Disclaimer: They do not belong to me in any way, shape or form.

Note 1: No thanks whatsoever to Kaeru Shisho for aiding, abetting and encouraging me.

Note 2: This is for Dyna Dee, with Many Happy Returns.

Chapter 1 – First Time:

Their first time was every porn cliché in the universe.

It was something of a trend, these days; Preventer porn, or at least actors in uniforms which were vaguely Preventer-ish, presumably to avoid any kind of lawsuits or whatever. He had scary visions of Une watching them on her days off, making notes on anything which might be considered in any way actionable.

In the porn flicks, it was just like this. Two hot, hard-bodied agents, cleaning up after a mission, high on success and survival and adrenalin, scoping out each other as they stripped off their artfully dishevelled uniforms. Eyes suddenly meeting, as they realised what the other was doing, and then tearing at each other's strategically-torn clothing.

As far as he knew, nothing like that had ever happened in reality. Oh, everyone claimed to know someone who knew someone who'd done it in the locker room or the showers or wherever, but it was always that American guy who went to Mars, remember him? or that South African chick, she transferred to Canada or somewhere after.

He didn't believe a word of it.

After most missions, the only thing you wanted to do was go home and sleep your brains out, not screw some random co-worker into oblivion.

It hadn't even been that sort of mission. He wasn't even a field agent. He was a forensic accountant, for fuck's sake, and yeah, the two-week internal auditing job on L3 had given him some satisfaction, and the odd thrill, but hardly an adrenalin rush. Certainly not any desperate desire to grab the first warm body he saw and fuck him.

The only reason he'd even been in the locker room in the first place was because he'd picked up the wrong laptop bag as they got off the shuttle. He hadn't even noticed until he'd been putting the damn thing into the back of his car and realised they'd switched bags. He'd considered doing nothing about it; after all, they'd both be in the office first thing, and it wasn't as if they'd be logging on to any work this late, and they had their own tablets for personal stuff.

He wasn't even sure why he'd made the snap decision to go and find the bag's real owner; he could have just sent a quick text. After the long shuttle flight, he'd maybe fancied stretching his legs a bit before driving home, so he'd stowed his own case and settled the laptop across his shoulder, and headed back into the building and made some sort of joke with the duty officer about not being able to stay away from the place. She'd laughed.

And then he'd been walking into the locker rooms and then….,,he still wasn't entirely sure what had happened after that.

He'd never bought into the claims of oh, I don't know, it just happened, I must have tripped over something and my dick fell into his ass. Sex wasn't like that, it was deliberate and intentional and, yeah, there was a definite point where hormones took over, but there was some sort of premeditation beforehand, even if it was only to consider access to condoms and lube.

Always.

Not any more.

This wasn't… he didn't do stuff like this. He got teased for it sometimes, that he liked the flowers-and-poetry bit; something no one ever expected if they knew anything about how he'd grown up.

Yeah, there'd been the few months, post-Quatre, where he'd picked up strangers in bars and screwed them in back alleys and bathrooms, but even those encounters had had more intimacy and affection and sheer fun than this.

Whatever the hell this was.

Every fucking porn cliché truly, except maybe the dirty talk. No talking at all, just Trowa's zip jerking down, and the sudden rip of fabric, and two bodies colliding.

He'd got off, yeah, in about ten seconds of what had probably been the worst sexual encounter of his entire life.

Numbly, he watched the other man stand, fumble his clothing into place, head deliberately turned away. Then he turned back, just for a second, and they looked at each other.

Even over the heavy, industrial-strength of the chemical cleaners the janitors used, he could still smell the sharp tang of sex. Trowa knew he'd showered, used the cheap shower gel they used in the shower dispensers, but there was still the very faint smell of engine grease, or maybe he was just imagining it.

He'd spent years associating sex with the smell of the sea, with exotic flowers. His first time.

This was nothing, less than nothing.

Hell, he had no fucking clue what it was.

Something must have shown in his expression; those big, violet-blue eyes jerked away from his, and Trowa was abruptly alone with a slammed door, and a sick feeling in his gut.

Heero Yuy was going to kill him.

Duo sidles into his office five days later, kicking the door shut with one heel, and slouching against it.

Trowa nods; he's just won a private bet with himself. He and Duo aren't friends, precisely; maybe, more friendish. They work together sometimes, and there's all that ancient history during the war, but for years all of their interactions have been filtered through the others.

He knows Duo well enough though, knows about the running and hiding thing. He doesn't doubt that Duo could keep that up for ever, but it's awkward with colleagues who have mutual friends, and anyway Duo does face up to things eventually. He just needs some space first.

Trowa had given him five days to show up, six max. He's not sure what to award himself as a prize.

Duo doesn't say anything at first, just leans against the door, hands in his pockets. A few years back, he'd undoubtedly have had the tip of his braid in his mouth, nibbling it, but his hair's too short now.

A damn shame, that is. It had been unbelievably sexy in that Duo-way that Trowa had never been entirely sure was intentional or not. He's doing it now, the way he's standing.

One hip just thrust forward, one long leg bent slightly at the knee, left hand in his back pocket, resting against the curve of his ass.

Fuck.

There's definite heat pooling between Trowa's legs, lust and something else, a sudden flare of pride.

He'd bagged Duo Maxwell. Duo's the prize, the one everyone wants, doubly desirable because of his looks, and the fact that he's utterly unattainable, by virtue of his steel-bending boyfriend. Or whatever Heero is.

And yeah, even if the sex was pretty much a wash-out, it was the first time and hardly the best location, with half of bloody Preventers on the other side of the unlocked door. Not everyone can have their first time in a four-poster bed, in the Caribbean. Heero's a bloody perfectionist, and Duo's nothing if not competitive. He doesn't doubt that, under optimum circumstances, the sex will be off the charts.

Would be.

Hypothetically.

Duo Maxwell looks at him for a long minute, absent all the usual sass and snark and swagger.

'So. Um. That thing the other night.'

'The sex thing?' Trowa clarifies helpfully, lowering the timbre of his voice to the register that always used to make Quatre shiver, just to see if he can make Duo blush.

He doesn't. 'Yeah. The sex thing.'

There's a rather surreal moment when Duo frowns, looking like he might actually critique his performance. It can't have been much good for him either, after hardly any prep, after he'd barely allowed any. He's mostly used to Heero though, and Trowa can't imagine Heero being anything other than a straight in-and-out, get-the-mission-over-with sort of guy in bed.

So maybe Duo's not used to anything else.

Duo pushes off from the door, and says, in a do-or-die kind of voice, 'I just wanted you to know, I mean, it was pretty stupid and shit, but I'm clean. You don't need to worry about that.'

'I know,' Trowa says quietly. Yeah, he had been worried, when he'd thought about it, just a bit. Not because of Heero, but because he knows there've been other guys. Quite a few of them, by all reports. 'I checked your medical records,' he explains and Duo just nods.

'Yeah. Anyway.' Trowa doesn't think he's ever seen him so off-balance, heard him so inarticulate. 'I was thinking, you want to go get a coffee or something?'

Trowa just looks at him. 'Coffee, OK. If that's all you want. That's it. I'm not getting into whatever's going on with you and Heero.'

By now he knows, everyone in a ten-mile-radius knows, that Duo and Heero are fighting. It's probably a large part of what prompted the sex thing.

He and Quatre had had some pretty spectacular blow-ups over the years, but Quat always had a thing about never going to bed angry, and Trowa believed in keeping conflict in-house and private, so they'd usually been of fairly short duration and most people believe they'd never so much as shared a cross word.

Always the perfect couple.

Heero and Duo are the exact opposite. Their fights are duels to the death, no mercy, no quarter. Every argument is purely toxic: a plummeting spiral that starts with whatever the present grievance happens to be, and works its way downwards to every fight they've ever had.

You shot me, you stole my Gundam, you took the last juice box and you knew I wanted it, you were going to kill me.

Their fights drag on for days, weeks, and they try to drag everyone else in as well; their friends, colleagues, random strangers on the street.

Trowa figures the make-up sex has to be whole constellations full of spectacular for them to put up with it.

'Shit,' Duo snaps, glaring at him. 'It's a fucking cup of coffee. You don't have to. I'm not twisting your damn arm, Barton. You can say no.'

'Yeah?' Trowa lifts an eyebrow at him, taunting. 'Can I? You didn't exactly give me a chance to say no the other night.'

'Oh, fuck off,' Duo says, very clearly. 'Not like I raped you.' It takes him four strides to cross the office floor to the desk. By then, Trowa is already out of his chair, not quite sure what he's about to do until Duo is right in front of him, leaning over the desk.

They hadn't kissed that night, had somehow managed to achieve grimly-focused climaxes with the bare minimum of physical contact, so Duo's mouth under his is a revelation. He could do this, more than happily, for the rest of his life, Heero Yuy be damned.

Heero.

Shit.

He bites down on Duo's bottom lip, and then swipes his tongue across it, and Duo honest-to-God moans, a sound that goes direct to Trowa's groin.

It's two years, more or less, since he did the hardest thing he's ever had to do, and this should be easy in comparison, just breaking off a kiss; a kiss which is an insanely bad idea by any reckoning.

Should be easy.

'Heero's my friend.' He finally manages to pull away just enough to say the words, to breathe them into the skin at Duo's neck. They're supposed to be some sort of magic talisman, a way to push Duo off.

'And?' Duo looks at him like he's said something crazy.

'And you two are together.'

'Heero fucks me when he needs somewhere to stick it,' Duo says, very crude, very explicit. 'We're not together. I can do what I like.' There's more than a hint of the usual bravado in there; Trowa knows him well enough to guess he's covering something up. 'So. You up for round two?'

Trowa shrugs, taking a couple of steps back behind his desk, removing himself from the danger zone. 'I thought you wanted to go for coffee. We can do that if you still want. Actually talk about whatever's going on with you.'

Of all the impossible things in the universe, that makes Duo blush. Trowa can actually see the options he's weighing up in his eyes; run off or take a swing at him. Instead, he nods and then grins suddenly. 'Coffee. OK. Whatevs. Or tea. Maybe cocoa, even, if you want. Very unsexy.'

He's one step in front as they leave the office, Trowa pacing him obediently, letting him set the pace. This way, he gets to enjoy the view, that delicious ass and the jaunty bounce of Duo's shining hair in its ponytail.

He's impossibly, painfully hard by the time they get halfway to the lift; they're outside on the street before his bloodstream diverts even a token service back to his brain, and by then he realises he's being played. Duo's damn good; the entire walk has been nothing but one long tease on his part. All those little sidelong glances as he checks Trowa's still there, one hand fleetingly brushing Trowa's arm he holds a door open, even the damn ponytail.

Of course he's good, Trowa acknowledges ruefully. He got Heero Yuy, indisputably the most driven, focussed person in the world, into bed when he was fifteen, in the middle of a war. He's kept him there pretty much ever since, despite the claim that they're not a couple.

He fully expects them to end up in a bar, but Duo takes him a few blocks away from HQ, to a frilly little tea shop that's otherwise populated by old ladies with shopping trolleys. They settle themselves at a table by the window, among the gingham table cloths and china kittens and lacy napkins.

Duo adjusts the rose-patterned cushion at his back and gives Trowa that meltingly innocent look that's usually a forerunner of something about to go boom in the immediate future. 'Is this safe enough for you?'

Trowa grins back. Can't help it for the world. The little brat.

Duo greets their waitress by name, and orders lemon tea and shortbread without even looking at the menu. Trowa asks for cocoa, just to keep the joke going, and gets an appreciative laugh from Duo in return, and they sit in silence as their waitress flutters around with doilies and pastry forks and a fiddly little pair of tongs for picking up sugar lumps. It's not, in a million years, the sort of place he'd ever imagined Duo would hang out in but he's obviously familiar with the place, nodding at a couple of grey-haired grandmotherly types.

Trowa can't, for the life of him, imagine Heero Yuy in a place like this.

Duo's tea comes with a pretty little china dish of honey on the side. He dips his spoon in, twirling it around three times before tapping it on the side, very precisely, so it won't drip on the table-cloth, and stirs it into his tea, before putting it back on the saucer, just so. It's a habit he picked up from Quatre, every movement, and then he looks up and sees the look on Trowa's face.

It only takes him a second to realise; he's quick. Or maybe it's just that bloody obvious. 'Shit.' He says it loud enough that a number of permed, blue-rinsed heads turn to look at him, and there are a few disapproving nods. He does blush then. It's almost funny. 'Sorry.'

'It's not a thing,' Trowa says quickly. He should be used to it, after two years, that every day the universe will spring at least one memory of Quatre on to him. He's never ready, though. 'Duo, tell me something.'

'Like, something in particular?'

'The thing on Monday. What exactly was that about?'

'Jeez, Barton.' Duo picks up his cup, and then replaces it on its little saucer with the pattern of violets. 'Sure that's direct enough for you?'

'Actually, you were the direct one,' Trowa points out. 'So, what happened? You've known me for nearly ten years. What was it, you suddenly couldn't cope with all those years of unrequited lust and just had to jump me before you spontaneously combusted?'

Duo gives him a filthy look. 'For the record, I could've spent every one of those years shimmying around naked in front of you, and you'd never have noticed.'

'Well, actually,' Trowa says, very dry. 'I'm pretty sure I'd have noticed at some point.'

Duo grins at that. 'Yeah, maybe.'

'So? I asked you a question. Remember?'

Duo sighs into his teacup. 'I'm sorry, OK? It was dumb. I don't know. I mean, yeah, I always thought you were hot. Come on, you must've picked up on that. And I was royally pissed off at Heero, and I guess I was upset, and I don't know, you were there. It probably could have been anyone.'

'That's flattering.'

More or less what he'd expected though, and he'd been thinking about it pretty much obsessively, trying to work out if maybe something had happened while they'd been on L3. He'd come up with nothing. Duo hadn't even been there the whole time; he'd turned up a week into the trip when Trowa had found enough evidence squirreled away that the station chief was on the take, and Internal Affairs had got involved. Even then, he'd just had a couple of meals with Duo, and always with a few other people, and yeah, they'd been on the same shuttle home, but Trowa had spent it doing paperwork, and Duo had disappeared into the engine room as soon as they'd taken off, and come back for landing, with grease under his fingernails and a few dark streaks on his shirt.

Nothing; no sudden connection or moments of mutual understanding or sympathy. Just Duo Maxwell wanting to get laid, and Trowa being convenient. Not really the first time Duo's done something similar, in the middle of a fight. He knows, because he's heard Heero yelling about it often enough.

'Yeah, well.' Duo shrugs. 'I didn't tell Heero. In case you're worried.'

'I guessed. Since I'm still walking around with an un-broken neck and all.'

'Nah. He wouldn't.' Duo's tone doesn't carry a whole lot of conviction, though. 'He'd say I'm not worth it. And it's none of his business anyway.'

'You do live together,' Trowa points out tonelessly.

'No. We share a house. And sometimes a horizontal slash vertical surface when Mr. Perfect Soldier needs to get his rocks off.'

'He's my friend.'

'He's an asshole,' Duo snaps. 'And fuck it, what I just said, it's not true. We don't share a house any more. I moved out last night.'

That's a surprise, but then maybe it shouldn't be. The row yesterday morning had been vicious, even by their standards. Wufei had actually gone in to intervene when Heero got to the L2 slut bit, and slunk out a few seconds later, looking terrified. Trowa had felt a bit sorry for him, and then decided 'Fei should have known better. After all, those two had been traumatising him since they'd all been fifteen and he'd walked in on them at that safe house.

'I'm sorry,' Trowa offers.

'Yeah. Whatever.' He takes a dainty little sip of his tea. 'Probably should have done it years ago.'

'Maybe you should.' He reaches across the table, catching Duo's wrist, and pulling his sleeve back. His arm is lividly black and blue, to the elbow. 'Ouch,' he says softly, trailing his fingertips over the damaged skin. Duo's so bloody out there all the time, so determinedly larger than life, that it's always a shock how insubstantial he really is. Trowa's fingers can circle his wrist.

Duo allows it for a moment and then pulls his arm back. 'You should see the other guy.'

'I have actually.' Heero's sporting a massive purple bruise on his left cheek; it looks painful, but it was obviously planted in a carefully chosen spot, keeping clear of his eyes and nose.

'He doesn't realise.'

Trowa buries a snort in his cocoa. Heero's damn well old enough and smart enough to know exactly what he's doing. And he shouldn't be doing it in any case. Trowa would have cut his own arm off, rather than ever hurt Quatre. And just because Duo quite undoubtedly asks for it, it's no reason for Heero to respond.

'Don't look at me like that,' Duo flares. 'I'm not some fu…, victim.

'I know,' Trowa says calmly. 'Duo. Drink your tea before it gets cold.'

Duo splutters a laugh, and obeys. 'God. Heero always says you're funny. I never really got it.'

'Oh, I'm hilarious. Where are you staying?'

'Huh?' It takes him a second to catch on. ''Fei's couch. Me and a million books. He works late most nights, or goes over to Zechs' place. Why? Fancy coming over?'

'What for?' He's suddenly incandescent with fury and doesn't even know why, except that Duo Maxwell is sitting a few inches away, batting those ridiculously long lashes at him, and it obviously doesn't mean a damn thing to him. He manages to keep his voice low though, mindful of their company. 'Another wholly forgettable fuck, like the other night?'

'Oh, fuck you,' Duo lashes out at him, and everyone woman in the teashop gasps in well-simulated horror. They're lapping all of this up, naturally. Better than the daily soap opera.

'Well, if you want it that way, sure,' Trowa says composedly, and Duo jumps to his feet, shoving his chair out of the way as he storms out. Trowa slides a few notes out of his wallet as he follows, as the grannies tut at him, and resists, just, the temptation to sweep them a bow on his way out. God, Duo really knows how to pick places to have a fight; he feels a sudden slither of sympathy for Heero, putting up with this for years.

He catches Duo at the corner; a definite advantage of longer legs, and grabs his arm – the one that's not bruised, pulling him into a doorway.

'I'm not just one of your random one night stands, OK?' he hisses angrily in Duo's ear. 'Don't you fucking dare treat me like one.'

'What do you want then?' Duo snaps back. 'A relationship?' He says it like it's the filthiest word in the universe, like it's poison. 'Get real, Barton. I get the message; slumming once was enough for you, right? Don't need to rub my face in it.'

'Actually, you don't get anything at all, if that's what you think,' Trowa tells him crisply. 'But you do not get to treat me like that. I fucked you five days ago, and I haven't been able to think of anything else for one second since. I have no idea what you want to happen next, but either we never talk about it again, or else we're at the start of something.'

'I thought you said I was forgettable.' He's breathing hard.

This is their pattern, Trowa realises abruptly. Duo and Heero. It's how they work. Duo pounding at Heero's reserve until he cracks, doing anything to get his attention. It's how they were at fifteen, and they've never actually moved past it.

'Then you weren't listening properly. I never actually said that.'

God, it's almost criminally easy to put him off balance. He lets Duo go, flicks one finger against his cheek and then gives the ponytail a gentle tug, just because he's been wanting to do since forever, and it feels just as good as he'd imagined. 'Ball's in your court, Maxwell. Let me know what you want. You know where I am.'