Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Witches Shoe ❯ Chapter 9
[ 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: 01.18.2016 | Updated On: 07.25.2016 | Pages: 7 | Words: 4.3K | Visits: 257 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Action / Romance / Suspense | Type: Yaoi | Uploaded On: 01.18.2016 | Updated On: 07.25.2016 | Pages: 7 | Words: 4.3K | Visits: 257 | Status: Work In Progress
Warnings and disclaimers in first section. Don’t forget
to look or you might get a surprise or three!
The asteroid field was in view, taking up the entire window, space rocks of every size and shape spinning and zooming through this section of space, held in orbit by the gas giant that’s as big as twenty Earths put together. I had forgotten how intimidating that sight was, and also how damn terrifying my last foray through it was. I suddenly couldn’t breathe; this was the craziest thing I had done in a long time. It was a miracle I made it out alive before; could I really do this twice in a lifetime and live?
“Duo, are you okay?”
“Yeah, sure, no problem…I’m gonna throw up.”
Nauseous and on the verge of puking, I bent over in my chair and put my head between my legs to take in gulps of air. If I’d had a damn shred of common sense, I would have turned the ship the fuck around and forgot about that idiotic idea. I couldn’t do that. Quatre needed my help and the only way to get the information we needed was to get through the asteroids. Fucking PSP always finds a way to make shit more difficult than it has to be for me.
Trowa was by my chair, rubbing my back in circular motions, his thumbs digging into the muscles of my neck every few passes. I guess it was supposed to help calm me down, but his touch made me remember that it wasn’t just my life on the line. If something happened and we smashed into an asteroid, Trowa was going to die, too. Fuck. I needed to pull myself together.
Sitting up, I stared at Trowa when he backed up a bit. His face was blank but his eyes were worried, so I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I can do this.”
“I thought you’ve done this before.”
“I have, which is exactly why I’m freaking out. Back then, the only thing I had on board was my cargo. This time, I have something worth a helluva lot more than that.” Oops, another slip. I really needed to think before I ran off at the mouth. “There’s a lot depending on us getting through in one piece, with my ship whole and working. We’ll be too close to the PSP ships to hang around for repairs once we get out. It’ll take some time for them to get to us and we have to use that time to boogie and get as far away as possible.”
Strong, warm hands cradled my face, holding my head still so he could study me like I was a bug under a microscope or something. I completely ignored what I saw in his eyes as his face softened, giving me a small smile, “You can do this, Duo. You’re one of the best pilots I’ve ever known; even Heero’s said as much. If anyone can get us through, it’s you.”
His faith in me shouldn’t have mattered a bit to me, but it did. Whether it was the confidence in my abilities or the way his eyes stayed on mine, steady and unwavering, I suddenly calmed. My stomach unknotted and my breathing slowed as I put my hands over his. Damnit, he was going to be my undoing; I could already see it happening. “Trowa, I…thanks.” Thank God I hadn’t let that slip out. It would have been a disaster if I had admitted how much he had come to mean to me in such a short time. I couldn’t afford that kind of mistake again.
Knowing that didn’t stop me from melting into my flippin’ seat when he kissed me again. The taste of the man is addictive, I swear. I could have lived on that taste. I didn’t realize there were different kinds of kisses until that moment, but I was learning real fast, with Trowa’s help. Our first kisses had been the kind I’ve always been used to, where your intention is to tear someone’s clothes off and fuck like rabbits on ecstasy. The second time he kissed me, it was more of a way to shut me up and quite a bit smug. This kiss was different than either of those, making my toes want to curl up…actually, I think they might have.
This was slow and drawn out, Trowa making love to me with his mouth, teasing my lips apart with his tongue. Damnit, I could have resisted anything else, words and hands, but I was helpless against this, swept along as he tried to massage my damn tonsils. I didn’t have any defenses against this kind of silent seduction.
When he pulled away, I didn’t hide my sigh, smiling when he did the same. I wouldn’t tell him what that kiss had done to me, refused to admit that he’d put a huge chink in my armor when I needed it the most. I did manage a few words, “Thanks, I’m calmer now.”
He frowned as he sat, “I didn’t intend to calm you down. I was hoping to distract you by making you think of something else.”
“You did that, too. I can do this now, but fasten your harness, just in case.” He didn’t need to know that I had a lot to think about later; I couldn’t afford to be distracted at that moment.
My hands were already on the controls by the time he finished strapping in, “Aren’t you going to put your harness on?”
“I have to stay unstrapped in case I have to get up in a hurry. There are some switches I can’t reach while sitting down,” like the cargo hold dump switch, just in case I needed to lighten our load. It shouldn’t have been necessary and there wasn’t much cargo to dump, but I liked to keep my options open. It was going to be a damn good way to alter course in a hurry; flooding the cargo hold with unpressurized air would help me make an instant course change if something happened.
Stopping just outside the danger zone, I took a series of deep breaths, tracking the process of asteroids as they zipped past in a whirling, murderous frenzy. “Do you believe in God, Trowa?”
“No. Why?”
“Because now would be a good time to pray to whatever it is you do believe in. This isn’t going to be easy. The last time I did this I almost ended up looking like a bug on a windshield.”
“I believe in you.” His soft words had barely reached me, but I heard them. I knew I was definitely in trouble when my breath got briefly stuck in my lungs, but he didn’t wait for me to respond. “What can I do to help?”
This was going to sound pathetic and stupid as hell, but that didn’t stop me from requesting, “Talk to me.” The sound of his voice was reassuring, okay? That’s a bitch to admit, just so you know.
“What do you want me to talk about?”
First time he had bothered to ask that. Usually, he wanted to talk about shit I didn’t want to discuss. “It doesn’t matter. Anything that doesn’t require a response. Tell me about you, what you’ve done since the war and shit, okay?”
“You want to know more about me?”
His genuine surprise had me glancing at him with a smile, “Did you think I was only interested in your body?” Wrong thing to say, dude…again. “We’ve never really had a chance to talk, Tro. You know a lot about me, but I don’t know a damn thing about you.”
“I don’t know much about you at all, Duo.”
I think he knew more than he realized; how else would he be able to make me feel like a puddle of goo by saying a few words, in spite of my determination not to turn into Duo-ooze. “You can ask me questions later,” I vowed as I nudged the ship forward and then accelerated. I had to match the speed of the asteroids in orbit or we would be smashed before we managed to get very far. Sensors were going crazy, but I ignored them; I was going to cut them off in a few minutes, when I didn’t have to focus on getting us into the center of the field. “Trowa, just talk, damnit.”
“Where do I start?”
“What did you do when the war ended? What did you do?”
I heard him take a deep breath as we finally merged with the asteroids, like some kind of fucked up highway where the traffic is moving hundreds of miles an hour. “I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I returned to the circus for a while to continue working with Catherine. In time I realized I was bored out of my mind, so I travelled for a bit. I remained in contact with Quatre and he invited me to stay with him for a while. I was there when I saw Heero and Wufei, both taking a break from their work with the Preventers.”
He went on to tell me about his decision to join the Preventers while I fought the planet’s pull of gravity. I couldn’t ask him questions as I concentrated on our position, keeping most of my focus on the constantly changing rocks around us that could have smashed us to bits if one turned and I wasn’t paying attention, but I did file away several questions I wanted to ask him about later, if there was a chance.
For example, he really didn’t sound very enthusiastic about being a Preventer agent. It sounded more like something he did to keep from being bored than because he wanted to honor and protect. He did seem to be happy about the relationship between Quatre and Heero, although I had kinda assumed he’d be jealous. Honestly, I believed he’d be more than a bit jealous of them. There really had seemed to be something between him and Quat during the war.
He was telling me of some of the assignments he had worked on when I couldn’t help but mutter, “Son of a bitch.”
“That’s what I thought, but he really isn’t that bad to work with.” When I didn’t reply, he must have realized I wasn’t referring to his long-ago partner, a man I’ve never met. “What is it?”
“Asteroid.”
“There are a few, or are you referring to a particular one?”
Sarcasm in the light of possible death…could he be more perfect? “A damn big one. Big enough to have a grav field of its own,” I jerked my chin at the radar screen, showing hundreds of blips around us and one that was bigger than my ship by at least five times. “This should be interesting. Hold on.”
“What’s the worst that can happen?”
Bad question to ask, but I answered him anyway, “You see how the other asteroids around it are disappearing from the screen? They’re being caught in its grav-field and smashing against the surface, making it bigger because they hit with such force they kind of…melt into it. If any ships have gotten lost in this part of space, that thing is probably carrying pieces of it around.”
“I have one piece of advice, Duo.”
“What would that be?” I was already altering course, getting as close to the outside ring of the field, as far away from that spinning death trap, as possible. I’d leave the field long enough to pass it, but the PSP was in the damn way. The instant we popped out, they’d have a lock on us. After that, they could either track our progress through the field, waiting to see if the rocks did their job for them, or shoot us out of it. Either way, we wouldn’t have been going any farther.
His piece of advice? “Fly carefully.”
My laugh slipped out without thought. I could have used him beside me the last time I had done this. “So what happened after you got partnered up with Booker?”
He launched into his story while I watched our progress, palms sweating as we neared the large asteroid. If it turned abruptly, we were going to be in deep space shit. I felt sweat running down my face as it came closer and closer, swallowing hard as I divided my attention between a thousand small forms of death and one big enough to have several hundred rocks in its own orbit.
I took a deep breath of relief as we passed it, only to curse when I saw another asteroid headed right at us, apparently after being sling-shot out of its brother’s orbit. “That’s gonna hit, Tro. Hold on,” my voice surprised the hell out of me, to be honest. I sounded calm and collected but I really wanted to scream. Actually, what I wanted to do was kiss the hell out of him because if I was going to die, I wanted to die happy.
I couldn’t spare the brain cell needed to dissect that particular thought, turning my Hellion so we didn’t meet that flying fucking piece of rock head-on, but I couldn’t avoid it entirely. There was a shriek of metal and the collision siren went off, but after that all I heard was dead silence.
Quiet was either very good or very bad. It meant either we’d passed the asteroid without any major damage or it had ripped a hole in the hull and we were leaking out our breathable air. “Check the life support systems, Tro.”
“They’re steady, Duo. No change.”
“Keep an eye on them for a little while, okay?”
“Anything for you.” Trowa must have decided not to wait for me to respond, a good thing since I had no idea what to say to that declaration, clearing his throat before resuming his story like he had never been interrupted. “So after we finished that assignment, I wasn’t surprised that he asked for a new partner. Apparently, I’m a bit difficult to work with.”
Thirty minutes passed before I saw him releasing his harness from the corner of my eye. Before I had a chance to ask what the hell he thought he was doing, he was beside me, taking his shirt off to wipe the sweat from my face. “You’re amazing,” he whispered in my ear before kissing the side of my neck. Thankfully, I expected him to do something of the sort so I didn’t jerk the damn controls and kill us.
Without another word, he sat back down and strapped in, still shirtless. If I hadn’t been so damn busy, I would have been gaping at his bared chest, trying to sort out which spots would make him squirm with pleasure. Good thing I didn’t have time to look.
Aside from that brush with disaster, the rest of the flight was relatively easy. It’s pretty much what I expected, hours of stress and tense muscles caused by fast corrections and precisely timed maneuvers that kept us out of an asteroid’s path. There were some small collisions; it’s impossible to avoid every damn rock, but nothing that would require more than minor repairs, mostly cosmetic.
I thought I knew Trowa, at least a little bit, but I realized I didn’t know much about him at all. Once he finished filling me in about some of the more interesting aspects of being in the Preventers, he started telling me about the things he liked to do in his spare time, his favorite foods, the music he preferred, and a list of pet peeves I never would have guessed at. Who knew that hearing people whistle the same tune over and over again annoys the hell out of him?
Seriously, I don’t think he realized that I was actually listening as he told me about some of the men he’s dated. I didn’t hear every word, but I heard enough to realize he hadn’t been able to find someone that held his interest for more than a few weeks at a time. I was surprised how many things we had in common, from our horrible dating experiences to sharing the same tastes in food, music, movies, and books. I do read more than magazines; the magazines are usually a visual aid for relieving stress, anyway.
Obviously, he was running out of stuff to talk about because he started describing his favorite sexual positions. That’s when I decided it would be a good idea to stop him; I already had enough information to keep my fantasies busy for a few years without the aid of a mental photo. “Take a breath, Tro. You just talked for almost nineeen hours straight. You should get an award for that.”
“I’ll take a reward instead…and some water as soon as it’s safe.”
Taking one hand from the controls, I grabbed a bottle of water and tossed it to him, getting one for myself while I was at it. I had probably sweated out a few gallons and we weren’t out of danger yet. “If you could get a reward, what would it be?”
“I don’t think I should answer that.”
“So you wouldn’t want someone to try that thing with their tongue?” He choked on his water and I had to laugh. “I thought that sounded like it would keep someone busy for a while.” I was almost to the point where I volunteered for the job; I would have loved to hear what sounds he made during such an interlude.
“You heard me?”
“I can listen while doing something else; I just can’t think enough to answer.”
“You think of what you’re going to say before you answer a question? Why?”
“Some things shouldn’t be answered without thinking about them first,” I glanced at him and saw the contemplative expression. “Don’t bother; I do hear and understand you. If you ask me something I don’t want to answer, I’ll just stay quiet.”
“You would have considered it, too,” he didn’t sound angry about that at all.
I would have, which is why I had known what he had been thinking of. “Most likely.”
That evil shit waited until I was drinking my water to ask, “Can we arrange that thing with your tongue? I’d be happy to take that as my reward.”
Hmm, Trowa’s naked body, my tongue, and permission to lick him like he’s the ‘verse’s biggest and tastiest popsicle. There was a thought to get me hard in less than three seconds. I just knew I was gonna have blue balls for a year. “Sounds like a lot of fun. I’ll see what I can arrange when we get to the Shoe. There’ll be plenty of people that would jump at the opportunity.”
“I want you, not someone else.”
Lucky for me, I had to do some fancy flying to keep an asteroid from kissing the window, but I didn’t think he was going to let this go without having something else to think about. It’s hard as hell to think about something not related to sex when you’re so hard your pants are uncomfortable and confining. “We need to talk about the way you talk,” I decided once we were clear for a moment. Thank the gods there wasn’t much farther to go; my arms were starting to feel like cooked spaghetti.
“What’s wrong with the way I talk?”
I had insulted him, but he did forget about his body and my tongue meeting in an intimate way…yummy. “Nothing… in your world. In mine, you’ll stand out. Everyone will know you’re an outsider the instant you open your mouth.” There were other ways to get him to open his mouth without words being involved…I was gonna have blue balls for two years if I kept having thoughts like that one.
“Are you referring to the way I actually speak or the slang I assume you haven’t used because I would have no idea what you’re saying?”
Damn, he was perceptive, “Slang, Tro. Spacer slang is as varied as Earth accents. Depending on where you dock the most, you’ll say some things different.”
“Like ‘sed’ for a drug and ‘tranq’ for a sedative.”
“Exactly; drugs can also be called ‘tox’, so if someone asked you if you want to tox, firmly refuse. Most users will dose you whether you want it or not, so punching them is recommended.”
“How am I supposed to know if they’re users or just sellers?”
“If someone looks like they’re willing to fuck a tree stump or would enjoy rubbing their forehead against a wall, punch first and ask questions never.”
“That should be easy enough. What else?”
“Smugglers are often referred to as rock-jockeys or rock-jocks, so don’t be insulted. If someone calls you a cock jockey, tell them you aren’t. It’s someone that will trade sex for information or goods and you might hear me called that,” I didn’t let him ask before explaining the meaning.
“How many times have you actually traded sex for goods or info?”
He was getting too damn smart, “I’ve never had to, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t if it became necessary. A means to an end, remember?”
“No one else touches you while I’m around, Duo. You’re my partner, remember? My property, no one else’s.”
There had to be something wrong with me because the idea of Trowa being jealous had me hot all over again. “I am not a piece of property and this arrangement is only temporary.”
“We’ll have to see about that later.”
I couldn’t keep hearing him say things like that. For a little while, we were just talking without him constantly making me think of things that were impossible. I can handle sexual tension, I can deal with deep seated lust that makes me imagine him inside me, but I could not deal with hearing him talk of possibilities or a future where we were still together. “Stop it, Trowa. Don’t say shit like that again.”
“Why not? Why won’t you entertain the idea?”
“Because we’re different.”
“Not that different. We get along and we’re compatible or we wouldn’t be able to be enclosed without fighting.”
“We have been fighting, or did you forget while weaving stupid fantasies? I don’t do relationships, man. Get it through your thick skull…there is no future for you here.” My arms tensed and I jerked the controls, almost putting us into the side of a damn asteroid. “Don’t bring it up again.”
The asteroid field was in view, taking up the entire window, space rocks of every size and shape spinning and zooming through this section of space, held in orbit by the gas giant that’s as big as twenty Earths put together. I had forgotten how intimidating that sight was, and also how damn terrifying my last foray through it was. I suddenly couldn’t breathe; this was the craziest thing I had done in a long time. It was a miracle I made it out alive before; could I really do this twice in a lifetime and live?
“Duo, are you okay?”
“Yeah, sure, no problem…I’m gonna throw up.”
Nauseous and on the verge of puking, I bent over in my chair and put my head between my legs to take in gulps of air. If I’d had a damn shred of common sense, I would have turned the ship the fuck around and forgot about that idiotic idea. I couldn’t do that. Quatre needed my help and the only way to get the information we needed was to get through the asteroids. Fucking PSP always finds a way to make shit more difficult than it has to be for me.
Trowa was by my chair, rubbing my back in circular motions, his thumbs digging into the muscles of my neck every few passes. I guess it was supposed to help calm me down, but his touch made me remember that it wasn’t just my life on the line. If something happened and we smashed into an asteroid, Trowa was going to die, too. Fuck. I needed to pull myself together.
Sitting up, I stared at Trowa when he backed up a bit. His face was blank but his eyes were worried, so I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I can do this.”
“I thought you’ve done this before.”
“I have, which is exactly why I’m freaking out. Back then, the only thing I had on board was my cargo. This time, I have something worth a helluva lot more than that.” Oops, another slip. I really needed to think before I ran off at the mouth. “There’s a lot depending on us getting through in one piece, with my ship whole and working. We’ll be too close to the PSP ships to hang around for repairs once we get out. It’ll take some time for them to get to us and we have to use that time to boogie and get as far away as possible.”
Strong, warm hands cradled my face, holding my head still so he could study me like I was a bug under a microscope or something. I completely ignored what I saw in his eyes as his face softened, giving me a small smile, “You can do this, Duo. You’re one of the best pilots I’ve ever known; even Heero’s said as much. If anyone can get us through, it’s you.”
His faith in me shouldn’t have mattered a bit to me, but it did. Whether it was the confidence in my abilities or the way his eyes stayed on mine, steady and unwavering, I suddenly calmed. My stomach unknotted and my breathing slowed as I put my hands over his. Damnit, he was going to be my undoing; I could already see it happening. “Trowa, I…thanks.” Thank God I hadn’t let that slip out. It would have been a disaster if I had admitted how much he had come to mean to me in such a short time. I couldn’t afford that kind of mistake again.
Knowing that didn’t stop me from melting into my flippin’ seat when he kissed me again. The taste of the man is addictive, I swear. I could have lived on that taste. I didn’t realize there were different kinds of kisses until that moment, but I was learning real fast, with Trowa’s help. Our first kisses had been the kind I’ve always been used to, where your intention is to tear someone’s clothes off and fuck like rabbits on ecstasy. The second time he kissed me, it was more of a way to shut me up and quite a bit smug. This kiss was different than either of those, making my toes want to curl up…actually, I think they might have.
This was slow and drawn out, Trowa making love to me with his mouth, teasing my lips apart with his tongue. Damnit, I could have resisted anything else, words and hands, but I was helpless against this, swept along as he tried to massage my damn tonsils. I didn’t have any defenses against this kind of silent seduction.
When he pulled away, I didn’t hide my sigh, smiling when he did the same. I wouldn’t tell him what that kiss had done to me, refused to admit that he’d put a huge chink in my armor when I needed it the most. I did manage a few words, “Thanks, I’m calmer now.”
He frowned as he sat, “I didn’t intend to calm you down. I was hoping to distract you by making you think of something else.”
“You did that, too. I can do this now, but fasten your harness, just in case.” He didn’t need to know that I had a lot to think about later; I couldn’t afford to be distracted at that moment.
My hands were already on the controls by the time he finished strapping in, “Aren’t you going to put your harness on?”
“I have to stay unstrapped in case I have to get up in a hurry. There are some switches I can’t reach while sitting down,” like the cargo hold dump switch, just in case I needed to lighten our load. It shouldn’t have been necessary and there wasn’t much cargo to dump, but I liked to keep my options open. It was going to be a damn good way to alter course in a hurry; flooding the cargo hold with unpressurized air would help me make an instant course change if something happened.
Stopping just outside the danger zone, I took a series of deep breaths, tracking the process of asteroids as they zipped past in a whirling, murderous frenzy. “Do you believe in God, Trowa?”
“No. Why?”
“Because now would be a good time to pray to whatever it is you do believe in. This isn’t going to be easy. The last time I did this I almost ended up looking like a bug on a windshield.”
“I believe in you.” His soft words had barely reached me, but I heard them. I knew I was definitely in trouble when my breath got briefly stuck in my lungs, but he didn’t wait for me to respond. “What can I do to help?”
This was going to sound pathetic and stupid as hell, but that didn’t stop me from requesting, “Talk to me.” The sound of his voice was reassuring, okay? That’s a bitch to admit, just so you know.
“What do you want me to talk about?”
First time he had bothered to ask that. Usually, he wanted to talk about shit I didn’t want to discuss. “It doesn’t matter. Anything that doesn’t require a response. Tell me about you, what you’ve done since the war and shit, okay?”
“You want to know more about me?”
His genuine surprise had me glancing at him with a smile, “Did you think I was only interested in your body?” Wrong thing to say, dude…again. “We’ve never really had a chance to talk, Tro. You know a lot about me, but I don’t know a damn thing about you.”
“I don’t know much about you at all, Duo.”
I think he knew more than he realized; how else would he be able to make me feel like a puddle of goo by saying a few words, in spite of my determination not to turn into Duo-ooze. “You can ask me questions later,” I vowed as I nudged the ship forward and then accelerated. I had to match the speed of the asteroids in orbit or we would be smashed before we managed to get very far. Sensors were going crazy, but I ignored them; I was going to cut them off in a few minutes, when I didn’t have to focus on getting us into the center of the field. “Trowa, just talk, damnit.”
“Where do I start?”
“What did you do when the war ended? What did you do?”
I heard him take a deep breath as we finally merged with the asteroids, like some kind of fucked up highway where the traffic is moving hundreds of miles an hour. “I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I returned to the circus for a while to continue working with Catherine. In time I realized I was bored out of my mind, so I travelled for a bit. I remained in contact with Quatre and he invited me to stay with him for a while. I was there when I saw Heero and Wufei, both taking a break from their work with the Preventers.”
He went on to tell me about his decision to join the Preventers while I fought the planet’s pull of gravity. I couldn’t ask him questions as I concentrated on our position, keeping most of my focus on the constantly changing rocks around us that could have smashed us to bits if one turned and I wasn’t paying attention, but I did file away several questions I wanted to ask him about later, if there was a chance.
For example, he really didn’t sound very enthusiastic about being a Preventer agent. It sounded more like something he did to keep from being bored than because he wanted to honor and protect. He did seem to be happy about the relationship between Quatre and Heero, although I had kinda assumed he’d be jealous. Honestly, I believed he’d be more than a bit jealous of them. There really had seemed to be something between him and Quat during the war.
He was telling me of some of the assignments he had worked on when I couldn’t help but mutter, “Son of a bitch.”
“That’s what I thought, but he really isn’t that bad to work with.” When I didn’t reply, he must have realized I wasn’t referring to his long-ago partner, a man I’ve never met. “What is it?”
“Asteroid.”
“There are a few, or are you referring to a particular one?”
Sarcasm in the light of possible death…could he be more perfect? “A damn big one. Big enough to have a grav field of its own,” I jerked my chin at the radar screen, showing hundreds of blips around us and one that was bigger than my ship by at least five times. “This should be interesting. Hold on.”
“What’s the worst that can happen?”
Bad question to ask, but I answered him anyway, “You see how the other asteroids around it are disappearing from the screen? They’re being caught in its grav-field and smashing against the surface, making it bigger because they hit with such force they kind of…melt into it. If any ships have gotten lost in this part of space, that thing is probably carrying pieces of it around.”
“I have one piece of advice, Duo.”
“What would that be?” I was already altering course, getting as close to the outside ring of the field, as far away from that spinning death trap, as possible. I’d leave the field long enough to pass it, but the PSP was in the damn way. The instant we popped out, they’d have a lock on us. After that, they could either track our progress through the field, waiting to see if the rocks did their job for them, or shoot us out of it. Either way, we wouldn’t have been going any farther.
His piece of advice? “Fly carefully.”
My laugh slipped out without thought. I could have used him beside me the last time I had done this. “So what happened after you got partnered up with Booker?”
He launched into his story while I watched our progress, palms sweating as we neared the large asteroid. If it turned abruptly, we were going to be in deep space shit. I felt sweat running down my face as it came closer and closer, swallowing hard as I divided my attention between a thousand small forms of death and one big enough to have several hundred rocks in its own orbit.
I took a deep breath of relief as we passed it, only to curse when I saw another asteroid headed right at us, apparently after being sling-shot out of its brother’s orbit. “That’s gonna hit, Tro. Hold on,” my voice surprised the hell out of me, to be honest. I sounded calm and collected but I really wanted to scream. Actually, what I wanted to do was kiss the hell out of him because if I was going to die, I wanted to die happy.
I couldn’t spare the brain cell needed to dissect that particular thought, turning my Hellion so we didn’t meet that flying fucking piece of rock head-on, but I couldn’t avoid it entirely. There was a shriek of metal and the collision siren went off, but after that all I heard was dead silence.
Quiet was either very good or very bad. It meant either we’d passed the asteroid without any major damage or it had ripped a hole in the hull and we were leaking out our breathable air. “Check the life support systems, Tro.”
“They’re steady, Duo. No change.”
“Keep an eye on them for a little while, okay?”
“Anything for you.” Trowa must have decided not to wait for me to respond, a good thing since I had no idea what to say to that declaration, clearing his throat before resuming his story like he had never been interrupted. “So after we finished that assignment, I wasn’t surprised that he asked for a new partner. Apparently, I’m a bit difficult to work with.”
Thirty minutes passed before I saw him releasing his harness from the corner of my eye. Before I had a chance to ask what the hell he thought he was doing, he was beside me, taking his shirt off to wipe the sweat from my face. “You’re amazing,” he whispered in my ear before kissing the side of my neck. Thankfully, I expected him to do something of the sort so I didn’t jerk the damn controls and kill us.
Without another word, he sat back down and strapped in, still shirtless. If I hadn’t been so damn busy, I would have been gaping at his bared chest, trying to sort out which spots would make him squirm with pleasure. Good thing I didn’t have time to look.
Aside from that brush with disaster, the rest of the flight was relatively easy. It’s pretty much what I expected, hours of stress and tense muscles caused by fast corrections and precisely timed maneuvers that kept us out of an asteroid’s path. There were some small collisions; it’s impossible to avoid every damn rock, but nothing that would require more than minor repairs, mostly cosmetic.
I thought I knew Trowa, at least a little bit, but I realized I didn’t know much about him at all. Once he finished filling me in about some of the more interesting aspects of being in the Preventers, he started telling me about the things he liked to do in his spare time, his favorite foods, the music he preferred, and a list of pet peeves I never would have guessed at. Who knew that hearing people whistle the same tune over and over again annoys the hell out of him?
Seriously, I don’t think he realized that I was actually listening as he told me about some of the men he’s dated. I didn’t hear every word, but I heard enough to realize he hadn’t been able to find someone that held his interest for more than a few weeks at a time. I was surprised how many things we had in common, from our horrible dating experiences to sharing the same tastes in food, music, movies, and books. I do read more than magazines; the magazines are usually a visual aid for relieving stress, anyway.
Obviously, he was running out of stuff to talk about because he started describing his favorite sexual positions. That’s when I decided it would be a good idea to stop him; I already had enough information to keep my fantasies busy for a few years without the aid of a mental photo. “Take a breath, Tro. You just talked for almost nineeen hours straight. You should get an award for that.”
“I’ll take a reward instead…and some water as soon as it’s safe.”
Taking one hand from the controls, I grabbed a bottle of water and tossed it to him, getting one for myself while I was at it. I had probably sweated out a few gallons and we weren’t out of danger yet. “If you could get a reward, what would it be?”
“I don’t think I should answer that.”
“So you wouldn’t want someone to try that thing with their tongue?” He choked on his water and I had to laugh. “I thought that sounded like it would keep someone busy for a while.” I was almost to the point where I volunteered for the job; I would have loved to hear what sounds he made during such an interlude.
“You heard me?”
“I can listen while doing something else; I just can’t think enough to answer.”
“You think of what you’re going to say before you answer a question? Why?”
“Some things shouldn’t be answered without thinking about them first,” I glanced at him and saw the contemplative expression. “Don’t bother; I do hear and understand you. If you ask me something I don’t want to answer, I’ll just stay quiet.”
“You would have considered it, too,” he didn’t sound angry about that at all.
I would have, which is why I had known what he had been thinking of. “Most likely.”
That evil shit waited until I was drinking my water to ask, “Can we arrange that thing with your tongue? I’d be happy to take that as my reward.”
Hmm, Trowa’s naked body, my tongue, and permission to lick him like he’s the ‘verse’s biggest and tastiest popsicle. There was a thought to get me hard in less than three seconds. I just knew I was gonna have blue balls for a year. “Sounds like a lot of fun. I’ll see what I can arrange when we get to the Shoe. There’ll be plenty of people that would jump at the opportunity.”
“I want you, not someone else.”
Lucky for me, I had to do some fancy flying to keep an asteroid from kissing the window, but I didn’t think he was going to let this go without having something else to think about. It’s hard as hell to think about something not related to sex when you’re so hard your pants are uncomfortable and confining. “We need to talk about the way you talk,” I decided once we were clear for a moment. Thank the gods there wasn’t much farther to go; my arms were starting to feel like cooked spaghetti.
“What’s wrong with the way I talk?”
I had insulted him, but he did forget about his body and my tongue meeting in an intimate way…yummy. “Nothing… in your world. In mine, you’ll stand out. Everyone will know you’re an outsider the instant you open your mouth.” There were other ways to get him to open his mouth without words being involved…I was gonna have blue balls for two years if I kept having thoughts like that one.
“Are you referring to the way I actually speak or the slang I assume you haven’t used because I would have no idea what you’re saying?”
Damn, he was perceptive, “Slang, Tro. Spacer slang is as varied as Earth accents. Depending on where you dock the most, you’ll say some things different.”
“Like ‘sed’ for a drug and ‘tranq’ for a sedative.”
“Exactly; drugs can also be called ‘tox’, so if someone asked you if you want to tox, firmly refuse. Most users will dose you whether you want it or not, so punching them is recommended.”
“How am I supposed to know if they’re users or just sellers?”
“If someone looks like they’re willing to fuck a tree stump or would enjoy rubbing their forehead against a wall, punch first and ask questions never.”
“That should be easy enough. What else?”
“Smugglers are often referred to as rock-jockeys or rock-jocks, so don’t be insulted. If someone calls you a cock jockey, tell them you aren’t. It’s someone that will trade sex for information or goods and you might hear me called that,” I didn’t let him ask before explaining the meaning.
“How many times have you actually traded sex for goods or info?”
He was getting too damn smart, “I’ve never had to, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t if it became necessary. A means to an end, remember?”
“No one else touches you while I’m around, Duo. You’re my partner, remember? My property, no one else’s.”
There had to be something wrong with me because the idea of Trowa being jealous had me hot all over again. “I am not a piece of property and this arrangement is only temporary.”
“We’ll have to see about that later.”
I couldn’t keep hearing him say things like that. For a little while, we were just talking without him constantly making me think of things that were impossible. I can handle sexual tension, I can deal with deep seated lust that makes me imagine him inside me, but I could not deal with hearing him talk of possibilities or a future where we were still together. “Stop it, Trowa. Don’t say shit like that again.”
“Why not? Why won’t you entertain the idea?”
“Because we’re different.”
“Not that different. We get along and we’re compatible or we wouldn’t be able to be enclosed without fighting.”
“We have been fighting, or did you forget while weaving stupid fantasies? I don’t do relationships, man. Get it through your thick skull…there is no future for you here.” My arms tensed and I jerked the controls, almost putting us into the side of a damn asteroid. “Don’t bring it up again.”