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We did it.
A warm flood of relief filled Heero’s body, relaxing him and also making him suddenly aware of how sore and tired and drained he was. He didn’t realize how stressed he was about Duo’s capture until after it was already over and the American was safe again.
That’s why he’s a liability, the Soldier told him, but he shoved the criticism away, turning to look at where Duo was sitting in the copilot’s seat next to him.
Heero set the shuttle on autopilot, then looked over at Duo, scowling. The American had been awake a few minutes before, and now he seemed to be dozing, his breath ragged. Heero reached over to him, his first instinct to shake the pilot by the shoulder, but he remembered Duo’s injuries.
Instead he put his hand over the top of Duo’s hand where it laid on the arm rest, secretly relishing the sensation of warm skin under his palm.
“Duo.”
“Hmm,” Duo said, but didn’t open his eyes. “Five more minutes,” he muttered. “I’m so tired.”
“Duo, wake up. I think you have a concussion, you can’t go to sleep.”
One bleary violet eye, startlingly bright, cracked and looked over at Heero. Heero saw with alarm that Duo’s other eye had been almost completely shut, and there was a shiner under the other. Possible orbital fractures. Possible skull fracture.
That caused Heero’s frown to deepen, and he stood up out of the pilot’s chair. “Get up.”
Duo sighed. “Do I have to?”
“Yes,” Heero said, and didn’t wait for him to answer. He went into the back of the shuttle to the crew quarters and headed for the small bathroom, rifling through the storage compartments. He could hear Duo groan as he forced himself out of the copilot’s chair and followed Heero to the back of the shuttle.
“Take off your shirt and lay on the bed in there,” Heero called behind him as he found what he was looking for—there was a first aid kit in the bottom of the bathroom cabinet. He also poured a cup of warm water from the sink, grabbing a clean rag from the linen closet.
“Are you getting fresh with me, Heero Yuy?” Duo said, but Heero could hear rustling behind him as the American followed his instructions.
Heero ignored his remark and grabbed the kit, the rag, and the glass of water, carrying them back into the bedroom of the shuttle. Duo laid on the bed, his bared pale chest and torso a kaleidoscope of bruises.
When Heero walked in, Duo tried to waggle his eyebrows. The effect was somewhat ruined by the spectacular black eye and the general disrepair of Duo’s face and his jagged, shallow breathing. Heero noticed the gold cross gleaming at Duo’s neck, falling across his heart.
“Helloooo nurse.”
“Do you always have to be a smartass?” Heero asked quietly as he pulled a chair from the small desk in the living quarters up to the side of the bed and sat on it. He laid the medical kit beside him on the floor and sat the cup of warm water on the nightstand. “Sit up.”
Rolling his one good eye, Duo did as Heero asked, grimacing as he lifted up off the bed and swung his legs over the side. Heero handed him a few tablets of acetaminophin and the glass of water.
“It’s kind of the other half of my job,” Duo said before popping the pills in his mouth and taking a gulp of the water, swallowing them down.
“Maybe focus less on being clever and more on the Mission and next time you won’t end up getting worked over by a bunch of OZ officers,” Heero said as he took the glass back, dipping the clean rag in the glass of warm water before wringing it out until it was just damp.
Hesitating only slightly before he did it, he gently pressed the warm damp rag to Duo’s face, watching impassively as the American flinched back before accepting the sensation. Carefully, Heero began to remove dried blood from Duo’s cheeks and chin. Duo’s open violet eye seemed very, very close to him while he did it.
“So why’d you do it?” Duo asked, uncommonly serious. His voice seemed smaller.
“Do what?” Heero dipped the rag back in the cup of warm water and squeezed, watching it turn pink before he returned the damp cloth to Duo’s face, removing the blood by degrees to reveal bruising and swelling underneath.
“Oh don’t be an ass,” Duo muttered, hissing as Heero pressed down over a sore spot. “You know exactly what I meant. Ow!”
Duo yelped as Heero put the damp rag on the nightstand and reached out to run his hands lightly over Duo’s bared chest, feeling his ribs. Under other circumstances, Heero thought, the gesture would feel achingly erotic, and he filed the sensation away to think about later. But Heero was too aware of the deep black and purple bruises mottled across Duo’s flesh to feel any kind of arousal.
“If you think hurting me is going to distract me, you’re right,” Duo said. “But I still want to know.”
“You need to take deep breaths to prevent pneumonia,” Heero said. He looked up at Duo with his hand still palmed against Duo’s chest. “I think your rib is fractured here.”
“I know, it hurts like a motherfucker, please stop prodding it and answer my question,” Duo said, and Heero withdrew his hand.
“What does it matter?”
“It matters to me,” Duo replied, his expression uncharacteristically solemn, very different than the laughing bravado Duo had shown in the prison cell, when he was sure Heero really was going to kill him.
Heero sat the rag on the nightstand, looking at him.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Heero said. I don’t. I want to keep you safe.
“Why?” Duo asked, and when Heero looked at him in the warm lamplight of the shuttle quarters he looked different when he asked this, his expression more open. Vulnerable. It was a face that accepted that he would be hurt, he would be hurt plenty, over and over, by enemies and friends alike.
“Did you want me to kill you?”
“No,” Duo said, as Heero reached out to gently tilt his head, inspecting his ear. “Um, what the fuck are you doing?”
“Looking for intercranial fluid leaking from your ears. It can indicate a skull fracture.”
“Gross.”
Heero touched Duo’s head gingerly, watching how he winced when Heero touched the back of his head where it had been slammed against the side of the cockpit in battle.
“You’re lucky you’re hard-headed.”
“Now who is being a smartass?" Duo asked, closing his eyes at the sensation of Heero’s hands on his face and head. Hands that had killed only hours before now cradling his face, running one hand through his hair, feeling for knots and contusions. “So is my skull fractured or what?”
“I don’t have an X-ray, but I think you’ll live,” Heero said. “Lie back down.”
When Duo did as he said, Heero moved to the shuttle’s kitchen area. They wouldn’t have loose ice, but if he was lucky there would be a few multi-purpose ice packs in the freezer. He was.
He brought the ice packs back into the bedroom, handing one to Duo. “Hold this over your eye.”
Duo did as he was told, holding the pack over his eye that was swollen shut while Heero gently held the other ice pack to his chest. Duo hissed.
“Jesus, Heero, that’s cold.”
“That’s the point,” Heero replied, dryly.
“How long are you gonna leave that on there?”
“Until you stop complaining about it. That should give me an adequate fifteen minutes.”
Duo snorted and shut up. The two of them fell silent for a few minutes, listening to the rumble of the shuttle thrusters around them, the deep almost subaudible hum of the oxygen and gravity generators.
Heero was very still, feeling the rise and fall of Duo’s chest under the ice pack as they sat there. Duo closed his good eye and Heero was glad—he didn’t want the American staring at him, trying to read his thoughts through his face.
“Would you really have killed me and then yourself?”
“I’m reconsidering it. Breathe deeper. Shallow breaths increase the risk of pneumonia or a collapsed lung with rib fractures.”
“It fuckin’ hurts, man.” But Duo obeyed him, and Heero could feel the rise and fall of his chest deepen. Heero moved his free hand to Duo’s belly, feeling the area beneath the ribs and over his navel. He felt Duo freeze under his touch.
“I’m checking for internal bleeds,” Heero said, noticing that the Deathscythe pilot was now watching him carefully.
“Well you could at least buy me dinner first.”
Heero looked up, met his eyes.
“Are you hungry?”
Duo sighed, as much as he could in his current condition, and shifted slightly on the bed, grimacing. “Do you have to be so serious all the time?”
“Yes.”
“Well you know what I meant, thanks for ruining the joke, and I’m always hungry. Besides that, they didn’t exactly see the need to feed me since they were planning on killing me.”
“Here, hold this pack with your other hand,” Heero said, and Duo obeyed him, taking over for the pack on his chest.
Heero got up and moved to the shuttle’s tiny kitchenette, busying himself with the hydrator and the small convection oven. He reconstituted and cooked two of the foiled packs of macaroni and cheese, bringing them back into the bedroom with a pair of forks and moistened towelettes in tear-packs.
“I’d say that smells amazing, but my nose is so stuffed up I can’t smell anything,” Duo said, sitting up again. Heero noted that after taking the acetaminophen, Duo seemed to be moving a little more loosely than before. It made something in him relax slightly, to see Duo in less pain.
He handed Duo one of the trays of macaroni and the utensils, then sat down with his own tray.
“You need a shower,” Heero said, forking the hot macaroni and cheese into his mouth mechanically.
“Oh, thanks.”
“Your hair.”
Duo gingerly reached up a bruised and scraped hand to touch his head as he waited for the food to cool, feeling how flyaway and grimy his hair had gotten. “Well...yeah. But I don’t know if I have the energy to fix it back even if I washed it. Which also sounds like a little more than I can manage right now.”
“I can help you.”
Duo looked at him then, and Heero saw something guarded fall over his expression, shuttering it. “What’s with you, anyway?” he asked as he turned away, stirring his food, a furrow between his eyes.
“What do you mean?”
Duo glanced back up at him, and Heero couldn’t read his expression now. “You came here specifically to murder me, and now you’re offering to help me wash and braid my hair. Do you really have no concept of social boundaries to understand how fucking weird that is?”
“If you don’t want my help, all you have to do is say so,” Heero replied after swallowing his food.
Duo sighed and got another forkful of macaroni, chewing. “You’re a pain in the ass,” he said, talking around the food in his mouth.
“You’re one to talk.”
They fell into a companionable silence as they finished their food. Heero held out his hand for Duo’s tray.
“I...uh. If you could help me with it, I would appreciate it. My shoulder...they pulled something in it, I think. The pain when I took my shirt off was pretty bad,” Duo said, quietly. He handed the tray to Heero.
“I said I would,” Heero replied shortly, and walked back to the kitchen to throw the trays in the trash receptacle. He didn’t look at Duo’s face before he went, afraid of what he might see there. With his back turned, he could hear Duo shuffling around in the back of the shuttle, moving to the bathroom.
Heero returned to the bathroom, where Duo was stiffly trying to get his pants unbuttoned.
“Quit trying to bend over. Sit down on the toilet.”
Duo obeyed. Heero unlaced the American’s boots and pulled them off his feet, then pulled off his socks.
“Stand up. Quit straining your arm.”
Duo did, starting to unbutton his pants. Heero walked forward and pushed Duo’s hand away gently away from his waist, moving to unbutton them himself as he knelt down. He heard Duo make a small, strangled noise above him, but he ignored it as he clinically pulled Duo’s pants and boxers down, letting Duo step out of them.
“Get in,” Heero said, looking back up at Duo and seeing that the Deathscythe pilot’s face had gone red and flushed all the way to his ears.
His color looks better, Heero thought, and had to fight to keep a tiny smirk off his face.
Duo turned away from him and got into the enclosed shower, turning it on.
Then Heero undressed and got in behind him.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Duo asked, standing under the fall of water.
Heero frowned at him. “What, I’m supposed to get my clothes wet to do this?”
He watched Duo visibly swallow, then Duo turned away from him in the shower, avoiding his eyes. Duo felt for the end of his braid and undid it, setting the elastic aside.
“Um…”
But before Duo could say anything else, Heero grabbed the braid and started methodically unraveling it, gently working the strands loose. Dried blood rinsed down the drain, turning the water a reddish-brown color. Duo just stood there, turned away from him, and Heero could see that the American was trembling a little even under the warm water.
“How is your pain?” he asked, by way of distraction.
“A little better,” Duo said. “Thanks.”
“Hn.”
Heero worked slowly, partially out of the desire to be thorough, but also because he savored the feel of Duo’s silky hair puddling in his hands, slipping through his fingers. To look at it was one thing, but to be allowed to touch it was something else.
Heero grabbed a palmful of 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner from the dispenser in the side of the shuttle shower, squirting several large portions before moving to the end of Duo’s hair and beginning to soap it up one section at a time.
He could feel and see the tension in Duo’s shoulders as he worked. The American was practically vibrating with anxiety to turn his back on Heero. But as Heero kept carefully washing his hair, moving up the length of it, Heero felt Duo relax under his ministrations.
Finally he reached Duo’s head proper and shampooed it up, massaging the lather into his hair carefully, avoiding his bumped head. He heard Duo sigh when Heero’s fingers touched his scalp, and the sound sent a shiver through Heero.
“There. Turn around and rinse it out.”
Duo turned back to him, putting his head under the falling water, and Heero was suddenly stunned at how close they were. Bared to each other. He felt heat rise into his own face.
“Better?” Heero asked.
“Oh yeah,” Duo said, his voice huskier than before as he looked into Heero’s eyes.
“Good.” Heero tore his gaze away from Duo’s and grabbed the shower loofah, soaping it up and washing Duo’s body, starting from the shoulders.
“You...uh...you don’t have to do that,” Duo said, grabbing Heero’s wrist where it held the loofah against his collarbone, looking into Heero’s eyes. “I can do it.”
Heero checked his expression, then nodded, opening the shower door and stepping out without another word. He closed it behind him and got dressed again after rubbing himself dry with a towel, moving back into the sleeping quarters.
Now, in the aftermath of the battle, Heero felt exhaustion and the dregs of drained adrenaline threatening weighing on him. He sat on Duo’s bed.
“Grab some dry towels!” Heero shouted, not sure if Duo could hear him over the sound of the running water but yelling anyway.
When Duo emerged from the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist, carrying a stack of two more clean white towels, a hair dryer, and a hair brush, he looked much better to Heero, and it caused something to unloosen in him, making him feel good but also more tired. He’ll be okay. He’s fine.
Heero had faced the chair from the desk away from the bed. “Sit down.”
Duo did as he asked. Heero began the painstaking task of using the dry towels to dry Duo’s hair to a state that was as dry as possible before he plugged in the hair dryer.
“Why are you doing this?” Duo whispered.
“You’re injured, you can’t,” Heero said, simply, before turning on the hair dryer, drowning out further conversation.
Drying Duo’s hair felt like it took a long time, but neither pilot minded. With the noise from the dryer, there was no way to talk.
When the hair was finally dry, Heero took the brush and started smoothing it down, working at the bottom and moving his way up, grasping the hair in handfuls so it wouldn’t pull Duo’s scalp as he did it.
“This is impractical,” Heero said as he worked, Duo’s silky chestnut locks sliding through his fingers like a waterfall.
“Yeah, yeah,” Duo whispered, his eyes closed, breathing deeper under Heero’s touch.
“Why don’t you cut it?”
“Reminds me of somebody I cared about.”
“Ah,” Heero said, and didn’t ask anything else, only started sectioning the hair out at the top of Duo’s head and methodically braiding it down.
“How do you know how to do that?” Duo asked.
Heero scowled as he worked. “It’s just looping one piece of hair over the other and then back again. It’s not a complicated process if you watch.”
“You watched me braid my hair?”
Heero felt hot blood in his face again, but answered. “Yes.”
“Why?”
Because you’re beautiful. You have no idea how beautiful you are.
“In case I needed to know.”
“Oh,” Duo said, and his voice sounded different now, but Heero couldn’t see his face.
It took him a few minutes, but Heero finally got the Deathscythe pilot’s hair braided all the way to the end. He secured it with the elastic.
“There. Now get back in bed.” Heero stood up off Duo’s bed, giving him room. “But no sleeping. Just rest.”
Duo stood up from the chair, turning back to him. He was looking at Heero with an expression that Heero couldn’t read.
“What?” Heero said, feeling suddenly self-conscious, his voice sharper than he intended.
“Nothing. Thanks for that,” Duo said softly.
“You’re welcome.” Heero moved to the single bunk opposite Duo’s, lying down on the bed with his shoes and socks off. He folded his hands behind his head and closed his eyes as he listened to the sound of Duo laying back down on the bed opposite his. Behind his eyelids, he could see where Duo dimmed the lighting in the room.
“You going to sleep?” Duo asked.
“We’re on autopilot until 0600. But no. I’m just going to meditate. I have to make sure you don’t fall asleep.”
The two of them fell silent for a few moments. Then Duo spoke again.
“Heero?”
“What?”
Duo’s voice was still soft, but it carried in the stillness of the shuttle, in the small amount of space between them. The two beds were so close that they could almost touch their outstretched fingertips if they wanted to.
“Thanks for saving my life.”
The words sent a bolt of feeling through Heero. He kept his eyes tightly shut, afraid to look over at Duo, afraid of what he might see in Duo’s eyes.
“You’re welcome.”