Something was wrong with him that night.
It started out with him plain out refusing to eat anything I cooked for breakfast. Normally, I would have shrugged this off and joked with him. And normally, he probably would have joked right back and told me my cooking would have killed him anyway. His sense of humor tends to really shine nice and bright when he's alone with me and wanting to jab little teases in my direction.
That morning, he refused to eat and shot odd, rather rude comments at me about trying to force him to eat. Some shit about him being an adult now, and he didn't have to take orders from anyone, not even his best friend.
Okay, okay. He's a little cranky. Maybe.
I called Tro about it and asked him what he thought I should try to do. Being a good friend of Heero's himself, Tro said that I should watch him and make sure he wasn't in any pain. We all know Heero has a wonderful tendency to lie about his injuries, may it be a bullet wound or a gash on his leg. Most of the time, we didn't find out about him being hurt until we saw the one splot of blood he accidentally allowed to stay on the carpet; the one spot he missed in a daze to clean up his mess.
Maybe he cut himself on a piece of glass, or on a nail. Maybe he had a migraine and didn't want me to worry. Maybe he was feeling down about something. Maybe he was just sick and tired of having to clean the dishes and didn't want to dirty any up himself.
Maybe, maybe, maybe...
... doesn't mean crap, does it?
Mid-evening I found him sitting on the bedroom floor, watching the ceiling fan spin. When he saw me, he looked down at the floor and smiled. I questioned him, teasing lightly. I didn't want to make him angry if he didn't feel good.
His smile widened a little and we joked together for a while. All centering around the damn ceiling fan. Something was off, though. I could tell that the second he offered up his small, shy smile. It didn't reach his eyes, for one.
Sure there was a smile. Sure it could have passed as happy. But not for me. I know him far too well to be fooled by a cheap imitation smile from my best friend. His eyes were a little too bright and unseeing. His jokes were a little too off-topic. His smile was a little too forced.
He was straining, and I didn't know why. It was then that I dismissed the physical pain issue. He wasn't hurt, that's for damn sure.
About an hour after that, we met in the small kitchen to eat dinner together. Sometimes Heero'll skip breakfast, but he always eats dinner with me. I was just about to set his plate on the cheap table when his hand wrapped around my wrist and he shook his head. I asked him what the deal was, and he said he wasn't feeling up to eating right now.
Of course, he must have sensed my protests about to spill out full-force, so he loosened his grip on my arm and offered that same smile from an hour before. He quietly said that he wasn't hungry, but I should definitely leave some for him in the fridge. Said he might have wanted a late night snack, and he'd eat then.
He knew I would still argue, so he played all of his cards at just the right time. He let go of my arm and pulled out his chair. We can still talk, he said.
And we talked.
Like always.
I wrapped his food up and placed it in the fridge like he asked, at the time convinced that he would eat it sooner or later.
There we were: three hours later and Heero hadn't gone down for his regular night snack. He's made it a ritual of his to force himself down to the kitchen to eat something.
Anything, he told me once, anything so I don't feel so hungry in the morning and have to eat the crap you call food.
A joke of his. One he doesn't mean... I hope.
I hadn't seen Heero since dinner time, and it's odd how he can disappear in our small house for hours without any trace what-so-ever. I tried to watch television for those three hours that he was gone. To be truthful, I was starting to get a little worried about him. His car was still next to mine in the driveway, and his coat was still on the coat rack. His shoes were sitting by the front door, and his laptop was in our bedroom.
I did a scan of the house to see where he might have gone, but I came back with nothing special, so I went back to our room. Just as I was settling down on the bed, the door slid open and he stepped through from the darkness of the hall. He stopped for a split second that anyone else would have missed, then he continued on his merry way towards the adjacent bathroom. I told him it was late and we should get to bed, and he softly told me that he was wanting to take a long bath before going to bed and I shouldn't wait for him.
My silence obviously concerned him, so he came over to the bed and placed a soft kiss against my forehead. His hand slid down my arm and then dropped to the blanket to grasp onto my braid. His eyes locked with mine, and he smirked. A bath is all I want, he whispered.
I need to relax, he said and kissed me again before straightening up and strolling back towards the bathroom. As he was shutting the door, he winked at me and told me to get to bed. When the door shut, I heard him mumble something about me needing more rest, and then bath water hitting the tile covered up any other noise he may have made.
He was still acting a little odd, but I dismissed it as him having a bad day. Heero needs some cranky time, too. I know I have my fair share of bad days and horrible evenings, so he can experience them as well.
I grabbed the remote and flipped the television back on to see if I could find some good movie to watch until Heero got out of the bath. That's another strange thing about the whole situation; Heero doesn't like baths. He took one once and was still complaining two hours after saying that his skin felt dry and uncomfortable. I told him he would one day get used to the feeling of being a prune, and he kindly told me I was a idiot and I could go prune myself if I wanted, but he'd stay away from the tub from then on out.
I found an interesting documentary about WWII on the History Channel, and was half an hour into the show when I noticed something really strange. After all that time flipping through all channels satellite has to offer, I never once heard a splash of water. I never once heard a shift of sound or a mumble of content. Or a mumble of discomfort. I didn't hear much of anything after Heero had turned off the water.
With the television on 'Mute' and everything perfectly silent, I strained to hear any kind of movement. The water was obviously extremely still and had been for quite some time. Either that or Heero was in the tub and not moving at all, keeping the water quiet and peaceful. Next, I tried to pinpoint his exact location from sound alone, but there wasn't a single whisper of cloth and no shift of the air. I closed my eyes and kicked in all my old habits, trying to listen for breathing.
I heard nothing, I sensed nothing, for all I knew Heero could have slipped out the bathroom window and pranced away into the night. I might have considered this if our bathroom had a window that was big enough for a cat to fit through. Unless Heero chewed his own limbs off and shimmied through the tiny window, he was still in there.
I hadn't fallen asleep, so he hadn't slipped past me at anytime. The bathroom door hadn't opened. As interesting as the war documentary was, I would have easily seen and heard Heero strolling through the room to leave.
My pajama bottoms scrunched up uncomfortably as I scooted to the edge of the bed. They straightened out once again as I stood up and started slowly walking towards the bathroom. As I made my way across the room, I had to think of every possible excuse for going in there. I knew he would have been frustrated as hell to have me bounce in with him trying to meditate or whatnot.
I told myself I'd play it by ear as I reached the door. I knocked twice to let him know I was coming in, and I slid the door open.
The first thing I saw was his petite form next to the bath tub, his head resting against the edge on the tile. He was still fully clothed and resting on his knees while leaning against the tub, his back facing the doorway and hunched over in what could have been a very uncomfortable position. I saw the side of his face from the doorway and immediately thought he had fallen asleep.
The fingers of his left hand were hanging over the edge of the tub and barely brushing the water's surface, as if he was testing the temperature to make sure it was just right for him. He has always been picky when it comes to things like that.
The bath was completely full, the water peacefully quiet, and that struck me as odd.
I finally decided I would take him away from the tub and get him into a more comfortable place so he wouldn't wake up achy and bitchy. He'd like waking up in the bed, because he'd probably remember falling asleep while about to take a bath.
I stepped further into the bathroom, preparing myself to carry the bastard back into our bedroom and get him nice and comfy underneath the covers, and stopped when my sock-covered feet were about to touch his boots. My mind seemed to shut down from there as I caught a shimmer of silver coming from the water. I instantly ignored the spiral of blood settled in the water around his right wrist as I focused on the razor blade at the bottom of the tub. Glinting from the overhead light. Screaming silently to me with its shine.
My thoughts spinned back into reality and I shifted my gaze from the razor blade to the suspended blood around his small wrist. The blood ghosted in the water and seemed to reach out and caress his fingers every once in a while. I'd never seen blood stay so perfectly formed in water before until then. It wasn't breaking apart, or spreading all throughout the tub; it was just settling around Heero's arm in a sick accessory to his act.
I realized I had stood there for at least two minutes just staring at the picture Heero had kindly created for me, and then reality sunk further into my system, capturing everything this time. I threw myself to my knees and pulled his body against mine. I started gasping for breath as I scooted back away from the bath tub and pulled his limp body with me. His right arm slid out of the water, and that's when it started getting messy.
His left arm fell off the edge of the bath to settle on the tiled floor while his right arm hooked on the tub and stayed there. Blood instantly began spilling from the neat slash wound on his wrist, and the liquid danced and caressed its way down the side of the tub. When his arm fell off of its shelf and landed on the floor, splatters of red began slowly decorating the clean white tile. I grabbed his wrist and tried to stop the bleeding, while trying to slide across the floor to the sink to get the first-aid kit in the medicine cabinet.
The blood was still pumping. That was a good thing.
When we reached the sink, after leaving bloody droplets along the way, I felt my heart start to shatter as I had to put him down just to stand and get the med kit. I was back on my knees in less than a second, holding him against my chest, trying to open the box with one hand and trying to stop bleeding with the other. I managed to get some gauze from the kit and quickly flung it out, beginning to wrap it around his wrist a little too quickly.
After I got his wrist wrapped up nice and tight, I sat on the floor for what could have been forever, holding him and putting pressure on his wound. I felt blood starting to dry on my face and I briefly wondered how it got there. Heero was laying motionless in the space between my outstretched legs, and I took in the sight of my bloodied PJ's. Heero himself had streaks of blood covering his entire face, even his hair caked up from it.
The phone rang thirty minutes later, begging to be answered, but I couldn't leave. Heero wouldn't want me to leave. I looked around at the bathroom and found it hard to believe that about forty-five minutes earlier, it was perfectly clean. All nice and white. Spotless.
Blood everywhere.
Clean until I came in.
All I did was hold Heero in that bloody bathroom. I wrapped one of my arms around his chest and held his wrist all throughout the night. I thought I'd surely die from the pounding in my chest alone, but death never wrapped its arms around me. Never held me like it seemed to hold him. I never once checked his pulse. Never once checked to see if he was okay. Never once forced myself to stand and get him to a hospital.
I didn't want to know the truth.
It started out with him plain out refusing to eat anything I cooked for breakfast. Normally, I would have shrugged this off and joked with him. And normally, he probably would have joked right back and told me my cooking would have killed him anyway. His sense of humor tends to really shine nice and bright when he's alone with me and wanting to jab little teases in my direction.
That morning, he refused to eat and shot odd, rather rude comments at me about trying to force him to eat. Some shit about him being an adult now, and he didn't have to take orders from anyone, not even his best friend.
Okay, okay. He's a little cranky. Maybe.
I called Tro about it and asked him what he thought I should try to do. Being a good friend of Heero's himself, Tro said that I should watch him and make sure he wasn't in any pain. We all know Heero has a wonderful tendency to lie about his injuries, may it be a bullet wound or a gash on his leg. Most of the time, we didn't find out about him being hurt until we saw the one splot of blood he accidentally allowed to stay on the carpet; the one spot he missed in a daze to clean up his mess.
Maybe he cut himself on a piece of glass, or on a nail. Maybe he had a migraine and didn't want me to worry. Maybe he was feeling down about something. Maybe he was just sick and tired of having to clean the dishes and didn't want to dirty any up himself.
Maybe, maybe, maybe...
... doesn't mean crap, does it?
Mid-evening I found him sitting on the bedroom floor, watching the ceiling fan spin. When he saw me, he looked down at the floor and smiled. I questioned him, teasing lightly. I didn't want to make him angry if he didn't feel good.
His smile widened a little and we joked together for a while. All centering around the damn ceiling fan. Something was off, though. I could tell that the second he offered up his small, shy smile. It didn't reach his eyes, for one.
Sure there was a smile. Sure it could have passed as happy. But not for me. I know him far too well to be fooled by a cheap imitation smile from my best friend. His eyes were a little too bright and unseeing. His jokes were a little too off-topic. His smile was a little too forced.
He was straining, and I didn't know why. It was then that I dismissed the physical pain issue. He wasn't hurt, that's for damn sure.
About an hour after that, we met in the small kitchen to eat dinner together. Sometimes Heero'll skip breakfast, but he always eats dinner with me. I was just about to set his plate on the cheap table when his hand wrapped around my wrist and he shook his head. I asked him what the deal was, and he said he wasn't feeling up to eating right now.
Of course, he must have sensed my protests about to spill out full-force, so he loosened his grip on my arm and offered that same smile from an hour before. He quietly said that he wasn't hungry, but I should definitely leave some for him in the fridge. Said he might have wanted a late night snack, and he'd eat then.
He knew I would still argue, so he played all of his cards at just the right time. He let go of my arm and pulled out his chair. We can still talk, he said.
And we talked.
Like always.
I wrapped his food up and placed it in the fridge like he asked, at the time convinced that he would eat it sooner or later.
There we were: three hours later and Heero hadn't gone down for his regular night snack. He's made it a ritual of his to force himself down to the kitchen to eat something.
Anything, he told me once, anything so I don't feel so hungry in the morning and have to eat the crap you call food.
A joke of his. One he doesn't mean... I hope.
I hadn't seen Heero since dinner time, and it's odd how he can disappear in our small house for hours without any trace what-so-ever. I tried to watch television for those three hours that he was gone. To be truthful, I was starting to get a little worried about him. His car was still next to mine in the driveway, and his coat was still on the coat rack. His shoes were sitting by the front door, and his laptop was in our bedroom.
I did a scan of the house to see where he might have gone, but I came back with nothing special, so I went back to our room. Just as I was settling down on the bed, the door slid open and he stepped through from the darkness of the hall. He stopped for a split second that anyone else would have missed, then he continued on his merry way towards the adjacent bathroom. I told him it was late and we should get to bed, and he softly told me that he was wanting to take a long bath before going to bed and I shouldn't wait for him.
My silence obviously concerned him, so he came over to the bed and placed a soft kiss against my forehead. His hand slid down my arm and then dropped to the blanket to grasp onto my braid. His eyes locked with mine, and he smirked. A bath is all I want, he whispered.
I need to relax, he said and kissed me again before straightening up and strolling back towards the bathroom. As he was shutting the door, he winked at me and told me to get to bed. When the door shut, I heard him mumble something about me needing more rest, and then bath water hitting the tile covered up any other noise he may have made.
He was still acting a little odd, but I dismissed it as him having a bad day. Heero needs some cranky time, too. I know I have my fair share of bad days and horrible evenings, so he can experience them as well.
I grabbed the remote and flipped the television back on to see if I could find some good movie to watch until Heero got out of the bath. That's another strange thing about the whole situation; Heero doesn't like baths. He took one once and was still complaining two hours after saying that his skin felt dry and uncomfortable. I told him he would one day get used to the feeling of being a prune, and he kindly told me I was a idiot and I could go prune myself if I wanted, but he'd stay away from the tub from then on out.
I found an interesting documentary about WWII on the History Channel, and was half an hour into the show when I noticed something really strange. After all that time flipping through all channels satellite has to offer, I never once heard a splash of water. I never once heard a shift of sound or a mumble of content. Or a mumble of discomfort. I didn't hear much of anything after Heero had turned off the water.
With the television on 'Mute' and everything perfectly silent, I strained to hear any kind of movement. The water was obviously extremely still and had been for quite some time. Either that or Heero was in the tub and not moving at all, keeping the water quiet and peaceful. Next, I tried to pinpoint his exact location from sound alone, but there wasn't a single whisper of cloth and no shift of the air. I closed my eyes and kicked in all my old habits, trying to listen for breathing.
I heard nothing, I sensed nothing, for all I knew Heero could have slipped out the bathroom window and pranced away into the night. I might have considered this if our bathroom had a window that was big enough for a cat to fit through. Unless Heero chewed his own limbs off and shimmied through the tiny window, he was still in there.
I hadn't fallen asleep, so he hadn't slipped past me at anytime. The bathroom door hadn't opened. As interesting as the war documentary was, I would have easily seen and heard Heero strolling through the room to leave.
My pajama bottoms scrunched up uncomfortably as I scooted to the edge of the bed. They straightened out once again as I stood up and started slowly walking towards the bathroom. As I made my way across the room, I had to think of every possible excuse for going in there. I knew he would have been frustrated as hell to have me bounce in with him trying to meditate or whatnot.
I told myself I'd play it by ear as I reached the door. I knocked twice to let him know I was coming in, and I slid the door open.
The first thing I saw was his petite form next to the bath tub, his head resting against the edge on the tile. He was still fully clothed and resting on his knees while leaning against the tub, his back facing the doorway and hunched over in what could have been a very uncomfortable position. I saw the side of his face from the doorway and immediately thought he had fallen asleep.
The fingers of his left hand were hanging over the edge of the tub and barely brushing the water's surface, as if he was testing the temperature to make sure it was just right for him. He has always been picky when it comes to things like that.
The bath was completely full, the water peacefully quiet, and that struck me as odd.
I finally decided I would take him away from the tub and get him into a more comfortable place so he wouldn't wake up achy and bitchy. He'd like waking up in the bed, because he'd probably remember falling asleep while about to take a bath.
I stepped further into the bathroom, preparing myself to carry the bastard back into our bedroom and get him nice and comfy underneath the covers, and stopped when my sock-covered feet were about to touch his boots. My mind seemed to shut down from there as I caught a shimmer of silver coming from the water. I instantly ignored the spiral of blood settled in the water around his right wrist as I focused on the razor blade at the bottom of the tub. Glinting from the overhead light. Screaming silently to me with its shine.
My thoughts spinned back into reality and I shifted my gaze from the razor blade to the suspended blood around his small wrist. The blood ghosted in the water and seemed to reach out and caress his fingers every once in a while. I'd never seen blood stay so perfectly formed in water before until then. It wasn't breaking apart, or spreading all throughout the tub; it was just settling around Heero's arm in a sick accessory to his act.
I realized I had stood there for at least two minutes just staring at the picture Heero had kindly created for me, and then reality sunk further into my system, capturing everything this time. I threw myself to my knees and pulled his body against mine. I started gasping for breath as I scooted back away from the bath tub and pulled his limp body with me. His right arm slid out of the water, and that's when it started getting messy.
His left arm fell off the edge of the bath to settle on the tiled floor while his right arm hooked on the tub and stayed there. Blood instantly began spilling from the neat slash wound on his wrist, and the liquid danced and caressed its way down the side of the tub. When his arm fell off of its shelf and landed on the floor, splatters of red began slowly decorating the clean white tile. I grabbed his wrist and tried to stop the bleeding, while trying to slide across the floor to the sink to get the first-aid kit in the medicine cabinet.
The blood was still pumping. That was a good thing.
When we reached the sink, after leaving bloody droplets along the way, I felt my heart start to shatter as I had to put him down just to stand and get the med kit. I was back on my knees in less than a second, holding him against my chest, trying to open the box with one hand and trying to stop bleeding with the other. I managed to get some gauze from the kit and quickly flung it out, beginning to wrap it around his wrist a little too quickly.
After I got his wrist wrapped up nice and tight, I sat on the floor for what could have been forever, holding him and putting pressure on his wound. I felt blood starting to dry on my face and I briefly wondered how it got there. Heero was laying motionless in the space between my outstretched legs, and I took in the sight of my bloodied PJ's. Heero himself had streaks of blood covering his entire face, even his hair caked up from it.
The phone rang thirty minutes later, begging to be answered, but I couldn't leave. Heero wouldn't want me to leave. I looked around at the bathroom and found it hard to believe that about forty-five minutes earlier, it was perfectly clean. All nice and white. Spotless.
Blood everywhere.
Clean until I came in.
All I did was hold Heero in that bloody bathroom. I wrapped one of my arms around his chest and held his wrist all throughout the night. I thought I'd surely die from the pounding in my chest alone, but death never wrapped its arms around me. Never held me like it seemed to hold him. I never once checked his pulse. Never once checked to see if he was okay. Never once forced myself to stand and get him to a hospital.
I didn't want to know the truth.