---------------------
Of Apples and Oranges
~ A Moment of Haven ~
---------------------
	"Heero, what's taking so long?" Duo called out as he walked down 
the aisle in the produce department, bearing his assigned portion of the 
shopping list.  In the basket hanging from his grasp, the milk was 
slipping to the side, throwing off its delicate balance with the carton 
of orange juice on the other end, so he stopped to straighten that out 
before walking the last few steps to his housemate's side.  "It's just a 
bag full of apples."

	He waited expectantly for an answer from the taciturn teen, but 
then realized he was getting one, as he watched the other meticulously 
examine each fruit for flaws before finding one that met his 
requirements.  "Or maybe it's just a bag full of the absolute best 
apples this store has to offer," Duo corrected himself amusedly.

	Mission accomplished, Heero grunted in satisfaction as he held 
the bag up, twirled it a few times to loosely seal the opening, and 
placed them with care in the middle of the basket Duo was carrying.  As 
Heero left to get another plastic bag, the apples started sliding 
towards the orange juice, and once again, Duo took the time to rearrange 
the groceries into some semblance of balance before following his 
partner to the vegetable section.  "You know, I never imagined you to be 
so... anal about your produce.  I mean, you're usually pretty laid back 
about the taste and appearance of your food.  I distinctly recall you 
saying on several occasions that it all looks the same to your stomach."

	Heero didn't pause in gathering his bean sprouts to respond.  
"It does.  But this isn't about taste or appearance.  It's about 
quality."

	"And quality often includes taste or appearance," Duo pointed 
out logically, watching as he sifted his way precisely through the 
fragile sprouts.

	"Granted," Heero conceded, frowning a bit as he found a sprout 
that had already sprouted.  He tossed it aside and gathered another 
handful, slipping his fingers deftly into the disorderly pile with an 
absolute minimum of breakage.  "But in this case, it's about knowing 
that quality is right in front of me.  A negligible expenditure of 
energy will get me better results, so why should I settle for inferior 
goods?"

	"Because it all looks the same to your stomach?  I mean, we're 
not talking mold here, just a few bruises or something."

	"But we're not just talking about fruit, either.  This is just a 
single application of cost-benefit analysis.  I could be talking about a 
stack of screws for use in a suit, and using the new ones instead of the 
old ones."

	"That's a matter of life and death, there," Duo felt obliged to 
point out.

	"It's a matter of principle," Heero chided lightly.  "And in 
this case, why should I accept the bruised and the broken when I have 
the option of unbroken and whole?  It'd be like choosing a Taurus 
instead a Gundam."

	"Ah.  Or like choosing Wing Zero instead of Deathscythe Hell, 
right?"

	Heero shot a sidelong glance at him as he softly shook his bag 
to settle it, and spied the boy with a wide grin on his face.  "From 
your point of view, perhaps," he said dryly.

	"Aw, come on, my baby could kick Wing's ass any day."

	"With, or without, their pilots?"  He leaned over, pushed the 
apples over an inch, and set the bag of sprouts in beside them.

	"Oh, let's say without.  Wouldn't want to give us an unfair 
advantage over you guys, after all.  But you'd have to remove that crazy 
Zero system or something.  That thing's whacked."

	"The word 'zero' is in its name for a reason, Duo," he commented 
as they walked over to the checkout lines.

	"Alright, fine.  But the words 'buster rifle' aren't.  Besides, 
Wing shouldn't rely so heavily upon Zero.  If you don't think he'd win 
without the system, you can just give in and agree with me right now."

	"But Wing *Zero* was designed around the Zero system.  It's who 
he is and how he works."

	"Ha!  So you admit that he's useless without the system!"

	"Of course," Heero agreed calmly.  "That's because he'd be 
without an operating system.  You can barely boot him up without at 
least partially accessing Zero modules."

	"I knew Wing was white for a reason.  He's nothing more than a 
lily-livered--"

	"Duo," he interrupted, absently thanking the cashier, and 
grabbing the bags.  "Wing is a machine.  He can not be 'lily-livered'.  
Why are we having this conversation?"

	"Because, silly," he answered, swooping in to capture half the 
bags from his partner's hands.  "You started it.  You were the one who 
wondered how they would fare against each other without their pilots.  
This obviously implies that they can pilot themselves, and therefore 
must be alive.  So there.  Besides, you've been calling Wing a 'he', 
anthropomorphizing right alongside me.  Why'd you ask in the first 
place, hmmmm?"  He waited only a second before coming up with his own 
answer.  "I bet you're just scared I'm a better pilot than you are!"

	"Hn.  And you're just scared Wing's a better mech than 
Deathscythe, and that's why you want to denude him."

	"Am not!"

	"Then let's remove all of Deathscythe's cloaking devices, too."

	"I would do no such thing!  My baby's not my baby without his 
hyperjammers!"

	"And Zero isn't Zero without Zero, which I would think should be 
even more obvious."

	The automatic doors of the grocery store slid shut behind them.

                              ************

	*click*

	Heero's fingers paused above his keyboard, thinking he had heard 
something out of the ordinary, but he shortly shrugged it off and 
continued his work.

	*click*

	He stopped again.  Yes, definitely that was a click quite unlike 
the clacking of his keys.  With narrow eyes, he turned his head to the 
side, towards the entryway leading to the living room, only to be 
greeted with yet another click.

	The innocent grin on Duo's face was revealed as he lowered the 
camera from his eye.

	"Duo, what are you doing?" Heero asked with a hint of familiar 
exasperation at his housemate's antics.  His head was tilted slightly at 
an angle, with his hair falling just so.

	"Hold that," Duo ordered, as he swiftly raised his camera once 
more, took aim, and fired.

	"Duo," Heero repeated warningly.

	"Blame Suzuhara-san," he shrugged, setting the camera down on 
the table and sitting down across from the other teen, leaning his 
elbows on the table.  "This whole picture-taking phase of hers sounded 
fun, so I dug up a camera and started taking pictures of things.  
Unfortunately for you, you're about the only thing that's interesting in 
this house, unless you want me to set up a mirror and start taking 
pictures of myself, which I think would be absolutely lacking in taste, 
and besides which, would have absolutely nothing in the way of candor.  
But you, my friend, you make a wonderful subject for candid shots, and 
so here we are."

	"I'm working, Duo," Heero pointed out, his eyes glued back to 
the screen again.

	"Yes, admittedly not the most exciting of poses, but you do get 
the most delightful and terribly picture-worthy frown of concentration 
when you're stuck, which, I assume, you currently are.  Still working on 
those honey pots?"  A short grunt of acknowledgement was received as an 
answer.  "Well, it's your fault for being such a good hacker.  Naturally 
they'd want you to help trap others.  So what's the problem?"

	Heero sighed minutely, and leaned back in his chair, although 
his hands didn't leave the keyboard.  "Maybe I've just been staring at 
this for too long.  Nothing is happening when something should be, and 
I'm sure the answer is completely obvious."

	"Well, maybe I can offer a fresh perspective."  Duo stood and 
exited the room, patting Heero reassuringly on the shoulder as he 
brushed by, and came back bearing his own laptop.  He plugged the 
network cable into Heero's machine, and booted up.  "Hey, Deathscythe, 
old buddy," he murmured to his computer as he logged himself in.  The 
wallpaper on his desktop was set to cycle through various of the more 
non-essential schematics of his former partner.  There was just 
something about the mechanical designs that he found soothing.

	Heero obligingly showed him what wasn't cooperating, and then 
got up and fetched himself something soothing to drink.  When he came 
back, he sat down again, but opted to take a short break with his tea 
instead of banging his head against the code immediately.

	"Na, Heero?" Duo asked a bit later, a tiny quirk tugging at the 
corner of his lips.

	"Aa?"

	"You running the potlib in release mode?"

	"Yeah, that was the final version Anderson gave me on Friday.  
I've haven't changed any of his code."

	"Well, that would explain why you haven't been stepping into his 
code.  And this is just low-level enough that you probably wouldn't 
anyway.  But say you're me, and I just had to rebuild the entire thing 
because I only copied the code over, and so I got the whole thing in 
debug, and then I started to step--"

	"Your point, Duo," Heero cut in curtly.

	Duo beckoned him over to his display with a brief gesture.  
Heero, rather dreading what folly was about to be exposed, got up and 
moved to stand behind Duo, where he spent several moments blinking at 
the screen.  "I'm going to kill Anderson," he stated conversationally, 
still staring at the empty functions being displayed.  "Comments that 
say 'need to finish' can not take the place of functional code, nor 
constitute any sort of completion."

	"Did he tell you he was done?"

	"Yes, he did."  He leaned in a little closer and commandeered 
the mouse, countenance becoming less and less pleasant as more and more 
functions that did absolutely nothing scrolled across the screen.  "I'll 
have to tell him how incorrect he was."

	"Aw, give the guy a break, Heero," he said, his head bumping 
against Heero's chest when he tipped it back to speak in his partner's 
direction.  "He probably thought he could finish it up this weekend and 
slip it in before you tried to use it.  It's not his fault you're a 
workaholic and decided to work on a Saturday."

	"He could have just told me he wasn't done yet."  Heero glanced 
down as he made his response, meeting the cobalt eyes through a wispy 
shield of chestnut bangs.

	"He might have the guts to lie to you, but he probably doesn't 
have the guts to tell you to your face that he hadn't finished it up 
yet."

	"If he wasn't done, then he wasn't done," Heero said mildly, 
going back to his seat and shutting his work down.  There wasn't much 
more point in continuing now.  "I'd just expect him to finish it as soon 
as possible, that's all."

	"And all the while you'd have a scowl on your face, fit to 
frighten him shitless."  Heero raised an eyebrow at him in denial.  
"Would, too.  Or least, that's what he would see."

	A tiny smile infinitely less than pleasant bloomed on Heero's 
face.  "I don't think he spared himself a scowl.  In fact, he might even 
get more than that."

	"Anderson's really gonna get it, isn't he?"

                              ************

	When next Duo saw Heero, the quiet one was seated at the kitchen 
table, picking the tails off his bean sprouts.

	"Are you really that bored?" Duo asked, snapping a picture for 
the heck of it.  It made a wonderful image of domesticity.

	Heero, not really wanting to respond with an incriminating 
'yes', sidestepped.  "It's my turn to make dinner, and it's not like I 
can get any further on my project."

	"Yes," Duo agreed.  "And I hate to keep repeating you, but 
whatever happened to 'looks the same to your stomach'?  It's not like 
the roots taste bad or anything."

	"Blame Odin," he said, once again avoiding the point.

	"When you were a bad boy, he used to sit you down and make you 
pick the tails off of bean sprouts?"

	"No, we used to sit down and pick the tails off of bean sprouts 
whenever we had them."

	"Because...?"  Duo circled around to the other side and took 
another picture.

	"I'm not quite certain.  I think he just liked them better that 
way.  It looks cleaner, and he always was a tidy man.  Of course, he 
liked to tell me that I should never consider myself too good for 
anything, even such menial chores, so maybe it was a lesson in 
humility."

	Duo snorted.  "More likely he was just taking advantage of your 
free labor.  Did he make you scrub the toilets and take out the trash, 
too?"

	"He did it, too.  It is rather pleasantly mind-numbing, though.  
I think we need that, sometimes, in our line of work."

	Duo wasn't quite sure whether he was referring to work as an 
assassin with Odin, or work as a Gundam pilot with him.  Either way, he 
chose to capture the introspective look on his partner's face with 
another snapshot.

	"Duo," Heero said, not looking up as he continued his mindless 
task.

	"Yes?"

	"Stop that.  ...Please," he appended as an afterthought.

	"What, taking pictures?"  Duo put his camera down.

	"Yes.  It's... making me jumpy."  His eyes flickered briefly at 
his friend.  "Like you're performing surveillance on me or something."

	Duo blinked.  "...Oh.  Sorry.  Should have realized that.  But 
maybe you should get used to it," he shrugged it off, but nevertheless 
ceased his picture-taking activities.  If it made Heero uncomfortable, 
then he would stop, regardless of whether or not Heero should be getting 
used to it.  "You do exist, these days, you know.  Wouldn't kill you to 
have your image captured on film once in a while.  I won't be selling 
them to the highest bidder, after all."

	He took a seat at the table as well and started picking at the 
sprouts.  "I probably need some work in humility.  Mind if I help?  I 
guess I can't do anything about the shutter sound.  Making it any softer 
somehow would probably just sound more covert, and just make you more 
jumpy.  Hmmm, but wouldn't it be funny if instead of a click, it quacked 
or something?"

	Heero stopped and leveled a steady, prussian look at him.  "No," 
he answered, quite distinctly.



----
the sound a camera makes completely eludes me at the moment, so i'm 
going to call it a click.

honey pots are, succinctly, booby traps in a network.  they're systems 
that don't have anything important on them, but are designed to be 
attractive to intruders and lure their attention away from the more 
interesting things.  they can just sit there and look pretty, or they 
can log intruder information and activity, or whatever.  the name potlib 
is logical, but not anything in particular.

believe it or not, there is actually a point to this chapter.  but i'm 
also just burning time til august.

_________________________________________
This piece of fiction is the intellectual 
property of the little turnip that could.  
The basis for this fic, i.e. Gundam Wing, 
Kyuuketsuki Miyu, et al., is the property 
of someone else.  The author can be con-
tacted at jchew@myrealbox.com.  This has 
been an entirely automated message.
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~jchew/misc/gw.html

last modified : 11/11/2001 14:24:28 PST