Winner Takes All

by luvsanime02

Really, I can't think of anything worse after a night of heavy drinking than waking up next to someone and not being able to remember their name. Or how you met. Or why they're dead.

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, and am making no money off of this fic.

AN: Written for the December 8th Cocktail Party prompt found here: thisweekgundamevents . tumblr .com (/)post/168207479990/cocktail-friday-cant-wait-to-see-what-you-guys. (Without spaces and parentheses.)

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Winner Takes All by luvsanime02

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Really, I can't think of anything worse after a night of heavy drinking than waking up next to someone and not being able to remember their name.

Or how you met.

Or why they're dead.

I blink and try to focus through the pounding headache, but everything's rolling around in my stomach, and I sadly have more pressing concerns at the moment than the corpse lying next to me on the floor.

Why am I on the floor? Where am I?

I look around and don't recognize anything. Of course, I'm still sprawled out on the floor. I think about standing up, but just shifting around so that I'm lying on my back makes the room spin dangerously, and now I'm busy struggling to breathe.

Several long minutes later, the room seems to finally stabilize enough that it feels safe to stand. Maybe. Lurching awkwardly to my feet, I scramble into the next room, which I see is a bathroom. Not even bothering with the sink or toilet, I step into the shower and blast myself with ice cold water.

That serves to wake me up a little bit more, and I drink some of the water before turning the temperature warmer. I don't know how long I stand there under the pressure, but I feel a little bit more human when I finally look around for soap or shampoo.

I still have no idea where I am. I can tell at a glance that this isn't a hotel room. It's definitely someone's personal home, just not one that I ever remember being inside of.

...Why am I naked? Suddenly, it occurs to me that I should have woken up with clothes on. Holy crap, what did I do last night? The last thing that I remember is being out with Heero and Trowa. We were undercover at a club, waiting for a call from Wufei about Millson.

Oh, please don't tell me that I slept with the target, and then killed him? No, that sounds ridiculous. Even dead drunk, I can't believe that I'd be so unprofessional. Or attracted to a middle-aged, married drug lord.

Dead drunk. Kind of funny, but definitely in bad taste.

Frowning, I grab a towel and dry myself off, and then search around for my clothes. I finally find them in a pile in the hallway, and wrinkle my nose when I pick them up. They're covered in stale vomit, ugh. At least that probably answers my question about why I'm naked.

Okay, enough with the guessing. I walk over to the dead guy and toe his side gently. Yep, very dead. Carefully rolling him over shows me that he died from someone slitting his throat. Okay, I vaguely remember doing that now. Just not why.

The guy's much too young to be Millson, which should be a relief, except now I'm worried about who I've killed exactly. That also doesn't help to explain why I'm apparently in this guy's house. A quick search through my clothes doesn't unearth my phone, either. Or my wallet. Or my shoes.

Seriously? Sighing, I walk through the house, hoping to discover them somewhere. What I do find is a washing machine, and, after contemplating the washer for a minute, I shrug and dump my clothes inside. I'd rather not leave them here, but there's no way that I'm carrying my clothes around if they're covered in vomit.

My shoes are in the kitchen. And my wallet and phone. Whew. Quickly, I pick up my phone and dial Trowa, not even bothering to check my messages first. That can wait. My head's still pounding, and while my phone's ringing, I walk back down the hallway and back into the bathroom, hoping to find some tylenol or something.

"Quatre!" Trowa exclaims. He sounds relieved, which is nice. Not so nice is the brief stab of pain that his shout causes inside of my head. "Where are you?" he asks. "You disappeared after saying that you were going to distract Millson's driver."

I moan. "Oh, please tell me that I didn't kill some drug lord's driver?" I plead into the phone.

Trowa's quiet for a long minute, and I mentally applaud myself. It's hard to surprise Trowa. "Quatre, where are you?" Trowa asks, sounding concerned now.

I find some aspirin and swallow a couple. "I have no idea," I inform Trowa honestly. "But I'm in some guy's house, and he's definitely dead."

More silence. Dimly, I can hear Trowa talking to someone else on the other end of the line. I really hope that he's speaking with Heero or Wufei or Duo. Someone who I would trust with this information. None of them will ever let me live this down, but they'll still help me out.

"Can you go outside and look for a street sign?" Trowa asks.

I shrug. "Maybe. If I can find a robe or something," I say.

Three for three. This time, Trowa's clearly laughing on the other end of the line. "Why are you naked?" he asks. I hear someone else let out a loud exclamation on the other end of the line in response to Trowa's question. That was definitely Duo.

"Quatre?!" Duo asks. Clearly, he took the phone from Trowa. "What did you do?" He sounds absolutely delighted. Not that I'm surprised.

I sigh. "I don't remember, Duo," I explain. "Could you please wait a minute? My clothes are in the wash, so I'm going to find something else to wear."

"Uh huh," Duo says, clearly still amused. "So… you just woke up next to a dead body? Naked? Didn't think you'd be into necrophilia," he teases.

"Haha," I say, deadpan. I look through some dresser drawers and manage to find sweatpants and a t-shirt, and that'll have to do. Pulling them on, I stuff my feet into my shoes and walk outside.

There's nothing around but trees. "Oh, for fuck's sake," I say, irritated.

Duo pauses significantly. That's even more impressive than surprising Trowa. "What is it?" he asks, sounding a little stunned now.

"I'm in the middle of nowhere," I snap. I walk around the house, and yes, I have no idea where I am. "There's a car," I say. "I guess I could just start driving down the road. But I'm not leaving until my clothes are out of the wash, at least."

"Wouldn't want to forget about them and leave the evidence behind, yeah," Duo agrees. Which honestly hadn't been my main concern. As soon as I find out where I am, I know that the guys will come and help me clean up the scene. It's just that I happen to really like the shirt that I was wearing last night.

Grumbling, I sit down on the front porch. "I can't believe that I went somewhere with a stranger when I was that drunk," I confess. The more alcohol that I have in my system, the more wary I tend to become of other people, not less.

"Well, you were supposed to distract Millson's driver," Duo points out fairly. "Making him believe that you wanted to fuck him, and then letting him drive you out into the middle of nowhere, would be a good way to kill some time, if nothing else. I guess you just took it a step further than that," he adds.

I have a sudden flash of driving along a road in the dark, with trees all around me. I wince. "Actually, I think I was the one driving," I admit, and then I squint at the Lincoln in the driveway. "This definitely isn't one of my cars, though," I say. As though that makes everything all better.

Duo's laughing. He's trying to cover the phone so that I can't hear him, but I can just make out the sound over the connection.

"Is your location secure?" Heero, of course. He must have taken the phone from Duo while he was distracted.

"Looks like it," I reply. "There's nothing and no one around that I can see." I'd been looking for bugs and surveillance equipment while I was searching for my clothes and stuff, of course. "Just one very dead driver, who I don't remember at all."

"I'm sorry we let you go off alone with him," Heero says quietly.

I smile. "It's fine, Heero," I say reassuringly. "I'm not hurt at all." Except for the headache that I have from drinking too much alcohol, which is thankfully receding, I'm perfectly fine. Maybe a little dehydrated. "I'll wait for my clothes to wash, and then drive out of here. Can you track my phone at all?" I ask.

"Yes," Heero replies, "but only to the tower that your phone's signal is bouncing off of. All I know is that you're up in the mountains, which I could have already guessed."

I snicker. "Please tell me that I'm still in Nevada, at least," I say.

"Yes, you're still in Nevada," Heero replies steadily. At least he's not laughing at me. I'm sure that Heero's amused, but he's also clearly more focused on finding the house than with having a laugh at my expense. For the moment.

"Well, that's a relief," I say. The two of us are silent for a minute. I know that my clothes aren't done yet, so I don't bother to move. The breeze outside feels good, clearing my head even more.

"Any idea why you woke up naked?" Heero finally asks, and now I can hear the amusement in his tone.

"I'm pretty sure I didn't sleep with him," I say. "I think I just puked on my clothes and then pulled them off." I pause. "I think the driver got a little insistent about sex then, and that's when I killed him?"

Heero actually lets out a quiet snort of amusement at my questioning tone. Great. Now they're all laughing at me. "How did you kill him?" Heero asks then, his voice back to professional. I assume that he wants to know how much clean-up will be needed.

"Sorry, but there's a lot of blood in the bedroom," I say. "I slit his throat."

"Floors?" Heero asks.

"Very tacky floor tiles," I reply, scrunching my nose up at the memory. "I'll find it online and send a link to you." If we can replace the tile, then we'll be fine.

"Excuse me, Lars," Heero suddenly says, and I blink. What? "Commander Une wishes to speak with me. I'll have to get back to you later."

Heero hangs up, clearly not wanting Une to find out about what's going on. I don't want her to, either. Still. "Lars?" I ask out loud, speaking to no one.

Sometime later, my phone rings. I'm back inside of the house, stuffing my clean clothes into a trash bag. I don't want to wait until they're dry, but I didn't want to go anywhere with them smelling like vomit, either.

I pick up the call without looking at the number, intent on walking through the house and making sure that everything of mine is accounted for. "Lars?" I ask into the phone, certain that it's Heero.

"...How many men are you planning on killing today?" Wufei asks.

I sigh loudly. "Sorry, Wufei." I don't bother to explain the Lars comment. "What's the situation?" I ask.

"Millson's talking," Wufei replies. "And don't worry, the driver is a piece of scum. You didn't kill someone innocent."

"Was," I correct automatically. Part of me wants to protest that I'm not the kind of person who would kill someone innocent while my mind was under the influence, but. Well.

We all know that's not quite true, so I'm not even offended by the implication.

"Define 'scum'," I say, picking up the keys to the car on my way out the door.

"Drug trafficker, drug user, and if his boss is telling the truth, a serial rapist," Wufei says, sounding disgusted.

I grimace. "Lovely," I reply. "Now I'm kind of wishing I'd cut more than his throat."

Wufei makes an amused sound in the back of his throat. "Are you leaving soon?" he asks.

"Yes, I'm walking to the car right now," I reply, trash bag slung over my shoulder. "What has Une said about the missing driver?"

"Everyone thinks that he somehow found out about us arresting Millson and fled. Including Milllson. We can easily strip the body down and dump him somewhere."

Wufei doesn't sound concerned, and I nod, getting into the Lincoln. "I'll call you when I find out where I am," I promise, and then hang up.

The car smells like alcohol and vomit, and I roll down the window. What a mission. "What happens in Vegas," I mutter, and can only hope that the other guys are willing to never bring this up ever again.

Yeah, no chance of that happening, is there? Oh well, at least they have my back. It's not often that someone has a friend who they can call up when they need some help in getting rid of a body, much less four friends. All in all, I think that I can consider myself a lucky person, even after waking up next to a corpse.

Not many other people can claim that.