Situations

Or

Duo Maxwell’s Awful, Bad Day

Warnings : Yaoi, angst/sap, OOC, language, and a couple of OCs, Duo POV.
Thanks to Christy for beta reading and Aya for encouragement. (Oh; and apologies to Grover!)
Congratulations to Lev on her two-year anniversary!
Feed-back is a dream I have.
And I don't own anything in this series, either.

Mechanic. Before you ask, that’s what I ended up doing. Sounds pretty boring after owning my own ship and traveling all over the solar system, doesn’t it? Well, it might have been a little more… unbearable, if the job hadn’t been with the Preventors.

It was another one of those things that just kind of happened without my making any real conscious effort to pursue it. One day I was teetering on the edges of a nervous breakdown and the next I had a full time job working on the fleet of vehicles used by the network of Preventor agents. I still woke up in the morning sometimes expecting to find that it had all been some sort of surreal dream. But no, I had the closet full of polo shirts and coveralls with that six-sided, brown and gray emblem over the left breast to prove it.

I was having one of those mornings. Heero had left early to make some appointment with Wufei; an interview with a high-ranking government official concerning the case they were currently working on. The guy apparently had a schedule that read like the Earth-sphere Who’s Who of noteworthy people. He had insisted that if they wanted a piece of his oh-so-important time, they had to join him on his morning jog, which he did at five a.m., on the other side of town. I had little doubt that my highly irritated lover and his equally irritated partner would run the guy’s ass into the ground by way of payback, despite the half hour lecture I had given Heero about not over-doing it.

He hadn’t been back on the active duty roster for all that long, since being shot on the job, I hadn’t been happy about him accepting this asshole’s terms. I felt like the moron could just damn well make time for them in his busy schedule or they could haul his ass downtown for questioning. Of course, that attitude of mine is probably part of why I’m a mechanic and not an agent. Go figure.

Anyway, Heero’s early departure had left me without a ride to work and needing to catch the seven o’clock bus. So, of course, with this deadline looming over me, everything that could go wrong seemed to be doing so. The first shirt I grabbed out of the closet was missing a button, and I didn’t notice it until I was already dressed and in the bathroom doing my hair. I changed shirts and went back to finish my hair and the first hair-tie I grabbed snapped as I was wrapping it around the end of my braid. I discovered as I was running through the kitchen, that the last minute, on-the-run breakfast of a ration bar that I had been planning, was a bust because I had run out. I didn’t have time to fix anything else and dashed out the door without, having to run the whole two blocks to the bus stop and almost missing it anyway.

I threw myself into an empty seat with a sigh and just prayed that the rest of the day wasn’t going to be in the same vein. I’m a mechanic now; I work on some big-ass equipment. If this morning followed me to work, I could conceivably kill myself in a variety of messy ways.

I settled myself into my seat and turned my attention to watching the houses go by. I really hate having to take the bus to work; it only takes twenty minutes when Heero drives, but the bus ride is a good forty-five minutes. The bus wasn’t even half full, for which I was grateful; I don’t like to share my seat.

It truly does amaze me, when I let myself think about it too hard, that I have come full circle back to this world I find myself in. With all the people I fought in the war with - the guys, Sally, Noin, Zechs, even Une. I had run from this as fast as I could run all those years ago; had tucked my tail firmly between my legs and taken off for parts unknown. It… frightened me a little bit, when I let myself dwell on it; like some fated thing that I couldn’t escape. But I wasn’t an agent. I wasn’t really a Preventor. I was just a damn mechanic. I reminded myself of that every morning as I pulled on the clothes with that emblem on them. I do not carry a gun. I will not carry a gun. I’m just a mechanic.

Not a Preventor. Not an agent. Not a pilot or a salvage man. Only a mechanic. Mechanics do not have to shoot at people; mechanics do not have to make split-second decisions that could result in a lot of people being dead. That was how I wanted it. I sometimes wondered how Heero and Wufei did it. And sometimes… when I let myself really think about it, I had to wonder why.

A mechanic. I still had a little trouble with that… when filling out forms, not writing ‘pilot’ on the line that said ‘employment’. It had been one hell of a major life change. But a month and a half since the sale of my ship had gone through, and I was a little more able to face that thought.

Did you catch that? ‘My ship’? I can say it with out gagging now… aren’t you proud? I tried a little of that therapy that Wufei and Heero had wanted me so desperately to go into, and you want to know what the lady said? That I was the most grounded person she had ever met. That I knew the inside of my own head forward and backward and there really wasn’t much she could do for me. She had been expecting, from the reports, to be dealing with someone in total denial, who needed help facing his phobias and inner demons. She had actually chuckled at Heero’s concerns and told him that some things just took time; that she couldn’t help me face things that I had already embraced with both hands. I didn’t even have to do the inkblot thing; I was actually kind of disappointed.

I had probably only had a dozen sessions with her and she had been kind of helpful in giving me some insight into dealing with my occasional anxiety attacks. I had realized as she had taught me the breathing techniques and the methods of focusing inward on my own heartbeat… that the whole thing seemed damned familiar. It finally came to me one afternoon, as I was leaving her office, that it reminded me of what Trowa had done for me that day I’d thought Captain Camden had taken up residence in my closet. That made me think really hard about just where Trowa had learned it. I suppose, with the guy’s ‘truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ vow of total honesty, that I’d find out one of these days. If I ever got up the nerve to ask. But, as for therapy… Dr. Webster hadn’t been able to do a hell of a lot else for me, beyond lecturing me about hiding things and not speaking up when I’d had enough.

I did not, of course, try to explain about thought-hamsters, or that guilt was a thing with teeth, nor did I show her any of my more… personal artwork; though she’d had an interesting idea when she found out I could draw, about my making a portrait of what I thought the spirit of my ‘Demon’ looked like. I told her I’d think about it. But, you know? Since I kind of considered my Demon-girl to be… dead, that just seemed kind of… morbid.

Anyway, eight and a half months since the accident and I was finally free from physical therapy, though I still had to keep up with some of the exercises on my own. I’d done a short stint in that… other kind of therapy and been able to gleefully inform the guys that I was not crazy, with the backing of a professional. I’d gotten a job, even if it wasn’t exactly what I would have chosen for myself, but it allowed me to send money off to L2 on a fairly regular basis, which helped my sense of self-worth more than just about any of the rest of it. All in all, I felt I was doing a lot better. I hadn’t had a nightmare in weeks and weeks.

And I don’t want to hear about the fact that I measure all passage of time from the accident. I know that. I don’t care. It will always loom in my mind as a rather major event. In my youth, I measured everything from the burning of the church. Now that I am older, I have a new reference point. Get over it, it’s human nature. I have the backing of a professional psychologist that says so.

If there was anything in my life right now that wasn’t going so well, I suppose it was Wufei’s and my search for Captain Camden’s wife Anna. That little self-imposed quest, to find the woman and give her the dubious gift of her husband’s last, dying words, was not going all that peachy keen. It was as though the woman had dropped off the face of the planet after the war. We were far from giving up, but the search had kind of taken a back seat to life and that nagged at me a little bit. Sometimes I imagined the half visage of the dead Captain Camden glaring at me unhappily in the dark of the night.

I’m not saying I was giddily happy all the time. I still had my darker moments, still sometimes found myself thinking about my ship and my old life with a sharp pang of loss… but it wasn’t sitting on my shoulder twenty-four hours a day any more. I could sometimes go several days without something slapping me in the face and reminding me of everything I had let go of. But I was learning to just keep moving until the moment passed. Hey, I got through the last pilot’s dinner without a single, solitary dramatic scene and I didn’t even throw up… how’s that for improvement?

There were just days sometimes that seemed to wear me down until all I wanted was to go home and go back to bed. The day I’m talking about here…? It would fall in that category.

I was rather surprised to come up out of my brooding and realize that the bus was already coming into the heavier traffic of downtown, and that I’d been sitting there wool gathering for over a half an hour. I shook my head and made a conscious effort to look around; trying not to let myself sink any further into the vague depression that I knew lurked behind every corner on days like this. There were a few more fellow passengers than there had been the last time I looked, and I realized that I had daydreamed right through several stops. I grinned at myself rather ruefully, imagining the lecture I would have gotten from Heero about inattention to my surroundings. But, you know? I hadn’t had quite the problem that he had, adjusting to a civilian’s thinking. I didn’t still look for enemies at every turn. I wondered sometimes if Heero hadn’t joined the Preventors, if he might not have quite so much of the soldier still in him.

I smiled distractedly at a guy who made eye contact almost by accident, and he returned the tentative smile and looked away, going back to a book in his lap. There was an older guy sitting behind him who had dozed off and I wondered if he was one of those who could wake himself up before his stop, or if he would end up being supremely surprised to find himself very far from where he was supposed to be, later on. There was a lady in front of me who looked to be balancing her checkbook and a woman in the seat opposite me who seemed to be going over a shopping list. I sighed, thinking that I should have brought something with me to do, but I didn’t make this ride every day like most of these people did. I hadn’t thought about it. It was a non-issue when I rode to work with Heero.

I looked out the window as the buildings flashed by and thought about how odd it was that a person who used to think of travel in terms of velocity and lift, could actually feel that this felt fast. I almost laughed; we were probably going fifty miles an hour; what the hell was that in comparison to breaking through the atmosphere? My, how the times do change.

Something killed that amused thought suddenly, nagging at me that something was wrong. I looked around me with a little more attention. My instincts were telling me that something wasn’t quite right. Some inner sense was tingling warmly and telling me there was something here to be concerned with. I scanned the other passengers quickly and found nothing amiss. Nobody was even looking at me. I turned my attention back outside and saw it fairly quickly: a car that was drifting erratically in a lane just two over from the bus. Once I saw it, I zeroed in on it closer and realized the guy at the wheel had some major problems. Drunk? Maybe… though it was kind of early in the day. Heart attack? Possibly… I couldn’t see the driver well enough to take a guess at his age. Falling asleep at the wheel? Another possibility… though you would have thought that would have been an ‘all of a sudden’ thing, unless the guy was an idiot too and was going to continue trying to drive and just fight sleep at the same time.

‘Hey,’ I said to nobody in particular, watching that car with the narrowed vision of a man who used to pilot a fighter. Seeing it as a threat and reflex making me want to blow it out of the sky. Except I didn’t have the means, it wasn’t a Leo, and we were hardly in the air or in a dogfight.

The car veered rather sharply and a van in the far outside lane slammed on his breaks to avoid a collision. The ‘target’ vehicle lurched back into his own lane. I found my hands wanting to tighten on control grips that weren’t there, and I suddenly knew the one naggy little reason that made public transit a bad idea; you have no damn control.

‘Hey!’ I said a little louder and got the attention of several of the other passengers. The little red car began to creep the other way now, coming closer to the truck that was between it and the bus. ‘Driver! On your left!’ I yelled and had everybody’s attention, but it was really a moot damn point and a little too late. There wasn’t exactly anywhere for the bus driver to go and the red car wasn’t righting itself this time.

Some calm, distanced part of my mind was calculating trajectories and speed, and making snide little estimations about the likelihood that this wasn’t going to end up being one of those nasty little rush hour accidents.

‘Brace for impact!’ I shouted and watched helplessly as the car bumped the truck, then suddenly shot forward, trying to avoid the collision. The pickup truck driver slammed on his brakes but not before he was nudged into the side of the bus. There was the sound of metal on metal and a couple of people behind me screamed. The whole bus wobbled. I did my best to keep my eyes on the red car and watched it accelerate wildly, trying to get the hell out of the mess he’d just made. But the impact with the truck had cost him some of the little control he’d had left and all he succeeded in doing was running right straight into the path of the bus. Kind of sideways. Shit.

I was braced hard between my seat and the one in front of me, arms and legs spread wide for maximum leverage. I had a split second to register the other passengers, most of them reacting way too damn slow. The napping man surprised me, being wide awake now and braced better than anyone else I could see, barring myself. I tagged him for a fellow former soldier and that was the last thought I had time for, before the bus turned the little red sports car into something that closely resembled a dog’s chew toy. No one would probably ever know what in the hell happened to the driver to cause him to veer in the first place.

‘Holdonholdonholdon!’ the driver was shrieking but he was barely making himself heard over the screaming of his passengers.

You don’t hit something the size of a car at fifty miles an hour and recover control, not in something the size of a city bus. It shuddered and screamed like a thing alive, the rear end impacting with something on our right, the front of the bus rising as it tried to climb over what was left of the sports car, and then… it started to tip up. It got kind of confusing after that, and I was washed back to the war years with a jolt. Memories of firefights and tumbling mobile suits flashed in my mind, and I wished fervently for that old safety harness. I wished for my own hands on the controls. I wished for a bottle of aspirin because I had a feeling I was really gonna need it in a minute.

Then it was just holding on like riding in the rodeo, while the bus bucked and kicked and tried to throw us all off. We went over and the woman in the seat opposite me was suddenly falling toward me, because I had become ‘down’. I was forced to let go with one arm and catch her to keep from getting completely creamed by her flailing limbs. She latched onto me like a lifeline and I just did my best to keep us both in place. I had a feeling she’d forgotten all about her shopping list.

It was one of those things that happened so fast I couldn’t really have described it… but while it was going on, seemed to last an eternity. I thought the damn bus would never stop bucking and jerking, thought the yelling and screaming would never stop. I was sure that the damn thing would slide on its side for a mile. There was the distant sound of blowing horns and screeching brakes.

And then it was over. At least that part of it, though I knew damn well we were a long way from done. Up was left and right was up and there was a hysterical woman clinging to my arm and sobbing brokenly. I saw nap-guy first, because he was suspended above me in the next row up, having managed to keep himself from falling on check-book lady.

‘Status!’ I croaked out, falling back on ages old training, and then almost burst out laughing, remembering that there wasn’t a war on.

‘Clear!’ nap-guy responded automatically. He and I made sudden eye contact and I saw that same chagrined look on his face. We were both a long way from the battlefield, but some habits just died a hard death. He flashed me a sheepish grin and began to climb down from his precarious perch.

‘Lady, are you all right?’ I asked the woman who seemed to think I was her own personal teddy bear all of a sudden.

She just blinked at me for a minute before blurting out. ‘I don’t know!’

I looked her over and didn’t see anything wrong, so I began trying to pry her off. ‘Here… let me up so I can check things out.’ I convinced her to let go of my shirt and started trying to crawl out from under her. ‘Watch the glass here lady,’ I muttered and had to turn her so her feet were toward what had been my window just a minute or two ago. She crouched there and I crawled up to check the rest of the bus.

‘Anybody hurt?’ I called and got such a chorus of wails and sobs that I just sighed and decided I’d have to deal with that in a minute. It was all very disconcerting with what should have been the ceiling being on my left hand, and having a narrow ‘aisle’ to walk through, in what should have been above the seats. Glass crunched underfoot with every move I made.

‘Hey soldier-boy,’ nap-guy said and I turned to find him by the driver who was hanging limply in his seat belt. ‘Know much about first-aid?’

I climbed up and made my way to his side over the seats. ‘Some,’ I muttered, but when I got there it didn’t take long to determine that the driver was pretty much beyond aid of any kind.

Nap-guy was getting his first good look at me, and obviously not liking what he saw, but I didn’t have the time to do the whole song and dance with the guy. He was middle-aged and had assumed when he had realized that I was another ex-soldier that I was his age or at least a hell of a lot closer to it.

‘They drafted us a lot younger in the colonies,’ I growled, to forestall any lengthy conversations I wasn’t in the mood for. ‘See if you can get that door open… he’s beyond our help.’

He grunted at me in some small surprise and I noticed him glance at the logo on my shirt. That got me a funny little appraising look and I didn’t bother to explain to him that I worked in the motor pool. He turned to wrestle with the door control and got nowhere. He was a hell of a lot bigger than I was, and I had no doubt that if he couldn’t get it, I wasn’t going to have any better luck.

Some guy in back suddenly called out, ‘There’s a truck against the back of the bus… I can’t get the emergency door open.’

This news was greeted with a couple of unhappy cries and I cut across it before that could get started. ‘Calm down, we’ll just go out through the windows.’

The guy that had been reading in the seat in front of nap-guy climbed up and tried the nearest one and quickly reported in a voice rising with the first stirrings of panic, ‘It’s jammed… I can’t get it!’

That garnered a couple of screams.

‘Don’t panic!’ I snapped and wished I could just smack a couple of these guys around. Let’s just yell encouraging news all over the damn bus, why don’t we?

I climbed up beside book-boy and give it a try myself. The window gave slightly, but the frame of the damn bus was in enough of a bind that it wouldn’t open more than an inch. I growled at it, but it wasn’t impressed.

I glanced around and decided that my soldier buddy was probably the tallest person in the bus. ‘Hey,’ I beckoned to him,‘can you brace me?’

He looked the situation over and I saw him figure out what I had in mind almost instantly. It was actually a fairly standard technique… if you’d been in the military.

He climbed around to get below where I was wedged in the ‘up’ seats, helped the shopping-lady get out of the way, then planted himself firmly below me. I let myself down, upside down until we were braced shoulder to shoulder; me using his body to give myself the leverage I needed and then I kicked upward for all I was worth.

Glass and the metal window frame showered down all around us and there was a ragged cheer from the back of the bus.

Soldier-boy helped me get turned around and back on my feet, and we brushed glass off each other. He grinned at me, deciding maybe I wasn’t just playing at this after all. ‘Sam,’ he told me brusquely.

‘Duo,’ I replied and quirked him a grin. ‘Push or pull?’

He laughed out right, looking me over. ‘Pull… I think I probably got a little upper body strength on you.’

I snorted and moved out of his way while he climbed up and out through the window.

I needed a little room to work, so I went ahead and passed the shopping-lady up to him first and we got another one of those ragged little cheers.

In the distance, I heard the sound of approaching sirens. Somebody muttered something that sounded like, ‘about damn time.’ But come on; it hadn’t really been all that damn long. I decided to just let the crack go.

I looked the ragged little group over. ‘Ok people… where’s the wounded?’ I cringed. Injured. Where’s the injured. I’d be asking for C4 and an evac-chopper next.

A guy with blood on his forehead stood up and called, ‘There’s a lady back here who’s unconscious.’

I frowned. ‘Leave her for now… she might have back injuries. We’ll wait for the professionals.’

A couple of guys helped a young girl forward then. She had an obviously broken arm, was crying softly and didn’t look so damn good. I met them halfway and helped her make the climb to the right seat to reach the exit. ‘Broken arms suck,’ I murmured to her, ‘but you can count on at least five or six weeks of not having to do the dishes.’

She gave me a watery little smile through the tears and I turned my attention up to Sam. ‘Right arm!’ I yelled out and saw him nod. I passed her up and he pulled her out. I glanced around and beckoned to book-boy.

‘Come here, kid.’ He blinked at me for a minute, caught between wanting the hell out of there and feeling funny about going before some of the other wounded. Injured, damn it… injured. I sighed. ‘I need somebody else in one piece up topside to help Sam.’ He didn’t argue with me further and I boosted him out.

It started to go a little faster, with someone else to help pull people up, and I was beginning to think that we’d all be out and sitting on the sidewalk by the time the cops got there. I should have known better… it had been one of those kinds of days.

‘Fire!’ somebody screamed and I turned to look where they were pointing to see that the damn red sports car, permanently mated to what was left of the front of the bus, had burst into flame.

‘Shit!’ I looked up imploringly at Sam. ‘Get me another hole!’ I barked, and he nodded and moved to comply. ‘Watch your heads back there!’ I bellowed over the yells and screams, then turned my attention back to passing checkbook-lady up to book-boy… except book-boy was gone. I cursed resoundingly for a moment, then there was suddenly a new face above me, and a blue-clad arm was pulling checkbook-girl out through the window like she was a rag doll.

The cops were there.

I flashed the guy a grin and turned to grab the next pair of hands reaching for me, lifting some young kid up until he was within reach of my new savior.

The guy was freakin’ huge, the up side to that being that people were being jerked out of the bus like they were puppies. The downside being that there was no way in hell he could fit through that window to get down here and help me.

I divided my attention between watching the group at the back of the bus climb out the second exit that Sam had made, boosting people out myself, and the fire that was starting to creep around the front end of the bus. It was starting to get smoky.

Then tall, dark and blue was screaming for all the civilians to get the hell off the bus… now! And I knew I was running out of time. I cupped my hands and boosted the last man up, feeling like my shoulders were going to come right out of their sockets.

‘Come on, kid… get the hell out of there!’ the cop was yelling at me and I had to ignore him.

‘Got wounded!’ I barked and went hunting for the unconscious woman that I had meant to leave for the professionals. No damn time for that now.

I found her in the second seat from the back. It looked like someone had tried to make her comfortable on a bundle of coats, or maybe she’d just fallen that way. I would have cursed the idiot for moving her if it hadn’t been a pretty damn moot point now.

My buddy up top side was still with me, thank God, and had moved down to the second opening so I didn’t have to work my way clear back to the front of the bus.

‘Hurry the hell up!’ he was screaming at me and I gave up trying to be gentle with the poor woman and just shoved her limp body upward, hoping like hell that I wasn’t doing any damage to her. It was getting hard to see and I suddenly realized that it was getting damn hot, too. Then the woman’s weight was suddenly gone from my arms and I scrambled up after her, sliding off the bus and following my blue angel to the ground. We ran like hell.

There was the sound of exultant cheering and we were quickly surrounded by a crowd of former bus passengers. Somebody clapped me on the back and I glanced up to grin at Sam.

‘Well,’ he drawled, ‘that’ll sure as hell get your blood pumping first thing in the morning.’

I had to laugh, though it seemed fairly out of place in the huddled group of sobbing accident victims.

The cop was carefully laying the unconscious woman out on the ground and I moved to go stand by them, surprised to see the woman stir.

‘Damn,’ somebody muttered. ‘Look at the thing burn.’

I heard more sirens, but they seemed awfully far away. I looked back at the bus and the whole front half was in flames. I felt a pang for the family of the bus driver… I’d had to leave the body.

‘W…where… where’s my baby?’

I whirled around to see who in the hell had spoken and almost threw up on the damn sidewalk. The woman was awake, eyes wide as saucers and staring wildly around. Her voice was rising as she started to take in the situation. ‘Missy? Where’s my daughter? Where’s my baby? Missy!’

There hadn’t been any kids leave that bus. I was sure of that. I’d left a kid on the bus?

I whirled back around and headed for the street, but something stopped me cold, bringing me up so sharply I almost fell. I jerked rather ineffectively at what felt like a damn steel band and turned to find the cop with his hand on my upper arm.

‘You can’t go back in there,’ he snapped. ‘Leave it to us!’

‘You can’t fit!’ I yelled back and saw a certain amount of pain flash in the big man’s eyes, but he wouldn’t let go. I started to panic. I could hear the mother starting to scream. I saw some of the other passengers trying to comfort her. I stopped tugging to get free. ‘Is that your partner?’ I blurted. ‘He’s small enough… he’ll fit!’

The cop bought it, whirling to see which of his buddies had finally gotten there to back him up and I broke free and ran like hell. There was an outraged bellow behind me and I heard him coming hard on my heels, but I’m nothing if not agile and I swarmed up the under carriage of that bus like a damn monkey.

It was hot. Damn, it was hot. I could feel it even with my half numb fingers and I just did my best not to touch metal once I had dropped through the smashed out window. The inside of the bus was a nightmare of heat and smoke, and I despaired that I could freakin’ find a damn elephant in there. Then I remembered the pile of coats the woman had been lying on top of and realized what had to be under those coats.

I scrambled like I haven’t scrambled in a long damn time.

Behind me I heard a string of swear words that would have made a longshoreman proud. I tried to pull my polo shirt up over my nose and mouth as my fingers were digging through the pile of coats. Nothing. Damn it.

One of my little thought hamsters appeared long enough to smack me up the side of the head with a banner that said ‘RUN!’ But he couldn’t take the heat and vanished with a tiny little pop.

Not leaving a kid. Not leaving a kid. Not on my damn watch. Not gonna happen.

No way… no how… not leaving without a little kid…

Behind me, the cursing resolved itself into something that I think was only ‘get the hell out of there!’ But was said so fast it was coming out almost as a single word.

I might have screamed, ‘No!’ I might have told him to run. I don’t really know, I didn’t have my little hamsters to supply me with lines, after all.

Then I heard a tiny little cough and almost shouted out loud. I found her by touch, because I couldn’t see a damn thing. She was hiding in the very back corner of the bus behind the seat.

‘Come on, honey,’ I soothed as I grabbed hold of her like I was picking up a puppy and hauled her out. ‘Your momma’s really worried.’

My braid was dangling down as I pulled her up and she grabbed hold of it with both hands like it was a lifeline. Then I moved like my ass was on fire, because it damn near was.

‘Go!’ I shouted, getting a lung full of smoke for my trouble. ‘I got her! Go! Go! Go!’

The kid didn’t feel like she was more than about five or six and was clinging to me like one of those baby monkeys you see in the documentaries. I was scrabbling around like a madman, frantic to get back out that tiny little opening and for a second I was afraid I wasn’t going to find it in the smoke.

‘Here!’ my angel bellowed and I followed his voice, my fingers finally finding open air instead of glass. Something grabbed my wrist and just damn well pulled. I thought he was going to rip my arm out of its socket jerking us up out of there. He didn’t even set me down, but just kept the momentum and swung me off the side of the bus and dropped me. The impact took me down to one knee and I was barely back on my feet before I heard him hit the ground beside me.

‘Run, you God damn son of a bitch!’ he was roaring at me and I didn’t have to be told twice. Hell… I didn’t really have to be told the first time.

We ran, and for a big guy, he was damn fast. Or maybe it was me having the little girl wrapped around me like a boa constrictor, but he actually got a couple of paces ahead of me. All three of us were coughing fit to bring up a lung.

Then the bus blew. Or the pickup truck, or fucking something. It got damn confusing for a couple of minutes. I went down hard and did my best to keep from crushing the little girl. There was a moment when I couldn’t seem to breathe. There was a lot of yelling. A lot of screaming. Something ripped the kid out of my arms and I scrabbled after her, but hands were pinning me down and all of a sudden I thought somebody was trying to smother me. What the hell? I think I fought.

‘Hold the hell still soldier-boy!’ Sam was yelling at me and things slowly started to make sense. I stopped fighting them and let them finish putting my back out.

Ouch.

When things stopped seeming so frantic, I dared raise my head. Missy was in her mother’s arms, and people were huddling around them. Other people were staring down at me, and the rest of the police department seemed to have arrived.

I turned my gaze to Sam, because the blue angel just seemed to be pissed off at me no end. ‘Am I out?’ I grinned, and Sam threw his head back and laughed out right.

‘Yeah, you cocky little asshole,’ he chortled. ‘You seem to be out.’

‘Can I get up now?’ I asked pleasantly, since they seemed to be holding me down and I got another chuckle from Sam. The cop still seemed to be glaring daggers at me.

‘Sure thing, kid,’ the big guy grinned and reached to give me a hand up.

‘Good,’ I muttered, ‘because I am so late for work.’

‘You sit the hell still until the medics take a look at you,’ the cop growled menacingly and I froze with my wrist locked with Sam’s, deciding that maybe I should stop pushing my luck with this guy.

Sam shrugged and let go, stood to move off, hesitated for a second and then squatted back down beside me. He stuck his hand out, shaking mine firmly when I reached to take it. ‘I got a feeling we weren’t on the same side in the war kid, but… well… it was nice meetin’ you anyway.’

Then he made his way over to the crowd of people clustered around Missy and her Mom. I grinned after him for a second before turning my attention to the big, glaring man in blue next to me.

‘Uhmmm…’ I muttered, trying to look apologetic. ‘Sorry about that, man.’ I shrugged and stuck my hand out. ‘I just have this thing about little kids.’

He vented an exasperated sigh and took my hand in his massive one. I felt like a freakin’ dwarf.

‘Duo Maxwell,’ I said with a grin that I tried to tone down just a little. I couldn’t help grinning like an asshole… I was still alive, after all.

His irritation seemed to be bleeding away and he gave me a rueful shake of his head. ‘Clint Jones.’

‘Thanks for sticking with me,’ I told him and thought he might just smack me in the back of the head.

He made me sit until the medics got around to me, and I had to admit that my back was a little sore. I had apparently been hit with a piece of flying debris that had set my damn shirt on fire. It had been Sam and Clint who had put it out almost before it’d had a chance to get started.

The medic declared my back no worse than a bad sunburn, but my shirt a total loss, and moved on to the next person.

The place was swarming with emergency personnel by then and Clint didn’t seem to be needed, so he had stayed by me. Almost as though he were afraid of what other trouble I might get myself into if he left me alone. He had killed the time waiting for the medics by taking my statement about how the accident had happened, and took my address and contact information in case they had any questions later.

‘So,’ I grinned at him when the medic was done, ‘am I free to go, Officer?’

He snorted at me, shaking his head again; he seemed to find me terribly amusing for some damn reason, now that he didn’t look like he wanted to throttle me. He stood and stretched his hand down to help me to my feet, pulling me up until I was standing there looking at his… breastbone. Damn, but I felt short. He jerked his head toward where his cruiser was parked and beckoned me to walk there with him. I followed, somewhat shakily, starting to feel sore muscles and tiny aches and pains just freakin’ everywhere. But I was intrigued all the same, and was a little surprised when he opened the trunk of his car and fished around in a sack until he came up with a t-shirt. ‘Here,’ he said gruffly. ‘My kid out grew it and it was on its way to Good Will. Should fit you.’

I held it up and marveled at the size, quirking an eyebrow at him. ‘Your kid… got his size from your side of the family?’ I quipped and this oddly wicked grin came over him.

‘Nah,’ he said, totally deadpan. ‘You should see my wife.’

I laughed, delighted, and put the thing on. It was probably two sizes too big, but was going to beat the hell out of arriving at Preventor’s headquarters shirtless. Even if it did have a picture on the front of a dragon with a knight in shining armor in one hand… and a can opener in the other. I briefly considered wearing it wrong side out, but decided what the hell.

‘Thanks,’ I smiled up at him. ‘Beats the heck out of wandering around downtown half naked.’

It was his turn to laugh. ‘I don’t need to have to come and pick you up for indecent exposure three blocks from here.’

He shut the trunk and looked me up and down, as though trying to reassure himself that I really was in one piece. ‘That took some nerve, kid,’ he told me grudgingly.

‘Nah,’ I grinned up at him, ‘just no brains.’

He snorted that little laugh again and shook his head. ‘Well it was one hell of a way to start the morning, wasn’t it?’

‘It has been something of a crappy day so far,’ I opined ruefully, and we said our goodbyes.

I had to walk three blocks before the traffic was untangled enough that I could flag down a cab that actually looked like it might get somewhere.

I arrived at work an hour and a half late and had to stare at the clock. Only a damn hour and a half? I felt like I’d been on that bus for days. Damn.

I clocked in and headed straight for the soda machine in the back of the bay, I really, really felt the need of a little caffeine. My back was tingling uncomfortably and starting to feel tight, my shoulders ached like I’d been weight lifting for twenty-four hours straight and I think Clint pulled something in my wrist when he jerked me out of the bus that last time. I shoved my coins in the slot, and when that beautiful green can dropped into my hand, it was so wonderfully cold that I was taken with the urge to pour it down my back.

‘Maxwell! Where the hell have you been?’ I heard the strident tones of my boss and had to sigh. I’d kind of been hoping that he wasn’t in today. Griff is an ok kind of guy, but has this major problem with punctuality.

‘Good morning to you too,’ I smirked at him and got a little growl. I rather enjoyed baiting the guy, if the truth be told. I’d had a little trouble when I’d taken this job because of who I was and what I used to be. People had this whole ‘awe’ thing going on, where former Gundam pilots were concerned. A pilot as an agent seemed to be something they could relate to, deal with. A pilot as another grungy mechanic with grease up to his elbows and several of his knuckles busted, seemed to throw them off. For the first couple of weeks, I could count on having a good twenty feet of personal space without having to ask. And while, at the time, that had not been an altogether bad thing for a guy who was still raw edged enough to cuss out loud at tiny little things like stubborn bolts, it had started to get a little lonely. Griff had treated me like any other newbie grease monkey, yelling about all his strange little rules and regulations and eventually, when the others started noticing that I took it just like anybody else, they stopped treating me like I had a third head. So I liked Griff just on the general principal that he treated me like a human being and not an icon or the devil incarnate.

Griff looked irritated already and we really hadn’t even gotten started. ‘I said;’ he repeated himself with a little more… volume, ‘where the hell have you been? You’re over an hour late!’

‘An hour and thirty-five minutes to be exact, boss-man,’ I grinned at him. ‘I had some transportation problems this morning.’

‘I thought you took the bus when Yuy was out on assignment,’ he grumbled and I couldn’t hide the cock-eyed grin. The man knew freakin’ everything about the whole damn building. I wondered, not for the first time, if he had tracking devices on all ‘his’ agents. Since they all drove vehicles that his department supplied, it was like he had a personal stake in each and every one of them.

‘I do,’ I confirmed and made him wait while I took another sip of my breakfast. ‘There was an accident…’

His face changed a little bit and he grimaced. ‘I heard about that… there was a fire, wasn’t there?’

‘You could say that,’ I confirmed and all of a sudden he was getting an eyeful of the front of my shirt and was off on a whole other tangent. He has this dress code thing as well.

‘Where the hell is your damn shirt?!’ he bellowed and I saw people flinch all over the room. ‘You know better than to show up out of uniform!’

For some strange reason, that one kind of ran all over me. I don’t know why, I guess because I’ve never really understood his absolute obsession with those stupid polo shirts. I don’t really mind them, it takes all the decision making out of the process of getting dressed in the morning, but I think it’s kind of stupid to assume that I can’t do my job if I’m not wearing an article of clothing with the Preventor’s logo on it. ‘Look Griff,’ I barked, and instantly had his attention because I don’t call him by name unless I’m supremely serious. ‘Its been a pretty damn bad morning so far… if you want me to go the hell home and change clothes, just say so. But I’m not in the mood to stand here and listen to this shit!’

He blinked at me, looking me up and down and something in his eyes told me he was going to back down. ‘Hey Duo… calm down buddy,’ he soothed. ‘What’s the matter? You see that accident or somethin’?’

‘You could say that,’ I growled and threw back the rest of the can of soda in one long gulp and then tossed the can half way across the room into the big trash barrel.

‘Sorry, man,’ he appeased gently, his whole demeanor changing. ‘Listen… why don’t you go work on Anderson’s Ford until lunchtime. Then I need somebody to run over to the dry cleaners and pick up a shipment of new shirts anyway… you can go and change at the same time.’

I made a conscious effort to shove my irritation away, Griff hadn’t caused the damn accident after all, and muttered, ‘sure thing, boss-man.’

He clapped me on the shoulder, didn’t notice me wince and pointed me to the back of the bay where Anderson’s car awaited. I sighed inwardly, girded my loins and went to get my toolbox. Anderson’s car is a piece of shit. It should have been shot and put out of its misery ages ago, but the agent has been with the Preventors from the beginning and has some kind of superstitious weird crap going on with that car and won’t let them junk it.

I’m not sure what was wrong with the damn thing this time, but I did know that I’d seen it sitting here for the last couple of days and knew that several of the other guys had already given it a go. And obviously failed to fix it. Joy.

That damn Ford consumed the rest of my morning, like some demonic, possessed… thing, intent on feeding off my blood. I don’t like being Griff’s errand boy. I don’t like making the trip to the damn dry cleaner’s. But by the time lunch rolled around I was missing skin off about half my knuckles, had burned my elbow on a hot manifold, had inadvertently taught the mail-carrier woman a couple of swear words she apparently had never heard before, and was more than ready to make the walk the six blocks to the damn dry cleaners.

‘Maxwell!’ Griff bellowed across the bay. ‘The cleaner’s called… the shirts are in!’

‘About God damn time,’ I muttered to no one in particular and threw my wrench back in my toolbox, where it rather predictably bounced back out. I took a minute to wipe my hands on a rag, and exited stage left. Managing by some miracle, to walk across the garage without tripping on anything. I could not wait for this damn day to be over.

‘Take your time!’ Griff called after me and I heard a chorus of stifled chuckles from around the bay.

‘I’m so fucking pleased to be able to entertain you guys!’ I shouted without looking back, delivering the one-fingered salute as I threw the front door open and stalked out onto the street. The chuckles changed to boisterous laughter that was cut off when the door closed behind me. I couldn’t even slam it; it has one of those automatic closer things.

For the first block, people seemed to just move the hell out of my way and I imagined later that I must have been scowling like some sort of insane asylum escapee. My back freakin’ hurt. Every muscle I owned was aching like a mother. I never had gotten any damn aspirin and just to top things off, that stupid piece of crap car still wasn’t fixed. And didn’t look like it was going to be fixed any time soon. In fact… I was starting to contemplate just setting fire to the damn thing and telling Anderson it was an accident. Except… the way my day was going, I’d end up burning down the whole stinking building.

By the second block, the foot traffic had thinned and the walk had cleared my head a little. I stopped playing the ‘see how many people I can get to pee their pants with just a glare’ game, and settled down to a simple ‘don’t fuck with me’ expression. I actually considered hailing a cab, going the hell home and just calling Griff and telling him I was sick. As much as I’d been cussing and kicking at things and not getting a lot of actual, productive work done, he’d probably be just as glad to see me go.

Midway down the third block, some guy almost ran into me because he was trying to key something into his palm computer while he walked. I think I might have growled because he looked up at me with wide eyes, made a funny little noise and gave ground like he’d just made eye contact with a charging bear. I was hit all of a sudden with the horrendous urge to be hugged. Don’t laugh at me. I just seriously, achingly, overwhelmingly and all of a damn sudden wanted Heero’s arms around me and I might have cursed the motherless politician who had caused him to be gone today, right out loud because the next person I passed gave me a really weird look.

The fourth block is a turn down a side street and the pedestrian traffic thinned out almost completely. There were, in fact, only a handful of people within sight. It’s a narrow little street; one way, and only ran about seven or eight blocks before it dead-ended into a park. I unbent enough to actually nod at a woman I passed. But then… I got pure, unadulterated proof of what I have always suspected. God really, really is not all that fond of little ol’ Duo Maxwell.

Something in my head suddenly said danger. I slowed my steps and couldn’t find it. Couldn’t see a thing wrong, but the inner voice that belongs to the soldier after all these damn years, was adamant. Something was very seriously… not right. I turned and looked behind me and saw nothing but the woman I had nodded to, as she made the turn and disappeared around the corner where I had just come from. I scanned the street, my steps slowing as I looked for what my head assured me was there… somewhere.

It’s like a… buzzing in your nervous system, that sense. When you’re a soldier, you develop that knack very quickly, or you very quickly become dead. You learn to trust it too… without hesitation or self-doubt. I am a lot of years removed from the days when that sense had come into being, but it was still as sharp as ever and just as damn scary.

I couldn’t find it. I scanned the street up and down and just couldn’t get a fix on what was bothering the soldier. Every hamster I owned was in complete harmony for nearly the first time in memory; run, you sucker.

But there was nothing to run from.

I realized I had stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk, and let the soldier move me nearer to one of those little ornamental trees at the edge of the street. Not good actual cover, but somewhat obscuring all the same.

And then a shot rang out. War instincts homed in on the sound, made pertinent decisions and activated evasive maneuvers before my conscious mind had time to do more than go, what the hell?

I found myself on the ground, hugging the side of a parked car with fingers digging to draw a weapon I didn’t have. Shit. I scanned up the sidewalk and saw a body and further along, some woman with a dog running like hell the other way. I turned to look back down the sidewalk just in time to see another pedestrian go down. What in the hell had I blundered into the middle of?

Actually seeing the second man go down told me roughly where the shots were coming from and I dared a peek through the window of the car I was mated with, but couldn’t see high enough up the building to spot anything. I slid forward and used the jerk and duck method of stealing a look upward, almost getting shot for my trouble, but was able to spot muzzle flash from a window across the street.

I crouched back down and took another scan of the street. There were other cars, but not many, and they were fairly widely spaced. It would be a hard run to make the next one down the block, and there was no other cover to be found. There was a building right in front of me, but it appeared to be closed for the lunch hour. Movement caught my eye as a door opened three buildings down and some older guy stepped out of the barbershop.

‘Sniper!’ I shouted at the top of my lungs. ‘Get back in the building!’ The guy just stood there for a second, staring at me like he’d just wandered onto a movie set. ‘Move!’ I bellowed, but it was the crack of the rifle that drove him back. At least my little buddy across the street missed the guy.

A car pulled into the street from the direction of the main drag. No way in hell could I warn them off, so I turned and made ready to use them as best I could. When they came abreast of my hiding place, I darted from cover, staying as low as possible and ran like hell in the shadow of the moving vehicle until I could throw myself down in the gutter beside the next car down the line.

The sniper fired off three or four halfhearted shots at the moving car, but only succeeded in making the guy floor it and take off like a bat out of hell.

Sure hope somebody had gotten around to calling the cops.

From my new vantage point, I could see that victim number one was dead as a door nail, taken right through the head. I wondered who in the hell the guy up there was after; surely he’d either gotten his target or scared them off by now. Why in the hell didn’t he pack it in and run for it, before the law showed up? We were only four or five blocks from the fucking Preventor’s headquarters for God’s sake! For the first time in a lot of years, I wished I had a gun.

Finally, I heard sirens approaching and reflected that I would have to tell Heero that we needed to make a generous donation to the policemen’s ball this year, just for this day alone. I shifted towards the hood of the car I was currently hiding behind and risked a look, but a shot rang out almost before I started to move and I dropped back to the ground.

Could this God damn day get any fucking worse?

Oh dear Lord… had I just challenged the power of worse?

The siren drew closer and there was suddenly one of those blessed machines with the pretty blue and red lights sailing down the street toward me. Well… toward the area anyway, not necessarily me. Right into the middle of the damn hot zone. What the hell? Hadn’t the idiot who called this in, told them that there was a gunman down here?

The car screeched to a stop almost right across the street from me, and I watched in open-mouthed horror as the damn door opened and the guy climbed out, intent on heading for the body on the sidewalk in front of me.

I didn’t know what the hell to do. Damn it, I couldn’t just watch this guy get shot. On a sudden inspiration, I leapt to my feet and struck a pose that was supposed to look like I had a weapon, aimed up at that window, hoping to distract the gunman. I was banking on the sniper’s split second hesitation while he tried to decide whether to shoot me or the cop, to save my damn life. I could only toss up a little prayer that the cop didn’t shoot me.

‘Sniper! Get down! Get down! Get down!’ I was bellowing and my point was illustrated for me rather eloquently when my window buddy fired off a round. I dropped back to the ground and swear to freakin’ God I felt the wind of that last bullet, and the window in the parked car exploded all over me.

There was a grunt and a curse and I looked up to find that the cop had taken refuge with me behind my car.

‘Maxwell?’ the guy blurted in utter amazement.

‘Clint?’ I could hardly believe my eyes and I’m afraid a strained little chuckle burst up out of my throat. ‘Long time no see man; so how’ya been?’

He just stared at me. Blinking in some small amount of shock.

‘What the hell is going on here!’ he finally blurted and I gave him a maniacal grin that I think scared him a little bit.

‘I have no fucking idea,’ I was happy to impart. ‘There seems to be a guy with a sniper rifle on the third floor of the gray brick building intent on ventilating the ass of anything that moves down here.’ Up the street I saw another pedestrian turn the corner and I sighed heavily. ‘Get out of here! Clear the area!’ I hollered and watched the guy freeze. ‘Nobody wants to fucking listen to me today,’ I muttered.

Clint backed me up with the wave of his hand and the guy jumped and ran.

‘Oh aren’t you just special,’ I grumbled and got an amazed little stare.

The guy we had just warned off must have been out of range anyway, or at an odd angle, because my third floor buddy hadn’t fired on him. But he must have seen what we’d done and gotten pissed about it, because he suddenly hit the car with a couple of rounds.

We both flinched and ducked lower almost automatically. I felt Clint shifting around and realized he was getting ready to try to take a peek. ‘Don’t try it; he’s had his sights set on this car for five minutes now… just waiting for me to show myself.’

‘Is this guy after you?’ he asked suddenly and I snorted.

‘Not as far as I know,’ I informed him. ‘I think I just pissed him off because I ducked and I keep spoiling his fun.’

He got on his little handheld then and radioed in the situation. I breathed a sigh of relief and was preparing to settle in and wait for the cavalry when the guy shot at us again. And then again. And again. It had a…rhythm to it. A pattern.

‘What the hell?’ Clint muttered, and I really wished I could see what was going on across the street. A couple of blocks down, I saw a police car move in and block the street. I assumed another one would be doing the same behind me, but I didn’t turn and look. What the hell, was right. What was the sucker up to?

‘Duck down a minute,’ I suddenly told my blue angel buddy and he gave me a quizzical look before complying. I rolled over on my back and kicked upward at the side mirror on the car. It took three hard kicks before I got the thing loose and it came away with a crack. ‘Ha.’ I grinned and caught it before it could hit the sidewalk and shatter.

Clint eased back up after I righted myself and gave me a raised eyebrow.

I smirked at him and then positioned my new toy so that I could see our playmate without sticking my head up where I would lose it. It took me almost thirty seconds of watching the guy fire and infinitesimally move the barrel and fire again before I got what he was doing.

‘Son of a bitch!’ I snapped and Clint looked at me in concern.

‘What?’ he growled back at me, looking a little wide-eyed.

‘He’s trying to hit the damn gas tank!’

‘Shit! We gotta move!’ and he grabbed my arm and started looking up and down the street, finding the same woeful lack of cover that I had.

‘Whoa, big guy!’ I told him, lowering the mirror and turning to get off my ass and crouched low on my feet. ‘Gimme your gun.’

‘What?’ he barked, looking at me like I’d just asked him to kiss me goodbye. ‘I can’t turn my firearm over to a civilian!’

‘I’m with the Preventor’s,’ I informed him and it really wasn’t my fault I didn’t have the time for the other pertinent details… any more than it was my fault if he chose to interpret that as a claim to be a Preventor agent. ‘Give me your damn gun and get ready to run… its called ‘cover fire’!’

‘No way, Maxwell! We’re not going through this shit again,’ he snapped.

I was starting to get a little pissed off, I wasn’t real anxious to sit there in the gutter and get my ass blown to kingdom come. ‘We have to run that way,’ I yelled at him, ‘and I can’t get around you without breaking cover. You have to go first. Give me your mother fucking gun and run, damn it, before we get blown to bloody bits!’

I could see all kinds of crap running through his eyes about regulations and protecting civilians. About what the rulebook said to do in this kind of situation.

‘This ain’t in the damn rule book, big guy!’ I snapped and I think it was my mind reading act that did it for him. He pulled the gun out and passed it to me butt first. My fingers automatically checked the load while my eyes were scanning his route out of here. All the while, there was the steady incessant crack of that damn rifle.

‘On three,’ I told him tersely, shifting around and getting ready to take my stance. ‘Black van. I’ll throw you the gun.’

He said something then, which sounded suspiciously like, ‘Holy mother of God.’

I took my breath, steadied my hand and began the count.

‘One…’ Clint scrambled around and settled into a low runner’s crouch.

‘Two…’ the count was punctuated with gunshots. Sweat was starting to trickle down my back.

‘Three!’ On the same heartbeat, Clint launched himself and I threw my ass up and opened fire.

If nothing else, it served to break that God damn relentless rhythm.

I didn’t have the time to seriously take aim, just threw shots in what I knew was the right general direction. There were answering shots and I realized I was holding my breath when my lungs began to burn.

‘Clear!’ came my signal and I dropped to the ground like a stone. I just laid there, panting like a marathon runner for a second until I got a frantic, ‘Maxwell! Maxwell… are you hit?’ I raised my head and gave him a feral grin.

He waved his hand for the gun at the same moment that my little buddy began poking for the gas tank again. The shots were coming a little closer together… he was getting seriously pissed. Making sure the safety was on, I moved as far towards the front of the car as I could get and then hurled the gun for all I was worth. Clint caught it unerringly and I watched impatiently while he reloaded.

‘Ready?’ he called and I suddenly hesitated. The guy knew for sure what we were up to now. He’d be waiting for me to make my run the minute Clint made his move. I looked around and my eyes snagged on the broken mirror in the gutter.

‘Maxwell!’ Clint hissed and I passed him a sign to hold on. I stripped off my borrowed t-shirt, knotted the bottom closed and dropped the weight of the mirror into it.

‘What the hell are you…?’ he began, but I cut him off.

‘Get ready!’

With the sound of that gun still exploring for the fluid that would end my run right then and there, I threw the shirt in the opposite direction and took off running.

‘Shit!’ Clint bellowed, totally unprepared, and began lying down fire.

Behind me, I heard the angry firing of that rifle. I imagined my little decoy getting drilled and tried not to imagine my own little self getting drilled. I dove the last couple of feet with that spot between my shoulders itching like a mother. I tore the knees out of my jeans but landed unventilated, giving out with an exultant cry that was almost a moan.

In the distance, there were some serious sirens closing in and Clint’s radio crackled to life. We both jumped a foot in the air. A voice informed us that the SWAT team was on their way and to just hold on. Clint informed them right back that holding on wasn’t much of an option since our little playmate was trying to blow us into the middle of next week. I was already scoping out the next car down the line and calculating out odds.

I suddenly realized that there was silence coming from across the street. That there hadn’t been a shot fired in a handful of pounding heartbeats. I dared a jerk of my head and couldn’t see the guy in the window any more.

Reloading. Had to fucking, finally be reloading.

Something old and instinctive took hold of my ass and I was suddenly on some sort of autopilot. I snatched the gun right out of Clint’s hand and darted around the front of the van, running across the street.

‘Maxwell!’ he bellowed and came right after me. I hit the other sidewalk and threw myself flush against the building; grabbing a handful of his shirt when he caught up, and making him flatten out with me. ‘What in the hell do you…’ he was growling at me, seriously pissed off.

I was in that black and white world though, and only snapped, ‘Shut up!’

I’m pretty sure he thought I’d lost my damn mind. It only took another couple of seconds of our pressing there against the warm brick wall before the firing resumed. Aimed at the black van. As I had suspected, the mother had been reloading and hadn’t seen us move.

‘Gotcha!’ I breathed with a feral grin, and took my own sweet time taking a firm firing stance and careful aim. There wasn’t much I could hit from that angle, so I just zeroed in on the barrel of the gun.

It all happened rather quickly then… I saw more emergency vehicles flooding into the end of the street. Someone pointed at us. I heard Clint’s voice yelling into his radio for somebody to hold their fire. One of the shots from the third floor got lucky and the van exploded. The gunman quit firing and leaned out just a hair further, hoping to see us fry… and gave me a clear shot at his left hand. I took it and was rewarded by the sight of the rifle tumbling down to the sidewalk.

I was enveloped then by a pair of unbelievably strong arms and taken down to the sidewalk in a protective huddle as debris from the van rained down all over the street. Clint was attempting to share with me every curse word he’d ever heard.

We somehow managed to escape without getting skewered by flaming hot metal and eventually, Clint allowed me to stand up again. He plucked his gun out of my hands with this weird look that was somewhere between awed and apoplectic, and shoved it back into his holster as if defying me to say something about it.

SWAT guys were swarming all over the gray brick building, and a couple of them ran our way to check on us. I pointed them to the second victim on the other side of the street and was gratified to hear a shout go up a few minutes later for an ambulance.

I stood leaning against the building, only because sliding to the ground shirtless against bricks would have hurt. Clint was just staring at me almost like he was trying to make up his mind whether to hit me or hug me.

He opened his mouth a couple of times and then shut it again, finally blurting, ‘I can’t fucking believe you made that shot with a van exploding in your damn ear.’

I chuckled. Or I tried to chuckle… it came out kind of strangled and the big guy took me by the arm and sat me on the ground. After a second, he sat down too.

‘So…’ I ventured, ‘has your day been going as bad as mine?’

He started laughing, and for a second I didn’t think he was going to stop. A couple of members of the SWAT team looked at him kind of funny.

‘I’ve had better days,’ he chuckled at last, when he seemed able to settle down enough to speak.

We just sat and watched them load up the still breathing victim into an ambulance, and then the body into a separate one. Not long after, a couple of SWAT guys marched the shooter out of the gray building in cuffs. He was very… unassuming. Not young. Not all that old. Short hair, kind of greasy looking. I didn’t know the guy from Adam, and wondered if I would ever know what in the hell this had all been about. I sighed and shook my head.

A SWAT member came toward us, carrying the shirt I’d thrown to distract the sniper and grinned. ‘Hey buddy… this yours?’

I cocked my head and looked up at him. ‘Kind of.’ He’d already taken the weight out of it and took a dramatic moment to flip the thing out and hold it up. It had three bullet holes through it.

‘Shit,’ Clint muttered and reached with a shaky hand to grab it away from the guy. The man walked away with an odd little nod.

I took the shirt from Clint and just held it, a little loathe to put it back on.

‘You ok, kid?’ he asked in a surprisingly gentle tone.

‘Yeah,’ I sighed. ‘Just wishing this day was a little bit further along than just the lunch hour… I’m not sure I’m going to live to see five o’clock at this rate.’

He snorted and stood, reaching down to pull me to my feet. I had the strangest sense of déjà vu. We walked to his cruiser, still sitting at the curb with the door open and the lights flashing. He took the t-shirt out of my hands without a word and went to open the trunk again. There was more fishing around in the Good Will sack and he finally came up with a fresh shirt. He tossed it to me and I looked it over. This one said ‘Where are we going, and why am I in this hand basket?’ I laughed out loud and got a pleased little smirk from the man in blue. I pulled it on and we sat in his cruiser while he took my statement and I tried to hide from him how bad I was shaking.

What an unbelievably screwed up day.

When we parted ways this time, he hollered after me, ‘I don’t want to run into you again today, Maxwell!’

‘I am counting on it, big guy!’ I hollered back and finished my walk to the dry cleaners. I made the return trip via an alternate route, stepped in some gum and almost got hit by a cab, trying to decide just what I’d done recently to so thoroughly piss off the Gods.

Would this day never be over? Would I freaking live to see another one?

I was, of course, fairly late getting back to work and was greeted with an exasperated sigh from Griff. ‘Maxwell,’ he grumbled, ‘when I told you to change shirts… I meant into one of the ones you were picking up… not just something different!’

My blood pressure was doing odd little things to my head. I was… rather on the brink of something kind of ugly. ‘Griff… I am having a bad day the likes of which the human race has never seen before. If one more thing goes wrong, I am going to…’ I had been about to say I was going to take a rifle and climb the nearest tower and start shooting things, but… well, you know.

I dumped the bundle of new shirts on his desk, ripped the paper off one end, fished around inside and pulled one out in my size. I stripped the t-shirt off and jerked the polo shirt on, right in the middle of his damn office. I didn’t say another word and neither did he. I crammed the t-shirt into my hip pocket and just let it hang there like a shop rag, storming off towards the back of the bay where the Ford from hell waited for me. I could feel his eyes on me all the way there.

Just fuck this damn day.

To be quite honest, I didn’t do a hell of a lot else to that car. I rattled my tools around and hung over the fender with my head in the engine compartment just staring.

I hadn’t even thought to eat lunch while I was out, and on top of missing breakfast, I was starting to feel a little shaky. There might have been a teeny little bit of adrenaline overload going on there too. I tried to just not think of anything, because when I let things replay in my head I kept seeing the bus driver and the shooting victims. Kept hearing explosions. Heard that lady screaming for her little girl.

George the thought hamster wandered in, looking around nervously, as if he were afraid to be near me and waved a little tiny banner that just said, ‘damn’ in a very understated way. He was wearing one of those little World War I pith helmets and took off the minute his message was delivered.

I was sitting cross-legged on the fender, absently turning a wrench over and over in my hands, staring at nothing in particular and thinking about fate and the power of worse. I had more personal space than was granted your average rabid wolverine and no one had spoken to me in hours. In some part of my mind that wasn’t involved with wanting to go home, draw the curtains and crawl under my bed to sleep for about a week, I heard Griff say, ‘About time you got here, Yuy. Take his sorry ass out of here before the whole garage falls down around my ears. He’s got some kind of jinx today.’

There was more, a string of mutterings about broken tools and scaring the mail lady. I looked up and saw Heero and Wufei coming toward my corner of the garage with a matching set of smirking grins. I realized then that everyone else besides Griff and me was gone for the day. It was almost twenty minutes after. I considered leaping off the car and throwing myself into Heero’s arms but was actually kind of afraid that I might fall on my face. Or that he would refuse me in front of Wufei and Griff. Or that I would somehow accidentally skewer him with the wrench in my hand.

‘Is that Anderson’s car?’ Wufei asked with an odd little grin, as they got closer.

‘Is this the infamous car from hell?’ I growled. ‘Is this the oldest piece of crap on the face of the planet? Is this the vehicle that takes more man hours to keep running than it would be worth if it were brand new?’

He repressed a chuckle as he came to lean against the fender next to me. ‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

‘Yes,’ I sighed, rubbing at tired eyes. ‘This is Anderson’s fucking piece of shit car.’

Wufei stifled a sharp little laugh. ‘Apt description,’ he said rather enigmatically.

Heero stood at the front of the car and gave me a gentle, somewhat sympathetic smile. ‘Sorry I’m late. Why don’t you climb down from there and we’ll get out of here.’

‘Because,’ I groused, ‘my legs went to sleep a half an hour ago.’ I poked my wrench rather viciously at the damn alternator that I was starting to suspect was totally shot. ‘I do not understand why the man insists on using this car. It has to be the oldest thing in the entire fleet.’

Wufei and Heero were both grinning rather broadly and Wufei had to stifle another one of those evil little chuckles. ‘Because he lost his virginity to his first partner in the back seat.’

‘What!’ I yelped and didn’t see the same amusement factor that they did. ‘You mean to tell me I bust my ass working on this damn thing at least once a week because… because…’ I was so pissed that I hurled my wrench into my toolbox. Succeeding in knocking the whole damn box off the stool it had been sitting on and unbalancing myself in the process. My legs really had gone to sleep and I would have fallen right off the damn car if Wufei hadn’t been there to catch me.

He was grinning before he even had me eased off the fender.

‘Laugh at me and die,’ I growled, and he did everything but bite his lip to keep from it.

‘Get him the hell out of here while I still have a garage!’ Griff yelled across the bay. ‘He’s been like this all damn day!’

Heero came around the car and took my one arm while Wufei held the other and they kept me on my feet until the feeling came back into my legs.

‘I gotta pick up my tools,’ I mumbled, feeling like a total idiot.

‘Leave it!’ bellowed Griff and I had to look across the bay at the man. How the hell did he do that?

‘You are not going to believe the day I’ve had,’ I told them as we started for the door. ‘I just want to go home and go the hell to bed.’

There was a strange stiffening in Heero’s shoulders and Wufei chuckled lightly. ‘Maybe after dinner… did you forget what night it is?’

Oh for the love of God. The thrice-damned pilot’s dinner. I think I groaned out loud. ‘That’s tonight? Please tell me you’re kidding?’

‘How could you forget?’ Wufei said with a raised eyebrow. ‘It was your turn to pick the restaurant.’

I really did groan out loud that time.

There was a very uncomfortable feeling in the air and they both got quiet. My legs were working again and I slipped free of them, glancing at one and then the other. They had lost their amused smiles and looked… disappointed. Disappointed in me.

Something twisted in my gut like a knife.

I gamely reached for… fairy dust, I guess. Fairy dust and bull shit.

‘Please tell me I don’t have to go without a shower?’ I grinned at them. ‘I stink… see? Even my hair stinks.’ I grabbed the end of my braid and made as though I was going to shove it in Wufei’s face. He fended me off with upraised hands.

‘I will take your word for it, Maxwell,’ he chuckled and I danced lightly ahead of them.

‘I can’t go to McMurphy’s without my drinking shirt,’ I quipped and even Heero seemed to be losing that expression. That look of… sad reproach. I would sell my soul to not see that look directed at me again.

Eventually, they laughingly agreed to allow me time to go home, shower and change. Wufei took directions to the place and said that he would pick up Trowa and Quatre and meet us there in an hour and a half.

Heero began to tell me about his morning ‘jog’ with the good Senator during the drive back to the apartment and I just left off telling him about my own interesting day for the time being. He was laughing again, and happy, and I just decided that it could wait until later.

I made the climb up the stairs to the apartment feeling every ache and pain, wanting to beg him to call this damn night off. Would it really be the end of the world if we just put this off for one day? I felt… shell-shocked. But when I thought about speaking up, I saw that look on his face again. That faintly unhappy, disappointed look.

Dinner out wouldn’t kill me. At least, the way this day had been going… I hoped it wouldn’t.

When we stepped into the apartment and the door was shut, blocking out the rest of the world, I turned to catch at him… claiming that hug I’d been wanting all afternoon.

His arms felt like heaven around me and he chuckled softly as he nuzzled the side of my neck. ‘What brought this on, love…’ and then the chuckle turned rueful. ‘You really do stink. What is that? Smoke?’

I drew away and laughed at him. ‘That’s what you get for living with a mechanic.’ Would not do to get into it now, we’d be late to dinner by the time I got it all told and reassured him that I was all right.

So I reluctantly slipped out of his arms and went to shower and change. I turned on the water, hot and steamy, meaning to soak out some of the aches and pains… until the hot water hit my burned back. I was fairly quick to turn the heat down after that. I remembered to take a couple of aspirin before I left the bathroom though.

I don’t own a drinking shirt. Don’t know what in the hell one would look like. But I figured that Heero or Wufei would remember my little remark. I ended up wearing the ‘hand basket’ shirt that Clint had given me, mostly just because none of the guys would recognize it. I could call it a drinking shirt if I wanted to.

I did feel a little more human with the smoke and grit washed off, though my skinned knees were stinging now and my back felt as tight as a drum. I’d lived through worse. It would only be a couple of hours. I could do this for the guy’s sake.

When I emerged from my room, Heero was changed and ready to go, sitting on the couch and waiting for me. He stood to meet me, taking me in his arms with a bright smile. ‘Well… that’s much better,’ he told me as he nuzzled and kissed his way down the side of my face and into my shirt collar. I think I melted. He chuckled huskily at me.

‘Oh God, Heero…’ I began, barely stopping the pathetic pleading to stay home for the evening, managing to turn it to, ‘I will pay you copious amounts of money for a backrub later tonight.’

His arms unwrapped from around my waist and his hands dropped to my hips, sliding further down until he could cup them just under my ass with a wicked little grin. ‘Copious amounts?’ he teased and slid his hands upward until he was kneading at my lower back. I let out with a deep throated groan that was somewhere between pain and pleasure. He stopped and his expression became a little concerned. ‘You are all knotted up… what’s wrong?’

I sighed and pushed away before he could accidentally touch any higher. ‘I spent most of the afternoon bent over the stand-in for Stephen King’s ‘Christine’,’ I grumbled and took his hand to head him toward the door with a camouflaging shake of my head. ‘I still can’t believe that asshole Anderson is hanging onto that stupid car because he had his first… roll in the hay in it.’

He laughed, letting me lead him out the front door. ‘Well… don’t you have fond memories of your first time?’

I think my face must have turned an interesting shade of red, because he chuckled at me with wicked glee.

Actually… thinking about my first time, which had been a rather pathetic round of dry-humping with Heero aboard my ship on that ill-fated trip to L2 with Relena ‘stick up the ass’ Peacecraft… I’d have to say no. Yes. Ah hell… maybe?

Ok. It’d had its sweet aspects. The core of it would always be this treasured little jewel in my mind. But to think about it, I had to cup it tight in my hands and try hard not to think about all the other aspects. It had happened aboard my ship. The ship that I’d had to sell. It had happened with Relena and her damn chaperone right across the hall. The next morning, I had felt like the whole world was staring at us, knowing what we’d done. I had been suffering with a newly fractured arm and so the memory would always be laced around with pain.

But worst of all was the realization that I had now, that I hadn’t had then; it might have been my first time… but it hadn’t been Heero’s. It had taken me some time to figure that out, we’d never freakin’ talked about it, after all. But it had become apparent over the next couple of weeks that he… knew what the hell he was doing. I tried not to let it bother me… but it did.

That comment about fond memories was something like a slap in the face. He obviously had not figured out that he had been my first time.

I suppose I should have thought up some bantering response instead of getting all introspective, because his smile faltered a little. ‘Duo love, what’s the matter?’ he asked me gently.

Nothing much came to mind. Ok… nothing came to mind. I could not think of a single thing to say. My face got a little redder and I worked at words like I was chewing on something stubborn. What was the matter, he wanted to know? How could I tell him that it made me utterly heartsick to think about him with… someone else? That it made me feel God awful self-conscious and awkward whenever I let myself think about it while he and I were… together.

His look suddenly became… stricken and I watched him jump to a here-to-fore un-thought of conclusion. ‘Duo,’ he fairly whispered, reaching to catch my arm and stopping us in the middle of the stairs, his eyes searching mine. ‘You haven’t been… no one has… hurt you… I mean…’ He couldn’t even finish it, his eyes warring between fear and anger as he let himself contemplate it.

I stepped back up a step to be on even ground with him and looked him straight in the eye. ‘No, Heero,’ I hold him firmly. ‘No one has ever hurt me sexually; I swear.’

Jensen didn’t count… did he?

I saw the purest relief flood his eyes, like watching cool water wash over hot coals and he slipped his arm around my waist to draw me near. ‘Then… what’s put that sad look in your eyes, love?’ he asked gently, cupping my face in his hand.

‘I don’t know, Heero,’ I sighed, leaning into his touch. ‘I’m just so tired…’

I felt him stiffen and go all still and I realized what I’d just said. That phrase that I had spent weeks beating out of my vocabulary; the all-purpose ‘I’m tired’. That thing that I had taken to using as an excuse for everything from ‘I almost cut off my arm’, to ‘I can’t sleep alone without screaming nightmares’.

I was madly cueing a thought hamster, hoping for a little help, when my stomach decided to let out with a thunderous growl. ‘I uhmm… missed lunch,’ I grinned at him sheepishly.

He dropped his hand from my cheek and rubbed teasingly at my belly, raising an eyebrow. ‘Sounds like you missed more than that,’ he admonished.

‘Maybe breakfast too?’ I grinned at him, taking full advantage of the moment.

It did serve to change the subject and I launched into a rant about Griff and his anal retentive problem with the Preventor’s logo and polo shirts in general. Expressing my severe doubt that I would forget how to work on engines if I were wearing a blank t-shirt. Or that I would suddenly become an all-star first-baseman if I wore, for instance, Heero’s ball shirt to work. By the time we got to the restaurant I had him laughing so hard he was having trouble driving. I had just really gotten warmed up to the topic and begun to conjecture about the possibility of being able to perform neural surgery if I happened to put on a pair of surgical scrubs when he pulled into McMurphy’s and parked.

The guys were there, sitting in their car watching for us. They climbed out when we pulled in next to them and I led the way inside.

McMurphy’s is a spacer bar. A restaurant really, with nice simple food where ration bars are actually on the menu. I hadn’t been in the place since before the accident. I found my palms sweating a little bit. This hadn’t entirely been my idea, but Quatre had been on my case about taking my turn in picking where we went and when I had tried to beg off, Wufei had remembered hearing me mention McMurphy’s. So… ta-dah; here we were. I felt a little odd about going in the place. It’s far, far from an exclusive atmosphere… McMurphy is not a bigot about spacers versus ground-bounders. He sees all people in a nice, even shade of green - the color of their money. But… I wasn’t in the trade anymore and I couldn’t help but feel… odd about coming back here.

It hadn’t changed one bit on the outside and I took a deep breath, reaching for the door, wishing my stomach wasn’t knotted like a drunken python. I suppose the whole thing just sort of topped off my day.

We walked in and I let my eyes adjust to the dimmer interior, doing a quick scan and finding the place moderately crowded. I saw Jessamine, the evening hostess, grab a handful of wrapped silverware and some menus and head toward the door when she heard the bell, not even looking. I grinned and waited.

She didn’t disappoint me when she finally did look up, letting out a little squeal of delight and running the last couple of steps to throw her arms around my neck and plant a big motherly kiss on my cheek. ‘Duo!’ she grinned at me, and then she drew back and whopped me up the side of the head with the menus. ‘Where the hell have you been, you jerk? Go off and try to get yourself killed and don’t even come back to see your old friends. I ought to make you sit by the kitchen door and eat plate scrapings!’ Then she was whirling away with my wrist trapped in her hand. ‘McMurphy!’ she bellowed, ‘McMurphy… look what the hell the dog dragged in!’

I had to dig my heels in to get her damn attention. ‘Jess, dear-heart, light of my life, keeper of my dinner… hold up a minute; I’m not alone.’

She stopped hauling on me, for which I was grateful because she had me by my sore wrist, and turned back around with her ponytail swinging and an embarrassed look on her face. Not for the first time, I wondered where in the hell she kept all the energy she seemed to exude, in that petite little frame of hers.

‘I need a table for five before you feed me to McMurphy,’ I grinned at her and she fell all over herself apologizing and getting us settled at a nice big table near the front corner, not anywhere near the kitchen doorway she had threatened me with.

‘What can I get you boys to drink?’ she inquired, remembering she had a job to do and gave me a quizzical look after she listened to the orders for iced tea, water and soda. ‘These guys are with you?’ she snickered at me. ‘You want your beer?’

God that sounded good; about ten of them… until I was so pleasantly sloshed that I wouldn’t care anymore about all the people sitting around the place staring at me. Until I could forget about the damn morning I’d had. Something to wash that lingering taste of smoke out of the back of my throat. I opened my mouth to tell her yes and caught Wufei looking at me with an oddly… concerned look on his face. I remembered confessing to him almost a month ago that I was mildly afraid of drinking alcohol of any kind. At the time, I had been rather afraid that if I got started, I might not be able to get stopped. I sighed. I really didn’t think that was going to be an issue any more, but if I ordered a drink, Wufei was going to sit there all night and worry himself sick. I really needed to see to it that I stopped getting seated across from him. Somehow, I always got the seat beside Heero and across from Wufei.

‘Water, Jess,’ I told her with a sigh, ‘and shut up about it.’

She laughed out loud and headed for the bar.

I turned my attention back to my little group, only to find them all smiling at me in varying stages of bemusement. ‘I tried to warn you guys about this place,’ I groused.

‘I take it,’ Trowa smiled at me, ‘that you used to eat here fairly frequently?’

‘Hey,’ I grinned at him. ‘I didn’t live completely off ration bars!’

‘Sounds to me,’ Quatre snickered at me, ‘like eating wasn’t what you were doing here.’

‘It’s the atmosphere,’ I informed him haughtily, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the television over the bar that was currently tuned to a local channel and showing reruns of some old sci-fi show or other; I caught a glimpse of a girl in a ridiculously short skirt carrying what looked like a bazooka. I sighed. ‘Ok… maybe not.’

‘And what kind of atmosphere is that?’ he deftly returned. ‘Early sci-fi T and A?’

I opened my mouth to retort, and something bounced off the top of my head, landing on the table in front of me. Beside me, Heero tensed slightly and I had to grin at him. ‘Don’t get your knickers in an uproar, soldier boy.’ Only Heero could react to a paper wad like it was a hand grenade. I turned in my seat to find the three musketeers sitting two tables over grinning at me madly. I palmed the paper wad and smiled at the guy sitting behind me, a tech worker from the docks if I remembered right. He grinned back, catching the flick of my eyes to the ball of paper in my hand and subtly eased to his right, out of my way.

‘Damn Smitty,’ I laughed. ‘I even called ahead to make sure you weren’t going to be here tonight!’

‘I think you’re stalking me, Maxwell,’ he chortled, elbowing Bernie in the ribs. ‘What do ya think, buddy? We keep running into him everywhere!’

‘We’ve run into him twice, asshole,’ Bernie told him with a roll of his eyes. Smitty turned away from him to seek Havers support and I nailed him on the end of the nose with his own paper wad. Even the tech guy chortled at the startled little yelp.

Smitty went off on an indignant little tangent, and Havers and Bernie just waved at me. I started to turn back around but the tech guy suddenly stuck his fist out in a spacer’s greeting. ‘Good to see you around again, Maxwell,’ he grinned and I flushed while I tapped my own fist against his.

‘Thanks, Grant,’ I murmured, his name suddenly coming to mind, and he beamed.

If at all possible, my own table full of guys was grinning even wider.

‘Floor show’s over,’ I growled and I think I would have gotten something more out of Wufei, but Jess showed up with the drinks and we spent some time going over the menu. I warned them away from ordering anything that had McMurphy’s name in the title, and we ended up just ordering steaks all around.

Quatre asked about Heero and Wufei’s ‘interview’ with the Senator and we talked about that for a little while. Jess came back by and refilled all the drinks, teasing me about hanging out with a bunch of ‘stick in the muds’. Smitty lobed another paper wad at me and managed to sink it in my drink. I lobbed it back, still dripping water, and hit him in the top of the head. Cortaine, one of the ‘tug’ drivers from the shuttle field came in then, stopping to speak before heading over to take a seat at the bar.

‘Is there anybody in this room that you don’t know?’ Heero asked me with a cock-eyed little grin.

‘Sure,’ I told him and did a quick scan of the room. ‘The guy in the corner with the black jacket and…’ I finished my scan. ‘The two girls sitting together at the bar.’

Wufei laughed lightly, looking at me with a very strange light in his eyes, but just shook his head ruefully.

I shrugged, suddenly finding myself a little embarrassed. ‘Trade’s kinda tight… I guess,’ I muttered, trailing off when I realized that, technically, I wasn’t actually in the trade anymore.

I was saved from further discomfort when dinner arrived, McMurphy coming out from behind his beloved bar to help Jess serve it. I grinned up at the guy, but he made me stand up so he could give me a big bear hug. McMurphy’s like… the Papa bear of the trade. Won’t take any crap off anybody, but treats everybody who falls in his circle of acquaintances like little nieces and nephews or something. And a lot of people fell into his circle.

‘Bout time you got your ass back here, Maxwell,’ he grinned down at me after he’d let me sit back down. ‘I didn’t even get a card on my birthday!’

I laughed at him, ‘I’ve never sent you a card, you old bear… birthday or otherwise!’ That got a smattering of chuckles from some of the surrounding tables as people watched us banter.

‘I’m wounded, kid!’ he told me with a dramatic hand clutched to his heart. ‘I think you owe me one.’

I groaned loudly. ‘Owe you what?’ I asked guardedly and heard some snickers, telling me that something was up. I looked to Jess for help and found her standing there with a pitcher of something… oddly orange, and a pained little smile on her face. ‘Oh God, McMurphy… not tonight!’ I wailed and the laughter spread through the room until I realized the whole place was watching this play out.

‘Come on, Duo!’ I heard Smitty yell. ‘He’s been waiting for you to come back for months. Had this concoction under wraps just waiting for you!’

McMurphy was grinning at me like a loon. ‘If it isn’t toxic, I’m gonna call it ‘Maxwell’s Hell-fire’.’ He took the pitcher from Jess, produced a glass from I couldn’t begin to tell you where, and poured. How could I say no to a glass of Maxwell’s Hell-fire?

I took the drink and looked up at him imploringly. ‘Mac… with the day I’ve had so far; this is likely to kill me.’

Behind me, Smitty began a low chant of ‘Maxwell… Maxwell… Maxwell…’ and quickly got Havers and Bernie to join in with him. Before long, most of the room was chanting with them. I glanced around at my table, embarrassed beyond words and found the guys looking vaguely confused, but grinning at me all the same.

‘You won’t think its so damn funny when you have to drag my dissolving corpse out of here when it kills me,’ I groused and rose to my feet. If I was going to do this… I’d do it with style.

The chanting, at least, stopped when I stood. There was a smattering of applause. I raised the glass to the room in general.

‘You all remember the legend of the blue concoction that shall ever remain nameless,’ I intoned solemnly. ‘If anyone here has a convertible… go put the top up now.’ There was more laughter and I pretty much had the attention of the whole room.

‘Get on with it, Maxwell!’ Smitty hollered.

‘Care to join me, smart guy?’ I prompted, but he just grinned.

‘As I was saying,’ I continued with a mock glare in his direction. ‘All my worldly possessions I leave to…oh wait; I don’t have any worldly possessions!’ I took a stance and cried, ‘Ok then – I leave my body to science! Skoal!’ and tossed that sucker back. Hell-fire was an apt name. Thank God there wasn’t more than a swallow or two in the glass or I think I would have thrown it right back up. There was a… cloying sweetness to it, somewhere under a flaming surface taste, and it was… thick. I would have used some of the blue crap to wash the taste out of my mouth if I’d had any. I turned to face McMurphy, gave him a cross-eyed look that thoroughly conveyed my opinion, and then tossed him a wink.

‘Not too bad, Mac,’ I told the room in general and McMurphy played my game with me, looking down into the pitcher with a wide smile.

‘No shit?’ he asked me happily and we had to share a grin when we heard Smitty take the bait. Goad my ass, would he?

‘Really?’ Smitty asked, incredulous. ‘Old McMurphy came up with something worth drinking, all on his own?’

I stepped away and let it play out. McMurphy poured, Smitty drank, and the whole place erupted in laughter when he ran for the bathroom, somehow managing to hold both hands over his mouth and curse me resoundingly at the same time.

‘That was the most vile thing I have ever tasted, Mac,’ I told the bartender after the teasing had died down. ‘And that includes the time I tried to siphon raw jet fuel. What in the hell did you put in that?’

The big guy sighed dejectedly, dipping a finger into the brew and tasting it himself with a shrug. ‘It’s a brandy base, with Tabasco sauce, honey, a raw egg, and…’

‘Stop!’ I choked out, holding a hand up to forestall any more explanation. ‘I suddenly don’t want to know!’ The thing about McMurphy is he doesn’t seem to have any functioning taste buds of his own. Just an undying desire to create a new, earth-shatteringly good drink, and make it into some sort of bartender hall of fame. Or maybe he just likes watching his customers gag. Though… when I thought about it, Smitty and I were the only ones he could ever get to try the damned things for him.

I turned back to my dinner with a rueful shake of my head, taking a long swallow of water, trying to get that sticky, burning taste out of my mouth. Jess brought me a soda without being prompted, I took a couple of gulps of that too, but it didn’t help much. Napalm… I think I’d just drunk napalm.

I suddenly felt the weight of four pairs of eyes on me and looked up to find the oddest audience I’d had all day. They all looked… amused. Strangely guilty. Weirdly melancholy.

‘What?’ I blurted, looking from one of them to the other and feeling like I’d missed a whole conversation. ‘Have I got orange Hell-fire on my chin, or something?’

Quatre smiled for me and shook his head. ‘No… we just realized how you must have been feeling all those times out with us.’

I felt myself flushing and bent to cutting my steak.

‘We’re sorry,’ Trowa said quietly. ‘We should have realized what all those inside jokes felt like… from the outside.’

I mumbled something and just wished they’d drop it. I was saved from having to think of something else to say when Smitty finally made his way out of the bathroom and stalked with grim determination toward my seat. Everyone else at the table was suddenly alert to some danger to me and I had to snort at them derisively. ‘Get a grip, guys,’ I snickered. But, you know? It gave me one hell of a warm feeling in the pit of my stomach. Or maybe that was the Hell-fire.

‘Maxwell,’ Smitty said almost formally when he got to the table. ‘Have you thrown up yet?’

‘No, I have not,’ I informed him with just as much seriousness.

‘Then I bow to the better man,’ he said, doing just that. ‘And I will mourn your passing when that shit finally eats out your stomach lining and kills you.’

‘I’m… uh… honored?’ I snickered at him. ‘You look kinda… green.’

He grinned at me then, informing me, ‘I will get you, Maxwell.’

‘You will try, Smith,’ I grinned right back at him.

He went back to join his partners, and I turned back to my dinner with a shake of my head.

I quickly started a conversation about the sticky properties of honey and the guys let me. We passed most of the rest of the meal in idle banter and pretty mindless talk. I was actually starting to relax a little bit, finding that it hadn’t been all that hard to fit back in here. No one had said a thing to me about my ship or my accident and I realized after a bit that there lie the difference between Heero’s circle of friends and mine. Mine were spacers and understood the depth of the hurt I had taken when I had lost my ship and my livelihood. They understood how it was like salt in the wound to keep bringing it up. So they just let it go, accepting me back at face value.

I was just starting to think that my crappy day had finally turned around when I saw Jess come around the bar with a fearful look on her face. I saw her flash a signal at McMurphy and then her eyes were seeking mine. I knew what that look and that signal meant.

‘Shit,’ I muttered.

‘What’s wrong, Duo?’ Wufei asked, sitting across from me and noticing the look on my face.

‘I’ll be right back,’ I told them, tossed my napkin in my plate and went to meet Jess half way.

‘Jock?’ I asked tersely when I got there.

She nodded fearfully.

‘Where?’ I asked, eyes flicking around the room and not seeing the man I sought.

‘In the back dining room,’ she informed me, her voice sounding nervous.

‘Is the room clear?’ I sighed, feeling myself start to tense.

‘Yeah,’ she was able to tell me.

I took her by the shoulders and met her wide eyes, ‘Ok, honey… here’s the deal. You see the guy that is sitting next to my chair? The one with the eyes that are probably boring a hole in my back right now?’

She peeked around my arm and nodded vigorously.

‘That is my incredibly over-protective… room-mate.’ I tightened my grip a little to emphasize my words. ‘He is going to be exceedingly unhappy when he finds out what is going on here. It is your job to impress on him just how bad an idea it would be for him to interfere, got it?’

‘Shit, Duo,’ she blurted unhappily and I grinned at her ferally.

‘Sorry about your luck, kid,’ I told her. ‘Get the musketeers to help you.’

I patted her shoulder, turned to share a tight nod with McMurphy and headed for the back room. I damn near challenged the power of worse again, but remembered at the last minute, and bit my mental ‘tongue’.

As I was nearing the door, I heard McMurphy beginning the job of protecting his flock. ‘Ok people… we all know the drill…’ I forgot about them, Mac would see to it that everyone got down or completely out of the building.

The trade is… a damn tough business to be in. For every pilot that makes a go of it, there are five that cave and go under. It’s a dangerous, merciless industry that hinges as much on luck as it does on skill. And Lady Luck, as we well know, is a damn fickle little thing, and not really much of a lady. There are a dozen tragic stories out there for every successful one. Stories like Neo’s. Stories like… mine. And stories like Jock’s.

Retired from the military with not much rank and less pension, he’d sunk everything he’d had into his own ship and gone into mining. He’d made a small strike, gotten a little money and gotten himself a girl. Then he’d hit a little dry spell and lost all his money, lost his ship to creditors, and finally lost his girl to a pilot who still had a ship. He’d… not handled it well. He’d sunk into a dark depression and taken to drinking. He didn’t handle his drink much better than he’d handled his loss.

He showed up at McMurphy’s or some other spacer bar every couple of months, desperate for the company of his own kind… and suicidally drunk. He usually came carrying a gun. For some strange reason… he liked me and I could usually talk him through it. And of all the damn nights for Jock to show up at McMurphy’s in his usual drunken stupor, waving his pistol… didn’t it figure that it would be tonight?

Could this fucking day get any damn worse?

Oooops.

I eased up to the door and held back out of sight until I could assess his mood.

‘Hey Jock,’ I called with, I hoped, a light, unconcerned tone of voice. ‘You in there?’

There was a moment before I got a reply and his voice was that maudlin one I knew so well. I sighed. He’d been a strong, sure man once… a long time ago.

‘That you, Maxwell?’

‘I’ve been looking all over for you, man,’ I lied. ‘Mind if we sit down and talk for a bit?’

‘Naw,’ he said after a few minutes to think about it. ‘Come and sit with me… I’m all alone.’

I eased into the doorway until I could see him sitting against the back wall. The gun was in his lap, so I moved cautiously toward him. The back dining room is for larger, single groups and isn’t all that big. There’s a long table in the middle of the room that could probably seat twenty or so. The chairs were resting upside-down on the tabletop and Jock was sitting against the back wall on the serving counter, leaning against the wall.

‘Come talk to me Maxwell,’ he said unhappily. ‘Nobody wants to talk to me.’

‘I want to talk to you,’ I told him with false cheer, still trying to assess just how far gone he was. ‘I told you I been looking all over the place for you.’

‘Liar,’ he grumbled and I froze half way across the room. ‘Nobody ever comes lookin’ for me.’

‘Well…’ I began. ‘I was hoping you might know…’ I froze when the gun came up. The trick with Jock is to get close enough to him without pissing him off so that you could get the gun away. He doesn’t really mean to hurt anybody, except himself maybe, and when he sobers up later he always hates himself for these little episodes. We keep taking the guns away from him… but somehow he keeps getting hold of new ones.

‘Stop right there,’ he growled at me, and I was more than happy to do as he said. ‘What do you want?’

I eyed the gun and eased slightly to the right. ‘You invited me, remember? You said you wanted company.’

‘Don’t need no damn company!’ he snapped unhappily and the gun wavered. I shifted just a hair again, to stay out from in front of it.

‘Come on, man,’ I wheedled, ‘I need to talk to you…’

Suddenly the damn gun went off and I swear from the look on his face, he hadn’t really meant to do it. I had a heart stopping moment of not being positive he’d missed me, before I remembered to breath. Damn. He’d never fired the gun before.

Heart in my throat I called out, ‘Mac! Is everybody all right out there?’

‘Ok out here,’ came McMurphy’s voice, and he sounded rattled. ‘You?’

I thought I heard voices in the background, raised in argument.

‘We’re all right… accident.’

Jock seemed vaguely confused and I pressed forward.

He looked kind of troubled about where the loud noise had come from, and it distracted him long enough that I got around the room to his side of the table.

‘This seat taken?’ I grinned at him when I got there.

He blinked at me for a minute before gesturing to the counter with the barrel of the gun. ‘Go ahead…’

I hopped up beside him and settled down, crossing my ankles and trying to look non-threatening.

‘So, what do you know about ocelots?’ I gamely asked him, the most off-putting thing I could think of, keeping an eye on that gun, trying to make sure he kept it pointed away from me. Somewhere in the pit of my stomach, underneath the prickly fear of getting shot, I understood that Jock had just changed all the rules to this game we played. He’d pulled the damn trigger this time; we weren’t going to be able to talk him down, sober him up and try to get him back on his feet. This time it couldn’t be swept under the rug.

‘Ocelots?’ he repeated blankly, looking at me, and when the gun tracked where his eyes went… I dared to reach out and gently ease the barrel away.

‘Listen, Jock,’ I whined, shamelessly trying to win his sympathy. ‘I’m in a lot of trouble. I had to take this job transporting some animal called an ocelot and I just don’t know anything about them. Ever seen one?’

‘It’s a cat isn’t it?’ he asked, interested despite himself. ‘What kind of trouble you in, kiddo?’

I sighed heavily and hung my head, having to reach and push the barrel away again. ‘You heard about my accident… right?’

‘Yeah, man,’ he commiserated and actually sounded a little weepy. ‘That was a nasty, nasty piece of luck.’

‘Tell me about it,’ I complained. ‘I can’t get any decent jobs at all… I don’t know what I’m going to do…’

‘That’s tough,’ he told me, voice wavering. ‘That’s real tough.’

‘You want a beer?’ I suddenly blurted and he gave me a surprised little nod of his head.

‘That’d be good, Duo,’ he confirmed. ‘I could use a beer.’

‘Great!’ I enthused. ‘I’m buying!’

That served to cheer him up a little bit and he sat contemplating the butt of his gun while I turned and called out to the other room.

‘Hey McMurphy, how about a couple of beers in here?’

‘Coming right up, Maxwell,’ he hollered back and I didn’t have to wait long. McMurphy brought them himself, which was a wise choice. Jock sometimes reacted badly around women.

Mac came slowly around the table, keeping an eye on Jock, but trusting me to keep him from getting shot. He handed me two beer bottles and then quietly slipped out of the room again, leaving me to do what I’d come in here to do.

I handed Jock his bottle and then made a great show of trying to get the cap twisted off mine and grimacing in pain.

‘Y’ok, Duo?’ Jock asked me with owlish concern on his face.

‘I screwed my wrist up today,’ I told him. ‘Can you open this for me?’

‘Sure, kiddo,’ he soothed and laid the gun down on the counter to take the bottle from me, since his other hand had his own bottle in it. While he took the minute to figure out that he had to set his own bottle down to free up a hand, I deftly slid the gun across the counter and behind me, until it was resting on my other side where he couldn’t reach it. He never seemed to notice.

He handed me my beer back and took a sip of his own. ‘You in a bad way, Duo?’ he asked, all watery-eyed concern and I felt a little bit like a heel for playing on his sympathies.

‘You could say that, Jock,’ I sighed.

‘I’m real sorry to hear that,’ he told me, reaching to pat my knee awkwardly. ‘It sucks to be on the outside.’

‘Yeah,’ I told him and sipped my own beer. ‘I know. I think I’ll be all right though.’

‘You’re tough,’ he agreed, nodding his head sagely. ‘I was tough too… a long time ago.’ He got a funny little look in his eye then and leaned close to tell me conspiratorially, ‘Don’t trust women, and don’t fall in love.’

I laughed out loud and bit down on my first retort. ‘Women aren’t all bad,’ I said instead and got a little snort.

‘They’ll screw you over and then leave you the first time things get a little rough,’ he grumbled.

‘Ok…’ I smirked at him. ‘I swear… no falling in love with a woman.’

He seemed to brighten a little, as though I had accepted his little nugget of wisdom as the God’s honest truth and the only way to live. I felt really bad for him and had to wonder, not for the first time, about the woman who had walked out on him for greener pastures.

I sat and talked with him for a few minutes, listened to his story again and let him finish his beer

Movement by the door made me glance that way and I saw McMurphy peeking around the corner. I gave him the thumbs up and saw him visibly relax. He turned away for a second and I’m sure he passed the sign on to the room. Then he stepped into the doorway and quietly said, ‘Uh, Duo… Jock’s got company.’

‘Jock,’ I said gently. ‘You know we got to go.’

He nodded morosely, tilted his bottle back to be sure he had the last drop and then set it aside to look at me. ‘Yeah… I know.’

I got down first, flipping on the gun’s safety and slipping it into my pocket, waiting while he climbed down with exaggerated care. He’s not a stumbling, babbling drunk. He just gets… depressed.

I felt awful for him, knowing what was waiting for him in the other room. Knowing where he was going to be going tonight. The trade takes care of their own… to a point. Jock had stepped over the line this time though. I dropped my arm across his shoulders as we walked around the table and headed for the door.

He sighed heavily and looked at me. ‘I screwed up this time, didn’t I Duo?’ he asked quietly and I had to nod.

‘Yeah buddy,’ I agreed sympathetically. ‘I’m afraid you did… I’m real sorry.’

‘Not your fault I’m an old idiot,’ he grumbled as we went through the door.

The first thing I noticed was the rather large group of people clustered in the corner of the room, making a human wall between me and my Heero. I could see his wild-eyed face through the bodies and flashed him a grin that I hoped was reassuring. I could feel his eyes locked on me like a tracking device. I felt really guilty about all those people who’d had to throw themselves in front of his considerable… protective tendencies.

The second thing I noticed were the three police officers by the door, talking to McMurphy and looking highly agitated. I’m sure that most ‘shots fired’ calls don’t get a ‘just hold on a minute’ response from the people being shot at.

‘Maxwell?!’ I heard and had to grin near to split my face.

‘Jones?’ I almost laughed. ‘I thought we agreed to stop meeting like this?’

He just stared down at me, shaking his head in total exasperation. I turned the gun over to one of his cohorts while the other one took Jock in hand. The old guy was docile as hell until they started to cuff him, then he looked to me for support with frightened eyes.

I sighed. ‘Listen Clint… is that really necessary?’

‘Sorry kid,’ Clint told me with a little shake of his head. ‘Its procedure.’

‘At least in front, and not behind his back?’ I cajoled and I saw the other guy hesitate, waiting for Clint to decide.

‘All right,’ Clint said with a gusty sigh and I had to grin up at him.

‘Is that ok, Jock?’ I asked, just as if he had a choice and he nodded, maybe understanding somewhere under all the alcohol that it didn’t really matter what he said. But I understood what a difference it could make in a situation like this to feel like you had some kind of control left.

They led him away then and he glanced back once with one of those weepy looks that could rip your heart out. ‘Sorry McMurphy,’ was the last thing we heard.

I turned my attention up to the man who had, so far, shared most of my day. ‘Looks like your bad day sucks worse than mine… you’re still on the job,’ I grinned at him.

He snorted and planted his hands on his hips with a mock glare. ‘I thought I told you I didn’t want to see you again today?’

I had to laugh out loud. ‘Well, I sure as hell haven’t gotten a whole lot of what I was wishing for today, either!’

Around us, people were returning to their tables and I suddenly had a wall of bodies behind me. Glancing back, I found the guys all but ready to pull me into a protective huddle of ex-Gundam pilot. I could feel Heero fairly vibrating behind me and knew that were we alone, I’d be wrapped in his arms so tight there would be pain. I cast him a warm look that I hoped would hold him until we got through this.

There were a couple of more cops now, one of them talking to McMurphy by the bar and another one looking at the bullet hole in the wall of the back dining room.

Clint was shaking his head at me, looking down from his great height, ‘Maxwell… if I were you I’d be in a damn bunker somewhere, wearing a flak jacket and a helmet.’

I planted my own hands on my hips, mocking his stance, and grinned. ‘I like living on the edge I guess… I dared to go out to dinner.’

He laughed, moving his hands self-consciously and suddenly turned to look around. ‘Hold on a second kid, there’s someone you have got to meet.’ He caught sight of the guy in the back room and called to him, ‘Harris! Hey… come here a minute, Harris. This is that guy I told you about from this morning!’

While his attention was diverted for a second, getting his partner’s attention, Heero moved in a little closer behind me and I turned to face him.

‘Duo,’ he asked softly. ‘Are you all right? What the hell is going on here?’

I could see confusion and fear in his eyes, and a burning desire to reach out and hold me, that he was ruthlessly holding in check.

‘I’m fine,’ I soothed, and his desire to touch communicated itself to me so strongly that it was all I could do not to throw my arms around his neck and hold on tight. I wanted in that moment, to get the hell out of there so badly I could have screamed. I covered it up with a bright smile, ‘I tried to warn you guys about this place.’

‘Well,’ Trowa drawled, ‘it has been an interesting evening.’

I thought Quatre would choke to death trying not to laugh.

‘Duo,’ Wufei interjected, giving Quatre a squelching glare, ‘what is the Officer talking about? What about this morning?’

I couldn’t help giving him a wicked little grin. ‘I tried to tell you guys that I’d had a pretty damn crappy day…’

‘Hey Jones!’ the cop talking to McMurphy suddenly called, waving madly. ‘You guys made the news! Come and look at this!’

There was suddenly a crowd of people jockeying to get where they could see the television and somebody hollered for McMurphy to turn it up. I found myself standing next to Clint and his partner with the guys clustered around me like an honor guard, watching myself on the evening news. Oh joy. How… oddly mortifying.

Though people kept telling other people to shut up, you still couldn’t hear a whole lot. ‘… city bus…’ I heard, ‘…rush hour traffic…’

The news crew had apparently gotten there sometime after Clint, but before the rest of the cops, and the footage started with a scene of me and Clint, practically wrestling in the street. The camera zoomed in on our desperate faces, cutting for a moment to the woman on the sidewalk screaming hysterically about her baby. I noticed for the first time that she was blonde and there was blood on the side of her face. The picture cut back to Clint and me, just as I stopped fighting and pointed over his shoulder. Clint turned to look and I broke free.

On the other side of Clint, his partner, the guy name Harris, burst out laughing. ‘I can’t believe you fell for that, Jonesy!’ he teased mercilessly.

‘Shut up, Harris,’ Clint growled at him.

On screen, the camera jerked and steadied, following my mad dash across the pavement and up the side of the bus. I saw for the first time just how close the cop had come to catching me.

I nudged him in the ribs, ‘You know… you’re kinda fast for such a big guy.’

‘You shut up, too,’ he grinned, and went back to watching the screen.

On the television, I folded my arms across my chest, and just stepped through the smashed out bus window, dropping like a stone into the thick black smoke.

Behind me, there was a funny little gasp of sound and Heero was suddenly standing right next to me, managing in the crowd of people to press his shoulder against mine in the closest thing he would allow himself to an embrace here in front of all these strangers.

‘It’s all right,’ I murmured and then grimaced, giving him a pathetic little grin, ‘It’s… gonna get worse here in a minute…’ and leaned into his shoulder.

The camera man had to move because of the smoke and there was a cut and when the scene came back, it was Clint jerking me and the kid out of the bus like a couple of rag dolls, and throwing us to the ground. I saw the wide eyes of the kid over my own arm for a minute and shivered at the… weirdness of it all. A hand fell on my left shoulder and I glanced back to see Wufei staring at the screen, looking a little disconcerted.

‘I swear to God,’ he whispered to me, ‘the next time you tell us you had a bad day… we’ll listen.’

I snickered softly and turned back to the news broadcast just in time to see the flaming piece of… bus, I guess… hit me squarely across my shoulders. It was extremely surreal watching myself catch fire. I saw Heero’s hands twitch as though he would reach out towards the ‘me’ on the screen. I leaned into him a little harder and saw Quatre move up on his other side and murmur something I couldn’t hear.

The Clint and the Sam on the screen scrambled like mad, Sam pulling the little girl from my arms, having to fight to make her let go of my braid, at the same time that Clint was smothering the flames with his jacket and his hands. I reflected that I probably owed my hair to that little kid’s grip.

‘Did I remember to say thanks?’ I grinned up at him.

He snorted. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘Thanks, man.’

‘You’re welcome… you damn little shit.’

The broadcast cut back to the studio and some red-head behind an anchor’s desk said some stuff I really couldn’t hear, ‘… Officer Clinton Jones… unknown man…’

The bar erupted in cheers. I deftly stepped away from Clint and gestured toward him with a flourish, applauding with everybody else, making him the center of attention and deflecting the spotlight from myself. He glowered at me.

‘Hush up!’ Harris suddenly called out. ‘It ain’t over yet!’

We looked up at the screen. Apparently, the bus accident had been the top story of the night… followed closely by the sniper incident. I think I sighed. I know Clint sighed.

‘There was a damn news crew there?’ he murmured, managing to sound a little dejected.

The camera crew hadn’t gotten there until late in the dealings. There was a quick warning that flashed on the screen about the following footage not being suitable for younger children. They cut right to a series of shots of the bodies on the sidewalk. The first one obviously dead, the second one twitching in a very… unsettling manner.

Then the camera closed on a little red car, behind which Clint and I were crouched.

‘It was red,’ I muttered to no one in particular and Clint laughed at me.

‘You didn’t remember?’ he snickered.

‘It could have been a rock for all I cared,’ I grinned.

The crew had gotten there just as we had started our move to the black van. There wasn’t any sound; the crew was too far away, using telephoto lenses from… I couldn’t really figure out where. You could see Clint yelling at me, and then me yelling back before he finally relinquished his gun to me. Beside Clint, Harris snickered.

‘You’re gonna catch hell for that,’ he chuckled gleefully.

‘Yeah,’ Clint sighed. ‘I was kind of hoping they didn’t catch that on film.’ Then he glared down at me, telling his partner, ‘And it only gets worse.’

I grinned up at him unrepentant.

A hand closed around my elbow and I glanced to find Heero beside me again, looking a little pale. ‘I’m all right, love,’ I breathed as softly as I could, and he looked at me with eyes that were demanding so much more than the bare touch that he was daring.

There was a collective gasp and I glanced back at the screen in time to see Clint finish his run to the cover of the black van. I watched myself get ready to follow him before suddenly thinking better of it. The newscast ‘me’ suddenly stripped his shirt off and there was a round of laughter.

‘Only you, Maxwell,’ Smitty cat-called, ‘would stop to do beef-cake in the middle of a situation like that!’

I watched the scene play out and suddenly Clint was leaning down and looking at me intently, as his on-screen self was taken by surprise when I broke cover. ‘I meant to ask you… why in the hell didn’t you warn me before you ran?’

I shrugged and gave him a cock-eyed grin. ‘We were only going to fool him once with that trick. Figured I had to take him by surprise… and your firing at him was only going to alert him I was getting ready to run.’

He shook his head and glared at me. ‘You know… there was a moment there I just about arrested your ass for… for… something.’

I blinked up at him, but Harris burst out laughing. ‘For what? Saving your sorry ass?’

‘Shut up, Harris.’

We looked back at the screen just in time to see me grab the gun out of his hand and make my dash across the street. On the television, Clint looked like he was about to have a coronary, but he thundered after me.

‘Oh my God,’ Harris wheezed, laughing so hard that tears were streaming down his face. ‘You weren’t bloody well kidding, were you? The chief is going to kill you when he sees this!’

I tried an apologetic smile, but Clint wasn’t buying it.

‘He’s a damn Preventor!’ Clint justified and I cringed. I’d kind of hoped he’d forgotten that little comment.

‘He’s a mechanic for the Preventor’s,’ Wufei supplied helpfully, appearing to take great delight in watching Clint give birth to a litter of kittens right there in the bar.

‘A mechanic?’ Clint roared and several people shushed him. The look of total consternation that came over his face then, was kind of priceless… except for the part where he looked like he was going to kill me.

The camera crew seemed to have some trouble as the SWAT team arrived and tried to get them to back off, the scene cut for a minute while they must have moved. We appeared back in the frame suddenly, a dead-on shot of me standing in the middle of the sidewalk, bare chest heaving, a feral grin on my face as I sighted carefully. Clint pressed to the wall behind me, looking really damn pissed off. I blinked at myself… I’d never actually gotten to see me… in soldier mode. I looked so damn… calm, it was almost eerie. The bar had somehow fallen silent, collectively seeming to hold their breath, and I could hear the announcer lady for a minute, ‘…SWAT team arrived on the scene at approximately twelve thirty, just as the local authorities brought an end to the…’

Harris started to snicker.

‘Shut up,’ Clint growled.

I could see my breathing still and I looked like a damn rock standing there, waiting for the right moment. Then the black van exploded. Beside me, Heero jerked in reaction and his hand on my elbow tightened until my arm started to feel numb.

On-screen, Clint flinched and automatically threw his arms up, ducking slightly. I never blinked, staying stock still until the shooter gave me my opening and I took my shot. The rifle actually fell through the frame, an out-of-focus blur.

I watched Clint gather me in toward his chest and take us both down to the sidewalk. Debris rained down around us like flaming hail, somehow leaving us unscathed.

After that, there was some footage of the shooter as they brought him out in cuffs. The bar was so still you could have heard a pin drop.

Into that almost awed silence, Trowa ventured, ‘Is that all… or should we keep watching?’ It served to break the tension and generated a round of almost uncomfortable laughter.

I turned around to grin up at him gratefully. ‘I… think that should do it.’ I glanced back at Clint. ‘Unless you did something without me today?’

That got a bigger laugh and people finally started to move away. I felt Heero’s hand slip reluctantly away from me, but he didn’t go far. Clint just glared at me again.

‘Jesus, Maxwell,’ Smitty said, his voice seeming louder than usual. ‘Is this like a normal day for you? Or was it some special occasion?’

‘What?’ I asked, all innocence. ‘Isn’t that what everybody does on their lunch hour?’

He snorted at me and went back to his table, shaking his head the whole way.

Clint and his two buddies finished not long after that and headed out. Clint turned at the door and grinned at me. ‘I’m serious Maxwell… I never want to see you again as long as I live.’

‘The feeling is completely mutual, big guy,’ I replied and he gave me a jaunty little salute.

I just stood and stared after them for a minute once the door was closed, trying to gather my tired wits. I felt like someone had used my body to scrub the floor, wrung me out and dumped me here. I hadn’t been this damn worn out since Heero had gotten out of the hospital. I could have gone and laid down on the stupid table and gone to sleep, without even waiting for Jess to clear the dishes. As if the rest of my day hadn’t been bad enough, the thing with Jock had just served to add that last little straw, and I felt like I was trembling under the weight of it… about to go down. I took a deep, steadying breath and turned back to the guys. ‘Did anybody want dessert?’ I asked brightly and was met with four looks of mild reproach. I swallowed, trying to see where the chink in my façade was and couldn’t find it. ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked cautiously.

‘Duo,’ Quatre said quietly, ‘why didn’t you tell us what happened to you today?’

‘Ah,’ I waved dismissively and felt myself blushing. ‘It didn’t seem like a great dinner story. I’d have gotten around to it.’

Heero was looking at me with hurt in his eyes and I couldn’t meet that gaze. I tried looking to one of the others, but even Wufei looked… unhappy with me. So I just looked at the floor.

‘Let’s… take this out of here,’ Trowa suddenly interjected softly and I couldn’t have agreed more. Well… about the ‘out of there’ part. I wasn’t so sure about the ‘let’s take this’ part.

I tried to settle the bill, but McMurphy wouldn’t charge us anything. I tried to argue and he jeered me out of there. We got a laughing sendoff from about half the bar and then we were outside in the dark, walking toward the cars.

And frankly I was feeling like shit and wasn’t even really sure why. I heard murmured talk about who was going to follow who and I realized that they were all planning on coming back to the apartment with us… presumably so we could… talk.

I sighed heavily and resisted the urge to kick the car.

‘What is it, Duo?’ Quatre asked gently, and all eyes were on me again.

‘Look, guys,’ I mumbled, finding the end of my braid in my fingers, a nervous habit that I thought I’d gotten over. ‘Do we have to do this tonight? I’m really kind of tir…’ I bit it off. Tired. That phrase I had taken to using; my little euphemism for ‘total emotional shutdown’. They were looking at me with slightly frightened expressions, every damn one of them. Wondering what I was covering up. Wondering what I hadn’t told them. I got… a little angry.

‘I’m not fucking allowed to be tired anymore?’ I snapped, giving in to the urge and kicking the tire. ‘That wasn’t enough? I have to be hiding something else?’ It bled out of me rather quickly, that anger. I just didn’t have the energy to keep it up.

It was Trowa who seemed to lose that look first, seeming to switch to my side of an argument we weren’t really having. He gave me a little smile and said, ‘No… that was more than enough for you to be… tired. You’re right… this can wait until another time.’ Then he grinned broadly. ‘But don’t think you’re going to get away with not telling us the whole damn story sooner or later.’

I smiled at him gratefully and reflected that, sometimes, he seemed to understand me better than any one of them. I felt a tiny nip of guilt, thinking about some of the things that he had hinted at, things about his own past and his struggle with ‘normal’. Hints that I had left lie and not pursued with him. It occurred to me that I needed to spend a little time getting to know him better. I think we had a lot more in common besides just that whole Gundam thing. I ducked my head and rubbed gingerly at the back of my neck.

‘It’ll make a much better tale when my brain isn’t fried,’ I grinned up at him.

Quatre gave out with a somewhat exasperated sigh, looking irritated that his curiosity was going to be sent begging for now, but was quick to follow Trowa’s lead. He came and gave me a gentle hug, murmuring softly, ‘I want to hear all about it, but for now I’m just glad you’re all right.’

‘Thanks, Qat,’ I told him.

He drew away and the two of them headed for Wufei’s car. ‘Just don’t wait so long to come and see us that I have to come after you,’ Quatre called to me.

I snorted derisively and watched them walk away. Wufei took a second before following them to cock his head and give me an appraising stare. ‘You know, Maxwell,’ he smiled bemusedly, ‘you got through the entire evening without throwing up or running away.’

That caught me rather flat-footed and I just blinked at him.

His smile grew a little bigger as he thought about it. ‘You really are getting better you know. Two months ago we’d have found you hiding under your bed or something.’

I repressed a gasp as he needled so close to my desire to crawl under the bed the way we orphans used to do when we were scared or upset. There really wasn’t an answer to that, so he didn’t wait for one, going to climb in the driver’s seat of his car and taking them all out of there.

Then it was down to Heero and me. We just stood there for a moment, at the edge of the parking lot, neither one of us quite sure what to say.

I could see conflicting emotions running through his eyes as he stared at me. Irritation, that lingering fear, confusion still… all wrapped up in that longing that he’d been denying himself for the last hour.

‘It is dark and there is no one around and I wouldn’t fucking give a damn even if there was,’ I suddenly heard myself growling. ‘If you don’t put your damn arms around me right now, I am going to…’

That was all it took. He reached out with a funny little moan and jerked me into his arms; pulling me so far off balance I couldn’t have stood up if he hadn’t been supporting us both.

‘Damn it,’ he whispered next to my ear, ‘I almost lost you three God damn times today… and didn’t even know it.’

‘I tried to tell you,’ I told him, trying not to let it come out sounding defensive.

‘I know it, love,’ he murmured, dropping a kiss on the side of my face. ‘Damn it… I know it. But I couldn’t hear you. I’m sorry… I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s not always about that damn accident anymore, Heero,’ I dared. ‘It’s getting darn close to a year ago now.’

‘And you’re so much better,’ he admitted, ghosting kisses down my cheek. ‘I know that… you just hid things from me for so long that I… look for things that aren’t there sometimes. I…’

‘Hush,’ I growled throatily, ‘and just fucking kiss me already.’

And he did, completely and thoroughly. Until I freakin’ forgot I was supposed to be standing up and ending up hanging in his arms, whimpering helplessly.

He drew back and looked at me with the flare of that protective gleam in his eyes. ‘We’re not going to work tomorrow,’ he informed me firmly.

‘We’re not?’ I panted huskily, grinning at him, ‘And just what are we going to be doing?’

He smirked softly. ‘We are going car shopping.’

It was an absurdly perfect thing for him to say and I laughed delightedly with him. Winding down to look deep into those beautiful eyes of his, I stroked my knuckles over his lips and along his jaw line. ‘Maybe tomorrow afternoon… I’m planning on sleeping until noon.’

He snorted and smiled warmly, turning his face to kiss at my fingers. ‘Fair enough.’

I laid my head on his shoulder with a weary sigh. ‘Take me home, Heero.’

His arms wound around me a little tighter, and he lifted my head with gentle fingers, bringing my lips to meet his. ‘You’re already there.’

 

Cont....

 

Go to Chapter Nine:Confrontations

Back to Chapter Seven

Sunhawk's Fics

Fiction : GW :