What up, fam? Sorry you waited [counts] 16 years for an update. What can you do? (I hate this website and all of its formatting BS, you should go find this story on AO3 and read it there instead.)

The worst thing about promises, Heero reflected, was that you had to keep them. Promising the help of his team had seemed like a great idea when Noin was pointing a gun at him, but in the sober light of day he realized he'd gotten a little ahead of himself.

Quatre wasn't answering his phone.

He counted out ten rings and then hung up, his thumb moving to the redial button again, but he hesitated. Should he even try calling a fourth time? Was that excessive?

He decided to split the difference and call Trowa instead.

The sauce was simmering and smelled pretty good. Trowa gave it a stir, tasted it and added some more pepper.

The phone started ringing just as he was filling a pot to boil pasta. Catherine eagerly abandoned her studying at the kitchen table to answer it, so he turned his attention back to the sink. It must have been one of her handful of friends, because she launched quickly into the chatter of small talk; he tuned her out as he fiddled with the burner to boil his water.

The phone receiver cutting into his peripheral vision startled him. "It's your weird friend," she said, pushing it at him. "He hasn't blown himself up or anything lately, so tell him you're proud." Trowa took the phone cautiously and she wandered off to the bathroom.

"Hello?" he said, cradling the phone against his shoulder as he watched the water heat.

"It's Heero."

"I thought she was talking to one of her friends, you two chatted for so long," said Trowa. "When did you learn how to be sociable?"

"Am I supposed to be rude to someone who let me stay in her home for weeks?"

Not a hill Trowa wanted to die on. "So what's up?" he asked, shaking a little salt into the pasta water. "I got your message that you managed to get Duo back and I haven't heard from you since. How did that go, anyway? Was he surprised to see you breathing?"

He heard Heero clear his throat, which seemed odd. "I guess. It was fine. It wasn't a tough retrieval; I still don't understand how they could have gotten the drop on him in the first place. Anyway, I'm calling because I have a job for us."

Heero was trying to redirect him. Trowa considered pushing the topic but the pasta water was up to a simmer and Catherine was back at the table in front of her homework, so he decided to file it away for later. "What's the job?" he asked.

"Long-term protection of an asset our new friends want to get their hands on."

Trowa hummed an acknowledgment, gave the sauce another stir and turned it down a little. "What did Quatre say?"

"I couldn't reach him. Did he change his phone number?"

That brought Trowa up short. "If he did, he didn't tell me."

"I guess I'll keep trying him, then," said Heero. "And I'll contact the others myself in the meantime. But are you in?"

Trowa shot a glance back over his shoulder at his sister. "Where's the job? And how long is 'long-term'?"

"Liechtenstein. I don't know how long but I can't see things being safe enough until we neutralize the threat."

That was in the order of months. Well past Christmas, probably. Maybe even longer, if they had to balance this protection detail business with the assaults on bases and taking out high-ranking personnel. Trowa's water was boiling. He dumped in the pasta one-handed while he considered his answer.

"I can't do it," he said. "I'm sorry. She'll flip."

There was a pause long enough to make Trowa close his eyes before Heero said, "I understand. I should have realized."

"I wish I could," he found himself saying, a little desperately. "I don't want to leave you shorthanded. But I just came back; I can't up and leave again like that. Not after everything she put on the line for this, and making her wait and worry."

"Stop apologizing. You have nothing to apologize for. You have something most of us can't get back. Don't take it for granted." Heero's tone was sharp.

"I—thank you," said Trowa, pinching the bridge of his nose with his free hand. "I do wish I could come."

"Just do me a favour and get Quatre to contact me, if you hear from him."

"I will," said Trowa. Before Heero could hang up, he rushed to add, "If you need help with another short job though, like we've been doing, call me. I mean it."

"You need to worry about getting your life together."

"I'm not going to have any life to get together if we don't deal with this problem," Trowa shot back.

"All right. I promise to contact you if we need you for something." His tone implied that he was going to do his best never to need Trowa for something, but Trowa would take it.

"Take care of yourselves," he said.

"You too." Heero hung up and Trowa let the phone hang from his fingers for a second before moving to put it back on the cradle.

"What did he want?" Catherine asked, not looking up from her textbook. "Are you jetting off somewhere?"

"Nope," said Trowa, testing a piece of pasta and then picking up the pot to drain. "I'm not going anywhere."

Zechs was sitting on their bench. Noin could remember a time when sharing a thing like that with Zechs would have thrilled her. Her entire life felt like it had been turned on its head.

"Lucy," he greeted her. "You look lovely."

Her traitorous heart thumped in her chest and she glared out at the pond as she willed it to calm down; she was wearing a t-shirt and jeans, for Christ's sake. She was starting to need a haircut. There was nothing about her appearance that invited a compliment like that. He was trying to butter her up.

"Thank you," she said anyway. He didn't move his arm off the back of the bench this time when she sat down.

"Civilian life agrees with you," he said, sounding fond.

Noin squinted in the sun. "I guess the food and mattresses are better. It's too hot for jeans and my ankle holster today, though. Let's make this quick, please, so I can get back under some air conditioning."

"We don't have to stay here," he offered. "Come, let's get lunch."

She stopped him from getting up with a stilling hand on his leg (which she immediately snatched away again like he'd burned her). Her first, reflexive response was too harsh and she swallowed it in favour of something friendlier. "Thanks for the offer," she said, "but I can't stay that long. It's hard enough to get away to meet you when I have to be vague about where I'm going, and I wasn't expecting you to come back so soon."

"I'm sorry, Lu," he said, sounding like he meant it, "I didn't realize. These meets put you in a tough position, don't they? But I wasn't expecting to get leave on such short notice, at a time like this, and I felt like I had to take advantage. Who knows when it'll happen again?"

"You have a point," she admitted. Why had the Commander sent Zechs on leave just when everything seemed to be falling apart?

"So, how are things? Any changes?"

"No," she lied, "it's all status quo." She was a little bit relieved that Heero had left the country the night before, to go off and assemble his little team. She wouldn't put it past Zechs to be in the habit of surveilling the estate during his visits and he'd claimed to have seen all of these kids' faces.

"What about that gardener you hired? How's he working out?"

"He didn't last," she said. "There was an illness in his family; he went back to Austria." She paused. "I guess we'll have to hire another one."

"Ah, that's a shame," said Zechs. He hesitated. "I wouldn't wish to impugn your ability to run a background check," he said carefully, as though she might bite, "but can I help with the next one?"

She wasn't surprised but kept up her act by giving him a nonplussed look.

"If you can just allow me this one act of overprotective paranoia," he said.

In the spirit of fairness, she had managed to hire an assassin on the first attempt, but Heero's cover had been meticulously created. She'd never seen a fake identity so convincing. And although she didn't admit it to others, she would to herself: she was rightly the highest-scoring student in Academy history. She knew how to run a background check at least as well as Zechs did, and she had been fooled. There was only one way Zechs could guarantee a safe hire if the enemy had resources like Heero at their disposal, and if Noin was going to permit some Taurus-trained sergeant to come in and clip the rosebushes then she should have just shot Heero in the head when she'd had the chance.

Besides, she could probably just get Heero to vet people. He probably knew how to catch someone with a cover as good as his own.

"You didn't want to get involved in Relena's life," Noin told him. "That's the only reason I'm here in the first place. You said you trusted me."

He gave her a helpless look.

"So trust me," she finished, ruthless.

Zechs looked away for a while. Noin watched the way his arms crossed, muscles flexing with the tight way he held himself, the tic in his jaw as he fought with himself.

She abruptly decided she'd had enough of waiting around and looking for Zechs' approval. She stood up and dusted off the back of her jeans. "All right, let me spell it out for you. If I'm going to put my career and my life on hold to babysit your fucking sister and play surrogate-sibling, Zechs Merquise, then I am doing it conditionally. You don't get to manipulate me like a puppeteer. Take it or leave it."

He looked like she'd kicked him. "Noin, I—"

"What am I even doing here, talking to you about this?" she asked the air. "I got this job all by myself! You don't even pay me to do it. You're dead."

She did not expect him to swoop in and bear-hug her. She didn't know what to do with her arms.

"You're right," he said into her shoulder. "I'm sorry. You've never given me a reason to question your loyalty."

His arms tightened around her middle and she awkwardly patted his back.

"I trust you," he said.

Well, that made one of them.

It felt good to clean, once he got going. Duo didn't know why he didn't do it more often. Although maybe it was because his vacuum was a piece of shit.

He froze suddenly. He'd heard something. Underneath the jet-engine roar of the vacuum, the musical rattle of crumbs being sucked up out of the rug and the blare of the TV he'd left tuned to a Judge Judy rerun, there had been another noise. He shut the vacuum off.

The plaintiff on the TV was crying but not loudly enough to drown it out again: someone was knocking on his door. He hadn't ordered pizza and Hilde had a key now, so that left either a Jehovah's Witness who'd somehow gotten into the building, or the old lady down the hall who was half-blind with cataracts and kept receiving Duo's mail by mistake (and then opening it).

Whoever it was, they had a cop-knock.

Duo decided not to mute Judge Judy before answering it, hoping he could make it seem more like he'd been horribly interrupted. The tight smile he had ready for whoever was cop-knocking (he had the fleeting thought that it could actually be the cops) fell off his face when he opened the door.

It was Heero.

Heero had a good head of annoyance built up and was starting to debate the merits of picking the lock or kicking in the door by the time Duo shut off his vacuum cleaner and finally heard him knocking. Feeling annoyed was better than the nervousness he'd been feeling all the way here. He knew how to deal with feeling annoyed by Duo.

It was too bad that the annoyance fled him the instant the door opened and Duo's face melted into shock at the sight of him. Then he was left with only the nerves. And an intrusive memory of the last time he'd seen that look on Duo's face (bruised, exhausted, soaked to the bone, huddled in a dark OZ cell and daring Heero to shoot him). Right behind that was another memory, the feeling of Duo's skin warming under his hands after he'd dragged his shirt halfway off. Heero drew in a long, steady breath through his nose and sternly reminded himself why he was here.

Duo, for his part, was apparently moving past the shock. "What are you doing here?" he demanded.

"I don't have your phone number," Heero said honestly.

"What?"

"I needed to get in contact with you but I don't have your phone number," he repeated.

"So you just... came all the way to New York and knocked on my door instead?"

"Yes," he said. The TV was on; he wondered if Hilde was in there. "Can I come in? And not discuss this in the hallway?"

Duo jolted a little but stepped back out of the doorway to let him inside. He briefly leaned into Heero's space to shut the door again and in that instant, Heero could smell... a Duo-smell, one of comfort and care that hadn't been on him in that Russian hotel room. Some combination of deodorant, shampoo, dryer sheets, skin. He liked it. He had to keep himself from following it when Duo stepped away from him. It was disconcerting. He tried to distract himself by looking around at Duo's shabby, comfortable apartment: the scratched countertops, the bagged-up garbage waiting near the front door, the vacuum left standing in the living room and the coffee table aligned at a weird angle to the couch because Duo had shoved it out of the way to clean. Hilde wasn't here. His gaze kept travelling back to Duo's mouth. Duo was gnawing on his lip and watching Heero like a skittish animal looking for a clue on where to run.

He had come here for a reason, he remembered.

"I have a job for us," he said.

The spell was broken instantly; Duo rubbed a hand over his eyes and walked into the living room. Heero kicked off his shoes and followed, sitting on one end of the couch as Duo took the other and grabbed the remote to turn the TV volume down.

"What's the job?" asked Duo.

"Relena Darlian."

He could see he had all of Duo's attention now.

"She's actually the princess-in-exile of Liechtenstein," he went on. "Royal family was a bunch of famous pacifists. My intel suggests OZ wants to get their hands on her pretty badly."

"Like, to kill her?" Duo asked. He seemed skeptical. Heero watched as the idea caught him. "No," he answered his own question, "not to kill her. It's a symbolic kinda thing. Endorsement. Maybe install her as a figurehead to rubber-stamp their whole operation."

He'd taken it even further than Heero had, and his assessment made a chilling amount of sense. The trip here had been worth it; if he couldn't have access to Quatre's brain on this, Duo's was almost as good.

Duo was studying him now. "If you were gonna kill her to keep her out of their hands, you'd just do it. You want help because you're trying to keep her alive and away from them. From Kushrenada."

"Free room and board," Heero ventured. "The palace is very... big."

Duo's attention drifted to the TV and he chewed his thumbnail. Heero waited.

"Yeah, fine," he said eventually. "The city's been too fucking hot for August, anyway."

"I wouldn't expect to be back before next spring," Heero cautioned.

"No shit; me neither," said Duo. He waved a hand. "It's fine. I'm not leaving much behind here."

Heero could believe it. Comfortable or not, compared to Trowa and Catherine's place, this apartment looked more like a safehouse than a home. "What about Hilde?"

"She has her own place. Does her own thing."

His confusion must have shown on his face because Duo added, "She moved into a place downstairs after... Quatre's."

Heero was about to say something awkward like, "Oh," but Duo changed the subject and spared him.

"Speaking of Quatre, where is he in all this? He has my number. You must have his. Long-distance would have been cheaper than airfare."

"He's unreachable."

Duo sat up a little straighter. "Unreachable?"

"I haven't gotten him to pick up his phone in five days."

"What about Trowa?"

"Trowa hasn't heard anything. He knows how to reach me if he hears from Quatre."

"Trowa will fix it," said Duo confidently, sitting back again.

Heero wasn't so sure, but he kept that to himself.

The TV had switched from some fake courtroom show to Jeopardy, which Heero had been introduced to in Italy. It made more sense in English.

"So," said Duo, breaking the silence, "give me a week to get my shit in order and tell me where I'm going, and you can expect me there. In Liechtenstein." He said it in a way that emphasized how stupid the name sounded and Heero's lips twitched.

"Good," he said, quietly and firmly. It was settled, and they were agreed. They looked at each other at the same moment; when their eyes met, the atmosphere seemed to change. Heero's skin tingled and the air suddenly felt hot, still and charged, like an afternoon building to a summer storm. Like he was about to get struck by lightning. He couldn't handle this any longer.

"I need to apologize," he said before he could second-guess himself.

Duo blinked and some of the charged feeling dissipated. "For what?"

"Russia."

Duo surged to his feet and made a beeline for the kitchen; Heero watched him over the island that separated the living room as he opened the fridge, ducked to grab something and slammed it shut again, turning around with a can in his hand. He popped the tab, all his movements jerky and frenetic, and as he took a swig from it Heero realized that he was just keeping his hands busy. "What about Russia?" Duo asked after another swig from the can. "Threatening to shoot me? Being all cavalier about coming back from the dead? Ditching me in that hotel?"

Heero stood up cautiously but thought better of approaching him. "Those things, too, yeah," he conceded. "But primarily I'm sorry about kissing you."

Duo gave him an odd look but said nothing.

Heero licked his lips, feeling nervous again, and made himself keep talking. "You were... angry. At me. And beat-up, and vulnerable, and I still don't know what they did to you while they had you there, but you needed to be left alone to rest and recover, and instead I... took advantage of you. And that was bad," he finished lamely. He'd drifted about half the distance to the kitchen, he realized. The funny look hadn't left Duo's face.

Duo set the can—soda, Heero noticed absently—down on the counter and crossed his arms. He tilted his head at Heero, still wearing the look. "Why did you do it?"

There was no reason not to keep being honest, at this point. Duo would probably still come to help Relena regardless of what happened next. "You said you loved me. Sort of."

"And that made you suddenly want to kiss me?"

"Yes."

"And now?"

Heero had reached the kitchen island by now, bracing his hand lightly on the edge of the counter. "Still do," he admitted.

"So you're not really sorry you kissed me, then," said Duo. He came around the end of the counter and stopped directly in front of Heero. They were almost the same height. Heero sensed danger but Duo had just thrown out a challenge, so he was going to meet it.

"I guess what I'm sorry for is choosing that moment to do it," he said, steeling himself for whatever was going to come next.

Duo leaned in, nose to nose, looking ready to pick a fight. "Well, if you want to make better choices, now's your fucking chance."

Heero's heart skipped a beat.

Duo's mouth tasted fleetingly like the soda he'd been drinking; Heero chased the taste but it was gone, leaving just Duo in its wake. His nose was filled with that deodorant-and-clean-clothes smell and he lost himself in it. They tripped over the vacuum cleaner, knocking it over and dancing around it, and barely avoided the coffee table. Duo threw him down on the couch, following him down with a knee wedged between his thighs; Heero landed on something with an edge that dug into his back and he arched up, pressing into Duo's solid, warm chest, to fish the TV remote out from underneath him and toss it on the floor. Duo couldn't seem to make up his mind between mauling Heero's mouth or the soft underside of his jaw, so Heero set himself to finding the hem of Duo's t-shirt and dragging it up over his head. He had to pull it away at arm's length to get Duo's braid out of the neck hole, and then it went to join the remote somewhere on the floor.

Duo's tongue went back to exploring his mouth some more, which he enthusiastically allowed, before breaking away again to trail down his neck. His own shirt was caught under his back, pressed down into the cushions as he was, but Duo shoved the front as far up his ribs as it would go and started kissing his way down Heero's stomach, nipping occasionally and making his breath catch in his throat. Heero arched up into it and Duo immediately shoved his shirt farther up until it bunched up under his armpits. He found his way to Heero's mouth again and slid his hands up and down Heero's bared sides as they kissed, ghosting over his ribs and gripping lightly at his waist, down to his bony hips and curving around to press light fingertips into the sensitive small of his back.

Heero slid a little further down the couch under Duo, improving the angle of the kiss, and his crotch bumped up against the leg Duo had braced between his. He ground against Duo's leg instinctively, groaning a little at the feel of his hard, muscular thigh. Duo broke the kiss to lean up a little and watched Heero move against him again, on a quest for friction; his braid slipped forward over his shoulder when he moved. The tip of it just barely grazed the kiss-reddened, over-sensitized skin of Heero's stomach, a whisper-touch, and Heero bit back what would have been an embarrassingly loud moan at the sensation.

Duo leaned in, bracing his weight on his hands and rubbing his thigh teasingly up against Heero's crotch again, and completely bypassed his lips to whisper in his ear, "Apology accepted."

Heero laughed but it quickly turned into a breathless gasp. He was positive he'd never felt happier than this.

Nadia tried to take Quatre home when he was finally discharged, but he bullied her into going to the graveyard instead. She didn't say a word as she led him through the rows of headstones to two new graves, cordoned off until the masonry to edge them was done and marked by wreaths until the headstones were carved. The dirt was still a little darker where it was piled on top of Father's and Iria's graves, not quite dried out yet. Nadia stood with him, a few feet apart but together, staring in silence at the lumps of earth that used to be their family.

The sun had moved in the sky by the time Quatre roused himself. Nadia's makeup had run in little black tracks down her cheeks. They stared at each other for a moment, two near-strangers.

"I guess you're the head of the family now, little brother," she said, her voice full of irony. "Get well; we need your strength to fill the holes where theirs used to be."

Quatre cast one more reluctant glance over his shoulder at the graves. He shifted his arm in the sling, feeling sweat itch inside his cast. It was hot outside.

"You can probably start coming to work soon," she continued. "Get started learning the ropes."

But Quatre shook his head, squinting against the beating sun as he finally unhooked his sunglasses from his shirt collar and put them on one-handed. "I'm not a businessperson. You are. You can all handle the company just fine without me, like you always have, with or without this takeover threat. That's not my strength."

"What is your strength, then?" she asked, humouring him.

"I'm going to find the dogs who did this," he said, "and I'm going to put them down. Each and every one of them."

Neither of them said another word the rest of the way home.