Disclaimer: I am not delusional enough to think that Gundam Wing belongs
to me. Give it a few more years.
Warnings: 1+2? So minor, I'll leave the reader to decide
Dedication: I don't think I've ever dedicated a fic before, but now seems
like a good time to start. This is for my best friend M.E., who can break
through my glass bubble.
Ramblings: I hate my muse sometimes. Trust her to show up two nights
before my chemistry midterm when I'm supposed to be studying. @.@ Of
course, if I told her to get lost, she'd take it personally and not return
for a month at least.
Glass Bubble By Rapunzel
"Hi! You're the new student here, aren't you? My name is Katie!"
Heero gritted his teeth and numbly shook the hand the bubbly girl held out to him. This had to be the hundredth person he'd met today. As soon as he and Duo had arrived at this new school, the whole student body had heard, and everyone seemed hell bent on meeting them, despite the fact that he showed no particular enthusiasm in receiving their greetings.
This meeting was no different. Heero mumbled his own name without much interest. Once he had clasped her hand for the prescribed length of time, he released it, turning away from the girl and heading off down the hall. She continued to trotting along side him for a moment, asking about what classes he was taking, but once he had told her, she ran out of conversational material and moved off.
He didn't look after her. She was just one face in the crowd. Almost everyone else he had met had started off conversations in just such a way, and ended them just as quickly. Then they moved on, and he forgot them. It wasn't that he couldn't remember them; he had a fantastic memory and could easily have correctly matched every face with a name had he wished to do so. He did not wish to do so. Why bother to memorize the faces and names of people he wouldn't see again, people who probably wouldn't remember him? He had better uses for those brain cells.
"Man, Heero," said a voice from just beyond his left shoulder, "you sure scared her off pretty fast."
Heero turned long enough to bestow an indifferent look upon the speaker, one Duo Maxwell. "I didn't scare her off; she left on her own."
"Yeah," Duo answered. "Because you froze her out."
Heero's shoulder lifted in a slight shrug that clearly said, "So what?" without words.
"We have got to work on those social skills," Duo said determinedly.
The shoulder dropped, and an eyebrow lifted instead. "We?"
"Well, yeah. They aren't going to get any better unless you want them to."
Heero just snorted and shook his head. "Why would I want them to?"
It was Duo's turn to raise the eyebrow, but it did not remain raised for very long. He'd learned a long time ago that trying to get Heero to be social was like trying to tell rocks that they should fly; things just didn't work that way.
"Never mind. Come on, let's get lunch."
~*~*~
At the sound of the knocking, Duo set down his book and leapt off the bed to go answer the door. Heero barely glanced up from his work, until Duo called, "Hey, Heero!"
With a barely audible sigh, Heero rose from his chair and went to the door. There, he stood at Duo's shoulder and listened to the two boys at the door explained that they were from just down the hall and that they wanted to meet their new school mates. More names were exchanged, hands were shaken, and Heero promptly turned around and went back to his desk and his work, leaving Duo to chat up their new neighbors. The whole thing was a waste of time anyway.
Knowing that Duo could talk up a storm when he chose to, Heero tuned out the scene at the door in favor of his math equations. He was so absorbed in not noticing the social exchanges that he didn't hear the door close, and didn't realize that the visitors were gone until he felt eyes on his back, and looked up to find Duo looking at him with a mixture of resignation and exasperation.
"You are impossible, do you know that?" Duo said, sounding annoyed.
"You have told me so before," Heero answered without much interest.
"Look, I know you're not a people person, but could you at least try to be social once in a while?"
"Why bother?"
"Because," Duo said, leaning in close enough to put his face between Heero and his work, "it's what people do. You don't live in a vacuum, you know. There are people out there around you, and sooner or later, you're going to have to interact with them. Even you have to interact with _someone_."
"I interact with you," Heero pointed out.
Duo snorted. "Not much. Don't you have any friends, Heero?"
"What would I do with friends?"
Duo threw up his hands in despair. "Forget I said anything."
Heero calmly went back to his work, determined to do just that.
~*~*~
The beep of the laptop brought both Heero and Duo into the world of the conscious again. Heero, ever efficient, leapt out of bed first, and immediately started to read the message. Duo was a little less enthusiastic.
"Orders to move out again? Geez, where are they sending us this time?"
"You could come over here and see," Heero told him pointedly.
"I am, I am. Just be patient; it's not like the information is going to vanish in the next two seconds, and even if it did, I'll bet you've already memorized it anyway."
Yawning, Duo heaved himself out of bed and moved to Heero's side. Upon reading the message, he clapped his hand to his head. "Solo mission?" he moaned. "Why me?"
/Some people have all the luck,/ Heero thought, but didn't say aloud. Duo's solo mission was estimated to last about a week, during which time, Heero was to wait for him at the new school they were to attend. For some reason he couldn't pinpoint, the thought of a week by himself at a new place made him uneasy.
"Start packing," was all he said.
~*~*~
The room was empty. Nothing but bare, white walls and a cold, tile floor met his eyes. The only furniture consisted of two beds, two dressers, and two desks in perfect alignment. It was just like a hundred other rooms he had stayed in, and yet its emptiness irritated him vaguely.
He had unpacked, but it was hard to tell. The few belongings he had brought with him did little to alleviate the sparseness of the room. It lacked life. It lacked Duo.
Had Duo been there, the room wouldn't have seemed bare at all. It wasn't that Duo had more stuff than Heero, but he was better at arranging it. Or, rather, he was better at not arranging it. Books laid out on the desk, socks scattered on the floor, and all the various other detritus that Duo left in his wake helped to break up the uniformity of the rooms they stayed in, giving them a lived in look.
Heero gave himself a slight shake to jerk himself out of his reverie. He was being foolish; he had lived in rooms just as bare and impersonal as this, if not more so, for most of his life, and it had never bothered him before. He'd been spending far too much time living with Duo lately, that was all.
With that excuse firmly in mind, Heero set out for the dinning hall.
~*~*~
"Wow! You're the new kid in our building, aren't you?"
Heero looked over his salad bowl at the girl posing the question and simply nodded. Since the dinning hall had been full, he had elected to sit amongst a group of people he had seen in the halls of his building. Most of them seemed mildly curious about him, but not genuinely interested.
"I hear that you haven't got a roommate yet."
"He's due to show up next week," Heero told them, and then filled his mouth with food, as he was at a loss for what else to say.
"You're so lucky," the boy two seats down said. "Must be nice to have all that space to yourself."
Heero shrugged. He didn't especially think so, but he kept reminding himself that it wasn't supposed to matter what his living accommodations were.
Seeing that Heero wasn't talking, the people around him began their own conversations with their neighbors. Conversations that didn't include him. Heero was used to eating in silence, but all the same, it felt odd to be sitting in the midst of a large group of people acting as though he didn't exist. He should have been glad; after all, part of his job was to avoid being conspicuous. Still.
Rather guiltily, Heero found himself listening in on some of the conversations going on around him in an attempt to entertain himself. They were mostly about inane topics such as classes and homework. He couldn't think of a thing to add to them. Had Duo been there, he would have thought of a hundred, a thousand things to say.
Duo's voice echoed in his memory. "We have got to work on those social skills."
Heero snorted softly to himself. Social skills indeed. What did he need with social skills?
~*~*~
The small digital alarm clock still read 8:00. Another two hours at least before he had to go to bed. Heero was brought up short by the realization that he had absolutely nothing to do with the time. He wasn't- he couldn't be- bored. Still, something was missing. Normally, he sat and did his homework or typed on his computer, while Duo chattered, or listened to music, or simply lay sprawled on the other side of the room and breathed. Now the absence of those noises weighed on him.
Heero finally resigned himself to the fact that he wasn't going to get any work done tonight and closed his laptop. That left him even more aware of the two hours that were waiting to be filled. What was he to do with the time? What would Duo have done? He'd have gone around to the other people in the dorm and.
And what? Heero could hardly go around knocking on people's doors just for the sake of disturbing them, and it wasn't like he had anything to _say_ to them. He never had anything to say to them, that was the problem. He was no good at making conversation. Duo, at least, understood that.
Duo. Somehow, it always came back to Duo.
He stood up. Since he had no intentions of going to bed before 10:00, he decided to take a walk. Maybe in the dark, it would be easier to ignore his solitude.
~*~*~
The dinning hall was mostly empty when he arrive there the next morning. Still, Heero approached a table where two girls were already sitting. After mumbling a brief, "Do you mind?", he took a seat across from them. Maybe they would fill the silence.
Only they didn't. They told him their names, and asked him what classes he had, then went back to their own conversation. For some reason, the drone of their voices didn't fill the void the way Duo's voice did. Perhaps that was because Duo had always seemed to give Heero a tacit invitation to join the conversation. These two could have cared less whether he spoke or not. And Heero didn't speak. He was accustomed to saying things that were pertinent and important, and he had nothing even remotely useful to add to what they were saying.
Eventually, the girls finished their food and got up to leave without so much as casting another glance at him. For all he had been sitting across the table from them for the duration of the meal, he might not have existed. It was as though something divided him from his fellow students and the rest of the world. Heero didn't know if that something was of his own making, and if so, how to get rid of it. He had never had this problem before. Normally, being ignored didn't bother him in the slightest, but now, he wished for someone to talk to.
The problem was that no one seemed interested in talking to him.
~*~*~
Heero barely looked up as a boy about his age slid into the desk next to him. However, when the boy tapped the edge of his desk, he looked over almost hopefully.
"Did he say anything important yet?" the boy asked, gesturing at the teacher.
"No," Heero answered.
"Oh. Thanks."
The thread of conversation was dying. Desperately, Heero tried to revive it. "Why are you late?" he asked.
"Had to stay behind in my last class," the boy answered. At that moment, the teacher sent a look in their direction, and his neighbor instantly became silent. Inwardly, Heero cursed. That had been shaping up to be the first actual conversation he had had in two days.
Heero had come to the conclusion that he was either invisible, or so well barricaded from the rest of the world that he might as well have been invisible. He couldn't maintain a conversation for the life of him, even when someone else actually bothered to start one with him, which wasn't often.
/When Duo gets back, I'll make him explain to me how he does it./
/When Duo gets back./
~*~*~
The loud squealing made Heero look up from his homework. Cautiously, he slipped the door open and looked down the hall to see what all the fuss was about. The noise had emanated from one of the girls down the hall, who was greeting a friend. Another girl was standing in the hallway, but not for long. Her friend grabbed her and pulled her into a hug. They began laughing and talking together as they vanished into the room and the door slid closed behind them.
Heero closed his own door, returning to his still barren room. He went back to his desk, but he didn't pick up his pen to continue on with his homework. Instead, he considered what he had just seen. No one hugged him. No one touched him. It was like he was separated from the rest of the world by a glass wall. More precisely, a glass bubble that extended around him in all directions. He couldn't break it, and no one else penetrated it. He no longer even shook hands with his fellow students. Even worse was the fact that he suspected that he himself was responsible for the bubble's being there in the first place.
Without warning, Heero slammed his fists into the desk. He had to break it, had to break free. Again and again he struck the wood in front of him. Never had he wanted anything as badly as he wanted to escape.
The door to his room flew open. "Hey!"
Heero's head jerked up as he gazed hopefully at his visitor. Had it worked?
"Could you keep it down? I'm trying to study here!" And without waiting for an answered, the person left, slamming the door, leaving him in solitude once more.
Heero hung his head. It was useless. He was trapped.
~*~*~
Slowly and mechanically, Heero raised the spoon to his mouth. His eyes were fixed firmly on his food, as there was no where else really for them to rest. The bubble seemed to prevent anyone from sitting within three seats of him. He was growing almost accustomed to eating alone, but he still felt a slight tug in his gut when he noticed the lack of people around him. Before, at least one seat would have been filled by.
"Hey, is this seat taken?"
"Duo!"
Duo grinned at him as he set his tray on the table and plunked himself down in the seat next to Heero. "I thought you looked kind of lonely over here all by yourself."
Lonely. Was that what that was?
"Anyway, how's it been going, buddy?" Duo asked, reaching out to clap a hand on Heero's shoulder.
Heero looked at the hand, then at Duo's face. Duo was touching him. Duo was acting as if the bubble wasn't there, as if it didn't exist.
"Hn."
"That good, huh?"
Heero swirled the spoon around in his bowl of cereal, but didn't actually raise it to take a bite. He was still too busy looking at his comrade. "How do you do it, Duo?"
Duo paused, a forkful of scrambled eggs suspended half way to his mouth. "Do what?"
"Never mind." Heero didn't quite know how to explain what he was asking. Certainly he didn't want to try and explain it here in front of a bunch of strangers. After all, they were still strangers to him.
"No, really. What is it?" Duo asked.
"I'll explain later. I have to go to class."
~*~*~
As Heero closed the door behind him, he paused to survey the changes to the room. As usual, pandemonium dominated Duo's half. For all that, Heero knew from experience that if he ever called on Duo to find something, the other pilot would find it without any trouble.
Duo himself was sprawled on his bed reading a book. Aside from his soft breathing and the occasional turning of a page, the room was quiet, but to Heero, who had been living in semi-silence for a week, the sounds were sufficient.
"Gonna explain to me what you were talking about earlier?" Duo asked without looking up from his book.
"You broke the bubble. How?"
"Huh?" Duo put his open book face down on the pillow and turned to look at Heero. "What bubble?"
"The one that kept me from talking to other people."
Duo shrugged. "You never talk to other people."
"Because I can't. I tried."
That made Duo smile wryly. "What? Heero Yuy tried to be social and I missed it?"
"If you had been here, I wouldn't have had to try!" Heero snarled, irritated by Duo's attitude towards his problem.
That made Duo pause. "Heero. were you lonely?"
"I don't get lonely," Heero scoffed.
"Then why were you trying to talk to other people for once?"
"It was too quiet," Heero answered. "But you were gone, and when I tried to speak to the other students, it didn't work. I couldn't think of things to say."
Abruptly, Duo moved, gathering his legs under him and standing, moving over to stand next to Heero. He slung an arm over Heero's shoulders, carefully, but not hesitantly. Evidently, he knew that Heero was in no mood to reject the touch.
"Oh, Heero," he said sympathetically. "Everyone gets lonely. It's okay."
"I don't notice it around you," the other pilot answered. "I never noticed it before I met you either."
Duo considered that. "I guess I'm just a bad influence on you all the way around."
"I don't understand how you do it," Heero murmured softly. "People talk to you, and you know what to say back. I can never think of pertinent things to say."
Duo laughed. "Well, there's part of your problem right there. Whoever said conversational material had to be pertinent? Just say whatever, even if you think it sounds kind of stupid. I guarantee you, other people have said more idiotic things."
"Will you teach me how to be social?"
Duo frown. "It's not as easy as teaching, say, chemistry, but sure, I'll try." He beamed at Heero. "After all, what are friends for?"
Heero smiled back ever so slightly and let Duo lead him over to his desk. As he moved, he could have sworn that he heard, ever so faintly, the sound of glass crunching beneath his heels.
Fin
Note: This whole thing is based in part on how I felt my first week living in the dorms. Even I didn't have it as bad as Heero, and now that I'm all settled in, I wonder what all the fuss was about. I still wish they would give me a roommate though. The housing people seem awfully eager to get rid of the poor guy on the third floor that they put here by accident, but they still won't give me a roommate, despite the shortage of housing. ^.^;; Sometimes, bureaucracy makes no sense to me.
Glass Bubble By Rapunzel
"Hi! You're the new student here, aren't you? My name is Katie!"
Heero gritted his teeth and numbly shook the hand the bubbly girl held out to him. This had to be the hundredth person he'd met today. As soon as he and Duo had arrived at this new school, the whole student body had heard, and everyone seemed hell bent on meeting them, despite the fact that he showed no particular enthusiasm in receiving their greetings.
This meeting was no different. Heero mumbled his own name without much interest. Once he had clasped her hand for the prescribed length of time, he released it, turning away from the girl and heading off down the hall. She continued to trotting along side him for a moment, asking about what classes he was taking, but once he had told her, she ran out of conversational material and moved off.
He didn't look after her. She was just one face in the crowd. Almost everyone else he had met had started off conversations in just such a way, and ended them just as quickly. Then they moved on, and he forgot them. It wasn't that he couldn't remember them; he had a fantastic memory and could easily have correctly matched every face with a name had he wished to do so. He did not wish to do so. Why bother to memorize the faces and names of people he wouldn't see again, people who probably wouldn't remember him? He had better uses for those brain cells.
"Man, Heero," said a voice from just beyond his left shoulder, "you sure scared her off pretty fast."
Heero turned long enough to bestow an indifferent look upon the speaker, one Duo Maxwell. "I didn't scare her off; she left on her own."
"Yeah," Duo answered. "Because you froze her out."
Heero's shoulder lifted in a slight shrug that clearly said, "So what?" without words.
"We have got to work on those social skills," Duo said determinedly.
The shoulder dropped, and an eyebrow lifted instead. "We?"
"Well, yeah. They aren't going to get any better unless you want them to."
Heero just snorted and shook his head. "Why would I want them to?"
It was Duo's turn to raise the eyebrow, but it did not remain raised for very long. He'd learned a long time ago that trying to get Heero to be social was like trying to tell rocks that they should fly; things just didn't work that way.
"Never mind. Come on, let's get lunch."
~*~*~
At the sound of the knocking, Duo set down his book and leapt off the bed to go answer the door. Heero barely glanced up from his work, until Duo called, "Hey, Heero!"
With a barely audible sigh, Heero rose from his chair and went to the door. There, he stood at Duo's shoulder and listened to the two boys at the door explained that they were from just down the hall and that they wanted to meet their new school mates. More names were exchanged, hands were shaken, and Heero promptly turned around and went back to his desk and his work, leaving Duo to chat up their new neighbors. The whole thing was a waste of time anyway.
Knowing that Duo could talk up a storm when he chose to, Heero tuned out the scene at the door in favor of his math equations. He was so absorbed in not noticing the social exchanges that he didn't hear the door close, and didn't realize that the visitors were gone until he felt eyes on his back, and looked up to find Duo looking at him with a mixture of resignation and exasperation.
"You are impossible, do you know that?" Duo said, sounding annoyed.
"You have told me so before," Heero answered without much interest.
"Look, I know you're not a people person, but could you at least try to be social once in a while?"
"Why bother?"
"Because," Duo said, leaning in close enough to put his face between Heero and his work, "it's what people do. You don't live in a vacuum, you know. There are people out there around you, and sooner or later, you're going to have to interact with them. Even you have to interact with _someone_."
"I interact with you," Heero pointed out.
Duo snorted. "Not much. Don't you have any friends, Heero?"
"What would I do with friends?"
Duo threw up his hands in despair. "Forget I said anything."
Heero calmly went back to his work, determined to do just that.
~*~*~
The beep of the laptop brought both Heero and Duo into the world of the conscious again. Heero, ever efficient, leapt out of bed first, and immediately started to read the message. Duo was a little less enthusiastic.
"Orders to move out again? Geez, where are they sending us this time?"
"You could come over here and see," Heero told him pointedly.
"I am, I am. Just be patient; it's not like the information is going to vanish in the next two seconds, and even if it did, I'll bet you've already memorized it anyway."
Yawning, Duo heaved himself out of bed and moved to Heero's side. Upon reading the message, he clapped his hand to his head. "Solo mission?" he moaned. "Why me?"
/Some people have all the luck,/ Heero thought, but didn't say aloud. Duo's solo mission was estimated to last about a week, during which time, Heero was to wait for him at the new school they were to attend. For some reason he couldn't pinpoint, the thought of a week by himself at a new place made him uneasy.
"Start packing," was all he said.
~*~*~
The room was empty. Nothing but bare, white walls and a cold, tile floor met his eyes. The only furniture consisted of two beds, two dressers, and two desks in perfect alignment. It was just like a hundred other rooms he had stayed in, and yet its emptiness irritated him vaguely.
He had unpacked, but it was hard to tell. The few belongings he had brought with him did little to alleviate the sparseness of the room. It lacked life. It lacked Duo.
Had Duo been there, the room wouldn't have seemed bare at all. It wasn't that Duo had more stuff than Heero, but he was better at arranging it. Or, rather, he was better at not arranging it. Books laid out on the desk, socks scattered on the floor, and all the various other detritus that Duo left in his wake helped to break up the uniformity of the rooms they stayed in, giving them a lived in look.
Heero gave himself a slight shake to jerk himself out of his reverie. He was being foolish; he had lived in rooms just as bare and impersonal as this, if not more so, for most of his life, and it had never bothered him before. He'd been spending far too much time living with Duo lately, that was all.
With that excuse firmly in mind, Heero set out for the dinning hall.
~*~*~
"Wow! You're the new kid in our building, aren't you?"
Heero looked over his salad bowl at the girl posing the question and simply nodded. Since the dinning hall had been full, he had elected to sit amongst a group of people he had seen in the halls of his building. Most of them seemed mildly curious about him, but not genuinely interested.
"I hear that you haven't got a roommate yet."
"He's due to show up next week," Heero told them, and then filled his mouth with food, as he was at a loss for what else to say.
"You're so lucky," the boy two seats down said. "Must be nice to have all that space to yourself."
Heero shrugged. He didn't especially think so, but he kept reminding himself that it wasn't supposed to matter what his living accommodations were.
Seeing that Heero wasn't talking, the people around him began their own conversations with their neighbors. Conversations that didn't include him. Heero was used to eating in silence, but all the same, it felt odd to be sitting in the midst of a large group of people acting as though he didn't exist. He should have been glad; after all, part of his job was to avoid being conspicuous. Still.
Rather guiltily, Heero found himself listening in on some of the conversations going on around him in an attempt to entertain himself. They were mostly about inane topics such as classes and homework. He couldn't think of a thing to add to them. Had Duo been there, he would have thought of a hundred, a thousand things to say.
Duo's voice echoed in his memory. "We have got to work on those social skills."
Heero snorted softly to himself. Social skills indeed. What did he need with social skills?
~*~*~
The small digital alarm clock still read 8:00. Another two hours at least before he had to go to bed. Heero was brought up short by the realization that he had absolutely nothing to do with the time. He wasn't- he couldn't be- bored. Still, something was missing. Normally, he sat and did his homework or typed on his computer, while Duo chattered, or listened to music, or simply lay sprawled on the other side of the room and breathed. Now the absence of those noises weighed on him.
Heero finally resigned himself to the fact that he wasn't going to get any work done tonight and closed his laptop. That left him even more aware of the two hours that were waiting to be filled. What was he to do with the time? What would Duo have done? He'd have gone around to the other people in the dorm and.
And what? Heero could hardly go around knocking on people's doors just for the sake of disturbing them, and it wasn't like he had anything to _say_ to them. He never had anything to say to them, that was the problem. He was no good at making conversation. Duo, at least, understood that.
Duo. Somehow, it always came back to Duo.
He stood up. Since he had no intentions of going to bed before 10:00, he decided to take a walk. Maybe in the dark, it would be easier to ignore his solitude.
~*~*~
The dinning hall was mostly empty when he arrive there the next morning. Still, Heero approached a table where two girls were already sitting. After mumbling a brief, "Do you mind?", he took a seat across from them. Maybe they would fill the silence.
Only they didn't. They told him their names, and asked him what classes he had, then went back to their own conversation. For some reason, the drone of their voices didn't fill the void the way Duo's voice did. Perhaps that was because Duo had always seemed to give Heero a tacit invitation to join the conversation. These two could have cared less whether he spoke or not. And Heero didn't speak. He was accustomed to saying things that were pertinent and important, and he had nothing even remotely useful to add to what they were saying.
Eventually, the girls finished their food and got up to leave without so much as casting another glance at him. For all he had been sitting across the table from them for the duration of the meal, he might not have existed. It was as though something divided him from his fellow students and the rest of the world. Heero didn't know if that something was of his own making, and if so, how to get rid of it. He had never had this problem before. Normally, being ignored didn't bother him in the slightest, but now, he wished for someone to talk to.
The problem was that no one seemed interested in talking to him.
~*~*~
Heero barely looked up as a boy about his age slid into the desk next to him. However, when the boy tapped the edge of his desk, he looked over almost hopefully.
"Did he say anything important yet?" the boy asked, gesturing at the teacher.
"No," Heero answered.
"Oh. Thanks."
The thread of conversation was dying. Desperately, Heero tried to revive it. "Why are you late?" he asked.
"Had to stay behind in my last class," the boy answered. At that moment, the teacher sent a look in their direction, and his neighbor instantly became silent. Inwardly, Heero cursed. That had been shaping up to be the first actual conversation he had had in two days.
Heero had come to the conclusion that he was either invisible, or so well barricaded from the rest of the world that he might as well have been invisible. He couldn't maintain a conversation for the life of him, even when someone else actually bothered to start one with him, which wasn't often.
/When Duo gets back, I'll make him explain to me how he does it./
/When Duo gets back./
~*~*~
The loud squealing made Heero look up from his homework. Cautiously, he slipped the door open and looked down the hall to see what all the fuss was about. The noise had emanated from one of the girls down the hall, who was greeting a friend. Another girl was standing in the hallway, but not for long. Her friend grabbed her and pulled her into a hug. They began laughing and talking together as they vanished into the room and the door slid closed behind them.
Heero closed his own door, returning to his still barren room. He went back to his desk, but he didn't pick up his pen to continue on with his homework. Instead, he considered what he had just seen. No one hugged him. No one touched him. It was like he was separated from the rest of the world by a glass wall. More precisely, a glass bubble that extended around him in all directions. He couldn't break it, and no one else penetrated it. He no longer even shook hands with his fellow students. Even worse was the fact that he suspected that he himself was responsible for the bubble's being there in the first place.
Without warning, Heero slammed his fists into the desk. He had to break it, had to break free. Again and again he struck the wood in front of him. Never had he wanted anything as badly as he wanted to escape.
The door to his room flew open. "Hey!"
Heero's head jerked up as he gazed hopefully at his visitor. Had it worked?
"Could you keep it down? I'm trying to study here!" And without waiting for an answered, the person left, slamming the door, leaving him in solitude once more.
Heero hung his head. It was useless. He was trapped.
~*~*~
Slowly and mechanically, Heero raised the spoon to his mouth. His eyes were fixed firmly on his food, as there was no where else really for them to rest. The bubble seemed to prevent anyone from sitting within three seats of him. He was growing almost accustomed to eating alone, but he still felt a slight tug in his gut when he noticed the lack of people around him. Before, at least one seat would have been filled by.
"Hey, is this seat taken?"
"Duo!"
Duo grinned at him as he set his tray on the table and plunked himself down in the seat next to Heero. "I thought you looked kind of lonely over here all by yourself."
Lonely. Was that what that was?
"Anyway, how's it been going, buddy?" Duo asked, reaching out to clap a hand on Heero's shoulder.
Heero looked at the hand, then at Duo's face. Duo was touching him. Duo was acting as if the bubble wasn't there, as if it didn't exist.
"Hn."
"That good, huh?"
Heero swirled the spoon around in his bowl of cereal, but didn't actually raise it to take a bite. He was still too busy looking at his comrade. "How do you do it, Duo?"
Duo paused, a forkful of scrambled eggs suspended half way to his mouth. "Do what?"
"Never mind." Heero didn't quite know how to explain what he was asking. Certainly he didn't want to try and explain it here in front of a bunch of strangers. After all, they were still strangers to him.
"No, really. What is it?" Duo asked.
"I'll explain later. I have to go to class."
~*~*~
As Heero closed the door behind him, he paused to survey the changes to the room. As usual, pandemonium dominated Duo's half. For all that, Heero knew from experience that if he ever called on Duo to find something, the other pilot would find it without any trouble.
Duo himself was sprawled on his bed reading a book. Aside from his soft breathing and the occasional turning of a page, the room was quiet, but to Heero, who had been living in semi-silence for a week, the sounds were sufficient.
"Gonna explain to me what you were talking about earlier?" Duo asked without looking up from his book.
"You broke the bubble. How?"
"Huh?" Duo put his open book face down on the pillow and turned to look at Heero. "What bubble?"
"The one that kept me from talking to other people."
Duo shrugged. "You never talk to other people."
"Because I can't. I tried."
That made Duo smile wryly. "What? Heero Yuy tried to be social and I missed it?"
"If you had been here, I wouldn't have had to try!" Heero snarled, irritated by Duo's attitude towards his problem.
That made Duo pause. "Heero. were you lonely?"
"I don't get lonely," Heero scoffed.
"Then why were you trying to talk to other people for once?"
"It was too quiet," Heero answered. "But you were gone, and when I tried to speak to the other students, it didn't work. I couldn't think of things to say."
Abruptly, Duo moved, gathering his legs under him and standing, moving over to stand next to Heero. He slung an arm over Heero's shoulders, carefully, but not hesitantly. Evidently, he knew that Heero was in no mood to reject the touch.
"Oh, Heero," he said sympathetically. "Everyone gets lonely. It's okay."
"I don't notice it around you," the other pilot answered. "I never noticed it before I met you either."
Duo considered that. "I guess I'm just a bad influence on you all the way around."
"I don't understand how you do it," Heero murmured softly. "People talk to you, and you know what to say back. I can never think of pertinent things to say."
Duo laughed. "Well, there's part of your problem right there. Whoever said conversational material had to be pertinent? Just say whatever, even if you think it sounds kind of stupid. I guarantee you, other people have said more idiotic things."
"Will you teach me how to be social?"
Duo frown. "It's not as easy as teaching, say, chemistry, but sure, I'll try." He beamed at Heero. "After all, what are friends for?"
Heero smiled back ever so slightly and let Duo lead him over to his desk. As he moved, he could have sworn that he heard, ever so faintly, the sound of glass crunching beneath his heels.
Fin
Note: This whole thing is based in part on how I felt my first week living in the dorms. Even I didn't have it as bad as Heero, and now that I'm all settled in, I wonder what all the fuss was about. I still wish they would give me a roommate though. The housing people seem awfully eager to get rid of the poor guy on the third floor that they put here by accident, but they still won't give me a roommate, despite the shortage of housing. ^.^;; Sometimes, bureaucracy makes no sense to me.