Welcome Distractions
By Rapunzel
Chapter 9: Belated Revelations
Heero discovered on Monday what Wufei had planned for Dorothy when, upon leaving the dorms in the morning to go to class, he noticed that the objects flying in the breeze atop the flag pole did not look like a flag. Upon closer inspection, he realized that it was a woman's bra and underwear. With cheeks tinted slightly pink, he continued on his way.
He tried not to think about Wufei's action and the repercussions it was bound to have while he was in class. However, once he was safely ensconced in the library with Duo, he told his friend all about the incident. Duo seemed amused by the whole thing, but then he didn't have to share a room with the offender, and therefore was safely removed from any acts of vengeance. For Heero was sure that there would be acts of vengeance, and he told Duo as much.
"Dorothy will never let this slide," he said as he followed Duo, watching him put books back on the shelves. "She's not going to take the humiliation of every guy in the housing unit being able to ogle her underwear lying down."
Duo shrugged. "You know what I think the problem is? Both Wufei and Dorothy take these things far too seriously. If it were Hilde, she'd just write it off as childish. She once said that any guy who had nothing better to do than ogle her underpants deserved her sympathy more than her contempt."
"Well, she may be right, but neither one of them is Hilde," Heero pointed out.
"True," Duo said.
~*~*~
Meanwhile, in room 210, a discussion was taking place.
"Oh, he's going to get it this time," Dorothy muttered, pacing across the small room. "He really has no idea who he's messing with."
"Don't you think you should just complain to the RA and leave it at that?" Relena said, not at all liking the rather feral gleam in her roommate's eyes.
"Don't be ridiculous," Dorothy scoffed. "This is between him and me; the RA has nothing to do with it. Anyway, he'd just scold me for starting the whole thing in the first place. Which, by the way, I _didn't_. I put the cough syrup in Heero's shampoo; I can't help it if Wufei was idiot enough to use it too."
"So that _was_ you!"
Dorothy and Relena both turned, realizing belatedly that the door to their room was open. Every girl living on the second floor stood in the hall outside, listening attentively. "We thought you were the one responsible for the two shirtless guys running up and down the hall," one of them said, "but we weren't sure."
Dorothy gapped at them for a minute, then stuck her chin in the air defiantly. "I am quite proud to say that, yes, I was responsible for that."
A female voice rose from the back of the group. "Do you take commissions?"
Dorothy sweat dropped.
~*~*~
"Underwear up the flagpole?"
Wufei smirked. "It worked, didn't it?"
Heero eyed his roommate with something akin to disbelief. "I just can't see you going into some girl's room and rooting through her underwear drawer."
"Well, I wore gloves," Wufei admitted.
"You what?"
"I got one of the guys in chemistry to swipe me a pair of gloves from the lab. My hands smelled like latex for the rest of the day, but it was worth it. You should have seen the look on her face when she saw."
Heero shivered, not at all sorry that he _hadn't_ seen the look on Dorothy's face. Imagining it was bad enough.
~*~*~
By the next day, it became apparent that Wufei had been right about one thing at least: this meant war.
Heero set his book bag down in the hall as he fumbled in his pocket for his keys. Since the incident over Christmas break, Wufei had insisted that they lock the door whenever both of them were out, and they had both been away at classes all morning.
When he finally got the door open, he thought for a moment that he was in the wrong room. But no, his half of it still looked as it always did. It was Wufei's half that had suffered. His stern, gray sheets had been replaced by pink ones, and little pink bows and streamers adorned the room at regular intervals. The plain, white wall seemed to have disappeared beneath a plethora of Hello Kitty stickers. There were even a few cutesy stuffed animals thrown in for effect.
Quietly, Heero backed out of his room, shutting the door and relocking it. He didn't really need anything out of there anyway, and there was no way he wanted to be around when this one hit. The library was a good place to be, he decided, safely removed from Wufei and the explosion that was sure to follow when he found out.
As he picked up his backpack and headed back out, Heero considered asking his roommate to stop locking the door, since the only person it seemed to slow down was him.
~*~*~
Relena gazed mournfully at her stripped bed. "I understand your motivation and all, but why did you have to use _my_ sheets?"
"Oh, Relena," Dorothy said airily. "Just think; it was for a good cause. And you might actually get a hot Asian guy between your sheets now."
~*~*~
As Heero trailed after Duo, who was still on duty and was busily stacking books, he told his companion all about the war that was brewing in his dorm. As usual, Duo found the whole thing more amusing than anything else. He was especially amused by Wufei's admission about the gloves.
"He's such a prude sometimes. I wonder that he's even survived this long into the war. But look on the bright side," Duo said. "Dorothy's clearly not after you any more. You said she didn't even touch your side of the room."
"That's true," Heero said. "But I still have to live with a pissed off roommate."
"Well, if it gets too bad, you're welcome to spend the night at my place, provided that you don't mind sleeping on the couch."
Heero nodded, suddenly reminded of something. "Hey, Duo. I never did thank you for letting me stay that night after the party, did I?"
Duo waved that away. "It was nothing."
"I acted like a fool," Heero muttered ruefully.
"You sure did," Duo agreed amiably. "But that's okay. Like I said, I did a fair amount of that myself, freshman year. It's all part of the learning experience. Next time, you'll know better."
"There won't _be_ a next time!" Heero said with conviction.
"See? You've already learned your lesson."
~*~*~
Heero had been right about Wufei's reaction to the defiling of his room. His roommate was still fuming loudly when he got back late that afternoon. The days that followed weren't much better. Poor Relena ended up suffering when a bunch of water balloons intended for Dorothy fell on her instead as she was opening the door. Dorothy seemed to take any affront to her roommate as an affront to her, and the next day, Wufei found an exploded soda bomb in his backpack that had converted most of the papers inside to a carbonated, caffeinated, sticky mess.
Heero became extremely cautious about entering and leaving his room after Relena's example, and he tried his best to keep from becoming involved in any way. However, he did begin a score sheet, which he tacked to the door so that their other dorm mates, all of whom knew what was going on, could keep up. He began to make duplicates after Wufei ripped down the first one in a fit of rage because Dorothy was winning.
As the war raged on between the two contestants, Heero found himself spending more and more time either in the library or in the lounge of his building. He was sitting quietly in the latter location one night, when Relena approached him, looking slightly nervous.
"Hi, Heero," she said. "Mind if I join you?"
He shrugged indifferently. "You can do as you please,"
She smiled and sat down across from him. Pulling out some papers, she shuffled them haphazardly, but she clearly wasn't very intent on working on them. "Dorothy hasn't been bothering you?" she asked.
"No," he answered. "She seems to be concentrating all of her effort on Wufei."
"That's good," Relena smiled. "I asked her not to bother you. I mean, I know what it feels like to be the poor, innocent roommate caught in the crossfire."
Remembering the incident of the water balloons, Heero nodded understandingly. "She hasn't bothered me."
"That's good," Relena repeated vaguely. She seemed to be watching him very intently, and Heero wondered if he had something strange on his face or between his teeth.
"You know," Relena began after clearing her throat slightly, "we should probably get out of the dorms sometimes just to avoid problems with them."
Heero snorted. "That's what I've been doing. Why do you think I'm never here in the afternoons?"
"Well, but..." Relena sputtered, going rather red in the face. Heero watched her patiently, and she finally blurted, "I meant, would you like to go out with me sometime?"
Heero blinked. She was asking him out on a date? "Not really," he said.
Relena's face was still an unnatural shade of red, and her mouth was turned down in a frown. "Oh. Why not?" she asked in a disappointed voice.
Why not indeed? Heero shrugged. "I don't go out with girls." That much was true. He had never been on a date with a girl, and he didn't really want to start.
Relena's lips quivered, and her eyes were downcast. "I see," she said, voice sounding as if it had to squeeze its way out of her throat. "In that case, I won't bother you anymore." With that, she stood up and rushed out of the lounge.
Heero watched her go with confusion and a small amount of trepidation. She seemed so upset, but he had only told her the truth. What else was he supposed to do? He sighed, wishing for Duo's presence. His vocal friend would surely be able to tell him what he had done wrong. As it was, whatever he had said was said, and all he could do was wait.
He didn't have to wait long. The lounge door flew open, banging against the wall with a crash that nearly made him jump out of his seat. Dorothy strode in, looking as pissed as Heero had ever seen her. It was enough to almost make him cower in his seat. Almost.
"You are such a prick!" Dorothy growled, leaning down so that she was right in his face, but still managing to loom above him. "Stringing Relena along like that!"
"What?" Heero gasped. "I didn't string her along!"
"Oh no?" Dorothy snarled. "She thought that she actually had a chance with you!"
"I never..." Heero stammered. "I didn't..."
"And now you go and tell her that you're not interested in women!"
Heero opened his mouth to deny it, then reconsidered. While those weren't his exact words, it was more or less what he had said, and it was true. "So?" he said.
"So, if you're gay, why didn't you go and live on the third floor of Clay like the rest of them?!"
"The third floor of Clay?" Heero repeated dumbly.
"Yeah! You know, the Rainbow Pride Floor? That way, all the girls would know you were off limits!"
Heero goggled like a fish. The third floor of Clay... That was where Duo had lived...
"Oh, forget it!" Dorothy spat in disgust. "You're so clueless!" She stormed out as noisily as she had come in.
Heero stared after her blankly, not really seeing what was in front of him. The third floor of Clay... "So he _was_ trying to tell me something," he said to no one in particular. Once supplied with the connection, his brain made the leap to figure out exactly why Duo had drawn attention to that particular bit of information.
Duo was interested in him.
tbc
Yes! Finally! A chapter where something actually happens! Actual plot development! I knew I would get around to it eventually.
Chapter 9: Belated Revelations
Heero discovered on Monday what Wufei had planned for Dorothy when, upon leaving the dorms in the morning to go to class, he noticed that the objects flying in the breeze atop the flag pole did not look like a flag. Upon closer inspection, he realized that it was a woman's bra and underwear. With cheeks tinted slightly pink, he continued on his way.
He tried not to think about Wufei's action and the repercussions it was bound to have while he was in class. However, once he was safely ensconced in the library with Duo, he told his friend all about the incident. Duo seemed amused by the whole thing, but then he didn't have to share a room with the offender, and therefore was safely removed from any acts of vengeance. For Heero was sure that there would be acts of vengeance, and he told Duo as much.
"Dorothy will never let this slide," he said as he followed Duo, watching him put books back on the shelves. "She's not going to take the humiliation of every guy in the housing unit being able to ogle her underwear lying down."
Duo shrugged. "You know what I think the problem is? Both Wufei and Dorothy take these things far too seriously. If it were Hilde, she'd just write it off as childish. She once said that any guy who had nothing better to do than ogle her underpants deserved her sympathy more than her contempt."
"Well, she may be right, but neither one of them is Hilde," Heero pointed out.
"True," Duo said.
~*~*~
Meanwhile, in room 210, a discussion was taking place.
"Oh, he's going to get it this time," Dorothy muttered, pacing across the small room. "He really has no idea who he's messing with."
"Don't you think you should just complain to the RA and leave it at that?" Relena said, not at all liking the rather feral gleam in her roommate's eyes.
"Don't be ridiculous," Dorothy scoffed. "This is between him and me; the RA has nothing to do with it. Anyway, he'd just scold me for starting the whole thing in the first place. Which, by the way, I _didn't_. I put the cough syrup in Heero's shampoo; I can't help it if Wufei was idiot enough to use it too."
"So that _was_ you!"
Dorothy and Relena both turned, realizing belatedly that the door to their room was open. Every girl living on the second floor stood in the hall outside, listening attentively. "We thought you were the one responsible for the two shirtless guys running up and down the hall," one of them said, "but we weren't sure."
Dorothy gapped at them for a minute, then stuck her chin in the air defiantly. "I am quite proud to say that, yes, I was responsible for that."
A female voice rose from the back of the group. "Do you take commissions?"
Dorothy sweat dropped.
~*~*~
"Underwear up the flagpole?"
Wufei smirked. "It worked, didn't it?"
Heero eyed his roommate with something akin to disbelief. "I just can't see you going into some girl's room and rooting through her underwear drawer."
"Well, I wore gloves," Wufei admitted.
"You what?"
"I got one of the guys in chemistry to swipe me a pair of gloves from the lab. My hands smelled like latex for the rest of the day, but it was worth it. You should have seen the look on her face when she saw."
Heero shivered, not at all sorry that he _hadn't_ seen the look on Dorothy's face. Imagining it was bad enough.
~*~*~
By the next day, it became apparent that Wufei had been right about one thing at least: this meant war.
Heero set his book bag down in the hall as he fumbled in his pocket for his keys. Since the incident over Christmas break, Wufei had insisted that they lock the door whenever both of them were out, and they had both been away at classes all morning.
When he finally got the door open, he thought for a moment that he was in the wrong room. But no, his half of it still looked as it always did. It was Wufei's half that had suffered. His stern, gray sheets had been replaced by pink ones, and little pink bows and streamers adorned the room at regular intervals. The plain, white wall seemed to have disappeared beneath a plethora of Hello Kitty stickers. There were even a few cutesy stuffed animals thrown in for effect.
Quietly, Heero backed out of his room, shutting the door and relocking it. He didn't really need anything out of there anyway, and there was no way he wanted to be around when this one hit. The library was a good place to be, he decided, safely removed from Wufei and the explosion that was sure to follow when he found out.
As he picked up his backpack and headed back out, Heero considered asking his roommate to stop locking the door, since the only person it seemed to slow down was him.
~*~*~
Relena gazed mournfully at her stripped bed. "I understand your motivation and all, but why did you have to use _my_ sheets?"
"Oh, Relena," Dorothy said airily. "Just think; it was for a good cause. And you might actually get a hot Asian guy between your sheets now."
~*~*~
As Heero trailed after Duo, who was still on duty and was busily stacking books, he told his companion all about the war that was brewing in his dorm. As usual, Duo found the whole thing more amusing than anything else. He was especially amused by Wufei's admission about the gloves.
"He's such a prude sometimes. I wonder that he's even survived this long into the war. But look on the bright side," Duo said. "Dorothy's clearly not after you any more. You said she didn't even touch your side of the room."
"That's true," Heero said. "But I still have to live with a pissed off roommate."
"Well, if it gets too bad, you're welcome to spend the night at my place, provided that you don't mind sleeping on the couch."
Heero nodded, suddenly reminded of something. "Hey, Duo. I never did thank you for letting me stay that night after the party, did I?"
Duo waved that away. "It was nothing."
"I acted like a fool," Heero muttered ruefully.
"You sure did," Duo agreed amiably. "But that's okay. Like I said, I did a fair amount of that myself, freshman year. It's all part of the learning experience. Next time, you'll know better."
"There won't _be_ a next time!" Heero said with conviction.
"See? You've already learned your lesson."
~*~*~
Heero had been right about Wufei's reaction to the defiling of his room. His roommate was still fuming loudly when he got back late that afternoon. The days that followed weren't much better. Poor Relena ended up suffering when a bunch of water balloons intended for Dorothy fell on her instead as she was opening the door. Dorothy seemed to take any affront to her roommate as an affront to her, and the next day, Wufei found an exploded soda bomb in his backpack that had converted most of the papers inside to a carbonated, caffeinated, sticky mess.
Heero became extremely cautious about entering and leaving his room after Relena's example, and he tried his best to keep from becoming involved in any way. However, he did begin a score sheet, which he tacked to the door so that their other dorm mates, all of whom knew what was going on, could keep up. He began to make duplicates after Wufei ripped down the first one in a fit of rage because Dorothy was winning.
As the war raged on between the two contestants, Heero found himself spending more and more time either in the library or in the lounge of his building. He was sitting quietly in the latter location one night, when Relena approached him, looking slightly nervous.
"Hi, Heero," she said. "Mind if I join you?"
He shrugged indifferently. "You can do as you please,"
She smiled and sat down across from him. Pulling out some papers, she shuffled them haphazardly, but she clearly wasn't very intent on working on them. "Dorothy hasn't been bothering you?" she asked.
"No," he answered. "She seems to be concentrating all of her effort on Wufei."
"That's good," Relena smiled. "I asked her not to bother you. I mean, I know what it feels like to be the poor, innocent roommate caught in the crossfire."
Remembering the incident of the water balloons, Heero nodded understandingly. "She hasn't bothered me."
"That's good," Relena repeated vaguely. She seemed to be watching him very intently, and Heero wondered if he had something strange on his face or between his teeth.
"You know," Relena began after clearing her throat slightly, "we should probably get out of the dorms sometimes just to avoid problems with them."
Heero snorted. "That's what I've been doing. Why do you think I'm never here in the afternoons?"
"Well, but..." Relena sputtered, going rather red in the face. Heero watched her patiently, and she finally blurted, "I meant, would you like to go out with me sometime?"
Heero blinked. She was asking him out on a date? "Not really," he said.
Relena's face was still an unnatural shade of red, and her mouth was turned down in a frown. "Oh. Why not?" she asked in a disappointed voice.
Why not indeed? Heero shrugged. "I don't go out with girls." That much was true. He had never been on a date with a girl, and he didn't really want to start.
Relena's lips quivered, and her eyes were downcast. "I see," she said, voice sounding as if it had to squeeze its way out of her throat. "In that case, I won't bother you anymore." With that, she stood up and rushed out of the lounge.
Heero watched her go with confusion and a small amount of trepidation. She seemed so upset, but he had only told her the truth. What else was he supposed to do? He sighed, wishing for Duo's presence. His vocal friend would surely be able to tell him what he had done wrong. As it was, whatever he had said was said, and all he could do was wait.
He didn't have to wait long. The lounge door flew open, banging against the wall with a crash that nearly made him jump out of his seat. Dorothy strode in, looking as pissed as Heero had ever seen her. It was enough to almost make him cower in his seat. Almost.
"You are such a prick!" Dorothy growled, leaning down so that she was right in his face, but still managing to loom above him. "Stringing Relena along like that!"
"What?" Heero gasped. "I didn't string her along!"
"Oh no?" Dorothy snarled. "She thought that she actually had a chance with you!"
"I never..." Heero stammered. "I didn't..."
"And now you go and tell her that you're not interested in women!"
Heero opened his mouth to deny it, then reconsidered. While those weren't his exact words, it was more or less what he had said, and it was true. "So?" he said.
"So, if you're gay, why didn't you go and live on the third floor of Clay like the rest of them?!"
"The third floor of Clay?" Heero repeated dumbly.
"Yeah! You know, the Rainbow Pride Floor? That way, all the girls would know you were off limits!"
Heero goggled like a fish. The third floor of Clay... That was where Duo had lived...
"Oh, forget it!" Dorothy spat in disgust. "You're so clueless!" She stormed out as noisily as she had come in.
Heero stared after her blankly, not really seeing what was in front of him. The third floor of Clay... "So he _was_ trying to tell me something," he said to no one in particular. Once supplied with the connection, his brain made the leap to figure out exactly why Duo had drawn attention to that particular bit of information.
Duo was interested in him.
tbc
Yes! Finally! A chapter where something actually happens! Actual plot development! I knew I would get around to it eventually.