Argentina

Author: Bardicsidhe
Rating: T+ for suggestive situation and language
Summary: Stand-alone piece of a much larger story. The boys get a little wild in an Argentinian dance hall.
Notes: I appear to have a fetish for dancing.

Gawd, it was hot.

He just…wanted to be anywhere but the hotel right now. Restless energy built up into an explosion of movement, and Duke shoved himself out of the battered couch. As he was shrugging on his shirt and moving toward the door, Tristan hollered from the tiny bathroom. “Where you going?”

Joey muttered something in a foreign language, and snickered. Tristan's head popped out of the bathroom as Duke laid a glare on the blonde that could melt ice. “What did you just say…?”

“I said, you're probably going out to pick up chicks,” Joey countered matter-of-factly, still smirking over the map he'd unfolded and spread across one of the two beds. They still had two days left until the rest of the crew arrived, and he was double-checking their route through the Andes . With six of them, two trucks to Tarma might be a little hard squeeze, but at least the road through the mountains looked straightforward enough. A friend of Joey's from college was currently living there, and with her as a touchstone, they could venture down into the Basin with confidence.

“Oh, gee Joey, am I that obvious?” Duke retorted, fingertips just touching the tarnished brass doorknob, “All right, fine. I paid through the ass for a ticket to God-knows-where on a crappy cargo ship with the intention of getting laid. You have uncovered my great and evil plan. Can I go now?”

“Hell no!” Tristan yelped, coming fully around the corner, “If you're going, we're coming with you!”

“Why?” Joey whined, smoothing out a crease in his map.

“For emotional support, or something.”

“Oo, nice save,” Duke snickered, and Tristan glared.

“And also to keep your notorious bad taste in check.”

“Hey! Low blow!”

“My point exactly,” Tristan folded his arms, eyebrows raised significantly. They stared at one another, one challenging, the other defiant. Then, unexpectedly, Duke's shoulders slumped.

“Fine, have it your way and spoil my fun. But you two prudes seriously cramp my style, you know.”

“I am not a prude.” Tristan countered as he was reaching to pull on a shirt. “Just because I don't chase everything in a skirt. Call me picky.”

Duke lost his voice for a second or two at the hot glimpse of muscles under tanned skin, flushed and swallowed hard, and smacked a hand over his eyes. No…no… “Okay then, Picky, let's you and Whiney get going before we lose any more daylight.”

“It's night, you idiot,” Tristan said, muffled through a plain ribbed tank top as he pulled it on and grabbed his red cotton overshirt from the nearby chair.

Duke phaffed Tristan over the head again and turned away. “I know that. Can we go already?”

With a minimum of grumbling, they went.

There were only a few street lamps this close to the Peruvian seashore despite the size of the city, and most of the illumination was via the windows of crowded boathouses along the wharf, and a promise of brighter glow from the main street up ahead. The sky overhead was orange with the last of the sun, but the great red ball was already down, the fire of the sunset a dimming memory. “Remind me again why we haven't called to check in with your friend…what was her name?”

“Scylla,” Joey supplied, “And we're not supposed to be here yet. And it's late. And she may already be in bed…”

“So in other words, you and she are on bad terms, right?”

“Well…that's kind of harsh...”

A sigh, this one from Tristan. “Joey, is there a woman on earth you're not on bad terms with?”

“Just one. And she's only nice to me because she has to be.”

“Teá?”

“Naw. Serenity.”

They missed Duke's wince at that, which did nothing to improve his already dismal mood. Aw, hell, it wasn't Joey's fault, after all.

Their boots shuffled heavily in the street, raising puffs of dust motes to sparkle in the square shards of light thrown from passing windows. Instinctively, they stayed close together, as every pair of eyes rose to examine them, and just as quickly turned away. Strangers in a strange town, and a strange town that seemed hardly hospitable at the moment.

But just at the moment. It was early yet. Someone in a bright purple skirt ran by them, nearly clipping Tristan's shoulder, and he stumbled out of the way and into Duke, who almost knocked Joey flat. Then there were two more. And then five. Like billowing arcs of a rainbow, those skirts swept by in every possible hue, all bright and ballooning around slim brown calves or slender ankles dancing with bells and beads.

“Hey, watch where you're going!”

“It's not my fault!”

The three men regained their feet and stood together, watching their would-be assailants.

The girls turned around, laughing with brilliant white teeth in olive-tanned faces. In a swirl of sleek dark hair, they were gone.

What choice did they have but to follow?

As it turned out, there was entertainment indeed to be had, in the form of a smoky wooden-floored dancing hall just off the seashore. The girls they pursued beat it through the open front door and disappeared inside, and upon following, the trio were promptly swallowed up in a mad crowd of revelers. A narrow foyer of red earthen tile and white stucco walls spilled them into one small open room. The floor was highly polished and shone as heels clacked over the waxed hardwood. There were no windows – and the heat was overwhelming. Along the entire wall to the immediate left of the entrance was a dark wooden bar the same color as the floor, and just as polished. A darkhaired, dark-eyed bear of a man in a tiny mustache and a sheen of sweat presided over the stools of patrons. Over the din of voices and the smell of dozens of sweating bodies crammed together in a single room, the earthshaking thud of real Latin music rocked the floor and the air and set it quivering with wild sensuality. That was the thing about it – ‘Grab the nearest willing body and go for it!'

Duke had more willpower than the other two. Hell, he didn't feel like touching anybody right now. He wanted a nice stiff drink and another one to chase that and some pretzels. He dove through the sea of milling, swaying people and made a beeline for the bar along the wall. Joey threw Tristan a frantic look. Tristan shrugged, but suddenly Joey was gone too. With a groan, he followed.

“And you accused us of being prudes?” Tristan accused when they found Duke later, settling for hot tortilla chips when pretzels proved to be a scarce commodity. He and the bartender had given up on each other in disgust after a few false starts, and out of desperation, Duke had pointed at his neighbor's drink – whatever it was – and was now nursing not-so-good warm beer. Joey snatched it out of his hands when he and Tristan arrived at the bar and examined the label. “What the hell are you doing drinking this stuff? You could go blind!”

Duke moaned, propping his elbows on the bar and burying his head in his hands. “Can't a poor bastard get some peace ?”

“Not if you don't speak the language,” Joey reminded him, and slid next to him and leaned against the bar. “You need me and Tristan around, face it.”

“Only you speak the language,” Duke pointed out from between his palms.

“Yeah…well…”

“Emotional support,” Tristan reminded him, and sidled around to Duke's other side, dropping a subtle hand to his shoulder.

The ponytail twitched, and then Duke shrugged him off. Tristan shot Joey a look over the other's head. Joey shrugged. Raised a finger to attract the barkeep's attention and placed an order. Three amber bottles appeared on the bar. He handed one to Tristan over Duke's head, and shoved the second under his slumped nose.

“Well, at least you're not getting drunk by yourself. Here. This stuff's supposed to be better than the crap you were drinking.” Joey clinked his bottle against the untouched one on the bar.

An hour and a half and two bottles apiece later, the music was actually starting to appeal to the darkhaired dicemaster. Almost as much as the beer was. He slid off of his stool, surprising his two self-appointed bodyguards.

“Where are you heading?” Tristan asked, catching his shoulder. With a load of beer in his gut, it was enough of a throw off balance to make Duke sway unsteadily. Just a little. Things were pleasantly warm and bright and slow at the edge of his vision. He turned back with an easy smile sliding across his lips, dropping the adorable dimple in one cheek. Well…it would've been adorable but for the harlequin-diamond tattoo pointing down to it from underneath his eye. Tristan had always wondered if he regretted getting that thing – it had to have hurt like hell – and someday he'd be an old man with a bad-boy tattoo hanging in wrinkled folds down his cheek.

Unless Duke didn't plan to let that tattoo age, which was a frightening thought.

“Just to the dance floor.” His fist curled on his hip, jutting a little with a show of his old attitude. “What, you want to go too?”

Joey had turned around by now at the rise of their voices, and watched them quietly from his stool, still nursing his second beer. He could have sworn that for a hot second, the brunette was going to say yes. But the thread of yearning snapped even before it was tangible, and Tristan released Duke's shoulder with a shrug. “Just don't fall down, huh?”

“I'm not that smashed,” Duke protested, and backed away, turning again to face the crowd. It had grown even larger and the music louder since they came. He peeked over his shoulder at his two friends lounging uncomfortably against the bar. “See you later, tiger,” He winked, and nudged between two hip-grinding couples into oblivion. A pair of laughing, dark-eyed girls picked him up immediately. He was in his element. The veiled language of dancing and sex.

Meanwhile, Tristan's expression was obvious as he poised on the edge of a spare stool. He gripped the edge of the bar and glared at the crowd and the occasional glimpse of a dark ponytail out of his reach from across the mouth of his beer bottle.

Joey saw it, and sighed. It'd been this way since they were in college. The summer after their first semester, Tristan had called him and told him to get his ass home, he had something important to say. So, ditching the tentative plans he'd made for summer classes, Joey drove home.

Found out something about his best friend that made him decidedly uncomfortable. After all, it's something of a shock to find out that not only was your best friend lusting after your sister, but given a solid chance, he'd have been lusting after you. It was one of the rare times he'd seen Tristan cry – and that was so rare that Joey could vividly remember both times to date.

It was just after Serenity had broken her engagement to Duke – and Tristan had been pretty torn up about it. But not for the reasons anyone suspected. Duke went away to college after high school, and with the exception of news clips every now and then, there was…nothing.

The old tension was back with a vengeance. Tristan wasn't a risk-taker…he tended to sit on the sidelines until someone yanked him forcibly into the game, and then he played with everything he had until he dropped. That was just the way it was, and Tristan knew it, and Joey knew it. The blonde nudged the brunette's shoulder, shaking him enough to wake him up out of his inward thoughts. Tristan jerked a little, and turned in surprise to his best friend.

“You know, it's no damn fair,” Joey began smoothly, conversationally, “you and I are the workhorses for this whole outfit.”

“What?” Tristan shook his head to clear the thick haze of irritation and blinked at Joey. “What are you talking about?”

“You and me. We're going to do most of the grunt work. This may be our only chance to party, you know. Once Yugi and Téa and Ryou get here, everything's going to get serious again. Gawd, I love ‘em, the whole lot of ‘em, but you know what Yugi's like when he gets into something.”

“Yeah, I know,” Tristan's frown quirked into a smile at the thought. Yugi was the most sober of them all, with perhaps the exception of Bakura. And Téa's exhaustive speeches about friendship, of course.

“And now we've got a few days without them before all the work starts. And the guy who nobody ever figured was going to come along is having more fun than we are.”

“Yeah…”

“So why are we letting the uninvited guest have all the frickin' fun ?”

Joey covered a snicker as he saw his words sink in, and could almost hear the gears turning in Tristan's ‘jealousy' complex. The brown eyes popped open a nudge wider, and then narrowed in irritation again. He slammed the beer on the bartop – what was left of it. “Hell no! I'm not letting Duke's bad mood ruin mine!”

“All right! So let's go show him that we're not prudes!”

“Yeah!” They left their empties on the counter and slid into the crowd. Duke wasn't hard to spot – he was the wraith-thin male body in the midst of a lot of round-thighed, round-chested women. Like a paper cutout in a heap of pink-cheeked baby dolls. At some point, his outer shirt had fallen off of his shoulders, and as Tristan watched, the nearest girl slid her hands up Duke's undershirt, roving over the sweating skin it clung to. He swallowed hard, and would have turned away, until an unswerving hand clamped his shoulder in a death-grip.

Joey.

The blonde grinned up at him and shoved him forward. “You go show that bitch whose boss.”

“Who? Duke?”

Joey just winked, and then a dark woman with patently dyed red hair grabbed his shoulders and swung him away from Tristan, leaving the taller man alone. Staring at Duke and the strange girl. He gathered all of his courage into one hand, shoved it into his pocket, and started forward.

She whispered her name in his ear when he didn't know the words to ask: Maria. Weren't they all named Maria? She was hungry and warm and eager and not the least bit skilled, and Duke found himself all the more turned on for that. The girl with her hands all over him was a far cry from Seto Kaiba. Seto had been…calculating…even when they were having sex. He did everything for a reason, and he gave nothing away that he didn't get back twofold. With him …Duke was always left with the strange feeling of just having had the best sex in his life…and feeling used at the same time.

Suddenly she looked up from the sweat-soaked front of his chest, over his shoulder at something behind them. Duke didn't care…she was hot and he was hotter; he felt good. To top it off, the band was really killing up there, and he was happy to get lost in the brassy blare of trumpets and the heavy percussion and the thrum of a mean bassist.

That was when he felt Maria's grip tighten a little, as two warm, broad and damp palms slid over her hands and arms and splayed around his navel. A set of hips followed that, and suddenly a taller, much broader frame than Duke's was pressed up against his back. He chanced a glance up. What the…?

Tristan grinned down at him. Maria lost her rhythm a little, peering at the pair of men uncertainly.

Suddenly his back was cold again, and Tristan was behind the little bronze-skinned woman, pressing her between himself and Duke. She started and pushed back, but when frightened doe eyes turned up at Tristan, they saw an easy smile. She threw her lot in with them for the rest of the dance.

Duke kept throwing him ‘what the hell?' looks over Maria's head, to which Tristan only smiled. Joey swung through the crowd ringing them, and his smile of Cheshire-cat satisfaction at seeing them was enough to make Duke grit his teeth. The bastards! They'd planned this, hadn't they?

Oh, what the hell. It was just dancing.

Until Maria tired of them, that is.

She was there one instant, and gone the next, dripping with sweat and leaving only a tendril of her perfume tantalizing in her wake. Leaving nothing between Tristan and his prey.

With the innate prey-sense that he was in danger, Duke tried to flee. But with hands suddenly gone demanding and hard, Tristan caught his hips and pressed close. They were both sweating heavily, and both breathing hard. It sealed them together, and when the taller brunette's hips slid against his, Duke was lost. There was nothing he could do to escape, nothing he wanted to do to escape. He looked up into a pair of deep brown eyes – black in the low light. Sighed in defeat. But dammit, if they were going to do this, they were going to do this his way! He grabbed the upper hand when he saw Tristan waver, and slithered around him, chest to back with his fingers clamped to near convulsions around his middle. Tristan grunted in shock, but didn't fight him. He was longer through the upper body, but their legs, it seemed, were the same length, as suddenly the warmth of Duke's hips cradled against him and there was nothing to do but move with the rhythm. Tristan reached back, curved an arm around Duke's neck.

Gave up the fight.

Joey was with them before they knew it, and it was time to head back. But not…not quite yet. Tristan seemed to have gained a notch of self-confidence in the process, or maybe the alcohol and the heat swept his inhibitions all to hell. But when Joey gestured wildly that it was time to go…the darker man reached out and reeled his best friend in.

“Urgh!” Joey squirmed, “Lemme go! You guys are nasty!”

“Nasty how?” Duke snickered over Tristan's shoulder, feeling somehow as though he were tearing through layers of hypnosis to speak again.

“Yeah, nasty…how?” Tristan grinned, and his grip on Joey's waist indicated that he wasn't letting go anytime soon. “Good nasty?”

“No, sweaty smelly perverted nasty! Lemme go!”

“Not until you take it back!” Extra arms snaked around Tristan's waist and latched onto Joey's beltloops.

“Take what back? ‘Cause no way in hell am I taking back ‘perverted'!”

“You asked for it!” Tristan crowd, pushed forward into Joey by Duke's momentum.

Joey fought, but in the end, it just wasn't worth the effort. Oh, what the hell. It was just dancing. One body was as good as another on the floor, right?

He moved with them, obeying with a deadly glare when Tristan looped his arms around his neck, and scarcely noted the moment when he'd fallen close enough to them to share their scent; see the beads of sweat rolling down the strong, bristly curves of their jaws. His vision swam, head spun in the heat, and a deep visceral part of him stirred uncomfortably in response to the intermittent pressure against his jeans. He hadn't realized until now that Tristan's thigh was between his legs, but he noticed now , and just as quickly pushed away. Everything was heating up, growing more sensitive and desperate as green and blue sparked against his eyelids. If his cheeks and forehead weren't already riotously red from the exertion, he would have been blushing. “Perverts!” He yelled at them, and spun around, straightening his collar while they snickered. “If you guys don't get your asses out of here in five minutes, I swear I'm lockin' the door on ya.”

Still snickering, they followed him, and the night air struck cool on their skins as they tumbled out of the door into the street.

They fell into bed separately, not looking at one another, not speaking more than a guttural grunted ‘good night' or two. And though they didn't talk about what had happened, the feeling of camaraderie that had bound them as schoolboys seemed to have returned overnight.

They were best friends again, all three, as though the years of separation had never happened.

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