Must Drench to Numb
title: Must Drench To Numb - part 14 (gw)
rating: NC 17 - 1xOCs, 1xrelena, unrequited 1+2
warnings: sex, angst, swearing, unbeta-ed
summary: One of the pilots is gay. Now married and living "happily ever after" he must make this discovery and keep this secret on his own.
Word count: 4,800!
I’m trying to wrap it up, you know?
“How was your appointment?” Relena asks when I get home and my body is still humming from my own little breakthrough with Duo.
She’s on the computer and I lean over behind her, kissing her neck.
“Mmmm,” she smiles, “That well?”
“I love you,” I say for the second time today and mean them both with as much intensity.
“I love you, too, but this schedule can’t wait.”
“It can,” I tell her and shut the laptop.
“Heero! What has gotten into you?” she tries to look angry, but is smiling.
I kiss her and immediately she’s kissing me back, her hands already undoing the buttons of my shirt.
“Someone’s eager,” I point out.
“Maybe so,” she replies mischievously, “Someone’s kept me waiting.”
I kiss her again without replying and she deepens the kiss, I’m surprised to find her tongue sliding along my teeth, rubbing against my own tongue.
Her fingers slip inside my shirt and they’re so soft and thin…
Music is suddenly playing, getting louder with each note. Sighing, she breaks our kiss and answers her phone, with an annoyed, “Yes?”
I smirk as her flushed face pouts as she listens, “Yes, I see. No, I don’t understand why…Have you tried calling Dempsey?.....Yes, ok…”
Taking her fingers, I decide to be playful and slowly take her finger, putting it to my lips, and slowly slip it into my mouth. Her eyes grow wide while her other hand clutches the phone. Her finger twitches in my mouth as I suck it, my tongue trailing up and down. Her cheeks flush and she says shakily into the phone, “Yes, I…I believe so.”
Pulling her finger out of my mouth, I go back for a second round, adding another finger, watching her every change - eyes glossy, mouth opening slightly, breathing differently; she’s aroused. I slip my tongue between her fingers, sliding up to brush over her fingertips. I open my mouth and lap at her fingertips and this pulls out a small gasp from her, “No, no, I’m fine. I really have to go. Yes, I’ll be waiting. Yes? In twenty minutes? Ok. I-I’ll see you then.”
I smirk into her fingers and kiss them wetly, sucking so slightly.
“Yes…Yes..Goodbye!” she hangs up hastily and shivers, sighing.
“Now that I have your attention,” I tease her.
“You made me just hang up on Senator Charlington,” she replies, exasperated, “While he’s in a crisis.”
“Hmmm,” is all I say, my lips vibrating against her skin.
“I have to leave in about twenty,” she tells me, “They’re picking me up.”
“Plenty of time,” I reply, still feeling on top of the world, and it’s been years since I’ve felt like that and that was only literally when I was on top of the world.
“Time for what?” she laughs.
In reply, I suck her ring finger into my mouth and enjoy her gasp of pleasure.
“Heero?” she lazily asks, her pretty eyes half-closing.
“Mmm-hmm,” I respond sucking harder.
“Where did you learn to do that?”
I pause. Suddenly on top of the world is now falling down into it. I look at her, study her questioning eyes almost hidden by her eyelashes. I take her finger out of my mouth. What is she implying? What kind of question is that? What the hell? I control my breathing, slow and even, but I feel sweat start to form on my forehead.
“What do you mean?” I dare to ask her.
We’re both motionless. Panic is starting to gather and cloud my stomach. What did she see? Was it Gloria, did she find out and tell Relena?
“You just seem…I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head, “Never mind. I like it. Don’t worry I said anything.”
I drop her hand and feel a rare flare of anger toward her.
“What do you mean?” I repeat myself.
“Forget I said anything,” she says, and her wet fingers find my hand and out of instinct, out of frustration, I pull back. Worry is instant on her face.
“What are you saying?” I ask her, one more time. Just one more time.
“I’m sorry,” she gushes, sitting up, “I didn’t mean anything.”
Then why ask it if she didn’t have doubts?
“Heero…”
I shake my head and walk out of the room. I hear her call out to me, but I’m getting angrier. But what am I angry at? It can’t be her. It has to be more. It has to be me. She can’t make me angry.
“Heero! Please!” She’s calling out to me and I keep walking, walking out the door, shutting it carefully behind me. Just walking. Only after a few blocks I realize that it’s cold, but keep going. I don’t know where I’m going, but I just keep walking hoping that the next step I’ll know and get it all figured out.
But I know to be more realistic than that.
Just when I think I get things figured out a little, something comes up unexpectedly and I’m thrown back into it.
I lean against a light pole, stopped at a light. When did it get to be this bad? I was contented when we first were married. I had curiosities, sure, but it wasn’t this bad. I found a balance. Was it the novelty of marriage that kept me satisfied? Was it that I saw more of Relena? Or is this thing increasing more? Can it be my body just becoming more of whatever this is? I don’t know. Dr. J wasn’t the best teacher in sex education. I was given a book to read and no questions were asked. Sexual deviancies were contained to one paragraph in a 200 page book. But I learned about ovulation, ejaculation, how breasts work, how arousal works, but not why it works. Why is one man aroused by the sight of another man, while another man is aroused something extreme like necrophilia? And is it so extreme? What’s to draw the line of acceptable and not acceptable? Is my arousal acceptable? Probably not if labeled under “deviancy” - I am in the minority, mentioned with people who aroused by feces, animals, children, etc. I am in the same category, the same paragraph as they are.
And that makes me feel very sick and very lonely.
My feet take me to a phone booth. I already know who I’m going to call.
The phone rings three times and I begin to accept that he won’t pick up when I need him to the most. This is what happens when you rely on people, for anything, even if just picking up the phone. When I realize he’s not going to answer my call, I discover how desperately I really wanted him to. It shocks and shames me. I didn’t think that he was that important to me. Even if in just a superficial way.
“Hello?”
He picked up.
“Hello,” I reply, reluctantly.
“Heero?”
“Yes.”
“It’s bad reception.”
“A pay phone.”
“I see.”
I struggle with what I called him about.
“Did she find out?” he assumes.
“I don’t think so, but she implied certain things. I don’t know what she meant, though. She wouldn’t talk about it.”
“You had better be careful all the same. A grain of suspicion goes a long way.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell him finally.
“For what?” He asks, but he has some ideas, I’m sure.
“Acting the way I have been. It’s difficult.”
“I know,” he says, and out from the static he says, “I understand.”
I memorize those words, his tone of voice, the moment that I really needed.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Either tell her or don’t.”
“I love her,” I tell him and it hurts because it’s so true and I don’t want anything to hurt her, especially me.
“She loves you, too, but you’re lying to her. What if you get a disease? She’ll most likely catch it.”
“I wear protection.”
“You think everything is fool-proof?”
I sigh, but I needed this.
“It’s getting worse.”
“What is?”
“Wanting it. Getting it.”
“Worse or are you just getting more comfortable with it?”
I hesitate, “Is it…” I want to say, ‘Is it terrible to want?’ But I don’t ask.
“How do you deal with Gloria?” I ask instead.
“I love her, too, but sometimes she can’t provide what I want. We’ve discussed it.”
My mind reels, “You what? She knows?”
“To an extent, yes. But who I am meeting with or what I mean, who I have sex with, she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know when, either. I’m very discreet for her sake.”
“But,” I say and the whole thing is insane, doesn’t make any sense, “But don’t you love her?”
“Very much,” he says tenderly and it rubs my chest raw, “And that’s why it was discussed. She understands. If she didn’t, I would stop.”
“You can just…stop?”
“I suppose so.”
“Then,” I swallow hard, “why can’t I?”
“Are you happy with Relena?”
“Yes,” I answer automatically.
“No, Heero,” he calmly reprimands me, “I mean it. Actually think about it. Think about everything you want out of life. What kinds of feelings do you feel now and what kind of feelings do you want to have? If you’re feeling ‘restless’, but you want to feel ‘relaxed’, that’s a point of ‘no’. Measure everything.”
I feel sick to my stomach because I don’t want to know the outcome. I want to be happy with her. I want Relena to be enough. I want her to be happy.
“I don’t know what I want.”
“That’s because you were never given the choice.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell him again and I’m about to hang up.
“Think about it. How happy will she be when she realizes that you’re not happy?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“I know.”
There’s silence and I can almost hear him breathing in the static.
“When I first got out of the army, I drank a lot,” he says quietly and slowly as if carefully lying out the words before using them, “I cut off all my friends before the war because they just didn’t understand what it felt like. They didn’t know how it felt to be on edge every moment of every day, knowing that any second you could be killed or kill someone else. Their problems seemed so trivial. It was very challenging becoming a civilian again. In my heart, though, I’m still wearing my uniform, still carrying my gun. Some feelings don’t just disappear when someone says that it’s all over.
“You’re not the only one, Heero. I’m not angry. I suppose I just have a hard time connecting with you on that aspect because I’m not hiding anything. I’ve learned not to hide anything. This is who I am, I accept that, and fortunately I’ve found other people who accept that, too.”
I lean my head against the phone and just listen to his words filling my head, circulating through my body and heating my veins.
“I don’t know what you want to do and it doesn’t matter how many times you say it, I won’t know how to help you. That’s your life, your lot. But just know that life for an ex-soldier can be successful and fulfilling. I just don’t know what you have to do to get there, you have to figure that out. So think about what you want and see if that’s what you have. I’m not saying that you don’t already have it, maybe you do and you don’t even realize it. Just think about it.”
“I will,” I promise.
“Spend some time with friends. They might help you figure it out.”
“I will.”
“If you want, make it mission-based.”
“I don’t need it any more.”
“Good.”
“Thank you…”
“Yes, Heero.”
We hung up.
---
“I’m sorry,” she said later that night, as soon as she came in.
“No, it’s not your fault,” I said, hugging her clumsily, I never know how to initiate moments like this.
“I didn’t mean anything,” she tells me, almost in tears.
“It’s ok. I know.”
“I guess,” she struggles with the weight of her words, “I just don’t know about you. I mean, your past. Sometimes you pull out some kind of trick and I think, ‘he must have been trained in that’ or ‘he’s done this before’. And then I get thinking and...It shouldn’t matter.”
I kiss her forehead and wish we could just get past things like this. It’s becoming tiresome for me.
I immediately feel guilty for thinking that.
--
“Is that you, Heero? Oh my! What a great surprise!” Quatre’s face exploded in happiness.
“Hello.”
“How is Duo’s wedding coming along? I haven’t even received an invitation yet. Knowing Duo, it would come the day after.”
“It’s fine. He was fitted for a tux recently.”
“Is he nervous?”
I ponder it for a moment, “I suppose in some ways.”
“Well, at least he has a pro by his side.”
It takes a moment before I realize he means me.
“I think that…I don’t know,” Quatre continues, “I think I may propose, too. I know everyone is expecting it, and there’s still a little rebel in me that wants to postpone it just for that reason, but…I keep thinking, ‘She’s the one!’ I can’t believe it.”
He laughs, but I don’t. I just feel even more nervous. He senses it.
“Heero,” his voice shifts to concern, “Is everything ok? You seem…”
He lets it trail off, but I don’t pick it up. I just watch him in the video screen and his smile slowly drops, like a tent collapsing and being packed up. For a few minutes I’m trying to figure out why I really called and how to say what I want to say.
“Do you need me there?” He tries delicately.
I shake my head, looking down at my hands before finding his eyes again.
“Do you want me to listen?”
I shake my head again and with Quatre it’s hard not to be who you really are. With other people it’s easy to be closed and quiet, but something about Quatre makes you exactly what you are and what you should be. He can see it. He can reach past any blockade and feel you. I just need that feeling of warmth, that constant source of sincerity.
“It’s ok, Heero,” he quietly whispers and reaches up to touch the screen. Unconsciously I reach up to touch the cool surface of the LCD screen. It heats under my palm and I see my hand on top of his. I needed just that connection, that openness and comfort that is beyond sexuality and confusion. Just pure care without anything trailing along.
I nod. I know he’s worried and there’s nothing I can do about that, I can’t laugh it off or push it back. We sit, our hands reaching out across miles and miles, in a bond that no one else can ever give me.
Without a word, I disconnect the signal. His face fades into the black screen. My hand still resting on the screen, still growing hot.
It’s ok.
---
I sit down. Power on the laptop. Blink. Breathe. Control. My hands are shaking.
“What’s wrong?” Relena asks behind me. That’s right. She said hello and I didn’t reply. She smiled at me and I didn’t smile back. I sat down because I needed a seat. I needed quiet for a moment. I needed stability after the long car ride home from the psychologist’s office. Duo didn’t look at me the whole way. I didn’t look at him.
“Heero?”
I type in ‘Maxwell Church Massacre’.
Nothing.
“Heero?”
I type in ‘L2 Church Massacre’.
There are some newspaper articles. Very short articles with body counts.
I lean back.
She’s right behind me, her fingers on my shoulders. “Heero? What’s wrong?”
I put my head in my hands and it hurts. Everything. The whole world moving around me, scraping me against it.
“Did something happen?”
“I don’t know what it means to lose something,” I tell her, surprising myself at the ease of the words pushing out. It feels good, like cutting a blister and feeling the skin return to normal - the pressure lessened.
“Oh,” she replies, gingerly sitting next to me, her hand returning to my shoulder lightly.
“I lost things, but nothing that meant anything to me. Really meant something.”
“That’s ok, Heero. No one expects you to…We all have burdens.”
“What was it like?” I ask her suddenly and I know it’s unfair of me to ask, “There were so many things going on in my life. I never asked you. What was it like to…lose your father?”
Tears emerge in her eyes as I lift my head, but they don’t fall. I hate making her cry. I’m going to apologize, but for some reason, I don’t. In my mind, I’m going to. But I don’t. Because I’m selfish and want to know.
“It was,” she pauses and takes my hand, “very unexpected. It was so sudden. I didn’t really feel like it was happening. It was like it really wasn’t happening to me. I kept thinking, ‘But we were just fighting the other day, it can’t end like this.’ I thought that something would happen. Like somehow it would be ok. Someone would come and save him. He would be ok. But…then I just knew. I knew he was going to die.”
She swallows and her grip tightens, “And I couldn’t do anything. I was just a silly girl. I couldn’t even save my own father. After he died, I thought to myself, ‘I can do better. In the future, that won’t ever happen to me again. I won’t be useless.’ Sometimes I still feel that way.”
“What,” I begin to ask and squeeze her hand, “What was he like?”
She roughly laughs and the tears fall at eruption, “He was stubborn and was busy. In his own way, he tried to make me grow up faster than the girls my age. He would say things like, ‘Oh, those girls don’t understand how the world is. Makeup and shopping is for girls and when you’re older, they don’t mean anything but frivolities and bills.’ I would get so angry. I was trapped between being a girl and being a woman. But he was kind. He would read to me when I was a little girl. Just before bed, he would tuck me in and read classics to me because ‘those were the books that mattered’, that were ‘timeless’.”
She laughs again, but this one is less painful.
“He would carry around my drawings that I drew as a baby in his briefcase. I thought it was so silly. He always had a picture of me in his wallet.”
I nod and notice that I don’t even carry around a wallet. I make a note to myself to carry a wallet with her picture in it.
“It’s sad,” she breathes out, “But I would never take back any memory of him. Sometimes I miss him so much, but I never regret anything about him. I was loved and even when I was frustrated with him, I loved him so much. That’s important to have in my heart. I see myself taking some of his traits, for better or worse.”
Her other hand lifts and touches the side of my face. I hold it there.
“But that doesn’t mean anything. If you didn’t have that, then I’m sorry. I’m sorry you didn’t love anyone that you’ve lost.”
I sigh slowly, “Duo said…a lot today. I didn’t…I wanted to make things better. I know it’s impossible, there’s nothing I can do. I just wanted to. I was angry. I don’t know what to do with it.”
She leans in and kisses me softly.
“I understand,” she says between shallow kisses, “I understand completely. I felt the same way.”
This is surprising and I pull back, “What do you mean?”
“I used to be so angry and Dr. J, at all of them, turning all of you into…into something that I felt was against who you really are. Before we were married, I would get so angry for all the things he took from you or didn’t give you. There was nothing that I could do, though. I can’t go back into time, and I know that’s for the better. If he hadn’t trained you, if none of that happened, I wouldn’t have met you. But still, I had all this resentment built up in me.”
“You never told me,” I quietly reply and it sounds as shocked as I feel.
“I didn’t want to upset you,” she admits, kissing my hand, “But I could only concentrate on now and the future. I can’t change the past, but I can help shape your future.”
I nod, leaning forward, and she’s already enthusiastically kissing me. Her hands dig into my hair. I pull her to the ground with me. She’s on top me, kissing, rubbing, feeling, crying, holding, loving - it’s all soft and wonderful. My heart tucking in her words, embedding them there. I want to hold her forever. She’s creating my future, molding it with her love.
She’s tugging down my pants and I barely have time to sit up before her lips are hungrily on mine. Her smell curls into my lungs, I keep breathing her in, all powder and lace. Kissing, more kissing, fire burning in the wetness of her body. Suddenly she’s on her knees and she’s guiding me into her. I gasp and grunt, feeling that tightness welcoming me in. She pushes my cock in and we’re gasping through the kisses, not stopping or slowing down. It’s the first time she’s been rough and hurried. It turns me on enormously and instead of awkwardly finding my arousal, I want more. I want more of her. I want to give more of myself to her. I thrust into her, grabbing her hips and she breaks the kiss to moan and murmur, “YesHeeroyesyesyesohyes!”
I’m going to come soon, can feel it rumbling through me, thunder in the background, lightning ready to strike. I grunt and thrust as she thrusts wildly against me and it’s the best sex I’ve ever had with her and I let myself nearly lose, thin bonds of control against the heat of passion.
“I’m close,” I growl out between my clenched teeth.
“Come in me,” she whispers and -ohgod- actually bites my ear. Ohfuckohgodohgodyes.
I come in her hard, so hard that my muscles spasm. I choke out her name as I come, my hands falling to my side so I don’t hurt her. It feels so good, tiring, bursting, amazing, fucking amazing, and incredible. Truly incredible, like I don’t believe that I really can have that good of sex with her. I want to discredit it, disbelieve it, but god, it leaves my legs weak and a few minutes to get my whole body back into control.
She laughs and falls into me, gasping and stroking my hair.
“That was fantastic!” She exclaims, “You were…”
She flushes, pulling back to look at me. Her face is all smiles, her lips, cheeks, and eyes.
“You were so hard,” she shyly admits.
“Did you,” I gasp out, “plan that in my future?”
Laughing again, she replies, “Oh, yes. And much more.”
I join her laughter.
Yes, everything is ok.
---
I knock on his door and don’t have to wait long.
“Heero?” Hilde asks, “Wow, hi!”
She pulls me into a hug that I loosely return.
“Duo’s upstairs. I just made dinner, you want some?”
“No,” I hesitate, I didn’t mean to ruin his dinner, “Is he available for a short walk?”
“Sure. You know what,” she says to me opening the door wider for me to slip into, “I’ll just put dinner in the fridge and you guys can come back and we’ll all eat it. I’ve got some grocery shopping to do any way that I wanted to do before it was too late.”
Their townhouse was small, but always smelled good. And was usually unbearably hot in the fall and winter (like now) and felt like the inside of a snowball in spring in summer. As always, it’s cluttered with their hobbies and broken things that will one day be either fixed or forgotten. Some of it will be fixed and sent to us as presents or sent to Howard to sell. I look around for anything of interest that will one day makes its way into my own home.
“Sound good?” she asks and I see there’s not much room for declining, so I nod.
“Duo!” she shouts upstairs, “Duo! Heero’s here! He’s taking you out! Get down here!”
She grins and says, “He’ll be down in a minute. You know where everything is, help yourself to anything. Our home is your home, you know.”
As she walks down the hall, I think I can see a little of why he loves her. She’s fun. She’s friendly. She’s not reserved, but polite. She’ll make a great wife for him. They’ll have beautiful children who are street-savvy, but ambitious. I can see it easily and the thought comforts me. I want them to be happy. There’s something novel and cute thinking about the pictures they’ll send up to put on the fridge or in our study. Something permanent and warm, the closest thing to an extended family.
“Hey,” he says quietly after coming down the stairs and slipping on his shoes, “Hilde, where’s my hat?”
“Kitchen table!” She calls back.
“Thanks!” He yells back and grabs it, tugging it on. He turns to me and apprehensively says, “You ready?”
I always try to be. “Yeah.”
It’s cold out. Winter is slowly taking over autumn each day, but there’s no wind and I don’t mind it.
“Man, I hate winter,” he says, rubbing his hands together after we close the door behind us. I’m silent as we walk.
“Is this about the other day?” He wonders suddenly after we get a block away from his home.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t mean to…fall apart like that,” he admits, “Once I got into it, I just couldn’t stop. It’s like a train, you know? I keep thinking that I get past it, that I get better, but then I bring it up…That’s why I hate talking about it.”
“It’s ok.”
“No, I completely dominated last session and looked like a crying, wet mess of a-“
“It’s ok,” I interrupt him, “I’m sorry.”
“Huh?”
“I’ve been getting used to apologizing lately. I keep finding things that I’m wrong about. I used to think I was right about a lot of things, and those things were the things that really mattered. I’m finding out that they don’t mean anything, though. Not really. I’m sorry, I should have said something then. I should have…touched you.”
He bashfully laughs, “Nah, it’s fine.”
I stop, “You wanted me to.”
He stops, too, and it seems like our relationship is built up like this. Stopping and starting. Leaving and coming back. Constantly bumping into each other.
“Yeah,” he sighs out, “Maybe I did. That’s my fault. I know you’re not good with that.”
“But I knew that you wanted me to do something. I was shocked. I shut down.”
“Did you reboot?” He jokes.
“Yeah.”
He laughs. I uncomfortably pat him on the back and he laughs harder. His face is red from the cold, but so full of life and things that make my stomach feel weird.
“I don’t know how to lose someone,” I tell him when we start walking again.
“I don’t seem to know how to keep people.”
“I can’t seem to die,” I joke and become astonished when he puts an arm around me and roughly replies, “I know, I’m holding you to that.”
--
She folds clothes on the bed, neatly tucking them into a box. Relena smiles as she packs them away. Going to the closet, she thinks, ‘I’m sure Heero won’t mind if I donate some of the things he doesn’t even wear. Like all those shirts my mother keeps sending.’ Shaking her head, she pulls out the few Hawaiian shirts that were given as presents that she couldn’t even picture him in, and the countless paisley shirts that her mother sent.
Bending low, she starting pulling out shoes that he never wore any more.
Reaching back, she felt the corners of what was a movie. Her mind wandered, blushing, thinking she knew what it might be. What else would be hidden in the back of a closet? Curiosity won over and she pulled it out.
It was not what she expected.
Neither were the rest of the things she found hidden back there, in a place she never would have dared to venture or even imagine…
TBC...
Ooooo, cliffhanger! hahahahaha!
A few notes: 1) Hilde going grocery shopping was for stacey 2) I wonder which porno Relena found first...Cock commandos perhaps? XD
More smex in the next part promised, there are some kinks I want to pull out of the pron hat still. So, stick around...