Kracken
Disclaimer;I don't own them and I don't make any money off of this
Warning:Male/male sex, graphic, violence, language,attempted NCS
Soldier Boys
Sequel to Under the Moon
Running Men
"Okay, so that didn't work so well," Duo grumbled as they slipped from one dark alley to the next, Oz soldiers seeming to pop up at every turn.
"You're getting to old for big eyes and quivering lips, I think," Heero said.
"I almost had him," Duo grumbled as he crouched and peeked around a corner. "If he hadn't insisted on patting me down, the pervert, we would have been free and clear." He shook his head in sympathy. "Poor guy is going to be bent over for a month. I had to kick him pretty hard." Heero didn't reply to that and Duo knew what he was thinking, that he should have quietly killed the man instead. "I'm pretty sure he still thinks we were just a couple of joy riding teens," Duo told him.
Heero glared. "You know that for a fact?"
Duo scowled, "No, but I didn't hear him groan after us, 'F'n terrorists', either after we took off running. I heard 'F'n punks.' That's a big difference."
Heero was quiet. It was useless to argue about it any further, especially when they were in dire straits, and Heero was never a person to waste breath. Finally, he asked simply, "Status?"
Duo grunted and rolled eyes at him. "What's it matter?"
"If we are discovered, and you can't fight or run, it does matter," Heero replied, but there was a soft concern in his that spoke of another reason for his question, his own personal concern.
Duo sighed. "Everything stings and aches and I'm tired, but none of that is going to kill me."
Duo saw two soldiers stop a young man on the street and begin talking to him. He made a motion for Heero to be quiet and they sank further back into the shadows to watch. One of the soldiers had a machine gun. He pointed it at the man's gut and the man was pale and stammering answers to what ever they were asking. Duo turned and sank back against a wall.
"I'm tired of this," Duo said angrily. "Enough with the stealth crap. I say we make a break for it and run like hell. If they want to try and stop us, that's their own fault."
Heero sighed as he crouched in front of Duo, hand on the butt of his gun. The alley stunk of garbage from a nearby restaurant and the shadows were caused by the very tall brownstones on either side of them. A trickle of dirty water ran down the center of the alley and Heero's heels were almost in it. There wasn't room for him to stand anywhere else and still face Duo. His expression was determined, determined to keep Duo from making a mistake in his impatience. "Disguise," he said and Duo blinked at him. "It has a good chance of working. They have so many soldiers coming and going, it would be hard for someone to know every face."
Duo flicked his braid at Heero and it slapped him lightly on the cheek. "Forgetting something?"
Heero caught the braid deftly, leaned forward, and tucked it into the back of Duo's coat.
"That's not foolproof," Duo told him unnecessarily.
"Nothing is," Heero replied. "I don't see that we have much choice. If we run for it, then we will be dragging Oz soldiers behind us as we try and escape, compromising ourselves. I would rather try an option that has a higher probability of survival with our identities still unknown."
Duo thought about it and then sighed. "All right. You go get us two uniforms in extra small and I'll hang out here." When Heero looked surprised, Duo said, "You're stronger and more mobile, right now. You don't need me fumbling around and blowing things."
That was a hard admission to make and Heero understood that. He nodded and was gone, slipping into the shadows so well and so quickly that Duo realized, with a knot in his gut, just how much of a liability he had been to Heero so far.
The Oz soldiers were getting angry. Duo couldn't make out what they were saying as much as he tried. There was a wind and it was making a whistling sound as it was sucked through the alley. He shivered and sank huddled in his coat, putting hands deep into the pockets.
The rapid round of gunfire only lasted a second. A quick noise that rose above the wind and then was gone. Duo pressed against the brownstone, heart hammering, eyes wide, and gun in his hand. There was silence and then a loud exclamation that might have been a curse. Duo didn't dare look. He stayed where he was, mind trying to convince him that Heero had just been shot, if not killed.
"No," Duo told himself fiercely. Heero wasn't there. Heero had gone elsewhere to find his victims. Heero wouldn't allow himself to get caught that quickly or that easily.
Duo watched the mouth of the alley, gun tight in his hand, wondering if he dared look as the fear and curiosity ate at him. Suddenly, he saw a slow, thick, oozing trail of steaming blood start to crawl across the pavement. Duo tensed in every muscle.
"Duo," Heero's voice warned and Duo almost jumped out of his skin, his body and gun whirling to confront Heero. Heero, crouching a few feet away, froze until Duo registered who he was.
"Heero," Duo breathed and then he was grabbing Heero's jacket and pulling him close, saying fiercely in his ear, "Let's get the hell out of here!"
Heero tucked his bundle of uniforms under his arm and nodded.
They dressed in a patch of darkness behind a dumpster, stuffed their gear into a military knapsack that Heero had also stolen, and then looked at the ids they were to wear. It was extreme efficiency that Heero had chosen victims that looked somewhat like them. Duo's ID said Ken Harwell and the man had brown hair and a rounded face. Heero's said Harold Bickens and he did look oriental, dark, and brooding.
"You're definitely getting the terrorist of the month award," Duo told him with a grim chuckle. "Now we just need a story."
Heero shrugged. "We simply step in with a convoy going out of town."
"For what reason?" Duo wanted to know. "Do you think they don't know their own men? They'll see us and they'll want to know what's up and why we don't have any paperwork to back us up."
Heero grunted and bent down to the duffel. He slipped out his laptop, booted it up, and hacked into a system in moments. He typed furiously and then powered down his laptop and put it away. "We have orders. We're from Unit 2, Captain Frederick Starks' company. We are being transferred to a field unit."
Duo leaned into Heero for warmth. Visions of that creeping blood, and that gut wrenching fear that it had been Heero's, was slow in fading. Duo felt an overwhelming need to be as prepared as possible for their next attempt to escape the city. The fear of seeing Heero's blood flowing for real, refused to go away despite Duo's efforts. "We still need filler," he said.
"Filler?" Heero echoed with a frown.
"The story behind the story. It's like incidental music," Duo explained. "We can go up there and say, 'Hi, we're Ken Harwell and Harold Bickens', and show them our awful IDs, but if anyone asks, 'So, what did you do to get transferred?' What are you going to tell them? And, no, killing them, is not going to be the answer."
Heero looked impatient, but he was willing to defer to Duo. "Do you have a background story prepared?"
Duo smirked. "Of course. Captain Starks caught us fraternizing and he wants us, not only out of his unit, but clear out of town and on the front as well. Bastard hates guys making out with guys that much, and he'd like to see us get turned into chopped liver by some mobile suits. It's discrimination, I tell you!" Duo faked outrage.
Heero smiled. "I think you deserve your own kind of a award. That is a lie with some truth to it."
Duo frowned, but then he shrugged. "I don't consider that Lying. It's camouflage.
Play acting."
"A fine line," Heero grunted, but then dropped it when Duo frowned even more. Heero was suddenly realizing that he was treading on a land mine at the worst possible time. Duo prided himself on not lying. Pointing out that 'play acting' was, in fact, a lie as well, wasn't a very intelligent thing to do, "but I think you're right, " he added quickly.
Duo's frown smoothed out. He took hold of Heero's elbows and leaned close to his face, "Just follow my lead and play Mr. Silent, if you think you can't keep up the act," he told Heero. "I'll pick up the slack, okay?"
"Roger that," Heero replied, and kissed Duo briefly. When Heero
broke away, he said as he slung the duffel over one shoulder, "Practicing
my part."
Duo laughed, taken by surprise by Heero's humor, but the light hearted moment
didn't last. They were both tense and grim by the time they reached several
units of Oz soldiers milling around several trucks. The disorder was deceptive.
They didn't fool themselves into thinking that their sudden appearance wouldn't
be noted. They weren't wrong.
"You there!" An older, red haired, captain jabbed a finger at them as he strode up with an electronic clipboard. "Who's your commander and what are your orders?"
Heero gave their aliases and their commanding officer. "Transfer to Meridian Point."
The man grunted. "Meridian Point? That's the thick of the fighting right now. There are some insurgents there who have some major firepower. What's the reason for your transfer to that place?"
Heero glared, but Duo looked embarrassed, staring down at his toes.
"Well?!" the Captain snarled. "I asked you a question, soldiers!"
"Fraternization," Duo replied in a small, nervous, voice.
The man scowled. "Fraternization? A man signs you two over to the worst fighting that we've seen in awhile for playing doctor with some of the female troops?"
"Uh," Duo hunched in on himself. Heero just looked uncomfortable.
"Well?" the Captain shouted.
"Actually, we were fraternizing with each other," Duo replied.
They waited for the man to recoil in disgust. Instead, he ran a hand through his close cropped hair and sighed. "What else are soldiers supposed to do when there is a hundred men to one woman in our forces? We aren't goddam machines. This Stark is a fool."
Duo wisely didn't point out that most men wouldn't turn to each other even if there were no women troops, but he kept it behind his teeth and tried not to grin as the Captain half turned, surveyed his own men, and then curtly ordered, "Get on the second transport. You can get off at the fourth checkpoint and take another transport from there. We're only going to the Eastern grid."
"Yes, sir," Duo and Heero said in unison.
The Captain blinked at them and then said, almost sympathetically, "I think a correct punishment would have been to separate you, but you do realize that your captain doesn't expect you to survive his orders?" When Heero and Duo looked back at him with faked horror, he added, "Try to prove him wrong."
"With pleasure, sir," Duo responded grimly and the man gave him a nod of respect for not giving in to fear.
"You have your orders, The Captain barked and then turned away to tend to his own men.
Duo wiped his brow dramatically in relief as Heero led the way to the transport. "Luck's with us this time, I can smell it," Duo whispered under his breath.
"It has a smell?" Heero wondered.
"Yeah," Duo replied. "It smells sweet."
"What does bad luck smell like?" Heero wondered.
"Like the nastiest thing in the world," Duo replied with a grimace.
They climbed into the back of the transport and found a line of soldiers sitting on each side of the flatbed. They were openly stared at. Duo nudged with elbows and a cheeky grin until people made room and then he and Heero sat down. Duo looked up and down the line.
"Don't worry, we're getting off at one of the stops," Duo told them and he saw a relaxing of tension. Soldiers became close knit and they knew each other's moves and moods. Throwing new people into the mix usually meant trouble. "We're going to the front," Duo added, wanting sympathy. He got it. Some of the men looked frightened for them, sympathetic, and some looked almost ill thinking about how they might end up there as well if the fighting became much worse.
"I thought you looked pale," A man said derisively. Ah, the troublemaker, Duo thought sourly. There was one in every bunch.
"They didn't let me confess to my priest before I left," Duo told him. "A man likes to clear off his sins before he gets killed, you know?"
The man glared. He had counted on being the one to generate the fear and to make fun of them. There were some people in the world who took pleasure from that. Duo knew that he was looking at one of them.
"Must have ticked someone off pretty bad to get a death sentence," the man drawled. "Or you must be piss poor soldiers and they figure you're expendable."
"Both, actually, " Duo quipped good naturedly. "That's okay though, I didn't want to make being a soldier my life long career anyway."
There were some guilty, half hearted, laughs from the other men.
"Freak," the man muttered.
Duo shrugged. "Yeah, I guess I am."
The man sized them both up and Duo felt Heero stiffen. In a moment, Duo was afraid, Heero was going to kill everyone in the transport and then try something really over the top to save them.
"You're going AWOL," the man guessed with a knowing glint in his eyes. "You wouldn't be so calm if you were really going to the front."
The transport started up with a roar of the engine and they were committed as it pulled away. Duo knew that he had to say something, some sort of snappy comment to put the man's fears at ease, but nothing came to him. He had overplayed his hand.
Heero suddenly said, in a low, dangerous tone, "Don't question us. We are under orders."
It said something, but didn't say anything as well. Heero was letting the man draw his own conclusions. The man did, looking very nervous. "Special ops?" he asked tensely. Heero gave an imperceptible nod and the man suddenly sat back and withdrew as if he had just found scorpions ready to sting him. "Uh, sorry." Was all he could find to stammer and then his attention was riveted 'elsewhere'. Heero had just effectively saved them both.
I'm never going to hear the end of this, Duo thought sourly, but then he smiled. He would never have though, in a million years, that Heero Yuy would upstage him. Duo was hard put to stifle a laugh.