Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Deadly Beautiful ❯ Hustler ( Chapter 12 )

Disclaimer: I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts, doodly doo... But that's all I have. I don't own Gundam Wing, and I'm not making any money off of this endeavor.

Deadly Beautiful - Chapter 12

By danse

Duo grinned as he took a swallow of his beer. Hilde, sitting across from him, was chattering away at nearly a mile a minute about her encounter with her old roommate earlier that day. After spending almost all of yesterday sleeping and drinking water, she had finally approached him this morning about the possibility of her staying with him a little longer, just until she found a job.

He had grinned and said that was fine, and she squealed and hugged him before yelling, 'Be back later!' and leaving. Just like that. He was left to stand in the living room, staring at the door, wondering what was going on.

When she came back three hours later, lugging an old, battered suitcase, he finally understood.

She had smiled sheepishly, gestured with the suitcase, and said, 'My clothes and stuff,' by way of explanation. 'I told Marie what happened, and we got in an argument, but I'll tell you about that later. She knows that I'm not going back there.' The sad, unsure smile on her face yanked at him, and before he knew it, he was hugging her tightly, murmuring reassuring sounds while she cried into his shoulder.

Ten minutes later, she wiped her face, sniffed, smiled, and said, 'I want to go out and do something tonight. Will you come with me?'

So here they were, in a bar Duo frequented occasionally because they didn't ask for ID. Hilde had apparently finished with being sad, and was almost grinning as she rehashed her argument with Marie, blow by blow. Marie was older than her, and had expressed all of the usual overprotective older sibling tendencies when she found out what was going on. "She said she was going to lock me in my bedroom and push food through the door until I came to my senses, so I just finished packing my suitcase, gave her my last fifty bucks for food and rent from my emergency stash--don't worry, I still have fifty on me--and I left. She wasn't happy with me," Hilde shrugged and took an unladylike but practiced swig of her beer.

Duo was in the middle of nodding sympathetically when a huge shadow suddenly covered their little table. It belonged to a very large, muscular man in his mid-twenties.

"Hey, honey," the man said, totally ignoring Duo, "You look bored. Want to play a game of pool with me?"

Hilde glanced at Duo apprehensively. He shrugged and suddenly found the label of his bottle very interesting. Finally, she looked up at the guy.

"Oh, I don't know," she said bashfully. "I'm really not very good…"

"I'll go easy on you," the guy said winningly.

"Okay." Hilde grinned shyly and got up to follow him to the pool tables. Just before she walked away, she turned her head and winked at Duo. That wink made him a little nervous, and he decided that things could get interesting very soon. He leaned back in his chair to watch the game.

Somebody racked the balls for them, and the guy broke, sending balls all over the table and sinking one. He eliminated two more before it was Hilde's turn.

As she walked towards the table to play, Duo couldn't help but notice how many men were admiring her. She was wearing flared jeans that fit her like a glove, as well as a blue tank top that matched her eyes, and a white dress shirt that she'd pilfered from Duo's closet. She leaned only slightly over the cue, standing awkwardly, and soon proved to Duo that she was right--she really wasn't very good at pool.

He watched in some degree of anguish as the guy she was playing with defeated her handily; she only sank three balls the whole game. When the game was over, his voice carried towards Duo as he talked to her.

"Do you want to play another one? But you're getting better; maybe we can make a little wager on this one, to sweeten the deal."

Duo winced as she said, "All right."

"How about fifty dollars?"

She bit her lip. "That's a lot of money…"

"Come on…" Duo was left to sweat and scream silently as the jerk cajoled her into betting fifty dollars on a game she could never win. They gave the bartender the money to hang onto and the game began.

As the loser, Hilde broke this time, and didn't hit the set anywhere near hard enough. The guy won again, quite easily.

"Ohhh!" she wailed, stomping her foot. "I thought I would do better that time!"

The guy smirked, then grinned at her. "Do you want to play one more? Double or nothing?"

"I don't have any more money with me," she replied.

He looked her up and down and grinned in a way that Duo didn't like at all. "I'm sure we'll think of some way to repay me if you lose…"

The 'if' sounded more like 'when'. Duo was about to butt into the conversation, but Hilde smiled and shook her opponent's hand before he got the chance. How could she not have any idea what she's getting into? Duo fumed. I thought she was smarter than that… But the smile that still lingered on Hilde's face made him remember the wink she'd given him. A lump of ice formed in his stomach. Something was going on.

He sat forward in his seat to watch the game, chewing on his lip, his half-empty beer forgotten. Hilde had lost, so she was going to break again. The bar had gone quiet, finding out what was going on, and wondering what this idiot girl was going to do. Total silence followed her as she went to the front of the table and leaned down over the pool cue. Her eyes looked fierce and a little predatory, and her air had gone from that of a giggling airhead to a confident professional. Even the bartender had wandered over to watch, the $150 riding on the game clutched in his burly hand.

With powerful grace, Hilde broke and ran the table.

She giggled girlishly as she walked by the gawking loser, tossing her pool cue at him and heading straight for Duo, who was still sitting at their table by the door. She stopped to take her money from the grinning, baffled bartender and winked again as she approached. 'Let's go,' she mouthed at him. He could see the urgency in her expression. Awestruck but still functioning, he followed her out of the bar and down the street. They caught a cab and settled safely in the backseat as the bar rushed away through the back window.

As soon as she was sure that they were getting away, Hilde started to laugh. Nervous and high-strung, Duo joined in, until they were a helpless heap of giggles on the plush seat. The driver was giving them funny looks in the rearview mirror.

Gasping for breath, Hilde wiped tears out of her eyes. "Did you…see…his face?" she gasped. "That was priceless. He won't be bothering girls for a while, and I doubt he'll ever set foot in that bar again!"

Duo sobered up considerably. "Why did you leave so fast?" he asked.

She grinned. "In another five minutes, we would have been fending off an angry mob. It's better to make the getaway."

"You've done that before, then."

"Several times. I've probably cased every bar on this end of town. I can only do it once at each place, and I have to check out the patrons to make sure I haven't done it to anyone there before," she added.

"Where did you learn to play pool so well?" he asked.

"My older brother taught me a long time ago. He was fantastic. I'm not as good as he was."

"Was?"

"He's dead," she said softly.

Duo's eyes widened. Shit, he thought. "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean--"

"It's all right," she said, staring at the street lights outside the cab. "It happened a long time ago." They were both silent for a while. Just before the silence officially became an awkward one, Hilde pointed out the window. "I think we're home," she said.

They were. They got out of the car and stumbled tiredly up the stairs and into the apartment. Duo wandered into the kitchen and discovered that the light on his answering machine was blinking. He pressed the play button and leaned against the fridge while the message played.

The familiar, kind voice of a woman who'd practically raised him spoke primly into the dark kitchen. "Maxwell, I just called to remind you that your vacation time is at its end, and that we expect you in the office bright and early tomorrow morning. I'm sorry that we missed you tonight."

Hilde entered the kitchen and raised her eyebrow at him. "Your office calls you when your vacation time is over?" she asked quizzically.

Duo was a little pale, and his heart was thumping out of his chest as he stared at the little red light. His suspension was over. Apparently, had he been home, he would have been hauled down to G's office tonight, but it would wait until morning now. Helen had sounded a little annoyed, possibly on G's behalf, that he hadn't been waiting at home for their call. Well, he wasn't that whipped, he thought with irritation.

"Yes, they do," he answered absently. "They really care about their employees, I guess."

It wasn't a very good excuse, but she accepted it and went to get ready for bed. Duo didn't notice; he was still staring at the light on the answering machine.