--------------------- School Supplies ~ A Moment of Haven ~ --------------------- Duo picked up a basket with a faint frown in his face. "Is it just me, or does this feel like it's defeating the purpose?" Heero was going to bet on 'it's just you', but he dutifully asked for clarification. "Which purpose?" Duo was happy to elaborate. "The improv purpose. It's improv. I'm supposed to improvise. Which means that Reqs is supposed to let me run amok in their stores and let me improvise a lesson plan, not that they should just send me out to the store to buy whatever I feel like for my lesson plan, as long as I come back with a receipt for reimbursement." This was sure to be one of Duo's 'object for the sake of objecting' lines of logic. That was usually the time he got picky over inconsequential details. "Pretend you're running amok here. You probably don't even have to pretend too hard." "Maybe I can artificially impose some limits here... Like, I have to choose ten items from each aisle." Self-defeating reasoning. Another sign of Duo's lack of true disgruntlement. The guy was smarter than that. "Doesn't improv routinely bend rules?" "...Okay, so it'd really be more like a guideline." Heero shrugged. "Whatever. Your call." "You could at least pretend to be interested." "I'll start being interested once you actually start to work." Duo glared, but there wasn't much force behind it. "Fine. Let's find the office supplies." He had, in fact, already limited his options by choosing a drug store rather than one of those big box stores that would definitely have everything anyone could ever need to take down a city block. He surveyed the possibilities in the office supplies aisle and immediately zoomed in on his first selection. "Oooh, push pins. I could do a lot with push pins." "Are you allowed to make your students bleed?" Bleed? Bah! Those pins couldn't possibly be longer than, uh... something that could hit a vein. "Um... field medicine! Field medicine is an improvisational art, right?" "If I'm not allowed to intentionally injure anyone, neither are you." Fair was fair, after all, and balance was key in any good relationship. "Boo. What if I capped them with little bits of cork or eraser or something? No, I guess if they sat or stepped on them, the pin would probably go right through. Ooh, but I can still propel them through the air, right?" The mental image made him glad he wasn't going to be Maxwell's next class. "Just try not to poke anyone's eyes out." "No prob. Let's get some erasers." He'd only taken a step in that direction before getting distracted. "Oooh, rubber bands! I can always put a rubber band to good use. And paper clips, of course, paper clips. Hmm, where's the glue? Yup, there it is." "Do you have a plan?" Heero eyed the components in the shopping basket and tried improvising some things of his own, but he was sure that anything Duo came up with would be a step ahead of his own paltry attempts. There was a reason Duo was teaching the improv class. Duo's answering smile was a little too devilish for comfort. "I am plotting one as we speak." "Are you going to warn them?" He paused for a thoughtful moment, flipping a small box of crayons between his fingers. "I thought about not warning them, which would have been fun, but then I figured they'd actually miss most of my brilliant work that way. I'll probably tell 'em they're walking into a minefield, just so they know they're supposed to be paying attention, but it'll be probably be a free-for-all from there. It'll be interesting to see what they're looking for, too." Heero had the feeling that, no matter how well Duo might have schooled them over the last few weeks, he would still outsmart them all. "Rulers might be useful for support structures." "Ooh, good call. Hmm, too bad they probably don't have any fishing line or something around here. The best I can manage will probably be twine." "They might have sewing kits." "I like the sound of that." Done with one aisle, they strolled down the next. "Aaaaaannnd... duct tape. Never leave home without that." And indeed they didn't. There was a roll underneath one of the seats in their jeep -- the expensive kind that wasn't silver and shiny, too, just in case they needed to camouflage their work. "Hmm, the calculator's got possibilities. The solar cell probably won't help in the classroom, though. Pity. I could do some creative things with a solar cell. Wonder what other electronics I can find around here, though. And for wire..." "Paper clips." "Of course." The rest of the row contained mostly fifty different colors and sizes of notebooks. They moved on quickly. "Hey, let's see what we've got in the cleaners aisle." He cheated and bypassed the aisle with the leftover holiday decorations. There were sure to be some out of the ordinary and very useful devices there, but he was trying to emulate the daily office environment. "You know, mixing stuff to go boom was really a lot easier back in the days they put crazy chemicals in this stuff. These days, it's all natural! Nothing's reactive anymore! Ooh, this one looks toxic..." He picked up a bottle of something an electric blue and read the label. "Hm, okay, maybe a little too toxic. I don't think the room's got good enough ventilation for anything fume-y." There was a reason the market for all-natural products had expanded. "I hope none of your students are sensitive to things like this." Duo waved his hand airily. "If they are, they really shouldn't be in this line of work." Then he snapped his fingers. "Ooh, you know what I need? Nail polish remover. That stuff'll work wonders." Heero followed obediently as they paid a visit to the health and beauty section of the store. "I pity the poor person in Reqs who will have to look at your receipts and wonder why the hell you're expensing all of this." Duo rarely felt any pity for the people in Reqs. "Hey, I got approval." He found what he was looking for, dropped it into their basket, then struck out in a new random direction. "Hey." Heero stopped him just two aisles over. "Since we're here..." "What...?" He looked down the row to see what had caught his partner's eye. It took him a few seconds to figure it out. "Oh! Uh, gee..." Heero glanced at him expectantly before making his way over to the personal lubricants. "We'll have to sometime." "Yeah, but...." He looked nervously over his shoulder before quickstepping to catch up, pointedly ignoring the rest of the 'family planning' products he passed. "Holy crap, there's a lot of choices." So much for his hopes of just getting it over with. He sighed minutely. "Well, I guess if we have to, I'd rather do it here than at home." One of Heero's ever-expressive eyebrows rose. "What, are you embarrassed we'll meet someone we know there or something?" He made a face. "Ugh, could you imagine? We're hitting this stuff up, and on the other side of the aisle, there's one of those crazy girls, or even worse, old man Keller! That'd be, uh, awkward, to say the least." Heero's amusement went up half a notch. "So whenever we need this sort of thing, we have to buy it in the city?" Why did Heero always have to burst his bubbles by making valid points? "Well, at least at first?" he responded, unconsciously lowering his voice so it wouldn't carry. "'Cuz I don't know about you, but I haven't got a damn clue what's what here, and if I'm gonna be standing here a long time reading labels, I'd rather not do it while looking over my shoulder. Once we know what's what, then yeah, sure, okay, we can buy it back home. Just grab it and go, no big deal." "No big deal," Heero repeated, peppering the three words with a dash of smirk. Duo whapped him on the arm. "Shut up. So? Choose one." "You don't want to have any input?" "Fine!" He pointed at the thing eye-level to him. "That's the brand we got from Ms. S. Think it's safe?" Heero had already recognized it and moved on to the row beneath it. While he certainly trusted their neighbor's endorsement on the matters of safety, he chose to make his own decisions on the matter of taste. "This one looks a little more no-nonsense, and it seems to be popular, too." "Hmmm." Duo scanned the other options quickly. "Yeah, those sound girly, those sound, um, too manly, that just sounds weird, and we don't need all that crap..." There was someone in a marketing division somewhere that really needed to lose his or her job. "Yeah, okay, what have we got there? What the...? Now you're just getting distracted by the gadgetry." "You don't think it has its merits?" Heero turned the bottle around and skimmed the information on the label. "Tingles on contact? If I'm doing my job right, babe, you're already tingling. With or without contact. And all-naturally, too. Wait..." Another label had caught his eye. "What the-- mint scented? Ew. Just brush your teeth. That'll be good enough for me." Heero agreed on both counts and set the bottle in his hand back on the shelf. "How about self-warming?" "Self-warming?" Duo's nose wrinkled in skepticism as he considered it. "Is this stuff normally cold, then?" "Compared to body temperature, probably. It'd probably warm up pretty quickly, though, if you figure it's not too different from moisturizing lotion." "Well, considering where it's going, I guess that's good?" "Done." Heero took the bottle off the shelf decisively. "We can move on now." Duo automatically held the basket out to him, but he shook his head. "I can hang on to this." Duo blinked at him. "Uh, gee, you trying to tell me we can't both use the same bottle or something? Maybe I need to get my own?" "Of course not. But that's stuff for work. We should keep them separate." The bottle was abruptly removed from his possession and dropped into the basket. "You are not walking through this store with a tube of lube in your hand." Heero rolled his eyes. "Duo--" "And big deal, anyway. I doubt Reqs will look at the receipt all that closely." His eyebrows shot up again. "Duo. You want things pertaining to our sex life to be paid on the Preventers' tab?" "What, you gonna tell me that's an abuse of power again?" "No. It's just..." His eyebrows lowered into a furrow. "That's just weird. And how can you be embarrassed to be buying this stuff at all, and have no compunctions against making the government pay for it?" Duo grinned. "Not quite. What compunctions I do have are overrun by the amusement and satisfaction of sticking one to the suits." How scandalous. "What if they really do look at what you buy? They like reviewing our work, after all." How irritatingly true. "Aw, come on. This could totally be work-related. Bottle says it can be used for massage, too, and maybe one day, one of your kiddies will actually get good enough to leave a mark on you." "Even if that's a valid reason, it shouldn't be lumped in with your purchases for your class." "This could totally be class-related," Duo scoffed. "Maybe I'm just buying totally random things and forcing the kiddies to think about what they could use it for. It's educational." "Give me an example," Heero challenged him. Duo wasn't one to back down from a challenge. "Hm. How warm do you think this stuff gets?" "Considering where it's going? Not that warm, I hope." "Because you could probably rig up a pretty clever delayed-after-contact sort of detonator with it..." Now that he thought about it, yeah, it did seem to have a variety of uses. "Definitely not warm enough to catalyze a chemical reaction." The thought almost made his privates cringe. "Really?" Duo leered cheerfully at him. "'Cuz I'd say this stuff's all about catalyzing chemical reactions." Heero rolled his eyes again, but let it slide. "Fine. But you're taking full responsibility for this." "Ha, who's embarrassed now?" "This has nothing to do with buying lube, and everything to do with expensing it." "Hey, you said I should run amok in here. I'm just doing what you said." He took off for another aisle to put an end to the discussion. Heero caught up, a thoughtful look on his face. "You like doing what I say?" Like Duo was going to fall for that obvious trap. "Well, that sort of depends, now doesn't it? Have something specific in mind, fly boy?" Only the slightest of hesitations preceded the answer. "Let's go find some wet-naps." Duo stopped short of laughing out loud. "I like the way you think, Yuy." _________________________________________ 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 at myrealbox.com. This has been an entirely automated message. http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~jchew/misc/gw.html last modified : 11/4/2007 01:55:12 PST