Part of the GW prompts series, for Ellewrites. 3

Prompt was sappy and autumn-themed.

There was something beautiful about autumn. Duo knew that there were things he should never find beautiful, like dying, and boys. The leaves descended in a silent profusion, a tornado of paper flame sweeping down, leaving branches tattered and naked in the November afternoon. The sun burst through the empty frames, painting a picture of decay as the summer passed into its sullen, snow-filled grave. Autumn was the dying season, the season of loss. The season when everything bright and good about the world exploded in a fitful breeze. The crimson maple reminded him of flames licking the spires of the Maxwell Church, of what little childhood he knew vanishing from life in a plume of smoke. His own personal fall from grace, his own festering autumn wound.

He was learning to love the passing of summer, in all of its gorgeous desiccation. Was learning to chase drying leaves down the sidewalk to hear the crunch beneath his feet. He looked forward to trips to the apple orchard, climbing the trees like a spider monkey and throwing apples to the basket below until someone came to scold him. And then watching the fascinating machinery of the cider press, drinking the mulled results hot from the oven. There was beauty in the breakdown.

Dying didn't have to be negative, he found. His strained friendship with Heero had ended in the chilled October dusk, had died in the dancing flames of a roaring bonfire. One sweet Halloween evening, with the exuberant cries of children in the background, Heero pushed the wolf mask to the top of his head and leaned in, his ocean blue eyes dancing orange and crimson with the fire's reflection. And there, with the taste of chocolate on his tongue, their friendship had burst into a kaleidoscope of color, never to be retrieved.

God help him, he never wanted it to. He dove headfirst into free-fall, damning his heart in a heedless leap into Heero's arms. He could never go back to the way it was before, to the placid waters of friendship. He was as rooted to Heero as he was to the fall-damp soil beneath his feet. People asked why he never returned to L2, not comprehending why he had no desire to retreat to the place that raised him. How could he explain it? He thrived on the chaos of this living planet. He loved every instant of earth's torrid seasons, of the unpredictable weather, of the fascinating leaps that nature made. He could never return to the colonies, though he once called them home, though the wonder of space struck him breathless even now. He could never return to a place where the passing of seasons was so sterile, nothing more than a programmed temperature drop in the colony controls, a change in the precipitation patterns. He loved watching the world burn, watching the brilliant emerald give grudging way to the searing heat of autumn's kiss.

And he loved Heero, with all of the fervor of a late summer sunset. He loved Heero because the peace that allowed them to love came at such great cost. He knew the tally of the dying, knew that the toll of the war numbered more than the leaves coating the lawn of their new-bought home. They fought for the right to be here, in a green-shuttered house with a porch swing and a strawberry patch. Their pasts weren't pretty, were as bitter and bloodwashed as sunrise across the Arctic Ocean. But they didn't have to veil their crimsoned hands, their bullet wounds or their battle scars. He loved Heero as he could only love a person who had seen both his mid-day summer sun, shining bright on a sun-warmed field, and his frozen winter midnight, snow falling deep and drifting until each memory of heat was erased.

Heero was his autumn, his dying and his redemption. They had battled through the winter of war, been washed clean in the bracing rains of spring, wounds cauterized by the toxic heat of summer. Heero was his healing touch, his guiding light. The one who finally made him whole. He had gladly surrendered Shinigami in the face of such breathless love, in the name of a kiss that touched his soul as much as it touched his skin. He let the weapons calluses fade from his skin, let the memories of Deathscythe shiver from the marrow of his bones. He let Heero wash the endless layers of blood from his hands, erasing war with the grace of his touch.

Heero caressed him like he was a god – not the god of death any longer, but a god of something more. A god of firelight playing over naked skin, of I love yous traded between sweat slicked skin. A god who could save a soldier by sheer force of will, fighting him through nightmares with a sure touch that spoke only of passion. A god who had the power to heal rather than to kill, who could do more good with his bare hands than he ever could with a Gundam. Heero changed him into something more, stared at him with a breathlessness that made him want to move mountains, if only to keep that sacred trust in Heero's eyes.

Their friendship's deathblow had been the slide of Heero's hands beneath a thin thermal shirt, the open-mouthed kisses pressed down the column of his throat. The blanket wrapped around his hips had fallen away, autumn breeze sweeping the curtains aside and letting the fireplace dance. As summer waned, their passion glowed, lit from within by the sure knowledge that Heero touched him like an exile coming home, kissed him like a drowning man reaching for sunlight through a watery grave. Duo never for a moment missed the steady reliance of their friendship, even when their passion turned to anger, even when Heero's lack of communication collided against his tendency to run. They lived the great romance of fairytales, the type of love he could unreservedly call unconditional.

He didn't know if he could shoot straight anymore, didn't know if the muscle memory of piloting still resided in his brain, didn't know if the g-force of flight would thrill him or stop his heart in its tracks. But he could recognize the heated steel scent of Heero's skin in a midnight room, could find his lips unerringly in total darkness. He could stand in a crowded room and know the instant that his lover entered, sense the weight of eyes on his skin and know that Heero saw straight through the crowd, know that Heero couldn't see anyone but him. They were oriented to each other like magnets, opposite sides of the pole that couldn't exist without the other. They were halves of the same whole, and Duo craved Heero as desperately as he himself was required.

They were alpha and omega, the first and the last, and Duo knew he could die in the final gasps of summer with the knowledge that he had been loved with the entirety of someone's soul. More than that, he could pass into the icy embrace of winter knowing that he had plumbed the depths of his heart, a heart he hardly believed he had, and found someone living there. Oh, how he loved that man – the type of fiery, all-consuming love that was as likely to destroy him as it was to build him up. It might have scared him if he hadn't believed with every fiber of his being that Heero would be right there by his side, walking straight into that conflagration to face it with him.

His breath fogs up the window, bursting and receding with each quiet breath, and the leaves swirl in a sudden flurry of wind. His hand presses against the glass, the chilled transparency leeching the warmth from his flesh. And he shivers, watching the world perish, missing the heat of his lover's touch. As if his mind was read, he hears footsteps behind him, soft tread as recognizable as his own heartbeat.

Arms encircle him, an embrace more familiar to him than his own reflection, a love written in the lines of his skin. He leans his head back, secure in the understanding that Heero will never let him fall. That Heero will always be there for him, even as summer dies. He twists in his lover's arms, turning his back on the pirouette of sunlight through trees, and gives himself up to another soul-searing kiss. Heero's cheeks are flushed from the brisk afternoon wind, his skin warming quickly in Duo's grasp. Duo plucks a leaf from his hair, smiling, tucking it into the pocket of his jeans. It will join the others, nature's catalog of their relationship, maples and oaks and elms pressed between the pages of a book. First kiss, first date, first time. And there will only be more firsts, as their love may pass from autumn to winter, but will never fade with time.

Heero laces their hands together, a fit Duo's found with no other, and leads him to the doorway. The heavy oak door stands ajar, framing their leaf-covered lawn, the flame licked edges of trees where the last remnants of summer cling to sullen branches. And there, with autumn to witness, Heero drops to his knees in worship. He bows his head for a moment, as if in prayer, and when he lifts his eyes to Duo they sparkle in awe, as if he can truly see god in his lover's face. He catches Duo's hand in his, printing a litany of kisses across the knuckles, and blinks the sheen of tears away from summer-sky eyes.

"Duo, you are my year round love, the passion that burns me in autumn, warms me in winter, revives me in spring, and soothes me in summer. Without you, the seasons might change, but I wouldn't notice, caught forever in the empty winter of your absence. I can't pass a day without wanting to dance beneath the sun of your presence, can't spend a night without basking in the glow from your moon. The stars could go out and you would still shine so brightly that I would never miss them. Say you'll be my light, from now until the day that I die. Duo Maxwell, will you marry me?"

And when that ring slides onto his finger, fit as perfectly as Heero fits into his soul, another piece of him joins the autumn leaves. That piece of him who piloted Deathscythe, who didn't care if he survived or dissipated in a spray of bullets. That piece of him who would put his life on the line for the mission, who had no care for coming home in one piece or coming home at all. He is Heero's now, would lay down his life only for the man in his arms. He will never find a home more secure than the circle of Heero's arms, than the space in Heero's heart that they built together.

He is not an orphan, not a victim of the L2 plague or the Maxwell church fire. He is Heero's, in good times and bad, and the dying of autumn has never looked so beautiful.