Fic: The Bitten Peach
Fandom: Gundam Wing
Warnings: implied past non-con
Characters: 2x5x2
Length: 2,434 words
Summary: Character study of Chang Wufei. Duo helps Wufei address some of his issues from Operation Meteor and Treize Kushrenada.
The Bitten Peach
From Chin-Chu Creek, Past the Ridge, Along the Stream
All I could see was the tip of the knife. A gorgeous, naked man stood between the soft light of a lamp and me, and all I could see was the black tip of the knife peeking behind the space between his thighs. I clamped down on the shiver of fear that ran through my nerves. He had unmanned me with a knife. I had been helpless, then. Weak. It had been black like this one, this one that my lover hid from me behind his thighs. The metal on this one was covered with a powder-coated matte, except where the blade had been honed into an evil, silver grin. Years of training in both mobile suit and personal combat, a warrior lineage that stretched farther than writing itself, an elite Preventer agent: all of that and I had been-
The hilt was rubber. He had rubbed it on my face when he had shoved my legs open and had stabbed himself in to the-
"You're afraid." My lover's voice was soft and warm. It was gentle with affection and acceptance. Had it been anyone else, it would have been pity.
I didn't say anything; I couldn't. Acknowledgment of fear was only permitted when it could be used to my advantage. He knew it and accepted it. He was a man that could look you in the eye and baldly admit to fear. He would quiver with it, sweat with it, and never once was he weak with it. It was almost beyond my understanding how he could wear fear with neither weakness nor cowardice. If I held my fear where any could see, it would unman me. Like a black, powder-coated blade.
I didn't look away from the darkness in the center of his naked thighs. I wanted to, to look him in the eye, but I couldn't. The tip disappeared from the space between his thighs, but it didn't matter. I knew it was there, lurking.
"You know that I love you," he said. The voice turned softer, tender and proud.
I wanted.... I didn't know any words for what I wanted. These things were not for warriors such as we were. They were for poets and women. And scholars. I was none of these things. They were for those who could afford to be weak, who had the ability to find strength in weakness. I was none of these things, either. Weak, yes, but I could do nothing with that weakness other than let it consume me. The warrior within desperately battled the weakness within and the warrior....
The knife was still in my mind. I knew it was black and that it had a skinny blade.
"I will never hurt you." His voice quivered and ran over. It echoed and clung to the wanting that I had no words for.
It was long and it was probably sharp. He was as dedicated to his knives as I was to my sword. Honed with a stone until the nearly invisible gleaming silver could cut a hair with no effort. Mine, perhaps. His.
Or me.
I do not fear death. I do not fear pain. I do not. Yet here I lay, wallowing in the swill of fear of a knife held by a naked man that loved me. It wasn't the knife that unmanned me, it was my own pathetic weakness.
He put his hand on my shoulder, his palm burning into my bare skin. I met his gaze with an effort I took pains to hide and watched his warm smile blossom. Something in those dew softened eyes cut through the image of the knife and I remembered how gentle he always was with me. An answering smile eased itself just behind my lips, where only he could see. With the sharp edge of my fear gone, I let him guide me onto my back, settling into the bed. His fingers trailed along my cheek, soothing slowly down the length of my jaw to feather along my throat.
One of those words I didn't have hovered, just within reach. Cherish. I wanted cherish. Somehow.
I nearly screamed when he set the knife on me and let it go, the long, curved blade and the hot, rubber hilt bisecting my chest. The steel was cold and as black as my nightmares--except for the silvery smirk along the edge. The handle was warm and clung to my flesh. I could smell the sour sweat. I could taste the wet of the damp rubber in the air. I could feel the bitter semen eating at my skin. I wanted to crawl out from under the knife, but I couldn't make myself move. He curled up next to me, wrapping his heat against my side. His braid slithered down his shoulder and arm to pool along the side of my chest. I took a deep breath, held it, then let it go slowly, silently. My fingers twitched to take that braid and clutch it like a lifeline, but I refused. There was enough of my weakness between us already.
Threading his fingers through my hair, he sang to me.
Monkeys cry: dawn, they know.
Valleys still dark: no light visible.
His voice was husky smooth, like old Kentucky bourbon. A capella, it was gentle and sweet. The yearning words wove a spell of love and tranquility; they massaged my wounded heart like nothing else could.
Like, it was like...cherish.
Beneath the peak, clouds close up.
On the flowers, dews drip.
It hurt in a warm, honeyed way. It ached inside, like the memory of a memory that was fish-eyed and not quite polychromatic. It was a pain I only felt after leaving the shrine of my ancestors, where I had honored them with offerings and prayers as I hoped that I made them proud of the way I carried on the name of my clan. Away from the strength of my family's honor, I pulled out and examined the memory of the sweet scent of cherry blossoms, the maternal embrace of arms and a soft bosom pillowing my head, the ivory beauty of a smiling face, and the onyx eyes full of love and wonder. It was the eyes that hurt the most. They answered everything inside of me that wanted what I could not have, what I could not even name.
Twisting, turning---along mountain bends,
Up among far reaching braes,
Past the creek, trailing across torrents,
Ascend plank-paths, into the distance.
His voice promised the same things as the memory, all of that and more. Eyes so blue they were almost lilac, hair burnished like sun-dappled maple, a spicy scent of musk and warmed earth; they all called to me. In the harbor of his body and his song, all I could do was want. No. There was also cherish. I could want and then cherish the tender aching that came with it.
Still, with each breath, the knife rubbed like thousands of crawling spiders. I couldn't help myself; I couldn't stop it. I closed my eyes to force back the tears. His song crooned to me, soothing and petting. With a deliberate effort, I forced my muscles to relax, starting from my toes. I had gotten as far as my hips when he placed his hand on my chest. Right next to the knife. Everything tensed again and I had to force myself not throw him off.
River, islets thrown out and winding back.
Ride the current, enjoy the many turns.
Duckweeds float on dark deeps.
I took a deep breath. Then another one. My body trembled and I could not stop it. I took another breath and concentrated on the slow sway of the melancholy words, the gentle rasp of his breath warming my throat, and silken length of his hair coiled on my skin. His palm was hot, just below my pectoral. His thumb rested just shy of my nipple and his fingers curled along the sloping curve of my ribs.
The knife, heated and set in motion by my own body, twitched against my flesh like the vibrating needle of a tattoo gun.
I forced my mind to absorb the words to his song. He had learned Chinese just for me. It was our secret, our stolen moments that I packed carefully away in the depths of myself for safe keeping. I treasured them.
Treasured.
My eyes popped open and only deeply ingrained training kept my breathing steady. The usually white ceiling of this bedroom was cast in a golden glow of the lamp. He loved me. I knew this. I knew that I was fond of him. I knew that I sought him out above all others. I loved him in return, as much as I thought that I could. Words like warrior and battlefield comrade had comfortably meshed with my regard for him. The love I entered into with him had grown from a respect for the soldier and then the Preventer. Words like treasured had never entered my mind; how could they? Words like treasured were for silly romantic novels and the women who swooned over them.
And now, apparently, for him.
How long had I treasured his presence? The things we did that had no purpose other than silly romantic nonsense between silly romantic lovers? Us? Him?
His fingers trailed along my ribs to my pelvis, then followed a return path over my navel to the knife hilt. He touched it. A gentle, upward pressure on the bottom of the hilt put nauseating friction between the rubber and my skin. The tip of the blade itself dipped, pressing into my flesh. I sucked in a breath, then eased it out. My breath forced its way past the blockage throttling my throat with a Gundam's grip with a shudder and a yippish whimper. So missish. I could not breathe out again. So weak.
Reeds, rushes cover clear shallows.
Tiptoe on rocks to catch a cup of flying spring:
Tug the trees to pluck budding leaves.
I forced my eyes open. I could not turn my head, but he was there, in front of me, with a gentle shift of his limbs and his chest. His eyes were so blue.
His eyes. They had been blue, a paler blue. Like the afternoon sky or cut glass. His eyes had been alternately hard and then soft. Soft as he had admired my spirit, my ideals, my warriorhood. Hard as he turned to dominate, to own. His voice had been like liquor as well, a silky cognac that eased from the tongue and misled the palate. He praised manhood and emasculated with the same silk. He gave me my place in history, cemented my place with my ancestors even as he took away my warriorhood, the very warriorhood he claimed to love. I could not defeat him, not in the beginning, not then, and not now. He committed suicide, throwing himself on Nataku's blade with the promise of a recitation of all of the names of all those who had suffered loss for his cause. Even as he died as he had orchestrated. A beautiful irony in his plans no doubt. I did not have to hear his listing to know that my name was not on his list. As if I was not weak. As if my sacrifice was something to be proud of. Or did not matter.
My eyes stung and his face swam between slow blinks. He soothed the backs of his fingers along the length of my cheek and throat again, over and over as if I were some sort of pup to be gentled.
There looms this Man of the Mountains,
Full-clad in fig leaves and mistletoe,
His lips pressed to mine, lightly. His breath and his song moved across my face. In his eyes I could see that he admired me. I knew he admired my ideals and my warriorhood. He praised them enough and with vociferously vulgar language whenever possible. But there was no hardness. No ownership.
His hand shifted down past my collarbones and the knife, the black blade I'd managed to forget, shifted a moment later. The rubber pulled at my skin, dragging down, a little more toward my manhood. The point of the knife dug into my skin and trailed through it. Did it cut me?
Holding orchids vainly waiting for friendship:
Plucking hemps: no way to bare his heart.
The knife stopped moving and he idly jiggled it with one finger. I could feel his fingertip idly tracing across my belly.
What one feels becomes beauty-
I blinked. My heart stuttered behind my ribs. I held my breath.
This subtle truth: who would share?
I opened eyes that I hadn't realized that I'd closed to find his face a lift and a kiss from mine. The skin around his eyes tightened and lifted in a guileless smile. And I knew.
I took a deep breath, one that stuttered and shook with palsy. It washed over me, this subtle truth, like whatever we had that lay between us, like these wants that I could not name. I had no words for it; I had no images of it. I doubted that I would understand it tomorrow as fully as I did in this moment.
His fingers left my belly to trail along my rib cage. His fingers touched my cheek bone and his palm curved around my jaw. I felt the wet between his flesh and mine before I understood what the sting in my eyes meant. It broke, whatever it was, like a dike beneath Nataku's implacable foot.
To view thus releases worries of the world.
A flash of awakening: everything is dispelled.
I held myself stiff beneath him and the knife, as still as I could between the clash of my training and the broken thing. I could not breathe. I could not take my eyes from his. I could do nothing but quiver.
He took my hand in his. His thumb, calloused by the hilts of knives, guns, and the control sticks in mobile suits, scraped like satin across my own callouses. His eyes smiled into mine, again, and he set my hand on the hilt of the knife. His fingers returned to my cheek, to trace the path of tears. And he knew. I could see it there, like a lamp in a temple. He kissed my tears, then said, "I love you, too."
I curled into him and wept.
Warnings: implied past non-con
Characters: 2x5x2
Length: 2,434 words
Summary: Character study of Chang Wufei. Duo helps Wufei address some of his issues from Operation Meteor and Treize Kushrenada.
The Bitten Peach
From Chin-Chu Creek, Past the Ridge, Along the Stream
All I could see was the tip of the knife. A gorgeous, naked man stood between the soft light of a lamp and me, and all I could see was the black tip of the knife peeking behind the space between his thighs. I clamped down on the shiver of fear that ran through my nerves. He had unmanned me with a knife. I had been helpless, then. Weak. It had been black like this one, this one that my lover hid from me behind his thighs. The metal on this one was covered with a powder-coated matte, except where the blade had been honed into an evil, silver grin. Years of training in both mobile suit and personal combat, a warrior lineage that stretched farther than writing itself, an elite Preventer agent: all of that and I had been-
The hilt was rubber. He had rubbed it on my face when he had shoved my legs open and had stabbed himself in to the-
"You're afraid." My lover's voice was soft and warm. It was gentle with affection and acceptance. Had it been anyone else, it would have been pity.
I didn't say anything; I couldn't. Acknowledgment of fear was only permitted when it could be used to my advantage. He knew it and accepted it. He was a man that could look you in the eye and baldly admit to fear. He would quiver with it, sweat with it, and never once was he weak with it. It was almost beyond my understanding how he could wear fear with neither weakness nor cowardice. If I held my fear where any could see, it would unman me. Like a black, powder-coated blade.
I didn't look away from the darkness in the center of his naked thighs. I wanted to, to look him in the eye, but I couldn't. The tip disappeared from the space between his thighs, but it didn't matter. I knew it was there, lurking.
"You know that I love you," he said. The voice turned softer, tender and proud.
I wanted.... I didn't know any words for what I wanted. These things were not for warriors such as we were. They were for poets and women. And scholars. I was none of these things. They were for those who could afford to be weak, who had the ability to find strength in weakness. I was none of these things, either. Weak, yes, but I could do nothing with that weakness other than let it consume me. The warrior within desperately battled the weakness within and the warrior....
The knife was still in my mind. I knew it was black and that it had a skinny blade.
"I will never hurt you." His voice quivered and ran over. It echoed and clung to the wanting that I had no words for.
It was long and it was probably sharp. He was as dedicated to his knives as I was to my sword. Honed with a stone until the nearly invisible gleaming silver could cut a hair with no effort. Mine, perhaps. His.
Or me.
I do not fear death. I do not fear pain. I do not. Yet here I lay, wallowing in the swill of fear of a knife held by a naked man that loved me. It wasn't the knife that unmanned me, it was my own pathetic weakness.
He put his hand on my shoulder, his palm burning into my bare skin. I met his gaze with an effort I took pains to hide and watched his warm smile blossom. Something in those dew softened eyes cut through the image of the knife and I remembered how gentle he always was with me. An answering smile eased itself just behind my lips, where only he could see. With the sharp edge of my fear gone, I let him guide me onto my back, settling into the bed. His fingers trailed along my cheek, soothing slowly down the length of my jaw to feather along my throat.
One of those words I didn't have hovered, just within reach. Cherish. I wanted cherish. Somehow.
I nearly screamed when he set the knife on me and let it go, the long, curved blade and the hot, rubber hilt bisecting my chest. The steel was cold and as black as my nightmares--except for the silvery smirk along the edge. The handle was warm and clung to my flesh. I could smell the sour sweat. I could taste the wet of the damp rubber in the air. I could feel the bitter semen eating at my skin. I wanted to crawl out from under the knife, but I couldn't make myself move. He curled up next to me, wrapping his heat against my side. His braid slithered down his shoulder and arm to pool along the side of my chest. I took a deep breath, held it, then let it go slowly, silently. My fingers twitched to take that braid and clutch it like a lifeline, but I refused. There was enough of my weakness between us already.
Threading his fingers through my hair, he sang to me.
Monkeys cry: dawn, they know.
Valleys still dark: no light visible.
His voice was husky smooth, like old Kentucky bourbon. A capella, it was gentle and sweet. The yearning words wove a spell of love and tranquility; they massaged my wounded heart like nothing else could.
Like, it was like...cherish.
Beneath the peak, clouds close up.
On the flowers, dews drip.
It hurt in a warm, honeyed way. It ached inside, like the memory of a memory that was fish-eyed and not quite polychromatic. It was a pain I only felt after leaving the shrine of my ancestors, where I had honored them with offerings and prayers as I hoped that I made them proud of the way I carried on the name of my clan. Away from the strength of my family's honor, I pulled out and examined the memory of the sweet scent of cherry blossoms, the maternal embrace of arms and a soft bosom pillowing my head, the ivory beauty of a smiling face, and the onyx eyes full of love and wonder. It was the eyes that hurt the most. They answered everything inside of me that wanted what I could not have, what I could not even name.
Twisting, turning---along mountain bends,
Up among far reaching braes,
Past the creek, trailing across torrents,
Ascend plank-paths, into the distance.
His voice promised the same things as the memory, all of that and more. Eyes so blue they were almost lilac, hair burnished like sun-dappled maple, a spicy scent of musk and warmed earth; they all called to me. In the harbor of his body and his song, all I could do was want. No. There was also cherish. I could want and then cherish the tender aching that came with it.
Still, with each breath, the knife rubbed like thousands of crawling spiders. I couldn't help myself; I couldn't stop it. I closed my eyes to force back the tears. His song crooned to me, soothing and petting. With a deliberate effort, I forced my muscles to relax, starting from my toes. I had gotten as far as my hips when he placed his hand on my chest. Right next to the knife. Everything tensed again and I had to force myself not throw him off.
River, islets thrown out and winding back.
Ride the current, enjoy the many turns.
Duckweeds float on dark deeps.
I took a deep breath. Then another one. My body trembled and I could not stop it. I took another breath and concentrated on the slow sway of the melancholy words, the gentle rasp of his breath warming my throat, and silken length of his hair coiled on my skin. His palm was hot, just below my pectoral. His thumb rested just shy of my nipple and his fingers curled along the sloping curve of my ribs.
The knife, heated and set in motion by my own body, twitched against my flesh like the vibrating needle of a tattoo gun.
I forced my mind to absorb the words to his song. He had learned Chinese just for me. It was our secret, our stolen moments that I packed carefully away in the depths of myself for safe keeping. I treasured them.
Treasured.
My eyes popped open and only deeply ingrained training kept my breathing steady. The usually white ceiling of this bedroom was cast in a golden glow of the lamp. He loved me. I knew this. I knew that I was fond of him. I knew that I sought him out above all others. I loved him in return, as much as I thought that I could. Words like warrior and battlefield comrade had comfortably meshed with my regard for him. The love I entered into with him had grown from a respect for the soldier and then the Preventer. Words like treasured had never entered my mind; how could they? Words like treasured were for silly romantic novels and the women who swooned over them.
And now, apparently, for him.
How long had I treasured his presence? The things we did that had no purpose other than silly romantic nonsense between silly romantic lovers? Us? Him?
His fingers trailed along my ribs to my pelvis, then followed a return path over my navel to the knife hilt. He touched it. A gentle, upward pressure on the bottom of the hilt put nauseating friction between the rubber and my skin. The tip of the blade itself dipped, pressing into my flesh. I sucked in a breath, then eased it out. My breath forced its way past the blockage throttling my throat with a Gundam's grip with a shudder and a yippish whimper. So missish. I could not breathe out again. So weak.
Reeds, rushes cover clear shallows.
Tiptoe on rocks to catch a cup of flying spring:
Tug the trees to pluck budding leaves.
I forced my eyes open. I could not turn my head, but he was there, in front of me, with a gentle shift of his limbs and his chest. His eyes were so blue.
His eyes. They had been blue, a paler blue. Like the afternoon sky or cut glass. His eyes had been alternately hard and then soft. Soft as he had admired my spirit, my ideals, my warriorhood. Hard as he turned to dominate, to own. His voice had been like liquor as well, a silky cognac that eased from the tongue and misled the palate. He praised manhood and emasculated with the same silk. He gave me my place in history, cemented my place with my ancestors even as he took away my warriorhood, the very warriorhood he claimed to love. I could not defeat him, not in the beginning, not then, and not now. He committed suicide, throwing himself on Nataku's blade with the promise of a recitation of all of the names of all those who had suffered loss for his cause. Even as he died as he had orchestrated. A beautiful irony in his plans no doubt. I did not have to hear his listing to know that my name was not on his list. As if I was not weak. As if my sacrifice was something to be proud of. Or did not matter.
My eyes stung and his face swam between slow blinks. He soothed the backs of his fingers along the length of my cheek and throat again, over and over as if I were some sort of pup to be gentled.
There looms this Man of the Mountains,
Full-clad in fig leaves and mistletoe,
His lips pressed to mine, lightly. His breath and his song moved across my face. In his eyes I could see that he admired me. I knew he admired my ideals and my warriorhood. He praised them enough and with vociferously vulgar language whenever possible. But there was no hardness. No ownership.
His hand shifted down past my collarbones and the knife, the black blade I'd managed to forget, shifted a moment later. The rubber pulled at my skin, dragging down, a little more toward my manhood. The point of the knife dug into my skin and trailed through it. Did it cut me?
Holding orchids vainly waiting for friendship:
Plucking hemps: no way to bare his heart.
The knife stopped moving and he idly jiggled it with one finger. I could feel his fingertip idly tracing across my belly.
What one feels becomes beauty-
I blinked. My heart stuttered behind my ribs. I held my breath.
This subtle truth: who would share?
I opened eyes that I hadn't realized that I'd closed to find his face a lift and a kiss from mine. The skin around his eyes tightened and lifted in a guileless smile. And I knew.
I took a deep breath, one that stuttered and shook with palsy. It washed over me, this subtle truth, like whatever we had that lay between us, like these wants that I could not name. I had no words for it; I had no images of it. I doubted that I would understand it tomorrow as fully as I did in this moment.
His fingers left my belly to trail along my rib cage. His fingers touched my cheek bone and his palm curved around my jaw. I felt the wet between his flesh and mine before I understood what the sting in my eyes meant. It broke, whatever it was, like a dike beneath Nataku's implacable foot.
To view thus releases worries of the world.
A flash of awakening: everything is dispelled.
I held myself stiff beneath him and the knife, as still as I could between the clash of my training and the broken thing. I could not breathe. I could not take my eyes from his. I could do nothing but quiver.
He took my hand in his. His thumb, calloused by the hilts of knives, guns, and the control sticks in mobile suits, scraped like satin across my own callouses. His eyes smiled into mine, again, and he set my hand on the hilt of the knife. His fingers returned to my cheek, to trace the path of tears. And he knew. I could see it there, like a lamp in a temple. He kissed my tears, then said, "I love you, too."
I curled into him and wept.