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"Close Proximity"Written By: Fancy Figures Disclaimer: I don't own 'em, wish I did, just
enjoy writing about 'em for free etc Pairing: 1x2, 3+4, Warnings: AU, Duo POV, drama, yaoi, lemon Rating: NC 17 Summary: Duo Maxwell and Heero Yuy are members
of the highly specialised Project Team, dealing with those matters
that are too sensitive for normal political channels. But there was
a time when they were something very much more than that – until
one particular mission went horribly wrong. Written for the 2005 Novella Challenge - voted 2nd place
"Close Proximity" Chapter 4Day Two 01.25A cool breeze on the street and a good meal nudging my stomach; those were some of the memories of that evening, all those months ago. But the clearest memory of that precious moment was how fantastic Heero tasted! I’d been in some kind of sensual heaven. He kissed like a demon – but a very sweet, very sincere demon! His tongue was hot and fast and fucking gorgeous. He tasted of the wine, and the mints that had come with the bill. He was pressed very fiercely against me, like he’d been holding himself back for the last hour or so but was now released from whatever inhibitions he’d had, and his hands twisted sharply into my hair at the back of my neck. I could feel strands of my braid working loose – I could feel his fingertips pressing on the thin skin at the nape. However, I couldn’t help but notice that his eyes were open, watching my reactions, and his hands never strayed past my shoulders. He was waiting, I think, to double check that I was OK with it all. No-one has ever accused me of hiding my emotions, of being difficult to read, OK? Nor was I then. I slid both my arms round his waist and pulled him in even closer, tight against my body. My lips pressed back hard against his, and I gasped my willingness into his mouth. I felt his body relax and the muscles slide against my own, all the way from torso to knee. The door eased open behind us and we half-fell into the hallway, laughing, groaning, still nipping at each other’s lips. “Which floor?” he gasped. “Fifth.” I’d never cursed the broken elevator so soundly as that night. We stumbled up all five flights, knocking our bones on the banister, scuffing our shoes against the wall. We were like a single, melded body with two sets of limbs, for all we clung to each other. I nudged him round each corner, taking every chance to run my hands inside his jacket and down along his sides, his ribs tight and tantalising underneath the thin material of his shirt. On his part, he seemed to be the only thing holding me upright as I groped for the keys to my apartment, clutching my shoulders and gasping into my neck, his fingertips tracing the pulse in my throat, caressing my skin with the damp heat of his palms. We tumbled again though a doorway, panting from our exertions and from a barely contained passion. But this time when I kicked the door closed behind us, I knew it was just us now – just the two of us, and blessed privacy, and a mounting excitement that had consumed any shred of sense left in my brain. The music playing? It was pure soul… a low, slow beat and a voice rich with sensuous humour in every syllable and tone. I barely registered, except to feel the comfort of it around me. Kind of my favourite music. And all those worries I had about the state of my place? Thankfully, we never went anywhere near the kitchen to check up on my housekeeping abilities – we also bypassed the lounge where, in fact, there were several piles of my laundry on the couch, some clean and some embarrassingly crumpled. As we bounced against the walls of my narrow hallway, he shrugged off his jacket, and I dropped my keys someplace I didn’t see and, frankly, didn’t care. I toed off my boots and socks in a trail of laughter and hot breath along the corridor. When I mumbled something about the coffee I’d promised him, he laughed directly into my face and kissed me so soundly that my eyes closed against his forehead and I felt his taste seep into my very veins. I felt him kicking off his own shoes and fumbling at the collar of my shirt. I’d wanted to take some time, to savour the suspense of peeling his clothes off of him – to tease him, perhaps, with my own unwrapping. Then his hands came up underneath the cool fabric of my shirt and ran their fingertips across my exposed nipples, and suddenly instantaneous nakedness would have been way too slow for me! The bedroom wasn’t hard to find, mainly because I pushed him bodily through the door, and we fell on to the bed, still entwined as that four-limbed beast. By now, my shirt was hanging from my body by nothing more than a single sleeve, but in return I’d managed to open his without ripping off any buttons in my impatience, and also tug down the zip of his pants. He was palming at my groin, moulding his hand round the swollen excitement under my jeans, but I had a hand inside the cloth of his underwear and I had a hold of flesh – damp, hot, tangled in amongst curls of hair already sticky with excitement – and I was making him groan aloud in a very satisfying way. He felt exquisite. Precious. I couldn’t understand my reverence, but there was no mistaking it. I’d never felt like that before – nor since, for that matter. I took the advantage then. I rolled myself round and up to kneel beside him, and I tugged at the fabric of his pants, pulling them down from his hips. His briefs were soft black jersey against his dark, flushed skin, and they peeled off just as easily under my determined touch. I wanted him naked, and I wanted it now! He lay underneath me, with none of that coyness that some guys have when you strip them without so much as a by-your-leave. No, he lay there with his shirt wide open and his chest heaving, his long, bare legs stretched out along the length of my bed. He looked both confident and comfortable, like a wet dream come to reality. His eager eyes glittered like flints - and they were locked on me. His arms lay by his side, and I could see his fist clenching gently; then he reached up for my hand and drew it down to his mouth. I watched, fascinated, as his tongue slipped out and licked the valleys between my fingers. “Duo,” he sighed. It was just a breath – just a murmur. No instruction; no demand. I just gazed at him, drinking in the sight of him, laid out on my bed, the sheet creased up under his hip, shadowing the clench of muscle at his slim ass. The front of his thighs curved sweetly, the soft hairs on his skin running up into the soft, dark curls around his groin. He sucked softly on my fingers, and he shifted a little, getting more comfortable. What can I say? It made his thick, swollen cock bob gently against his belly; it made the skin of his balls crinkle and the globes inside roll against the base of it. I had always thought unadulterated joy an unattainable urban myth, but I felt it then. I leaned down further and pressed my mouth to his, trying to regain the taste of hot need in him – and succeeding. He was saturated with it; his kiss in return was even greedier than mine. My hands slid down his body, his hips straining up into my hands as I took his cock back into my grip and I continued to stroke him. I rolled both hands around him, up and down, spreading the warm pre-cum around his width. He gasped and bit at my lip so that I pulled my kiss away, laughing softly. And still I caressed him. He cursed a few times, like he couldn’t find the right words. Once, his hand crawled up to his own hair, gripping it like some kind of anchor to reality. I’d never enjoyed pumping a guy so much in all my life – he was like quicksilver in my hands; I felt his desire flooding up through my fingertips and into my own body. I was grinning like a fool by this time, and wriggling out of my own loosened jeans until I was naked, too. My hands were trying to keep the contact with his arousal, his seed leaking out on to my palms, glistening and making me slippery. I felt the shiver of disappointment in his body every time I had to loosen my grip. His eyes were fixed on mine; they widened with every stroke. His face was very flushed – his chest was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and he was panting. Seems he was trying to tell me something; ask for something, maybe. I thought I could guess what it was. I was pretty smug by then. I licked my lips. “Heero,” I said, trying out the sound of his voice in the acoustics of my bedroom. Music had never sounded so good, and I grinned from pure pleasure. “So what now?” His pupils were dangerously dilated, but he smiled back, as if he was savouring the anticipation as deeply as me. “Whatever you want, Duo…” he groaned, huskily. “It’s your place – your room. Your call. I just want you.” And with that deeply sensual sound in my ears I nearly lost it. Any bantering reply I had in my throat turned tail and ran, and I leant down over his hips instead and took him into my mouth. I knew what I wanted – I wanted to taste him, to possess him, to draw him into me wherever and however I could. He cried out loudly, and his hand snatched fiercely at my hair. I didn’t care. I licked and sucked and his cock nudged at the back of my mouth with barely controlled passion, and it was better than any damned meal I could ever have ordered. * I think he was close to climax when he pushed me off. I didn’t take it as any kind of a rejection, just that he wanted it to last longer. He still grasped at me – I could still feel the harsh panting inside his chest, and hear the soft whimpers of need in the back of his throat. His hands stroked at my flesh, rolling my erect nipples between his fingertips. Then he shucked off his shirt and shifted his body so that he lay beside me, but with his head now at my hips and his groin achingly close to my chin. I had saliva glands at full productivity and a tongue caressed by trails of his pre-cum, so I was more than happy to go back down on him. But I didn’t complain when he returned the favour. His tongue was soft at the tip, with a pleasing roughness along its length – it swiped hungrily along my shaft and I gasped with delight. It was a shock when he took almost all of me into his mouth – I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not boasting, but I’ve been told in the past that I’m not small. But his nose nudged at my groin, and my balls swung helplessly at his bared throat. I started to slide down that slippery slope of ecstasy right about then, and - fuck - I was loath to resist it. I tried to hold back; I tried to keep my mind on pleasing him, and I was thrilled when I felt the familiar throb of his cock against my lips and the strangled sob from his throat that meant – in my experience – that surrender was imminent. “Duo –“ He pulled his own mouth back up to the tip of my cock, gasping for breath, struggling for words. I didn’t know why he bothered – I wanted to throw myself off that damned slope and let the tidal wave of orgasm wash over me as well. But what did I know of him and his thoughts, back then? “Is it –? I’m going to…” Yes, yes, get on with it - I thought, impatiently. “Duo –” he groaned. “In your mouth -?” He wanted to know if I swallowed or spat, I realised. If I wanted him fully – if I’d be disgusted or nervous of it. I couldn’t remember the last guy who’d bothered to ask – not that I wouldn’t have made my own preferences clear enough if things were going the wrong way. But I was intrigued, despite myself. Even if I hadn’t needed any more evidence that Heero Yuy was a different kind of guy – which, had I been honest, I didn’t – his attention to me, even as he shuddered with a climax approaching in the fast lane of his nervous system, was very revealing. I shook my head gently and tensed my lips around his cock to emphasise my eagerness. He groaned then – no more words available – and I was filled with the sudden burst of warm, sticky liquid from its tip. An eager burst – then another. Hot, thick flesh, shooting its delicious load, shuddering on my tongue. I licked and swallowed, gratefully. His thighs crushed up against my chin, his muscles clenched and strained, and I smelled the sweat and passion that suffused his skin. It was all I needed to take me there, too. I lifted my head from his groin, and bared my neck, eyes sliding half-closed – then I grabbed at whatever part of his shoulders I could reach, and pressed his head down securely on my own arousal. Two more thrusts of my hips and I gasped aloud with my climax, assuming he’d be OK with me staying in the warmest, tightest, softest place it had been for a hell of a long time. Seemed he was; his mouth tightened round me, like mine had round him, and I swear I felt the vibration of a laugh run the length of my shaft. I don’t know for sure – I was rather occupied at the time with keeping my body on the planet and my voice below mega-decibels. I came like the walls of
* That was never going to be enough. Like I said before, don’t get me wrong – I don’t fuck on a first ‘date’ as a matter of habit. Credit me with some discrimination, won’t you? But as he shifted back up on the bed to come face to face with me, my whole body still shook with desire. I was like the string of a guitar, pulled tight and then released, but still thrumming with the note. I turned unfocussed eyes on to his dark, laughing gaze, and my mouth just opened for his tongue, all over again. “I want you,” he murmured, thickly, deep into my mouth. I think he’d said it a few times already – or maybe I heard it echoing in my head, which was far from clear. I was hardening again at the mere sound of his voice. From the harsh nudging against my hip, it seemed he was as eager himself. We rolled almost instinctively into a position where I was to be bottom. Guess I didn’t care – and I can do both, of course, with almost equal enthusiasm. His hands were very sure, parting my legs, stroking at my belly. Looking down at me with those midnight eyes, smiling that ridiculously fascinating smile… There were condoms and lube in my bedside drawer, though I admit I had to search under a pile of books and receipts and various coins to find them. It had been a while since I’d found anyone that attracted me that much. He leant against me as I fumbled around, murmuring nonsense into my shoulder, running his tongue along the line of my muscle, deep into the armpit and down along the sinews on the inside of my arm. It all reduced me to a mess of needy, nauseous hunger. When his cock finally nudged up between my legs, pressing tentatively at an opening that hadn’t seen much action for a while, I stretched myself up to stroke my body against his, and pulled his head back down to nip at his lips. My thighs tightened round his hips, and my ass lifted slightly from the bed, rubbing back at him with my own eagerness. He sank into me steadily – carefully - deeply. I know I groaned; daresay I cursed. I’m not the quietest of guys in my bedtime talk. But before he could think he’d hurt me, or that I was reluctant in any way, I slid my hands around his body, under tight, lean buttocks, and I gripped him to me. He thrust suddenly, greedily, as if the desperation overcame him – I heard his low groan in reply to mine. We rocked together, skin slick with sweat, muscles young and strong and clenching on to each other like we were afraid to let go. We both scrabbled for my cock, crushed as it was between our bodies, rubbing it mercilessly against my belly. He pushed away my flailing hand, and it didn’t take much to tip me over the edge again – a few strokes from Heero’s broad hand, and I was moaning his name along with a lot of other stuff that didn’t make any coherent sense. Suddenly my back arched and my head swam, and then the flesh between us was damp with my sticky seed, bursting free as we thrust together. I felt its warmth as it pooled in my navel and then trickled down on to the sheets beneath us. Guess it was my night for embarrassingly quick comings. I could feel Heero’s own climax approaching – could feel the swelling inside me, and the tightening of his hand on my hip. I wanted to savour it as much as my own – I wanted to give him that same ecstasy! I hissed encouragement and I clutched him close to me; I tried to meld my body up against his as he leant into me and heaved out every gasping breath. I felt as if he were an extension of me; I felt like we consumed each other. Hell, I couldn’t have described the feeling aloud, but the satisfaction and the desire coiled deep in my groin and started to flood thickly through my limbs. It saturated me. When he came, my ears rang and my head swam – again - as if I were suffering it myself. I could feel the sharpness of his hips slamming against my body and the cry of shocked delight, as if he hadn’t enjoyed such a thing for a long, long time. I didn’t know if he always sounded like that, or if it were something to treasure. I didn’t care, really – I was just too thrilled for sensible thought. Didn’t I say it earlier? I’d never felt like that before in my life. * We’d amused ourselves for quite some hours after that first time - couldn’t get enough. I can’t remember anything we might have talked about – just the thrill of anticipation along my nerves every time he laughed, or moved his limbs in that way, or kissed me again – every time our lustful desires were reawakened. Every touch made me catch my breath; every outrageous, tingling, thrilling climax brought amazement. In the end we were defeated by our own stamina - or lack of it, and we collapsed, still laughing, from pure exhaustion and aching muscles. The bed had creaked happily under our combined weight – the mattress dipped with relief as we relaxed. We untangled our limbs and wiped off some of the more obvious mess. Then I fetched some chilled water and the pair of us drank it slowly. We listened to the music, without really listening – you know? The last I remembered was the soundtrack of an anime movie… a particularly angsty one. I have wide tastes, you see, and I don’t apologise for it. Then, when the CD faded to nothing, we sighed into the silence – companionably - and I turned it off. I didn’t need any other company at that moment. He turned to kiss me and we both felt our bodies stirring with the memory of recent, renewed lust – but then he yawned, and laughed, and I laughed along with him. Enough, already! He wriggled down on the bed instead, his arm still over my chest, and he’d fallen asleep soon after. I stayed awake for a longer time, watching him. Jeez, I thought to myself, I was like some kind of lovesick teenager! But he looked so good I felt I could have feasted on him for a couple of days and never felt the need for anything else. He slept totally unselfconsciously, sheets crumpled round his ankles, his limbs spread-eagled across my mattress like he slept there every night. It was all so corny! At any other time, it would’ve made my teeth clench. The whole romance thing was anathema to me, you see. I liked dating – I liked company. But it was usually a much more pragmatic approach for me. A couple of beers; a shared sense of humour; a measured glance down a body to see if the other guy felt the same physical interest – and then it was just a matter of whose apartment was nearer. But this had been something very different, right from the start. And now he was asleep in my bed, apparently staying the night. I gave him every chance, didn’t I? I thought. To leave when we were done. I’d waited for him to smile and say ‘thanks’ – to climb back into his clothes, and ask if I had a local cab number. I knew where every item of his clothing was, so he wouldn’t be embarrassed when he couldn’t find anything. I would have offered him a drink – a sandwich, maybe. Dammit, I’d have clambered back into my own wrinkled jeans and driven him home myself. Anything to have kept that delicious, sated, sensual feeling between us. Anything to have stood a chance of seeing him again. And I didn’t mean at the office. I hadn’t needed any of my plans, though; he’d seemed happy enough to stay with me regardless. I held my breath for a full minute, I reckon, in case I woke him and he got up to leave after all. But he didn’t. And finally I slept myself. * After the passion comes the reckoning. Whatever. That’s always been the way for me; that’s always been my expectation. Maybe not straight away – but the payback is always waiting in the wings. Isn’t it? I slept deeply after that first ‘date’ with Heero – after showing him everything I’d got, and a couple more things I thought I’d mislaid someplace along the rocky romantic way. I’d slept very deeply, but also very comfortably, and right through my insistent alarm. When I finally woke with heavy lids and limbs full of lassitude, I stared stupidly at the clock for some time, trying to reorient myself. 08:17. I was going to be late for work. That morning after – everyone has to face it, right? The bed beside me was creased, but empty. I tried to gather my thoughts, bemused by the remnants of sleep. Hadn’t I -? Hadn’t we -? Fuck! The rattle of cups in the kitchen startled me. I sat upright under the crumpled sheet and held my breath until Heero appeared in the open doorway of my room, dressed in nothing but his pants and carrying two mugs of steaming coffee. He looked in, saw that I was awake, and just paused there. His bare feet looked a little cold on the boards of my hallway. “Coffee,” he said, a little awkwardly. “I guessed you’d want some. I make it rather strong, but hopefully that’s OK with you.” I coughed, and found a dribble of my voice still obeying me. “It’s fine.” “I called in. To the Department,” he said. I was still staring at him – didn’t reply. “To tell them we were working from home today.” His eyes widened suddenly as he realised what he’d said. “I mean - I was working from my home, and you were working from - hell -“ I was still staring. If my eyes had got any wider, they’d have rolled out of my head altogether. He stood there in my doorway and he looked spectacular: rumpled hair, flushed skin, eyes darting around with uncertainty. Nervous, perhaps. But spectacular! “Look, I’m sorry about last night,” he started. Perhaps he saw me wince, because he hastened to clarify. “No – hell – not that! I mean – I fell asleep in your bed, in your apartment, without asking if you’d mind. I was too tired – I was exhausted, actually. It’s been a hard week at the Department. And last night, on top of that –“ Was that a blush I saw? Fuck, it was cute on him. “You should have woken me, Duo – bundled me out. I had no right to assume that was OK – “ “But it was,” I interrupted. I looked at the two mugs in his hands, but I wasn’t focussing on them – I couldn’t have told you what colour they were, or what stupid logo they might have been emblazoned with. I think I had an inane grin on my face again. “It was fine. I wanted you there.” He stood in the doorway a little too long for comfort, as if he were trying to decide if I was serious. I could see the hot mugs were starting to burn his thumbs. “Put them down,” I said, slowly. I shucked off the sheet and rolled my body round until I was kneeling on the bed facing him. Then I wriggled a couple of feet towards him. I was still totally naked. My skin shivered in the early morning air, but it wasn’t just from the cold snap - and there was a deep, heavy warmth bobbing between my legs that was most distracting. “Put them down,” I repeated. “And lose those pants. Get back over here. I’m not thirsty for coffee. I want to fuck again.” His eyes flared some bright message – something vivid and sensual. It sparked an answering shiver across my skin. I could see his breath hitching in his bare chest, and his mouth twisted in a slow smile. “That’s good,” he replied, placing the mugs on the floor by the bedroom door, with exaggerated care. “Because I wasn’t sure if you would. It was all rather fast, wasn’t it?” “That suits me fine,” I purred. I was only half joking. I couldn’t have held myself back from him if my limbs had been strapped to the proverbial wild horses. Yeah, it had been damned fast – I only met the guy three hours before we ended up in bed! I had no regrets at all – but I knew I ought to appreciate any that he had. “You sorry, Heero? You want to draw breath – take it slower? I understand…” “No,” he said, abruptly. “I don’t want to. But I don’t know if I should. Hell…I don’t do this a lot, Duo. That’s all I can say. It’s just – last night, being with you - it was almost like I couldn’t help myself – “ “I know,” I said, grinning. He looked even cuter, struggling with the words. I’d crawled to the edge of the bed by now and reached over for him; I was plucking at the half-undone belt of his pants. “It’s the same for me. It happened – it was magnificent. I want some more. End of soul baring for today, OK?” He gazed at me, and that beautifully understated smile crept over his face again. I felt the blood rush through me like the tide coming in. My mouth grew dry – my morning arousal wept shamelessly for his touch. I fell back on the bed, ignoring his protests as his falling pants snagged on his hips; as he toppled over after me; as he caught himself on shaking arms, leaning over me, releasing a hand to push the bedraggled hair back off my face to gaze at me, and laugh with me, and sink down to kiss me… I knew even then that he was probably the best thing I’d ever seen. The best thing I could ever have imagined. The man who could quite possibly give me the best time of my life. It was only the first time I’d met him properly – yet it was the first time we came together. There was no doubt it was right – there was never any doubt at all, though I knew very little of him then. * The best time of my life? Oh yeah, it was! After that night, we wanted to see each other again – and then again. We wanted each other’s company like a drug – we were hungry for each other like nothing else we’d ever known. I don’t know when – or if – the other guys learned we were seeing each other, because at first we were fairly circumspect at work. But outside of work matters, we drew together like moths to each other’s flame. We drank together, ate together, watched movies, played music. All that stuff. And we fucked as if it were permanently on sale. Glorious times. Most of the time. We were very different, of course. From the very beginning. For me, that was the excitement – that was the whole stimulation. I didn’t think it mattered that we communicated in different ways, too. Hell, I could manage on very little, I thought. That, and the fantastic sex. It was never really easy, being together. We had the work business, for a start. We weren’t always on the same jobs – the hours weren’t exactly your nine-to-five routine. And over the course of the next six months or so, the Project Team began to establish itself. It asked even more of us, then. Relena drew about a dozen of us together, including the guys I’ve already described, including Heero and me. We were still under the Department, but were a separate Project Team, answerable to her. There was no brief, no job description – just an amazingly wide collection of skills and enthusiasms and a bunch of people who itched restlessly to use them. The idea seemed to be that we’d take on the more sensitive missions – the more complex ones. Anything requiring our specialised skills; anything with a high profile involvement; anything other departments had turned down as too much for them to handle: confidential celebrity security issues; assassination threats; investigation of industrial sabotage; political sleaze, either the investigation of it or the proof of its absence. You name it! Seemed the variety and the risks suited us all just fine – we bounced ideas and results off each other and developed a way of working well, whatever the combination of team members. I never felt so good as when I was in that Team – when I was with the guys, using the talents we had, working always at top speed, at top awareness. We had a banter going between us that was exhilarating – we were young and fit and full of confidence, and working like dogs. In some ways I thought it’d be better for me and Heero, too, in that we worked together, that we shared the tension and the excitement and the long days planning and scheming and directing. So OK, we had little leisure time, and weren’t always on the same missions, but all the same we’d find places to be together when we needed to. We laughed at ourselves, sneaking around like school kids, but I guess our passion was heightened by the adrenalin rush and the half-secrecy with which we shrouded our early relationship. Yeah, I got fucked in the janitor’ closet! Jeez, I had trouble looking seriously at the cleaners for weeks after. I’d recall the image of my foot stuck in a metal bucket, my pants round my ankles and my head twisted so awkwardly in the confined space that a mop head got tangled in with my braid. The mop jerked alongside me as I climaxed into Heero’s mouth, in a weird pseudo-sexual dance of its own; Heero laughed so much that my cum dribbled out of his mouth and all down his shirt. There were more anecdotes than could fit in one of the more lurid men’s magazines. Late one evening, we christened one of the minor Board tables, my face pushed flat down on the expensive wood, the skin of my belly squeaking alarmingly against the highly polished surface, and my fingers gripping the bevelled edges for dear life. Oh, and there was one particular stall in the executive toilets on the third floor of the Department’s head office that had Heero’s fingernail tracks as a permanent feature of the Italian tiling… We even did it once on the back seat of Relena’s car. She’d been driving us to a Team briefing out of town, then she was called in to an impromptu meeting with the Board, reporting on our latest success. Left us to amuse ourselves for a while. We flipped the windows up and down and played with her video telephone like naughty kids, and then Heero pushed me on to my back on the broad leather seat and wriggled his hand down the front of my pants. Two minutes later, my pants were round my ankles, my head was twisted awkwardly against the door panel, and my legs were wrapped tightly round Heero’s bare hips as he pushed into me. Mercifully, the windows steamed up quickly, and the expensive suspension proved more than equal to the challenge. He had to press his hand over my mouth when I came, to shut me up. It was fast and funny and poignant, like the way tears squeeze out during a laughing fit. No-one had ever made me enjoy it so much. Don’t think Relena ever guessed what we got up to; we were easily decent by the time she returned, though there was rather a rich aroma inside the car. Anyhow, we never risked it twice! Had to find alternative, less potentially dangerous places to satisfy ourselves. It was brilliant. He was brilliant. That’s how it all seemed to me. But those are other tales that I’m not dwelling on here. Not today. Maybe never. * I suppose we never gave much time to thinking it through – to where we might go with it, what we both wanted from it all. It was too damned heady at the time – neither of us could think straight, it seemed, except through our dicks. He seemed happy enough with it all – happy enough with me. Or so it seemed. I didn’t always have a lot to go on. You see, he was the brightest, smartest man I’d ever met but he didn’t much do the ‘talking’ thing. I discovered that pretty early on. Oh, he was damned articulate, and he could talk plenty about work and weapons and the world, and I never knew him to be rude. But he rarely wanted to talk to me about the sex and how we were together – despite my hungry need to praise it and pimp it and just generally pet it all, every damned feeling I had from the fiercest orgasm to the strange ache that I felt across every inch of my body every time he ran a hand through his hair. But when he did talk, it silenced me; it enchanted me. Once, he said he was stunned from the moment he saw me, that first evening – he’d never felt like that about anyone in his life. Even before he knew me – before he’d spoken to me. Just looked at me and wanted to know me. In every sense of the word. Yeah, he could be damned good with the words when he chose to. It wasn’t long before I was spending more time at his place than my own, and we were effectively living together. Time was snatched and precious – so no-one wanted to spend it in a game of musical beds, dashing across town to meet for an hour or so when we were both free, eating in one apartment, arranging to meet later in the other, duplicating most things we owned so that we never got caught without toothbrush or spare socks. Heero had an apartment in the Westbridge block, in a residential area north of town. It was one of the places that Relena had cleared for security purposes – it was critical that her Team worked secretly and anonymously, and yet comfortably. Somehow she hadn’t got round to re-housing me as well; I’d been wondering whether to take her neglect personally. However, his place was a damned sight smarter than my downtown apartment, so I enjoyed my time there. We went our separate ways out in the field, but then we came back together – back to washing up, reading the paper at night, yawning our way round supermarkets, playing interminable games of chess, waking up with sheets tangled round us and pillows kicked off on the floor. All that stuff about living together. We just did it because it felt good. Well, it did to me. * I had visions of us being as much friends as lovers – supporting each other through the missions. Fuck knows, we needed it. Heero came home sometimes dirty and tired, ears ringing from explosions that had been too fucking close – sometimes there’d been killings that they hadn’t anticipated. He’d sit in his room, and he’d strip and clean his personal guns as if it burned his hands to hold them any longer than necessary. He’d tell me about some of the missions – and others he wouldn’t, even if I asked. Tighter than a clam, his control over his expressed emotions. So different from me, who ranted and raved about the way things had gone – the successes – the setbacks. The damned stupid way the world ran. The arguments I had with Relena – the delays in supply, the calibre of personnel, the fucking rain when I was on outdoor surveillance in the park. I like to talk – it’s not a crime, is it? But he so rarely reacted. Sometimes it even looked like he was bored. That’s too painful to remember, of course. I felt sure that he must feel the same stuff as me. Once, after he’d been away on a week-long, solitary mission, I heard him cry. Quietly, in the bathroom during his shower. With the door closed so he thought I wouldn’t see or hear. Maybe he forgot I could attune myself to a lot more than sight and sound. But when he came out, he looked fine, and he never volunteered a single fucking word about it. I was confused; I was angry; guess I was upset, too, that he didn’t need me for that kind of support. Then he turned those deep, hungry eyes on me and in the middle of the tumble of towels to the lounge floor, I forgot to argue the point. * Was it just the sex? Is that all we had? It continued to be as hot and as fulfilling as it had ever been. We’d be apart for a while – then we’d be back in the same apartment like newly married, yet familiar partners. At first there’d be a thick cloak of tension, clutching round us like a straitjacket, then we’d argue over something or nothing, or so it seemed to me, like we needed to let off steam before we could touch. And then we’d clamber over each other’s bodies to get to the soft, sensitive bits, and we’d fuck like starved bunnies. After all, it had been his body I wanted, right from the first time I saw him. It was the rush of thick, ecstatic delight that suffused me every time I saw him – that was all I needed to keep me riding the crest of a wave. I didn’t have the appetite for investigating it any further, did I? Or so I told myself. Dammit, I spent my whole time at work empathising with people, and analysing their motives and behaviour – I reckoned I wasn’t keen to do a whole lot of it between the sheets as well. And that seemed to suit Heero just fine. He suffered the same pressure, after all – we both knew how the work was, how significant it was to us, and what it represented in our lives. Anything else was just a diversion – just entertainment. I ought to have known that was the way he wanted to play it. But I wasn’t being particularly honest. I knew how I felt about him. Not just his body, fit and lean and strong and flexible and imaginative as that was. No, how I felt about all of him: how he dressed; how he laughed; how he puzzled; how he wrote; how he smiled… yeah, all of him. But he rarely gave me any encouragement to tell him so. And I wasn’t likely to humiliate myself voluntarily, was I? * It was the tension, of course. Guess neither of us had realised that the Team work would be its own kind of trial, as well as an unbelievably exciting challenge. There were ridiculously long hours – reams of paperwork – the need to have a portion of your brain concentrated on every other Team mate at all times - and throughout it all, a constant exposure to people whose motivation would probably remain incomprehensible for the whole of your conscious life, and whose lack of humanity was staggering. I gabbled about it a lot, and went clubbing, and played louder music, and – well, that was how I dealt with it. Heero didn’t often come out with me. His reaction was the opposite. His quietness annoyed me! Sometimes it felt like he ignored me – and that was a cut that went too damned deep. So I’d push him to open up. I’d challenge him – I’d provoke him. That’s when I realised he was damned good with the words in other capacities, too – when I pushed him to argue. Hell, I never thought of myself as aggressive in that way – provocative, maybe. But it seemed like that was the only time I got some positive reaction from him - that was when I got a decent response. So I let the temptation have its way, probably far too often. Once he crossed that line, he entered into the whole damned thing as enthusiastically as I - his counter-attacks were rich and fierce, and usually left us both panting with spent energy and sore throats. It was stimulating, all right. But probably not in any of the right ways. It was early days with the Project Team; the demands on us – and the expectations of the Department - were pretty high. I wasn’t used to being so screwed up all the time, so tired, so tense. For a while, the arguments were kept to the apartment – kept to our leisure time. They were fierce and fast, and often finished up with grabbing hands and clothes torn off. I reckoned I had control over it all, that there was a foundation underneath us that made it nothing more than a lively sex play. It was a new, unfamiliar time for everyone, right? For us – well, we were always either dog-tired, or screwed up with anticipation. Or fucking. Perhaps the depth of what I felt was all too soon. Perhaps it was all too much. It was what I wanted, though. He was what I wanted. It was usually really good, OK? But I guess, looking back, I was never sure for how long.
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