What I series

Author's Notes:

Disclaimers: I don't own Gundam Wing. Just this story plot and lots of GW paraphernalia...

A/N: This is a companion piece to 'What I Need'. You don't have to read it to understand this story at all, but it would be nice. ^_~ This plot bunny struck me at 4 in the morning after reading a *really* good 5+2+5 fic on GWA by Jen called "When Fallen Angels Fly". READ IT!
It is the small things that I notice about him.

The way his mask of joviality cracks and a darker, dangerous side shows. Shinigami. That is who he is at those moments, and although it scares me, I can not help but wonder what could make him slip so far inside himself.

The way he smiles, and shares his passion about life. That is another thing that attracts and confuses me.

He is like two entirely differently people wrapped up in one beautiful package, with an air of mystery around him. I want to know what makes him tick, but... part of me is worried about what will happen once I do.

Ever since I asked him to join the Preventers, a year and a half ago, he has been what he was during the wars. Someone who is a companion... No, a friend. He is a friend, and more than likely, the only one I have ever truly had.

I look over to take the sight of him in. He is sitting at his desk, staring at his computer screen, his usual mask of manic happiness gone, a look of loneliness dragging at his eyes and surrounding his beautiful face and form.

How I long to take him into my arms and hold him. How I long to make all his pain go away, and not return. I sigh in frustration. These thoughts are a fool's dream. There is no way he would ever want me the same way I *need*, want, *crave* him.

He calls me the 'Solitary Dragon', but sometimes I think *he* is the one who is truly alone. It saddens me, and yet, I can think of nothing that would bring his secret to the light...

What is it about Duo Maxwell that draws me to him, like a moth to the flame? His hauntingly vivid purple eyes? His long, although at times impractical, brown hair that is always braided, and kissed with hints of red and gold in the sunlight? His face when he laughs? When he *truly* laughs? I have no idea. Maybe it is his giving nature. His brutal honesty. None of this, and maybe it is all of these things, wrapped inside with the broken soul that screams out at moments when he thinks no one is noticing.

He has finally noticed me watching him. He sits up and takes a deep breath, flashing me a smile that I know is forced and unnatural to his heart-shaped face. I cock my head to the side, trying to ask him without words what it is that makes that sad look come to him. He shrugs in response, and buries himself in the paperwork on his desk.

Forcing my partner's face from my mind for a moment, I return to working on the pile of paperwork on *my* desk. I only succeed in getting a few pages complete when the desire to see what Duo is doing comes to mind, and won't leave. He is staring at his papers, and yet he is not paying attention to them. As if I am paying attention to my own.

All this watching has made me realize that I am really not as strong as I let others think I am. I have a longing for him that I cannot shake, nor do I think that I truly want to. What will welcome me once I leave the Preventers' Headquarters? A cold, empty, and lonely apartment. A place where my obsession will overwhelm my taxed body and mind, unless I throw myself into my katas and meditation until I am so weary that I collapse into my cold, empty, and lonely bed.

I look up again, catching his eyes, and his mask of easygoing amusement is completely eradicated from his face. A look of panic takes over, and I cannot take it anymore. I walk over to him, needing to hear his voice.

He closes his eyes as I near him, and when he opens them again, his smiling Jester's mask is in place. It hurts me to see the falseness of it.

"Maxwell," I say quietly, not wanting to get the attention of our nosey coworkers.

"Yeah?" he asks, his rich voice running over me like water, and acting as a balm to the dull ache in my torn and ragged body.

"Is there something wrong?" I ask, wanting so much to know, and not to know at the same time.

He slips somewhere that I can not go. I allow him his moment of inner thought, but after a few moments, I am impatient with waiting. I was *never* very good with waiting. Only with my books am I ever focused on anything akin to patience, and never with Duo. Not even after the year and half as his partner. Not after the three years I have been his comrade-in-arms... his friend.

"Maxwell," I bite out, sounding overly irritated, though I am actually only worried for him.

"Nah, nothing's wrong really. Just thinking about something." He is not telling me everything, though I know that he would not lie to me. I have never heard him lie. He has his own sense of honour and pride, just as I do mine.

"What?" Tell me, Maxwell. I am so weak with this need to know all I can about him.

"Nothing important. Just something," he says, sounding desperately weary.

I move until I can smell the vanilla, lavender, and the undeniably attractive scent that is his own. I can feel my heart race, and wonder if he can hear it. It feels so loud; surely he can hear it. If I moved another inch, I would be so close that I could... No...

"You're not telling me the whole truth, Duo," I whisper. His eyes flutter when I say his first name, which is something odd in and of itself. It rolls off my tongue, and I devour the taste of it. It's sweet and sour, pure and defiled, simple and complex... Just like the person it belongs to, and who I want to hear the truth from. "You will, though. Because if you don't, I'll talk to Une. You know what she will do then."

I instantly regret having let those last two sentences leave my mouth. His wide eyes shoot open, and then narrow in anger, which is radiating off of him at the moment. His chair shoots away from me, and I notice that his long-sleeve shirt is pulled up, revealing many scars all over his arms.

I listen, but do not hear, his warning. I am staring at the scars in morbid fascination. A few seem very recent and not at all healed. How could I have missed that? It then hits me that he has been wearing long-sleeved shirts for months now, even in the stifling heat of the summer. I feel a severe sadness well up in my body, and if I were a weaker man, I believe I would cry.

Gently, I place a hand on his shoulder. I wish I could say I do so to offer him comfort, but in truth, it is because I suddenly feel light-headed at being so close to him, and the air is so charged I can taste it.

He sighs, and speaks again. "Look, there's nothing wrong with me. I was just thinking. Don't worry about it." The anger has died, leaving the sad tone behind. It infuriates me to no end.

"Maxwell," I growl.

"Yeah?" Suddenly, his shoulder under my hand is as stiff as Gundanium, and his head whips around to glare at our *extremely* nosey coworkers. Straightening up, I drop my hand from his body, and look at him, meaning every word I am about to say.

"We'll talk about this later." I can tell that Duo is unaffected, but I *will* talk to him before I allow him to go off by himself. Those scars are just another warning sign that I refuse to ignore any longer.

I leave him, glaring at the others in the room, until they find their paperwork *far* more interesting than what was happening between Maxwell and myself. Sitting back at my desk, I wearily eye the stack of papers that I *swear* has grown in the last few minutes. I sneak a look at the clock on my computer monitor. It is fifteen minutes until five.

Quickly, I finish the report I had been working on for an hour, and look back at the clock. It is now a minute to five. I save my work, sign my name one last time to the paper, turn off my computer, grab my jacket off the hook by my desk, and follow the rest of the prisoners to freedom.

I make it to the sleek black sports car before he does, and I watch his ambling gait move across the concrete as if he is a dancer. As soon as he is close enough, I step out from the shadow that was hiding my form, and get as near as I dare.

"Duo," I say, his name falling from my mouth easily once again. "We need to talk. I know what you've been doing, and it has to stop." I try to pour all the concern I can muster into those two simple sentences, hoping that he won't leave me feeling this raw and exposed.

His beautiful eyes spare me a glance, and I lock onto that with all that I am worth, and maybe more. I can not wait for him to talk again. I cannot risk any sort of rejection. Not now. I move until there is nowhere for either of us to go, except... And now, my breathing is hitched, and it is difficult to speak properly.

"Duo?" I whisper.

"Yeah?" He sounds so unsure, and it makes what I have to ask a bit simpler, but not as easy as our usual banter. And yet, this is more satisfying. "Why?" One word that betrays my weakness, and I ignore that voice in the back of my mind telling me that I am weak, and unworthy. Not now, not ever again, Meiran. You are dead, and I am not. Find your peace; I have mine in my grasp.

"Why what?" He knows, and yet pretends that he does not.

"Why do you hurt yourself?" I ask, and in my anger, I shove a sleeve up, exposing his scarred arm to the air.

"Why not?" WHY NOT??? Does he really hold himself in such low regard? How could he? He is the strongest person I have ever known, and yet he thinks he is unworthy of so much. It hurts to realize this important factor behind Maxwell's many masks.

"Don't you know?" Don't you know that I love you? Don't you know that I wish that every time you are hurt on a mission that it was me?

"Know what?" he asks, his voice strained and eyes blazing as they burn into my own.

Before I can stop myself, I have him in my arms, and I am touching those soft lips that haunt my dreams every night. It is heaven and hell, fire and ice, beyond anything I have ever experienced. I want it to continue forever, but I also know that we will need to breath soon.

"That," I whisper, savoring his taste, his feel, the way I am all but holding him up.

"What?" he asks, needing to hear me say the words that I *want* to finally tell someone, but I have no idea if he feels the same way. So, instead, I settle for something remarkably close to those three words that could bring me pain and pleasure, hoping that they will suffice until we are both positive.

"That as much as you need pain, I need you," I whisper into his ear, pulling him into another kiss, not wanting to let him go.