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"Convincing Heero"Written By: Hemlock Inyx Disclaimer: This chick does not own any of the
Gundam Wing characters because they belong to Bandai and Sunrise.
I am borrowing them for this fict and will return them
in good (if somewhat sticky) condition. I also don't own Nora Robert's
Convincing Alex, on which this fict is heavily based (well more like
a fusion/translation). This fict is written out of love and not for
profit, don't sue. Thanks and enjoy! Rating: NC 17 Warnings: AU Romance/Cop Drama, Cross-dressing/drag,
humor, romance, some OOC-ness, language, and murder- not main characters.
Pairings: 1x2, 4xC for added interest. More pairings
to come. Summary: Heero is a cop, Duo is a cross-dressing man who writes for a daytime soap opera. The pair meet when Duo is arrested doing 'research' for the soapie.
" Convincing Heero"
Duo didn't think he'd ever been in this part of town before. Many of the shop windows were boarded up. Those still in business were grubbier than usual. People still walked as though they were in a hurry, but it didn't look as if they had anyplace to go. Funny, he thought, how Heero seemed to blend with the surroundings. It wasn't simply the jeans and battered jacket he wore, or the hair he'd deliberately mussed. It was a look in the eyes, a set of the body, a twist of the mouth. No one would look twice at him, Duo thought. Or if they bothered, they wouldn't see a cop, they'd see another street tough obviously on the edge of his luck. Taking a cue from Heero, Duo pulled out his bag of cosmetics, darkening his mouth, adding just a little too much eyeliner and shadow. He tried a couple of bored looks in the mirror of his compact and decided to muss up his braid. Heero glanced back at him and scowled. "What the hell are you doing to your face?" "Getting into character," he said blithely. "Just like you. Are we going to bust somebody?" Heero only turned away and muttered. Just his luck he thought. He wanted to slip into Boomer's joint unobtrusively, and he was stuck with a drag queen who thought they were playing cops and robbers. Un-offended, Duo put away his mirror and scanned the area. Parking wasn't a problem here. Duo decided that if anyone left his car unattended in this neighborhood for above ten minutes, he'd come back and be lucky to find a hubcap. Heero swung the car over to the curb and swore. He couldn't leave Duo in the car here, damn it. Any of the hustlers or junkies on the streets would take one look, then eat him alive. "You listen to me," Heero turned, leaning over the seat to make a point. "Stay close to me, and keep your mouth shut. No questions, no comments." "All right, but where..." "No questions." Heero slammed out of his door, then waited for Duo. With his hand firm on Duo's arm, he hauled him to the sidewalk. "If you step out of line, I swear, I'll slap the cuffs on you." "Romantic, isn't he?" Duo said to Quatre. "Just sends shivers down my spine." "Keep a lid on it, Maxwell," Heero told him, refusing to be amused. He pulled Duo though the grimy door into an airless shop. It took Duo a minute to get his bearings in the dim light. There were shelves and shelves crowded with dusty merchandise. Radios, picture frames, kitchenware. A tuba. A huge glass display counter with a diagonal crack across it dominated one wall. Security glass ran to the ceiling. Cutting through it was a window, like a bank teller's, studded with bars. "A pawnshop," Duo said, with such obvious delight that Heero snarled at him. "One word about atmosphere, I'll kill you." But Duo was already dragging out his notebook. "Go ahead, do what you have to do. You won't even know I'm here." Sure, Heero thought. How would anyone know he was there, simply because that sunshine scent of him cut right though the grime and must? Heero stepped up to the counter just as a scrawny man in loose white shirt came though the rear door. "Yuy." "Boomer. What have you got for me?" Grinning, Boomer passed a hand over his heavily greased black hair. "Come on, I got some good stuff, and you know I make a point of cooperating with the law. But a man's got to make a living." "You make one ripping off every poor slob who walks though the door." "Aw, now you hurt my feelings." Boomer's pale blue eyes glittered. "Rookie?" he asked, nodding to Quatre. "He used to be." After an appraising look, Boomer glanced over at Duo. He was busy poking through his merchandise. "Looks like I got me a customer. Hang on." "She's with me." Heero shot him a knife-edged look that forestalled any questions. "Just forget she's here." Boomer had already appraised the trio of rings on Duo's right hand, and the blue topaz drops at his ears. He sighed his disappointment. "You're the boss, Yuy. But listen, I like to be discreet." Heero leaned on the counter, like a man ready to shoot the bull for hours. His voice was soft, and deadly. "Jerk my chain, Boomer, and I'm going to have to come down here and take a hard look at what you keep in that back room." "Stock. Just Stock." But he grinned. He didn't have any illusions about Heero. Boomer knew when he was detested, but he also knew they had an agreement of sorts. And, thus far, it had been advantageous to both of them. "I got something on those hookers that got sliced up." Though his expression didn't change, though he didn't move a muscle, Heero went on the alert. "What kind of something?" Boomer merely smiled, and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. When Heero drew out a twenty, it disappeared quickly though the bars. "Twenty more, if you like what I have to say." "If it's worth it, you'll get it." "You know I trust you." Smelling of hair grease and sweat, Boomer leaned closer. "Word on the street is you're looking for some high roller. Guy's name's Jack." "So far I'm not impressed." "Just building up to it, pal. The first one that was wasted? She was one of Muller's wives. I recognized her from the newspaper picture. Now, she was fine-looking. Not that I ever used her services." "Turn the page, Boomer." "Okay, okay." He shot a grin at Quatre. "He don't like conversation. I heard both those unfortunate ladies were in possession of a certain piece of jewelry." "You've got good ears." "Man in my position hears things. It so happens I had a young lady come in just yesterday. She had a certain piece of jewelry she wanted to exchange." Opening a drawer, Boomer pulled out a thin gold chain. Dangling from it was a heart, cracked down the center. When Heero held out a hand, Boomer shook his head. "I gave her twenty for it." Saying nothing, Heero pulled out another bill from his wallet. "Seems to me I'm entitled to a certain amount of profit." Eyes steady, Heero pulled the twenty back an inch. "You're entitled to go in and answer a bunch of nasty questions at the cop shop." With a shrug, Boomer exchanged the bill for the heart. He'd only given ten for it, in any case. "She wasn't much more than a kid," Boomer added. "Eighteen, maybe twenty at a stretch. Still pretty. Bottle blonde, blue eyes. Little mole right here." He tapped beside his left eyebrow. "Got an address?" "Well, now..." "Twenty for the address, Boomer." Heero's tone told the man to take it. "That's it." Satisfied, Boomer named a hotel a few blocks away. "Signed her name Crystal," he added, wanting to keep the partnership intact. "Crystal LaRue. Figure she made it up." "Let's check it out," he said to Quatre, then tapped Duo on the shoulder. Duo was apparently absorbed in an ugly brass lamp in the shape of a rearing horse. "Let's go." "In a minute." Duo turned a smile at Boomer. "How much?" "Oh, for you..." "Forget it." Heero was dragging Duo to the door. "I want to buy..." "It's ugly." Annoyed at the loss, but pleased to have recorded the entire conversation, Duo sighed. "That's the point." But Duo climbed meekly into the car and began to scribble his impression in his notebook. Cramped shop. Very dirty. Mostly junk. Excellent place for props. Proprietor a complete sleaze. Heero in complete control of the exchange-a kind of game-playing. Quietly disgusted but willing to use the tools at hand By the time he'd finished scribbling, Heero was pulling to the curb again. "Same rules," Heero said to Duo as they climbed out of the car. "Absolutely." Lips pursed, Duo studied the crumbling hotel. He recognized it as a rent-by-the-hour special. "Is this were she lives?" "Who?" "The girl you were talking about." Duo lifted a brow. "I have ears, too Hee-ro." Heero should have known. "As long as you keep your mouth shut." "There's no need to be rude," Duo told him as they started in. "Tell you what, just to show there's no hard feelings, I'll buy lunch." "Great." Quatre gallantly opened the door for Duo. "You're so easy," Heero muttered to his partner as they entered the filthy lobby. "Hey, we got to eat sometime." He hated to bring Duo in here, Heero realized. Into this dirty place that smelled of garbage and moldy dreams. How could Duo be so unaffected by it? He wondered, then struggled to put thoughts of Duo aside as he approached the desk clerk. "You got a Crystal LaRue?" The clerk peered over his newspaper. There was an unfiltered cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth and total disinterest in his eyes. "Don't ask for names." Heero merely pulled out his badge, flashed it. "Blonde, about eighteen. Good-looking. A beauty mark beside her eyebrow. Working girl." "Don't ask what they do for a living, neither." With a shrug, the clerk went back to his paper. "Two-twelve." "She in?" "Haven't seen her go out." With Duo trailing behind, they started up the steps. To entertain himself, Duo read the various tenant's suggestions and statements that were scrawled on the walls. There was a screaming match in progress behind one of the doors on the first floor. Someone was banging on the wall from a neighboring room and demanding-in colorful terms-that the two opponents quiet down. A bag of garbage had spilled on the stairs between the second and first floors. It had gone very ripe. Heero rapped on the door 212, waited. He rapped again and called out. "Crystal. Need to talk to you." With a glance at Quatre, Heero tried the door. The knob turned easily. "In a place like this, you'd think she'd lock it," Quatre commented. "And wire it with explosives," Heero added. He slipped out his gun, and Quatre did the same. "Stay in the hall," he order Duo without looking at him. They went though the door, guns at the ready. He did exactly what he was told. But that didn't stop him from seeing. Crystal hadn't gone out, and she wouldn't be walking the street again. As the door hung open, Duo stared at what was sprawled across the sagging mattress inside. The stench of blood-and worse-streamed through the open doorway. Death. Violent death. Duo had written about it, discussed it, watched gleefully as it was acted out for the cameras. But he'd never seen it face-to-face. Had never known how completely a human being could be turned into a thing. From far away, he heard Heero swear, but he could only stare, frozen, until Heero's body blocked his view. Heero had his hands on his shoulders, squeezing. God, he was cold, Duo thought. He'd never been so cold. "I want you to go downstairs." Duo managed to lift his gaze from Heero's chin to his eyes. The iced fury in them had Duo shivering. "What?" Heero nearly swore again. Duo was white as a sheet, and his pupils had contracted until they were hardly bigger than a point of a pin. "Go downstairs, Duo." Heero tried to rub the chill out of his arms, knowing he couldn't. "Are you listening to me?" he said, his voice quiet, gentle. "Yes." Duo moistened his lips, pressed them together. "I'm sorry, yes." "Go down, stay in the lobby. Don't say anything, don't do anything, until Quatre or I come down. Okay?" Heero gave Duo a little shake, and wondered what he would do if Duo folded on him. "Okay?' Duo took one shaky breath, then nodded. "She's...so young." With effort, Duo swallowed the sickness that kept threatening to rise in his throat. "I'm all right. Don't worry about me. I'm all right," he repeated, then turned away to go downstairs. "Duo shouldn't have seen this," Quatre said. His own stomach was quivering. "Nobody should see this." Shutting down every emotion, Heero shut the door at his back. Duo stuck it out, refusing to budge when Quatre came down to drive him home. After finding an old chair, he settled into a corner while the business of death went on around him. From his vantage point, Duo watched them come and go-forensics, the police photographer, the morgue. Detached, Duo studied the people who crowded in, asking questions, making comments, being shuffled out again by blank-faced cops. There was grief in him for a girl he hadn't known, a fury at the waste of a life. But Duo remained. Not because of the job. Because of Heero. Heero was angry with him. Duo understood it, and didn't question it. When they were finished at the scene, Duo rode in silence in the back of the car. Back at the station, he took the same chair he'd had that morning. Hours went by, endlessly long. At one point Duo slipped out and bought Heero and Quatre sandwiches from a deli. After a time, Heero went into another room. Duo followed, still silent, noted a board with pictures tacked to it. Horrible pictures. He looked away from them, took a chair and listened while Heero and other detectives discussed the latest murder and the ongoing investigation. Later, Duo rode with Heero back to the pawnshop. Waited patiently while he questioned Boomer again. Waited longer while he and Judd returned to the motel to re-interview the clerk, the tenants. Like them, Duo learned little about Crystal LaRue. Her name had been Kathy Segal, and she'd once lived in Wisconsin. It had been hard, terribly hard for Duo to listen when Heero tracked down and notified her parents. Hard, too, to understand from Heero's end of the conversation that they didn't care. For them, their daughter had already been dead. She'd been nobody's girl. She'd worked the streets on her own. Two months after she moved into the tiny little room with the sagging mattress, she had died there. No one had known her. No one had wanted to know her. No one had cared. Heero couldn't talk to Duo. It was impossible for him. Intolerable. Heero shared this part of his life with no one who mattered to him. It was true that his sister Noin saw some of it as a public defender but as far as Heero was concerned that was too much. Perhaps that was why he kept all the pieces he could away from the rest of his family and loved ones. Heero hated remembering the look on Duo's face as he'd stood in that doorway. There should have been a way to protect him from that, to shield Duo from his own stubbornness. But he hadn't protected Duo, he hadn't shielded him, though that was precisely what he had sworn to do for people he'd never met from the first day he'd worn a badge. Yet for Duo, for the man-God, yes, the man he was in love with-he'd open the door himself and let Duo in. So he didn't talk to Duo, not even when it was time to turn it off and go home. And in the silence, Heero's anger built and swelled and clawed at his guts. He found the words when he stepped into Duo's apartment and closed the door. "Did you get enough?" Duo was in no mood to fight. His emotions, always close to the surface, had been wrung dry by what he'd seen and heard that day. Duo would let Heero yell, if that was what he needed, but he was tired, and he was aching, and his heart went out to Heero. "Let me get you a drink," Duo said quietly, but Heero snagged his arm and whirled him back. "Is it all in your notes?" That cold, terribly controlled fury swiped out at Duo. "Can you find a way to use it to entertain those millions of daytime viewers?" "I'm sorry." It was all Duo could think of. "Hee-ro, I'm so sorry." Duo took a deep breath. "I want a brandy. I'll get us both one." "Fine. A nice, civilized brandy is just what we need." Duo walked away to choose a bottle from an old lacquered cabinet. "I don't know what you want me to say." Very carefully, very deliberately, Duo poured two snifters. "I'll apologize for choosing today to do this, if that helps. I'll apologize for making it more difficult for you by being there when this happened." Duo brought the snifter to Heero, but he didn't take it. "Right now, I'd be willing to say anything you'd like to hear." Heero couldn't get beyond it, no matter what Duo said. He couldn't get beyond knowing that Duo had opened the door on the kind of horror he'd never be able to forget. "You had no business being there. You had no business seeing any of that." With a sigh, Duo set both snifters aside. Maybe brandy wouldn't help after all. "You were there. You saw it." Heero's eyes flashed white heat. "It's my damn job." "I know." Duo lifted a hand to Heero's check, soothing. "I know." Compelled, he grabbed Duo's wrist, held tight a moment before he turned away. "I don't want you touched by it. I don't want you touched by it ever again." "I can't promise that." Because it was his
way, Duo wrapped his arms around Heero's waist, rested his cheek against
Heero's back. He was rigid as steel, unyielding as granite. "It's because I do want something between us." "Hee-ro." So many emotions, Duo thought. Always
before it had been easy to sort them out, to drift with them. But
this time…It had been a long, hard day, Duo reminded himself.
That sliced at Heero, a long thin blade though the heart. "I shouldn't have let you go with me. That part of my life isn't ever going to be a part of yours." "Stop." The sorrow that had paled Duo's face hardened into determination. "Do you think that because I write fantasy I don't know what goes on in real life? You're wrong. I know; it just doesn't overwhelm my life. And I know that what you face today you may face tomorrow. Or worse. I know that every time you walk out the door you may not come back." The quick lick of fear reminded Duo to slow down and speak carefully. "What you are makes that a very real possibility. But I won't let that overwhelm me, either. Because there's nothing about you I'd change." For a moment, Heero simply stared at Duo, a hundred different feelings fighting for control inside of him. Then, slowly, Heero lowered his brow to Duo's and shut his eyes. "I don't know what to say to you." "You don't have to say anything at all." Heero knew what Duo was offering, even before he tilted his head and touched his lips to his. Heero wanted it, and Duo. More than anything, he wanted to steep himself in Duo until the rest of the world went away. Heero reached down and started to unravel Duo's braid, letting his fingers toy with the rich, silken strands. "We haven't come up with those rules." Duo's lips curved, slanted over Heero's. "We'll figure them out later." Heero murmured his agreement, drawing Duo closer. "I want you. I need to be with you. I think I'd go crazy if I couldn't be with you tonight." "I'm here. Right here." "Duo." Heero's mouth moved from his to skim along those sharp cheekbones. "I'm in love with you." Duo felt his heart stutter. That was the only way he could describe this sensation he'd never experienced before. "Hee-ro…" "Don't." Heero closed his mouth over Duo's again. "Don't say it. It comes too easy to you. Just come to bed." He buried his face against Duo's neck. "For God's sake, let me take you to bed."
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