Some Bullets Stay Bleeding Forever...

The .45 Colt War

By Kaitsurinu

Chapter 1 — Guns Are [for the] Artless

Contrary to most beliefs, I have to tell you now, my friend the Perfect Soldier isn’t the laptop extremist that he may seem. Really. I consider his time spent with that thin black sheet of metal and a screen to be very productive. After all, whatever he types can be the difference from being viciously ambushed during a mission and having a metallic object skewered between my ribs or being viciously prepared and doing the aforementioned to my enemy. It can be the difference between hidden explosives blazing out of control in the night and needlessly killing civilians or detonating flawlessly and collapsing an OZ building on its ass, and it usually is.

Hours furiously typing are pennies in the dollar scheme of war anyway. Heero and his laptop have saved me relentlessly, so, I let him be about it.

Boots clunk vaguely into the room and he glances at me, lounging on my bed, half-dissembled gun in my lap and gleaming near my toes. Usually, I’ll grace him with a grin or even a jaunty greeting like ‘Good morning’ or something, but I don’t like to waver my concentration by uselessly chatting towards him when I’m cleaning this gun. It’s my favorite. Sinfully black .45. Officially matte blue, but it’s black in my book. Colts have always fascinated me despite the fact they were old by most standards when the colonies were basically still in their fathers’ sacs and as rare as shit from a statue nowadays.

Today, he grunts and strides off my vision somewhere into the anonymous dorm room that we’ve taken prisoner and poked full of holes to cloak our weapons and bugs. Do I look? Naw. I don’t have to baby-sit him.

Clinks around the sink.

For fun, Heero will sharpen my knives.

It’s only fair that I remain silent. He has never once questioned my liberal dubbing of myself by the name of Shinigami, so I don’t pry into his logic either no matter how weird the gesture. I find that to be invasive and rude. Glowered steely at me, yes, but never spoken the words.

And second of all, I can’t decipher his monotone grunts for shit. Not at all. It’s a very common misconception that people who often resort to lifeless, disparaging noises like that regularly in their sentences have actually put meaning behind them. Such is the case with steely, stone-blue eyed Heero here. I couldn’t tell you the difference between a ‘Hn’ and it’s fucking twin brother if one meant, "I love you, Duo, take me now," and the other was "I’m chaffing." Ha. Are you kidding? When he decides he’s going to speak to you about anything of true importance, which is mostly the only time that he will, he refines every syllable to get his point across very quickly, very efficiently. Grunts and snorts are just addendum, little wordless emotions. I could read into them, but I’ve learned early on, that it’d be like trying to chew on bricks. Meaningless and vain and with the tendency of being painful. I know I must sound an awful, almost nauseatingly amount like Heero, but this is only my observation and silly, fluffy, over-romanticized pining would cloud that.

So, when he grunts at me, he’s actually just ignoring me. Something to pacify me. Peachy. That makes me so much happier. Or, on restless days, reining in some primal growl of impatience.

Leather is cuffing mutely in the background. I can nearly hear my virgin knives gleaming even more perfectly, as Heero seems to sharpen them to razor point and find something wrong with it being the sharpest it can and just continues on. I haven’t used them thus far into the war but obviously need a brisk sharpening. Actually, Trowa lent them to me. My old knives, ferreted from a trashcan and a shifty guy’s pocket respectively, were lost long ago during my orphan days on the street.

Before Solo. Therefore, before Duo.

I picture Solo’s scruffy, dimly attractive face for a second, and Heero’s replaces it. The brown, wooden bathroom door is ajar, aforementioned slim Japanese brunette gliding out. Not walking – moving with a purpose. Chh. Page me when Heero Yuy does not have a purpose.

Surprised, I suppose, I jolt my leg slightly and it chinks the dissembled, greased gun piece, catching his shady blue eyes. I didn’t expect him to finish so soon, so I lean slightly back against my pillow and tell him so, even though it’s against my code for cleaning my gun.

My black Colt isn’t alive, so it can’t get impatient.

"Something wrong?" I ask, as Heero freezes and graces me with a flat, fluid blue gaze that indicates he’s listening quite intensely to me, something that happens only when he’s not busied with something else mission related. He stares at me, non-threatening, non-questioning, as blue and blank as a chalkboard is green and blank. Poor thing. I know for a fact that, like a lemmon driven by madness to the ocean, a soldier as rigidly structured as him finds little recreation activities to be worth the effort they demand and is often plagued with bouts of intense boredom. A toy monkey with stolen cymbals.

"Nothing," he says truthfully. Nothing is wrong because nothing is really happening.

I know him so well.

Somewhere primal, gleaming in the back of his pretty blue eyes, I, Duo Maxwell, know that he doesn’t feel right, doesn’t feel whole until a task is finished and another starts up again. It’s not unusual or eccentric by any standards. The laziest slugabeds in the world have the same problem, as does anyone else. People feel strange if nothing is happening, it’s that like dread you get when it’s silent and you sense paranoia coming down on you. Heero just feels more incomplete at more times because, if you have not noticed, he’s expected to save the world, and when you have do something like that, you don’t want to slack off much.

A lopsided grin aches on my face. I hadn’t given it permission.

"You don’t feel like sharpening my knives anymore, huh?" I say, sarcasm peppered over my voice. Sometimes, I feel too damned sarcastic and quick to react with an endless reserve of it for my own good but I can’t help it. Reflexive. Facial knee-jerk. It’s my niche.

Here’s the bloody hole in the plot line where Heero shooting me a ‘Hn’ and emotionlessly typing a storm on his laptop would be.

"I finished," Heero grits out lifelessly. Like it tastes bad.

He’s framed perfectly between our two, periwinkle blue single beds, with uniform cardboard pillows, standing still and looking visibly drained and stony-faced simultaneously. Even his clothes seem tired and useless. Maybe they should just jump off. And, what else could he be sporting now but just his jeans and a tank top? Usually, he refrains from the school uniforms that we get with a tiny reluctant look. I know him so well.

Heero secretly hates mindless uniformity, but was bred to be a soldier. So ironic, I think, that you could forge iron bullets from the very withering glances he gives those innocent clothes.

I know him so well.

I grin at him again, toothy and broad, as if to subtly advertise my sudden smugness.

Nothing relays on his face to that fact, but am I discouraged by that listlessness toward our relationship? You must be joking. Right now, I could say whatever I liked in my mind, and it would never matter, smug and grinning like a fucking clown or a fool, which ever suits me for the day. Non-consequence situations are fun.

My Colt clinks softly and Heero moves and I lounge against my cardboard pillow and reconstruct my favorite gun. Most importantly, I pop the pieces confidently into place and revel in the metallic, masculine noises they make. When I decide that I’m waist deep in way-too-idyllic sludge and I’m bored to death in this mind-numbing school, I usually resort to cleaning my gun collection I’ve scrounged up over the years. The whole purpose of those times is to make yourself sound as manly and gun slinging as you possibly can. Why not try to be cool? Cause when you think about it...Gundam Pilots aren’t really focused on helping to increase the average life expectancy. Might as well up the standard of fashionableness.

I know Heero is watching me from his bed, as I finish reassembling the gun and lazily cock back the hammer and fire off dry rounds. It creaks and dips slightly, silently, like a cat treading slyly on dry leaves.

"This world is made of…" I murmur to myself as I cross my legs, lifting off my scratchy pillow. I attempt a stab at the absolute inhuman Vash marksmanship I had drooled over in a Trigun manga a classmate lent to me during a particularly drab assembly and mock draw pictures in the wall. Half-dramatically, half-sloppily, I lift the Colt needlessly far out in front of me, arm straightened and shoulder high against my neck, firing little harmless clicks off in rapid succession. I even wink for good measure. "Love and Peace!"

It’s really too small to look anything like the real thing. Good God, I would have given anything for something like that man’s long barrel Colt.

A "Hn" lifts my attention over to my blue-eyed comrade.

Okay, so maybe I underestimated the expressiveness of Heero’s little grunts. This one was definitely a sneer. Nothing in the spiteful, malignant school detention monitor department, but he wasn’t really pleased and if was with me or not, I wasn’t sure. If he talked, I was sure I’d find out. For a second, I wonder if he’s going to call me Tongari or something.

Marble blue eyes sours and he pouts his lip in a frown, sitting on his bed, shamelessly ruffling the comforter he’d immaculately made this morning in only a cheap towel. How did I know, you ask? In the morning, let’s just say, I’m always happy for a few free hentai moments and I’m an expert at faking stuff, like sleep.

"What’s up, Heero?" I ask as I causally knead the gun under the mattress. I glance up to him as I settle back down on my knees and he seems to frown more. "What’s the matter? Didn’t I let you get enough sleep last night?"

An eyebrow just sinks and he grunts. Noncommittally. Wooh. God, but innuendo is just lost on this kid. The thin Japanese boy swings his legs up onto the bed and lies down face still stitched up in impatience with something and minute frown deepening. He monitors the ceiling panels faithfully as the dimming pale orange of late afternoon glows through the window and stains our room a shade of pumpkin.

Cute, but I wish I didn’t have to deal with it sometimes. I lean to the side, arching my eyebrows flatly and snorting, the tiniest little grin adorning my face. My braid swings over my shoulder and brushes against my chin.

"Bored, huh?"

"I guess," he grumbles, closing his eyes, sinking into the mattress listlessly.

"Obviously, you haven’t been American. We’re experts at that," I say, half sarcastically. Fleeting laughter escapes me and Heero turns his head, chocolate brown bangs mildly disheveled like usual, pinning my laughter to the wall like a dart through a piece of paper. Fierce look. Very. His eyes are smoldering blue, tapered slightly upward, narrowed in an unreadable blur of beauty that I stare at very openly. Blinking innocently, I watch him stare back at me like some displeased lion rolling over the ribs of a skinny gazelle with his eyes.

"You’re American?" he asks.

This Heero I do not know well. For God’s sakes…

I just stare at him. Anvils dropping gawk. "Yeah," I answer lamely, automatically scratching at some random itch in my hair. The awkward button. Adding to my uncomfortable moment, I shrug impulsively. Should I pop some pink streamers and yell ‘surprise?’

"Oh. I didn’t know." He stares blankly, looking delicious and infuriating. One day I’ll kill him for that.

"Well, yeah," I point out to him redundantly. "I am."

Heero: Stare.

Duo: Stare and inwardly sigh.

Yay. More points for me.

I laugh nervously and say, trying to kill the awkward button with my fingernails, "Don’t I look like it?" The soldier mastermind blinks dumbly at me, almost as if watching a robot sprout from my brain without my knowing. Sometimes, I think I know him. Sometimes I know I know him, memorized every action and habit, and just as I’m wallowing, he’ll knock me over with a club of bloated ignorance and smirk at me…

Ah, hell, who do I think I’m kidding? This is the first time he’s ever surprised me like this. Annihilated my pride like this.

Blue eyes blink again, and then he wordlessly rolls over and begins his rapport with the ceiling again. Something in me just seems to drop dead from exhaustion, like road kill straining for a grassy ditch to just die in, and I let my arms drop lifelessly to my side and I sit, just looking crotchety in his direction.

Peachy. I ache for bitter coffee, I ache to sleep, I just want to do something now.

Great. I’ve become bored and pissed off. I sneer at Heero, trying to kill the infectious thing with just a look. Sometimes, I know him too well for my own damned good and it’s an ironic, tilting boat, because, he knows nothing about me. I know he knows nothing. Silently, I lift off my irritatingly blue cardboard bed and snatch up my rumpled jacket from the headboard, chinking with ammunition in the pocket. God, I feel like a cantankerous bastard. I’m acting like an old man as I snappishly put on the coat, take my Colt, and walk out the door to leave Heero to boil in his boredom, this bedroom soaked with tension. I’m sure as hell not going to with him.

You’d think a gnashing American accent would indicate something.