Warnings: 1x2, swearing, weirdness (I've noticed that that particular warning has been attaching itself to more and more of my fics lately...)
Author's Ramblings: I don't know what possessed me to write this, I really don't. Sometimes it's better not to ask.
Serious Games
By Rapunzel
Quatre knew something was wrong the moment he walked through the door of the safe house.
Of course, had Quatre not been as intelligent as he was, he probably still could have figured out that something was not right. It wasn't terribly difficult to tell, especially with Duo Maxwell sitting on the couch in their temporary living room, sniffling loudly as he worked his way through a chocolate bar.
"Duo," Quatre asked, surprised to see his friend in such bad spirits, "what's wrong?"
Duo sniffled and set the chocolate aside. "It's Heero," he said miserably.
Quatre, who had guessed as much, silently resigned himself to playing the therapist/relationship counselor once again and took a seat on the couch next to his distraught comrade. "What about Heero?" he asked, trying to sound sympathetic and understanding instead of dead tired like he really was. "Is he ignoring you again?"
Duo shook his head.
"Has he decided that he must sacrifice your relationship for the sake of the mission?" he guessed again.
Again Duo shook his head.
"Has he been paying an inordinate amount of attention to Relena, making you doubt his devotion to you?"
Another shake of the head.
"Has he told you that he is really madly in love with Wufei and is going to elope with him and carry his love child?"
Duo blinked, then eyed the other warily. "Quatre, have you been watching those cheesy soap operas again?"
"Never mind," Quatre muttered, waving away the question.
Duo looked mildly disturbed. "Heero and Wufei? Where in the world did you come up with that?"
"This is getting us nowhere," Quatre said impatiently. "How about you just tell me what's wrong?"
Duo, who had temporarily ceased his sniffling to listen to Quatre's guesses, started up again. One hand twitched impulsively towards his discarded chocolate bar. "It's just... It's just..."
"Just what?" Quatre prodded.
His question had more of an effect than he had expected, and the next thing he knew, he had a double armful of half hysterical Duo. "He's just so mad at me, and I don't know why! Well, I do know why, but I didn't think it was that big a deal! I mean, he did say that I could use his laptop, and how was I supposed to know?!"
It was Quatre's turn to blink in surprise. "He let you use his laptop?"
"Uh huh," Duo answered miserably.
"And let me guess," Quatre went on, resisting the urge to rub his temples where he could feel a headache starting to set in. "You got into something on there that you weren't supposed to."
Duo looked a little sheepish. "I guess you could kind of say that," he admitted. Then he hastened to defend himself. "But how was I supposed to know he didn't want me playing around like that? It wasn't like he told me, or even had it password protected or anything! I was just having fun, but he got so mad at me..." He sniffled again, managing to look very sorry for himself.
Quatre heaved a sigh. What messes those two got themselves into.
"Quatre," Duo asked, "what do you think I should do?"
"Thank your lucky stars you're still alive?" Quatre suggested, remembering Heero's usual attitude towards anyone that went near his laptop. When a baleful look from Duo told him that he was being less than helpful, he relented. "I'll try talking to him, okay?"
Duo gave him a weak smile. "Thanks Quatre," he said.
"You might as well wish me good luck," Quatre answered wearily. "I have a nasty feeling I'm going to need it."
It didn't take Quatre very long to determine that he probably wasn't going to get very far with Heero. As soon as he mentioned Duo and the laptop, Heero's mouth thinned to a tight line and his eyes hardened. Nevertheless, Quatre forged on ahead, attempting to make Heero see reason.
"Look, Heero, I know Duo is technically at fault here, but he really didn't mean to. I'm sure if he'd known you would get so upset with him, he would never have touched your laptop. He just didn't know it was so important to you."
Heero scowled. "It doesn't matter; the damage is done now anyway."
"But it's not permanent, is it?" Quatre asked anxiously. If it- whatever "it" was- was permanent, convincing Heero to forgive his boyfriend was going to be a lot more difficult.
If anything, the scowl deepened. "I should hope not," Heero muttered. "We shall see. But until I manage to put things back to the way they were, Duo sleeps on the couch."
Quatre winced. "That's a little harsh, don't you think Heero?"
"You don't understand, dammit!" Heero snapped. "And neither does he! This isn't just about the laptop, it's a matter of pride!"
Quatre blinked, surprised. What on earth had Duo done? "Well," Quatre said nervously, "I'm sure you'll find a way to fix things, Heero."
"That's what I'm trying to do now," Heero retorted acidly. "But somebody is interrupting me!"
Quatre took the hint and scurried out of the room, leaving pilot 01 still fuming in front of his laptop.
By that night, Quatre was beginning to think that both of his housemates had lost their minds.
It was bad enough that Heero was so stubbornly set on not forgiving Duo until the damage was fixed, but Quatre had at least expected that Duo would be semi-reasonable about the whole thing. However, the Deathscythe pilot seemed to have gone from dejected to infuriated all in the space of the few minutes it took Quatre to relate his conversation with Heero to the other.
"He's going to make me what?!"
"Sleep on the couch," Quatre repeated, wishing he had a set of earplugs with him. Duo had a tendency to get rather vociferous when he was angry.
"He didn't say anything about that! What the hell for?"
"He says it's a matter of pride," Quatre explained.
"Pride?! Pride, he says?!" Duo's eyes flashed dangerously. "Why of all the stupid, anal-retentive..." He trailed off, apparently too irate to speak. His fists clenched and unclenched as he attempted to calm himself. "Blowing up at me was bad enough, but to make me sleep on the couch over a stupid little thing like this... If he thinks I'm going to take this one lying down, he's got another thing coming!" Turning on his heel, he stormed off towards Heero's room.
"Um, Duo?" Quatre called hastily, trailing after him. "I'm not sure this is wise..."
Duo snorted loudly. "Oh, trust me, wisdom has had nothing to do with this from the very beginning."
So saying, Duo reached the closed door to what had been his and Heero's room (now Heero's room only), and started pounding on it. Quatre, meanwhile, stood in the hall behind him and entreated him to stop, both for the sake of sanity and for the sake of his head, which was pounding in time to Duo's violent knocks.
"Heero! You open the goddamn door right now!" Duo hollered.
"Duo, please," Quatre pleaded with a wince. "Why don't you just try the knob?"
Duo looked at him like he'd lost his mind for half a moment, then he grabbed the doorknob and twisted. Amazingly enough, the door was not locked, and it swung open to reveal Heero sitting in front of his laptop, much as Quatre had left him. He barely glanced up to acknowledge the newcomers before focusing his attention back on the machine in front of him. "What do you want?" he demanded, sounding surly.
"I want to know what the hell is the matter with you!" Duo shouted. "How dare you try to kick me out over a little thing like this?!"
"It's not little to me," Heero growled.
"That's because you're an obsessive bastard! You can't possibly admit that I might be better at something than you are!"
Heero's glare was lost on his audience since he was still facing his laptop, but his voice managed to convey it all the same. "Whether or not you're better at it is immaterial. The point is, this is my laptop."
"You said I could use it!"
"That's because I never thought you would open that program!"
"Um, guys?" Quatre tried rather hesitantly to interrupt the argument, but both the other pilots ignored him.
"Why the hell shouldn't I? It's not like you asked me not to!"
"You should have known better! Some things are sacred!"
"Guys!" Quatre interjected himself into the conversation a little more forcefully, but he still went unnoticed by the other two.
"If it's so important to you, why don't you just clear the damn thing and start over again?"
"Because that would be cheating!"
"HEERO! DUO! SHUT UP AND LISTEN FOR A MOMENT!"
The room abruptly went silent. It was rare that Quatre got riled enough to make a scene, but when he did, none of the other pilots wanted to get in his way. Duo turned to look at the blond pilot cautiously, and even Heero glanced up from his laptop for a moment to shoot Quatre a wary glance.
Once Quatre saw that he had their full and undivided attention, he asked, "What exactly is it you're trying to fix, Heero? Maybe I could help."
Heero snorted and shook his head, his attention still focused on the laptop. "That would just make things worse," he said.
"Yeah," Duo snorted bitterly. "Because Quatre might just wound your pride too."
Heero was about to answer when his laptop emitted a small noise. Eagerly, he leaned forward to read the message that had popped up on the screen, then a triumphant sound escaped from him. Curious, both Quatre and Duo leaned over his shoulder to see what had so distracted him.
In the center of the screen, a little box had appeared that carried the words, "You have the fastest time for the Expert level. Please enter your name." Below was a text box, in which Duo's name had formerly been written. It was now being erased, however, as Heero prepared to gleefully enter his own name there.
"Minesweeper?" Quatre asked in a deceptively calm voice.
Duo threw up his hands. "There. See? You beat me. Are you happy now?"
"All this was over a game of minesweeper?" Quatre's eye was beginning to twitch, but Duo didn't seem to have observed the warning sign.
"Heero's just funny like that. I mean really, who would make their boyfriend sleep on the couch just because he beat their best times at minesweeper? That's going overboard, don't you think, Quatre?" Duo turned to face his friend, only to find that the twitch had spread from his eye and was working its way through the rest of his body.
"Quatre? Quatre? Oh shit!"
CRASH
"Look on the bright side, Heero," Duo said, patting his boyfriend's shoulders consolingly. "At least you'll be able to start a fresh minesweeper game where all the high scores will be yours."
"..." was all Heero could seem to say as he stared in shocked disbelief at the sad remains of his laptop.
"It could have been much worse," Duo went on. "He could have gone after one of us instead of just the machinery."
"...what am I going to tell J?" Heero asked in a small voice.
"We'll think of something," Duo reassured him. "But right now, how about we head off to bed, huh? It's getting late."
"...okay..."
"And don't even think about trying to send me out to the couch now," Duo warned. "Quatre's out there with an icepack over his eyes, and I'd rather not disturb him, if it's all the same to you. It might just be my head instead of the laptop this time around."
Heero just nodded and let Duo steer him towards the bed after closing the door quietly. He was in such a state of shock that he almost missed Duo's last comment.
"I wonder if your new laptop will have FreeCell on it..."
The end?
Epilogue (aka M.E.'s Alternate Ending)
The door to the safe house opened and closed quietly to admit Trowa. He had gotten in rather late and expected that all of his comrades who had arrived prior to him would be asleep, but to his surprise, the lights in the living room were still on, and Quatre was sprawled out on the couch, an icepack positioned carefully on his head.
"Trowa?" he questioned. "Is that you?"
Trowa swallowed nervously. This was going to make things more difficult...
Quatre peered out at him from under the icepack and gave him a tired smile. "I'm glad to see you. You wouldn't believe what's been going on here. Somehow Heero and Duo always find the stupidest things to fight over. But at least it's over now."
Trowa just shifted uncomfortably.
"Trowa?" Quatre asked. "Is everything all right?"
"Quatre," Trowa said in a low, hesitant voice, "I have something I should tell you."
Quatre sat up a bit, removing the icepack. "Yes?"
"Well, I was using your computer earlier, and I really probably shouldn't have, but I did..."
Quatre was frowning at him, but he said, "Go on."
"And, well, I... I..."
"Yes?"
"I beat all of your Tetris scores."
"WHAT?!"
Owari
Author's note: The last little bit is entirely M.E.'s fault, as she is the one who suggested it. We were talking on the phone, and I was bouncing ideas off of her, and this is what came of it...