|
"On the Wings of an Eagle"Written By: Kaeru Shisho Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Gundam Wing
or its characters, nor do I make any monetary profit off this story. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: AU, male/male pairings, language Pairings: several Summary: When Trowa Barton and Duo Maxwell pay Quatre Winner a visit, he coerces them into archeological site destruction and matchmaking A/N: My deepest thanks go to the kindness of Snowdragon and WaterLily for editing and encouraging me to complete this. Sequel to For a Lark "On the Wings of an Eagle " Chapter Ten I Shall Never Be a Prisoner Getting Duo on a horse was a near failure. "No way, Jose." He did not want to miss out on the fact-finding mission, though, and eventually broke down and agreed, at last, to share my saddle. I was grateful we were both slim, but still it was a better idea in theory than in practice. Two asses plus one ass holder equaled one sure-as-hell tightass. Winner, Merquise, and Yuy all rode as if they were born in a saddle. Chang looked stiff, but when wasn't he? I learned to ride bareback in the circus and before that I rode with mercenaries, making me one with riding as a mode of transport in an age of space travel. Wasn't that anachronistic to some degree? Duo had never before touched horseflesh and when meeting one for the first time kept both hands tucked away under his arms. "Big." As he said that, his eyes enlarged to dinner plate size, which was bigger than big. I could tell the horse impressed him, even frightened him some. "Yeah, this one is big enough to carry two men." I climbed atop first and reached for his hand. "We'll share." He smiled and clasped my hand and I pulled him up. Rashid pushed from below and stood by to make sure Duo wouldn't faint, I guess. The others had thoughtfully gone on ahead and not watched our floundering. I had appreciated the privacy, and I know Duo had too. The ride lasted an hour or more. Being a first-timer, Duo would be sore later, but for the start he seemed to be having a good time. "Different point of view from up here," he said. "Yeah." I especially liked the feel of his warm back pressed to my chest; less the tickle of hair up my nose. The sights were okay, we could both see them, so there was no use talking about them, until we passed the stable yard. After that, an entire panorama opened and opened and opened into a gorgeous vastness that being cooped up on a satellite or on a dingy colony made unfathomable. "Jesus, 'Tro. Earth's one heck of a gorgeous place." "Yeah." Made spectacular by having him to share it all with. We rode across this, the lesser of Winner's estates, admiring the pastureland, miles of tall grass, and trees. Acres of them. "What if life is one giant mathematical equation?" he asked, out of the blue, unless I'd missed what he'd been saying before that. I considered his question a moment, then told him, "If it is, then there's an answer." "Yeah," he said, twisting around so his braid slipped over my leg like a thick snake. "I like that idea. Everything works out in the end." It would be nice if it did. "You wanna tell me about the email you read this morning?" he asked, again out of the blue-with-white-fluffy-clouds sky. This time his expression was speculative—not annoyed or pushy. I did not really want to expose my disappointment, but, I needed to. The school I ended up attending would mean a life change for Duo as well, since he wanted to go wherever I went. "No word from my top choice, but one of the least spectacular schools approved me." "Well, that's good; at least you got that to plan around." "I'll try to work up enthusiasm for that one in case I get no other offers." He had a long-winded way of telling me I was damned lucky to get to go to school and have a hot guy like him to sleep with and who liked to cook. Didn't I know it? He intended it all to come off in a playful way. He wanted me to appreciate what I had and cheer up. He threw in how lucky he knew he was to have me as well with a firm enough conviction to convince me he did really mean it. I hugged him and nuzzled his sun-roasted hair. "I know." I told him. "But right now I can't get past having some guy's sexy ass grinding between my thighs." He flung back his head so he was looking upside down at me and laughed. We were still laughing when we reached the pit. It looked to me more like a construction site than a ruin, and I was right. "We were building a new research center, starting with this site, when the first relic was discovered," Winner told those of us who were listening. Chang was leaping from rock to rock like a mountain goat, stooping to examine the intervening rubble. "Work stopped until a team of researchers could evaluate the find." "What was the analysis?" Yuy asked. "It's not complete." Winner gestured to the expansive crater. "It's all happened very recently. It could take months to get a final report." "So until then, your operation is shut down?" "Yes, I wasn't enthusiastic about building this close to my home anyway, so it's all right." "I found one!" Chang shouted. We all dashed over to where he stood knee deep in debris halfway down the side of a cliff. We looked down, and over. "I found one of those figures." "Man or woman?" Yuy asked. "Man-- I think," he said. "He couldn't tell the difference? No wonder he's single," Duo shared with me. "Don't bother coming here," Chang yelled while flapping his arms about, to chase us off, I guess. "I'm coming up." I don't think any of us had considered risking a broken ankle to meet him in the pit. Yuy appropriated the artifact the moment Chang showed up with it. Even I could see it had a penis the size of its arm. "Looks like the others," he said. "Winner? You said this place might have been a temple? Temple to what?" To what, indeed? How much background had Winner prepared for this insane plan of his? Merquise motioned for silence with an elegant hand. I kept forgetting him and knew I would regret underestimating his abilities one of these days. "The indigenous people of this land created fertility dolls to bring them rich harvests. There's a stunning documentary on the ethnicity and cultural significance based on complete—" It looked to be building up to another monologue of monumental proportions, but this time Duo and I weren't the ones to have to hear it. "Time to depart." I led the horse around, found a rock for him to stand on, and got him seated before mounting behind him. We listened a few moments longer as I walked the horse to the path. "Is this valuable, you think?" Chang looked at the god-awful doll trying to see value in it, I think. "What matters is how it makes you feel each time you look at it or hold it in your hands. Does the piece 'speak' to you? If you like it, if it does speak to you in some way, it's worth won't really matter, you will always enjoy it and you won't be disappointed." The prince was good at this subterfuge, I had to admit. "So there's a film on the people that made these things?" Yuy asked. "Yes, as I started to say. I understand that the archival content alone is worth the viewing time with at least twenty hours of translated field research on the religion, rituals, art, medicine, law—" "Law?" Chang asked, totally falling under the spell of the spiel. "Yes, hours on that alone," Merquise assured him. We left them in discussion, Yuy and Chang insisting that they stay the night. I wanted to get back to the ranch, eat, and get Duo's sore ass into the warm pool; although, I moved eating to the end of the list the closer we got to our destination. By the time we dropped off the horse at the stable, the only way I could get Duo to walk was to entice him with promises of a "warm spa with bubbles." And he made it to the water, evading the additional hike to the pool house, which told me how much he had to be hurting to ignore his empty stomach and his inhibitions. He dropped his clothes where he stood, "Don't need no dressing room," and eased his small self into the gigantic hot tub connected to the massive swimming pool. I combined the circulating heat of the water with some rather knowledgeable massage techniques to soothe his riding muscles, taking my time to enjoy his pale, silky skin. He was unearthly in so many ways. He was unaccustomed to the great open expanses, horseback riding, and direct, unfiltered, straight-from-the-source sunlight. "Not much longer or you'll burn," I warned him. "Blistered and burned, welcome to Earth, eh?" "Just take it slower." "Um, 'Tro? You gonna take care of my other problem?" "Another one's arisen?" "Heh, heh, oh—" "I'm lucky you learned to swim as some point in your life," I said, my massaging fingers becoming deeply personal. "L4 visiting Quat required swimming in pools. A couple brave Maguanacs t-tahh-aught me." "Uh, huh." I fingered and stretched him a little more then moved him to my lap. He was weightless; impaling him was effortless. Pool sex is something like zero-G sex in that way. "Oh, ho, oooweee! That's interesting." He went incoherent after that. The feel of his tight heat contracting around me totally killed my stamina. Five minutes from start to finish. But five minutes of loving Duo was just fucking amazing, literally. We floated a bit, spent, and contented, and then we wrapped up in towels. I scooted a pair of lounge chairs to the shade and there we collapsed. "Like a pair of sea lions snoozing under a pier," he said. "Better than week-old, beached whales." "God, no kidding!" He made a face. "Rotten image to put in my head, lover." "How about lunch?" "You are warped." "So's space." I chuckled and got up, re-securing the towel at my waist in case we got company. I recovered our packed lunches from my pack, which I'd dropped with my pants earlier, and tottered back to the "wharf." He watched me rather deliberately. I asked, "What's your point?" "I forgot. You're more interesting. You move so... fluidly." That sent the blood to my cheeks. He must have enjoyed his effect on me, so he added, "Like a big graceful cat." When our eyes met I realized he was waiting for me to connect the dots to his point. If I un-jumbled all his odd comments, I'd discover an embedded joke. Big cats, fluidly... oh, I got it: lions plus water made sea lions. We were sea lions. I groaned and told him he was awful, which he loved, and then passed him his share of lunch. As we fortified ourselves, Winner and his prince joined us with glasses and a pitcher of Margaritas. "Well, that's done," Winner said. "They should be good for a few hours. Then, you can take them dinner and wait until dark and then—here's a diagram of where some treasures are hidden for you to haul away. Make lots of obvious marks of having been there for them to find... evidence and all—" "Waitaminute," Duo said. "I'm not riding a damned horse again today." "Of course not-- not in the dark," Winner assured him. "You'll take the jeep." Duo emptied one drink down his throat, and then looked at me through the bottom of his glass. "You'll be driving," he said, and then he filled another glass to the brim. "I'm entering the 'forgetting' phase of my day." Double joy, he was giving me his "watch this," hooded eye-wink. I prepared to be amused. "I'm just feeling too loose to trek," he said. Winner grimaced. Duo had told me the old war story of being subjected to a day at the L4 art museum with Winner, leading to his first telling of this joke—just silly word-play, but unadulterated Duo. Apparently it was new to Merquise, because he questioned the connection. "Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec?" Merquise asked. He fell for it, God love him. "Why would you be channeling that particular French painter?" Ah, being the butt of the gag. I let his lover break it gently to him, while I took a look at his diagram of the ruin area and Duo pretended to sleep. There was the "loot" for us to tote away; there was where our favorite guards were encamped; and there was the back road leading to town, giving us an alternative route back to the estate. We'd see who got the last laugh in the end, but I hoped it would be Duo and me.
|
