Rating: PG-13
Finished: 3-29-07
Disclaimer: I only own the maid narrating, and I kind of wish I could hire her to clean my room.
Notes: Remember "Wishing on a Memory"? Well, the same idea that originally prompted that grew this thing. This is just how I see Duo.
He's got that look again. He usually gets that look when he comes here to visit. Most people don't see it, because he's got other ones to cover it. Like the proud smile reserved for my boss. Or the secret smile that means that you want to get closer to him, because he never sets off pranks he'll be caught in. Except that one time. It's not even that hot little look he gives his lover in the middle of a party, five minutes before the pair decide that they're very tired and need to get their sleep. No, this look is different. Painful. It's a look of loneliness. Not 'I've-got-no-one-to-play-with-come-entertain-me' loneliness, but intense 'I-know-you're-there-and-that-you-can't-help-me' loneliness.
Out of the five young men that frequent this place, including the two that live here, he is most aware of me and my prescence, even when my job is to do what I need to and be invisible while I do it. I think I remind him of someone he knew. I never saw that look before he got to know me, and everytime I tell him something he didn't know about me, he seems to become relieved.
I just came into the library to dust, like I do every day. He's sitting in the windowseat, his pretty purple eyes focused directly on me when I come in. I'm not surprised. I've gotten accustomed to walking into rooms and finding up to five pairs of eyes pinned on me. He turns away, looking out the window, chesnut bangs hiding his eyes. I dust. After a proper amount of time, I ask him, "What are you thinking about?" I can't ask him what's wrong, because he'll list everything he's aware of that's screwed up in the world. Took me three months to figure that out.
"Have you ever seen a stained glass window?"
I refuse to believe that's the entire thought, so I hold my silence as I dust the desk on the other side of the room. I can't look at him when he starts talking, because he'll see my face and attempt to laugh himself off. It'll work, too. Took me a year to figure that out.
"This first time I saw one, I was eight and thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life. I know now that it probably wasn't all that great, as far as stained glass windows go, but I still remember it as being beautiful."
I nod as I dust a different bookshelf. I know he can see me, and even if he couldn't, he'd probably know anyway. He has the most insane knack for assessing people and being able to guess what they're doing and why they're doing it. None of us have managed to figure out how he does it, but we're all impressed.
"Life is like a stained glass window. And people are the pieces of colored glass within. And no matter how hard those little pieces of colored glass try, they'll never overtake the line between and become a part of the next piece of glass over. Even when they mix, they will still be separate. They will never truly be able to understand each other. That's what I was thinking about."
How mercenary. I'm using the swivel sweeper[1] to get up all the dirt in the corner when I say, "I've heard that the whole is echoed the pieces and the pieces in the whole."
"Does that mean you think I'm fractured?" I can hear laughter in his voice. In a few minutes, that look will be gone.
"No," I exclaim, "Of course not! What I'm saying is that you're one of the pieces of colored glass, and without you, the picture wouldn't be as beautiful because it wouldn't be complete."
"I'm flattered." The moment has ended, the look is gone.
A few weeks later, I learn that I was righter than I knew about the whole being echoed in the pieces, just not in the way I thought. Duo Maxwell is a fractured individual. Fractured and possibly missing pieces.
[1]For anyone who hasn't seen this ad, the swivel sweeper is a useful little gadget that's like a vacuum crossed with a swiffer. I don't own one, but they look pretty cool.