A/N: For Polyamorous Fanwork Day, April 1st. I had wanted to do a follow-up to Working on a Feeling but time got away from me.
A/N 2: I crave feedback. Please, PLEASE let me know what you think.
A/N 3: This is my 91st Gundam Wing Fic. I'm trying to think of something special to do for the 100th but I don't have any ideas. If you can think of something, let me know.
Warnings: angst, language, violence, vague sexy times, DARK DARK DARK things
Pairings:3x5, 2x3x5
Foolish
The first time, Duo could say it was because he was drunk.
The second time… okay, the second time he had been drunk, too.
But by the sixth time, Duo knew he needed to find a better reason or start going to AA meetings.
When he knocked, the door opened and a pair of dark, assessing eyes regarded him.
"Hi?" It came out as a question, and Duo felt like even more of an idiot than he already did - which was actually a bit of an accomplishment.
A dark, perfect eyebrow arched in response and Duo flushed.
"Er, can I come in?"
This hadn't happened before - the other times. No doorway judgement. Well, probably there had been doorway judgement. Lots and lots and lots of it. But there had been no hesitation.
"You aren't drunk."
"Nope," Duo agreed, unable to decide if that was disappointment or surprise he heard in the other man's voice.
The door opened wider and Wufei, his dark eyes still wary, still sweeping over Duo's body as if to catalog his every movement, stepped to the side.
Duo took two cautious steps, over the threshold and inside, and Wufei closed the door behind him.
He drew in a deep breath and he had to work hard to kill the smile that tugged at his lips. Tea - something without caffeine probably, considering the hour - and coffee - definitely caffeinated - warred with each other to scent the air.
The apartment was small, by Terran standards, a cramped two bedroom with a large, open central room that functioned as the kitchen, dining room and living room as well as the entrance.
Sparse decor that was utilitarian in line and function but, Duo knew from experience sleeping on the couch and in the armchair, shockingly comfortable. The room was clutter free, as was the bedroom, but the office - situated in the second bedroom - was probably a mess, as it always was. A clutter of maps and data printouts, mugshots and vid screen caps. The doors to both rooms were, as always, closed.
Duo started to toe of his boots but then he paused and found himself, ludicrously, looking to Wufei for permission to take them off.
The first time - drunk as he had been, he hadn't even thought about his shoes - hadn't thought much about anything except the feeling of being boiled alive in his own blood and drowned in sensation - and Wufei had stopped him, shoved his back against the door and Duo's head had hit it with a painful thunk that had Duo wincing and bitching while Wufei knelt and quickly, efficiently, pulled off his shoes.
Now, though, Wufei just arched an eyebrow. A challenge? A judgement? A question?
Duo realized, now - too late, that he probably should have had at least a drink, maybe a few, before coming here. Wufei was impenetrable when Duo was sober.
Slowly, cautiously, Duo stepped out of his boots and used his right foot to maneuver them into place beside the other pairs of shoes to the left of the door.
He waited for Wufei's reaction, his judgement, but he was saved from it by the opening of another door in the apartment.
The door led to the bathroom and Duo knew that too, from experience, was uncluttered and clean and shockingly, mind-numbingly, bright and white.
A spill of light and heat and steam hit them as the door opened.
Trowa, in a towel that was both too small and too large, stepped out as he was in the process of adjusting the towel around his waist, and caught sight of the standoff. He looked between them and even though his face was open, his hair plastered to his skull, it was impossible to read his expression as he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned one shoulder against the wall behind him.
"You're not drunk."
Duo rolled his eyes and shoved his hands into his pockets, well aware that it was a defensive move - a move that these two saw and understood - but unable to resist the urge.
"What is that, some new kind of greeting? You two been going around, saying that to people on the streets? To Heero in the gym? Une after a briefing?"
Wufei stared at him, face impassive, but Duo caught the slight twitch of Trowa's lips. He had always been more susceptible to Duo's humor - less, Duo thought, because Trowa actually found the jokes funny and more because he was amused at the effort that Duo put into trying to provoke reactions.
"If you aren't drunk, why are you here?" That from Wufei. A tag-team interrogation.
Duo had the brief, quickly smothered, question of which one of them was supposed to be the good cop and which the bad cop. But he already knew - there was no good cop between these two.
Slowly, as casually as he could, Duo flicked his eyes towards the closed office door.
Without moving an inch - without moving a fraction of an inch - both men before him shifted, morphed into something deadly and terrifying and Duo felt his breath catch in his throat, felt his flesh prickle at the ice in Wufei's eyes, at the emptiness in Trowa's.
It had been dangerous. Had been a gamble, a wager more foolish that even Duo usually cared to make, to come here. Like this.
Inside his pockets, he let his fingers curl around the throwing knives. He forced himself to stay as unaffected as he could by the change in the two men. He had expected it - hence the knives.
What he hadn't expected - hadn't known how to anticipate - was what would happen next.
"That's not how this works." Wufei's voice, rough and deadly and Duo shivered as he felt his heart thud wildly in response to the violence in his eyes, in his words.
"Not so far," Duo agreed.
Trowa and Wufei looked at each other. A moment. A single heartbeat passed.
Smirking. Duo had seen that look on Trowa before - so many, many times before in so many, many situations. But on Wufei… he had never seen Wufei smirk before.
His first instinct was to run, from the predatory expression, a delighted cat with a mouse under her paw. From the darkness he saw in both their eyes. The anticipation. The desire.
But he hesitated. Made the fatal mistake of pausing to draw in a breath as he considered just how much he might have miscalculated this entire thing.
One on one, Duo could take Trowa or Wufei in a fight. That's what happened when you spent half of your free time sparring with Heero I'm Not Going to Ever Kill Again But I Have to Do Something With My Pent Up Frustrations Yuy.
But this wasn't one on one, and even as Duo started to pull his hands out of his pockets, Wufei was on him, shoving him back against the door in an eerie parody of that first night.
Duo struggled, lashing out with his feet but the floor was slick and his socks were smooth and then Trowa was there, the towel wrung into a tight cord that he wrapped around Duo's neck and used to pull him away from the door, before pushing him back into it, smashing his nose against it and Duo let out a painful groan that turned into a choke as Trowa tightened the towel against Duo's windpipe.
Duo grabbed at the towel with one hand, Trowa's hair with the other and he kicked his feet against the door, trying to get the leverage to propel them backwards and break free of Trowa's hold.
But the creeping inches of space Duo put between himself and the door was soon occupied with Wufei, who calmly punched Duo in the gut once, twice, three times until Duo was wheezing and choking and Trowa shoved him back against the door with enough force that Duo's grip on his hair was dislodged.
Wufei went through his pockets, collected the other knives, the razor wire, the gun. He was thorough as he patted down Duo, as he shoved clothing aside and his nimble fingers danced across Duo's skin in what would have - what could have - been a caress in other circumstances.
It was getting hard to breath, by the time Wufei was done. Duo's struggles, ineffectual at the beginning, were becoming pathetic as pain and a lack of oxygen weakened him.
And then suddenly, abruptly, the towel was gone and Trowa was gone and Duo found himself sprawled out on the hard, cold floor.
He drew in a few deep, sobbing breaths as he closed his eyes and mentally berated himself.
Oh but you have fucked up so good this time, Duo.
"What do you want?" Trowa's voice this time. Cold. Like space - empty and without comfort or the ability or desire to sustain life.
Duo had made the mistake, the first time, of thinking that it was Trowa who ran things, who knew what was what. It had been the first of many mistakes he had made with these two.
Because Trowa didn't run things. Trowa was the muscle and yeah, he had the brains to run things himself, certainly had the aptitude, but it was Wufei at the head. Wufei steering this thing while Trowa took orders and enforced the other man's will and -
And now it was Trowa doing the interrogating. That wasn't, Duo was confident, a good thing.
If Wufei wasn't asking the questions it meant that this - this moment - had been planned for.
Duo's blood ran cold.
Oh you are so, so, so fucking dead. They are going to rip you to pieces and enjoy every second of it.
Duo swallowed and he forced himself to uncurl from the fetal position he had adopted when Trowa had dropped him to the floor. He rolled over onto his back, forced a wide grin and ran his right hand down his own chest, over his rumpled clothes.
"What do I always want?" He turned the question around and watched as Trowa's eyes narrowed.
He was naked, towering over Duo's prone body and he carried himself with the confidence as power of a man in the cockpit of a mobile suit.
Wufei watched, circled like a shark or a buzzard or a cobra. Duo couldn't decide. Hell, Duo could barely even think past the mantra running through his brain like a tattoo.
Shit shit shit shit shit shit. I'm fucked. So fucked. So fucking fucking fucked. Shit shit shit shit shit.
"Why are you sober?"
Duo had expected the questions to be more oblique, had counted on Wufei to be the one asking the questions while Trowa worked him over. He had expected the benefit of pain to focus on, to catalyze his fear and anger into resolve.
"Well," Duo offered up a rueful grin and let his gaze linger on Trowa's cock and balls, heavy and pendulous even when unaroused. "I figured I should try this without being drunk. At least once. Maybe twice, if I got lucky."
It might have worked, had one of them been focused on beating the shit out of him while the other did the talking.
But Duo didn't get lucky. Hadn't, apparently, had luck on his side at all tonight.
Trowa knelt down, balancing on his toes in a graceful crouch that spoke of power and purpose and Duo's mouth went completely dry.
Trowa smirked and he ran the backs of his fingers over Duo's cheek.
"Duo." His voice was a croon.
"Tro - Trowa." Duo's voice cracked and he didn't even bother to imitate the intimate tone the other man had used.
Trowa trailed his hand lower, gliding over Duo's jacket in a touch so light Duo was probably just imagining he even felt it. Trowa came to a stop, his hand hovering over the crotch of Duo's worn jeans, and he fixed Duo with his cold green eyes before reaching down and seizing Duo in an iron grip.
The breath was sucked out of him. All rational thought, all feeling of anything but pain, left him.
"Who sent you?" Trowa asked, so sweetly, so softly. Just answer the question, he seemed to be saying, and see how good it will feel compared to this. Trowa gave a twist, a brutal, thoughtless flick of his wrist and Duo was curling around him and closing his eyes.
"Duo."
Another twist, a tug and then a push and Duo was dry heaving and clutching at Trowa's thighs, fingers digging in so deep he felt the skin give way but Trowa didn't move, didn't react at all and Duo cried out in frustration and panic, the first hot trickle of it, seeped into his voice.
Trowa's free hand, smoothing over his hair and his face, wiping away tears Duo didn't realize he had shed.
"Duo."
It was ironic - would have been worth laughing over if he wasn't in this situation. But Trowa was the one begging, begging Duo to just speak, to save himself. To betray himself.
The hand dipped lower, under his chin and Trowa used a knuckle to angle Duo's face up, to force their gazes to meet again.
Compassion.
It wasn't, Duo realized, a look he had seen very often on Trowa. He didn't wear it well. It was like an ill fitting suit, or a mask that sat precariously, ready to slip away at any second.
It was terrifying.
He closed his eyes and tried to turn away but Trowa twisted his wrist again and fuck. Duo hadn't known there was a way to feel more pain there.
"I told you this wouldn't break him," Wufei spoke up, his voice an angry, irritated sigh.
And in that instant, Trowa released, stepping away and standing up in one smooth motion while Duo lay gasping on the floor.
He was only vaguely aware of being picked up, of Trowa hauling him upright and dragging him across the room and then methodically stripping him.
Even if he'd been able to put up a fight, Duo knew there wasn't much point in it. He was still outnumbered, at a greater disadvantage than he had been at before, and fighting at this point would only work to their advantage, not his own.
So he let Trowa remove his clothes, gave himself those precious moments to breathe and push aside the aching, throbbing pain and remind himself of just what was at stake, remind himself what needed to happen.
And then they were tying him down to the coffee table, spreading his arms and legs and bowing them down to tie to the legs and the table was only just long enough for the base of his skull to rest against the edge. It was uncomfortable. It was awkward.
It was planned.
They weren't tying him with things lying around - ties or shirts or plastic bags. Zip ties. Thick, heavy ones that were so tight they cut into his skin.
So fucking fucked.
"Well this is a new kink," he forced himself to say.
It caught them both off guard, Wufei's eyes going wide and his jaw a little slack, Trowa's lips curving upwards before he got control of himself.
They exchanged another look and Duo gave himself a point - they hadn't thought he would still be resistant. They had known the pain wouldn't break him, but they hadn't realized just how intact he would still be after it.
Sorry to disappoint, fellas.
Trowa, at least, should know that it took more than a little vomit inducing torture to make Duo Maxwell stop throwing out jokes.
They stared down at him for a long, tense moment.
And then a kettle whistled.
It was hilarious, the way all three of them jumped at the sound, the irritation on Wufei's face, the amusement on Trowa's.
"Oh, I'll wait," Duo said and he gestured with his bound wrist towards the kitchen.
Another tilt of Trowa's lips, an exasperated eye roll from Wufei, but they moved away, into the kitchen area of the room.
He had expected, had hoped they would talk to each other, would take the moment to regroup and maybe give him something, some kernel of leverage, to work with.
But the apartment was completely silent except for the scrape of metal on porcelain, the gurgle of milk meeting hot liquid, the soft avalanche of sugar dissolving.
Trowa came back first, sat down on the couch and crossed his legs before regarding Duo over the steaming cup of coffee.
It took a certain lack of self-preservation to drink hot coffee naked, Duo couldn't help but think. That or a supreme confidence in yourself. Both, probably, at least in Duo's case.
Six silent minutes stretched between them and then Wufei sat down.
Duo knew it had been six minutes, had previously timed how long Wufei usually let his tea steep, and the knowledge gave him some tiny grasp on reality that he clung to as he fought back the growing tides of despair.
Duo licked his lips and swallowed, tried to unobtrusively clear his bruised throat.
"So… when'd you figure it out?" He made the question conversational, as if he was asking about the weather or the colony cricket teams that Trowa followed or the pre-colony jazz collection Wufei had amassed.
It was Wufei who was amused this time, snorting slightly and shaking his head even as his lips turned upwards into an exasperated, almost fond expression.
Trowa took a sip of his coffee.
"Third time, right?" Duo guessed.
Their faces were blank, unresponsive. Might as well have been carved in marble.
I really should have had at least one drink before doing this. Probably twenty.
"Because I was pretty smooth, the first two times, wasn't I? Bet it kills you, thinking back, doesn't ?" He forced a wide, shit-eating smirk and he saw Wufei's eyes narrow. "That first time - God, Wufei, you wanted my dick so bad I probably could have just stood in the office and snapped photos of everything while you sucked me off."
Trowa made a tsking sound, aggravated and bored, and shook his head.
Duo felt his smirk falter. He propped it back up and shrugged.
"Okay, maybe a bit of an exaggeration," he said. "But the second time… hell, Trowa, you were the one finger fucking me in the taxi. You were -"
And that's when it hit Duo, in one terrible blow.
"I was what?" Trowa coaxed, his face neutral, devoid of all life.
Fuck.
"You've known all along. You knew - you knew before I even fucking knew."
Wufei chuckled and he leaned against Trowa, who obligingly lifted his arm and draped it across Wufei's shoulders and the back of the couch.
"I told you he would figure it out," Wufei said and he took a sip from his tea.
Trowa nodded and he stroked Wufei's shoulder with his thumb, the gesture idle, the absent minded caress of a lover.
It was, Duo knew, just as calculated as every breath Trowa took, every thought that passed through his mind, every economical move of his body.
"How?"
His anger got the better of him, his rage exploding in that one word, a shout in the black void before him.
They regarded him in silence and Duo realized he was shaking, his body trembling from head to foot as he panted, as his heart thundered wildly.
He closed his eyes, looked away from them, tried to steady himself. Tried to think of a way out. Tried to - he felt his throat constrict, tighter than when Trowa had been choking him, and Duo knew this had to be it. This was the end.
The clink of porcelain and a hard surface, the murmur of skin shifting against skin, the touch of Trowa's hand, on his cock again, this time soft and apologetic.
Duo remembered the briefing, remembered unlocking the door to his cramped, practically barren studio apartment and finding Une and Heero inside, waiting for him.
Traitors. Terrorists. Rogues. Two ex-pilots working on their own to gruesomely destroy the last vestiges of the old Terran elite. One by one, retired politicians and military officials, then active duty ones who had been deemed not awful enough to force into retirement or prison and instead had been incorporated into the ESUN government. All of them murdered. No one safe, except for Zechs and Noin on Mars.
It couldn't be Heero, Une had decided, because they wouldn't believe it and because Heero still felt he owed Trowa his life.
But Duo… Duo had always been resistant to his coerced Preventers recruitment, had been very vocal about his distaste for all of the former OZ soldiers who were now his colleagues.
So Heero had stopped by Duo's office one night at HQ, had calmly measured out six shots of vodka and supervised Duo downing each one of them before sending Duo off to their apartment, an apartment Duo had been to only twice before - once to help them move in and again when Duo's apartment had flooded and they had offered him their couch for the night.
He'd been drunk, the alcohol strong on his breath and in his blood, when he pounded on the door to their apartment, harder than he'd meant to and yeah - Heero had been right: he couldn't have faked being this drunk, he needed to actually be this drunk for this to be believable.
Duo had kissed Wufei as soon as he opened the door, had mashed their faces together in a sloppy, open mouth kiss that was - no one would ever, ever know - Duo's first. He had laid the groundwork over the previous two weeks, had hung around Wufei and Trowa's desks, had flirted with them both with obvious lines that Trowa lazily shot down while Wufei just narrowed his eyes and looked away, had let himself be caught staring and flushed when speared by one or both of their incisive gazes.
And that day, the day Heero had sat him down and forced the vodka down his throat, had been the day after a mission that had not gone well, a mission where Duo's partner had been sloppy, had been careless and had killed two civilians who had not needed to die - would have been safe and alive if only Duo hadn't been paired with such a useless waste of oxygen.
Duo hadn't asked, couldn't bring himself to ask, if that had been deliberate. If Heero and Une had assigned him the idiot, the former OZ soldier who, after that mission, Duo would have cheerfully killed and left face down in an alley even if it hadn't been for the sake of this undercover operation.
So he'd fucked Wufei, had let Trowa bend him over and fuck him in turn and it wasn't what Duo had imagined his first time would be like - hell, he'd been pretty confident he would never be able to bring himself to have sex with someone; would have been perfectly happy to have that be the case, even - and he hadn't known it would be good. Stupid of him, to think that Wufei or Trowa would do anything poorly, especially not something they so obviously practiced frequently. After the sex had been the talking, tangled in sheets and limbs on their bed, and then Trowa's casual words: "It shouldn't happen again."
Such a subtle suggestion and it had made Duo think this was Trowa's game. They had dressed in silence, had put on coffee and tea and Trowa had asked Duo for help remotely hacking into the Preventers database, had looked up the idiots home address and the three of them had slipped into the cold night and when they came back, hours later as the sky turned gray, there had been blood spattered on Trowa's cheek, the stains of whatever was on the alley street on Wufei's trousers, a bruise on Duo's neck where the man had tried to fight back before Duo ended his life.
Now, under Trowa's touch, Duo's body was betraying him.
He wasn't sure how his bruised cock was able to even function but Trowa had surely and steadily worked it to erection and was now lazily stroking it, sipping coffee and studying Duo's face with disinterest.
And it hit Duo then, as Trowa watched him. Trowa was watching him - was waiting for Duo to react, to realize and the moment he did -
Trowa's eyes lit up with genuine pleasure, a look Duo recognized from the six nights he had been fucked by Trowa, had been manipulated into murdering people at his side.
Duo had never asked Heero or Une if they had arranged to partner him with an agent who had a history of aggression towards colonists but he should have. He should have asked and when they had said no he would have known, after that first time, how much shit he was in.
Because Trowa and Wufei had arranged it. They had set this entire thing up. Had taken Une's plan and turned it inside out and stuffed it full of deadly explosives and now - now it was all going to blow up.
"I'm going to take the fall, for all of it," Duo breathed.
"Close," Wufei said. He set his teacup down on the same side table where Trowa had placed his coffee and he walked around to Duo's other side and knelt down.
Duo frowned and he tried to work through it, tried to figure out if this was some trick, some part of the game he hadn't unraveled and -
"Une."
Trowa smiled at him proudly.
"Very good," he said without any obvious sarcasm. He twisted his wrist, a echo of the gesture that had caused Duo so much pain before but now - now it had Duo moaning and arching his hips upwards, bowing his body back against his restraints as he came, ecstasy and anger coursing through his veins.
"She wanted to use you against us, to put a stop to our plans," Wufei murmured, drawing one long, elegant finger through the semen on Duo's belly. He brought it to his lips and licked the digit clean before leaning over Duo's body and kissing Trowa.
They took their time, lips parting and tongues twining and faces aligned and Duo could only watch, could only marvel at how surreal, how inevitable, this whole thing was.
When they pulled apart, they were both flushed, lips swollen, eyes dilated and Duo couldn't help but feel a stir of desire in response.
The sex - the sex before they killed someone had been good, usually quick and hard and left all of them breathless and panting and on edge but the sex after they killed someone, when they came back to the apartment and stripped out of their clothes and showered together and took their time, their arousal heightened by the slow burn of adrenaline in their veins that lingered after their victim's life had slipped away, the sex after had always left Duo thinking of heaven, of eternity.
He wondered idly just how good the sex would be for them after they killed him.
Wufei turned half lidded eyes on Duo and his breath caught, at that look, at the molten desire in those dark eyes.
Wufei slowly lowered his head to Duo's naked chest and slowly, oh so very slowly, lapped up the rest of the semen, the look on his face suggesting that he was enjoying the rarest of delicacies.
Trowa sat back and continued to drink his coffee.
"What about -" his voice caught, and he couldn't bring himself to ask the question.
"Heero?" Trowa finished for him and gave a careless shrug. "He'll survive the fall. Hard to tear down the Last War Hero."
Duo closed his eyes.
"You won't - you won't kill him?"
Wufei laugh was as delicate and sharp as a knife against Duo's ribcage.
"What would you give us, in exchange for his life?"
"I don't have anything you want," Duo knew. He'd only ever been a pawn to them - a pawn they stole from Une's chessboard and added to their own.
"Not true," Trowa tsked.
Wufei licked a path around Duo's left nipple before biting down, none too gently, on the hard nub.
Duo rocked into the sensation, the blend of pain and pleasure.
"You're not going to keep me alive just for sex," he said, unbelieving.
"Of course not," Trowa agreed. "Though Wufei is unaccountably obsessed with your cock and I'll admit it's been very...diverting to break you in."
Duo's eyes snapped open and he turned to Trowa, who offered him only a bland look in response.
"Une will fall. There will be a trial and she will go to prison for the rest of her life," Wufei said as he sat back on his heels, leaving Duo's body wet and cold and aching.
"Which, admittedly, won't be very long," Trowa added.
Wufei nodded and a look that was something akin to concern floated across his face. "It really is a shame that prison violence is still so problematic."
"A shame," Trowa echoed.
"Is that how I'm going to die, too? In prison?"
"Only if that's what you want," Wufei said.
Duo tried to reason through their statements, tried to figure out what value he could possibly have for them now that they had arranged Une's demise to their liking.
What did he have that they wanted?
Connections. Contacts. Charm.
They wanted him as a front man - what he had, Duo suddenly realized, been for them those six other nights.
They were watching him with something that, in another person's face, Duo would have thought resembled affection.
"Tell me," Wufei said as he leaned close and placed a kiss against Duo's cheek, "what do you think of Mars?"