Disclaimer:I don't own them and I don't make any money off of them.
Warnings: Male/male sex, graphic, language, violence
Kracken
Disclaimer"I don't own them and I don't make any money off of this.
Warning:Male/Male sex, graphic, language, violence,
Princes and Soldiers 3
Against the Grain
"You know, sometimes I wish I was gay," Heero said softly.
Milliardo sat on the step next to him on the porch and joined Heero in rubbing Missy's silky fur. "Why?" Milliardo dared.
Heero looked angry for a moment and then he sighed and it sounded pained. "Because, then I would be in there taking care of him."
"Instead of me," Milliardo finished.
Heero didn't reply to that, simply ducked his head into the night time shadows.
"I think I will be angry when you turn Noin away," Milliardo continued.
"What?" Heero was startled into looking at him again.
"If you're sitting here, wishing that you were gay, then you must not love her," Milliardo pointed out.
"I do!" Heero retorted strongly, but then he floundered, "but... I just... I put it badly..."
Milliardo chuckled lightly. "I know what you meant, Heero. You want to love him and make him feel better. I can understand that. Sitting in bed with him isn't a cure, though, especially since it isn't Duo you want to comfort, but yourself."
Heero flinched and Milliardo knew that he had hit a nerve.
"You're afraid of losing him, so am I. The doctor said that he was all right and my own physician concurred," Milliardo reminded him. "He may be very sick, but he isn't dangerously so."
Milliardo reached across Missy and squeezed Heero's shoulder. "Don't wish to be something that you aren't, Heero. We are what we were meant to be."
Heero nodded.
"Besides, if I were straight," Milliardo continued as he stood up and stretched, "I would be with Noin, not you."
Heero's eyes went wide. "I wouldn't allow that," he retorted.
Milliardo looked down at Heero from his tall height. "And I wouldn't let you have Duo if you were gay," he told him.
Heero blinked and then smiled fiercely. "If I still had my Gundam..."
"Who would we fight for, Noin or Duo?" Milliardo wondered with a raised, pale eyebrow.
Heero was still smiling, but he looked confused, not sure how to answer.
"That's all right," Milliardo assured him with a smirk. "I would win any how."
"I've already beaten you," Heero reminded him as they went back into the house.
"I let you win," Milliardo replied.
"Which time?" Heero taunted.
Milliardo drew breath to protest but Noin confronted them both, a half eaten bowl of soup in one hand. She scowled. "If you two would please stop indulging in macho posturing, Maxwell needs to be cleaned up."
"What happened?!" Milliardo exclaimed in concern as he hurried towards the bedroom.
"Let's just say," Noin called after him grimacing, "That he didn't like the soup."
Heero began to follow, But Noin snagged a finger in the loop of his jeans and stopped him. "He can handle it, Heero. Maxwell is going to be all right."
Heero bowed his head and rubbed at his forehead. "I'm sorry," he said.
"For loving and caring about your friend?" Noin wondered and smacked him on the back of the head. "You think I don't care about Mill like that? If he was sick, I'd be kicking down the door to help him too. I don't feel threatened. Do you?"
Heero wrapped arms around her and put his forehead against her shoulder. He shook his head and she kissed him. "I don't deserve you," he murmured against her collar bone.
"No, you don't," She agreed smugly. "And don't you forget it." She said suggestively, "If you're up to it, we can go to our room and I'll really make you feel unworthy, all right?"
Heero smiled and nuzzled her neck. "Love you," he breathed.
She grinned. "That's why I stick around."
______________________
Milliardo finished cleaning Duo and then crawled into bed with him and held Duo against his chest, arms wrapped around him. Duo sighed, looking drawn and pale.
"Guess it's love," Duo said.
"Duo?" Milliardo wondered, puzzled.
Duo chuckled weakly. "When you throw up on your lover's coat, and they
still want to hug you, I guess that's proof."
Milliardo grimaced ruefully. "I can buy a new coat. You are impossible
to replace."
They were quiet, Duo almost dozing off again, but Milliardo knew that he needed answers. Their time until their next court date was short. They couldn't go into battle, even a legal one, with doubts and secrets between them.
"Love," Milliardo said softly into Duo's ear. "Why do you want to hide from me, if you understand how much I care for you? Why do you think I'll turn from you in disgust because of scars?"
Duo picked at his blanket and Milliardo felt him shiver. Finally, he replied, "When you look at my back, what do you think of? Do you see my skin or what you know is under it?"
Milliardo almost lied, but he knew that he couldn't ask for the truth from Duo without giving back the same himself. "I do think about it, sometimes. I get angry when I think about how it must have hurt. I often wish that I could crush those men, who did that to you, in my bare hands." His voice had lowered to a dangerous growl as he imagined it, imagined getting his revenge on the men who had hurt Duo. "It doesn't disgust me, the scar itself. If it did, that would mean that I believed it."
Duo shivered again and rubbed a thumb over Milliardo's hand, caressing the skin there. "You have to know.... You're a Prince. You're tall, handsome, strong, and you have a really big-"
"Duo," Milliardo admonished, kissing the tip of Duo's ear. "If you're going to tell me that you have an inferiority complex..."
Duo frowned and his thumb began rubbing even harder. "Hey, maybe I'm not tall, or look like a Greek god, but I'm a good looking guy and I have personality. I just wonder... how much of the other side of the tracks you can handle, that's all."
"I don't understand." Milliardo removed his hand from Duo's abuse and then closed it over Duo's hand. "We've already talked about this. You know that your past doesn't bother me and, I hope, mine doesn't bother you."
Duo tilted his head to look at Milliardo with wide eyes and then he snorted. "I guess we all have our sins, but I meant, how much shit do you want to deal with now? I'm a rebel and I can't follow orders or do things the way normal people do. Me and Heero, we've been fighting and trying to survive our whole lives. We're always going to be paranoid soldiers with their heads in the war. I... I can remember to use a fork when I eat dinner, but what do I do about the stuff that's carved into my back and my brain?" He looked down again, at their clasped hands.
"You're very young," Milliardo told Duo, holding him tighter. "Don't be too sure that you won't put the past behind you eventually. As for now..." He smiled. "I must admit you are a handful. It does trouble me that you act without thought for me, sometimes, as if I wasn't your lover, as if..."
Duo stiffened and looked up at Milliardo. He considered that charge and then sank down as if in depression. "You're right... When I'm with Heero... and things happen... it's like it's the war again, like we're on a mission and we have to get through it with teamwork. I don't think... about anything else, just surviving. I'm sorry. I love you. If you had been there, at the prison, I would have added you to the plan, I swear."
Milliardo replied softly, "It's that you had such a plan to begin with, Duo, instead of trusting me to take care of things for you. I do believe, though, that time and peace will change how you react to things, how you react to us. I'm a patient man and you're worth waiting for, Duo." He caressed Duo's arms. "Scars don't matter. What they say won't change how I feel. Please... tell me. Start trusting me beginning now."
Duo's hands fisted in the blankets and his entire body tensed. "Okay," he said in a small voice, but then remained silent for some time. "Okay," he repeated and then said in a low, tight voice, "Right above my ass, on my tail bone, they wrote, 'insert here'. " Duo shuddered, but he continued, "There's two stick figures on my right side... one's bent over and the other figure is 'doing it' to him. They made that one by burning me with their cigarettes. Left side, it says, 'sucks dick 4 free.'See why I didn't mind telling you about the first one? It wasn't that bad compared to the rest..."
"Love," Milliardo murmured and bowed over Duo, holding him like a child and feeling like weeping. "It could say anything, ANYTHING, Duo, and I would never be disgusted by you. Trust me. Trust me, Duo, to love you."
Duo turned in his arms and curled up against his chest. He said more gruffly, trying to regain some of the ragged edges of his self respect, "I showed them... I kicked their asses , every one of them."
"Yes, you did," Milliardo replied and then struggled for something comforting that Duo would accept as more than nonsense. "If they had spray painted those words on Deathscythe, would you have remembered them after you had painted them over, or thought less of your Gundam because you knew what the paint was covering up?"
Duo glared at him. "I'm not a child, you know. Just tell me I'm being stupid, okay?"
"You are being supremely stupid," Milliardo replied.
Duo grimaced. "You don't have to make it fancy either." He nuzzled Milliardo and then sighed as he relaxed. "I wanna be perfect for you, but I keep screwing up. I'm a selfish, messed up, bastard and I know it. Having you know my body is messed up too, just seemed to be the thing that was going to make you see I'm not worth it."
"I would be a shallow man, then," Milliardo replied seriously, "and I would be the one not worthy of you."
Duo blinked rapidly, wiped at his eyes, and then tried on a weak smile. "Must be nice, having really great words to say like that."
"Words are meaningless," Milliardo told him as he arranged himself so that he was spooning up behind Duo and they were both lying down. "It's what's in your heart that speaks to me."
______________________________________
Duo stood, naked to the waist, with his back to everyone, small headphones on and music, with a frantic beat, playing so loudly that they could hear the bass. He acted oblivious to them, but his hands were braced on the table in front of him and his muscles were bunching and sliding under his skin.
"Duo," Milliardo said as he took the headphones off. "Please relax. Heero is here. I am here." He pulled Duo's braid out of the way and massaged a shoulder. "It will be over very shortly. The doctor only has to take two images."
Duo nodded and replaced the headphones, not trusting himself to speak. Heero stood on his one side and Milliardo stood on his other. The defense and prosecution, along with the judge, were seated behind. The doctor, an old man with large glasses, finished setting up his machine and then approached cautiously.
"It's all right,' Milliardo assured the doctor. "It's simply... embarrassing for him."
Duo was accused of murdering civilians and his reputation as a terrorist was well known. Milliardo's words didn't comfort the man. He fiddled with a hand held device and then seemed to gather courage, swallowing audibly. He stood at Duo's back and nervously ran the device along Duo's skin. He squinted at an image on a screen close by, adjusted the device until he was satisfied, and then began scanning Duo's back a section at a time. The room remained silent, everyone watching the screen as the computer put the scans together and made a picture.
Heero didn't look. He had already seen the scars. He was watching Duo's face instead, pale and tense. Milliardo gritted his teeth as the burns and knife cuts made vile patterns on the screen.
"Mother of God!" the doctor gasped as he watched the image develop. "What monstrous..."
Zanse's lawyer took advantage of everyone's stunned disbelief to launch into a quick demand. "Your honor, I ask that these images be shown in court. They are key to Mr. Maxwell's defense."
"No recent wounds," the doctor commented, looking a sickly green."These are all old scarring."
"Mr. Maxwell has not been indicted," the judge reminded him. "He is not on trial here."
"But his innocence bears heavily on my client's sentencing," The lawyer argued. "It should become part of the public record."
Duo's shoulders were trembling. He stilled them with an effort and then reached for his shirt. The doctor stepped back. "If it will put Zanse away, yeah, go ahead and show them," he grated out and only Heero and Milliardo knew how much that cost him.
"Your dedication is admirable," the judge replied and then nodded. "All right. When we reconvene, these images will be placed in the public record."
Duo walked out of the room, throwing on his coat. Milliardo and Heero followed. Duo walked with his hands in his pockets and his head down. He left the courthouse and took off down a side street. They walked for a long while and it seemed that Duo would never stop. Finally, though, he ducked into a shadowy, narrow alleyway and leaned against a wall. He pulled off his headphones and sank down in a crouch, his entire body clenched tight and trembling. He refused to shed tears, but he wasn't able to stop his body's reaction to the stress.
Heero and Milliardo kneeled with him and they pressed their warm bodies against him. They held him steady while he tried to come to terms with utter humiliation.
"It'll be in the papers, in the news...," Duo choked out. "Relena... she'll call, she'll tell you-"
"Doesn't matter," Milliardo told him firmly as he slipped and arm around Duo's waist.
"Some people... some people will think it's true, what it says on my back," Duo whispered,. Closing his eyes tightly. "If I had any reputation...."
"You need to tell them," Heero said. "You need to tell your side of the story."
Duo trembled even more at that, but Milliardo agreed. "Never let them guess at the truth. Heero's correct."
"They can only hurt you if you let them," Heero told him. "Don't let them past your guard."
"So, I should act all badass, like I'm tough and it doesn't bother me?" Duo asked and managed a weak smirk "That'll be hard. I don't think I have enough strength to walk back. I'm gonna look stupid slung over your shoulder."
Milliardo kissed him briefly and then straightened. "I'll call Noin to bring the car around. We still have a little time. I think you'll be able to walk by the time we arrive."
Heero frowned as Milliardo made the call. "You do realize that this is part of Zanse's strategy?"
Duo nodded, "He has a plan. We just have to be ready. Just like a mission, Heero. Have to be ready for anything."
Milliardo finished his call. "I think I know his plan," he told them, "and I am certain that he is going to fail."
"Certain?" Duo echoed.
Milliardo helped Duo to his feet. "His doctored record of a Gundam pilot in action was a very large tactical error."
Heero understood at once. His eyes seemed to glow with anticipation.
"What?" Duo demanded, looking at them both. "Care to clue me in?"
"I think it will be best if I show you," Milliardo soothed, "and it will be even better if I show everyone."