Disclaimer: The only Heero I have is my cat and he spells it Hiro. GW is so not mine and so not filling my empty pockets. Not that this'll stop anything should Sunrise/Bandai decide it's worth pursuing me for my pocket lint...

Characters: Heero, Duo
Content: a little innuendo, more probing jokes, even more utter silliness
Part Summary: Under Heero's watchful eye, the investigation into Duo's interesting experience continues.
Word Count: 1252
Archive: ask please
Concrit: sure.
Notes: ::more facepalming:: Written for LJ comm gw500 prompt 215 - abduction. The crack...she is strong.

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COFFEE & DOUGHNUTS
part ii: Disorganized and Stuff
by McJ

Duo had insisted that if he was going to be questioned about the whole of his "alien encounter" that it would happen where coffee and doughnuts were directly on hand, so they kept to the semi-privacy of the break room with the door locked. Frankly, Heero was glad of it as he'd needed the comfort of three maple bars and a full pot of the coffee – black and bitter – to get him through the ordeal thus far.

The story was even more absurd spoken aloud than it was in written form. While normally sparse with his words, Heero found himself quite speechless – dumbfounded, almost – as Duo wrapped up his tale. He sat across the round, plastic veneered table from Heero, sucking the powdery white remnants of a sugared doughnut from his fingers and fiddling with the handle of an obnoxiously vivid purple coffee mug. The telltale bouncing of his knee just below the edge of said table showed he was awaiting some sort of response.

"So?"

Glancing down at the open manila folder and the file laying innocently within, Heero pondered where to start as he brushed aside a few crumbs left over from his pastries. He delayed further with a deep breath, slowly releasing it while worrying at a still wet coffee ring left from his own mug. The napkins were on the other side of the room, near the coffee maker, but going over to get one would really be pushing the delaying tactic a bit far, he thought. Straightening the sheets of paper that were in no need of straightening, he attempted to get his vocal cords working again. "This is..."

"Crazy?" Duo supplied as Heero faltered, pulling his thumb out of his mouth with an audible pop. His chuckle held an air of helplessness, his face tilting downward to study the table top. He shook his head, braid slinking back and forth like some kind of snake. "You think I don't know that, buddy?"

"Of course not," Heero said. He had to say something, after all. Wufei was going to pay dearly for passing this off to him. Perhaps, though, it would have been in his own best interest to have known better in the first place, considering what he had seen of Wufei's reaction to the file. "Have you...been seen to by medical?"

"You mean have I let Sally probe my butt to see if I was lying about having my butt probed by aliens?"

Heero curled his hands into fists, each knuckle cracking in turn. Luckily, he was a good ways off the point of popping any veins, but he could easily envision it happening before they were done. Wufei had likely made the correct choice, Heero reconsidered – continued exposure to this case might have caused him a heart attack or stroke through elevated blood pressure. "Yes."

"Heero, do I look like the kind of guy that enjoys having his butt probed?" Duo asked him, leaning closer across the table as a line crinkled the skin between his drawn down brows. There was something joyously sinister about the look on his face. Combined with the inherent danger involved in answering the question, it was enough to give Heero pause. Again.

However, he could not end this portion of the investigation so soon and steeled his already unbending nerves. He was not going to be led down that path. An answer either way would give him information he had no desire to learn without a few beers in his belly. Not that Heero was one to drink. "Just answer the question."

"Yeah, yeah," Duo sighed. "It's been done. Doesn't Sal have the paperwork in there?" He gestured at the folder. Then he stole it away and began rifling through the contents before Heero could protest.

"It doesn't matter if the paperwork is in there or not, Duo," Heero said, doing his best not to be unduly irritated with Duo simply being himself. Or with his own self for being duped by Wufei. If he kept tight enough wraps on it, everyone might come out of the situation unharmed. "I needed to hear it from you. It's standard procedure, you know that."

"Whatever," Duo snorted. He looked up, rumpled pieces of paper in each hand. "You talked to Trowa yet?"

"Trowa?"

"Well, he is the local leading UFO expert, you know." Duo stared at him like he was stupid, but that was all right – Heero was feeling somewhat stupid at that given moment. A large, unexpected stone of useless knowledge had just appeared in the path of his plow, after all. He tried to unite the image of the Trowa he knew with the alien hunting wackos he'd seen on television and kept getting an answer of three. It quickly occurred to him that Trowa was in fact pilot 03, though, so perhaps it was not so strange that one plus one might equal three in this situation.

Waving paperwork flagged Heero's attention back to the need to move forward with the investigation. "C'mon, Heero, don't let that superbrain of yours fail me now. Alien abduction-slash-butt-probing case, hello?"

"Trowa?" he asked again. "A UFO expert? Are you certain?"

"Yeah, I am. Don't worry, I don't get it, either," Duo commiserated. "Then again, he's always been a little weird." He laid the papers down and plopped his chin in his hands. "I was with him the night it happened. Told him I didn't believe in UFOs. At least, the aliens from another planet kind, anyway. He was trying to show me the best place around to go looking for the things. To prove it to me, right?"

"How come you didn't mention Trowa before?" Heero watched Duo go back to digging through the file, his heart clenching at the disorganized mess it had become. While he did not get twitching eyes like Wufei, Heero sometimes wished he did. Right then, for instance, it would have been a suitable reaction, he believed.

"Oh wow, this is kind of disorganized and stuff," Duo noted suddenly, causing Heero to wonder if his mind were somehow being read – the result of an encounter with an alien probe, maybe? He could only continue to watch in dismayed silence as Duo started shuffling the papers around more, changing the order of them all over again. "Sorry about that. I'll put it all back in order, okay?"

Duty, Heero told himself. Duty was more important than swiping the folder back and getting Duo's paws off it. "Answer the question, Duo."

A pair of curiously round, deep blue eyes peered up at him from beneath a blocky curtain of cinnamon brown bangs. "What was the question again?"

Heero scrunched his face, the annoyance he had done his best to contain started to unfold in his chest like the petals of a rose. A red rose. Like blood. He shoved his hands under his thighs to restrain them from doing something unfortunate. Through a clenched jaw, he repeated himself. "How come you didn't mention Trowa before?"

"Oh, that question." Duo had the nerve to grin, scratch his head, and offer a lame excuse: "Nobody ever asked if anyone else was there and, really, after seeing a flying saucer and getting abducted for a week-long, brainwashing butt-probe, who in their right mind is going to remember some weirdo like Trowa? At least right off the bat, you know?"

Heero jotted down a mental note to kill Wufei at the earliest possible convenience.

FIN (of part ii)