Chapter Text
Beneath: Oil Fire
by duointherain
Disclaimer: I don’t own Gundam Wing
Note: Duo is twenty in this story. Relena is Rey.
Warning: Depressed Duo and mention of suicidal ideation
There is an edge to anger. Like a razor embedded in the soul. If you tell a therapist you want help with anger issues, they think you get angry all the time, punch things. The goal is to not feel anger, maybe.
Duo poked the pouch of spaghetti down into the cup. He wasn’t sure he was going to eat it, but he knew he should eat it, so he was warming it up in the hopes that he’d eat it. Rey was off at college, finishing up their junior year. The house was empty with most of the servants off to their own homes for the holidays. Maureen had flown out to sit with Milliardo, as he was in the hospital. Preventer work was dangerous, after all. Heero was also with Preventers, but as an analyst.
Duo was home.
Again.
He’d failed chemistry.
Again.
It wasn’t like he couldn’t go into the lab and make almost anything. That wasn’t the problem. It was that the textbooks felt like they were written in a foreign language. Tutors were humiliating and frustrating. Honestly, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do or why he was doing it.
Before the war, everything had been about survival. During the war, everything had been about survival and killing. It had been four years since the war. Maureen was the best parent he could imagine. Everyone was nice.
Since the war money had made the world nice.
He could study anything he wanted. Tests measured his IQ has high. He could still run a five-minute mile without feeling winded.
It was just this creeping malaise deep in his soul. If he looked at it too long, it was rage, this roaring oil fire of rage. If he didn’t look at it, it lurked under the skin turning his blood to sludge and his will to dust.
He could be a doctor.
He could be a lawyer like Trowa seemed happy to do.
Quatre said he could come into Winner Enterprises.
Maureen said he should keep trying schools. Go to the community college, be home at night. Maureen said he could do anything he wanted, other than use any more of her cars as race cars.
Heero loved him, even if Heero didn’t say much.
Duo guessed Heero had his own version of an oil fire in his soul. When they’d been kids, he thought they were at the happily ever after and then school had ended and suddenly they were adults.
Adults were supposed to be something, supposed to do something.
Duo turned around in the empty kitchen and eyed the drawer with all the knives. That would end the fucking oil fire. Leaning against the island, his lukewarm spaghetti silent and iconic, he leaned his head back and stared at the pristine ceiling of what amounted to a commercial kitchen in the house he could say he’d grown up in. It was a metaphor for how things should be. Catch the pancakes on fire, fill the kitchen with smoke, someone else cleans it up like it never happened.
Go to a therapist with anger issues and they ask if you have tried punching a pillow. They get kinda upset when you say now, but you once killed a cop in an ally because he tried to rape child you. Different times. Killing doesn’t help. Violence doesn’t help.
Muted rage melts the world down to grey. “I want to die,” he said out loud.
There was no one around to hear or be upset by it.
There must have been a parent, a mother, a biological mother, at some point. He rubbed his face, feeling the stubble of two days with no razor to skin. There was a chance that he wasn’t going to do anything. He couldn’t make it through school and if he was honest with himself, he didn’t actually want to be a doctor.
Or maybe he did, but fear of not being able was like rage gray soaking into the rest of the fabric of his life. Maybe he couldn’t do anything. Worthless.
His marble started to vibrate and fished it out of his pocket, set it into his ear where it melted warmly into place. “Hey.”
“Hi Honey!” Maureen said cheerful.
“Hey mom,” Duo said, trying not to cry, trying really hard to sound like a decent rational person. “How’s Milliardo?”
“He’s being released tomorrow. I’m bringing him home I just had a feeling about you. I just wanted to check on you.”
“I’m gonna fail chemistry again and I just don’t,” Duo said, pausing, jaw tight enough to hurt. “I’m sorry.”
“Honey! I love you. You’re going to find what works for you. It’s okay if it takes some time.”
“The broken dishwasher is more useful than I am,” Duo said, wishing she’d understand, that she’d just let him go. “It’s hard.”
“Duo Maxwell-Darlian,” Maureen said firmly. “I know it is. I know it’s hard. I love you. I’m very glad you’re my son. I will be home for the holidays. Promise me we’ll have lots of time to talk.”
“I promise, Mom,” Duo said. “What time will you be home?”
“About noon, I think. I hope it’s okay, but that nice Winner boy and his husband are coming as well. He’s flying us home on his shuttle.”
“That’s great,” Duo said, feeling two more tick marks for presents he didn’t have, that he wasn’t going to have. It made his chest hurt.
“So you’ll go shopping tomorrow morning,” Maureen said cheerfully. “You know where the house card is.”
He had money. That wasn’t the issue. He did like using the house card though. It felt more... belonging somehow. Like everything else in his life, it didn’t have to make sense. “Yeah. Maybe Heero will make it home too.”
“I hope so, honey. I should go. You’ll be okay till we get home, right?”
“Yeah, I promise,” Duo said. “I’ll order a pizza and look at local classifieds. Maybe I’ll get a job, you know? I hate being useless.”
“The worth of a person is not what they produce, it’s who they are and you’re the best.”
She spoke with such forceful honesty that he believed her and it made him feel a bit better. “I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too, honey. See you tomorrow!”
An hour later, Duo was at the keyboard, a pizza crust pinned between his teeth, violet eyes on the words streaming onto the screen.
A chat window from Heero popped up. “I will arrive at the Darlian estate in two hours. Is this acceptable.”
“Shit yes!” Duo typed back, spitting chewed on pizza crust onto the box. “You okay?”
“I am well. You?”
“I’m a worthless piece of shit. I failed chemistry, or will. Still love me?”
“Yes. Always.”
The tears hit Duo hard, a hand over his eyes, sobbing. He didn’t know why he was crying. He didn’t know which bit of cruel, hunger, neglect, which sin did him in. He didn’t feel sad in that moment. He didn’t feel depressed. He just sobbed. In his imagination, he saw his hand on Heero’s and dark poison spreading from him to the man he loved. With wet fingertips, he typed back, “I’m a piece of shit and I’m not good enough for you.”
“What are you working on,” Heero typed back.
“I was writing a story. It’s just a stupid story.”
“I love your stories. When we were in safe houses, sometimes you’d tell me stories and I’d pretend I wasn’t listening, but I loved them. You write and I think it’s real. Remember Yuki Eiri?”
“Oh my god, yeah. I remember. You really thought I was sleeping with an older guy. Maybe I’m a good writer?”
“You are a very good writer. Will you write me a story for Christmas? Maybe about how we get married?”
“Yeah,” Duo said, feeling much more cheerful, even if he was still crying. “I’ll write for you. Two hours?”
“Or less. I have a private jet for the week. Winner’s gift. We can go to the beach. I know you like the beach.”
“Everyone is so nice to me. What if I don’t deserve it?”
“What if you do? I think you do.”
“I’m so angry, Heero.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you’re angry because the world has hurt us. It’s right to be angry. You are good. I love you.”
“Really?”
“Forever and always. I am about to take off. I love you. Being near you makes me happy, even if you’re in a bad mood.”
Duo touched the screen over Heero’s chat window. “Someday we’ll get married,” he typed quickly.
“Pick the day. I’ll be there.”
“Even if I never graduate college and I’m a bum?”
“Yes. TTYS.”
“Bye Heero,” Duo said out loud to the screen, before focusing back on the story he was writing. Maybe he was a writer and that’s all he was and maybe it was enough.