Current Pairing: HeavyWing (1x3x3), past DeathWing (1x2x1)
Ahoy, here thar be smut.
A year ago, Duo wandered out of his life like flame-licked leaves drifting away in the fall. He fled the colder weather, tucked himself into the warmth and comfort of old habits. He did what Duo Maxwell did best, and ran. Heero hasn't seen him since then, hasn't heard from him since a tear-spattered note promised I won't call.
Heero has gotten over the ache of regretting that promise, extracted on the night that he first acknowledged that Duo would leave. He's stifled the twitch that a phone call causes, though sometimes when the night breeze drifts through the window, that haunting ring still guts him and leaves him raw with wanting.
He's recovered from four months of insomnia, four months of running from sleep and dreams of his missing lover. Eight months ago, in the midst of the worst night he'd endured for a while, he lifted his head from a nest of tears and discovered that he wasn't alone. His faithful shadow, sitting beside the bed, offered him a cup of tea and ensured him that this would pass, that he would be okay. Eight months ago, he rolled into the dip of the mattress and captured Trowa's lips in a kiss that warmed him down to his frozen bones.
Trowa is Trowa. Heero never expects him to be Duo, never expects their passion to be the same. It is gentle as the rolling waves, blanketing him in safety. It is the healing balm for his wounded soul. Trowa will never fan the flames of his heart's forge, will never cause the fire to leap so high that he fears he will be consumed. Trowa is the banked coals, the heat that seeps into his soul and warms him from within. It's the gentle heat of coming back to a body-warmed bed, not the raging bonfire of undaunted passion. But that is okay with him. Heero never wants to be lost in someone else again, never wants to fall so deep into them that he loses who he is.
And Trowa does that for him. Undemanding in his love, there when Heero reaches for him and absent when Heero mourns for someone else. He won't move into Heero's house, to the bed he once shared with Duo. Says Heero needs his space, knows that Heero still needs just a little bit more time. Heero doesn't have to explain, yet Trowa understands. He doesn't ask why they can't fuck on nights when Heero leaves the window open. Never questions when Heero still jumps sometimes when the phone rings.
It's close to one year since that first kiss when Trowa refuses to come home with him one night. Gives him only a strange, blank stare in response to his questioning. Trowa, always reticent, always answers in his own way. A touch to the wrist, a flicker in the depths of his visible eye, an almost invisible smile. Today, nothing. No compassion. No explanation.
"You'll understand when you get home," he comments quietly.
His body screams tension, the lean muscle of his body tight with unspoken fear. Heero hasn't seen Trowa afraid since the war, and wonders what could possibly be waiting in his house that has Trowa coiled so tensely. Whatever it is, Trowa doesn't want to face it with him. Refuses to face it with him.
"Trowa, come home with me. Please. We can figure out whatever it is."
Trowa just shakes his head, twisting free of his restraining hand, and stalks away, green eyes clouded with pain. Heero is left standing in the doorway to their office, confusion twisting in his gut, trying to recall what he's done wrong. He hasn't left the window open in months. He twists his hands into fists, fighting the urge to say 'fuck it' and sleep alone without protest. Running is the truest lesson that Duo ever taught him, but it sure as hell doesn't save relationships. Fighting down a snarl, he stalks through the corridors after Trowa's retreating back.
He corners his lover in the locker room, hefting one of the massively heavy benches and slamming it up against the door. Locking them in, ensuring that no one will interrupt before he gets his answers. Trowa pivots on his heel to watch, his eyebrows rising up his forehead. He blinks slowly at Heero, a vaguely amused curl on his lips.
"Bit dramatic, don't you think?" he murmurs.
Heero strides across the room, eyes dark and determined, tongue flicking out to taste his lips. Backing Trowa up along the line of lockers, he cages the taller man between his muscular arms and leans in. A pained glint shines in Trowa's eyes as he jerks his face away, tilting his jaw toward the ceiling. Heero almost stops, then, Trowa's fear seeping into him. Trowa's never said no before. Never refused a kiss.
"Heero, please don't."
Uncertainty skitters along his skin, itching down his spine. Every instinct screams for him to stop, but his heart is down on its knees in prayer. "Trowa, don't do this to me. Don't shut me out. Don't run. I can't handle that – you know I can't handle it."
His hands fumble at the belt of Trowa's black uniform pants, eyes bright with desperation. Panic seeps into his veins, leaving his fingers shaking and weak, barely able to manage the simple buckle. He knows this might be a bad decision, but he can't help but believe that this will make Trowa stay. It has to work.
"Fuck, baby," Trowa breathes as Heero's hand slips inside his pants, cupping his half-hard cock through the wash-softened fabric of his boxers.
Trowa's eyes slam shut as he surrenders, head falling back against the unyielding metal of the lockers. The grate bites into his shoulders, leaving him to arch himself away, inadvertently rolling his hips into Heero's grasping palm. Heero grunts appreciatively, licking his lips again, flicking a quick glance up at Trowa's face. His eyes are clenched tight, eyebrows drawn together in apprehension. The expression on his face is closer to anxiety than pleasure, though his mouth smoothes into a soft 'oh' as Heero's hand slips past the button fly of his briefs.
"You really," Trowa gasps around a moan, "you really need to go home."
"Mmhm," Heero agrees noncommittally, beginning to inch Trowa's pants over his slender hips. "After I finish this…"
"Shit, this is – damn, you look so good like that… shit, Heero, this is not a good idea."
Heero stares up at him, folded on the tiled locker room floor like a goddamn pornstar, knees not bothered in the slightest by the mosaic biting into his legs. His hair has that mussed, just-fucked tangle, worsened by Trowa's long fingers slowly twining their way into the silken mass. Leaning in, he ghosts a breath over Trowa's erection, his stomach muscles tightening at the delicious noises creeping from his lover's lips. He never gets tired of that – hearing Trowa completely unhinged, seeing the quiver in his legs as his knees threaten to give way, feeling the tightening grip in his hair.
"I love you," Heero breathes, shutting out Trowa's tortured whimper as the words graze the sensitive head of his dick.
Trowa doesn't answer, doesn't say it back, just tightens his grip and tugs Heero's lips around his crown. Heero might be worried if he wasn't captivated by the taste of that flesh as hot as molten steel, if he wasn't entirely focused on the symphony of noise tugged out by the instruments of tongue and lips. Trowa rocks his hips, sheathing and withdrawing his twitching cock, the tiny movements aiding in Heero's bobbing head.
His moan echoes off the roof as Heero's hand lifts to cradle his balls, trapping them deftly between his fingers with a sure grip that shoots Trowa's libido through the atmosphere. They don't often play in public places – Trowa's specialty is sleepy morning sex – but there's something about watching the normally stoic man come undone beneath the harsh fluorescent lights that drives Heero crazy.
Trowa's free arm lifts to curl behind his head, his shirt riding up to expose washboard abs. Heero lifts off his cock, a strand of saliva dangling from the head to his tongue. His lips are swollen slightly from the suction, and he grins filthily up at Trowa's flushed cheeks before pressing a series of wet, heated kisses across Trowa's bared stomach. The muscles jump beneath his lips, Trowa's strangled whine pleading with him for more sensation. His hand fists around the spit-slicked shaft abandoned by his mouth, slowly pumping as his tongue replaces his lips. He laps at the salty tang of Trowa's skin, tracing wet lines across the flat expanse of flesh between his hipbones.
"Heero, please," he pleads, tugging frantically at the chocolate roots clenched in his fists.
Heero chuckles, low and dark, and relents, wrapping his lips around Trowa's cock and working with tongue and lips until his nose is pressed against the downy hair at its base. He swallows convulsively, his throat pulsing against the head, and Trowa's legs quiver in warning. Trowa leans heavily against the metal door for support, praying that his knees won't give before his orgasm. And Heero, realizing that the other man is on the brink of collapse, speeds up his movements, tongue lapping at the vein on the underside of Trowa's shaft, hands wrapping around Trowa's ass to give him leverage.
Trowa's climax rips out of him, a hoarse cry announcing his peak, and his fingers yank on Heero's hair until tears spring to his eyes. Heero laps up the salty fluid, fingers caressing Trowa's skin as he withdraws his mouth. It's not until he sits back on his heels that he realizes that Trowa's shaking isn't from a post-orgasmic haze. His lover has an arm draped over his face, jaw turned into the crook of his elbow. A tear splashes free of the concealing limb, landing on Heero's knee.
"Trowa…?" he stutters, bewildered.
He's never seen Trowa cry. Not during the war, not when he is seized by nightmares, not even when Quatre chose politics over his circus boy and walked away. Yet the acrobat turns his back in shame, shoulders protectively hunched as a muffled sob drifts across the room. Heero rises to his feet, slowly, reaching out to place a hesitant hand on Trowa's shoulder. The other man jerks away from him, movement sharp and protective.
"Don't. You got what you wanted, Heero. Now go home."
Stung, Heero backs away, emotional barriers descending with a harsh slam. Trowa has never been intentionally hurtful. He was never one to deliberately inflict wounds on someone else's soul. Heero doesn't know how to face this mechanical apathy, this grinding sadism in the face of a soul-shattering orgasm.
"I don't know what I did, but I'm sorry. I wish you wouldn't shut me out… I'm going. You know how to find me when you want me again."
His last glimpse of Trowa, as he unceremoniously shoves the metal bench blocking the door, is the unibanged man slumping to the tiled floor, hands collecting his tears as his face twists in unfathomable pain. Like his heart is breaking in the empty, sterile confines of that room. Heero opens the door, his chest throbbing with shared agony, wondering why this feels like goodbye.
The walk home is excruciating. Every step screams through Heero's bones, begging him to go back, to try and fix whatever is wrong, to prevent someone else from leaving him. He wraps arms around his ribcage, holding the fear trapped within his body. Trowa won't leave. Trowa is his solid ground. Trowa knows that it would destroy him if someone else just vanished without a trace.
He still can't fathom what went wrong. Trowa had been fine that morning, kissing him goodbye before heading to court to testify on a drug case. Had smiled like the sun rising above mountains when Heero dropped by to deliver lunch, fresh from his favorite Italian restaurant. And then, when Heero mentioned plans after work, Trowa had suddenly shut down. What happened? Did he see Quatre in the courtroom? Heero didn't recall whether this particular drug issue had involved Winner Corporation. Perhaps he should have been paying closer attention to the press coverage.
It's just that Trowa always wears this devastating pinstriped suit to court, and Heero spent most of his time that morning being exceptionally distracted by the pull of the jacket across his broad shoulders, the cut of the slacks across his magnificent ass…
A tiny smile quirks his lips. He lucked out, with Trowa. Finding someone so dedicated to him, someone to drive off the dogs of heartbreak that nipped at his heels. Maybe he could make Trowa dinner, toss together some rice and stir fry and bring it by Trowa's apartment.
Maybe he could figure out why Trowa demanded that he go home alone. His key rattles in the door to the house, and he fidgets one key into the lock as he spins the combination with the other hand. He has it down to a science – unlock the top deadbolt while entering the proper code, and unlock the second deadbolt while preparing to catch the mail that the carrier insisted on shoving in the doorjamb.
The mail isn't there today. He frowns at the absence and checks the date on his phone, ensuring that a delivery should have occurred. Now it just seems like the universe is screwing with him – the mail is missing, his lover refused to join him for dinner. He hates when his routine is disrupted for no discernable reason. Toeing open the door, he steps into the entryway and chucks his keys at the steel bowl on the counter. They ricochet off the edge and land at the bottom with a satisfying ring, and a silly smile paints his face as he plants his heel into the door to shove it closed. He doesn't bother to lock it, as he's planning on heading out as soon as dinner is ready.
It's only as he shrugs out of his jacket, moving to hang it from the wall hook, that he notices company. A thrill of shock runs through his system, adrenaline pumping through his veins in the space of a heartbeat. His reflexes settle as his body instinctively recognizes the person framed in the window, sunset casting a halo across a slew of messy bangs. Tawny braid rests between the fingers of one hand, the other hand rising in a careless wave. A shy smile curls heart-shaped lips, deep, deep purple eyes shimmering with some strange emotion. Heero's heart drops out of his chest, colliding with his lungs until he can hardly draw breath.
It's why Trowa said no. It's why the mail was missing. It was always his job.
"Hey there, 'Ro."
