"Sunny Day Outside Marseilles"

Written By: Waterliliylf

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing. All rights remain with Bandai, Sotsu and associated parties. No profit being made here.

Rating: R

Warnings:Duo POV, Pure, unmitigated sap and undoubtedly a certain amount of OOC. You have been warned...

Pairings: 1x2x5

Summary: Um, three hot guys driving around the French Riviera in a sports car..who needs a plot? Sequel to the 'Rainy Day' stories

"Sunny Day Outside Marseilles"

 

Chapter 6:

'No.'

'Duo. Just try it.'

'What part of 'no' do you not understand, 'Ro?'

He just laughed at me. 'You said yesterday that you wanted to be more adventurous.'

'Yeah, well, I wasn't talking about stuff like that. Didn't you get the memo that I'm not a girl?'

'Oh, I got that one all right.' He gave me a long, up and down appraisal. 'Come on, love. Just this once?'

'No.' That one came out with just a little less conviction.

'Please. Wufei would love it.'

'Wufei would die laughing.'

'Oh, I promise you he wouldn't laugh.' Heero informed me. He was still smiling, but some part of his mind had obviously slid away to some memory. Some memory the two of them shared and I didn't.

'You do it then.'

'I will if you will. How about that?' Shit, I knew I was a goner when he give me that smile. People think Quatre's the one with the killer smile, but Heero can beat him hands-down when he tries.

'You're joking!'

He shrugged. 'It's no big deal. You're not on L2 anymore, you know. This is Europe. Anything goes!'

'Fine. Fine. Whatever. Anything to shut you up.'

'Duo, if it makes you uncomfortable, you don't have to,' he back-pedalled hastily.

'Nah, I'll survive. But you're going first, and I get to choose.' He looked just a shade wary at that, and I could tell he was dying to make certain….specifications. 'That's the deal. Take it or leave it.'

'Agreed.'

We even shook on it, much to the amusement of the two girls who'd been watching the whole exchange. Before I'd even agreed, they were already laying out their torture implements - ahem, selection of nail polishes and brushes.

Shit. I so couldn't believe I'd agreed to letting some girl on the beach paint my toenails.

The selection of colour and little transfers was actually better than I'd thought; I wouldn't totally mind having black polish with little skulls on my big nails. Or bats.

I picked a deep blue for Heero that echoed his eyes, and his eyes shone with relief. The poor guy had obviously thought I'd pick out some uber-embarrassing girly colour. A nice bubble-gum pink maybe. Although he wasn't overly impressed by the cute little daisy I picked to adorn the nail on each big toe.

In exchange, he selected a bearable bluish-grey; Quatre would have said it was 'lavender' or something but that sounded way too feminine. I could live with bluish-grey. The actual painting wasn't too bad; one of my boyfriends has a foot fetish so I'm fairly used to people handling my feet. They looked OK when it was all over; a fairly subtle with a leaping dolphin on my big toe-nails.

Heero paid the girls, which was only fair since it had been his idea, and very firmly refused their offers of massages and hair-braiding. I guessed he could take other people handling my feet, but no way was he letting anyone else near any other part of me, particularly not my hair.

I got a deep kiss as he bent down, running his fingers over my painted nails. They'd both been very touchy-feely lately. Not that they hadn't always been, but it usually tended to be fairly subtle, especially in public. Semi-accidental touches that lingered just a little too long, that sort of thing.

Lately, they'd been a lot more - overt about it.

At first, I'd put it down to them being on holiday and just feeling relaxed; I can be pretty slow sometimes.

It took me a couple of days to figure that the change traced directly back to the night when I'd told them I'd never been raped. They'd believed, somewhere in my past, I had some sexual experience that was less than pleasant.

Once I'd reassured them that this wasn't the case, it was apparently open season on Duo.

I still wasn't sure how I felt about that. Sure, it was a relief that they'd finally taken off the kid gloves. But mixed up with that was guilt over the fact that they had believed I'd been abused. And yeah, just a little bit of fear.

They'd been holding back from certain things out of respect for my imagined past traumas. Now, that wasn't the case anymore, there was no real reason not to move things up to the next level.

And it was obvious they both wanted that to happen. God, I knew they'd never force me, never pressure me into anything I wasn't comfortable with, but I couldn't expect them to wait for ever.

'Duo?' I looked up from studying my toes to find Heero watching me. 'Are you OK?'

'Fine, fine.' I stood up hurriedly, hoping my blush could be attributable to suntan, thankful that mind reading isn't one of his powers. Not usually, anyway.

'Would you like to go for a walk? I've just got a text from Wufei; he's talking to the curator of the museum and he'll be a while longer. He can come and meet us later.'

'Sure.' I stood up, letting him take my hand. 'Is he having fun?'

'Of course. He's in a museum of medieval weaponry. He'll never want to leave.'

'I guess.' It had been Wufei's idea to drive along the coast and spend a couple of hours doing the tourist thing. After we'd had lunch, he'd dived into a small museum that 'just happened' to be opposite the restaurant. 'Are you sure you didn't want to go with him?'

He grinned. 'It was a tough choice to make, love. Spend the afternoon in a dusty building or spend it with you on the beach.'

'Funny, aren't you?'

'I must be absorbing your sense of humour by osmosis.'

'Ha ha.' I kicked a little spray of sand in front of me. It was something I could never get tired of; walking on sand. The dry, powdery kind that almost burnt the soles of my feet or the damp stuff where the sea had washed over it that just squelched deliciously between my toes. I loved watching my footprints too.

Absorbed in my sand-related activities, I didn't actually look up for a few minutes. We'd left the touristy beach with its families and sun-loungers and ice-cream vendors behind us; this stretch was wilder with sand dunes and rocks and most of the people stretched out on the sand or playing the waves were guys. And some of them were naked.

'Heero?'

'Duo?'

'Is this a gay beach? A gay nudist beach?'

He laughed at me. 'You must have aced all your observation classes at Preventers. Une must be so proud of you.'

'Seriously? Did you know before we got here?'

'I looked it up on line this morning. It's no big deal.'

OK, not for him, maybe. I wasn't entirely sure I was comfortable with this.

'Relax, baby. I'm not planning to drag you behind a sand dune and ravish you.'

Hum. Retract earlier comment about him being unable to read minds. He was grinning, but there was just a hint of wistfulness there, like he would be quite happy if I dragged him behind said sand dune and….whatever.

Instead, I pulled my hand away, paddling a little deeper into the water. Not too deep; my boyfriends had stopped mocking my banana-embellished swimming trunks once they realised the things were pretty damn transparent when wet. I didn't mind so much giving them a show at home, but no way was I letting anyone else see my nearly naked ass. I had far too much skin on display as it was, but the guys had left their t-shirts back in the car, and I didn't want to make an issue out of keeping mine.

'Why don't you go for a swim?' I offered, noticing he was looking longingly at the coolly glistening waves.

'Are you joking? No way am I leaving you alone on a beach full of gay guys.'

'I have this to show I'm taken, remember?' I wiggled my hand at him, letting the Claddagh ring catch the light. 'Plus I am actually capable of looking after myself, Yuy.'

I still hadn't quite figured out my attitude to their uber-possessiveness. It tended to be annoying or endearing depending on my mood and the situation. I was sort of glad of it here. I'd got used to walking around the villa naked or with just my swimming shorts.

It was different in public; I'd grown up with Solo teaching me that the only way to stay safe on the streets was to look as unappealing as possible. No one was going to look twice at a scrawny kid with filthy rags and matted hair.

The first time Sister Helen had given me a bath, I'd fought like a demon. I'd thought she was getting me all cleaned up nice for a client.

'It's not exactly like there'll be a stampede to get to me if you leave me alone for two seconds.'

'Hn.' He gave me this weird little cross between a smile and a frown. 'You constantly underrate yourself. And I have no intention of leaving you anywhere for even one second. I have you all to myself and I'm going to make the most of it. We could walk to the lighthouse, if you wanted?' He suggested, pointing to a tall, white building ahead of us.

'It's not too far?' I squinted into the sun, trying to gauge the distance. I'd been - very subtly - trying to encourage Heero to take things easy since I'd had that little chat with Wufei. I'd started noticing little things; he'd lost weight in the past couple of months and there were a few little lines around his eyes that hadn't been there before my illness.

My fault.

Heero snorted. 'I see Wufei's been telling tales. I'm perfectly fine, Duo; I may have overdone things a little over the past month or so, but he worries far too much. There was no need for him to tell you about it.'

'Huh! What's it you're always telling me? That partners should be able to confide in each other, right? I need to know this stuff, Heero.' I gave him a sudden grin. 'And I don't know where you get off complaining about Wufei worrying too much. That's a joke.'

'Well, he does worry too much,' Heero said defensively, and then his own mouth quirked, seeing the funny side of it.

'And you, sweetie, can't talk!' We walked on a bit, stopping now and then to pick up shells or bits of driftwood, and to answer a text from Wufei, who was heading to meet us. 'Heero, how did you cope when you guys first hooked up? When he started fussing over you?'

'It was difficult, at first,' he admitted. 'I'd been never had anyone care about my welfare before, only whether I was capable of achieving some mission. Then I started to realise it was just a sign that he cared about me.'

'Well, so do I.' I wound one arm around his waist, pulling him down on to the sand with me. 'Sorry, Yuy. You're just going to have to get used to the fact that there are two of us now. Both checking that you eat right and sleep properly and don't stay up all night on your laptop.'

'It sounds…terrifying.' He fell back on the sand; we'd walked way past everyone else and had a stretch of golden beach to ourselves; an unbroken swatch of curving sand lapped by gleaming water. Like a holiday brochure.

When Wufei turned up, we were sprawled on the warm sand, me with my head pillowed on his stomach and our hands entwined.

'Hey,' he smiled down at both of us, before collapsing gracefully - only Chang Wufei is capable of collapsing gracefully - beside us. 'I love the toenails. You both look beautiful. And very relaxed.'

'Mmm. Am relaxed.' It was true; we had the whole world to ourselves. An infinity of sea and sky and sunlight with not another person in sight. A whole world full of possibilities to be explored. The feelings of light and space were new; the feeling of - possibility wasn't new, but it was a while since I'd felt it.

The first time I'd gone into space; the first time I'd flown Deathscythe. My first kiss. The first time I'd really, truly believed that they cared about me. All times when I'd stood at the crest of something amazing that was just about to happen.

Heero is capable of utter silence, utter stillness when he wants. We'd spent almost an hour just lying in each other's arms, watching the way light played on the crest of a breaking wave, or the curve of a seagull's wing in flight, silhouetted against the burnt-blue sky.

Wufei's arrival broke the spell, just a little, and then he was curling up between us, one hand sliding up and down my braid, and the other stroking Heero's chest.

Not a couple anymore, but a threesome.

And suddenly it was the right moment.

'I have something for you guys.' The little boxes were dark green, with a golden harp embossed on each. I'd got them on our last day in Dublin, sneaking off while they'd gone to see some sort of exhibition at the museum. I'd kept them in the bottom of my backpack, waiting for the right moment. Somehow, there hadn't been the right opportunity to give them out.

Yeah, right.

There'd been plenty of opportunities. But it was a pretty big commitment, if you thought about it.

The weren't just rings; that would have been enough of a gesture in itself. I'd asked the guy in the shop to have them inscribed, and then had the same inscription put in the one they'd given me.

1+2+5=8.

'8 for infinity?' Wufei asked softly, expression utterly unreadable. Hell, I can never read either of them. Two inscrutable, unfathomable Asians.

'Um, yeah. It sort of seemed appropriate. You know?' I swallowed. Shit. Maybe they thought I was being way too presumptuous, assuming we were forever. Maybe that wasn't what they wanted at all. 'I just thought it would be a way to tell you that I really care about you guys. I'm not much good at saying it or anything but…'

'Duo, shut up.' Heero commanded. 'Infinity sounds perfect. Absolutely perfect.'

'It's not long enough,' Wufei growled, and suddenly handed me back the ring I'd given him. 'I think you're supposed to put this on my finger. And Heero's on his.'

~ * ~

Back to Waterlilylf's Page

Back to GW Authors Index.