Kracken
Disclaimer:I don't own them and I don't make any money off of this.
Warnings:Male/male sex, graphic, violence, language
Lawless Hearts
Falling Under
The finish line was a good distance. That distance doubled when you considered all the big machines, cursing and shoving men, and the dangerous terrain. The newbies of course, went down in the mud so fast it was as if they'd dumped themselves over. I was treated to a view of one of their machines, a rotating, deadly, hunk of metal, as it sailed past my bumper and plowed into two other machines. They went down and my left side was free to maneuver in.
You didn't just run for the finish. Nobody would let you do it, for one thing. That was 'asking for it'. Instead, you had to turn to your opponents and make sure they didn't make it either. There have been a few 'last man standing' contests where no one actually finished the race.
We kicked, we shoved, and we rammed each other. Bone and muscle took a harsh beating as we churned the mud under our wheels. That mud splattered everywhere and tossed up its secrets in weird, mud covered chunks that had a tendency to fly every which way. I avoided them, weaving and ducking as I steered, while Heero gave our opponents as good as we got.
I have to give it to him, Heero did damned good for a first timer. He stayed on, which was most of the battle, and he was a match for anyone that came for us. I was actually getting cocky, thinking that we might have a chance. I'd never had one before. It takes a certain amount of ruthlessness to win. I didn't have it, didn't really want to have it either. I was in it for the fun. It would have been nice to win, but, oh, well....
A kick to the jaw made my head almost spin around. I saw lights and sagged over the handlebars as Heero made a sound that alerted me that someone was about to get turned into paste. I groped backwards, even as I dodged another booted kick, and clutched at Heero's shirt. "Okay!" I assured him as I forced myself to straighten and swerve from my attacker. My head throbbed and one eye seemed covered in a haze. I blinked rapidly and felt the swelling there. God, it hurt!
"Duo?!" Heero shouted at me, a question.
"Okay!" I repeated and went back to the business of steering.
I looked back as I heard an engine rev almost in my ear and saw Heero do an incredible stunt. Grabbing onto the back of my seat, he balanced on his hands and kicked out with both feet. It took my lot neighbor down and I crowed in delight, right before Stubbert fell almost under my wheels. I'm not a bastard and I don't kill people just because they piss me off and try to run me out of business. I had one option to avoid him in those close quarters. I popped a wheelie and jerked Mudhopper sideways. It was all reflex. reflex that didn't take into account that Heero was just sitting back down and that there was an upswing of mud covered machine in the path of my maneuver.
We came down hard, mud and metal twisting and heaving, and then we suddenly popped up again like a spring from the force of our landing. We started going over backwards. I didn't have time for 'Oh, shit!'. I did have time for 'Fuck!' and the sure knowledge that we were about to get crushed by Mudhopper.
Arms went around my waist and yanked me backwards off of Mudhopper. As we hit the mud, I was dimly aware of Heero holding me against his chest as he kicked upwards. Stupid, useless... A man wasn't strong enough to stop that kind of weight and force. It hit hard and we were both driven under. I felt a numb pain. Sounds weird, but that's what it was. I guess I was knocked out before it could really sink in that I was hurt, that metal had slammed into soft tissue, that Duo Maxwell was probably crushed beyond what a medic could patch together. At least dying didn't suck as much as I thought it would.
Waking up sucked royally though. I came to with the medic, Heero, and Stubbert dragging me out of the mud. Between them, they carried me to the sidelines. My skin felt like I had been attacked by cut glass and rusty nails, my mouth was full of caustic tasting mud, and breathing was a collection of wheezes forced on my abused diaphragm. I think the handlebars had tried to make shishkabob out of it.
'You better not die, Maxwell!" Stubbert snarled. "I still have to run you out of business!"
"F-f-f-fuck y-you!" I wheezed and spat out dirt in his general direction.
The man laughed. I don't remember ever hearing that sound come out of that jackass before. Maybe he just hadn't wanted the guilt on his mind; Duo Maxwell, hated competition, saving his damned life at the cost of his own. Our fellow scrap men would never have let him forget it.
I reached out and gripped Heero's arm, pulling him in close. He wiped at my face with rags the medic was handing him while that man doused my wounds with stinging antiseptic. Heero cleared my one eye of a clot of mud. I blinked at him, still dazed. "Y-You okay?"
"Left leg," he admitted as if it didn't matter. He sounded like a soldier reporting as he continued to clean me up. "A deep cut in my calf. Bruises. A contusion on my left shoulder." That drone to his voice ended abruptly and he asked anxiously, "Are you allright?"
I snorted as I managed to regain my ability to breathe. "Shouldn't be..." I puzzled over his pale, pinched expression. It made me suddenly afraid. I mentally checked myself out. I didn't feel any random pieces of metal sticking in me, didn't feel anything crushed or too bad off, so what the hell...?
"I am allright, aren't I?" I demanded.
The medic made a pissy sound. "You boys go out there and try and kill yourselves, and you're worried now?" He relented as my eyes swiveled to him. I must have looked ready to panic. "You're okay," he assured me gruffly. "You're going to feel it for a few days though. Keep those damned wounds soaking in antiseptic and, first sign of infection, get your ass down to hospital before something has to be amputated for gangrene."
"I bet you get awards for your wonderful bed side manner," I sneered, right before he jabbed a pressure needle against my neck and injected something that burned. "Crap, what the hell was that?"
The medic waved towards the field and the men still battling it out. "You don't want to know what's out there that you need a shot for, okay?" He said to Heero, as he stood up. "Get him home and cleaned up. The race is over for him."
That's what really hurt.
Stubbert stood as well. He glared at Heero. "Need a hand?" He asked in the same tone of voice as, 'Need me to kick your ass?'
"Fuck off, Stubbert!" I growled.
Stubbert snorted and his muddy boot gave me a kick, well, a nudge, to be honest, because Heero put a hand out and stopped him. "Be a smart ass all you want, Maxwell," Stubbert warned, "You earned the right today. Tomorrow, though, we'll see."
He left. It was just Heero and me now and I felt whipped down to my soul. I sighed. I tried to shove muddy bangs out of my face, but I was shaking too badly. "Lost again," I said, pretending to joke. "Didn't want to break my track record."
Heero shook mud from a rag in his hands and then tossed it over his shoulder. It was then that I saw that he was covered in mud too. He had been underneath me after all. I thought about that, thought about how he could have left me and saved himself. Instead, he had deliberately matched his strength against that machine... for me.
"Sorry," I said, not knowing what else to say.
Heero looked down at me, puzzled. "Why?"
"I put you in danger by not being fast enough. Guess... " I paused, feeling ashamed, and then finished lamely, "Guess I'm getting rusty..."
Heero grunted, as if I had said something funny, as he gathered up our things and picked me up bodily. When he slung me into a fireman's carry, I really had to wonder at the man's strength as he ignored his own injuries and easily began walking away from the field and towards my lot.
Heero said at last, as the rain began to slow, "You aren't a soldier any longer."
That said a lot of things and I knew he was right. It was an excuse that I wanted to take and hold close. I didn't want to feel like I didn't measure up just then. Losing on the mud field was bad enough.
I remembered some pride, or at least wanted to win some back. "You can put me down. I can walk."
Heero was struggling to walk, slogging through mud, bowed under my weight. He grunted, "You have a head injury."
"Which gives me one hell of a headache but doesn't effect my legs, Yuy. Put me down!" I tried pushing off from his shoulder, but it was hard to do in my position. I ended up just flopping uselessly.
Okay, I don't like to be embarrassed or to feel that I look like an idiot. I didn't like having everyone see me carried from the field and I didn't like Heero thinking that I needed to be carried. It was a two pronged fork in my ego and it stabbed in deep where my temper was coiled up.
You know, sometimes you're angry and you don't even know it. It hides and grows bigger and bigger, getting more and more wound up, until something, or someone, triggers it. Heero, unfortunately, turned out to be that trigger. Guess I was still mad about the sting operation, about being stripped mentally naked and hung out where everyone could gawk at me, about having my place robbed, about having to take handouts, about losing the damned race. All I know is that, one moment I was hanging over Heero's shoulder as he obstinately refused to put me down, and the next I was tightening my arm around his throat and punching him.
We went down like a sack of bad parts. Heero tried to recover, but instinct was making him try and duck my rain of punches, defend himself, and drop me all at the same time. He landed on the bottom, but that wasn't to my advantage. As the mud splashed upwards and then came down to cover us, he twisted me side ways so that I lost my lock on his throat and he shoved me off.
I was cussing in a long rant, not even really aware of what the hell I was saying. I couldn't get it stopped. My temper was like an erupting volcano. I was blind with it, numb to everything else around us and just reacting. I was grabbing at Heero's shirt, fisting it, pulling him in, not allowing him to get away.
I came back to myself a little when I felt my knuckles stinging. That pain registered very slowly. The next thing I noticed, was that Heero wasn't hitting back. He was deftly deflecting my every blow despite how I was in his face and grabbing at him. I came back completely, when I realized that I was shouting myself hoarse.
"Goddam son of a bitch! You think you can come back into my life? Wanna see how bad Duo Maxwell's doing? Want to see Maxwell running his goddam business into the ground? Want to see how I can't even fucking eat? Badass gundam pilot can't even win a fucking mud contest! You get enough laughs yet? You get enough stuff to take back to the guys at work so you can yuck it up? Bet you're glad you didn't hook up with me after the war. Bet your glad you hooked your goddam life to Relena Bitchcraft! Hilde got a clue and she left too. Who the hell wants to stick around me? You'll be fucking glad to get the hell away from me when this is all over, won't you? Then you won't have to pretend you give a fuck about me anymore for the sake of the mission!"
It was like a vocal purge. I heard my own voice as if it belonged to someone else, some loser who needed a mud foot stuck up his butt for being such a goddam whiner. What was all this crap? I didn't realize just how good I was at bottling things up and putting on a happy face for myself. I had totally convinced myself that everything was a-okay with my life and with Heero. Surprise, surprise...
I stopped when I ran out of breath and just sat next to Heero in the abrasive mud, panting, both hands fisted in the front of his t-shirt. There was blood, I noticed in a daze, blood from my knuckles smearing the shirt and Heero's skin. Heero had definite black eye.
Our eyes met. Mine were as blank as my mind just then, but Heero's... they were worried, full of concern for me. When his broad hand tangled at the back of my neck and grabbed a fist full of braid, I thought for sure I'd read that look wrong and that he was going to deck me. Instead.... Instead, Heero forcefully pulled me down by my hair and locked fierce lips with me. It was a hard, deep kiss, full of mud, some blood from Heero's split lip, and the taste of... testosterone? What ever it was it tasted wild, primal, and I wanted more. I jammed my tongue in and searched his mouth, not caring about what just happened between us, not caring where we were, not... caring... about... anything...
Have you ever done something and had a feeling that it was 'right'? Perfectly 'right'? Absolutely 'right'? Well, I never had before. Tangled with Heero in the mud, trying to swallow his tongue whole, feeling his strong hands gripping me to him as if we were going to wrestle, I had that feeling of 'right' and it was so strong it was blinding, painful, all encompassing, mind blowing, and absolutely terrifying. I wanted to grab him and pull him right into me. I wanted to shove a hand into him and pull out that other half of my damned soul, because, along with that feeling of 'right', I had the strongest feeling that Heero had been keeping that part of me all this time and I had never realized it was missing until just then.
No, I'm not about to wax eloquent and poetic, or whatever they call it. I had gut feelings. I was scared and needy. I wanted to lock lips with that damned man forever. And, at my basest; I really wanted to screw his lights out, right then and there, like I'd never wanted to with anyone else before in my life.
The kiss had to end. Really it did. We pulled away with the sound of suction breaking and just looked at each other. We didn't say anything. We both had the same expression; expectant. We both knew what came next. We helped each other up, ignored the dripping mud, ignored our hurts, and ignored people gawking at us. Very slowly, I put an arm over Heero's shoulder and he slipped one around my waist. We did a mutual support and limp back to my lot.
We were reduced to hushed whispers and I don't know why.
"Get the door."
"Okay."
"Allright?"
"Yes."
"We need to get cleaned up."
"Okay."
We locked the door of my shack by jamming the chair under the knob. We limped to the bedroom and into the bathroom. I turned on the shower, while Heero put out towels, shampoo, soap, and a brush as if we were about to do some sort of important ceremony.
We faced each other again, and we both smiled. Hands began to pull at clothes and we undressed each other. Heero caressed my sides, my bare back, looking at scraps and cuts, checking large bruises. I did the same for him.
I snickered at all the mud on him. He used the edge of his thumb to scrape some away from my eyes and chuckled lightly in return. We shared a long look and then... I reached out and stroked his growing erection. I boldly pulled him into the spray of the shower by it and a hand behind his neck. We locked lips and I searched for that feeling, that wild taste in his mouth again. He cupped my ass with both hands and just held on.
We soaped, we sluiced, and we soaped again. Heero ran a hand down the crack of my ass and 'cleaned off' my balls with gentle, calloused fingers. That faint,'scratching' made my damned toes curl. I kept stroking him, loving that feel of masculine strength and virility. I wanted him, wanted to explore his every taste. I began to kneel, the water pounding down on top of us both.
Heero caught at me, brought me up again, cupped my face and kissed me all over. He shampooed my hair, unbraiding it and patiently getting all the mud out. At one point, he pulled my curtain of wet hair aside and rubbed at me, letting me feel how hard and wanting me he was. He reached in front and palmed my erection. I spread my legs to keep from falling over and just closed my eyes and enjoyed it.
Hands tugged. I turned off the water. We weren't reluctant to leave the shower. Promises were made with smiles and eyes glowing with rising passion. We toweled off. My hair was squeezed out, brushed straight, and dried as well as we could manage, and then we were on our way to the bed.
We didn't get there all at once. I was pressed against a wall and ravaged. I pulled Heero to me and rode his knee, rocking and sliding it against the space between my balls and my entrance. He pulled up my legs and made me straddle him, his erection teasing me, but not daring anything yet. We were still injured. Heero still limped. It faded to the back of our minds, though, and we weren't feeling pain. Endorphines are wonderful for that. Maybe we'd pay for it later, but we weren't caring about it just now.
We crawled onto my narrow bed and sixty nined. I groaned and felt my eyes roll back into my head as Heero sucked my cock into moist heat, his tongue swirling and his hand stroking my length with a tight grip. I returned the favor. Heero's cock was swollen and rising from a nest of black hair. It called to me, to that part of me that had made me different since my birth, that part of me that said, 'I want guys! Oh, God, do I want them!' instead of wanting girls. I eagerly swallowed Heero down and manhandled him with my mouth. I couldn't get enough of him. I gripped his ass and pulled him in, sinking in my fingers as I worked up and down, worshiping that wonderful, rigid, length of....
"God!" Heero exclaimed in a strangled voice and he came so heavy and so hard, I choked. I pulled up and let him slide out of my mouth along with his hot load as I tried to recover.
Heero didn't leave me hanging. Even as he was still gasping from his own orgasm, he was jerking me off, milking me with hard strokes, his hand a tight vise around my erection. When he swallowed me down to my root, I shouted in shock at the sensation of reaching his tonsils, and then came like I had never come before.
Neither of us had the strength for anything after that. I pulled the blanket up over us and we sprawled together. Heero was completely limp and breathing evenly in sleep as I curled against his back and draped an arm over him. I nuzzled his shoulder and then took a sleepy bite, some sort of revenge, or leftover spite, from our fight in the mud. Or, maybe, it was punishment for all my confusion. I was still confused. My mind wanted to figure out what was going to happen when we woke up, so sure that this act, that had seemed so natural and so wonderfully perfect, wouldn't seem so perfect when we were rested and in our right minds again.
I touched Heero's tousled hair and brushed it back from his handsome face. My heart ached. My libido smelled sex and wanted more. My brain did mental gyrations. Bitter, jaded, hard, it wanted to look for the con, the scam, the reason why this was all going to blow up in my face later.
Heero sighed and murmured, some part of him aware of me still. "Duo." It sounded like lust and... love.
Hope peeked out and tried to convince me to believe in it.
I bit Heero again, harder. He grunted and frowned in his sleep. Screw hope. Screw tomorrow. Screw thinking about it being anything other than sex and temporary madness. It was safer that way. I couldn't be disappointed if I thought of it like that.
I kissed the bite and leaned my cheek against it, all of my thinking collapsing at once into a big mental heap. I couldn't do it. I couldn't pretend that what had just happened had been nothing. It had been something, an earth moving, life changing... something. .. All I could hope for, was that Heero felt the same way and that I hadn't just lost my mind.