Chapter Text
When Heero says he wants to join Preventers two months after the Mariemaia Incident, Duo has serious reservations. It’s being run by Une, and okay, she’s working with Sally, and Sally is good people, but she’s also still working with Zechs, which creeps Duo out, because there’s crazy, and then there’s crazy, and then there’s drop a supership onto Earth to avenge the colonies crazy. He doesn’t ask how the guy survived, and at least he seems more sane than he had? Duo thinks the jury is still out, but then, some world security whatsits thought putting Une in charge of a global paramilitary antiterrorist organization was a good idea, so Duo’s definition of sanity doesn’t seem to line up with the world at large.
He’s about to make that very argument—after all, Duo’s pretty sure that his standard for sanity is pretty far left of normal—when he notices that abject misery in Heero’s eyes. They’ve only known each other for two years, and while they fucked for the last six months of the war, they’d only started actually dating after it. Heero is still figuring out how to be a real boy, and Duo forgets sometimes that Heero is actually more soft-hearted than Duo is.
Duo didn’t do anything during the Eve Wars—either of them—that he doesn’t stand behind 100%. Even his mistakes—and he’s not perfect by a longshot—he stands by. It was war. Collateral is an unfortunate reality. He did his best to minimize it, but it doesn’t keep him awake at night. It’s never been the people he killed that keep him up at night—it’s the ones he didn’t kill soon enough; the ones he couldn’t save.
Just another way he and Heero are opposites, because the blood on his hands definitely keeps Heero up at night. He still wakes up shaking, thinking about that little girl. He keeps in touch with Sylvia Noventa, which Duo thinks is downright unhealthy, but Duo put the last shrinks he interacted with into psych wards, so he’s probably not a reliable judge.
Heero still wakes up saying he killed Mariemaia Khushrenada.
So Duo says, “Okay. Let’s talk to Une.”
It isn’t a surprise that Une is delighted to bring them onboard. She helps them fast track their paperwork to establish the official identities required to be eligible for the Old Souls Statute, and therefore, Preventers. They have to pick birthdays. Duo picks Halloween because it amuses him. Heero would have selected January 1st just because it’s literally the first day he can pick and Heero might be sensitive, but he’s not really sentimental. Duo suggests March 21st instead. He tells Heero that it’s because having a birthday on New Year’s Day would basically obligate his friends to make a big deal of it, and also closely associate his birthday with the ends of the Eve Wars.
Both those reasons are true, but they aren’t the real reason. The real reason Duo suggested it was because it’s the beginning of spring. It’s the equinox—a day of balance and rebirth. It’s sacred in religions the world over as a day of new beginnings. He thinks it’s appropriate for Heero, and he thinks Heero knows why Duo really suggested it, because he agrees to it, but only after giving Duo a very long look.
In what must be a fucking record, their paperwork is through in a month, and they are moving into their apartment in Brussels. It’s the first lease either of them have ever signed, and it takes a call from Une herself to the new landlord to confirm that Duo and Heero really are Preventers and they really are adults under the Old Souls Statute. It’s an older home, but aside from some pretty ugly tiles in the bathroom and some laughably awful striped wallpaper in the entry, it’s almost unnecessarily big for the two of them at a little over 800 square feet. It’s on the second floor with no balcony, so the risks of anyone unknown coming in are minimal. It’s five minutes from pretty much anywhere they’d possibly want to walk to and the metro, so a car is unnecessary. It’s far from the most expensive place on the market, and they have more than adequate funds to cover it just from what they stole from OZ over the War, but it’ll also be well within their means based on their Preventer salaries, but it’s still the biggest real-world purchase either have ever made, and they’re both nervous and giddy about the commitment.
They clear the so-called basic training with scores that will stand for years, but only because Duo makes a bet with Heero to see how exactly they can match the scores without going over. If Heero loses, he’s not allowed to touch work or a work laptop outside of business hours for a month. If Duo loses, he has to rewire the apartment, because the wiring is probably decades out of date if it isn’t an outright fire hazard, but the plaster walls in the apartment are original, and Duo really doesn’t want to tear into them all over the place to replace the wiring, if for no other reason than refinishing them to match will be a nightmare. Heero pretends he wouldn’t care, but Duo knows how OCD he is, and the rewiring project would probably lead to replastering the whole damn apartment, so he is very careful not to beat his initial score.
They submit their suggestions for call signs separately, and Duo deliberately shuffled the stack of forms to make sure his and Heero’s were well separated. He’s delighted when Une approves Duo as Darkside, and Heero as Force. He’s not really sure if he slips that one past her on the grounds of seeing the dark side of the moon from L2, or if she let it through because she has no intention of allowing them to partner.
Hearing that is a rude awakening. Heero read the employee handbook and regulations cover-to-cover, so had Duo, but neither of them had thought that the non-fraternization policy would apply to them. They were Gundam pilots. Not just Gundam pilots—they were the Gundam pilots, pilots 01 and 02. Between them, they had been responsible for two thirds of the Gundam-related casualties, and close to half of those had been joint efforts, which wasn’t including the sheer amount of destruction they had otherwise wreaked.
Une, to their surprise, holds her ground. She doesn’t want accusations of favoritism, and they had asked to keep their identities anonymous. Duo is ready to just call this whole experiment failed, but Heero has that mission look in his eyes, and he knows that Heero’s doing this, even if Duo’s not.
No way in any hell is Duo letting Heero do this alone, so he sucks it up instead of telling Une what he thinks of her to her face.
He thinks he’s entitled to holding a grudge and reserving judgment. She did have him tortured and tried to have him executed after all.
Wufei has decided to go through this with them, but he goes through faster than they did because he officially existed. Trowa’s poking at it, but is undecided. Quatre is in talks with Une, but neither of them are sure it’s a good idea.
Heero lucks out—or Une just likes him better than Duo—and gets partnered with Wufei. They aren’t what Duo and Heero are, but if you didn’t have that bar set, you’d be hardpressed to believe that there might be a more effective pair. Une is certainly happy with having them paired.
Duo’s first partner is an ex-OZ Special and one of Noin’s former students. Margeaux Ellingshire has all of Noin’s haughtiness and none of her pragmatism to balance it. She is a decent pilot—she was Noin’s student after all—but that’s about all she is, and she doesn’t respect Duo’s skills as a pilot. Not that he has much call to use them in the new job and put her in her privileged place, but the old classism is alive and well in Ms. Ellingshire.
Excuse him—Lady Ellingshire. He’s been corrected. A lot.
Her call sign is Nightingale. Duo mostly tries to call her just that because forget trying to be friends with his partner, and call signs are not just acceptable but encouraged forms of address. She also decides that Une’s clearly not entirely sane if she made Duo the senior partner in their team, because an uneducated sixteen-year-old brat should not be making life-and-death decisions.
They have a month of what’s basically team bonding where they’re paired up with local law enforcement to get some basics under their belts. Because Preventers is so new and their roles are still being figured out, Une had the bright idea to ingratiate her new troops with law enforcement, since once thing was clear—military background did not equate civilian experience. Sarcasm aside, it was a good idea, but Duo thought that their pair might shoot both Duo and Nightingale to put them out of their collective misery by the time their month-long crash course was done.
Duo gives Clijsters and Niskanen credit because they spent most of their time putting Nightingale in her place, explaining how real-life situations worked, and seem to realize that Duo got it, because within a week they treat him like he knows what he is doing. Duo would take being permanently paired with them any day, but he didn’t join the Belgian police, he joined the Preventers.
Their apparent favoritism is a thorn in Nightingale’s side though. Of course she is being persecuted. It is because she was ex-Oz, and a woman, and Duo starts tuning her out about then.
It would be easier if she was just stupid or lazy to be honest. She’s neither of those things. She’s smart, supereducated, and driven. Sidelined during the war with a freak blown out knee during training, she has something to prove. Considering the fatality rate of mobile suit pilots—and OZ Specials in particular—Duo doesn’t get it. She should feel like she dodged a bullet, ’cause, statistically, if she’d run into a Gundam, her chances of surviving the encounter were around 20% if you go with the optimistic estimate.
Une seems to think she has real promise though because even he doesn’t believe Une partnered Nightingale with him just irritate him. Heero is sympathetic when Duo complains, but he doesn’t really understand. He hasn’t been forced to work with someone who he clearly outclasses before, and he doesn’t have the social awareness to notice or be offended by her snobbery.
The first solo assignment they have together is also the last solo assignment they have together. It isn’t exactly that the assignment should have been simple—it would have been a waste of resources to send someone like him into something truly simple—but it should have been straightforward. They were supposed to scope out a location where a major weapons deal was supposed to go down later that week.
Either someone had spooked and moved up the timeline or someone set them up because they landed in the middle of said deal. Okay, irritating, but hardly the end of the world, at least in Duo’s mind. It’s only when bullets start flying that he realizes Nightingale doesn’t just dislike him—she actively distrusts him. That is a problem when people are shooting at you.
Nightingale goes down with a shot in the vest because she outright ignores Duo when he tries to get her to adequate cover because she’s panicking. From what he can see, she’s not bleeding, so it hurts like a bitch, but she’ll probably live. He’s going to laugh very hard at how utterly unprepared Nightingale is for real violence.
You know, assuming he gets out of this alive, that is. He knows he’s a Preventer, and “kill everyone in your path” isn’t really the MO, but at this point, he thinks it’s time to take the kid gloves off. Shinigami fills him like an old friend, the world graying and going silent, and when he pops up this time, he takes down two traffickers with headshots.
When color and sound bleeds back into the world some time later, he can hear Nightingale crying softly and sirens coming—this kind of shoot-out is loud, and he kind of assumes Nightingale called for backup, but he can’t be sure. He moves carefully through the warehouse, keeping Shini close to the surface, but he doesn’t sense anyone other than himself and Nightingale. If anyone survived, they’re long gone.
Satisfied they’re secure for the moment, he goes back to check on Nightingale.
He isn’t terribly surprised when the first thing she says is “Don’t touch me.”
“Did it get through the vest?” he asks instead, Shini slipping away.
“I… I don’t know,” she admits, tears in her voice, though she’s trying hard to put on a brave face. “I can’t move my arm.”
Since she’s in Preventer navy and the lighting isn’t great, Duo can’t tell if she’s bleeding or not. The jacket isn’t obviously wet, but the scent of gunpowder and blood are thick in the air, and he can’t be sure some isn’t hers.
Resigned, he flips the safety and tucks his gun into the back of his pants, ignoring the shoulder holster for now, and crouches down beside her. She hisses as she tries to move out of his reach, and he sighs.
“We’re about as safe as we can be without backup,” Duo tells her. “I know you don’t trust me, but I have been shot before. You obviously haven’t. I may not be a doctor, but you can at least trust me to tell whether it’s life-threatening or not.”
Duo doesn’t know how he’s the one who ends up feeling like the adult when she has six years on him, but she suddenly looks very young and very scared, and Duo just feels old. Jerkily, she nods, and he reaches forward again. She whimpers as he moves aside the jacket, and gets a good look at where the bullet hit. When he does, he’s impressed she’s not screaming or wailing, because, yeah, that spot in the breastbone—there isn’t a lot of protection there, even with the vest. He can tell just by the way she reacts when he shifts her that the clavicle is broken. Still, he persists, peeling the jacket and her shirt under it aside far enough to see that the vest did its job. The skin around the impact is already terribly discolored, and that’s going to get worse before it gets better, but she should live.
“Okay,” he says, tucking the shirt back in place. “Looks like a bad break, I’m not going to lie. And that shoulder is going to feel like you got kicked by a mule with a grudge probably for a few weeks. I don’t have anything good to stabilize it right now, but it sounds like help is about here, so just rely on the mags.” He turns his attention back out to the rest of the warehouse, letting Shinigami rise again, trying to sense any other life.
In spite of her obvious distress, she asks, “Rely on the mags?”
Duo looks back at her. “Oh,” he realizes. “It’s a Spacer thing. If you get hurt while you’re working on an exterior—or even interior, if you’re in zero-G—you try to stay as still as possible and rely on your magnets. It means…”
“It means let someone else do the heavy lifting?” she guesses, and even though she’s in terrible pain, Duo suddenly understands why Une paired her with him. She has potential.
“Yeah, pretty much that.”
He’s still a bit surprised when he visits Nightingale in the hospital the next day that she welcomes him in. He didn’t really think she’d want to see him, but whether she trusts or likes him or not, it seems the right thing to do.
“You’ve really done this before, haven’t you?” she asks.
Duo scratches the back of his head a little uncomfortable. “Not from this side of the law, no,” he admits. “But more or less?”
“I heard there weren’t any survivors,” she comments, watching him carefully.
He winces because he’d apparently let Shini go a little too far. He has a meeting with Une after this about precisely that. Apparently it’s bad form for the good guys to gun the bad guys down to a man. They had recovered several hundred thousand creds worth of illegal weapons, so Duo still kind of counts it as a win, but he’s not looking forward to his one-on-one with the boss lady.
“I, uh, got a look at your chart,” he throws a thumb over his shoulder toward the door. “Gonna be a rough recovery.”
She goes to shrug and stops with a hiss. “Yeah,” she admits. “But I can handle the recovery.”
“Didn’t doubt it,” Duo says, and it’s even true.
“But I don’t think I can handle being your partner.”
It’s a good thing Duo is leaning against the wall because he might have tripped if he hadn’t been. “Oh?” he asks, not sure if he’s relieved or insulted.
“There’s a reason Une made you the lead agent in our partnership, and I didn’t trust her. I didn’t trust you. I’ve had some time to think, and…” she pauses, taking a breath. “You were… so calm. You didn’t panic. You knew how to handle the situation.”
Duo shrugs this time. “You never know how you’re going to react in a situation like that until you’re in one,” he tells her, because while it’s a cliché, it’s also true. There were people with all the training in the world who still lost their heads in actual combat. “But now you know, and you can adjust it for next time.”
She gives him a look that borders on pitying, and it gets his hackles up. “I don’t want there to be a next time, Duo.”
He thinks it’s the first time she’s actually called him by his name, and if she wanted to throw him, that is a great way to do it. “O…kay…?” he says, not sure if it’s a question or not. He doesn’t know how to feel because he is finally starting to think this might be okay, and she clearly doesn’t.
“You… you were so…” She huffs, as if her inability to articulate herself is his fault. “You live in a world like that.” He nods slowly, acknowledging it, because it’s true, but he’s not sure where he’s going yet. “I was sitting there, wondering if I might permanently lose my arm because I didn’t listen to you, and I realized…” She meets his eyes, fearless, and there’s the haughtiness he’d become so familiar with. “I don’t want to be there again. I didn’t get to fight in the war, and… maybe I got lucky when I tore my ACL. I buried a lot of friends, and I still didn’t get it, didn’t get that if I hadn’t been hurt, it could have been me in one of those coffins.” She seems a little disgusted, but this time, it isn’t with Duo.
Duo pulls his braid around to play with the ends because he gets it now. She is twenty-two, but she still had that kid’s belief in their own invincibility. That belief was stripped from Duo before he had a name. He knows better than most that anyone can die at any time, but he’s also learned how to live with that reality. She’s not there yet.
“If I’d been with someone less skilled than you, would I have even survived? Or would I have been gunned down?” she asks.
“You were with me,” he replies with another shrug, You would be with me next time too, he wants to say, but he knows she doesn’t want to hear it.
“Yeah,” she agrees, looking down at her hands, and the silence grows heavy. “It’s not that I don’t want to be there with you,” she blurts, as if she has to get it out right now. “It’s that I don’t want to be there at all.”
“Okay,” he says, and this time he means it. It is okay, because he knows not everyone is cut out to live this kind of life, willing to step into rooms where bullets will be flying.
“I can serve Preventers in other capacities than as a field agent,” she continues, and he knows that she hasn’t heard him. “I just…”
Duo pushes off the wall and goes to the bed, putting a hand on her ankle. “Margeaux,” he says, stealing her trick to get her attention. She looks up at him, and her eyes are tear-rimmed, but not red. There’s no wavering in them, no confusion. “It’s okay,” he says again, making sure she hears him this time. “It is. I get it—it’s not personal. To be honest, I’d rather be out there on my own than out there with someone who doesn’t want to be there. You gotta do what’s right for you, kid,” he says, and reaches out to wipe away a tear that escaped her best efforts to contain it. He’s horrified when it makes her start crying in earnest. She grabs his wrist, so he can’t leave. At a loss, he just pets her hair, helpless, and lets her cry.
Une reads him the riot act for killing all of the suspects. He realizes after about a minute that she’s not actually upset with him, and pretty much tunes her out after that. It’s the first time he’s getting this lecture, but he’s sure it won’t be the last. When she realizes he’s not listening, she cuts herself off and says, “I understand Agent Nightingale intends to pursue other opportunities within the organization.”
He assumes that’s fancy-speak for “she wants a desk job,” but just says, “Yes, ma’am.”
“I only spoke with her briefly, but she had nothing but praise for your cool head under pressure.” She’s looking at him like she can’t figure him out, and he has no idea why, since he’s the one who called her a psycho bitch to her face when she literally held his life in her hands. Did she really think a little shoot-out with some gun runners would upset him?
“That’s good?” he says, not sure if it’s a question or not, because he’s not sure if she is complimenting him or not.
She sighs, visibly annoyed. Duo mentally gives himself a point, because he hadn’t even really done anything, and she’s still exasperated.
“I want your report—detailed—on my desk by end of day tomorrow. Otherwise, go home, Darkside. You’re on desk duty until your gun clears and I find another partner for you.”
“Whatever you say, lady,” he says, agreeable, and another point for him, because her mouth totally just twitched. He turns to go before she steals some points back and reminds him she’s only a facsimile of a human being.
Just before he reaches the door, she says, “Maxwell.”
He turns back, head tilted in curiosity because she doesn’t sound angry.
“Keep up the good work.”
He grins, and gives her a mock salute, deciding maybe she is actually a human being as he dashes out before she can change her mind.
When Heero gets home late that evening, Duo is curled up on the couch, a towel wrapped around his hair in a puddle on the arm. His report—or part of it, anyway—is on the coffee table, given up as the news about Tony Stark stepping down as CEO of Stark Industries, appointing his previous secretary as CEO in his place, plays.
“Welcome home,” he says, turning his attention to Heero. He looks tired, but there’s also a satisfaction about him that Duo recognizes as mission accomplished.
“Tadaima,” Heero returns, setting his bag next to the kitchen counter before making a beeline to Duo. Duo budges over automatically as Heero picks up the towel and hair, and settles in behind him, squeezing the last bits of water from it. Without a word, Duo hands him the wet brush off the coffee table. Heero tosses the towel on the back of the couch, and takes the wet mess in his hands, starting at the bottom.
“Mission go well?” Duo asks because Heero still isn’t great at small talk.
“Ah,” he confirms. “I’ll let you read the report when I’m done with it.”
Duo smiles because it had been a requirement of doing this crazy thing—no matter Preventer regulations, they wouldn’t keep things from one another. They had to keep each other in check, and keep Une in check by extension.
He opens his mouth to ask another question, when Heero surprises him. “How’d it go with Une?”
“Surprisingly well,” he admits. “Still feel like the other shoe’s gotta drop, but for now, what is it Tro says? No looking gift horses in mouths?”
“And Nightingale?”
“She’ll be fine, except for wanting a desk job. Between my gun getting cleared and Une assigning another partner, I’m probably going to be out of the field for a few weeks,” he admits.
Heero grabs the towel to wring a bit of the excess water out of the ends before he continues working his way up. “Good,” he says, because he’s heard enough about Margeaux’s temperament to distrust her outright. He hadn’t been excited to hear about them going in the field together. Duo didn’t enlighten him as to how much Margeaux had distrusted him. There was no point now—it would just piss Heero off and give him no outlet.
When he gets up to the scalp, Duo hmms in contentment, the day’s tension draining away. They sit in silence for long, comfortable minutes as Heero works and Duo relishes the attention and simple intimacy.
Heero finishes and sets the brush aside before moving Duo’s damp hair over a shoulder and placing a kiss on the nape of Duo’s neck. Duo leans back into him, reaching behind him to pull his arms around his waist. He traces the kana for love you on Heero’s arm, knowing Heero will understand it. Heero’s not good with spoken endearments, but Duo watches as Heero traces the kana for mi and the kanji for two on Duo’s forearm, copying Duo’s original response from the first time Heero traced the suki on Duo’s skin. He smiles and spins in Heero’s arms, meeting ocean-deep eyes.
“Missed you,” he says, moving forward, shifting himself into Heero’s lap.
Amusement dances in Heero’s eyes, even though only a small grin twists at his lips. His fingers are warm and firm on Duo’s waist, one hand slipping up under his shirt to play with the waist of his shorts. “Did you?” he asks, and only the last year of living together allows Duo to hear the teasing in it.
Duo presses closer, letting their chests collide, enjoying having the temporary height advantage a he raises his hands to tangle in Heero’s thick, unruly hair.
“Yeah,” he confirms. “Sure did.”
“How much?” Heero asks.
Duo leans his forehead down to Heero’s and he watches as Heero’s pupils grow. “So much,” he admits because it’s true. It’s only been four days, but it’s the first time they’ve been apart for so long since the war, and he didn’t realize how much he missed him until he had Heero in his arms again. Suddenly, the clothing separating them is too much—anything separating them is too much. He kisses Heero, hard and deep, pouring everything he is, everything he feels into it. Heero returns it, his body articulating his feelings better than he can with words. When they break, Duo asks, “Here?”
Heero actually growls, and, fuck it is hot when he does that. Then he surges, standing with Duo as if he weighs no more than a pillow. “Bed,” he says firmly, walking toward the bedroom, and Duo wraps his legs around him to make it easier, even though Heero could carry his dead weight just as easily.
“Yes, sir,” he replies cheekily, just to get that look from Heero that says he’s going to wipe that grin off Duo’s face.
Duo laughs and looks forward to it.