-1Disclaimer - Gundam Wing does not belong to me and this a purely non-profit enterprise. Well, in the financial sense, anyway.

Note: This one comes with immense gratitude to my Kaeru Shisho, who edited this one, came up with the title, and provided huge amounts of support, suggestions, and sympathy when it just refused to work! *hugs*

Thanks also to everyone who is still sticking with this story, and my kind reviewers.

Castles in the Sky:

Rashid ignored me for on the brief drive from the airfield to the cottage; something that was par for the course these days. He'd never liked me, and though he'd mellowed slightly after the War, that phase hadn't lasted long. He'd been coolly polite in Quatre's presence; in his absence, he obviously didn't feel it was necessary. Rashid quizzed Heero on the details of the Preventers investigation, and I spent the time gazing out of the window.

Once we'd arrived, I left Heero to get our stuff out of the car, and make arrangements to be picked up.

'I thought you and Rashid were friends,' Heero said uncertainly.

'Yeah, we were for a little bit.' I shrugged. 'He sort of went off me when the media started treating my personal life as a spectator sport. Thought I was a bad influence on Master Quatre.' I keyed a string of numbers into the key pad. 'I guess you have to feel sorry for those guys; they probably think Quat picks his friends deliberately to piss them off.'

'I didn't realise they had a problem with Trowa,' he sounded somewhat hesitant; I wasn't sure if he was just picking up on the atmosphere, or if he felt uncomfortable discussing Tro with me.

'That's …debatable. They can accept him as Quat's bodyguard, if they blank out everything else. Fair dues, though; at least they have the sense to realise there's no way Tro would be involved in this shit. More than some people have.'

Heero opened his mouth to say something, probably to defend Une's reasoning and then sensibly closed it again.

'This place is nothing like I'd imagined,' he commented, standing beside me as I keyed in the security code. 'When you said this place was a cottage, that was what I'd expected.'

'Well, it's a cottage by Quat's standards, right? It actually used to be staff quarters for the main estate, and then Quat had it converted into a holiday home. He wanted a place where he and Tro could just kick back a little bit, and not trip over servants all the time. This is perfect; it's just far enough from the main house to be private but near enough to use their pool and everything.'

I was babbling away to cover up this nasty little awkward feeling. It just felt so damn weird to be in this place with Heero Yuy. I'd spent a fairly significant proportion of my time here, at least for the first few visits, trying to come to grips with the fact that I'd lost him. Spent way too much time dwelling on the fact that he and I weren't together; something that was tended to hit me especially hard in Trowa and Quat's company.

'OK. Come on in.'

'I like this room.' Heero stepped in behind me and took a long look around. The whole ground floor comprised one large living space, with a small kitchen tucked away. Quat had tried to create a 'typical' family room, and none of us had quite had the heart to tell him that your typical family didn't own a grand piano, a collection of original paintings, or the sort of sound system that could probably be heard on Earth.

I'd always liked it though; there were photos and an old Chinese blessing, contributed by Wufei in his calligraphy phase, mixed in with the Monets and Turners, and Trowa had lined one of the walls with shelves and they were stacked with his old copies of Global Geographic and Quat's collection of romance novels.

'I can't believe he still reads this stuff!' Heero plucked a dog-eared copy of 'The Sheikh's Secret Love' off the shelf and scanned the back cover.

'He likes them,' I said, just a little defensively, remembering just how happy Quat had been when he'd found out you could buy gay romances.

That conjured up all sorts of memories of watching movies with Trowa, with Quat curled up reading his favourite chapters aloud. Inevitably, at some point, Tro would lose control and drag his boyfriend upstairs.

God, I'd tried so damn hard not to envy the two of them, back then. They'd always seemed the perfect couple; the two Gundam Pilots who'd fallen in love during the War and were still together, and still crazy about each other.

Heero gave me an uncertain look; I guess the mood had shifted over the past few hours from that nice little interlude in the garden. Getting the cold shoulder from Rashid hadn't helped, but just being in Quat's home, with Quat still missing, was bad enough.

'I don't remember Trowa ever mentioning this place. How long have they had it?' He asked finally, apparently having searched for a 'safe' conversation topic.

Bad move.

'About three years. You probably won't remember, but there was this party we all attended at the Sanque Embassy; you were sitting at the top table with Relena?' He looked down at the floor, then glanced quickly back at me. 'You totally ignored me for the whole night. Well, a couple of weeks after that, 'Fei and I came to visit and they took us out here for a few days.'

'I remember,' he told me quietly. 'That night was - I swear, Duo. I'd meant to talk to you, but you and Wufei arrived late and everyone had started dinner by then. I should have just gone straight up to you, but I didn't want to start a conversation in front of a crowd. I was going to follow you when you got up, but you'd vanished. With Wufei and Milliardo.'

'Oh, yeah, that was the night those two met.' I trailed a finger along the mantle-piece, thinking that Quat wouldn't be too pleased to see that amount of dust.

Yet another little niggle from that particular evening-from-hell. It was the first time we'd met Zechs; the starting point for that particular relationship.

Not that I hadn't been happy for 'Fei or anything, but it had been just the two of us for a couple of years. His meeting Zechs had made me face reality. Of course, 'Fei wasn't going to want to spend the rest of his life with just me. Not when he had an incredibly handsome prince who'd utterly fallen for him. They wouldn't want to have me hanging around forever.

All my own fault, of course. I was the one who'd encouraged - forced - 'Fei to go on a date with the prince. I'd never expected anything would come of it, just thought it would be good for my friend to go out with a hot guy for a change. Except - something had happened, and I'd just had to suck it up and be glad for them. It wasn't like 'Fei would ever have been interested in me anyway.

'I'm sorry,' Heero said helplessly; he probably felt the uncomfortable silence had dragged on for quite long enough. Lucky he couldn't read my mind, or he might not want to be quite so pally with 'Fei in future.

'I've missed so much, haven't I? Of your life; of all your lives.' I guess I didn't blame him for feeling lost; not when I felt that way myself.

'Yeah.' It wasn't like I could exactly contradict him. Sometimes, I got this feeling that everything we said or did was happening across a gulf that stretched over the past six years. I'd known him as a terrorist, as a Preventer agent, a guy my age desperately trying to find a place in the world. Heero, six years on from all that, was still very much a puzzle of missing pieces. 'I've missed you too.'

He nodded, moving inside the room to study the framed photographs over the fireplace. Wufei's and my graduation; Sally's wedding; some of Quat's family.

'That's Florida,' I commented on the photo he was studying; somewhat unnecessarily given the backdrop of palm trees and ocean. 'Quat visited for a weekend just after I'd gone there.' It had been a pretty damn perfect couple of days; he'd wanted to pretend to be some college kid, and we'd hired surfboards and rollerblades and scuba gear. A girl on the beach had put tiny plaits in his hair, and beads in mine. In the photo, we're both sprawled across the bonnet of my yellow car, dressed in baggy surfer dude gear.

'You both look so happy,' Heero says softly. 'And I see you finally got the car you always wanted.'

'Yep.'

'This one is beautiful,' Heero picked up one of the frames to study it.

'Trowa took that,' I leaned over his shoulder to look. It was just a simple head-and-shoulders shot of me, with the dunes in the background; Tro had snapped it one evening when we were out in the desert and the dying sun had painted all kinds of colours in my hair.

'Do you think that maybe I could get a copy?'

'I guess. I think we've got one somewhere at home.'

'I'd like that. We ... have to get some pictures of the two of us together.'

'Oh, shit!' I exclaimed, suddenly remembering something Jack had told me. 'Um, you might be getting some tomorrow. Jack said we're going to be on the news in the morning.' I fiddled with the end of my braid; waiting for the explosion. He'd always had something of a love-hate relationship with the press; he hated them and would have liked nothing better than to destroy every member of the journalistic profession.

'I'm sorry. I guess we probably should have been a bit more discreet back at the hospital.'

He surprised the hell out of me by shrugging. 'If it's on television, then it means it must be true that we're together.' He slid an arm around my shoulder. 'I - still have problems believing this is really happening.'

'It's real, Heero,' I pressed closer to him, stroking his face gently. It still seemed weird that he was the insecure one; the one needed to be reassured. 'I'm real. This is real. I promise.'

'Good.' His arms tightened around me. 'It will be ... nice,' he said the word wonderingly, 'to be the one in the photos with you.'

Instead of being the one seeing you plastered all over the world news with some other guy.

OK, he didn't say that bit out loud, but it was pretty damn obvious what he meant.

'Well, it wasn't exactly easy for me either, you know, seeing all those pretty pictures of you with Relena.' It came out - maybe - just a little bit harsher than I'd meant. Or maybe not. We'd kind of skirted around the whole 'Lena thing; I'd thought it would be easier not to know all the gory details, but maybe we should just get it out of the way.

'Did you sleep with her?' Great, Duo. Just cut straight to the big question and blurt it out. I wanted so very much for him to deny it, although realistically I knew they'd been together for months. Something had to have happened.

He nodded, and then said nothing while I waited for him to say it had been a nightmare - a disaster - the worst experience of his entire life. It wasn't like I wanted details or anything; God knows, his sense of honour would never allow that, and I sure as hell wouldn't like to think of him discussing our sex life with anyone else, but still....

'She was a girl infatuated with a dream she'd tried to make into reality,' he said eventually, very softly, as if he didn't want the chance of anyone else overhearing him. 'I was still in love with you. We were both - quite desperately lonely. And scared.'

'Did you ever love her?'

Silence, while he placed my photo back on the shelf, making sure it was exactly line up with the other pictures. Oh God. Silence is not good. Not in a situation like this.

'In a way, yes.' He looked up at me then. 'Duo, I'm sorry but I won't lie to you. After - what happened with us, Relena was about the only person who didn't seem to think I was some sort of monster. We became very close and I still value that friendship.'

OK, that sounded - reasonable on the face of it. Except reason wasn't exactly working for me right then. 'She was a girl for Christ's sake! How do you think that made me feel; that I'd just been some sort of experiment for you while you were figuring out whether you preferred guys or girls? Or that I'd been a useful way for you to work off a bit of tension 'til you got into her bed?'

'You know it was never like that!' he actually had the temerity to glare at me.

'I didn't know shit!' I snapped back. 'You bloody left me, Yuy, remember? To be with the fucking Queen of the World, who'd been obsessed with you since you first met. So, tell me, what the hell was I supposed to think?'

He didn't say anything; just hauled me into his arms and did his level best to scoop out my tonsils with his tongue. Then, just when I was beginning to forget what had brought on this desperate kiss, hell, beginning to forget everything in the whole damn universe including my name, he broke away.

'I love you. I swear, Duo, I've never felt like that about anyone else. Never. I swear, nothing happened with Relena until you'd made it damn clear how you felt about me.'

I nodded, trying to catch my breath. God, I'd forgotten what a full-on kisser he was; lips and tongue and the occasional bite, but one hand was also twisted in my hair, holding me in place, and the other was roaming all over my ass.

'You can't tell me you've never done something you regret, love. We were only together for a couple of months in all, and yes, I should have gone and banged your door down but as far as I knew you were perfectly happy with Wufei and didn't need me back in your life.'

'Shouldn't that have been my choice?' I asked softly and he nodded.

'Of course, but the few times we did talk, you seemed to be coping perfectly well with life. From what Sally and Trowa told me, you were happy. Successful. Far better than when you'd been with me.'

'That's …sort of relative, isn't it?' I shrugged. 'What do you want me to say, 'Ro? I haven't spent every minute of the last six years pining after you. Sure, I did some stupid shit after my accident.' No real need to elaborate on that; he was quite capable of reading. 'But I did move on a bit after that; got an education, a career, dated some decent guys. A few when I was living in Florida - nothing serious - and then I met Mikhail. You know about that.'

'Duo, I think the whole world knows about you two.'

'I guess.' I fiddled with a spare hair tie, wrapping it around my finger. 'It was - I really liked him. But he wanted it to get more serious, and I... wasn't ready for that.'

That much was perfectly true; Mischa had wanted to marry me, but I wasn't sure if Heero wanted to hear that. He'd wanted some sort of commitment, and the problem was that I liked the lack of it. It wasn't that I'd lacked feelings for him; he was a wonderful guy and I'd been flattered by all the attention and by the fact that he was clearly crazy about me. It had helped that he fit very easily into my life; he travelled a lot so we'd only seen each other every few weeks, and I'd been able to go on living with Wufei and Zechs the rest of the time.

'Do you miss him?' Heero asked softly.

I shrugged. Damn, it can be hard to lie when you're asked straight questions like that.

'We still talk, sometimes. He's a friend. Sorry, Heero, but if you and Relena are still close, you'll have to realise I still have my own exes in my life.'

He just nodded, though, even thought he'd probably had to half-swallow his tongue not to make any comment. OK, he'd been with Relena and I knew he'd dated a few guys over the years, but really, it didn't remotely stack up against all the stuff I'd done. If he'd wanted, there was plenty in my past that he could have thrown in my face.

'Sorry,' I muttered. ''Ro, I don't want to keep dragging this stuff up. I just…it's important for us to feel we can have an open discussion and air our respective fears and grievances in a positive and mutually supportive way. That's not actually funny!' It was a verbatim quote from a plaque my therapist had hanging in his waiting room; after years of attending, I knew the damn thing off by heart..

He composed his face hurriedly. 'Of course not. And you're perfectly right. Openness and honesty are very important.'

Ooops. I went slowly red. OK, he'd deserved that little dig, considering I'd dedicated most of the year after the war to hiding things from him.

'Anyway, we split up around a year ago.' I switched the subject back to Mischa, not bothering to elaborate; the press had had a merry field day with the break up, and there'd been all kinds of rumours flying around. Some of them hadn't been very pretty.

'I kind of didn't see anyone for ages after that; then Hilde set me up with this guy, Ben.' The elastic snapped suddenly; you'd think they could be made strong enough to withstand a little pressure. 'We went out a couple of times. It was OK at first; then we had this row one night and that was that.'

Fuck, I actually shivered, thinking about it. Standing outside Steel, listening to his accusations, with a crowd of people watching and enjoying the show. I'd had my first panic attack in months, driving back home, with the words he'd said scratching at my mind.

'What's wrong; you only sleep with guys who pay you?' His mouth twisted into an ugly sneer. 'Or is pretending you don't want it just some little act? You like it rough, don't you? I've seen all those articles about what you've done; you want me to drag you down an alley, it is that it?'

Leon had burst out about then, and probably saved Ben's life for him in the process. I can only take so much abuse, anger management classes and therapy notwithstanding.

'Duo?' Heero; not Ben. Heero sitting beside me; not quite touching me. Shit, I hadn't even noticed I'd sagged down on to the couch. 'What's wrong?'

'Just some stupid stuff.' Fuck, but I wanted to collapse against him; wasn't quite sure if I'd ever be able to get myself together if I let myself go even that much. We had stuff to do. 'We'd better get on with this.'

Thank God, he didn't push it. He'd always had a little bit of a problem keeping up with my mood changes, that sometimes I just need to put things away in a sealed box until I feel like picking the lock. Heero doesn't believe in that; problems should be faced head on and locks exist to be blown away.

'What exactly are we looking for?'

A quick glance around the living room didn't show any convenient envelope on the coffee table marked 'Duo Maxwell. Private and Confidential' in Quat's handwriting. Damn. That would have been so useful.

'Honestly?' I shrugged. 'I have no freaking clue. According to Trowa, the computer system showed that somebody was here for about an hour a couple of days before Quat vanished, and then tried to change the system to cover it up. Rashid only found out by mistake. He was running a routine check this morning and found some anomalies.'

'But it might not have been Quatre who triggered it.'

I shrugged. 'It's possible, I guess, but Tro had set up the most advanced security system you've ever imagined for this place. It was like a little hobby for him, adding new refinements every time they came out here. Officially, Quat, Tro and Rashid are supposed to have the code, but I think some of the other Maguanacs probably have it too; just to do security checks.'

'Wouldn't they have noticed someone arriving here? From what I can see, security on the whole estate is very tight.'

'You know, I never thought of that.' Stupid Duo. 'You're right; all of this place belongs to the Winners and there are regular security patrols, plus they've got all sorts of sensors up at the main house.' Great; another mystery. 'Another thing; all the camera systems at the cottage were disabled for a couple of hours while someone was here. They actually ran a loop of the previous day's footage so the problem wouldn't show up.'

'Very professional,' Heero commented. 'Assuming it was Quatre, what would he have been looking for?'

'God knows. If Quat did come here, he must have had a reason; either to take something or leave some sort of message. He was probably here for less than an hour. I thought we could maybe start with their bedroom and then go through this room. Otherwise, there are three bedrooms upstairs, and the kitchen's through there. You know, we should probably take something out of the freezer to defrost for dinner.'

'Already taken care of,' he sounded just a tad smug about that. 'Since our last dinner date ended rather abruptly, I thought we should try again.'

'This is a date? I thought we were here to work.'

He grinned. 'Can't we mix business with pleasure?'

'Really? Isn't that some sort of blasphemy in your world?'

'Funny,' he remarked dryly. 'For your information, I've learned how to multi-task. Besides, Milliardo - Zechs - said I needed to romance the hell out of you if I wanted to get you back.'

'What? You're taking Zechs as your relationship guidance counsellor now? That's seriously weird.'

'He must be doing something right,' Heero defended himself, a little sheepishly. 'Wufei is obviously happy with him; I - I would like what they have together.'

'Yeah,' I let myself lean against him, let him slide one arm around my waist and pull me close. 'I'd like that too.'

'Can I ask you to do something for me? I want you to tell me what I'm doing wrong, if I make you unhappy. I want you to talk to me.'

'You want me to point out every little thing you do that maybe pisses me off?' I demanded, staring at him. ''Ro, I can't do that.'

'There are... so many?' He breathed despairingly.

'No! No. That wasn't what I meant at all. I just -- don't want to spend all my time criticising you.'

'It's wouldn't be criticising me if you're trying to help me be just what you want.'

Oh dear. Typical Yuy solution to a problem. Mission - become perfect boyfriend for Duo. Mission parameters - obtain guidelines for suitable/desirable behaviour.

'Listen to me, OK? I know where you're coming from, and I know I could probably have been more - open with you, and I will try to be better, but, trust me, snipping at every little thing you happen to do isn't going to work either. Trust me on this one, 'Ro. I was there from the very beginning of the whole Wufei/Zechs thing and I'm not still not entirely sure how they actually ended up together, instead of killing each other off.'

'It was...really that bad?' He asked uncertainly.

I shrugged, realising that even if he and Wufei were back to being buddies, 'Fei probably wouldn't want Heero to know all the little details of his love life. 'Some parts. Wu was ...kind of blown away by the fact that Zechs was pursuing him.' OK, that was the understatement of the century. It had taken hourly pep talks and reassurance from me and Quat and Sally to convince him that the sort of feelings he was starting to have for Zechsy were normal and that the fair, honourable thing for him to do would be at least to give the guy a chance.

'There was this one time, a couple of weeks after they'd started dating, that Zechs sent him this incredible arrangement of orchids. Armageddon nearly broke out; 'Fei was sure that Zechs was sending him sort of signal that he was going to be the, well, girly one in the relationship and he hit the roof.'

'I can imagine,' Heero smiled faintly. 'What happened?'

'I hid the flowers away; Zechs sent him this amazing antique sword; they still have it over their bed actually. Anyway, that's not the point; the thing is, someone told 'Fei when you're with someone, you have to accept that maybe you can change some things about them, but you've got to accept that you can't change everything; that there are some things that you'll just have to live with and you have to decide if you can do that or not.'

'What,' he asked, very hesitantly for him, 'are my things?'

'That's easy,' I said with no hesitation at all. 'You're a possessive, over-protective control freak.'

'Oh! Ah, is that it?'

'Well, they're the main ones.' I gave him a tentative grin. Oddly, considering how this was a pretty heavy conversation, it wasn't too threatening. We were being honest and that was it; I didn't really think he was going to storm off and I wasn't making plans for a quick getaway myself. 'I can probably put up with the fact that you use your laptop as a life support system, and that you think punctuality should be a major world religion.'

'I .. am trying to be less controlling,' he offered, and I had to laugh at his tone.

'OK, I guess I'll have to give you that one, since you did let me abduct you and everything. And sort of disrupt your whole life.' I hesitated. 'The thing is, 'Ro, I've had to cope on my own for the last six years.' Well, maybe not on my own; I'd had the most supportive group of friends in the universe to lean on. 'I can't just have you coming into my life and trying to take it over.'

'Agreed. I will try. But if I do try to be too....overbearing with you, you have to tell me,' his eyes gazed into mine. 'I promise, I will try and I have been practising.'

'I never meant to be possessive, or jealous,' he told me. 'I just - it was never that I didn't trust you, Duo. Just that I couldn't ever see why you'd want to be with me, of all people in the universe. I was sure that one day you'd realise that you could be with someone better. And I would have lost you.'

'But, that is not trusting me,' I said gently, skating over all the insecurities that he'd revealed. 'I told you how much I loved you; you were the person I'd chosen to be with. Why couldn't you trust me enough to believe that?' I swallowed. 'I never lied to you, Heero. Never. And you still couldn't trust me. Do you have any idea how much that used to hurt? I'd told you pretty much everything about my life. All the bad stuff. You knew all that and you still thought I could ever want to be with anyone else. '

He shook his head. 'You never told me a deliberate lie, love. I know that. But you are....extremely talented at..... not lying. And you seemed to be happier with other people, most of the time. I'd see you with Trowa or Quatre or some of your new friends; even people you'd just met at a party. You used to look happy. It was like...everyone else in the universe could give you something that I couldn't. '

'No, it wasn't like that. Never. I just thought if I could pretend hard enough that I was dealing OK with everything, it would sort of make it true. You knew me better than anyone so you could tell it didn't always work, couldn't you?'

'I think so, sometimes. Half the time, I just didn't know,' he burst out. 'I knew you were having problems but you refused to discuss them. You just seemed to want to pretend that everything was fine, that you could just live in your own little world and ignore everything that you didn't like. And a lot of the time it was easier just to go along with that pretence, and tell myself I was doing it solely for your sake, and not because it was easier for me.'

'Just a matched set of bakas, right?' I leaned over and touched one finger to the line between his eyes. 'Both pretending like hell that everything was fine in our castle in the sky. While it was crumbling away under our feet.'

He nodded. 'It's going to be different this time, love. Truly. We can make this work.'

He took a deep breath, not altogether steadily. 'Just for the record, I... will always want to protect you, Duo. That's nonnegotiable. And you are just as bad.'

'I am not!'

He tugged my braid, chuckling. 'Really? So you didn't use to leave death threats for Une any time I was late getting back from a mission and you thought she'd placed me in danger? You never hacked into the Preventers information system to check on my status?'

I blushed. 'It was only a couple of times! Well, maybe I was just a little over protective.'

He laughed outright at that.

'So, um, I guess you'll have to accept that as one of my faults. Along with the running and hiding, right?'

He threw me a faint smile. 'I'm not sure where you'll run to, out here. And the house is too small to offer a hiding place. Seriously, I will always catch you; I will always find you. Provided you want me to. I just wish...'

'What?' Oh, God, if he was hesitating like that, it had to be something bad. Cut my hair off? Stop being friends with the guys?

'I just wish,' he said in a rush, the words chasing each other out of his mouth, 'that you had some remote idea of how amazing you are.'

OK. So not what I'd been imagining. I could feel my cheeks burning and had to look away.

'Right,' I said briskly. 'We really should start doing something. Like I said, I think we should check out their room first.'

'No 'phones,' Heero commented, as we walked upstairs.

I shook my head. 'That was one of Trowa's rules. If anybody needed to contact them urgently, they could leave a message at the main house. They did have a laptop here, but they used it mainly for downloading music and movies and stuff. Actually; that's weird. They used to keep it downstairs and I didn't see it.'

'Maybe that's what Quatre took away with him?' Heero suggested.

'Maybe. OK, it's this door. If you check Tro's dresser, I'll look in Quat's.'

He nodded, stepping into the room behind me. Wow. I liked this new obedient Heero.

'You drew that,' he said instantly, glancing at the sketch hanging above the bed.

'Yep, a couple of years ago.' It was just a simple pen-and-ink drawing of Tro, and I'd always been absurdly flattered that they'd hung it on their bedroom wall. I 'd tried a couple of times to do a matching picture of Quat but it had never worked. Trowa was always so much easier, given that I could cover most of his face with that fall of hair.

'So..find anything?' I asked after he'd closed the first drawer somewhat…abruptly.

'Just some photographs.'

I raised my eyebrows at him. 'Useful photos?'

'You probably don't want to look. I think I'll have issues looking Trowa in the face again for a while. Or any other part of his anatomy.'

Ah. Those sort of photos.

'Oh, yeah. Quat's changed a little bit from the innocent guy he used to be.'

'So I see.' He opened the second drawer, and then removed a pair of handcuffs, raising his eyes. 'Quatre? Really?'

'Uh, yeah.' I couldn't stop grinning at the look on his face. I'd had years to adapt to Quatre's little kinks; he'd come a hell of a long way from the fifteen year old who'd once nearly had a heart attack in a gay porn shop.

'Dear God,' he pulled out a matching blindfold. 'Am I the only person in the universe who isn't into bondage or threesomes or ….that sort of thing?' He swallowed, blushing faintly.

'Oh? You haven't developed a little taste for S and M since we were together then?' I couldn't help teasing. He's never been the easiest person to embarrass, and I had to take advantage. Of course, just the fact that I was joking about this sort of thing was probably enough to throw him off balance. But then, I'd spent the last couple of years sharing living space with a couple who tied each other up on occasion. I still wasn't sure if I'd ever be comfortable enough to let anyone to it to me, but I could at least discuss it.

It was funny, anyway, just watching the different shades of red on his skin.

'It's OK,' I finally took pity on him. 'I'm honestly still strictly vanilla.'

'Thank God for that. I was getting worried that you might want to start whipping me or something.'

I winked at him. 'Only if you don't behave yourself.'

'Trust me,' he assured me fervently. 'I'll behave. Just tell me what to do.'

A couple of frustrating hours later, we still hadn't found anything that might provide some sort of clue. Lots of little memories of staying there; my room still had some clothes stored in the closet and an unused sketch pad, and 'Fei's had a neat little pile of books by the bed.

'No sign of that laptop anywhere,' Heero remarked, coming out of the master bathroom.

'Um, it might be downstairs somewhere if you wouldn't mind looking. I'll go through the attic space.'

That was where I found it, eventually, hidden under a box of WEI annual reports for 201 and several spider colonies.

'Well? Did you find anything interesting?' Heero stuck his head up a couple of hours later. I'd called down to him to let him know I'd found the thing, and he'd offered to poke around downstairs.

'No idea, honestly. There is just so much stuff, and half of it's in Arabic. I don't know; I used the PC translator but they're not that accurate, are they? We should probably get an Arabic speaker to look at them, just in case. I really hate the idea of letting some stranger read all his private stuff, though.'

'Rashid could do it,' Heero suggested, 'and I'm sure he or one of the other Maguanacs has some experience with encryption programmes. Or I could, if you liked.'

'I guess that would be better than strangers.' Well, maybe. Rashid would probably have apoplexy if he read some of the things Quat had written about Trowa. He had some photos stored there too. 'I don't know; it's really hard to know if a lot of it is actually in code or not. Like, there's thousands of words describing a birthday party for one of his nieces, but I don't know if maybe it means something else. You know, 'birthday party' might be a codename for something else?'

'You could forward it to Trowa,' he suggested. 'He might have some idea.'

'Yeah. That's not a bad plan. He keeps saying he's sorry for something he's done, or is going to do, but you know Quat; he could have stepped on a worm or something. Or maybe just had a really bad day.'

'Hn. Incidentally, do you know you've got cobwebs in your hair?' He leaned over and removed one.

I grinned. 'Yeah, I was trying for a new, back-to-nature look. Sexy, huh?'

'Different, certainly. Dinner should be ready in thirty minutes or so, if you wanted to have a quick shower first.'

'I take it that's a hint?' Well, it probably wasn't a bad idea; I felt I had a couple of years' accumulated dust gathering on my skin, plus all my muscles were protesting at spending the last two hours hunched over a computer. Plus if he was sticking with the 'Romance the Hell out of Duo' plan, I at least wanted to be cobweb free.