Another in the way of Trials & Tribulations, although not near as silly. Unbeta'd. Beware of mistakes. Those commas are especially nasty when you trip over them. Also really really rambley, tense is all over the place, and doesn't really follow a coherent train of thought at all.
Mariemaia had asked him, interrupting his paperwork, what, exactly, he saw in Duo Maxwell. Heero suspected Relena had sent her in for undercover information gathering, but the faint sparkle of unholy glee proved that her motives weren't wholly altruistic. Mariemaia was the undisputed queen of the Preventer's gossip circle.
"It's because he's totally cute, isn't it?" She surmised, snapping her gum and adding a quick little smirk to the end. Une was going to have a fit when she found out exactly how much of a little girl Mariemaia wasn't anymore.
Whatever the prompting behind the question, Heero had found it intriguing enough to pause in his work long enough to methodically work his way through an answer.
Duo is not a conventionally handsome man, if one takes conventionally to be the photos Wufei is constantly finding female (and occasionally male) Preventers giggling about after he has spent nearly an hour confiscating that particular magazine. He's unique, certainly. Heero has seen girls who think he is pretty (Although he wonders if they would still think that if they had seen him when he knows he doesn't have to leave the house, unshaven, braid sticking out every which way, chain smoking and in week-old pajamas).
Duo is tall, though not as tall as Trowa, who frequently bears a more then passing resemblance to a disjointed marionette. He doesn't have the self-assured grace Trowa has either; Trowa is an acrobat, Duo seems to have trouble finding his feet some days. The most graceful part of him is his hands, long fingered, broad knuckled, and almost too big for the rest of him. Heero is constantly amazed by the things those hands can do.
He's sensitive about his freckles, which never fade no matter how much time he spends stuck in the office. He's also sensitive about the fact that the combination of round eyes and triangular face make him look younger then twenty five. He is constantly getting carded whenever Hilde drags him out bar hopping with her.
Nobody ever tries carding Heero, despite the fact that he is just under five and a half feet. After years of trying to grow taller, Heero has given up and accepted that his is, apparently, built for compact power and never being able to reach the top shelf. It is only by the grace of god that he managed to get over five feet at all. Even Quatre has gotten taller then him, though not by much.
Duo jokes that Heero could crush walnuts between his thighs, Heero thinks that Duo is prone to over-exaggeration at times. It'd take some effort Heero isn't sure he's capable of anymore - the leg he'd broken when he nosedived out of the Alliance hospital had never healed right. He should have known better.
He still has the scars from the time he'd sat in the middle of Wing's self-detonation blast (as far as stupid ideas go, that had been one of his more spectacular ones. It had seemed like a good idea at the time). Duo's scars all seem to be internal. There have been times when Heero has been tempted to smack the smile right off the infuriating man's face. No matter what Duo says to the contrary, he does lie, and lies frequently. Smiling when you are not okay constitutes a lie as far as Heero is concerned.
Duo has more strange quirks then anybody else Heero knows, like insisting on trying to grow sunflowers when their apartment gets no sunlight at all, natural or not. ("They mean devotion," Duo had explained once when old ghosts and old pains made sleep an impossibility. "Cause they always follow the sun even when it ain't out. Sister Helen used t' grow 'em all the time.")
He is a colony brat, and he talks like it, refusing to replace half slurs and random words-that-aren't-words with what one might consider a normal vocabulary. He can, but it's usually an indicator that the God of Death is back on the clock and somebody is about to be very sorry.
It drives Wufei insane when he has nothing else to be grumpy about. Heero finds it endearing.
Another quirk; Duo can't sleep without the TV on. He's afraid not of the dark, but of silence. It embarrasses him to a grumpy splutter if you bring it up, but Heero doesn't mind it. He knows enough about the wrong kind of quiet to understand; he can always manipulated the awkward tangle they make on the too-small bed to block it out anyway.
Heero is well aware of his own quirks; like his occasional issue with slang. Trowa once remarked that Heero occasionally sounded like he'd learned to talk from a dictionary (He didn't, but Odin did. English had not, on hindsight, been his first language). He is so used to operating in small spaces that he often forgets he has room to stretch out now.
He is something of a neat freak. He has a very distinct system he functions in, and disruptions tend to make him cranky. Duo calls it being anal, Heero calls it keeping track of where he put things so he can find them again. If it isn't visibly important, like a puzzle piece or his favorite tools, Duo is always finding a way to make things accidentally disappear.
Perhaps he should not have chosen to live with a walking disruption.
Heero has to constantly check to make sure no unauthorized pens, spray paints, or markers have made it into the house. Duo doodles on everything. The walls in their apartment have suffered. Duo has to police the spice racks and the refrigerator the same way; Heero has an unfortunate tendency to want to experiment with his cooking.
They both agree that Quatre's culinary suggestions are never to be taken again. Calm leader he is, cook he is not.
Their bed is too small, but they have never gotten around to replacing it. Even though Duo is a notorious blanket hog; he is also practically a living, breathing space heater all on his own. He also snores, but only when he sleeps on his back and Heero is a light enough sleeper to wake up and shove him back over on his side. Duo maintains that sleeping with Heero is like sleeping with an octopus. Heero wakes up early enough to know that yes, he is a clingy sleeper. He'll never admit it though.
The most unusual thing, in his mind, is the studied gentleness in the way Duo touches him, and in the way he kisses, as if he were afraid that if he isn't careful, Heero will break, even though he knows it takes more then that to even chip him. Heero has never known how to be gentle.
But he is learning.
Mariemaia is still staring at him, waiting for an answer.
Heero frowned at the computer screen, mentally sorting through his train of thought, condensing the salient points into a succinct and efficient answer. Differences. Similarities. Quirks and odd habits.
"Because he is Duo." Heero told her finally, and got back to his work.