Author: Sami-pi
Pairing: established 1x2x1 and 3x4x3
Rating: R (for bad words)
Warnings: none?
Timeline: post EW, Quatre's CEO of WEI, Heero, Duo, Trowa, and Wufei are all Preventers, and they're all around 30ish.
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing, its characters and its trappings, belong to Bandai, Sotsu, and... I was sure there was someone else in there... sorry! ^^;;; Anyway, this fic is not for profit, just for fun.
Note: thought i'd try a little Preventer-ness...
12:08
I'd had a lunch meeting with a witness scheduled for 11:30. Duo was supposed to be my partner and backup, but he never showed and neither did my witness. There was nothing for it but to go back to my office to see what turned up.
At 12:08 my phone rang. I picked up after the first ring.
"Duo, where--"
"Hi, honey. I just wanted to let you know that I won't be able to meet you for lunch today. Nothing's wrong, I'm fine, the Lexus is fine, so don't worry. I just got a little...tied up with work,"
'Honey'? What the hell was he talking about? I thought he and Heero were all but married! Not to mention me and Quatre. What were we, chopped liver? And Lexus? Duo drove a Volvo.
"Duo, what are--"
"I know I'm already ten minutes late. I should have called you sooner, but I really couldn't get away."
Okay. Ten? Try forty, but at least this was making a little more sense...
"C'mon, don't be like that, baby."
Well, it was making sense until the 'baby' part.
"You remember what happened the last time I was late? You overreacted and called the police. And when I came home I nearly had a heart attack because the house was covered with yellow tape and there were flashing blue lights all around the place."
Ah. I got it.
Shit.
"It's all right now, sweetie. Just calm down. Take three deep breaths and you'll be right there, okay?"
I quickly snagged a pen and started to jot down this bizarre conversation in its entirety. Luckily I was an aural learner. If Duo had called Wufei, we'd all be sunk.
"Duo--"
"Look, honey, I gotta go, they're calling for me. I might be late coming home too, so don't panic. Love you lots and remember to keep calm."
And he hung up.
Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it. This wasn't supposed to be a hard case. It was just a little matter of embezzlement. Okay, it was embezzlement on a multinational level. Fine, the guy was embezzling from a huge-ass arms dealing syndicate. Yes, Preventers were called in to put a stop to the lot of them. But it wasn't supposed to be that hard.
Alright, alright, so they only had one reliable witness...
And shit. If I'd read Duo correctly, three men had captured both him and our witness and were holding them in a house not too far from our original meeting place.
Shit.
I grabbed my notes and tore out of there, bellowing for Heero and Wufei to meet me in Conference Room B. It wasn't their case, but it sure as hell was going to be now. "Keep calm", Duo'd said. Ha! Heero was going to kill me for not watching out for his precious boyfriend.
But maybe this apprehension was unwarranted. Maybe Heero wouldn't notice Duo was "missing" per se. Maybe I could play it off like Duo... deliberately... followed... Oh, who was I kidding? Yuy was going to murder me.
"Barton!" Commander Une strode into the room, a sheet of fax paper clutched in one hand. "I just got a ransom note for your witness and "a loud-mouthed Preventers agent"! What's this about?"
FUCK.
There went my plan for taking it casually and breaking the news gently.
"Now, now, Heero." I held out my hands towards him in what I hoped was a placating gesture. "Keep calm. I just talked with him on the phone. He's fine. He told me where he was and now we're going to go get him, okay?"
Heero went completely still.
"That's right. Don't overreact. Stay. Calm."
Everyone in the room held their breath.
"You talked to him. Talked to him in person," Heero finally said.
We all sighed in relief. The last time something happened to Duo, Heero had destroyed his office and nearly brained me with an errant paperweight. Well, at least he claimed it was "errant" in front of the review board. I understood though. It was okay.
But that didn't mean I wanted a repeat performance.
So...
"Yes. I talked with him in person. He sounded perfectly okay, I swear."
"So where is he then? And what's with this note?" demanded Commander Une, waving the fax in my face.
"I assume he was still with his captors when he called. He was spouting some nonsense about his flaky, anxiety-prone wife calling the cops every time he's even a minute late," I explained.
Heero nodded. "Okay, if they let him call you based on that, they're just amateurs. He's not in any real danger yet."
I agreed with him. It was a weak ploy and if someone had said that to me, I'd have backhanded him into tomorrow and told him to let the bitch go to the cops. Because anyone with half a brain and a television knew that the police didn't respond to missing persons claims until said person had been missing for at least 24 hours.
"So what'd he say?" asked Wufei, as always bringing it back down to the basics.
"He hinted that there're three guys and they've tied him up. They're in a house about ten blocks away from the café where we were to meet..."
Wufei had one of the techs project a detailed map of that sector of the city onto the wall.
"He said he was 'ten minutes late', so I'm thinking, he must be ten blocks past the café assuming we're heading out from HQ," I said, tracing out the vector with my finger.
"There are no houses around there though, Barton. Those are strip malls, and that's a transit loop."
I reviewed my notes again.
"Take a right there and then the third right after that."
The tech zoomed in on the area I'd indicated.
"That looks pretty residential, sir," he concluded.
"Okay then. That's where we're going. We're looking for a yellow house with blue Christmas lights outlining the building. There should be a Lexus somewhere nearby. Let's move out people! Time is of the essence!"
We found the house in record time, it being exactly where Duo had led us to believe it to be. Heero was the first one out of the car and, without waiting for recon or backup, rushed up to kick in the door.
He was just like a 15 year old kid again when it came to Duo, really.
No one was in the front room and we immediately spread out through the house, guns drawn. Now that Heero had ruined our element of surprise, we had to be extra alert, but at least we didn't have to bother so much with keeping silent.
In a strange, sort of anticlimactic kind of way, I literally stumbled upon my partner just standing in the kitchen not a minute later.
"Trowa, for God's sake! Watch where you put your big feet, you big oaf!"
I looked down to see that I was indeed standing squarely on Duo's foot.
"You're supposed to be tied up somewhere!"
Duo rolled his eyes at me.
"Well you took so damn long I had to rescue myself!"
It was then that I noticed the two unconscious bodies lying by the stove.
"Well you were calling me 'honey' and 'baby'. Excuse me if I was a little confused!" I yelled.
The ungrateful wretch. Next time I was just going to leave his ass.
Of course, then Heero would have to kill me which would probably make Quatre less than ecstatic... It was a tough life.
"You forgot about 'sweetie' here," said Duo.
I looked down at where he was indicating and was mildly surprised to discover a man cowering under the kitchen table.
Crouching down, I peered in at him.
"That's your wife?" the man asked, sounding quite disbelieving.
Duo cast me a blank look.
I mouthed the words "stupid cover story" at him.
He kindly took the time to give me the finger before responding to "Sweetie's" question.
"Oh, no it's not him..."
I heard Heero stomp into the kitchen, felt him come up right behind me. I could almost taste the smoky tang of his anger/frustration/worry in the air. I figured he probably looked like he could breathe fire any minute now.
Duo was positively beaming as he pointed out Heero and proudly proclaimed: "That's my wife!"
OWARI
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