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"Silver Threads"Written By: t-shirt Disclaimer: Gundam Wing and its characters are
copyright to Sunrise, Bandai, Sotsu Agency, and associated parties.
I make no money with this fic. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: Post war Cannon, Supernatural, Angst,
fluff, mention of lemon Pairings: 1x2 Summary: When Hiiro’s behavior goes astray after an animal attack on a mission Duo is forced to open his mind and make a dangerous choice. Beta’ed by Mechante Fille ^-^ "Silver Threads" Ch 1 I hate snow. It’s cold and wet and gets every-goddamn-where; then it melts and makes you even wetter which makes you even colder and I can’t feel my toes. Such was the case on a certain mission in the middle of nowhere on a continent covered in ice where no man nor beast should have been trying to live when I learned there are stranger things in this world than my disembodied feet. It had been hell week all month long. First there was the weather, which sucked no matter how many times Hiiro used the cold as an excuse to molest me, then there was the fact that we had been out there two weeks longer than it was supposed to take to bring this psycho down, not to mention the creepy freaking wild life and the fact that we continually got stuck doing these little raids in the middle of the night. At least it wasn’t so dark this time, we had the moon to light our way, but something was making the little hairs on my arms stand on end. “Hiiro!” I hissed just over the whistle of the wind. Of course, it had to be snowing. He nodded, making me understand he felt it too and motioned for me to move forward. We were taking this place out tonight, I was going to make damn sure of it and when it was a flaming inferno belching massive clouds of black smoke into the sky, I was going to take my stoic minded lover just as far south as I could manage and rock his world so righteously he would never want to leave the beach again. I stopped at my next safe point to wait for him to advance, but he hadn’t moved. My first inclination was to call out to him again but something gripped my throat and I swallowed the words. Something was very not right about this place. We had both felt it time and again. It was in the wind and the peculiarities of the animals that dared brave this land. The birds were strange, mostly owls with huge yellow eyes that tracked like a homing sight, but what really set your skin to crawling was the wolves. We had only seen one twice and always in the dead of the night with the snow blowing and the moon spinning her silver threads in the air, but each time I had felt my bones ache under their gaze. I had that feeling again, as if my very core was slowly freezing over, but we were out of time. He hit the detonator and made his dash at the same moment, but all I saw was a blur of white, the sound of bodies hitting the snow-covered ground, then all was overshadowed by the huge plume of fire that lit up the sky. “Hiiro!” Where was he? Fucking snow! “Hiiro!” My blood stilled when I heard the snapping, snarling sounds of a beast in the darkness off to my left, but before I could run to his aid the fight toppled back into the light and confirmed what I had feared. It was a big one, a white wolf and it was intent on turning Hiiro into its next meal. His right arm was bleeding, his shirt soaked in blood, but he was fighting the clawing beast with all his might. He was losing. The shock was gone in a flash and I put two bullets in the thing, sending it crashing to the ground while I rushed to my lover’s aid. However, two wasn’t enough to keep it down. I wasn’t too familiar with wolves in general, but it occurred to me once I had emptied a clip into it and it was still getting up and coming after me that perhaps I should be reasonably terrified. He was a nasty sight, his white fur covered in red blood, the sticky liquid oozing from between his snarling fangs as he advanced and I wondered if it would kill me quickly or just eat me alive. I should have factored in the fact that Hiiro was still alive and while that was true, there wasn’t a creature in Heaven or Hell that would ever cause me harm if he could help it. And he did, even though he was badly injured and weak from loss of blood, he managed to get a hold of the beast’s hind leg, causing him to snarl and turn to attack him. I might have missed all the major organs with the gun but my knife apparently nailed it in the heart, because it howled, painfully lurching back to convulse horribly in the snow while I headed for Hiiro’s side. “Look at me,” I told him, seeing the distant expression in his eyes as I used torn bits of my undershirt to tie a tourniquet. His arm was just shredded, he had taken bites to the shoulder and was covered in claw marks that trickled dark red into the snow. Something blew up nearby sending the men from the base scurrying everywhere. At least the snow helped to mask us from them, but I had no clue how I was supposed to get us out of there until I spotted an unmanned snow mobile. Hiiro’s small but he’s a heavy son of a bitch. I was out of breath and wishing I had half his muscle density before relieving the wolf of my knife and pointing us anywhere but where we were. It took an hour to reach the pick up point, and with the vehicle we managed to arrive a good deal early so I used the time to check on Hiiro and do a better job of dressing his wounds. I did my best, but to be honest, he was scaring the shit out of me. I had never seen a fever come on so fast before. His brow was covered in sweat in spite of the biting cold and every time I bumbled and caused him pain he growled at me. “Hiiro?” I kept talking to him but he seemed unable to respond. I wished the transport would hurry up, but there was no hope of them being early, it just wasn’t done. I thought about all the times we had faced death back during the wars and our conscious decision to keep taking high risk jobs with the Preventer’s, but suddenly, looking down on his shivering, sweaty face it sure as hell didn’t seem worth it. “Hiiro, stay with me baby,” I begged, feeling my blood race, but when I pulled the blood soaked rag away from his wound he lurched snapping at my hand and disappeared into the darkness before my ass hit the ground. I sat there in the snow staring out into the night, utterly unable to comprehend that my lover of the past two years had just growled at me and tried to bite me. There was only one recourse. I found him in a small cave about a mile south of our pick up point, but by then the transport had already come and gone. I didn’t have the capacity to worry with it just then, however, because he was shaking hard where he was curled up on the stone and it looked as if most of his blood was on the floor instead of in his veins. It terrified me to see how pale he had become, but the dead calm that seized my heart came when I turned him and saw no recognition in his eyes. “Hiiro?” I called softly, but he gazed at me as if he had never seen me before and I suddenly felt very ill. “It’s me, Duo,” I reminded him, wrapping my coat around his shoulders, but he merely lay there and shook. Part of my mind was trying to work out how to save his life while the other was working on getting our asses out of there, but they both ceased to work when he suddenly stilled and passed out. First thing on the list was to stop the bleeding, but all I could do at the time was wrap the arm tight and head back out into the cold to find some firewood. He was still passed out when I returned, leaving me as cold inside as I was on the outside, but no fire in the world was going to warm the icy wind in my heart at the thought of losing him. The arm was still bleeding, that was going to have to stop so I laid my blade in the fire and prepared to cauterize the wound. “Hiiro?” I wanted him to know what I was going to do because it was going to hurt like a bitch. “I’ve gotta sear the vein,’ I told him, but all he did was shiver and curl in on himself as I lifted the glowing blade from the flames. The smell of burning flesh is a horrible experience that was compounded by the fact that it was the flesh of the man I love, but it was the agonized cry that ripped from his throat when I touched the blade to his arm that made me jerk it away. I couldn’t catch my breath as I gazed on him in shocked dismay, the knife still clutched in my hand while he curled into a tight little ball and cradled his arm while he wept. I knew it was going to hurt, but there was no way a hot knife should have caused him that kind of pain. The deed was done and well enough to have stopped the bleeding so I turned my attention to the next task on my list. “Hey, you still with me?” “Yes!” Quatre’s exasperated tone gasped over the tiny speaker in my ear. I knew he wouldn’t give up. “Where are you? I can’t get a fix on your position.” “Missed me, huh?” I laughed. “Are you all right?” “Oh, yeah,” I sighed, feeling so tired all of a sudden. “But blue boy here needs immediate evac.” “Location?” “An hour south of Johnny’s house.” “Status?” he asked after a moment in which I imagined him shouting a heading to his crew. “Never get in a fist fight with a wolf,” I replied, looking my shivering mate over again before adding a quiet, “Hurry.” “You’ve got four minutes to get him up and ready,” he informed me. “No can do,” I replied. “We’ll need a stretcher.” He went quiet then and I saw in my mind’s eyes the pain that had flashed in his eyes. “He needs blood…” I began, but my throat suddenly closed off when Hiiro’s eyes snapped open. “Hiiro?” I couldn’t believe he was conscious, much less trying to sit up. “Be still,” I soothed, laying a hand on his shoulder that was instantly seized and I suddenly found myself laying flat on my back looking up into the wildest eyes I have ever seen on another human being. He was damn strong for someone running on half a tank of plasma. “Hiiro?” I breathed, but then he was kissing me and it was all I could do to keep from passing out. Never, not in all the time we’ve been together had I felt such a need in him. “S…stop,” I gasped, wriggling around beneath him, but his suddenly ravenous desire refused to be denied and I felt the familiar fire ignite in my loins when he moved purposefully down my neck. “You’re hurt,” I reminded him, gaining no response. “Hiiro, please…” “What’s wrong?” Quatre interjected and Hiiro’s head snapped up at the sound of his voice. I had no idea how he could have heard him since the ear bud was still in my ear, but he grinned and backed off helping me to sit up. “Nothing,” I replied dazedly. “Just… hurry up.” “We’re less than a minute away.” “Time enough,” Hiiro growled low, jerking me to my feet then my back met with the rock wall and he was kissing me blind again. “Wait.” “Why?” he chuckled, gnawing on my neck. “I know what you like.” “You’ve lost a lot of blood,” I informed him, though considering the way he was acting I had to question my judgment on that one. Maybe my fear had made me see things worse than they were. “I feel fine,” he informed me, kissing me again. “What about your arm?” I asked, but he wasn’t paying much attention to what I was saying. “Gods, you smell good,” he purred, lapping at my ear in that way that turns my knees to jelly. “Hiiro.” I couldn’t breath, couldn’t reconcile his energy with the wounded man that had been shivering on the floor only minutes before and couldn’t stop myself from wanting more of the red hot passion he was drowning me in. “I thought I might lose you.” He kissed me so deeply I barely noticed when the cave was flooded with light and wind and Quatre burst in a moment later with two men hot on his heels with a stretcher in hand. “Hiiro?” was his first response to seeing my lover pinning me to the wall, his second being a huge smile of relief before his brows dropped like an iron mallet and he glared at me. “Get back to the ship!” he snapped at the men, turning a keen eye on us before adding, “Move!” So we did. “I thought you said he was mortally wounded,” Quatre questioned from the relative privacy of the back of the airship. I took a moment to look at the ragged, blood soaked clothes my lover was wearing as he sat beside Trowa in the cockpit and sighed heavily. “He was,” I told him, though I couldn’t explain it to myself, much less him. “I don’t know what happened. One minute he was barely alive and the next…” “He must have been in shock,” he reasoned. I suppose it was possible, but this was Hiiro we were talking about. The guy took out an entire legion of soldiers in a psychotic rage and all he did was throw up and keep going. That resilience of his could have been part of the reason for his speedy recovery, but my gut was telling me something was wrong. I could see it in the strange light that had invaded his eyes and it left me feeling horribly hollow inside. ** “Morning.” I had never before felt the need to refuse him. It hurt like nothing I had ever experienced before, but I couldn’t take it anymore. In the five days since we had returned, he had barely let me out of bed. I was sore, bone weary and sick to my stomach with the gradual realization that things had changed between us. It was the first time I had ever questioned his reasons for making love with me. “What’s wrong?” he purred, rolling me over to gaze into my eyes and I winced at the need I saw there. Christ, we had spent most of the night rattling the damn windows, just like the night before. He even trapped me in a closet at headquarters after debriefing. It was hot and heavy and only left us wanting more, but he had taken care of that once we got home. Now, after days and nights of almost non-stop sex I was just drained, both physically and emotionally, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why I suddenly felt like he was just taking what he wanted from me. I couldn’t say these things to him so when my eyes brushed over the healing scars on his shoulder I replied with, “Don’t you think its odd how quickly you’re healing?” “Is that a bad thing?” he chuckled, crawling partially on top of me. “It’s a bit strange, isn’t it?” “Would you rather I was wounded?” he asked, but his attention was on my ear lobe not the conversation. “Stop.” “We still have half a tube of lube,” he grinned, but I was not amused. “Stop it!” I growled, pushing him off so I could get up, get out, get… away. “Duo?” Well that got his attention. “I’m tired ok?” I sighed. “Geez, we’ve done it like six times since we went to bed last night. When in the hell did you become a sex fiend?’ I tried to make it sound light, as if weren’t that big of a deal, but he wasn’t buying it. “I just… I’m sorry,” he said softly with down cast eyes. “I guess I didn’t realize I was pushing you so hard.” “Hiiro,” I sighed, sitting down beside him. “Haven’t you noticed you’ve been all over me ever since we came back?” “You never minded before,” he commented distantly. “Love, you’ve never lacked for an active libido, but six times in a night?” I’m not sure if it was my words or the playful way I cocked a brow that made him laugh but I latched onto the sound of it like a drowning man. It seemed like it had been so long since he had let me see him. “Alright,” he chuckled, pulling me down to hold me close. “I get the point. I guess I overreacted to the injury a little.” Was that what it was? He needed to reaffirm our relationship or the fact that he was still alive to celebrate it? I hoped so, truly I did, but after another week I was begging him to make an appointment with Sally. “I’m fine.” “You are not fine!” I growled in exasperation. “You hardly sleep! And why in the hell were you eating fucking raw steak last night for dinner?” “I like mine rare, you know that,” he replied impatiently. I had never seen him so anxious before. “How far did you run this morning?” I asked. “I don’t know.” “You were gone three hours, Hiiro.” “So what?” “Since when do you run three hours a damn day!?” “Why are you getting so upset?” he said sighing heavily and everything I was about to toss at him drained out of my mind because I really didn’t have a clear answer. “Because I… can’t lose you.” Gods, I felt like my stomach might empty the moment I realized that’s exactly what I was afraid of. “I’m not going anywhere,” he chuckled softly, pulling me down into his lap. “Something’s wrong with you,” I pouted but let him because I really needed to feel his arms around me. “Alright,” he acquiesced. “I’ll make an appointment, but I really do feel fine. Great, in fact. I can’t understand why that bothers you so much.” “It doesn’t,” I grumbled. “I just want my Hiiro back.” “I’m right here,” he soothed, proving it with a kiss that made my stomach flutter in a whole different way. “I love you,” I felt compelled to tell him as he laid me back on the couch. “You know you are the most important part of me?” he whispered, nibbling on my neck and though he still hadn’t really let up all that much on the sex, I wanted him very badly in that moment. It was almost like it had been before that miserable mission, but things got weird again when he decided to run to work instead of riding with me. ** “Physically, he’s in top shape.” Well, I already knew that. I had the rug burns on my ass to prove it. “You didn’t find anything… odd?” I asked dejectedly. “No,” Sally replied, eyeing me thoughtfully. “Is there something you’re not telling me?” I blushed and Hiiro laughed at me and squeezed my hand. “I think what he’s trying to say is I’ve been a bit over affectionate lately.” Now it was her turn to blush. “I see,” she replied, turning her back to us. Sally’s a great gal, but I think the thought of two guys having sex is a little more than she can cope with without getting a nosebleed. “And this started during the incident?” she asked, scribbling something on her clipboard. “Yes/No,” we answered in unison. “No,” I reiterated while he grinned playfully and kissed my hand. “You didn’t have… relations before the mission?” “Yes,” I replied, my cheeks flaring bright red when he leered at me and licked the back of my hand. “Hiiro, I need him coherent,” Sally interrupted and I thought my face might catch on fire. “We had sex,” he told her, still grinning at me. “Not nearly as much,” I grumbled. “Is that uncommon?” she inquired. “Since we got back, yes,” I informed her. “I still don’t understand what the problem is,” he sighed. “Hiiro, would you mind getting me a soda?” I smiled and my lover flashed me that strange look that reminded me of the wolf that had attacked him. “Don’t believe anything he says,” he laughed, rising to leave. “I think the snow might have frozen his brain.” Then he kissed me right there in front of Sally, leaving my knees weak, my face red and her with the most awful `maybe you’re right` look on her face. “What’s going on, Duo?” she asked the moment the door had shut. “I have no idea,” I sighed tiredly. “He’s been all over me since we came back.” “Is it really that much?” “Is it normal for a guy to want it ten times a day?” I retorted and she just shut up. “E…everyday?” “It never ends,” I snorted, feeling the need to get up and move around. “But that’s only the half of it. He’s taken to eating raw steak for dinner. Isn’t there a condition that makes you crave raw meat? And he can’t seem to settle down. He runs like fifteen miles at a time.” Her brow went up on that one. “I don’t know, it’s hard to explain but he’s just not acting like Hiiro.” “Alright,” she nodded, making more notes. “I’ll run some tests just to be sure, but from the sound of it I doubt we’re going to find anything. Would you object to a psychological evaluation?” “Pffft! For him or me?”
~ * ~ tbc... |
