Disclaimer: I don't own them and I don't make any money off of them.
Warnings: Male/Male sex, graphic, language, violence.
Lost and Found
1x2, 3x4, 5x Sally
Warning:Angst, violence, graphic... the usual.
"It's been two years," Duo growled and then slung back a beer bottle
in one hand to guzzle it.
Quatre Winner caught at the bottle, pulled it out of Duo's hand, and then put it firmly down on the table. "You were friends, closer than anyone else to Heero."
"Really?" Duo sneered. "You're the one that lived with him, remember? You're the one that spent so much time, during the war, sharing apartments, sharing tea, sharing incarceration. Maybe sharing something else, too, am I right?"
Quatre scowled. "Now you're being drunk and stupid."
"I don't hear a well cultured voice denying it," Duo retorted as he grabbed the bottle again and drank the rest of the contents down. He slammed it down on the table, himself, that time, and then stood up as he wiped at his mouth. "Thanks for the ten dollar beer, Qat, but you just wasted your money. I'm a crane operator, not a Preventer agent any longer. If Heero's lost, you need to get one of them to look for his ass. If you ask, me, though, he likes being gone, so don't bother."
Quatre stood as well and grabbed at Duo's arm. In his three piece business suit, he was in stark contrast to Duo's dirty work overalls and his filthy bandana. Duo was the more out of place, though, at the five star restaurant. the other patrons were making faces and the waiter was hovering, expecting trouble, and clearly wishing that Duo would leave.
"He was sent out on a mission, and never returned," Quatre told Duo. "No one is talking. It's all classified. Heero is only listed as taking a leave of absence, for an unknown period of time, with pay."
"If you think that Superman Heero can't take care of himself, then you don't know shit about him, Quatre Winner," Duo growled as he jerked his arm out of Quatre's grasp. "If he's in a situation, then he wants to be in it."
"What happened to you?" Quatre demanded, looking hurt. "What happened to the man who used to give a damn?"
"Ask Preventers that," Duo snarled back, purple eyes on fire as he balled his hands into fists. "Ask Heero, if you find him. They know. I'm surprised that you don't, with your connections."
"I'm not all powerful," Quatre replied as he followed Duo through the restaurant and to the front door, much to the waiter's relief. "I don't have open channels with Preventers."
"If they aren't talking to you," Duo shouted, "Then maybe it's something that you shouldn't know about, ever consider that? Maybe we'd like to keep a few things private from you!"
Quatre looked confused as Duo left him behind. He stood in the door, as the one time pilot of Deathscythe, climbed into a battered sports car, and sped away. "But it is my business," Quatre whispered, "because I care about all of you, and they don't seem to."
______________________________________
Duo slammed a hand onto the steering wheel, cursing and muttering under his
breath, as he took the expressway home. He shouldn't have given Quatre the time
of day, after he had clocked out from work, and found the man standing there,
waiting for him. The visit had actually been nice, right before Quatre had started
stabbing forks into old wounds. Heero, and his last days with Preventers, were
still gaping wounds in his psyche.
Duo's home was one of a hundred low rent apartments, leaning against the side of a slum area. Rust pockmarked and smeared itself over every available metal surface and graffiti livened up the otherwise gray on gray, box design. The remains of a tree, a bare skeleton in the front of the building, attested to someone's attempt to change the place. Such attempts were rare. Most people who lived there worked hard, drank to drown out their misery at the local bar, and really didn't care about their living conditions. If things got rough there, everyone knew that they were on their own. The government was too busy playing the 'there are no slums' avoidance game to care and the local cops were too afraid to deal with a place full of crazy war veterans, gangs, and hardened criminals. It suited Duo, though. He could have afforded better, but that wouldn't have given him the protection that he needed so desperately just then. No one visited him and no one expected much from a man fallen that low. Because of that, he was finally being allowed to live his own life. He wasn't about to let Quatre Winner pull him into the thick of things again, not even for Heero.
Especially not for Heero, Duo thought sourly, as he climbed out of his car and set the wheel locks and the alarms. Careful to look for trouble, he hurried into the building, managing the broken front steps, and avoiding the pit bull dog that always seemed to be chained to the outside knob of his owner's apartment. It snarled at Duo, but came up short of taking off flesh.
Duo made a face at it as he passed and then slowed his steps as he approached his own door. Someone was leaning against the wall beside it, hunched into the collar of a thick coat. A face looked his way and Duo scowled. He didn't call Heero's name out and he stopped a yard away.
"My door, huh?" Duo wondered. "Do you think we're friends or something?"
Heero sighed, dug his hands into his coat pockets, and shrugged. "They won't look for me here."
"Ah... wonder why?" Duo retorted angrily. "Oh, yeah? I remember! You signed the papers getting me thrown out of Preventers for something that was your fault!"
Heero's blue eyes looked pained. His jaw clenched and then he looked down at the filthy hall carpet. "I've made mistakes."
"No shit!" Duo snarled.
"I need... help." It came with difficulty.
"So did I!" Duo shouted back, "but you pissed on me, instead! You're not going to get any different from me! Get the fuck out of here!"
"I can't," Heero replied as he peeled himself off of the wall and walked away from Duo. One hand raised and he jingled a set of door keys. "I'm your new neighbor."
________________
Duo slammed the door to his apartment closed and threw his keys against one wall. He couldn't see, lost in a fog of anger, as he stood, head down and fists clenched, and considered the logistics of packing his things and taking himself somewhere else. That last day at Preventers intruded, though, rubbing his face in one of the most embarrassing days of his life.
The tersely worded termination paper had sat, innocently enough, on his desk, when he had arrived at work. The two security guards, flanking his desk, had let him know how serious it was and how much they had expected trouble. Duo hadn't touched the paper. He had only looked down at it, his lunch, in a paper bag, clenched in one fist, as he had tried to wrap his head around the fact that Heero Yuy had been listed as a 'witness' to his gross insubordination and that Zechs Marquise, himself, had ordered his termination.
One guard had ordered him to give up his badge and his gun, then. Duo had flipped his badge onto the desk, on top of the paper, but had coldly pointed out that the gun had belonged to him. The stares, the whispers, and the shock of colleagues that had idolized him, had been the salt in a sudden, gaping wound of his psyche, as Duo had emptied desk drawers into the clean, waste bin trash bag, tied it up, and slung it over one shoulder.
His cheery, "That's it, boys, let's go!" had been forced and dangerous. The guards had nervously arranged themselves at his back and escorted him to the parking garage.
Duo had floundered, directionless and devastated after that. The offers, to 'take him in', had come from every corner, though, some legit and some shadowy, certain that a disgruntled Preventer agent might be of use to them. Duo had changed his phone number, changed his home, and changed his life to escape them. He had found a small pocket of peace, when he had least expected it, and he didn't want that peace ruined by Heero Yuy.
Was he going to run, though? Was he going to let this man, who had ruined his career, ruin yet something else that he had built for himself? He could simply out wait Heero. Even in the Preventers, the man had always been on the go, taking missions from Borneo to the rim, in space, on a constant basis. It was possible that this was only a rest stop, and that he would be moving on eventually. It would be stupid to pull up stakes only to find him gone in a matter of days.
"I'm not letting you win this one, Yuy," Duo grated out to the room. "This is war and I'm not giving up the base to you."
A scrawny black cat meowed at him in question from under a chair. Duo was instantly contrite. "Sorry, Diss, didn't mean to scare you."
The cat slowly came out, rubbed along the chair, tail up, and then cautiously made its way over to Duo to rub against his legs. Duo picked the animal up. All fur and bones, the skinny thing seemed to have over large gold eyes, as it looked at him adoringly and then butted its head against Duo's chin.
"You don't have to butter me up. I know, you want food," Duo said as he made his way to the kitchenette and pulled a can of tuna cat food from a cupboard. Putting the cat on the narrow counter, he opened the can up and plopped the contents onto a dish there. The cat immediately began eating voraciously.
Duo stroked the cat's bony back. It wasn't very far out of kitten hood. He had found it in a bag, tossed into the garbage bin outside of the building. The thing had started meowing pitifully when Duo had tossed his garbage over the side of the bin. Climbing into the muck, and digging the bag out, hadn't been pleasant, but the cat had turned out to be good company in the last few weeks. Getting it to gain weight, though, was turning out to be a challenge, and Duo was beginning to wonder if the cat would always be rail thin.
"So, Diss," he murmured to it. "Are you ready to be my second in command in our little war with Heero Yuy? I expect total dedication to the cause of kicking his ass out of here. I will also need you to follow all orders to the letter. You haven't been very good at the up until now, but you can turn that around."
The cat looked at him, blinked, and then went back to eating.
"I'll take that as agreeing with me," Duo said with a snort.
He left the cat to its food and sat down, his brief good mood evaporating, as he tried to understand why Heero had come there, and why he had expected Duo to accept him. It didn't make sense. The more he thought about it, the crazier Heero's logic seemed. Quatre's concern for the man suddenly took on a whole new light. Heero had bugged out of Preventers, leaving behind a career that had become his life and calling, and had moved into a slum apartment next to the one man who had reason to put a bullet in him. Not only did it seem crazy, but it seemed self destructive. Was Heero trying to egg him into killing him?
Duo scowled. That was too much like the old Heero from the war. He wouldn't get his wish, Duo thought angrily, if that was what he wanted. Duo determined, more than ever, to stand his ground, and to make Heero leave.
_____________________________________
"I'm only doing this,because this is really good beer," Duo growled as he took another swig from the bottle and ignored the fancy glass beside it. His eyes, while he drank, were automatically tracking the movements of the uncomfortable wait staff, and the other affronted diners. Management would have liked to have stopped Duo at the door, but no one was going to deny the richest man on Earth, or in space, his dinner guest, even when that guest was covered , head to toe, in construction dust.
"Relax, Duo," Quatre urged as he nursed his own expensive drink, aged scotch on the rocks. "They're restaurateurs, not Oz with blast rifles."
Duo gave Quatre a sour look as he lowered his empty bottle and wiped at his mouth. "I'm alive, only because I keep an eye on everybody, including the roaches under the table."
Quatre tensed, but then decided not to look. He clasped his hands on the tabletop and said, "I talked to Une and the council."
Duo sneered. "The almighty council. What's rule number one, of any conflict, Quatre? Never let armchair politicians run the war. Une was running the organization just fine, before they were appointed. Then it all went to shit. Une made decisions that kept men alive and accomplished the mission. Those guys are only worried about image and popular opinion. A rebel force can't be convinced to drop their nuclear cluster bomb, by negotiation. A lot of men get slaughtered trying."
"You're blaming them?" Quatre asked curiously. "I thought..."
Duo scowled and waved his empty bottle at the waiter. The man reluctantly gave him a new bottle and opened it. "It's all in my report," Duo said after another, long swig. "You know who I blamed."
"It's classified, but, yes, I did find out that you blamed Heero, for those agents dying," Quatre replied.
Duo lined up a knife, a fork, and his unused glass. "Target." He positioned the glass. "Agents." He moved a fork to one side. "Me and Heero." He placed the knife on the opposite side. "I said, 'we need to come in low, under the radar, and take them out with blast cannons'. Heero said, 'That's not our orders.' I said, 'Pussy! You know that those orders will get everyone killed! Show you have some balls and make the right decision.' Heero isn't good at strategy, but he was in command and I wasn't. He decided to divide our small force and try negotiating first. Well, after those 'negotiators' were turned into paste, he moved up on the assault.. only we didn't have enough agents by then. It was a slaughter and we had to call base for reinforcements. Heero blamed me," Duo ended bitterly, his hand white knuckled on his beer. "He said that I was insubordinate and my unwillingness to follow command decisions caused all those deaths."
There was silence while Duo stared very hard at nothing. "You're drunk," Quatre said softly. "Let me take you home."
"No," Duo growled back and took another drink. He could feel the buzz of the alcohol, but he wasn't shit faced drunk yet. It had made him pour out a story, that he hadn't really wanted to reveal, but he was sure that Quatre Winner would have managed to find out, sooner or later.
"I promised, after the war, to make sure that you were all treated as you deserve," Quatre said. He reached across the table and firmly took hold of Duo's arm."They wanted to forget about you. They wanted Gundam pilots, and their sacrifices, to be relegated to a footnote in history. They didn't want war heroes making people proud of war."
Duo shrugged as he finished his beer and put the bottle down hard. "Yeah, yeah, and who can blame them? I don't. Maybe everyone else expected parades and a pension, but I just wanted to have a life like everyone else seemed to have. Preventers was a mistake. Construction suits me just fine. "
Quatre's blue eyes didn't believe him. Duo didn't care.
"So, find out anything about your boyfriend, Heero?" Duo wanted to know as he signaled for yet another beer.
Quatre frowned. "He's not my boyfriend, Duo."
Duo snickered. "I guess I don't know the right lingo, then. What do you call someone you f-"
"You may stop there," Quatre snarled and Duo went wide eyed over the lip of his beer bottle. He lowered the bottle as Quatre said, in even tones, "Heero is a friend. I thought that you and I shared a friendship as well, but I seem to be mistaken."
Duo grunted and sprawled his weight on the table, pushing things out of his way to get closer to Quatre. "So, you and Heero never...?"
Quatre blushed. "No, and I never had any desire too."
Duo lifted a lip. "Friends don't lie to friends, Qat."
Quatre looked uncomfortable, and then admitted, "I am human... but that's beside the point. I don't want any sort of relationship with Heero, except one of friendship."
Duo studied him for a long minute and then grunted as he slid back to his side of the table. "So, do you have any leads as to where Heero might have gone?"
"There was a report of him in Spain," Quatre replied.
"Probably false," Duo said as he rubbed at his forehead. He was suddenly developing a headache on top of his beer buzz. "He probably left a lot of false trails."
"Like you," Quatre reminded him, but Duo only nodded.
Duo finished the beer and then sat back with a sigh. "Look, Qat, if Heero had wanted to off himself, he wouldn't have bothered with the false trails. He just would have swallowed a bullet. The man wants some alone time. Let him have it and stop looking for him."
Quatre shook his head. "I can't do that."
Duo frowned. "Why not?"
"Because, his last psyche evaluation revealed marked depression and suicidal thoughts," Quatre revealed. "He was being mandated a leave of absence and intense therapy meetings, just before he disappeared."
"Oh," was all that Duo could find to say. "Maybe he felt guilty, finally, for letting me take the fall? Maybe he wondered if his career was worth ruining my life over?"
Quatre jumped on that, startling Duo as he said, "Ruined your life? Can't you hear yourself, Duo? You want me to believe that everything is all right with Heero, and yourself, but your words are saying something different. You didn't want to leave Preventers."
Duo stood, scowling, leaving behind a fine powder of construction dust on his chair. He swept off his bandana and wiped at his face, as he replied tightly, "I take what I can get, Quatre, and I make do. It doesn't do any good to cry over it. Thanks for the beer, again, and see you later."
"Later?" Quatre asked, hopeful even amidst his frustration.
Duo sighed and made a giving up gesture as he turned and walked towards the front door of the restaurant, "We're friends. Of course, I'll see you again."
Duo missed seeing Quatre's smile of relief.
___________________________________________
Turning Heero into Preventers, or even Quatre, was lower than Duo wanted to go, especially when there were so many other alternatives.Duo hacked into systems and turned off Heero's power, then his phone, delivered twenty pizzas to his doorstep, and made sure that the neighbor's blamed him for the sudden, unusual, and pungent stink in the hallway. Men, who were hiding, didn't want attention. Duo was making sure that Heero was given lots of it.
"Thank you for your contribution, today, Diss," Duo said with a salute, as he cracked a beer and sat in front of the vid screen. The cat looked as pleased as Duo, purring and jumping up on the back of Duo's chair to curl up near his head. Cat litter in Heero's mailbox would insure that the postman would make a visit. Yet someone else seeing Heero's face and knowing where he lived.
Heero hadn't confronted him again, since that day in the hallway, but Duo had watched him from his window, briefcase in one hand and suit and tie looking completely wrong on that lean frame. He looked like a boy playing dress up, his hair still a ruffled mess of chocolate and his blue eyes intense, as if he considered what he was doing the gravest of missions. His grave 'mission', though, had turned out to be a job as mundane as Duo's. File clerk in a shipping warehouse, hardly required a suit and tie.
The news was boring. Relena's face popped up more than once, always looking concerned, as she said serious things about serious matters. Seeing Chang Wu Fei, at her elbow in his Preventer uniform, rubbed salt into old wounds and Duo found himself changing the channel to some sports. As men darted, this way and that, playing antigrav ball, Duo relaxed and sipped at his beer.
Diss was his warning. The cat hissed, arched up, every hair on end, and then darted for the door. Duo's gun was out, his beer hitting the floor, as he sprang up and whirled on the door. Gun nosing for enemies, Duo scowled at the unassuming envelope half way under his door. Diss batted it with his paw and pulled it the rest of the way in, still unnerved and growling.
Even an envelope could blow up in your face. Duo winced, several times, expecting his pet to lose one of his nine lives, before he decided that it was safe enough to approach, shove the cat aside, and pick the envelope up. It wasn't bulky enough for a letter bomb. The small slip of paper was obvious when Duo held it up to the light and it was unsealed.
Duo took out the slip and read the bold script written there. It said simply, I'm sorry.
"Fuck that!" Duo snarled, crumpled it and threw it hard at nothing. Diss shot away to hide under a chair, eyes wide. "What freakin' mind game is he playing? Sorry? He's sorry? Like hell!"
Duo paced, thought it through, and then came to a conclusion. He growled at Diss, "He's trying to make me go over there. He wants me where he can get to me... for some reason." The reason wasn't so forthcoming and Duo chewed on his thumb nail, hard, as he continued to pace. "He has to have a plan. It includes me, or he wouldn't have come here. All this sorry, bullshit, is just a cover. Maybe he does want me to kill him? It seems the only thing that makes sense, but it's so nuts! Is Heero really that crazy?"
Diss made a murr noise, still not willing to come out yet. Duo jerked up the crumpled paper, smoothed it out, and then took it to where he kept a collection of stolen work pens, with various company names, in a beer can with the top cut off. Fishing one out, he wrote on the back of the note, If you want to commit suicide, do it somewhere else. I'm not going to be your trigger man.
Duo was careful to wait a few hours before entering the hallway. Looking about carefully, he held his nose against the stink, and then crept to the mailboxes. He slipped the note into Heero's box, and then quickly made his way back into his apartment. The dog down the hallway snarled and barked. Duo flipped it his middle finger before he closed his door.
___________________________________________
There wasn't a reply and Duo went to work, the next day, wondering if Heero would try something else. When he returned home, he found workmen ripping up the hall carpet and the landlord speaking to Heero. Heero was hunched over with his hair in his face, nodding as he listened to the landlord's warning about peeing in the hallways. Duo snickered as he ducked into his own apartment and then froze. On the rough, folding table, chinese takeout had been arranged around another note. Diss was on the table, and obviously just about to try and get into the meal himself.
"Shit!" Duo swore, face flaming, as he touched the boxes and found them still hot. Not only did Heero know when he came home, but he had bypassed all of Duo's security measures as if they hadn't existed.
Duo picked up the note. It read, I don't need death, only forgiveness.
Duo trashed the food, too suspicious and unnerved to eat it. Thoughts of running away were strong enough to make him grab his duffel bag.He wasn't safe. Heero could get to him whenever he wanted to.
Diss rubbed against Duo's legs. He would have to leave Diss, though. He couldn't take the cat on the road. He would lose him to the back alleys and the transport stations, if he did. He rubbed the cat's head and then ran a hand along its back. The cat arched into his touch, purring. Old lady Peterson might take him in... or that lonely man down in 8c, who'd just lost one of his cats... or maybe... Diss looked up at Duo with trusting eyes.
"I'm a cold blooded killer," he told the cat. "I once destroyed fifty Leos before lunch time and then had lunch."
Diss purred and butted his hand to be petted some more.
"Aw, crap!" Duo groaned as he pulled the cat to him and rubbed it under the chin. "Well need better security," he told the cat, "and some booby traps. Heero is going to get a nasty surprise if he tries getting in here again. Now, if you'll excuse me, Diss, I have to go pee on the new carpet in front of Heero's door. If he won't leave, I'll have to get him evicted."
TBC