31-Jan-2006
Title: A Duo and Relena Out-take
Author: TB
Archive: GWA
Category: humour, het
Pairing: 2+R (kind of), R+1
Rating: PG13; Duo is just that sexy.
Notes: Sort of a missing scene from Episode 2, wherein Duo makes his
dashing entrance and Heero blows himself up. The first time. I also
fiddle with the timing of Duo learning Heero's name.
Spoilers: The first few episodes.
Disclaimer: The characters and plotline of Gundam Wing are being used
here without permission or profit. If I had a penny for every time I've
written that, I might be able to buy a soda now.
The final shock waves of the explosion passed, and the pier stopped shivering under her. Relena stared as the surface of the ocean returned to calm, climbing unsteadily to her feet.
She faced the boy in the black outfit, and found him looking at her already.
'Aren't you going to help him?' Relena demanded, pointing.
The braided boy glanced over the edge of the pier, where Heero's poor body had landed. 'No,' he said after a moment. 'I think he's doing just fine on his own.' He looked back at her, just as a new ear-splitting siren sounded, and she watched his wide mouth twist into a grimace. 'Missy,' he added, 'You are I are getting out of this joint.'
'What about Heero?' she stalled, evading his hand as he reached for her.
'Not much of a hero if he can't even dodge bullets,' the boy retorted, but the humour was back in his grin. 'He's wounded. They'll probably hold him on base. There's not much either you or I can do about that. Now, will you please let me take you off this base before lots of people with guns show up?'
'What about your machines?' Relena hedged.
'They can take care of themselves.'
The siren was definitely accompanied by shouting now. The explosion had been awfully close. It didn't take much imagination to see what would happen if soldiers did find her here. At the least, she'd been reckless. At the worst, her presence here could hurt her father.
It was that more than anything that decided her. 'All right,' she snapped. 'Take me out of here.'
'As my lady commands.' The boy slipped his gun into the back of his trousers, then stabbed at his wrist watch again. No, Relena remembered, not a wrist watch, but some kind of communicator. The sudden roar of an engine nearby made her jump, but he grabbed her by the elbows and pushed her back toward the head of the pier. She tried to get a final glimpse of Heero, and saw nothing more than a huddle slumped at the edge of the sand before the boy guided her down a rickety metal ladder, and then they were under the pier itself and close to the waves.
There was a motorcycle there. The boy had remote-started it, and it purred noisily at them as the boy brought her up to it. 'Ever ride before?' he asked her. Relena shook her head, and he smiled. 'No problemo, chica. Get on the seat, and I'll hold you from behind so you don't fall off.'
'I don't have to drive it, do I?' she gasped.
His smiled grew again until a little dimple appeared in his right cheek. Relena cursed herself for so much as noticing it, and looked stubbornly away. She hiked up her skirt and quickly, if not entirely gracefully, mounted the bike. It felt huge between her legs, warm on her calves and a little damp from sea spray on her thighs, creating patches of wet on her hose. The boy swung up behind her, settling uncomfortably close- not that there was room for them to spread out. But she gasped again when he wrapped an arm high and tight about her waist and settled his chin on her shoulder.
'Is that really necessary?' she asked nervously, as his forearm crushed against the bottom of her breasts.
His breath was warm and minty on her cheek. 'Nope,' he whispered against her ear. He gunned the engine, and it drowned out her furious retort.
He kicked down somewhere on the left, and Relena picked up her feet just in time as they sped forward, spraying sand, and zoomed out from the shelter of the pier. They shot past the chain-link perimetre of the base, sometimes skidding dangerously in the wet sand. They cut a sharp left toward a concrete ramp, and picked up speed when they were back on solid ground. The boy's arm clenched tight around her in warning just before he braked hard and the bike fell sideways, wringing a shriek from her. To Relena it seemed they were almost horizontal, and then with a roller-coaster wrench of gravity, they were facing the other way. The rev of the bike's engine made her realise she'd closed her eyes; she looked ahead to see men running toward the pier, but none in their direction. They had climbed during their dash to freedom, and were now on the peak of a tall hill overlooking the base.
'I love the military,' the boy said behind her. 'Never look up when straight ahead will do.'
Relena swallowed convulsively when she found she had a death-tight grip on the boy's arm. His thighs were a hot sheath about her, his heartbeat wild against her shoulderblade. She had the strangest impression he was laughing in delight, though his voice was only a lazy drawl.
She made her tongue work. 'Do you really think they'll care for Heero?'
'Is that his name or his title or what?'
'His name,' she snapped. 'Heero Yuy.'
'Heero Yuy?' There was a long, incredulous pause. Then the laughter was real. 'I'll be damned,' he muttered, dropping his chin to her shoulder again. 'Yeah,' he finally answered her. 'I think they'll take care of him.'
'But he's fighting them.'
'They don't know that yet, I'll wager.' That comment was cryptic, and she didn't understand it. She squirmed in his loosened hold until she could see his face over her shoulder. 'Will you go back and rescue him?' she demanded.
He wore that irritating grin. Was his face never still? 'Missy,' he said, 'you've got some strange ideas. I shoot him for you and I'm the bad guy- but if I rescue him, you'll be grateful?'
A flush started on her neck and worked its way up to her cheeks. 'Yes,' she admitted stiffly. 'I would be grateful.'
His eyes- he had purple eyes, she realised, startled- didn't seem nearly as amused as the rest of him. They held hers for a long time.
Then he looked away, and Relena blinked. 'Never deny a lady what she wants,' he said brightly, as if he'd never questioned her sanity. He winked without even looking back at her. 'We'll figure out what you can give me for it later.'
'That is not the way the world works!'
'Maybe not your world,' he conceded. 'But it's certainly how mine operates.' He resettled his arm about her waist, and she shivered as he brushed against her breasts again. 'So where can this black knight and noble steed drop you off?'
'My home,' she told him, trying to sound haughty to hide the unfamiliar tingle in her abdomen. 'It's on the other side of the city.'
'Of course.' He took the time to show her how to place her feet on the ridges and whorls of the bike's outer shell, and directed her hands to grip inside his on the handlebars so she would be better balanced. He shifted behind her, grinding for a moment against the small of her back, and Relena flushed so red she felt hot. He got the bike moving, making a wide turn and angling them toward the nearby road. 'So... he your boyfriend, or what?'
'I'm only fifteen!'
Somehow she knew he was laughing at her again.
'He's just another student,' she tried again. 'And why do you care so much who he is? Who are you?'
'You can call me Duo.'
'That's a silly name.'
'Oh yeah?' He braked until they stopped, and she glanced behind her, thinking he was offended. But he was only stripping the elastic off the end of his long braid, and he held it out to her. 'Your hair, while lovely, is going to be a little inconvenient on the highway,' he said.
'Oh,' she answered dumbly. She took the elastic, and pulled her hair back into a tail, wrapping the elastic several times over. He patted her leg and the bike was moving almost before she had finished, and she had to grab the handlebars quickly. He sped up as they merged, and as easy as that they were in traffic, and anything else they might have said to each other was lost in the rush of the wind.
Though the drive to the pier had seemed to take eons, the ride back to her house took little more than half an hour. She began to wonder if he would leave her on the street and disappear back to wherever he had come from, this strange boy, but he drove confidently up her main drive all the way to the gatehouse. They weren't even stopped- when the guard saw Relena perched in front, he hurried to open the gate and let them though with a wave.
'Your security sucks,' the boy told her, coasting gently up the tree-lined drive. He whistled when her house came into the view, the brownstone mansion Relena had never been particularly fond of. 'Great digs, though.'
'Digs?' she repeated, confused, and he chuckled low in his chest, so that her spine tingled.
He came to a halt where all the cars of her classmates were parked, leaning the bike and dropping the stand. He held her steady as she scrambled off the seat, trying not to trip and fall flat on her face in front of him. His broad, square hand lingered on her hip as she finally hopped to the cobbles.
'Thank you,' Relena told him, trying to regain her composure. His palm was warm and his fingers seemed very long, reaching around toward her back. She knew she should step away, but she didn't. Long lashes, she thought, looking at him. He had long eyelashes of dark brown, and they made his eyes seem pretty, until you looked at the sharp nose and the wide mouth and remembered he was a boy. 'Good-bye,' she added hastily, and stepped back.
Or tried to. He only caught her wrist. 'We haven't talked yet about what you're gonna give me for rescuing you and the Hero.'
His fingers wrapped all he way around her wrist and overlapped. She stared at that for a moment, then looked back at his smirking face. 'I don't suppose my everlasting gratitude would be enough?' she murmured.
How he laughed at that. He threw his head back and it bubbled out of him, long and easy and young. When he stopped, Relena found herself smiling. And then, to her surprise, he let her go, and settled both hands back on the handlebars.
'You know,' he said, 'you're the most beautiful woman I've ever met.'
She blushed. No-one had ever called her a woman before. She was often a young lady, and he was hardly the first to address her as Miss; but never a woman.
Then he winked at her. 'And that whole dress-tearing thing- thanks for that.'
Her face went so hot that she had to press her palms to her cheeks.
He started the engine again, and rocked the bike back and forth a bit. 'Stay away from Heero Yuy,' he warned her. 'You don't want to get mixed up in his shit, I think. It looks like you've got a really nice life. Try to enjoy it.' He made a little salute with two fingers, and then the bike jumped forward. He whirled it about on the cobbles in a tight turn, and then sped off down the drive. Relena watched him go, her hands still on her cheeks, thinking about the feeling of him pressed close behind her, his hand holding her wrist as if it were a tiny, delicate thing.
She thought of Heero, and wished he would look at her like Duo had when he told her she was beautiful.
The End
(:./erin/relena)
