Thanks to Hawk for her ever-wonderful beta-ing skills. *huggles*

Silence
by Nessa-chan

For weeks now, whenever it rains, he'll just sit in front of the window, his eyes hazy and unfocused, his voice absolutely silent.

Let me describe this silence to you.

This silence is what happens when there is no sound. It's what happens when the battles are fought and won, what happens when I sit down to read a book. It's the stillness of trees and the mirror surfaces of lakes and the gentle sliding of water down a glass windowpane.

This silence is what happens when Duo Maxwell is not talking.

I suppose anyone else might call that "quiet," but not many people have lived with Duo in varying situations for just over five years. By varying situations, I mean that I've lived with Duo because I've had to, I've lived with him because I've needed to, and I've lived with him because I've wanted to. Now it's really a combination of all three. In each case, he very rarely ever stopped talking. His chatter ceased for food and food alone on most occasions, and it became something of an addiction to me. To hear him speaking of the most banal and stupid things always kept me acutely aware of his presence, which I never would admit -- aloud, anyway -- that I needed. His voice always brought me to the present, always grounded me in the here and now and even gave me a reason to listen to him. And to live.

So pardon me if I say that, at times, his lack of speech is unnerving.

He was always there to save me, even if I didn't realize at the time that he was doing it. After the wars were over and it seemed as if there was nothing to do but wander aimlessly for the rest of my life, Duo suggested that we stay together. To figure ourselves out, he said. He told me it would be easier to blaze a path with someone than go at it alone, and I agreed. We went in together for an apartment on Earth; I was sick of space, and I'm pretty sure he was, too.

Things seemed slow for the first months; there was an awkwardness between us that even now is difficult to recall. At the time, the strangeness felt surreal as we stumbled our way into a normal existence, or at least as normal an existence as soldiers can find in a time of peace. Gradually, things fell into place. He got me to talk more; he was always talking and suddenly I felt insensitive for not answering him after I'd spent years doing just that. I came to know that his smiles weren't always happy and that the depth of his emotions were all too easily hidden by the many masks he wore. He helped me tear down some of my own masks as I grew to know his.

There were many days when I would think back on the war; my first impression of Duo was that he was obnoxious, intrusive and dangerous. As time went on, though, I had come to depend on his being around me to remind myself that I was alive. One day I woke up and realized why it had been so easy for me to say "yes" to him when he suggested we live together when the wars were over, and I very suddenly couldn't recall a time when I hadn't loved Duo Maxwell with every last breath in my body.

I was told when I was very young to follow my emotions, but it was damn hard advice to follow. I'm not someone to act on a gut feeling without analyzing it to death and back first -- that's more something Duo would do. But I started noticing something was... off with him. I could feel it when I sat down to type a letter, or wash the dishes, or when I was getting ready for bed. I couldn't tell what exactly was different, but there was a noticeable change in Duo and it made me uneasy. If there's one thing I hate, it's not knowing why I feel like something is wrong.

I couldn't just ask him. His defenses are better than mine and I've learned it's almost impossible to get him to talk about something he doesn't want to talk about. But there was this tension in the apartment, tangible, and it took me longer than it should have to realize what it was.

He wasn't talking.

Not nearly as much as he usually did, at least. I didn't understand right away why something like that should bother me, since I really do enjoy a quiet read or even just sitting in silence. But then I noticed how heavy the quiet in the apartment felt, and that is when I dubbed Duo's unusual quietness as silence. It was too deep and oppressive to be called anything else. I reminded myself every day that Duo's voice was one of the reasons I didn't disappear for good after the second war.

After a few days of this new habit, I noticed that Duo's silence always coincided with a storm. A rainstorm, specifically -- one that was equally quiet in its majesty. He'd talk right through thunderstorms but the quiet, gentle rain always found him sitting on the loveseat beneath the big window of the living room, his eyes fixed on a distant point that no one else could see, his lips sealed shut in what could have been awe or reverence or thoughtfulness.

When I finally did mention to Duo that he seemed awfully quiet lately (and I made it a point to be as gentle as possible about it), he got a strange, faraway look in his eyes, then shrugged and changed the subject. As I had thought, it wasn't anything he wanted to share. Yet. He almost always tells me what's on his mind eventually, even if he doesn't realize that he's saying it.

And he's at it again.

It wasn't supposed to rain today. But around dinnertime, clouds rolled in and darkened the house too early and let little drops of water sneak into the kitchen by way of the open window. It was warm out, and I'd left it open. I closed it as soon as I noticed the counter getting wet.

There was coffee in the pot left over from breakfast, but I prefer tea after dinner. I walked into the living room to ask Duo if he wanted either and found him sitting on the wide sill of the window, the pane slid all the way open. He was staring out into the darkness, a mug already cradled in his lithe, strong hands, and he was getting soaked.

Somehow I didn't have the heart to disturb him. So I just stood there and watched from just inside the door.

His hair was snaking down his back in its usual braid -- impractical during the war, certainly, but since it survived with him it's now more a thing of beauty than anything. He was sprawled like a big cat across the windowsill and, like me, had nothing on his feet. I preferred to wear nothing on my feet because it just seemed impolite to walk on a clean floor with dirty shoes. Duo... well, Duo just doesn't like shoes. Or clothes, for that matter, but tonight he was wearing jeans and the shirt he had worn to work. Both were soggy on the right side from the rain. There was probably more rainwater in his mug than whatever else had been in it before and he didn't seem much bothered by it.

It was while I was studying his profile, searching it, that I realized I was calling Duo beautiful in my mind. I'd been doing that for some time. But a thought kept nagging at me; why had he asked me to live with him? Why not Quatre, who was so like him in ways, or Wufei, who told him the truth when he needed to hear it? Why not Trowa, even? Why did wonderful, talkative Duo choose to live with dull, pragmatic me? I didn't understand.

"Heero?"

He'd broken his routine silence when he noticed me standing there staring at him as he had stared out the window a moment ago. The look on his face was without its usual façade and his eyes as they regarded me were the violet of the horizon during a storm. He looked expectant and afraid and vulnerable and I felt that if I didn't say something he might never speak again.

"Are you okay, Duo?" I asked, because it was so obvious that he wasn't, and I didn't know how to make it better. Whatever was bothering him had to be confronted, and if he wouldn't do it then I would.

I think it bothered him that I asked in English, or maybe it was just that I asked. I saw surprise on his face before his features closed up, shut me out. His eyes had that distant, hazy look to them, like he was looking at something that I couldn't see, would never be able to see. But I wanted to. If it would make the gaping emptiness I felt when he was silent go away, I would do anything.

"Please, Duo," I said when he seemed to push me even farther away. "Talk to me."

He turned those eyes on me then, and I could see beyond the haze to something that was dark and brooding. "I --" he began, then looked away. He stopped and took a breath. The sound, quiet as it should have been, seemed deafening.

When he finally looked back at me, he looked miserable. The look in his eyes was one of mourning and confusion, death, betrayal. An entire gamut of emotions that I could only grasp at as vague feelings until I'd met him, lived with him.

"Does it ever... bother you?" Duo finally asked, and I frowned.

"Does what bother me?"

He hesitated before answering, "Knowing that you're responsible for the deaths of people who could have had families? People who... were just doing a job, or trying to pay their way through school?" He looked away, back out the window. His hands seemed to reflexively grasp the mug he was holding, but I hadn't seen him drink from it.

I felt like the answer was important to him. Silly me, I evaded. "Does it bother you, Duo? Is that why you've been so quiet lately?"

He spoke without turning back to me. "Answer my question first, Heero, and then I'll answer yours."

I remembered a moment of kindness, repaid with blood and death. In the silence that followed as I thought of my answer, I could hear the rain drizzling on the roof. I saw it sliding past the open window, some of the larger drops falling in and onto Duo's clothes. He looked so relaxed sitting there, but I knew he wasn't. There was a trembling in the hand that gripped the white porcelain mug that belied his calm.

"Yes."

He turned back to me, his eyes studying my face. I felt a little uncomfortable under his gaze, but I repeated myself, just in case he hadn't heard. Duo could be awfully selective about what he heard when he wanted to be. "Yes, Duo. It bothers me."

He was silent for a moment more, his eyes still on my face, before he said, "No, that's not the reason I -- I haven't been talking." The rain still hissed softly on the roof, and Duo still held that plain white mug in his hands. I still hadn't come into the living room, and I could feel the space between us pressing against my skin.

"Why, Duo?" I asked, keeping my voice just above the sound of the rain. I wasn't sure if I was asking him why he'd asked me about death bothering me, or if I was asking why he'd been so silent these last weeks. All I knew was that I had him talking and I wasn't about to let him stop. Even when he was angry, his voice calmed me, let me think clearly. I'd missed it.

He looked away again. This time, I didn't think he was going to answer; he had returned to gazing out the window, aloof and seemingly calm. I didn't understand his questions or his answers to my own and I didn't understand his behavior at all. I'd thought it through a thousand times but this change in him was something far beyond my analytical capability.

When his voice came, I was unprepared for it, having resigned myself to another night of listening to the sound of the rain and wishing that Duo would just come and sit with me instead of staring out the window. I think I winced when he spoke, but as he was still staring out the window, he didn't see.

"It bothered me a lot, being responsible for the lives of so many people, people I didn't know, people I did have the honor to know and respect and love," he said, and his voice was just above a whisper. "And I've dealt with that in my own way." He turned back to me, and his face was a mask of confusion. "But you, Heero... nothing seems to bother you at all. You're always so... so goddamned stoic, I don't know, and sometimes it really scares the shit out of me because you're my friend. If death didn't bother you, if killing didn't bother you, then how... could you function? How did you keep going?"

After the quietness that I'd expected, his long speech was surprising. It was nothing near what I was used to hearing from Duo, but I could tell from the way he forged on that he was winding himself up for a good rant.

"And somehow, I found myself hoping that I was wrong, that you were just really good at hiding shit like I am and everything bothered you but you were just too stubborn to show it. Which made me wonder if there were a lot of things you weren't showing; things you hid from me because you were trained to or didn't feel comfortable telling me or whatever." He paused again, and in this pause I could feel him struggle with something that he wanted to say. Something that felt equally important as his question to me just a moment ago had been. I took a step into the room, two, three. When he squared his shoulders and turned, clutching his mug to his chest like a lifeline, I took a fourth step and was halfway across the hardwood floor -- close enough to Duo that if I reached out all the way I could brush my fingertips across him.

"So, Heero," he said, his eyes bright in the paleness of his face, "what have you been hiding?"

I don't give Duo enough credit sometimes. He was and is just as capable as I of analyzing something to its death. The way he phrased the question made me feel suddenly like an insect under some giant microscope, as if all this time he'd really been observing me, or his memories of me or what he knew of me. While I had watched him sit and stare into the falling rain, he'd been thinking about me and trying to figure out why I was behaving strangely. Not that I had noticed I was behaving any different.

I thought of lying to him, then thought better of it. I didn't want to tell him how I felt, but hiding it or simply omitting it from my answer would only serve to make the strange predicament we'd gotten ourselves into worse. I knew that Duo hated lying, and so there was really only one thing for me to do.

I had wanted so badly to keep this from him, but I had decided long ago that if I ever were to tell Duo how I felt for him, I would just say it. I don't like to take a long time to say something. I looked into his open, waiting face and recalled again how very beautiful I found him to be.

"You are so beautiful," I whispered. The words had left my mouth to travel the space between us before I had decided that I was going to say them aloud, and I was immediately frustrated with myself for starting out with something that was going to lead to our beating around the bush. But then I saw his eyes light up a little, even though he had fallen back into silence. He looked expectant, as if those four words were only the beginning of something else he had been waiting to hear.

I felt jolted, startled at myself for keeping my feelings from him. I knew that throughout our years knowing each other I'd been gruff and callous at best, and somehow he was still my best friend and the only person I could ever see myself loving. He always told me what was on his mind, even if it did take him weeks to say it, no matter what it was. And I hadn't so much as given him a hint as to what I was thinking.

He was still staring at me with that look on his face, hopeful in spite of something I'm sure he thought he'd only imagined hearing. There had been enough waiting, enough hoping for things that would supposedly never be. Enough silence in this place. I was sick of it. He probably was, too.

"I love you, Duo," I told him, trying to keep the tremor from my voice. His fingers flexed around the mug. "I have for a long time." I took a step towards him, two. When I saw that expectant glow in his eyes flare into something blazing and alive, I knew I was lost beyond all reason. I crossed that last distance between us as if it did not exist and fell towards him, a hand reaching for his hair and the other capturing his wrist as he wrapped cool fingers around my neck. The joining of our lips was not so much a meeting as a reunion; all of a sudden there was this overwhelming sense of familiarity and knowing and rightness. It was coming home. Everything else paled before the sensation of his lips on mine.

Duo was the one to deepen the kiss, to make absolutely certain that I knew what it was that he wanted and expected and feared. I responded to his urgency with my own. I was delirious with the feel of him, the touch and the taste and the scent of him; I was drunk on him. I was drowning in him as surely as he had been drowning in the rain for all these weeks, and I had no desire to save myself. I heard the mug clatter to the floor, felt his fingers tangling in my hair and gripping the strands just as they had gripped the mug. Whatever had been in the white porcelain was now surely spilled all over the loveseat and the floor, but I didn't care.

I broke the kiss, cupping his lovely, elegant face in my hands. I wanted to tell him how sorry I was for keeping him waiting, for not realizing sooner that he felt the same. "I'm sorry -- " I began, but he shook his head, his eyes sliding shut.

"Forget it, Heero," he breathed, his eyes opening again and staring into mine without masks, without pretense. "I love you, and right now all I want is for you to not stop kissing me." He turned his face and placed a quick kiss on my wrist. "We can talk about 'sorry' some other time."

I love to hear Duo talk, but I agreed. This was not the moment for talking.

Even so, the silence in our home is broken.

I don't think it'll be around again any time soon.