Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Witches Shoe ❯ Chapter 3
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: deathangel125 
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Romance / Suspense | Type: Yaoi | Uploaded On: 12.26.2015 | Pages: 7 | Words: 4.4K | Visits: 267 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Romance / Suspense | Type: Yaoi | Uploaded On: 12.26.2015 | Pages: 7 | Words: 4.4K | Visits: 267 | Status: Work In Progress
Warnings and disclaimers in first section. Don’t forget
to look or you might get a surprise or three!
By the time Strident came into view my poor nerves were beginning to fray. Four hours had passed since we had started our strange little convoy, my little Hellion stuck right in the middle of six PSP cruisers. The entire flight I had been reliving my last visit in a cell and wondered if I could handle being caged again without going crazy…crazier.
“I’m sorry.”
Heero’s sudden words nearly had me jumping out of the pilot’s chair. I was so strung out I was close to begging for a sed…preferably one so strong it would take me out of commission for a week. “For what?” I winced as my voice cracked. To hell with the sed, I needed a damn vacation.
“For what happened…at the end of the war.”
Stunned by the apology, I let myself forget for a moment what was about to happen. Looking over, I found his eyes on me and shrugged, “I’m not mad about it anymore.”
“Then why did you hit me?”
“You punched me, remember? Back then? I thought you were offering…something, and you punched me.”
He looked away, but not before I saw regret in his eyes. “I…was trying…to offer you something. I didn’t…know how to…accept.” Hearing Heero sigh was odd, but no weirder than his strange, stuttered explanation. “I wanted…”
“Spit it out, Heero. We’re gonna dock soon.”
“You were so alive, so bright. I wanted…to know if I could feel the same with you, I guess.” He stopped and rubbed his face, fingers clenching in his hair, probably at his inability to say what he wanted. I stopped watching him, concentrating on following the cruiser in front of me. “I panicked when I realized I didn’t want to feel the same thing you did,” he continued softly, apparently more at ease without me looking at him. “I wanted to…possess you…not just for a while, but for as long as possible.”
“That’s what good sex is all about, Heero.” I could have laughed at the way his head swiveled toward me, but I held it in. “You get to possess the person you’re with for a while and they do the same to you.”
From the corner of my eye I could see the small smile form on his lips. “I guess you’re right. If it means anything, I wish we could have…”
Here is the point where my brain took a detour. I stopped thinking about my upcoming, and hopefully brief, stay in a cell and began wondering what it would have been like to hit the sheets with Heero Yuy. Let me say I’m not a total slut, okay? I am, however, a gay man that makes his living, legal and otherwise, while spending days, weeks, or even months alone at a time. In one day I had two hot guys in my small ship and it wasn’t difficult to imagine what could have happened under different circumstances.
I’m good at fantasizing, I do it a lot. Who the hell’s gonna care if I dream about somebody exploring my body when I’m a thousand miles from my closest neighbor? I guess what stunned me the most was when my fantasy took an unexpected turn where Heero was replaced with one Trowa Barton.
Almost choking on my own spit, I kept my gaze focused on the ship in front of me. “Too bad we don’t have time to find out what we missed, right?” I quipped, not sure how I was gonna live with someone for weeks that I lusted over, especially not while I looked for clues about his kidnapped lover.
My blind panic almost had me missing Heero’s next words, “I’m sure it would be interesting and memorable, but I can’t do that to Quatre.”
In shock, my hand jerked the controls and I almost slammed into the ship in front of me. After a few adjustments, I gave Heero a blank look. “Huh?” How’s that for brilliant?”
At least he had the sense to blush, “Quatre and I have been together for almost three years.”
“What about Quatre and Trowa?”
“They were never a couple.”
The idea had me snorting as I followed docking instructions, “Then what were they doing in their shared rooms during the war? Playing checkers?”
“Chess. Quatre was teaching Trowa how to play chess.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
This time Heero snorted as I powered down and rose from my chair, “It’s a likely possibility.”
A bit of the friendship we had shared before that fateful night came back to me and I grinned as I reached for the clothes I intended to be arrested in. “More than a possibility, I’d say. But when I go down, I’ll go in my own Hellion.”
It took hours to get through the process of booking me and throwing me into a holding cell, but I made it past the five layers of shit that seemed determined to make sure I remembered the PSP in a bad way. I was reasonably unscathed other than a few bumps and bruises that could have been explained away…until I was tossed in the cell and Heero had an errand to tend to, leaving me alone and unprotected for way too long.
“Duo, are you okay?”
Prying my eyes open, I saw Heero hovering over me. “Asshole. Where’d you go?”
“I had to fill Une in on what you’re doing and check to see if there was any news on Quatre. What happened?” Putting his arm around my back he helped me sit up.
Closing my eyes until the pain receded and the room stopped spinning, I attempted a smile, wishing I hadn’t as I felt my lip start bleeding where someone had sucker punched me. “Your buddy Allbright wasn’t too happy about what I did on my ship and was thrilled to find me without a guard at the door.” Realizing I couldn’t open one eye all the way, I prodded it to discover it was swollen, a small cut above it oozing blood sluggishly. “He and his men took turns hitting me while two of them held me down.”
“I was only gone for a half-hour.”
“It only took fifteen minutes to beat the shit out of me. There were at least eight of them. Some were guys from the ship.”
“I’m telling Trowa to get you out tonight.”
“It’s a risk, Heero.”
“Not that much of a risk. You look like you’ve been beaten for days. Lay low for a day or two, find somewhere safe and then make the trip to Witches Shoe. No one will question you were interrogated, Duo.” His face was set in a mask of concern and I couldn’t blame him. I felt like shit.
Nodding weakly, I gripped his shirt, “Do something for me? After we get Quatre back, take these bastards down for me, okay?”
Heero gave me a full-on shit-eating grin that radiated with smugness. “Wufei’s already working on it. I asked Une to investigate the searches and disappearances of salvage ships detained by the PSP. She was…concerned by what you said.” Fire lit his eyes as I moaned in pain. “You rest for now. Trowa will be here to get you out soon.”
More than happy to hear that little piece of information, I gave a crooked smile and leaned against the cold metal wall of the cell and passed out.
I woke up feeling like I was being run through an industrial washing machine. Shifting, I felt arms tighten around me like bands. “Be still. I can’t move when you’re squirming.”
The whispered voice had me looking up in surprise. Several seconds passed where I simply stared at Trowa before I wrapped my tongue around words. “What’s going on?”
“Allbright came to pay you another visit and figured out you were gone. His men are everywhere.”
“Put me down.”
“Duo, you’re seriously hurt.”
“I’ve had worse and you know it. We’ll go faster if you aren’t carrying me.”
He set me down but kept a firm grip on my waist until he decided I was steady enough to stand. God help me, I enjoyed those few moments when his fingers tightened on me. Taking in our surroundings, I saw he had holed us up in one of the many abandoned warehouses that seemed to be everywhere in Strident, another testament to the war weapons that had been manufactured here but were no longer needed. “Where are we, exactly?”
“Section H-14, quadrant 34. We’re close to the dock.”
“Where’s my Hellion?” he blinked at me, confused at the question. “My ship, Trowa. Where’s my ship?”
“Dock B-16. She should be fueled and ready, but are you going to able to get through the PSP barricade?”
My grin was feral as I began to move, my lip splitting again. “Getting out ain’t the problem, getting to the ship is. Once we’re on her, we’ll bug out before Allbright knows what happened.”
Apparently willing to trust me, Trowa followed as I made my way through the deserted streets, biting back the groans of agony as wounds reopened and sprains made themselves known. Like most smugglers, I knew almost every port by heart. We don’t like getting caught without a way out if it’s needed.
Creeping across a narrow street, we barely made it out of sight before several PSP cops came around the corner. Grinning, I tapped a wall to my left, slipping inside the building as a board was pushed to the side. Danger, a man as strange as his name, raised bushy grey eyebrows at me. “Day-um, Duo. You in trouble or what? Them cops lookin’ all over for you, my man.”
“PSP is after my ass, Danger. Got a way to my ship? Dock B-16.”
Eyes a milky white turned to study Trowa, “You trust ‘im?”
“With my life. He busted me out.”
“Good ‘nuff for me.” Danger led the way into a room that seemed tiny, reaching down to toss a ragged rug out of the way to reveal a trap door underneath it. “Left, straight, straight, right, right, left. Got it?”
Repeating his directions earned me a grin and into the tunnels we went. I glanced up just in time to see a flashlight dropped to me, turning it on as Danger gave me a salute. “Take care. See ya on the other.”
“You bet. Hide safe, Danger.”
Plunged into near darkness after he closed the trap door, I shined my light around the carbon-glass walls. Trowa’s hand grasping the back of my shirt was all the signal I needed to start moving. We had made four of our six turns when he finally gave me a baffled, “Where the hell are we?”
“Old recyc tunnels. New ones were built farther down inside the colony because the smell was drifting into the streets. These were never dismantled. Not many people know they’re still there, so people like me use them.”
“How did you know of them?”
“Had to use them to get away from someone before this.”
“The police?”
“An ex that didn’t want to be an ex. He was pissed and decided if he couldn’t have me, nobody could.”
Despite feeling like fire was consuming me from the pain, I had to grin at the lack of response. In truth, if that guy had gotten his hands on me he would have ripped me to shreds. Firmly, I still believe I had the right to run like hell; I had made it clear I was only interested in sex. Too bad he found me so much fun he didn’t like the idea of me going on my own way.
The last two turns were made in almost silence. My breath was coming in gasps and my steps faltered as the beating I had taken began to really wear on me. Looking for the symbol marking the wall that would signal our exit, I slowed even more, slumping against Trowa when his hands came around my waist.
“Maybe we should wait a little longer.” He leaned over my back, searching my face in the dim glow of the flashlight.
“We have to go now. They’ll lock the ship down if we don’t get out fast.” I was counting on Allbright believing he could catch me in the industrial district. Getting through a barricade is easy…getting a ship out that is locked down in dock is not.
Finally finding the signal, I turned slowly to meet his eyes. “We go up quiet, then cover the door. Head left and we should be at the ship…I hope.”
“What if Danger was wrong?”
“Danger’s not wrong.” At least I hoped he wasn’t. He had never been wrong before, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be a first time.
Pushing the trap door open took almost all the strength I had left, but I managed. Getting topside, I crouched down as low as I was able, feeling blood trickle from a number of cuts on my body. My hand was the worst of it and I could clearly recall the glee on Allbright’s face as he had crushed the heel of his boot on it. Swearing to pay that man back in spades, I helped Trowa close the door, tossing some dust over the cracks to hide it again. The pain in my knees almost had me standing, so I bit my tongue until my mouth filled with blood and focused on the new pain.
Skirting around a tugger, I heard Trowa gasp as I spotted my ship about a hundred yards in front of us. The sigh I made was due to the fact that we seemed to be completely alone, the docking bay deserted. When I sprinted to the underside of my ship I had to smile at Trowa’s wordless mimicry of my actions. He had to be completely baffled why we weren’t going to the airlock. Thankfully, there’s enough room under my Hellion to crawl to the smuggler’s airlock I had put in less than a month after buying her. You never go anywhere without making sure you have a second escape route.
Keying in the code, I waited for the hiss of the pressure release and wiggled my way inside, turning to give Trowa a hand up. His green eyes were completely bewildered as I locked the hatch behind me and proceeded to make my way cautiously to the flight cabin.
I was already in the pilot’s seat when he hissed, “What if someone’s on board?”
“No one is. Life monitors,” I jabbed a finger at one of the only screens still working, even with no power to the ship. The small picture on the screen had two green dots on it, me and Trowa. “If you give a signal of any sort, it reads on here. Humans are green, ‘bots are red.”
As I spoke my hands were already running through the launch sequence, plotting my trajectory once we were outside Strident space. Until then I would be navigating by hand to get past the barricade and all of the PSP guns that were sure to be aimed at us. The thrusters powered to life and I grinned at my temporary partner, “Buckle up. You’re about to get the ride of your life.”
“How do you plan to get the bay door open?” his hands were already fastening the harness around himself.
“Already working on it.” Several long breaths were spent as I searched for the override codes, biting the inside of my cheek to ignore the pain in my throbbing hand. “I figure we got about ten seconds after the doors open to book it. Sound right to you?”
Since his answer sounded more like a whimper than anything else, I took it as an affirmative. Checking my calculations one last time, I began opening the bay doors; I was going to be hitting boosters in a hurry and if my calculations weren’t right, we could end up splatting against a satellite like a bug on a windshield. Lucky for us, the PSP had done us a favor by sealing the bay so we wouldn’t suck anyone into space during our escape. Keeping a mental count as the doors slowly slid apart, I waited until I got to three to hit the thrusters, keeping them at half-speed. My Hellion shot forward like a horse out of the starting gate. By the time I got to five we were slipping through the crack, missing the large metal slabs with inches to spare.
By seven we were confronted by the barricade, PSP ships already targeting us. By nine we were headed directly at one of the main cruisers and by ten we slipped past its nose with a hair of space between us. I didn’t take time to congratulate myself, knowing we had less than three seconds before they locked on and began firing. I didn’t think they would worry about killing each other…they could always blame it on me later.
One shot was fired across the nose of my ship, almost close enough to scar metal. “That was the warning shot,” Trowa informed me casually. “I don’t think you’ll get another one.”
“That’s the shot I was waiting for.” Punching the thrusters to full speed, I hit the extra boosters at the same time. We were gone before the space cops had a chance to fire another shot.
Trowa cursed as he was thrown back in his seat but I didn’t have time to make sure he was okay as I checked our position and turned on the nav system, snorting when I saw my trajectory was so close it could have been auto piloted instead of by hand. I gave the extra boosters ten seconds before shutting them down and switching to auto. Turning my chair I found Trowa staring at me with wide eyes. “How’s your first foray into running from the police?”
To my surprise, he gave a shaky laugh while I unfastened my harness and stood, looking myself over to ascertain how badly I had been injured while Allbright and his men had beaten me. I was beaten and battered and hurt like hell, but adrenalin was coursing through me.
“I don’t think I could do this every day.”
“I don’t do this every day. I’d have had a heart attack by now,” I admitted, my eyes roaming the expanse of his body as he unfastened his harness and stood. He had acquired the items I had told him to and had figured out a number of the clothes were his, obviously.
Heavy black boots, leather pants that fit his frame like a glove and a green tank top had me in danger of drooling. When he stepped forward, I stepped back, away from him. He frowned, not understanding why I was dodging him. “We need to look at your wounds.”
“I can handle it. You stay here and make sure no one finds us.” It was unlikely; none of the PSP ships had a chance of catching up to us and the look in his eyes said he knew that, too. “I’ll be fine.”
“Let me help, Duo.”
He reached again, I dodged again. Since evasion wasn’t working, I opted for truth. “Appreciate the offer and all, but if you touch me right now it better be with a different kind of offering in mind.”
During the war, I had never had a chance to see Trowa shocked; I did then. His eyebrows shot up and he froze and I hoped that was the end of it. I had turned to walk to my cabin when hands shot out and grabbed me. Too stunned by the abrupt move, I froze this time, waiting to see what he would do next.
Pulling me against his chest, he whispered in my ear as he directed me to my cabin with soft nudges of his body. “How long do we have before the PSP will find us, really?”
“They won’t find us unless it’s by pure luck. We’ve got four days before we get to Strauss.”
At my bed he urged me to lie down and I did so, grumbling when I saw the med-kit in his hand. “Why are we going to Strauss instead of Witches Shoe?”
Resigned to letting him look at my various boo-boos, I grabbed my pillow and shoved it under my chin, knocking my forgotten magazine behind the bunk. “We need to get supplies.” My boots loosened and landed on the floor with a soft thunk. Those things are heavier than they look, for good reason. I could carry a small arsenal in them without anyone suspecting a thing and have a number of times.
He carefully removed any clothing I had and I let him, already knowing I’d been out-maneuvered. Large hands roamed all over me, but not in the manner I had wanted them to. Trowa was all business as he disinfected, cleaned, and bandaged me up. The only time he showed any emotion was when he winced at the bruise on my chest, the outline unmistakably from a large police-issue boot. “So why are we going to Strauss? I got everything on the list you gave me,” he was dabbing at my swollen eye.
“Other supplies, not the kind you can get in Strident. It should only take a few hours to get what I need, then we’re off to the Shoe.”
“This isn’t a business run, is it?”
Slanting open my good eye, I smirked, “Of course it is.”
Face set in a disapproving frown, he sat back on his knees. Any hope I had of eventually getting him into bed died a painful death when I saw he cared more for Quatre than he let on. It was something I had known before but after finding out Heero and Quatre were together…well, hope is a mean bitch. “It’s necessary, Trowa. If I show up for no reason at the Shoe, people will talk. I don’t go unless it’s business. Staying for a while after that is normal.”
Going back to applying some sort of cream on the cut above my eye, he asked me, “The course is already set for Strauss?”
My poor beaten brain was trying to tell me something was wrong but wouldn’t speak up loud enough for me to understand it. The adrenalin was already dissipating, leaving me flat worn-out. “Yeah, we’ll be fine as long as we don’t collide with anything.” That was always a possibility out here, where trash and debris could be as small as a piece of dust or as large as a car. “We should be okay for a while, why?”
The prick of a needle in my arm had me sitting up on the bed in my boxers with every intention of skewering Trowa with my own fingernails. “You son of a bitch.”
“You need to rest. Now you will.”
My punch connected with his jaw, but there wasn’t enough force behind it to do any damage. My limbs were heavy, eyelids dropping as I tried to swing again, thankfully using my uninjured hand. There was a whispered, “I’m sorry,” before the room went black.
By the time Strident came into view my poor nerves were beginning to fray. Four hours had passed since we had started our strange little convoy, my little Hellion stuck right in the middle of six PSP cruisers. The entire flight I had been reliving my last visit in a cell and wondered if I could handle being caged again without going crazy…crazier.
“I’m sorry.”
Heero’s sudden words nearly had me jumping out of the pilot’s chair. I was so strung out I was close to begging for a sed…preferably one so strong it would take me out of commission for a week. “For what?” I winced as my voice cracked. To hell with the sed, I needed a damn vacation.
“For what happened…at the end of the war.”
Stunned by the apology, I let myself forget for a moment what was about to happen. Looking over, I found his eyes on me and shrugged, “I’m not mad about it anymore.”
“Then why did you hit me?”
“You punched me, remember? Back then? I thought you were offering…something, and you punched me.”
He looked away, but not before I saw regret in his eyes. “I…was trying…to offer you something. I didn’t…know how to…accept.” Hearing Heero sigh was odd, but no weirder than his strange, stuttered explanation. “I wanted…”
“Spit it out, Heero. We’re gonna dock soon.”
“You were so alive, so bright. I wanted…to know if I could feel the same with you, I guess.” He stopped and rubbed his face, fingers clenching in his hair, probably at his inability to say what he wanted. I stopped watching him, concentrating on following the cruiser in front of me. “I panicked when I realized I didn’t want to feel the same thing you did,” he continued softly, apparently more at ease without me looking at him. “I wanted to…possess you…not just for a while, but for as long as possible.”
“That’s what good sex is all about, Heero.” I could have laughed at the way his head swiveled toward me, but I held it in. “You get to possess the person you’re with for a while and they do the same to you.”
From the corner of my eye I could see the small smile form on his lips. “I guess you’re right. If it means anything, I wish we could have…”
Here is the point where my brain took a detour. I stopped thinking about my upcoming, and hopefully brief, stay in a cell and began wondering what it would have been like to hit the sheets with Heero Yuy. Let me say I’m not a total slut, okay? I am, however, a gay man that makes his living, legal and otherwise, while spending days, weeks, or even months alone at a time. In one day I had two hot guys in my small ship and it wasn’t difficult to imagine what could have happened under different circumstances.
I’m good at fantasizing, I do it a lot. Who the hell’s gonna care if I dream about somebody exploring my body when I’m a thousand miles from my closest neighbor? I guess what stunned me the most was when my fantasy took an unexpected turn where Heero was replaced with one Trowa Barton.
Almost choking on my own spit, I kept my gaze focused on the ship in front of me. “Too bad we don’t have time to find out what we missed, right?” I quipped, not sure how I was gonna live with someone for weeks that I lusted over, especially not while I looked for clues about his kidnapped lover.
My blind panic almost had me missing Heero’s next words, “I’m sure it would be interesting and memorable, but I can’t do that to Quatre.”
In shock, my hand jerked the controls and I almost slammed into the ship in front of me. After a few adjustments, I gave Heero a blank look. “Huh?” How’s that for brilliant?”
At least he had the sense to blush, “Quatre and I have been together for almost three years.”
“What about Quatre and Trowa?”
“They were never a couple.”
The idea had me snorting as I followed docking instructions, “Then what were they doing in their shared rooms during the war? Playing checkers?”
“Chess. Quatre was teaching Trowa how to play chess.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
This time Heero snorted as I powered down and rose from my chair, “It’s a likely possibility.”
A bit of the friendship we had shared before that fateful night came back to me and I grinned as I reached for the clothes I intended to be arrested in. “More than a possibility, I’d say. But when I go down, I’ll go in my own Hellion.”
It took hours to get through the process of booking me and throwing me into a holding cell, but I made it past the five layers of shit that seemed determined to make sure I remembered the PSP in a bad way. I was reasonably unscathed other than a few bumps and bruises that could have been explained away…until I was tossed in the cell and Heero had an errand to tend to, leaving me alone and unprotected for way too long.
“Duo, are you okay?”
Prying my eyes open, I saw Heero hovering over me. “Asshole. Where’d you go?”
“I had to fill Une in on what you’re doing and check to see if there was any news on Quatre. What happened?” Putting his arm around my back he helped me sit up.
Closing my eyes until the pain receded and the room stopped spinning, I attempted a smile, wishing I hadn’t as I felt my lip start bleeding where someone had sucker punched me. “Your buddy Allbright wasn’t too happy about what I did on my ship and was thrilled to find me without a guard at the door.” Realizing I couldn’t open one eye all the way, I prodded it to discover it was swollen, a small cut above it oozing blood sluggishly. “He and his men took turns hitting me while two of them held me down.”
“I was only gone for a half-hour.”
“It only took fifteen minutes to beat the shit out of me. There were at least eight of them. Some were guys from the ship.”
“I’m telling Trowa to get you out tonight.”
“It’s a risk, Heero.”
“Not that much of a risk. You look like you’ve been beaten for days. Lay low for a day or two, find somewhere safe and then make the trip to Witches Shoe. No one will question you were interrogated, Duo.” His face was set in a mask of concern and I couldn’t blame him. I felt like shit.
Nodding weakly, I gripped his shirt, “Do something for me? After we get Quatre back, take these bastards down for me, okay?”
Heero gave me a full-on shit-eating grin that radiated with smugness. “Wufei’s already working on it. I asked Une to investigate the searches and disappearances of salvage ships detained by the PSP. She was…concerned by what you said.” Fire lit his eyes as I moaned in pain. “You rest for now. Trowa will be here to get you out soon.”
More than happy to hear that little piece of information, I gave a crooked smile and leaned against the cold metal wall of the cell and passed out.
I woke up feeling like I was being run through an industrial washing machine. Shifting, I felt arms tighten around me like bands. “Be still. I can’t move when you’re squirming.”
The whispered voice had me looking up in surprise. Several seconds passed where I simply stared at Trowa before I wrapped my tongue around words. “What’s going on?”
“Allbright came to pay you another visit and figured out you were gone. His men are everywhere.”
“Put me down.”
“Duo, you’re seriously hurt.”
“I’ve had worse and you know it. We’ll go faster if you aren’t carrying me.”
He set me down but kept a firm grip on my waist until he decided I was steady enough to stand. God help me, I enjoyed those few moments when his fingers tightened on me. Taking in our surroundings, I saw he had holed us up in one of the many abandoned warehouses that seemed to be everywhere in Strident, another testament to the war weapons that had been manufactured here but were no longer needed. “Where are we, exactly?”
“Section H-14, quadrant 34. We’re close to the dock.”
“Where’s my Hellion?” he blinked at me, confused at the question. “My ship, Trowa. Where’s my ship?”
“Dock B-16. She should be fueled and ready, but are you going to able to get through the PSP barricade?”
My grin was feral as I began to move, my lip splitting again. “Getting out ain’t the problem, getting to the ship is. Once we’re on her, we’ll bug out before Allbright knows what happened.”
Apparently willing to trust me, Trowa followed as I made my way through the deserted streets, biting back the groans of agony as wounds reopened and sprains made themselves known. Like most smugglers, I knew almost every port by heart. We don’t like getting caught without a way out if it’s needed.
Creeping across a narrow street, we barely made it out of sight before several PSP cops came around the corner. Grinning, I tapped a wall to my left, slipping inside the building as a board was pushed to the side. Danger, a man as strange as his name, raised bushy grey eyebrows at me. “Day-um, Duo. You in trouble or what? Them cops lookin’ all over for you, my man.”
“PSP is after my ass, Danger. Got a way to my ship? Dock B-16.”
Eyes a milky white turned to study Trowa, “You trust ‘im?”
“With my life. He busted me out.”
“Good ‘nuff for me.” Danger led the way into a room that seemed tiny, reaching down to toss a ragged rug out of the way to reveal a trap door underneath it. “Left, straight, straight, right, right, left. Got it?”
Repeating his directions earned me a grin and into the tunnels we went. I glanced up just in time to see a flashlight dropped to me, turning it on as Danger gave me a salute. “Take care. See ya on the other.”
“You bet. Hide safe, Danger.”
Plunged into near darkness after he closed the trap door, I shined my light around the carbon-glass walls. Trowa’s hand grasping the back of my shirt was all the signal I needed to start moving. We had made four of our six turns when he finally gave me a baffled, “Where the hell are we?”
“Old recyc tunnels. New ones were built farther down inside the colony because the smell was drifting into the streets. These were never dismantled. Not many people know they’re still there, so people like me use them.”
“How did you know of them?”
“Had to use them to get away from someone before this.”
“The police?”
“An ex that didn’t want to be an ex. He was pissed and decided if he couldn’t have me, nobody could.”
Despite feeling like fire was consuming me from the pain, I had to grin at the lack of response. In truth, if that guy had gotten his hands on me he would have ripped me to shreds. Firmly, I still believe I had the right to run like hell; I had made it clear I was only interested in sex. Too bad he found me so much fun he didn’t like the idea of me going on my own way.
The last two turns were made in almost silence. My breath was coming in gasps and my steps faltered as the beating I had taken began to really wear on me. Looking for the symbol marking the wall that would signal our exit, I slowed even more, slumping against Trowa when his hands came around my waist.
“Maybe we should wait a little longer.” He leaned over my back, searching my face in the dim glow of the flashlight.
“We have to go now. They’ll lock the ship down if we don’t get out fast.” I was counting on Allbright believing he could catch me in the industrial district. Getting through a barricade is easy…getting a ship out that is locked down in dock is not.
Finally finding the signal, I turned slowly to meet his eyes. “We go up quiet, then cover the door. Head left and we should be at the ship…I hope.”
“What if Danger was wrong?”
“Danger’s not wrong.” At least I hoped he wasn’t. He had never been wrong before, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be a first time.
Pushing the trap door open took almost all the strength I had left, but I managed. Getting topside, I crouched down as low as I was able, feeling blood trickle from a number of cuts on my body. My hand was the worst of it and I could clearly recall the glee on Allbright’s face as he had crushed the heel of his boot on it. Swearing to pay that man back in spades, I helped Trowa close the door, tossing some dust over the cracks to hide it again. The pain in my knees almost had me standing, so I bit my tongue until my mouth filled with blood and focused on the new pain.
Skirting around a tugger, I heard Trowa gasp as I spotted my ship about a hundred yards in front of us. The sigh I made was due to the fact that we seemed to be completely alone, the docking bay deserted. When I sprinted to the underside of my ship I had to smile at Trowa’s wordless mimicry of my actions. He had to be completely baffled why we weren’t going to the airlock. Thankfully, there’s enough room under my Hellion to crawl to the smuggler’s airlock I had put in less than a month after buying her. You never go anywhere without making sure you have a second escape route.
Keying in the code, I waited for the hiss of the pressure release and wiggled my way inside, turning to give Trowa a hand up. His green eyes were completely bewildered as I locked the hatch behind me and proceeded to make my way cautiously to the flight cabin.
I was already in the pilot’s seat when he hissed, “What if someone’s on board?”
“No one is. Life monitors,” I jabbed a finger at one of the only screens still working, even with no power to the ship. The small picture on the screen had two green dots on it, me and Trowa. “If you give a signal of any sort, it reads on here. Humans are green, ‘bots are red.”
As I spoke my hands were already running through the launch sequence, plotting my trajectory once we were outside Strident space. Until then I would be navigating by hand to get past the barricade and all of the PSP guns that were sure to be aimed at us. The thrusters powered to life and I grinned at my temporary partner, “Buckle up. You’re about to get the ride of your life.”
“How do you plan to get the bay door open?” his hands were already fastening the harness around himself.
“Already working on it.” Several long breaths were spent as I searched for the override codes, biting the inside of my cheek to ignore the pain in my throbbing hand. “I figure we got about ten seconds after the doors open to book it. Sound right to you?”
Since his answer sounded more like a whimper than anything else, I took it as an affirmative. Checking my calculations one last time, I began opening the bay doors; I was going to be hitting boosters in a hurry and if my calculations weren’t right, we could end up splatting against a satellite like a bug on a windshield. Lucky for us, the PSP had done us a favor by sealing the bay so we wouldn’t suck anyone into space during our escape. Keeping a mental count as the doors slowly slid apart, I waited until I got to three to hit the thrusters, keeping them at half-speed. My Hellion shot forward like a horse out of the starting gate. By the time I got to five we were slipping through the crack, missing the large metal slabs with inches to spare.
By seven we were confronted by the barricade, PSP ships already targeting us. By nine we were headed directly at one of the main cruisers and by ten we slipped past its nose with a hair of space between us. I didn’t take time to congratulate myself, knowing we had less than three seconds before they locked on and began firing. I didn’t think they would worry about killing each other…they could always blame it on me later.
One shot was fired across the nose of my ship, almost close enough to scar metal. “That was the warning shot,” Trowa informed me casually. “I don’t think you’ll get another one.”
“That’s the shot I was waiting for.” Punching the thrusters to full speed, I hit the extra boosters at the same time. We were gone before the space cops had a chance to fire another shot.
Trowa cursed as he was thrown back in his seat but I didn’t have time to make sure he was okay as I checked our position and turned on the nav system, snorting when I saw my trajectory was so close it could have been auto piloted instead of by hand. I gave the extra boosters ten seconds before shutting them down and switching to auto. Turning my chair I found Trowa staring at me with wide eyes. “How’s your first foray into running from the police?”
To my surprise, he gave a shaky laugh while I unfastened my harness and stood, looking myself over to ascertain how badly I had been injured while Allbright and his men had beaten me. I was beaten and battered and hurt like hell, but adrenalin was coursing through me.
“I don’t think I could do this every day.”
“I don’t do this every day. I’d have had a heart attack by now,” I admitted, my eyes roaming the expanse of his body as he unfastened his harness and stood. He had acquired the items I had told him to and had figured out a number of the clothes were his, obviously.
Heavy black boots, leather pants that fit his frame like a glove and a green tank top had me in danger of drooling. When he stepped forward, I stepped back, away from him. He frowned, not understanding why I was dodging him. “We need to look at your wounds.”
“I can handle it. You stay here and make sure no one finds us.” It was unlikely; none of the PSP ships had a chance of catching up to us and the look in his eyes said he knew that, too. “I’ll be fine.”
“Let me help, Duo.”
He reached again, I dodged again. Since evasion wasn’t working, I opted for truth. “Appreciate the offer and all, but if you touch me right now it better be with a different kind of offering in mind.”
During the war, I had never had a chance to see Trowa shocked; I did then. His eyebrows shot up and he froze and I hoped that was the end of it. I had turned to walk to my cabin when hands shot out and grabbed me. Too stunned by the abrupt move, I froze this time, waiting to see what he would do next.
Pulling me against his chest, he whispered in my ear as he directed me to my cabin with soft nudges of his body. “How long do we have before the PSP will find us, really?”
“They won’t find us unless it’s by pure luck. We’ve got four days before we get to Strauss.”
At my bed he urged me to lie down and I did so, grumbling when I saw the med-kit in his hand. “Why are we going to Strauss instead of Witches Shoe?”
Resigned to letting him look at my various boo-boos, I grabbed my pillow and shoved it under my chin, knocking my forgotten magazine behind the bunk. “We need to get supplies.” My boots loosened and landed on the floor with a soft thunk. Those things are heavier than they look, for good reason. I could carry a small arsenal in them without anyone suspecting a thing and have a number of times.
He carefully removed any clothing I had and I let him, already knowing I’d been out-maneuvered. Large hands roamed all over me, but not in the manner I had wanted them to. Trowa was all business as he disinfected, cleaned, and bandaged me up. The only time he showed any emotion was when he winced at the bruise on my chest, the outline unmistakably from a large police-issue boot. “So why are we going to Strauss? I got everything on the list you gave me,” he was dabbing at my swollen eye.
“Other supplies, not the kind you can get in Strident. It should only take a few hours to get what I need, then we’re off to the Shoe.”
“This isn’t a business run, is it?”
Slanting open my good eye, I smirked, “Of course it is.”
Face set in a disapproving frown, he sat back on his knees. Any hope I had of eventually getting him into bed died a painful death when I saw he cared more for Quatre than he let on. It was something I had known before but after finding out Heero and Quatre were together…well, hope is a mean bitch. “It’s necessary, Trowa. If I show up for no reason at the Shoe, people will talk. I don’t go unless it’s business. Staying for a while after that is normal.”
Going back to applying some sort of cream on the cut above my eye, he asked me, “The course is already set for Strauss?”
My poor beaten brain was trying to tell me something was wrong but wouldn’t speak up loud enough for me to understand it. The adrenalin was already dissipating, leaving me flat worn-out. “Yeah, we’ll be fine as long as we don’t collide with anything.” That was always a possibility out here, where trash and debris could be as small as a piece of dust or as large as a car. “We should be okay for a while, why?”
The prick of a needle in my arm had me sitting up on the bed in my boxers with every intention of skewering Trowa with my own fingernails. “You son of a bitch.”
“You need to rest. Now you will.”
My punch connected with his jaw, but there wasn’t enough force behind it to do any damage. My limbs were heavy, eyelids dropping as I tried to swing again, thankfully using my uninjured hand. There was a whispered, “I’m sorry,” before the room went black.