"Diplomatic Relations"

By Viridian5

6/5/01

RATING: NC-17; Dylan/Harper. If m/m interaction bothers you, pass this story by.

SPOILERS: None.

SUMMARY: Harper comes up with an unusual escape plan.

ARCHIVED: Yes, at my site and the WWoMB

FEEDBACK: can be sent to Viridian5@aol.com

DISCLAIMERS: All things _Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda_ belong to Gene Roddenberry's estate, Majel Roddenberry, and Tribune Entertainment Company. None of them are mine at all, and I'm putting them back when I'm done with them, though I can't promise that they won't be disturbed in the process.

NOTES: Thanks to Kass and LaT for encouraging my insanity. LaT helped with three lines and found some typos.

By
Viridian5
========================

"Hey, watch the shirt," Harper muttered back at the guard pushing him.

"This has all been a big misunderstanding," Dylan said. "We're not from some rival religion, so we couldn't possibly be evangelizing. The Commonwealth is a political and economic association. Your government will have a voice in--" The hand over his mouth muffled his next words. Dylan glared down at Harper, who owned that hand.

"And people say I don't know when to shut up. That's the kind of talk that got us into this mess." Harper dug in his heels when he saw into the room waiting for them. "Shock chairs. Bad news. Not going in there."

But their taller and stronger guards shoved them in anyway. "Maybe they'll be nonfunctional like most of the Hagiots' technology," Dylan said.

"Our lives have never worked like that."

These chairs, redesigned for use on Hagiots, were so tall themselves that the guards picked Harper up and deposited him in his. Dylan needed a push up himself. Harper looked ready to fight against having the restraints put on, but the guards didn't activate the shackles, simply left their prisoners sitting loose. Harper glanced at the displays on his chair and exhaled in what sounded like relief. "Nonfunctional," he said.

"You will sit until your punishment is decided. We will not molest you until then," one of the guards said, then the group walked away to stand in the corner of the room, watching Dylan and Harper the whole time.

"'Molest'?" Harper whispered. "I hope that's part of the language drift you were talking about, because if these sharkskin guys are this tall, I don't want to think what size the rest of their equipment is. I can't believe I let you convince me to let them arrest us. Never again, okay? And this is the last diplomatic thing where I stand next to you. Beka had the right idea."

"What do you think she'll do if we don't rendezvous with her soon?" Dylan whispered back.

"You don't know?"

"You've known her longer, and I want to see if what I'm afraid of is likely."

"She'll sneak back to our ship. Then she'll try to talk to them. If that doesn't work, she'll try stealth to get us loose. If that doesn't work, she'll start on the threats, insults, and shooting things."

"That's what I thought."

"Honestly, I'm never standing next to you at one of these things again."

"Given that they lost their technicians during the Fall, I felt that your knowledge would be a valuable bargaining point."

"Yeah, lost their technicians... along with their freaking minds. And now I'm valuable in keeping this excruciatingly hard chair warm." Harper's feet didn't come anywhere near touching the floor, so he swung them under the chair. It would have been endearingly childlike if the fast, jerky movement didn't suggest an angry cat's tail lashing. "Once they said that there was no authority above their church and never will be, you should have shut up."

"They were a republic 300 years ago."

"300 years ago! 300 years ago they weren't got cut off from most of the slipstream routes!"

"Trance found the surviving route for us."

"So you figured they'd love to join the Commonwealth from that? There's an old saying: When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me."

All true. Unfortunately. "Are you finished, Mr. Harper?"

"No." Harper sighed. "Look, I'm sorry, but why would the theocracy want to be *a* voice in the Commonwealth when they could be *the* voice here? They lived just fine without seeing anybody else for 300 years. 'There is no greater authority than the Church.' I think they know that the Commonwealth would be a greater authority." Harper squirmed, probably in an effort to get comfortable, an effort Dylan more than sympathized with. "Screw this. The floor has to be softer." He started to slide out of the chair.

"You will stay in the chair!" All the guards trained their guns on them. The Hagiots hadn't lost the knowledge that maintained their guns.

Harper stopped and pulled himself back up. "Staying," he said loudly. To Dylan, he whispered, "How long do you think they'll make us wait here before they give us a hearing or whatever?"

Did the Hagiots even observe habeas corpus anymore? Did they bother to try their prisoners or simply execute a sentence? "I don't know." His assumptions had been 300 years out of date. It looked more and more like his effort to respect the Hagiots' culture and authority might not have been the best thing to do.

Harper leaned his head back. "Shit. I hate planets, you know?"

"You were born on one."

"Yeah, Earth. Proves my point. The problem with planets is that it's so damned hard to get off them. Just give me a chance here, and I'd show you escape velocity." He watched the guards, who watched them, guns ready. They didn't move or look away for even a second. "Shit."

*********

Through the next five hours Dylan's concern over their predicament and Harper's fidgeting kept increasing. Harper swung his feet under the chair or tucked them up under him, rested his head back and then brought it forward, slouched then straightened, rocked from side to side, and tapped his fingers against the dead restraint cuffs. Unwilling to take the chance that they'd left their visitors armed in any way, the Hagiot customs officials had taken his tool belt along with his gun and Dylan's weapons, so the famously manic engineer had nothing to distract himself with. It seemed to Dylan like Harper had been going through something in his head for the first three hours to keep himself occupied, but by hour four it had obviously paled.

If Harper imploded, maybe Dylan could use the distraction to get away.

Okay, now Dylan knew he had to get them out of here.

The guards hadn't wavered or moved except to brandish their guns on occasion. They spoke only to tell their prisoners to get back in the chairs if it looked like Dylan or Harper might have been trying to get out of them.

It didn't look like their fate would be decided soon, and he didn't want to even think about what Beka would be doing by now.

"Harper," Dylan whispered.

"What?" Harper whispered back. "Do you know that my ass and feet are numb?"

"So are mine. I can only reach the floor with my toe tips."

"Better than me. So what's up?"

"I don't think waiting here will do us any good." Thus leaving himself wide open to sarcasm as a kind of apology.

"Well, duh. I'm sure you're the nicest, politest prisone-- sorry, unwilling guest they've had for some time."

"Do you have any better ideas?"

"Make them want to get rid of us?"

"Why didn't I think of that?"

"You were too busy being polite?"

"Maybe you could be obnoxious and confrontational to them."

Harper widened his eyes in a parody of innocence. "I dunno if I could do that, Dylan." He swung his feet again like a bored kid, but the motion looked more agitated now.

"That's a good example of what I'm talking about."

"Gee, thanks." He slid off the chair, swaying as he stood, then stamped his feet to try to get some feeling back.

"I was joking."

"I wasn't." As Harper stretched, his shirt pulled out of his pants to reveal a glimpse of pale belly.

"You will get back in the chair!" one of the guards said.

"Bite me." Harper walked over to them. "So whose dick do I have to suck to get off this fucking rock?"

Unbelievable.

"I'm bored," Harper told them. "If there's somewhere that has a definition of 'bored,' a picture of how I look right now is next to it. So I need to divert myself. And I can talk. Oh, yes, can I talk. When the stars burn out, I can still be talking. Believe me, I can talk for longer than an eternity."

Caught up in the insane spirit of the moment, Dylan said, "Even longer."

Harper looked back over his shoulder and smirked. "Thanks, D."

Dylan really hoped they didn't shoot Harper. They looked tempted.

Harper turned back to the guards. "Do you want to deal with that? No, you don't. And I'm just starting. Take my advice and let us go before I really get wound up. And another--"

Three of the guards picked Harper up by his shoulders, leaving his feet dangling above the floor, carried him back over, and dropped him down on the chair while the others kept their guns trained on Dylan. Once they returned to their position, they tapped a panel on the wall that brought down a clear barrier between them and Dylan and Harper. The barrier also blocked Dylan and Harper's path to the door.

"Oh, c'mon!" Harper groaned. "They lost everything but guns, comm systems, and *sound shields*? This sucks!"

"It was worth a try."

"Oh, I'm not finished yet." Harper directed a sly look at Dylan. "They're still watching us at least. You trust me, Dylan?"

Since "trust me" had to be one of the most frightening phrases in any language, Dylan hesitated a moment before saying, "Yes."

Harper looked almost sunny. "That hesitation means you're learning. Good. Okay, go with me here." Harper slid out of his chair and leapt up onto Dylan's. Straddling his lap, facing him, Harper started to kiss Dylan hungrily, with tongue, running his hands through Dylan's hair and down his back.

Once Dylan had a second when he didn't have Harper's mouth on his, he whispered, "What are you doing?"

"It was a really long 300 years, wasn't it?" Harper panted into his ear.

Despite his mortification--they had an *audience*--Dylan's cock responded eagerly to the warm body grinding against his. "If I kill you, maybe they'll let me go."

"I doubt that, since you're the blasphemer here. I'm just an accessory. Look, I want to horrify them into setting us free."

Dylan felt like the guards could somehow see him right through Harper's writhing back. Which only seemed to intensify his unwilling lust. He was much too old to be finding out now that he was an exhibitionist. "'Horrify' them?"

"Don't get terrified; I'm not going to go kinky on you." Harper tongue-fucked his ear and grabbed his ass. "Much."

Dylan gasped, "How far are you going to take this if they don't respond?"

"All the way, honey." Harper licked along Dylan's jawline and writhed against him. "That was a joke."

"No, *this* is a joke."

"You are such a big baby. Beka was much better when we had to do this on Rio Negro Station. Gave as good as she got too."

There was a mental image to short out his brain. His engineer and his first officer, entwined together in an act of lust.... Knowing them, it seemed almost like incest. "You and Beka."

"This drug dealer had a thing for blondes, and he thought he could do a two-for-one deal by having us perform for him in exchange for a promise of our freedom afterward. As if. But they'd injured and disarmed us first, so.... We distracted everybody long enough and well enough for Dzeliwe to sneak in and even the odds."

Funny how much trouble Dylan was having getting his brain to work. "Dzeliwe?"

"Used to be Maru crew. Mmmm. Beka's rings felt really nice against my cock. But, hey, she was *cooperating* with me." Harper kneaded Dylan's ass and rubbed his erection against Dylan's. "Work with me here. Some people pay good money for this kind of thing."

Oh, what the hell. Maybe it *would* help, and he doubted they'd ever come back here if he could get them off Hagios. He opened his mouth to Harper's and put his hands under Harper's shirt, stroking the hot skin of his back. Harper purred and ground into him, then started to suck on his tongue. As he wondered how far the guards would let them go, he got even harder and started to hump Harper. They had to make it look good, right?

Dylan heard quickly approaching footsteps. "Harper. Harper. They're here. Oh...."

Harper made a groan of protest as they dragged him off Dylan, and he twisted, dangling, fighting, in their grip. He looked like he was trying to launch himself back onto the chair. Overacting wildly, he protested, "You can't be so cruel. You don't wanna know the other ways we react to being under stress."

The dismayed guards looked at Dylan, perhaps for confirmation. Dylan adjusted himself and tried to slow his heart rate and breathing, then shrugged. "I never said I belonged to the same species as he does."

Harper, still trying, said, "You have to let us go for humanitarian reasons."

"We are not human."

"And I'm not holding that against you, believe me, but come *on*!"

To his embarrassment, Dylan was still trying to figure out how he should be reacting and what he should be doing. Aside from suffering from a lack of blood flow to his brain due to his insistent erection, he was enjoying Harper's performance a little too much. Harper might shake himself loose of their grip from sheer force and squirming ability yet.

"If I don't fuck, I'll have to talk," Harper continued. "If you throw me in solitary, I'll talk and throw myself at the walls. If you kill me, he'll," Harper pointed to Dylan, "go into a homicidal/suicidal rampage. It would be better for everybody if you just let us go."

"Is that so?" the guards asked Dylan.

"He's a member of my crew, my responsibility. I couldn't let you kill him without paying you back in kind. I suspect that he'd react the same way."

"Hell yeah!" Harper said.

"But we don't want to do any of this. Let us go, and I can guarantee you that we won't be back." And Dylan was *still* aroused, though it had subsided a little. If they got out of this alive, he'd have to find someplace private where he could take care of himself.

Or convince Harper to do it for him.

"We must confer with our theocrat."

"That would be fine," Dylan answered expansively.

As one of them went to the other end of the room to use the comm panel, two of the Hagiots put Harper into his own chair and kept his wrists and thighs pinned down to it to keep him there. "Buy me a drink first!" Harper protested. Dylan struggled to keep a straight face.

The guard walked back to them. "You will go and never return."

Dylan clamped his hand down hard on Harper's shoulder to try to forestall any smart-assed remarks. "Yes."

"Then we will see you out. And you will never return."

"We got that," Harper muttered. "Like we'd want to come back."

"Thank you," Dylan said.

Their armed escort hustled them out of the building and then the town as quickly as possible, with them struggling to keep up with the Hagiots' much longer strides. Once Dylan and Harper crossed the threshold over into the woods outside, Harper fired back at them, "You guys sure you don't want to join the Commonwealth?"

Dylan cuffed him across the back of the head.

**********************THE END***********************