I have to admit that I thought we were all going to buy the farm that day. It was something of a mind bending rush of emotions; first the relief when we finally found Duo in that rat’s nest of a terrorist’s hideout… followed immediately by the horror of realizing what he was wired to. He was unconscious and the slightest sharp move on his part was going to quite literally, bring the house down. It was only a matter of time before he came around, and no way in hell he wasn’t going to wake up thrashing.

You go down fighting, and the odds are always pretty good you’ll come back up fighting.

‘We’ve got to disarm that thing,’ Wufei hissed, eyeing the mechanism with obvious trepidation. It was hooked up to our resident demolitions expert after all, and he wasn’t being a lot of help in his current state.

‘We have to evacuate the…’ Quatre began, but Wufei just growled.

‘They set the damn thing, they can damn well sweat it out with us!’

They would have argued more, but there was a slight change in Duo’s breathing pattern and we knew we were running out of time.

‘What do we do?’ Quatre asked, voice dropping to a whisper, putting me in mind of a man in a nursery full of sleeping babies.

‘You call the ground forces in,’ Heero suddenly snapped, taking charge out of nowhere. ‘And get the damn prisoners out of here.’ And since that had been part of his plan to begin with, Quatre darted off to comply. ‘Trowa, you and Wufei see if you can figure out how to get Duo loose from that thing.’

‘And just what the hell are you…’ Wufei began, but petered out to an inarticulate little noise when Heero started stripping out of his jacket and harness.

‘Heero?’ I couldn’t help asking, but he didn’t look up at us as he knelt down behind Duo there on the floor.

‘I’m going to keep him from blowing us all to kingdom come,’ he informed us, the remark given a very odd tone by the weird little blush on his face.

I thought Wufei was going to swallow his tongue when Heero carefully laid down and spooned up against Duo’s back.

‘Yuy!’ he gasped, voice wanting to rise at the same time he was trying to keep it low. ‘Are you insane?’

But Heero wasn’t paying any more attention to us as he gently wrapped an arm around Duo’s waist and held him against the curve of his body. I waited with breath held for the eruption that would send us all to hell, but Duo just seemed to… settle into the embrace.

No thrashing, no fighting, no erupting. Just… snuggling.

‘I’m here,’ I heard Heero murmur, and he managed to work his other arm under Duo’s head. Duo sighed and I don’t think Wufei was breathing either.

‘I need you to wake up, love,’ Heero whispered and I’d only thought he’d been blushing before. I swear, for about two damn minutes, Wufei and I completely forgot about the bomb.

‘H’ro?’ Duo mumbled, voice thick and a bit hoarse.

‘Yes, it’s me,’ Heero responded, looking somehow relieved. ‘I need for you to listen to me, ok?’

‘K,’ Duo responded, almost on automatic, his head rubbing back against Heero’s chest. Heero pressed down on the top of Duo’s head with his chin and they stilled.

‘Trust me?’ Heero asked and there was an immediate.

‘Course…’

‘No matter what, you have to not move, all right?’ he commanded, and Duo went still in a scary sort of way.

‘S’wrong?’ Duo mumbled and I could see him struggling to get his eyes open.

I blinked when Heero chuckled darkly. ‘Absolutely nothing as long as you stay quiet, ok?’

‘K,’ Duo replied again, and Heero finally looked up at us.

‘You two want to get the fuck to work, please?’ he snarled and we shook ourselves free of the dumbfounded trance we’d been in.

Wufei squatted down next to the tangle of wires and plastiques first and I followed, a bit slower to tear my eyes away from the sight of Heero Yuy spooning Duo Maxwell. Hell… Heero Yuy spooning anybody.

‘It’s ok,’ Heero murmured to Duo, his tone doing a complete turn around from the one he’d used to address us. It was surreal. ‘I’m here now.’

Wufei was staring intently at the mess in front of us and I tried hard to keep my focus there, but I’m really just not that good with explosives to begin with, and I was still trying to get my head around that ‘love’ thing. And the spooning.

It was pretty damn obvious that it was a position they were both very comfortable in. Which sort of implied that it was something they’d done before. A lot of times before.

‘Why…’ Duo began, voice fading in and out. ‘Head… hurts…’

‘I know,’ Heero told him, sounding pained himself. ‘I know. Just stay still and we’ll take care of it. It’s all right.’

I couldn’t help stealing glances their way and was surprised to look across and find Duo’s eyes drooping, but open.

‘Uh… hey,’ I said brightly and he blinked at me.

‘Why are…’ he began and then stopped while he puzzled something out. ‘Uh… not… our bedroom?’

‘No, love,’ Heero soothed, stroking his hand over Duo’s cheek. ‘We’re not in our bedroom. Do you remember the mission?’

‘Mission?’ Duo parroted, blinking at me still, as though trying to fit me into his reality.

‘The Hildreth case,’ I supplied. ‘Remember? We played Gundam, paper, scissors to see which of us went in first? In our office?’ I ignored the looks that got from Heero and Wufei… Duo was my partner and I knew what memory triggers would do it for him.

It took him a long moment, and then he said, ‘Oh yeah,’ around a slow blink.

‘Do you know what happened after that?’ Wufei prodded, still chewing on the part where Duo had gotten caught. He’d been ranting about it for the last three hours, and I guess he wanted his answers just in case. Wouldn’t do to go into the after-life with unanswered questions.

‘Dunno…’ Duo sighed, his eyes easing closed again. ‘Can’t think…’

Wufei returned the sigh, though his was more of frustration, and straightened to fish his knife out of his pants pocket.

‘Shhhh…’ Heero said, gently brushing the sweaty bangs from Duo’s forehead. ‘We’ll get you out of here as soon as we get this thing disarmed.’

‘Dis…armed?’ Duo asked, and there was just a hint more focus in his wavering tone.

‘Why did you think you needed to stay still?’ Wufei chuckled, pulling tools out of that stupid Swiss army knife he’s so damn proud of. He flexed the little clippers and grinned broadly… we’d be hearing about how handy it was for weeks.

That was about where Quatre came striding back into the room. ‘Ok, guys… how’s it going? The troops have moved in and… holy shit!’

I wanted to laugh at the pole-axed expression on his face, but I was pretty sure mine hadn’t looked that much different not five minutes before.

There was a long quiet moment while I imagined crickets chirping merrily.

‘Welcome to this week’s issue of ‘Romance in Uniform’…’ Wufei bagan, but Heero cut him off.

‘Shut up and get to work, Chang.’

Wufei snorted, but bent back into the tangle of wires, visually tracing the one attached to Duo.

Quatre was quiet for a long moment before gamely rising to the occasion. ‘I’m thinking we’re about due for a boy’s night out. You know; one of those evenings where we sit around some bar and… talk?’

‘Oh yeah,’ I agreed, watching Wufei’s partner carefully kissing the top of my partner’s head. ‘Talk.’

‘Shut up, Barton,’ Heero said, but it was losing the heat.

‘Disarm?’ Duo muttered again, sounding like he was carrying on a conversation with the sprites in his head.

‘Bomb, Duo,’ Quatre supplied. ‘Big ass bomb intimately wedded to your person.’

Duo’s blinking became more… high priority. ‘What? Wait…’

‘We’ll have you loose in a minute,’ Wufei told him distractedly, and reached out with his little clippers.

‘Not the red one!’ Duo suddenly burst out, and with his eyes wide open, I could tell he probably had a concussion as weird as his pupils looked. We all froze.

‘Why not?’ Wufei asked guardedly, clippers hovering.

‘Well,’ Duo stammered. ‘It’s never the red wire.’

‘Oh for God’s sake, Maxwell!’ Wufei huffed, rolling his eyes. ‘Be serious!’

‘I am,’ Duo managed, sounding like he was coming around more, but still staying perfectly still in Heero’s arms. ‘What’s the red wire… ‘ttached to?’

‘You,’ Wufei replied, clippers still hovering, but his indecision was plain.

‘Course you don’t cut that one!’ Duo said, scolding like you would a little kid that had screwed up their homework. ‘Cut the other first…’

‘Other?’ Wufei groused. ‘A little bit more specific, if you please?’

‘The one tha’s not red?’ Duo tried, his eyes almost crossing as he tried to focus.

There was a sound of disgusted frustration from Quatre and then he demanded, ‘Is that thing on a timer?’

‘Doesn’t seem to be,’ I told him. ‘Just looks like a basic ‘suicide’ switch. It’s just such an amateur job that it’s kind of hard to be sure what the hell all this crap is.’

‘Then just hold on a minute,’ and he strode back out. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Striding, I mean.

Wufei huffed something under his breath that was decidedly displeased. ‘Great; he’s going to call the damn bomb squad and we’re never going to hear the end of this.’

‘They do like to brag about getting to save Gundam pilots,’ I commiserated and Heero sighed.

‘Five bucks says one of them has to make that damn self detonate joke… again,’ he said, tone somewhere between dejected and annoyed.

‘S’ok, Heero,’ Duo mumbled and I think he started to reach up to pat Heero’s hand before he remembered he wasn’t supposed to be moving.

‘We could always go ahead…’ Wufei mused absently and Heero and I snorted at the same time.

‘You disobey a Winner directive,’ I grunted. ‘And you’re on your own.’

‘Wimp,’ Wufei grumbled, but he flipped the clipper back into his knife and dropped it back into his pocket.

Duo seemed to be lagging just a hair behind the conversation because he chose that moment to give Wufei a rather plaintive look and asked, ‘You won’t blow me up, will you ‘Fei?’

Wufei reached out to pat his leg but then thought better of it. ‘If I do, I’ll blow me up too, ok?’

‘K,’ Duo smiled just as though it made all the difference in the world. Misery truly does love company, I guess.

‘How long…’ Heero began, but there was a sound from the hallway that didn’t sound like the bomb squad. Not unless ‘mother-fucking asshole’ was some sort of new mission code-word. I exchanged a wide-eyed look with Heero over Duo’s head that produced no clue, so I exchanged the same look with Wufei. He had no idea either.

Then Quatre was back in the room dragging a cuffed and sobbing prisoner by elbows that were so close together I’m pretty sure the associated shoulders were dislocated. The man’s wails only escalated as he found himself coming full circle into the room he probably helped wire.

It didn’t even slow Quatre down as he man-handled the unfortunate fellow across the room. ‘Now then,’ he said conversationally, slamming a knee into the back of the prisoner’s and forcing him down on the floor. ‘If that bomb goes off, your face is going to be the first thing it impacts because the position you are in now is what we in the business fondly refer to as ‘ground zero’. That’s pretty clear, right?’

The guy gave a half-hearted nod in between the wailing and the sobbing. Quatre gave him a shake.

‘Say hello to the nice bomb, Mr. Riggs.’

There was an incomprehensible sound while Heero, Wufei, and I stared.

‘I can’t hear you,’ Quatre said pleasantly, and ratcheted up the tension on the guy’s arms. There was a strangled scream and then damned if the guy didn’t shriek out,
‘Hellonicebomb!’

I thought Wufei was going to laugh right out loud, but it would really have spoiled the moment, so he just bit his lip instead.

‘So you understand your position?’ Quatre prodded, leaning the guy in just a little closer, making him forget the pain in his arms and really start thinking about the blowing off of the head thing.

I’d never really seen anybody bug their eyes out quite that much before. It was actually kind of gross.

‘And you get the part where Duo here is a friend of mine, right? A really good friend who has a whole hell of a lot of explaining to do, right? Explaining that I intend to see that he is around to do, right?’

Another shake and the response of ‘Right!’ was echoing off the walls.

‘So you tell the gentleman here just how to disarm this thing unless you want a real intimate relationship with Mr. Nice Bomb… got it?’

‘The black wire!’ the sobbing Mr. Riggs howled. ‘Cut the black wire!’

Wufei dug his pocket knife back out, the fancy Swiss army one, having to flex the little clippers just once before bending down and carefully snipping the black wire.

The only thing that happened was Duo’s mumbled, ‘Told ya…’

‘May we cut the red wire now?’ Quatre asked and it was kind of surreal how genteel he could sound while roughing up a prisoner.

Mr. Riggs nodded vigorously and Wufei dutifully clipped the wire melding Duo into the mix. It was barely severed before Heero was off the floor with Duo in his arms, striding for the door and shouting for the medics.

‘Very good, Mr. Riggs,’ Quatre told his captive and the tone was so icily pleasant that the man just up and fainted. There was a disgusted sigh from Quatre before he turned to the door with the limp body in tow. ‘Murdock! Get in here and help me get this idiot out of here!’

‘Yes sir, Commander Winner, sir!’ the agent in question shouted, running in to the now safe room and grabbing up half a body. They both disappeared through the doorway with the somewhat worse for wear Mr. Riggs suspended between them.

Wufei and I shared another one of those wide-eyed looks.

‘Commander?’ he asked in disbelief. ‘When in the hell did Quatre outrank Une?’

‘You got me,’ I confessed. ‘I guess when he became scarier than Une?’

Wufei whistled softly between his teeth, ‘Remind me never to keep gossip from Quatre Winner.’

‘No shit,’ I agreed and then looked around. ‘You do realize they just left us with the cleanup?’

He sighed heavily, putting his knife away and pushing himself to his feet. ‘And all the paperwork.’ He stuck his hand out to pull me up as well. ‘Come on… if I know Quatre, he’s following them to the hospital right now.’

I let him drag me to my feet and grinned. ‘And if we’re not there when the medics get done with Duo…’

‘We’ll miss the fireworks.’

‘No way in hell am I letting that happen,’ I informed him. ‘If Quatre can be a Commander, so can we; somebody else can deal with this mess.’

We gave the bomb a wide berth, and headed for the door. Wufei got an odd little smile about half way there and suddenly said, ‘Besides… Quatre’s kind of hot when he’s all take charge like that.’

‘Hands off,’ I growled, wondering if the incoming troops would buy that Wufei got clothes-lined in the struggle with the terrorists.

‘I wasn’t aware you had a claim?’ he smirked at me and we stopped in the doorway to glare at each other.

‘I saw him first,’ I told him, leaning a bit and trying to use my superior height to intimidate. Wufei just leaned in too.

‘What?’ he wanted to know. ‘Are we five years old?’

‘Hardly,’ I snapped. ‘Or we wouldn’t have a problem, now would we?’

He couldn’t help a snort of a laugh, but then he got a feral little grin, sticking his fist out. ‘How about we settle this like men then. What’d you call it… Rock, paper, Gundam?’

I bit down on the satisfied grin. ‘Gundam, paper, scissors, Chang. Get it right.’

‘Maxwell’s version, I assume,’ he said with a roll of his eyes. ‘On three…’

I matched his fist with mine. Oh yeah… Duo’s rules, all right. Gundam trumps everything. And just like Duo, I wouldn’t bother to explain the rules until after I’d won.

Quatre Winner was definitely hot when he was all ‘take charge.’

 

 

 

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