This didn't
really fit anywhere else, but Treize and Wufei's relationship really did rate a
little more exploration, since it's such a focal point for so many things that
happen in the story. This slides neatly
in between books I and II, after Duo has escaped from Fortress Barge and let
the others know he's all right.
It is a
lemon. Like most of my serious lemons
it's mostly psychological, but there are still graphic depictions of yaoi sex,
so if the thought of Treize and Wufei going at it turns your stomach, you might
want to give it a pass...or just read the first couple pages and stop when
things start getting heavy, because the beginning is pretty much just Wufei
contemplating things. I mean, I'd like
it if you gave it a try, of course, but I don't want to disturb anybody! And if you like lemon, well, here, it's my
first ever 13x5, have fun!
Ash
****
Toy
Soldiers: Interlude
Inferno Rosa
by Ashura Nagisa
standard
disclaimers apply
archive: Desolation Angels
(http://www.dreamwater.net/ashura)
pairings: 13x5
warnings: POV yaoi lemon
notes: since Yahoo doesn't always show italics, I
want to clarify that when Treize says 'dragon,' even as a single word instead
of the longer 'mon petit dragon,' he's speaking French and it should be
pronounced as such.
*****
"You
promised."
I meant to be
defiant, accusing, but I know I only sounded tired. Treize nodded--regretfully, I thought--and sank onto the edge of
the bed. He looked weary,
threadworn--it was one of those rare moments when I realised my lover was
really only a man.
I didn't want a
man. I wanted a god. Treize had beaten me at so many games, and
my pride demanded that he be more than human. The victor of my body and champion of my hard-won heart must not be as
mortal as I.
"I
did," he agreed softly, and I realised I had almost forgotten my charge
against him, lost as I was in my own thoughts. "I never meant to break my promise to you, mon petit dragon,
and I have remedied it as best I can."
I wanted to tell
him it wasn't enough--that /he/ wasn't enough. I wanted, as I had so many times before, to call an end to this bizarre
affair and restore our relationship to something that made sense. But I didn't, couldn't, just as I never
could, because some part of me knew this was the /only/ thing that made
sense. I understood him, and it bound
me to him. In the end I was really no
more than Treize's Wufei.
//And is he
then...My Treize?// I tried out the
words in my mind, but they tasted strange. I am not the sort for romantic turns of phrase, and while his public
facade may have seemed otherwise, neither was he. We were lovers, true, but we were not lisping effeminates
drowning each other in affection. He
made me strong. He helped me clear my
head and determine my own path...and he distracted me, when all I could hear in
my head was Nataku's incessant demand for revenge.
And he reminded
me that all men, even my enemies, have it in them to be honourable.
He looked at me
expectantly, and I realised how long I must have been standing there staring at
him.
"I
asked," he said gently, as if he knew he were interrupting my thoughts,
"after the health of pilot 02."
I swallowed. "He's all right," I conceded. It was true. I had not seen Duo in person in a long time, but his
transmissions were always optimistic, and he had assured me he was recovering
from the Oz soldiers' ill treatment of him.
Treize
nodded. "You are angry," he
observed quietly. I winced at the hurt
in his voice. I never understood this
power I had to wound him; maybe it was because I had so much trouble believing
he had real feelings for me.
But why should
that be so? Surely he risked as much as
I did--even more, for he was a leader of so many devoted souls and I had only
Nataku to answer to. Logic told me he
must care for me, or he would have taken me once in victory and discarded me.
But he had
not. It was my own insecurity that made
me doubt him, for he had never given me reason to. To believe I was only a bedmate to him was ludicrous--I, an
unpracticed boy whose sexual experience had been limited to the single
unwilling consummation of a childhood wedding, I his sworn enemy who, had I
been possessed of less honour and more sense, would have ended his life while
he slept and taken my own victory. He
had never treated me as less than an equal, no matter how inferior I felt. We talked more than we made love. We did not discuss the war we were fighting;
it was part of our agreement to keep our soldier-selves separate from the
secret life we led. That agreement had
included his promise, to disallow the torture and mistreatment of any of us
pilots Oz captured.
It had not been a
hard thing for him to agree to. He did
not want to hurt us--truly, I think he did not ever want to harm anyone. We would not have been foes at all, but for
our differing ideas on how peace was to be attained, and who would control it
afterward.
So we talked
instead of intellectual things--literature, philosophy, the history of man and
how it might come into play again--conversations such as I had not had since my
youth as a would-be scholar. Treize
understood my hunger for knowledge as Meiran--Nataku--never had, and what he
had of it he fed me indulgently.
He was older than
Meiran had been, though, and wiser--there was no reason for me to ever find a
connection between them. Still, there
were times when I couldn't help thinking that Treize would have understood
giving one's life to defend a bed of flowers.
He was just more
ambitious. To Treize, all the earth was
a flowerbed, or perhaps a rose garden.
But I had been
lost again. "Mon petit dragon...Wufei...tell
me what you are thinking." 'Little
dragon,' he called me, and perhaps I should have been insulted, but from his
lips the words were a caress. /His/
dragon...because I was his, as I had never been anyone's.
"I am
angry," I told him, but I knew as I spoke them that the words were
untrue. So I corrected them, standing
stiff and still before him, his shoulders slumped as he perched wearily on the
edge of the bed.
"You were
weak," I continued, and I thought I saw a twitch at the corner of his
lips. It was a word I had a tendency to
overuse. "You failed to control
your soldiers."
"And I have
compensated for it," he reminded me. "Your friend is free and recovering; those responsible for his
treatment have been punished. Even you,
dragon, must consider that justice has been done?"
"But if you
are weak," I blurted suddenly, "what does that make me?" There it was, the heart and soul of all my
fears.
Treize caught my
hand and drew me, unresisting, close. "Wufei," he said softly, his voice tender, his breath warming
my skin, "no man is infallible. Being strong does not mean never making a mistake; it does not mean
winning every fight. Sometimes strength
lies only in the willingness to admit a failure and remedy it."
I did not know if
I believed him. Still I let him lead
me, allowing myself to be comforted by his acceptance of imperfection. In the main at least he was correct, it
would do me no good to cling to an anger I did not wish to feel. Blaming him would make nothing more right
than he had already done.
And I believed
then, as I still do, that whatever else might be said of him, Treize was a
good-hearted man.
His fingers
stroked tenderly through my hair, loosing it to fall around my face, and he
pressed his cheek into it. A soft
exhalation of his breath tickled my ear, a sigh of profound weariness that
bordered on despair. Another revelation--it
had not occurred to me before that moment that his heart and mind might be as
weighted with troubles as my own. I was
being selfish--but I was also being young, and he knew that and forgave it in
me.
My heart beat
faster in my chest, pulsing in my temples as I folded him in my arms, taller
than he only because I was still standing. When I had been the one to lose the duel between us, he became to me the
stronger, the Alpha in our pack of two. I had been too naïve to realise that in love between equals the
responsibilities must be shared, that a time would come when I would be the
strong one. But as I struggled to come
to terms with his humanity I realised at last that it must be so. I cupped his chin in my fingers, tilting his
face up toward my own.
"Treize," I whispered, "I understand. I'm not angry now."
A
tired smile curved his lips. "I am
relieved," he said. His eyes
questioned me--he was unsure what I was planning, but then so was I. I planned nothing, I simply /acted/, for
once without calculating what every move might bring me, because that is no way
to use a love affair. There was a cry
of surprise when I seized and kissed him, but I am sure that it came from my
own throat.
The
ends of my hair tickled my chin, my fingers clenched the crisp fabric of his
jacket, even my eyelashes tangled as I kissed him--fervently, hungrily,
refusing to let go. I pressed him back
onto the bed, revelling in my newfound courage. I had never in my life been wanton--I had never wanted to be--but
now I found it was liberating, to surrender to my own desire without
consideration for what weakness I might show. Treize had trusted me with his own vulnerability, and at last I was free
to do the same.
My
sudden behaviour startled him, but his body reacted predictably and he hauled
me above him, fumbling with the fastenings of my clothes. I straddled his hips, refusing to free his
mouth from mine, as if, now that I had at last admitted how much I wanted him,
I was afraid I would no longer hold any attraction for him once I let go. I do not remember how he managed to undress
me without disattaching me, but he was always quite competent in such matters,
and I was distracted by his touch and the rising fire in my blood. His arms wrapped around me; he gathered me
up and surged upward so he was sitting with me on his lap. At last he tore his mouth away, soothing my
whimper of loss with a whisper and a kiss, his tongue trailing along the line
of my jaw and my neck. His fingers
played across my skin, lighting fires along my naked flesh til every nerve was
a separate self, crying out for his touch. I pushed ineffectually at his clothes, but already lust had formed a
haze across my eyes, and the most I could do was feel the divergence as cloth
gave way to sweat-glistened skin.
"Wufei...." His voice was tinted with as much disbelief
as desire, and it made the sound of my name on his lips all the sweeter. I pushed forward, tumbling us once again to
the mattress, attacking his throat with my tongue. His head fell back and I pressed my advantage, my hands stroking
down his bare chest as I crawled between his legs. He had been in uniform; I peeled the tight white trousers from
his body while my own quivered and trembled with the need to touch him.
I
had him naked at last, and I ran my hands all up and down the length of him,
exploring freely places I had once blushed to touch. He sensed, I think, how strange and heady this was for me, and
did his best to lie still under my ministrations as I made myself comfortable
with the intricacies of his body. But
it was impossible to quell the effect we had on each other; indeed I was drunk
on it, intoxicated by his scent and the salty taste of his skin, by the urgency
in his touch and the smouldering of his azure eyes.
His
body was perfect, unmarred by scars like those that marked my own, sculpted as
truly as if he had been a statue. Fortunately, a statue he was not. I explored him with my tongue as thoroughly as my hands; the line of his
neck and the hard planes of his chest and further yet below. His penis stood free and erect, twitching
whenever my hands neared it, and like the wanton I had become I wanted to taste
it. Treize let out a groan as my mouth
covered it; a wordless moan strangled in a rush of sensation as his hands flew
to tangle in my hair. He pressed my
head down and I allowed him to, sucking as he arced against me, moving with the
untimed gasps that escaped his lips. I
toyed with him as I would never have thought myself capable of, teasing him
with my tongue and my breath, promising release but ever refusing to deliver
it.
He
grasped my shoulders and hauled me up, rolling suddenly to pin me beneath
him. "Wufei--" My name again, flooding my soul, buoying my
desire for him.
"Kiss
me," I demanded, and with a gasp he obeyed. His body covered mine, our skin slick with shared sweat, our
eager erections bumping together in our frenzied movement. I spread my legs wide, and he straightened
enough to hook my knees over his shoulders--there was no more discussion; we
moved as a strained and desperate pair, our higher intellect scarcely aware of
our bodies' tumult.
He
began to stretch me. I would have
protested the time it took for him to do so, but I knew without speaking that
he would not have listened. Though we
were not yet joined, our minds, it seemed, had merged, rendering mere words
useless and finding poetry in every touch. He would not hurt me, and while my body ached for his presence, I
appreciated the care he took with me.
He
thrust into me at last, and my body swallowed him. Always before, it had taken time for me to adjust to him inside
me, as my eager body forced my errant will into submission. This time there was no such discomfort, or
if there was, I never noticed it. This
lovemaking was headier than any drug that had ever aided my ancestors in
meditation, I was alive with it, every nerve and pore singing the sensual
praise of the man who claimed me.
I do
not remember how the night ended, save for the flurry of passion and
ill-stifled cries. I remember feeling
full as I never had before. And I
remember his arms around me, holding me close against him long after he had
whispered his devotion and surrendered to sleep. He guarded me from my demons, and Nataku, for a night, was
silent.
As
long as men have told stories and fought battles, they have told of brave warriors
who, defeated, swore their lives to the victors. Once I thought such men were weak fools. It was Treize who taught me
differently. I am not the sort to be
drawn by a body alone; if that was all I sought I would have found a
woman. But the spark of an ancient soul
and a kindred spirit called to me even while we fought, and his sword at my
throat forced me to reassess my evaluation of him. It was the most poetic twist of tragedy, our meeting, for we
could never be more than we became--soulmates, lovers, and bitterest foes.
~Owari~
