Smells Like Teen Spirit
By Shannon the Twisted Link Worshiper

(x) X (x)

Game 15
Rainy Day, Dream Away

(x) X (x)

Duo looked down at his watch, the plastic covering over the numbers misted over by the rain to a point where it was almost impossible to read the time. He sighed and looked back across the street, shifting his large blue umbrella to the other hand, which he had stolen from the Barton foyer on his way out. Upon slipping away from Heero and the rest, he had made a beeline for Quatre’s, still not totally comfortable with being in the general vicinity of his own home, but found that Mr. Winner was still around. Though the head of Quatre’s family did not know that Duo was a mutant, he still was not pleased that his son (who had enough problems as it was) enjoyed the company of a lower class street rat. So here he was, stuck in the rain and singing quietly to himself, while he waited for a green light to knock on the front door.

“Hey man, take a look out the window,
And see what’s happening.
Hey man, it’s raining.
It’s raining outside man.
Aw, don’t worry ‘bout that.”

Duo’s legs were starting to ache from all that standing, and it was not long before he had plopped down on the wet pavement, supporting the slim metal shaft of the unfurled umbrella on his shoulder. The index finger of one hand swept around its curling tip and wiped away the never-ending raindrops idly. The rain was doing well to wash away the stench of last night’s defeat and that morning’s embarrassment. Duo had always relied on rain that way, seeing it as a natural and pure way to cleanse his body when he felt especially dirty or unhappy with himself. It always helped to start off a new chapter with a clean slate.

He started really getting into his song, snapping his fingers and swaying a bit, another one of his outlets when he was feeling particularly down on himself. For some reason, it seemed like he was floating in some weird limbo, sort of how he had felt during the time when he was transitioning from his old gang life to his new one. He could tell he was setting himself up for a fall and he was going to end up with a bloody nose because of it.

“Everything’s gonna be everything.
We’ll get into something real nice, you know.
Sit back and groove on a rainy day.
Yeah....”

Quatre’s house was just short of being a small Victorian mansion, with its big gabled facade and spindled veranda. The Winner family was easily the richest family for miles, even casting the esteemed Barton clan in its shadow. But Duo had come to realize that just because Quatre had enough money to run a marathon with holes in his pockets and still be able to treat himself to a nice nine-course gourmet dinner at the finish line did not mean that his life was exactly rich. Fortunately, Quatre had a lot of gears and cogs clanking around between his ears to keep him busy, but Duo knew that in his heart of hearts, Quatre Raberba Winner was not happy. Proof of that was unfolding in the rightmost front window of the Winner home and Duo felt his heart constrict, knowing that there was next to nothing he could do. He would have to wait until Mr. Winner stopped his verbal abuse upon his poor son and left until Duo could make any moves to make things better. Duo could just make out Quatre’s expression through the fogged window from where he was standing, and could tell that his friend was on the verge of tears and fighting a losing battle to keep them dried up. Not even singing could dispel Duo’s sadness for Quatre. Guess the sky’s crying it out for ya, Q, Duo thought mournfully, cupping his plush cheek in one hand. Might as well be. Just watching you and your old man go at it makes me feel like I’m being drenched in ‘em anyway.

Suddenly, Duo’s eyes widened at the sight just inside the window. Quatre’s father had his hand raised high over his head like he intended to strike down on his son, whose arms were flung over his face for protection. Duo was on his feet and heading towards the house in no time, flinging the umbrella to the street as he ran. One finger tapped incessantly on the doorbell while his other hand knocked loud and hard on the front door, his eyes shooting down the porch to check up on Quatre in the front parlour. He could hear muffled bits of their argument now that he was closer to the house. He heard Quatre’s father yell something about Quatre being the greatest blemish to ever welt the name of Winner followed by a heavy crash. Duo’s attention was diverted from the window by the opening of the front door from underneath his knuckles.

“Duo!” Iria exclaimed, practically dragging the braided boy over the threshold. “You’re soaking wet! Have you been standing out in the rain all day?” she fawned, closing the door behind him and rubbing his arms in a motherly way, kind of like the way the old nun from Duo’s orphanage used to when he was cold. The moment was shattered by a boyish yelp from somewhere deep inside the house. Iria’s face switched from that cozy warm expression to one of fear as she snapped in the direction of the sound. Her voice dropped a couple levels, just above a whisper. “This is a bad time. You know, you really shouldn’t be here. Father’ll kill you if he finds you--he’s mad enough at Quatre as it is!”

“Yeah, but I just can’t let him get--” a sneeze rocketed through Duo’s wiry frame, his entire genetic makeup exploding into a spidery nebula of atoms just for the duration of the sneeze. Duo rubbed his nose and continued, “--just get away with acting like that to his son.”

“And you’re sick!” Iria exclaimed, returning to her mother hen mode, flinging her arms around Duo and rubbing his arms again, trying to let the warmth of her hands sink into his damp and chilled skin. “You should go home and stay in bed!”

“I can’t!” Duo argued, cuddling up in Iria’s warm embrace. He had the chills and he could feel another sneeze coming on, which ended up eliciting the same reaction with his mutated make-up the last one had. “I hate being sick,” he grumbled to himself. Another loud noise came from the side parlour, making Duo wince. He said louder, “And I hate sick fucks who abuse their kids!”

“Duo....”

“...dirty little slut!” Mr. Winner’s voice echoed through the small sitting room just outside the parlour where he and his son were convened. “Don’t think I haven’t seen the way you are, you following the Barton boy all over the place! You’re strange enough as it is! Do you think you really need to be any stranger? What will people think about you? About me!? You’re disgracing both the name of Winner and Barton, making their boy out to be another little pansy like you!”

“Yes Father,” came Quatre’s strangled response. “I’m sorry, Father.”

“Are you listening to that?” Duo practically shouted at Iria, though the force of his anger was muted by yet another sneeze. Once his body had recovered from that little interruption, he went on; “Poor kid’s gotta take all that bigoted crap? I swear that Daddy Dearest dislikes everything about Q just ‘cause it’s Q!”

“Duo, don’t go in there!” Iria said firmly, grabbing Duo’s sodden arm when he tried to stalk off towards the parlour where his friend was. Her fingers dug into the fabric of Duo’s shirt, burrowing softly into his flesh as she went on in a very firm, yet distant voice. “It will change you if you go in there,” she whispered, her eyes focused on him, unblinking and glazed like she was under a spell of hypnosis. “It’ll change you and Quatre and everyone around you. Everything about you will never go back to being the same as you are right now. But whether the change is good or bad, well....” she trailed off and paused for a moment, baiting Duo and waiting for him to understand, but he was just as caught in her trance as she was, “....that will depend on your choices afterwards....”

“Iria...?” Duo said softly, breaking his gaze away from Iria’s stony one. At the sound of his voice, she blinked for the first time since she had started speaking, slipping out of the strange state of mind her mutation always seemed to instill upon her when it kicked in.

“Did I... say something strange again?” she wondered aloud, completely unaware of what she had just told Duo.

“I don’t know where you’re getting these strange ideas from, young man,” Winner’s angered shout filled the entire house, causing Iria to cover her ears in fright and denial, “but it will stop now! You are my son, and as long as I tell you that you will not be the mutant or a queer little fairy you are, you will not be! You will be the boy I wanted you to be and you will grow into the man I raised you to be! I don’t care what you think; I am your father, and you will obey me!”

“Quatre!” Duo had no time to waste chatting with Iria. He would ask her to explain her mutterings later. Quatre may have had a lot of fight in him, but he knew that Quatre was too kindhearted to make any attacks on his father, no matter how wicked things got in there; he needed someone to stand up for him and teach him how to fight. Ignoring Iria’s protests to stay out of it, Duo squelched out of the foyer, towards the closed parlour door that stood as the only barrier between him and his best friend.

Duo ran through the little sitting room just off the foyer and flew at the door, grasping the handle and finding it locked. He jiggled it desperately, trying to get in, and even pounded a heavy fist onto the door in a last-ditch effort to open it. All that did was cause a slight stir between the two inside for a moment, before they returned to their heated confrontation. “Goddammit!” Duo grunted under his breath, flattening himself against the wooden panel. His day was just getting stranger and worse with each passing second, and it was about to hit the ‘suck mark’ really soon. His mind was such a whirl of emotions, between waking up in the arms of a Heero he had never met and then coming to his one safehouse in the entire town to find it was a nuclear war zone, and he was not thinking straight or of the obvious. As if that wasn’t enough, to top it all off, he just had to be coming down with the flu as well! Devil’s luck strikes again, he thought morosely.

It was not until he was practically in tears and shivering at the sound of Mr. Winner’s still-raging voice, that a sneeze decided to give his mind a nudge in the right direction and sent his atoms scattering. The idea to get around the locked door to help Quatre by means of his mutation dawned on him right then, even though it meant showing off in front of an unappreciative audience. He kept himself spread out in that hazy cloud of particles even after the sneeze had finished its business, directing his misty form downwards, and slid into the room through the crack under the door, rising up into his usual shape just inside.

Quatre let out a small gasp when he saw the familiar dark cloud rising up behind his father and take the shape of his longhaired friend. He was not sure whether he was happy to see him there or not though. On the one hand, he was happy that Duo had come to support him in such a jam; on the other hand, he knew his father would be less than happy to see him... as if he were not unhappy already....

“What was that you said, boy!?” Mr. Winner paused in whatever he was ranting at Quatre about to snap at his son. Quatre quickly threw both hands over his mouth, realizing that he had given away Duo’s presence with a low mutter under his breath.

“He said, ‘Fuck you!’,” Duo clarified from behind the millionaire. Mr. Winner spun around with a look of anger and shock on his face to see who had dared to intrude on his lecture. Duo grinned cheekily at the man, a hand on each hip as he said in what might have been called a cheerful tone: “What kind of father are you, telling your son how he ought to live his life? Let the kid take a breath , for God’s sake!”

“Who the hell are you!?” Winner turned his tirade on Duo, who just took the yelling in stride. “How did you get in here?”

“Oh, just a passing shadow,” Duo answered darkly, that same smile still fixed upon his face, though there was now something decidedly wicked about his expression. “I just come out of dark corners, like that,” he snapped his fingers to illustrate.

Quatre was not fooled by the easy-going attitude though. He knew by just the look in Duo’s eyes that he meant business, and if his father did something that the braided mechanic did not approve of, there would be no stopping whatever whirlwind of a reaction Duo might have to it. He probably would have said something to stop a disaster from occurring, but a part of him silently wanted to see Duo give his father exactly what he always secretly hoped he would get one day, disgusting as it may have sounded. Duo was the sort of person who could leave an impression so deep, one rarely forgot the lesson he was trying to teach.

“Who are you?” Winner snarled unkindly at Duo. “I will have you arrested for breaking and entering a private property!”

“I’ll have you know that your own daughter was the one who let me in, Sir,” Duo answered, the words rolling snidely off his tongue. “Iria likes me; she’s my friend, just as your son, Quatre, also is. I saw you fighting and was worried about him.”

“Leave me to take care of my son!” Winner shouted. “What happens in my house is my business! You have no right to meddle in the affairs of my family!”

“Third party observation says you haven’t got much of a family in here. You’ve got thirty kids and you don’t love a single one,” Duo said, his tone a little pretentious as he strode by Mr. Winner.

The millionaire sneered at Duo as he flounced by and lunged at his flopping braid in an effort to restrain the boy to give him a piece of his mind, but found that he was grabbing at empty air. A mysterious haze of dark matter was buzzing around his outstretched hand; Winner’s face became very contorted with disgust when he realized the dark cloud to be what once been the braided boy as it zoomed over towards Quatre. Seeing the atoms reconvene into Duo’s shape did nothing more than to agitate the old man further.

“Q deserves to be around people who appreciate who he is,” Duo finished tartly, his hands on his hips.

“Quatre!” Winner went back to his son, a vein starting to stand out on his forehead as the shouting continued. He pointed a quivering finger at Duo and said in a disgusted tone, “I thought I told you to never see that... that weirdo again! He is the reason you have become as out of order as you are!”

“No, Father, you’re wrong!” Quatre finally mounted the courage to argue back, stomping his foot to make his presence even larger. Mr. Winner seemed both appalled and surprised that his son would dare to speak to him in such a way, and he obviously was not aware that the boy had such fire. “All the years of my childhood when you said that I was a freak for being what I was, what I am... all that changed since I started being friends with Duo!” Quatre swallowed hard and balled his fists at his sides as he took his much awaited stance against his father. “Duo was the first person I’d ever met who I didn’t have to hide myself around and he said it was okay to be who I was! Because of him, I have lots of friends who love and care for me, unlike you! I hate having to be someone else around you! I don’t know why I have to pretend to be someone I’m not just to make you happy! Why can’t I be happy, Father!?”

“You selfish little brat!” Winner sputtered with rage, his eyes bulging out of his skull a little as he glared at the two defiant boys standing in front of him: the Devil and the Devil’s Advocate. “Did you ever stop to think that there was more to the world than just you?”

“Ever stop to think there’s more to the world than just you!?” Duo stepped around Quatre, fist held threateningly in front of him. “You’re just more proof that you people just hate everything you’re afraid of! You’re hate of Q’s mutation ‘cause you’re afraid of it! You’re hate of the thing he and Trowa have going on ‘cause you’re afraid of it! You could never hope to understand something you’re afraid of! You’ll never understand how beautiful Q’s Sense and his love are ‘cause you’re just a great big chicken!” He tucked his hands under his arms and flapped them like wings as he made clucking noises at the flabbergasted millionaire. When Duo had his fill of that, he tied off his little speech; “He can’t help who he is or who he loves! Why can’t you love him for just being Quatre, your son, and stop trying to make him into something he’s not!?”

“Get out,” Winner whispered flatly, his entire body trembling with rage towards Duo. When he saw Duo’s resistance to move, he said it again, in a much louder and more unkind voice this time. “GET OUT!!!”

Duo smirked at Quatre’s father, knowing he had won this battle, and maybe even the war, as he started for the door. He was a little surprised, but all in all pleased, when he realized that Quatre was following his heels closely.

“Just where do you think you’re going, Quatre Raberba Winner?” Mr. Winner’s voice echoed after them, just as Duo’s hand was on the door handle, ready to make their escape. “I believe I only told your raucous flower-child acquaintance to take his leave. I’m not quite finished with you yet.”

Quatre looked over his shoulder, his eyes an unfamiliar and frightening shade of icy aqua blue as he said coldly to his father, “I’m going with Duo. If he is not a welcome member of this house, then neither am I. I don’t want to be part of a family that can’t accept me and my friends.”

“What does that mean!?” Winner sputtered, unable to believe that Quatre had the audacity to dare such a thing.

“It means if you don’t want me as your son,” Quatre answered his sire, “then I am no longer your son.” And with those words, he turned his back on the head of the Winner family, reached past his friend and grabbed the door handle, wrenching it open on his own and stepping out of the room. “Goodbye, Mr. Winner.”

And for the first time, as soon as he heard Duo close the door behind them, separating them from his father, Quatre felt free. For the first time in a long time, he could be just plain Quatre, whether his father liked it or not. As they headed for the door, he felt a warm breeze billowing through his Sensitive heart, and rejoiced to know that he had friends who only needed him to be himself and loved him all the more for just that one simple thing.

(x) X (x)

“Rainy day, dream away.
Ah, let the sun take a holiday.
Flowers bathe and uh, see the children play.
Lay back and groove on a rainy day....”

Duo sat perched up on the stool behind the front counter of Nataku’s, watching the rain come down in droves upon the boardwalk outside and churn up the ocean waves down on the beach just beyond it. It had been raining all week, and while Duo was a rather large fan of the rain, it was not doing much for his flu and those problematic sneezes. He had gone in to see if Meilan had anything she needed done, but was quickly finished with all the skateboard repairs she had orders for and was left to baby-sit the register while she ran some errands. The shop was dead; no one was going to come into a surf shop on a rainy day and not even Heero or Wufei was around to bother. Duo made a cradle with his folded arms upon the surfboard countertop and buried his head in it, singing quietly to himself while he waited for Meilan to come back. Hopefully she’d get a clue that she was not going to get any business on a day like this and let him go home.

Home.... That was another problem. Quatre was drifting between his and the homes of their other friends after the young blonde had walked out on his family and dropped the name ‘Winner’ like moldy sardines from back of the fridge that had been incubating there for a year. And while Duo would have wanted to sweep Quatre right under his wing, he still was not entirely comfortable with staying around the garage too long himself, let alone inviting his friend to stay there. White Fang could prove to be a nasty enemy when they felt the urge, especially when Solo lost out on a prize such as the one Duo owed for losing the last race. Quatre was currently bunking with Dorothy, though Duo was pretty sure that would not be able to hold out long. Living with Dorothy was something that he was sure Quatre could deal with--they had been friends since they were toddlers, after all. But the fact that Dorothy’s house was next door to Quatre’s former residence, well, there was little more anyone could say about that. It would probably prove to be disastrous for all parties concerned if Quatre came into contact with his father ever since that whole incident earlier that week.

“Well I can see a bunch of wet creatures.
Look at them on the run.
The carnival traffic noise,
It sings the tune splashing up’n’....”

He was dimly aware of the bell hanging over the front door ringing cheerfully as someone entered the shop. He was way too out-of-it to care... or at least, that was how he tried to appear. Underneath the troubles of Quatre’s story was the churning murk of what had happened with Heero. He was still perplexed as to what had instigated the whole thing. Had Trowa forced his brother into dragging him home? That would not make sense though; Trowa did not work for Meilan and would have very little reason to be hanging around the shop at three in the morning. Or maybe it was some kind of underground joke among the preps that had yet to come into the light. That option seemed highly likely to Duo, and he worried what they might have in store for him and whether or not he would be able to retaliate without getting into too much trouble. Even if they had instigated it, he was pretty sure it would end up being his fault; it always did.

But joke or not, what bothered Duo most was the fact that it had actually been a rather pleasant experience, waking up in Heero’s arms like that. Yeah, so the guy was probably the hottest thing Duo had ever laid eyes on, and even the biggest prude would have been turned on in a situation like that, but that was far from the point. The point was that he had gotten the strangest feeling when he had awoken that morning, an odd kind of stirring in his heart that he had not felt since he was a little kid at the orphanage. What made it worse was that even after he had managed to register that it had been Heero’s embrace he was wrapped up in, that feeling failed to go away and had lingered all morning and onwards. Scarier still was that he was reminded of that feeling every time Heero walked into his presence, or even if his name came up in conversation. Duo could feel his ever-so-sturdy personality start to become just as erratic as his paranoid DNA. It gave him the willies.

“Even the ducks can groove
Rain bathin’ in the park side pool.
And I’m leaning out my window sill,
Digging everything,
And uh, and you too....”

There was a quiet knock upon glass that floated up to Duo’s ears, drawing him lazily out of his musical daze. He perked up, arms still folded on the surfboard countertop as he looked around the small shop, figuring out for the first time that he was not alone. His eyes roved, but he saw no one probing around the shelves, or looking at the boards fixed on their racks all across the ceiling. He was sure no one had sneaked downstairs when he was not paying attention; the second stair creaked far too loud for him not to hear it. A mysterious dark blue short board that Duo did not remember seeing before was leaning near the door. “Who goes surfing in January, in the rain?” he wondered, arching a perplexed eyebrow and wrinkling his nose.

There was another rattle of glass from nearby, which Duo realized was coming from the display case right in front of him. He cautiously slid off his stool and lowered himself into a crouch so he could see who was sitting on the other side of the glass case, unsure as to why he was acting like he was in the midst of a thief. Bent at the knees and sitting back on his haunches, he looked through the case and found himself staring right into a pair of deep sapphire eyes that flickered with a dim meteor of light orbiting around dark black irises, which seemed to open up into a separate dimension of darkness and stars. Water droplets rained down the thick spiky clumps of hair that framed those bottomless eyes and dripped over the rest of Heero’s damp body, which was wrapped in nothing more than a tight wet suit. “The waves are bigger in the rain, and the water is warmer too,” came the harshly whispered reply to Duo’s previous musing. “And no one is ever on the beach in January, so the ocean is mine.”

“Can I help you,” Duo bit out in a chewed, flat voice, fixing his cynical painted mask over his lazy rainy day face. He swallowed and set his mind on the long board sitting just beyond Heero, by the door, willing his eyes to divert them from the tempting vision in front of him. But it was kind of hard to ignore a soaking-wet Heero, clad in nothing more than that black wet suit, slim white lines running along the tops of his arms and down his sides, like a line marking a perfectly paved street. The stretchy, form-loving neoprene molded to his body so well, Duo could make out every sculpted detail underneath that black material.

“I found what I want,” Heero said in a low, almost sensual, voice, his eyes never wavering from Duo’s on the other side of the display case. His hot breath misted a small cloud of milky white moisture on the glass as he waited for Duo to respond, each breath painting it bolder after the haze of the last one started to fade.

“What?” Duo stated plainly, looking over all the bumper stickers and watches loaded into the case between them, wondering what Heero could possibly want from inside.

“Right here, in front of me,” Heero whispered in response, placing a finger against the glass.

Duo tried to follow the path of Heero’s finger to whatever it was he was trying (and failing) to indicate, but found that it did not really lead to anything. “What?!” Duo said, his voice becoming harsher. “I’m sleepy and in a bad mood--definitely not a mood for games like this!”

“You know what it is.” Heero’s voice was low and husky, and Duo quickly plugged his ears up with his fingers so he would not have to hear that seductive purr. “I’ve decided to take a rest and wait for you; stop running from me... Duo....” The way he whispered the braided boy’s name almost made Duo’s head (and body, for that matter) explode into a thousand little pieces as his fingers fell away from his ears. Slowly, they both rose to their feet, eyes still locked on each other as they stood up straight over the counter. Heero leaned on the surfboard top so close to Duo, his breath flitting over the other boy’s lips. “You....” came the hushed whisper as those gorgeous, pink, pouting mouth danced lightly across Duo’s lips, parted in surprise.

Duo’s eyes were wide, his black pupils contracted to tiny pinpoints, lost in a sea of swirling purple. His legs became shaky, and he dropped down onto the stool like a stone, Heero’s lips leaning closer towards Duo’s lips as he fell a bit further away, still questing for a taste. Duo’s hands were weighted down at his sides, dangling by the stool’s legs, unmoving as a million confused thoughts raced through his head, focused primarily on this strange and unseen change in Heero: What the hell has this come from? Why the fuck is he kissing me? I thought he wanted me to die!

He was so wrapped up in his thoughts, he had not realized that he had unconsciously let his lips part further, giving Heero more room to taste and explore, until the Japanese lacrosse player leaned further across the counter and and placed his hands delicately over Duo’s temples, his fingers hooked gently around his slightly tapered ears, to draw their kiss closer. He gave Duo’s mouth a final passionate ravage before slowly pulling away and opening his glassy eyes, their Prussian blue colour foggy and damp, like the weather outside.

“What are you doing?” Duo hissed, though his voice did not sound as vehement as he had intended it to be. He let his eyes slide closed as Heero leaned forward to kiss him again. “Why are you suddenly doing this to me...?”

“Trowa was right; it’s silly for me to keep running away from you,” Heero whispered against his lips, his eyelids still lowered sleepily over his lazy blue eyes, giving him a strange ethereal look that was completely different from the hardened Heero Yuy Duo was familiar with. “Especially when you’re just so beautiful and I’ve been....” His words were lost in Duo’s mouth as he kissed him harder.

Duo pulled away and gasped for breath, panting hard and grasping his chest, his heart practically leaping out into his hand with each beat as he surveyed Heero with those same wide eyes. The messy haired Japanese boy was practically lying on top of the counter, hands curled tightly around the inside edge of its smooth, surfboard face. “This has to be some kind of scary dream!” Duo declared, ordering his heart to slow down its excited pace. “Even if I wanted you to kiss me, you wouldn’t!”

“But I just did,” Heero answered in that same hushed tone, licking his lips in such a manner that Duo’s quelled heart started running circles in his chest again at just the sight of that little, dark, rouge tongue flicking across rose-hued flesh. “And I’ll kiss you again.” His eyes lowered a bit, thick elfin eyelashes sweeping down over sultry blue eyes. “You want me to, don’t you.” It was not a question, but a statement and what frightened Duo most about it was that it was true; he would not mind having another taste of that god. He let out a little moan as he reaffirmed the thought in his head and Heero smirked wryly. Heero slid back off the countertop and inclined his head downwards a bit, his tongue playing across the bottom of his ivory white teeth as he gazed at Duo from the corners of his eyes. He swept around the counter and was soon standing in the gap in the side to allow entrance and exit into the little sales nook. “Tell me you want me to kiss you again,” he breathed, one hand fixed high above his head on the wall beside him as he leaned in, banishing all concepts of personal space. “Tell me that you want me.”

Duo swallowed and scooted his stool backwards so that the tip of his spine was pressed against the edge of the front, surfboard portion of the counter. His arms were bent back, hands pressed flat onto the countertop behind him, leaving steamy, smeared prints on the shining, red, fiberglass surface. “I....”

He swallowed again and readjusted his position on the stool as Heero took a few confident steps forward, into the small area behind the counter, now looming hardly a foot away from Duo. Duo’s voice caught in his throat as his eyes examined each defined contour of Heero’s muscled form, all accentuated by his tight wet suit, even more so with each slight motion the slim Japanese boy made. Dark streaks of shadow were carefully stroked underneath the dips and curves of his body, painted below the muscles that slanted down the sides of his back and slipping along the lines of his shoulder blades and his graceful spine. Dark shadowy colour was splashed across his hard, well-sculpted abdomen, petering out into slim penned lines around each contour of it where the light was spilled in more abundance. The same technique was washed across his pectoral muscles, shadow brushed around each shape and pronouncing his hardened nipples underneath the black, second skin. His eyes were taking note of the rough swipes of darkness that outlined the shapes of his powerful thighs and had to fight to avoid sweeping across the shading penciled in around his rather pronounced manhood. “I’m afraid to want you,” he whispered, looking away from Heero and out the nearby window at the still hounding rain. “I can’t want you; it’s too dangerous.”

Duo did not realize how much closer Heero had come until he was standing over him, legs straddling Duo’s knees, mirroring the shape of his body as he leaned over him, pressing his hands over top of Duo’s to hold him in place. “I thought,” he growled, his voice wintry like cold fire, “that you liked dangerous things.” He pressed himself closer, sitting in Duo’s lap, teeth nipping at the top of Duo’s ear as he whispered more: “I thought that danger always turned you on.”

Duo only vaguely heard the words; his senses, at the moment, were far more preoccupied with the delicious sensation of Heero’s very defined and very hard cock gently pressed against the inside of his thigh. “That’s why you always...” Duo choked out with a strangled gasp as he tried to swallow the growing heat welling up inside of him, “...why I think you’re beautiful--deadly beautiful.”

“Is a little death really so bad for a boy who’s named himself after it?” Heero asked, his lips and tongue still toying with Duo’s one ear as he purred his shrouded longings into it. “Don’t be afraid of me, Duo. I can’t hurt you more than you hurt yourself with all your hiding away.”

“I’m afraid to lose, of what I might lose.” Duo’s eyes were closed again as he drew in ragged breaths, trying hard to focus on... something, anything, but found that all that he could feel, hear, smell, everything, was Heero. Heero was surrounding him like the pouring rain and foggy mist outside, and Duo found himself lost in the haze, just as he would in his beloved stormy weather. “I learned a long time ago that I can’t afford to lose. There are some things I’m willing to risk, but what if I lost you? You’re dangerous because... because I don’t think I could lose... you....”

“You like being in control, don’t you, Duo?” Heero said, his voice soft, yet gruff, as was always his way. Duo let out a tiny mewl of agreement as he lifted his leg a little, trying to press it closer to Heero’s teasing hardness. “Me too,” Heero’s tongue flickered out across Duo’s earlobe with a small nasal chuckle to accompany it. “But...” He paused again to kiss the bottom of Duo’s jaw, right where the curve of the bone became less steep and started to jut outwards towards the center of the chin. “...I’ve found that nothing would feel better than just letting go of all that control. I want to let it go, Duo. It’s been trapped up inside of me for so long and I....” His voice fell into a low growling noise in the back of his throat that vibrated against Duo’s skin as he kissed along his jaw. “You make me want to let go, Duo Maxwell....”

“You’re... you’re just full of shit, aren’t you,” Duo tried to say, insulting as they usually were to each other, but found that the words just were not the same now. Whether it had something to do with the fact that his beautiful enemy was currently rubbing lightly against his thigh and pressing his powerful chest flush up against his, or because Duo simply just had no reason to fight against the Japanese boy anymore, he was not sure. Duo had decided that one thing was certain though: Heero had offered him danger, the danger that Duo knew coursed through the other boy’s veins more vitally than blood...

He wanted that danger more than anything.

“It’s worth the chance,” Duo whispered, the words blowing at the short waves of hair that curled over the nape of Heero’s long swanlike neck. “You’re worth losing the entire game.”

Heero’s lips widened into a smirk wider than most against Duo’s warming flesh, almost a full-fledged smile, but not quite. “Perfect,” Heero laid a final kiss just beside Duo’s lips, slowly creeping his way back to that cheeky, devilish mouth of his. “Help me let go, Duo. I want release, please....”

“What do you...?” Duo’s mind immediately saw at least eight thousand different ways to read that comment, some of them innocent, most of them dirty. After all, at the end of the day, he was an eighteen year old boy with screaming, raging hormones that were all brawling over the chance to get closer to the sex god straddling over his thighs.

“Everything,” Heero answered, picking up where Duo had trailed off. “I want to feel myself let go of everything, and only you can do it for me.” His voice lowered again into that seductive purr as he lifted one of Duo’s hands and guided it between them, drawing it down Duo’s stomach, across one thigh and then dipping it down between them to cup one aspect of his aching need, still clad in that skintight black material. “Do it for me, Duo.”

Duo’s fingers played across the rigid shaft tucked away inside the damp confines of Heero’s wet suit, before slowly drawing his hand up the center of Heero’s stomach, following the white-edged line of silver zipper teeth, under Heero’s watchful, heated stare. Duo’s long spidery fingers came to a halt at the neck of the high-collared wet suit, toying with the glittering little tab that hung at Heero’s throat while his other fingers gently scratched him under the chin like one would a cat, the gesture eliciting kittenish mewls from the Japanese boy. Duo slid his hand around Heero’s neck and held it firmly there, his palm pressed flat against the prominent bump at the top of Heero’s spine as he pulled Heero closer. Heero watched with rapt fascination and lust as the zipper was lost between Duo’s soft, light reddish lips and was slowly tugged downwards, those same moist lips ghosting across the thick ribbon of flesh that the yielding zipper revealed. He stopped his descent at Heero’s stomach, unable to bend himself downward anymore. He gave Heero a shove upwards, and Heero arched his back luxuriously as he slid off of Duo’s lap and melted into a wet puddle splashed across the floor and against the wall.

“You’re lying,” Duo bit, trying to sound hurtful as he stood up, glaring down at Heero. He reached around his neck and grabbed the thick weave of his braid, pulling it over his shoulder and running his fingers up and down its lumpy texture in nervousness. “You’re trying to pull the wool over my eyes and make a joke out of me.”

“But you like it, don’t you,” Heero argued, his voice still rumbling at that low, flat monotone. His eyes were roaming up and down Duo’s narrow form, blatantly stripping him down with his eyes. “You like having what you’re not supposed to.”

“That’s not it at all!” Duo retorted, falling to his knees and reaching forward to grab Heero violently by the shoulders. “Stop trying to manipulate me! You’re not going to win me just because you’re a fucking perfect sex god!”

Heero lifted his dark, feathered eyebrows in amusement, his arms weaving around Duo’s, locking him in place in a knot of limbs, gripping Duo’s shoulders with that hidden strength, gentle, yet rough enough to make the longhaired boy wince. “For someone who prides himself on always being honest, you sure do lie like a bastard.”

“That’s a load of crap,” Duo snarled, leaning inwards, his nose almost brushing the tip of Heero’s. Their glares crackled in the heated air wafting between them as they weighed each other up, trying to probe into the other’s head and destroy from the inside out. “You’re scaring the shit out of me, okay? There’s a bit of honesty for you! You’ve got some secret motivation and it’s damn obvious, so don’t try and push that shit around anymore, like no one knows what the crap is going on!”

Heero’s initial reaction to Duo’s rant was to just lean in closer and lick the bridge of his nose. “Yet another lie for Maxwell,” he murmured, his lips creeping down along Duo’s cheek to lay another kiss upon Duo’s mouth. “You’re denying yourself what you know you want. You just wanna keep yourself locked up tight in your little shell and you’ll lie, cheat and steal to hell and back to keep yourself safe in there. Punk? No...” Heero shook his head gently, his wild mahogany bangs scratching Duo’s face as he did so, “...you’re just a coward, and you don’t want to admit it.”

“Coward?” Duo was extremely angry at this assessment of his character, especially since it was really somewhat accurate. “COWARD? Fuck you, I’ll show you coward,” he spat viciously at Heero, attacking Heero’s lips with a relentless kiss, fierce with harsh bites that bruised and bled Heero’s soft flesh. “I’m not afraid of you,” Duo whispered darkly, his eyes shining in the dark shop like low-lit, indigo lamps. “Death isn’t afraid of a goddamned thing.”

“Except yourself,” Heero shrugged, unwinding himself from Duo and replacing his arms around Duo’s body, crushing him closer, “but what does that matter now?”

“Not much,” Duo hissed, kissing Heero again and again, bleeding his lips and then lapping away at the metallic-flavoured liquid that dotted the little bite marks he left. “I’m gonna prove you wrong if it kills me, Heero Yuy.”

Heero smirked and yanked Duo away, his strength spiking up to play for a moment to drag Duo away. “Good,” Heero smiled again with that same mysterious quirk of his lips. “I want to be wrong about you, my charming little devil,” he said. He managed to slip a quick kiss on Duo’s brow as the other boy dropped his head and started nuzzling the collar of his wet suit away to get at the damp skin of his neck. “Oh God, how I want to be wrong....” Heero whispered as Duo started sucking hard at the juncture where his neck sloped down to his shoulder.

“...gonna rip your skin off and make you raw,” Duo growled as his teeth sunk aggressively into Heero’s vanilla flavoured skin, his tongue brushing devilishly rough across the now tender and bruised flesh. “Hate you....”

“You’re in love with your hate for me,” Heero purred, rubbing his cheek against the top of Duo’s head like a pleased cat. “Go ahead, my pet. Show me how much you love to hate me.”

Duo took that command to heart and went on roaming Heero’s body with his lips like he was Caesar reborn and conquering the world with vengeance and power. The little moans won from every battle his mouth waged upon the plains of Heero’s bronze chest sent streams of confidence winding through his entire body, reaffirming that he was in control and that Heero was lying in the palm of his hand, waiting to be crushed. He nudged away the smooth folds of Heero’s wet suit as he drew his questing mouth down the salty-tasting passage yielded by the pulled zipper. Reaching the end of the path, Duo latched his teeth around the little silver zipper again and dragged the small bit of metal all the way to the end of its track, right below Heero’s navel. A low and drawn out groan from the Japanese boy floated above him, causing Duo to grin sadistically as he laid another kiss right above the zipper.

Crouched low on his hands and knees between Heero’s sinewy, spread legs, his lips lingering over Heero’s hips as he was, Duo could feel how excited Heero was by this whole interlude, a very tangible spandex-covered hardness pressed up against the top of his breastbone. He lowered himself a bit more, cuddling it with the side of his face and his nose, much like the kittenish gesture Heero had practiced on him earlier, when he had been nipping at his shoulder, only now, Duo’s nuzzling was far more erotic than that. Heero lifted his hips and rocked himself further into Duo’s teasing, rubbing himself against him, desperate for more pleasure. As Duo parted his lips slightly and capped the tip of Heero’s hardened erection lightly with the moist cavern of his mouth. Another moan came from Heero as he arched his back and thrust himself further into that tantalizing, devilish mouth, wordlessly begging Duo for more, one damp hand gripping the edge of the counter above, the other knitting itself into Duo’s thick tresses of chestnut hair, loosening them from their traditional braid.

You’re my plaything, Heero Yuy, you manipulative whore, Duo thought to himself, his eyelids drooping halfway over evilly glowing eyes, his inner devil climbing up to take a peek at the world with his eyes. He drew his lips away and clamped one of his wide palms on Heero’s hip, positioned right over the slender white line that ran down the sides of his wet suit, his demonic gaze sweeping over Heero’s iron-cast thighs and that throbbing, trapped arousal with delight.

His eyes focused on at Heero’s glazed expression with a dark and dirty stare, his eyes practically ablaze with indigo Satanic fire as his free hand flew between Heero’s parted legs, his long, rough, slender fingers dancing up his captive’s hardened length and reaching deep into the unzipped wet suit. He ripped it aside, drawing one side of it off of Heero’s shoulder, exposing even more slick, tan flesh. He truly was the most delicious thing Duo had ever laid eyes on; he was the most voluptuous wet dream Duo could have ever dreamed up, slouched in the corner on the floor there with his legs thrown lazily apart, half of the tight wet suit hanging limply behind him, revealing a lightly browned torso, glistening in the dim light. A few dark, auburn curls tempted Duo to explore further and lower, starting an inviting path that slid underneath the tight black spandex that still clung protectively to Heero’s slim hips. “You’re my toy,” Duo whispered, lowering his soft lips down to Heero’s abdomen again, grabbing and pulling away at that black material with his teeth, suddenly extremely wild to taste Heero’s most hidden parts.

He was almost there; that heavy, masculine scent was assaulting his nostrils and a fresh, stick dampness was soaking through Heero’s wet suit as Duo’s hungry lips came closer to the prize. Heero arched his back, gasping breathily as his cock sprung free at last: “You’ve lost your control. You’re on your knees for me and starting to break--”


Duo’s eyes flew open as he throttled awake, sitting bolt right up in bed and panting hard. His hands were locked up tight in fists and strangled with the sheets wrapped around them as he gasped for breath. A pounding headache rattled his brain as his eyes fought to adjust to the bluish-tinged darkness of his bedroom, the various pieces of furniture blurry and unfocused to his vision. Freeing his hands from the confines of his blankets, he collapsed back into the disarray of pillows behind him, staring up at the ceiling as he gripped his forehead. He could still hear Heero’s pleading moans wafting around in the empty space of his head, which was drained of everything but what he had just experienced. As his breathing calmed down, his mind became less pained, and he started thinking clearer, his eyes starting to recognize the shapes looming in the darkness around him. Heero’s groans slowly quieted into the dull, whipping sound of his ceiling fan as it spun tiredly above him.

“A dream,” he groaned, noting the hot and needy hardness pressed against the inside of his thigh beneath the blankets. He settled his head back further into the pillows as he threw an arm over his eyes. “Shit.”

He had to retreat to the bathroom for some emergency jerking off before he could get back to a decent night’s sleep.

(x) X (x)

a/n: *evil, evil laughter* What d’ya all think of that one? *more laughs* Like that guys? Hehe, good. Anyways, the title of the chappy (because some people seem to think that I’m referring to Smells Like Teen Spirit, a Nirvana song, when I credit the song titles down here) is a Jimi Hendrix song. *puts vinyl on turntable and grooves* Yeah, shut up. I’m such a hippie. And, uh, who caught the small, bitty reference to the movie Apocolypse Now? Love you all! ^_____^

PS
I think I’m gonna post the next chappy on Febuary 20. If you’re a good Nirvana fan, you’ll know why that date is important.