Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ 3 Ties That Bind ❯ Six ( Chapter 6 )

It was kinda funny, how these things worked out…

“You look pale,” Hilde muttered to me tiredly, smiling slightly.

“I was closer to passing out when Dusty was born,” I reminded her, grabbing her hand.

She laughed a bit at that, studying the perfect little boy in my arms. After a moment, she looked to my eyes again. “How were you with Alex?”

“By Letti’s head not seeing anything,” I admitted with a grin.

She smiled at that, touching my hair as she sighed. “Drugs are nice.”

“I noticed you liking them,” I reassured her.

She laughed again, yawning.

It’d been a chaotic night.

True to Duo’s panic-form, the hospital had been well checked entirely before we even got off the palace grounds. Every patient, every guest, every nurse in the maternity wing had gone through a process of checking that’d make airport security feel a breeze…well, he wasn’t searching their stuff, but everyone was accounted for, and every person that entered or left the wing had been documented.

No one minded, when they realized why, though…

“I should put him down, huh?” I murmured.

“You don’t have to,” she reassured me with another yawn. “Who has Dusty?”

“Lex and him are staying with Duo,” I returned.

“Mm…that’s nice.”

“Selena’s gonna break’em to trade,” I agreed.

“Okay.”

I grinned, looking up to her as she actually thought about what I said and met my eyes.

I laughed happily, kissing her hand.

She rolled her eyes at me, touching my hair again before extending her arms.

I passed our baby over to her, then thought a second and turned to look for the camera.

Her initial contractions had taken almost until we were at the hospital to start, and then it’d taken several hours for the rest of the labor to hit. We’d left the palace at about nine…she hadn’t had the baby until four-ten.

It’d been a very long night.

I snapped a picture of her, moving closer to study his small face.

“What should we name him?” she asked quietly.

“Raberba,” I mused, dropping into my chair again.

“Mm,” she thought. “Mikhail Raberba?”

I wondered if she realized the full intent of my suggestion or if she was too drugged to care.

“Quatre might not like that, though,” she added thoughtfully.

I sniggered slightly and she looked up to me. “Robert?”

A moment of disbelief crossed her eyes before she grinned evilly.

I laughed, leaning forward and resting my head on the bed. “They’d all get it, but no one else would…and that might lead to some…issues.”

She giggled slightly again.

“Demitry?

“No…”

“Mikhail Robert?”

She laughed again, smacking me.

“I dunno, baby,” I muttered, touching her hand.

“Only Duo calls me that,” she retorted, touching my hand again.

“Sorry. Mikhail Raberba, huh?”

“Yeah…. Trowa? I’m tired now.”

“Now?” I asked archly, rising to take Mikhail from her. She smiled at me as I almost went to put him in his cradle, then decided against it.

“You’ll have to put him down some time,” she reminded me with a smile. “If you do it now, the nurse will take him and you can sleep.”

I thought about that a long moment, then shook my head. “You go ahead…I think I’ll stay awake a little bit more.”

- -

“And I just thought I’d let you all know that last night, my wife went into labor,” Trowa informed the people who’d gathered. “And as of four-ten A.M., today, August twenty-second, she gave birth to a six pound, three ounce baby boy.”

The cheers from the crowd were extremely loud.

Trowa laughed, scooping up Dustin and hugging him a moment before muttering in his ear.

“Yeah,” Dustin agreed, looking to his father’s eyes a moment. Trowa nodded encouragingly at him and he took a breath, looking back to the crowd. “My baby brother’s name is…” Trowa whispered something else to him. “…Mikhail Raberba Barton!” he turned to give Trowa a confused look. “Really?”

Quatre was standing quite a bit straighter, actually, as many in the crowd appreciated the child’s earnest question with happy laughter and loud cheers.

Trowa smiled, then looked back to Quatre a moment before looking back to the assemblage. “In honor of my new son,” he said loudly, “and the fact that we’re in the middle of a carnival…I’ve set up an area on the east side of the fair…where there will be free drinks until it runs out!”

The cheers broke again as Trowa watched the people with a smile before turning to look at us again.

“Raberba, huh?” Quatre asked with a grin. “I don’t like it.”

Trowa sniggered.

“That’s my brother’s name!” Dusty protested, scrambling down from Trowa to run up to Quatre and frown up at the man. For a moment it’d looked like he was going to hit Quatre, but it’d just been him putting his arms up…kinda in the “pick me up” gesture…to lean against the man.

Quatre smiled, kneeling down so they were eye to eye. “I’m just playing, buddy…do you know what my middle name is?”

Dustin frowned, shaking his head.

“Raberba,” Q explained. “Quatre Raberba Winner.”

Dustin’s eyes widened as he understood what had been said.

See, Trowa’d found this fun game called naming-the-kid…in which the practice was not to tell any of the rest of us what name you’d chose and announcing it to the kingdom with us all in company.

“He has your middle name?” Dustin asked, looking over his shoulder to Trowa. “Who has my middle name?”

“Your grandpa on your mom’s side,” Trowa explained as Alex darted into his arms to hug him tightly. He kissed the top of her head, and in a moment, Dustin had joined them. “You wanna go see baby Mikhail now?” he asked them curiously.

Ashley opened her mouth, but I touched her shoulder before she could move, picking her up as she gave me a confused look.

“They need some time with their mom and baby,” I explained quietly to her. “Okay? We can go see Auntie later on.”

“Okay,” she agreed, thinking about it.

“We’ll be back,” Trowa informed us, then stopped and looked at me.

“What?” I asked.

“You can take the unit out. Leave two at the room and we’ll be fine.”

“Oh yeah, huh?” I grinned at him, pulling out my cell phone.

“Come on, let’s go celebrate,” Heero muttered, stretching tiredly and looking to the early afternoon sun. The crowd had dispersed fairly shortly after Trowa’d explained what he’d been doing.

“Kitty, get your toy to order more drinks,” Relena added, touching Ashley’s hair as she passed.

“Did she just call you kitty?” Ashley asked me, since I wasn’t following the crowd.

“A lot of people call your dad a Cheshire Cat,” Selena noted, moving up to kiss her cheek.

“’Cause he’s always smiling, huh?” she asked, nodding her head.

“Exactly,” Wufei agreed, touching her hair as well before casting me an evil grin and bouncing off.

“Hey, Ryu,” I added. “The queen wants more drinks ordered for the celebration.”

“More drinks?” Som asked blankly. “Don’t hang up!” he added quickly. “I’m sorry…I don’t have any idea how to do that one.”

I grinned, feeling more cordial with my baby girl in my arms. “Get ahold of Barton’s secretary. Order two more of whatever size he’d gotten from the queen, and get two large kegs of beer for me.”

“Duo!” Selena protested.

“Hey, it’s not a celebration until the beer flows,” I retorted.

“Daddy, beer is icky,” Ashley reminded me, sitting back to look at me.

“See, here’s the thing, some people like it…but only adults.”

She smiled at that, seeing as I tempered every possible adult vice with that notation.

“It’ll have to be set up separately, I think…I don’t know if Trowa thought to do it…so take care of that.”

“Maxwell,” he protested at me.

“Ryu,” I retorted in the same whine, “it’s not October yet and I told you I’m gonna try and break you.”

He groaned. “Of course, sir.”

I grinned at bit and closed my phone.

Ryu hadn’t disappointed me yet.

- -

The end of August was marked with a week long party, seeing as Hilde’d had Mikhail on the first night of it, and even though Trowa’d only provided enough drinks for the first night, it was promptly followed with a little bit from the queen…sort of a gift from the people for the people…and then, of course, I took a night…or two. Buying that much juice, soda, and beer amused me highly…then Duo’d taken one night before, Wufei…etcetera. I was the only one who’d taken two nights, considering the brat was named after me, but that was all the same.

It was sad, on another hand, because Duo’s stress was getting the better of him. Wufei might have thought he was funny setting up some pretty boy to be Duo’s secretary, but no one else really appreciated the humor. By mid-September he was pissy as all hell and snapping at anyone who interrupted him…and he was always moving.

The only person he even pretended to have patience for was Ashley.

Of course, it didn’t take long for Alex and Lea to be following him around. We’d all known how the children could calm even his worst of moods, and unlike the rest of us adults who pulled just enough away not to bother him, the kids moved in and smothered him.

Actually, I was on my way to extricate the poor boy causing half of the knight’s stress because my sources had reported Duo was actually yelling in his office.

I shoved the door opened and looked at the knight with raised eyebrows.

“Oh, tempt me,” Duo returned without hesitation, turning on me. “Oh, just say something.”

“Go home,” I retorted.

He narrowed his eyes at me.

“You’re getting nothing done and you’re traumatizing…someone,” I looked to Ryu, who had very wide eyes as he looked up to me from the chair he generally sat in.

He was wearing a wife-beater.

“Go to your room,” I ordered him, looking him over. “And wear a proper uniform tomorrow.”

Duo was studying me challengingly.

“Now,” I snapped.

Ryu darted and was gone.

I turned back to Duo. “You wanna fight me, I’ll fight you,” I informed him, moving to stand in his face. “You’re being ridiculous and have half the staff terrified.”

His evil smirk crossed his face, but he controlled it and looked away from me.

“Actually, let’s go,” I muttered, pulling at him.

“Don’t touch me,” he snapped, yanking away.

I gave him a look and shoved him, which had him instantly turning on me, but he was thinking a little more than that immediate annoyance and kept stopping himself from responding. I pushed and shoved him into my office, which he seemed very annoyed about the entire time, but as soon as I got my door closed, he started laughing.

I raised my eyebrows at him.

“Sorry,” he muttered, groaning and moving to drop onto the chair of my office and curling up so his feet were on the seat. “Why am I in hell?”

“Because you sweet talked Jun’s court date out of my secretary?” I asked sweetly. “Or maybe because you sweet talked his lawyer’s intern into telling you what languages he spoke.”

“A little slow on the draw, aren’t you?” he asked, raising his eyes to mine. “That shit was going on in June.”

“I knew you were up to no good, but I don’t make a practice of spying on you.”

“If only because it could get your man hurt,” he noted.

“With you, my dear boy, it would be no man.”

He smirked at that.

I sighed and moved to sit at my desk. “You feel better now? Terrified the poor boy, huh?”

“Nah, he was worried about me flipping out, but not terrified.”

I gave him a look.

He shrugged, yawning and pressing his face into his legs.

“You sleep last night?”

“Not really.”

“What’s your verdict?” I asked, meaning his own summation of his circumstances.

“I’m in a bad mood, leave me alone,” he replied promptly.

I grinned at him. “So maybe you’re in hell because you had a manipulative argument with Wufei, timed with disturbing precision, to be outside the court-house as the lawyer escorted Jun to his car.”

“So your only helpful comments are about Jun?” he asked, raising his eyes to mine again. “Nothing about my situation?”

“Situation?” I asked sweetly. “Unlike Heero, I know better than thinking you’d cheat on Selena…conversely, unlike Wufei, I don’t think it’s endlessly amusing to bait you. Selena’s due early December, right? So come January you’ll be in better spirits. Seeing as it is mid-September, though, we’ll have to figure out something to do with you in the interim.”

“Next month Ryu is moving into the actual recruits,” he noted. “That’ll help.”

“It might kill Heero, but I think I’ll put you on the little girlies.”

“You won't put me anywhere,” he retorted, raising his eyes to me again.

“No, dear,” I muttered. “You think about what I do, huh? You think about my job, my skills, and my thought processing, and you consider how I might do with you exactly as I will.”

The phrase’d passed my lips before I realized what I was saying, and his instant response was to be on me, eye to eye, studying me seriously. “And what would you do with me?” he whispered.

“Castrate you,” I replied. “Let’s see how excitable you are then.”

He laughed at that and groaned, dropping down so his head was on my lap and sighing.

“You’ll never grow up,” I noted, petting his head. “You’ll always be a little boy.”

“What should I do?” he asked with a sigh. “What’s your advice?”

I considered that a long time, considering how long it was until Nira should have her baby and grinned slightly. “Get a hobby.”

“What?” he asked, raising his head to look at me.

“You have nothing to do, nothing to distract yourself. Find something to do.”

“Like what?”

“Teach Ash chess?”

“Did it.”

I focused on his head in disbelief.

“She plays me twice a week,” he muttered into my pant-leg.

Damn…that was wrong somehow. She wasn’t even seven yet.

I thought again. “Start teaching her self-defense?”

“We’ve got her signed up for a normal class that starts in November,” he disagreed.

Okay, chances were his daughter was completely covered.

“That feels good,” he noted, moving his head more on my lap.

“That feels wrong,” I retorted shifting back in my seat. “We aren’t that close, remember?”

He laughed slightly at that, but didn’t move.

“Shit, Duo, I don’t know…”

“I could find you a girlfriend,” he noted, sitting back to look up at me.

“Like last time? Decided to get me laid and threw girls at me every time we went out?”

He sniggered at that.

“No, let’s not start that again…my job is stressful and if I find someone she’ll have to be in the field to understand…”

“Keep preaching,” he suggested. “You might even start to believe it.”

I smacked him.

He laughed and sat back on his heels to look up at me.

“I don’t know…find some great cause or something,” I mused. “Sanq doesn’t really have a problem with poverty…or issues in our schools…go campaign for orphanages or something. There are still plenty of war orphans who could use homes. Go drown yourself in children…keep your mind off that boy.”

“My mind is more on my wife,” he noted.

“Sure it is,” I agreed, smacking at his face. “I’ll accept that.”

“Asshole.”

I considered my friend a long moment, knowing that the orphanage thing would be beyond him. He didn’t have enough resources to do anymore than adopt a child or two, and I doubted Selena would be very happy with that. I grinned. “And if you’re going to persist in finding me someone, just remember she can’t be needy and she has to be able to understand that I get woken up in the middle of the night all the time, all right?”

He sniggered at that…and bit my thigh.

…somehow, it went downhill from there…and he absolutely ran out of my office as I threw a paperweight after him.

- -

“What are you doing?” I demanded of Duo as he sat on me. “Why aren’t you working?”

“Why aren’t you working?” he retorted, starting to mess with my buttons.

I rolled my eyes at him. “Because I’m the king and I can do what I will.”

“I’m the king’s right-hand man, and I can do more than he wills.”

I laughed at that, watching his eyes with interest. I’d nearly brushed him off, but then I’d recalled my thoughts the last time he’d done it and wondered what I should do with my hands.

“No,” he added, stopping about half-way down to yawn. “Ryu decided he was hot shit and was half dressed this morning.” He started to lay forward on me and changed his mind, rolling to the floor much like he had last time, resting his head back. “I was irritable for some reason and Quatre came storming in and told me to go home.”

“I take it your irritability was getting the better of your work?”

“Yep,” he yawned again. “So blondie forced me to his office where he told me to get a hobby because Selena’s out of bounds until January.”

I snorted at that.

“How the hell does Trowa keep from getting all pissy?” he added, shifting around to sit along the side of the couch and study my face. “You, even?”

“I kinda run a kingdom,” I retorted, grinning slightly at him. “Trowa’s job keeps him busy, too. You gonna be able to baby-sit for Faye’s party?”

“I’m fine with the kids,” I retorted. “It’s you guys who annoy me,” he flicked my shirt by the button he’d given up on.

I snorted at that, rolling onto my side to study his face. “You okay, really?”

“I’m fine,” he admitted with a sigh, looking away from me. “I’m just tired.”

“What were you shouting about?” I asked instead.

His eyes landed on mine.

“I figured someone would go chase you from your office and decided I may as well chase you down and poke you into admission.”

“Who told you I was shouting?”

“Probably the same person who told Quatre…just some runner.”

“I wonder who sent him,” he muttered, looking away.

“What were you shouting about?”

“I dunno, kinda rambling,” he grinned. “I was trying to freak him out, but he doesn’t freak very well. Looked a little wild-eyed, but not doing more’n that.”

“Ryu?” I asked, studying his face more.

He nodded.

“You like the Asians?” I teased, smirking slightly.

He hit me in the stomach without hesitation, giving me a very level look.

I laughed more, reaching over and pulling him to me by the head, hugging him very briefly before flopping over and starting to re-button my shirt.

“I’m gonna go back to bed,” he muttered, rising and popping his neck. “You know how to find me if you need me.”

“All right…you picking up Ash today?”

He thought and shrugged. “Probably, I don’t remember…Selena should call soon to remind me.”

I grinned at that as he moved from the room, then flopped back again and yawned.

A nap definitely sounded good.