Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, it belongs to Bandai, Sotsu and associated parties. I just borrow the guys from time to time and return them a whole lot happier. I do own the plot and any other characters, especially the equines, that you will find in this fic. Please do not take them without permission. Written for pleasure not profit.
Pairing: 2x1x2, 3x4, 13x6, H+C
Warnings: Yaoi, lemon, sap, angst, vet themes, AU
Rating: NC 17
Archive: gundam-wing-diaries. forverfandom. net Anyone else please ask.
Betaed by Karina *snugs*
Summary: Set 2 years after Equus and Heero is doing so well in his own business that he's taken June on as a working pupil. The qualifying shows for the International teams are well underway and it looks like it will be a good year for Heero, his pupils and horses... until Mother Nature steps in.
AN: This fic, although a complete work of fiction is based partially on fact. I will add notes at the end of chapters where necessary to clarify events and provide links where needed.
Dedication: To Leslie and Karina. Leslie for giving me the original idea for Equinity and encouraging and supporting me through the writing of all the fics thus far in the arc. And Karina for not just taking over as my much needed beta, (poor woman needs a medal!), but for also poking and prodding Fred until he went on strike, refusing to work on anything at all until I let him start this. Needless to say, we managed to come to a compromise... Fred gets to write a chapter of this one week... the next week he has to write a chapter of 'Bound'... Did I ever tell you all I hate my muse? :-)
Fic 5 in the Equine Intervention Arc.
Commenced December 2013 – ShenLong
"Rival Riders"
Chapter 13
Once the table had been cleared and the dishes done, Heero and Duo found themselves ensconced in the lounge room with a cup of coffee each. Darryl left them to talk, citing he had some case notes to write up and bid them all good night. The conversation continued on, Simon and Duo catching up on what had been going on with the other over the years. Simon was pleased to hear that Duo's decision to set up practice in a country town had paid off for him to the point where the practice was busy and profitable enough to warrant three vets working there.
Simon's practice had originally been in the city, a small animal clinic and that's where he'd met Jill, now his wife. She'd been babysitting a friend's cat while her friend was away on vacation and the cat had somehow managed to get out of her apartment and onto the balcony where it had made a leap for freedom.
Problem was, Jill's apartment was on the second floor and it was a twelve meter drop from the balcony to the concrete car park below. Jill had made a grab for the cat and missed. Horrified by what had happened and not really wanting to look down over the balcony railing, Jill had forced herself to take a peek.
"The cat was on the ground and moving, but I could see she was hurt. I honestly thought she would be dead," Jill said and shuddered. Simon put his arm around her and squeezed.
"I got a call to say an emergency was on it's way in and five minutes later, Jill rolled up with this tortoiseshell cat wrapped in a blanket. I thought she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever laid eyes on; Jill that was, not the cat; although the cat was a nice feline too," Simon clarified and got a poke in the ribs from his wife.
"By rights, the cat should have been killed jumping from that height, but as it turned out, all she'd done was fractured the bones in both front feet," Jill said.
Duo gave a whistle. "Talk about lucky!"
"Yes, she was," Jill replied.
"It took four hours of surgery to fix up the damage, but Bindy came through it all with flying colors," Simon finished. "Once the cat had come back to have the plaster removed I screwed up enough courage and asked if Jill would like to go out for a coffee. Lucky for me she said yes and things just went from there. We've been married for six years now and moved out here four years ago."
"That's a really nice story," Heero said.
"Thanks," Jill replied and with a sly look on her face, she eyed up both men. "So, how about you two? When and how did you two become a couple?"
"Eh?" Duo began to turn red. Heero did his best to pretend he hadn't heard the woman speak.
"Oh, come on, anyone with half a brain can see from how you two look at each other that you're together; not to mention the wedding bands you both wear," Jill snorted. "Considering that neither one of you has mentioned a wife waiting at home it seems a pretty easy deduction to make." Beside her, Simon looked quite amused by the turn of events.
"Errr... Uh..." Duo, it seemed, was lost for words.
Simon decided to help his buddy out a little. "Duo, it doesn't matter to Jill or myself if you two are together. We're very broad minded people and think that everyone in this world should be given a shot at happiness."
"Thanks, Simon, you have no idea how much that means to us," Duo replied softly.
"Hai, thank you," Heero said. "I'm afraid that there aren't many people in the world that share your views, hence our reluctance to let our relationship become common knowledge."
"I can understand that," Jill offered, "but your secret is safe with us. Now, when did you two become a couple? And how on earth did you manage to marry? By that statement I mean, marriage isn't legal between same sex couples that I'm aware of - yet."
Duo didn't miss the 'yet' tagged onto the end of that sentence. "We met at the Salsbury Ag show about fourteen years ago now. Heero was competing on his horse Zero and had a nasty fall. I was the vet on duty for the show and treated the horse for him; I also ended up taking Heero home and looking after him as he'd also injured himself."
"You always were one for picking up and taking in strays," Simon chuckled.
Duo shot his colleague a glare. "I was not."
"Sure you weren't," Simon teased. "I can still remember the cat and kittens you took in."
"That was different, they were going to be put down."
"And the rabbit?"
"It needed nursing back to health."
"You can't tell me that the lamb needed nursing."
"I couldn't let it end up being a roast!" Duo defended himself.
"A lamb?" Heero questioned with a raise of his eyebrow at Duo.
"Roast?" Jill asked. Turning to look at Heero she directed her words to the rider, "Clearly there is a lot going on here we don't know about."
"I think you could be right there." Heero replied to Jill before turning his attention back to the two vets and addressing Simon. "By the way, I was not a stray either, I did have my own home to go back to." Heero's eyes danced with amusement.
Deciding to ignore the jab at his soft side from his fellow vet, Duo continued with his story of how he and Heero had gotten together, finishing up with their wedding, or rather civil ceremony. "So even though same sex marriage isn't legal yet, we did have a ceremony and in our eyes we're married, we don't need to have a piece of paper to confirm it."
"I wish you both all the very best," Jill said sincerely.
"Thanks, it's nice to know we have friends that look beyond the bigotry and see us for who we are." Duo began to fiddle with the end of his braid.
"Well, you and Heero are always welcome in our home," Simon stated and gave both men a warm smile.
"Okay, who's up for some cocoa?" Jill asked, breaking the somber moment.
With cocoa's all round, the four sat and talked for a while longer before calling it a night and turning in.
# # #
"Horses all okay?" Duo asked as Heero stepped into the goose-neck and closed the door behind him.
"Hai, they're fine," Heero replied and smiled at the sight that greeted him. Duo was sitting on the bed brushing his hair and wearing nothing but his boxers. Stepping across the small space, Heero took the brush from his husband's hand. "Let me?"
"Mmm, anytime, Heero, anytime." Duo closed his eyes as his partner worked the brush through the strands, eventually separating the locks into three segments and braiding the mass.
"There, all done." Heero got up and set the brush down, moving to remove his own clothes as Duo slipped beneath the covers of the small bed. Leaving just his briefs on, Heero joined his husband under the covers and reached to switch off the small light. Settling into the thin mattress, Heero's arms wound around Duo's shoulders as the vet snuggled into his partner's side and pillowed his head in the crook of Heero's shoulder.
"Just tomorrow night to go at Frank's sister's place and then it's Werribee," Duo murmured.
"Shouldn't be too long a drive either," Heero replied. "I hope to get on the road again by nine at the latest, that way we should get into Sunbury by mid afternoon."
"Not that I haven't enjoyed our little road trip so far, but I will be glad to get to Werribee and sleep in a proper bed, not to mention the break from traveling."
"I know exactly what you mean. The horses will be glad to get there too. They will need a bit of a break from all the traveling to get their jumping legs back again."
"If it's this tiring on us I can only imagine how tiring it must be for the horses," Duo mused.
"It isn't easy on them," Heero replied and pressed a kiss to Duo's head.
"So far we've been lucky. No injuries or illness."
"I hope to keep it that way too." Heero pulled his husband closer. "You going to enlighten me about the strays Simon was talking about earlier?"
Damn! "I was hoping you'd forgotten about that," Duo muttered.
"No, not a chance. Now spill."
Duo sighed. "The cat and kittens someone dumped at the campus surgery. After trying to locate the owner and coming up blank, the surgery couldn't keep them so they really didn't have much of a choice other than to get rid of them. It was decided by the hierarchy that they could be used to teach the students how to correctly euthanize an animal." Duo paused for a moment. "I couldn't let that happen to a healthy cat and kittens so they kinda disappeared before that lecture. I managed to hide them in my dorm room for a few weeks and found homes for them all."
Heero gave his partner a squeeze. "I think that was very noble of you," he whispered.
"Thanks."
"The rabbit and the lamb?"
"Ah. I found the rabbit when I was returning to campus one evening after a night out with some of the guys. It had been hit by a car and left on the side of the road to die." Duo shrugged. "I couldn't leave it there so I took it back and the other guys and I decided to try out our surgery skills. We were in our surgical year by then," Duo clarified. "Come to think of it, it probably wasn't the best idea I've ever had, four of us, still students and all at least half tanked, performing surgery on a rabbit." Duo shrugged. "The rabbit survived, I nursed it back to health and then released it back into the wild."
"I wish I'd been there to see that," Heero snickered. Just the thought of Duo being drunk and trying to perform surgery was amusing – more so as the vet didn't drink as a rule. Heero hazarded a guess that after that scenario it was highly possible it was the reason Duo quit drinking. "And the lamb?" Heero prompted.
"That was something else. We'd had several lambs donated to the University for the students to learn abdominal surgery on. We were each given a lamb and had to perform a surgical procedure on it. Then we were responsible for the after surgery care and so on."
"Sounds logical to me," Heero replied. It stood to common sense that vet students were going to have to learn surgery on live animals at some stage.
"That was the easy part," Duo sighed. "The lamb I was given came through with flying colors, as did my grades for that part of the course; problem was, the lamb kinda got very attached to me and I to it. We discovered after all the lambs had recovered from their surgery that the campus was planning on taking the lambs to the local slaughter house to be butchered and the meat sold – it was another of the many ways the campus managed its fund raising."
"Ah." Heero could see where this was going. He knew his husband well enough by now to know that Duo had a soft spot, especially when it came to baby animals and the lamb having to go for slaughter wouldn't have sat well with him. "What did you do?"
"What could I do, Heero? I couldn't let Fleecy suffer a fate like that!"
"Fleecy?!"
"The lamb."
"Aa." I should have known he'd give the lamb a name, after all, he names all the inanimate objects around the place, about time he actually gave a name to something that lives, Heero thought.
"I managed to smuggle Fleecy into my dorm room the day the lambs were to be sold."
"Didn't they know the lamb was missing? Wouldn't they have done a head count or something like that?" Heero questioned.
"No, they didn't know they were one short. Some of the lambs didn't make it through the surgery for medical reasons and a couple escaped so I was pretty safe, well, until Fleecy started to get a bit more vocal. Not to mention how hard it is to clean up after a lamb and try to make out that your room is only occupied by yourself."
"I can imagine," Heero remarked dryly.
"Anyway, a couple of the more snooty students began to suspect something was up, but I managed to find a home for Fleecy before anything could be proven. It was a pretty close call though, I can tell you. Plus a couple of the other students kept threatening to have a lamb on a spit one weekend – no prizes for guessing whose lamb they were intending to use."
"Where did you send it?"
"I managed to find a sheep farmer not too far away from campus who said he'd take Fleecy. Last I saw of the lamb she'd grown into a nice ewe and the farmer was happy enough with her." Duo gave another sigh and snuggled closer to Heero. "Sleep now?"
"Duo Maxwell, you are one seriously amazing person and I love you so much," Heero said softly and pressed a kiss to the crown of his partner's head.
"Nah, not amazing, just caring."
# # #
Understandably, the horses were a little reluctant to step back onto the goose-neck the following morning. Heero couldn't blame them and knew they would probably have a bit of trouble when they made their stops during the day's travel.
He made sure to have a good supply of carrots on hand.
'Thank yous' and goodbyes were exchanged, Jill making Duo and Heero promise to stay again overnight on their return journey and also keep in touch with them both. After wishing Heero all the best for Werribee and the Nation's Cup Simon and his wife waved madly as the goose-neck rumbled out of the practice driveway and onto the road again.
Heero drove, Duo having set the GPS with the address of Frank's sister in Sunbury.
"June's leaving tonight with Geoff and Max, isn't she?" Duo asked as he watched the landscape rolling by.
"As far as I know that was what she'd planned," Heero replied.
"When do you think they will get to Werribee?"
"If they share the driving they will probably arrive sometime Wednesday afternoon to evening."
"When is Treize expecting to arrive?"
"He's hoping to be there tomorrow in the early afternoon."
"It will be good to see everyone again."
"That it will, Duo."
#
"If this thing is correct, we should be arriving at Frank's sister's place in the next ten or so minutes," Duo commented, taking a look at the GPS. "I hope Frank remembered to call her and let her know we would be arriving this afternoon."
"I'm sure he would have," Heero replied, slowing the goose-neck a little to comply with the speed limit.
They were approaching the town of Sunbury and needed to pass through the township itself to reach their destination which lay on the outskirts of the other side.
"What was her name again?"
"Miss Lowe?" Heero offered.
Duo snorted. "You forgot to ask him, didn't you?"
"Ah, maybe." Heero looked sheepish.
"She could be married for all we know," Duo stated.
"You could be right. I guess we will find out shortly." Heero maneuvered the goose-neck through the town center - which fortunately wasn't all that busy - and was soon heading out the other side.
"Should be about another kilometer up the road," Duo said, eyes scanning around for the property Frank's sister lived at. "I think that's it up there."
Heero looked where Duo was pointing, slowing down at the same time. "That's it," he agreed, spotting the number and sign that said 'Meadow Springs'.
Moments later they were pulling into a large, open area at the back of a rambling house. Several concrete 'runs' were set up on one side of the yard, on the other lay a few small paddocks with shelters in them. With the arrival of the goose-neck several dogs began to bark followed by a woman's voice telling the canines to be quiet. Heero cut the engine and both men unbuckled their seat-belts. Stepping out of the goose-neck, they were greeted by a woman who looked to be in her late thirties.
"Heero Yuy?" the woman asked with a smile.
"I'm Heero and this is Doctor Duo Maxwell," Heero replied and stepped forward to shake the offered hand.
"A pleasure to meet you, miss...?" Duo gave a charming smile. "I'm afraid Frank didn't tell us your name."
The woman gave a light laugh. "That's typical of Frank. Betty, Betty Lowe and it's a pleasure to have you both and your horses here. Before we get better acquainted though, I'm sure you must be anxious to get those horses off the truck and settled?"
Heero instantly warmed to the woman. "I would really appreciate that."
"If you follow me I'll show you where you can put them."
The horses were all soon off loaded and settled into small, individual paddocks that had a lean-to shelter and large trees. Betty had kindly filled the water troughs in each paddock and set a feed bin ready for each occupant. As it was still a little early in the afternoon for feeding, Heero opted to leave the four equines to enjoy the green grass and peace for a couple of hours before feeding them and settling them for the night. Betty invited them into the house for a coffee and chat, something both guys welcomed – Heero was curious to learn a little more about Frank, whilst Duo couldn't keep his eyes off the dogs which were lovely examples of their breed.
"Lovely dogs," Duo commented to the woman when they were sat in a cozy living room, coffee in hand and several canines scattered around the floor.
"Thank you. I used to breed and show the dogs quite a lot, but it all started to get a bit much so I stopped. I sold off most of my dogs and now I spend a lot of my time judging. Couldn't sell off these ones though, they're family to me," Betty replied with a smile.
"How long did you breed and show for?" Duo politely asked.
"I became interested in my latter years of school and when I left school and got a job I saved up and bought my first blue heeler then. I had some success showing him and once I could afford to, I purchased a bitch and bred the pair. I sold all but one of the pups and started to show the one I kept. From there things went really well for me and I expanded my showing and breeding program. I bought this property several years ago now and had the kennels and runs built."
Having seen the kennels and runs already when they had been unloading the horses, Duo could appreciate just how much time and work would have needed to go into maintaining such a set up. "I can understand why you stopped then, it must have been a lot of hard work to keep those kennels maintained, not to mention the work with the dogs too. You didn't have anyone to help you?"
"No, I guess I never really met the right man, but I did enjoy it at the time. Now I'm just as happy doing the judging."
"Frank never showed an interest in the dogs at all?" Heero inquired.
"No, never." Betty chuckled. "Franks always was one for the horses. He always did say he wanted to be a top rider and represent his country at some stage. Never thought he'd get there, but he seems to be doing just fine." Betty seemed to drift off into her own world for a moment before coming back to the present. "Frank said that he keeps his horse with you, Mr. Yuy and that he's taking lessons from you too?"
"Hai, he is and please, call me Heero. He's been agisting with me for a little over two years now and usually has a lesson a week with me. He's come a long way in that time and I have no doubts he will be a strong contender when it comes to the selections for the next Olympic team."
"He's gotten that good?" Betty said.
"Yes, he has," Heero replied with a smile.
"That's wonderful. I'm happy for him and really hope he does achieve his goal. He's worked damn hard for it, that I do know."
Heero nodded in agreement.
"So, tell me, Heero, where is it you're going now with the horses? Frank didn't say much on the phone about where it is you're going and what for, I gathered it must be some big competition or something like it."
Heero explained exactly where they were going, the Nations Cup event and that Frank and himself were both competing in the A Grade Championships. "It is a good competition for him to enter in as a lot of the selectors for the Olympics will be there."
"Then I wish him all the very best of luck for it; oh, and you too, Heero."
"Thank you."
# # #
The following morning saw Heero up and about early, getting the horses fed and the goose-neck ready for the final days travel. They had spent a pleasant evening with Betty, talking about dogs and horses, Betty showing them both some of the trophies and ribbons she'd won with her dogs over the years and even went as far as to drag out a couple of photo albums too. Both men had shared chuckles with the woman at some of the photos of Frank in his childhood years. Whilst Heero and Duo had gone back out to settle the horses, Betty cooked a dinner for them both, insisting they eat with her and that it was no trouble at all when Duo had protested that she didn't have to do it. Betty had explained that she didn't get a lot of company so it was nice to share her home with two such well mannered men. She'd even gone as far as to make up the spare bedroom for them so they wouldn't have to sleep in the goose-neck. Both guys had been humbled and warmed by the generosity of Frank's sister and let her know how much they appreciated what she'd done.
With the horses eating, Betty cooked them a big breakfast and made them promise to stop overnight again on their way back to Salsbury and let her know how the competitions had gone for them all.
Having loaded up the understandably reluctant horses, Heero and Duo thanked Betty for her hospitality, Duo pressing a kiss to the woman's cheek and causing her to blush. With a wave out of the window, the goose-neck rumbled out of the yard area and back down the driveway to the road that would see them on their last leg of their journey to Werribee.
tbc...