Work Text:
“Are you still single?”
The question snipes Duo unexpectedly over the photocopier and he dies on the spot. Trowa looks up, the unwitting gunman, or perhaps more accurately, the man who has unluckily stepped on a land mine yet by some miracle managed to blow someone else’s leg off instead of his own.
“Uh…” He says, noting the rising air of panic in the room and the way Duo is looking increasingly toothy and nervous. It’s contagious, leading to an abrupt nonsensical exchange as they both try and wiggle in reverse out of the conversation. “I’m asking for a friend.”
“Oh, I’ve got friends! Loads!”
“I’ve got lions. They’re not coming. To dinner. In the pub.”
They both stop, the singular braincell coming to land. Trowa cocks his head, and looks between the sweating Duo and Heero, who is still trying to compute the complex social algebra that is going on.
He repeats, with new emphasis and doubled curiosity, “Are you still single?”
Duo’s eyes slide side to side like he should be nailed on a kitchen wall, holding a clock. “You mean, like, do I wanna come to this dinner thing?”
“It’s a dating thing, yes. For single people.” Trowa says, increasingly suspicious. He pivots in his chair to face Heero. “What about you? Are you single?”
Heero, with far less subtlety, looks to Duo for the answer, and at that Trowa has all his answers.
“You’re together. You and him.” It’s hardly the work of Sherlock Holmes, but Trowa feels vindicated in saying it out loud. After all, you never know with these two.
“Yes?” says Heero, mildly surprised, as if on some level it’s also news to him.
“Well,” Duo starts, with a clear intention to make some kind of excuse or denial and then stops when Heero frowns at him.
“We had sex,” Heero clarifies for the world at large. “On Wednesday.”
That’s two days ago by both Trowa’s count and that of the standard Preventer-issue desk calendar in front of him. And a work night. And he hadn’t even guessed? Duo makes a deflating kind of noise, from which Trowa diagnoses the issue.
“Ah. You’re idiots.”
Duo is, to his credit, not blushing at this bald exposure of his proclivities. He rubs the back of his neck and looks mildly put out. “We’re kinda…hooking up?”
There is a pause following this so pregnant it makes the gestational efforts of an elephant look inconsequential. Trowa follows the rapid back and forth of micro-expressions between the two, confirming his case of terminal stupid.
“We are not ‘hooking up’,” Heero says at the end of all this. “That-“ he points, in a gesture that on anyone else would be a whimsical finger gun, “Is my boyfriend.”
“Oh,” says Duo, slithering slightly onto the lid of the photocopier. “Am I?” His smile goes big and wobbly and Trowa has to look at the ceiling for a moment and allow them a little privacy. Kissing in front of him would be one thing, but this level of mush is a bit much.
“I thought you knew,” Heero says. “I didn’t realise I had to actually say it.”
“Technically, it’s polite to ask,” Trowa says to the ceiling, not that the styrofoam cares. He can hear Duo making noises, and when he’s assured they’re just kissing and not being actually disgusting, he looks back. It’s still a little bit gross. He sighs, picks up his phone again and scrolls through it for a moment, and sighs again.
This is somewhat putting a cramp in his party plans.
A yell makes him look up.
“Why are you sharing tongues in the office?!” Wufei barks, slapping papers down. “Or am I the only person doing any work around here?”
“Yes,” Heero says, over Duo’s shoulder.
“Yes,” Duo says, ditto.
Wufei gives them a scorching look, and when that utterly fails to douse their happiness, looks witheringly at Trowa. “Well?”
Trowa shrugs, looks at his phone, looks at Wufei. Cannot resist.
“Are you single?”