---------------------------
 A Momentary Inconvenience
~ A Moment in a Dorm Room ~
---------------------------
	"This is lame."  Duo plopped himself down in an armchair and 
rolled his eyes towards the ceiling of the dorm lounge.  The room was 
empty on a Saturday evening.  It seemed the other students had better 
places to spend their weekends.  Not long ago, Duo would have placed 
himself in that group.  "What is this, some sort of support group?"

	Quatre took a sedate seat across from him on a surprisingly 
comfortable sofa, looking dignified despite the dreary, dirtied pinkness 
of it.  "They told you the same thing they told the rest of us: they 
think it'll help us to talk to each other."

	An inelegant sound came from Duo's direction.  "Please don't 
tell me you believe all the crap the shrinks spew at us, Q."

	As the one that had gathered them, ostensibly at the direction 
of the Preventers' psychologists by whom they had been reviewed the day 
before, Quatre accepted the accusation with equanimity.  "I don't 
believe it just because they told us so, Duo... But I do believe that in 
this whole world, we five share something.  And I'm not saying that we 
should do as they say and..."

	"Get all warm and fuzzy with each other?" Duo phrased 
sardonically.

	Quatre smiled briefly.  "That will do."  He looked around the 
room at each of their comrades and met their eyes.  "We don't need this 
for therapy.  We're all strong people, adapatable people, who are 
hell-bent on proving that we don't need their 'supervision' to get on 
with our lives."  He received four looks to varying degrees of grimness 
indicating agreement.  "But while we're all independent people, that 
doesn't mean we're alone.  I think our last battles should have proved 
something to us.  It's important for us to stick together, if nothing 
else than to watch each other's backs.  We're the only people in the 
situation that we're in.  We can help each other.  Maybe we don't have 
to.  But there's no reason for us to make things harder for ourselves.  
We... have enough to deal with as it is.  Agreed?"

	Four slow, thoughtful, and grudgingly given nods.

	Duo's sudden laugh cut sharply through the contemplative pause.  
"You know, that makes them all drones, doesn't it?  Mindless dolls with 
their strings being pulled."  He sighed.  'Us vs. them' seemed to be a 
chronic condition for him.  "Man, that's kinda depressing, actually.  
Well, whatever.  I'm in.  So long as this doesn't involve hugging and 
kissing and crying and talking about our feelings and all that shit."

	"We will have been well and truly emasculated when that day 
comes," Wufei stated quietly from his corner of the sofa.  Duo chuckled 
softly in response, but it was not without an accompanying shudder.

	Leaning over the back of the sofa, Trowa inserted his opinion 
smoothly.  "I would not turn down an offer from someone I trust to watch 
my back."

	Heero made a soft sound of agreement before moving away from the 
seating arrangement to head towards the kitchenette attached to the 
lounge.  Although the kitchenette was used very infrequently, it seemed 
its domestic influence infected the rest of the lounge, and even on days 
not Saturday, it saw light traffic.  Heero took advantage of the stove 
and put a kettle on.

	"So if we're not going to talk about our feelings, then what are 
we going to talk about?" Duo asked with a blithe sarcasm.  "The weather?  
The price of private education these days?  The pennant race?  I think 
the Meteos have a shot at winning this year."

	"They lost their last game to the Griffs," Trowa pointed out 
with mild amusement, deciding to play for the moment.

	Having only pulled the first name that came to mind, Duo didn't 
mind being contradicted at all.  "Really?  Huh.  Who knew?  The, uh, 
Gulls, then?"

	The corner of Trowa's mouth quirked up ever so slightly.  
"They're second to last in the league, if I'm not mistaken."

	"Well, that would probably explain why I've heard of them.  
Dammit, Trowa, why do you even know these things?"

	He shrugged slightly, not quite sure of the answer himself.  He 
simply paid attention to all of the information swirling around him.

	"Duo," Quatre said, catching the attention of the pilot in 
question.  "You never did say why you were late yesterday."

	"I wasn't late," Duo answered primly.  "I just got there after 
everyone else did.  Well, not everyone.  Heero got there the same time I 
did."

	"And what kept him, then?"

	Several eyes turned towards Heero in question.  Leaning against 
the kitchenette's countertop and looking fixedly at nothing in 
particular, it took Heero a couple of seconds to realize that the topic 
of discussion had fallen into his lap.  He blinked, and tossed it back 
at Duo with a point of his thumb.  "I was with him."

	Quatre turned back to Duo.  "And what kept you, then?"

	Duo shrugged.  "Hey, like I said yesterday, I ran into some 
guys, that's all."

	"In the future, refrain from running into anyone," Wufei said, 
faint reproof tinging his words.  "It is important that we maintain the 
image of responsibility and cooperation.  We cannot achieve that without 
punctuality."

	"We weren't even late."  An edge was creeping into his tone.  
"In fact, we got there a little early, as I recall.  We didn't plan 
things down to the second, you know.  Don't know why we have to cater to 
the whims of those damn shrinks, anyway."

	"Because they're the ones that will clear us," Trowa answered 
reasonably.  "We may not need their clearance, nor particularly respect 
their opinions, but if a few months inconvenience is all it will take to 
stop them from breathing down our necks for the rest of our lives, I 
would gladly suffer it."

	"'Inconvenience'?  Is that what you call this?"

	"Honestly, Duo."  Indigo eyes slid back to rest on the blonde.  
"Other than the fact that the government is keeping tabs on us, is it 
really that bad here?"

	"'Other than that'?  That's not just a little something that I'm 
willing to sweep underneath the rug, Quatre."

	"They're just observing us.  They're not controlling us."

	"Really."  There was no question in that flat word at all.  
"They enrolled us in this school with promises of being even more of a 
pain in our ass if we refused.  They make us report to them regularly 
for some twisted form of debriefing.  They kindly provided us with a 
dinky little car to get us to their sessions, and I swear to God I saw 
someone checking the mileage on it yesterday.  They've given us an 
'allowance' in their infinite generosity.  They probably just don't want 
us stealing things, or otherwise getting into trouble.  Gotta make nice 
with us, after all."

	"You're stealing things anyway, aren't you?" Wufei asked with a 
reasonable degree of conviction.  He didn't say it as an accusation.  
Rather, he simply sought confirmation of a suspicion.

	Duo snorted.  "And what the hell is there around here to steal?"  
Before the matter could be investigated further, Duo returned to his 
original topic.  "And what is it with all of these psychological 
evaluations, anyway?  It's like they're expecting us to crack at any 
moment.  If I were them, I wouldn't want to be there when it happened."

	"Guidance counseling," Trowa rephrased mildly, using the 
department's terms.

	"Performance reviews," Quatre added wryly.

	"Progress reports."  Wufei rolled his eyes.  It was like being 
back in grade school.  Maxwell had a perfectly legitimate point, but the 
situation was what it was.  It would all be over in a little while, and 
then they could get on with their lives.

	"Oh, yeah, that's right."  Duo snorted.  "On the one hand, I'm 
all, 'what the hell are they doing with all that crap?'  And on the 
other hand, I'm all, 'what the hell are they doing with all that crap?'"  
He asked it the first time with humor, and the second time with ire.  
"You know, next time we swing by, I think I'll try and see if I can't 
get my hands on a copy of my file.  I think it'd be interesting to see 
what they think about me."

	"Ooh, get mine, too, if you can," Quatre piped up.

	Duo shot him an ironic look.

	He shrugged.  "Hey, I may understand why they're doing it, and I 
may accept it, but that doesn't mean that I'm just going to let them do 
whatever they want without my knowledge."

	"Aw, get all righteous about it, why don't you.  You know you're 
just curious."

	Quatre smiled without revealing anything.

	Duo shook his head.  "I'll see what I can see."  They sat in 
silence for a moment, and then he deliberately whined in a childish 
voice, "Are we there yet?"

	Quatre chuckled.  "Where?"

	"At the end of this little lab experiment of theirs.  This 
blows.  And for fuck's sake, Yuy, will you turn that damn kettle off!"

	Heero blinked, realized it was the kettle that had been 
whistling for quite a few seconds, that it was not just random 
background noise designed to intensify the throbbing building up in his 
head, and finally turned it off.  As he went through the motions of 
making a pot of tea, he belatedly remembered Duo's vocabulary.  "I don't 
believe 'fuck' is a noun, Duo."

	Duo's instinctive reaction was to use that same word right back 
at him, only in conjunction with 'you', until he remembered that he was 
the fool that had asked Yuy to keep an ear out for his grammar and 
diction.  Most of the time, Heero didn't even have to say anything; just 
knowing that Heero would if he slipped was often enough to make him 
think about his words a little more carefully.  Nevertheless, he made an 
exasperated sound, just to keep up appearances.

	He paused as a thought struck him.  "They worked us over with 
all that psych testing before they ever decided to stick us here... and 
they were the ones that set us up in this place, right?  Which means 
they probably chose the room assignments, and used the profiles to do 
it... and I got stuck with you?  Shit, I must be more messed up than I 
thought."

	"Duo," Quatre said chidingly.  If it was true that their 
profiles had been used to place them with their roommates, he wondered 
what it said about Heero and Duo.  It was his opinion that they'd either 
end up best friends, or tearing each other's throat out, he wasn't sure 
which.  He was definitely rooting for the former.

	Heero settled the lid onto the teapot and turned around with a 
dry look on his face.  "I doubt they would have put the two craziest 
people in the same room together, if that makes you feel any better."

	"How is that any better than getting stuck rooming with the 
craziest guy?  Do they expect me to reform you or something?"

	"Why do you assume that you're the sane one?"

	"'Cuz I never tried blowing myself up.  Duh."

	"Yes, you did."

	"...Oh, yeah."  Dammit, how did he know that?  Was the guy so 
boring that he read other people's mission reports for fun?  "But at 
least I didn't actually succeed at it!"

	"Are you sure you want to claim incompetence as a defense?"

	While Duo struggled for a moment trying to find a way to tell 
Heero off without using any L2 slang or profanity, Quatre intervened 
with an amused laugh.  "You two are both crazy."

	"We're all a little crazy," Trowa mused, not in mediation, but 
thought.  They had to have been, for them to have done what they did.

	"The question is not whether or not we're crazy: it's who's the 
craziest," Duo clarified, once again wondering what the experts thought 
of them.  "I vote for Heero.  Anyone else in?"  Not even Heero batted an 
eyelash at him.  Duo rather liked the way he could insult Heero like 
that and not have to worry about ruffling anyone's feathers.  The day 
Heero's feathers got ruffled was the day Heero's hair got unruffled.  
"No?  Score!  One vote, four absentions: I win!  Congratulations, 
Heero."

	Heero blinked blandly at him, then turned around to get himself 
a cup of tea.  He was in no mood to dispute the claim.  He was, after 
all, beginning to suspect that Zero was still haunting him, despite the 
fact that the system had been shut down and tucked away into Preventers 
custody, and he hadn't been anywhere near it or a neural interface since 
shortly after the war had ended.  That didn't seem entirely rational to 
him, but it would account for the strange, yet eerily familiar 
afterimages he felt some times.

	He tuned the rest of them out and took a sip of his tea, 
refraining from making a face at its bitterness.  He had managed to down 
half his cup before Wufei appeared beside him, taking a mug from the 
cabinet and pouring some tea for himself.

	Wufei stopped pouring after he had only a centimeter of liquid 
in his cup and raised an inquisitive eyebrow at his comrade.  "You 
brewed it strong," he observed, noting its unusually dark color.  A 
careful sniff confirmed it.

	"Dilute it to your own preferences."  Heero gestured towards the 
kettle still filled a third of the way with recently boiled water.  He 
didn't normally take his tea so powerful, and Wufei knew it, but tonight 
he was looking for a caffeine fix, and he chose tea as its vehicle on 
general principle.

	He failed to pay much attention to the rest of the conversation, 
as evidenced by the fact that at one point, Duo had to prod him to get 
his attention again, but after not too long a time, people started 
populating the hallway outside of their lounge, and with them came a 
reluctance for any of the pilots to talk as freely as they had been only 
minutes prior.  Their interaction first quieted, then got abstract and 
vague enough that no one really knew what they were talking about any 
more, and that was a sign for them to retire.

	Duo was antsy when he got back to their room.  People were still 
going about their Saturday night business out in the hallway, and it 
sort of bothered him that he was already done with his.  At the 
beginning of the semester, he would have joined them, but first he soon 
found himself unable to muster the enthusiasm, and recently he found 
himself unable to even pretend he had the enthusiasm.  As time passed, 
as he was exposed to what passed for 'normal' around here, the activity 
became less and less appealing.  He found he simply couldn't relate to 
any of the people around him, except for his fellow pilots, and while he 
could act like one of them and fit right in, it didn't satisfy him in 
any way.

	On some occasions, he stepped out after the rest of his 
classmates were back in their rooms for the night and got cozy with the 
feeling of solitude.  Prowling the night alleviated the sense of 
claustrophobia he got from staying cooped up in his room, but it didn't 
leave him any less restless.  The walls limiting his freedom existed 
everywhere, tangible and otherwise.

	It pissed him off, sometimes.  All that crap about how they'd be 
able to live normal lives after the war was a joke.  Even worse, he 
didn't even know if he could blame that all on the government, or the 
students around them, or anything at all outside of himself.  It was all 
his own fault if he'd managed to delude himself into believing it.

	Heero picked up a textbook, and the notebook stacked on top of 
it, that was sitting on his desk and shifted it over to Duo's desk.  
While the hutch sitting on top of Duo's desk allowed for him to be 
hidden from view as one entered the room, it also made access to his 
desk inconvenient at times, and so Duo had developed a habit of leaving 
things on Heero's hutchless desk instead.

	As he moved the papers, Heero noticed a quiz sticking out of the 
top of the notebook, and though the bottom half of the red numbers was 
obscured, he could still make out a score of eighty-six.  Knowing it was 
not his place to ask, he asked anyway, for lack of anything better to 
do.  He, too, found Saturday nights in their room boring sometimes.  
That did not bode well for him.  He chose to stave off the inevitable 
for as long as possible.  "Duo, the calculus quiz should have been no 
problem for you.  As a pilot, you would have had to be able to do these 
calculations in your sleep."

	"Yeah.  So?"  Duo saw no point in trying to deny the obvious.

	"So how did you end up with an eighty-six?  Are you deliberately 
trying to get poor marks?"

	"...Well, that would be the obvious answer, wouldn't it?" he 
answered, dropping into his chair and returning his things to the proper 
pile on the side of his desk next to the wall.

	Heero assumed that was supposed to mean 'yes', and he didn't 
understand the reasoning behind such behavior.  "Why?"

	"Why not?"

	That answer confused Heero even more.  Perhaps on a better day, 
it wouldn't have.  "You couldn't possibly be that bored."

	"Heh, try me."  Duo leaned back in his chair until the front two 
legs were no longer resting on the floor and proceeded to rock.

	Heero tried to figure out how he might go about making 
deliberate mistakes on a quiz, and found it rather difficult.  He 
supposed one could make careless errors left and right, such as 
'forgetting' to take the derivative of one of the terms, or integrating 
backwards across a range, but he wondered if that approach would draw 
unwanted attention.  Too many careless errors would generate admonitions 
to pay more attention in the future, wouldn't it?  On the other hand, 
Heero didn't think the teacher awarded partial credit, a concept with 
which he personally was unfamiliar.  If in the course of grading, the 
teacher never looked for the cause of an incorrect answer, perhaps he 
would never notice the degree of supposed carelessness.  If that wasn't 
the case, Heero didn't even know how he might begin to emulate a lack of 
understanding for the material.

	"To my knowledge," he proposed instead, "none of the others are 
lowering their marks.  That would make you the only one not getting 
perfects on the exams."

	"Damned if you do, damned if you don't," Duo muttered.  "Used to 
be that getting perfects all the damned time made a person stick out too 
much, and now I'm sticking out because I'm not?  That's a little unfair, 
don't you think?"

	"You're still trying not to stick out?  That isn't necessary 
anymore."

	"In your world, maybe."

	"Who's threatening us here?"  The question was, in large part, 
rhetorical.  Yes, he wanted an answer as it dealt with this odd issue of 
grades, but on the other hand, he fully expected mere paranoia to be the 
cause of it.  They all avoided doing things that would make them stand 
out too much, but so far that involved things like not working out in 
the rec room in the presence of others, and nothing academic.

	Duo was unhappy with this line of questioning, preferring that 
it be dropped instead, but since it wasn't, he took the opportunity to 
try to relate his idea of 'standing out' to Heero.  His first attempts, 
all the way back towards the beginning of the war, when they had first 
attended the same school together, had failed to register, so perhaps he 
would have more luck this time around.  Although why he even bothered to 
try now that the war was over, he wasn't quite sure.

	"Getting the highest marks isn't going to attract the attention 
of the teachers, sure, or if it does, we don't care.  What it does do is 
attract the attention of your fellow students."

	"They're not going to be reporting us to anybody."  Heero 
ignored the flashes he got in his mind's eye of ways that statement 
could be proven wrong.

	Duo rolled his eyes and tried again.  "It intimidates the 
bigger, brawnier guys.  You know, the ones that are most likely to try 
and beat you up?"

	Heero gave that a moment's thought.  "Granted.  But the guys 
from yesterday were ready to beat you up, and it had nothing to do with 
your scores."

	"Yeah.  Funny, that."  He laughed, a little puzzled.  "I gotta 
admit, I didn't see that one coming.  Really, like I'd want to have 
anything to do with Nora.  I think that's more insulting than anything 
else, that he'd put me on the same level as him."

	"You're getting nearly the same marks he is."  Well, he was 
probably still scoring more highly than the jock, but in principle it 
was true.  "Why not take the opportunity to prove to them that you're 
smarter than they are?  Smarter than everyone expected?  Why not rub it 
in that they're all wrong?"

	He winced, then glared at Heero.  "...Damn.  You really know how 
to push a guy's buttons, don't you?"

	Heero shrugged.  He'd simply used an argument he knew was more 
likely to appeal to his roommate, and there was nothing dirty about 
that.  "Doesn't doing badly take more effort than doing well?"

	"What else am I going to do with that effort?" Duo scoffed.

	"Surely there must be something more productive for you to do."  
His sense of efficient propriety would not allow otherwise.

	"What, like underwater basketweaving?"

	Okay, that one made his head hurt.  "...Why would you want to 
weave a basket under water?"

	Staring at his perplexed expression, Duo thought about trying to 
explain that one for all of two seconds before deciding to just let it 
go.  "...Never mind.  Look, I'm certainly open to suggestions."  He said 
that not invitingly, but mockingly, as if knowing just how unlikely it 
would be for Heero to come up with something interesting.

	Heero tossed him the textbook he had picked up from the used 
bookstore.  He had finished studying it a week ago and had initially 
thought he might sell it back to the bookstore, but some strange impulse 
made him decide to keep it.  Perhaps it was simply that having 
non-essential possessions was still a novelty.

	Duo automatically caught the item thrown his way and glanced at 
the cover.  "You want me to study fluid dynamics?"  He used an 
incredulous tone, but the engineer in him did start purring in 
anticipation.  He told it to stop that.

	Heero shrugged and gestured at the next book on the stack.  
"I've got general relativity here, too.  Or modern applications of 
advanced artificial intelligence."

	"You're a real geek sometimes, ya know that, Yuy?"

	"And you're the one that got roomed with me," he pointed out 
with a certain smug amusement, even though he didn't put much faith in 
what the shrinks had to say about them.  "Feel free to find your own 
hobby.  But your choices here are, of course, limited."

	Leaving Duo to frown over that, he decided to hit the shower.  
If he had any expectations of the hot water working any wonders on him, 
he was disappointed.  Having nothing to occupy his thoughts while he was 
there, his mind unfortunately wandered away for a little bit to parts 
unknown, and when he suddenly came back to himself, he wasn't sure how 
long he had blanked out.  It couldn't have been that long if the water 
was still running hot.

	Feeling disoriented, he quickly finished cleaning himself and 
stepped out, the throbbing returning along with his consciousness.  
Music assaulted him when he opened the door.  Duo had kept it at a 
reasonable volume, but the beat seemed to resonate ominously with the 
pulse of his blood.  Taking a deep breath, he steeled himself before 
leaving the dubious sanctuary of the bathroom.

	Not wanting to expend the effort it would take to be creative, 
he decided to simply do his homework.  It was, perhaps, somewhat 
abnormal that he could plow his way through his problem sets with little 
trouble, despite his inability to concentrate, but then again, calculus 
did not require much concentration from him.  When he hit the proof at 
the end, however, his mind completely balked.

	He rubbed tiredly at his temples and gave up.  "Could you turn 
that down, please?"

	Duo poked his head around the hutch on his desk from where he 
had been hiding with his laptop.  There was something of a 'you've gotta 
be kidding me' look on his face.  They'd had a discussion on what 
constituted acceptable volume, and this fell well within the range.  
Heero had never had a problem with it before.  One look at his face, 
however, soon had Duo sporting a different expression.  "You okay there, 
buddy?  You're looking a little green around the gills."

	Heero sighed.  "I do not have gills."

	"You were kinda zoning out earlier, too.  That seemed kinda 
unusual."  When Heero did nothing more than close his eyes and shrug, 
Duo went on.  "Something up?"

	After a brief silence, Heero answered shortly.  "It's nothing.  
Just a headache."

	It was sobering for Duo to think on what a doozy of a headache 
it must have been for Heero to have even acknowledged its existence.  He 
turned his music down, and briefly considered offering to get some 
painkillers before he nearly laughed.  Of course Heero would refuse, so 
there was no point in asking.  Only in retrospect did he realize he'd 
seen signs of this before, although nothing so bad as tonight.  That 
wrinkle between Heero's brows was familiar, and he remembered recent 
nights on which Heero had quietly retired to his bed a little earlier 
than Duo would have expected.

	He glanced at the clock and figured it wouldn't be too 
completely out there to suggest a similar course of action.  "Maybe you 
can sleep it off."

	Heero didn't move for a while, but when he did, he turned his 
actions into a silent concession, getting up from his desk to slip 
beneath the cool covers on his bed.  It didn't seem to do much good, but 
it beat sitting at his desk pretending to work.  All he had to do now 
was just grit his teeth and ignore it.  Pain was fleeting; it would 
pass.

	Duo sat contemplatively for a minute before shutting off his 
music, flipping on his desk lamp, and turning off the room lights.  
After another minute, he shut down his laptop, flipped the book on fluid 
dynamics over several times, then settled down to read.



_________________________________________
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Kyuuketsuki Miyu, et al., is the property 
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http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~jchew/misc/gw.html

last modified : 2/10/2004 23:30:00 PST