keire_ke | Heatwave is back.

I'm off again, to a land of no intrawebs tomorrow. x.X I'd be lucky if I return without a nervous breakdown, for various reasons.

Anyway:

And drabbly thingies: the first I believe I wrote for the "guess the writer" meme, for

hostilecrayon. She guessed in a snap, so I suppose it is a totally me drabble. The other is a random bit of vacation for the boys. *grins*

Duo took great pains to ensure he was never promoted. Many of the people he started the training with were, by now, sitting in cosy, tastefully decorated, offices and signing scraps of paper (naturally, just as many were six feet under. Considering other alternatives, however, these two fates always ended up on top of the list). These people tended to point at him and laugh. He didn’t particularly care, really, even when various people with titles were raising brows when they were forced to find the space for yet another medal on his dress uniform.

Duo Maxwell was a pilot at heart and he would fight tooth and nail to retain the position for as long as his hands could maintain a steady grip on the control stick. It hardly required much effort on his part – although great many positions were open to him, should he blink in their direction – he was, quite simply, brilliant at flying. People joked he must have been born in the air, so naturally he took to any and all conditions. It wasn’t to say he tripped over his feet on the ground, not at all – it just there was this particular look in his eyes, a different expression on his face, when he was separated from the world by a metal cage and miles of empty space.

Heero became familiar with that expression soon after they met and still couldn’t get enough of it.

“God, it’s even more beautiful than I remembered!” Duo called, spreading his arms and running down the sand. Heero watched with a smirk on his lips as his partner (and he thought the word with a considerable amount of pleasure, also at the lack of shocked ohs and ahs) kicked a wave childishly and laughed when it glittered in the air.

Indulgent was not a word anyone sane would use to describe Heero Yuy, not on a good day and from a distance. Tolerant, now that cropped up whenever people watched him interact with Duo, whose energy was on par with the best nuclear reactors.

What people also pointed out often, was that Duo and reactors shared one more trait, which sadly did not endear either of them to the general public: the tendency to blow up, unless cooled. No one particularly wanted to be at the bad end of Duo’s temper when it exploded – especially since behind the raging God of Death usually stood the Angel of Destruction, a merciless stare in his blue eyes telling the victim that it was, after all, their own fault.

Which was always true.

“Stop thinking, soldier boy. Playtime now,” Duo said, his voice ringing with laughter, leaning over Heero and pressing their noses together. The other man snorted, but got up obediently and chased after his quicksilver partner. All too soon they were both breathless and covered in sand, rolling together down and into the water.

Heero straddled his partner’s hips and looked down victoriously.

“Pinned ya.”

“Une will have a cow,” Duo said, pointedly ignoring Heero’s claims.

“You did steal, commandeer that is, a Preventer’s shuttle.” If there was any remorse or guilt in the stern commander Yuy, it was either buried deep, or he was eligible for an Oscar.

“And you so totally weren’t right there with me,” Duo countered. Heero pulled him up, so that at least the base of the braid was out of the range of the waves.

“Who do you think is going to be blamed? If you’re lucky, she won’t charge you with kidnapping to boot.”

“She won’t. Une loves me,” Duo said, with an absolute conviction.

Heero grinned. There would be trouble, no questions about it, even if Une did harbour a soft spot for the violet-eyed pilot. And the little cretin whose head Duo bit off deserved it, many times over, and in fact should have had his head bitten off a long time ago and more permanently. Maybe the short stay at the hospital would finally teach him something.

Thing is, at the very moment, stripping Duo’s wet shirt off and burying his fingers in the loosened braid, Heero just couldn’t bring himself to care.