Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ In the City at Night ❯ Bad Habits ( Chapter 15 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Bad Habits

Piet was dead.

Jor ran his hand tiredly down his face as Heero paced his kitchen in a rage. The soldier was ranting on anything from lax security to double agents. Any thought that crossed his mind instantly crossed his lips in a half shout that had Chai in her room almost cowering on the bed.

The soldier drew a breath.

"If my girl is crying," Jordan warned him in a dark tone, rising to his feet to limp tiredly toward the master bedroom. He didn't feel like finishing the threat, and knew he didn't actually have to.

"What?" Heero asked blankly, focusing on him.

"You've been shouting for the last hour," Jordan retorted. "Men shouting upsets her."

The man hesitated, then moved to step toward the guy.

"No, just wait," Jordan pushed through the door. Chai was laying in the middle of the mattress and raised her head with very large eyes to meet her boyfriend's.

"Did he leave?" she whispered.

Jordan made a wait gesture to the other man again and closed the door, moving across the room with a bit of a smile. "You're bad."

"He's out there shouting like you could do something about it, though," she protested. "It's..."

"He's frustrated," Jordan cut her off gently. "He knows there's nothing I can do about it, but...come on, the man who did the dirty deed was killed."

She sat up, running her hands along her arms. There was a knock on the door, and she blinked as Heero poked his head in and gave her an apologetic smile.

"Talk like a civilized person," Jordan informed his friend. "You gave me a headache," he yawned largely, dropping back onto the mattress. He was silent a moment, then groaned slightly, "You woke me up again..."

"Sorry," Heero apologized quickly, feeling guilty as he moved to sit at the end of the mattress. It had felt good to rant at Jor. No one else really understood his ranting; they seemed to think he'd flipped his lid when he started. Jordan, however, bore with it all and took things away from it. It was always a stream of half-connected facts that Jor could find trails in.

The volume of the ranting had never proved issue before.

"I..."

Chai gave him a level look, "You feelin' civil again?"

"As civil as I get," he shot back.

She made a slight face at him.

"What?" he laughed a bit, "I was kidding..."

The woman sniggered at that, curling up against Jor's middle.

Heero sat a moment, trying to decide if this meant he should leave, then noted that his friend had actually fallen back asleep. He grinned a bit and crawled across the bed to the guy's far side, settling down into the pillow...it was just...so...draining. All of it was. Running around and trying to find people, running around...losing friends.

If Baits would just check-in...

The soldier didn't realize he fell asleep.

X x X x X

"You layin' on me?" Jordan demanded, blinking blankly at his friend. He had Chai in the crook of his arm and Heero on his chest.

Heero jumped hard and tumbled out of the bed, then sat blinking blankly at the walls as he tried to decide whose house it was and whose voice had spoken...and why anyone cared that he was sleeping on them.

Jordan laughed a bit, rolling from under Chai to brush Heero's hair, "Hey, you okay?"

Heero turned to look at Jordan blankly for a long moment, then started rubbing his eyes as his mind decided it was probably time to work. "Sorry, I just..."

"Your phone was ringing," Jordan informed him. "It was in your pocket...that was pressed against my side."

That got an evilly guilty laugh as Heero focused on his old friend, "Sorry."

"Go talk somewhere else," Chai muttered disconsolately.

Heero started pushing himself to his feet.

"Why don't you go sleep somewhere else?" Jordan retorted.

"It's my room in my house, you told me it was."

"Doesn't mean you get pissy," Jor's tone was obviously a bit upset as he climbed off the bed as well.

"Sorry," she muttered, then buried her head with the pillow.

It was about that point that Heero realized his phone had been ringing. It had woken him up slightly, but he ignored it if he were in a mess of bodies—not that it was usually in his pockets during such situations. That fact hadn't occurred to him as he slept, and he glanced slightly nervously to the limping male who closed the bedroom door as he dug out his phone.

"You sleep good?" Jor offered with a grin, moving around the guy in the small kitchen to dig into the fridge for breakfast foods.

"Woulda been better if we'd done the threesome thing," Heero noted, plucking at the back ring of his friend's belt-loops with his left hand and hitting the button to return Quatre's call with his right.

Jordan turned amazed eyes to his friend's back as a few bit-facts he hadn't told Chai crossed his mind. There were hickies on his friend's throat, and while he'd slept with Shin while they visited her, the girl had only left one mark. He'd seen it and noted it as a matter of course. When Logan and Wayne had followed Heero drunkenly to Jordan's side later that night, they'd also had the markings. Logan's shirt had been on backwards and inside out, and Wayne had taken several moments to attempt to tie his shoe.

"Where the hell are you?" Quatre demanded suddenly, sounding agitated.

"I'm at Jor's," Heero returned. "Sorry about that. I meant to come home after ranting last night, but I upset Chai with my shouting and when Jor went to check on her..."

"You slept at Duo's?" Quatre asked blankly.

"Yeah. When Jordan," Heero said the name pointedly, "Went to check on Chai, I came in to apologize and he fell asleep...I just kinda..."

"Oh god, Heero, you didn't," Quatre muttered.

"You can't see me so don't try to read me," Heero snapped back.

Jordan raised an eyebrow at that, then stepped around the guy in his personal space—just to see what he'd do. Heero flashed Jor a slight smile, moving his head to the side as Jordan pushed the call button for their apartment's vid. Heero didn't make any other move to get away, and even reached over and looped a finger into Jordan's waistband. "I'm gonna make breakfast here and..." he stopped as he blinked up at Quatre on the screen.

"Tell me," Jordan said in a level voice as Quatre blinked at them in return. It was an old device the re-instated soldier had figured out with Quatre shortly into the after-war peace. If he hit the right timing, that one right instant when guards were down, Quatre could almost read minds.

"I see a lot of bodies," Quatre replied as Heero sat up straighter and let Jordan go, reaching for the vid button. "Bodies and alcohol...and there's no variation between..."

The call ended.

The moment hung between the pair as Jordan realized what Heero had really been doing at the club. Seven Deadly Sins. Lechery. Debauchery.

Heero offered his friend a slightly evil smirk. "Like Wayne and Logan said," he muttered, rising to his feet and moving around the other. "You should come."

X x X x X

It was hard to get work done with Heero and Jordan not speaking to each other, and even worse to see the amusement in Heero's eyes every time he looked up. It was Jordan who was doing the not speaking part, but Heero wasn't fool enough to make himself look fool. He held his peace, and amusement shone through every pore.

The assassination of the assassin had been an inside job. The person who'd done it had been wearing a deep shade of black, so the profiler would have a hard time making any match since the dark materiel would obscure depth perception. To further the insider aspect of it all, the man'd had his back to every camera.

"We'll have to assume that he told us his story," Heero muttered finally. He looked up and around the room, then back to the papers. "We know it was a credit transfer," he added, looking to Jordan. "What else do we know?"

It was work, and the question was directed to the man specifically.

Jordan sighed, studying Heero a long moment, then shifted lower in his chair, "We know jack-shit."

"Intimately," Heero agreed.

Trowa shook his head as Jordan narrowed his eyes at the guy and Wufei looked between them with interest.

"You realize the air is buzzing, don't you?" Quatre asked tiredly, not looking at them.

"Sorry," Heero apologized, "I did him a misfavor, so he's upset with me."

"Like what?" Tro asked, blinking.

"He said we could come home in a half-hour's time and disappeared for four," Jordan retorted.

"Heero," Wufei snapped, focusing on the guy in disbelief.

Heero gave Wufei a long and level look.

"Chai was upset with me, and then he came in shouting," Jordan added. "I'm annoyed with him. I'm trying to control it, Q. I'm really sorry."

Quatre shrugged, "I feel it all the time, it's just not helpful when I can't concentrate."

"Let's move this to my place," Jordan suggested, looking up to the camera. "These walls are too flat-planed and it's too much an institution. I can't think here."

It wasn't a truth, and Trowa knew it. What he didn't know was if it was because of the cameras or the wary change in Jordan in general. He'd stopped trusting.

"Chai can make us some coffee and we can lay this out on my coffee table."

The empath sat up sharply, almost jumping from his seat at the offer, but controlled himself and nodded. "I could use some coffee."

"Coffee sounds good," Trowa agreed languidly, collecting his own papers.

Wufei and Heero shrugged at each other, though Wufei was giving Heero an almost questioning look.

It took them a matter of minutes to sign out and troop to the cars. During most days, they all had their own things that they had to do, so they all had their own vehicle, all except Jordan.

"Ride with me," Heero ordered him quietly as they moved into the open-air. "I want to talk."

"Then let me drive," Jordan retorted.

Heero passed him the keys and Trowa pulled out first. He didn't know what was going on with his friends, but that had stopped being a new development years before. He noticed, and that should be enough.

X x X x X

It irked Jordan that he was more annoyed with Chance's...Heero's...inconsideration than about the murdered assassin. The conversation they'd had in the car, which had included Jordan slamming on the breaks and sending the other against the dashboard, hadn't helped. Ch...Heero had apologized, but there was something lacking about the entire matter that made focusing hard.

After a half hour of Quatre half-collapsed on the couch near Chai, he perked up and started listening to conversation again. They compared what they did know on the matter, the technical facts, then started reasoning out the later bits.

"I bet you it wasn't either of them," Jordan noted, making a light scribble on the bottom of a page with his pencil and not looking at anyone. "I bet you it's someone else altogether."

Quatre sniggered very slightly, looking around at the others, then sniggered more.

"What?" Wufei asked him, blinking.

"I don't feel it," Quatre muttered, biting one lip. "I can see he's all upset, and I don't feel it," he sniggered again.

"Are you okay?" Wufei demanded instantly, sitting forward worriedly.

"Oh," Heero realized, blinking at him, then across to Trowa. "We forgot to mention...Chai's got some quieting abilities."

They stared at him, then looked to the girl—she'd fallen asleep, but evidently that didn't end whatever she was doing.

"You think it's funny that you can't feel his pain?" Trowa asked in a bemused tone.

Quatre sniggered again, studying his expression, "I can tell how you'll be feeling about that...but I don't feel it..."

"Wow, he's an asshole," Wufei noted, looking back to Heero. "I never realized that."

"Seriously?" Heero was amazed.

"Hey!" Quatre protested...and started to laugh.

X x X x X

"Would you knock it off?" Wufei muttered to Quatre as he moved into Une's office, rubbing his arm.

Quatre punched him again.

Wufei muttered some unfriendly things as Quatre drank in his expression with Chai a step behind. Jordan followed his girlfriend, and Heero moved to stand directly in front of Une as if the group weren't behind him.

"So?" Une muttered, setting her coffee cup down.

"Most likely thing," Heero returned, "is that he met with the person who hired him in person, they orchestrated the credit transfer together, and had no intentions of seeing one another again."

Quatre punched Wufei's arm again.

"Son of a..." Wufei restrained himself from attacking the other stepping at him warningly and wondering at the change. When they had this sort of altercation normally, Quatre would flinch back from the intended threat. Now, though, his eyes were sparkling and he didn't seem to care.

"What's going on?" Une demanded in the tone of a mother noticing quiet disagreements.

Wufei opened his mouth to speak, but Jordan took the moment to shove Chai toward the woman.

When Chai was moved five feet from him, Quatre hissed and flinched hard, dancing back from Wufei's arms reach with a sort of deer-in-the-headlights look.

"I brought you some cookies," Chai muttered smoothly, flowing with the transition to set the plate in front of the woman.

"They even taste good," Trowa noted.

Chai giggled, turning to smack at him.

"Cookies?" Une perked up.

Chai grinned, "I'll wait in the waiting room, all right? I don't feel any particular need to sit through these talks."

"We'll make it short," Une reassured her, watching as she and Quatre exchanged an almost secret look. She narrowed her eyes, noting that Jordan and Heero were talking quietly together and the male did not see.

"So," Wufei added, moving forward. "We need to know how the profiling is getting on."

X x X x X

Jon ran a nervous hand through his hair as he studied the tabletop. He didn't want to bring Jordan's attention to the fact that someone might not be so law abiding as they were supposed to be. Two of four men who'd questioned him had left several bruises on his chest and thighs, mostly boots for his legs. He hurt and didn't want to have to deal with Jordan's questioning on the two men who'd done it. He didn't want to deal with Jordan's anger on the matter, because he knew Jor would be pissed.

Corringer and Baerinum.

The nametags were still strong in his memory.

"What's the matter with you?" Jordan demanded, moving with coffee cups to sit by his friend again at the couch. "I knew they'd keep you locked up a few days, but you're acting like they beat you or something."

Jon forced a laugh and took his cup without meeting his friend's eyes.

"Anyway," Jordan muttered, getting back to his story. "We've found that Quatre with a quieting creates a sort of havoc that doesn't help us get work done. We spent three or four hours here, and the only thing he did was hit Daniel."

"Wufei," Jon corrected.

"Same damn difference," Jor shook his head, extending his right leg and pulling up his pant-leg to study the now mostly healed wound.

"Crap," Jon noted, also looking it over.

"I know, Remalene sucks to be on, but the effects are...somewhat pleasing."

"When you gonna be done with it?" Jon muttered, looking up to his friend's eyes. "Your hair is already shaggy."

"Oh yeah," Jordan reached up and wondered at the time that had past. It had been what? Two weeks, three weeks? Not quite three weeks since he'd first seen Chance perched at the bar, and over a week since he'd moved back onto base. His wound, a wound that should have had him on his ass for a month, was days away from healing.

"Jordan?" Jon muttered, still not quite looking at him. "Is beating allowed?"

"Why? Someone threatening you?"

Jon wished he hadn't asked the question and shrugged, making sure there was a smile in his eyes as he met Jor's again. "I just want to know what I can throw back."

"Let me think," Jordan muttered. "There are places in Brazil and stuff that allow beatings...minor, nothing permanent. But...no. Not in the states. You can't use physical force in America." He grinned at his friend as he fixed his pant leg again. "What you do is tell'em they can beat you if they take you across the lines, then realize that you're an American citizen and they can't take you against your will."

Jon smiled at that, feeling the bruises again and wondering if the rules had changed in the past five years. He rubbed the particularly deep bruise on his thigh.

"Even before the fucker got killed," Jordan added, sitting back to sip at his cup, "he was a dead end. He gave too many stories for us to know which were truth or fiction. He was caught, so he knew he'd get no back up or escape route. He was probably praying every night that the guards were ever-vigilant."

"No use keeping an assassin alive when he knows your face," Jon agreed, poking at the edge of the bruise. It hurt. He needed to stop touching it, but it was a strange thing...

"You still didn't do it, right?" Jor muttered, watching his friend's hands.

"Of course not," Jon snapped, smacking his hands onto his thighs and glowering. "I told you, Marquise is the only one I like on that fucked-up panel."

The panel.

Jordan rubbed at his nose as he nodded, thinking about that. Jon's story didn't extend beyond the panel. He wasn't thinking of a major power-play.

Jon poked at the bruises again, then blinked as Jordan moved off his chair and directly next to him on the couch. For a brief moment he wondered if he was fantasizing again, because Jordan was reaching for his pants...

"What is this?" Jordan demanded levelly, noting the horseshoe shape of a very deep bruise.

"Hey!" Jon protested a bit belatedly, shifting to pull away. He started to fight at Jordan then when his friend started to remove his shirt.

"What is this?" Jordan repeated a bit more demandingly, throwing the shirt aside.

"You know," Chance noted from the door, "I almost want to know..."

Jordan focused up at his old friend, then drug Jon to his feet so the bruising was in evidence.

"Burned alive," he swore quietly, moving around the couch to study the things. He met Jon's eyes.

"He's been acting distant all day," Jor explained. "He kept poking at his legs, and if I moved too fast he jumped."

"Nervous," Heero noted, still staring at the bruises. "Damn," he added, touching some of them lightly, "Burned alive..."

"Burned alive?" Jon muttered uncertainly. He really wanted his clothing back.

"Camera," Heero snapped at Jordan, taking out his phone and taking a long shot with it.

"Hey!" Jon protested.

"Dictate," Heero added. "The time is," he added, glancing to his watch, "Thirteen-hundred hours. I entered the Maxwell personal residence to find Maxwell removing articles of clothing from Breer. Bruises became evident quickly and Breer's manner has changed entirely..."

Jon felt incredibly embarrassed to have the photographs taken. It would have been entirely different if they hadn't been completely businesslike over the matter. He was cajoled into making a statement into Heero's phone, and when Jordan finally allowed him to pull his pants back on, his eyes were extremely sad.

"Can I go now?" Jon muttered, noting that he hadn't checked in.

"Une?" Heero muttered, studying the man's face as Jordan passed him back his shirt. "Can you get me the names of the people who questioned Breer? All right," Heero ran a hand through his hair as he paced off a few steps. "Corringer," he agreed, "Baerinum, Vagrant...yes, that's what I said, Vagrant. Tall asshole with strong hands...huh? Shit, Une, that's not even...okay. Meal." Heero actually laughed, "You know we have our own names for half the people on the base. It's our code-talking...all right. Thanks a lot...uh-huh. Mm, I should warn you that we might have blood." He snapped his phone closed while Une's voice was still audible, looking to Jordan.

"Shouldn't you...tell her?" Jon asked, swallowing slightly.

"We will," Jordan reassured the man, patting his shoulder as he started away, "Don't worry, we will."

"It wasn't Browning or Liasco," Jon blurted quickly. "They were nice to me."

"Yeah," Heero agreed easily. "Vagrant and Meal love me to pieces, and I noted in passing that you're my friend."

"Who did that one?" Jordan muttered, indicating the bruise on his friend's thigh. "The big one?"

"I...don't..."

"He had his foot about three inches from your cock," Jordan snapped at him. "There's no way you didn't know which one he was."

"Just don't get yourself in trouble," Jon muttered. "Take the legal..."

"They're the kind of guys that do what they're told and keep their heads low," Chance snapped. "They'd get a mild reprimand and sent on their way—they'd keep us away, too."

"But you'll..."

"Oh, I really don't like Corringer," Heero muttered. "I really really don't like him."

"Who did it, Jon?" Jordan insisted.

"Baerinum," Jon admitted, ducking his head.

"He's mine," Jordan informed Heero.

Heero's eyes sparkled as he realized that Jordan was as much up for blood as he himself was. "You be my god?" Heero teased. "You be my sun?"

Breer blinked at him.

"Worship me, I'll be your moon," Jordan agreed, breezing toward the front door.

"You guys, come on," Jon insisted, realizing he shouldn't just let them do this.

Heero had a sort of evil smirk on his lips as he stopped in the door, leaning against the doorjamb as Jordan hesitated on the porch.

"Just..." Jon persisted, attempting to move around the soldier.

"When my way stops working," Jordan noted, starting down the stairs, "I'll do it your way."

"Jordan..."

Heero snapped his teeth in Jon's face, the evil grin still firmly lighting up his expression.

"What are you..." Jon started.

"My god had spoken," Heero informed him, shoving back at his stomach in an area where there were no bruises. He hoped Jon appreciated that he thought about it, but Jordan was climbing into his SUV, and that meant it was time to go.

"What the..." Jon started again...and the door closed in his face. "What the fuck is wrong with that one," Jon breathed, settling back a step or two.

He realized that he probably didn't want to know.