Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Make it Stop ❯ Chapter 1
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: deathangel125 
A hard job makes Duo talk more than he should, 3x2,yaoi
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai | Type: One Shot | Uploaded On: 06.21.2012 | Pages: 3 | Words: 4.5K | Visits: 588 | Status: Completed
A hard job makes Duo talk more than he should, 3x2,yaoi
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Hentai | Type: One Shot | Uploaded On: 06.21.2012 | Pages: 3 | Words: 4.5K | Visits: 588 | Status: Completed
Disclaimers: Not mine. I wish they were, but sadly, they belong to someone else with a lot more money than I have.
Pairings: 3+2, 3x2
Warnings: There be men in them there hills, doing things they shouldn’t be. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. Yaoi, A bit of lime with a dose of lemon to keep things interesting.
AN: I needed a break from another story that is much more confusing and convoluted, so several small, short stories were a good way to give my brain that much needed rest. This is one of those stories. It’s sweet, sappy, and predictable, but it’s Trowa and Duo, so who cares, right? Enjoy! Feedback always appreciated.
MAKE IT STOP
Duo came through the front door quietly, not wanting to disturb his roommate. It was much later than he thought he would be home, and he had no intentions of disturbing Trowa’s sleep, no matter how much he wanted to see the other man.
Navigating through the single level house they rented was easy due to the way Trowa kept everything neat. Duo often felt he was a burden to have as a roommate, his belongings always out of place, yet the tall man never complained. It could have been because Duo was rarely home to inconvenience the green-eyed man, his work keeping him away for days and sometimes weeks at a time.
Creeping through the living room, Duo smiled to himself as he saw the light over the stove in the kitchen had been left on for him, as it usually was when he was scheduled to come home. Turning it off, he continued down the hallway, stopping for a moment outside Trowa’s closed bedroom door, cursing softly at himself as he made his feet move again, calling himself a coward.
If anyone had told him a year and a half before that living with the person he was in love with would be torture, Duo would have laughed. Now, however, the days he spent at home with Trowa were agony. It was almost impossible to spend all that time with the quiet man and not blurt out his feelings, but he didn’t think Trowa would accept that type of admission.
In his own room, Duo didn’t bother with a light as he got undressed, letting his clothes fall to the floor on his way to his bathroom. The separate personal bathrooms had been a plus when they had first seen the house, but at times Duo wished he and Trowa shared a bathroom, just so he could use that excuse to smell the man’s soap without having to catch the faintest whiff on the air when Trowa walked past.
Turning on the water in the bathtub, Duo shook his head. Water pooling, he raided the cabinet for some aspirin to battle the headache forming at his temples. “You’ve got it bad. Thinking about him when I’m finally home. Doesn’t do a damn bit of good, so forget about it, you moron. After all this time, all these years, I should have been able to give up.” Finding the bottle, he took two pills and swallowed them dry, wincing at the taste.
Settling into the hot water, he felt some of his muscles begin to relax and sighed, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. “It’s time to move on, Duo. This stupid, ridiculous, eternal hope is never going to get me anywhere. Maybe I need to start dating again,” he suggested to himself, nodding even as the thought made his heart ache as badly as his head. “That’s what I’ll do…start dating. That’ll help get him out of my brain.”
“Anybody I know?”
Duo’s eyes flew open as he jerked, hitting his head against the tiled wall of the bath. Rubbing his head, he glared at the man calmly turning off the water before it ran over the edge of the tub. “What the hell? I know I wasn’t being loud enough to wake you up, Trowa.” Remembering his nude state, he sat up and pulled his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them, face burning. “What are you doing in here?”
“You didn’t wake me. I wasn’t asleep,” replied the other man, casually sitting on the closed toilet lid as if it was something he did all the time. “I was listening for you to get home, just like I always do.”
The sight of Trowa’s bare chest was distracting, so Duo decided it was best to stare directly at the wall in front of him. “You listen for me?” he almost whispered, then shook his head, grimacing at the pain that shot through it. “Doesn’t matter. What are you doing in here?”
“I heard you stop outside my room. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
For a moment, Duo told himself he heard more than a passing concern in the soft voice he sometimes dreamed of. There were times while he was away that he kept going only because he knew he would get to hear Trowa’s voice once he came home. Shoving the thought aside, he frowned, “I was going to tell you I was back, but I assumed you were asleep. It is late.”
“That’s why you stop in front of my door each time you come home and I’m in bed?”
Swiveling his head, Duo glanced at Trowa for an instant then turned away again. Avoiding the question, he shrugged, “You were awake every time?”
“Not the first few times. Not when you make it home on time. It’s the times when you come home later than expected, sometimes by a day or more.”
“What? You get worried about me when I don’t come home on time?” Duo smiled as he joked, sure Trowa would also laugh.
“Yes.”
The muscles in his body that had begun to relax stiffened at the single word. “Why would you worry? All I do is fix things – I don’t have a dangerous job like yours,” Duo argued, using his normal line to fend off unwanted questions about his work. Very few people knew what he really did, and he wanted to keep it that way.
“You fix things. What was it you fixed this time that took you two weeks instead of one, like you originally thought?” Trowa’s voice came out in a growl. “Was it a computer problem, some wiring – or was it an assassination you were hired to do?”
It didn’t even occur to Duo to deny it. “How did you know?” he demanded, finally meeting the green eyes staring at him, stunned at the anger he found there.
“At least you didn’t lie this time.”
“I never lie, Trowa. I just don’t tell the whole truth. What would have been the point?” Shaking his head, Duo repeated his first question, “How did you know? How long have you known?” he added with a frown.
Crossing arms over his chest, Trowa kept his eyes steady. “I began to suspect you were lyi- omitting the truth when you couldn’t give me a direct answer about when you would be home while you were supposed to be repairing a crashed network. For some time I thought you were meeting someone when you left here. About six months ago, I followed you. It was a shock to see you meet a man, and I wondered why you hadn’t said anything about him to me. It was a bigger shock when he gave you two briefcases – one with money, the other containing a high-powered sniper rifle. Four days later I heard of the assassination of Soto Takahashi and put the facts together. It wasn’t a secret the Preventers considered him a problem, and suddenly he was gone.”
“The Preventers couldn’t touch him, and you know it,” Duo snarled, hating having to defend himself this way. “As one of the leaders for the L1 cluster, Takahashi had a huge amount of political pull.”
“Who gave you the right to be judge, jury, and executioner?”
“Une did, damnit!” The look of surprise told Duo that Trowa hadn’t known that particular piece of information. “You didn’t know I work for her, and other people of authority like her. There’s a reason for that. By using me, those organizations keep their hands clean. I get paid in cash so there’s no trail. If I’m captured or killed -” he shrugged, pulling the plug to let the cooling water down the drain. “If I’m captured or killed, they’ll deny any knowledge of me. That’s the deal.”
“You shouldn’t be allowed to kill someone simply because they cause a small problem, or they don’t agree with another company’s outlook. Can’t you see that’s wrong?”
Realizing Trowa had no intention of leaving, Duo unbraided his hair while sitting, then stood slowly, using the long mass to hide his body as he turned on the shower and pulled the door closed. “You must have a very low opinion of me,” he said loud enough to be heard over the running water.
“I don’t. That’s why I’m so disappointed.”
Tilting his head back, Duo let the water soak his hair, sighing sadly. He had let himself fantasize of Trowa joining him in the shower before, but none of his fantasies had turned out this way. “Why do you think Takahashi was targeted?”
“His political views were extreme, and he had a number of avid followers that would have done anything he wanted.”
“Would it make a difference in your mind if he had been plotting a revolution? Because he was. He already had thousands of black-market weapons when I killed him. He has also gotten a general to lead the army he was putting together, an army I had to be part of for almost a month before I could get the data necessary to prove Takahashi was the man in charge.”
“I-I didn’t know any of that.” Trowa sounded confused, but Duo didn’t explain further, deeply hurt by the other man’s words. “What was it this time, then? Another job for Une?”
“Private job. You don’t want to know the details, Trowa, trust me.”
Trowa didn’t seem ready to accept that. “I need to know, Duo. I have to know.”
Rubbing shampoo into his hair, Duo let out a harsh bark of laughter. “Or what? You’ll turn me in? If you can’t trust me to do what’s right, I’ll move out. I’m not a cold-blooded killer, you know. I only take a job after I’ve done my own investigation, and after I make sure the son of a bitch doesn’t deserve to live.”
“Tell me about your last job, Duo. Please.”
It was the please that broke Duo’s determination not to explain. Rinsing his hair, he spoke brusquely, the horrors he had witnessed still fresh in his mind. “Dabia Anitole – a nobody. He wasn’t involved in government or politics or anything. To his friends, he was a decent guy, a good son that kept to himself. His employer said the same things – quiet, a steady worker that was reliable.”
Wrapping his hair around his head to let the conditioner work its magic, Duo began to rub a sponge over his body slowly, eyes unfocused as he thought back to the last few weeks. “Paul Ivan is a cop that heard about my…occupation through another associate, a woman I’d worked for about four years ago. Paul knew Dabia was the man he was looking for, but there was no evidence to prove it. He asked me to follow Dabia and see if his instincts were right, then to solve the problem however I thought best. I didn’t feel any guilt when I pulled the trigger, Trowa. If I had a chance to make the choice, I’d do the same thing over again.”
“What did the police suspect him of?”
“There’s been a string of women going missing on L2, some of their bodies turning up later in the better parts of the colony. When the first body turned up, it took over a month to identify her. The two after that have never been identified, probably from the slums – my old neighborhood. There are still fourteen mission women, and every one of them is dead. It’ll be up to the police to find their bodies, though it should be easy now. I made sure all the evidence was in plain sight.”
“I read about the disappearances. The media said the police had no leads in the case.”
“Except for one old cop’s gut feeling. Dabia was picking women in bars – there’s a surplus of bars on L2 – and taking them to a warehouse he had set up to do his…work in. Once he got them there, he drugged them, raped them, mutilated them, then killed them. He had a number of costumes he would use while at bars so no one would recognize him. One of the missing women was someone he worked with every day. Nineteen women, probably more, and the only one left alive is the one I managed to get out. She’ll be scarred for life, though, so maybe I should have shot her while I was at it.”
“Duo, it couldn’t have been that bad,” Trowa chastised.
Standing under the water, Duo was still as it ran over him, removing the dirt from his body although it couldn’t touch the stains left on his soul. “She was a beautiful woman before he got to her, had dozens of guys after her, I’m sure. Trowa, he cut out one of her eyes, tore open her cheek, and removed skin from her arms and legs. This was after he raped her so badly she was ripped apart, bleeding and bruised. Killing her would have been merciful. She’ll never be able to lead a normal life, not even if they can fix her body.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that, Duo.”
Surprised Trowa understood him that well, Duo shook his head. “Who else is there to blame? If I had gotten to him an hour earlier, I could have stopped him. I had a feeling Paul was right, but I hadn’t been able to find any proof, either. I saw him leave with that woman, and I should have followed, but I was searching for properties where he could be doing …damage to his victims. If I had just followed, I could have found the property and saved her at the same time.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
The sentiment had Duo snorting, “Weren’t you worried a few minutes ago that I was a killer? Now you’re offering comfort. Make up your mind – either I’m a bad guy or a good one. It’s not possible to be both.” When the other man remained silent, Duo closed his eyes, unsure what hurt worse, his head or his heart. “I’ll start looking for another place tomorrow. It shouldn’t take long for me to find somewhere to live.”
“Find somewhere to …you want to move?”
“I don’t want to, but it’s easy to see you aren’t comfortable living with an assassin.” Feeling the water run cold over him, Duo shivered, not entirely certain the chill was from the water. Keeping the misery from his voice, he added, “You don’t have to worry about rent or anything like that. I’ll go ahead and pay my part of it for a few more months, until you can find another roommate.”
“Another…roommate?”
&# 8220;Yeah. I know what the Preventers pay you, remember? It’s one of the reasons we got this place together, right?” Although Duo would have lived in a one-room shack if it had meant staying with Trowa. “It’ll be easier on both of us anyways. If I’m gone, you won’t have to worry about when I’ll be home, or keeping my secrets. As for me, I’ll just…I’ll stay in a motel or something. It’ll be easier since I’m not home that much. Actually, I’ve had a lot of jobs I’ve turned down because…” because they would have kept him away from the tall man for longer than Duo was willing to be gone. “Because they were far away and stuff. I won’t be a burden to you anymore.”
Turning the water off, Duo stayed in the shower, the utter silence coming from the other side of the door ripping him to shreds. “So, it’s late, and I have some packing to do tomorrow. Guess it’s a good thing I don’t have much stuff, huh? I suppose I always knew this would happen, sooner or later. Not like this was ever going to be a permanent thing. We both have lives, and eventually you were bound to find someone you wanted to be with, and I would have moved then, so it’s really not a big deal.”
Moisture falling on his chest had him frowning, wondering briefly if there was a leak in the shower. When another drop joined the first, he lifted a hand to his face, stunned to discover his eyes wet. In all his life he could never recall a single time he had cried, not even at the lowest points, when he believed he had lost everything. Seeing the vague form on the other side of the door, he finally understood. “I’m losing the only thing that’s important,” he whispered as his tears continued to fall.
“Duo?”
“I need some time alone, Trowa. Please go away.” Duo desperately hoped the other man wouldn’t hear the heartbreak in his voice, wishing for just one chance to redo everything. If he had come home earlier, perhaps they never would have had this talk and he could go on pretending they would always be close. “Please, go.”
“Like hell I will. We need to talk about this,” Trowa pushed the door open and stared openly at Duo’s face. “You’re crying?” he asked, sounding as stunned as Duo felt. “I’ve never seen you cry before.”
“Join the club. I’ve never seen me cry before, either. I’d like some privacy, Trowa.”
“Tell me why you’re crying.”
Clumps of hair clinging to his body, Duo shook his head fiercely. When Trowa grabbed him, he could only gasp, confused when arms wrapped around his wet body. “I don’t want you to leave, but if that’s what you want, I won’t stop you.”
Shoving the other man away, Duo stepped out of the tub and grabbed a towel to wrap around his waist. Swiping angrily at his tears, he snatched his hairbrush and went into the bedroom, sitting on the bed and frowning when Trowa followed. “You idiot. Of course I don’t want to leave. I think it’s good living with you.” Wisely, he didn’t say anything about why their living together was so good.
Trowa gave him a baffled expression, coming to sit on the bed beside him. “You just said it would make things easier for you.”
“In theory, it would. It doesn’t make sense for me to have a place to live when I’m never home anyway.” Wiping his face again, he snarled, “How do I make this stop?”
“Usually you can’t until you stop thinking about whatever caused you to cry in the first place,” Trowa commented softly, eyes apologetic. “If it doesn’t make sense for you to have a place to live, why don’t you want to leave?”
Running the brush through his hair, Duo sighed heavily, hating the way his eyes burned and nose was running. “The idea of coming home to an empty hotel room isn’t appealing. I like knowing you’re here when I come home. I like knowing the kitchen light is going to be on to keep me from tripping and getting hurt. I like knowing you’re in bed behind the closed bedroom door.”
“I thought you didn’t want to live with me.”
“You’re the one worried about what I do. I guess you’re concerned one night I’ll kill you, too.”
“I’m not worried about what you do – not since you explained. I was worried about you, Duo. Taking on these dangerous jobs alone. I wait up until you get home because I want to make sure you come home.”
“Most jobs aren’t that dangerous. Disturbing, but not dangerous,” he sniffed, wiping his eyes.
“I heard you talking when you came in here. I heard you talking…about someone,” Trowa was staring down at his hands, avoiding looking at Duo.
“You shouldn’t listen to conversations between myself and I. Sometimes me gets involved and it turns into a real argument.” Seeing the frown on Trowa’s face, Duo swiped at his face again in frustration. “I wasn’t talking about just someone. I was talking about the most important person in the world to me.”
“You don’t want to be with him? Move out of here so you can be with…him?”
The time for evasions and half-truths had passed. Duo understood that as he set the brush aside. “You’re a real dumbass sometimes, Trowa. I already live with him.”
Duo gave a small laugh at the pure, unadulterated shock on the tall man’s face, then started to say something witty in hopes of salvaging their friendship. The attempt was gone as he was pushed to the bed, Trowa climbing on top of him and fusing their mouths together. Duo didn’t dare question the kiss, enthusiastically participating as his hands gripped Trowa.
Very aware of the hand fisted in his hair and the other skimming down his bare side, Duo wondered if he was dreaming. There was no way this could really be happening, but as the taste of Trowa seeped into him, he had to alter his thinking. His dreams had never been so vivid, the flavor like nothing he could have imagined. Trowa pulled away slowly, propping up on one arm over Duo, the other hand still in his long hair. “I spent so many nights hearing you stop outside my door, hoping you would come inside, wanting you to get in bed with me. So many nights, you kept going to your room and I wanted to follow you and show you what I wanted. Since figuring out what you were doing, I’ve been so afraid one day you wouldn’t be just late, but that you wouldn’t come back at all.”
“You don’t hate me because of what I do?”
“You aren’t a bad person, Duo. You have a huge heart, and a better sense of what is right and wrong than most people. I should have known you wouldn’t do anything really wrong. You wouldn’t get rid of someone unless you had a very good reason. No, I don’t hate you.”
“Those nights when I stopped in front of your room, I wanted to go in and tell you what I was doing. I wanted someone to tell me I was doing the right thing. I wanted you to tell me I was doing the right thing. Your opinion means more than anyone else’s.”
“From now on, instead of stopping outside my door, why don’t you just come in? We can be together, or just talk,” Trowa suggested, his free hand questing down and inside Duo’s towel, making the long-haired man gasp.
“You could sleep in here when you know I’m coming back, so I can take a shower first,” he countered breathlessly, back arching in pure pleasure.
“We could move your things into my room, so it’s not an issue about where you go.”
“That sounds best.” Duo pulled breath into his lungs, wondering how much longer he was going to be capable of doing so as nimble fingers stroked him.
“Duo, guess what?” Trowa whispered into his ear, softly. Duo made an incoherent noise in response, unable to speak. “You stopped crying.”
< br>
Pairings: 3+2, 3x2
Warnings: There be men in them there hills, doing things they shouldn’t be. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. Yaoi, A bit of lime with a dose of lemon to keep things interesting.
AN: I needed a break from another story that is much more confusing and convoluted, so several small, short stories were a good way to give my brain that much needed rest. This is one of those stories. It’s sweet, sappy, and predictable, but it’s Trowa and Duo, so who cares, right? Enjoy! Feedback always appreciated.
MAKE IT STOP
Duo came through the front door quietly, not wanting to disturb his roommate. It was much later than he thought he would be home, and he had no intentions of disturbing Trowa’s sleep, no matter how much he wanted to see the other man.
Navigating through the single level house they rented was easy due to the way Trowa kept everything neat. Duo often felt he was a burden to have as a roommate, his belongings always out of place, yet the tall man never complained. It could have been because Duo was rarely home to inconvenience the green-eyed man, his work keeping him away for days and sometimes weeks at a time.
Creeping through the living room, Duo smiled to himself as he saw the light over the stove in the kitchen had been left on for him, as it usually was when he was scheduled to come home. Turning it off, he continued down the hallway, stopping for a moment outside Trowa’s closed bedroom door, cursing softly at himself as he made his feet move again, calling himself a coward.
If anyone had told him a year and a half before that living with the person he was in love with would be torture, Duo would have laughed. Now, however, the days he spent at home with Trowa were agony. It was almost impossible to spend all that time with the quiet man and not blurt out his feelings, but he didn’t think Trowa would accept that type of admission.
In his own room, Duo didn’t bother with a light as he got undressed, letting his clothes fall to the floor on his way to his bathroom. The separate personal bathrooms had been a plus when they had first seen the house, but at times Duo wished he and Trowa shared a bathroom, just so he could use that excuse to smell the man’s soap without having to catch the faintest whiff on the air when Trowa walked past.
Turning on the water in the bathtub, Duo shook his head. Water pooling, he raided the cabinet for some aspirin to battle the headache forming at his temples. “You’ve got it bad. Thinking about him when I’m finally home. Doesn’t do a damn bit of good, so forget about it, you moron. After all this time, all these years, I should have been able to give up.” Finding the bottle, he took two pills and swallowed them dry, wincing at the taste.
Settling into the hot water, he felt some of his muscles begin to relax and sighed, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. “It’s time to move on, Duo. This stupid, ridiculous, eternal hope is never going to get me anywhere. Maybe I need to start dating again,” he suggested to himself, nodding even as the thought made his heart ache as badly as his head. “That’s what I’ll do…start dating. That’ll help get him out of my brain.”
“Anybody I know?”
Duo’s eyes flew open as he jerked, hitting his head against the tiled wall of the bath. Rubbing his head, he glared at the man calmly turning off the water before it ran over the edge of the tub. “What the hell? I know I wasn’t being loud enough to wake you up, Trowa.” Remembering his nude state, he sat up and pulled his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them, face burning. “What are you doing in here?”
“You didn’t wake me. I wasn’t asleep,” replied the other man, casually sitting on the closed toilet lid as if it was something he did all the time. “I was listening for you to get home, just like I always do.”
The sight of Trowa’s bare chest was distracting, so Duo decided it was best to stare directly at the wall in front of him. “You listen for me?” he almost whispered, then shook his head, grimacing at the pain that shot through it. “Doesn’t matter. What are you doing in here?”
“I heard you stop outside my room. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
For a moment, Duo told himself he heard more than a passing concern in the soft voice he sometimes dreamed of. There were times while he was away that he kept going only because he knew he would get to hear Trowa’s voice once he came home. Shoving the thought aside, he frowned, “I was going to tell you I was back, but I assumed you were asleep. It is late.”
“That’s why you stop in front of my door each time you come home and I’m in bed?”
Swiveling his head, Duo glanced at Trowa for an instant then turned away again. Avoiding the question, he shrugged, “You were awake every time?”
“Not the first few times. Not when you make it home on time. It’s the times when you come home later than expected, sometimes by a day or more.”
“What? You get worried about me when I don’t come home on time?” Duo smiled as he joked, sure Trowa would also laugh.
“Yes.”
The muscles in his body that had begun to relax stiffened at the single word. “Why would you worry? All I do is fix things – I don’t have a dangerous job like yours,” Duo argued, using his normal line to fend off unwanted questions about his work. Very few people knew what he really did, and he wanted to keep it that way.
“You fix things. What was it you fixed this time that took you two weeks instead of one, like you originally thought?” Trowa’s voice came out in a growl. “Was it a computer problem, some wiring – or was it an assassination you were hired to do?”
It didn’t even occur to Duo to deny it. “How did you know?” he demanded, finally meeting the green eyes staring at him, stunned at the anger he found there.
“At least you didn’t lie this time.”
“I never lie, Trowa. I just don’t tell the whole truth. What would have been the point?” Shaking his head, Duo repeated his first question, “How did you know? How long have you known?” he added with a frown.
Crossing arms over his chest, Trowa kept his eyes steady. “I began to suspect you were lyi- omitting the truth when you couldn’t give me a direct answer about when you would be home while you were supposed to be repairing a crashed network. For some time I thought you were meeting someone when you left here. About six months ago, I followed you. It was a shock to see you meet a man, and I wondered why you hadn’t said anything about him to me. It was a bigger shock when he gave you two briefcases – one with money, the other containing a high-powered sniper rifle. Four days later I heard of the assassination of Soto Takahashi and put the facts together. It wasn’t a secret the Preventers considered him a problem, and suddenly he was gone.”
“The Preventers couldn’t touch him, and you know it,” Duo snarled, hating having to defend himself this way. “As one of the leaders for the L1 cluster, Takahashi had a huge amount of political pull.”
“Who gave you the right to be judge, jury, and executioner?”
“Une did, damnit!” The look of surprise told Duo that Trowa hadn’t known that particular piece of information. “You didn’t know I work for her, and other people of authority like her. There’s a reason for that. By using me, those organizations keep their hands clean. I get paid in cash so there’s no trail. If I’m captured or killed -” he shrugged, pulling the plug to let the cooling water down the drain. “If I’m captured or killed, they’ll deny any knowledge of me. That’s the deal.”
“You shouldn’t be allowed to kill someone simply because they cause a small problem, or they don’t agree with another company’s outlook. Can’t you see that’s wrong?”
Realizing Trowa had no intention of leaving, Duo unbraided his hair while sitting, then stood slowly, using the long mass to hide his body as he turned on the shower and pulled the door closed. “You must have a very low opinion of me,” he said loud enough to be heard over the running water.
“I don’t. That’s why I’m so disappointed.”
Tilting his head back, Duo let the water soak his hair, sighing sadly. He had let himself fantasize of Trowa joining him in the shower before, but none of his fantasies had turned out this way. “Why do you think Takahashi was targeted?”
“His political views were extreme, and he had a number of avid followers that would have done anything he wanted.”
“Would it make a difference in your mind if he had been plotting a revolution? Because he was. He already had thousands of black-market weapons when I killed him. He has also gotten a general to lead the army he was putting together, an army I had to be part of for almost a month before I could get the data necessary to prove Takahashi was the man in charge.”
“I-I didn’t know any of that.” Trowa sounded confused, but Duo didn’t explain further, deeply hurt by the other man’s words. “What was it this time, then? Another job for Une?”
“Private job. You don’t want to know the details, Trowa, trust me.”
Trowa didn’t seem ready to accept that. “I need to know, Duo. I have to know.”
Rubbing shampoo into his hair, Duo let out a harsh bark of laughter. “Or what? You’ll turn me in? If you can’t trust me to do what’s right, I’ll move out. I’m not a cold-blooded killer, you know. I only take a job after I’ve done my own investigation, and after I make sure the son of a bitch doesn’t deserve to live.”
“Tell me about your last job, Duo. Please.”
It was the please that broke Duo’s determination not to explain. Rinsing his hair, he spoke brusquely, the horrors he had witnessed still fresh in his mind. “Dabia Anitole – a nobody. He wasn’t involved in government or politics or anything. To his friends, he was a decent guy, a good son that kept to himself. His employer said the same things – quiet, a steady worker that was reliable.”
Wrapping his hair around his head to let the conditioner work its magic, Duo began to rub a sponge over his body slowly, eyes unfocused as he thought back to the last few weeks. “Paul Ivan is a cop that heard about my…occupation through another associate, a woman I’d worked for about four years ago. Paul knew Dabia was the man he was looking for, but there was no evidence to prove it. He asked me to follow Dabia and see if his instincts were right, then to solve the problem however I thought best. I didn’t feel any guilt when I pulled the trigger, Trowa. If I had a chance to make the choice, I’d do the same thing over again.”
“What did the police suspect him of?”
“There’s been a string of women going missing on L2, some of their bodies turning up later in the better parts of the colony. When the first body turned up, it took over a month to identify her. The two after that have never been identified, probably from the slums – my old neighborhood. There are still fourteen mission women, and every one of them is dead. It’ll be up to the police to find their bodies, though it should be easy now. I made sure all the evidence was in plain sight.”
“I read about the disappearances. The media said the police had no leads in the case.”
“Except for one old cop’s gut feeling. Dabia was picking women in bars – there’s a surplus of bars on L2 – and taking them to a warehouse he had set up to do his…work in. Once he got them there, he drugged them, raped them, mutilated them, then killed them. He had a number of costumes he would use while at bars so no one would recognize him. One of the missing women was someone he worked with every day. Nineteen women, probably more, and the only one left alive is the one I managed to get out. She’ll be scarred for life, though, so maybe I should have shot her while I was at it.”
“Duo, it couldn’t have been that bad,” Trowa chastised.
Standing under the water, Duo was still as it ran over him, removing the dirt from his body although it couldn’t touch the stains left on his soul. “She was a beautiful woman before he got to her, had dozens of guys after her, I’m sure. Trowa, he cut out one of her eyes, tore open her cheek, and removed skin from her arms and legs. This was after he raped her so badly she was ripped apart, bleeding and bruised. Killing her would have been merciful. She’ll never be able to lead a normal life, not even if they can fix her body.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that, Duo.”
Surprised Trowa understood him that well, Duo shook his head. “Who else is there to blame? If I had gotten to him an hour earlier, I could have stopped him. I had a feeling Paul was right, but I hadn’t been able to find any proof, either. I saw him leave with that woman, and I should have followed, but I was searching for properties where he could be doing …damage to his victims. If I had just followed, I could have found the property and saved her at the same time.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
The sentiment had Duo snorting, “Weren’t you worried a few minutes ago that I was a killer? Now you’re offering comfort. Make up your mind – either I’m a bad guy or a good one. It’s not possible to be both.” When the other man remained silent, Duo closed his eyes, unsure what hurt worse, his head or his heart. “I’ll start looking for another place tomorrow. It shouldn’t take long for me to find somewhere to live.”
“Find somewhere to …you want to move?”
“I don’t want to, but it’s easy to see you aren’t comfortable living with an assassin.” Feeling the water run cold over him, Duo shivered, not entirely certain the chill was from the water. Keeping the misery from his voice, he added, “You don’t have to worry about rent or anything like that. I’ll go ahead and pay my part of it for a few more months, until you can find another roommate.”
“Another…roommate?”
&# 8220;Yeah. I know what the Preventers pay you, remember? It’s one of the reasons we got this place together, right?” Although Duo would have lived in a one-room shack if it had meant staying with Trowa. “It’ll be easier on both of us anyways. If I’m gone, you won’t have to worry about when I’ll be home, or keeping my secrets. As for me, I’ll just…I’ll stay in a motel or something. It’ll be easier since I’m not home that much. Actually, I’ve had a lot of jobs I’ve turned down because…” because they would have kept him away from the tall man for longer than Duo was willing to be gone. “Because they were far away and stuff. I won’t be a burden to you anymore.”
Turning the water off, Duo stayed in the shower, the utter silence coming from the other side of the door ripping him to shreds. “So, it’s late, and I have some packing to do tomorrow. Guess it’s a good thing I don’t have much stuff, huh? I suppose I always knew this would happen, sooner or later. Not like this was ever going to be a permanent thing. We both have lives, and eventually you were bound to find someone you wanted to be with, and I would have moved then, so it’s really not a big deal.”
Moisture falling on his chest had him frowning, wondering briefly if there was a leak in the shower. When another drop joined the first, he lifted a hand to his face, stunned to discover his eyes wet. In all his life he could never recall a single time he had cried, not even at the lowest points, when he believed he had lost everything. Seeing the vague form on the other side of the door, he finally understood. “I’m losing the only thing that’s important,” he whispered as his tears continued to fall.
“Duo?”
“I need some time alone, Trowa. Please go away.” Duo desperately hoped the other man wouldn’t hear the heartbreak in his voice, wishing for just one chance to redo everything. If he had come home earlier, perhaps they never would have had this talk and he could go on pretending they would always be close. “Please, go.”
“Like hell I will. We need to talk about this,” Trowa pushed the door open and stared openly at Duo’s face. “You’re crying?” he asked, sounding as stunned as Duo felt. “I’ve never seen you cry before.”
“Join the club. I’ve never seen me cry before, either. I’d like some privacy, Trowa.”
“Tell me why you’re crying.”
Clumps of hair clinging to his body, Duo shook his head fiercely. When Trowa grabbed him, he could only gasp, confused when arms wrapped around his wet body. “I don’t want you to leave, but if that’s what you want, I won’t stop you.”
Shoving the other man away, Duo stepped out of the tub and grabbed a towel to wrap around his waist. Swiping angrily at his tears, he snatched his hairbrush and went into the bedroom, sitting on the bed and frowning when Trowa followed. “You idiot. Of course I don’t want to leave. I think it’s good living with you.” Wisely, he didn’t say anything about why their living together was so good.
Trowa gave him a baffled expression, coming to sit on the bed beside him. “You just said it would make things easier for you.”
“In theory, it would. It doesn’t make sense for me to have a place to live when I’m never home anyway.” Wiping his face again, he snarled, “How do I make this stop?”
“Usually you can’t until you stop thinking about whatever caused you to cry in the first place,” Trowa commented softly, eyes apologetic. “If it doesn’t make sense for you to have a place to live, why don’t you want to leave?”
Running the brush through his hair, Duo sighed heavily, hating the way his eyes burned and nose was running. “The idea of coming home to an empty hotel room isn’t appealing. I like knowing you’re here when I come home. I like knowing the kitchen light is going to be on to keep me from tripping and getting hurt. I like knowing you’re in bed behind the closed bedroom door.”
“I thought you didn’t want to live with me.”
“You’re the one worried about what I do. I guess you’re concerned one night I’ll kill you, too.”
“I’m not worried about what you do – not since you explained. I was worried about you, Duo. Taking on these dangerous jobs alone. I wait up until you get home because I want to make sure you come home.”
“Most jobs aren’t that dangerous. Disturbing, but not dangerous,” he sniffed, wiping his eyes.
“I heard you talking when you came in here. I heard you talking…about someone,” Trowa was staring down at his hands, avoiding looking at Duo.
“You shouldn’t listen to conversations between myself and I. Sometimes me gets involved and it turns into a real argument.” Seeing the frown on Trowa’s face, Duo swiped at his face again in frustration. “I wasn’t talking about just someone. I was talking about the most important person in the world to me.”
“You don’t want to be with him? Move out of here so you can be with…him?”
The time for evasions and half-truths had passed. Duo understood that as he set the brush aside. “You’re a real dumbass sometimes, Trowa. I already live with him.”
Duo gave a small laugh at the pure, unadulterated shock on the tall man’s face, then started to say something witty in hopes of salvaging their friendship. The attempt was gone as he was pushed to the bed, Trowa climbing on top of him and fusing their mouths together. Duo didn’t dare question the kiss, enthusiastically participating as his hands gripped Trowa.
Very aware of the hand fisted in his hair and the other skimming down his bare side, Duo wondered if he was dreaming. There was no way this could really be happening, but as the taste of Trowa seeped into him, he had to alter his thinking. His dreams had never been so vivid, the flavor like nothing he could have imagined. Trowa pulled away slowly, propping up on one arm over Duo, the other hand still in his long hair. “I spent so many nights hearing you stop outside my door, hoping you would come inside, wanting you to get in bed with me. So many nights, you kept going to your room and I wanted to follow you and show you what I wanted. Since figuring out what you were doing, I’ve been so afraid one day you wouldn’t be just late, but that you wouldn’t come back at all.”
“You don’t hate me because of what I do?”
“You aren’t a bad person, Duo. You have a huge heart, and a better sense of what is right and wrong than most people. I should have known you wouldn’t do anything really wrong. You wouldn’t get rid of someone unless you had a very good reason. No, I don’t hate you.”
“Those nights when I stopped in front of your room, I wanted to go in and tell you what I was doing. I wanted someone to tell me I was doing the right thing. I wanted you to tell me I was doing the right thing. Your opinion means more than anyone else’s.”
“From now on, instead of stopping outside my door, why don’t you just come in? We can be together, or just talk,” Trowa suggested, his free hand questing down and inside Duo’s towel, making the long-haired man gasp.
“You could sleep in here when you know I’m coming back, so I can take a shower first,” he countered breathlessly, back arching in pure pleasure.
“We could move your things into my room, so it’s not an issue about where you go.”
“That sounds best.” Duo pulled breath into his lungs, wondering how much longer he was going to be capable of doing so as nimble fingers stroked him.
“Duo, guess what?” Trowa whispered into his ear, softly. Duo made an incoherent noise in response, unable to speak. “You stopped crying.”
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