FicWad

TITLE: CAPTAINS
FANDOM: Gundam Wing
PAIRING: 1x2 and some het pairings in the background
RATING: R/NC-17
GENRE: AU, Adventure, Historical, Romance
WARNING: yaoi, cross-dressing, swearing, graphic violence, sex
DISCLAIMER: Don't own anything save for the story, so please don't sue poor little me
SUMMARY: A huge reward on his head, a crew who doesn't take him seriously, a few vindictive ex girlfriends and a vicious curse which sticks like a bad smell. The fearsome pirate Shinigami thinks it can't get worse. A stalkerish Heero will prove him wrong.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: My laptop died, may it rest in peace, and my hubby finally gave me my very own home computer. Problem is: the former had an AZERTY keyboard while the new one is a QWERTY and that sucks. I can get used to one or the other reasonably fast but the problem is that I'm not only writing in English but also translating in French lately. So I had to do a well-known manip to pass from one keyboard to the other numerous times this past week and that put a serious cramp in my style. I must write at half the speed I'm used to... I hate technology.

On a more pleasant note, I finally came around to display the fanarts that nice readers gave me for this fic. There's not much yet but it's nice enough. So go check out the gallery on my lj-page, which you can find on my profile by clicking on homepage.

Chapter 20 : The Fairies' Wings

Heero felt like pacing. Of course, he wasn't dumb enough to actually do it. He knew that head injuries could be pretty serious and given that his headache had yet to disappear entirely, there still was a good chance that he would fall on his ass if he tried to stand, let alone walk. He wasn't much of a pacer either; usually he could do all his thinking while staying perfectly still. But there wasn't much that was usual, nor even anywhere approaching normal, with his behaviour since a delicious imp had burst into his life.

The scariest thing wasn't even that he didn't recognize himself anymore, but that he kind of liked the new him better than the old one. He had sincerely believed that the Colonel Lowe and his special brand of loving had bred all the rebellion out of him. The Colonel thought so too. They had both been grossly mistaken. He remembered that at some point he had chosen the path of least resistance and thought that it wasn't worth it to continue fighting his grandfather when all he got for his efforts was more misery. Yet, now he was wondering if it wasn't worth it after all. All the things he had done these past few weeks would have gotten him utter disapprobation from the Colonel and before meeting a certain long-haired pirate, he would have considered that a bad thing. He had obviously underestimated the enjoyment factor. Misbehaving was... fun. And wasn't it simply appalling that he had had to come to the venerable age of twenty-seven to finally understand what having "fun" was all about?

It was also true that being toyed with by a famous pirate, going on a wild-goose chase, being knocked unconscious, then abducted and imprisoned shouldn't be considered like fun. However, as previously established, the concept of "fun" was a new one for him so what did he know? Maybe it was what it was all about. He also had a reasonably reasonable conviction that no one had the right to contest what was making anyone tick. If ridicule, panic, stress, pain and incarceration were his things then so be it. Nobody should judge him on that. Matters of taste shouldn't be discussed and he had every right to be weird. It was maybe even a logical product of the way he had been raised that he should be so weird now. So there! "Dear Grandpa" could go fuck himself with all his righteousness and self-importance: that was all his fault anyway.

So, now that it was established that he was a weirdo, that it wasn't all that dramatic and most likely not his fault, he could contemplate the far reaches of his weirdness. He was attracted to men. Well no, not really. He was pretty sure Trowa's musculature didn't do it for him. He thought fast about all the men that could be considered handsome that he knew of: Treize Kushrenada, Quatre Winner, the insane Chinese even, and really no, not a single twinge in his nether regions. So okay maybe not attracted to men, but definitely to one man; because there wasn't any question that Duo Maxwell did turn him on.

There wasn't any question that he was definitely a man either. Even if it was his feminine disguise that had first piqued Heero's interest, the Captain Lowe was man enough to admit that the man under the dress was equally as interesting, perhaps even more so. It was Duo he had been teasing earlier, Duo again he had made silent promises to and it was even Shinigami he had found so dangerously exciting. Not Helen. It might not have been Helen for a long time. The blinders had just taken a little time to come off.

If he was honest with himself, he could even confess that the little show of last night had been all Duo and nothing Helen either; because if the face had been softened by cleverly applied make-up when he first met him at the Palace, that hadn't been the case last night. Duo's features might be delicate in some ways but they were indubitably male and still more beautiful than everything Heero had ever seen. The way his eyes had feasted upon that body was even more proof: there again, there had been nothing female in the lean but sculpted muscles, in the narrowness of the hips balanced cockily even in the privacy of Shinigami's cabin. And... well, he remembered staring at Duo's virility and getting harder instead of disgusted so you couldn't really get more obvious than that.

Someone would argue that the impossibly long hair gave the illusion of femininity to the whole but that was bullshit. Heero thought that Shinigami wore these magnificent tresses with an aggressive and strangely virile arrogance --whatever that meant.

Yeah, the distinguished and boring Captain Lowe was attracted to a male pirate and that made him even weirder than he always suspected he was. On the other hand that could have been worse. He could have been attracted to children, corpses or animals; that would have been an altogether different level of weird. Speaking about fucking animals made him think about Shinigami's Second. No! Not like that, at least he hoped not. That just reminded him of the man's tasteless joke about goats and so he recalled his conversation with Quatre. He remembered in particular the way the blond had watched him and Duo like he could see their attraction and was... amused, not disgusted...

So maybe Heero wasn't all that weird in the end. Maybe guys being attracted to one another were only weird in Heero's world and not in this new and intriguing one he had stepped in a few weeks ago. Case in point: all Shinigami's crewmembers he had met until now looked weird to him. They would have clashed in the Captain Lowe's ordered world but here they just seemed to... fit in.

After all he wasn't as naive as Trowa and his grandfather would have him believe. Well okay, he wasn't either the most observant of men but sometimes he caught on his fellow human beings' behaviour when it was sufficiently --hear glaringly-- obvious and so he knew that it happened that two males chose to relieve stress together when they were apart from women for a significant amount of time. That wasn't exactly considered acceptable behaviour and wasn't openly discussed, but that happened in times of war when things went bad and every man was desperate for any kind of comfort. Heero had known it happened and had never questioned it... nor had he partaken in it. It was a form of self-indulgence and his Grandfather had taught him not to indulge in anything.

Now however he was curious as to what had been taking place between those men. What exactly could two men do together behind closed doors? It was intriguing. He hoped he would have the occasion to explore the possibilities in the near future. As the saying goes: "when in Rome, do as the Romans do," so if he had to stay imprisoned among weirdoes, he might as well embrace his own weirdness. He nodded to himself satisfied with his conclusions.

He was hungry. That was a given: he couldn't even recall the last time he had eaten anything. He was unsure of what time it was but he hoped it was around meal time and that Shinigami's unexpected hospitality would extend to lunch. One could still hope. It was probably closer to dinner, now that he thought about it. His captors had been kind enough to leave him one of their saltpetre lamps and the cabin was bathed in that eerie blue light he remembered from the Duo's room. The window didn't offer any other source of light so it must be night time. He looked more closely at said window and amended his first impression: as in Shinigami's cabin, the panes opened on nothing but more wood instead of air. What could be the point to have windows if they were all obscured by panelled wood? That was one more thing that didn't quite make sense with this crew. And anyway, what were they doing onboard this little brigantine when they had one kick-ass frigate secreted somewhere. Unless the Deathscythe had been totalled by a rival ship and the news hadn't yet made it to Sank when Heero had left. God he hoped not. It would be a shame. Deathscythe was a damn fine ship that didn't deserved such an anonymous end. If anyone should sink him, it should be Heero's Wing and nobody else.

An ominous crack resounded suddenly from the bowels of the ship. The Captain Lowe was instantly alert. Did they hit something? A reef maybe? No, that didn't make sense: there hadn't been any impact. At the precise time he was thinking that, he felt like the room he was in was sinking, then it stopped and the motion went in reverse. It was so sudden that his stomach made his discomfort known and he had to clamp his lips shut to stop the sudden rise of bile in his throat. His sense of equilibrium was kind of thrown off balance by his nausea but he still had the distinct impression that the whole ship was rising. It was like they were caught on top of an enormous wave and he expected the ensuing crash any time now. Except it didn't come. It felt like they were suspended in mid-air. That really didn't feel like they were caught in a storm now that he was thinking about it and the sea had seemed calm just before the sudden sensation of sinking.

The whole thing made him uneasy. There was something unnatural going on and there was nothing he could do about it. The ship was now immobile as if time had stopped. Then the screeching began. He didn't know what it was but it was frighteningly loud. There was more cracking of wood as if the ship was being ripped apart and more of that unbearably shrill noise as if Hell Doors themselves were grating open. Good thing Heero wasn't the superstitious type or he might have envisioned scenarios of monsters and mayhem. As it was, the not knowing was still unsettling enough. He wouldn't say he was panicking because the Captain Lowe didn't panic, but he still would have felt better if he had had the assurance that his captors wouldn't forget he was there if they decided to abandon the ship. It seemed to last an eternity with no end in sight but when the noise dimmed before stopping altogether, he reasoned that couldn't have been going on longer than fifteen minutes. There was another unsettling motion; the room was sinking once again, but it was slow this time, almost gentle. After that, there was a last cracking sound and a very loud bang as if two enormous pieces of some puzzle had just clicked together in place. Or as if those doors of Hell had just shut. Heero didn't care much for that particular analogy but if that was what it had been, he could at least appreciate the fact that he hadn't been the one suckered down into the infernal depths. Unless the whole ship had been of course...

He was pulled from his apocalyptic musings by the sound of water cascading and hitting more water. Well, in Hell or not, they were obviously still at sea and the crew was... bailing out? You think they could send someone to explain things to their stowaway, but no, of course he didn't deserve such consideration. Heero looked on to the moon filtering through the window and pondered the injustice of his fate. Wait a minute! The moon? And there it was. No more panelled wood, the window was now looking out into the night sky. Is that what they had been doing? Opening the blinds? That was a little over the top. Heero shook himself out of his stupor: there was a good chance that he really didn't want to know what was going on on this ship. Save maybe for the meals schedule. He was still hungry.

***

Duo had wanted to let the Deathscythe loose as soon as the sun went down but there had been unavoidable delays. There was the usual maintenance, securing of the cargo and guns that were accessible while in Sandrock's form and there had been that pesky problem of their stowaway whose sort they had had to discuss. He hadn't foreseen either that Quatre would slip away while they were debating, nor that he would have to go into lecturing mode. Sometimes it sucked to be him. It was thus night already and they were still rigging their new black sails to the gaffs that would later be hauled up the masts. The main and fore masts were the same onboard the two incarnations of the ships, only the mizzenmast was Deathscythe's alone. It had made more sense when he was working on the schematics to design a system of pulleys allowing to switch gaffs and sails than to switch the whole masts. The latter would have implied to have the second set of masts stored somewhere on the ship at all time and those were freaking big sticks.

There were many sails and it was a fastidious task but that couldn't be helped. It would have been faster if their numbers hadn't been cut down so drastically by their latest misfortune. It wasn't like they could have had Dietrich's people doing it. They had been curious enough about the new sails when the Sandrock already had perfectly good ones, the extra gaffs would have attracted unwanted attention. Hilde and Dietrich might have known about the transformation but their employees did not and it would stay that way if Duo had any say in it. He wasn't overly worried about it; for all they were horrible gossips, the two Germans were cunning enough to know when to keep their mouths shut. Well Hilde was anyway and she would keep her Daddy in line.

Duo wondered idly how the Shipwreck's employees were explaining that they had never seen the Deathscythe and that the Captain Shinigami they knew he was, was always cruising aboard a modest brigantine when they saw him. Hmm... They probably entertained some ridicule delusions like most of the Caribbean population. He had heard a lot of half-assed theories on this matter while hitting the pubs. His favourite by far was that Shinigami had signed a pact with the Devil and could call forth the Deathscythe by spilling some of his blood in the ocean. The vessel would then rise from Hell itself to do his bidding as if he was a sentient infernal creature. That theory had merit... No, it had...seriously. Duo wasn't that far himself from thinking that Deathscythe was truly sentient; he often talked to him and if he wouldn't go so far as to say the ship was answering, he sometimes had the feeling that they understood each other.

Once all the sails had been rigged and all the gaffs secreted away in their hidden places, Duo ordered the crew in their quarters and went to his own cabin to activate the lever. The switch from one set of gaffs and their attached sails to the other was done mechanically as part of the transformation. At least they wouldn't have to haul the sails on top of everything. He couldn't afford to waste any more of their precious few time. The Sandrock was far too vulnerable a ship for his peace of mind and the sooner the Deathscythe was operational, the sooner they could go on on their journey. Duo hadn't forgotten that they had a curse to lift. He was also uneasy to have been forced to leave part of his crew behind. Their place was at his side and he would feel a lot better once they were well enough to be picked up. That was probably a silly notion as there was a good chance that the cross presented less danger to them while they weren't in its immediate vicinity.

There were a few things to do after the transformation, but they could have done those tasks in their sleep so it didn't take long. Howard had been put to bed, Hernan was on guard in the crow's nest and Quatre was still confined in his quarters. Auda tried to push everyone to attend the dinner he had miraculously had the time to prepare, but it wasn't the same when so many were missing. The crewmembers grabbed a few bites and went on their way. Duo sent Rashid to deliver Quatre's dinner with orders to let him go only once the man estimated he had been appropriately lectured. That was a little cruel of Duo as he knew that the big guard could be quite severe when he thought something threatened the well-being of his charge. Shinigami himself took the helm. It didn't need to be manned permanently and it could have well been left alone for now, but Duo needed to think and there was no better place to do it than here. He loved the sea at night. Alone with Deathscythe in the protective cocoon of the darkness, he truly felt invincible. There wasn't a problem he couldn't solve, nor a fight he couldn't win when he was Shinigami, let alone when the tendrils of night were cradling him like a favourite child.

Of course, acknowledging that he needed to think didn't necessarily mean that he wanted to. In this case he most definitely not wanted to. Duo knew himself pretty well and was aware that his thought process was seriously fucked up. He was reasonably intelligent, some people would even go as far as to say he had some kind of genius in a few domains --his work on the Deathscythe's schematics and his inherent grasp of navigation came to mind. However, when it came to mundane problems or anything emotional, he had learned to go with his instincts without thinking things through. This method could seem dumb to the uninitiated in light of some of the fucks-up that behaviour of his resulted in, but Duo knew better. In truth, all the problems he managed to land himself in because of his impulsiveness had nothing on those he created inadvertently while cleverly planning a way to get out of the first ones. With time he had learned to be a man of action not so much because he was one to begin with, but because it was one of those annoying laws of the universe that "if he thought it through, he fucked it up."

That said and regardless of his resulting squeamishness regarding deep introspection, there were some situations where thinking was unavoidable so he just had to take it like a man and pray all the way that a God he wasn't sure he still believed in would finally take pity on him. Lightening couldn't strike the same person so many times before unbalancing the world's equilibrium after all. In his present situation anyway there was a good chance that things couldn't get much worse no matter what he tried to make them better.

He was still not crazy enough to tempt fate by actually thinking about the curse or Kushrenada's plot: those things were under control since they already had a half-baked plan to deal with those. And as it was a plan that had been put together in five minutes, it might just work. No, it was better to keep his devious mind as far as possible from those problems. He had to think but it was simply good sense than to begin smaller. Especially when the smallest of his problems was precisely the one that confused him the most.

Well, it might not be especially clever to call Heero small because not only did he have a head over him but Duo also recalled with unsettling clarity the sensation of the man's virility pressed against him and there had been nothing small there either. And wasn't it just wrong that he should know about /that/? Oh yeah he remembered a lot of things from that night and not among the least that he --all Captain Shinigami and Ladies' Man that he was-- had had an explosive if fumbling orgasm in another man's arms. Duo had had countless lovers and tried pretty much all there was to do in a bedchamber. With so much experience, mostly dressed frottage shouldn't, by all rights, have felt so fantastic.

He could argue till he was blue in the face that the whole event had been non consensual and thus that the blame shouldn't be laid on his door, when it came down to it, he had to confess if to no one but himself that he had stopped struggling awfully fast. Before his little bout of panic and the consequent nasty flashback, he had truly loved the grounding weight of a hard male body pressing him to the mattress, the devouring kisses of thin chapped lips and the grasping caresses of big possessive hands.

If someone had asked him a few weeks ago, he would have sworn he wasn't interested in sexual intercourses with other men. He had been aware those were a possibility but his carnal adventures never pushed him in this direction. He could vaguely remember a few offers he had offhandedly dismissed in the past; he had simply found the very idea unappealing. Why bother fighting for dominance with another man when so many women were more than willing? The variety of what you could do with a woman --or two or three-- had always been more than satisfying enough for even his considerable appetite. He recalled with fondness a few orgies he had partaken in in Italy for example; there was so much to do, so much to learn. Now that he was thinking about it, those times had probably been when he had come the closest to lying with a man before last night and that had only been while they shared a woman or compared performances while each being busy with their own. But even in such a sensual atmosphere, even while drunk on wine and pleasure, he had never been tempted to touch the male bodies performing so close.

So what was it about the Captain Lowe that made him so different? Because there wasn't any doubt that he had wanted to touch the hard planes of that naked chest that had so badly distracted him earlier in Quatre's cabin. That wasn't either because his own body was remembering the delights of the previous night. If it had just been that, he could have chucked it out as frustration and go in search of a willing female. However he couldn't stop to think about that disembodied dark blue gaze which had haunted him since Sank and which he suspected now belonged to Heero. Obviously there were other forces at work here than mere lust, he couldn't help but think their meeting had been fated and that some Higher Power was pushing them together. After all, as Wufei had said, that wasn't everyday that respectable Navy officers went in pursuit of a pirate not because they wanted to arrest him but to molest him. The Captain Lowe was clearly as fascinated with Duo as Duo was with him.

At least, he was reasonably sure that Heero had no nefarious intentions where Shinigami was concerned. That was a relief because if any other soldier had managed to sneak his way onboard Deathscythe, Duo would have been forced to kill him to protect their secrets. He really didn't want to kill Heero but what else to do with him? Even if he doubted the man would talk, they couldn't take the risk to let him go and if they kept him, Duo would have to confront the feelings the dark Captain was awakening in him. He might even begin acting on them sooner or later. He wasn't sure he was ready for that.

Duo was interrupted in his musings by the feeling of a presence behind him. There was no telltale sound of footsteps as every member of his crew had learned to walk silently to play the role of ghosts people wanted to see them as. Shinigami however was so attuned to his ship and his crew that he always knew when one of them was approaching and could even tell which one of them it was most of the time.

"Quatre," he acknowledged. "Already done with dinner?"

The young prince huffed behind him. "That was hours ago Duo and I had an enlightening dinner companion to make me appreciate every second of those hours."

Duo didn't try to repress his grin, confident that even if Quatre saw it, he wouldn't be offended. The young man knew Rashid's lecture had been his punishment for being careless and a busybody and he accepted it, if with little grace. That was always like that onboard Deathscythe: punishments were dealt when necessary and could take on the strangest of forms. The offenders always accepted Shinigami's decisions on those matters and if they rarely apologized, they always found a way to make amends later. Duo liked it just fine this way; he had always thought men's actions spoke louder than their words. He wondered what Quatre would do to apologize for being an insufferable little meddler. Perhaps he would tone down on his Captain's teasing... Okay, that was wishful thinking.

"So? What are you going to do about him?"

The question coming out of the blue threw Duo for a loop. He turned toward Quatre and donned a clueless expression.

"About who?"

Quatre snorted and gave him a knowing look. "The Captain Lowe of course. What are you gonna do about him?"

"Huh... err... nothing?"

The little shit had the gals to look dubious as if Duo was purposely playing dumb. Well he was but a polite subordinate shouldn't call his Captain on it. "What do you mean nothing? It's obvious that he fancies you."

"...but I'm not a fairy!" This cry had come from the heart and had not been thought through... obviously.

"Aaaah! So that's why. I always wondered at the lack of wings... but it all makes sense now."

The heady mix of righteous, dismissive and disappointed in Quatre's tone annoyed Duo.

"Hmm... you know what I mean."

His friend studied him intently, his expression contemplative.

"You know Duo, I just might know exactly what you mean and if I may: that's bullshit! There's something between you two. I don't know what exactly, but I know that much at least. You probably don't want my opinion right now, but I'm still gonna give it to you because it's what friends do. Whatever there is, don't dismiss it out of hand and certainly not for a misconception as silly as thinking it's wrong with both of you being men. There's not a lot of joy in this world, so the least you can do is grab every bit of it you can, while you still can."

Duo watched him for hidden clues that he wasn't his most sincere but couldn't find any. He took on a stubborn expression.

"That's easy for you to say /Your Highness/, but I don't see you making the slightest effort to find someone for yourself. I believe you left your fiancée behind with your kingdom... And isn't your God all disapproving about unnatural relationship like the one you're suggesting I invest myself in?"

Quatre took on a faraway expression. "Precisely /Captain/: I didn't want to believe in the precepts of men and thought that I would rather find my own truth. There will always be people who think you don't have the right to love people who don't have the same colour or the same religion as yourself. I refuse to believe in such things. The Allah I believe in is loving and I don't think he would be the sort to punish his children because they love, no matter who they love."

"That's all well and good Quatre but no matter what you say, even if I was interested in the Captain Lowe, he /is /our enemy. There's not much I can do about that."

"I wouldn't be that sure about that if I were you..."

Duo had an inquiring look and Quatre appeared uncomfortable for a moment. He always felt uneasy when he had to talk about that weird gift he had that let him know what people were feeling around him. The Captain waited patiently for the moment when his friend would be ready to share the impressions he had gathered from his solo meeting with their stowaway. It came finally as he had hoped even if the voice was hesitant, as if Quatre still feared judgement on the occasions he showed his supernatural empathy.

"I... I don't know how to explain but... the Captain Lowe is not a happy man. There's something in his past that... weighs on him. I don't think he's all that dedicated a soldier. Or at least I don't think he wants to. Before you all came barging in on us, the most I could feel was misery, like it was seeping from all of his pores. But after you came in... it was different. It was like your presence alone was enough to make him happy, to make him question and... change maybe."

Duo was thoughtful. He had never mocked Quatre's strange abilities that let him feel more of the world than your average guy. He had promised himself that he would never do that: first because the Prince had suffered enough grief from it in his home country and secondly, because he knew enough of the world behind the world to know this ability was as real as ghosts and curses were, no matter what most regular people were lead to believe.

"So you're thinking he could be an ally rather than an enemy?"

"Yes. I think he's there for a reason and that your relationship whatever you decide to make of it was... fated to be."

Duo nodded, half convinced if still confused. Maybe that was as simple as that.