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"Iron Fists "Written By: ELLE and Miss Murdered Disclaimer: If Gundam Wing was ours, there'd be ONE damned cannon kiss. All for fun, fun for all! :D Rating: NC 17 Warnings: post EW, physical violence, m/m sexual
relations, cursing, you know – the typical angsty stuff! Pairings: 1x2x1, Summary: In the world of illegal cage fighting there are no rules and only the strongest survive. It is a world that Duo has been undercover in for over a year and when the Preventers fear he may have gone rogue unexpected back up arrives... Author's Notes: Miss Murdered mentioned this little
inkling to ELLE one day and several weeks later after ELLE's desire
to get into a fight peeked, ELLE asked if they might team up and write
some delicious, sexy fight scenes. All Duo's chapters are Miss Murdered's,
all Heero's are ELLE's. Enjoy! "Iron Fists "
15. The buzz of the tattoo gun was now barely noticeable. After two hours, the hum, the constant sound had become nothing more than background noise and the hints of pain had melded into something vague. Duo was aware that the multiple needles were penetrating his skin - the shading of the eagle that went from hip bone up his ribs, up to the wings that stopped just below his left nipple - but it had stopped being anything more than a small irritant. Except occasionally when the asshole who was inking his skin dug a little too deep, a brief moment when the needles seemed to hit bone and the feeling was of the needles knocking against it and it jolted him out of the comfortable position he was in. "Got another hour," the guy, Rex, said, moving the needle from skin again, dipping the needles into black ink and wiping with the other hand the excess black ink and blood on his stomach. "Just keep goin'," Duo replied, moved a little, putting both arms behind his head to raise his head up a little so that he could see the progress being made. It didn't look bad from his position. It was a big damn piece but he figured back when he decided on the eagle, before Heero was on this fucking colony, that he might as well go big or go home. He laid his head back down, looking up at the metal ceiling of the infirmary, lying on the same damn gurney that Wade had been on as the needles entered skin again, the sweep of them across his ribs feeling sharp, cat scratches or the sorta pain felt from the quick sharp pain of metal entering skin - blades or flying debris from a Gundam cockpit. It was a pain he could deal with - easier than others. The tattooists that visited the piece of shit colony did well off the fighters, trainers and the damn gang members. Could over charge for below par work, at least Rex was better than some of the fucking amateurish work he'd seen on some of the guys around the colony. He had enough shitty tattoos already - the prison one was fucking horrendous, the black inks already faded after only two years, think it was meant to be a spider above his nipple but couldn't really figure out what the smudge with lines around it was really meant to be. The eagle was a choice he'd made when he'd seen the work - Rex's portfolio had the image, black and grey, wings outstretched and it had been nearly ten months since he'd stepped foot on earth, ten months since he'd left Heero when he had the first session and it just said something to him without knowing truly what the fuck it meant. He knew that it was symbolic of something - like his damn braid, like the priests outfit he'd worn for one war - but he couldn't figure why it damn spoke to him, even as he laid back for that first session, those first outlines. Could say it meant nothing but then it had wings, that they were fucking extinct, that it was the tattoo of choice for soldiers and ex-soldiers and an Americana thing that long since stopped fucking existing. Maybe it meant that he wanted to damn fly again - to pilot, to be off this shit stall of a colony and exist again rather than sneaking between undercover jobs and not be on the leash of the Preventers. Freedom. Something he'd never had. True damn freedom - with Heero by his side and they'd figure it out. Maybe it was a fucking love letter to Heero - somewhere in his fucked up psyche associating wings with Heero during the war or maybe that eagles were damn effective predators. Though maybe not so much as they ended up extinct. Like they were. Not needed now - put into their own safe cages, keeping Duo busy on shitty assignments and keeping Heero tamed following around the princess. He sure as hell didn't know if it was about Heero and despite admitting those feelings, saying those words, he still felt like they had a helluva a long way to go. Loving someone didn't mean shit. The last hour of inking came to an end, the gun stopped for a final time and Rex wiped off the blood and ink, letting him move, to sitting and the standing to look at the ink in the reflection of a small mirror that the tattooist kept with him. The ink looked good despite the angry redness surrounding it, the size of the thing meaning that the details were pretty intricate. The eye of the bird looked out, a small white glint in it from those final bits of detail that Rex had done and maybe it was the fact it was a predator that had made Duo pick the thing. Maybe Milliardo was fucking right. That somewhere, subconsciously, he was still that killer and he'd do whatever needed to be done. Like Heero had done. Killed as that's what had to happen. He was damn sure they'd both have to kill a few times to get off this place, the next death fight would be coming up and then it had to be over. Had to be damn free. "Thanks, man," he said, finding cash, the bills he'd earned and not spent from his time as a fighter and those that he earned being a trainer for Kerrigan. The money wasn't good. Fighters got a lowly cut, hell, it was probably no more than ten per cent and that was the reason most of them stuck around. Not paid enough to get the fuck off the colony or those that did came back. Or if they didn't come back, Duo had the hunch they ended up in body bags. Those that came back spent whatever money they'd made on booze and whores and drugs and found them right back to where they started - needing cash and have no way of earning it. Instead, they went back to the piss and sweat smelling barracks and the cage. It was a fucking cycle. "It's one of my best." "You doin' more guys?" "Got a few more - need a damn break. Three hours does fuck all for my back." Duo smirked at the guy, as he grabbed the plastic wrap and tape to cover it. He raised his arms as Rex taped it up and then the guy excused himself to go get a smoke so that Duo could put a shirt or something on. Feeling tender and damn awkward due to the amount of skin the piece covered, he only grabbed the grey hoodie, shrugged it over his shoulders and not bothering to zip it up. The t-shirt he picked up, balling it up in his hands and he was about to exit and go back to his own room, training done for the day and to another night trying to figure out how the fuck to get off this colony when she walked through the door. She'd been around before - when Wade died, during the death fight, giving Heero that message but she usually disappeared. Kept a low profile. She was a smart chick. The fighters really didn't need to see a pair of tits to make them into more of the animals that they already were. "That looks like it might get infected," she said, a quirk of lips and a raise of one of her eyebrows. "You always this cheery?" "I was a nurse. I've seen blood poisoning and infected ink. Don't think someone like you'd risk it. Most of the guys on this colony are dumb as fuck. You ain't." Duo raised one eyebrow at the comment. "Thanks, but really, I'm probably as dumb as them, yanno?" "Rex is better than most. He might actually use sterile needles. Uses gloves. Smart choice." She walked towards him, a hand very close to the now plastic wrapped tattoo. "And least it looks like something. Meant to be an eagle?" "Yeah." "Least it kinda looks like that." She squinted, cocking her head to one side in an exaggerated motion and Duo folded his arms and then realised it was a bad idea, the broken skin smarting from the hint of touch. Fuck, it would be a bitch to sleep. Glad for once that Heero wasn't in his room, that he couldn't possible touch it while he tried to sleep. As much as he usually craved his touch, right now the associated pain was enough to satiate that longing and for once be glad of the tiny damn box he called a home on the fucking piece of rusted metal. "You gotta reason to be here, sweetheart?" "I thought we were friends. I helped you get the message to your fighter. And friends help each other, don't they?" "So I owe you now?" "That's how this place works. Every one owes every one something." Duo looked at her warily. Trust really wasn't his thing and she was known as Kerrigan's chick. Fuck knew her role in the whole thing. How much she knew. He thought she'd be damn useful, in all his time on the damn colony he'd not really gained much trust within the gang - people like Colton, Jim, all liked him but didn't know fuck. They knew the fights, the standard fights but they'd never led him to anything else. Only Milliardo had known more and Duo really didn't want to go to Milliardo again if he could help it as it really didn't do Heero's mental state any damn good to see that. And he trusted Milliardo as far as he could throw the asshole. "What do you want?" he asked, eyeing her up as she shifted her body weight on both feet - despite her confidence and the steady voice she seemed nervous. "The same thing as you do. Off this shit hole." "How do you know I want out?" "Oh, call it women's intuition. Call it a hunch. Call it whatever but I guess you want off." "You don't know anything." "I saw you with him in the gym." Blue eyes widened momentarily with a slight hint of shock remembering Milliardo. You were seen. Who'd seen them had never occurred to him. And what they'd seen was bad but maybe it was just some goon who'd think nothing of it - that they were just getting out some aggressive energy. There were plenty of fighters who fucked each other as some kind of comfort when it all got too much. And it was generally ignored. It happened but everyone didn't acknowledge it but if she'd seen, she knew there was more shit to it and she must've passed on the intel to Milliardo. And then he'd used her to get a message to Heero. It felt too close. And fuck knew what it meant. But it all led to Milliardo. "So you're together. It's kinda sweet. Ohh and don't worry. Didn't tell Kerrigan as, yanno, he's a spiteful asshole." Duo snorted in response. "If you know so much, bribe a captain and get outta here." "You are joking, right?" she said, a mocking and tone and laugh punctuating her words. "He'd kill me before I got anywhere near a fucking ship. That's what happened to the last girl." Her brown eyes looked downwards as she said the last girl. Duo had seen Kerrigan be ruthless, got pleasure from watching Wade die, seen it first hand when the stupid fuck with his hands in the cookie jar had got beaten to death and Kerrigan seemed like the sorta asshole who would kill without remorse. The last girl. It seemed she didn't want to become the last girl - another body that would've been sent into space without any regard for any traditions - no last rites, no graves, no markers, only death. He could see why she was totally fucked but also wondered how the hell she ended up here in the first place - a nurse didn't belong here. She had choices. Everybody had choices but she had more as she could do something useful. Help people. Not destroy or kill like he'd done his whole damn life. Her hands were probably not blood stained and her dreams were not filled with lifeless corpses and the smell of charred flesh. "And you think I can help?" Duo asked, his hands in the pockets of his jeans, taking every detail of her clothing in - covered up from head to toe - tight clothes but nothing much to see. "Maybe. I don't know. I just keep my options open..." "Like Peacecraft?" he ventured, to clarify that she damn knew the prick and whether he was using her. "Like Peacecraft. He makes promises but I don't think he'll keep them... he's got his own plan for this place and I don't want to pin everything on a guy like that." Her face didn't betray anything, her arms folded across his chest, as though hiding her feminine assets, probably used to doing that in this place. Duo could tell her not to bother with him but she already knew that. She'd seen them - Duo's body on top of Heero's, lips meeting even in a tentative and unresponsive kiss. And those words confused the fuck out of Duo - his own plans. Knew Milliardo wasn't to be trusted in this world but if he had his own agenda then fuck. He wanted even more to strangle the guy with his own blonde hair and wished he'd done more damage with his knee when he'd had the chance. "So you pin it on a guy like me instead?" "You're an option," she said. "Another option." The door opened again and Rex entered, coughing throatily as though the cigarette break had fucking killed him and the chick walked to leave, Duo followed her and another guy entered the room - Javez who probably wanted some love or hate shit on his knuckles or something equally juvenile like all his other ink was. Once the door was closed to behind them, Duo reached for her arm and the action made the long sleeved top move upwards on her arm revealing heavy bruising. It was the sorta bruising men had after the cage and she pulled on the sleeve to hide it, looking up into Duo's eyes in the corridors that were never lit properly and there was a look on her face that said shame or something like it. They were recent. She'd not had them when she'd served drinks at the last death fight - there had been enough skin on show to prove that she'd had no such wounds. And they were pretty bright, the purplish and brown and some green that he could see even in the bad lighting. Knew that a chick would suffer on this colony and knew that Kerrigan was a sadistic asshole but actually seeing it was different. "That's my reason," she said, defiantly, "I need to get off here alive." "I don't know what you think I can do or what the fuck Peacecraft promised you but I don't think I can help." They stopped talking for a moment, a few fighters passing by and Duo leaned against the metallic wall as casually as he could and she averted her gaze to the floor as they walked before she reached out, grabbed Duo's arm by the wrist. "The death fight is next Wednesday. It's a big one. Kerrigan's been talking about it for months. It's going to be packed and he's billing it as the fight to end all fights." "You are sure?" "I know," she said, her eyes shining in the low light. "I can get you a guest list if you promise to take me with you." Duo barked a rough laugh. "Hon, all I need is my associate for that. You gotta do better." Her eyes hardened. "I'll testify against Kerrigan. Then you have to take me with you." Duo sighed heavily. They still didn't need her... but it would certainly damn help. But he couldn't really promise her shit. He really didn't know whether he could get Heero out of here, didn't know if he could even get himself off the colony without it all going to hell in a shit storm. But so far, he'd done a helluva lot worse things in the mess that this undercover had become - fucked around with Heero when it was totally unprofessional, beat men to near death for sport and he'd let Milliardo fucking Peacecraft get a few gropes in so promising a chick that he'd get her off the colony alive really didn't seem that bad. His own mortality was totally fucked by now anyway and the only thing that had become important was getting Heero out - lies and truth seemed totally irrelevant. Once he had the guest list, he could contact HQ, give them the dates and times and wait for the cavalry and hope it arrived before Heero was forced to kill some other unfortunate son of bitch so a tiny white lie seemed like nothing. "I promise." The words sounded hollow even as he whispered them in the damn corridor. Her hand left his wrist and she nodded, walking away down the corridor. "Hey!" he shouted and she stopped for a second, turning back towards him. "I need your name." "Call me MJ." She turned back and was gone down the darkened corridor. Duo pushed himself off the metallic wall and walked away thinking that now he really had fucked over his own set of rules he thought he lived by. He'd stopped running and hiding from Heero - told the thick headed asshole that he loved him and now he was fucking lying. Sure wondered if somewhere a priest was rolling in whatever grave the Alliance had thrown him in. And fuck, that was a depressing thought.
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