How to Duct Tape a Diaper

"Good morning, Quatre speaking."

Light was just beginning to filter through the windows of the smallish room that once served as a spare bedroom-office-catchall. Part of it was artificial; the other part was actual sunlight. To Heero there was no difference—light was light.

"Quatre?" Heero had the phone balanced between his ear and his shoulder as he stared at the baby on the changing table. "I have a problem."

"Yes, Heero?" Heero heard a muffled yawn. He could tell Quatre wanted to ask why he was calling at 6:30am, but neglected to actually ask.

"How do you change a diaper without using duct tape?"

At first, there was silence. Then, "How did you manage without it when Adie was in diapers?"

Heero thought back to what felt like so long ago, but was in reality only almost two years ago, to when Adie was just beginning to toddle. "I don't know."

"You don't know? How can you not know?"

"Relena changed her most of the time. Sometimes Pagan if she couldn't wait for Relena to get home. She must've made it look easy, it didn't look so difficult."

Quatre sighed. "So what are you doing?"

"Well I asked Duo if he'd ever changed a diaper, and he didn't say anything, just left and came back with his "fix any problem" tool."

"Which is…?"

"A roll of duct tape."

Heero heard nothing on the other end.

"Seriously?"

"Ah."

"I don't believe you."

Heero put the call on hold and snapped a picture of his handiwork before sending it, since 'seeing is believing' and all that.

"Which brings me to the reason why I'm calling you to ask if there's a way around using duct tape." "Heero." Quatre sounded incredulous. "There are instructions on the side of the box."

Heero picked DJ up, held him against his shoulder with one arm while putting diaper changing supplies away with the other.

"All it is is diagrams and shit. What good does that do me? It's just a picture of a diaper doing some origami shit."

"Heero… Do I really need to explain how to use a diaper?"

"I'm an ex-Gundam pilot who was trained as an assassin since I was seven years old. Why the hell would I need to know how to change a diaper? I'm sure the maternal instinct makes this, well, instinctual. But I lack that."

He could picture the look on Quatre's face right now. "Do you see those tabs on the sides?"

Heero picked up and examined an unused diaper, found the yellow sticky tabs. "Yeah, those tab things didn't work. Didn't stick too great. I pulled the flaps over them and expected them to stick because that's what it looks like the diagram shows, but it failed. Do you think I might have defective diapers? Don't have time for trying to figure out how this stuff works—just wanted to know if using duct tape would work. Duo said it would, but he also suggested duct taping the diaper to the baby, but then I'd have to cut it off and the adhesive might do something to their skin. Babies have sensitive skin, don't they? I just used it on the sides. Is that okay?"

"On the sides should be okay."

"Great." Heero placed DJ down in his crib, gave a quick glance at Eden in the crib next to DJ's. She was still fast asleep, completely undisturbed by her twin's crying moments before. "I've got to go—Une said I can't be late for this video conference and I need to find a shirt."

"What about pants?"

Heero left the nursery and padded down the hall to the bedroom he shared with Duo. He turned on the light, shook Duo awake and motioned for him to get up. He saw Duo glance at the clock, heard him swear under his breath. Heero went to his closet, put the phone on speaker and put it down on the top of the dresser.

"I'll only be seen from the waist up," Heero said, rummaging through his shirts. "I'm not finding clean trousers to wear for an hour of sitting on the couch watching Une draw diagrams on the office whiteboard. Don't think the others will appreciate my lack of a shirt though…"

"I would," Duo muttered loud enough for Heero to just make out, coming up behind him, before wrapping his arms round Heero's waist and kissing his neck.

"I suppose that makes sense…though you should wear some kind of pants," Quatre reasoned.

Heero felt Duo smirk.

"We'll see 'bout tha'…"

"Who was that?" Quatre asked. "Was that Duo?"

"Who else?" Duo asked. "Sup, Quatre?"

"You told Heero to use duct tape to keep the diaper on?"

Heero pursed his lips. "The diaper's on. That's better than nothing."

"I don't do diaper duty so I don't know what Heero does. I don't change 'em."

"But you know how at least, right?" Quatre sounded exasperated.

Duo snorted. "Heero handles tha', like I said. But when I was a kid, we used duct tape for everything, so tha's what I suggested."

There was silence for a bit. Heero pulled a whole bunch of shirts off their hangers, stared at them for a bit, before putting them back.

"I'll just wear a regular shirt and shove my Preventers jacket over it so Une can't say anything," Heero reasoned.

"Thanks for the…help, Quatre."

Another sigh. "You're welcome. Before you go…"

"Yeah?" Heero's thumb hovered over the 'end call' button.

"What time is your meeting over?"

Heero looked at Duo, who shrugged.

"It's the Commander. You know how she is."

"When are you 'off' from work?"

"Tamorra," Duo said. "We have the same days off."

"Good. I'll see you tomorrow then, so I can show you how to use a diaper."

Heero ended the call, pulled off his sleep shirt, and pulled on a plain green tee.

"Honestly, as long as the diaper stays on, what's the big deal?"

Duo shrugged. "'f anyone asked, could jus' say tha's wha' we do on L2."

"They supposedly used to use safety pins to hold them on… Why not duct tape?"

Duo kissed Heero lightly and patted his shoulder. "Dunno. Those safety pin ones're probably not Huggies brand. They're probably the store ones. Real people use duct tape."