Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Comforts ❯ Edge ( Chapter 2 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Kracken

Comforts


3x4

Edge

I thought that he would be embarrassed when he finally woke, but Quatre sat up, blinked as if trying to remember why he was on the edge of a sewer, and then looked down at me. I was still lying on my back, one arm behind my head as a cushion and my eyes, pinched with weariness, battling the siren call of sleep.

"You should sleep," Quatre told me. No apology or wasted time feeling guilty. There was a question in that suggestion, though, and it wasn't an order.

"Later," I told him simply and pulled him to his feet along with me as I rose. I carefully listened and surveyed the area, a dawn free of rain showing me the war torn countryside all around us.

"We need to move," he said. "We'll need to supply as well. I have contacts if we can get that far."

I nodded, but I wasn't a man who trusted anyone, certainly not a third party. I wouldn't avail myself of Quatre's 'friends' unless I couldn't find any other alternative. The first order of business, though, was to eliminate the things that would make us stand out.

"We need to wash the mud and stink off," I told Quatre and led him along the stream until I was certain that it was running clean. I gathered a certain lily from the upper bank as we walked. When I had an armful of them, Quatre raised a golden brow but didn't question me. I think having saved his life was giving me credibility. I hoped that would continue. I needed him not to question me for our survival's sake.

"Here," I said, pointing down a gentler slope of dirt to the water's edge. "Take off your clothing and wash first. Do so quickly. We don't have much time."

He hesitated and there was a slight pinking of his pale cheeks. With his hair hanging in his eyes, it made him look very young and uncertain. His fingers began working then as he began unbuttoning his shirt.

I turned away to crush my plants against a stone. The smell was faint and the pods rough. With some added river bottom sand, it would make a crude kind of soap, that would, hopefully, get both mud and smell removed. I used my military hat to bring it to Quatre and then I had to look down and swallow hard.

Quatre is beautiful. I suppose, if I wanted to keep it cynical, and clinical, I could point out that his family formulated themselves in labs; weeding out genetic flaws, and making perfect heirs. Quatre didn't look engineered though, he looked sculpted by a higher power. His body flowed, lithe like a dancer, but still on that verge of man and boy, soft in places and curved in others, yet possessing some muscle. He had scars, and I know, that if I looked closely, I might see freckles, moles, or pimples, but I couldn't see any of that just then... and didn't really care to. Standing waist deep in the stream and trying to wash, the rest of Quatre was a tantalizing mystery that I was ready to solve.

"Soap." My voice was almost irritated with my need to at least appear in control.

The blush that had been on Quatre's cheeks rocketed along his back and chest and he kept his eyes lowered as he took the hat from me and looked inside curiously.

"Add river sand and mix it," I suggested. "It will help scrub. Make certain that you keep it out of any wounds."

I turned my back and began undressing myself. I was long and lean and didn't care what anyone thought of me... or hadn't until then. Now, I felt like a mongrel bathing with a purebred... daring to bathe with one. I hated that feeling of not being as good as everyone else. Yes, I was gypsy, mercenary, and didn't have a real name, but I did things on a daily basis that most men couldn't.... that even Quatre Winner couldn't do. Shame was not something that I needed to indulge in... yet I wondered if he looked and what he thought about what he saw.

Quatre handed me the soap before ducking to rinse out his hair. He came up with a splash of cold water and then walked out of the stream, his hair gold once more. I looked, of course, my eyes tracking one spot in particular. What did I hope to see? Anyone will tell you what happens to men in cold water. Yet, I looked and saw exactly what I expected to see, and then looked quickly away.

I washed and then dressed. I didn't feel eyes on me and was somewhat disappointed to find Quatre dressed and turned discretely away when I was done. The man is honorable and proper. I had no doubt, just then, that my modesty was still intact and that Quatre had never looked.

I examined us both carefully, after washing out the hat. I gave it back to Quatre and he put it on over his soggy, bright hair. He shivered, but I promised, "The sun will dry us, along with our body warmth, once we begin to walk. It is easier to explain being wet than it is to explain why we were swimming in a sewer."

Quatre nodded and then he smiled. "I'm glad that you were the one to rescue me," he said. I had a heart fluttering moment where I thought... but then I attributed the comment to his appreciating my skill, and wrestled my emotions back under control.

"I've been doing this all of my life," I told him as we began to walk. "It is the same as breathing for me."

"Then I'm slowing you down, endangering you," Quatre replied worriedly.

"I chose to take the risk," I reminded him and saw his sidelong look of gratitude. If he only knew just how much I would risk for him...

Contacts gone, and hair gold again, Quatre only had a slouching hat and a uniform to cover the fact that he was the Winner heir and a particular Gundam pilot on the run. I wondered what it was like for everyone to know your face and then shivered, glad that I was someone who was nondescript, forgotten, looked over, looked past... No Name. I was surprised by a touch of bitterness when I thought that I had long ago accepted it. I knew, though, that it sprang from wanting to be someone Quatre would notice, someone Quatre wouldn't forget.

"I was afraid," Quatre said as he slid across a slick rock and regained his balance.

I tried to process that and make sense of it. "Afraid?" I finally had to ask.

"That they would capture me," he clarified and that admission obviously bothered him. I wondered why he was confessing it to me, why he felt the need.

"They... hurt Duo badly when he was captured by them," Quatre went on. He adjusted his hat and then jammed cold hands into his pockets. "Broken ribs, a broken leg, and contusions. He told me... He told me that they beat him as soon as they dragged him out of his Gundam. They hated him. They wanted to hurt him."

"We've killed many people," Trowa replied. He didn't have to elaborate. Quatre understood. Right or wrong, daughters, sons, lovers, wives, and husbands were dead at their hands. Animosity was to be expected. "Duo was also interrogated," he mused darkly. "They wanted information badly."

"That's... criminal," Quatre said, disturbed and I had to laugh. The man could be so... pure in the midst of our dirty little war. It might have made him angry, my reaction. He didn't say anything else for awhile.

"Aren't you ever afraid?" Quatre asked out of the blue, as if we had never stopped having the earlier conversation, though it was later in the day by several hours.

"Yes," I replied. "But it doesn't matter. I still do my job."

"Then you're brave," Quatre said softly.

"Not caring and being brave are different," I argued. "You have to be afraid of losing your life to be brave."

"But you said..." Quatre was confused.

"I fear pain and a messy end, but not dying. My life has always been full of it," I explained. "I've slept soundly on battlefields and in trenches with death all around me."

Quatre shook his head as if I confused him and then he said,. "You should care about dying. I would hate for you to die."

I stopped walking and he bumped into my back. I was having a hard time believing what I had just heard him say. He cared whether I lived or died? He was the first that I could remember. I had always been expendable. Nobody. The loner. The kid. The No Name tagalong who was good with weapons. Send him, they'd often ordered. He's got nobody. Nobody cares if he dies.

Quatre snaked an arm around me as if sensing my turmoil and he... hugged me tight.

"It's okay," he whispered against my back.

No, it wasn't. Not then. Not when I couldn't... Not in the danger we were in. I pulled away and started walking again, but I was tense and emotionally shaky. I didn't want him to see it as a rejection and hated when he caught up with me and said a soft, "Sorry."

"It's not...," I began to say and then clamped down on that and said instead, "We don't have time."

"I know," he replied and then sighed, "I hate this war."

Hate it? It was all that I knew. It was my life. I might as well hate the air that I breathed. There were times, though, when there were lulls, when there were pockets of peace before the next battle. Then, I told myself, I would, perhaps, find time to let Quatre know how I felt.

When darkness descended, we crawled through a narrow, broken window into the tumbled remains of a brick building. It had enough space for lying down and an off room to use as a privy. It would do for the night and I hoped that the long line of troop carriers, that we had seen crossing our airspace for most of that day, would be long gone by morning. We hadn't made much progress, hiding mostly in depressions and under bushes to avoid detection by their instruments.

It was cold. Quatre was rubbing his hands together and then jamming them into his pockets. We couldn't chance a fire, unfortunately, but I couldn't say that sharing body warmth for the night was unappealing. As we crouched in our small space and cleared some of the floor of debris, I was surprised to learn that Quatre wasn't thinking about our predicament at all.

"This town was completely destroyed. War destroys so many lives." Quatre said, troubled.

It was an unnecessary observation. I was thinking more along the lines that, being the perfect hiding place, troops probably searched the blasted out buildings as part of their sweeps. We were taking a chance by staying there, but the wind was up and getting brisker and I didn't want to spend the night being buffeted by it and the cold.

Floor clean, we settled together in the darkness. We both didn't voice our hunger in unspoken agreement. I set my back against a fallen wall and I felt him lean into me. I couldn't help the impulse to wrap an arm around him and pull him closer.

"Cold," I explained. I felt him nod.

"We should be clear by tomorrow afternoon," Quatre mused. "I'll be happy to get out of the battle zone. There's so much I want to do, but I need Sandrock."

"Or a few good weapons," I chuckled. Depending on one form of fighting was always dangerous, especially when one depended on such a rare machine, a Gundam. It was smarter to be a man of many skills. I could pilot any mobile suit and any weapons array.

"Trowa?" Quatre said softly as if he wanted to tell me something important.

I thought of discovery, that perhaps he had heard a sound that I hadn't, but then he was slipping an arm around me as well and putting his weight on my chest. I wanted more than anything else to be able to see his eyes, to see his expression and know for sure what I was only hoping for.

"Quatre..." There was so much that we could say by only saying each other's name. How did we question, argue, and then come to an agreement with just two names? Quatre will tell you that it was soul meeting soul, but I think it was stress, adrenaline, hormones, and feelings for each other that we couldn't keep to ourselves any longer. Screw danger of discovery, we wanted to screw each other to put it bluntly.

Warm hands slid under my shirt and a kiss missed my mouth. It was tentative, expecting censure, but, instead, it met my hot kiss instead as I snatched at his lips with my own. He was on me then, groaning and whispering some sort of gratitude. I don't know for sure, I was too far gone and struggling with the mechanics of getting at least the important parts of him undressed.

Quatre is a passionate young man and he didn't disappoint me as he proved to be just as passionate in my arms. His hands are strong, used to the grip of a Gundam' controls, and his slim body was well muscled where it pressed against mine. When my hands slide between the crack of his ass, played there, and then squeezed his firm, rounded cheeks, there was a breath of uncertainty from him. Of course we couldn't go that far, but it didn't mean that I couldn't explore him there.

On our rough bed of broken concrete, we lay down as best we could in opposite directions. I knew a certain skill in this area, but Quatre was fumbling and slow to begin. When he finally took me into his warm, moist mouth, I shook all over, cursing the fact that I couldn't see the person that I was so attracted to claim me that way for the first time.

We both didn't last long. I finished him, wringing out a cry from him, as I thoroughly enjoyed the taste and feel of him in my mouth. When he had presence of mind again, he took my erection deeper than he had before and gave a powerful suck. His tongue dipped into the slit at the top at the same time, deep and rough, and I spurted while I tangled my fingers into his hair. He choked and I heard him spit, but he didn't protest when I pulled him around and chased the taste of myself on his tongue in an open mouthed kiss.

We lay together afterward, Quatre draped over me and my hand playing idly in his loose curls. He said, after awhile, almost afraid, "When it's morning again... will it be over? Am I going to be... ashamed?"

That question told me a great deal and I felt a tension within me relax. I wasn't just relief, the next in line. I was the first. I held him tightly and replied, "No shame. None at all."

Would it be over, though? I didn't have the answer to that. I couldn't make promises. I had always been a soldier. My life had always been on the front lines. I couldn't see a future that was any other way.

TBC


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