Disclaimer – People, really. Must I even say it?

Only You

Chapter 5

Consequences

Heero never came back.

Duo slowly healed, though the doctors assured him he was recovering quickly. Every day he secretly hoped Heero would return, if only so that he could apologize for what he'd done. But he never came back.

The doctor eventually released him from the hospital, and to his utter torment and humiliation, one of the nurses had to drive him to his home. It was rather difficult to endure the torture like a man when the woman kept giggling at his face.

Of course, being trapped in the house all day every day gave him more than enough tie to randomly think. And of course the first damn thing to constantly pop into his brain just had to be Heero Yuy. It had been a year since he'd last seen the man, and he'd come back only to wreck his workplace, which forced him to try to find a new job. It was like he was bloody well starting over again, only working backwards thanks to his damn injured arm.

Worse, the bastard had brought back emotions Duo had thought long buried. And then he just poofs off again! Mission: protect woman. Mission: complete. Why stick around? It wasn't necessary. Allies could be replaced, especially these days – especially when it's an old ally who wasn't a full-time ally anymore. They weren't important. Let them handle themselves. Like the man on the floor of Taco Bell. Stupid, on their part, to get injured in the first place. Promise to remember them and walk away.

Duo found himself standing stupidly outside his house one afternoon, staring rather blankly out toward the empty suburban road. Not until families began returning to their own rented houses would the road fill. His arm was trapped in both a sling and a cast, the doctor warning him not to overdo it. Apparently the cast and sling were supposed to deter him. He might have argued that he wasn't a part of the Preventors, damn it all, but figured Heero had his reasons and just let it go.

Stupidly Duo wondered where Heero lived. Then he wondered what said man would do if he caught a look at Duo's house. If Heero had somehow learned how to laugh, the bastard would definitely bust a gut laughing at him. Thank goodness, he sighed with relief, Heero had never learned that he'd worked at Taco Bell. That probably would've acted as the catalyst that taught the man to laugh.

He trudged his way back into the house, disturbed that he'd been called out anyway; like hell he wanted to be seen with the damn contraption all over his arm. At least Heero hadn't stuck around to see just how pathetic lil' old Duo Maxwell had become.

Then it was off to the bedroom. He fell, ridiculously grateful for the chance to escape, and curled into his sheets and off to sleep, middle of the day, clothes and everything.

Duo had lengthened his hospital stay as long as he'd been able, wanting to be fairly healthy before hiking back to his place alone and selfishly hoping to see Heero. There hadn't been a good reason to rush, in any case. No one waited for him at home, after all.

He'd found out his first few days back that the decision to stay had been a very wise choice. He'd been tired those first few days back, though he'd been given enough blood, and he'd been told it was simply a reaction to the problems due to his body's defense mechanisms. Or something. He hadn't particularly cared when the doctor had been talking about it.

He'd thought he could handle the lethargy, since he'd dealt with blood loss and whatnot before, but he'd found a huge annoyance in doing even just the simplest things. Cooking was even more of a chore than usual, and going to the bathroom was kind of interesting with only one hand.

And if the physical drama wasn't enough, he'd received a call from none other than Lady Une formally thanking him for his valor under fire and assisting her commanders. Duo'd worked solely on instinct, and he only vaguely recalled saying some bullshit about it being old hat and how he hadn't wanted any gratitude. So the woman had paid the medical bills and left him alone.

And as embarrassing as it was, he didn't argue the payment. He could only afford – literally – to be thankful.

He'd never had cable, thank goodness, so he hadn't needed to worry about that particular bill. The phone lines were cut a few weeks after the incident, the electricity a week after that. So it had been over a month since he'd seen Heero. His search for a job was rather comical, at least if one could find the humor to laugh. His abilities had been chopped in half, after all. The small things he could do took him forever and a day to finish. At least therapy didn't come in until after the damn cast was off, which wouldn't come for a few more weeks. The Taco Bell store was almost completely renovated, but he didn't know if he'd be accepted back, what with circumstances as they were.

So Duo was going stark raving mad in need for money. And though he knew Quatre could easily pick up the slack, and even if he could choke his pride silent long enough, he still wouldn't be able to call the blond, knowing that the Worry Chain would start. Quatre would worry like hell over Duo, and then the worry would go on down the damn proverbial line and the dominoes would topple quicker than he could blink. And those damn dominoes would include the other ex-Gundam pilots. So he struggled with payments, managing to hold onto the townhouse through sheer grit and the beauty of saved-up pennies and dimes.

Of course, tenacity could hold on to much for long, and when the water was turned off, Duo might have actually screamed. He spent that night tugging at his hair and pacing and trying to ignore how damn hungry he was.

The next morning he woke up quickly and got dressed as fast as he could, ready to bolt out and grab a damn job before he smelled too bad to get one. He was fairly desperate; he'd sunk to accepting babysitting jobs or even pet-sitting, and he'd found himself tutoring a couple kids. It wasn't working. It wasn't enough.

He opened the door with his left hand and hopped out onto the steps, then the sidewalk, then his rotter of a car. He put on his best, most winning smile and firmly ignored his grumbling stomach some more. It would shut up eventually. The only food he had left were a few pieces of bread and maybe a Cream of Mushroom can. He swallowed, felt the dryness of his throat, and decided to also ignore how thirsty he was until he managed to find a water fountain in the nearby park.

By that afternoon, he was officially ready to punch in the face of the next jackass who said a crippled cashier wasn't what they were looking for.

By the evening, he was tired, dirty, and completely fed up with the entire damn ordeal. He just couldn't seem to find a job, not in his condition. Which was total bullshit, honestly, because even with just one hand he was most likely more capable than those with two, and dammit but he could do calculations in his head that some computer engineer somewhere was struggling with.

He gave up for the day and drove his sorry ass back to his townhouse. He'd just managed to park and get out when he heard a startlingly familiar voice. Shit.

"Duo!"

He turned to his side. Quatre was running up to him, waving. Worry and pain were in his wide blue eyes, almost strong enough to leap out and attack him outright. He winced. Duo's eyes caught movement from behind the blond and wanted to scream. Trowa and Heero and Wufei were all following after the blond, walking much more sedately, all of them piercing him with their eyes. He turned back to his car longingly. What were the chances of him making it back inside and out onto the road before one of the four caught him?

"Don't even think about it," Heero growled before they even reached him, and he sighed in defeat. It probably wouldn't have worked, anyway. And it would only worsen the situation. Whatever the situation was.

Quatre reached him then, and the little blond immediately threw himself at the braided pilot. Duo tried to catch him with one arm, but it was awkward and they ended up falling, Quatre sprawled on top of him thanks to some mid-fall maneuvering. But then the blond was pushing himself up and planting those damn puppy-dog eyes of his on Duo. He looked at the corporate mogul carefully, then tried on a patented Duo Maxwell grin. "Hey, Qat," he said breezily. "Want to warn me the next time you come around here? I think my back needs a little warning before going through this again." He'd specifically aimed for a teasing tone, but it seemed his words had only hurt the boy more.

"Duo," Quatre said quietly, and Duo's grin vanished at the obvious sound of distress, "why didn't you tell me you were in such financial straights?"

"Financial straights?" Duo echoed. Heero and Trowa and Wufei stopped right at their feet, looking down on them. On him.Oh, shit. The grin returned, an automatic defense. "You're not in financial straights until you don't have any money at all. And you're out on the streets." That brought back some nasty memories, but the smile didn't falter.

"Duo..." he began again, but his attempt was cut off by none other than Heero Yuy.

"Duo Maxwell, you have nothing to your name save the bed you sleep in," he snapped, and Duo met his gaze for the first time since they'd arrived. Why was it that this man's re-emergence in his life always heralded disaster? "Your job consisted of taking orders and handing out Mexican food. You are in financial straights."

His jaw just dropped. Had the bastard dug into his files? He must have. How else had he found that out? And Duo had tried so hard to hide his identity. Of course, Heero was just as much a technological genius as he. It would inevitably be possible. But why? Why would Heero Yuy bother to check on lil' old Duo Maxwell?

Heero seemed to see the confusion in Duo's eyes and magically guessed at what was going through his mind. Either that or he just wanted to say it. "Miss Paisley seemed confused as to why you'd been hiding as a Preventor when I had been so up front."

Duo thought he heard his heart clunk down the street and squish underneath a car's tire. I maneuvered Quatre until he understood it was time to stand and pushed myself onto my own two feet, needing some sort of equal footing.

"She was very talkative," Wufei said shortly, and he turned his own glare on. Duo glared right back, his spine ramrod straight. It seemed to throw the Chinese man off, but he recovered quickly. "She seemed to be in awe of you, if it makes you feel better. How calm you'd been, how you'd spoken so openly to her even during a firefight, how seemingly oblivious you'd been of your wound." He had the grace to look down at Duo's bad arm with chagrin, and Duo got to watch the glare wither away. "Then she said, 'and I'd thought he was just another college student paying his way through.'"

He might have gulped.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Quatre asked again, and those eyes demanded an answer.

"I didn't want to rely on you, Qat." Which was about ninety percent of the truth and thus more than enough. His eyes flickered up to the rest before resting back on Quatre. The blond was the most important one in all this right then. "Believe me when I say that it's not because I didn't think you'd help me, or that I thought you would hold it over my head. It's just..." He blew out an agitated breath. "Everyone else has moved on. Everyone else has jobs and money, and they don' need the help. I don't want to be the leech of the group. The helpless one. I want to be able to take care of myself."

"But Duo!" he argued, and since the guy was shorter than Duo he could continue pulling that damn puppy-dog look on him, "you're injured, and the place you worked at was completely destroyed. You don't have a job! It would make sense if you-"

"Would anyone else here be having trouble right now?" Duo asked abruptly, cutting the blond, and didn't even wait for someone else to answer. "No, of course not. Heero and Wufei are fucking rich-" He thought he heard a wince in there and momentarily pitied Wufei for his angry outburst "-and Trowa would just stay out of the circus' performances for a few weeks. You, of course, would be in no trouble at all. I'm the only one who fucked up here. I'm the only one who should pay for it."

Quatre growled then and surprised him by getting up in his face. "We. Are. Friends," the blond told him roughly. "We work together. I don't give a damn if you somehow messed up on your road out of the war. I want to help you. We were in the war together, fighting side by side. Why can't we still be like that?"

Quatre's eyes were fervent, almost fierce. Like he was giving orders to us through the Zero system, or as if he was making one of his many bold declarations as head of Winner enterprises. It was difficult to argue against such conviction, especially when it sounded so... right. But argue I tried.

"I don't want-"

"Forget about what you want!" he yelled, and stuck his face right under Duo's, until their noses almost touched. "I don't care about what you want!"

The shock made him mouth gape open. "W-What?" He shook his head. "Qat, I'm not trying to be-"

"Just shut up, Maxwell," Quatre barked, and his mouth clamped shut almost of its own accord. "I paid all of your bills," the blond informed him. "And I'm going to stay here while you recover."

Duo started to protest, but Quatre shut him up all over again with nothing more than a glare. Another moment passed before he could try again. "Quatre, please-"

"Don't you 'please' me!" Quatre looked absolutely livid, and Duo decided to just keep his mouth closed. "The others are going to help, too." And he turned that glare on Wufei and Duo, daring them to argue. Neither did.

Seeing this, Duo decided to try one last time. "Quatre, you can't-"

"I can do what I want," he declared haughtily, and the downright wherewithal left Duo once more without words. "And we are going to help you through this, Duo Maxwell, whether you like it or not."

Duo opened his mouth, ready to protest the idea of all four of them pampering him and coddling him like a baby, but Trowa's eye caught his, and the man was just shaking his head slowly. Duo's lips thinned, but his eyes just had to catch on Heero and the glare that was being sent via airwaves straight into his skull. He hung his head and groaned.