--------------------- A Week at HQ ~ A Moment of Haven ~ --------------------- "Don't you have anything better to do than lounge about in the commissary, Maxwell?" Duo looked up from his seat at the small table, where he had been most studiously intent upon building a fortress with little cups of non-dairy creamer and sugar packets. "Wufei!" he said excitedly. "Hey, long time no see, buddy. What brings you out to this little corner of nowhere?" Wufei looked at him with an eyebrow raised. This 'corner of nowhere' as a city was the political heart of the world, which was why the main Preventers headquarters were located there, along with the offices of numerous global political entities. This corner of the grounds was the central dining facility, an area that saw a lot of traffic, even if they were at a small two-seater table along the edge of the room. "I work here," he responded dryly, putting down his breakfast tray and sitting down across from the part-time Preventer. "What's your excuse?" "Hey, I'm working, too. Kind of. Sort of. Well, between jobs, really. You probably know we just got back from Relena's little colony tour... Ah. I get it now. You came all the way out here just to see us, right? Aww, ain't that sweet?" The friendly barb failed to net any interesting response from the L5 man, so he dropped it. "So you just got back from... oh, wherezit. South America somewhere, right?" "Aa." "And I imagine that if anything at all interesting had happened, you'd tell me, right?" he asked, dismantling his condiment construction and stacking it back up neatly in their allotted containers. "Aa." "So I guess I shouldn't pester you with questions, right?" "It appears that Yuy has been able to teach you a few things." Duo made an indelicate sound. "Pbft. Maybe I've just been able to learn a few good things about Yuy on my own, eh? He don't gotta teach me nothing." "Except some grammar, perhaps," Wufei responded calmly, attempting to cut into his french toast with a knife that held no edge. "I did that on purpose, you know." "Hn. Speaking of which, where is Yuy?" "Am I my partner's keeper?" Wufei's lips turned up into a small smirk. "You may not be his keeper, but he is very likely yours." "Great," he responded brightly. "So does that mean he's responsible for any reprehensible behavior on my part?" "You'll have to take that up with him. Did you eat him for breakfast or something? I notice you have no food before you." Duo bounced out of his chair. "As a matter of fact, he is picking up some food right now. And I notice that this table is sadly lacking in napkins, even if there is quite the supply of sugar packets. Would you excuse me for a moment?" He bowed slightly and departed in search of his breakfast accessories. By the time Heero got to the table, Wufei had switched to using a spoon to cut through his french toast. It seemed to be sharper than the knife. "Hn," Wufei uttered, eyeing the other young man as he set two trays down on the table. "You really are his keeper." "Hm?" Heero said, taking the seat that Duo had vacated a minute before. "Is it your responsibility to feed him?" "No. It's a... bet. Agreement. Wager. Something. Don't ask," he advised, not really sure why he was doing this again. Duo seemed to have 'bet' him that Relena would end up taking a vacation, and the wager was that the loser would have to serve up breakfast the next day. Heero hadn't actually agreed to any such bet, but he found it easier to just fetch Duo's breakfast than argue the point. He surveyed the table with a frown. "Napkins." "Duo's gone to get some. Good tour?" "Aa. You?" "Aa." And with those few words, it seemed that they had communicated everything of immediate import, up until Duo got back with a stack of napkins. "Heero, you're sitting in my seat." Heero gestured at the next table, indicating an empty chair with his spoon, which he had used in the first place without even bothering to consult the knife. "No way," Duo complained, waving the napkins around to emphasize his point. "I got here first." "You weren't here when I got here," Heero answered placidly, taking a bite of his breakfast. "Hmpf." It only took him a brief moment before he decided there was only one way to solve this problem, and that was to sit down in his chair. Of course, Heero happened to be occupying that spot at the time, but he didn't let that bother him. "Do you mind?" Heero asked rather pointedly, automatically moving his arms out of the way of the person in his lap. Duo would throttle him with his braid if he managed to touch his sticky utensils to his hair. "No, thank you for asking," Duo responded cheerfully. "Is that a scoop of vanilla ice cream on my waffle?" "They were out of whipped cream." "So instead you use ice cream...? Sometimes, you are too damn cool for words, Yuy." He picked up his own fork and spoon and started smooshing the ice cream down and around the top of his fresh waffle, the heat from the waffle and the strawberry sauce facilitating his task. Heero glared mildly at the braid in front of his face for a while before he decided that it wasn't worth the trouble of dislodging his partner and took up his utensils once again with a tiny sigh that ruffled the loose hairs wisping out from behind Duo's ear. Although it wasn't overt enough to warrant retribution by the injured party, there was a definitely amused edge to Wufei's expression as he observed the two-headed four-armed fork-and-spoon-wielding creature sitting before him and moving with remarkable grace. "So how is everything at home?" Duo inquired, making sounds of approval as he sampled his breakfast-dessert combination. Wufei gave them a brief report on the state of the world, interrupted only briefly when Duo fell down a few inches with an oomph as Heero finally managed to maneuver his legs out from underneath his partner's behind. Not only was it a lot easier for the boy-turned-seat-cushion to see what he was doing, his legs were starting to go numb. Following this, Wufei asked about the general state of the colonies, and Heero briefed him concisely, with Duo adding all of the more interesting, yet mostly irrelevant, details to brighten the narration. "And now that you're back on Earth, you're going home?" Wufei asked. "Yes," Heero answered. "But we're bringing Relena with us. We're waiting the week out here until she finishes arranging things with her office." "So we're actually going on vacation," Duo piped up before intercepting Heero's fork with his mouth. Slightly startled by the utensil that was suddenly bare by the time he brought it up to his lips, Heero blinked, noticed Duo munching away on something, and gave up on the food for the moment, electing instead to take a sip of his milk. "She needed a vacation, but standard policy dictates that we take a break between stints." "Does she know she's about to become privy to one of the best kept Preventer secrets?" "Hmf?" Duo swallowed before continuing. "That we're forced to take breaks?" Wufei favored him with a Look. "Where you two live." "I know it's not public knowledge, but I didn't think it was actively kept a secret." "Even I know only approximately where you live. It would take quite some work for me to get access to your precise location unless the two of you informed me." "Cool. So I guess if Relena ever tells anyone where we live, Heero here will finally get a chance to kill her, eh?" Heero might have considered spilling something in Duo's lap, if Duo hadn't been sitting in his lap. Wufei snorted lightly. "I'd better find the two of you something to do in the meantime to keep you occupied, then. Having a bored Duo loose on the base would undoubtedly be a bad thing." "Aww, thanks for caring, babe." ************ The first thing Heero noticed about Duo when they met in the hall to go to dinner was that Duo was whistling. He did not think this to be a good sign. "Duo?" he asked carefully as Duo caught up and began to walk beside him. "Hm?" the young man responded cheerily. "How did your session go?" The question was nice and neutral even though there were a number of suspicious possibilities dancing in his brain. Duo should have just gotten back from his appointment with the base psychologists. Because he didn't like the doctors, or psychologists in general, there was no particular reason for him to appear lighthearted and happy unless a) the shrinks had done something to him, or b) he had done something to the shrinks. "Great, Heero. Just great." A quick glance at his violet eyes confirmed his observation that his pupils were responding properly to the light. The bounce in his step was natural and uncontrived. The inflection of the reply had just the right amount of confidence. Therefore, the proper answer was likely option b. "What did you do to her?" Duo blinked innocently at him. "To who?" "The doctor. What did you do to her?" "Why, Heero," he answered pleasantly. "Whatever do you mean? I just sat down and had a nice, long chat with her. You met the new doctor, right? Laurie?" First name basis. Indicative of either a friendly relationship, or a mocking one. This was not the psychologist that had previously evaluated Duo, either, implying either the possibility of a fresh start, or a new plaything. A second sidelong glance into his eyes revealed no wicked gleam. Heero grunted something affirmative as an answer. "Yup, she was great. I think we worked well together. We took a look at the notes from the last guy, reviewed some of the facts, talked a bit, consulted the big ol' book o' disorders -- you know, that DSM whatever number they're on now -- and guess what? I'm clean!" Heero raised an eyebrow at him. "You were always 'clean', Duo. You just managed to convince Dr. Browning otherwise." He was the psychologist that had first evaluated them. "The guy deserved it," Duo defended himself scornfully. "He was a stuffy little prick who was altogether too eager to find something wrong with me. Anyway, no, I haven't always been clean, I bet. I was one messed up kid, you know. So me and Laurie, we decided that maybe, just maybe I was almost sorta kinda borderline PD -- heh, like borderline borderline! But whether I was or not, or still am, I seem to be pretty stable these days and my record has been officially cleared!" "Am I supposed to congratulate you?" He refrained from adding that Duo was just clearing up a mess he had created himself. He had already said 'I told you so' once in this conversation. "I'll live without it. But we ought to celebrate, anyway. You can buy me dinner." "Dinner is free, Duo." They were eating in the HQ dining hall again, after all. "Well, I guess you lucked out then, didn't you?" ************ When Duo got back to their temporarily assigned office with a couple of fresh bottles of water, he found Heero glaring at the computer screen with a rather aggressive disinterest as he clicked away with his mouse, his fingers uncharacteristically tapping the buttons while he was presumably waiting for things to load. Duo leaned against the doorframe and studied the look on his face carefully, along with the general body posture, and decided that there was only one likely cause for it. "How the hell did Mark manage to annoy you all the way out here?" If Heero was at all surprised by Duo's accurate guess, he didn't show it. "I got mail." "Ah, the wonders of modern technology. Nevertheless, it seems to me as if he's done something especially annoying, rather than just usually annoying." He pushed himself off the doorframe and headed over to Heero's desk to set the water down. When he got there, he had to do a double take at what was being displayed on the monitor. "Heero... why are you looking at porn ads?" Heero's finger jabbed the mouse one last time before he leaned back in his chair, took a hold of the new bottle of water, and twisted off the cap with a jerky motion that failed to satisfy him. "This is a dummy address I use when I have to supply an address to any of those sites that deal in the less than legal traffic I research sometimes." "Well. Okay. So I guess I can accept the fact that you have a mailbox filled with porn ads. Now the question is, why are you looking at them, and what does Mark have to do with it?" "Mark, in his infinite wisdom," Heero began, and Duo nearly smirked at the caustic flavor of the words lurking beneath the mild tone. "Decided to mail me a file encoded as an image. One guess as to what kind of image he selected." Duo nodded his head slightly, indicating his understanding and utter lack of need to actually make that guess. "Which is fine," Heero continued after taking a sip of water. "It's the data in the image, not the image itself, that matters. Unless, of course, the data is a worm I was working on. He thought e-mail was the best way of getting it to me, but he couldn't send it through the Preventers' network because I quite deliberately updated the security to detect that sort of worm. Therefore he thought to send it outside the network, and managed to find this address on file somewhere." "Which is also fine," Duo said in a reasonably confident voice. "Unless he sent this pseudo-porn ad to a mailbox full of porn ads, and neglected to tell me how I could recognize it before he took off for the week." The computer beeped, indicating to him that this image had failed the test. He flipped open the next one. "...and you're just looking through all of them and running the decryption algorithm on every image and seeing if it pops up with something familiar?" "Not all of them. I have an approximate window of time during which he would have sent it, but Mark may not have written me at the same time he mailed the file, and this lousy mail service doesn't necessarily guarantee instant delivery to my mail box." The computer beeped again, and again Heero moved on to the next message. "Have fun, buddy," Duo said, trying to keep the amusement out of his voice. Then he was staring quizzically at the mass of tangled flesh being displayed at the moment, head turned one way, then the other as he tried to figure it out. "...What is that?" "Hn." Heero studied the image as well, eyes tracing the lines of limbs in a methodical attempt to sort out the action. How on earth could something be erotic if it was so outlandish it was confusing first? "...Oh," they both exclaimed simultaneously, each having discovered at long last just what was going where, and not being particularly pleased with the answer. The computer thankfully beeped again, and they reached out as one towards the mouse to clear the screen of the disturbing image. ************ Duo let out a small groan as he threw his head from side to side, trying to work out the kinks. "How the hell do you do this all day, Yuy?" he complained, trying to drum up some enthusiasm within himself to finish up the last part of the L1 report. They were filing joint reports for this mission, and had thus far been doing fairly well in taking turns, one report per colony. The other, of course, was always sure to read the report thoroughly before signing it. This report wasn't particularly distinct from any of the other reports, but typically Duo didn't have to write them up while shut inside a small room. They had earlier been working inside their even smaller cubicles before retreating to the confines of their temporarily assigned quarters after dinner. Duo didn't usually make it a habit of sitting for long periods of time, but he wanted to get this report done by the next day, to give Heero time to approve it and submit it to the department, rather than having to finish it up at home, when they were supposed to be on vacation. No, Duo would be providing Heero with no excuse to work on their downtime. Heero's fingers stilled as he glanced over his shoulder at his partner, who was mentally preparing himself for one last long haul before turning in for the night. "Have you been sitting like that all this time?" he asked critically, studying the set of his body with an eye for detail. "Huh?" He blinked and turned around to face him. What was he supposed to be doing? Standing? Heero pushed his seat back and went to stand behind the other's chair. Duo looked up at him curiously. "Sit," Heero commanded. "As if you were going to work." Duo looked at him skeptically for a few moments, but otherwise turned back around to face the monitor of his laptop without comment. There was a moment of silence. Then, "You're sitting wrong." A general flash of irritation passed over Duo's face. The work of the night had not put him in a particularly good mood, and now he was being told he didn't know how to sit? "What's that supposed to mean?" he asked, automatically tensing defensively as he turned around again to glare at Heero's unperturbed face. Heero set one hand gently on each of side Duo's head and turned it back towards the front. Then, he let his hands fall to Duo's shoulders and applied a gentle downward pressure. "Your shoulders are too tense, first of all, but that might just be a byproduct of everything else." "And just what is 'everything else'?" "Do your knees ache?" Duo wasn't quite sure why he was in a contrary mood, but he chose defiantly not to answer at first. When Heero repeated the question calmly, however, he relented. "Maybe," he conceded guardedly. "You probably have the same problem that I do." He saw Heero's faint reflection on his screen nodding his head slightly in confirmation of his suspicions. "This is just standard issue furniture, and you're only taller than I am by a few centimeters." "And?" Duo demanded impatiently. "If you lower the chair far enough to put your feet on the ground, then your forearms won't be level with the table top, which is bad for your wrists and hands as you type. If you raise your chair enough to have your hands at the right height, then your feet will come off the ground, and it'll be bad for your knees and your circulation." Duo turned around again, and Heero's hands slid off his shoulders to fall to the top of the back of the chair. "So you mean we're screwed either way? Geez." He pushed his chair away from his desk a little, to the side so that he wouldn't run over his partner, whose hands came off the chair altogether. "I think we should sue someone for discrimination. They've made all of this furniture for big, fat paper pushers and given absolutely no consideration to the normal scrawny joe!" "We're far from normal, Duo." Heero backed off a casual step to give Duo some more room to move without whacking him. "But we are scrawny. Well, excuse me for growing up poor and malnourished on the streets of L2. The wonderful environment there managed to give me my funny eye color; a mutant height gene might have been more helpful." He started to spin around sourly in his chair, suddenly noticing that he had to push off of the ground with his toes. "It would also help if you sat up straight," Heero advised, leaning back against Duo's desk and careful not to disturb the work there. "Hunching over like that tightens your neck and shoulder muscles, reduces lung capacity, brings stress to the lower back, and compacts your innards." Duo planted his toes on the ground long enough to make sure his partner saw him stick his tongue out at him, before resuming his spinning course, albeit more subdued than previously. He changed direction this time, surmising that he might be able to get the fluid in his semicircular canals to stop their sloshing more quickly that way. "You know, I would say, 'And here I thought you had such good posture because of that stick up your ass,' only I don't really think you've got one anymore." Heero raised his brow silently at the implication that he used to think so. "I don't know how you can make sitting up straight look so bloody natural, though. I'm telling ya, mankind was meant to slouch. Men have been slouching since forever." "Yes, Duo. And they were called Neanderthals." "I hate mission reports." "They're a necessary evil." "Doesn't mean I like them." "Beats killing people as a necessary evil." Duo stopped his swiveling with his toes again, bringing himself to a stop facing his desktop once again. "Got me there," he acknowledged softly. Heero exhaled, and dislodged himself from his position and moved once more to stand behind his partner. Placing light hands upon his shoulders, he began to knead. It was halfway an apology for bringing up death. He should have known better, even though the statement had sounded perfectly fine in his head. "Hmm," Duo sighed in comfort, his mind supplying him with the remembered image of Heero working similar magic on a tired, overworked Vice Foreign Minister of their acquaintance. His technique was far from perfect, but he certainly knew what was where in the human body, and how to use that to his best advantage. "Now I know what Relena loves about you." "Hn," he grunted absently, eyes automatically scanning the information displayed on the computer screen and already beginning his review, even while another portion of his mind was engaged in listing the muscle groups and pressure points located beneath his hands, and how he could use them to kill, incapcitate, or hurt someone. The moment he caught himself at it, though, he replaced the thoughts with ways to use them to the opposite effect. "Wow," Duo remarked calmly. "You know, I can't readily remember the last guy I had to kill... and now that I've come to that marvelous revelation, I'm going to stop thinking about it before I figure it out. Distract me, Heero." "I thought I was," he answered dryly, pushing a few of the right buttons in Duo's upper back to relieve tension and causing him rather promptly to almost lose the thought that was gathering in his head. "Ummm... what was I just...? Oh. So how come we don't have the same furniture problem in our office?" "We have those sliding keyboard trays beneath the surface of the desk. It lowers the arrangement by about a dozen centimeters." "Hmm, yeah," he mumbled, envisioning the setup behind his closed eyelids. "I guess so. I never noticed before. Why have you? Noticed, that is. I mean, personal comfort isn't usually high on your list of priorities." "It's not about comfort, it's about efficiency." Much like how, while giving Duo a massage, Heero was simultaneously able to work out the kinks in his own hands from being poised on his keyboard for so long. "Of course. Silly me. Let's see... Physical complaints, while tolerable, are possible distractions that may prevent peak operational efficiency, where a distraction is anything that is noticeable. They may also accumulate over time until they reach a point of problemhood. And one never knows when one might suffer from something that is definitely a distraction or problem, and in such a case, it would be helpful not to have to deal with a host of little things as well." He said it as if he were reading it out of a textbook or brochure. "That sound about right?" "Hn." The slight uplifting of one corner of Heero's lips went unseen by either of them. He finished up with one last squeeze. "You're in no mood to keep working tonight." "Am too," Duo protested mildly. The languid quality of his tone belied his words. Although the quick massage was over, his eyes remained closed. "You've just recharged me." "'Security on the route from that bank whose name I can't remember to the hot dog stand with the tasteless mustard was poor,'" he quoted from the bottom of the screen. "...Well, there can't possibly be that many tasteless mustard-bearing hot dog stands on that colony." The other corner of Heero's lips snuck upwards a notch. "Pack it up. Take a shower, get some sleep. Finish this up tomorrow." "Are you actually proposing that I put off my work?" "You have time," Heero defended himself. "And you won't be getting much productive work done for the rest of the night, anyway. You might as well turn in early and start up tomorrow fresh." "And what about you?" Duo asked, already suspecting his answer. "I'm in the middle of something. I'll finish it up, and then go to bed," he answered according to what Duo's tone said he had better do. In order to motivate Duo to turn in, he went back to his own seat and made it clear that he was getting back to work. ************ "Heero?" he mumbled, his voice roughened by sleep. It was around 2 AM, and whereas he had fallen asleep to the gentle lull of key clacking, now he was roused by the cessation of such sweet background noise, and the movement of someone in the room. "Just go back to sleep, Duo," Heero spoke softly, not wanting to bring Duo any further out of his half-somnolent state. It was all too easy to at least partially wake Duo in the night, especially since the boy was prone to doing that even without any outside assistance. At the lightest part of his often short REM cycle, he typically broke the surface of sleep just enough to become aware of and verify his surroundings before slipping back under again. It was a remnant of sleeping in dangerous places, and surpassed Heero in paranoia, at least in this regard. Heero had grown up with a highly secured roof over his head for most nights, whereas Duo had hardly had any guarantee that he would wake up the next morning. "'s late," he slurred, already surrendering to the command. "I know. I'm turning in now." "Mmmm," was all the answer Heero got. When Duo finally got up for real in the morning, he did so quietly, but not sneakily, because Heero would have woken if he had heard someone sneaking around in the room, and Duo had every intention of letting him sleep in as long as he wanted to. Which, knowing Heero, wasn't very long at all. During the course of his lazy morning stretch, his eyes fell upon the computers sitting quietly upon their desks. He wondered what had kept Heero up so late. An unexpected bug, perhaps? He opened up his laptop and tapped a key to wake it from its sleep mode with one hand while, with the other, he tried to tame his bangs. Sometimes, he envied Heero's hair. It may have been wild and untamed, but that just meant it looked good at all times. He stopped minding his hair when he noticed that his desktop was not as he left it. There was a note sitting in the middle of it, and even without reading it he knew it would be from Heero. Heero wouldn't have needed to even sit down in front of Duo's machine since he was allowed remote desktop access to it. He read the note with narrowed eyes. 'That bastard,' he thought. 'I don't know whether to smack him or thank him.' The tables had been turned. Since Heero had taken it upon himself to finish up the report last night, now it was Duo's turn to do the final verification. Well, at least Heero had had some sort of justification for finishing it up. First of all, there had been an odd number of reports to write up, and second, late last night they had received a couple of messages informing them of a change in their plans, and they would likely be kept busy for the rest of the day. Luckily, they didn't need to report for anything until after lunch, and as Duo quietly went about his morning routine, he made a bet with himself about what time Heero would wake up. He was only off by about five minutes. -------- yes, folks, furniture is made for tall people. i, in all my five foot one half an inch glory, can attest to that. then again, to me, pretty much everyone is tall. =P and normally, i would consider plopping duo down in heero's lap to be contrived, only i've seen it done, and between a much set upon guy and a girl whose nature just drove her to be generally annoying to even people she had no right being annoying to. so here we are. _________________________________________ 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 : 12/15/2002 16:41:40 PST