"Defying Gravity"

A Romance in Three Parts

Written By: Kaeru Shisho

Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Gundam Wing or its characters, nor do I make any monetary profit off this story.

Rating: NC 17

Warnings: AU, yaoi, some language

Pairings: 1x2x1, 3x4x3

Summary: A multi part story of romance starting with a turning point vacation, developing throughout a dangerous UC mission, and moving ahead through the unexpected challenges of a summer vacation.

"Part Three: It's Another Vacation"

The party after the short ceremony joining Chang Wufei to Sally Po lasted well into the wee hours of the morning. Most of the guests had long since gone home. Quatre had fixed up a house with cots and sleeping bags for the few remaining friends to stay over night-- Hilde, Relena, Dorothy, and their dates-- but they were still partying on the beach, in a quiet way. Milliardo and his wife, Lucrezia Noin, lay flat side by side on their backs on the beach, their baby asleep between them. On second glance, they looked asleep as well.

Fairy lights strung from volleyball nets provided the only light, besides that of the stars overhead. Duo lay back with his arms behind his head and Heero's head cushioned on his stomach. Quatre and Trowa lounged apart, but with legs intertwined, and Wufei was stretched out in a similar fashion to Duo, cradling Sally's head. Relena, Dorothy, and Hilde were dotted about amongst the shells and other ocean castoffs. Their boyfriends had long washed away to their cots inside on a tide of old-chums talk.

Hilde was still taking occasional swigs from a bottle of champagne. "It's the end of an era."

"What is?" Trowa asked.

"Come on, the Fei-man getting hitched isn't that monumental an event, is it?" Duo asked.

"Of course it is! But not what I meant," Hilde said, waving the bottle in the air and sending up sprays of bubbles. "You guys aren't all going to work together any longer, like ever again."

"Yeah, Quatre, you're a real era-ender," Duo said with a toss of a piece of polished sea glass in the blonde's direction.

"Yay," was his lackluster response.

"Yeah," Hilda muttered into his mass of corn silk hair. She polished off the champagne and kissed Quatre on top of his head. "Trowa gets to live out all kinds of dreams now, like gettin' it on with a college boy."

"Yours maybe, but not mine," Trowa said.

"Trowa!" Quatre cried out sounding truly annoyed.

Hilde continued as if they hadn't started a fight at her feet. "No more undercover work...right?"

"I remember their first time." Dorothy sat up, resting on an elbow.

"You couldn't possibly," Trowa said.

Dorothy kicked him in the shins, missed, and barked Quatre's instead. "Not that first time! Sorry, Quatre, but your boyfriend's got his head in the gutter."

"Not quite—" Trowa was about to get down right dirty until Quatre slammed a hand over his mouth to silence him.

"What are you talking about?" Wufei asked, his voice muffled by roar of the ocean waves.

There was a tinkle of empty bottles as Dorothy shifted closer to Wufei and Sally. "I remember the first mission Une put you guys on. Don't you?"

"Hn."

The single, unconcerned syllable irritated her to death. She repeated, "I am sure you remember that undercover mission we all got mixed up in, Heero. Don't try to deny it."

"Heero, are you awake?" Duo asked him.

"No. Tell Dorothy to forget that mission."

"Dorothy, Heero says to forget... whatever."

"Which mission was that?" Sally asked. "I'm sure I never heard about it."

"Une assigned all five of them to undercover then sent them off on three, or was it four, different missions? Who cares? The funny part was that by mistake they ended up tracking one another to the same place. It was a mess and Une vowed—"

"Ugh," Quatre moaned. "Dear Allah, not that one! What a disaster that was. Commander Une took us all out of UC work from then on, except Duo. It was terrible. Just forget it ever happened."

"It did not happen," Wufei said. "That's all there is to it."

"Oh, my. Now I want to hear about it all," Sally said with conspiratorial grin. "Spill, girl."

"Naturally," Wufei groaned. "I was at my worst."

"Okay, correct me if I'm wrong, but as I recall, Wufei was undercover as a museum director dealing in Asian antiquities. He was to contact an assumed illegal importer, secure a transaction, and then catch him with the goods."

"I did that part very, very well," Wufei insisted from his supine position, "until Maxwell got into the picture."

"Which, since Maxwell was your illegal importer, was about what, step one?" Trowa asked. He flashed Wufei a nasty grin and then closed up.

"Hey! I was a smuggler, deep undercover at the time. I had to be at that party. How was I to know you'd be there-- and Trowa?"

"Forget I mentioned shit," Trowa muttered.

"Trowa," Dorothy continued, "was posing as a graduate student in archeology hot on the trail of some not-yet-despoiled temple. Her professor was about to send her abroad to check it out."

"Her? Trowa's a him; take it from me," Sally said.

"What does she mean by that?" Quatre asked.

"She's a doctor, Quatre. You aren't the only one to see his danglies." Dorothy said. "Go on, you explain it Trowa."

"Danglies?" Duo echoed.

Heero ran a hand across hips, between his legs, found, and squeezed Duo's male sex organs. "Those."

"Oh, gross!" Relena spat.

"Oh, very," Heero agreed in a low purr.

"Keep it clean, boys. There are ladies present," Relena said louder.

"Where?" Duo muttered and was rewarded with a hail of little fists.

"Do you all want to hear this story or not?" Dorothy asked.

"NO!" the five boys shouted in unison.

"Sally and Relena said 'yes', so 'yes' it is," Dorothy determined. "So the 'girl grad student role' was Une's idea, not Trowa's."

"Shit, yeah! I was a 'girl' on that job, not by choice either. And... the reason I was at that party was not to hook up with your target, Chang. I was there to spread the word about the new shrine-find and get as many looters as possible interested."

"They were interested, all right," Wufei grumbled, "but not in what you had to say."

"Hey, quit looking at him that way!" Quatre said to Relena and Sally. "He was made up, hair and all, but no dress."

"That's right. I do not do drag in dresses. Not me."

"I'm sure you don't, Trowa. Not with hairy legs like those," Dorothy pointed out. "To move on... Heero and Quatre were also on an unrelated-- it was assumed-- assignment to track down men stealing treasures from neglected outposts along the Border States. They were to pose as buyers for antiquities."

"We co-owned an antique shop in a posh part of upper Sanc," Quatre said.

"A stupid cover," Heero said.

"I liked the idea, but..." Quatre began.

"And it was all fine and working well until Maxwell got into the act-- am I not correct?" Wufei asked.

"You have already pointed that out," Duo said. "And as to my defense, all I can say is that after that mission, I, and I alone, was permitted to continue with UC work."

"I got the go-ahead, too," Trowa said. "I didn't."

"That's so Heero could have a partner," Quatre added. "Pull that blanket over Hilde; she's asleep."

"So, what was Duo doing on this mission?" Relena asked. "I'm confused." She chose a blanket of the top of a pile pillowed in a hamper and covered their passed out friend.

Quarter moaned. "Haven't we heard enough of the story now? I remember a better one. The time we cleaned out the lower Eastside of dealers."

"Quatre, quit trying to change the subject," Sally said. "Dorothy, so what happened? I'm dying to find out now."

"But first we need to know about Duo's job," Relena cut in again.

"Why the interest in me?" Duo asked.

"No one's interested in you. She just wants to get the players straight," Dorothy replied.

"I'm not going straight for any girl, even a pretty one like Relena," Duo insisted.

"Shut up," Heero muttered.

Several voices harmonized on a "thank you" and then Dorothy continued. "He had been deep undercover for months, making friends and connections in the area of Trowa's mythical shine on an island in the far south of Japan."

"Ishigaki," Duo said. "Real nice folks there. Spoke a dialect that confused me for awhile."

"That's because all you knew was the trash-talk Japanese from L2," Heero said.

"But I got along okay."

"Half the villagers I dealt with spoke Chinese from mainland China anyway, which was closer than the main island of Japan," Wufei added helpfully.

"But what were you there to do, Duo?" Relena asked.

"I posed as a combination drug marketer-slash-treasure smuggler."

"Oh, God. A pirate," Relena sighed, "I could so see you as that."

"And if this new training thing doesn't work out," Duo said with a wry smile, "maybe I'll look into it."

"No, you won't," Heero told him.

"Over my dead body," Wufei tagged on.

"Can be arranged."

"I don't think so, Duo," Sally said. "Remember I know all your secrets. I am the only one with the power to kill you all."

"I've always been an admirer of yours," said Trowa.

"Suck up!" Duo muttered.

"On with the story!" Relena shouted. Milliardo stirred and Hilde mumbled something and turned over.

"The problem started with the Preventer's information network," Dorothy began.

"It always does..." murmured Wufei.

"Who would imagine that the Preventer's illustrious investigating team got their research results from the same lunatics who concocted the professor and his made up shrine?" Dorothy said.

"Who would have thought to setup a surveillance mission on the wrong house, well, practically," Quatre said.

This was followed by a moment of silence out of respect for the memory of the last near-catastrophic mission.

"So, Duo, you were sent to the fake shrine place? And Trowa was going to go there, too?" Relena asked.

"That's right. See, I had it all worked out: routes, drop points, and at this party I got me a customer, which unfortunately turned out to be Wufei." Duo smiled with the pleasure of having a clear shot at a memory from his past.

"But you didn't recognize Wufei at this party?"

"No, and he didn't recognize me either," Duo said, "or Trowa."

"So all three of you were role playing at the same party and didn't know it?" Sally asked, chuckling.

"Yes," Wufei said, ruefully. "It was only the beginning of the farce."

"How did Heero and Quatre become entangled?" Relena asked.

"Oh, that was later and all Maxwell," Wufei told her.

"Just doing my job as a smuggler, linking up with buyers, and I got a pair of pretty boys looking for action over the internet."

"Had I known it was you, you would have gotten more than you'd expected," Heero said.

"Not likely. I was in denial at the time, remember?" Duo said.

"Too well."

"As I recall, Fei-man, it was you who fouled things up, not me," Duo said.

"I just showed up on your nasty little island a day early. But that wasn't my fault at all. That was scheduling at Preventer's. They said it would work better."

"They were just idiots trying to cram all of you on the same planes to save money. Man, if you'd recognized each other then, before messing up my plans--" Duo said.

Trowa cut him off. "I caught Chang checking me out."

Wufei snorted, then said, "That is a lie."

"Yeah, and not even possible," Trowa said with a half-chuckle. "I got there days before you."

"So, you three met at some party where Duo set you up to steal treasures from a shrine for a museum you represented, and Trowa was there to catch you in the act and arrest you both?" Sally asked her husband.

"Pretty much," Duo answered for him. "I was dangling my bait at the party, about to reel him in, when Trowa, who didn't look like Trowa but like more of a—"

"Drunken tart," Wufei supplied.

"Okay," Duo drawled, "then Trowa the Tart started preaching about the destruction of antiquities."

"At the time, it was more about self-preservation than preservation," Trowa said with a dry laugh. "I was being hunted by this guy and had to get him off my tail."

"So you nearly scared Wufei off forever," Duo said.

"Which in hindsight would have been far better than having the charade continue like it did," Wufei said.

"Anyway, as it turned out Wufei and I hooked up at another party and we made a deal to exchange money for smuggled goods for his museum. Unluckily, I already had my antique-shop-twinks, Terry and Rei, aka Quatre and Heero, scheduled to look over the 'shrine', so I had to put Fei off a week."

"Which puts us at back at the office scheduling screw up," Wufei said.

"I'm getting lost here," Relena said. "So both Wufei and the Quatre-Heero group showed up to buy illegal goods from Duo at some not-real-but-looks-real shrine on this island on the same day?"

"Oh yeah, and I was already there, having met Garrett-the-Smuggler, aka Duo, a few days before and was figuring on luring him to this shrine and cuffing him," Trowa said.

"And for that Une thought you needed to be a girl?" Relena asked.

"Not for Duo, but no one knew who was UC or who was doing what," Trowa grumbled. "It was asinine from start to finish. I mean, would I have named myself Shirley?"

"No, sweetie, you're more of a 'Cathy' type. Oh, my! That's your sister!" Quatre said with a false-sounding laugh. "I never did get how the 'girl' thing fit in."

"That's because you are gay," Wufei said with a smile. "I could explain, if you'd like?"

"No, thank you," Quatre said. "With more than twenty sisters all married to men, I understand male-female relationships. I meant..."

"Fei knew what you meant. He was just pulling your chain," Duo said.

Trowa asked, "Did we leave out the part about there being only the one hotel on the island? Oh, yeah. And we were all booked there at the same time. How cool was that?"

"Get the picture now? All these sting operations to get the bad guys, who were actually all UC agents?" Duo asked. "Yeah, really, really lame. It was really early in the Preventers history. Had Une let Quatre in on the strategy--"

"It never would have happened," Quatre completed for him.

"So, Duo, how did you know they were all there on the island?" Sally asked.

"They called me; at least, Heero and Quatre did when they arrived—as planned. Then, out of the blue, came Wufei's call."

"Blessed ancestors," Wufei groaned.

"So did they all show up at the same hotel and the place explode?" Relena asked."

"That would have been preferable to the humiliating—"

Quatre interrupted Wufei with, "Dreadful, awful, terrible mess—"

"--Which it became," Wufei completed.

"To keep us all from meeting, sharing information, and figuring Duo out to be a double-dealing crook trying to sell us the same stuff," Heero said, "he made up cover stories to explain our presence."

"Oh yeah," Duo laughed aloud. "It started with this cock-and-bull story about my being drug runner to fund my business during 'dry' times. I added that I had a seriously ruthless drug customer coming in to do business with me, something unexpected but not to be put off. They were to keep their distance from the drug business entirely."

"You told Quatre and me that Mr. Su, who was actually Wufei, was a drug dealer of the worst sort," Heero said. "We were in the hotel pool and this Mr. Su passed by for a moment—then you told us to keep our distance."

"Then I dragged Wufei away and told him the same thing about you guys. It should have worked. You all should have avoided one another like the plague."

"Except that they weren't really a timid museum director and co-owners of an antique business," Sally said. "They were ex-Gundam pilots and Preventers agents."

 

Chapter 3

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