Disclaimer: I don't own the GW characters – am just borrowing to torment for my amusement

Warnings: Swearing, yaoi, violence, general angst, possible OOCness (ages since I've written fanfiction so may be a little bit rusty) m/m sexual relations

Pairings: 1x2 , 3x4, 5+2

A/N: Hi everyone – I'm back from Honeymoon with a chapter for Domino and a chapter for a new multipart fic – Caught in the Crossfire which I promise won't affect the updates for this fic!

Chapter's song is Hospital by the Used.

Chapter Ten

Leave the Lies for Liars

The day cycle was ending as I approached the hospital alone. The District had come to life being that it was now the time to make the money and the customers were ready to get their kicks whichever way they preferred. I held the sports bag with explosives, the gun in my back pocket and suddenly felt really alone. It was weird, I was used to working alone being that it was what I'd done for the past three years but just having Heero back in my life for the last few days had made me remember I really do suck at being alone. I was so great at running and pushing people away but it only hurt myself, I'd ended up isolated and lying to myself that I was fine. Well done, Duo, finally working out you are the idiot people say you are.

I'd left Heero in front of Wired. I didn't know why he followed me out of the apartment but I didn't complain when he kissed me – his arms holding me tightly, his hands in the pockets of my jeans and my arms round his waist. It felt right, you know. Despite the years and the growth spurts, I fitted in with his body and my face only had to tilt a little to meet his lips. I was kinda just going with it – fighting with his tongue, and knowing that if this continued I wasn't gonna make it to the rendezvous at the hospital. I broke off a little and gave him a lopsided smirk.

"I gotta go."

"Don't die."

"Promise ya, no dying, no stupidity, no recklessness. I'll come back."

He nodded and I realised his eyes were scanning behind me which I thought was kinda rude being that I was doing a whole speech that promised I was coming back alive. For him. The whole speech should have been a proof of some kinda feelings that I wasn't going into right now but I was being vaguely romantic and he wasn't paying attention.

"My face is here."

"There's someone watching."

"Maybe because we're two guys making out?"

"They took photographs."

Bad. I should just move but my feet didn't respond. "'Ro?"

His eyes returned to my face, the steeliness gone and there was a weird kinda gentleness when he looked at me. "I have a bad feeling."

I gave him a devil may care grin. "If they're taking pictures, might as well give them something interesting to look at."

I pushed him towards the wall and kissed the life outta him, his hands grabbed my hair, twirling my braid round it and pulled me close. He let me dominate, push him around, let my hands roam over his skin and I realised we were getting far too hot and heavy for outside. I pulled away, his hand still wrapped in my hair. "They still watching?"

He nodded.

I gave him the briefest of kisses, letting my lips meet his lightly and moved away, his hand drifted from my hair to his side and he looked troubled.

"I'm gonna be fine."

"Look after yourself."

"You too, Heero."

I turned and briefly looked over my shoulder as he slumped against the wall as though my body had been supporting him, keeping him upright and I realised he really was struggling with some internal shit. His eyes watched me go, the intensity of his glare saying everything, he was more than worried about letting me go, he was goddamn scared. I turned away and clocked our photographer who was now dispersing into the crowd and thought, this sure as hell got complicated.

Now that I approached the hospital, his kiss still on my lips I could see where Dallas kept his guards and the sniper on the roof. This time, the gun was trained on me, I gave the dude a little wave sarcastically as I approached the three guards stood next to a burnt out car. They were watching but let me get close before they pulled out their weapons. I dropped the bag and held my arms out in surrender as the girl who we'd seen the other day approached me.

I guessed she was about seventeen. She looked young, And that troubled me. She was trying to hide her body underneath a heavy hoodie and a pair of unflattering and baggy jeans – hell I wouldn't wear them but then I know the skinny jean look works for me and it has a certain blue eyed fan. But though she hid her body, or was trying to, her eyes were bright and her eyelashes really long – her face was feminine despite the attempts at the fierce eye liner and make up. She had to project tough – I knew her pain. I'd always been the boy with the long hair and the pretty blue eyes – gangs were not kind on me when I was a kid. Or they hadn't been until I beat the shit out of someone. I was all innocent and fragile looking until I knifed someone. Solo had thought the same as everyone when I was kid.

I remembered him clapping and smiling approvingly at me, coming out of the shadows from behind a dumpster as the kid, two years older than me and a helluva lot bigger than I was, started rolling around the floor in agony. Jesus, I really can't remember the kids name but he was shouting in pain. For a second I was terrified when Solo appeared, his slow clap confused the hell outta me being that I was so young and didn't understand. I guess it had always been my way of fighting, punch me and I'll punch back, get me into a corner and I'll claw my way out. That kid had thought I was an easy target. He learnt his lesson.

"What did he say to you, kiddo?"

"He called me girly."

"And you broke his nose and his arm?"

I'd nodded trying not to cry. I was like barely six years old and I was worried that I was gonna get thrown outta the gang. I was in awe with him at that time.

"What's your name?"

I'd shrugged. I didn't have one and I was still a kid. I didn't know what the hell to say as he knelt down and touched my shoulder.

"You'll be my number two from now on, kiddo… Duo to my Solo. That 'kay with you?"

I remember nodding and not much else, I think I gave him a watery smile but I was too young. It was too long ago. I shrugged off the memory as the girl pointed her weapon at me. I got the impression she was not used to guns being that she didn't know how to hold it quite right. I wanted to make a comment about holding the thing properly but I wasn't going to help the person who is, you know, potentially trying to kill me tips on posture and how to hold a weapon properly.

"I'm here to see Dallas."

"Name?"

"Domino."

She glanced at me, taking in my entire body from head to foot.

"You armed?"

I retrieved the gun from my back pocket offered her it. She took it and handed it to one of the guys who I gave a glance towards. They all seemed young. They were all around my age, not tough ass terrorists and I really began to wonder why I was here as I wasn't patted down, wasn't checked for additional weapons which seemed amateurish. It was awesome for me being that I still had a flick knife on me but it seemed childish. Kids playing with guns. Suppose I know how it feels. I was fifteen piloting a weapon of mass destruction. I'd grown up way too fast. So had Heero. So had all of us. We'd played soldier before we'd known anything else.

"Follow me."

She gestured towards the grey hospital that looked even more depressing against the darkening colony sky, a shell of a building. I grabbed the sports bag and followed looking closely at the hospital. It had suffered some damage over the years. Windows were smashed and had been replaced by wooden boards, there was graffiti staining the walls with loads of different messages – there was everything from "I wuz here" crap to an elaborate sugar skull that was kinda beautiful. I looked at it, the diamond eyes staring back at me as we walked, it was quite the thing. I thought about my own tattoos and thought the skull thing could look good. I wondered if Heero had liked my body with the ink on it. And then I thought whether it mattered if he did.

I turned my attention to her. She was short, petite and unable to hold a gun properly. What the hell was she doing in a gang? In a badass gang? This puzzled me.

"What's your name?"

"Zadie but everyone calls me Zee."

"Zee, huh? Cool."

"Why you asking?"

"I like to get to know people."

"Good for you."

"So how long you been here?"

"All my life. No one ever gets outta of the District."

"No, in the gang, darlin'."

She stopped in front of me spinning around in an angry way. I'd hit a button apparently. I dropped the bag and reached for the knife in my pocket in a quick gesture. I wasn't sure what the hell she was gonna do but with the way she held a gun, I had no confidence in her not shooting me.

"No one calls me darling, sweetheart, or any of that shit."

I chuckled and held my hands up in mock surrender. I'd stopped my hand going for the knife as I realised she wasn't really a threat. I could just lash out and get the gun if needed but she was harmless, a kitty cat.

"Shit, Zee, point taken. No nicknames."

The little altercation made me smirk as we walked the remaining distance to the hospital. I wasn't sure what her role in the gang was but being that she was ridiculously defensive about being accused of being remotely girly, my guess was she was having a hard time. So why would Dallas keep a chick around who couldn't defend herself? My theory of her being a second in command had evaporated. She wasn't even worth having. Harsh as it sounds but in any gang you have to pay your way, you have to be able to bring something to the group and if you can't then you're a drain. When I was a kid if you couldn't steal and look after yourself then you were useless. I'd seen Solo throw kids out for not paying their way. They probably died or got into the sex or drug trade. I didn't think about it.

We entered the hospital at what was once the emergency room. The doors were automatic but had long since given up. Instead, the glass had been knocked out and we went through that. It was dark in the hospital as I wondered if they had power in the building. The cold that hit me as I entered suggested that they didn't. It had been forgotten, abandoned so it made sense that it had no power but then I couldn't imagine it was pleasant for the gang to be here. Then I thought about some of the places I'd stayed – yeah, there was no hole in the roof which was always an improvement.

There were a few guys around in what once would've been the waiting area, they were smoking, a few playing poker and a few just watching as I passed trying to look intimidating and shit. I shot back a glare and gave them a smirk. I wasn't going to be intimidated by them. I was meeting with Dallas.

Zee walked along a corridor and we passed the empty beds that had once been where the emergencies came in. Despite it being old and in disrepair, the place still seemed to have that sterile weird feel of a hospital. Yeah, the smell was mainly stale but it was definitely a hospital when I breathed in the air. And I hated hospitals. It brought up the image of the lost and bandaged Heero kissing me hard, holding my arms, trying to get me to stay with him… trying to persuade me that I was the one he needed. A message I didn't hear until now. Dumbass.

I shook the thoughts out of my head. Last night had proved that we were still sorting out whatever we had. And the kiss in front of Wired. And the look in his eyes. Sure, Heero, I'm coming back from this place 'cause I need to know. I need to know what we have.

We passed through some more doors so that we arrived at a ward with a nurse's station with two guards sat on top it. They were throwing balls of paper into a wastepaper basket located in the middle of the room. Whatever you wanna do for entertain. It was pretty tame entertainment for an L2 street thug. I was not really unsure about the place. And the gang. They were like pussycats compared to the fuckers I'd worked with in the past. Why were people so scared of Dallas if everyone around him was prepubescent?

Zee directed me towards what had once been an examination room and that's when I first saw Dallas. After all the hype, the pictures and the nature of the threats against Q's life I was expecting him to be more impressive. He had two guys stood by the door who were twins. They both had the same brown eyes and close shaven heads, they were both muscly and looked virtually identical apart from one had a thin line cut into his eyebrow. I'd already nicknamed them in my head. Eyebrow guy? Twin one. Other? Twin two. It was important to start identifying the gang member so I gave them a real hard look before turning my attention to the room. The examination room had been transformed and was covered in plans and pictures. Schematics of varying buildings located around L2 – the government buildings, schools, universities, shuttle port and conference centre. Then there were clippings from newspapers detailing the different parts of the L2 Project and alongside those were usually pictures of Quatre. I'd never really followed Quatre's life since the fall out being that it made me feel really bad about how I'd acted and how I'd hurt him so for the first time, I was in a room full of pictures of him.

He looked pretty much just as Wufei had said – tired, stressed, worried. His suit always seemed a little too big for him, his slicked back hair always making him seem like he was trying to play the grown up. Be the man his father wanted him to be and run the company in the ideals that his father had laid down. The one thing you appreciate being an orphan is that you can't let anyone down – you can never disappoint a mother or father. I couldn't imagine the pressure being the only male Winner child. I shoulda given him some breaks.

It amazed me as I scanned the room how many times Trowa appeared in the photographs. It was never obvious but he was there. Sometimes all you saw was a slight hint of hair but he was in the background, a suit, a gun, an earpiece. It was an amazing amount of devotion. I wondered idly if Trowa had been hurt by little comment about being bought. I never really knew Trowa, we met, like a handful of times and I think he'd have said about ten words to me in that time span but I thought briefly whether he hated my insinuation about being bought.

My eyes stopped roaming and they rested on Dallas. He was wearing similar clothes to the photographs I'd seen – a white wife beater, jeans, a studded leather jacket and the blonde hair spiked. He was smiling at me, a cigarette in his lips and he was sat up on the examination table.

"So this must the famous Domino."

"And you must be the famous Dallas."

Dallas jumped down from his position and walked towards me but bypassed me a little for Zee. He grabbed her and kissed her as she stood beside me. I watched for a second and then decided to roll my eyes in annoyance at the make out session going on beside me but then I looked again and realised he was kissing the life out of Zee, her eyes closed and like, totally into it, while he was staring at me in some kind of confrontational way. I had no idea what this was.

He let her go and then stood right in front of me, I glanced to see Zee look like her knees were about to buckle underneath her. I knew what it was like to have the life kissed out of you and sympathised.

"So… C4?"

"In the bag. Wanna look?"

He smirked cockily at me and I realised he was a motherfucker with attitude, a killer smirk and a seriously warped sense of humour. Damn, I was looking in a mirror and I didn't like it. Dallas was me if I'd not got off L2. If I'd never been a Gundam pilot. If I'd never met Heero.

"Boys."

That's all he needed to say and the twins took the bag off me and one put it down on the examination table and started looking through it. All the while Dallas was stood two inches from me and smirked. I glared back. I thought about smirking but I wasn't going to be cocky. I don't appreciate cocky shits. I had a feeling that if Dallas was like me, if I was an ass he'd hit me, lock me up, fuck me over.

"There's a lot boss."

"Antoine was right. You are serious."

"Serious as a heart attack."

He laughed at my comment and slapped my arm. It wasn't hard or anything but I looked at him wearily. He had some height on me and some weight. What he didn't have was Shinigami and no one fucks with that side of me and lives.

"So what's your price, Dom?"

"Fifty thousand and an extra ten on completion for the money I had to pay to that fuck Antoine to arrange this meeting."

He whistled and laughed. "You really worth that much, Dom?"

I stepped a little forward, experimenting a little, and looked up at him from under my hair. I made my voice husky. "I'm worth every penny."

Get this straight, I have never had sex with someone during an undercover op to get information. It was beyond dirty, degrading and soul destroying to do that and it would make me nothing more than a whore and the Preventers my pimp. Or Wufei my pimp. Jesus, that thought just conjured up an image of him in a pimp costume. Which is weird. Fuck, Maxwell, back to the point. But I knew sex is a way of getting what you want. I wanted to know which way Dallas swung and see if he was at all interested. It could be something I could use.

"I'm sure you're a firecracker in bed but I bet your boyfriend won't approve."

I suddenly felt very cold. "My boyfriend?"

"Rick."

I looked over at one of the twins who grabbed a folder that was perched on counter. He passed it to Dallas who then opened it and out spilled pictures onto the floor. They started from us walking out of Black Velvet. How the fuck hadn't we noticed that before? Then I remembered he was pissed at me as I saw the picture of him pinning me against the wall in the alleyway. And with a kinda horror, there was one of me smoking on the fire escape. Dallas held one picture back. I saw it.

It was us outside of Wired, me pinning him against the wall and his hand with my hair wrapped around it. It was weird to see how we looked, our eyes closed, our mouths locked, my body against his. I noticed we looked good together. Hot even. Dallas probably saw that I was thinking and he gave me a grin that chilled me. He showed me the picture and then dramatically ripped it in half in front of my face, the two halves falling to the floor, us separated by the rip.

"You see, I think we're gonna pay you jack shit, Dom, cause if you don't co-operate with our plans." He made his hand look like a gun and pointed a finger at my head. He made a noise like he was pretending to cock it. "Then boom to your sweetie…What do you say to that?"

"Blaise is a tough guy. You got no fucking chance of touching him."

He grabbed hold of the top of my shirt and pulled my face close to his face. "I got a man in Wired, I got a man on the opposite building roof and someone hanging around the alleyway. I'll keep someone on him 24 hours a day. And I'll kill him if you do anything that I don't like, do we understand each other?"

"What if I don't care? What if he's just my fuck buddy?"

"Dom… look at those photographs. Even I can see you're in love with the guy."

I blinked as he let me go. In love? How could you tell from a fucking photograph? Shit, this mission had gone from bad to worse. Wufei was right, our relationship, whatever it meant was going to get in the way of what I was meant to be doing. I couldn't be as effective if I worried about my actions having repercussions on Heero. At least I knew he was listening. He'd be extra careful about those guys, I could see him now in my head locating the enemy and working out ways to kill them if necessary. He couldn't just do it as if he killed those guys then it would get back to Dallas that somehow Heero knew and then it would be my life at risk. They'd work out I was feeding information out and it would end badly. Duo Maxwell: single bullet wound to the head execution style. It was a catch 22. We both had to be careful as we were both at risk from one false move from the other. Shit.

"Do we understand each other, Dom?"

"It's crystal clear."

And it was. We were in trouble. A lot. Bad feeling? No shit, Heero.

"I'm glad… now let's talk business."