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Gundam Wing - Lone Wolf and Pilot - 8/?
Post-EW, fusion with the Iskryne series, written for the Psychic Wolves for Lupercalia mini-challenge. Duo-centric, eventual Duo/Heero. Psychic packbonding, consent issues.
Duo doesn’t want to join the Preventers, thankyouverymuch. Preserving the peace is all well and good but he likes answering to no one but himself, and like hell he wants to buddy up to people he and Killer used to stand against, back during the war.
Only the Preventers have a pack, and his brother-wolf doesn’t, never has, deserves to, and maybe a junkyard dog isn’t all a warrior wolf should be.
--
Duo swore Heero would have kept him awake less if he'd been tossing and turning.
Mary had retired to her little wolf cave on the ground floor of the Yuy bunk bed a while ago, and was dead asleep as far as Duo could tell. Meanwhile, her person was lying absolutely still one level up, stretched out on his back, a hand tucked under his pillow for the hidden gun. Staring at the ceiling.
Okay, not really, his eyes were closed. Might as well have been staring, though. Duo didn't know if it was because almost everyone else was asleep and therefore quiet, but...
The awareness of too many breaths in the room he felt was a little too sharp to be his. He'd been here for almost four weeks now, after all, and it wasn't like he'd never slept in dorms before, doing his training on cramped, overcrowded Sweeper ship after Sweeper ship. Half the time he had his choice of hammock or Killer's flank to sleep on, and the hammocks vibrated every time someone opened a door or walked by...
Sigh.
Killer was currently stretched out on the floor toward the foot of Duo's own bunk, between the bunk and the wall. He was asleep, but lightly so, ears flicking here and there. Duo counted his wolf's breaths up to a hundred, and shifted onto his side, leaning on his elbow.
"Do you wanna trade?"
Heero's head pivoted like he was an eagle who'd heard a mouse complaining of being too deliciously fat and slow to run. Duo pinched his lips together to keep from smiling, in case Heero took it badly.
"Bunks," he said patiently. "Do you want the wall? You're the one who was traveling today."
Heero gave him a glare that Duo privately titled 'I'm actually confused but Heero Yuy doesn't do confused so I'm gonna be annoyed instead.'
"You'll be waking up other people soon, buddy. Just saying."
People, or their wolves. Before Mary hid away in her private cave to sleep she'd been... Duo wasn't sure why, possibly the queen wolf thing, but she was hugely interesting to just about all the other wolves, who just had to bow to her and lick her chin and all those things.
Which she oddly enough seemed to take in stride! The issue had come mostly from the fact that their humans seemed just as interested in engaging Heero in conversation.
"So where are you from?"
"How long have you and Mary been bonded?"
"Gundam pilot, huh? What have you been doing since the war?"
"If you want, we can tour the buildings tomorrow, show you around, yeah?"
Heero was alright at faking polite by-rote small talk, but Duo couldn't have missed the twitch of relief in the pack sense when it was time to turn off the lights.
There was an unexpected flash of someone else's sense-memory -- starched-stiff button-up shirt, neck tight (cravat? That's as good as a garrote) and a pack of school students crowding all around him. Soft civilians, which meant fighting his way out would be inappropriate, but it itched.
Yeah, it's less stressful when your wolfsib is right there with you, huh, Duo sent, aiming carefully. Started going solo when I was nine, but it never not sucked.
Heero snorted, a quiet puff of breath in the darkened room. He was thinking about how, comparatively, being mobbed by harmless teenage civilians had somehow been worse than by adults carrying weapons.
Duo got that, though. People who'd received combat training started thinking and acting along the same lines they did. Sheltered teenagers might as well have been aliens.
You're twisted, Duo teased, and rolled straight over his guardrail to land in a silent crouch between their bunks. Mary's fur rustled against the wooden wall in the absolute black of her little cave as she shifted at his scent. "Hey, Mary, go sleep in Killer's bunk, okay? It's not like he's using it."
"Duo--"
Heero's mouth clamped closed, and he glared some more, sitting up halfway on his bunk to scowl down at Duo better. Duo put his hands on his hips and gave him his best shit-eating grin.
Mary lumbered out of the bunk and feathered a half-awake mnh-yes-want-the-safer-den down their spines. Heero's hand fisted in the sheets.
Tracking-flanking wolf will guard us, she replied sleepily, checking in with Duo with an inquisitive mental poke. It wasn't even making sure that was what he was offering, more like... Duo wasn't too sure.
Bossy, he thought at her, and nudged her blond ass with his knee. She yawned all teeth out and trudged on.
Duo stepped closer to the bunk, put a daring hand on the ladder. "Trade you tomorrow," he whispered up at Heero. Now go before we do wake up people!
He almost expected Heero to get stubborn, but Heero must have known that going into tomorrow on zero sleep wouldn't be half as smart as going on a mission that way. They could all defuse bombs and field-strip weapons borderline in their sleep; socializing, now, not so much.
And everyone was expecting Heero to show up at the bar after work, Rosca Folhasbrother included.
... Fine.
Heero slipped down the ladder, paused to stare at him -- grunted, and went around the foot of Duo's bed for his ladder. Shrugging, Duo climbed his way up to Heero's empty bunk.
Lying down under Heero's still-warm blankets would be a little weird, and anyway he was keeping watch, he didn't need to be comfortable, he might fall asleep. He sat up against the wall, tucked in the corner to have a good view of the dorm room.
"Wake me up at four," Heero ordered in a whisper as he appeared on top of Duo's ladder. Half asleep on your feet-I deal with them alone-mission failure.
Duo snickered, and made an okay sign. Heero lay down on his mattress. Even out of sight, Duo knew that Mary had snuffled at Killer's fur, that he'd woken up to nose at her chin and let her through before setting his head on his paws again. He was watching the room now, they both were, two slightly different angles of view. Killer's eyes were a bit better in low light, but it was nice to have a higher view too...
Mary was already falling back asleep. It was cozy and warm and smelled just like the dens where cordite and nitroglycerin and blood had told her Protect the giant metal important thing I must go alone to the human pack. Killer had been there, too, with his own giant important thing...
She still remembered Killer's rough-furred flank under her as she napped on top of him. He'd been so much bigger. A giant wolf. Duo chuckled under his breath. For her it wasn't her who had grown, it was Killer who had shrunk.
He felt a... twitch, something flinching back from that thought, so quiet, a mouse skittering in the dark of the bond.
Heero?
No answer. Heero kept breathing quiet and slow, sounding perfectly asleep.
Yeah, he could make his goddamn brainwaves say he was asleep too, and that didn't mean he was.
Duo concentrated on the familiar smells of pungent gunpowder and hot blood spreading in a puddle on the ground, on the way they mingled. Heero's scent-name contained other things in the background -- mostly sweat, tinged with nuances he couldn't decipher, not being a wolf -- but he remembered it well enough even if he couldn't crack it all the way down.
What's wrong? doubt it'd be about Killer shrinking (too silly to actually be a concern) did you not want her to grow up or ...? (okay she was cute all long-legged teenpuppy but)
Heero sighed through his nose. No/yes/maybe.
Duo gave a blink in the dark, though he didn't turn away from the rest of the room.
Growing up is good/natural, Heero sent him, firm and clear, and Duo could almost have missed the involuntary (but...) that ran underneath it.
Biting his lips in thoughtful concentration, he sent no words, only a feeling of disbelief.
(Annoyance!) I knew from the start. (Doctor J sitting me down now if you have decided to stay together there are things you must know about wolves my boy.)
"I don't get it," Duo admitted after a few long seconds of waiting for more and being forced to realize that Heero didn't intend to add anything else.
He received a brief pulse of faces all around him (targets/victims) (danger), smiles and too much interest.
Wow. So it was that bad for him, huh. Wooow.
I'll run interference, he promised -- lightly, confidently. He and Quatre had been the sociable ones back in the day. Easy. It was just sensible repartition of tasks, really!
Can't.
Duo frowned. "Why not?"
"Mary's heat," Heero said with his voice, mind gone in stealth mode once again, which Duo was vaguely miffed about because damn it, stealth was his shtick.
"Hmm?"
"They believe I might influence Mary's choice," Heero said, bland.
Um. "What, so they're courting you by proxy?" Duo's eyes widened a little. He tried not to laugh -- it was more disbelief than amusement, but -- wow, ridiculous. Did they want to get their wolves laid so badly? Okay, Duo had heard a lot of jokes and rumors about sex between wolfbrothers being some kinky mind-meld shit, but he'd heard a lot of ridiculous misinformed bullshit, some of which he knew for a fact was false as false can be.
Heero was still locked up like a fortress. Which was strange as hell because now Duo was realizing how much he hadn't been before this.
He turned onto his side, his back to Duo, grunted a "Sleep," and stopped moving entirely. Sighing, Duo gave up on the conversation.
It was too late at night for it, anyway -- not a good topic for wolf telepathy, and whispers in the dark would wake people up soonish, if they hadn't already.
Yeah, but tomorrow: research. Because the more he thought about it, the more he thought that nothing that bugged Heero so badly could be innocuous.
He settled against the wall and resumed keeping watch on the full bunks, and the pile of sleeping wolves in the middle of the room.
--
At breakfast they avoided the crunch by the simple expedient of going at six thirty, which meant Duo had two and a half hours of sleep under his belt and was pretty much walking on autopilot, letting Killer drive him.
"Are your eyes actually closed?" Makisig asked through a yawn as he trudged along on Killer's other side, wolfless (gotta get silly-lost human back to his cub, was Killer's determined opinion.)
Duo grunted. "What'd they look like?"
"Closed."
"Mm."
The face Makisig was making was pretty funny, he thought back at Heero, because Heero's eyes were open of course and he didn't yet trust the guy which meant he kept stealing glances. Seriously, the guy is as much of a puppy as his brother, relax, man.
Hole in the ground! Make a big step.
Duo made a big step. Yawn.
"You've never used your wolf's senses?" Heero asked, a bit brusque, to Makisig.
"--Um. No? I mean. He shares, but. Not deliberately? Not so much that I could go without mine, anyway."
Tumbling cubs who haven't figured out their paws, Mary pulsed over the four of them, and under that a sense of intrigued tenderness, of want.
"Did she just -- hah. Heh. I guess we are pretty new at this!"
Mary and Killer snorted in tandem. Duo chuckled indulgently, felt to the side blindly to pat his wolf brother's head. He kept his eyes closed deliberately, because it was a bit fun; the conversation was, alas, starting to wake him up in full.
"Um, you know I'm actually older than you, right? Like, at least three years. You're eighteen, yeah?"
"Yeah, and if we combine ages with our wolves I'm twenty-six and you're... well, still twenty-one."
"Oh, shut up," Makisig said good-naturedly. "Though... Hey... Yuy, how old would you be?"
What's the point of this conversation, Heero flashed at Duo, in a perplexed, vaguely suspicious way.
Social bonding by way of sharing inconsequential personal history to promote a feeling (unwarranted or not doesn't matter) of understanding and closeness! Be nice to the pup, Yuy.
"Twenty-three."
"Are you guys the same age?"
"Yes." Probably. Estimated birth date?
Not a clue! I got it narrowed down to a year -- haha, yeah, same, close enough for government work.
"Anyway, Chiquito does share smells, but I haven't really noticed any... sounds, or sights, or..."
"Yeah, sharing smells they do pretty early on, on account of we poor humans don't have any nose and it's a travesty that we can't smell that dead roadkill in all its glory. Man, all the rats Killer found for me--"
No rats here, Killer shared sadly. The wolves got them all. Pigeons?
"--Anyway, it'll happen, and it's fun to practice."
"Also useful if you or your wolf gets too close to a flash grenade or an explosion," Heero said and frowned. "It should be part of the curriculum."
"I think it is," Duo reassured him. "They've got seminars and stuff, I'm sure it's in there somewhere. Also neat when you can get some parallax going with your wolf, you know, you can pinpoint things down to the inch, it's pretty cool."
Killer shared, unselfconscious, the last time he and Duo had known things straight from Heero and Mary. Eight eyes and ears and four times the knowledge and ideas, the terrain in glorious detail and the plan so smooth and oiled--
Duo opened his eyes. "We're here," he said, maybe a bit abruptly, and pushed the door of the cafeteria open. "Sweet ambrosia, here I come!"
They shed Makisig on the way to the counter -- he'd seen a friend in what was effectively the wolfless side of the room. Mary detached from Heero's side instantly, started trotting along the walls, zigzagging under the tables wherever needed. Heero didn't seem interested; Duo could almost feel that mask of 'person unconcerned by silly excited dog antics' in his mind, could see it in the set of his shoulders, the body language. Mary was actually casing the joint, pinging Heero with every window and aeration grate she came across, the location of the emergency doors and whether they smelled like electricity or explosive or some other kind of trap (they did not.)
Killer stayed by Duo, sitting next to him as they waited in the very short line, but his muzzle pointed to her as reliably as a compass pointing north. Interesting! he told Duo. Wolf smells! People smells! Gun smells! Chemical smells! Fries with ketchup.
Ketchup is bad for you.
Ketchup is bad for you, Killer retorted, with the clear undertone that if he didn't get to have any then neither did Duo.
That's healthier for both of you, Heero interjected, and they both turned to glare narrow-eyed at him.
"... Your turn," Heero said, one eyebrow up a quarter of an inch, and Duo turned around and went to the counter with a huff.
Mary found a door that went to the kitchen while he was busy loading up his platter, and Duo laughed to himself right in front of the cook. Thankfully she was used to worse. The lock needs hands, sorry.
Dig through the wall? Killer suggested, and they thought of raw paw-pads and claws used to th quick, but maybe if they managed to rip the edge of the frame out with their claws then they could bite into it and tear it out of the wall! Hmm. Worth a try.
It was hilarious and well worth the loss of sleep and when Duo stopped to think about how easy it was to sit with Heero like he'd always been around, like he had stayed, after the war, it felt weird again, as if another countdown had started and a coup was coming on.
No secret mission, Heero told him, floating quiet and a little -- repressed, depressed, something like that.
If there had been I don't think I would even have minded, Duo thought back, and then buried exactly how true it was.
There was peace now. He was here to learn how to deal with that.
I wouldn't have minded either, Heero thought, but almost to himself, (so much better than the actual--) and then he went stealth again and stayed that way until the middle of the morning.
--
At lunch Wufei dropped by to drive Heero to a vet that specialized in bitches. Killer nosed firmly at Glenfiddich and nipped his ear and Wufei snorted at Duo and promised he wouldn't lose Yuy at the mall and drive off without him, which was patently unfair and totally out of the blue besides.
Alone for lunch, they returned to the cafeteria.
It was busy at this hour and all the people Duo and Killer knew... well, none of them were Trowa, and he'd seen enough of the trainees for now. There was a space free at their table, and he saw Wangai bite her lip and then tilt her head in invitation, but he smiled and pointed half at random to Agent Dagher and her bitch wolf Sekhmet, who he had met that first day and not really talked with since.
Then he got himself a tray and followed his implicit promise.
"Hey there. This seat taken?"
Dagher shrugged, moved her folders; Sekhmet sniffed briefly at Killer's nose and then ignored him utterly. Duo put Killer's bowl in the stand beside him -- half the seats came with so the wolves wouldn't develop arthritis of the neck in their old age (luxury!) -- and then sat.
"Good morning. Where's your other half?"
"... Killer is under the table," Duo said, misunderstanding her quite deliberately. She sent him a thin smirk. "And Yuy is at the vet. Why is everyone so interested in him, anyway?"
"Not him so much as the wolf," Dagher said, and shrugged elegantly. "You've been missing out on some major ripples."
"Urgh." Duo frowned, attacked his salad with annoyance. (Why had he picked up a salad? Oh yeah, he'd promised Hilde. Fresh vegetables were good for you! Only he wasn't used to them and they felt gross on his tongue a bit. Well, mostly the lettuce. And spinach. And...) "I don't get why, it's not like they want to be the center of everything."
Dagher shook her head, said nothing.
Duo had come to sit with her for a reason, though. It was because the first day they met she'd tried to explain, neat and incisive and to the point. She knew how much background he was missing and she didn't bother with the 'oh my god you poor deprived plebe that can't be right' routine.
"So why are they?" he said.
Dagher made a noncommittal sound. "Reason one, pure mechanics -- a queen wolf has the kind of mental voice that fills a room when it speaks up. It's like ignoring the leading lady in an opera. Reason two, willpower. Wolves never feel so safe and confident than they do under a solid leader. A queen wolf is that."
"Huh." He considered it. "Can you have one without the other? The mental power without the self-confidence?"
"Sure, but a wolf who's shy won't dare to push as loud, anyway, so they rein themselves in. Queens grow up with it, though, so they get used to being the center of attention. It's all pretty entangled."
"Like tall strong guys and guys who play basketball."
"Mm." She took a bite. "Plus there's the hot monkey sex."
Duo did not do a spit-take, because he knew she was mildly evil and when someone evil looked so bland and uninterested it meant something was coming. He still swallowed weird, and had to tap his chest with his fist to get the tomato slice down the proper tube before he could inhale it.
"What."
Dagher was laughing at him with her eyes. "You did notice there's about one bitch wolf for five dog wolves, right?"
"Um, yes." No. What, really? Oh hell. Yeah.
Well. Okay.
"This is such a conveniently coincidental slide toward the topic I was about to ask you about. I'd almost suspect you of telepathy."
Telepathy?she sent him, face impassible, black eyes heavily lidded. No such thing.
He laughed, couldn't help it. It was weird as hell, because he couldn't even feel her at the edge of his awareness.
But apparently she could feel him.
"Trained police detective," Dagher pointed out. "You realize you only looked at people with bitch wolves before you sat with me?"
"I know you, and I don't know any of them," Duo protested. "Apart from the trainees, but getting Shark and Killer to hang out together with a bowl of food between them is... Yeah, I'll pass."
Which sucked because Wangai was pretty cool, and he'd never get to know the rest of the group if he couldn't approach them, either.
"Ask your question and let me eat in peace," Dagher said, rolling her eyes.
Urgh. Uuuurgh. "Okay. I don't actually know where to start. I tried to look it up online and it's such a mess of bullshit and rumors. I just..."
He hesitated, frowned. Heero would not want Duo to bring his personal problems to a stranger. But how else... It wasn't like he could ask Heero.
"How does it go, really? Wolf breeding."
Sekhmet lifted her narrow head off the tiles to stare at him in pure, golden-eyed disbelief.
"Because when I had sex, Killer never gave a shit! Well, he'd -- he'd whine and maybe sulk a bit, but it wasn't..." Duo paused for a breath, frowned. "Why'd--"
Why'd Heero act like -- why did he keep dodging the thought of it, why...
Dagher muttered something in Arabic that featured Allah's name prominently, several times in a row. Duo scowled at her.
"Okay, your trainers should be set on fire. Any of them have a wolf?"
"... Um, no." Most of them had been spacers, never touching land, and the rest were scientists. He tried to imagine Professor G with a wolf that wouldn't die of hunger, forgotten under his desk, or crushed to death by a crane installing a gundanium plate. Yeah, nah. Howard, now, he could see it better, but where would the man had met any...?
"Okay." She sighed, pinched her elegant nose. "Wolves can have recreational sex, or even, you know, lick themselves, they just rarely see a point. Pretty much functionally asexual out of season, I guess. When it happens it's like human sex -- distracting, physically, but that's it, the other bondmate doesn't have to get involved in it."
She paused to stare at him, voice dropping low, not a whisper but not far from it either. Duo was suddenly uncomfortably aware of the number of people surrounding them, of how many of them came with radar ears.
"When it's a heat, they need to fuck, they need you to fuck, basically everyone needs to fuck. Reason goes out the window. Training needs to be pretty ingrained not to follow. And you're dragged along for the ride, because they need it and you're pack and the pack needs to grow and it's right and good and proper and why would there be any distance between you?"
Duo could only stare at her.
Dagher planted her fork in her steak decisively, frowning.
"So Heero--"
"Your friend is going to get fucked by the brothers and sisters of every dog wolf his sister accepts, which might be one, might be none, might be ten, she won't be noticing little things like that by then. She'll just know whether she wants the dogs or not."
Duo opened his mouth, almost said something about how she must be wrong and it didn't -- couldn't -- have to be like that, and Sekhmet looked up at him, all golden and sleek and very much a bitch.
"You, uh."
"There's heat suppressants, but every male in the Preventers already knows she's coming off them."
"Heero said she wanted a litter," Duo told her dazedly.
Heero had said...
People pressing around him, too close, looking at him, touching him. Friendly and smiling and him burning with the need to escape.
They weren't even approaching him with lust yet, just with friendliness.
Jesus.
Jesus. This was going to be a disaster. Unless Heero got dragged under by Mary's heat and forgot to fight them off, but how likely was that? With his training and his -- his Heero-ness, that untouchable quality, that...
People touching him. Strangers.
Did Trowa and Wufei know? Did they. Fuck.
What were they going to do about this?
--
In the afternoon they had classroom lessons on procedure. Heero was still out -- registration stuff, Duo thought, but he wasn't sure. The instructor didn't seem concerned, so probably it wasn't that they'd found some problem with Mary at the vet's. Or they hadn't gotten around to telling the instructor that they'd found some problem with Mary at the vet's.
"Dude, pen," Wangai whispered to him from the row before his. Duo guiltily stopped bouncing it.
Killer, is Mary in range? Can you hear her?
Busy, Killer replied sleepily, and rolled himself in a ball against Duo's chair.
"Whassamatter?" Wangai said quietly, reclining her chair so the back braced against Duo's desk. Shark was on the other side of the desk from Killer and studiously ignoring him. "You've been jumpy all afternoon."
"Urgh."
He looked at her, her profile as she pretended to pay attention to the teacher, her square hands on the desk, the battle scar on her brow.
She was pretty steady, wasn't she. Well-trained. Strong but secure, didn't think she had anything to prove; cool-headed, but still friendly. And Shark had shown interest in Mary already. Maybe if Duo introduced them first...
Killer lifted his head from the ground and let out a low, rolling growl, staring right through the mess of chairs and desk legs. Shark twitched, stared right back, lip curling up, ruff prickling.
"--Oh, Jesus. Killer, down. What's gotten into you?"
He got no response save for a wave of hostility. Argh. Shark wasn't even doing anything!
Nope, still growling. At least Killer was growling? Instead of just... Yeah, not a great silver lining. "Sorry, teach," he said with a sigh, and gathered his stuff. "Killer, out."
Wangai watched him go, brows knit in either suspicion or worry. He gave her an apologetic shrug and herded his wolf out through the door at the back of the room with a knee to his furry ass before any of the others got involved; there were already too many muzzles lifted and ears pointed their way.
Maybe it wasn't so bad that he'd be repeating the course. Urgh.
He stretched out with the bond, cautious, felt -- oh, that was Chiquito, not very loud yet but excitable enough that it dragged the mind closer. Okay, hello cub, but it wasn't who he wanted to...
Who? Killer asked as they made their way down the hall.
Bazooka? And Segura.
Killer filled his nose with Bazooka's orange peels scent, Segura's warm, still-humid laundry, reached out, feeling tentatively -- still better than Duo -- toward...
What is it?
Oh hey, it had worked. Got questions, can we see you? We've got until the end of the hour, or after classes I guess.
Shouldn't you be in -- I see. Okay. He dropped the map of the building into Duo's head, tagged a room up a level and then two doors to the left.
Duo and Killer went.
It was an office with three desks in it, but only Segura was there at the moment, sitting down with a pile of paperwork. Bazooka sat up; Killer went to bump noses with her and Duo followed, pulling up a chair to sit in front of Segura's desk.
"Next time you might want to tell him to leave the room and wait in the corridor, if he's feeling disruptive," Segura said casually as Killer went to nose around behind the other desks.
Duo blinked. Okay, that wasn't the topic he'd had in mind. Like, at all. "Leave him alone? I--"
Segura pursed his lips a bit, though his dark eyes stayed rueful, like he despaired of Duo a bit but in a way that worried him more than it annoyed him. Which was... something, Duo guessed, and tried not to turn red.
"He's much less likely to be hostile if he doesn't have you to protect," Segura said, weighing his words carefully enough that Duo guessed it wasn't what he'd wanted to say first. "... Also, you guys are a bit attached at the hip." He gave a casual shrug.
"Oh." Duo digested that, rubbed the back of his head, made himself smile. "A bit, huh?"
Segura cracked a smile. "A tad. A smidgen. Barely noticeable at all." He sobered up. "It's understandable, with your history, I'm just mentioning it so that you're aware of it. You guys are used to being in each other's pockets twenty-four-seven, but if one of you wanted to do something on his own for once it wouldn't be a catastrophe."
Duo pinged Killer by reflex, but he wasn't even paying attention, and the thought of doing his own thing ... well, do what? While Duo was where? It was too vague and he couldn't judge if he'd like it just from that -- but there was none of the instant, uneasy refusal Duo had expected.
Letting Killer wander off entirely on his own was... Well, they used to do that when they were in L2's streets, but. They'd had the other street kids then. They'd had food to scrounge up and cops to avoid and...
To be frank, back then if Killer had bitten someone Duo wouldn't have cared, because he'd have assumed they deserved it, if only for the idiocy of trying to pet a german-shepherd-sized, dog-looking stray.
"Uuurgh, the more I do this thing, the more I realize I suck at it," Duo grumbled, slumping forward theatrically and dragging a chuckle out of the man.
"Alright, so what did you want to talk about?"
"Um. Actually it's about another of those things I just realized I know nothing about because I never had a reason to."
"Hmm?"
Duo's face prickled. He forced himself to meet Segura's eyes anyway. "About heats."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, I just -- always thought it was exaggeration, but I was talking to Dagher and she said..." He forced the rest out; it came out a bit rough, embarrassed. "That people would fuck regardless. That..."
Segura blinked. Bazooka stretched her paws before her and let out a huge yawn, flopped onto her side. Lots of silliness, was her opinion.
"She's spayed," Segura said dryly. "She was singing another tune back when she wasn't."
So why...? Duo started to think, and then tried to shove it down, and Segura brought up a blurry, old image of dead puppy and blood, repressed it. Duo came out of that little accidental over-share with the pretty gross words "uterine prolapse" and "hysterectomy" in his head.
Oh god, all the things that could go wrong with Mary's cubs. Duo was aware that he'd paled just a little bit, but. Awgh.
"Wow, okay, that is another good reason not to go through with it, why does anyone ever..."
Yeah, okay, for the cubs. Cubs needed to happen, and hey, people probably enjoyed having them around once they were there. But the heat itself, dear lord, no.
Segura let out little sigh and leaned on an elbow, rubbed his jaw in thought, in faint embarrassment. "Listen, Maxwell... No one thinks you're gay if you end up in bed with another man during a wolf heat. Everyone knows it's just one of those things, it doesn't--"
"That is so not it!" Duo spluttered.
"--Oh. Sorry then."
Sigh. "Okay, so I have this friend -- no, wait, that makes it sound like it's for me. But it's really for a friend."
"Dog or bitch?"
... Siiiigh. "Yeah,okay, it's Heero and Mary. They haven't asked me to come here, I'm just... Dagher told me some things and -- now I'm feeling fretty. It seems pretty... intense?"
Segura nodded a little. "Okay... I don't really want to discuss them, especially without their approval or knowledge, but we can certainly talk about things in general terms. Especially since it's pretty likely that you'll be around the building for a heat at some point and it's also pretty likely that if you are, Killer will want to participate."
"...Okay, that's fair."
"Okay, first thing -- unless the bitch is young and not regular yet, or getting triggered by massive upheavals like the death of an alpha bitch, or accidentally went off her heat suppressants, we know when a heat is coming. You've got time to choose whether to attend or not. Your wolf might grumble a little, but so long as they don't catch the scent or you leave right afterwards, they'll forget about it in half a day."
"Unless they're the bitch in heat."
"The brother of a bitch has... not as many choices, that's true, but there are heat suppressants." Segura's voice gentled. "If Yuy chose to let Mary go off hers after keeping her on them since the war, it was his choice, and probably an informed one."
Duo grunted. "Yeah, if there was information to find, he found it." He just didn't know if Heero had taken it into consideration. The guy had always had a regrettable tendency to consider himself as acceptable collateral damage if something needed doing badly enough back in the day, and Duo didn't know if the two years of peace since then had changed that mindset any.
"If they're nervous there's anxiety medication, but most of the time the bitch's anticipation takes care of that."
Haha, Heero taking drugs to make himself be less on edge. Ha.
"I know from the outside it sounds like a bit much, but there are nurses and a doctor on site, there's a squad of brothers of bitches ready to intervene the second anyone taps out, for any reason at all. Injuries are pretty rare, the worst is usually chafing and mild dehydratation. It's stressful for people who have a hard time going with the flow, but -- Maxwell..." Segura reddened a little, looked away. "It feels good. We wouldn't keep bonding if it didn't."
Yeah. The issue there was 'people who have a hard time going with the flow' sounded like Segura-speak for 'control freak.'
And he really didn't want to discuss Heero's issues in depth, anyway.
He didn't know what he'd been hoping for, that Segura would tell him Agent Dagher had been fucking with him or something.
He supposed it was a little reassuring that Segura was a man who'd gone through heat as the brother of a bitch, and he didn't seem to think it was anything traumatic.
"Remind Yuy that he has an exclusion list," Segura said, a bit abrupt. "If there's anyone he doesn't want to attend for any reason at all, they won't be permitted on site. There'll be no questions asked."
Duo thought it might not be useful to exclude everyone. Kinda counter-productive, really. And he was starting to sound kind of overprotective even to himself with that one.
He should probably shelve the catastrophic thoughts until he had talked to Heero himself. Good thing they were meeting this evening...
"Okay. Thanks for the talk, sir. I should probably go back to class now."
"Probably," Segura replied with an amused snort. "Get going. You should drop by the infirmary and ask for pamphlets at some point," he added as Duo got up.
Duo made an agreeing noise (ugh, people seeing him request that stuff) and walked out, Killer yawning as he ambled on his heels.
--
When he tried to step inside the bar that evening Duo collided with Wufei head on.
"Whoa," he said, grabbing for Wufei's upper arm for balance, as Killer whuffed disapprovingly. Wufei cupped his elbow from underneath and finished dragging him upright. He was scowling, but Duo had a feeling he'd been scowling before he stepped out.
What's wrong/sitrep? (am I late?)
Wufei huffed through his nose and poked Duo in the shoulder, shoving him back so that Glenfiddich could walk out after him. He stepped to the side, out of sight of the window; Duo followed, eyebrows quirked.
"Interpersonal difficulties," Wufei said dryly as Glen went to sniff a road sign.
"Which means? ... Did you argue with Heero or Tro?"
He was a bit relieved when Wufei blinked at him like the thought hadn't even occurred to him. "No. Some idiot is getting drunk in there and reminiscing about his glory days in White Fang and how much the Treize faction-- 'ch. A bunch of nonsense."
"Uh huh."
Wufei shrugged sharply, crossed his arms. "I'd have ignored it but his wolf was starting to crowd Glenfiddich. I'm actually not supposed to allow imbeciles to get their comeuppance," he added, grumbling. Now he's going to think he's won argh.
Glen lolled his tongue at his brother in what was clearly amusement. Dumb puppy growling at shoes, he shared. Duo snickered.
"Well, obviously Glen doesn't care much. You can't be wiping the floor with every idiot who waltzes your way, Wu-dawg! The janitors will be out of a job. Also if he's that drunk it'd be boring."
"I was thinking unsporting," Wufei retorted, the corner of his mouth starting to lift in an unwilling smile, "but yes, that too."
Duo leaned on the wall beside him and watched Killer sniff at Glen's well-marked post and hike up his leg, determined to piss higher.
"God, I hope they hose down that sign sometimes. Lucky it's not summer."
Wufei snorted, and then pretended he hadn't. "That was juvenile."
"Yeah and who was all 'I'm eighteen not eighty' last time? I'm just providing fresh childishness, bro. See it as age retraining!"
"Eighteen, not eight."
"Hey, they both look nubile and sexy to a home-brewed octogenarian -- ow." Duo rubbed his shoulder. He bet it would bruise.
"Just because people from L2 are the only ones allowed to make pedophile from L2 jokes doesn't mean they should."
"There, there, my little jailbait -- ow, seriously." Wufei had jabbed him in the exact same bruise.
"I will make Glenfiddich piss on you, Maxwell, don't test me."
Duo grinned, and elbowed him back. "What were you saying about maturity again?"
He didn't get to find out what Wufei would have retorted; the bar's door handle twisted, and Mary's yellow shoulder shoved it open. She peered outside, scanning Killer and then Duo and Wufei.
Come in, she said, quiet now/stupid one bitten quiet.
Duo pushed away from the wall, ambled to the door. "Yes ma'am. ... Did you really bite him?"
... Not with my mouth? She demonstrated; a push with her mind sudden enough to feel kind of the way a higher-ranked wolf would nip or pinch in reprimand. Duo almost flinched back.
"Huh, cool, Killer has never done that."
Horse-lather does it, Mary said carelessly -- like it meant absolutely nothing of interest that she was picking up tricks from the current queen of the pack, no really it didn't -- and then stared imperiously at Killer and Glen and disappeared back inside. Glen caught the door, checked it with his shoulder, and they followed. Duo shrugged at Wufei and went.
They'd managed to get a corner table this time around, toward the back and the door that led to the back garden. Duo flicked his fingers at Trowa, who he hadn't seen yet today, and sat down with his back, once again, to the goddamn room.
"Seen Rosca and Folha yet?"
Heero didn't answer, sipping on something that a quick sniff from Killer proved to be coffee, and not even an Irish one.
"They're having a chat with Mister Hotshot Pride of the Fleet," Trowa said, inclining his head toward the door that led out. Wufei looked briefly vindicated, and then sighed, thought that it was still hard sometimes not to fight his own battles, not to make himself respected through his own words and... But he knew that a superior officer wasn't supposed to brawl with every moron who thought "teenager" and "can break you in two over his knee" were mutually exclusive.
"Haha, that's what you get for taking that promotion," Duo said, but his laughter fell flat.
Heero had taken one of the benches in the corner and Trowa the other one, and Wufei sat at his side so that he faced Heero.
When he looked at him, casually remote, faking relaxation with his drink and scanning the room incessantly over the rim, Duo couldn't help but remember Dagher's words.
Heero's intensely blue eyes flicked to him, harpooned in; his heavy brows twitched downwards. "What is it?"
"Haha. Nothing." But he -- 'they need to fuck, they need you to fuck, basically everyone needs to fuck.'
He didn't think he'd imagined the flinch there. Oh, fuck.
"Sorry. Shit. I -- realized I knew nothing about that and -- asked people." He ran a hand though his bangs, winced. "I'm really sorry."
"It is a topic of general interest," Heero said, utterly tonelessly. Duo was torn between cringing and kicking him under the table, making him stop doing that ever again.
"Still not the best place to bring it up. I just... Yeah. Sorry."
Wufei was staring at the wall past Heero's shoulder, lips pursed, looking uncomfortable, and Trowa into his glass.
"Why are you sorry?" Heero said, a little sharp. "You're not responsible for a biological process."
Duo sighed through his nose. "It's not sorry I did a bad, it's sorry you have to go through that shit. I know you can see the difference, come on."
"I'll survive," Heero said, and the tone was definitely 'drop it', but underneath... (Other people might not.)
Duo winced. Trowa pushed a drink at him and he took it without a word, sipped. Martini. Okay, why not. He drained half the glass in one go. Maybe being a little tipsy would help.
Not so tipsy that Killer started picking fights with about any wolf who looked at Mary twice, though. He was currently crouched next to Duo's chair, following her progress through the room, touching noses here and there.
"I just..." Sigh. "This is a phenomenally bad idea, Yuy, and you know it. D'you really have to...?"
Trowa kicked him under the table, face bored. Duo yelped.
"It is your decision," Wufei said, quietly, "but if we're going to mitigate the collateral damage it might help to know the context."
Heero stared at him for a second, and frowned -- and then glanced at Mary, who -- Killer could see -- was now looking back.
"I took her to war with me," he said, switching to Japanese without warning. "I can deal with fucking someone for her."
That was so not how make love not war was supposed to go, Duo thought, but somehow kept his teeth shut on it. Wow, hearing Heero talk about fucking. That was going to take some getting used to.
"At least tell me you're not a virgin," he begged instead, which was obviously much better.
Wufei groaned and closed his eyes, shook his head, muttering something about elephants and porcelain. Heero stared at him.
Trowa coughed delicately, and actually fucking smiled at the ceiling.
Which Duo would have ignored because Trowa was habitually a smug douche, if subdued one, only...
"When the fuck did that happen?!" he spluttered.
"Circus?" Heero replied, frowning like he couldn't figure out what the issue was. "We bunked together for over a month."
"Oh, bunked together! Well in that case -- wait, you lost it before me?! You asshole! Wufei, tell me you didn't -- um."
Wufei sighed long and slow through his nose, stared at the ceiling like he was weighing the pros and cons of shoving Duo off his chair, and then said, "Married."
Before the war, too. "... Right. Wow, sudden urge to call Quatre and ask him when he lost his."
"When was yours?" Trowa asked, head tilted a little bit.
Duo shrugged. Wow, this had to be the most age-appropriate conversation he'd ever had with these guys, he could have sworn it on his unknown mother's head. "Uh. Couple months after the war? With Hilde," he added, bragging maybe a tiny bit, because Hilde was a babe.
"Then he also beat you."
"How do you know -- oh my God is there a Gundam pilot you didn't tumble Wufei tell me there is."
Wufei pinched his lips so hard they paled, said, "Well," a bit regretfully, and then started laughing right in Duo's face. Trowa was following him a second later. Duo gave in and sank to the table, whimpering and snickering in about equal measures.
"Straight," Wufei told him mercifully, once he was done laughing like he was actually his age. "Apologies, Barton."
"No offense taken," Trowa replied urbanely, still smirking. "Not straight, by the way."
"We figured," Duo grumbled. "How not-straight?"
Trowa shrugged. "All the way bent, pretty much."
"Pfff."
Meanwhile Heero was watching the three patiently, face blank.
"... Oh, right. Heero, are you straight or gay or... bi or what?"
"... I don't care."
"Well if you've never done it with a girl how would you be sure of that?"
A slow, slow blink. "I had sex with Relena too. In about equal numbers to Trowa. There was no difference I couldn't attribute to different experience and personalities."
Duo stared at him, totally incredulous. "Fuckin' hell. Not two-timing I hope -- okay, you've had more partners than me, I am officially done worrying about this side of the issue."
"Good. It's not the sex that's the issue," Heero said, frank and matter of fact, a hand loosely curled around the coffee cup he'd put down. Loss of control/strangers pinning me/cannot fight back cannot not fight back--
Well.
Well. "There's an obvious solution, is there?"
"There is?" Trowa said, one eyebrow up.
Duo pointed wordlessly over his shoulder at Mary, pointed at Coyote sleeping under the table, tried very hard not to imagine Trowa and Heero together, all long limbs and trim muscles and that ridiculous "wolf-induced passion" he'd seen gushed about online. Would Trowa bite? Shit.
"Coyote and Mary?" Wufei said, straightening up a little; he looked briefly uncomfortable, and then forced it away. "That would certainly fix the trust issues..."
Heero looked at Trowa, hands gone oh so slightly tight on his cup. Trowa slowly, regretfully shook his head.
"Heero... You can get away with it for a subordinate bitch, but -- ask Mary if she'd want to be locked away with only Coyote to choose from." Heero obviously did; his face tightened. Trowa kept going, softly, keeping up eye contact. "She's not settled in the pack, she's messing with the hierarchy just by being here; they will fight. If we lock her up with a beta male, and he covers her, they'll just fight afterwards."
He sighed quietly, lifted a hand palm up and let it drop back to his lap.
"Coyote will attend, but he's fifty pounds lighter than the big ones. He's not going to win."
Tricky, Coyote protested sleepily, but he didn't sound especially bothered. Maybe he wouldn't get the fuss so long as Mary wasn't in heat. Maybe he wouldn't get it at all.
Duo looked down at his clenched hands, wondered how he felt. If he was -- relieved? -- that Trowa couldn't. Maybe a bit, but it was more complex than that. Trowa would have taken care of Heero. He'd grown up in an actual pack, he had to know how a heat went, what you did to mitigate things, to avoid accidents. Heero trusted him. (Duo bet he had gone to sleep just fine on his couch.)
There was still a solution, though, wasn't there.
"Glenfiddich will attend," Wufei said, meeting Heero's eyes with quiet determination.
"Yeah," Duo said around the knot in his throat. "So will Killer. If that's okay."
"That's..."
Heero's so self-assured voice trailed off (oh), and he inclined his head, blue eyes briefly closing -- and then he bowed, over the edge of the table, just a little.
"Thank you. "
Yeah. No problem there. Purely the goodness of his heart. (He'd have done it for Wufei or Trowa. Just... Heero.)
Now Duo just had to make sure Killer didn't actually kill any of the other challengers. That was going to be fun.
Fight? Killer asked him, a little baffled but game. Duo sank his fingers in his brother's thick ruff and scritched him until the wolf forgot he'd asked a question.
Duo doesn’t want to join the Preventers, thankyouverymuch. Preserving the peace is all well and good but he likes answering to no one but himself, and like hell he wants to buddy up to people he and Killer used to stand against, back during the war.
Only the Preventers have a pack, and his brother-wolf doesn’t, never has, deserves to, and maybe a junkyard dog isn’t all a warrior wolf should be.
--
Duo swore Heero would have kept him awake less if he'd been tossing and turning.
Mary had retired to her little wolf cave on the ground floor of the Yuy bunk bed a while ago, and was dead asleep as far as Duo could tell. Meanwhile, her person was lying absolutely still one level up, stretched out on his back, a hand tucked under his pillow for the hidden gun. Staring at the ceiling.
Okay, not really, his eyes were closed. Might as well have been staring, though. Duo didn't know if it was because almost everyone else was asleep and therefore quiet, but...
The awareness of too many breaths in the room he felt was a little too sharp to be his. He'd been here for almost four weeks now, after all, and it wasn't like he'd never slept in dorms before, doing his training on cramped, overcrowded Sweeper ship after Sweeper ship. Half the time he had his choice of hammock or Killer's flank to sleep on, and the hammocks vibrated every time someone opened a door or walked by...
Sigh.
Killer was currently stretched out on the floor toward the foot of Duo's own bunk, between the bunk and the wall. He was asleep, but lightly so, ears flicking here and there. Duo counted his wolf's breaths up to a hundred, and shifted onto his side, leaning on his elbow.
"Do you wanna trade?"
Heero's head pivoted like he was an eagle who'd heard a mouse complaining of being too deliciously fat and slow to run. Duo pinched his lips together to keep from smiling, in case Heero took it badly.
"Bunks," he said patiently. "Do you want the wall? You're the one who was traveling today."
Heero gave him a glare that Duo privately titled 'I'm actually confused but Heero Yuy doesn't do confused so I'm gonna be annoyed instead.'
"You'll be waking up other people soon, buddy. Just saying."
People, or their wolves. Before Mary hid away in her private cave to sleep she'd been... Duo wasn't sure why, possibly the queen wolf thing, but she was hugely interesting to just about all the other wolves, who just had to bow to her and lick her chin and all those things.
Which she oddly enough seemed to take in stride! The issue had come mostly from the fact that their humans seemed just as interested in engaging Heero in conversation.
"So where are you from?"
"How long have you and Mary been bonded?"
"Gundam pilot, huh? What have you been doing since the war?"
"If you want, we can tour the buildings tomorrow, show you around, yeah?"
Heero was alright at faking polite by-rote small talk, but Duo couldn't have missed the twitch of relief in the pack sense when it was time to turn off the lights.
There was an unexpected flash of someone else's sense-memory -- starched-stiff button-up shirt, neck tight (cravat? That's as good as a garrote) and a pack of school students crowding all around him. Soft civilians, which meant fighting his way out would be inappropriate, but it itched.
Yeah, it's less stressful when your wolfsib is right there with you, huh, Duo sent, aiming carefully. Started going solo when I was nine, but it never not sucked.
Heero snorted, a quiet puff of breath in the darkened room. He was thinking about how, comparatively, being mobbed by harmless teenage civilians had somehow been worse than by adults carrying weapons.
Duo got that, though. People who'd received combat training started thinking and acting along the same lines they did. Sheltered teenagers might as well have been aliens.
You're twisted, Duo teased, and rolled straight over his guardrail to land in a silent crouch between their bunks. Mary's fur rustled against the wooden wall in the absolute black of her little cave as she shifted at his scent. "Hey, Mary, go sleep in Killer's bunk, okay? It's not like he's using it."
"Duo--"
Heero's mouth clamped closed, and he glared some more, sitting up halfway on his bunk to scowl down at Duo better. Duo put his hands on his hips and gave him his best shit-eating grin.
Mary lumbered out of the bunk and feathered a half-awake mnh-yes-want-the-safer-den down their spines. Heero's hand fisted in the sheets.
Tracking-flanking wolf will guard us, she replied sleepily, checking in with Duo with an inquisitive mental poke. It wasn't even making sure that was what he was offering, more like... Duo wasn't too sure.
Bossy, he thought at her, and nudged her blond ass with his knee. She yawned all teeth out and trudged on.
Duo stepped closer to the bunk, put a daring hand on the ladder. "Trade you tomorrow," he whispered up at Heero. Now go before we do wake up people!
He almost expected Heero to get stubborn, but Heero must have known that going into tomorrow on zero sleep wouldn't be half as smart as going on a mission that way. They could all defuse bombs and field-strip weapons borderline in their sleep; socializing, now, not so much.
And everyone was expecting Heero to show up at the bar after work, Rosca Folhasbrother included.
... Fine.
Heero slipped down the ladder, paused to stare at him -- grunted, and went around the foot of Duo's bed for his ladder. Shrugging, Duo climbed his way up to Heero's empty bunk.
Lying down under Heero's still-warm blankets would be a little weird, and anyway he was keeping watch, he didn't need to be comfortable, he might fall asleep. He sat up against the wall, tucked in the corner to have a good view of the dorm room.
"Wake me up at four," Heero ordered in a whisper as he appeared on top of Duo's ladder. Half asleep on your feet-I deal with them alone-mission failure.
Duo snickered, and made an okay sign. Heero lay down on his mattress. Even out of sight, Duo knew that Mary had snuffled at Killer's fur, that he'd woken up to nose at her chin and let her through before setting his head on his paws again. He was watching the room now, they both were, two slightly different angles of view. Killer's eyes were a bit better in low light, but it was nice to have a higher view too...
Mary was already falling back asleep. It was cozy and warm and smelled just like the dens where cordite and nitroglycerin and blood had told her Protect the giant metal important thing I must go alone to the human pack. Killer had been there, too, with his own giant important thing...
She still remembered Killer's rough-furred flank under her as she napped on top of him. He'd been so much bigger. A giant wolf. Duo chuckled under his breath. For her it wasn't her who had grown, it was Killer who had shrunk.
He felt a... twitch, something flinching back from that thought, so quiet, a mouse skittering in the dark of the bond.
Heero?
No answer. Heero kept breathing quiet and slow, sounding perfectly asleep.
Yeah, he could make his goddamn brainwaves say he was asleep too, and that didn't mean he was.
Duo concentrated on the familiar smells of pungent gunpowder and hot blood spreading in a puddle on the ground, on the way they mingled. Heero's scent-name contained other things in the background -- mostly sweat, tinged with nuances he couldn't decipher, not being a wolf -- but he remembered it well enough even if he couldn't crack it all the way down.
What's wrong? doubt it'd be about Killer shrinking (too silly to actually be a concern) did you not want her to grow up or ...? (okay she was cute all long-legged teenpuppy but)
Heero sighed through his nose. No/yes/maybe.
Duo gave a blink in the dark, though he didn't turn away from the rest of the room.
Growing up is good/natural, Heero sent him, firm and clear, and Duo could almost have missed the involuntary (but...) that ran underneath it.
Biting his lips in thoughtful concentration, he sent no words, only a feeling of disbelief.
(Annoyance!) I knew from the start. (Doctor J sitting me down now if you have decided to stay together there are things you must know about wolves my boy.)
"I don't get it," Duo admitted after a few long seconds of waiting for more and being forced to realize that Heero didn't intend to add anything else.
He received a brief pulse of faces all around him (targets/victims) (danger), smiles and too much interest.
Wow. So it was that bad for him, huh. Wooow.
I'll run interference, he promised -- lightly, confidently. He and Quatre had been the sociable ones back in the day. Easy. It was just sensible repartition of tasks, really!
Can't.
Duo frowned. "Why not?"
"Mary's heat," Heero said with his voice, mind gone in stealth mode once again, which Duo was vaguely miffed about because damn it, stealth was his shtick.
"Hmm?"
"They believe I might influence Mary's choice," Heero said, bland.
Um. "What, so they're courting you by proxy?" Duo's eyes widened a little. He tried not to laugh -- it was more disbelief than amusement, but -- wow, ridiculous. Did they want to get their wolves laid so badly? Okay, Duo had heard a lot of jokes and rumors about sex between wolfbrothers being some kinky mind-meld shit, but he'd heard a lot of ridiculous misinformed bullshit, some of which he knew for a fact was false as false can be.
Heero was still locked up like a fortress. Which was strange as hell because now Duo was realizing how much he hadn't been before this.
He turned onto his side, his back to Duo, grunted a "Sleep," and stopped moving entirely. Sighing, Duo gave up on the conversation.
It was too late at night for it, anyway -- not a good topic for wolf telepathy, and whispers in the dark would wake people up soonish, if they hadn't already.
Yeah, but tomorrow: research. Because the more he thought about it, the more he thought that nothing that bugged Heero so badly could be innocuous.
He settled against the wall and resumed keeping watch on the full bunks, and the pile of sleeping wolves in the middle of the room.
--
At breakfast they avoided the crunch by the simple expedient of going at six thirty, which meant Duo had two and a half hours of sleep under his belt and was pretty much walking on autopilot, letting Killer drive him.
"Are your eyes actually closed?" Makisig asked through a yawn as he trudged along on Killer's other side, wolfless (gotta get silly-lost human back to his cub, was Killer's determined opinion.)
Duo grunted. "What'd they look like?"
"Closed."
"Mm."
The face Makisig was making was pretty funny, he thought back at Heero, because Heero's eyes were open of course and he didn't yet trust the guy which meant he kept stealing glances. Seriously, the guy is as much of a puppy as his brother, relax, man.
Hole in the ground! Make a big step.
Duo made a big step. Yawn.
"You've never used your wolf's senses?" Heero asked, a bit brusque, to Makisig.
"--Um. No? I mean. He shares, but. Not deliberately? Not so much that I could go without mine, anyway."
Tumbling cubs who haven't figured out their paws, Mary pulsed over the four of them, and under that a sense of intrigued tenderness, of want.
"Did she just -- hah. Heh. I guess we are pretty new at this!"
Mary and Killer snorted in tandem. Duo chuckled indulgently, felt to the side blindly to pat his wolf brother's head. He kept his eyes closed deliberately, because it was a bit fun; the conversation was, alas, starting to wake him up in full.
"Um, you know I'm actually older than you, right? Like, at least three years. You're eighteen, yeah?"
"Yeah, and if we combine ages with our wolves I'm twenty-six and you're... well, still twenty-one."
"Oh, shut up," Makisig said good-naturedly. "Though... Hey... Yuy, how old would you be?"
What's the point of this conversation, Heero flashed at Duo, in a perplexed, vaguely suspicious way.
Social bonding by way of sharing inconsequential personal history to promote a feeling (unwarranted or not doesn't matter) of understanding and closeness! Be nice to the pup, Yuy.
"Twenty-three."
"Are you guys the same age?"
"Yes." Probably. Estimated birth date?
Not a clue! I got it narrowed down to a year -- haha, yeah, same, close enough for government work.
"Anyway, Chiquito does share smells, but I haven't really noticed any... sounds, or sights, or..."
"Yeah, sharing smells they do pretty early on, on account of we poor humans don't have any nose and it's a travesty that we can't smell that dead roadkill in all its glory. Man, all the rats Killer found for me--"
No rats here, Killer shared sadly. The wolves got them all. Pigeons?
"--Anyway, it'll happen, and it's fun to practice."
"Also useful if you or your wolf gets too close to a flash grenade or an explosion," Heero said and frowned. "It should be part of the curriculum."
"I think it is," Duo reassured him. "They've got seminars and stuff, I'm sure it's in there somewhere. Also neat when you can get some parallax going with your wolf, you know, you can pinpoint things down to the inch, it's pretty cool."
Killer shared, unselfconscious, the last time he and Duo had known things straight from Heero and Mary. Eight eyes and ears and four times the knowledge and ideas, the terrain in glorious detail and the plan so smooth and oiled--
Duo opened his eyes. "We're here," he said, maybe a bit abruptly, and pushed the door of the cafeteria open. "Sweet ambrosia, here I come!"
They shed Makisig on the way to the counter -- he'd seen a friend in what was effectively the wolfless side of the room. Mary detached from Heero's side instantly, started trotting along the walls, zigzagging under the tables wherever needed. Heero didn't seem interested; Duo could almost feel that mask of 'person unconcerned by silly excited dog antics' in his mind, could see it in the set of his shoulders, the body language. Mary was actually casing the joint, pinging Heero with every window and aeration grate she came across, the location of the emergency doors and whether they smelled like electricity or explosive or some other kind of trap (they did not.)
Killer stayed by Duo, sitting next to him as they waited in the very short line, but his muzzle pointed to her as reliably as a compass pointing north. Interesting! he told Duo. Wolf smells! People smells! Gun smells! Chemical smells! Fries with ketchup.
Ketchup is bad for you.
Ketchup is bad for you, Killer retorted, with the clear undertone that if he didn't get to have any then neither did Duo.
That's healthier for both of you, Heero interjected, and they both turned to glare narrow-eyed at him.
"... Your turn," Heero said, one eyebrow up a quarter of an inch, and Duo turned around and went to the counter with a huff.
Mary found a door that went to the kitchen while he was busy loading up his platter, and Duo laughed to himself right in front of the cook. Thankfully she was used to worse. The lock needs hands, sorry.
Dig through the wall? Killer suggested, and they thought of raw paw-pads and claws used to th quick, but maybe if they managed to rip the edge of the frame out with their claws then they could bite into it and tear it out of the wall! Hmm. Worth a try.
It was hilarious and well worth the loss of sleep and when Duo stopped to think about how easy it was to sit with Heero like he'd always been around, like he had stayed, after the war, it felt weird again, as if another countdown had started and a coup was coming on.
No secret mission, Heero told him, floating quiet and a little -- repressed, depressed, something like that.
If there had been I don't think I would even have minded, Duo thought back, and then buried exactly how true it was.
There was peace now. He was here to learn how to deal with that.
I wouldn't have minded either, Heero thought, but almost to himself, (so much better than the actual--) and then he went stealth again and stayed that way until the middle of the morning.
--
At lunch Wufei dropped by to drive Heero to a vet that specialized in bitches. Killer nosed firmly at Glenfiddich and nipped his ear and Wufei snorted at Duo and promised he wouldn't lose Yuy at the mall and drive off without him, which was patently unfair and totally out of the blue besides.
Alone for lunch, they returned to the cafeteria.
It was busy at this hour and all the people Duo and Killer knew... well, none of them were Trowa, and he'd seen enough of the trainees for now. There was a space free at their table, and he saw Wangai bite her lip and then tilt her head in invitation, but he smiled and pointed half at random to Agent Dagher and her bitch wolf Sekhmet, who he had met that first day and not really talked with since.
Then he got himself a tray and followed his implicit promise.
"Hey there. This seat taken?"
Dagher shrugged, moved her folders; Sekhmet sniffed briefly at Killer's nose and then ignored him utterly. Duo put Killer's bowl in the stand beside him -- half the seats came with so the wolves wouldn't develop arthritis of the neck in their old age (luxury!) -- and then sat.
"Good morning. Where's your other half?"
"... Killer is under the table," Duo said, misunderstanding her quite deliberately. She sent him a thin smirk. "And Yuy is at the vet. Why is everyone so interested in him, anyway?"
"Not him so much as the wolf," Dagher said, and shrugged elegantly. "You've been missing out on some major ripples."
"Urgh." Duo frowned, attacked his salad with annoyance. (Why had he picked up a salad? Oh yeah, he'd promised Hilde. Fresh vegetables were good for you! Only he wasn't used to them and they felt gross on his tongue a bit. Well, mostly the lettuce. And spinach. And...) "I don't get why, it's not like they want to be the center of everything."
Dagher shook her head, said nothing.
Duo had come to sit with her for a reason, though. It was because the first day they met she'd tried to explain, neat and incisive and to the point. She knew how much background he was missing and she didn't bother with the 'oh my god you poor deprived plebe that can't be right' routine.
"So why are they?" he said.
Dagher made a noncommittal sound. "Reason one, pure mechanics -- a queen wolf has the kind of mental voice that fills a room when it speaks up. It's like ignoring the leading lady in an opera. Reason two, willpower. Wolves never feel so safe and confident than they do under a solid leader. A queen wolf is that."
"Huh." He considered it. "Can you have one without the other? The mental power without the self-confidence?"
"Sure, but a wolf who's shy won't dare to push as loud, anyway, so they rein themselves in. Queens grow up with it, though, so they get used to being the center of attention. It's all pretty entangled."
"Like tall strong guys and guys who play basketball."
"Mm." She took a bite. "Plus there's the hot monkey sex."
Duo did not do a spit-take, because he knew she was mildly evil and when someone evil looked so bland and uninterested it meant something was coming. He still swallowed weird, and had to tap his chest with his fist to get the tomato slice down the proper tube before he could inhale it.
"What."
Dagher was laughing at him with her eyes. "You did notice there's about one bitch wolf for five dog wolves, right?"
"Um, yes." No. What, really? Oh hell. Yeah.
Well. Okay.
"This is such a conveniently coincidental slide toward the topic I was about to ask you about. I'd almost suspect you of telepathy."
Telepathy?she sent him, face impassible, black eyes heavily lidded. No such thing.
He laughed, couldn't help it. It was weird as hell, because he couldn't even feel her at the edge of his awareness.
But apparently she could feel him.
"Trained police detective," Dagher pointed out. "You realize you only looked at people with bitch wolves before you sat with me?"
"I know you, and I don't know any of them," Duo protested. "Apart from the trainees, but getting Shark and Killer to hang out together with a bowl of food between them is... Yeah, I'll pass."
Which sucked because Wangai was pretty cool, and he'd never get to know the rest of the group if he couldn't approach them, either.
"Ask your question and let me eat in peace," Dagher said, rolling her eyes.
Urgh. Uuuurgh. "Okay. I don't actually know where to start. I tried to look it up online and it's such a mess of bullshit and rumors. I just..."
He hesitated, frowned. Heero would not want Duo to bring his personal problems to a stranger. But how else... It wasn't like he could ask Heero.
"How does it go, really? Wolf breeding."
Sekhmet lifted her narrow head off the tiles to stare at him in pure, golden-eyed disbelief.
"Because when I had sex, Killer never gave a shit! Well, he'd -- he'd whine and maybe sulk a bit, but it wasn't..." Duo paused for a breath, frowned. "Why'd--"
Why'd Heero act like -- why did he keep dodging the thought of it, why...
Dagher muttered something in Arabic that featured Allah's name prominently, several times in a row. Duo scowled at her.
"Okay, your trainers should be set on fire. Any of them have a wolf?"
"... Um, no." Most of them had been spacers, never touching land, and the rest were scientists. He tried to imagine Professor G with a wolf that wouldn't die of hunger, forgotten under his desk, or crushed to death by a crane installing a gundanium plate. Yeah, nah. Howard, now, he could see it better, but where would the man had met any...?
"Okay." She sighed, pinched her elegant nose. "Wolves can have recreational sex, or even, you know, lick themselves, they just rarely see a point. Pretty much functionally asexual out of season, I guess. When it happens it's like human sex -- distracting, physically, but that's it, the other bondmate doesn't have to get involved in it."
She paused to stare at him, voice dropping low, not a whisper but not far from it either. Duo was suddenly uncomfortably aware of the number of people surrounding them, of how many of them came with radar ears.
"When it's a heat, they need to fuck, they need you to fuck, basically everyone needs to fuck. Reason goes out the window. Training needs to be pretty ingrained not to follow. And you're dragged along for the ride, because they need it and you're pack and the pack needs to grow and it's right and good and proper and why would there be any distance between you?"
Duo could only stare at her.
Dagher planted her fork in her steak decisively, frowning.
"So Heero--"
"Your friend is going to get fucked by the brothers and sisters of every dog wolf his sister accepts, which might be one, might be none, might be ten, she won't be noticing little things like that by then. She'll just know whether she wants the dogs or not."
Duo opened his mouth, almost said something about how she must be wrong and it didn't -- couldn't -- have to be like that, and Sekhmet looked up at him, all golden and sleek and very much a bitch.
"You, uh."
"There's heat suppressants, but every male in the Preventers already knows she's coming off them."
"Heero said she wanted a litter," Duo told her dazedly.
Heero had said...
People pressing around him, too close, looking at him, touching him. Friendly and smiling and him burning with the need to escape.
They weren't even approaching him with lust yet, just with friendliness.
Jesus.
Jesus. This was going to be a disaster. Unless Heero got dragged under by Mary's heat and forgot to fight them off, but how likely was that? With his training and his -- his Heero-ness, that untouchable quality, that...
People touching him. Strangers.
Did Trowa and Wufei know? Did they. Fuck.
What were they going to do about this?
--
In the afternoon they had classroom lessons on procedure. Heero was still out -- registration stuff, Duo thought, but he wasn't sure. The instructor didn't seem concerned, so probably it wasn't that they'd found some problem with Mary at the vet's. Or they hadn't gotten around to telling the instructor that they'd found some problem with Mary at the vet's.
"Dude, pen," Wangai whispered to him from the row before his. Duo guiltily stopped bouncing it.
Killer, is Mary in range? Can you hear her?
Busy, Killer replied sleepily, and rolled himself in a ball against Duo's chair.
"Whassamatter?" Wangai said quietly, reclining her chair so the back braced against Duo's desk. Shark was on the other side of the desk from Killer and studiously ignoring him. "You've been jumpy all afternoon."
"Urgh."
He looked at her, her profile as she pretended to pay attention to the teacher, her square hands on the desk, the battle scar on her brow.
She was pretty steady, wasn't she. Well-trained. Strong but secure, didn't think she had anything to prove; cool-headed, but still friendly. And Shark had shown interest in Mary already. Maybe if Duo introduced them first...
Killer lifted his head from the ground and let out a low, rolling growl, staring right through the mess of chairs and desk legs. Shark twitched, stared right back, lip curling up, ruff prickling.
"--Oh, Jesus. Killer, down. What's gotten into you?"
He got no response save for a wave of hostility. Argh. Shark wasn't even doing anything!
Nope, still growling. At least Killer was growling? Instead of just... Yeah, not a great silver lining. "Sorry, teach," he said with a sigh, and gathered his stuff. "Killer, out."
Wangai watched him go, brows knit in either suspicion or worry. He gave her an apologetic shrug and herded his wolf out through the door at the back of the room with a knee to his furry ass before any of the others got involved; there were already too many muzzles lifted and ears pointed their way.
Maybe it wasn't so bad that he'd be repeating the course. Urgh.
He stretched out with the bond, cautious, felt -- oh, that was Chiquito, not very loud yet but excitable enough that it dragged the mind closer. Okay, hello cub, but it wasn't who he wanted to...
Who? Killer asked as they made their way down the hall.
Bazooka? And Segura.
Killer filled his nose with Bazooka's orange peels scent, Segura's warm, still-humid laundry, reached out, feeling tentatively -- still better than Duo -- toward...
What is it?
Oh hey, it had worked. Got questions, can we see you? We've got until the end of the hour, or after classes I guess.
Shouldn't you be in -- I see. Okay. He dropped the map of the building into Duo's head, tagged a room up a level and then two doors to the left.
Duo and Killer went.
It was an office with three desks in it, but only Segura was there at the moment, sitting down with a pile of paperwork. Bazooka sat up; Killer went to bump noses with her and Duo followed, pulling up a chair to sit in front of Segura's desk.
"Next time you might want to tell him to leave the room and wait in the corridor, if he's feeling disruptive," Segura said casually as Killer went to nose around behind the other desks.
Duo blinked. Okay, that wasn't the topic he'd had in mind. Like, at all. "Leave him alone? I--"
Segura pursed his lips a bit, though his dark eyes stayed rueful, like he despaired of Duo a bit but in a way that worried him more than it annoyed him. Which was... something, Duo guessed, and tried not to turn red.
"He's much less likely to be hostile if he doesn't have you to protect," Segura said, weighing his words carefully enough that Duo guessed it wasn't what he'd wanted to say first. "... Also, you guys are a bit attached at the hip." He gave a casual shrug.
"Oh." Duo digested that, rubbed the back of his head, made himself smile. "A bit, huh?"
Segura cracked a smile. "A tad. A smidgen. Barely noticeable at all." He sobered up. "It's understandable, with your history, I'm just mentioning it so that you're aware of it. You guys are used to being in each other's pockets twenty-four-seven, but if one of you wanted to do something on his own for once it wouldn't be a catastrophe."
Duo pinged Killer by reflex, but he wasn't even paying attention, and the thought of doing his own thing ... well, do what? While Duo was where? It was too vague and he couldn't judge if he'd like it just from that -- but there was none of the instant, uneasy refusal Duo had expected.
Letting Killer wander off entirely on his own was... Well, they used to do that when they were in L2's streets, but. They'd had the other street kids then. They'd had food to scrounge up and cops to avoid and...
To be frank, back then if Killer had bitten someone Duo wouldn't have cared, because he'd have assumed they deserved it, if only for the idiocy of trying to pet a german-shepherd-sized, dog-looking stray.
"Uuurgh, the more I do this thing, the more I realize I suck at it," Duo grumbled, slumping forward theatrically and dragging a chuckle out of the man.
"Alright, so what did you want to talk about?"
"Um. Actually it's about another of those things I just realized I know nothing about because I never had a reason to."
"Hmm?"
Duo's face prickled. He forced himself to meet Segura's eyes anyway. "About heats."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, I just -- always thought it was exaggeration, but I was talking to Dagher and she said..." He forced the rest out; it came out a bit rough, embarrassed. "That people would fuck regardless. That..."
Segura blinked. Bazooka stretched her paws before her and let out a huge yawn, flopped onto her side. Lots of silliness, was her opinion.
"She's spayed," Segura said dryly. "She was singing another tune back when she wasn't."
So why...? Duo started to think, and then tried to shove it down, and Segura brought up a blurry, old image of dead puppy and blood, repressed it. Duo came out of that little accidental over-share with the pretty gross words "uterine prolapse" and "hysterectomy" in his head.
Oh god, all the things that could go wrong with Mary's cubs. Duo was aware that he'd paled just a little bit, but. Awgh.
"Wow, okay, that is another good reason not to go through with it, why does anyone ever..."
Yeah, okay, for the cubs. Cubs needed to happen, and hey, people probably enjoyed having them around once they were there. But the heat itself, dear lord, no.
Segura let out little sigh and leaned on an elbow, rubbed his jaw in thought, in faint embarrassment. "Listen, Maxwell... No one thinks you're gay if you end up in bed with another man during a wolf heat. Everyone knows it's just one of those things, it doesn't--"
"That is so not it!" Duo spluttered.
"--Oh. Sorry then."
Sigh. "Okay, so I have this friend -- no, wait, that makes it sound like it's for me. But it's really for a friend."
"Dog or bitch?"
... Siiiigh. "Yeah,okay, it's Heero and Mary. They haven't asked me to come here, I'm just... Dagher told me some things and -- now I'm feeling fretty. It seems pretty... intense?"
Segura nodded a little. "Okay... I don't really want to discuss them, especially without their approval or knowledge, but we can certainly talk about things in general terms. Especially since it's pretty likely that you'll be around the building for a heat at some point and it's also pretty likely that if you are, Killer will want to participate."
"...Okay, that's fair."
"Okay, first thing -- unless the bitch is young and not regular yet, or getting triggered by massive upheavals like the death of an alpha bitch, or accidentally went off her heat suppressants, we know when a heat is coming. You've got time to choose whether to attend or not. Your wolf might grumble a little, but so long as they don't catch the scent or you leave right afterwards, they'll forget about it in half a day."
"Unless they're the bitch in heat."
"The brother of a bitch has... not as many choices, that's true, but there are heat suppressants." Segura's voice gentled. "If Yuy chose to let Mary go off hers after keeping her on them since the war, it was his choice, and probably an informed one."
Duo grunted. "Yeah, if there was information to find, he found it." He just didn't know if Heero had taken it into consideration. The guy had always had a regrettable tendency to consider himself as acceptable collateral damage if something needed doing badly enough back in the day, and Duo didn't know if the two years of peace since then had changed that mindset any.
"If they're nervous there's anxiety medication, but most of the time the bitch's anticipation takes care of that."
Haha, Heero taking drugs to make himself be less on edge. Ha.
"I know from the outside it sounds like a bit much, but there are nurses and a doctor on site, there's a squad of brothers of bitches ready to intervene the second anyone taps out, for any reason at all. Injuries are pretty rare, the worst is usually chafing and mild dehydratation. It's stressful for people who have a hard time going with the flow, but -- Maxwell..." Segura reddened a little, looked away. "It feels good. We wouldn't keep bonding if it didn't."
Yeah. The issue there was 'people who have a hard time going with the flow' sounded like Segura-speak for 'control freak.'
And he really didn't want to discuss Heero's issues in depth, anyway.
He didn't know what he'd been hoping for, that Segura would tell him Agent Dagher had been fucking with him or something.
He supposed it was a little reassuring that Segura was a man who'd gone through heat as the brother of a bitch, and he didn't seem to think it was anything traumatic.
"Remind Yuy that he has an exclusion list," Segura said, a bit abrupt. "If there's anyone he doesn't want to attend for any reason at all, they won't be permitted on site. There'll be no questions asked."
Duo thought it might not be useful to exclude everyone. Kinda counter-productive, really. And he was starting to sound kind of overprotective even to himself with that one.
He should probably shelve the catastrophic thoughts until he had talked to Heero himself. Good thing they were meeting this evening...
"Okay. Thanks for the talk, sir. I should probably go back to class now."
"Probably," Segura replied with an amused snort. "Get going. You should drop by the infirmary and ask for pamphlets at some point," he added as Duo got up.
Duo made an agreeing noise (ugh, people seeing him request that stuff) and walked out, Killer yawning as he ambled on his heels.
--
When he tried to step inside the bar that evening Duo collided with Wufei head on.
"Whoa," he said, grabbing for Wufei's upper arm for balance, as Killer whuffed disapprovingly. Wufei cupped his elbow from underneath and finished dragging him upright. He was scowling, but Duo had a feeling he'd been scowling before he stepped out.
What's wrong/sitrep? (am I late?)
Wufei huffed through his nose and poked Duo in the shoulder, shoving him back so that Glenfiddich could walk out after him. He stepped to the side, out of sight of the window; Duo followed, eyebrows quirked.
"Interpersonal difficulties," Wufei said dryly as Glen went to sniff a road sign.
"Which means? ... Did you argue with Heero or Tro?"
He was a bit relieved when Wufei blinked at him like the thought hadn't even occurred to him. "No. Some idiot is getting drunk in there and reminiscing about his glory days in White Fang and how much the Treize faction-- 'ch. A bunch of nonsense."
"Uh huh."
Wufei shrugged sharply, crossed his arms. "I'd have ignored it but his wolf was starting to crowd Glenfiddich. I'm actually not supposed to allow imbeciles to get their comeuppance," he added, grumbling. Now he's going to think he's won argh.
Glen lolled his tongue at his brother in what was clearly amusement. Dumb puppy growling at shoes, he shared. Duo snickered.
"Well, obviously Glen doesn't care much. You can't be wiping the floor with every idiot who waltzes your way, Wu-dawg! The janitors will be out of a job. Also if he's that drunk it'd be boring."
"I was thinking unsporting," Wufei retorted, the corner of his mouth starting to lift in an unwilling smile, "but yes, that too."
Duo leaned on the wall beside him and watched Killer sniff at Glen's well-marked post and hike up his leg, determined to piss higher.
"God, I hope they hose down that sign sometimes. Lucky it's not summer."
Wufei snorted, and then pretended he hadn't. "That was juvenile."
"Yeah and who was all 'I'm eighteen not eighty' last time? I'm just providing fresh childishness, bro. See it as age retraining!"
"Eighteen, not eight."
"Hey, they both look nubile and sexy to a home-brewed octogenarian -- ow." Duo rubbed his shoulder. He bet it would bruise.
"Just because people from L2 are the only ones allowed to make pedophile from L2 jokes doesn't mean they should."
"There, there, my little jailbait -- ow, seriously." Wufei had jabbed him in the exact same bruise.
"I will make Glenfiddich piss on you, Maxwell, don't test me."
Duo grinned, and elbowed him back. "What were you saying about maturity again?"
He didn't get to find out what Wufei would have retorted; the bar's door handle twisted, and Mary's yellow shoulder shoved it open. She peered outside, scanning Killer and then Duo and Wufei.
Come in, she said, quiet now/stupid one bitten quiet.
Duo pushed away from the wall, ambled to the door. "Yes ma'am. ... Did you really bite him?"
... Not with my mouth? She demonstrated; a push with her mind sudden enough to feel kind of the way a higher-ranked wolf would nip or pinch in reprimand. Duo almost flinched back.
"Huh, cool, Killer has never done that."
Horse-lather does it, Mary said carelessly -- like it meant absolutely nothing of interest that she was picking up tricks from the current queen of the pack, no really it didn't -- and then stared imperiously at Killer and Glen and disappeared back inside. Glen caught the door, checked it with his shoulder, and they followed. Duo shrugged at Wufei and went.
They'd managed to get a corner table this time around, toward the back and the door that led to the back garden. Duo flicked his fingers at Trowa, who he hadn't seen yet today, and sat down with his back, once again, to the goddamn room.
"Seen Rosca and Folha yet?"
Heero didn't answer, sipping on something that a quick sniff from Killer proved to be coffee, and not even an Irish one.
"They're having a chat with Mister Hotshot Pride of the Fleet," Trowa said, inclining his head toward the door that led out. Wufei looked briefly vindicated, and then sighed, thought that it was still hard sometimes not to fight his own battles, not to make himself respected through his own words and... But he knew that a superior officer wasn't supposed to brawl with every moron who thought "teenager" and "can break you in two over his knee" were mutually exclusive.
"Haha, that's what you get for taking that promotion," Duo said, but his laughter fell flat.
Heero had taken one of the benches in the corner and Trowa the other one, and Wufei sat at his side so that he faced Heero.
When he looked at him, casually remote, faking relaxation with his drink and scanning the room incessantly over the rim, Duo couldn't help but remember Dagher's words.
Heero's intensely blue eyes flicked to him, harpooned in; his heavy brows twitched downwards. "What is it?"
"Haha. Nothing." But he -- 'they need to fuck, they need you to fuck, basically everyone needs to fuck.'
He didn't think he'd imagined the flinch there. Oh, fuck.
"Sorry. Shit. I -- realized I knew nothing about that and -- asked people." He ran a hand though his bangs, winced. "I'm really sorry."
"It is a topic of general interest," Heero said, utterly tonelessly. Duo was torn between cringing and kicking him under the table, making him stop doing that ever again.
"Still not the best place to bring it up. I just... Yeah. Sorry."
Wufei was staring at the wall past Heero's shoulder, lips pursed, looking uncomfortable, and Trowa into his glass.
"Why are you sorry?" Heero said, a little sharp. "You're not responsible for a biological process."
Duo sighed through his nose. "It's not sorry I did a bad, it's sorry you have to go through that shit. I know you can see the difference, come on."
"I'll survive," Heero said, and the tone was definitely 'drop it', but underneath... (Other people might not.)
Duo winced. Trowa pushed a drink at him and he took it without a word, sipped. Martini. Okay, why not. He drained half the glass in one go. Maybe being a little tipsy would help.
Not so tipsy that Killer started picking fights with about any wolf who looked at Mary twice, though. He was currently crouched next to Duo's chair, following her progress through the room, touching noses here and there.
"I just..." Sigh. "This is a phenomenally bad idea, Yuy, and you know it. D'you really have to...?"
Trowa kicked him under the table, face bored. Duo yelped.
"It is your decision," Wufei said, quietly, "but if we're going to mitigate the collateral damage it might help to know the context."
Heero stared at him for a second, and frowned -- and then glanced at Mary, who -- Killer could see -- was now looking back.
"I took her to war with me," he said, switching to Japanese without warning. "I can deal with fucking someone for her."
That was so not how make love not war was supposed to go, Duo thought, but somehow kept his teeth shut on it. Wow, hearing Heero talk about fucking. That was going to take some getting used to.
"At least tell me you're not a virgin," he begged instead, which was obviously much better.
Wufei groaned and closed his eyes, shook his head, muttering something about elephants and porcelain. Heero stared at him.
Trowa coughed delicately, and actually fucking smiled at the ceiling.
Which Duo would have ignored because Trowa was habitually a smug douche, if subdued one, only...
"When the fuck did that happen?!" he spluttered.
"Circus?" Heero replied, frowning like he couldn't figure out what the issue was. "We bunked together for over a month."
"Oh, bunked together! Well in that case -- wait, you lost it before me?! You asshole! Wufei, tell me you didn't -- um."
Wufei sighed long and slow through his nose, stared at the ceiling like he was weighing the pros and cons of shoving Duo off his chair, and then said, "Married."
Before the war, too. "... Right. Wow, sudden urge to call Quatre and ask him when he lost his."
"When was yours?" Trowa asked, head tilted a little bit.
Duo shrugged. Wow, this had to be the most age-appropriate conversation he'd ever had with these guys, he could have sworn it on his unknown mother's head. "Uh. Couple months after the war? With Hilde," he added, bragging maybe a tiny bit, because Hilde was a babe.
"Then he also beat you."
"How do you know -- oh my God is there a Gundam pilot you didn't tumble Wufei tell me there is."
Wufei pinched his lips so hard they paled, said, "Well," a bit regretfully, and then started laughing right in Duo's face. Trowa was following him a second later. Duo gave in and sank to the table, whimpering and snickering in about equal measures.
"Straight," Wufei told him mercifully, once he was done laughing like he was actually his age. "Apologies, Barton."
"No offense taken," Trowa replied urbanely, still smirking. "Not straight, by the way."
"We figured," Duo grumbled. "How not-straight?"
Trowa shrugged. "All the way bent, pretty much."
"Pfff."
Meanwhile Heero was watching the three patiently, face blank.
"... Oh, right. Heero, are you straight or gay or... bi or what?"
"... I don't care."
"Well if you've never done it with a girl how would you be sure of that?"
A slow, slow blink. "I had sex with Relena too. In about equal numbers to Trowa. There was no difference I couldn't attribute to different experience and personalities."
Duo stared at him, totally incredulous. "Fuckin' hell. Not two-timing I hope -- okay, you've had more partners than me, I am officially done worrying about this side of the issue."
"Good. It's not the sex that's the issue," Heero said, frank and matter of fact, a hand loosely curled around the coffee cup he'd put down. Loss of control/strangers pinning me/cannot fight back cannot not fight back--
Well.
Well. "There's an obvious solution, is there?"
"There is?" Trowa said, one eyebrow up.
Duo pointed wordlessly over his shoulder at Mary, pointed at Coyote sleeping under the table, tried very hard not to imagine Trowa and Heero together, all long limbs and trim muscles and that ridiculous "wolf-induced passion" he'd seen gushed about online. Would Trowa bite? Shit.
"Coyote and Mary?" Wufei said, straightening up a little; he looked briefly uncomfortable, and then forced it away. "That would certainly fix the trust issues..."
Heero looked at Trowa, hands gone oh so slightly tight on his cup. Trowa slowly, regretfully shook his head.
"Heero... You can get away with it for a subordinate bitch, but -- ask Mary if she'd want to be locked away with only Coyote to choose from." Heero obviously did; his face tightened. Trowa kept going, softly, keeping up eye contact. "She's not settled in the pack, she's messing with the hierarchy just by being here; they will fight. If we lock her up with a beta male, and he covers her, they'll just fight afterwards."
He sighed quietly, lifted a hand palm up and let it drop back to his lap.
"Coyote will attend, but he's fifty pounds lighter than the big ones. He's not going to win."
Tricky, Coyote protested sleepily, but he didn't sound especially bothered. Maybe he wouldn't get the fuss so long as Mary wasn't in heat. Maybe he wouldn't get it at all.
Duo looked down at his clenched hands, wondered how he felt. If he was -- relieved? -- that Trowa couldn't. Maybe a bit, but it was more complex than that. Trowa would have taken care of Heero. He'd grown up in an actual pack, he had to know how a heat went, what you did to mitigate things, to avoid accidents. Heero trusted him. (Duo bet he had gone to sleep just fine on his couch.)
There was still a solution, though, wasn't there.
"Glenfiddich will attend," Wufei said, meeting Heero's eyes with quiet determination.
"Yeah," Duo said around the knot in his throat. "So will Killer. If that's okay."
"That's..."
Heero's so self-assured voice trailed off (oh), and he inclined his head, blue eyes briefly closing -- and then he bowed, over the edge of the table, just a little.
"Thank you. "
Yeah. No problem there. Purely the goodness of his heart. (He'd have done it for Wufei or Trowa. Just... Heero.)
Now Duo just had to make sure Killer didn't actually kill any of the other challengers. That was going to be fun.
Fight? Killer asked him, a little baffled but game. Duo sank his fingers in his brother's thick ruff and scritched him until the wolf forgot he'd asked a question.
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