Title: Koji ma Oshi
author: Sol 1056
rating: NC-17 for sex, violence, and dirty mouths
warning: BDSM, psychological issues, post-post-EW
pairings: 2x1, 3x5x3, 4xR
Let's see. Two fully licensed bars. Two floors. Capacity 375. Ground floor contains bar. Seating area. Dance floor. Go-go cage--I paused for a moment to ponder that obscure title--and a small stage for live performances. I wasn't sure whether that meant bands but the chick in the corset on the webpage was looking a little extreme--a waist that small is just not normal. I ignored the picture and kept reading; after all, as long as the live performance didn't consist of staring at her deformed body, I didn't give a damn. I was looking for some reason Heero would be there.
Upper floor. Dungeon. On the upper floor? I read my classics--no thanks to G, that sadistic bastard--and I could've sworn dungeons were in the basement. I grunted in skepticism and kept reading.
Gothic throne. Wheel. Suspension. Stocks. Ceiling cage bed. I was nodding my way through the list like this was all quite hum-drum and nothing jumped out screaming, I'm a great place for an undercover investigation! And then I backed up and reread. Ceiling cage bed? What the fuck is that? I scrolled up and down, but there weren't any pictures. Great design, morons. What about those of us who are used to assuming beds go on floors, not ceilings? But no, no translation glossary anywhere--it's lingo for the in-crowd.
I like lingo. I hate it when I don't know what it means.
Second bar. Cloakroom. Right. So at least I can check my coat before I use the ceiling cage bed and the gothic throne that I'm guessing is not a fancy term for the piss-room. Themed toilets--no, that would be the head, not the throne. Themed. In what? Cows? Clowns? Who 'themes' a bathroom--other than a certain someone named Darlian--but I don't know if seashells and fish for a kid's bathroom really counts. I rolled my eyes and continued down the club's list of selling points.
Castle décor. Faux-stone walls. Fleur-de-lis--okay, that's some kind of flower, and who the fuck cares if the walls are real or fake? I scratched my head and started digging into the hotel's mini-bar. I was obviously going to need it.
"Drinks are reasonably priced," I read out loud from the webpage. I hoisted my two-ounce plastic bottle of cheap scotch, and said, "I'll drink to that. Themed bathrooms, two bars, fake walls, and a crapload of stuff that sounds fucked to all hell but the drinks are reasonably priced. Space bless."
Then it dawned on me. Maybe Heero's working on some other undercover investigation. Bastard. Two-timing me! He signed up to assist in surveillance and tracking, not spend only a few hours here and there when it pleased him. I scrubbed at my face and threw the plastic bottle over my shoulder, then grabbed for the hotel's vid-phone.
I was more than a bit shocked when Quatre answered his secure line on the second ring. I'd figured I'd leave a message, and it took me a second to regroup.
"Duo!" He looked exhausted, and his hair was messy, but he smiled. Then he looked at the time, and grimaced.
I chuckled; I knew that look. "Just realize it's almost midnight?"
"Shit, yeah," Quatre muttered, and began sorting papers on his desk. Halting suddenly, he looked up, puzzled. "Wait... why are you calling this late?"
"I was expecting your message system," I told him. "I'm in the same city, so it's not like I'm paying the equivalent of the average ransom on your first-born just to call ya."
"Hah." Quatre ran a hand through his hair, pulling bangs out of the way to reveal blue-green eyes that were remarkably sharp for someone who looked so wiped. "Trowa told me they took you to dinner last night. Micheala's is a nice place."
"Uh, yeah." I scratched the tip of my nose. "That's not quite why I was calling you."
"Settling in okay? Trowa said you seemed--"
I huffed. "Look, do you know anything about what Heero's been up to?"
"Hunh?"
"Shit, you're toast." I sighed and waved a hand at him. "I'll call you in the morning. Don't you have a gorgeous wife you should be molesting?"
Quatre turned beet red, his usual response, and it'd always struck me as hysterical. I snorted, and suddenly Relena appeared in the view-screen, behind Quatre. She leaned forward, wrapping her arms around his neck, and smiled sleepily at me.
"What, this gorgeous wife?" Relena rolled her eyes. "The one who can hear the phone ringing even once, from down the hall?" She kissed Quatre on the cheek, and he leaned into the affection. "Honey, it's past midnight," she whispered.
"I know," he said, wryly. He gave me a mock-sullen look. "And she's got eyes in the back of her head, too."
"Comes with pregnancy," Relena replied, not missing a beat for all that she looked ready to fall asleep on her feet. "Duo, next time, call when I'm more awake so we can visit."
"Sure thing, gorgeous," I chirped, and she waved before kissing Quatre one quick time and wandering back to bed. I turned hard eyes on Quatre. "I don't want her to know what I'm asking, okay? Just tell me what Heero's been up to."
"I don't know all the details," Quatre said.
"You're hedging."
"Fine." He made a face. "Let me rephrase. I'm not supposed to know all the details."
"Which means you heard it from Trowa. Perfect. Spill, Quatre." I leaned into the view-screen's camera, and Quatre glared at me. I bared my teeth, and he groaned and leaned back. "Has he been working with Preventers all this time?"
"He's been working missions during the summers, to pay for school. Short-term, often partnering with Wufei in high-level clearance search-and-destroy." Quatre shook his head. "He asked to be assigned to your case, when Wufei mentioned it to him."
"He graduated a year ago. He's been working cases for Preventers since then?"
"I'm not sure. I think mostly moonlighting. He does have a job with some major think-tank in Bremen. Something to do with the application of theoretical physics to improve colony design."
Of course. Over-achiever. Now all I had to do was figure out how to phrase it. "Okay. Any of these moonlighting investigations... any chance they deal with the club scene?"
"You mean major gun smuggling operations making sales in the midst of a dance floor?" Quatre's tone was dry. "I doubt it. What's going on, Duo? Trowa said you were--"
"Yeah, nothing much." I didn't want to hear what Trowa said. He's a cool guy, but he's... well, he's Trowa, and that should pretty much say it all right there. "You head onto bed, and I'll look you guys up when I'm settled in."
"Okay."
He didn't sound convinced, and he was looking at me a bit too closely, but he didn't seem upset or annoyed. And if there was anything I knew, it was that Quatre and Heero had always had some kind of bizarre connection. If asking about Heero hadn't made Quatre tense up or get that funny painful-ill look on his face, then Heero was all right, mostly. I had to concentrate to push away the irritation that immediately popped up, thinking about that way those two had of sensing each other, and dug around in my repertoire of expressions. Nothing too extreme, just an exhausted smile. I wasn't going to go into it, and he wasn't up to it. Besides, it's not wise to piss off Relena. The woman's got excellent aim.
"Good night, man," I said, and hit the button. I didn't want to hear him say it back to me, because it wasn't a good night. It hadn't been a good day, a good week, a good month, or a good fuckin' year.
I rolled over on my back and stared at the bland hotel ceiling, remembering Hilde's joke about sex so boring your only thought the whole time is: beige, I think I'll paint the ceiling beige.
Chicks in black leather, and dungeons on the second floor. If Heero specialized in search-and-destroy--and ten years of moonlighting in that area meant he was pretty much locked into that specialty--then it didn't make sense for him to do surveillance on my case. I might not be the most versed on Preventers' internal methods but I knew that much. I keep my ears open, and I know how things are run.
Given that bit from Quatre, it really didn't make sense for Heero to be undercover--so why was he acting like he was? I knew that look, that way of walking, from when he'd had to pretend during the first Eve War. He'd sucked at undercover back then, too--so intense, so guarded--and I knew that expression. I saw it everyday, when we left our dorm room. Not like I'd given him shit about it, since I had my own psych-up moments before stepping outside. It's just mine didn't usually involve looking like I was coming up with sixteen ways to dismantle the nearest large object.
Black leather... I yawned and stretched; jet lag was still clinging to me, and it'd been years since I'd been dirtside. My body was feeling the effects of the harsher gravity. Even a quarter-G difference does pull you down, especially if you're exhausted and trying to figure out why a doctorate in some high-falutin' mathematics-physics-engineering crap is wearing leather pants and no shirt.
I really, really hoped it was for some investigation. I couldn't bear to think of Heero hanging out at a club like that... why? What the fuck would he get out of it--hell, what were the chances he'd even talk to anyone? I had to laugh. Snowball's chance in hell, that's what. Heero? Socialize? Hah.
Rolling back onto my stomach, I clicked on a few of the webpage's links, and my gut tightened with every line I read. Respect different kinks. Okay. Whatever. Don't touch something that doesn't belong to you. That made sense--the only time someone else touches my knives, it's because it's against their throat and they're begging for mercy. Ask people how they'd like to be addressed. I stared at that heading, then scanned the paragraph underneath. One word jumped out: Master.
"Oh, shit," I moaned, and rolled over several times until I was face-down across all three pillows. My feet landed on the bedside table, knocking off the alarm clock, but I didn't care. I would've thrown it, if it had been within reach.
That whole master-mistress stuff is just crap. Heero had to be on some sort of investigation. Why the hell would he want to mess around with people like that? That whole scene is just fucked in the head. Not normal, and definitely not healthy, and with our histories, not exactly a turn-on, either.
I know. I met a girl once--it was such a relief to find someone who didn't simper or make cow-eyes at me or seem so intimidated she couldn't do more than stutter. We mostly got together to fuck, and she was damn aggressive in bed. Didn't bother me. Hey, it's flattering the first few times someone assumes that war hero means 'great in the sack' but after the third lover who thinks that means I gotta do all the work? Forget that. She did plenty of the work--and it was awesome.
So she was aggressive, and talkative. That was cool. And then we go out in public--yes, rare but I did go to a club if dragged--and I would've followed her to L2's Lower Side with the way she was dressed when I picked her up: black leather pants and a metal-studded corset. I was enjoying my plans of how soon we'd leave so I could get her out of that stuff, but before I even had a chance to order drinks, she fuckin' tells me to kneel at her side while she sits at the bar. I snorted, y'know, that short sound of not quite a laugh because you're not even sure it's funny. Then she told me if I didn't behave, she'd make me kiss her boots.
At that, I did laugh outright. She gave me this smug little smile like she knew something I didn't, and told me if I didn't kneel, I'd be sorry. I guess she thought it'd be a thrill for me. Or her. Or maybe the people standing around us. I don't know, but it sure wasn't my thrill.
So in the time it took her to blink, I had a knife at her throat. Wasn't gonna cut her, and I don't care what Hilde screamed at me later--but I just wanted to make a point.
"I don't kneel for anyone," I said, and then I smiled because I knew something she didn't, and that's a smile no one's seen in years. I'll give the bitch credit--she didn't run away screaming--but she did turn awfully pale and seemed to slump just a bit. She stammered something about me being her slave.
That was the last straw. I sheathed the knife and she blinked, and I knew she was trying to figure out where it'd gone. I told her, "I fought for freedom. Slavery ain't my thing." And I walked out.
Pity, too, because she was wild in bed. Some of the best sex I'd ever had with a woman.
Which is not the thing to be thinking about while lying face down on a cheap hotel bedspread. You'll get a hard-on and then it's a question of whether you jack off just to get it out of the way--which is fine if you just want the physical release--or whether you lie there and think about what you've been missing. And frankly, after ten minutes of thinking about what I'd been missing, maybe I should've jismed all over the damn ugly floral bedspread. Least then I would've been relaxed while feeling annoyed and bitter.
I had a great relationship with Hilde. If only it hadn't been too late by the time we'd grown up--in the sense that the one or two times we tried to date, we both just gave up. I mean, she was my best friend. Kissing her was... I dunno. Part of my body was shouting, yes! Yes! And the other part was going, you jerk, you're kissing Hilde. Worst was, she was thinking the same thing, and we'd end up just staring wall-eyed at each other until we admitted neither of us were really into it. I guess some relationships, once you get into a rut--not saying it was a bad rut, with Hilde--but you get there and that's just the way it is.
Now, sex with men? Fuck yeah. That crap about men knowing another man's body? That's bullshit. An experienced woman will always give better head than a man who's never done it before. No two ways around that. But it's not that; it's just something... I don't know. The firm lines, hard muscles, flat planes of chest and stomach and hip, the way the adam's apple bobs when my lover swallows--that just drives me over the edge.
If only my relationships with men hadn't sucked rocks on an emotional level. I'd get interested, date a few times, and end up drunk--and sobering up fast--at Hilde's. Meanwhile, she'd be bashing me over the head with a pillow for being a stubborn idiot. She also called me a romantic fool, but I made her swear on a stack of vernier specification texts never to repeat that in public.
The men who liked me were one of two kinds. Either they saw my wartime record and had this idea I'd be absolutely macho, or they saw the braid and thought I was a girl with a dick. The first category would simper and pout and throw little fits just as bad as any girl, and the second category expected me to do that girl-crap, and I don't fuckin simper for nobody. Hell, one of 'em even suggested I actually wear a dress. That's one time I was glad Hilde always saved money, cause I sure needed bail after what I did to him.
I had to pay a fine for assault, but the Judge didn't give me any community service--he didn't seem to think the suggestion was a compliment any more than I did. Fuck that shit. I did enough community service in one year of war to last sixteen lifetimes, and I sure as hell didn't do it so some two-bit mechanic from the far side of L2 could tell me I looked like a fuckin' girl.
I groaned and rolled over on my back, certain I had imprints from the bedspread in my cheek. Look, there's that ceiling again, and it's still beige. And it wasn't getting me any closer to understanding what Heero was doing in the club. I rolled over on my side, and curled up in a ball. If Hilde were here, she'd listen, then smack me with a pillow and read me the riot act, and tell me I'm stupid for not seeing the obvious. And when I still didn't get it, she'd tell me the obvious.
"I miss you," I whispered to the room.
I fell asleep with my head pillowed on my hands, and when I woke up my laptop had been bouncing the screen saver for six hours--and I was an hour late for work.
Fuck.
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I didn't exactly bust my ass to get to work--by that time, it was probably a moot point. But I didn't exactly mosey, either. I strolled into the faux travel agency around eight-thirty, braid neatly done but shirt not tucked in. My boots were unlaced and I'd grabbed my old leather jacket. I probably did not look like Une's idea of a travel agent. Maybe a shuttle hobo, which technically is a kind of travel agent if you think about. Lower fees, though.
Heero was at his laptop, just raising the lid. Ah-hah, I thought, and wanted to grin smugly--looks like he hadn't gotten but a few minutes before.
"I stopped for breakfast," he said, jerking his head over his shoulder. "Help yourself."
I choked out a 'thanks', and then I saw what he'd brought. A few oranges, two apples, couple of bananas. Fresh fruit--for a moment, I wasn't sure whether to eat it without comment or check to see if this was the real Heero Yuy. I settled for rubbing one of the apples on my shirt and biting into it, while perching on the edge of the table.
"You gonna give me the codes to get in?" I said around a bite.
"No codes," Heero said, and pointed to a small square on the mousepad. "Put your index finger there, and it'll recognize you."
Bloody fuckin' hell. "So why'd it ask me for a password?"
"That's a blind."
Asshole, but I had to smile. "Not bad. So what's your surveillance setup?"
"Barton forwarded the data collected from other missions in which Crow-71 made an appearance or was confiscated." Heero handed me six discs. "That's half of them. I'm almost done loading the other half."
I knew instinctively where he was heading, because it's the opposite of how I would have done it. Heero wanted to search through every previous Preventers case, note those where Crow-71 was involved, and then run surveillance on the parties. And Trowa would probably also suggest contacting those currently in jail to see if they'd turn state's evidence on Crow-71 information in turn for a reduced sentence. I would've reviewed existing undercover agents to see who could be double-timed to purchase Crow-71 and work our way up from there.
Top-down, bottom-up, all the same in the end.
I nodded and took the discs. Nothing wrong with doing it Heero's way, until I got bored and decided it was preferable to just blow something up. I loaded the data onto a secure subsection of the drives--Heero glanced over to make sure I was doing it, too, and damn it, I do know some Preventers procedure. Wufei's complained about it enough in his irregular emails. So while that loaded up, I took a chance and studied Heero as casually as I could manage.
He was smiling.
The bastard was frickin' smiling. He was typing at rapid speed, setting up search algorithms and cross-references, and he had this little smile on his face. As if he'd just heard the funniest joke and was replaying it in his memory like it was something so fuckin' special.
I had to focus on my screen, watching the files roll past, the program sorting and associating and setting up search parameters to keep from staring outright. Back when we boarded together, he beat me--once!--in a game of one-on-one, and he had that little smile on his face the whole time we did homework that night. Not a smug, malicious smirk. It was more like... oh, it's hard to explain. Like he's got a secret, but the secret is that he had fun. He won't admit it to anyone, but he's enjoying thinking about it--and if you pointed it out, he'd probably be mortified, pissed-off, and shoot you, and maybe not in that order.
What had happened to make him look like that? Maybe he caught the perp, the night before. Could be. Or maybe he got laid--and that thought had me choking on a bite of apple. Yeah, sure. Right. I crack myself up sometimes.
Then I noticed more things. His shoulders weren't as stiff, either, but he moved with just the slightest hesitation. When he shifted in the chair, his typing speed stuttered for a half-second. I wondered just how much he was working out these days.
Quatre had back problems from all that time spent in simulation cockpits, and Trowa was out of field duty permanently because his knees and shoulders were too fucked-up. Relena told me Wufei was miserable during cold weather--old injuries--and it's not like three years of training, two years fighting, and ten years working manual labor had done much for my spinal column. Go fuckin' figure: only Heero would still be bench-pressing twice his body weight and not even breaking into a sweat.
Or maybe he did break into a sweat now, and spent the next day a bit achy and sore. I got all happy just thinking about the idea that he was human like the rest of us now... and it almost distracted me from that tiny shy smile on his face. Almost.
The morning worn on, and I went out for lunch, bemused by the fact that Heero insisted on treating. Even gave me his credit card. Holy fuck, maybe he was on Crow-71--since when was he anything but frugal? Not saying I'm the world's most generous guy when it comes to hard-earned cash, but come on. He gave me his credit card, and said: "my treat." I was so stunned I just nodded, took his order, and left, dumbfounded. I'm pretty sure I saw the asshole smiling to himself as I shut the door behind me.
I had to duck out at two, so I could meet a landlord a few blocks over in the same neighborhood as Heero's place, but I didn't tell him the location. Just told him I had to make living arrangements. The third apartment I saw was perfect--across the street and down two houses from Heero's address, on the top floor.
Not that I'm a stalker or anything... just that part of me wanted to keep an eye on him. And another part of me--that I squished really damn fast--thought if we were sort-of neighbors, it'd be easier when we started hanging out. Y'know, less travel time, harder to make excuses to avoid chances to just drop by. When, not if, but I didn't dwell on it because it wasn't really an important thing--and it was the best place I'd seen for the money, so that's why I really picked it.
One bedroom, one room for kitchen, living room and place to eat, and a bathroom. Phone and electricity would be on within two days, deposit transferred from my savings, and we signed the paper standing over the kitchen counter. I pocketed the key, shook the guy's hand, and headed back to the office.
At which point I really was hoping that I'd find everything done--but it doesn't work that way. I had no illusions it would; I've worked with massive scrap databases and no matter how fast or furious the system, when it's compiling information from over a hundred seventy-five thousand cases, word by word, extracting data and compiling it again... it's not going to be a one-hour thing. Each of those cases was easily a hundred thousand words--if not three times that--of filings, notes, court orders, prisoner transfers, all that crap. I'd perused some while it was loading, and I think some of the precincts even included scans of every phone message. Dick, your wife called, kid's got the flu.
So there was nothing much to do, but it seemed like Heero was keeping busy. And as long as he was there, I'd stay, too. He hadn't asked how my apartment search went, and I didn't tell him. I just watched his shoulders twitch and listened to the cadence of his typing--who knows what he was working on, but I figured I'd wait a little longer before asking--and I planned what I'd have shipped from L2 and what I'd ditch and where I'd put my stuff.
And I thought of Hilde and wished she would be there to help me unpack.
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Mattress, check. Plastic cups, check. Instant ramen and a bag of apples, check. Oh, and coffee. No way was I gonna wait the three weeks for my coffee maker to show up, so I bought one on the way home, and then I stopped by the nearest hardware store. Picked out a slew of random things that made the clerk give me a confused look, and carried it all back to my new place.
And then I spent all night setting up my own damn security system. I don't trust those stupid keypads - not when I was able to break the first-generation ones at the tender age of eight. They haven't improved much.
Testing the system connected to the window, I stood in the dark and watched the apartment building across the street. Heero was also the top floor--probably going on the same security instincts as myself--and he opened the window and curtain first thing when he got home.
Which, unsurprisingly, was about four hours after I'd left. He walked, too; I saw him coming and was glad of the dark apartment. He hadn't changed clothes, and his laptop case was over his shoulder. He went inside, and a few minutes later lights click on in the top apartment. And then he did the strangest thing: not only did he open the curtains and the window, he sat on the ledge sideways, talking on the phone.
Now that's bizarre. He hated the phone when we were kids. Email me, he'd say. If I called--hell, if I just used the inter-Gundam protected signal--he'd shut down the visual and then the com-link at the first sign all relevant information that needed to be exchanged, had been. Asshole. And now he was chatting on the phone--and he was on it for nearly an hour.
I wasn't gonna tap his line, though. I was just mildly curious, and I wondered whether Quatre would know if Heero had a girlfriend. Would explain a lot. Acting kinda twitchy, then... no, it wouldn't explain what he was doing going to a club like that.
Three days passed, and I barely had time to give a damn what Heero did at night. I'd wised up on Day Two, as I called it, and realized I'd been a selfish prick to let him treat. Maybe that was his way of trying to get off on better feet, and if that was so, I could be a big enough man and meet him halfway. I showed up with breakfast--bagels, which he used to like, and turned out he apparently still liked--and then insisted on treating when he offered to pick up lunch. By Day Three, it was a tradition set in stone, when he showed up with tarts and coffee.
The rest of the time... we didn't say much. Most of our conversation was limited to grunts--his share--and muffled obscenities--my share. Watching DenWood's entertainment pap, I wouldn't blame anyone for getting the impression that by Day Three we should've been out pumping the bad guys full of holes. Not that I would've complained, but no one's going to make a movie out of what Preventers really do, and the whole reason I didn't want to join them after the wars, in the first place.
Paperwork. Lots and lots of paperwork.
We broke things down by unspoken agreement. It took two days to pick out the cases with some kind of potential. Heero began digging through associated Preventers offices in those regions, looking for undercover agents and general officers, to see who we'd use as contact. Meanwhile, I had the radio running on a constant scan, flipping through every pirate station and sometimes fiddling with the scan program to make sure I'd hit each station's semi-regular news reports--what passes for news amongst druggies and criminals, but whatever.
The rest of the time I was reviewing the cases Heero would be supporting, but looking for the big picture. It was like a map in my head. Ping, boat bust, boat being Crow-71 tainted weed. Ping, bird-party Friday night, bird-party being drag racing while hopped on Crow-71. Ping, six Crow-71 dealers taken out as side-benefits of illegal electronics smuggling ring. Heero's good at the details, see, but I've always preferred to stand back and look at the whole thing. Heero tries that, he just confuses himself and talks himself in circles. I know. I helped him with enough English essays when we were in school together. The one time he tried to write an argumentative essay on his own--which requires analysis, synthesis, and a clear understanding of the elements at play--he managed to produce a thoughtful, provocative piece of mangled crap.
Boy couldn't analyze his way out of a paper bag if you gave him a butcher's knife and night goggles. Give him the specifics and point him in that direction and don't waste his time with the décor.
So he stuck to the details, and I looked for where to focus, and where to hit. And between the two of us, we passed a week, then two weeks, then three. Three weeks of ten to eleven hour days, five days a week required--but I'd go in on Saturday and Sunday, and either he'd be there or he'd show up not long after me. He never said any crap like, "Oh, I happened to be in the neighborhood." Hell, he never said much. This was the extent of our conversation in eight hours, on an average day:
Me: "Bird party, Georgia Region. Friday."
Him: "Two undercover agents already on related case, Capetown."
Me: "Crow-71 murder spree, L3 Upper Ring."
Him: "Eastern Asia Preventers Units compilation done."
... With about two hours gap between each phrase. Yeah, we weren't the talkative type. And I think at first it bugged him. He expected me to talk, and I guess I could've--I did it for Trowa and Wufei, bastards who never looked me up again but it's not like I was going to track them down, either--but I had a year of working in an office by myself, doing paperwork by myself, and going home by myself.
I did my best not to think about my empty apartment and the lack of a certain female roommate and focused on figuring out the tracking patterns between the major cases. Which direction was the drug running? Trace it back to its roots. Sources and means of distribution. And lingo, all the lingo: bird, black, pinion, even death's head. File after file of listening and reading the way the dealers and addicts talked, their slang, their cadence. Trying to hear the patterns that designated who's in, who's out, the difference between the undercover agents and the real thing.
But I kept an eye on Heero, at the same time. He was across the office from me, and we were together for more hours in a week than I spent sleeping. It was hard to miss, especially when you're used to catching the subtle things--and you have to with a non-communicative bastard like Heero. Tension, I finally realized. That second day we'd worked together had been a highpoint, and yet gradually, it eroded. Either my silence was getting to him to the point he was a step away from bashing my head in for being so unlike he remembered, or there was something else going on.
That night, I was unpacking yet another set of boxes, putting away my silverware and glasses and kicking the apartment's wash-dryer--when I looked out the window to Heero stepping out of his front door. I set down the plate in my hand, slowly, as though he'd catch the movement from across the street. He was wearing a short black coat this time, lighter; the nights were getting warmer.
The coat swung open when he turned from locking the door. I could see a glint of silver on his chest, a row of buttons maybe, and a deep V in the neckline of his black shirt. He paused on the step, waiting as the taxi pulled up, and it was enough for me to realize he was wearing a vest of some sort. Black pants that had amber streaks down the side, and it wasn't until he moved in that lethal stalking way that I realized he was wearing vinyl pants--something tight, something reflective. No amber streaks; that was the streetlight's reflection.
What the fuck?
I watched until the cab was gone, then picked up the phone and called the cab company. Same company, different cab, but I gave the address. When the boy asked whether I knew the cab's ID, I said I didn't--my eyes are good but I can't pick out numbers that small from four floors up across the street, damn it.
"No, just tell me this," I said. "Do you have a cab heading to Providence and Thirty-eighth?"
"Let me check." He was quiet, then came back on the line. "Yeah. Just picked up its passenger a minute ago."
"Thanks," I replied. I hung up the phone, fumbling to get it back on the hook. I was too mystified with the situation to pay much attention to his young voice wishing me a good night.
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The next morning, I was in the office bright and early. Seven hundred hours, with my notes spread around me and the radio running scans. We were wrapping up, and ready to enter Stage Two. Soon we'd turn over the contact suggestions to Barton, who'd arrange with the various departments in regions and colonies. That's when it'd be time for me to really stretch my legs--in literal and metaphorical sense. Heero and I were looking at about six weeks of traveling, infiltrating and planting bugs in the various locations on Earth and two colonies. My analysis indicated that the known smuggling and drug rings were also running Crow-71, and we had the skills and techniques to do what the local offices couldn't.
But I wasn't there early just to map an itinerary. I was also curious to see how Heero'd be when he arrived. What the hell was he doing at the club? I was almost positive it couldn't be an undercover operation, though the minute Quatre and Relena got back from the conference on L5, I'd be asking anyway--but I wasn't sure I wanted to consider the alternative.
So there I was, nose-deep in paperwork, when Heero strolls through the door. Not stalk, not pace, not stomp... strolls. He dropped a bag of fruit on the table, gave me a small, relaxed smile, and settled down at his computer, ready to work. Bastard even cracked his knuckles, stretched with his arms over his head, and then shook out his hands and got to work.
I wasn't sure whether I wanted to throw knives at him--the real Heero Yuy would sense it, turn, and catch or deflect all in mid-air--or... No, I couldn't think of a second thing. Mostly I wanted to poke a hole in him somehow. He just wasn't acting normal.
Doing itineraries is old hat to me--had to do it enough when helping Hilde juggle deliveries, check-outs, and pick-ups back when it was mostly us and maybe two or three helpers. So I didn't need all my copious brain cells. Naturally I applied the rest to the curious situation of The Relaxed Mister Yuy. He couldn't have gone drinking--not with his super-efficient metabolism. I saw him drink once, after the second war, before we went our separate ways. Six shots and drunk as a skunk within ten minutes, ill for fifteen and completely sober--the fucker--all within an hour. Watching him sober up so fast, I'd wanted to use all nine knives, repeatedly. He would've been a damn pincushion by the time I was done, because lack of proper hangover is all sorts of wrongness.
But I didn't, for two reasons. One, I was drunk myself at the time. And two, I could only feel sorry for a guy who'd never lose his virginity because he couldn't stay drunk long enough to get beer goggles, let alone talk to a stranger.
But that morning he was--as Hilde would say--bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Downright friendly, even if we still didn't actually say much. When I left at eight that night, he waved over his shoulder and said he'd see me in the morning. I think I nearly fell over my own feet in shock: in three weeks, that was only the second or third time he'd noticed I was leaving.
I was halfway home when I realized those other two or three times were right after that night I'd followed him to the club. I gritted my teeth and got a little pissed off at that--might've even scared some neighborhood kids sitting on a front step but fuck 'em. Something was going on. I hadn't survived a year's war and a world domination plot and Howard's cooking to need a neon sign to know something was up.
Whatever the bastard was doing, it couldn't be a mission. It was something else, something so major the after-effects produced a radical change in his personality. Well, radical for Heero Yuy.
I trudged up the front steps of my apartment, unlocked the door to the building, and let myself into the narrow hallway. Maybe it wasn't alcohol. Maybe it was drugs, and the thought hung in the air like miasma around a rotting body left in the gutter. No, I told myself, and shook my head as if the force of my braid slapping the wall would undo that thought. Any drug, like alcohol, will leave a person twitching and jumpy, or at least hung-over--but he'd been downright chipper.
And I doubted drugs would be much different than alcohol, for him. Instant high hitting him twice as hard, come-down and crash, then sober. After all that crap J pumped into him, I doubted he could take aspirin for a fuckin' headache without going through the rapid rise-and-fall in his system. I metabolized alcohol and drugs pretty damn fast myself, thanks to those suppressants fucking up my adolescent systems for two years, but nowhere near Heero's rate--and I still got hangovers. Damn G on one more score.
So either Heero was on one of maybe three drugs in the Earth Sphere that wouldn't be metabolized within twenty minutes--a worried presumption I desperately wanted to disprove--or he'd gotten laid. The first was not something I wanted to be true, but the second would still rock my world.
I stood in front of my apartment door, staring down at my key. I inserted the key, wiggling it the proper number of times to disarm the security mechanisms, and the door swung open to reveal boxes waiting to be carted out, and boxes still to be unpacked. I was gonna find out the truth, and do something about it, I decided, dropping my keys on the counter and throwing my coat on the nearest kitchen chair. I didn't know what exactly that might be, but I'd have six weeks to study him in even closer quarters. That'd be plenty of time to come up with a plan.
I hoped.
On to Chapter Three
Back to chapter one