CHAPTER FOURTEEN
[Day 11] L2 Colony Cluster, Maxwell Scrap.
Duo had contacted Hilde that morning and had snuck out to visit her before the other agents woke up. He had left them snoozing in the makeshift sleeping quarters made of the second storage room.
He had explained to the woman that he would need to use the scrapyard for a week or so, and that she wouldn't have to bother coming in. He shot the breeze with her, told her he was doing a mission but failed to mention anything in great detail about the resource satellite, the mobile suits he had seen, or the fact that Solo was still alive and kicking.
Duo liked Hilde. He had begun a casual relationship with the woman right after the Eve Wars, but nothing serious ever came of it. She was a good friend to him. It was easy to talk to her. She had been in the wars so she was pretty sympathetic and understanding about his feelings. She would have been a great girlfriend. If Duo had to think of himself as settled with a house and kids, he wouldn't have been able to picture it with anyone but her.
But that life wasn't for him. She had never demanded that of him, but he knew deep down that she was tired of violence. She wanted to enjoy the calm and peace that the ESUN had to offer. He wanted her to have those things. So, when he was sent off to work for the Preventers, he had left her on L2 to run the shop. He had given her 50% ownership of the company. He had wanted to give her more, but she wouldn't accept it.
That morning he had met her in the park and they had walked to the coffee shop. For an hour he had pretended that he wasn't about to embark on a dangerous undercover operation. He sipped a coffee with her on the patio of the shop while she lectured him about how rude it was of him to call her and give her orders without any decent explanations. She also told him she missed his long hair, but that she liked the way he looked now. She had grabbed his head, styled it a few times, and then gave up when the mess fell back its normal place around his eyes and face. She told him about Joe and his travels, about the things she had heard on the news, and about how creeped out she was that Zechs Merquise had been murdered. He couldn't tell her all that he knew, so he had to sit quietly while she demanded that he be safe and be armed and be careful, in case the murderer snatched him up next.
While she grilled him he just smiled at her. Hilde was a great person, and he hoped she would find someone who treated her well. If anyone hurt her, he would kill them.
Once they had eaten their cinnamon rolls and chugged their coffees he walked her home and then returned to the scrapyard with a large stash of extra goodies under his arm: muffins, donuts, scones... anything baked and sugary that one could imagine. He stomped into the main room and announced cheerfully, "GOOD MORNING SUNSHINES!" And then slammed a large thermos of dark coffee on the counter.
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Heero rolled out of his cot, gun in hand, and about shot his brother, who had apparently done the same thing at precisely the same time. Two sets of bleary cobalt eyes assessed their targets, then lowered their guns slowly. Where the hell had that yelling come from?
Wing's pilot pushed his back to the wall beside the doorway, Solo on the other side, and the older man nodded twice towards the open doorway. Heero understood. Taking point, he swung around the corner, .45 first, and aimed at...
Coffee?
Solo ran into him as he followed sharply through the doorway, knocking the Japanese agent forward a step, and Heero turned to glare at him over his shoulder. That obnoxious wake up call had to have been his partner. That idiot was going to get himself killed, one of these days. Determining idly that the thermos of coffee was not a direct threat, Heero sagged down into a nearby desk chair, scratching the back of his head with is loaded sidearm. Solo grabbed another chair, turning it around backwards before straddling it and letting his head fall down against the tabletop. His arms hung limply at his sides.
Duo was digging through a bag of what Heero suspected were high-sugar, low-protein pastry things that the American often referred to as 'breakfast.' They normally made Heero's teeth hurt, so he avoided them at all costs. Solo spoke up beside him, talking directly into the table and yawning in the process. "So when are we contacting that asshole Chang? We have to report back on what happened yesterday, right?"
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Duo had thought that they may have reacted negatively to his wake-up call. So when the two stumbled in with guns blazing he wasn't entirely surprised, just prepared to duck, just in case one of them was still dreaming.
"Hey-hey!" He said brightly as he fished out a blueberry muffin bigger than his fist. He set it on the table in front of Heero and smiled. Then he grabbed a donut from inside, bit into it with gusto, and then pushed the rest of the bag at Solo, bumping the older agent's downturned head in the process.
At the mention of Chang, Duo's warm and cheery demeanor chilled about twenty degrees. "Hm... Chang, huh?" He stared at the donut and suddenly began to feel less than hungry. "Maybe we can send him a nice, friendly e-mail?"
Duo wasn't too thrilled on seeing Chang again. He never seemed to mesh well with the guy. He knew Wufei thought he was an incompetent idiot. Duo didn't much care what Wufei personally felt, but the guy's opinion of him always managed to come out in conversation. Or in report. Hell, they couldn't even pass each other in the hall without Chang scowling in greeting.
He began busying himself with pouring coffee into three styrofoam cups. He slid one in front of each agent before chugging contentedly at his own. It would be his third cup in less than two hours.
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Heero stared at the muffin thoughtfully. "E-mails can be intercepted. We should meet with him in person. The other pilots should probably be called in, as well."
Beside him, Solo had begun prowling through the bag of bakery goods, setting aside small piles of things. Heero snorted. His brother appeared to have retained some of his food hoarding tendencies from growing up on the streets. "It's not going anywhere," he said quietly. Solo glared at him and pocketed several danishes before announcing that he was going to, "Wash his ass, and you fuckers had better not flush the toilet 'til I'm done."
Heero drank his coffee, and then he finished Solo's before going to retrieve his laptop. He set it up on the table beside Duo and began patching a secured direct line to Chang's office. As his fingers moved over the worn keyboard, Wing's pilot wondered idly if the plants in his own office had died yet. It was such a random thought that when Chang's serious face appeared on his screen he was momentarily startled. "Yuy, this had better not be bad news."
Duo snickered beside him. "Good morning to you, too, Chang," Heero deadpanned. "If by bad news you mean that we made visual confirmation of at least thirty newly-designed and manufactured MS, then that's an affirmative." His sense of humor, as sardonic and flat as it was, had been heavily influenced by his partner, who was chuckling to his right. The Japanese agent hoped Chang could not hear him.
"That's what we were afraid of," the Chinese man scowled. "We'll need to set a rendezvous point and discuss this. There's no need for reports. We'll have to discuss parameters in person." Heero nodded. "Is that it?"
Wing's pilot hesitated. "Negative. I confirmed a new OS, as well. It appears to be modified from a pre-existing OS that increases mental instability and volatility in pilots." The look on Chang's face-speechless and shocked-told Heero that the other Preventer knew exactly which system he was referencing. Dark eyes stared piercingly through the screen for a moment before Chang sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose in irritation.
"Great. Just great." He shook his head. "Rendezvous point will be the facility on L3. I want this discussed as far from L2 as possible." Heero interpreted that to mean the Preventers field office in the L3 Colony Cluster. That trip would take them at least two days.
"Roger that," Heero murmured before terminating the line. He sat back in his chair and stared at the blank laptop screen for a while, before turning to Duo. "I don't think he'll be terribly pleased when we tell him about the salvaged Gundam technology."
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"Yeah, 'prolly not." Duo said quietly as he licked the glaze from the second donut he had inhaled from the tips of his fingers. "But really, is there anything that you could say that would 'terribly please' Chang Wufei?"
He grinned and poured Heero another cup of coffee idly before slouching low in his chair, his long and skinny legs outstretched as far as they could go. Duo enjoyed space, and he filled as much of it with himself as possible.
He propped his arms up behind his head and sighed, "went to see Hilde this morning. Told her you were here, too. I think she knows." He waggled his eyebrows and laughed. "She said hi. And told me to give it to ya good."
He had taken off his hair band and was smoothing out the back of his newly-shortened, thick chestnut hair with his fingertips. Quickly, as if he had changed his mind about playing with his hair, he dropped his arms and leaned over to grab Heero around his neck and kissed him on the jawline. He wanted to take the opportunity to get some affection in before Solo showed up. He felt strange doing anything in front of his former childhood friend. He didn't like the smile Solo always got when Duo did or said anything suggestive.
"Eat your fucking muffin, Yuy." He whispered playfully into Heero's ear as he loosened one of his arms from his death-grip around the Japanese pilot's neck to place his hand firmly on the other man's flat, muscular stomach. "You're getting skinny. Didn't you know I'm a chubby chaser? Here, you better have two..."
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Heero frowned and lifted the hem of his tee shirt to inspect his own stomach. Skinny? "I have an acceptable body fat index for my age and height," he said flatly. "And what is a 'chubby chaser'?" He wondered if it was anything like 'boinking.'
Duo's hair was loose around his face and it looked... odd. It wasn't a bad sort of odd, but it definitely wasn't what Heero was used to. He wondered what the other pilots would say when they saw it. He still felt a little guilty about talking his partner into hacking it off, but after a gunshot wound to the thigh and his still-sore knuckles, he figured they were even now. He was nothing if not equitable.
Duo's sudden affection didn't phase him as much as it probably should have, but he was well beyond overanalyzing their unconventional relationship. He let the hem of his shirt go and slid an arm around his partner's waist. The Deathscythe pilot's violet gaze kept sliding in the direction of the yard's tiny bathroom and Heero snorted. "Tell me you aren't doing this just to piss him off?"
There was a strange tension between his best friend and his brother with which the Japanese agent wasn't entirely comfortable. Solo tended to leer at Duo quite a bit, touch him whenever the opportunity presented itself, and for his part the other L2 colonist seemed to be intrigued by the attention almost as much as he outwardly fought it off.
So maybe Heero was just a stand-in for Duo's long-time hangup over his not-dead childhood friend? Wing's pilot was almost sure that he could handle that. He was a tool, after all. The American pilot's affection was probably more of a bonus than anything he'd gotten from J, the colonies, ESUN, or Preventers.
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Duo smirked at Heero's anaylsis of his own body weight and leaned his weight against the other pilot's shoulder, his arm still wrapped around the other pilot's neck.
"Huh... what?" He blinked furiously and looked away from the bathroom to Heero. "I don't care if he gets pissed." Which was true. He just felt weird. He couldn't explain it to himself, let alone to the other pilot, so he wasn't going to try. "Hey, if you're opposed to me feeling you up I'll stop."
He grinned widely and quickly, playfully rubbed his hand against the Japanese pilot's messy mop of brown hair. His sudden stirring of it didn't change it's placement in the least.
"Maybe I'll grope you in front of Chang. I wonder what he'd do..." Duo teased, his eyes glistening with pure deviousness.
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Heero glared at his partner. "You will in no way, shape, or form insinuate or confirm that our relationship is anything more than professional in front of Chang or Une," he growled. "The Colonel will split us up. You know that."
That was the last thing he needed-being saddled with some other idiot partner. Wing's pilot tightened the arm he had slung around Duo's waist and brooded silently. A few minutes later, Solo came sauntering out of the bathroom, towel over his head, wearing nothing but boxer briefs and eying Duo speculatively.
That was the last straw for the Japanese agent. He got up abruptly from the table, closed the distance between himself and his brother, and punched the man square in the jaw. Solo didn't crumple to the ground, but then again Heero hadn't really expected him to. They had matching genetic enhancements. His injured fist stung horribly, but he felt better. Without a word, he stormed past the stunned Sweeper and into the back room.
He needed to get off of this damned colony and out of close quarters from the both of them. It was driving him crazy and distracting him from the very serious situation they'd left on that resource satellite. Or maybe he just couldn't stand the way his brother looked at Duo and he wasn't sure how to deal with it.
None of this was part of his experience or training. Once they met up with Chang...
Once they met up with Chang, debriefed from their recent mission, and had some form of working strategy for the next phase of the plan, Heero was going to request to be assigned independently of Solo. While he trusted the man innately, he knew that they had such drastically different methodologies that partnering up with him-and Duo-was a disaster waiting to happen.