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The Chains We Wear	By : LadyYeinKhan Category: Gundam Wing/AC > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 13145 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing/AC, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 19
- 20
- 21
You can follow me for story updates and other random things at Ahsimwithsake.tumblr.com

A/n: So if you’ve been following me on tumblr, you might have noticed that I’ve been having a bad time at work recently. That malaise that I’ve been complaining of? Most of it is work related, and it’s come to a head. I’m trying to get through it.

I was really bad during the summer and missed two deadlines. But I got back into a bit of a groovy with this chapter and finished it on time.

This chapter is a little bit different, and I decided to do something I had thought about earlier and never did.

Warnings for this chapter: swearing, a very uncomfortable masturbation session (possibly triggering),

Chapter 20:

“God damn it all to hell! Tracey!”

Trowa, crouched next to the newest shipment of cereal boxes, sighed. He never thought he’d meet anyone who swore more than Duo. Trowa stood slowly, wincing as his back complained, and brushed his hands off on his black pants, frowning when they complained too.

Trowa flexed his stiff, aching fingers for a moment before calling “coming,” and jogging over to the truck with Tracey’s usual twitching enthusiasm.

Greg, the “stock manager” all intents and purposes, glared down at him from the cargo bed. “Pissed” seemed to be the man’s usual mood, so Trowa had already stopped assuming he had done something wrong every time Greg started swearing. Tracey was not so quick.

“What’d I do?”

“Get in here.”

Trowa gripped the edge of the truck and hoisted himself inside. His hands cramped around the metal. Worse, it took him a second longer than usual to make the muscles relax. Thankfully, Greg didn’t notice.

Squatting near the mouth of the bed, Greg gestured towards the last of the load. “What the hell is that?”

Trowa crouched near him. The week’s last shipment was almost fully unloaded. It had been a much slower, much heavier affair than Tuesday’s shipment of frozen food and yesterday’s fresh meat and produce. There were twice as many boxes today, packed twice as heavy with cans and boxes of processed, prepackaged food. Trowa understood, of course; a much longer shelf life meant fewer, bulkier shipments to cover the quantities necessary. His fingers, however, were not thanking him for the additional strain.

Rocking on his toes, Trowa looked at the last half-dozen boxes. It didn’t take him long to see the problem.

“Looks like boxes to me,” he said slowly. Trowa rocked forward and tilted his head to read the upside-down printout on the side. “Boxes of tuna fish.”

“See anything wrong with those boxes of tuna fish?”

“Well they’re upside down to start.”

“Damn right they are. And what’s that next to the label?”

“An arrow.”

“Damn right, and this is why you should get your ass back to college so you don’t forget what the fuck ‘up’ is.”

For someone who complained, often, about how three degrees between five kids had bled him dry, Greg was surprisingly adamant about Tracey going back to college. Tracey, however, had several ridiculously romantic notions about fame and changing the world, and none of them even suggested a bachelor’s degree.

“I thought degrees were scams,” he said.

“Degrees are scams, for kids who don’t know any better. And you ain’t one of those so you damn well better get your ass back there.”

Trowa rocked back on his heels, steadying himself with a hand against the truck wall. As a rule, Tracey was openly sensitive about very few things; it was easier, and often safer, for him to agree with others. Or at most, disagree in the most thickly-veiled, passive-aggressive way possible. College, however—more specifically his decision to drop out from it—was a sore spot. No one understood how those institutions destroyed the artist. How those brick and mortar houses crushed the creative spirit: drained the writer of his muse, the musician of his talent, the artist of his vision, until there were only husks of former greatness, shuffling aimlessly through the sprawling halls of those “esteemed” vaults of “education.”

No one understood—no one accepted—how Tracey was so much better than that. So much better than a four-year sickness and a piece of paper to hang his creative genius. Tracey had the same spark that had lit the hands of Shakespeare, Blake, and Joyce, and he would do nothing to risk it being snuffed out.

The irony was intentional.

Trowa had read passages from all of them, recently in fact. For background research. Blake he found in the bedroom, a battered copy of Songs of Innocence and Experience that stayed nestled between Chopin and Handel’s biographies. Shakespeare and Joyce had been at the library when he was looking for anything on woodworking. He hadn’t gotten through more than a page of either before putting them back.

Stockton was offering a fall-term survey course on Shakespeare, and an entire class on Joyce’s Ulysses. He’d have to take at least four courses before even being able to think about tackling that. Not that Trowa was thinking about it. Heero could hack a private university’s administration system easily, and the credit card Trowa would have to pay with even easier. College was out of the question.

Trowa dropped back onto his toes and pretended he wasn’t disappointed.

“I’m not writing with my eraser yet,” he said, letting a little sarcasm touch Tracey’s voice. “I think I’ll be fine.”

Tracey used sarcasm so rarely that Greg picked up on it right away. He gave Trowa a shove. Trowa shot his foot out to catch himself from a fall that wasn’t exactly faked.

“Flip the boxes, smart ass, and God help you if anything pops out.”

The last six boxes weren’t the heaviest but Trowa moved them carefully, mindful of his hands as they moved along the cardboard edges. He wasn’t particularly concerned about Greg’s empty threat. He was, however, concerned about certain reactions from the managing staff if any of the tuna cans went out on the floor dented. More specifically, Holly’s.

Aside from helping with the weekly shopping trip, Trowa had never had more than a limited understanding of how grocery stores actually worked. He knew they stocked and sold food, sometimes using a pricing algorithm that Trowa couldn’t even begin to understand. He also knew that they often sold less-than-perfect products: a few bruised apples in every bushel of reds, a dented can for every dozen not, a slightly crumpled box on every shelf. Nothing health threatening, of course. Just less than aesthetically perfect. There was almost always something in their weekly load that was outwardly damaged. When Trowa hadn’t known then was that they had rules about how to sell those less-than-perfect products, or at least this store did.

Per regulation, anything that wasn’t sold by the expiration date was removed and eventually thrown out. Damaged goods were notorious for never making it out of the store in time. It was a waste of food, and money. This store, however, had an unusually low percentage rate of wasted food. Cashiers more or less bribed their customers to take damaged goods with discounts. The worse the damage, the higher the discount, although Trowa was fairly sure it never broke forty percent. It was a surprisingly good system. In the two weeks he had been working here, he couldn’t have thrown away more than a dozen expired, damaged products.

It was also a very crooked system, according to Holly.

The discount only applied to products that were damaged by the staff at some point. And even though there was no way to prove it, even though there were no tapes of the canned goods aisle to watch or ledgers of “damage discounts given for August” to read, Holly was sure someone was “cheating the system.” That was the problem with honor systems, she said. You couldn’t trust people to respect it. You couldn’t trust customers to honor the honor system. You could trust the staff, though, with the right motivation. If you threatened their pay, you could trust them to be careful.

Trowa was more than certain that it was illegal, on top of impossible, to be docked for every damaged discount. Tracey was not. So Tracey moved the boxes from the truck and the cans from the box with the utmost care. And Trowa did his utmost not to smirk when Holly circled the stockroom with all the grace of Labrador chasing its tail.

When all of the boxes were right-way up, Trowa dropped carefully out of the cargo bed and waited for Greg to move them to the edge. He was at least twice Trowa’s age and weight, with only half of his muscle, but he still managed to push the boxes across the bed with moderate ease. Lifting them was another matter. Trowa did his best not to peek around the box and make a face as Greg lifted with all the wrong muscles. He had already been told, colorfully, exactly how much Greg appreciated a dropout’s advice about manual labor.

Trowa swore he wouldn’t smirk when Greg finally pulled or threw something.

Greg got his hands under the first box and lifted. Trowa slid his hands underneath the other end and waited for the cardboard to tip back into his chest. He realized two things as the weight started to shift. One, the cardboard beneath his fingers was dangerously soaked. Two, his fingers were cramping in a way that threatened sudden loss of feeling. One of them was going to give. Which one was the question.

The box settled in his arms. Trowa, fighting a grimace, took a step back. He took a second and there was a sharp, tearing sound. Trowa juggled ripped cardboard and falling tuna for a few seconds before several of heavy, plastic-wrapped bundles of cans landed just right on his foot.

Trowa jumped back. Most of his swearing was drowned out by the crashing cans.

“God damn it Tracey—”

“Shit—”

“That’s like fifty cans—”

“That fucking hurt—”

“Of course it hurt. There’s like six per pack.”

Trowa, barely resisting the urge to stand on one foot and rub the other, sneered. “Who’s brilliant idea was that?”

“Stop complaining and help me clean them up. You didn’t drop them far, maybe they’re okay.”

“I didn’t drop them at all,” he spat. “The box ripped.”

“Would you shut up and pick them up?”

Trowa sneered. For a moment, he was tempted to refuse, or even kick one of the packages at Greg. But then his foot throbbed. Trowa sighed softly and dropped to the ground, dull pain lancing up his shin as he rocked forward onto the ball of his foot. He grabbed the nearest pack of cans and started a pile.

Suddenly, with his hands full of bent cardboard and less-than-perfectly-round cans, getting docked per dent didn’t seem quite as impossible.

Trowa was making a second pile—and doing rough math in his head (just in case Holly did make good on her threats)—when Greg glanced at him.

“How’s the foot?”

“Fine,” he muttered, just loud enough that Tracey could argue that he wasn’t sulking.

“Not broken?”

“I can move it if that’s what you mean.”

Greg smirked. “You’ve never had a broken bone, have you?” Trowa had had plenty, actually. More than Greg anyway, he’d bet. “I’m talking about moving it without screaming.”

If he wanted to, Trowa could pop a dislocated shoulder in without screaming. He had almost gotten sick with the pain, but he certainly hadn’t screamed.

Trowa made a small show of checking his foot, flexing the muscles and prodding it hard with his thumb. The top of his foot hurt more than he thought it would, and the pain felt deeper, but he didn’t feel any bones grinding.

“Think it’s alright.”

“Good. How about that hand?”

Trowa paused, fingers clenched around another packet of cans. What about my hands, he thought even as his fingers gave a traitorous twinge. Greg couldn’t possibly have noticed. “They’re fine.”

“Don’t give me that. You’ve been wringing and flexing them all week.”

Actually, Trowa had been flexing and wringing them since Wednesday. So that would be less than half a week. Before Wednesday, Trowa had been cracking them, or rather forcing them to crack: pressing his thumbs against the joints until the bones gave that sharp, satisfying pop. Every finger, a couple of times a day. And then a couple of times an hour. On Wednesday, Trowa had dropped a glass of water and realized that his fingers, swollen and red, hurt.

That morning, the swelling had finally, mostly, gone down, and the hurt had devolved into a more tolerable ache. It was marked improvement after only a couple of days of conscious effort.

Trowa knew what had happened because he knew that he couldn’t ignore restlessness. Ever. Inactivity, or in this case near captivity, grated his every nerve. It wore his patience down to the barest nub, and strained his impassive mask to the point of cracking. Worse, he could use none of his usual coping mechanisms, either because it raised the risk of being found too high for comfort or else because Tracey would never use them.

Tracey would never run for miles. He would never practice his balance on railings. He would never check his aim with kitchen knives or a gun, if he had one. He would never take apart the nearest thing on hand and put it back together.

Tracey would write. Maybe he would read for an hour, but he would always write. Trowa was starting to hate writing.

If he couldn’t find a better way to vent his frustration than so obviously hurting himself, however, then Trowa would have to learn to like it.

“My hands are fine.”

“Your hands are telling you something. I’d listen.”

“Like what?”

Greg rocked back onto his heels. “You’re a writer, right? Songs and shit.”

“Short stories actually.”

“Whatever, you’re still writing aren’t you?”

“It’s not ‘whatever.’ They’re totally different.”

“Fine. They’re different. It’s still writing, right?”

“Right,” he muttered.

Greg nodded. “Way I see it,” he said as he slipped his hands beneath one of the piles of cans. “A writer’s hands might not be used to so much work.”

Trowa’s fingers tightened around the cans in his hands. It took every ounce of willpower he still had to place them—not drop, and certainly not throw—carefully on the floor.

His hands were fine when it came to work. Better than fine. And certainly better than Greg’s had ever been or ever could be. They had lifted and pulled paneling and cartridge cases without ever dropping a bolt or screw. They had slid between bullet shredded metal and sparking electrical wiring with only a few minor scratches or burns. They had never slipped with a soldering tool and never cramped around the thruster. And of course there were the guns and the knives, the flips and the catches. Never mind that he hadn’t used much of it in the last couple of months (half a year, more than half, almost a year); Trowa’s hands remembered. His arms and his legs might need a little reminding, but his hands remembered.

His hands were fine. It was the rest of him, right now his head most of all, that was the problem.

Tracey’s had been far from idle, too, and he took almost shocking offensive to any suggestion that writing made him soft. So Trowa let him bristle.

“My hands are fine,” he spat. “I wired a whole house with these, and put in the floors, and shingled the roof, and wrote a novel too.” One he never finished, but that wasn’t the point.

Greg gave him a lopsided smirk. “Yeah? When?”

“Three years ago with my uncle.”

“Three years is a long time to go between jobs.”

“I’ve done plenty since then.”

“With your uncle?”

“By myself. I’m maintenance at my apartment now. The whole damn building calls me to fix shit.”

He had gotten less than half a dozen calls in the last two weeks, and they had all been minor repairs. He hadn’t lifted more than a tool box.

“Tell you what,” he said lifting the pile of cans too easily and with too smooth a smile. “You don’t wring your fingers for three days and maybe I’ll believe you.”

Greg turned and shuffled towards the stock shelves. Trowa, biting back a sneer, snatched up his own pile and staggered after him. It was the only way to stop himself from throwing the just-heavy-enough parcels at his head. He couldn’t promise, though, that he wouldn’t “accidentally” drop them on Greg’s feet. Or maybe his fingers. We’ll see who whines about finger pain.

Trowa made a point of ignoring him for the rest of his shift, which actually wasn’t very difficult. Once the trucks were unloaded, Greg usually stayed in the back with the stock and his lists, and Trowa usually stayed on the floor with the trolley and a system for refilling shelves. So Trowa only had to worry about Greg when he went back to the stock room to refill. And since he kept his answers clipped and just this side of sulking, Greg stopped trying to talk to him after the first hour and seemed to find plenty of reasons to stay off the floor while Trowa was running around.

It was a ridiculous amount of work on a normal day, when Greg would at least come out for clean-up calls, price checks, number runs, and bagging. On a day when they weren’t talking, it was almost impossible. Trowa spent more time with a mop and plastic bags than with the trolley and food, and lost an entire twenty minutes to Holly. She caught him leaving the trolley, full of unopened bags of snack food, at the end of an aisle. By the time she finished yelling at him about how much money could have “walked right out,” he missed two price checks and three calls for bagging help. There was a long line of irritated, elderly ladies glaring at him when he finally got to the register. Trowa was sure that the one with the bag of cat food cans had hit him with it on purpose.

It could have been worse; he could have to rotate the produce out, too.

And there were a couple of benefits to doing the work of three people alone. He was almost guaranteed (or at least taunted with) sleep. Total exhaustion, bone-deep and dream-quenching. Which was exactly what Trowa needed to make up for the fact that he still couldn’t get more than ninety minutes at a time, and that was on a good night. Even he had to admit he was reaching the limit for normal functioning. If running around for nine hours was all it took to knock his body out, Trowa would make sure Greg never spoke to him again. And if Greg never spoke to him again, or at least avoided having to, Trowa would have the added bonus of rubbing his stiff, aching fingers whenever he wanted without Greg’s smirks or snide comments. He could lean back against the corner of the soup aisle and rub for five minutes if he wanted to.

He didn’t, because Greg had a point. It was hard to believe, looking at them, that these were the hands that had held him steady on a rail or the back of a lion, the hands that had clutched throttle and gun without flinching. Trowa knelt at the end of an aisle once between cleanups and stock runs. He stared at the stressed limbs, running a thumb carefully over the red fingers and swollen joints. The hot flesh trembled. Trowa’s thumb skated over his palm; his fingers twitched.

These were not the hands that got him through both mercenaries and war. These frail, trembling limbs with fingers that flinched at the lightest pressure, that could be so easily damaged, were not his hands. They weren’t even Tracey’s. They were a coward’s hands. A decrepit’s hands. Easily manipulated, easily ruined, by restlessness, fear, and an uncontrolled mind. They’re not mine. Not now anyway. But Trowa was going to fix it, soon, by any means necessary.

Trowa didn’t have the time to think about how he would fix it; his shift was too demanding. The rest of his time on the floor stretched and shrank in turns: speeding up to damn near dizzying whenever a call from over the speakers pulled him from his boxes and then stretching into a crawl once he got to the registers or the spill that was so demanding but tedious. Even his break didn’t stop the unusual stop-and-go of time. Holly snatched the second fifteen minutes of his half-hour break from him because someone might have complained about the empty toilet paper shelves. The fact that that half of the store wasn’t scheduled for restocking until tomorrow apparently didn’t matter.

He was almost disturbingly glad to leave. And then as he walked out of the store, after muttering a begrudging good bye to Greg who just grunted as he pulled his coat out of his own locker, and started for the apartment, Trowa realized how much happier he would be if a bus ran between the store and the apartment. At the very least remotely near them, but there wasn’t one. There were no buses in Ocean City period. Right now, his foot wasn’t exactly pleased about that.

Trowa’s foot hurt by the time he made it to his apartment. It was the stairs that had really done him in. There were just not a lot of ways to climb them without putting weight on the ball of his foot or looking like an idiot. He could have hopped up one stair at a time, like an idiot, but he couldn’t be sure no one would see him. So Trowa had taken them slowly. In the ten minutes it took, no one came up or down the stairwell, so no one asked him if he was hurt, and no one saw him when he put used just a little too much pressure on and nearly slipped down the steps when the pain buckled his knee.

Once the door was closed and locked, Trowa let himself limp around the apartment, walking on the side of his foot as he tossed his keys on the table and yanked his jacket off. Even that was starting to hurt. Maybe he had broken or cracked something. The cans hadn’t been heavy but there had been a lot of them pounding on his foot before he jumped back. Trowa, almost all of his weight on his left leg, glanced down the hall. He had dressing in the med kit under the sink. He should get it, bind his foot, and stretch out in bed with a glass of water, painkillers, and a pile of pillows under his ankle. If he was lucky, his foot would only ache a little tomorrow at work.

But the bathroom was far, and the couch was that much closer, and in thirty minutes he could probably walk between the two without flinching.

Trowa dropped gracelessly to the couch. He worked of his shoes and socks, kicking them away before drawing his legs up. He balanced his injured foot on his knee and ran his fingers carefully over it. It was tender to the touch, though not exactly painful. There was minimal swelling and the bruising wasn’t the deep purple and black of serious injury. Trowa pressed his thumbs into the bruise, gritting his teeth as he felt for the familiar grating of broken bones. There was none.

Just injured. Bruised. Not even bone bruised. An unfortunate physical shock that would fade in a couple of days, a week at most. He’d ice it and bind it tonight to be on the safe side. For the moment though, Trowa just dug his thumbs into the bruise and hissed because the pain was wonderfully distracting.

Trowa got a few minutes of blissful, mind-numbing pain before his body grew used to the sting. He sought out other sore spots and earned a few minutes more. But it was still less than ten minutes before the pain lessened to a more manageable, more therapeutic ache. Trowa, now working the tense muscles with a frown, looked around for another distraction against the creeping restlessness. There was a small, blinking red light on his left: the answering machine on the couch’s side table. Trowa leaned over and pushed the play button.

He settled against the arm rest as the throaty, mechanical voice started. “You have one new message. First message.” There was a short pause, and then a soft, purring voice drifted out of the machine. Trowa scowled.

“Hello, Tracey, this is Christine, down in 103,”He was tired of her starting every message like it was the first, and not the fiftieth. “I know I’ve been such a bother recently,” Her, a bother?   She had only called him seven times this week. “But I’m having a problem with my front door.” Again? He already replaced the knob and changed the locks. Twice. “It’s making this god awful screech whenever you open it. Sounds like a dying cat.” Obviously she had never heard the death knell of a slowly-dying cat before. “I don’t particularly mind, but you can hear it down the hall. Neighbors are starting to complain.” Trowa doubted that. “I know you’re busy with the store and your little stories,” There was the reason why Tracey hated her. “But if you could just pop down here for a minute sometime soon, I’d really appreciate it. You know I would.”

Yes he did, and that was part of the reason why Trowa hated her.

Christine wasn’t subtle. She hadn’t been since Trowa met her the first time to replace her doorknob. It had “mysteriously” snapped off. It didn’t take him long to figure out that she was probably in the middle of a messy divorce, what with the thick tan line on her ring finger and the actual break; someone had to have broken it off with something heavy to get that angle and dent most of the door handle. It took him even less time to figure out that she wasn’t particularly upset. She mentioned the updated restraining order without hesitation and called her ex a number of increasingly unflattering things, while crowding a crouching Trowa against the door until he ran the risk of face full of crouch if he dared turn his head.

Trowa could admit that Christine was attractive: slender and curved, with a soft face framed by softer, curly blonde hair. And he supposed he could admit that maybe he understood. She was probably bitter, probably lonely, maybe even a little scared. For her future, for her safety, for her life. Maybe she needed a relationship as either proof of moving on, or for the more practical purposes of having someone dedicated to her constantly at her side. Maybe she was being a little desperate about it, but people did desperate things to protect themselves. Trowa would know.

He didn’t, however, appreciate her almost aggressive attempts to get him into her apartment. He didn’t like the constant offers of tea, coffee, wine, whatever would bring him inside for “just a few minutes.” And he certainly didn’t like the flash of her too dark, too familiar eyes when she traced the contours of his body or face, or her smile that was all white teeth and a tiny flick of pink tongue.

Trowa didn’t like her. Trowa hated her, if only because when she tried, she was uncomfortably familiar.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t a legitimate reason to ignore her.

Trowa wasn’t the head of a one-person maintenance department. Tracey was, and Tracey had never gotten pathetically tangled in a terrorist’s game. Tracey had never thought, for an instance, that extortion and psychopathic sadism were acceptable because he was that pathetic and desperate for affection. Tracey wasn’t that weak, shockingly enough. So he had to go downstairs. He had to see if Christine’s door was screeching—and it probably was, because whatever Christine called him about was actually broken or complaining when he showed up—and blink when she purred her thanks, smile tensely when she invited him in, and maybe blush and shuffle backwards if she tried stroking his arm again.

He had a can of lithium grease under the sink. It was fine for simple joints. If he went took it down with him tomorrow, just before work, Trowa might be to get out in under five minutes without looking like he was running.

Trowa leaned over again and pressed the new blinking light. “Message deleted. You have no new messages. Message log. You have no messages.” The mechanical voice silenced. Trowa sat back against the armrest as the apartment turned suffocating with the quiet. Then the restlessness descended.

Trowa pressed his injured foot against his hip and dug into the sore flesh, knocking his head back against the armrest as he searched fruitlessly for the sharp, mind-blanking pain, because he needed it. He needed a distraction, any distraction, that would shut his mind up. And his already limited choices (because some things just didn’t work) dwindled further. Trowa couldn’t walk or run or attempt handstands on the boardwalk rail and still expect to work tomorrow. And days off were so much worse; there were that many more hours for his brain to titter and nag and mock him when he didn’t have nine hours at the store to distract him.

He needed the pain. He needed something, because he didn’t want to lie in bed all night, foot throbbing and grinding his teeth as his damn head reminded him how stupid he was, how stupid he is, weak, pathetic, worthless, freak—

Trowa gave the flesh a twist, and for one brief second his mind was quiet. His foot jerked in his hands, slipping off his hip. The heel grazed his crouch, and his mind went quiet for almost two.

He had been avoiding that option, for several reasons. But Trowa had to admit that his mind was never quieter than when it was clawing slowly out of the white haze after orgasm. If he was still conscious after orgasm.

His mind was also never crueler. If it got him to sleep, though, straight through, even for just a couple of hours, Trowa could find something to distract him from the mental bombardment when he finally woke up.

That made it a viable, if not desperate, option. Trowa was tired, and desperate.

Trowa released his foot slowly and let his leg drift away from his thighs. Staring at the ceiling, he slithered down the armrest until his head lay back on the cushion. He was just too tall and so spent several minutes (too many minutes) trying to feel comfortable. Eventually, he settled for propping his injured foot up on the other armrest and letting his left dangle to the floor. His hands waited at his sides, picking at his jeans and the cushions in turn, waiting for that physical comfort to ease the grip around his chest. It didn’t.

The mocking started, still just barely a whisper, but it got his hands to move, bringing them sideways up his thighs. There was a faint, almost pleasant tickle up his flesh from his fingers. The whisper quieted. Trowa moved his fingers in slow circles, pulling gently at the skin beneath the black denim, shifting the centers when the almost imperceptible pleasure started to ebb.

The tops of his thighs numbed quickly to the pleasure. Trowa let his fingers drift back around the outside of his thighs, feeling nothing. Trowa’s fingers slid back up, hesitated, and then continued in. He brushed over the inseams and he felt a stronger flick of pleasure lick up his center. Then his fingers, either uncomfortable with the closeness or else remembering how wrong it was to have even a light pressure between his thighs, flinched and retreated. Trowa clenched them over his stomach.

He almost wished that Fahd—no—Kader—No.—the mercenaries—No!—that someone had taken their time. That they, someone, had wrung out bursts of pleasure that weren’t always from a cock up his ass. He might be able to touch himself then. He might have at least a hint then. It might have made this less awkward, a little less frustrating.

Trowa growled low in his throat. That was a pathetic thing to wish for. This was his body; no one knew it better than he did. No one could show him what was pleasant or painful. He already knew. He could find it, if he could get his fingers to move again.

Trowa willed his fingers to move, forced them to straighten and then pluck up the edge of his shirt. He bit his lip as they slithered beneath the hem for his stomach. They brushed against stiff, scratch fabric. Trowa’s brow furrowed for a moment. Right. The corset. Trowa released his lip and sighed. He could take it off. He should take it off. It would only take a minute. Instead Trowa dropped the hem over his fingers.

It took Trowa much longer to move his fingers this time, because this was turning into a dumber, more frustrating decision by the minute. The whisper, now more like a soft chuckle, agreed. Trowa was not ready for that. Eventually, his stubbornness won over the frustration and distaste, although he still wasn’t able to look at his hands as they twitched back towards his jeans. Trowa pressed his head back into the cushion and stared hard at a particularly long crack in the ceiling as his fingers unbutton and unzipped his fly.

His hand slipped between the denim and pressed against warm skin. “You never struck me as the panty-less type,” Fahd purred softly in the back of his head. Trowa flinched, fingers digging into his pelvis. He glared at the ceiling. I’m not a panty-less type. I’m not a type. I’m not listening, I’m not listening. It wasn’t important. It didn’t matter. And the fact that Trowa had to hear it three more times before he could make his hand move meant absolutely nothing.

His cock was unfamiliar to his touch: a thin, flaccid anomaly on a body he otherwise knew intimately. The flesh was warm, though, and smooth like other, better known parts. And when he ran a fingertip slowly along its surface, there was a spike of pleasure that lingered longer than others had. When he did it again, the pleasure swelled.

Trowa laid his palm against himself. The skin warmed and swelled slowly beneath his fingers. Trowa’s fingers spread and slid down either side of his cock. He curled and flexed his fingers, pulling gently at the sensitive skin. Trowa breathed a soft, half-pleased sigh through his nose as he hardened from his own touch. When he was a little hard, Trowa lifted his hips some and eased his jeans down his hips with his free hand. Just a little, to keep the zipper from maybe even lightly scraping against him.

The couch cushions scratched pleasantly against his rear.

Trowa stared up at the ceiling as he touched himself, the tension melting more into a low, pleasant heat with every stroke of his fingers. Every few strokes, he brought his hands a little further down his stiffening cock, until his fingers nudged his sack with every curl. His nails scraped the skin. Trowa’s gaze slipped momentarily out of focus. He pushed his jeans further down his leg.

Distantly, Trowa was aware that he must look ridiculous: head back, legs splayed, one hand tucked behind his back to push his jeans further and further down, the other wrapping itself around the base of his cock and squeezing. The likelihood, though, of someone forcing open his door, or the landlord using the master key, was less than a percent Trowa couldn’t even guess right now, so he didn’t particularly care. Right now, all he cared about was the heat burning low in his stomach. All he cared about was the way his body had started to thrum with unusual pleasure, the way he could feel his pulse in his hand and his heart in his chest, and the way his mind was blissfully silent except for a quiet chorus of “more.”

Trowa stroked himself from base to tip. Slowly, loosely. He let his fingers linger at the head, the thumb brushing over the slit. The pad of his thumb spread of a bead of sticky wet over his skin. Trowa shuddered and pulled the moisture back down the length of his cock. He pushed and pulled at his jeans, the fabric stubbornly stopping short of his knees. Trowa shifted his hips. His jeans slithered down less than an inch. Trowa let out a frustrated huff. It would be easy to let go, just for a moment, and pull his knees close to his body so he could grab and rip his jeans off. Except that it wasn’t. His hand was hopelessly attached to his core, stroking a little faster with every pass. Letting go would take strength of will that could douse the heat building in him, the silence enveloping him, entirely, and Trowa wasn’t sure he would be able to get it back.

So Trowa twisted his left leg. He jerked it left and right, drawing it up through the pant leg by slow inches. His knee flashed briefly at the very bottom of his vision, nearly drawing Trowa’s eyes away from the ceiling as his leg fought against the top of his jeans. But bringing his head forward would tighten his throat and Trowa was already having a little trouble breathing. His knee was close enough to constrict his already constricted abdomen. But then his foot escaped the denim. Trowa curled his toes around the waist band and pulled. His jeans tangled briefly around his thigh and then his knee. But finally, Trowa kicked them off. They crumpled noisily to the floor.

Free, Trowa let his left leg fall back to the floor. His knee slipped below the line of cushions, opening him further. Exposing him. He felt a flick of cool air, a draft from somewhere, curl around his weeping cock, and lower. Trowa shivered and panted, breath rushing from his parted lips. Trowa shifted the foot on the armrest, planting it firmly, digging in with his toes when his knee fell open and landed against the back of the couch.

A drop dribbled down, curving back until it slid across his entrance. Trowa’s hips twitched up unto his strokes.

Trowa’s free hand slid up from behind his back, his fingers tugging at his rocking rear before skating over his sensitive hips and pelvis. His fingers lingered near his cock, stroking the base whenever his other hand pulled up towards the head. Then they dipped between his thighs. They paused to roll his balls between his fingers and wrung a quiet groan from Trowa’s throat. And then his fingers drifted further, running over the slit. Arousal clung to them. Trowa rubbed the wet opening, circling, nudging his wet fingers against a tiny nub that jerked his hips up with a spark of new pleasure. He flicked and pressed at it until his hips bucked and his eyes slid closed.

You are a sick, disgusting freak.

The voice—his voice—exploded in his ear. Trowa’s hands seized around himself for one, agonizing moment before darting away from his body as if they had been shocked. He flailed, trying to escape the accusation, the revulsion, ringing in his ears. The couch slipped out from under him, and everything went suddenly quiet when his head smacked into the floor.

But not for long. Trowa rolled onto his side, gripping his head against the sneering mantra and the bright, blossoming pain. He tried to focus on the hurt spreading out from his temple, the sharp pain that had blackened his vision. But as the black receded and floor focused enough that he could count the swirls in the old boards’ grain, the mantra grew, swelling to a hissing, bitter snarl.

Sick. Disgusting. Depraved.

Trowa pressed his hands against his temples and then the temple against the wood. He was rewarded with a too-short burst of pain that barely even dampened the sneering.

What’s wrong with you?

He wasn’t brave enough to smack his head against the floor. Not brave enough to face unconsciousness.

Perverted fuck.

Trowa twisted his injured foot into the floor. He beat it against the wood. It barely hurt at all.

You make me sick. Freak.

He let out a bitter snarl before rolling onto his stomach. He forced his hands away from his head and pressed them against the floor. Trowa’s legs worked uselessly for a moment, slipping against the wood as he tried to get to his feet. He beat his fist once. The pain grounded him long enough to get his legs beneath him. Trowa stood and swayed. He caught himself on the armrest as his body tried to crumble back to the floor.   His knees spilled openly awkwardly as the fall jerked to a stop.

Wet trickled down the inside of his thigh.

Trowa pushed off from the couch. He stumbled towards the bathroom, the pain in his head and foot distant and minor against the rush of silent vitriol. Still he clung to them. Fix his foot, bind it up. Check his cuts, concussion check. Distract himself with body maintenance. And when that was over and his head was screaming at him, work. Take something apart, put it back together. See how it worked. Not the fridge, he needed that. But maybe a lamp or the microwave. Or the piano. He’d never seen the inside of a piano. Take it apart, figure it out, put it back together. Items were easy. Break it and fix it. He could do that. He was pretty good at fixing things. Just not himself.

Trowa tumbled into the wall, sank against it. His fingers dug into the ugly pain. A second line of wet trickled beside the first. Trowa shuddered and knocked his head against the wall before pushing himself up.

Fix the foot. Fix the head. Break the piano, fix the piano. Fix it. Fix what he could. That was all he could do. He couldn’t fix what he wanted. But he could fix the rest. Fix it, fix it and make his head shut up for five minutes.

Trowa yanked open the bathroom door. His hand was already flicking on the lights when he realized that that was the last thing he wanted to see.

It was really the worse possible place to hang a mirror, right across from the door. Worse now when he was half-dressed and swaying, flushed and hurting. Trowa watched himself slump against the wood, gripping the edge tightly. He swept his eyes over his reflection. The mussed hair and flushed face. His skin wet with sweat, his lips with saliva. His shirt still hiked up around his chest, the corset peeking out beneath it. And then his cock, small, still half-hard and dripping pre-cum, and the trails of moisture that ran in messy rivulets down his thighs.

He followed a new drop with his eyes as it dribbled down his skin.

Freak.

Trowa’s lips pulled back into a snarl. Freak. He spun away from the door and snatched the heavy bottle of shampoo from the edge of the tub. Freak. Trowa whipped his arm back.

“Freak!”

The mirror exploded.

A/n: This chapter was not actually in my original concept of The Chains We Wear, and Trowa was supposed to be a very different person. But that’s the beautiful of writing and characters; they evolve on their own. We just document it.

I’m going to try and keep up with my deadlines, and work out of the funk I’m in. I really appreciate everyone sticking with me through all this. You have become one of the major reasons I continue to write this story. Your interest, your encouragement, are a god send.

Please review, they make my day. Constructive criticism is always welcome.

As always, I remain your humble story teller

~*~LadyYeinKhan~*~

You can follow me for story updates and other random things at Ahsimwithsake.tumblr.com
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The Chains We Wear