Disclaimer: What do you want, a written declaration that they're not mine? Oh...you do. My bad.

Author's Notes: Nearing the end...almost but not quite. I'd estimate another two or three chapters. I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed writing this story. So much so that I was afraid I might be rushing it and fucking it up. I hope that's not the case. Ack! I have to slap myself now. I've been trying to cut back on my cursing. I have bruises from writing Duo's lines alone.

Dedication: To my cat, Lady Jane, who hates me with the firey passion of several suns.

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Two Can Play
by Kristen Elizabeth

****

The place, the main hallway of Preventer Headquarters. The time, two PM. The event, a face off.

Heero and Duo stood at opposite ends of the hallway, daring each other to make the first move. Their coworkers passed them by with strange looks, but the men ignored them.

It was the stand off to end all stand offs. And neither man was backing down.

Wufei poked his head around his cubicle. "They haven't moved since they got back from lunch break."

"There's too much goddamn pride between them." Trowa fed a document through the shredder. "If one of them pulls a weapon, start worrying."

"Wait a minute. Yuy moved." Wufei watched carefully as Heero reached into his back pocket. "I think he has a gun."

Trowa shredded another document calmly. "If he starts shooting, call Une."

"It's a..." Wufei tilted his head to the side. "It's just his beeper. He's turning off....putting it back into his pocket..." Wufei snorted. "And the stand off resumes."

"While I appreciate the running commentary, this is getting a little old", Trowa said, finishing off the last of the documents. "Five dollars says Maxwell makes the first move."

"You already owe me a hundred", Wufei reminded him. "What's another five?"

Trowa stood up and glanced over the cubicle wall. "Looks like I win. Maxwell's walking towards him."

"I'll be damned..." Wufei squinted. "They're talking....talking....and now....hey, where are they going?", he balked. "They're leaving!" Trowa lifted his shoulders.

"What's going on with Duo and Heero?" Sally Po approached their desks. Unwillingly, Wufei breathed in deeply. Whenever Sally was around, the air smelled like jasmine.

"Trust me..." Trowa sat back down at his desk. "You don't want to know."

She shrugged and tossed a file onto Trowa's desk. "The reports from the field nurses. Une wants you to include them in your main report and have it on her desk in an hour."

"An hour?", Trowa repeated.

"Did you forget we have to close up shop early today for the ball?"

Trowa reached for the reports. "I had almost managed to."

Sally gave Wufei a coy stare. "I had a nice time the other night. I didn't know you liked seafood."

"There are many things that you do not know about me, woman."

"And if you keep calling me 'woman', I won't be sticking around long enough to find out any of them." Smiling sweetly, Sally turned on her heel and walked away.

Wufei watched her go. He tried to keep his eyes on the back of her head, but his gaze slipped down to her shapely buttocks, shown off to dangerous perfection by her Preventer uniform. He blinked. "Did you see that?! She's impossible!!"

"Well, my friend...." Trowa shook his head sadly. "So are you."

****

"All right. I'm only going to say this once, so listen up." There was a pause. "I'm sorry."

Heero's face showed no change in emotion. "For...?"

Duo gritted his teeth. "I'm sorry for giving you a rash. I'm sorry for sending Millardo after you. I'm sorry for betting on your sex life."

"That was more than once, you realize." Heero lifted his chin. "Apology accepted."

As his friend pushed past him into his office, Duo recanted. "You know..." He raised his voice. "...you have some stuff to be sorry for too!"

"If you are referring to your temporary celibacy, I regret that I had to resort to that." Heero walked around behind his desk. "But you pushed me, Duo. Too far."

"Yeah, well..." Duo crossed his arms over his chest. "What are friends for?" Heero began rearranging things on his desk. "Actually...that's a good question. What *are* friends for? What is our friendship for? Can you answer that, Heero? Can you tell me why we're friends?? And if you can't tell me that, then can you please explain how our friendship turned into a massive struggle for superiority?"

Heero lowered his head. "This wasn't ever about my sex life, was it?"

"Not really. I just really wanted to win this time. Personally, I really want you and Relena to have what Hilde and I have. But when you threatened my hair...and then it seemed like you were going to win so easily..." Duo shrugged. "What can I say? My competitive side took over."

"The thing is....it's not about winning anymore. Hell, it's not even about us anymore. We were treating Relena like some kind of concession prize." Heero sat down. "Which is why I'm going to tell her all about the bet. I couldn't sleep with her and keep this secret."

"Heero...am I still your best friend? Even after all this shit?"

Heero blinked. "I guess so."

Duo nodded. "Good." He walked over to Heero's desk and reached out, smacking Heero's forehead with the palm of his hand.

"What the hell was that for?!", Heero yelled.

"For being an idiot", Duo replied. "Why would you tell her now? The bet's off, Heero. No one won. And if you keep your mouth shut, no one will lose. More importantly, no one will get hurt. You'll sleep with Relena, Trowa will get two hundred bucks of my hard-earned cash and if what Quatre said when he was half-asleep at his desk the other day is true, he'll get laid, to boot." Duo spread his hands. "Everyone will be happy! Life goes on!"

Heero rubbed his forehead. "I couldn't live with the guilt."

"Ah, fuck the guilt! Guilt is selfish, Heero. It's saying that something you did in the past is more important to you than the people around you in the present. You gave up guilt the first time you told Relena you loved her. I gave it up when I asked Hilde to marry me. Don't go piling it back up again."

"The bet is still there, Duo. It still hangs around. If Relena ever found out from anyone else, even in casual reference, I'd lose her. I'd rather tell her and risk everything than lose her because I was too much of a coward to say it to her face."

Duo moved his hands in time with Heero's lips. "Blah, blah, blah. So...the bet's still on, huh? Fine then..." He reached for the scissors on Heero's desk. "I forfeit." Closing his eyes, he pulled his braid over his shoulder and with one quick movement, snipped off a little less than an inch of his hair.

Heero looked at the tiny bits of hair that fluttered to his carpet. Duo's eyes were still tightly shut; his face was scrunched up as if he were in terrible pain. Unable to stop himself, Heero began to laugh.

Duo cracked one eye open. "You're laughing...?"

Holding his sides, Heero continued to laugh. "You didn't...even reach...the rubber band!"

"Hey!" Duo's face relaxed. "That was a massive fucking step for me!! I just cut my hair for the first time in my entire life!!"

Heero tried to collect himself, but the sight of Duo holding the scissors indignantly was too much. Duo threw them back onto his desk; he laughed harder. Finally, he cleared his throat. "That was amusing", he said with a perfectly straight face.

There was a half second pause before Duo burst out laughing. Heero joined him and for a brief moment, any person passing by would have been hard pressed to believe that at one time, the men were considered two of the most dangerous in the entire world.

Duo wiped his eyes. "So, you're not going to tell her?"

"I won't tell her", Heero conceded. He shook his head, still smiling. "I just don't want to lie to her."

"Lying by sin of omission." Duo examined the end of his braid. "It only gets you ten Hail Mary's."

"And that means....?"

He dropped the braid. "Not as severe."

"Right. Sure." Heero thought for a moment. "I still have one question. How did you know about the ballroom?"

Sheepishly, Duo went around to his side of the desk and reached underneath it, extracting the metal transmitting-recording device. "We already called a truce", he reminded Heero. "If you punch me, I'll have to punch you back."

Heero grabbed the device and turned it over in his hands. "Did you record everything?" Duo nodded. "Some of what goes on in here is top secret, Duo. Classified even to you."

"Well, I didn't listen to *everything*."

"I'm going to have to destroy all the tapes. Where are they?"

Duo scratched the back of his head. "In the security kiosk at the conference hall."

Heero lifted his jacket from around his chair. "Let's go." As they left the office, he stopped dead in his tracks. "You asked Hilde to marry you?"

****

"But Mr. President, eliminating the interplanetary passport would only make it easier for people like fugitives or runaways to hop from colony to colony. They'd be invisible forever!"

Relena stifled a yawn as she listened to the Minister of the Interior engage in a heated debate with the President. She glanced at her watch. Five more minutes before she could get out of there.

Quatre didn't need to glance over to see her. "You're fidgeting again...", he informed her, teasingly.

"I know." Relena looked down at her lap. "What I don't know is why."

"Virginal anticipation?"

Relena's head whipped to the side. "Quatre Raberba Winner! That is completely unlike you to say something like that!"

"I don't know quite when I accquired this reptutation as the world's biggest prude, but I'm getting rather bored with it." Quatre raised his chin; his eyes never left the stage as though he were actually listening to the closing arguments.

She sat back in her seat. "I suppose people just...put you on a pedestal because of who you are."

"And what's that? The heir to the Winner Industries fortune?" Quatre watched the war raging on the stage. "Do those same people know that I'm a gay ex-guerilla warrior?"

"If you have a point...arrive at it."

He finally turned his head to look at her. "How people see us is a reflection on how we see ourselves, Relena."

"And that means...?"

"If *you* think you're a whore, you'll think other people think you're a whore and you'll be a whore. If you think you're a normal woman in love..."

She sucked in a breath. "You've been talking to Lucy, haven't you?"

"I did call Miss Noin when you skipped the morning meetings to go shopping", he admitted. "So...should I avoid Heero tonight or are you going to listen to reason?"

****

Duo flipped on the lights in the security kiosk. "The recorder's over there."

Walking across the room, Heero picked up a device. "This?"

"No, that's my link to the com system." He looked it over. "The red light is on. Someone's using it."

Heero frowned. "Well, who has the earpiece today?"

"Quatre, I think. He's at the conferences with Relena."

His best friend's face lightened. "Relena...I wonder if she's wearing her bulletproof vest." Without hesitation, Heero turned on the device's speakers and brought the microphone up to his lips. Flipping a few switches, he activated it. Within seconds, he could everything Quatre heard.

****

"It's not that simple, Quatre." Relena bit her lip. "You wouldn't understand."

"What I understand is that Heero Yuy, the emotionless soldier I met in the middle of a war has fallen in love. With you." Quatre took her hand. "Don't throw that away for anything. Not for your brother, not for your people and not because of whatever warped ideas of morality you've had pounded into your brain by years of Sunday School."

"Oh, you should talk! I've studied Islam...I know that your religion is even stricter about these things than mine!" She wrenched her hand away. "This has nothing to do with god. I can't be with Heero for many reasons, the least of which is morality."

Quatre flexed his fingers. "What happened to being ready? What happened to knowing that he was the only man for you? When did this all get so serious??"

The speeches were ending. All around them, senators and statesmen rose, applauding. Relena stood up. "It's always been serious, Quatre. Why do you think I haven't slept with him yet? When I told him I was ready, I was just fooling myself into believing that it really *wasn't* all that serious. But...it is." She turned to leave, but stopped and turned back around to face him. "Did you know that he's only told me he loved me once? And that was two years ago. I need to hear the words, Quatre. They remind me that I'm not some mission that he's already accomplished."

"Trust me on this one, Relena." Quatre smiled softly. "You're not."

"Yes, well..." Relena looked down at her hands. "It'd be nice to hear that every once in awhile. Excuse me...I have to get ready for this damn ball."

Quatre watched her go with the saddest look on his face. Sighing, he reached for his coat, preparing to leave.

"Is that it?" An all too familiar voice resounded in his ear. He clapped a hand to the side of his head as the voice continued. "Are Relena and I over?"

"Heero...", Quatre replied, quietly. "She's confused."

"I'm confusing her?"

"Everything is confusing her. Her job, her brother, her sexuality. You're one of the things in her life, Heero. Right now, you're taking a back seat to the rest of it all."

"But I don't want to be in the backseat."

Duo's voice was distant over the com link. "Unless she's in it with you..."

"It's your job to help her sift through all of it." Quatre's tone was calming.

Heero hesitated. "By telling her I love her? I thought she understood...I don't want that one word to get abused by repeating it all the time."

"Well, I think you need to drag it out of the closet every now and then, Heero."

Duo snickered. "Out of the closet....get it? You don't get it? C'mon...Quatre, you get it, right?"

"I get it." Quatre sighed. "Tonight is your opportunity", he told Heero. "You have to show her that you love her and that it's not just about sex. Can you do that?"

Two floors below, Heero nodded. "I can do that. But I'm going to need help." He turned to look at Duo. "Are you as good at getting two people together as you are keeping them apart?"

Duo rubbed his hands together eagerly. "You're damn right I am. Heero....stick with me and you'll get laid." Quatre began to laugh. Heero raised an eyebrow. Duo sighed loudly. "Oh, you know what I meant!!"

"Get Trowa and Wufei, Quatre. And call Noin while you're at it. Duo, you get Hilde...I'm going to need her for this. We'll meet at the Christmas tree in the ballroom at eight sharp."

"See you then." Quatre removed his earpiece.

Heero pulled the microphone away from his lips. "Let's go."

"You know what I meant, right?" Duo chewed on his lower lip. "'Cause I seriously have never thought about you like that." Heero ignored him and turned to go. "Just like I'm sure you've never thought of me like that, right?"

"Are you asking me if I think about your ass?"

"Do you?"

"Only in the capacity of kicking it repeatedly."

Duo nodded. "That's as it should be."

Heero rounded a corner and they stepped into the main hallway. "You know...I think you get stranger every year, Maxwell."

His best friend nodded happily. "It's my yearly resolution. To be more of a pain in Heero Yuy's..." He stopped when he noticed Heero was no longer walking beside him. Duo looked back over his shoulder.

Heero was staring across the room. Duo followed the path of his gaze. It lead straight to Relena.

She stood in the middle of a clump of diplomats, a plastic smile fixed upon her face. Duo walked back to Heero. "Why don't you go talk to her?"

"The time for talking is over. Tonight is about action."

Duo nodded. "It does speak louder than words. Well, except maybe three little words."

"I love her", Heero said, never letting her leave his sight. "I refuse to lose her."

"Well..." Duo swung an arm around Heero's shoulders. "That's what you have us for. By the end of this night, you will make all her doubts disappear. And when you wake up in the morning, she'll be tucked in the crook of your arm forever." Duo grinned mischieviously. "I'd bet my life on it."

****