To Understand

by KatiKat


It was shortly after the war ended when I first walked in on them. I don´t even remember what I wanted to tell them anymore. It became unimportant as soon as I opened the door and crossed the threshold to their room. I didn´t even think about what I was doing. They stayed at my house until they decided what they wanted to do. We lived together in safehouses before that so often that it was a normal thing for us not to knock. But this time it was really a bad idea to walk in unannouced.

Duo was lying spreadeagled on the king-sized bed, his wrists and ankles bound with leather cuffs to the bed posts. He was gagged, a black blindfold over his eyes, a leather collar around his neck. He was lying on his stomach, his bottom raised up by a pillow placed strategically under his hips. Duo´s body glistened with sweat, he was tugging on the cuffs, trashing on the silk
sheets. He was whimpering and crying, his blindfold wet with tears as Heero - who was kneeling on the bed next to him - was mercilessly hitting his buttocks and upper thighs with a wooden paddle. The creamy skin on the abused places already turned a deep shade of red.

I gasped in shock and Heero´s head snapped in my direction immediately. His eyes were wide open, the pupils dilated with lust. The hand with the paddle stopped in mid-fall as he regarded me, reason slowly returning to his eyes. Suddenly Duo whimpered and arched his back, fighting his bonds. Heero - not looking away from me - laid his palm in the middle of Duo´s back and pushed him down into the soft bed mercilessly.

I stood there frozen, my eyes fixed on the naked bodies on the bed. I think I would be standing there even now if Heero didn´t barked "OUT!" at me with such heat in his voice. This one word broke my trance-like state. I turned around and fled, leaving the sound of the paddle hitting the bare skin and Duo´s moans behind.

It was much later that I heard the reluctant knock on the door of my study. I fled there, hiding from the pictures that hammered on my brain, hiding from the reality of my two closest friends being engaged in... in... that. I didn´t answer the knock, but the door creaked open anyway.

"Q?"

I buried myself deeper into the leather chair as I heard Duo´s quiet, almost hesitant question. I didn´t want to talk to him right now.

"I know you're here. Can we talk?"

I sighed. I knew he wouldn´t go away until we talked. We could just as well leave it behind us. "I´m here," I called just as quietly.

The curtain that separated my reading corner from the rest of the study moved and Duo - dressed in his typical black - peeked in. "Hi," he smiled nervously and walked in.

I didn´t look at him.

He shuffled his feat like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Then he crossed the small space and gingerly sat down on the couch opposite me. He fidgeted for a moment, trying to find a comfortable position. After a couple of seconds he reached over and took the multi-colored fluffy pillow from the other end of the couch, raised himself and sat down on it slowly. Hearing him sigh happily, I turned red like a tomato, the picture of him being paddled until his skin was raw springing into my mind.

"Uh... well..." he started and I raised my eyes slightly to look at him through my blond lashes. He was as red in his face as me. Maybe even more. He had his hands clasped in front of him and his eyes were roaming the small alcove we were sitting in. Finally they settled on some spot over my head.

"Heero... uhm... Heero said you saw... that you... uhm... when we... uh..." He waved his right hand as if in description of their previous action.

"Uh... yeah." A really brilliant answer.

"Oh..." His cheeks went even more crimson. I think that even the tip of his braid blushed.

I didn´t want to talk about it, but I had a million and one questions at the same time. In the end, I blurted the question that seemed the most important to me. "Why?!" I didn´t need to specify what I was asking about. We both knew.

The spot over my head didn´t seem interesting enough for him anymore because he finally lowered his eyes and looked at me directly. He didn´t stop blushing but I could see that he really thought about the answer, that he really wanted me to understand.

"I... I think it´s all about control," he said in the end.

"Control? Duo, he was hurting you!" I cried out.

His cheeks became even redder. "No, he wasn´t... well, he was, but he wasn´t." I think I must have looked pretty confused because he tried to explain further: "It... hurt - hurts," he corrected himself and fidgeted once again. "But Heero would have stopped the moment I told him."

"Told him? You were gagged! I saw it!"

"That´s... uh, true. But what you didn´t see was the little bell I had in my hand."

Bell? I didn´t understand.

"The moment I would have let it fall he would have stopped. It´s like a safeword. Usually Heero knows my limits, but the safeword thing is mandatory by... uh... this."

My mind stopped somewhere on the "usually" and so I asked: "Did you ever use it? The bell I mean." I couldn´t believe I was discussing stuff like this with my best friend. My sisters would have a fit.

I could see Duo relax just a little seeing that I didn´t despise them for their... uh... thing. "Yeah, once or twice at the beginning. Heero really doesn´t know his strength sometimes." He smiled just a little.

We sat quietly for some time, neither of us ready to break the silence, until I just had to ask: "Was it... uh... enjoyable?" I could feel myself turning red again and one quick look at Duo told me that I wasn´t the only one.

"Uh... uhm... yeah," he admitted looking at his hands in his lap again. "When you do it with someone who knows what he is doing... yeah, it is."

"You said it hurt..." I couldn´t imagine to enjoy something that would hurt.

"It does. But it´s really... liberating too. You can let yourself feel. You can scream and cry and it has a purpose. You can release the tension and stress that built up in you. Sometimes... sometimes I had the feeling that the constant tension we lived in would choke me and this... this is a way out of it."

"And the sex?"

He smiled mischievously. "It´s HOT."

We looked each other in the eyes and I had the feeling as if - maybe - I was beginning to understand slowly. Then I remembered something he said. "You said it was about control... I thought it was all about sex."

"No, it isn´t." He leaned back against the couch and relaxed totally. He could see that I really wanted to know, to understand. "It doesn´t have to end with sex every time. It´s about giving up control to someone you trust unconditionally. You can´t do it when you have the least doubts in the person you are doing it with. When you can´t be sure that he will stop when you want
him to, you can´t loosen up, you can´t let go."

"So, you trust Heero unconditionally?"

He looked at me earnestly. "I trust him with my soul."

I knew what he meant. A lot of people you trust can watch your back in the battle, but only one person can guard your soul. For Duo it was Heero, for me it was Trowa, for Wufei... who knows? Maybe nobody.

"So, you give your control to Heero."

He nodded. "Yes. I had to take care of myself my whole life. I had to fight for food, for survival. It´s good to give this control to someone else, to lose your worries, just to enjoy that you are alive. For Heero... he didn´t have the best childhood either, but it was different for him. He was taken care of, the control over everything was taken out of his hands. He was taught to follow orders and rules. Where I need to give up the control, he needs to have it. He needs to be in charge."

"You let him do whatever he wants," I concluded.

"No. We are partners, equals. This isn´t slavery. It´s a consensual sexual relationship where he is the dominant one and I the submissive one. It´s something that shouldn´t be hidden or denied. Everyone has their needs. But it´s a very private thing that can be misunderstood easily. Some people think about it as about a perversion of some sort. It´s not. We are not really hurting each other. We don´t pull it in our everyday life - he doesn´t force me to serve him or sit by his feet when he eats. We have our limits that were clearly set at the beginning."

I sat there, frowning slightly and mulled it over and over. It sounded like it worked for them. It wasn´t easy to understand, I didn´t think I could enter this type of relationship with Trowa. Some mild bondage was one thing, but this... But he sounded happy and I could see that he went into it with his eyes open and his mind clear. The line between this type of relationship and abuse was thin but I was beginning to see it now.

"We... uh... we okay, Q?" Duo asked hesitantly as he peeked at me from under his bangs. I could see he was nervous about losing my friendship because of this. Some people would probably really turn away from him with disgust, but the same sort of people would probably turn away with dísgust from gays too. And I knew I was more open minded than that.

I smiled. "Yeah, we are, Duo. You and Heero are my closest friends and nothing will change that."

He beamed and jumped to his feet in excitement. Immediately, he hissed quietly through his teeth and rubbed his backside gently. He smiled a little, crimson staining his cheeks once again. "I will... uh... I will let you..." he waved his right hand around again, "... do what you were doing before I came in here."

"Duo?" I called him before he could slip through the curtain.

"Huh?" He turned.

"Next time - please, lock your door, okay?"

He blushed so hard I thought the curtain would catch fire from the heat. With a silent "you betcha" he vanished then.

I shook my head and chuckled. We were really okay.

I managed to walk in on them a couple of more times in the years that came. The slight embarassment remained and there were some awkward moments too, but one thing I learned from the experience I made with them --- I learned to knock!

The End.