Hello,
There isn't much Gatchaman based fiction posted here, I noticed.
Here's a follow-up to "Sustenance" which went out a few days ago.
Comments and criticism are welcome. Please send to ebonbird@hotmail.com.
********
Title: Between
Author: Ebonbird (ebonbird@hotmail.com)
Summary: Joe knows he's dying, but he hasn't told a soul.
Rating: R. For profanity and adult situations. Mind you, the
characters are adolescents.
Disclaimer: Shiratori no Jun, Joe Asakura, Ken Washio and
Galactor belong to Tatsunuko Productions and are used without
permission. Plot's mine, though. Send all feedback to
me. Please
don't sue me Tatsunuko, I'm just doing my part to keep
Gatch-love alive. Anyone who wants to archive this or send
copies of this any where, please contact me and get my
permission before doing so.
**********************************************************
**********************************************************
0213
Somewhere in Arizona
Joe leaned his head against his hand. The soft plastic rim of
the condor machine's open window bit into the sparsely haired
skin of his upper-arm as he waited for the light to change. A
line dimpled the skin between his eyes.
Night had dragged itself over the land long ago. Nobody out
but him and the coyotes. No one around, no one at all, neither
MP's nor cops, nor late night racers.
Somewhere, parked off the side of the road, in the quiet gentle
night were lovers. Enjoying the respite gained by his team's
victory against Galactor. Alone with each other in the cool
night air.
As for him, it was just him and his baby. Idling, when she
should've been going flat out on this highway, his hands guiding
and correcting her thrilling power and speed. His thoughts were
too heavy. Outside of battle his secret, the same secret that
fueled his dark-joyed spleen, made him a hollow thing.
He turned his head a bit, and looked out of the window, seeing
nothing but darkness beyond the street-lights. He studied the
heavens. This sky was the biggest he'd seen in a while. It went
on forever, its color dark and deep, stars scattered in it like
grains of sand. Like in an hourglass.
How many kills had he made this afternoon? Not enough. Not
nearly enough. Even now, as he waited for the light to change,
enemies could fall out of the beautifully starred night with
crushing fire. Between the shrapnel in his brain and fucking
Galactor he didn't have much maneuvering room.
Tick. Tick.
The light turned green. His right foot flexed. Had things been
normal it would have slammed down on the gas with jarring force.
Nah, if he was acting normal he would've blown the fucking light
without a sidewards glance, guest of a foreign country or no.
His lips pooched out as he bit the inner sides of his mouth.
He, Condor Joe, the scariest science ninja ever, was gonna die
on account of some dog. Funny thing, he'd known that if he'd
failed to rescue the puppy he would not have been able to live
with himself. He'd saved the puppy, and looked like he didn't
get to live with himself anyway.
The grumble of the approaching motorcycle swarmed at the edges
of his concentration. He knew that motor. Had helped put it
together himself.
The driver of the cycle eyed the blue racing car with curiosity,
surprised that the familiar vehicle was idling on a road that
begged for speed. The motorcycle came to a gentle dime-stop.
The driver's sneakered feet settling lightly on the asphalt of
the road as the light turned yellow.
Joe made no acknowledgment that his solitude had been broken.
The weight of his head had numbed his wrist. The driver's
helmet came off. Black slick hair slid past her face, settling
in severe flips around her shoulders as she bent to the window.
"Hey, stranger," Jun said, surprised and pleased to run into Joe,
"Race --"
Joe looked up.
". . ya," her voice died in her throat.
Joe said nothing. His gaze was hot, his vivid eyes red-rimmed
with suppresed tears.
Jun's lips parted wordlessly. Her slim fingers clenched on the
rim of her helmet. Dismay punched its way into her gut, and
bloomed on her face. Joe shut his eyes. She reached out her
hand and touched his jaw, her thumb gently brushing his cheek,
just to touch him, just to let him know that it would be okay,
he would be okay. His eyes opened. He swallowed.
"Jun," his voice was rough.
His eyes slid shut. His face changed, and he was grinning at
her.
Jun snatched her hand back.
Joe gunned his engine, downshifted violently and slammed his
foot on the gas.
For maybe a microsecond Jun straddled her bike, disoriented
by the maelstrom of sound and dust the condor machine left
in its wake. Then her helmet was bouncing on the road as she
jerked up with a little leap and came down hard on the clutch.
She shot forward, her hair unfurling like a flag, as she screamed
into the night, an unintelligible collection of sounds that
translated into, "Oh, no you don't!"
Joe's laugh spooled out ahead of her.
What just happened? Jun wondered. She saw see Joe's self-
satisfied smirk in her inner eye. It goaded her. She forgot
she didn't have a helmet, she forgot it was an unfamiliar
road, and pressed, pressed on, in faith that the beating
of her blood and the will of her heart would win her
victory.
Thighs taut, stomach tight she sped along the road. Holding
the motorcycle steady as she pushed the envelope. She would
win. She had to win.
On the long narrow road they flew, sometimes side-by-side,
often neck and neck, the occasional orange lit light revealed
their leap-frogging shadows, highlighting the lethal stitchery
of their race.
She was panting as her bike thrummed and groaned between her
legs. Her eyes watered from the vicious wind. This was like
old times, when she and Joe spent every spare minute at the
racetracks. Ghosting drivers, ooh-ing and ahh-ing over
the engines and wheedling the occasional ride.
Joe's arms were corded tight, as he clung to the wheel. The
narrow muscles of his lower back solid with tension. He was
not alone, and he was laughing. Laughing hard, and his laugh,
like Jun's hair unfurled darkly across the night.
The road flowed beneath them, narrowing then widening, dipping
ever so slightly in certain intervals. Jun, who'd been a little
behind him, swerved to the left, drilling into a tight turn that
Joe hadn't seen coming.
"Shit!" Joe scowled as she disappeared from beside him. He
fought the wheel, his vehicle shrieking as he forced it to mirror
Jun's sudden turn. Down-shift, more gas, up shift, more gas and
all the while chanting, "shitshitshit."
The lampposts were now few and far between and the road felt like
chatahoochee.
"Shit!" Joe swore as he ran over a pothole.
Red and yellow taillights teased him from ahead.
"Jun," he growled.
The road dipped. His teeth clicked together. Jun's red lights
winked out of existence. He was going so fast that he flew through
the dip, and landed with a harsh jounce, Jun's taillights brighter
then before. He was gaining, flying blind, but gaining, gaining, his
teeth barred with admiration.
Don't look back, Jun thought. Don't look back.
Yellow Bob's barricades flashed alongside them, marking the home-
stretch. The condor machine's straining engine chewed up the
distance between them as the signs cried: Road Ends in 100! Road
ends 50 ft! They caught air, Joe's teeth clicked, the end of the
road reared up to meet them, the road dipped again. Jun spurted
forward, free and clear. Raising a cloud of dust, Joe's car came
to a sudden stop. His headlights bleached her resting figure
titanium white.
Joe swore at Jun through the windshield. "You cheated!" he accused,
jumping out of his car and running at her.
"You -- *gack* -- cheated -- *wheeze*-- first!" she replied, her
eyes sparkling. Joe laughed up at the sky. Jun hunched over her
knees, coughing hard.
He slapped her back, "Yeah, I guess I did! Good thinking
following that road."
She began to reply then doubled over, coughing again.
Joe winced in sympathy. She must have swallowed a bug. "You want
something to drink?" he asked.
"Anything," Jun replied over her hand, and coughed some more.
Joe ran to his car, long arms pumping fluidly.
Jun watched him. Struck, for the first time in a long time,
by his strength and grace. It was different from Ken's.
Different from her own. In Utoland he stuck out as foreigner,
even from behind. But out West, be it Hawaii, or mainland
America, Joe stuck out as something more different still. He
cultivated that difference it seemed. In battle it came out
as recklessness, and she'd decried it many a time, but tonight,
she thought, here and now, as she watched him stick his torso in
the passenger window of his vehicle, and raise a ruckus of noise
and curses as he dug up something for her to drink, it made her
heart expand.
"Here," Joe said, coming up with a hip flask and tossing it to
her. It caught light as it flipped end over end, winking with
a metallic glint.
Jun caught it with outstretched hand, suppressing all expression
as she examined it. Joe had every race car driver's vice in
the book.
"Jun," Joe said, "please don't."
Jun uncapped the flask. Held it, tried not to sniff obviously.
"Remember when we were kids and used to sneak out to go drinking
with the pit-men?" Joe asked.
"I never drank, Joe," she rasped. "I just listened to the stories,"
but she smiled to take the sting out of the words. She tipped the
flask to lips. Her eyes widening in surprise as she tasted the
liquid. "This is water!" she exclaimed.
Joe crossed his arms, and leaned against the car, "Yeah, that
one's mine. You want the one I keep for girls?"
Her eyes widened. "Joe!" she said.
He reached into his car and brought up another hip-flask, identical
to the one in her hand. "C'mon. You really don't expect me to
drink and drive, do you?" he asked.
"How many girls have you taken advantage of that way?" Jun demanded.
"I don't need to take advantage!"
She snorted and cried, "Oh, you're the Great Lover Joe!?"
Joe's eyes bugged.
Jun dissolved into laughter.
Was this Jun? Joe wondered. Smiling, laughing, giggling, flirting?
He smirked, then tried to cover up the smirk. Jun, watching his
face, saw everything and laughed harder.
Joe stretched, basking a little in her attention. He bent to touch
his toes. His supple gymnast's body moving with his singular grace.
She laughed harder.
>From the ground-up Joe studied his teammate, "What has gotten into
you?"
Jun pondered this for a few seconds, hopping onto the hood of his
car and drawing her jacket tighter around her. The hour was late,
later then she was used to, so Joe gave her time. Her eyes were
thoughtful. Her hair had flattened out in the driving wind and hung
limp around her face. She yawned.
He yawned as well. To his suddenly sleepy eyes she looked warm and
soft.
"It's good to be alive," she said.
Joe's shoulders tensed, his spine straightened. The defeated look
that had ashed his face earlier that evening came back with sudden
force.
"Joe," asked Jun, "What's wrong?"
Joe looked at her, really looked at her, thinking that a guy'd
never known she'd killed hundreds of men in the service of the
ISO. She looked like a kid again. Like she had when they'd
first met and he'd thought her uncomfortably pretty for a boy.
Her eyes were that same sudden thick-lashed green and her skin
white, as white as it had always been, whiter even. She looked
serious, and smart and kind, her lips a promise of all things
lush and lovely. Joe shook his head and looked away.
"Joe?" she insisted, going cool with dread. After today's
battle, Jinpei had taken her aside and said, "Aniki's trying
to kill himself." At the time she'd dismissed the comment.
But now...
"Later," he replied, "I'll tell you later."
"Okay,"
Then, "Where's your helmet?"
*********
Backtracking to the starting line took much longer than Joe
expected because he was worrying. Worrying over Jun's
helmetlessness ("Why didn't you get your helmet, numbskull?!"
"You had too much of a head start!") and what he was going to
tell Jun when she cornered him.
The stop lights of the intersection blinked off and on. Jun's
helmet was where she'd dropped it.
"I can't believe how deserted this place is," she said.
"This is a desert," Joe replied.
He made no protest when she pulled up beside him, nor when she
followed him into the rented cabin and sat herself on the couch.
She could not help remarking to herself that the loaned room
looked a lot like his place in Utoland. That made her very sad.
"Thirsty?" Joe asked, walking to the fridge.
She was tired, her eyes drooping with fatigue.
"No," she replied. She'd rest her eyes for a few minutes.
Her head settled against the armrest of the couch. She heard
the refrigerator door open and shut. Water gush from the tap.
Joe murmured something. Jun didn't answer. Joe looked over to
where she was curled up in the corner of the couch. He went
to get a blanket.
"Sleepy?" he asked as he approached her.
Her eyes fluttered open, "No."
"You look it," Joe replied.
She sat up, and pulled Joe down beside her. "What's wrong? What
were you doing at the stoplight?"
Lot's of things, Joe wanted to say. Only it seemed more logical to
put his hands on hers. It felt right to allow his head to drop on
her shoulder. Like old times, when he was a new orphan and she was
barely a girl and they'd talked in the language of kittens.
Jinpei didn't really liked to be hugged and kissed. Not as much as
Joe had. It had gone on for a very long time, despite Nambu's best
efforts to impress upon Jun the need to behave like a proper young
lady, and for Joe to accept the mores of his adopted country. Then
they grew up, and full-fledged adolescence accomplished what Nambu
and cultural injunctions never could.
With Joe's hands around her wrists and the memory of his sorrowful
face the old need, the old affection, reasserted itself. She freed
one hand from his, his fingers rougher then she remembered, and curled
it around his shoulder. The fingers of her other hand splayed over
the unfamiliar bulge of his bicep, as she said with wonder, "We almost
died again today."
Joe said nothing, merely pulled her closer, turning and shifting into
a position he hadn't assumed with a girl since Jun was thirteen. He'd
been told that his sense of smell would be the first to go. He inclined
his head to Jun's hair. She smelled like slightly sweaty Jun. Brain
damage? he thought, what brain damage? and chuckled.
Facing him Jun smiled placidly. Already he seemed better, happier.
This was as things should be. She had always been able to make him feel
good and he her. When they'd done this as children, he'd been a new
orphan and she barely a girl. They'd been grubby little rug-rats who
liked cuddling just as much a fighting. She was sick of fighting. Sick
of open flame and hard noise and the smell of iron everywhere.
They toed off each others sneakers, Joe giggling a little (he'd always
been more ticklish down there). Jun twisted, trying to figure
out the right fit of her legs over his. Their bodies had changed so
much.
"Here," Joe said, and half lifted her hip, sliding under her so that
she lay half on, half off him. She twisted so that both arms reached
over his shoulders, looping herself over him like she'd done when
they were younger. This new position brought Joe to sudden stillness.
"Uh, Jun."
"What," she murmured sleepily and rubbed against him. He went light-
headed, thrilling at the sweet give of her breasts against his chest.
"I don't remember these," he answered, his head swaying back as he
pulled her even closer to him.
Jun could not say who kissed who. Lips met and met, at first almost
parallel, soft, and gossamer. Then warmer, softer, wetter, realer,
until with shocking awareness Jun knew that she was tasting him was,
inside him, lip curved around lip, the secret places of her mouth
sought out and revealed by his subtle tongue.
She was in him.
Her mind reeled. He felt so good. Her hands came up and pulled his
head closer still. Her fingers crept along his scalp, winding in the
sliding strands of his thick hair. She came up for air, dazzled by
the heat of his mouth and the darkness of the room.
"Jun," he whispered, eyes still closed. She pressed her face into
his shoulder, burying it in his abundant hair. Her thighs rubbed
together. She could smell him. He was drying on her mouth. Then
he was kissing her again, his hands warm and severe against her
burning face, their mouths swimming together, their hair tangling
around them. Jun forgot her hands, her will, her mind and breathed
only when her body begged her to. "Joe," she inhaled, catching his
gasp as she cooled her hot hands against the velvet of his skin.
She could feel his heart, beating, beating, beating against hers.
Her stomach felt hollow. Something fluttering light as a fairy
inside. Beneath her Joe squirmed, forward, ever forward, one of
his hands pressing down on the flat of her back. His fingers dug
pale into the soft flesh between the end of her shirt and start
of her pants. His other hand had pressed around past the curve of
her rear and was rubbing against the narrow wedge of her jeans.
Her legs parted. She whimpered, yelped, then sobbed as his hand
found better purchase between her denim covered legs.
She fell on him like stars.
Joe moaned, gasping for air. His eyes flickered open. He'd
hadn't meant to touch her there. He'd meant to keep his hands
out of her shirt. She was kissing him, massaging his chest,
grinding down tentatively on his lap, not so tentatively.
His pelvis leapt in reply, heavy with burning.
They found a rhythm, rubbed against each other, rising together,
falling apart, straining, pulling, pushing against each other---
"Oh, God," Joe gulped, and pushed her up and away before he
embarrassed them both. Her eyes blinked open in protest, her
irises were shading black into green. She loomed over him, her
hands on either side of his face. He'd never seen her like this.
Her normally set pale face was flushed high with color, red at
her temples, and neck.
He'd done this to her.
"Joe," she said, her voice sweet and high.
He blushed, felt it blaze up his neck and into his face.
She bent her head to his, to kiss him again, and again. That
taste, that crazy taste of Jun. So good. What about Ken?
Their mouths made hungry noises as he sat up, desperate to
hold her, to slow down.
And then she touched him. Jun was touching him(waitwaitwait)
holding him(himeangel)pressing him(waitplease)squeez--- he
ignited, blazing in inner light, his arms, his lips, legs,
his stomach, his thighs were everywhere and everywhere was Jun.
She felt bright and she felt good, and he had to see her(please)
had to see her. He had to see her.
Halting her magical movements he circled her wrists with his
hands. She cried out. "Shhhh, Juni, shhh." Their foreheads
pasted together, he caressed the back of her head, breathing
hard, "Shhh."
She cooed as the flat plane of his joined fingers glided over
her ribs, sighed as they curved round to stroke the muscles of
her back, the feeling so delicate, so pretty. Her mouth
was delicate on his jaw in thanks, on his ear on his mouth.
She was straddling his thigh. He could feel her, she was so
damp---her belt, he had to get her belt. ('But what about Ken?'
slicked through his thoughts.)
His fingers danced at her waist. His fly was open and his
hands were beneath her shirt, her breasts warm pulsing weights
in his flexing fingers. Her head was on his shoulder, her eyes half
open. Joe murmured something, murmured something soft and low and
wondering. Her hand was on his thigh. Shoulder to shoulder they
sat, so close, beautifully close.
She needed to be closer still.
She leaned back, breaking contact, with a soft cry Joe reached for
her. She pulled off her shirt and came to rest against him again.
They breathed in unison, soft and deep.
"Why me?" Joe rasped. His gaze riveted on the sight of his dark
fingers on her pale skin. He looked up at her. His eyes colorless
in the predawn light.
"Ken," she inhaled deeply. "Ken doesn't. . ." she looked up at
Joe. Her fingertips trailed along his shoulder, slid under his arm
and stroked the sensitive skin of his armpit, "Ken doesn't want me."
Shivering, Joe leaned back against the couch, his face set.
Jun took one of his hands and kissed it repeatedly as dawn made
the night a blue-tinged memory. His hand felt small in her grasp.
Small and heavy. It was getting lighter out. Somewhere along the
line, he'd lost his T-shirt, too. His upper body was scored with
battle-scars. His skin, where whole, was a gorgeous olive gold.
He let his hand glide down to Jun's waist.
"Joe," she asked, palming his skin, the scent of his cooling sweat
was sharp in her nostrils, "what's going on? Why were you crying?"
"I'm dying, Jun," he replied, giving voice to his secret, as dawn
made the night a soft blue-tinged memory. He added softly, "I
don't have much time."
Of course he was. How had she not known it?
"Jun?"
How had she managed to not see it for so long?
Her shoulders shook, her hair spilled black across her white
shoulders. The news she'd dreaded since meeting up with him at
the cross-roads. The news she'd dreaded to hear. She wept.
Wept hard. Her hands were white doves obscuring her face,
"I know."
She'd known for a long time.
The End of Between
*************************************************************
Notes: This was inspired by a chance remark Joe made to Ken
in the prologue to Alara Roger's Alatan Saga.
Revised: 13 Jan 2000
************************************************
"Less is more." "Less is more."
~~Pierre Givenchy ~~Audrey Hepburn
ebonbird's fan fic cache http://ebonbird.tripod.com
the storm archive http://ebonbird.tripod.com/stormarchive.html