Neither Danny nor Duo spoke a word, but just stared at the blonde who now graced them with his presence.

"I was looking for Duo." The blonde shifted uncomfortable as he spoke. "I'm not here to pester him about anything I just want to explain something to him that's all.

"You see I think that him talking to Hilde and Heero was a disaster and I just want him to understand their point of view and apologize for them being so …."

Duo snapped out of whatever trance he had been in at the mention of Hilde. "You mean for her being a complete bitch and not leaving me alone when I told her too."

"Well, yes, I suppose." The boy looked away. "So you're Duo then?"

"Yeah."

"I'm Quatre I play for bass for C.O.N., that's Heero's band."

"What do you want?" Danny nudged Duo has he said this.

Quatre eyed the brunette boy. He was attractive, and Quatre loved the cosplay thing he had going on, but his attitude sucked.

"Can I talk to you for a moment?"

"Anything you have to say to me can be said in front of Danny."

"Oi Duo, shut your trap and let the little one speak. I be outside waiting for my boy." Danny stood and walked out, grabbing Duo's jacket as she went seeing as she was only wearing a very flimsy tank top that didn't do much good.

"Fine." Duo cursed and then looked to Quatre waiting.

"There's something you need to know about our band before you judge Heero and Hilde. I know they can be overbearing on their own never mind when they team up, but you have to know we've been through a tough time recently. Especially Heero, the beginning of college was really rough on him."

"It's rough on everyone."

Quarter sighed and, abandoning all hope that Duo would invite him to sit, plopped down on the ground in front of Duo where Solo had been. "That's true, but for Heero it was especially hard. See our guitarist turned out to not be the great person that we thought he was."

Duo watched Quatre closely, he could tell by the boy's disposition he wasn't trying to manipulate Duo or lie. "Go on, I'm listening."

"Thank you. See Heero was kind of down in the dumps when he started college, it was a lot for him to take on. The band was really feeling the stress of the new and busier schedules and Hilde was almost hyperventilating, we have a bunch of shows coming up that at the beginning of the year were a total mess. We had no clue what we were doing.

"Anyway one night our guitarist convinced Heero to go to this party with him to relax. Heero's never had alcohol before, which turned out to be a total disaster. He went way past whatever limit he had and was completely plastered. Now the way we would have thought things would go from there is that Nim would have brought Heero-"

"Wait Nim, as in Nimrod?"

"Um, yes, that's our old guitarist's name."

"Nimrod meaning Jonny Aston?"

"Yes." Quatre was very confused by Duo's questioning. "Do you know him?"

"Yeah, but it doesn't matter."

Quatre didn't question him; he felt it wasn't his place to. "Shall I continue then?"

"You're so damn formal. Yeah go ahead."

"Alright, we hadn't worried about them going to a party because we figured if Heero did anything stupid Nim would bring him back up to his dorm and it would be okay. I don't really know why Trowa did it, but he decided he was going to go and check up on Heero." Quatre seemed uncomfortable but pushed on, "When he got there things were really bad. The party was disgusting, people were everywhere doing god knows what. The problem was that when he found Heero and Nim, well, it was wrong to say the least. Nim had Heero pinned on the couch, Heero was so drunk he couldn't really do anything other then yell at Nim and even that wasn't going well. Nim was trying to, trying to…"

"Rape?" Duo's eyes went blank so Quatre couldn't find the emotions that were fighting to break free from Duo.

"Almost, Trowa beat the crap out of Nim, and brought Heero home. There's a restraining order against him now, and he moved way out west some where. Those were the terms; Heero's parents wouldn't make his life a constant court room battle if he moved far away and never came near Heero or any of us for that matter again."

"He'll just try it with someone else."

Duo's words surprised Quatre. He looked up to find Duo's blank look had left and had been replaced with one of pure hatred. It scared Quatre yet he felt it wasn't meant for him.

"That's really all I wanted to tell you. No one knows I came to talk to you, and I beg you to keep what I told you private, though I feel that you would without me asking. You seem like you might be a nice person Duo if you would just accept people. Who hurt you so bad that you could be so cold?"

The door swung open and Solo came in.

"Hey, what's going on?" He smiled slightly, but frowned at Duo's expression.

"I was just going." Quatre stood and moved past Solo towards the door.

"Nimrod." Was all Duo said.

Quatre stopped briefly and then left.

"What the hell was that about?" Solo dropped a small brown bag on the table.

"Hey bro?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I borrow your guitar tomorrow?"

"What you break yours?"

"No, I just don't want them to know it's me till they after they hear me play." Duo smiled weakly at the boy he had considered his brother for the past fifteen years of his life.

"You're going?"

"To their auditions."

And suddenly the weird twisted world is making some weird twisted sense. I had a killer paper to write and then a my first college midterm. It's been insane. Anyway I hope everyone enjoys this next chapter of Vanilla. I know I love it in all its evil dark twisted coolness. I'm so weird. Anyway I had a very relaxing day drawing Tibetan Monks doing a sand mandala, they are so cool, and I felt the need to update this, and I'm starting to have a clearer image of where I want to go with this story, well how I want to get there anyway.

Om Mani Pedme Hung

Ris Night