Warnings and disclaimers in first part
Waking slowly, he hissed at the pressure of binding around his torso and the pounding of a thousand drums in his head. “Ugh.”
“You finally awake?”
Cracking his eyes open, he rolled them to glare at the black-haired woman. “What happened?”
“I was hoping you would tell me. Kieran and Trowa are sitting in the waiting room glaring at each other and not saying what happened.”
“Fan-fucking-tastic. Can you tell me why I’m in my least favorite place?”
“Apparently you passed out, though I doubt you simply fell over. The pretty bruises on your face and stomach say you were hit, damn hard. You have a concussion and have to stay overnight for observation because you lost consciousness,” Hilde’s face was concerned, though her words were flippant.
“I’ve been knocked out before. I’ll be fine.”
“Duo, you’ve been out cold for almost three hours. Stay the night, for me and the kids? Ayla and Kyran have called twice asking about you.”
He knew a guilt trip when he heard one, but damned if he would make those kids worry. “Fine, I’ll stay. Where the rugrats at?”
“Morgan’s house; when Kieran called to say they were taking you to the hospital, I called her. She’s going to open the store for the next few days, so you are to rest…doctor’s orders.”
The blue eyes didn’t make him feel guilty this time. Waving an arm and wishing he hadn’t, he dismissed the orders. “No doctor can tell me what to do.”
“This one can, and you’ll listen or I’ll sic my husband on you,” Sally Po Chang said from the doorway.
“Be still my beating heart. It’s Miss Sally,” Duo batted his lashes and got a laugh.
“That’s Mrs. Chang now. Good to see your charm didn’t get knocked out. Imagine my surprise when I saw one of my favorite boys rushed into the ER, carrying another one of my favorite boys. I was worried Trowa was going to have a heart attack.”
Duo had a hard time imagining Trowa that panicked about anything, so he changed the subject, “Are you sure I can’t leave?”
“I’m sure. So what happened, Duo? I’ve never known you to go down without a fight. You weren’t this bad off the last time you and Wufei got mad at each other and tried to beat out your problems,” Sally said with an arched brow.
“It worked, didn’t it?” Duo grinned, wincing when the stares of two women focused on him. “There wasn’t much of a fight. Kieran was trying to kill Trowa and I got in the way. Papa Bear has fists of steel.”
“You know when Kieran gets angry it’s best to let him get it out of his system,” chastised Hilde. “You should have stayed out of the way.”
“Hil, you don’t get it. When I say he was trying to kill Trowa, I mean it. He kept punching after I got between them.”
Hilde’s face was sober, “What did Trowa do? There must have been something.”
“We’d been talking and I was…upset. Kieran walked in, took one look at me and punched Trowa with no warning. Is Trowa all right?” he asked Sally suddenly, remembering how the man had been tossed across the room.
“I managed to check him out earlier. Small bump on the head and his ribs are sore, but he’s not nearly as bad as you are, Duo. On top of the concussion, you have four cracked ribs, hence the few days of rest. If I have to, I’ll call Wufei to come and ensure you don’t get out of bed other than to go to the bathroom,” warned Sally with an evil gleam in her eyes.
“No, thank you. I can only deal with one Chang at a time.”
Rolling her eyes at the playful words, Sally nodded, “Wise choice. I have some rounds with the ER staff, but I’ll be back to check on you later. When I come back, your cute ass better be in that bed.”
Duo laughed then grabbed his aching head. “I’m not going anywhere. No way am I risking being nursed by Wu, he’s mean. Can I have an aspirin, though? The band in my head is playing heavy metal.”
“It must be bad for you to even ask. Wufei likes to ride out a headache.”
“Yeah, but there’s not much in his head to rattle. My poor brain’s a rollin’ around, Sally.”
“I’ll be back with something. If you don’t want hospital food, someone can bring you something.”
Once the doctor left to get the promised aspirin, Duo turned to Hilde and shrunk back at the pissed off expression. “What did I do?”
“I’m not mad at you. Well, maybe a little, but not really.”
“Either that didn’t make sense, or I got hit harder than I thought.”
“Shut up. Kieran hit you because you were protecting Trowa. Trowa’s more than able to protect himself from Kieran, no matter how mad that grizzly bear is, so why did you get in the way?”
“Because Trowa wasn’t going to protect himself or fight back. I could see it in his eyes, Hil. He was going to let Kieran beat him to death.”
“Why? Why wouldn’t he fight?”
Tapping the fingers of one hand on the bed, he sighed, “I told him some of the things that happened while he was gone. We were fighting, and the worst of it slipped out.”
“You told him you almost killed yourself,” Hilde said flatly. When he nodded, she stood from the chair she had been sitting in and loomed over him. “Did you tell him you’d be dead if I hadn’t found you? That I had to kick you to put that damn gun down? Did you tell him you still have the bullet, in case you can’t take it anymore?”
“Is that true, Duo?”
Looking over and seeing Trowa in the doorway with Kieran and Sally just behind him, Duo snarled, “Thanks a heap, Hilde. That was supposed to be kept between us.”
Obviously ashamed, Hilde shook her head, “I wasn’t paying attention. We’re going to go so you can rest. We’ll pick you up tomorrow.”
“I’ll take him home,” Trowa said quickly.
Apparently sensing an argument, Sally pushed through the two men, “That’s not necessary. I’ll take Duo home after my morning shift. That way I can see his workshop and see if there’s anything else I want.”
Nodding his thanks, Duo looked past Trowa, noticing Kieran wasn’t looking directly at him. “Papa Bear, I’m not mad.”
“Damn it, I hurt you.”
“Did you mean to?”
“No, but that doesn’t…”
“It makes all the difference in the world. Go home, play with the cubs, and get some rest because I have a list of things I need you to do already. Orders have tripled in the last six months.”
Kieran regarded Duo with a combination of gratitude and guilt in his grey eyes, eventually nodding as Hilde joined him at the door. Sally pushed some pills into the braided man’s hand, giving him a can of coke with a straw and raising the bed for him.
Grateful, he downed the medicine and half the coke to get the awful taste from his mouth. Giving him one last smile, Sally left, closing the door behind her and leaving him alone with Trowa. Doing the wisest thing he could think of, Duo kept his mouth closed, aware the other man was staring at him.
“How close was it? How close did you come to dying?”
Trowa’s words had him wincing, but he refused to lie. “I was ready to pull the trigger when she found me. I’d quit my job and hadn’t answered the phone for days, so she got worried. After you left, I gave her a key, just in case something happened.”
“You were planning it already? You planned out your suicide?”
“I guess I was; I didn’t want to go on another day without you. I was already dead inside, so why did it matter?”
The tall man sat carefully on the edge of the bed, voice soft, “You got over it, though. You put what we had behind you without looking back.”
“I never stopped looking back. At first it was five or six times a day, then once a day, then once a week. I was trying to figure out what I had done to make you leave. Eventually, I only thought about you every once in a while, but I still remembered what it felt like to be with you.”
“Why would you want to? I didn’t listen to you and I was incapable of telling you how I felt. I couldn’t even show you how much I cared for you.”
Cautiously, Duo put his hand over Trowa’s, breath hitching at the heat that seemed to come off the other man in waves. Trowa had always been able to keep him warm, even in the dead of winter. “It wasn’t all bad, you know. There were a lot of good things, too. Those are what I remember now.”
Expression doubtful, Trowa gazed down at their hands, turning his over to curl his fingers over Duo’s. “Like what? Name one good thing.”
“You remember the time we were assigned to protect that French delegate while he was skiing? He insisted we drive instead of taking the plane with him and his mistress? That was a good time.”
“The car he provided broke down when we were in the middle of nowhere, with no signal for our phones. It took a week for someone to find us in that hunting cabin. If it hadn’t been for that place and the supplies we could have died there.”
Smiling fondly at the memory, Duo lifted a brow with some effort. “We didn’t, though. We had a full week where it was just the two of us. It was the first time I’d ever had a chance to play in the snow. Drinking soup out of cups and building a fire to sleep in front of… it was a good time for me.”
A soft smile appeared on Trowa’s lips, “I remember you staying as close to me at night as you could, saying you were cold, even with the fire at your back.”
“We probably would’ve stayed warmer if we’d slept with clothes on,” snorted Duo.
“Probably, but it wouldn’t have been as much fun.” Trowa’s smile faded, eyes turning solemn, “You were so happy that week, so carefree. You laughed more than you did when we got back, but I assumed you thought of it as a vacation, like I did. During the next few months, I forgot the sound of your laugh. While I was on the Hydra, sometimes I would wake thinking I heard your laugh, but it wasn’t as potent as the real thing. When I came to your store the other day, your laughter was the first thing I heard.”
“You never laughed enough,” Duo mused, eyelids growing heavy. “I love the way you laugh, but it was always so rare. I haven’t heard you laugh, really laugh, since you got here.”
“I’ll see if I can laugh for you before I leave. You get some rest. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
Already half-asleep, Duo hummed, “Why do you always have to leave me? I don’t want you to leave, not again.”