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The bitch of it all, he thought petulantly into the objectively disgusting mix of synthenol and “real ale flavoring,” was that this was entirely Heero’s fault, but he cared enough about Heero that he would rather blame it on Relena. Relena, who was up somewhere clean and calm and sane in her posh townhouse, who hadn’t done anything other than be the Other Best Friend, and since Heero was currently under supervision in hospital, Relena got the anxious thrust of his frustration.
He was at his fourth or fifth establishment of the night, and, in other circumstances, he would have been least flattered by, and maybe even taken up the offer from, one of the warm bodies that slid up next to him at the bar. There had been a time, definitely, when the giddy freedom and fun of exploring bodily pleasure with a friendly and attractive stranger had been an adventure as well as a plain old good time.
He wasn’t feeling like casual sex, not tonight, maybe not feeling it very much at all anymore. It had been fun and hot and often funny, but as sweet and hot and fun as all of the casual flings and one-night companions had been, he was tired, hungry for something different. He wanted to fuck and fight and cry all at once until all of this bottled guilt and anxiety and anger and panic were purged, and he wasn’t going to find that in a quickie out in the alley or an hourly motel.
It was all just so fucked. It had started, as it always did, with Heero taking it upon himself to address an issue, a violent issue, without backup or intel or really anything at all. After the routine (how the fuck was this becoming routine?) panic over where and how and what the fuck had Heero done to himself this time (this time!), Duo had waited with a nervously shaking leg and a cup of increasingly cold, increasingly untouched coffee. His knuckles were white against the disposable cup, calloused and chapped, dragging around the rim of the cup, around and around and around. The hallway was almost empty, bright, sterile, and oppressive. He vaguely clocked Relena down the hall, standing stiffly against a wall and waiting, waiting like he was waiting. The fluorescent lights of the hospital washed her out, the elegant bespoke suit and perfectly fitted shoes and tidy hair and expensive purse and gold watch all turned beige and bland under the harsh glare.
The same as always, Heero had gone off book, off the rails, out of his head. The same as always, against all odds, he had managed to escape barely intact. The same as always, Duo found himself waiting in the hospital with Relena hovering anxiously somewhere nearby.
The same as always, the stern faced doctors had returned with a positive prognosis but a bevy of concerned questions, and Duo was just fucking done with it, the hospital, Heero, all of it. He stood and threw his cold coffee into the bin and stalked down the corridor towards the exits. Relena could sign off on whatever recommendations were forthcoming. It wasn't like they needed both Duo and Relena there, and even if he felt like a dick, just bailing and dumping the whole mess on her, he didn't feel bad enough to stop.
Out of the bright lights of the hospital, he had turned, directionless, and walked out into the chill, wet streets, hunched into his jacket, hands fisted deep in his pockets. The streetlights were just beginning to blink on, and he mused vacantly that he’d never get over the bizarre unpredictability of weather on Earth. Fog? For no reason? Why the fuck not. It certainly fit his mood, heavy and weighed down. Grey.
He had wandered for what felt like hours, until a dirty vidsign ahead advertised “cheap! 100% real alcohol! No synthetic ethanol!” which sounded pretty fucking good at the moment, even if it was probably a lie. He managed to order an inoffensive lager and after a second round and a shot, he began to feel his leg stop shaking compulsively and the pressure in his stomach easing enough to take in his surroundings. The bar was cozy in a sleazy kind of way, crowded with local barflies and younger folks shooting pool, out of the fog and growing twilight. The bar vidscreens were lit up with various Leagues and Championships, a local news coverage of a new zoning ordinance prohibiting the home breeding of exotic reptiles, and a puff piece on the dedication of a new monument. Of course, there was Relena on screen, earlier in the day, before all of this bullshit, smiling her polished smile at the crowds, her gold watch glinting in the sun as she gave a brief speech on the importance of memory and community and art and on and on, the usual. He stopped reading the subtitles at some point to just look at her face on the screen and feel… something.
He was territorial around Relena. It wasn’t a terrific character trait, nor one that he was particularly pleased to have, but it was there nonetheless. He thought, without real seriousness, that it might have been easier if she and Heero had been lovers. Then there would be defined categories; the best friend and the girlfriend, (and he’d be lying if he denied best friend and boyfriend was an equally appealing option, if Heero had been interested in him, or in anyone at all). Heero being ace wasn’t something Duo could understand per se, but it was something that he could respect. That said, sharing a best friendship felt peculiar and almost crowded, especially when it was such a juxtaposition, the clownish dirtbag and the perfect little princess. He gave a bitter half-laugh into his own glass. Heero was enough stress for a thousand friends, and maybe one of them could even beat the sense into him that self-destruction was not actually an acceptable answer to any problem. It wasn’t, Duo thought, as he took another shot, that he personally had much room to talk, but on the other hand he wasn’t the one still getting exploded.
At the third or fourth bar, he nursed a pint of definitely not 100% real alcohol and vaguely considered taking a bump of the dubious and unknown stimulant that was being passed around the back room. It would be nice, he thought, to just vanish into a bender and re-emerge somewhere else, time-travel through all of this. On the other hand, he really wasn’t sure what the hell that even was, and as shitty as it had been to leave Relena and her ugly-fancy beige suit to handle all of Heero’s medical paperwork, having her called down to the morgue to identify his body after an OD on the latest street drug was a little too much to think about. He just wanted to punch something, or hug something, maybe both, angry and sad and frustrated all at once.
He was tired of it.
Relena was honestly the only person who had any idea what this was like, and he was angry enough that it seemed like an excellent idea to just march up to her and ask how the fuck she could deal with all of this, if she even cared, because he was about to put a fist through a bar bathroom mirror. He looked through the dirty window at the lights of the barges passing slowly by. He was on the edge of the river, and he could see, through the network of bridges, the lights of the tall hotels on the opposite bank, the classy side, and without really thinking about it, he threw some credit chips down on the bar, turned the collar of his jacket up against the night, and headed out, onto the closest bridge and across the dark water.
As soon as he slouched into the glossy lobby of the Madison du Méridien, he started to regret his decision. He wasn’t gross-gross, not like after a day up to his neck in rust and steel and oil. He wasn’t sloppy drunk either, just tired and buzzed, but he was wearing the same clothes he’d run to the hospital in hours and hours and bottles and dozens of wet, foggy city miles ago. The doorman certainly didn’t seem impressed, and when he asked to ring up the penthouse, he was on the fence as to whether he’d be sent away. A crackling call later, however, he was being ushered towards the elevators, and as the doors closed shut, he wondered one more time what the fuck he was thinking.
His dirty boots scuffed against the pristine white carpet of the elevator and he petulantly hoped that he left a stain, a tear, some imperfection in the vast space of manicured carpets and wallpaper. The elevator was mirrored, a box of reflection, and Duo was very careful not to catch his own eyes in the glass.
Relena was already standing in her open door as the elevator bank opened, ornate wood framing her outline as she waited for him, arms crossed but face neutral, blandly curious. She looked strangely shelled, unpeeled, without the carapace of powersuits and makeup and stage lights. Her fringe was pinned and pomaded severely to the side in a wide curl, and the rest of her hair was pulled up into a sleek bun. She looked fresh from the bath, with the glisten of lotion across her face. Although he could see the stain of the semi-permanent thermal makeup on her lips and cheeks, it was shocking to see her so naked, barefaced except for a tiny dot of medicated serum over a small blemish. She was barefoot, too, arms crossed over her black slip and quietly expensive dressing robe, and he felt like such a fucking jerk, showing up half-drunk and dirty and raw at her doorstep at one in the morning. She looked him up and down, in an assessing sort of way. Her face stayed relaxed, free from judgement, but he could still feel her waiting for an explanation. A good one.
“Duo,” Relena said finally. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Fuck you,” he thought.
“Fuck you,” he said out loud and then screwed up his face in frustration and mortification, scrubbing a rough hand over his face, fingertips dragging across the emerging stubble. “I mean… fuck. Fucking Heero. How do you deal with all this fuckery without,” he gestured vaguely at himself, “just getting massively fucked up?”
Relena unfolded her arms, and he could see the nearly empty wine glass held loosely in her fingertips. She shook it gently, a small, understanding refutation, and then sighed.
“You probably should come in,” she said, holding the door open, “because you look like a giant wet puppy, and I really do not think either of us should be drinking alone.”
He couldn’t really argue with that logic, and followed her into the flat.
He paused in the vestibule, uncertain, but Relena just walked past him, down the wide steps and through the depressed visiting area and then back up into her open kitchen. Her lightly quilted and ‘definitely-more-expensive-than-his vintage-leather-jacket’ robe covered the lush curve of her ass, but the handful of steps up and down showcased the thick, milky thighs and long legs. He forced himself to look in a more reputable direction.
The rest of the lights in the flat had been dimmed for the night, but the kitchen remained lit, with half a bottle of wine and a book resting on a bare peninsula countertop. The kitchen, like the entire flat, was clear and bare, wide open, with long lines and luxuriant modularity in that particular minimalist Scandinavian style that always made Duo feel itchy. There was just enough fine copper detailing and real wood and elaborate tile work to scream money, just in case anyone were to miss the rich simplicity of the entire apartment.
“What do you even call this anyway,” he asked, poking at some kind of overly pruned houseplant, half-provoking and half to clear the air, “Opulent -functionalist?”
Relena, who had just taken a sip of her wine, snorted, then coughed.
“Did you really show up at 01:00 to insult my decor?” she asked, but she was smiling again, and that was something, her face relaxing from stoic to quietly charmed, and it startled him how entirely he was charmed right back. Relena had a nice smile, a polished smile, a political smile, but sometimes, in private, one side of her mouth would twist up in earnest delight. It was like a shot of electricity, and he immediately wanted to make it happen again.
“I didn’t really mean to,” he shoved his hands in his pockets, feeling a lot less angry bravado and a lot more awkward, babbling and hoping that it emerged in a comprehensible form. “I’m pissed at Heero, and that made me pissed at you, because you can somehow take all this, and I can’t, I can’t take it, and I tried to get wasted but couldn’t, thought about getting laid but I didn’t want to, because none of them would understand. I just want to yell at someone, but it has to be someone who gets it, and you’re the only one. You’re the only one who gets it, and I need to know how the fuck you can take it.”
“I can’t, actually,” Relena replied, seriously, “‘Take all of this,’ as you put it. I am doing a very very poor facsimile of ‘taking it.’ I am also angry and frustrated, and you aren’t doing a very good job of yelling at me, so at the very least you can keep me company while I have a drink.”
“Do I get one?” Duo asked, trying to cut the ambient tension in the air. Somehow, in defiance of everything, it worked, and Relena laughed, bubbling up from somewhere and washing away the heaviness of the room.
“If I share my extremely nice liquor with you,” Relena smiled, gnawing thoughtfully at her lower lip, “I’m going to make you promise to enjoy it. This isn’t for getting wasted. It’s for savoring.”
“So then why are you chugging down that vintage bottle of Vinho Verde instead of savoring?”
Relena gave him another of those brief, amused smiles that made him feel unaccountably pleased, like he’d done a magic trick.
“It’s hard to savor alone. I guess I was waiting for some company.”
“Even as bad of company as me?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I’m glad you’re here.” She smiled again, and it hit him like a fucking tractor how incredibly hot she was, which wasn’t new, newsflash, Relena Darlian was good-looking, more obvious news at 15:00, but that hungry want, the desire to reach out and touch, that part? That was new. Relena wasn’t flamboyantly sexual in the way that Dorothy was, with peeks of black lace and skin and cleavage, but there was something more quietly epicurean about Relena, plain silk and fresh face and bare legs and short, subtly manicured nails and all.
In the split second that she turned and reached up to take down the bottle and two glasses, he watched the dark silk of her slip slide up against her skin, catching on the unapologetic contour of nipple, and when she reached over her head, he could just see the soft patch of dusty hair under her arms.
It was overwhelmingly, viscerally erotic, that sensual, womanly patch of hair, so bohemian and sophisticated and strangely elegant. She was so often poised and perfect, sexless and serene in pristine pastel powersuits, but now he could see the woman underneath and chided himself for being surprised that she was there, a whole person, underneath the public face.
He was a bit astonished at her comfort at lounging around in just a robe, and before he could think better of it, commented as much.
“I never took you for a black silk slip kinda gal.”
She shrugged the robe back over her shoulders before setting down the glasses and twisting off the top of a venerable-looking round bottle.
“I’m a bit afraid to ask what your presumption was,” she smiled back lightly, pouring them each a few fingers into the wide glasses, “Armagnac?”
She reached out to hand him his glass and he couldn’t help but start to laugh. The way she held out the top by her fingertips, like an ancient empress holding out her hand to have her rings kissed, her serene, beatific expression, both struck him as both undeniably funny but also warm, comforting; such a small, uniquely Relena gesture that he had him grinning. He couldn’t help himself and ducked his head down to plant a smacking, teasing kiss against the back of the outstretched palm, sending her huffing a laugh back.
“You really will flirt with anything, won’t you,” she said, but she didn’t pull her hand away. He traced the peaks of her knuckles with his thumb, almost mindlessly.
“Not anything,” he replied, taking a small sip of the amber liquid, and wow, okay that was definitely for savoring. Wow. “I might be a little bit of a slut, but not all of us have the monastic dedication to prudishness that you have going on.”
She laughed at that, thankfully, because he knew there was a fine line between teasing and insult, and he was glad that that filament of understanding was lit up, that he could relax into banter without worry. Somehow, out of all the gin joints in the city, he’d stumbled into the one with fine liquor and a beautiful, kind, obnoxious friend, and the last knot in his chest started to unravel.
“It’s not monastic, it’s strategic,” Relena explained, taking a sip from her own glass. “Oh, that is nice, isn’t it? It was a gift and I haven’t had much of a chance to drink it. This is the kind of bottle that deserves to be shared.”
“To sharing, then,” Duo said, and knocked their glasses together, or, rather, brushed their knuckles together as the rims of the glasses met in a soft clink. “But I do want you to explain this monastic versus political celibacy to me, because all I can think is that you are missing out.”
“Sex is always… politically fraught for me,” Relena began thoughtfully. She glared at him, “And not in the filthy way you’re thinking. Not in a ‘sex-for-votes’ manner.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking, but you woulda got my vote,” he quipped with a wink and then internally groaned. This was a terrifying, dangerous conversation but he had the deep, gut instinct that it was also seismically important. On the other hand, he’d spent the majority of his adult life as a horny dumbass who flirted with anything that had a pulse, and there was really no going back now. Besides, Relena was giving him that look of prim, mild chastisement, with the tiny tremble at the corner of her mouth meant that she actually thought he was funny but wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of showing it.
“It’s not particularly easy to forge connections when you’re in my position. There’s plenty of men who would love to take me to bed out of a misguided urge for domination, from some internalized idea that they could diminish me.” She gave a shrug, “and if they don’t want to diminish me as a symbol, then they are so terrified of me as a person that making love is awkward and stilted. Once in a while I’ll connect with someone for a few days, but it doesn’t last.” She sighed heavily, “When you’re me, when you know that there’s a certain kind of man who loves to hate you, who gets off on the idea of your degradation? It makes it extremely hard to enjoy going down on someone. And when everyone else is scared of you it’s quite difficult to ever just… be uninhibited. I can’t, for example, ask for it hard and rough, and be sure that my partner won’t leak it all to the tabloids in the morning. People want to be with the Foreign Minister or the Former Queen. No one really wants to be with Relena Darlian.”
She sighed, taking another thoughtful sip from her glass. “I’m not saying that I universally approve of the way you roll in and out of people's beds, but I am jealous. That’s never an option for me. There’s intrigue and power dynamics and expectations… When it comes to sex, I’m never free to be myself.”
Duo’s mind was still helpfully repeating “ask for it hard and rough! ask for it hard and rough!” and even more, he felt like an absolute fuckhead for dragging his mess over to Relena, Relena, who apparently had been drinking semi-responsible amounts of wine alone in her kitchen, who didn’t even have the option of disappearing for a few hours with a lover, who hadn’t had any one helping her to get out of her own head.
“You would have my vote no matter how you wanted to fuck,” Duo managed, trying to thread the line between humour and authenticity.
Relena gave him a thoughtful, shy look, and he couldn’t help but notice the blotchy pink blush spreading across her chest.
“Is that an offer?”
“Yeah, kinda. I mean, it is if you want it to be.” He scrubbed his hands over his face again and tried to articulate his thoughts like an adult. “We can forget I said anything. But, I mean. Look, we’re both anxious and frustrated and like. We’ve known each other forever. I don’t think politics are an issue here, and I promise not to call the press over how bad you need to get dicked down.”
Relena winced slightly, as if the phrase “dicked down” caused her indigestion, but that telltale blush kept creeping up her chest to her neck.
“And also,” Duo added, because he was nothing if not painfully, embarrassingly honest, “To be completely clear: I do want you. I want you worse than I’ve wanted anyone in ages. You understand this whole fucking mess. You opened the door and listened to me, even though a sane person would have kicked me out of the building. Besides,” He turned so that they were leaning against the counter side-by-side, elbows brushing, staring down at their glasses as if they were discussing the weather, because there was honesty and then there was honesty with eye contact, and he wasn’t quite up to that one.
“Besides,” he finished, stealing a glance at her, “it sucks that you can’t have what you want. It sucks, and I hate that for you, and even if I’m not the guy for the job, you should have something, somebody, who you can lose yourself with. Who will give you everything you want, without stress or whatever. With trust or something.”
There was an invisible membrane vibrating between them, a magnetic pull and push. Relena’s breath was coming in shallow and just a little afraid, and Duo felt unusually tentative. Relena was a heady combination of strong and fragile, confident and calculating. He could smell her light perfume, subtle enough that he wanted to nose closer, press his face against her pulse points to drink in the notes of jasmine and lemon balm and orchids. She swirled the liquor in her glass thoughtfully, then leaned her cheek against a palm to look up and over at him.
“I think you do a lot of very stupid things,” she said finally, “but I do trust you. I trust you enough that the idea of you and me…” She looked him up and down, gnawing on her lower lip again. The blush had taken over her face, her pink cheeks glowing and her gnawed lip swollen and red. “To be perfectly frank, the idea of being with you isn't exactly a new thought for me.”
And that was, he thought, with a warm twist behind his navel, a revelation for him, but fuck if he was going to interrupt her train of thought when the tracks were heading in this direction. She screwed her eyes shut and said all in one breath, “This is so difficult, because you’re frustrated and horny and so, so attractive and you make me so nervous, because it's all so easy for you, and I don’t want to be another stupid thing you do, but then when I think about you taking me, my eyes cross and I can’t think at all.”
“You aren’t a stupid thing,” was all he managed before reaching out, finding that if he cupped a palm around her face, she would lean in, wide-eyes fluttering closed as he traced the bow of her upper lip with his thumb, soft skin against callouses. His pulse was pounding wildly in his ears and he kept himself carefully still, as though Relena were a wild animal about to startle and run.
She sighed against his palm, and slid closer, one hand resting against his chest, “This is probably a terrible idea, isn’t it?”
“Probably,” he admitted, even though his brain was arguing that no, this was in fact the best idea he’d ever heard.
Relena laughed, and tipped her face up, inches from his own, her eyes flickering between his mouth and his eyes.
“I suppose as long as we both know that,” she sighed, and that was all he needed to close the distance, to crush their mouths together. He was a little harder, a little hungrier, than he’d meant to be, but Relena opened up underneath him, her tongue tracing the sharp edge of a tooth, mouth slick and yielding. He yanked her flush up against him so that he could keep swallowing down her soft, surprised little moans, trying to keep himself from just coming in his jeans, because since when had kissing ever been this hot?
Her light robe had fallen forgotten on the floor, and he was doing his best to brace against the countertop, hold her up, and get his hands up her slip, but he kept getting distracted. There were constellations of freckles on her shoulder that were begging to be licked and bitten, and the long length of her neck was equally fascinating, but then there was her mouth, and he wasn’t quite finished kissing her to his satisfaction. Relena was clinging to the back of his shirt with both fists, making these choked little gasps, and it was so hot, it was so fucking hot, but he wanted more. He wanted to see if he could make her scream, to make her forget to stay quiet and composed, to wipe away that last layer of artifice, to get her all messy and desperate and writhing.
She raised her lips to his ear, playing with the top button of his shirt, rolling it between her fingers and whispering, “May I?”
“Fuck, please,” he gasped back, and she started tearing at the buttons in earnest, and he reached up to help, to go faster. Their fingers tangled together, each brush of skin on skin electric, until his shirt front was finally open and she could run a light hand over his chest and down, tickling his sides.
“Oh, goodness!” Relena gasped, and Duo suddenly realized that although he’d always slotted her into the same category as his other Old Friends, she occupied a very different space in the world. She’d never shared lockers and showers with him, had never seen the slow collection of ink building under his clothes. She reached out to trace her fingertips over the oldest of them, the gaudy, bold Sacred Heart in the center of his chest.
“Yeah, uh. I, um,” he coughed, then tried again, “hope you don’t hate tattoos?” He wasn’t embarrassed, people saw them all the time, but Relena was really looking, tracing the fading ink, examining him in a new, visceral way. He’d never really cared about anyone else’s opinions before, and there was a touch of class paranoia buried deep inside his held breath. A distant intrusive anxiety emerged like a noxious weed, a fear that Relena would realize that he was so, so far beneath her. What if she saw him for what he was, a grimy punk from the shittiest, grimiest colony, tattooed and sunburned, from a different, baser, lower world.
“Did they hurt?” she asked breathily, and then his brain was shorting out because the last thing he had expected was that she would bend across to lick them.
“Hurgh,” he gasped, as she moved from his tattoo to his nipple, and he gritted his teeth to keep from popping in his jeans like a teenager, just from the brush of her mouth. “Some hurt. Some were fine. Depends, fuck, on the place.”
“Which one hurt the most?” she asked, tracing the dark lines of St. Jude with her fingertips, fascinated.
“Inner arm,” he gasped out, but she was pulling the open shirt off of his shoulders and down, looking him over with a kind of greedy wonder.
“There are so many,” she murmured, taking in his shoulders and arms, spinning him gently to examine his back. She guided him to face her again, and, confusingly, she looked a little bit chagrined.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, “I didn’t stop to think… I’m so sorry if it’s sacrilegious or disrespectful for me to be… salivating over them.”
“What? No! No, uh, salivate away. It’s not like they aren’t a part of me.”
“I’ve never really been able to tell,” she replied softly, “what religion means to you. I know it means something, and it has since I met you, but I’m never sure what that something is.” The look she was giving him was so fucking warm and welcoming and he couldn’t stand it, he wanted to push at her, to be swallowed up, enveloped.
“I’m not always sure, myself,” he admitted. “Sometimes it’s religion, and sometimes it’s memory, and sometimes it’s irony and bravado. Sometimes it’s all of that kinda mixed together.”
“You are full of the most amazing contradictions,” Relena smiled, full of affection. “And you are still so very much yourself, in a way that so few of us ever get to be.”
He scoffed, a little embarrassed. “Well, I wish I had an ounce of your poise and stoicism and like. Okay, bear with me, ‘cause I mean this in a good way, but calculating? I’ve never calculated shit in my life.”
“That’s one of the things I like best about you,” Relena muttered back, leaning up to kiss him again, and that sweet, momentary pause was overwhelmed by heat and hunger.
Her hands on his bare chest were burning, but he wanted to get even closer, pushing the straps of her slip down to let the entire thing slide down off of her to puddle on the floor. She had incredible tits, charmingly asymmetrical, with dusty pink areolas, and just the perfect size to squeeze. She moaned out when he did, reaching out and letting the dense weight of her chest settle into his palm. That unprepared, whiney little groan, was the last thread of playing it cool, dignity over, and he dropped to his knees so he could bury his face in her meticulously groomed thatch and breathe her in. The soft, rich scent of her arousal was dizzying, and when he traced his thumb over her swollen outer labia, dark with blood-flow and desire, she grabbed at his shoulder and hair, unbalanced by the touch. The softer lips of her opening were slick and wet, and he pressed his tongue against them, licking his way up to nose at her clit, spreading her apart with his hands and letting her sag against him.
He would have been happy to spend the rest of the night on his knees, letting the wet warmth of her arousal and his own greedy mouth drip down his chin. He couldn’t think of anything better than to keep teasing at her clit and tracing the topography of her opening with his tongue, but it was increasingly difficult to press her thighs apart, keep her upright and keep himself from falling over. He pulled back and wiped his wet face against his arm, reaching up to gently pull her down to the floor with him, but she twisted in his arms until she had him flat on his back under her. Given that she was naked and flushed and fumbling with his belt, he didn’t see any reason to argue with the change of plan.
His fingers had brushed against the vertical line of transdermal medical patches stretching from her hip to belly, and now that he could see, as well as feel, he poked at each one with a finger.
“Hormone and contraceptive control,” he murmured as he tapped the reddish patch at the top, then down to the three pale yellow spots below. “Analgesics, damn, woman, that’s a lot of aspirin, but honestly,” he let his fingers drift down to the last five, the peculiar, target-shaped patches that he recognized on sight. “This is the most antidepressants I’ve ever seen on anyone. Are you, I don’t know, okay?”
“I thought we’d established that neither of us were okay,” she replied, and it hit him, finally, fully, how deeply he wanted her, how much he needed this, all of it, the mess and affection and the deep, bittersweet, raw understanding.
Relena had wrestled his belt and fly open and he had to cover his own mouth to stifle the groan as her long, perfect fingers closed experimentally around his cock. She stroked at him thoughtfully, then gave him a serious look.
“I don’t often get an opportunity to try this, so don’t laugh at me,” she warned, and before he could ask for clarification, dropped her head between his thighs.
He gave an incoherent, garbled gasp when her soft lips closed over the head of his cock, her tongue carefully tracing the shape of him, running over the top and along the tender valley between tip and shaft. When she hit that sweet, sensitive spot at the seam and he groaned, body twitching compulsively, she doubled down, circling his cock with her tongue, lapping at that sensitive spot as she took him deeper into her mouth. He made an abortive little thrust up, and she made a satisfied little noise deep in her throat. She reached up blindly until she found his hand, guiding it firmly down to her head and then pushing down, showing him how she wanted to be held.
He usually was on the other side of any carnal hair-pulling, he had enough hair that it came up pretty often, so he knew just how to rake his fingers deep into her scalp, to close his fist carefully, to not pull individual hairs, but to hold all of it, all of her. She pushed her head demandingly up at him until he let his hands fully clench into fists, until he gave in and let himself thrust up into her eager mouth, sweating and shaking. She kept humming contented little moans around his cock, vibrating deep from inside her throat and he wondered if he could bottle this feeling, the fists clenched in her hair, the long, lingering strokes of her tongue, the warmth of her mouth.
She seemed just as happy as he had been to dive in and devour, but it was, if anything, a little too hot, and if she wanted more from him than tongue and fingers, they needed to stop, to slow down, something. He could hold himself back from finishing, but only if she stopped doing that thing with her tongue. It was achingly hard to pull her back, and it was almost in vain. Relena, poised, polished, serious Relena, was a gasping mess, sleek hair tangled in his hands, chest red and blotchy and heaving, licking at her swollen red lips in between desperate gasps for breath. She was the hottest thing he’d ever seen in his life, no doubt, no contest, at least not until she opened her mouth.
“You said any way I wanted,” she panted out, almost pleading, and he had to squeeze at the base of his cock, hard, to keep himself under control, “so if you wanted to, I want… please…”
“Hard and rough?” he rasped out, “Babe, I will fuck you hard, rough, underwater, with green eggs and ham, anyway you want it. The fuck, Relena, asking me like it’s some kind of chore, Jesus Christ.” Her face dissolved at that, and he thought, vaguely, that he might like that startled, silly little giggle best of all. All of her, the swollen lips, the welcome arms, the hot, slick heat of her, the kinship and comfort, those steady rows of medical patches holding her all together, that sexy giggle, all of it made him want, want more than he’d ever wanted anything, and fuck, if she wanted it hard and rough? She could have anything she wanted.
He had her flipped over and under him before she had time to gasp, lining up his cock with one hand, the other pushing her soft thigh up and open. He held her there, just looking at her, waiting, until their eyes could lock and he could beg-promise, “Just tell me if you want me to stop, Relena, I swear, whenever…”
“Duo, fuck!” Relena gasped out, arching up against him, “please!” And he was pushing into her, a little too fast and hard, maybe, but she was swollen and ready and the cry she made when he brought them crashing together was enough to make him forget his own name. She wanted rough, he remembered vaguely, and was surprised by how hot it felt to pin her wrists over her head with one hand and knead her ass with the other. He dug his fingers in deeper, pulling her in with each thrust until the slap of their bodies coming together was fast enough to shock each drawn-out moan into desperate, staccato little wails of pleasure-pain and hunger.
Somehow, he wasn’t sure exactly, they made their way from the floor to the wall, where he could pin her back with his own weight and lift her up with a hand under her ass. Each slide down the wall onto his cock was met with the frantic fumble of her fingers between her own legs, and that was so fucking hot that he rolled them down the two steps into the carpeted lounging area. He pulled her roughly up on her hands and knees so he could curl over her, fuck her as hard as she could take, and be able to reach down and around her belly to rub at her clit himself.
She gave him a wide-eyed, delighted, lip-bitten smile over her shoulder and then they slid back together again, as though they were magnetically compelled, as though they’d done this so many times before that they simply fell together, as naturally as though they’d been forged with the other in mind. The strange, heady combination of animalistic need and raw, unfiltered affection was overwhelming. He wasn’t sure exactly how long they ground and pushed against one another, pouring sweat and a few tears, only that it was both an eternity and an instant before Relena began to flutter, deep inside of her, her cries growing louder as he pushed in even deeper, rubbing her clit with the wetness of her own arousal.
“I’m not gonna be able to- “ he started to say, but then her body clenched around him and it was too late. He tried to pull out, but Relena stopped him, pulling him back in, holding him tight to her body and letting him spill out as deep as he could go.
She was shaking like a leaf as he rolled them gently onto their backs, held her as she shook and wrapped her tight against him as he reached down to dip fingers into her and drag his seed up to her clit and rub it in until she screamed and shuddered against him again. He thought, as much as he was still able to think, that he might close his eyes. Just while he held her against his chest and caught his breath. Just for a second.
There was a soft, lavender-scented blanket covering him when he blinked awake, a blanket and a sofa cushion for a pillow. A blanket and the warm, pressed down divot in the carpet where until very recently, someone else had been sleeping. He blinked again, tried to roll over, got tangled in his own hair, and finally managed to prop himself up with the blanket pooled around his waist.
It was still dark, but there was a faint peachy glow around the windows heralding the dawn. He heard the murmur of Relena’s voice, pausing, then talking again, taking a call in a neighboring room. Duo stretched out, astonished by how much lighter he felt, even if he could already feel the blooming bruises on his hip bones and the raw carpet burn on his knees and back. He tried to freak out, but it wouldn’t rise up. He wasn’t sure what it meant, or what it was going to mean, but it didn’t seem to matter, only that right now, it was. He felt exorcised, unburdened, and he could only blame part of that on exponentially the best sex he'd ever had by a factor of ten. He heard the soft patter of footsteps approaching from the hall, and then she was there, hair still sticking up in all directions. She was smiling shyly at him, and his belly flipped in fluttery, sophomoric gratification as he saw that she was wearing nothing but his discarded shirt.
“Hello,” she said, and the way she was beaming at him had him grinning back up at her.
“Hi.”
“I just received a call from the hospital,” she continued, “Heero’s out of urgent care, and he’s agreed to both a longer stay and to work with a specialist. Apparently, Sally is a bit scarier than either of us.”
“Well, she is also his boss,” Duo added with a wink, so relieved that he could cry, laugh, drag Relena back down to the floor and kiss her stupid.
“I was going to take coffee, and then perhaps rest a bit longer until visiting hours at the hospital?” Relena continued, the uptick in her voice turning it tentative and questioning. “And I thought, if you wanted, if you would like to, you could stay?”
The sunrise behind her was beginning to rise in earnest, backlighting her like a gilded statue of St. Catherine. The city was waking up, stretching, Heero had woken up, and he was waking up, too. He reached out a hand and gently pulled her back down and under the blanket, warm against his chest.
“Yeah. I’ll stay as long as you want.”