Unbroken 03/?
V of the "Chasing Down the Moon" Arc
Rating: pg13
Series: Gundam Wing
Genre: General/Romance
Pairings: 1+2+1
Spoilers: None
Warnings: Shounen Ai; Relena Bashing; Baiting of the Hee-chan; Duo-torture; Heero-torture; Humor; Language; Perverted YaoiFanGirls (like Little Shrimp); Tiny Cross-over
By Moon Faery
Archived: (eventually at) Moon Faery's Garden (); Kiss of Death [my new site!] (); anywhere else that asks nicely. (Hint hint?)
Disclaimer: Down at the bottom. I love surprises, don't you?
Author Notes: I took some liberty with Duo's taste in music. I'm assuming that the music we hear on the radio will still be around in AC 195, much the same way we still listen to Mozart. I might just end up using one or more of these songs for a songfic in the future.. (ponders that)
//Background Noise-Music\\
***
//Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of Heaven
You can justify it in the end
There wont be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away\\
Incredibly loud ancient folk - of all things - music blasted down the hallway of the boys dormitory, shaking knick-knacks off their shelves, piercing through skulls, and causing generic havoc up and down the dorm. The brief second of peace as the songs changed didn't make much difference in the noise levels, since it made the chatter from the gathered teenagers audible for the first time. Heero waded through crowds of students, most of which were chatting loudly over the noise and dancing, as if it was a party. Someone had even brought out snacks. He winced as he got closer to the room he shared with Duo, which happened to be where the music was coming from. Amazingly, there were no teachers in sight to protest this obvious violations of the noise-level rules.
//Still like that old time rock n' roll
That kind of music just soothes the soul
I reminisce about the days of old
With that old time rock n' roll\\ [1]
Heero grimaced and braced himself before opening the door, squeezing his eyes shut. The roar of pure sound that came out very nearly knocked him back down the hallway. Gritting his teeth, he entered the room, the sound of his entry completely covered by the music.
"DUO!" His shout wasn't even audible over the noise. Grumbling under his breath in various languages, Heero cracked open his eyes...
And wasn't sure which gun to pull.
Duo was literally bouncing around the dorm, wearing only a pair of black boxers and singing along at the top of his lungs, and for some inexplicable reason he was wearing the plain silver stud earring he'd aquired on a previous mission. His hair was loose, hanging down to the back of his knees and swirling around his hips and caressing his thighs. It caught the sunlight coming in from the tiny window set high up on the wall, turning into a curtain of gold, red and rich chestnut. His eyes, however, were almost completely hidden by that same curtain, offering only brief peeks of long lashes or a flash of bluish-lavender. The areas where his skin caught the few beams of sunlight practically glowed, the pale coloring making the lines of muscle on his back that much more prominent. It was very easily the most beautiful thing Heero had ever seen.
Or at least it would have been if it hadn't been so funny. Duo's singing voice was surprisingly good, but the toy blue bunny he was using as a microphone looked ridiculous. That combined with Duo's dancing- which was more like twisting and rocking his body in time to the music than anything else- left Heero staring at his partner, blue eyes glazed over and jaw hanging open slightly in shock.
Duo, who'd been in the middle of a particularly energetic spin, lost his balance as he saw Heero gaping. His feet slid out form under him, sending the nearly-naked boy crashing down onto Heero's bed. As he landed, instincts took over, making Duo roll the rest of the way across the bed and to the floor, where he landed in a defensive posture. It would have been very intimidating, if he'd remembered to let go of the stuffed rabbit clutched in his fist like a gun.
Heero's jaw slammed shut. "Duo, I don't think the bunny's loaded," he said dryly as the next song on the MIC Player began in the background. [2]
//A long long time ago
I can still remember how
That music used to make me smile...\\
After what seemed like an eternity, Heero's lips curled in a tiny grin. "Just what exactly do you think you're doing?"
Duo took a moment to contemplate that before answering seriously. "Dancing."
Heero raised an eyebrow, eyelids growing heavy as he contemplated Duo's slightly sweat-sheened form from across the room. Duo fidgeted under his stare, licking suddenly dry lips and fighting the surprisingly immense urge to just throw himself at the object of his affections. But he'd seen enough movies to know that nothing good ever came out of that approach, and it would probably just end up with Heero marrying someone like Relena, himself angsting over the wedding, and then he would either fall in love with someone completely different from Heero or end up in jail for trying to kill Heero's wife.
Let this be a lesson to you: watching too many movies can kill your sex-life in the womb. Or dorm, as it were.
They continued to stare at each other, Duo becoming more and more nervous as the seconds passed, until he was fidgeting under Heero's stare. There was something unnerving about it, almost as if Heero was staring right through him into his soul. It wouldn't have been nearly as bad, if he'd known whether or not Heero liked what he saw.
"Would you like to dance?"
Duo blinked, eyes turning more dark lavender than blue in response to his confusion. There was no way in hell Heero had just said that, he reasoned to himself. He must have slipped off into a daydream or something, even though it wasn't really like him. Just to be sure, he said "D- did you just say what I think you said?"
Heero's smile grew wider. Not by much, but it was there. It was also starting to take on a slight hint of something Duo remembered vaguely from previous encounters with Heero. There was something about that expression on Heero's face that made all of his internal danger alarms blare, but at the same time it made him want to melt into a little gooey puddle of former street rat at Heero's feet.
"And what do you think I said?" Heero asked softly, eyes darkening as they reflected some nameless emotion that he clearly made no effort to hide.
Duo gulped. He recognized that tone of voice too, and he could feel his knees trying to give out and tumble him face-first back onto the bed. This was not the way he expected his encounters with one Heero Yuy to occur. In every fantasy, dream and daydream, he had been the one to start things. However, like most people, it was easier to think about taking the initiative than it was to actually do it. He was honest enough to admit it to himself, though, so it really wasn't much of a surprise that the his tongue tied itself into a square knot when ever Heero came onto him.
Well, at least the bed was between them if he screwed up and Heero decided to kill him. That was reassuring.
On second thought, that wasn't very comforting at all.
The look Heero was casting at his partner picked up intensity as Duo fidgeted his way through his thoughts. Unfortunately (for Duo's peace of mind, anyways) it was not a type of intensity that Duo was prepared to handle. Truth be told, Heero was starting to look like a cross between a hunting panther in mating season and a teenage boy dealing with an over-active sex drive. Finally, Duo just blurted out, "I'd love to dance with you!"
//...were drinking whiskey and rye
Singin' this'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die\\
For some reason, the urge to find a nice sturdy wall and bang his head against it a few times was nigh-unto irresistible, but somehow Duo managed. That was very easily one of the most stupid thing he could have said. There was no way Heero was ever going to-
"Good."
Then again, maybe there is a God.
Before Duo could do more than blink stupidly, Heero had jumped over the narrow bed and grabbed his hand, leading his long-haired partner out from the narrow space between the beds to the larger area at the foot where they'd have more room as the song switched yet again, to a much more recent song that was decently fast-paced. Before Heero had a chance to change his mind, Duo threw his arms around the other boy's neck and forced him to move along with the beat.
Duo laughed out loud as suddenly Heero grabbed one of his hands and twirled him around the floor, only to spin him back in. It was only Duo's amazing sense of balance that kept him from eating linoleum. His smile grew wider as Heero gave him a grin. Not one of his deadly smirks, or one of the seductive half-smiles he'd been using on Duo so often lately, but a real, slightly goofy, grin.
"I didn't know you even knew how to dance!" Duo shouted over the music.
"There's a lot of things you don't know about me," Heero shot back, spinning his partner out again, admiring the way his hair flared out around him.
"Yet!"
Heero laughed as Duo started to show him some of the weirder dance moves he'd learned in his fifteen years of life. He'd liked the sound of that word.
Yet.
***
Duo did his best not to sigh audibly as he escorted his "girlfriend" to class the next morning. She was babbling about some band she was currently following, throwing in a comment about Heero every now and then, and occasionally squealing in glee for some unknown and unknowable reason. Duo wasn't sure which God hated him so much that they gave the Stalker Queen the ability to obsess over two things at once. He was about to make his excuses and run off somewhere when something he said caught his attention.
"... just released a new song called 'Yuutsu Na Seven Days' and it's SOOOO good, it's my favorite song after Spicy Marmalade-"
"Wait a minute, Relena," Duo interrupted her. "What kind of name is 'Yuuutsu Na Seven Days' for a song? It's not even intelligible!"
Relena looked insulted, pausing in her stride to glare at him, hands on her hips indignantly. "Weren't you listening to a word I said?"
"No."
For a moment, it looked like she might have been mad at him, maybe even mad enough to ignore him for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, Duo's dreams of freedom for the day were shattered when she smiled and rolled her eyes. "Typical man," she sighed. "Bad Luck's songs are all in an ancient style of music called J-Pop," she explained patiently. "All their songs are in old Japanese. Of COURSE the titles aren't going to be in our language."
He thought this over for a second, absently fiddling with the end of his braid. "If you can't understand the songs, then why do you listen to them?"
She shrugged, her gray jacket making stiff rustling sounds. "I like the music, and the entire band's gorgeous!" Her eyes glazed over slightly, contemplating God-didn't-want-to-know what. Duo's self-preservation instincts came to the fore, making him back away before hugged him or something equally cootie-filled. So imagine his surprise when he hit the wall and heard a very familiar name being spoken in very female tones.
"... the same Heero?"
"I can't believe you had the guts to do that!" another girl squealed. "And to HIM, no less!"
Duo froze as the implications of that phrase sunk in. Relena was almost at class, and someone had done something to his partner. Without wasting a step, he turned and sped back to the boys dorm. If something had happened to Heero, that would be the best place to look for him.
Through a combination of taking corners at dangerous speeds and ignoring slower-moving pedestrians, Duo managed to reach the room he shared with Heero at very-nearly record speeds. Flinging the door open loudly, he stepped inside...
And very nearly had Heero's gun shoved up his nose.
"Oh, it's you." With a relieved look, Heero put his gun down and pushed Duo inside the room, peering outside suspiciously before slamming the door shut and turning to look at Duo.
"Were you followed?"
His question was immediately answered with another one. "Are you alright?" Stepping forward, Duo pressed the back of his hand to Heero's forehead. "You look pale, and you're shaking! No fever, though."
Heero pulled out of Duo's grip. "I'm not sick! I'm being stalked!" His fists clenched and loosened, causing tiny crumpling sounds to come from two pieced of paper he held before they fluttered to the floor.
That took a second to process through the other pilot's mind. "Stalked? Heero, Relena IS in this school, remember?" Duo blinked. "And what are those?" Reaching down, he scooped up the dropped papers, noticing that they had dorm numbers, times and dated written on the backs of them.
"NO!" Heero dived for him, trying to snatch the notes away. Duo skipped aside from the clumsier than usual assault. "Come on, Heero, they can't be THAT bad," he soothed, unfolding one and reading it. Then he blinked, violet eyes widening in shock as he read it again, this time aloud, voice slightly strangled. "'I estimated that you're nine inches, minimum. Come by and you can tell me how close I am.'" With shaking hands, he opened the other one. "'Au Natural; me likee muchly.' Heero... there's a lipstick mark, and drool stains..." Duo held out the offensive notes. "Where did THESE come from?"
Heero glared at him and then stared at his feet, mumbling something.
"Repeat, please."
"I said that they were stuffed down my pants in the Library this morning!" Heero snapped, flushing a dull red.
There was a moment of silence. And then Duo did the worst thing he possibly could have done. He started laughing, curling over and collapsing in on himself. The next thing he knew, Heero gripped the front of his uniform and heaved, sending him tumbling over onto the bed, where he sprawled in a tangle of limbs and braid, still laughing.
"It's not funny!" Heero grumbled, sending his worst glare in Duo's direction. Not that it worked, but it made him feel better.
"Yes it is!" Duo giggled, clutching his stomach, tears streaming down his cheeks. "Now you know what I feel like! Wait till they start grabbing your-"
"DUO!" There was no was Heero could have possibly gotten redder. For the first time in several months, he considered killing Duo, but realized that would mean that HE would have to follow Relena around. Just the thought cooled his blood lust considerably. No amount of satisfaction was worth being stuck with Relena for any length of time.
Of course, that didn't mean that he couldn't get revenge, just that it would have to wait. And if there was anything Heero Yuy was, it was patient.
***
"Why were you and Heero late this morning? Anything Miss Relena should know about?"
Duo glared at the brunette girl blocking his way. Her name was Elisia, and out of all the girls in the school, she seemed to take the most delight in driving Duo insane. For some reason, she didn't trust him with "Miss Relena's" heart, and was bound and determined to break them up. She would have been successful, too, if there'd been a relationship to end. "Nope," he answered glibly. "Heero had some problems to deal with."
She raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow. "Not feeling very well, hm?" she asked, lips pursed. "That would explain why he was so flushed." One leaf green closed as she tapped her temple with a manicured finger. "But why were you?"
He could have told her that it was because they'd run to class, but that would have made it obvious that Heero wasn't sick, and while he wasn't going to lie, Duo was perfectly willing to let her make all the assumptions she wanted. So he shrugged, trying to detour around her. Elisia just stepped back into his way.
"I don't think that's the whole truth, for some reason." She leaned close, lips stopping just short of brushing Duo's ear. He restrained the urge to shudder. "You have a secret, little Duo, and I think I know what it is."
He froze completely, eyes widening slightly in shock. If she knew that they were pilots, there would be Hell to pay. For a second, he didn't even breathe. His answer, when it came, was almost a hiss. "I don't know what you're talking about."
She actually giggled. "Oh, I think you do, little Duo. But it really is cruel of you to do that to Miss Relena. If you're going to cheat on her, the least you could do is do it with a another girl."
"..." Duo's jaw hung open. Something deep inside him told him that he should have expected this. "I-I..."
"Don't try to deny it," Elisia purred, eyes almost seeming to glow with some sort of inner light. "We've all seen the way you look at him when you think no one's looking."
He REALLY didn't want to know the answer to the question immediately popped up, but a small, masochistic part of himself reminded Duo that it was probably best to get the worst out of the way. "We?"
"Oh, yes. We."
Before Duo could do more than blink, he was surrounded on all sides by girls. Inwardly he cursed himself for being so distracted by Elisia that he completely missed the arrival of so many people. He vaguely noted that not all of the girls in the school were there, but most of them were. (Once again, even the secretary. Mrs. Elderson just seemed to have a way of getting mixed up in things like this.) Some giggled, some just simpered and a few cackled in artful imitations of the Wicked Witch of the Colonies, but they all had something in common, something that frightened Duo more than any torture and OZ soldier could come up with.
Eyes of every shade stared at him with hungry, glazed, obsessed expressions, barraging him on all sides. The perfume alone very nearly choked him. The weight of the arms thrown around him in massive hugs sent him to his knees.
"We..." Elisia indicated the crowd of females with a sweep of her arm, "are willing to keep your... indiscretions with Heero Yuy a secret. There is, however, a price attached."
There was no way Duo's eyes could have possibly gone wider; they already took up more of his face than should have been physically possible. They did brighten with something very near panic. He was so close to the breaking point that it never even occurred to him to deny the accusations outright. He told himself that he was a Gundam Pilot, that he had faced death and worse many times over without even flinching, that these were unarmed civilian girls - not even grown women. It didn't do much good in the face of his all-too recent memories of humiliation and degradation suffered at their nail-polished hands. And the previous mission with Wufei made his courage take a flying leap out the window. "P-pr-pri-ice?"
The horde universally grinned, and terror settled into a cold, tight little ball right below Duo's sternum.
Long black curls flew through the air as Elisia brushed her hair back behind her shoulder before leaning forward, one hand placed on her thigh, while the other reached up to pat Duo's cheek. He would have cringed, but fine muscle control escaped him. "You see, little Duo, in return for our silence, all we ask are... pictures."
The crowd surged. "Detailed ones!" someone screamed.
"Explicit!"
"KINKY!" Duo was shocked to recognize Mrs. Elderson's voice.
Elisia giggled at his still-stunned expression, fluttering her eyes almost coquettishly. "Video is preferable, but we will accept still photographs." She smiled slightly. "Although the.. length and quality of our silence depends almost entirely upon the quality of the merchandise."
Duo managed to shake himself out of his stupor, even though it took smacking himself in the forehead with the palm of his hand. "So... Let me get this straight... If I give you X-rated pictures of myself and Heero, you won't tell Relena..?"
"Mmhm." Elisia smiled brightly, nodding. "That is very much the long and short of it. You have until Monday, sweet little Duo." With one more pat, she stood up straight. "We do SO enjoy doing business with you. Ciao."
As suddenly as they appeared, the mass of women vanished again. Duo was left on his knees, staring blankly at the ground, gasping for breathe in the newly perfume-free air. "And girls call US perverts..." he muttered to himself, inhaling yet another lungful of air. 'That was almost as scary as Heero around chocolate...' Duo froze where he knelt as that thought seeped through his skull, reminding him of a very immediate concern. His bones became chilled with the kind of cold that only impending mortal danger can bring. He had a rather large problem to deal with now, on top of the mission and incidentals like saving the world via Relena. And that problem was...
What was he going to tell Heero?
***
[1] Yep, Duo has odd taste in music! ^.^ Little bit of everything, isn't it?
[2] MIC - Molecular Information Chip, a completely imaginary form of recording music and information. I figured that the CD might be a little outdated after 200-something years.
Full Disclaimer: A statement created solely to save one's ass from becoming lawn for the proverbial legal mower. I do not own Gundam Wing, nor does anyone I know own it. "That Old Time Rock and Roll" is copyright Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band. "American Pie" is copyright Don McLean. "One Tin Soldier" in by Joni Mitchell (at least I THINK it is. oo;; ). Gravitation isn't mine either. All materials are used without the permission of their various owners. However, this story line, characters and plot are MINE. (Holds fic close to her.) Grrrr....
