---------------------- Finding a Hobby ~ A Moment of Haven ~ ---------------------- Noticing that he no longer heard the sound of ground pork being stirred behind him, Heero gathered his minced green onion together into a neat little pile on the chopping board, and turned around to find Duo sitting at the table with a far-off look on his face, bowl of meat resting neglected beside the elbow supporting the hand on which his head was propped up. "Are you finished with that, Duo?" "Hm?" Duo's eyes wandered up to meet Heero's, having previously been caught by the way Heero held the kitchen knife in his hand: confidently, comfortably. His pinkie didn't entirely join its fellows wrapped around the handle. The edge of the blade faced away from his body as he stood there expectantly for his answer. His other hand was a little wet from handling the washed greens, but it wasn't dripping. Heero also held that up and away from his body at about waist level, his fingers curled naturally, elegantly, loosely toward his palm. Duo blinked, and answered the question. "Yeah." Heero turned back to face his chopping board, and Duo noted the tiny little toss of his head that would shake the errant strands of his fine, dark hair aside from where they hung in a lazy inward curve that framed his eyes. He allowed himself a small, almost dreamy smile as he studied his housemate, perhaps roommate-to-be. He usually tried to keep such conspicuous expressions to himself, but this one wanted out (didn't they all?), and he reasoned that perhaps he could weird Heero out with it. That would balance out the overall cost of letting it show. Heero turned once more, with his green onions piled neatly upon the flat of his blade, and approached. His bare feet made only a faint squeak of sound as his skin left the linoleum. With his empty hand, he pulled the bowl safely away from Duo before pushing his knife's burden off the metal and into the meat with the index and middle fingers of his left hand. After sweeping his blade clean with his fingers, he flipped his hand over and used the edge of his knife to lightly scrape his fingers clean in a cool, well-practiced movement. One final pass over his knife, his index finger and thumb on either side of the blade to get those last, persistently clinging bits of vegetable matter, a flick of his fingers, and then he pushed the bowl back to Duo's elbow with the dry back of his hand before returning to his place by the kitchen sink. Duo sighed with a silent, satisfied exhalation. You had to like a guy that knew how to handle a knife. He watched as Heero washed first the kitchen knife, and then the chopping board, his movements orderly and efficient. His left foot lifted to absently rub a little at an itch on his right calf. And what a well-formed calf it was, too, just one more piece of that fine, wondrous machine named Heero Yuy. The aforementioned Heero Yuy was once again noticing the distinct lack of mixing sounds coming from behind his back, and so he shot a glance over his shoulder to see what the hold-up was. "Duo. Mix," he said simply. Duo took his head off his hand and reached out without looking to take a hold of the bowl and begin stirring with the spoon. The words had been a nice little package of reminder, reprimand, and request, all rolled into one. A few seconds ticked by, and Heero spoke once more. "You okay, Duo?" One eyebrow slightly higher than the other, Duo observed, or perhaps it was just the way Heero had of tilting his head just so in a familiar, inquisitive manner. His eyes seemed a little more open, too, a subtle break from his usual bland expression, the sharply alert eyes in a deceptively impassive face. The words had been spoken evenly, neutrally, unintrusively, but that he spoke them at all conveyed volumes of meaning beyond the words themselves. "Sure." The slightly belated reply fell into the uncluttered space between them. "So why aren't you paying any attention to what you're doing?" "Oh, but I am," he responded blithely. "What I'm doing right now just happens to be watching you, is all." That one eyebrow rose another degree. A blink, and the eyes opened again in curious non-understanding. The hands were drying themselves with the dish towel, and by habit they made sure the spaces between the fingers were dry as well. "This is fun," Duo declared in explanation. "Watching me?" Heero's eyes flickered down at himself, then back up to Duo, and then pointedly back to himself, clearly indicating to his grinning partner that he didn't see the attraction. "Yup. I didn't think it would be either, but no, it is." Duo hadn't quite known what to expect when he had started this little test, but he had heard that it was quite normal to sit and stare and drool over the object of one's affection. He hadn't quite gotten to the drooling part of things, although the crisp smell of a dinner coming together was starting to make him a little hungry. Maybe after he was done studying all the little things Heero did, like the way he was standing there blinking indulgently at him, maybe he would get on with studying all the other little things that made up Heero, like the sleek muscles and the compact bottom, and then they would have even more fun; but even so, right now he was still getting a kick out of it. There was just something remarkably cozy about such comfortable familiarity. "I think I'll make Heero-watching my new hobby." And... there. There was that faint hint of consternation on Heero's face he had been expecting. ************ After dinner was done, and they were finishing up the dishes while standing just a little bit closer to each other than they really had to, Heero turned the conversation to plans for the night. "I was going to give Relena a call. Did you want to talk to her?" Duo shook his head casually. "Nah. I was going to change the oil in the car today. Just say 'hi' for me, okay? And, uh...." His lips twitched as he tried to find something nice to say. He still liked Relena, of course, but there was the small matter of her conspiring against them that told him he ought to be wary of her for a while. "Yeah. Tell her 'hi', and to watch her back, 'cuz she's next." There. That was pleasantly neutral, right? He added a suspiciously sunny smile to it for extra effect. Heero gave him a Look, but otherwise accepted the statement with a nod and watched as Duo's grin softened around the edges before the boy with the braid took off to get to work. A little while later, Heero was settling down to make his call. He knew that Relena would probably be home and was usually available at this time. As a matter of habit, he patched their vidphone connection through his laptop to add an extra layer of security. Their entire home was set up with a local wireless network, but beyond the tight bubble encompassing the house, Heero put little faith in global wireless technology. Sure, the 802.11D protocols had come a long way from their original formulations, but no matter the level of data encryption, transmissions could still be intercepted by anyone that happened to be standing in the right place with a receiver. In fact, he himself had taken advantage of that very thing. A malicious adversary still had to figure out how the transmission was scrambled over the frequencies, but it could be done. Nevertheless, for most casual calls, he didn't go through the trouble of fetching his computer and setting it up, but this was a casual call to a government official's private line. It was just a minute later that Relena's private line was ringing and she was picking up. Her image flickered to life on the screen in front of him. "Heero." She smiled at him with pleasure. "Time for my regular checkup, hmm?" "Relena," Heero greeted amiably. "You know you like it when I call." "Well, there's no denying that. I always enjoy hearing from you." Idly, she shuffled some papers on top of her desk into a neat little stack. "How are you?" "Not bad." But of course, Heero would want details, so she obliged. "Busy as always, of course, but not unbearably so. The only troublesome matter right now is that mess of the financial misreporting from L4 on their holdings in L2. Enough numbers to make my head spin, and I'm not even one of the accountant consultants. But still, things aren't as bad as they could be. I was slightly worried that the world would end while I was on vacation, but that didn't prove to be the case. I think I'm getting to be as bad as you are. Perhaps I'll take a vacation more often?" "You're always welcome," he answered. Maybe not right now, though. Duo needed a little time to recover from the results of her last visit. "Thank you. And you, Heero? How have you and Duo been?" The way her expression brightened said that she wanted to hear something interesting. Heero answered first with a raised eyebrow. "Suzuhara-san hasn't been filling you in on all the details?" he asked sardonically. "Well, only the details she has," she answered forthrightly. "But you two boys are being so absolutely discreet that she doesn't have very many at all. You two aren't mad at us, are you?" "Mad?" Heero took a moment to dwell upon the boundaries encompassed by the word. "No." "But...?" He considered his next words carefully. "Granted, you and Suzuhara-san simply pointed some facts out to us and informed us of your personal conclusions about them, but was that really necessary?" "Necessary?" Relena laughed lightly. "Not in a life and death sort of way, no, of course not." A slight crinkle appeared on Heero's forehead. "Then what made you do it?" "Hmmm...," she mused. Leaning her elbows on the tabletop, she propped her chin up in her hands. With her head cocked to one side, she looked like a normal teenage girl. "Well, aside from the completely obvious fact that you two are perfect for each other? It would be such a shame for you two not to fully capitalize on that, given such a rare opportunity." "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should, Relena." "I know that. But do you have any idea at all how frustrating it was to watch you two be so perfectly unaware of the possibilities? If you had considered it on your own and found the idea lacking, then of course we would have let things lie, but how can you make good decisions when you're not completely informed, hmm?" Aha, that one should appeal to his logical side. Yes, this was indeed more fun than the debates on the Senate floor. "We had all the facts already," he pointed out. Nothing new had been revealed to them about their behavior and relationship, after all. "But you weren't seeing them from all possible angles. My duty as a friend to you both includes providing you with a different point of view. You've said it yourself that working with Duo is good because the two of you think in different ways, and therefore come up with different ideas, right?" Heero conceded the point with the barest inclination of his head. Their personalities did mesh together well in a rather complementary fashion. He liked it when things fit together like that. "Have you and Suzuhara-san been memorizing everything we've ever said about each other?" She blinked innocently at him, idly twirling a small lock of wheat-blonde hair around her finger. "Only the important things." Women. Perhaps it was only inevitable that he become intimately involved with another man. Woman's logic appeared to be completely different from man's logic. "Besides," she continued. "Haven't you ever... well, perhaps not. But did you ever consider getting romantically involved with someone before?" Heero shrugged as an answer. "Not seriously. I thought about it briefly, when Duo was still trying out the dating scene, but I decided that it wasn't for me." "You just decided? Just like that?" A tiny frown of disapproval bloomed on Heero's expression. "I never decide anything 'just like that'." "Of course." Relena dipped her head in contrition. "What sort of factors did you take into consideration?" He closed his eyes for just a moment, accessing his databanks for the details of that time. "I admit to being somewhat biased by the available candidates at the time. It didn't take me long to see that I didn't need or want one of those girls in my life." "But Duo did. Surely they were good for something." He shook his head slightly. "Not really. He was just using them to try to fill some holes in his life." The only emotional hole they could fill for Duo at the time was his initial, almost feverish need to feel 'normal' as soon as the war was over. Fortunately, he had soon realized that he was trying to jump into that too quickly, and he had taken a deep breath and slowed down. "I had no such hole in my life." "None at all?" Now that didn't seem very fair to her. She had had her own fair share of holes, some of which, she admitted, had been filled by that mysterious young man that had she spied washed ashore one day. "Well, maybe yours were just being filled by Duo?" A moment's consideration, then another shake of his head. "No. When we were in school, Duo didn't mean as much to me then as he does now." Relena smiled, listening to Heero unwittingly confess that Duo did mean a lot to him now, not that that was ever in any doubt. "Duo tried dating some of the girls in Haven, didn't he?" Once more, an expressive shrug of his shoulders. "Didn't work out." "Probably because he didn't need them anymore?" "Maybe," he corrected. "Because maybe he already had everything he needed, hmm?" She shot him an arch look. Heero returned the look with a dry one of his own. "It always comes back to this, doesn't it?" "Well, yes." She was completely unrepentant. "So you see, Heero, we had to point it out. If Duo had kept looking for something he already had, he would have went crazy. Not pointing it out would have been like... like not telling someone he had spinach stuck between his teeth. Or not pointing out the glasses that were sitting on top of his head." Heero had just been compared to a piece of masticated spinach. How pleasant. He let it slide, instead letting the corner of his lips quirk upwards in amusement. "So you did this for Duo?" "If it pleases you to think so, yes," she replied impishly. "I know you'd walk through heaven and hell for him." Well, he'd already agreed to hell, that was true enough. Perhaps heaven would pop up in a future conversation. "By the way, Duo says hi, and to watch your back, because you're next." "Oh. My." She lifted her head from her hands and sat up straight again. "That doesn't sound too pleasant." Heero put on what he thought was a reassuring expression. "I'm sure he won't do anything too dramatic." A small, rueful smile appeared on Relena's face. "Actually, I can't say I wouldn't appreciate it, though." "Everything okay?" he asked, a faint concern tinging his voice. "Okay? Yes. But... it does get a bit tiresome at times. Perhaps... perhaps having someone would help." She laughed nervously. "You know, that's the first time I've ever said that aloud. I don't know what it is about you, Heero...." "I'm sorry we can't do anything to help, Relena," he apologized. "About the work load, or the company." "Oh, don't you apologize for that, Heero Yuy," she reprimanded him. "I took this job, and now I'm the only one that can deal with the consequences of that decision. Well, in any case, until such a marvelous thing should happen, I'll just have to live vicariously through the two of you!" "And thus would be yet another reason to push this new relationship on us?" he said dryly. "Perhaps." A wink accompanied that saucy reply. "I think that if I couldn't claim having some small part in getting you two together, then I'd just be unbearably jealous of you. And you two are, right? Together?" "Of course," he answered easily. A little too easily for Relena. "You're answering literally, aren't you?" she accused, her eyes narrowing slightly as she caught on. "You are. You know what I mean, Heero." "I do," he replied cordially. An expectant pause. "...Well? I'm only asking you in such a straightforward manner because I know you like things simple and straightforward." "So now you're doing this for me?" "Oh!" she huffed. "You and Duo are truly perfect for each other. You can both be absolutely uninformative when you want to be. I'm not looking for every last detail here, Heero. I just want to know that you're happy, that's all." "Man can never truly be happy, Relena." "Ugh, I think I liked you better when you hardly said a word at all! Content, then. And I won't even ask you to speculate about Duo. So are you content, Heero?" Heero finally took some mercy on her. There was too much sincerity in her eyes for him not to. "I am, Relena." But he had been content before, so as a bonus treat, he added on some additional tidbits for her in an oblique answer to her original question. "I've been granted the opportunity to discover all sorts of things about myself, and I'm not displeased with what I've found out so far. It's... nice." It could have been exciting, breathtaking, thrilling, exhilarating, or any number of colorful adjectives, but none of them could quite capture the way pushing his limits in self-exploration gave him this gentle tingle that radiated outwards from his chest in a pleasant wave of fulfillment. So he stuck with 'nice'. "'Nice'," Relena repeated, amused by his once again uninformative choice of words. Nevertheless, she was at least being told that he and Duo were indeed walking down new pathways, and that they seemed to be doing well. Heero wouldn't be having a 'nice' time if Duo weren't too. She smiled. "I'm glad to hear that. I would hate to have been so very mistaken about you two." Her smile widened enough to indicate that her last statement was meant as light teasing. "So now you're doing this for you again?" That elicited a delighted laugh from her. "Oh, I just can't keep up with you. You must be the only one that can keep Duo on his toes." It occurred to Heero that Relena seemed to have all the ins and outs of their relationship thought out rather well. "Relena." He tilted his head to one side. "Just how long have you been putting Duo and me together in your head?" "Oh, I don't know," she stalled obviously, drawing out her words. "A couple of years now?" Blink. "Years?" Heero repeated, slightly incredulous. He had believed it to be merely the result of mixing one meddling neighbor and one bored and slightly lonely friend. "Years," she confirmed with a nonchalant shrug. "At least since that Christmas party at Quatre's, a couple of years back. You know, when Duo managed to drag you on to the floor to tango. I just thought that I had never, ever seen Heero humor anyone like that before. And every time you looked out over the floor, your eyes fell on him first." "He was probably the loudest one out there," Heero suggested in his defense, although he didn't deny the possibility. It irritated him only mildly that all of these 'clues' had somehow managed to slip past his notice, but he placated his ruffled ego by reasoning that they were the sorts of things that only became clear with hindsight. Or if one was a woman. Other than the blow to his pride, however, he didn't mind finding out about all of these little things. In fact, he found it rather interesting to watch all the tiny pieces slowly come together to form a single, flawless picture, a satisfyingly complete context in which to study this fine new state of things. "If you say so," Relena conceded, humoring him. She knew which battles were worth fighting and which weren't. It was also a line Heero tended to use on Duo. "You know you love him anyway, loud mouth and all." "Hn," he said contemplatively. "Maybe." She looked indignant for a moment. "Only maybe?" "Maybe," he said again, slightly defensive. "I'm still working out the details of 'love'." Oh, it was just Heero being Heero, then. Relena let out a sigh of relief. "Heero, you don't need to define love precisely, or to set limits on it. It just is. As a matter of fact, most people will agree that it's limitless, that it cannot be defined. It means something different to everyone." He had this somewhat miffed look on his face that said, 'well, that's annoying.' She smothered her amused giggle into a small smile. "Just go with what your gut tells you, Heero, and never mind the details." "This is important, Relena. I'm not going to leave something like this up to a reasonable guess. I don't want to lie to Duo, even unintentionally." Something cooed 'awwww' in her head with a sigh. "Well, when you put it that way, alright then. But don't keep him waiting too long, okay? If you love him, he needs to hear it. None of those little games you men play." "I know." And he wasn't agreeing that men played games. He didn't think Duo would believe it right away, though, but if that was the case, then he'd just have to keep on proving it until he did. Heero stopped, took a second look at that idea, and chalked up another point in the 'love' column. ************ When Duo went upstairs to wash up after his time with their jeep, he noticed that he didn't hear any voices coming out of Heero's room, so after he was done, he leaned around the door frame and poked his head into Heero's room. "Called her already?" Heero looked up from his laptop. "Yes. Was there something else you wanted me to tell her?" He hastily shook his head. "Nah. Just wondering, ya know. Did you actually tell her to watch her back?" Heero inclined his head once in the affirmative. "You could have just told her yourself, you know. You didn't have to go hide in the garage." "I was not hiding!" he protested, stepping entirely into the room so that he could put his hands on his hips in a display of mock outrage. "Yes, you were. You always disappear somewhere during those calls." "The oil really needed to be changed! We were almost three hundred kilometers overdue." "Changing the oil on a Saturday night?" Duo removed his hands from his hips to cross his arms defensively over the front of his chest. "It's easier when the engine is cold." There was a patient look on Heero's face. "Duo." That one word in quiet chiding was enough to make Duo squirm. "What?" All Heero did was level an expectant look at him. He cracked. "Okay. Fine. Geez. I wasn't hiding, though. I may have been avoiding, but I wasn't hiding." "Why?" "Well...," he hesitated, scraping a decent reason together that didn't sound too crazy when spoken aloud. He took his time in wandering a few steps to the wall and leaning against it. "I'm just giving you two your time together, that's all. She likes you." "She likes you, too," Heero calmly answered. "Well, yeah, I guess. But you're her favorite." He shoved his hands in his pockets, and found the washer he had been looking for. He made a note to himself to remove that from his pocket before tossing his pants in the laundry. "There are only two of us, Duo. It's unreasonable to speak of favorites in a selection set of two." "Whatever," he said dismissively. "She still likes you better. Everyone likes you better." Obviously, Duo was not to be dissuaded. "What makes you think that?" Duo shrugged. "I dunno. You're Relena's favorite. I think you're Ms. S's favorite. You're definitely Ami's favorite. I swear, you're probably even Lady Une's favorite pilot. The chicks in the IT department totally dig you. You've gotta be the media's favorite. Relatively speaking, anyway, since they don't actually know you, just the image." "Not true." "People would be making action figures of you if they could get a good model of you. Like, ones without a space suit and non-detachable helmet. You're everyone's favorite." The idea of little plastic copies of himself being played with by six-year-olds did not appeal to Heero. "I am not everyone's favorite, Duo." "Yeah?" The tilt of Duo's chin was challenging. "Prove it." Easy enough. "You're my favorite." Blink. Was it just Duo, or did it seem a little bit warmer in the room now? He scowled lightly, pushing himself away from the wall in a gesture of exasperation. He had walked right into that one. "Dammit, Yuy! One of these days, I'm going to get you like you get me. I am going to strike you speechless, just you wait." "You already get me, Duo. You get me every day." The ambient temperature must have risen another notch. "Stop that!" he cried, hoping his light skin wasn't betraying him again. Hmm. This was proving to be somewhat fun, thought Heero. He couldn't identify just what it was about making Duo flush that he found so enjoyable. He didn't even have to try hard. He had only to speak the truth. Maybe he had just found himself a new hobby as well. ------- dunno why i went off on wireless technology, but 802.11 is the protocol they use now in wireless transmission, and it's pretty insecure, so i figure in the future, they've probably worked out some of the bugs three releases later in 802.11d. _________________________________________ 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 : 9/6/2002 01:34:12 PST