"Bad Company"

Written By: Clara Barton & Kangofu_CB

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing. The following is an intellectual exercise with no intention of profit. That said, these characterizations, words, and situations are mine. Please ask before reprinting.

Rating: NC 17

Warnings: Post-Canon, Undercover Missions, Undercover as a Couple, Implied/Referenced Torture, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Human Trafficking, Gang Violence

Pairings: 3x2

Summary: "The only hell and the only paradise are the ones we build ourselves." - Unknown

This fic is dark. It explores the way the lines between good and bad, black and white are blurred, for those who work from the inside to bring down the bad guys. Clara and I do not, at any point, get graphic in our descriptions, but there is a lot of sensitive subject matter. We have tagged as clearly as possible, and individual chapters will contain individual warnings. As a general rule this fic contains: implied torture, death, description of a human trafficking organization and its methods, the surrounding implications of human trafficking including forced prostitution and what amounts to slavery, drug and alcohol use, and drug trafficking. We understand that these subjects are not for everyone. We have made every effort to be respectful and accurate without being gratuitous or disturbing. The bad guys are bad. The good guys are, sometimes, not much better.

We use a liberal sprinkling of Spanish and Russian in this fic, and neither of us are native speakers of either. We’ve relied heavily on the internet, and so we apologize for any mistakes. We have also included translations at the end of each chapter in the form of footnotes.

"Bad Company"

Chapter 12: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

And the first time ever I kissed your mouth,
I felt the earth move through my hands.
Like the trembling heart of a captive bird
That was there at my command.

- Johnny Cash

 

They'd debriefed him while Trowa had been in surgery.

Now that Duo had some perspective, nearly a year and a half later, he thought that had been the deciding factor. He'd intended to quit anyway - he couldn't watch Trowa passively die anymore, and he was sick of blurred lines and nearly overwhelming guilt. But he'd planned to do it the right way - with resignations and clearance revocations, and maybe helping to train up a couple of replacements.

Then the fiasco at the hospital had set him off.  

Duo was normally pretty even-keeled.  He could put up with a lot - had put up with a lot, his whole life, truth be told - but he had little to no patience for anything involving Trowa, or, really, any of the other pilots, and someone had decided that he deserved some comeuppance for everything that had gone down with Sinaloa.

He'd pissed Une off. Duo knew he had, when he'd burned the op and set off the chain of events that had led to the raid on the compound before all the intel was in-hand. It hadn't helped the situation any when, thanks to Duo's interference and Quatre's little black button, the blond-haired billionaire and Heero had come charging onto the scene in a conveniently stocked helicopter using bypass codes that Duo was fairly certain Une had given them for use only in the event of a nuclear apocalypse.

It probably also hadn't helped that Duo had leapt onto the helicopter with Trowa, still keeping pressure on his wound, still covered in blood, and had done nothing to further the other agents' efforts to secure the area.  To be fair, he'd been relatively certain he was supposed to be rounded up as part of the securement, but still.

Quatre, at least, had had the good grace to offer to transport Merquise as well, despite Duo's general disgruntlement with the other man.

Duo genuinely didn't know why Une had even been surprised.  The pilots had been closing ranks with regularity since before the end of the wars; it was hardly unexpected that they'd do so now, with one of their own incapacitated and possibly dying.  Wufei had turned up at the hospital mere hours after they'd arrived, his face set in the look of bullish stubbornness that had characterized both his wartime activities and his Preventers investigations, and had applied it liberally to the entire situation, increasing Une's ire exponentially, Duo had no doubt.

So, Trowa had been whisked off to surgery - hours of internal structure repair, units of blood, liver lacerations and god only knew what else - and Duo off to a room not much bigger than a closet, and which was probably intended for uncomfortable family meetings rather than interrogations masquerading as debriefings.

It had certainly felt like an interrogation.  Hours of repeating himself, explaining himself, and being prodded first by senior agents who didn't quite outrank him, and then by Une herself, whose pursed-lip countenance had reminded Duo entirely too much of his time on the Lunar Base. It hadn't helped that he'd sat through it covered in a combination of sweat, grime, and Trowa's blood still caked under his fingernails and drying tacky on his pants.  Then, when Duo had finally been released - given dubiously-acquired hospital scrubs to wear and a paper cup of coffee and told to sit in the waiting room - he'd had to walk past Merquise's room. Merquise, who was bitching up a storm about the lack of amenities and griping at the nurses that he'd been shot, for God's sake, he should be able to get a damn cup of coffee , and it had been all Duo could do not to go in there and dump the scalding cup in his hand over the asshole's pretentious fuckin' head.

He was, Duo thought bitterly, lucky that it had been Anhil who had shot him, and not Duo.  They'd had to dig a bullet out of his hip, instead of his head during an autopsy.

Then there were more surgeries and more close calls, and Trowa had been touch and go for days, and luckily for Merquise, he'd been discharged before Trowa had woken up, because that meant Duo had been too busy keeping watch to be bothered to suffocate him with a pillow.

Though he'd gotten the impression the nurses might have been willing to do it for him.

In the end, Trowa had been fine - he was fine - and something Quatre had said to the man had finally seemed to penetrate his thick, stubborn skull, because eventually, he'd agreed to leave with Duo.  To leave Preventers behind, to leave their violent pasts behind, and to go with Howard while they sorted themselves out.

Duo had never intended the Peacemillion to be a permanent solution.  He had just wanted familiar surroundings that said safe to all their combined instincts.  Somewhere he and Trowa could feel useful, but not pressured.  Secure, but not coddled.

Howard wasn't much for coddling anyway.  He'd put both of them to work immediately, Duo sorting out the electronics techs and Trowa supervising (terrorizing) the engineers until he was strong enough to get his hands dirty again.  The jokes that he and Trowa had made in Mexico about their slightly terrifying reputations aboard Howard's ship hadn't really been jokes, after all. And they really had broken a table once, though it had been accidental rather than intentional, and it hadn't exactly been during a fight.

Six months on board the ship had taken care of most of the shadows under Trowa's eyes, the remainder of his physical rehab, and as many of the nightmares as could reasonably be expected considering their pasts.

It wasn't like they didn't both have them, after all.

Trowa had said something about missing the water, offhand, like he wasn't paying attention to what he was saying, like Duo didn't register and catalogue everything the other man said, and Duo had started house hunting.

Something small, something they could come back to, whenever they wanted, if they wanted. Something that gave them the option of hitching rides with Howard, or flying to wherever suited them.

And, Duo thought, something as far from Preventers' North American location as was possible to get.

Maybe something close to the maximum security prison Anhil had been transferred to, once he had been medically cleared.  

Trowa, Duo knew, had a lot of unresolved issues regarding the enforcer. Things he wanted to say, and some things he probably wanted to hear.  Duo wasn't sure how that was going to go, but he was pretty sure it was something Trowa had to do.

So, a house.

He found a house in Carpinteria, something small and overpriced, but close to the beach, with space to store surfboards and a backyard that had enough plants and fencing to feel private and secure.  Carpinteria was close enough to the port in L.A. to make the drive reasonable to and from Peacemillion 's infrequent docking schedule, small enough to make watching their backs easy, and with enough young, hipster types to make blending in relatively easy, even with all their tattoos and hair.

Plus, good surfing, and only an hour and a half from the correctional facility where Anhil was incarcerated.

Trowa hadn't said anything when Duo took him to the house the first time, but his lips had curved into a small, pleased smile, and he'd dropped his duffle on the bed with no hesitation before slipping out to explore the rest of the house and the neighborhood.

It was the best Duo could have hoped for.

They were at home now for the first time in a couple of months, only a few days off-ship, falling into an exhausted sleep brought on by a day of surfing and other, more naked activities, when Duo was dragged into awareness by the unnatural stillness that followed Trowa's most hideous nightmares.

Duo, typically, woke up gasping for air, his body having never forgotten the feeling of near-suffocation on the moon.  Trowa, on the other hand, froze with the stillness of a corpse, breathing shallowly, his heart thrumming in his chest.

"What is it?" Duo rasped, sliding his hand from Trowa's hip to his chest, pressing him closer to his body.  

"Nothing.  It's nothing.  I'm fine."

Duo snorted.  "You're a liar, is what you are."  He pressed his face into the back of Trowa's head, smelling the generic shampoo and scent of the ocean that still clung to his skin despite their shower. "We're ok.  We're home. You're safe." Duo paused. "I'm safe."

Trowa made a noise in the back of his throat and tangled his fingers with Duo's.  "I know."

*

Duo was waiting with quietly-leashed impatience when the guards brought Anhil through the door into the room they reserved for conversation with law enforcement and prosecutors. It was wired for both video and sound, which wasn't perfect, but it would have to do.  He'd dressed like an adult today - or at least, that's what Heero had snorted at him when he'd helped him make the arrangements - in a suit and tie, his shorter hair slicked back into a stubby ponytail at the base of his neck.

He still hadn't quite gotten used to the lack of weight on his back.

Anhil balked as he limped into the room, wrists and ankles bound in long, clinking chains, but the guards urged him forward with something that wasn't quite a shove, and he was sat in a chair across from Duo, cuffs threaded through a bar for that purpose.  The guards left at a motion from Duo, eyeing the two of them dubiously, and then the door closed behind them, leaving Duo and Anhil in silence.

They stared at one another across the table for a minute or two until Duo snorted.  He lifted his wrist, pressing a small button on the side of his watch and then tossing it on the table.  The timer started counting down from fifteen minutes, which was all the unmonitored time Heero had been able to ensure Duo would get, the cameras in the room now on a continuous loop.

"Is this what you two do," Duo asked, "stare at each other for twenty minutes in silence a couple of times a month?"

Anhil didn't answer, though his face tightened at the reminder that Trowa came up for visiting hours regularly when they were planetside.

"I don't have anything to say to either of you chingados ."

Duo shrugged.

Preventers had, Duo knew, been trying to force Anhil's cooperation since the raid.  The man had said nothing to any of them, even at his trial, where he'd been treated as a hostile witness and sat in silence on the stand before being sentenced to life with no possibility of parole.  Trowa and Duo hadn't been at the trial, but Quatre had kept them updated.

"I don't really have much to say to you either, hermano . We only have a few minutes to talk though, so maybe you should think about listening."  Duo cut his eyes at the clock that was slowly counting down. "I brought you something."

"I don't want it," Anhil said immediately.  

"I think you might," Duo countered.  "I know things Prev doesn't know, jefe , and I take care of them."

Anhil's eyes flicked over Duo in disdain, taking in the expensive suit, the watch, the lax way he slouched in his chair.

"Is anything about you real, lisichka ?" the other man sneered.

Duo sighed, cracking his neck.  "Everything about me is real, hermano , that's the problem."  He slid a folder across the table to Anhil, though the other man made no move to pick it up.  Duo rolled his eyes. "Just open the fuckin' folder and look. I gotta get the hell outta here soon."

He and Trowa had no criminal records to speak of, everything quietly swept away under their former Preventers covers, but Duo didn't think Une would take kindly to him impersonating an agent, now that his resignation was finalized in black and white and he was collecting a pension. Hacking the prison system had gotten him in, and it would get him out with no trace of his visit, but guards gossiped like old women, and Duo wanted this visit as short and unmemorable as possible.

His jaw tight with temper and eyes wary, Anhil finally reached out and jerked the folder over as much as he could with his limited range of motion.  He flipped angrily through the pages in the folder, and when he looked back up at Duo, he looked positively furious .

"What the fuck is this?"

Duo knew what was in the folder, had gone through it meticulously before he'd even thought about showing it to Anhil.  Inside was possibly the only thing that Anhil cared about. A young woman and two small children, one boy and one girl.  The pictures had a surveillance quality to them, for all that they weren't being watched by any government agency, because Heero had taken them.  

"They're in Puerto Aventuras," Duo said, only kind of answering the question.  "Safe. A small house. Camila has a job. Alejandro and Sofia are in school. Their address is in the file, if you want to write them."

Duo could nearly hear Anhil grinding his teeth.  The man didn't look any less furious, though he flipped back to the beginning of the folder to look through it more slowly, to finger the photographs inside.

"What do you want?" he asked finally, the time still ticking down on the clock. Less than five minutes remaining.

"Nothing," Duo answered firmly.

Anhil slid two of the photos - one of the three of them on the beach near their home, and one of just the kids walking down the street hand-in-hand - and the small slip of paper that Duo had handwritten an address on out of the folder before passing it back over to Duo.  "I'm not thanking you for this," he said, his voice low and tight.

"I didn't do it for you."

Duo stood up, snagging the watch-turned-jammer off the table and wrapping it back around his wrist.  Reaching over, he paused just before his fingers touched the items Anhil had kept and raised an eyebrow.  The other man lifted them slightly, which Duo took for permission. He slid them from Anhil's fingers and into the front pocket of the orange jumpsuit.  Turning away, Duo walked to the door and knocked to be let out

Two weeks later, when Trowa returned from his regularly-scheduled visit with an easing of tension from his shoulders that made him look almost like the young man he was, Duo felt the knot of dread in his stomach that was a constant companion uncurl, a little.

*

Duo threw himself onto the sand in front of Trowa, tucked up between the other man's knees, and leaned back into his chest. They'd been in and out of the water for hours, catching waves at the beach near their house, and Duo felt pleasantly loose and relaxed, muscle-fatigued in the way that only physical exertion provided.  They stared out over the ocean in silence, the sun falling lower in the sky.

The moment was oddly reminiscent of another beach far away, in another time.

Duo wished he hadn't thought of that.

He took a deep breath and leaned farther into Trowa's embrace.  Trowa sighed into his neck, pushing Duo's sopping hair to the other shoulder, and Duo wondered if his thoughts had taken the same depressing, unwanted turn.  

"Take me home," he said instead of asking, and he felt Trowa smile against his skin.

"Or lose you forever?" Trowa misquoted, and Duo snorted softly.

"I'm not goin' anywhere Tro," he responded.

"I know."

And for the first time, he really sounded like he believed it.

They showered in silence, water sluicing off the last of the sand and salt, fingers chasing warm rivulets and soap suds, breathless kisses exchanged under the scalding water.

By the time they made it to bed, Duo was already rock hard and panting in anticipation, and Trowa-

Well, Trowa was moving at the frustrating speed of an ice age glacier.

"Come on, come on," Duo groaned, as Trowa dragged his hands down Duo's sides in a touch that was only this side of ticklish. Just firm enough to tease, and not enough to give him any kind of release. He wrapped his legs around the other man's hips and pulled, trying to force their bodies together.

"Slow down, zvezda , " Trowa chuckled, as his mouth traced over Duo's sternum. "We have all night."   

His lips against Duo's chest were electric, especially as they dragged over the newly-healed tattoo on his sternum, the one that Trowa was probably still trying to make sense of.  Duo hadn't explained. He'd simply laid down on Nikko's table on Peacemillion with a rough sketch and a vague idea of what he wanted the outcome to look like.  It was something like a compass.  Like the moon and the sun and the stars had gotten together and pointed in an unlabeled direction.  The colony clusters were in there too, if you looked close enough, L2 and L3 situated directly across from each other, as always.  Equal, reliable, always there.

It was the closest Duo could come to explaining Trowa's place in his life, etched into his skin.

Duo hummed and then groaned at the contact, the skin still sensitive, and arched upwards against Trowa's bare skin.  His own fingers were busy, grazing across scarred skin, pausing at the puckered bullet wound on Trowa's abdomen, where he had gotten his own tattoo, months before Duo, as soon as the skin was healed enough for the ink.  His was undeniably a compass, but the face was cracked where it followed Trowa's scars, and was lacking a directional needle at all.

They made a fine pair.

And then Duo stopped thinking about compasses or what they meant or how they fit together, because Trowa was alternating hot licks with blowing cool air over his cock in some sort of divine torture that he wasn't sure what he'd done to deserve.

"Fuck, Tro, come on ," he whined, tugging at Trowa's shoulders.

Green eyes lifted to meet his gaze, warm with lust and something else, soft in a way Duo wasn't used to seeing, and a little amused.  "Do I need to tie you down?"

Duo's cock twitched in response, and he swallowed hard.  "I did promise you could," he responded, voice rough.

Trowa grinned sharply, his eyes darkening.  He seemed to consider it for a moment, before shaking his head.  "Next time, zvezda , I promise."  Smirking, he pressed Duo's hands into the mattress, where he could twine his fingers in the sheets.  "Be still, hmm? Let me enjoy myself."

Duo groaned, gripping at the soft cotton.  

He and Trowa had had a lot of sex over the years.  Mostly hurried, quick fucks, or the occasional marathon session, punctuated by harsh groans and harder grips. At the moment, Duo couldn't think of another memory quite like this one, mostly quiet sighs and tender touches.  They weren't - or they hadn't been - soft men. There had always been an edge of danger, of secrecy, to their relationship.

An edge that had been lacking, lately, Duo had to admit.

He didn't miss it, he was surprised to realize.

Duo leaned back against the pillows and let his thighs relax, kept his hands in the mussed sheets, and watched Trowa with lazy eyes.  "Enjoy yourself, then, payaso , but don't think I won't repay the favor later."

"I was counting on it," Trowa retorted, leaning down to drag his tongue across Duo's thighs, around his groin, and nowhere near where Duo really wanted it to be.  

It was slow, sweet torture of a kind Duo was completely unaccustomed to, but found himself shockingly, entirely into, once he gave himself over to it.

"Fuck, Trowa," he groaned, as the other man wrapped a hand around his dick and gave it a lingering, experimental tug.

"We're getting there," was the response he got, just before Trowa's mouth descended over his cock, intensely hot and wet, and Duo couldn't help but buck into the touch.  Trowa allowed it, relaxing against the intrusion and letting Duo fuck his mouth, so long as he kept it slow and easy. He hummed around Duo, and Duo felt sparks go off behind his eyelids.

Duo lost all sense of time.  There was just the barely-there awareness of the sheets he was tugging in his grip and mostly the feel of Trowa's hands and mouth and fingers, the leisurely pace he set, keeping Duo on-edge and never letting him tumble over, exploring scars and tattoos, old and new, the rough calluses on his palms the only thing grounding Duo in the moment.

Trowa hovered over Duo, watching his face, the green of his eyes nearly swallowed by the blackness of his pupils as he pumped up and down Duo's cock in no kind of rhythm, making sure he kept Duo's attention as he slid his fingers in and out of his body.  Duo could hardly keep his eyes open as he rocked into both touches, seeking all the pleasure he could reach.

Words were dripping out of his lips, but Duo had long since lost track of what they were, and he was only barely aware of the whining sound he made when Trowa slipped his hands from his body.  The other man made a soft, soothing noise as he twisted his wrist around the head of Duo's cock, and then he was sliding his cock into Duo's body, easier than it had ever gone before. Just the slightest sense of stretching, and then the deeply satisfying feeling of fullness, of completion , that sex with Trowa always provided.

Duo sighed in contentment, reaching up to wrap an arm around Trowa's shoulders.  Trowa paused, leaning down to kiss Duo. There was a moment, brief and nearly-missed, of unbearable tenderness, then Trowa shifted and Duo responded, and it turned filthy, teeth and tongues, and exactly the kind of kissing Duo craved.

" Now will you fuck me?" Duo complained, a smile on his face.

Trowa snorted.  "No," he retorted, all snark and sass, but his hips shifted into a rolling, dirty grind, making Duo see spots, and he figured that was answer enough.

Both of them were sweating, all their hard work from the shower long-since destroyed, and Duo could feel himself climbing to the sort of precipice he wasn't sure he'd ever completely recover from.  It was a sudden vulnerability, almost terrifying in how much it was going to destroy him, and he gripped Trowa harder, burying his face in the space between his neck and shoulder as they rocked together.

He must have been making some kind of noise, because Trowa was making that same soothing sound again, was speaking to him low and almost-calm, except for the hitch in his breath and the emotion in his voice.

" Vse otlichno. Ty v bezopasnosti. Ya zdes'. "

Duo let go, and let himself trust.

 

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