Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Salt In Your Wounds ❯ Chapter 1

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

SALT IN YOUR WOUNDS

Disclaimers: Gundam Wing belongs to Sunrise, Shotsu Agency, Bandai, and other corporations, and has been used without permission, purely for entertainment purposes. Come on, they're meant to be played with just like the little toy Gundam models that I have!

Warnings: 1+2/ 2+1,

Songfic to Adam Chaki's "Sonofabitch" (copyrighted to him)

Watch your step

You don't know me yet

I would see you gone

With no regret

Go on, prick my skin

If it's trouble that your needing

'Cos the beast within

Is in need of a feeding

But be forewarned

And make no mistake

Where there's trouble in my path

There will be blood in my wake

To get me mad is to dig yourself a ditch

'Cos my mother raised a sonofabitch

The quiet was beginning to unnerve him - he'd never had that problem before. Silence was something he was used to, needed, required even. He'd always preferred his own company and never questioned or noticed the lack of human contact. But this was different. Like the two scars he had acquired…..and that was something he simply could not understand. He'd been shot at more times than he could remember during his training - no one had actually hit him, he was too fast, reflexes that kicked in without thought had always meant he was just that much quicker than the sights aimed at him. So how had that idiot managed to get him - twice??

Not that the young man in black seemed to have had much in the way of training - nothing near what he himself had been so thoroughly exposed to, relentlessly ever since he could remember. The baka was exactly that - undisciplined, unprofessional, too open and trusting, too god-damned happy. The look on his face when he blasted off in Wing after scavenging parts from that menacing-looking black Gundam proved that the braided pilot was no match for one crafted to be the Perfect Soldier.

Could it be that the American youth was more than what he seemed? To be underestimated was a trait that could be parlayed into a weapon as strong as superior skills. Was that it? All Heero knew was that he was spending - no, wasting - too much time thinking about his roommate….the one whose absence was responsible for the present quietude.

The Japanese pilot pushed his laptop back on the desk, eased out of the small chair and smoothly crossed the room to the window. One arm braced against the frame, he peered down into the campus quad below, looking for a slim black-clad shadow against the darkening evening. Heero closed his eyes and re-ran the heated words of his partner in his head.

********(flashback)

"Let him seduce you - get the information that way. The way you flirt, it shouldn't be something too hard for you to do."

It was a logical solution. Mr. Marks, the tall, platinum blonde engineering TA at Hertzfeld College had shown an obvious interest in Duo. Why not use that weakness to carry out the mission? The aristocrat could be closely connected to Romerfeller, if not Oz itself. Surely Duo could use his charm and wit to discover why there were large amounts of gundanium being transferred through the Engineering Department's research centre.

Before Heero had barely completed his suggestion, he found himself slammed against the thin wall of their shared room.

<< He's that strong? That quick?? Where did THIS come from?>>

Duo had one hand twisted tightly in his shirt, the other squeezing slowly around his partner's throat. The American had moved faster than Heero thought humanly possible and had his face pressed scant inches from his own. The look in his eyes was sub-zero cold, pure death.

With a venomous growl Duo spat, "You just blew it Yuy. You know NOTHING about me! You've never taken the time to find out a single thing about your partner - you don't know my skills, my abilities, my past. You don't know what I can do in the field that can help in a mission or what I can do that could harm. You never fucking talk or ask. Not knowing your partner can get you killed - and I like life too much to put myself in that position willingly. You don't fucking care to learn either and that makes YOU a liability. Here's the score, asshole. My first memory was when I was four years old and already living on the streets on L2. Do you know what true starvation is, Heero? Do you?? When you are only four years old and haven't fucking eaten in days, have no where to sleep, live or go to, have no one you know - you will do anything to survive. Anything! And I did. Anything - everything. ""A pretty thing"" they used to say, and then pay me. I sold myself for five years before I moved up in the food chain. I WILL NOT prostitute myself again. EVER!! Not for YOU, not for some fucking mission, not for ANYTHING!!!"

The voice never raised itself in volume, remaining in a low hiss that dripped with menace. His eyes were so dark they were almost an indigo blackness. Shinigami was off the battlefield and home to play and Heero could almost feel death rolling off his partner's body in waves that pulsed razor icicles into his flesh. With a last squeeze that threatened to permanently seal his throat, Duo released the Japanese pilot, grabbed his leather jacket and slammed his way out of the room.

********(end flashback)

You should be familiar

with my ugly side

I wear it on my back

As a matter of pride

If you've got to bother me

Then go ahead

You'll end up face down

In a pool of red

I've got a tripwire temper

I spit venom 40 yards

if you walk on me you walk barefoot across a garden of shards

My heart is a fist

It's hard and it's black as pitch

'Cos my mother raised a soneofabitch

//Hate - hate - hate - hate//

He could feel that emotion rolling around him, warming him with its flames. He should have known that his past would hang around him like a stench that could never be washed away. And it hurt. Man it hurt so fucking much. He never really expected to become friends with the Wing pilot - that would have been far too unlikely, even he knew that. All he had been aiming for was being a good partner. Someone that could be counted on for back up in a jam, to cover your ass when things were going to hell, someone who actually understood the things you were going through 'cause you were going through the same damn shit.

Duo Maxwell's mood was black, his thoughts were black, everything about him was black. //Why the hell should I care! I took the trouble to learn about him - hacked into Howard's system then Dr. J's so I could find out all about one Heero Yuy or Odin Lowe Jr. And what the fuck do I get? The only thing he didn't do was set the fucking price! Shimatta!! I'm wasting my time being his partner. He doesn't want one, doesn't need one and has made it clear that there is no point in having one. So, Heero Yuy, your wish is about to come true. Once this mission is complete, I am SO out of your life you won't even remember I EVER existed.//

With that thought firmly in place, Duo increased his pace and turned up the path that bisected the quad and away from the dorms.

Don't you watch the smile

Or the charm I might project

There's a part of me

Going to teach you some respect

I'm the kind of man

Who gives better than I get

I'm the kind of man

Who makes good on every threat

So don't you falsely move

Or miscalculate

Before you take good stock

Of my mental state

If you don't know what 's what

And you don't know which is which

You've got to know

That my mother raised a sonofabitch

TBC