Disclaimer: I don't own them and I don't make any money off of them.
Warnings: Male/Male sex, graphic, language, violence, S&M, NCS, prostitution.
1x2, 2x OCs
"How long do I have to see you, anyway?" Duo growled as he sat back in a comfortable chair and drummed fingers on the arms.
The Psychologist tapped something into his computer pad as he settled into a chair opposite him. "Do you think that you don't require my services?"
"You're just telling me what I already know," Duo complained. He stilled his hands by jamming them into his pants pockets.
"Sometimes, we don't want to face what we already know," Worfstein explained. "Sometimes, it's easier keeping the blast doors closed."
Duo blinked, "Blast doors? Do you think that the things, that I won't face, are that dangerous, that explosive?"
"I don't know," Worfstein admitted. "Perhaps you're a well adjusted person, after all, and you're able to walk away from your previous life without any trouble?"
Duo frowned. "I've walked away from a lot worse."
"Worse failures?" Worfstein dug.
Duo flinched imperceptibly."Maybe."
"Unscarred?"
Duo said nothing to that, only looked away at a painting of sunflowers, and tried to not let his temper get the best of him.
"Duo, if you were to walk away from Preventers, and onto the street once more, at this very moment, what would you do? What would be your first course of action?"
Duo's mind was quick to supply a laundry list that started with, 'A few tricks to get enough money until he could score a job.' "There's not a lot of help for people like me," he ended up replying.
"It seems hopeless, doesn't it?" Worfstein sympathized. "You see everyone against you, against what you used to be, a terrorist. You're afraid of the hate, so you bar yourself from the very people who could help you. You blind yourself to possibilities. You stick to the shadows rather than- "
"So... You're saying that I'm a chicken shit with a low self esteem problem?" Duo bit out, cutting him off and standing up. "Do you think that I didn't try? Going down on my knees, for some arrogant ass in a three piece suit, wasn't my first option!"
"But it was easier than showing the world that Duo Maxwell needed help, wasn't it?" Worfstein pointed out. "It was better than asking for help from people that you thought hated you and wanted you dead and gone. It was better than begging friends and letting them know that you were having trouble making it."
Duo suddenly kneeled in front of Worfstein's chair and parted the man's knees. He leered. "It is something that I'm good at. Want to try? I'll show you why I was so damned popular. Come on. I bet you always wanted to taste the 'other side'."
Worfstein made a note on his pad and looked down at Duo with acute sadness. "This is what I mean by 'closing the blast doors', Duo. Maybe we should try again tomorrow?"
Duo thrust himself to his feet, face going red in embarrassment. He couldn't get any words out, disgusted by his own actions, and furious at Worfstein's calm. "I'm leaving!" He snarled.
"Duo," Worfstein replied, "I know it's hard, but running away only makes it worse."
Duo stood very still, fists clenched, and head bowed, and then he managed, "Tomorrow.", and fled the room.
----------------------------
"He's dead." Heero turned his hand sized computer towards Duo and clicked through several crime scene photos of his one time pimp. It was a gruesome sight. "You can admit that he was your pimp, now."
Duo frowned and asked softly, "What happened?"
"He had pictures and vids of you," Heero explained. "Your pimp kept them at his bedside. One of the investigators recognized you."
Duo gave a ghost of a smile that was full of nausea. "I guess that I was his 'favorite'. I didn't think he cared that much. So, who was the investigator?"
"Wu Fei."
Duo winced.
"At least you can still be embarrassed," Heero commented sourly, "especially after doing the things that were in those tapes and photos."
Duo felt heat scald his face. "You looked?"
"No, but they were described to me." Heero looked uncomfortable. "I will have to look, though, as part of my investigation."
"I didn't enjoy it," Duo felt the need to say, looking hard at the table top and clenching his hands together. "He owned me. He had me hooked. I needed the stuff, the drugs."
Heero flipped his computer closed and his hand was very tight on the case. "Duo... I don't understand any of this. I've seen it happen, to many civilians, but you... You've been on your own, fighting wars, for many years without resorting to... this."
Duo ran his hands through his hair and took a deep breath. He shook his head and stood up, turning away from Heero and wrapping his arms around himself. "It was a trap, Heero. I saw it, I guess, but... I don't know. Will you believe me if I tell you that I just don't know what happened to me? Maybe..." He hunched in on himself and stopped talking.
"What?" Heero prompted.
"What's my life been, anyway?" Duo tried, but was finding it hard to think of the words to express the dark hole in his psyche. "Sure, I was top of my game while I was the best at making war, but before... and after... maybe I just couldn't see the worth in any of it..."
"In you?" Heero wondered, seeing to the heart of Duo and cutting him to the quick with those two simple words.
"Maybe." Duo knew that he was saying that word to evade other ones, but he couldn't stop saying it. Just like selling himself, and taking the drugs, it was too easy. "Maybe I'm just a lazy shit at heart?" he tried.
Heero cocked his head to one side and regarded him seriously. "It was easier, selling yourself? Are you sure about that?"
Duo chuckled darkly. "How hard is it to do what you want? I mean, I do 'swing that way', Heero. Suck that dick, bend over for that other one, and get paid. A dream job, all around."
"Then why didn't you enjoy being with your pimp... doing those things?" Heero probed as if he were using a laser, wanting something from Duo.
Duo shrugged. "He was an asshole. Who would? I'm not... into... weird stuff, either. I mean, a maid outfit and... you know? Feather dusters? I'm a guy, for fuck's sake!"
Duo jammed his hands into his pockets, hunching in on himself. "Let's drop that, okay? I have a psychologist. You don't need to be another one."
Heero nodded, conceding the point. He put his computer down on the table and tapped it to bring Duo around to look. "This murder was not execution style. It was messy... violent... something a madman might perpetrate."
"He had a 'stable', Heero," Duo replied with a grimace. "One of his whores might have snapped."
"Do you know any of the other prostitutes?" Heero asked.
"No, I never saw anyone else," Duo admitted.
"We found your pimps book of clients," Heero told him, eyes studying his reaction. "It would help my investigation if you could point out the man who tried to kill you."
"Was that why you asked me those questions?" Duo wanted to know, feeling angry and sick at heart as he glared at Heero. "Here, I thought you were concerned about the state of my soul, my well being. Instead, you're just fishing, trying to see how stable I am, how much what I say can be trusted, right? Wouldn't want a bitter, messed up, whore to finger a guy because he's pissed off, right? I told you, I walked right into it, with my eyes wide open. Any crazy, fucked up, thing that happened after that, I deserved."
Heero suddenly stood up, leaning towards Duo with fury in his blue eyes. "No... you... did ... not!" He snarled, stressing each word. "Don't ever say that again!"
Duo blinked, startled, and then looked down, confusion robbing him of any response.
"I can't pretend to understand," Heero continued, struggling for control, "but I won't let you belittle a crime against you."
Duo ran hands over his face, his head throbbing with emotions and a gut wrenching confusion. "I... I don't know..."
"Yes, you do," Heero told him as he turned on his computer again and showed him his pimp's client list. "Point the sick son of a bitch out to me, Duo. Stop him, now."
"Who's going to listen to me?" Duo said as he watched the flicker of photos, taken badly on a cell phone, probably without the client's knowledge."What proof do I have?"
"I'll find the proof," Heero promised. "I'll make them listen."
"Why?"
"It's my job, my calling in life," Heero replied quietly, "My purpose and my duty. It's also something that I need to do... for you."
Duo felt his heart clench, even though his brain mocked him for what he thought those words might mean. "For me," he repeated and was too afraid to ask any further about that. He reached out and stopped the flicker of images. "Him... It was him."
Heero turned the screen and nodded, as he looked at the man. "Thank you," he said, and then was suddenly all business as he closed the screen and headed for the door.
"I always fall for that shit!" Duo snarled after him, "This was all just a head game, right? That's why I'm like this, I guess, because I'm just a pussy, an eat whatever shit someone hands me, moron!"
Heero turned, looking startled. He glanced down at the computer in his hand, and then back at Duo. He said, "I meant everything that I said, Duo. It's time for me to do my job, now, though. Be patient."
He was gone, then, and Duo fell back into a chair, not understanding anything at all.
______________________
"That's him," Duo pointed to the unimposing short man in the line up.
The man was fiddling with overlarge spectacles and wearing a boring brown suit, Everything about him said, 'Normal, school teacher, upstanding citizen'. Heero, and the agents with him, didn't look doubtful of Duo's choice, though. Heero nodded, as if something was being confirmed, and the other agents left the room to arrest their suspect.
Duo watched as the men in the line up were told to leave. The man in the brown suit gave an imperceptible smile at the two way mirror. "Do you know what that meant?" Duo asked as he shoved his cold hands into his pants pockets to hide their shaking.
Heero turned to look at him, a concerned frown on his face.
"He's telling me it doesn't matter to him," Duo said, without waiting for Heero to reply. "He's saying, I fucked you over good, and nothing you do changes that. You'll always be mine. You'll always remember me. One big mind fuck, from a mind fucker. I got the same shit during the war. People get their immortality anyway they can, even if it's in people's nightmares."
Heero nodded, understanding.
"How do you do that?" Duo wondered with a snort, voice as unsteady as his hands. "How do you say so much without any words?"
"We share a lot of the same past," Heero replied. "We don't need words for what we already know."
"Deep," Duo chuckled and then wiped hands over his face. "Did you search his place yet?"
Heero switched tracks without a blink. "We will. He may have 'cleaned' it, though, after your pimp's death hit the news. I'm hoping that he didn't know about it."
"Or that he's one of those psychopaths who is so deep into his fun, that he can't stop even when he knows he's going to get found out," Duo added.
"That is possible," Heero replied.
Duo took his hands from his pockets and kneaded the aching joints.
"How are they healing?" Heero asked.
Duo studied them. They wanted to curl, but braces under each finger, and under each wrist, held them in place properly, letting bio materials repair ruined muscles and bone. Without help, he would have lost both hands; ligaments, bones, and veins, strangled and broken after hours being 'played with' as he hung from his wrists.
"The doc says I should be able to hold a gun again, soon." He gently flexed fingers and found some doubt for that assurance. Two fingers were numb on his right hand, and there was a lack of feeling, as well, in his left palm. "If I can't, I guess I'll have to find something else beside Preventers."
"Why?" Heero asked.
Duo blinked at him, confused. "Pretty obvious, I thought."
"Not obvious to me," Heero replied. "Explain it to me."
"Une wants me as an agent, not as a pussy desk worker," Duo told him as if Heero were being stupid.
Heero stared at him for a long moment and then shook his head in frustration.
"What?" Duo wanted to know, just as confused.
"You have so much talent, to be anything that you want to be," Heero explained, "But you refuse to see your own potential."
"I don't have any school papers, Heero," Duo reminded him. "No certificates of any kind. It's hard to put on a resume, 'I can do that because I used to do it as a terrorist when I was fifteen.' Let's not even get into the fact that a lot of people are scared shitless of having a Gundam pilot working next to them. You never went out and looked for work. You settled right into agent work. I wanted something else... still do, really. I'm not all hot to pull triggers again."
"I didn't settle," Heero told him. "I tried the private sector. It wasn't fulfilling enough."
"I... I guess I didn't find it too fulfilling, either," Duo admitted softly. "It all seemed like such a waste. I can do so much..."
"Better," Heero finished for him. "You feel it, too, Duo, the need to use what you've learned."
Duo hung his head, braid swinging. "I'm just tired, right now, Heero. I don't know what I want."
"Une will give you time to find out," Heero promised, "and to heal."
"I hope so," Duo replied, "but it sounds too good to be true. I've had too much of that, of listening to phony promises."
"Duo?" When Duo looked up at Heero, he saw a nervous, tentative man before him, uncertain of the reception of his next words. "I'll make certain that you get all the time that you need. You aren't alone anymore. Trust that."
Duo felt his heart clench, wanting Heero's words to mean so many things. He didn't dare hope for that much, though. "Thanks," he replied. "I don't know why you'd want to make the offer, but I'm grateful."
Later, in his room, Duo couldn't help replaying that look, that he had seen on Heero's face, over and over again in his mind. He called himself every kind of idiot, but Duo couldn't stop putting meaning to Heero's expression. It had seemed needy... wanting... longing. Duo knew that expression well. He had seen it on his own face, in a mirror, enough times. Knowing what Heero wanted, what he needed, was an entirely different guessing game, though. That was still a mystery, and one Duo desperately wanted to solve.
___________________________________________________
"Am I under arrest?" Duo asked as he pulled his shirt on over his head.
The doctor looked at Duo absently as he made checks on his chart. "Not that I'm aware of."
"So, if I walked out of here, out of Preventers, no one would stop me?" Duo brushed fingers through his bangs to straighten them and flipped his braid over his shoulder.
"I believe that you made a deal with Commander Une," the doctor replied as he finished a notation and tucked his chart under his arm. Giving Duo his full attention he added, "Even though you are not under arrest, officially, I don't think that you're free to go, not yet, anyway. You still have to prove that you aren't part of the criminal element any longer."
Duo looked over his hands, white from being in braces for so long. He flexed them experimentally. One finger was still stubborn about bending and there was still a disturbing numbness in the palm of one hand, but they had healed far better than he could have hoped for. He could hold a gun, or a stylus, depending on what sort of work he chose. He still hadn't decided on which. He had tried, with a great deal of pain, to avoid picking up a gun again, but his talk with Heero, about needing to use his hard won skills, had resonated with in him deeply.
"How do I prove that?" Duo wanted to know. "How do I convince people that I'm not into drugs or prostitution, any more, when I'm holed up here? Don't you have to slip the leash, and let the dog run, to prove that he doesn't eat chickens anymore?"
"What?" the doctor was looking confused.
Duo snickered, but it was dark, and devoid of humor. "Just something one of the agents told me. He said, "If they slip the leash, and you still eat chickens, little bitch, you give me a call. I'd like to try some of what you got."
The doctor frowned. "Give me his name."
"Why?" Duo shrugged as he slipped into his shoes. "He's just saying what everyone else thinks, well, sans the 'try some of what you got'."
"I'm not your psychologist, so I won't reply to that," the doctor replied. "That agent broke several regulations. If I have to watch the vid feeds, I will, to find out who he is. Save me the trouble."
"Agent Simmons," Duo grumbled as he fumbled to zip his pants. The doctor surprised him by reaching out and helping him. Duo flinched away, the sound of the zipper going up loud in the small exam room.
The doctor looked annoyed. "I don't want, 'some of what you got', Mr. Maxwell."
"I just think that you've been in my personal places way too much," Duo replied as if it were a joke. His reaction had puzzled him, though. He had felt a thread of fear along with that flinch, and that didn't make any sense, not when the doctor had, indeed, been, again, and again, into his most intimate of places.
The doctor grunted. "You're improving."
"What?" Duo replied, confused.
"You didn't ask me to pay for it. That is a good improvement. I think we're making progress." He left Duo sitting on the exam table, not sure how to reply to that.
His psychologist had talked about his defensiveness, the need to attack and show that he was tough, and his need to beat people to the punch when he imagined that they were about to insult him, or remind him of what he had been. Agent Simmons had gotten a lear, a swing of hips, and a tossed over the shoulder, 'You better have a lot of cash, then, because I don't come cheap for someone as ugly as you.' It had sounded good, had gotten the reaction that he had hoped for, but it had been an acceptance, once again, that he was still in the place where he had been before ever entering Preventers.
Duo flexed his hands again. "I need some trust," he whispered. "I need to trust me and I need them to trust me." As crude as agent Simmons had been, he had spoken some truth. Duo wouldn't know if he had turned his life around, if he couldn't walk past the opportunities that had brought him low in the first place. He couldn't start training for his new life, until he knew, for a fact. that he had shelved the old one... no, not shelved, he corrected himself fiercely, obliterated it entirely.
"I'm not a whore, I'm not a druggie, and I'm not a loser anymore," he tried on the four walls around him. He sounded small, pathetic, and like a liar. "I'm a Preventer agent. I'm a war hero. I'm..." It all rang hollow.
Duo left the clinic, feet taking him towards the service entrance of Preventer headquarters with a solid plan to prove to himself that he really had chosen to leave his old life behind.
_______________________________
Walking through his 'old neighborhood', made every nerve tense. Everyone knew him, from the businessman cruising for his evening blow job, to the drug dealer hanging out under a dirty awning in front of a liqueur store. Even a few regular whores, walked by and gave him a grin. They were predatory grins, though. He was competition, after all.
Duo shivered a little in his coat, and pulled the zipper higher, as if that gave him some protection. Clean of drugs, with a safe, warm place to return to, and something hopeful in his future, nothing around him tugged with it's old allure. In fact, he only felt disgust, that he had allowed himself to accept that kind of life. It brought home everything the doctors, and Heero had been trying to tell him. He had been punishing himself, and wallowing in the belief that he could never reach higher, being who and what he was.
Duo's eyes stung and he wiped at them quickly. It was a powerful moment, to realize that he didn't belong there anymore, that he had only to get on the bus, to leave it all behind forever. There were people who cared about him. He wasn't alone. He didn't have to just survive.
His pimp's customer list came to Duo's mind. He remembered the man pointing out the next client, and his ever present lie, 'I wouldn't send you there, if you were gonna get hurt.' Now Duo could clearly see how the man had slowly eroded him, physically and mentally, so that he would take a client worse than the last, that he would do whatever the client wished, in the end, to keep the money and the drugs flowing. Did every whore end up, face down, in the gutter, in the end? Was there always that purposeful slide, until a person was desperate enough to fulfil the violent desires of others? As eager, and as calculating, as his pimp had been, Duo could only assume that those sorts of desires demanded a high price.
Morbid curiosity turned Duo's steps uptown. A bus ride later, he stepped out onto a well kept street, with modest homes. He easily found the house where he had almost died, where a man kept a torture room beneath a tidy living room, with contemporary decor, and pictures of grandchildren on the walls. A notice fluttered on the front door, crisscrossed with broken crime scene tape.
Duo shoved his healing hands into his deep pockets, and slowly took the steps up to the front porch. The notice was legal, warning away trespassers and citing punishments for disturbing the scene. It was tagged with official seals at the bottom and one of the signatures was Une's, though it looked electronic.
"Yuy thought that you might end up here," a man's voice said behind him.
Duo started badly as he turned, and then Preventer agent looked apologetic.
"I can take you back, if you're ready?" the man asked. He glanced at the door and added, "You're not allowed in there, though they've pretty much cleaned it out for evidence."
Duo felt sick as he asked, "Did they find...?"
The man looked sick, as well, as he replied, "No. He was a pretty clean bastard. He wiped down everything."
"Then...?" Duo felt a lurch of dread. If they couldn't find any evidence, then that man might be wandering the streets again, looking for another victim.
"Don't worry," the agent assured him, not looking at him in sick embarrassment, "he liked to take photos."
Duo turned and threw up into a well manicured rose bush beside the porch. The man watched in sympathy.
"He kept a very detailed photo album on a shelf, right along side his family albums," the agent told him. "We wouldn't have noticed it, but one of the agents wondered what kind of life a sick bastard like that had, and took one down to flip through it."
Duo wiped at his mouth and shuddered. The agent put a hand under his elbow, as he straightened.
"If you're done...?" the agent asked gently.
Duo nodded. He couldn't find anything to say, and the agent wasn't expecting anything. His car was parked on the street and the walk seemed to take forever.
"I had a couple of buddies, from the war," the agent said, carefully, as if he wasn't sure how Duo would react. "They had a hard time finding their feet, afterward, too. They did... some damn stupid things. One of them almost got himself killed, on purpose. I just want you to know, that you aren't alone. They needed a lot of help. It doesn't have anything to do with being... weak... or, any of that. It's stress, and the life we all had to lead back then. It does a number on you. Makes you think it's all not worth it... that you aren't worth it."
Duo was still seeing the smile of the man who had almost killed him, the one that said, 'You'll never forget me.' It was hard to hear what the agent was saying, hard to acknowledge the effort that the man was making, to make him feel better.
"Thank you," Duo finally said and the man gave him a nod, as if that had been enough, and meant a great deal to him.
Safely in the back seat of the man's car, Duo found himself watching the house slip into the distance, as he drove them back to headquarters. "Never again," he whispered to the window and it was a vow he meant to keep.
---------------------------------
"You don't have to pretend as if that wasn't hard," Heero told Duo as they walked back to Duo's room.
Duo shrugged. "What do you want, freakin' tears? He's going away for life, and that's that. We all got to watch some nice video, I got to stand up, in front of a court room, and say, 'Yeah, that was me, obviously, and he was the one who did that.' Job well done, and all of that. Une even shook my hand."
"You were professional and well spoken," Heero offered, but then he took Duo by the elbow and stopped him, "You did do an excellent job of not killing the man, where he sat. I don't think that I could have been that... controlled... in your place."
Duo searched his eyes and saw the truth of that statement there. It demanded some honesty in return. "I am upset," he admitted. "Creeped out.. feeling really... used... abused..."
Duo ducked his head and hid behind his bangs, hands thrust deep into his pockets as he hunched. Heero gave his elbow another squeeze until Duo looked up at him again. Heero said with intensity. "Thank you, for going through that, for putting that man behind bars."
Duo managed a weak smile. "It did feel good, knowing that he wasn't going to be out there anymore, killing people. I think it's changed some of the ideas that I had after the war."
"Preventers is about keeping the peace, about protecting people, who can't protect themselves. The war, was more complicated than that," Heero said.
Duo frowned and nodded. "I wanted to protect the colonists, but I ended up just furthering political agendas. Don't try and tell me that I won't be doing that for Preventers, too, if I join?"
"Sometimes, agendas, save lives," Heero pointed out. "Sometimes, the pen is mightier than the sword."
"With swords to back it up, of course," Duo retorted. "Didn't we learn that lesson about pacifism? Killing so that others could practice it, without getting killed, was kind of... stupid..."
Heero grimaced. "We can only try to assure that our motives are pure, I suppose. Nothing is guaranteed, not in Preventers, or on the streets."
Duo felt the pain of that statement. "I guess not."
Duo looked down at Heero's hand and then back up into his eyes. "I think that I should tell you, right now, that I'm thinking in a very serious way about you. If that isn't something that you like, and I don't blame you, then you should say so, now."
Heero looked around them, at the people passing them by in the corridor, and then met Duo's eyes again. "Is this a good place to discuss this?"
"Might save me from getting punched," Duo replied, looking tense.
Heero smiled. "Punching wasn't what I had in mind. I think we're a long way from starting anything, between us, though, Duo, don't you? You have a lot on your plate, just now."
Duo smiled, parsing Heero's words, and then asked tentatively, "Does that mean that I'm not alone in how I'm feeling about you?"
"No, you're not," Heero replied without hesitation.
Duo felt a rush of relief, even though he was finding it hard to believe. He nodded, though, and confirmed Heero's assessment, "That's good, but you're right, I need to straighten out my life, before I start making you a part of it. I think joining Preventers, completely, is a good start. That is, if Une will ever think I'm ready to join."
Duo opened the door to his room and Heero followed him inside. Laid out on his bed, was a Preventer uniform, with a note placed carefully on top.
While Heero smiled at his shoulder, looking as if he had known about it all along, Duo read, "Welcome to Preventers, Agent Duo Maxwell."
Duo's hands shook a little, as he took hold of the uniform and pulled it up against him.
"How's it look on me?" he asked in a voice as unsteady as his hands.
"Like you belong in it," Heero replied, and then took Duo into his arms and kissed him deeply.
END