Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Dating Services ❯ Chapter 8

Warnings and disclaimers in first part


Luckily, Trowa didn’t seem to hold Duo’s momentary lack of sense against him, appearing completely normal the next day. Over breakfast of coffee and scrambled eggs, he saw the tall man watching him with an odd expression, but no mention was made of the brief kiss.

While he was glad that Trowa wasn’t mad at him, Duo was also curious why Trowa wasn’t mad at him. If someone had thrown themselves at him the way he had the tall man, he wouldn’t have been so calm about it…unless he had wanted that someone to throw themselves at him. With a snort, he shook his head at his thoughts, deciding he hadn’t gotten enough sleep.

“Something funny over there?”

Looking across the smoldering remains of what had been their campfire, he smiled freely at Trowa’s baffled expression. “The way a brain works is weird as hell, but you know you’re messed up when your own thoughts confuse you,” he snickered, laughing fully when Trowa blinked. “Nevermind; I have some major issues I need to deal with one day or I’ll be in an old folks home, spouting more nonsense than I do already.”

“Those poor nurses; they won’t have a chance in hell of understanding your ramblings. Half the time, I don’t understand them.”

“You understand me more than anyone else,” Duo remarked absently, not thinking about what he was admitting.

“Even Zechs?”

“Hell yes. I confuse Zechs on a daily basis. If he doesn’t give me that befuddled look of his at least once a day, I haven’t done my job.” Gesturing to Trowa’s empty plate, he asked, “You done?”

The tall man looked at him for another few seconds before nodding, “It was very good. I never realized someone could actually cook like that over a fire. Something else Howard taught you?”

Standing and walking to the other man Duo took the plate, fork, and mug, piling them on top of his own dishes, “Yeah. We would go out whenever we had a chance. I’m surprised you don’t know how to do any of this stuff, living with mercs and all.”

“We had a full camp with a mess tent. Someone else did the cooking. We were supposed to take turns, but when the others realized I was hopeless in the kitchen, they decided it would be better to keep a gun in my hands.”

“They were wrong to do that. You’re getting better at cooking all the time; you just need someone to work with you.”

“It helps that you are actually there with me, showing me what to do every step of the way. They would tell me what to do and leave me alone; that would have worked with a gun, but with a frying pan…I was a useless failure.” Trowa stood and followed Duo to the small creek that ran down the mountainside, “What are you doing?”

“The bad thing about cooking breakfast instead of eating a ration bar or something like that is that you actually have to wash the dishes later. Some stuff you could leave until later, I guess, but eggs are a bitch to get off after they’ve been sitting for a while.”

“I should be doing that since you did all the cooking.”

Crouching down beside the creek, Duo craned his head up to smile at the tall man, “I don’t mind doing this, really. You could get the stuff together we need for our hike, if you want. My fishing pole and tackle box are in my backpack.”

It didn’t take long to get the dishes washed up and Duo joined Trowa back in camp, smiling when he saw the other man standing with both backpacks at his feet. Before he could say anything, Trowa asked him, “Are you ready?”

“Absolutely; do you think it’s going to rain or anything today?”

“The weather is supposed to be nice all weekend. I don’t see any clouds, either.” Trowa consulted the watch he wore, giving Duo a moment to admire the way the tall man looked in a pair of loose jeans and another tank top, this one black. “We should be able to reach the waterfall by two at the latest, by taking our time and adopting a casual pace.”

“Adopting a casual pace? Dude, do you mean we can walk without having to march?” Duo snickered when Trowa jerked his head up. “We aren’t in the military. Saying we can take our time would have been good enough for me.”

It was surprising to watch Trowa’s skin take on a slightly pink tint as he ducked his head, “We should be able to take our time and be able to stay for a while before having to come back.”

“Sounds good,” Duo set the dishes down and covered them with a plastic tarp before grabbing and shouldering his pack. Seeing Trowa glance at the tarp, he shrugged, “It’ll keep bird shit off of them.”

Trowa’s bark of laughter echoed off the trees and across the ravine in front of them. “I never would have thought of that.”

“Yeah…let’s just say that Howard and I learned about it the hard way. Lead on, Tro.”



As always, the conversation varied as they walked side by side up the overgrown path, leaping from one topic to another without either man missing the thread of a subject. Duo told more of his camping trips with Howard, recalling those times with fondness that made him smile and laugh. Trowa told him more about his life with the mercenaries, sharing details of camp life and readily answering Duo’s questions.

“So you lived on Earth with the mercs?” Duo questioned, surprised by the news. “I thought you were from L3.”

“I think I was born here, or came here at a very young age. My first memories are of Earth,” Trowa explained quietly.

“So why the move to L3? Why leave here and go to a colony?”

“I can remember sitting around the campfire at night and watching the older men in the group. They were only forty or so, but they seemed so ancient at the time. They weren’t able to do much, one had a prosthetic leg and one was missing an arm, both from previous jobs; there was even one guy that had been blinded when he was hit in the face with shrapnel…all they could do was tend the camp while the rest of us worked. It was a dangerous and unpopular job, not the best choice of careers.” Trowa shook his head, “Anyway, I was looking at them one night and realized I didn’t want to be them when I got older. I didn’t want to spend my mid-life crises reliving tales of what I had been able to do before I got hurt and couldn’t do it anymore. A few weeks after that, I hooked up with a circus troupe that was travelling Earth, just getting ready to go back to the colonies.” Trowa gave an embarrassed shrug, “I guess the short answer is that I wanted out of that life.”

“How did you get hooked up with the asshole Barton?”

“Life at the circus was interesting, but there was something missing. I didn’t realize how much I would miss being able to work on mobile suits. Barton was at the circus one night, bragging loudly how he had the best mobile suit ever made. I got curious and followed him to their base and just acted like I was supposed to be there. I knew what I was doing, so no one asked me any questions. I remained there for over a year, getting to know everything about Heavyarms; when Barton was murdered, I volunteered to take his place.”

The sheer audacity of the idea had Duo gaping, stopping in his tracks and staring in silence for a few minutes before breathing, “Man, that took some balls. I don’t know if it was brilliant or stupid. Maybe a bit of both. Calling attention to yourself like that was a risk.”

“I didn’t really care if I lived or died, Duo. I wasn’t brave or anything, I knew I could pilot Heavyarms better than anyone else and I wanted it.”

“I gotta admit you were pretty damn awesome. Why did you keep fighting?”

“I realized how valuable human life was. You taught me that, with a little help from Catherine. I saw how you always fought with such determination, even when you didn’t have a chance in hell of winning.”

Walking again, Duo laughed, “Is that what you thought it was, determination? That was full-blown kamikaze, man. I figured that if I was going to die, I was taking as many of those SOB’s with me as I could. What were the chances of me, an L2 street rat, surviving the war?”

“When did you stop thinking that way?” Trowa’s voice was subdued.

“When the war ended and I was still alive,” he replied honestly. “Dying in battle is one thing, but I never considered suicide. Since I had beaten the odds, I was going to make the best out of my life.” Hearing a roaring sound that had been growing steadily louder, he stopped with wide eyes to ask Trowa, “Is that the water?”

“That is the waterfall.”

“Holy hell, that’s loud. What are we waiting for?” he demanded with a grin, grabbing Trowa’s hand and pulling the other man toward the noise, completely forgetting about their previous discussion.

Emerging from the trees, he looked up at the column of water that poured over rocks, splashing into the pool below hard enough to churn the water into froth. “Oh…wow.”

“Do you like it?”

Barely hearing Trowa’s voice over the pounding water, he nodded, “It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

“You’ve never seen a waterfall?”

Duo was being tugged away from the waterfall, farther down the rushing river. Looking back at it over his shoulder, he answered, “Sure, but never one like that. I’ve only seen little ones.”

Deciding it was best to watch where he was going when he tripped over a root, he turned in time to see Trowa’s satisfied smile, wondering about it when he realized his hand was being grasped firmly. “So, umm…where we goin’?”

“There’s a perfect place over here to fish. It’s even good for swimming, if you want to later.”

“We can go swimming?” Duo was thrilled by the idea, allowing only an instant to miss Trowa’s touch when his hand was released. “Is that safe?”

“As long as you don’t mind swimming with fish, it’s perfectly safe,” Trowa snorted as he sat on the hard ground, pulling off his pack and opening it to find his retractable fishing pole, pulling it open until it was the length of a standard fishing pole.

“I can live with swimming with fish, but I warn you that I’m not a real good swimmer. I look like I’m drowning, but I’m not.”

Trowa laughed as Duo sat ungracefully beside him, making a strange sound when Duo leaned forward and dug his fingers into the moist soil, “What are you doing?”

Making a face at the squishy mud, Duo finally found what he was looking for, holding up the squirmy worm with a lifted eyebrow, “You can’t fish without bait. You can use bread or bubble gum, but this works better. Here,” he grasped the hook on Trowa’s pole carefully, winding the worm around it and securing it before letting go and digging into the dirt again. “I like finding the worms,” he confided as he rose to his hands and knees.

“We’ll likely need several, so find as many as you want. I have a cup we can put them in,” Trowa cleared his throat abruptly, prompting Duo to look back at him and frowning at the blush on the tall man’s face.

Taking the cup held out to him, Duo dug around until he found seven more worms, snickering when Trowa shook his head. “This should be enough to catch something, as long as we pull them apart. Don’t worry, I’ll do that part.”

“You really do love this, don’t you?”

Baiting his own hook, which Trowa had obligingly gotten out for him, Duo nodded, “I love being out like this, where there aren’t any expectations or demands. My phone shouldn’t ring unless it’s an emergency and I can just relax. The company isn’t too bad, either.”

“I have to agree with you, on all points. As for the company, there’s no one else I would rather be with.”

“Not even the Ranger?” Duo tried to subdue the blush on his face, knowing he was turning red at the small compliment.

Standing, Trowa cast his line expertly, speaking in a low voice as he faced away from Duo, “Not even the Ranger.”