By the time the three returned to the kitchen, all of the pilots were conscious and waiting on them expectantly. Heero studied them suspiciously, certain that there was a simple way to tell them apart. Quatre simply threw a few baffled looks in their direction before shrugging and turning his usual happy-go-lucky smile on them. Trowa was still obviously amused from their earlier antics. Wufei looked visibly upset, not that anyone could blame him. He looked even more worried when three sets of amethyst eyes sparkled with malicious amusement.
"Say guys, could we talk about this in the morning? It's getting a bit late," Duo offered. Quatre started to respond before the obvious dawned on him.
"Where are you going to sleep?" he asked sheepishly. "There aren't enough rooms or beds…"
"No biggie," Deut responded idly. "Duo can stay with Heero. I don't think he'd mind. They're used to sharing a bed." At this, Darren leered suggestively at Heero, who blushed darkly, sending Trowa into another round of sniggering. "Darren can sleep with Wufei. And Wufei, you don't have to worry. Darren isn't gay, for all of his joking. As the only girl here, I'll stay on the couch."
Wufei nodded slowly, uncertainly. He knew that the Maxwells didn't lie and Deut had just flat out stated that Darren wasn't gay. All of the Maxwells were strange, so no matter what, he was going to be ripping his hair out. At the very least, it was a relief to know that the nymphomaniac, as Deut had so kindly pointed out in an earlier description, wouldn't be groping him in the night.
"You can finish questioning us in the morning," Duo added when Heero opened his mouth to protest to something. "The others just got back from a mission, so they're tired. I'd rather not have to answer everything on my lonesome."
Heero's jaw clicked shut and he nodded stiffly. With a grunt that sounded suspiciously disappointed to Deut, he started towards his room. Duo followed him silently, limping slightly. Darren made kissing noises after them, causing Heero to stiffen and mutter something under his breath. Wufei simply huffed indignantly and headed stiffly towards his room, trying to ignore Darren's mouth-produced noises as they disappeared down the hall. Giggling softly at the slurping sounds coming from the direction they had disappeared, Deut headed for the couch.
"Um, are you sure you'll be comfortable there?" Quatre asked. Deut glanced back at him, amused to see him wringing his hands worriedly. As expected, the sensitive blond was upset that a girl was sleeping in a less comfortable location than himself.
"Of course, Q-chan! I'm not one of the pilots of Deathscythe for nothing." Seeing him still looking visibly upset, she grinned shamelessly at him. "Unless, of course, you'd rather share the couch with Trowa?"
Quatre blushed to his roots and looked anywhere but at Trowa, who was unsuccessfully trying to hide his own crimson cheeks behind his bangs. Deut knew perfectly well that both of them were as straight as they came, despite their behavior towards each other. They were best friends, but nothing more. Despite knowing this fact, Deut had no compunctions about teasing them relentlessly. It took several moments before either of them found their voices again.
"Um… I could take the floor and Trowa could be on the couch," he tried again, unwilling to give up.
Deut sighed. Seeing that this was almost certainly a losing battle, she decided to act on her own stubbornness and plunked down on the sofa, wriggling happily into the cushions and staring at them defiantly.
"You want the couch? Come and get it."
Quatre opened his mouth to protest again when a shirt smacked into his face. He crimsoned again and quickly averted his gaze, tossing the shirt back clumsily. A pair of pants immediately hit Trowa in the head. The two pilots exchanged mortified expressions and scrambled from the room. Quatre was brave enough to back into the room a few minutes later with a stack of pillows and blankets in hand. He silently set them down beside the sofa and, keeping his eyes averted, beat a hasty retreat from the room, every inch of his fair skin a brilliant cherry red from the intensity of the poor boy's blush.
Deut watched him leave with an amused expression. That would be the last she saw of him for the rest of the night. Sighing, she collected the blankets and pillows to create a small fortress of warmth on the couch. Tomorrow, there would be problems and she knew it. In two hours, she and Duo were going to swap positions so that she could grope the pilot of Wing Zero. If things went well, he'd never know that the person prodding him wasn't Duo. Wufei would be out for blood as well. She had told him that Darren wasn't gay, which was perfectly true. However, the nymphomaniac happened to be bi, a detail that Wufei most certainly wouldn't appreciate.
She grinned and glanced at her watch. She didn't want to be late in swapping out with Duo. Heero was going to go into convulsions when she was done with him. Tomorrow, with the help of Donovan's tampering, the three of them would be out on 'missions' of some sort. Dustin and Donovan would mysteriously be busy as well, leaving the others, innocently unsuspecting, to catch the chaos that resulted from their actions. Fighting a snort of amusement, she checked her watch again.
* * *
Later in the night, two startled squalls rang through the safehouse. Three madly howling black-clad figures escaped into the night, none of them able to stop laughing long enough to ease the pain in their oxygen-starved lungs. After running a few miles, Deut and Darren mostly carrying Duo, they pulled to a stop, laughing uproariously now that they were safe. In a few minutes, three of their unsuspecting brothers would arrive to take their places.
"I wonder who got talked into wearing the padding," Deut gasped. That created another bout of laughter. Now that the other pilots knew that one of them was a girl, someone would have to keep up that illusion.
"Demitri," Duo snickered. "It has to be him. He's the only one passive enough to be forced into it."
"What if it was Derrick?" Darren asked. The other two started laughing again, getting louder as they saw the interested expression on Darren's face.
"Actually," a new voice interrupted. "It won't be either of them."
The three snickering Maxwells looked up to see Dustin hovering over them with an amused expression on his face. He was a bit late in meeting them, but not seriously so. Still grinning, he reached down to help Duo to his feet. A moment later, he pushed Darren onto his butt as his other brother tried to rise. Deut winked at Dustin and waited for a highly irritated Darren to try to rise again before she grabbed the back of his shirt and landed him in the dirt for a second time.
"Hey! What do I look like? An inflatable punching dummy?" Darren whined, finally managing to move away from them and get to his feet.
"An inflatable something," Dustin smirked.
"Hey!"
"So who is it?" Duo asked.
"Huh?" Dustin responded intelligently.
"Who has to dress in drag?"
At that, an unholy gleam appeared in Dustin's eyes, giving him a decidedly psychotic look. The others waited tensely, paying rapt attention. They knew that look a little too well. The last time they had seen that expression, David had been found mummified in duct tape. How he had managed it was still a mystery since David was much stronger than any of them, save Daniel, who was about an even match. Even Dante, who could easily beat Heero to the ground if he wanted to, couldn't have pulled that off on his own. Dustin, however, had managed it somehow.
"Well…" he drawled, enjoying watching them squirm. "Since I had Donovan conveniently send both Demitri and Derrick out along with the two of us and there's no way in hell that anyone could force David or Daniel into drag…"
"DANTE?!?" Deut sputtered. Tears ran down her cheeks. "He's gonna kill us!"
"Correction," Duo smirked. "He's going to kill the first person to try to grope his padding."
"Poor Heero," Darren wheezed.
"Poor Daniel and David," Deut countered. "Heero and Wufei are out for blood!"
"You know, I'm almost tempted to go back and watch," Duo muttered wistfully.
"You should have heard the language Dante was using."
"I'm not sure I want to know," Deut muttered.
"I didn't know that such words and phrases existed."
"I want to know," Darren said quickly.
"Let me see if I can remember this right… I believe I was called 'an unnatural spawn of the diseased backside of a castrated toad' for starters. And that was just his opening statement." Snickers followed his pronouncement.
"Anything else?"
"Something about a 'moldy bucket of decaying, maggot-infested yak testes' was the next one."
"You know you need a tape recorder, right?" Duo gasped.
"I never knew that he was that creative," Deut said, sounding awed.
"Blah," Darren muttered disinterestedly. "I can do better than that."
"I know," Dustin groaned. "Why do you think we make an effort not to piss you off anymore? Our ears can't take it."
"Neither can our poor little minds," Duo sniffled, adopting as innocent an expression as he was able.
"You're as corrupt as I am," Darren protested.
"Let's ask Wufei that," Deut smirked.
"Or Heero," Darren retorted, grinning.
"Speaking of which, how long do you think we'll have to hide from our three victims?" Duo asked.
"How long do we want to live?" Deut countered.
Darren got an unholy look in his eyes that caused the other three to shift uncomfortably. They knew that look. He was planning something that would most likely traumatize everyone involved.
"I say we give them a few days, then sneak in and get everyone riled up again."
The suggestion set off another round of laughter as the braided figures disappeared into the night.
* * *
Dante sat rigidly at the table as Quatre cheerily served him breakfast. The entire time, the blond proceeded to ask him how he slept, if he was comfortable on the couch and if he was sure he wouldn't like the bed tonight. Fighting a twitch in his cheek, he tried to respond politely to the inane chatter. His mind, however, was elsewhere, namely on the thick padding that he had been forced to strap to his chest. He barely remembered to keep his voice high enough to pass for Deut. While his voice wasn't nearly as low as David's or Daniel's, it was deep enough to draw attention to who he really was. Unfortunately for him, he was doing a very good job of hiding his identity. As it was, Trowa was openly looking at him from across the table with a distinctly admiring expression. If he kept it up, Dante was going to hurt him. Badly.
Feeling horribly conspicuous, he almost didn't notice when Wufei stomped into the tiny kitchen. Dante's gaze locked onto the Chinese boy after the first halfhearted glance. Half of his face was discolored with a bluish black bruise that stretched the entire length of his right jaw. Huffing in response to Quatre's shocked exclamation and immediate pampering, he turned to glare at Dante.
"You told me he was straight," he snapped. Dante blinked. Before he could think of an intelligent answer, Heero stormed into the kitchen sporting a black eye.
"You told me the same about Duo," Heero grated out, looking ready to kill. Dante blinked, realization settling in. He bit back a smirk.
"Duo IS straight," he answered easily. Despite himself, a grin slowly worked its way onto his face. "And as for Darren, were those my exact words?"
"You told me 'Darren isn't gay,' Maxwell!" Wufei roared. As soon as he said it, he paused, reflective. His suspicions were confirmed when Dante smirked.
"Darren is bi," Dante snickered. Nearly cross-eyed in his rage, Wufei drew back one hand to punch his lights out. Dante frowned at him and batted his eyes, feeling the Maxwell sense of humor taking over. "You would hit a girl, Fei-chan?"
Wufei sputtered and backed off, crossing his arms angrily. If he hit Deut, Heero would beat him into the ground and he knew it. Too bad for the Chinese pilot that he didn't know who he was looking at. Heero scowled at Wufei once before plunking down at the table.
"But Duo," he began.
"Is straight," a new, slightly nasal, voice said.
Dante looked up and bit back a grin. Standing in the doorway to the small kitchen was David, who was glaring daggers at Wufei. His nose was swollen and looked as though it had been bleeding recently. Dante had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing aloud. Apparently Wufei had given as good as he had gotten. He wondered how Daniel had fared against Heero. He was answered almost immediately when Daniel peered into the room just long enough to scowl at Heero. In almost a mirror image of Heero, Daniel was sporting a black eye. Dante couldn't help himself. He snickered.
"But," Heero started again, not to be put off. This time, Daniel interrupted him.
"I'm straight, Heero. I didn't touch you," he snapped. He glared at Dante, who was still laughing softly. "But I'm willing to bet that Deut did."
Heero snapped rigid in his seat, his head swiveling to stare at Dante, who had frozen in place. His eyes promised death to Daniel for saying that. There was no telling how long they were going to be stuck in this tiny safehouse and the last thing he needed was for Heero to be chasing him around, grabbing at the padding. Unwilling to be targeted, he did the only thing that made sense, even knowing that it would get his butt slammed later. If he couldn't lie, he could certainly find a mile of wriggle room in telling the other pilots the truth. Since the others didn't lie either, he only had to corner one of them into silence. And since Daniel had already stated that he wasn't to blame, there was only one avenue of escape left to him.
"I didn't touch you either," Dante said tersely. Which was true. He hadn't, but Deut had. "And Duo is straight, like he said, so there's no way he would have either. That only leaves one person."
"Darren," Heero growled.
If looks could have killed, Dante would have expired immediately under David's vengeful scowl. The scowl was moved almost immediately towards Heero and Wufei, both of whom had risen to settle the score. David took a step back, unable to defend himself by denying doing anything. The other pilots only knew about three of them and he couldn't say anything without letting on that their knowledge of the Maxwell numbers was still off.
David took another step back before abandoning all dignity and bolting for the door, Wufei and Heero right behind him. Dante watched him go with a relieved look. At the moment, he was safe from groping hands. Later, he was a dead man, but for the moment he could relax. Daniel watched the three go with a smug expression. He never had any compunctions about getting David in all sorts of trouble. This wasn't the first, and certainly wouldn't be the last, time that they had managed to get the pilots to hurt the other in some fashion.
Dante, despite his own precarious position in the whole affair, couldn't help himself. He snickered.
To Be Continued…
Ooh… I posted another section. I have a bit more than this written, but I'm not at a good point to post it. Things get really neat soon, I promise. Oh, and the faster the commentary comes, the faster I go. Must feed the ego, you know. ^_^
