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"Going the Distance"Written By: Clara Barton Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing. The following
is an intellectual exercise with no intention of profit. That said,
these characterizations, words, and situations are mine. Please ask
before reprinting. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: Angst, language, violence, sex, AU Pairings: 1x2x3 Summary: Duo Maxwell has just signed on to join Team Gundam Wing, an upstart League of Legends team looking to win the World Championships. Duo Maxwell, the first openly gay professional gamer. Duo Maxwell, the guy hated by almost all of Reddit. Duo Maxwell, the guy whose own brother hates him. Duo Maxwell, the guy who really just wants to find a team that doesn't hate him. A/N: This fic is an AU that has the boys playing
professional League of Legends. I'm going to try my best to not get
bogged down too much in game terminology or things like that, but,
well, I WILL reference the game and try to explain as much as I can,
as I go. I'm also way too lazy to make up "new" teams for
the league, so I will be using existing teams and players, with the
exceptions of Team Gundam Wing, Zodiac Gaming, and the Valkyries.
So… I will be referencing real people and real teams. "Going the Distance" Chapter Eighteen "So... do you want to talk about it?" It was their last day together, at the beach, and Duo and Hilde were sitting on the sand watching the sunset and Duo was trying very hard to psych himself up for the return to reality tomorrow, the return to the TGW house and long days of training for the Summer Season and the return to Heero and Trowa. But after a week with Hilde, after a week together in their ramshackle bungalow that they had rented with the bonuses from making the All-Stars, Duo was finding it hard to want to do anything that didn't involve another few days spent in the sun and the water. He sighed and shrugged. "Just Solo stuff," he said, which wasn't really a lie. But it wasn't as if he could tell her about the other things - about Heero and Trowa. He loved her and he trusted her, but there were too many secrets that weren't his and he didn't want to go down that path. She sighed and leaned against his shoulder. "Is this about the Reddit post?" Duo nodded. "Yeah, a little." The official trade announcement had been released two days ago and Solo had responded on Reddit by saying that ZG was happy to have the two best members of TGW join their squad and that he was confident that ZG would make it to World's this year, where they belonged, and no one was going to hold them back. "I thought you weren't checking Reddit anymore." "I'm not. I mean, not every day." And he wasn't. He had made a concerted effort to stay away. But he'd had to look, to see what the internet thought of the trade. A lot of people thought TGW was insane - after all, Trowa had spent his entire pro-career playing support. But, during All-Stars in Rio, the community had been given a taste of Trowa's skills when he had played Nidalee in the top lane and there was a fair share of people who seemed to be operating under the idea that Trowa had secretly been practicing top lane all along. Which, Duo supposed, was true. There were a lot of guesses about Meilin, a few people suggesting that she and Heero were secretly dating and this was their chance to spend more time together and that amused Duo more than anything else. "I wish I could tell you an easy way to fix things or just forget him but I know that's not going to happen," Meilin sighed. Duo wrapped his right arm around her. They had actually shared a bed this last week, and Duo was going to miss her presence, the physical contact, spooning together in bed at night and leaning against each other during the day. "Every time I think I'm over him I realize I'm not," Duo admitted. "I'm always going to want him to... forgive me, to love me or I don't know. But I'm done thinking the shit from last year was my fault. I'm done apologizing and I just - I just want to do my thing, you know?" "Solo's the only thing bothering you?" Hilde pressed and Duo hated that she knew him so well. "Just teammate things," he muttered. "I just need to work through some stuff in my head. It's nothing really." "Right." "I'll be fine." "You're totally in love with the straight boys, aren't you?" "I'm not in love with anyone," Duo snapped and then he sighed. "It's just a crush. It's stupid. It's... I'll get over it." "Duo, you've been living with them for four months. If you were going to get over it, you would have done it already." "You are the least helpful person on the planet, Hilde." "You're welcome." He sighed again. "Did you ever want something so badly you thought about just... giving up your other dreams for it?" "Please tell me we aren't still talking about you being in love with the straight boys." Duo nudged her shoulder. "No," he lied. Because he couldn't explain it to her. He couldn't tell her that after a week with Hilde, after thinking about Heero and Trowa and missing them and wondering what if - after all of this he was starting to think that it could be worth it, whatever behind closed doors thing they wanted to try. Except... except Duo didn't want that, not really. He didn't need to post photos of himself kissing them on Reddit to feel satisfied, but he didn't think he could just ignore them outside of their bedroom either. "Well," Hilde said eventually. "I wanted to be a pro-gamer so much that I gave up on the idea of being a ballerina." Duo glared at her and she shrugged. "What? I did. But, Duo... what kind of thing do you want so badly that you'd give up your other dreams? And if you have to give up your other dreams, is it really worth it?" It was a damned good question, and Duo was really going to have to try to answer it. He sighed. "About this being a pro-gamer dream of yours," he said, changing the subject and feeling it was his turn to be the annoyingly honest friend who made you confront the things you didn't want to. "Yeah?" She sounded uneasy, as if she knew what was coming. And she probably did. "So how long are you going to just sit back and be the best player on the worst team in the league?" She punched him, which he had been expecting, but it still hurt. He rubbed his stomach. "Fucking ow." Hilde tried to move away but he kept his arm around her. If she wouldn't let him run away from problems then he definitely wasn't going to let her do it either. "It's complicated," she said eventually, after glaring out at the ocean for a few minutes. "Tell me about it," he prompted. "They're all... they're good players, Duo. Really good. If they could get their shit together we could win. We could be a really, really scary team but..." "But..." "But I don't know. Everyone wants to do their own thing. They all have their own strengths and they want to play to those strengths and I feel like I'm in Solo Queue - like I have four other phenomenal players on my team and they've never heard of team chat." Duo nodded. He had watched videos of their gameplay, and he had noticed that they looked uncoordinated, that most of their teamfights looked like the things that happened with him and Wufei - someone going in and the rest of the team hesitating before deciding to go in as well or run away. They were a mess. "You need a shot caller." Hilde snorted. "No one wants to listen to Dorothy tell them what to do. And Dorothy's too busy trying to do what she needs to make sure she wins her lane to focus on the rest of the team." "Hilde, Dorothy should never, ever be the shot caller." "Then who?" "You." She turned to look at him. "Me?" Duo nodded. "Hilde, mechanically you're a good player. When you're on top of your game you can go toe to toe with me -" "Thanks," she snorted. "But what makes you a great player is your strategies. Hilde, you have amazing map awareness and it's like... it's like you can predict what the other team is going to do and where they're going to go. I've seen you do it for years and if you can just get the Valkyries to listen to you, to follow your instincts..." "Okay Yoda, I'll get right on that. They won't listen to anyone else, and they've spent the entire season bitching at each other so far, so I'm sure they'll be thrilled to have me try to tell them what to do." "Hey." Duo waited until she was looking at him. "I didn't say it was going to be easy. But if you want to do this - if you want to be a pro-gamer, then you've got to know it's not going to be easy. Either you can sit there practicing for ten hours a day and feel like you're getting nowhere and keep losing against other teams with players who are shittier than you, or you can practice for ten hours a day and maybe your teammates will be bitchy at first because no one wants to be told they're garbage and need to pull their shit together but... " "They aren't garbage," Hilde defended her teammates. "Honestly, Duo, they could be great." "Then make them great." They sat in silence after that, until the sun dipped down behind the horizon. "I hate you," Hilde said as they got up to go get dinner. "I love you, too." -o- Duo was running late the next day, they had hit traffic driving back and he barely had time to toss his duffel bag into his room, grab a hastily assembled sandwich, and slide into his chair in the gaming room before Quatre called a start to practice. "Sorry," he said around a mouthful of bread and turkey. Meilin looked at him with amusement, Quatre with a smirk and Heero and Trowa with unreadable expressions. Sally, however, crossed her arms and arched an eyebrow. "Won't happen again," he assured her. He never ran late, but still, it wasn't the best impression to make on their new teammate. Quatre nodded. "Right. Well, now that we're all here... I guess, welcome to the team Meilin." Meilin smirked slightly and nodded. "Thanks." "I just want us all to talk a little, before we play anything today, about the Spring Split and what we can take away from that and what our goals are for the Summer Split." "To win and go to Worlds," Duo pointed out. Quatre nodded. "Yeah. Definitely. But there are things we need to work on, to make sure we get there." "Actually," Meilin interrupted and everyone looked over at her. "There are things you need to work on if you want to win at Worlds." Heero, beside her, frowned. "You guys are a great team - obviously - and I think we're going to be one of the top three teams and we're going to go to Worlds if we work hard. But I didn't join this team to get to Worlds. I was already on a team that could get to Worlds. I want to win at Worlds." "And you think we can't?" Trowa asked. Meilin shrugged. "I don't know. I've only seen you play one game in the top lane and... maybe you're amazing. Or maybe it was a lot of luck since no one knew what to expect from you. Maybe you got ahead because Duo camped the shit out of your lane and got you fed - I just don't know. But I'm guessing you wouldn't have let Wufei go if you weren't confident that Trowa could hold his own." "He can," Duo assured her. "That's great. But what about the rest of the team?" "Umm..." Duo wasn't entirely sure where she was going. Meilin sighed and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Look, I just came from a team that thought the sun shined out of Zechs' ass and maybe it does - whatever - but the mentality over there was do what Treize says and get Zechs fed and let Solo do whatever the fuck he wants because he's a god. And that's fine, that's what ZG does and it helps them win a lot. But it won't let them win at World's. I'm not going to sit here and just... absorb all the things you guys think are so great about TGW and gently prod you in the direction I think you should go. We don't have the time and I'm done being ignored by boys because I don't have a dick and somehow that makes me inferior." "No one on this team thinks that," Quatre rushed to assure her. Meilin arched an eyebrow. "Really? We'll see." "So what problems do you see with us?" Heero asked, getting right to the point. "Well, for starters, Quatre is a great utility mid laner - he's good at supporting plays the rest of the team makes - but he's not much of a playmaker himself. In straight up fights against other mid laners you lose, every time. It's only when you're team fighting that you excel." Quatre shrugged. "Yeah. I know." "The Korean teams won't let you teamfight. It's as simple as that. You've played on the international stage now - they've seen how you play, even if one of the games was goofy as fuck - they know you call the shots and they know you only feel comfortable in teamfights. So they're going to target you and make sure you can't ever be in a teamfight." "Oh my God I love you," Duo had to say. Meilin turned to him. "And you -" "Please don't make me cry." She smirked. "You don't farm the Jungle enough. You spend too much time going back and forth between your lanes and trying to help them get kills and unless you get them a lot of kills or pull off crazy shit you fall behind by late game. You guys are lucky that you haven't had to play many long games - because that's your greatest weakness. Duo spends too much time worrying about other people and he never gets fed enough himself and it's going to come back and bite you in the ass." Duo had never really considered that before, but as he thought about it... she was right. He did tend to fall off the later games went, regardless of the champions he picked. He sighed and nodded. "You're right." She looked triumphant and then turned to Heero, who just rolled his eyes. "What?" "Nothing," he muttered. "Go ahead and tell me all of the reasons Zechs is better than I am." She did some eye rolling of her own. "There are two reasons Zechs is better than you." "Only two?" Heero asked. Beside Duo, Trowa sighed and he looked over at him. Trowa just shook his head, clearly anticipating this was not going to go well. "Yeah. Just two main reasons," Meilin said. She held up two fingers. "One, me." Heero arched an eyebrow. "You think you're a better support than Trowa?" She shrugged. "Let's hope so, or you guys have made a really big mistake." Duo had to agree with her logic. "And the other reason?" Trowa prompted, his voice somewhere between amusement and irritation. "Trowa." They all frowned. "What?" Quatre asked. "Trowa is the reason Zechs is better than Heero?" Meilin nodded. "Heero relies way too much on Trowa in the early game. It's fine to need your support - I mean, that's why we're there - but you never go aggressive unless Trowa tells you to. You never run away unless Trowa tells you to. It's as if for the first ten minutes of every game you can't even think for yourself. You just do exactly what Trowa says you should and then, after ten minutes, you magically realize you can think for yourself." Heero's glare was intense. "Um -" Quatre started to say, but Meilin wasn't done. "You're like a baby bird, Heero. You need Trowa to chew up food and dribble it into your mouth and then you figure out how to fly and you become a killing machine." "That was a completely unnecessary mental image," Duo had to say. "It's also a completely unnecessary way to play. Heero - you're a marksman. Yeah, you're fragile, but you can kill shit. You can kill shit level one and level two and you do not need anyone to chew up your food and spit it into your mouth." "Seriously, can we go with any other analogy?" Duo asked. "Zechs gets kills in his lane all by himself, early in the game, and it means he's ahead and it means he's scary and it means that his support gets to roam around the map and do scary shit and that's what makes him better - Zechs doesn't need Trowa and instead Zechs had me to help him when he needed it and to roam and have an impact on the map when he didn't need me." She paused and shrugged. "I can play like Trowa, if you need that. If you want to just... be a baby bird and have me feed you then I can do that. And we can still make it to World's. But if you want to win at World's then you need to realize that you are a killing machine as soon as the game starts and I'm not saying go balls to the wall all of the time - but you need to be able to survive without Trowa holding your hand." "Did you talk to ZG like this?" Trowa asked. Meilin shook her head. "No. Of course not. I don't have a dick, remember? Girls aren't allowed to be smarter or better." She sighed. "Look - you guys are good. Really, really good or I wouldn't have joined. I just... I just really want to be able to hold that damn trophy at the end of the season and tell Solo he can go fuck himself because I don't need him." Meilin stared at Duo. "I mean, I can get behind that," he said, and he had to wonder what Solo had said to Meilin to make her so pissed at him. "Wait," he realized something. "You and my brother were dating?" Meilin rolled her eyes. "I don't think we can call it dating if all we did was fuck each other and fight." "Right..." "It's over now," Meilin said and she didn't sound too upset about it. "Solo can find someone else to suck his dick and all I care about is winning. Is that going to be a problem?" "Nope," Duo assured her. "Not at all," Quatre agreed. Sally was smirking, looking at Meilin with a proud, somewhat fond expression and it was the first time Duo had seen her look at any of them without seeming on the verge of rolling her eyes. "Right," Quatre said. "I think... that's probably a good start to thinking about what we can all work on. Why don't we just warm up and -" "What about you?" Heero asked, looking at Meilin, "what are your weaknesses?" Meilin shrugged. "I'm bloodthirsty. I like to make sure my team gets kills and sometimes I do stupid shit that isn't worth it." It was a fair assessment, and Heero actually looked a bit pissed off over the fact that she didn't claim to be perfect. Duo fought to keep a straight face as Heero turned towards his computer and Meilin rolled her eyes at him. "Okay," Quatre shook his head. "Let's just jump in and play a few games. It's been a week since we last played and this is our first time playing together anyway so let's just... have fun and try to think about Meilin's super bitchy words of advice and be better." Duo and Meilin chuckled and Trowa smiled as he put on his headset. That night, after they finished a very long and more than a little stressful day - it was definitely going to take time for Meilin and Heero to get used to each other - Duo leaned back in his chair and felt exhausted and... excited. Their games hadn't been amazing, hadn't been their best by any stretch, but they had still been good. And even with Heero and Meilin passively-aggressively taunting each other, the games had been fun and Duo could see how they could become a scary good team. Quatre and Sally went off to the kitchen to talk strategy for the rest of the week. "Sweet dreams, baby bird," Meilin called after Heero when he removed his headset and left the room. Duo rolled his eyes and saw Trowa frowning. Meilin noticed too. "Oh, what?" She asked. "You know he's a better player when he's angry." Duo arched an eyebrow and turned to Trowa, who shrugged. "Sometimes," he allowed. Meilin snorted. "Trowa. He's always a better player when he thinks he has something to prove - you just like to keep him happy because he's your friend." Trowa sighed and shrugged again. "Think of it this way, you can still be the good cop and go up there and let him tell you what a horrible bitch I am and you can still be friends and then I get to play bad cop and egg him on until he becomes this ridiculously awesome marksman who eats Zechs for breakfast." "Un-pre-chewed breakfast?" Duo asked, trying to lighten the mood. Meilin shuddered. "I hope so. That guy's ego tastes like shit." Duo chuckled. "Anyway," Meilin continued, focusing back on Trowa. "You know him better than I do. If you think I'm pushing him too hard let me know. I'm not here to just make you guys throw everything out of the window - you know what works and what doesn't. I'm just... offering a new perspective." Trowa nodded and he looked thoughtful. He stood and stretched and Duo was proud of himself for looking away after only a few seconds of starting at Trowa's belly button, exposed when his shirt rode high above his waist. "Are you staying up for a while?" Trowa asked Duo, smoothing down his shirt again. Duo nodded. "Probably." Trowa jerked his head upstairs. "I want to go and see how our baby bird is doing," he gave Meilin a look, "and then I'll be back. Play one game without me?" He suggested. Duo nodded. He tried not to think about the fact that one game was plenty of time for Heero and Trowa to have sex. "Sounds good," he said. Trowa left the room and Duo turned to see Meilin looking at him with an arched eyebrow. "What?" "Nothing," she said, but she smirked and stood ~ * ~ |
