Most of Duo's features were stuffed comfortably into the cotton fattened pillow that supported his head, his long, lumpy braid pressed tightly between Heero's thigh and one of Duo's forearms. It had been a long, hard road to get to this place, Heero thought as he took in the peaceful way Duo slept -- a far cry from the bustling wad of energy he was when he was awake. The war was long over, but it was good to know that certain things didn't change.

This arrangement, however, was new, but it was certainly not unwelcome. He hadn't realized how unsavoury waking up alone had been until a few mornings prior, when he'd opened his eyes and found Duo curled up on the floor next to his bed, his head resting in the cradle of his folded arms scant inches from Heero's face. He wasn't sure how Duo had gotten there or why, and he hadn't asked.

Heero reached out to push his fingers beneath the thick tresses pulled across the side of Duo's skull. Duo's hair was course from lack of shampooing, but Duo had explained that he hadn't had the time with all the colony hopping he'd been doing as of late. "I want to wake up where you are," Heero told Duo's sleeping face as he fidgeting with a shock of his own hair, which had become a bit matted in the past week or so.

"That's why you ran away with me," came a mumbled reply from deep inside the pillow's soft padding. Duo had stirred a little bit, but his eyes were still closed. The corner of his smiling mouth flicked up over the pillow's plush contour. "And why you're here in my room."

"Our room," Heero corrected absently, pulling his fingers from Duo's hair and giving his pillow a friendly whack with the back of his hand. Technically, yes, the room did belong to Duo; it had been his home base for a long time running, though it had served as more of a depository for the things he'd accumulated on his wanderings than as a place to actually live. Not that any of that really made a difference to Heero. Living space hadn't been his primary concern when he'd taken off with Duo.

An amused but muffled chuckle rose from the vicinity of Duo's pillow. "Damn, what Father Maxwell would do if he saw us now," he said with an amused air, rolling onto his back and whacking his elbow against the wall with a hollow-sounding thunk as he reached up to press the heel of his hand against his forehead. "He'd hit the wall!"

Heero blinked down at Duo, a little surprised by Duo's sudden animation, his curious blue eyes asking the unspoken question.

Duo sat up, his eyes suddenly open and shining brightly in the dull morning glow. "Because you're... well... you," he said a bit sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck as best he could in the tight space. The bed was crammed in one corner of the room, between the wall and a mountainous tower of cardboard storage boxes.

Heero pulled harder on his hair, nervously tucking it behind his ear over and over. "Because I'm me?" he wondered, not even sure why it really mattered all that much. "Because of who I am? Or because of what I've done?"

"I don't know. Both, maybe?" Duo shrugged and leaned forward so he could wrap his arms around Heero's narrow waist and pull him further onto the bed, so his back was molded warmly against Duo's side. "Because of the things we've done -- both of us... together."

Heero cast his eyes downward at Duo's hands, which were clasped tightly upon his hip. A thin scar split the curve between Duo's thumb and forefinger on one hand, and a good chunk of the skin on the back of one of Heero's was a shade whiter than the rest. But his wrists were still bony, and Duo's hands still seemed far too big for his long frame His fingers fell limp around the shell of his ear. "Don't suppose I'll ever know what it means to be a real man, then. We live with too many faults."

Duo's breath ghosted across Heero's ear, rustling the loose wisps of air he'd just been toying with. "I know you're a real man, Heero," Duo murmured impishly, causing Heero to warm at the memory of the desperate way they'd clawed every thread off one another before stumbling into bed the night before. At first it had sort of frightened Heero to think that they were carrying through with such impulses, but he supposed he'd known for far too long that there was no other way it could have been. He saw Duo in the mirror every time he tried to look at his own face; there was no way Duo wasn't a part of him already.

Heero was quiet as he though to himself, turning his head in the direction of the room's single light source. Peeking out at the bland apartment building across the way, which sported a fa?de that was indistinct in the darkened colony's morning safe lights, the window was a boring rectangle of glass split by a metallic line through the center. Still, to Heero, with his face dimly outlined next to Duo's, the crystal clear glass seemed almost like a blank canvas upon which to paint a masterpiece. "Do you ever think we'll fly again?" he asked suddenly, pulling out of Duo's arms and twisting his body so they were facing each other.

Duo cocked his head curiously, unsure of just what had brought this question on. His eyes flicked over towards the window, which was slowly gaining a pale yellow hue as the colony's morning lights started to kick in. He knew what Heero was trying to express, though. This new world they'd won for Relena had left them fettered in a cage of normalcy and expectations. It was part of why he'd been overwhelmed with this urge to run, to always be on the move. He'd hopped from satellite to satellite until he'd found Heero again, and knew easily that he couldn't leave Heero chained behind in the same muck that had threatened to swallow him whole. It was then he realized that the thing he'd been so restless to find wasn't something he'd really had to really look all that hard for.

Heero was still watching the window and the way the morning light was pushing yellow squares across the sea of assorted junk that adorned the linoleum floor. The squares played over a broken motor and a scrap sheet of what looked like gundanium alloy, a forgotten watercolour set and an old stereo system, photo albums of people Duo didn't know and a small pyramid of unlabeled shoeboxes. "I think I want to try again," he said, standing up and taking a few steps from the bed. The sheet slid from around his body and pooled upon the floor with a soft rustle as he moved slowly towards the window, picking his way carefully around the things on the ground. Duo watched, riveted with fascination as the squares of light broke across Heero's naked body and transformed themselves into shapes that escaped a name.

Wedged between the mountain of cardboard boxes and a big packing trunk beneath the sill, Heero cautiously laid a hand on the wall beside window, leaning forward just slightly as he peered down the nine stories to the street below. "Do you remember just a year ago? When it seemed like all we had to do was jump? When we could live through anything?" he asked, his eyelashes fluttering upon his high cheekbones. "It was like you weren't walking blindly out over some bottomless chasm -- some deep, dark nothing -- but easy, as if you were just stepping into a green pasture full of yellow flowers...." His voice slowed as a gentle, almost whimsical smile of nostalgia budded upon his full lips.

"We were fighters, but we were still young and stupid," Duo said, scooting towards the edge of the bed. He didn't bother to try and hide his own nakedness beneath the sheets. "Young and stupid people can take on the world."

Heero was kneeling on the trunk now, his palms flat against the glass. "You lost the will to jump?" he asked absently. Slowly, he stood up on the cracked leather top of the trunk, his arms spread out like wings for balance as he cautiously turned around with tiny steps so he could face the inside of the room again.

"What if I survive?" Duo asked, his eyes tracing the halo that bent around Heero's frame. "I'd just end up more broken than I already am."

"But at least you'd be free," Heero answered calmly, as if all the answers in the world had suddenly leaked in through that little L2 window. "You could skim low, where it's safe, or you could try to go higher and grasp the sunlight."

"You yearn like Icarus," Duo said, awed by Heero's serenity. He leaned forward, digging his elbows into his thighs as he carefully regarded Heero. He was a beautiful thing in his vulnerable nakedness, the strengthening light feathering out like wings beneath the line of his outstretched arms. "Nothing holds you safe, Heero Yuy," he murmured. "Not even me."

Heero's startling blue eyes pierced Duo's with a flicker of some unnamed emotion. "I need you more than you could ever realize, Duo," he said, his tone even and serious.

Duo was unable to rip his eyes from Heero's pinning stare. "Even if you tried to fly?" Duo wondered, bewildered, fisting the sheets nervously in one fist. "Even if you went kept running on the air?" He was afraid to add the morose 'without me' to the end of that sentence, loathe to hear the words sound in his own voice.

"I think I still want to," Heero said decisively, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath that seemed to fill his very soul with the dusty light fluttering around him like ethereal butterflies. "If did it, if I should try," he went on, inching closer to the brass edge of the trunk, "would you be there to catch me when I fall?"

Before Duo had a chance to respond, Heero suddenly leapt off the edge of the trunk, and the world seemed to spin into an unnatural stillness as he lingered in the air, slowly plummeting towards the cluttered floor. Duo instinctively lunged forward, not caring what he landed on as he threw himself across the hard floor, his arms reaching up towards Heero to cradle him gently downwards as he tumbled from the above.

Heero landed on Duo in a wild tangle of arms and legs, their nude bodies splayed strangely across the floor. Heero's cheek lay pressed against Duo's clavicle, his eyelashes dusting the curve of Duo's neck as a sated grin slowly welled itself upon his features. "Did you see it, Duo?" he asked in a voice that melted into Duo's skin. "I did it -- I'm flying."

Duo's chest rose and fell erratically as he fought to regain the air and heartbeats he'd lost when he'd seen Heero throw himself so carelessly off the edge like that. His arms coiled themselves around Heero's torso as he held the Japanese aviator tightly, fearfully. "You scared the shit out of me, Heero," he said. "I thought, for a second, that I might lose you." His fingertips dug uncomfortably into Heero's flesh as he burrowed his face into Heero's thick hair, surrounding himself in that familiar scent of oil and cloves that hung like a haze around the other man. "Don't ever try to leave me like that again. I can't.... I can't..." He bit his lip harshly and squinted his eyes tightly.

The smile never once left Heero's face. Disentangling himself from Duo's crooked limps, he propped himself up on his elbows and gently ran the rough pad of this thumb across Duo's cheek. "I couldn't go anywhere without you," he whispered as he leaned down to kiss Duo's mouth softly. "Can't you feel it? Aren't you flying too?" He kissed Duo again, his hands sliding lovingly down the length of Duo's arms and fitting themselves into Duo's so he could stretch them wide across the floor, like eagle's wings.

Heero's body contoured against his as they kissed, hard and strong and beautiful, Duo suddenly felt it, like a breath of wind had suddenly caught his feet and tossed him skyward. He gave himself more fully to Heero's kiss, confirming in a low whisper against Heero's lips, "I think I am." He struggled to somehow mold himself even closer to Heero as if he was trying to somehow become a part of the other man. "By God, Heero, I am."