Work Text:
Beneath: The Discovery of Porn
by duointherain
disclaimer: I don’t own Gundam Wing
Warning: Mention of slight R+2
“I don’t know what to do,” Duo admitted with an overly dramatic teenaged aura of despair. “They’re both being super weird!”
Howard pinched his nose, staring at Duo over the top of his sunglasses. “So this is a problem for you? You got two admirers and you havin’ trouble picking?”
“No, no,” Duo said, getting up and pacing. He wasn’t sure what the word admirers meant, but that was the least of his problems. He chewed on his lip, violet eyes going narrow, wide, shifty, as he paced back and forth in Howard’s quarters.
“Okay, kid, explain it to me again.”
“So Heero kissed me.” Duo said, feet wide apart, the back of one hand smacking the palm of the other. “He stuck his tongue in MAH mouth.”
“You didn’t like it?”
“Naw,” Duo said, blushing, worrying at his lip again. “I liked it just fine. I like him a lot. I feel differently about him than anyone else. It’s like he makes me feel like I could float.”
“Ya got romantic feelings for him. Okay.”
“Romantic,” Duo said, nodding sagely. “But then Relena kissed me.”
“She put her tongue in your mouth too?”
“She tried,” Duo said, scrubbing at his face with both hands. “But then she kinda leaned back on the couch, with the top few buttons of her shirt undone and made an awkward pose and like when I got up to get her some water, cuz I like maybe she was having heat exhaustion or something, she got real mad at me. I don’t understand.”
“They’re hitting on you, kid. They wanna have sex.”
Duo wrinkled his nose, a look of confusion on his face.
“You know, like porn, but more basic and usually shorter.”
That did not get any greater recognition out of Duo.
Howard took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes. “Look, kid, how old you think you are?”
Duo shrugged. “Fifteen, maybe sixteen.”
“You’re kind of small.” Howard said, nodding, jaw shifting to the side.
“What’cha tryin’ta say?”
“Nothing bad, kid, give me a moment to just look at your medical records.” Howard took his feet off his desk and fired up his laptop. “Sit down, will ya?”
“No,” Duo nearly vibrated the word out, pacing even as he tried to stand still. “Is there something wrong with me? What were they expecting of me?”
“Well,” Howard asked, looking up as Duo’s records loaded, “Did your dick get hard for either of them?”
“Hard? Hard how? I mean, I got it bruised once and it was kinda stiff.”
“That’s not a good thing,” Howard said, grimacing. “You might wanna get that checked out, but more like when you fap off.”
“What?” Duo asked, confused, sinking into the chair by Howard’s desk. “I’m broken! There’s something wrong with me!”
After a sip of coffee that would not have passed a breathalyzer, Howard gave Duo a look that suggested he ought to be quiet. “So, look. I know G had you on a pretty short leash and all, but you know he meant well, right?”
Duo grabbed the edge of the table, leaning forward. “What did he do to me? I know I was broken!”
“Kid, you’re not broken. He had an investment in keeping you small. The shorter the nerves, the faster the reaction time. Also the less you weigh, the better fuel efficiency. He gave you a subcutaneous puberty blocker. I’ll remove it, give you a jump start. You should figure out those kisses real soon.”
“Will it make me a worse pilot?”
“Not enough to worry about. Odds are good that you’ll survive and this will help you figure out why you want to.”
“Surviving is good,” Duo said, nervous, fingertips air typing at each other. “Does it hurt? I mean, it hurt when my dick was bruised. It wasn’t so bad, cuz I was kinda bruised all over, so I didn’t really notice.”
“No, it don’t hurt,” Howard said, “Hyun is going to come in down, remove the subpatch and give you a short, okay?”
“This is the right choice? You sure it won’t hurt my fighting ability?”
“Well, it’ll make you more of an idiot, but that’s pretty much every man in the history of humanity. You’ll be fine. Just don’t go overboard thinking with your dick.”
Duo wrinkled up his face, violet eyes staring at Howard like he’d lost his mind. “There are no neurons in my dick. How can I think with it? Will neurons grow in my dick?” Duo’s eyes widened, his face going pale.
Howard clamped his hand over his mouth, fingers pinching off his nose. He closed his eyes, laugh tears squishing out. Then he forced a deep breath. “It’s a metaphor, kid, not literal. It’s just something you have to experience.”
“So like if I don’t like it, can I go back to being like this?”
Howard thought about suggesting castration, but shrugged. “Yeah, if you don’t like it, we can put a hormone blocker back in place.”
“And you think Heero will like it?”
Howard had never planned on having kids. This conversation was exactly why. “Look, I expect if he kissed you and put his tongue in your mouth, he’ll like getting a warmer response.”
“This is going to give me a fever? I don’t like fevers.”
Howard took a slow breath, a drink of his spiked coffee. “Want a whiskey?”
“Yeah!”
From his desk, Howard pulled a very nice, very stolen bottle of Hudson Baby Bourbon and a glass. By the time he’d poured it, there was a knock on the door.
“Come,” Howard called. “Duo, take your shirt off.”
After a mouthful of whiskey larger than one should have even of milk, Duo nodded and peeled his shirt off.
Hyon was a young doctor, her hair pulled up neatly, with an artificial eye and right hand. She paused by the door, pointed at Duo. “This is the one? The left shoulder?”
“Yeah.” Howard said, putting a bit more whiskey in his own coffee cup.
As she got close enough to look at Duo’s back, she started making disapproving snarling sounds that made Duo want to put his shirt back on. “Better scan. You come to medical bay.”
“He’s fine, Hyon. Just the treatment I messaged you about.”
“He not fine,” she said, setting her bag on the desk before glaring at the whiskey. “He boy. No alcohol.”
Duo grinned up at her, face smooth and free of facial hair, one tooth chipped. “It’s okay. I like it.”
“It’s not good for you.” She said firmly, before pulling out a bottle of sanitizer. “Lean forward, arms on the table, head on arms. Feel cool.”
And it did, enough to make Duo gasp as she rubbed sanitizer gel on her hands and then on his shoulder. She then went on a rant in what Duo was pretty sure was Korean. He let his mind wander back to Heero’s kiss. The look on Heero’s face had just hurt. Like, Heero had really expected something else from him.
A blue light hummed for a moment before she dressed Howard down a little more in Korean.
“Kid, she’s gonna make a small cut. Like a centimeter. You want a butterfly patch or stitch?”
“Patch,” Duo said. eyeing his glass of whiskey.
“She wants to know if you want painkiller first?”
“No.”
The incision was only slightly warm to him. The shot she gave him next hurt more, having jabbed nerve on the way in.
Hyon lectured a bit more in Korean. Duo knew Howard’s face, even if his sunglasses hid most of his impatience.
Eventually, the doctor went away. Duo didn’t feel any different.
“Kid, go back to your room. Sleep it off. I’ll send you a link you should watch when you get up, just to help the process along a bit.”
“Okay,” Duo said, not feeling very hopeful. He was just broken. He’d known that his whole life.
He sludged back to his room, a room that had been his when visiting Howard for as long as he could remember. If Howard was on his space ship or his earth ship, Duo’s room always showed up pretty much the same. On a whim, he rummaged in the closet and found a stuff xenomorph doll that he’d liked a lot when he was younger. As he drifted off to sleep, he dreamed that he sent Heero a message apologizing or being a broken piece of shit.
When he woke up, a good twelve hours later, he woke up with a desire to touch his dick, stroke it, but he put it down to just having been talking about it earlier. He ate a meal bar and showered and flopped down in his desk chair. A glorious hero’s death ought to have been his already. He totally did not understand how the world’s karma system worked. He totally did not deserve to still be alive.
Then he started playing the link Howard had sent him. Cute Japanese boy answers the door. It was a really poorly made movie. The plumber didn’t even look like any kind of serious mechanic or anything. The guy didn’t have any kind of hazmat gear or anything. This was probably why Earth’s environmental systems were so fucked sideways.
Duo tilted his head to the side, brows drawing down. Then the Japanese guy was bent over the table with the ... plumber’s dick.. in his plumbing.... Duo groaned. Loudly. This was nothing, not even a little, like a bruise.
Very quickly, Duo got louder than the video, and certainly more creamy. That was the day Duo learned to search for porn.
<><><>
Duo - messaging Heero: Heero! Do you know about porn?
Heero - Reading Duo’s Message, as he works on repairs: Yes.
Duo: How long did you know?
Heero paused, looked at the screen, eyes narrowing. “Always?”
Duo leaned back his seat, head tilted back as he let out a slow breath. “Have you had sex before?”
One of Heero’s eyebrow arched up. “Yes.”
Duo suddenly panicked and if he could have climbed through his keyboard he would have. “Was it with Relena?”
Heero went back to working on the repair he was working on. It was at least ten minutes before he replied. “No. Have you had sex with Relena?”
“No,” Duo typed. “Only thinking about you makes my dick hard.”
Heero pulled his cockpit door closed, just in case anyone was recording. “So you do like me?”
“Yeah! So G had me on a hormone blocker, to keep me small. I got that fixed. You wanna kiss me again?”
“Yes,” Heero said, smiling, a big enough smile his muscles felt strange. “Very much so.”