Disclaimer: I don't own a thing (as sad as that realization is), except for the words I've written.

Warnings: Rated for adult language (Duo's got quite a surly mouth and mind), some violence, and mild adult themes.

A/N: Here's the next installment, it's a slight bit shorter than normal, but the end is well worth it, in my opinion. Please leave a review and let me know what you think thus far, if you're so inclined. Thank you as always! Enjoy.

Maxwell

Chapter 8: I'll Be Damned If I Don't Wanna Kiss You

Shoulda Known - Atmosphere

There was a time, somewhere in between his abandonment of Heero, uncharacteristically weak in a hospital bed, and when Preventer visits to his always circulating address became fairly regular, when he and Wufei had reconciled a relationship that had seemed somewhat hostile during the war.

Were they together? Not by any fucking means. It was purely casual and angry and passionate, but still just a fling. Nothing in comparison to Duo's former relationship with a different pilot.

To this day he still wasn't even sure that the Chinese man swung that way and maybe their physical relations had just been a way to let off steam, a hook up, a good fucking lay. And in the end it didn't really matter because as quickly and surprisingly as it had started, it had abruptly ended.

They hadn't spoken of it ever again, all water under the bridge, and all that shit...until now.

The fire engine had come and gone, leaving a barren and soot covered frame of what once was Heero's car behind in the hotel parking lot. It was taped off with a few Preventers milling about, but Captain Chang had all but bit their heads off when they'd come asking too many questions. Duo figured he had yet to divulge to true gravity of the case he'd been recently entrusted with. Shit, Une probably still didn't even know Heero was alive.

Four men sat in the small living room of their hotel suite, two concerned but obliviously unaware, one staring emotionlessly at his computer screen as if it somehow comforted him, and the last chewing on a thumbnail nervously, mulling over just how to approach the situation, the photograph still burned into his memory. No pun intended.

Duo wondered how and why the fuck someone had so many compromising images of him. Did that realization make him a whore? Hell, at this point it didn't really make much of a difference. The emotion he felt most vividly was of uncomfortable humiliation, like his entire life was being watched through a magnifying glass he'd been unaware of all this time.

After a few more moments of thick silence the fifth man joined his companions, a stack of photographs in his hand. Wufei gave Duo a hard look when he entered the suite. The image of the braided man's bare chest was resting paralyzingly on top of the stack he carried. Of course it was, fuckin' Wufei had to stir the fuckin' pot like always.

The Preventer dropped the pile of photographs on the living room's coffee table, unceremoniously letting them sit there, almost as if to taunt the four men now staring pointedly down at them. Some were more intact than others, unluckily for Duo, the top image of his naked body was very much complete, aside from some charred edges.

"Time bomb planted in the engine," Wufei stated rather blandly, his eyes unable to totally leave the chiseled features of Duo's thin upper body in the photograph.

"A warning. Not intended to kill any of us." Heero finally lifted his eyes and spoke in a knowing way. All four other men nodded their heads in solemn understanding.

Shit, it made sense. They attacked a possible messenger or informant, Preventer or not. Someone was definitely fucking messing with them now, and with each passing second it seemed to be getting more and more personal. A sour taste formed on Duo's tongue.

Slowly, almost painfully slowly, Heero's fingers reached out and grabbed the pile's top photograph. He held it up and studied it and Duo felt his stomach clenching, but it was so empty that he barely even felt nauseous. He watched Heero's eyes, not a single emotion flashing across their blue surface. Fucking stoic son of a bitch.

Wufei stared for a moment as well, but spoke before the braided man could formulate any appropriate words. "Obviously another ruse to pit us against each other." The word 'obviously' was used quite harshly and Duo wondered, almost wide eyed, why Wufei was lying for him.

He may never tell a lie, but hell, that didn't mean people he'd slept with couldn't.

Duo realized that Heero must have been feeling the same emotions he had felt when he'd been delivered the misleading photograph of Heero and Trowa together, though he was doing a much more efficient job of keeping them in check.

Heero pursed his lips, said nothing, nodded his head affirmatively once, and set the photograph down. The arms wrapped around Duo's torso were only connected to a shadowy face, but it wasn't hard to try and guess who it belonged to, especially considering the amount of guilt pouring out of Duo's quite readable indigo eyes. There was no fooling the Perfect Solider.

Both Quatre and Trowa's eyes lifted to meet Duo's, one pair filled with concern and the other with suspicion. He could feel the fucking dry heaves attacking his body again.

As if in some act of mercy, maybe because the tension was becoming unbearably thick, or else he felt some sort of odd remorse for his comrade, Trowa finally spoke, changing the subject. "Any news on our Preventer tail?" He directed the question towards Wufei, his eyes intense as if to say 'you owe me.'

"Sean Davis joined Preventer little over two months ago. He's just a rookie." And just like that it was back to business, Wufei's fucking Preventer protocol voice kicking into action.

"Would he have a grudge against any of us?" Quatre wondered, his voice soft due to the fact that he hadn't spoken once since re-entering the hotel suite.

Duo licked his lips nervously, and then decided to match Wufei's tone with one of his own much less formal 'back to business' voices. "Shit, anyone in the colonies, or Earth for that matter, probably has a grudge against us for one thing or another. Things got pretty fucking gray during the war; we weren't always the good guys."

"We were never the good guys or the bad guys, we were just fucking kids." Heero's voice was harsher than they expected, making Duo wonder if he was channeling anger that may have been welling up inside of him towards a more relevant enemy.

Wufei, ignoring the outburst, explained, "Davis had family in the colonies during the war, but there's no current record of them presently. Could be unaccounted for or-"

"Could be dead." Duo finished the thought. "Shit, there were so many faceless and unaccounted deaths during the war."

The Chinese man nodded with a sigh. "Things are still just as gray as they were during the war. Black and white isn't remotely possible, even nowadays."

"Still, it doesn't make sense. Sean Davis couldn't be the only one involved in this," Quatre said, his brows furrowing over clear aquamarine eyes. "He was a middle man, a hired hand for surveillance, not the master mind behind everything. I thought we already covered that?"

There was a grim silence before finally Heero spoke, low and serious. "He certainly wasn't alone in this, that much is clear. As for everything else-"

"Fuckin' clear as mud." Duo had apparently developed a nasty habit of finishing people's sentences. Though at this point, he mainly seemed to just be filling in the blank of what his comrades were thinking but wouldn't vocalize. Hell, he'd always been the verbose one hadn't he?

"So what of Preventer's involvement?" Trowa wondered, his eyes floating to Wufei.

The man shrugged. "Don't look at me. I just work for them." Duo had to choke back a laugh at the man's sardonic quip.

"Sean Davis is a Preventer and he's also following us. That doesn't mean those two things are related," Quatre suggested, though rather meagerly as he knew it was scraping the bottom of the bowl without the others telling him so. But no one else had any better ideas.

Wufei unfolded the stiff arms that were at his chest. "I'm going to take the list of subjects to the Sanc Preventer office, see if I can get some addresses. We have to start somewhere." He spoke about Heero's list of M.R. initials as though they were suspects waiting to be brutally interrogated.

Quatre's gaze wondered to Duo and gave him a small, but reassuring smile, before standing and facing the Preventer. "We'll go with you," he said, gesturing to Trowa.

Duo thought that Quatre was pretty damn sly in making themselves scarce so he and Heero would be alone, yet again. But at the same time the man did always seem to know what he was thinking, feeling, or needed. Fuckin' empath or some shit.

Wufei nodded, rather begrudgingly Duo noticed, and turned on his heel towards the double bedroom they'd been sharing. The braided man was instantly at his heels. "Can I talk to you?" His voice was anything but casual and calm like he wanted it to be.

He heard a characteristic grunt of disapproval come from Heero, but he chose to ignore it, following the other man into his bedroom. When they were alone and the door was closed, but not completely shut as to attract anymore unwanted assumptions, Wufei set him with a dark glare.

"What do you want now?" His tone was icy and it made Duo's stomach cringe yet again.

"C'mon 'Fei. I just want to talk about that picture-"

Wufei held up his palm. "There is nothing to talk about. I assured Heero of it's purpose in the way of mental and emotional warfare. That's what you want, isn't it?"

Duo bit his lower lip, trying hard to fight back any sarcastic or angry words that might float past his nearly nonexistent filter. He took a deep breath in through his nose and then let it out through his mouth with a huffed sigh. "Yes, but-"

"Look, Maxwell, I'm not going to keep covering for you. Eventually you're just going to have to face facts-"

Now Duo couldn't hold back the emotions that had been bottling up inside. "Facts? We were never together. Not like me and Heero and you fucking know that, 'Fei. Don't make this into anything more than it was." He regretted the words immediately as they left his mouth, but being the fucking impulsive man he was there was nothing he could do about it.

Wufei stared at him, the faintest hint of pain in his dark eyes, but blinked once and it was gone. "Good. Then we have an understanding." He picked up his Preventer jacket from his bed and slung it across his shoulders. "If you'll excuse me." He pushed past Duo and walked out of the bedroom, leaving his braided companion in a state of utter speechlessness. Which, for Duo, was saying a fucking lot.

The tension in the air after the three men left the hotel suite was so heavy Duo could have sworn he could feel it closing in on him, strangling the breath from his lungs. Fucking emotions and shit, that was all he needed right now.

Duo sat on the couch and watched as Heero's eyes scanned the day's newspaper, his dark, blue eyes moving quickly across the page from left to right in such a rapid motion that it seemed almost improbable that the man was even actually reading the words. He sat in his chair with legs crossed in a lax position so unfamiliar, yet so ordinary that it was incredibly attractive. For some odd reason, in that moment, Duo wanted nothing more than to fling himself at Heero, lips first.

He sighed and placed his chin in the palm of his hand. Things were damn boring without the others there and without the possibility of fucking. Though he certainly didn't miss the awkward drama from earlier.

At the sound, Heero's gaze flicked upwards and his eyes met Duo's sharply. "Alright?"

Duo, not expecting the man to speak, licked his lips. "Fine. Bored as hell, but whatcha gonna do? More than half the team's gone, can't really do any work just the two of us." He was fucking babbling now and he knew it, but shit, somehow Heero was making him uncharacteristically nervous and unsure of himself. Hell, he hadn't felt these kinds of butterflies in years.

Heero eyed him warily, set down his newspaper, and uncrossed his legs. "We could finish our conversation from earlier."

Shit, Duo certainly didn't want to do that. Of course, he also didn't really want to chat about the photograph still staring up at them from the coffee table of he and the shadowy figure of Wufei. There was no fucking way for him to win this time around.

Anxiously Duo brought a hand up to swipe at the shaven part of his head and travel down to the back of his skull, his triceps stretching satisfyingly. "I don't know how much catching up we really need to do, Heero."

There were those eyes, those adorable fucking confused blue eyes. "Catching up? We've barely spoken, I don't think we can call any of what we've said to each other catching up."

Shit, why did Heero have to suddenly be so damn talkative? It was gonna give Duo a panic attack. He was used to talking at Heero, usually about random shit mind you, not talking with him.

The man didn't wait for a response. "Why did you leave?"

"Goddammit we've already been through this-"

"Fine then. Why did you leave and then start sleeping with Chang?"

The question was so forward and abrupt that Duo sputtered, his lower lip hanging slightly as he tried desperately to figure out how to send words from his brain to his mouth. "Heero," his eyes shot to the photograph between them. "It was fucking nothing. Like Wufei said, a ruse."

Heero stared hard, his eyes burning. The fuck was going on? Duo was internally screaming at himself. Did Heero really care that much, even after all these years? Shit, Duo was supposed to be the one with all the clever answers and one liners, not the one trying to dig his way out of his own grave.

Still Heero said nothing. Duo had a bad fucking feeling about this.

As the other man stood and took the several steps it took to get from the chair to the couch, Duo's entire body tensed, wondering if his fist would go for the jaw or stomach first. He clenched his eyes tight, realizing he may as well get it over with, at least maybe Heero would be able to let some of his aggression out before the other three returned.

But the dreaded hit never came.

Instead a pair of familiarly sculpted lips brushed against his own, kissing lightly once, and then a bit more forcefully a second time before pulling back.

Duo's eyes flashed open and he gasped out the breath he had been holding in his lungs. An impulsive shiver ran through his entire body, a feeling he hadn't experienced in a long time. "Fuck."

He stared into Heero's features and watched as the man's thick eyebrows shot up at his whispered word as if to say 'yeah, you wanna?'

Immediately Duo's hands flew to the collar of Heero's shirt and pulled him in for another kiss, this one much more passionate and prolonged. The heat of their mouths together, pulsing against one another, sparked another tremor, this time through both of their bodies.

Sure as fuck did he wanna.