Fractured Thoughts

The three young men were seated in deckchairs by the pool as instructed but they were about as inconspicuous as a nun in a biker’s bar. Trowa Barton who had made an art form of infiltration during the war had spread himself nonchalantly across a deck chair and relaxed into the expression of blank indifference that characterised his interaction with everyone except his closest friends. He was drawing attention, but only of the appreciatively admiring kind from fellow tourists admiring the view. 

Trowa’s ability to blend in was more than made up for by the joint efforts of Heero Yuy and Wufei Chang sitting either side of him, Heero was sitting ramrod straight and glaring at everyone who stepped within a 20 foot radius, looking like nothing more than the soldier he had been for most of his life. Wufei, to whom undercover was another word for cowardice and deceit, was scowling and occasionally snapping at anyone foolish enough to come too close. He was making it quite clear to everybody present that he didn’t want to be there and that he considered anyone who did both foolish and frivolous.  Trowa who actually deeply admired both Wufei and Heero as warriors sighed inwardly reflecting that this mission would be easier alone or with Duo or Quatre or in fact anyone else.  The only saving point was the fact that no one would expect undercover agents to be that bad at it.

“I fail to understand why we were chosen for this task of glorified baby-sitting.” Wufei hissed in Greek, they had chosen the language as one unlikely to be spoken by anyone else present and spoke it to each other or used accented English to speak to anyone else.

Trowa eyed the young woman sitting at the pool that they were supposed to be ‘unobtrusively protecting’, looking at the admiring attention she was gathering he could guess one reason why Une had picked three agents so mission focused. It probably also helped that one of them was recently married and the other two were obviously (though not openly) gay with their attention firmly fixed elsewhere (even if no one was stupid enough to risk death or dismemberment by gossiping about it).

“I think Une was concerned that other agents might become distracted.” Heero replied shortly, cutting as always to the heart of the matter. Wufei raised an eyebrow at that before catching onto the train of thought he huffed in distain at the idea.

Trowa, who had given up being surprised at the synchronicity between their thoughts, nodded remarking “Wouldn’t do to have the girl slumming it with the help.”

Wufei who had been taking a sip of his drink choked and spluttered before glaring at his smirking companion. Heero to whom tact was merely a 4 letter word beginning with T took the opening “Is that why you’ve been avoiding Quatre?”

Trowa had always found Heero easy to talk with and after a moment of total silence replied “Mostly, why do you avoid Duo?”

“I do not avoid Duo, we work together frequently.”

Wufei whose existence the other two gundam pilots had temporarily forgotten slammed his drink down onto the table “Gah, if I wanted to watch a damn soap opera I would watch TV with Sally. You both need to stop dancing around like cowards and do something about it or move on.”

Neither Trowa nor Heero pointed out that Wufei had only proposed to Sally because she had pulled a gun on him. Instead both returned to watching the people moving around the pool each resolving to speak to their not yet lover when they returned.