|
"For a Lark"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: 2x3x2 Summary: A Valentine special: after both men suffer from unrelated “breaks”, Trowa and Duo meet on an isolated satellite A/N: My deepest thanks go to the kindness of Snowdragon
and WaterLily for editing and encouraging me to complete this "For a Lark " Chapter 1 -- Reunion The place to meet men was where liquor was sold, and this place closest to the shuttle post had been recommended. One look inside, hundreds of bottles over, around, surrounded the bar in an awe-inspiring array-for the tiny, satellite-afterthought of a colony this was. Yeah, the tender was no slump about it. There was enough booze to float a loan, a dozen loans. Garlands of pink and white hearts were strung from light to light, reminding me of some past holiday celebration. "Hi! My name's Candy. Have a sweet tooth?" The big-titted brunette gave me a bruising kiss. "No," I said honestly, pushed her off, and moved up to the bar, already a sticky mess of mangled lemon wedges being whisked away by the hefty barkeep. "Um, 'keep, nice spread." "She could be, if you're interested." "No thanks. Not my type." And Candy really wasn't. At all. The bartender stepped away from the bar, his waist-length platinum hair shimmering in the tiki lights. "I'm going to the back for another Dewars. You can handle the bar alone, can't you Art?" Art was one hot topic with chin-length dreds, caramel skin, black, Asian eyes, melt-your-heart smile. Now that was my type. "Yeah, mon. I gotcha covered." My imagination stretched and shaped that off-hand remark into something lewd. Jeez, I needed to get laid and bad. "Picky, aren't you?" Art asked me. "Yeah, and I pick you." I flashed a smile. "Let's dance." He shook his head, picked up a rag, and wiped down the stainless steel bar, clearing the lemons on the first swipe, the sticky on the return. "Gotta work first. Name's Art Dodger, wat's yours?" "Duo Maxwell." "Duo? Well, Duo, wat can I pour you?" "Whiskey?" "ID?" I flipped out my pilot's license and hoped he didn't put my name and past vocation together to spell "ex-terrorist." Art studied the license, his eyes looking askance to the dark far corner of the bar, then back up to my face. I wondered if his boss was observing him, or me. "I can serve you beer. On dis satellite, gotta be 21 for hard liquor. Sorry, mon." "Eh." I shrugged it off. "Actually, I'm looking for a place to stay." "On dis Godforsaken outpost on de edge of de universe?" "Yeah..." I sipped at my beer. "Shuttle crew recommended I come here for a lead." Again, he glanced away, this time finding what he wanted, because he nodded in that direction. "The guy you ought to see is dat one, dere at the end." There was something in Art the Barman's tone that said "and do it now," so I did. "Okay, I will. Thanks." "An' don' forget to com' back fo' de dance." "Ah, right." Once I got past the scrim of smoke I could see the fellow he must have intended for me. Long legs and lanky with light brown hair framing half his face and hiding the other. For a second, I thought of Trowa Barton, the Gundam pilot at one time and circus performer of late, but my common sense told me it couldn't be him, not out here. But it was. When he looked up and the bangs fell away, I could see it was him. "Tro'? Dude, that you?" He recognized me right off, too. "Maxwell, what the hell? Where's the braid?" I scooted onto the next closest open barstool, which had pneumatics that adjusted for my height automatically with a wheezy sigh. The stool beside him was being used as a leg rest; Trowa's leg was in an over-the-knee cast. No one was on my other side and he was positioned so he could lean up against the wall, making a cozy, semi-private corner to converse. "Under my jacket." I turned around and took off my knit cap to show him where it tucked inside. I tapped the resin cast. "Looks serious." "The leg? Yeah. Circus dumped me here to heal after the reconstruction work." That had to be immense physical reconstruction to put him in a cast of that magnitude. I wanted to know more, but he had shut off the info tap and turned it on me. "What brings you to this colonial scrap heap? Don't see Hilde with you." "Long, stupid story which ends with me here looking for a place to hang my hat." "You need a place to stay for awhile?" It was Trowa's turn to hunt down Art and send fierce look in his direction. "Yeah. No scheduled departure. Um, I'm just following leads. Don't wanna put you on the spot or anything, okay?" "I have a flat, street level, small. You're welcome to the couch." "Really? Hey, that'd be cool until I find a more permanent hidey hole. I can help with food. I can cook. And I'll get out of your hair with one word. Promise." "It's not that big a deal." He reached for a crutch and hefted his leg off the barstool. "Finish your drink and I'll take you there. I got whiskey." I emptied the mug of beer in a few swallows. "A man after my heart." His wall-eyed expression sent my stomach deep south. Implying a gay thing in either direction would be a mistake. Sensitive issue with a bad story with a sorry ending. Seems of the five Gundam pilots, I alone got the 'gay' straw or gene or whatever. Slips like that could damage a friendship and he and I didn't have what you'd call a firm friendship foundation. More a passing respect. I tried to cover it with more yak. "Another whiskey drinker. Visited Chang once and he tried to drown me in tea. Washed me away. You ever get out his direction?" "Once or twice." He adjusted the crutch under his arm and stood. Then he smiled, catching my eye. "I got him drunk putting whiskey in his pot of shit tea." "Damn! I'm sorry I missed that." And I was. I paid my tab, exchanged winks with Art, and followed Trowa past the fluttering heart banner and out the door. I planned to return for that dance because Barton wasn't gay and as much as I needed a friend, I needed a gay friend, too. The door closed like an iris behind us. Outside, or what pretended to be the outside, was temperature and humidity controlled to human-comfort levels, although I would have liked it to be a tad warmer and drier. The illumination was currently low-light "night blue", as the night-rotation lighting was called on the satellite stations. Nothing like colonies, which tried to simulate Earth conditions to some extent, the satellites had their own cold, sterile appeal, if you were a cyborg. I was not part machine, but I preferred space to living land-side, and, since I hadn't much cash to speak of, this hunk of orbiting metal was about the only place I could afford. Post war colonies were thriving, which meant they were running out society's dregs. Jettisoning the flotsam. And a man without a job or family ties was flotsam by definition. That was me, settling to the bottom of the barrel, but for the grace of this last hold out in the friend camp, Trowa Barton. "Need to pick up some things." Trowa hobbled, with grace, his crutch and cast thumping softly on the simu-rubber matting used for most walkways. We stopped at a rations shop, its red and pink window dressing dancing with more hearts and naked babies shooting arrows, and collected two bags worth of foodstuffs and toilet paper, and then continued out on the main path, me carrying the bags like the gallant I was. He pointed out the sights along the way. Barbershop. Florist shop with a garden of bouquets dressed in red ribbons and bows pressed up against the plasti-flex windows as if they were scrambling to escape all at once. Liquor store. Hardware. Emergency station. "You see red lights flashing or hear the siren, head for an EM station if you are outside a residence. It means there's been a breach in the skin or glitch in the power grid." "Jesus! That happen often?" "No. Every Friday at noon there's a test of the system. For our safety. The residences have seals and I have a couple suits." Space suits, he meant. Hairdresser with dire "Get your 'do' done for that romantic day!" warnings posted in the window. I would not let some rug clipper get their hands on me, ever. Café. Smokes and Magazines. Clothing. Emergency station. "Every Friday? That's gotta be nerve-racking." "Among other things." The storefronts were uniformly pleasant, when not over-decorated with splashes of red, white, and pink, clean, and made of a super light-weight foam-core plastic material common to space construction. When he stopped, it was in front of a door of wood, well, it looked like wood. He slipped a passcard into the slot and the door opened. A guard, or doorman, eyed us for a moment, and then stepped back to let us pass. "Enter my lobby," Trowa muttered. He seemed more detached than I'd remembered, and hoped it wasn't because he was embarrassed to be seen entering with me. I felt at home, though. The entry opened into a large room with comfortable-looking chairs, tables with books and lamps, even what looked like a fireplace with a roaring fire, though it wasn't. "Mail room," he pointed at a passageway, "and elevators. We're going the other way." "Okay." I dragged myself away from the cozy scene of the common room and tagged along behind Trowa, wondering how he got here, if he had withdrawn on his own to recuperate or had been shoved out of the way. Did anyone know who he was, or had been? Art's eye-play with him had been suspicious. Had Art read both our IDs and put two and two together, or should I say two and three together? I say that because we had stopped at room 3. "You are kidding." Three, as in "03", his pilot's code, like Trowa's name. He broke into a smile. "Catherine made the arrangements. I thought it was...asinine, but ..." "She afraid you'd forget your room number otherwise?" "God. I hadn't thought of that. That is so sad." Trowa shook his head and passed his scan-card through the lock to cause it to disengage. "Welcome to my world." He could have called his room his "cell" for all the personality it had. "You just move in?" "I haven't had the...anything to decorate." "'Sokay. I'll try not to make it over." He chuckled. I'd actually made the dude laugh. Glowing with that achievement, I tottered through his apartment. "Not bad." There was a kitchen nook, where I unloaded one bag of groceries, an eating bar, but not stools, dividing it from the sitting area. There was an old style vidphone on an upended box and a TV on another in front of the ratty couch and chair. Instead of bookcases, a couple dozen stacks of books were pushed against the wall. Moving right along on my tour, a dresser and box-style nightstand sat beside a huge mattress pushed into a corner in what could be called the bedroom. These were space-certified, pressurizable cartons, not ordinary packing boxes, making them oh-so much more attractive in the decorating scheme of things. "Bathroom's through here." Trowa showed me a door, where I took the TP we'd just purchased and stacked it away-after closing the door and making use of the facilities to relieve myself and wash up a little. He had a bottle of liquor open and two glasses on the "coffee table" when I came out, and was stretched out on the couch, a place I figured he'd spent much of his time entertaining himself alone. Not the way you were thinking, either. Okay, that too. I saw no sign of a roommate or frequent lover who might leave an identifying item lying about in the bathroom or...around. There really was nothing lying around, except Trowa. The place had all the personality of its resident. "That looks good," I told him. "First, I gotta eat something, 'kay? Don't mind if I heat some soup?" "I'll have some, too. Cut the loaf and some cheese." "Gotcha. Tomorrow, I'll show you my skills at the stove. Hey, they were hard-learned so I'm rather proud of them." "You can cook all you want. No complaints from me. I'm...I didn't have to at the circus. We had a community mess tent." He settled back on his couch and flicked on the TV, listening to the news while I located a pot, on the stove, a large spoon, in the pot, and opened the pull-tab soup can, no water needed. I found places to stow the purchases that made sense to me, except for the bread and cheese, which we would eat. "You really need a bread knife." "I do?" "Yeah, this one's for cutting meat." "I use it for everything." "Yeah, well, I'll get you a bread knife." I had been domesticated by Hilde and necessity. "Suit yourself." I hummed a little tune and heated the pot, stirred the soup, sliced some of the cheese and bread, and located a plate, on a shelf with bowls, and mugs. One mug held an assortment of eating utensils. I moved those to a nearly empty drawer, saving out two spoons, collected the bowls, and assembled everything into our meal. There were only the bare essentials on the shelves and other than what we had purchased, the refrigerator was bare. I wondered at how Trowa had been getting along, hanging out alone on this isolated satellite, and took the opportunity to look him over while his attention was riveted to the TV. He had never been heavy, but now he had that lean-hungry look, the muscles standing our, clearly delineated. Acrobatics, if that is what he'd been doing, had developed his body real nicely. The dark smudges under his eyes and hollow cheeks told another story. "It's ready," I warned him. He was sitting up, ready. "Looks great." I thought so too, but then I hadn't eaten all day and had a belly full of sour beer. I carried it all in and laid it out on the crate-table, such as it was. We ate in silence, watching the news, listening to the harrowing tales of faraway places and political entanglements which didn't concern us in the least. It was nice. World events were passing us by and we cared not a twit. For dessert we polished off the liquor and watched TV. I fell asleep over my drink watching some nature show on desert lizards. Those little guys could take the heat, to a point, then they'd have to find a shady spot out of the sun or a hole in the sand to cool down. That's what cold-blooded really meant. I'd always heard folks use the words to describe a man, "a cold-blooded killer." The only man I thought of like that was Heero Yuy, but he didn't act out of instinct to stay alive. He killed because he liked to, whether they be enemies, gunmen, mission objectives, or friends who made big mistakes-all the same, all good targets. Heero, like other predators of arid land skirting the grasslands of Kenya, including the rufous-beaked snake, is most active at night. But underground, it is always dark. Night and day are the much the same to the tunnel-dwelling naked mole rat. The rats remain cool without fur, just wrinkly, pink skin. Very large incisors are used to excavate tunnels and the short, broad head contains powerful jaw muscles. Unfortunately for this mole rat, his scythe-like teeth are useless in a battle with the voracious snake... "Hey." It wasn't a rufous-beaked snake sinking its claws into me, the blind and naked mole rat; it was Trowa, gently shaking my shoulder. "Hey, man. You don't want to fall asleep on this couch. I think a clown died on it once, or something. C'mon, get up. Follow me." Thump, thump went his crutch receding away, leaving me with the image of a bloody clown, mouth gaping with a rictus grin, lying beside me. Geez! "Fol-low." I shot off the couch and stepped in line, although the only other place I could think of where we'd both fit was the kitchen, which was in the other direction; the bathroom, which he'd already passed up; or his bedroom. Presto! "Bed's big enough for us and a Gundam. Get in. Go to sleep. You can go with me to my doctor's appointment in the morning." "Wouldn't want me to go wild here all alone, eh? Heh, heh..." I said, laughing and my voice trailing off as I realized what I said had not come out sounding right. He shook his head and smiled fractionally. Thinking I was making him uncomfortable, I carried on, "Looks comfortable and roomy. You won't get any argument outta me. And I'm a quiet sleeper." "I know." His voice was so soft I could hardly hear him. "We shared a safe house once or twice, if you'll recall." "Oh, yeah, sure; I'm just ...tired." "Uh, huh. I know you hardly noticed I was even in the same room. It's okay. It suited me at the time." He was right about me not noticing him much. I'd had Quatre to chat with, Heero to ogle when he wasn't looking, and Wufei to avoid. Trowa was just not there. But he was here and very visible, stripping down to shorts, with some trouble getting his loose pants off over the cast, and removing his t-shirt with jaw-dropping triceps, and turning back the sheets. I wasn't staring! I was better trained at controlling my eyes than I'd been as a kid. It just takes getting caught once by a fellow pilot to teach a guy like me a lesson in manners. In Trowa's room, I only peeked a little before following suit, removing my outerwear, and climbing into bed. I hugged the mattress edge, giving him a wide, wide berth; at least to start, and then I fell asleep. Traveling the dreamscape I know not where, I hallucinated sweet visions that I forgot on awakening. "Good morning, sweetheart!" I must have been awake; nobody could have dreamed a headache as bad as I had. Cautiously - or incautiously, as it turned out-I opened one eye, and a needle of artificial sunlight struck straight through my brain. "Holy mother of God!" I groaned, and snapped the eyelid shut again over my charred eyeball. A smell of coffee threatened my stomach with upheaval, and a voice I recognized said, redundantly, "I brought you some coffee." This time I squinted, which was safer, and vaguely made out a male form of a man with a crutch under one arm and a steaming mug in the other. Trowa Barton. That's where I was!
|
