I got a comment last time about the morality of having a "Rainbow Pride
Floor" in the freshmen dorms. I would just like to state, for the record,
that I did not make that up. There really was such a floor in one of the
dorms when I was a freshman, and as far as I know, there still is. It was
meant to provide a safe environment for the students living there, rather
than to segregate them from the general populace. I don't know what the
majority of the LGBT community thinks on the subject. I'm sure if I asked
around, I'd find both sides of the issue represented.
On another note, for those who haven't seen it already, I got fan art! My friends M.E. and Blue Jeans conspired to draw a picture of Wufei during "The Whipped Cream Incident." It can be found at http: //www. huntersglade. com/ art /a /wld_wcfei .jpg
Enough ramblings. On with the fic!
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing is owned by people far more rich and powerful than I am (for whatever that's saying). Warnings: AU, shounen ai (1+2) Author's Ramblings: Okay, when I went off to college, I started writing these "everyday life" stories. This is sort of the culmination of them, since it depicts what I think would happen if the guys lived "normal" lives and met in college. I know that this idea is far from new, but hey, you know what they say; you write what you know.
Welcome Distractions
By Rapunzel
Chapter 19: Developing Plots
For Heero, the next few days went by in a flurry of events and paperwork. By the end of the week he had worked out an arrangement, had his practically non-existent credit history checked, and signed the lease for Trowa's apartment. By the time all that was finished and Heero was finally through looking for an apartment, he was astonished to find how little of the quarter remained.
Since the apartment hunt had taken up so much of his time, Heero found himself scrambling in order to catch up with his school work. His time at the library was now spent doing more reading than chatting. Fortunately, Duo didn't seem to mind. He was preoccupied with problems of his own.
"I don't like it," Duo muttered for the third time. "It's like he's obsessing about it. Every spare minute he has when he's not eating, sleeping, visiting Trowa, or busy with school, he spends plotting against her. When I ask him what he's doing, he just mutters something about the perfect plan for revenge."
"He's starting to sound like Wufei," Heero muttered, tearing out a piece of graph paper and starting on his math homework.
"I know!" Duo said. "Except he's even worse than Wufei!"
"That's not possible," Heero said, pulling out a ruler and trying to get the axes for his graph perfect.
"Oh yes it is, because it's Quatre," Duo replied. "Every once in a while, something major will happen, and he'll go off like this. Trowa calls it going Zero System, because he gets this one fixed notion in his head and he zeros in on it and ignores everything else."
"Sounds intense."
"Scary, is what it is!" Duo said. "Fortunately, it doesn't happen very often. And usually, when it does happen, we can just turn him over to Trowa and let him take care of it. Unfortunately, that won't work in this case, since Trowa is kind of what started this in the first place."
Heero, absorbed in his graph, just grunted in response.
"Still," Duo mused, "I suppose I should be glad. If he's still busy plotting, it means he hasn't done anything yet."
~*~*~
"I've got it!"
Duo and Hilde both looked up from what they were doing to stare at Quatre. "What have you got?" Hilde asked.
"The perfect plan!" Quatre said, his eyes alight.
"Uh... That's nice," Hilde said cautiously.
"No." Quatre's smile was sly and calculating, very unlike his usual, sweet smile. "It's not nice at all. That's why it's perfect." Then he frowned. "There are still some flaws, things I need to work out. It might not be a tenable solution."
"If it's your idea, I'm sure it'll be brilliant," Hilde said.
"Hilde!" Duo hissed at her. "You're not supposed to encourage him!"
But Quatre didn't need any encouragement; he was already in motion. "Duo, can we go visit Heero tomorrow?"
"Uh, sure," Duo replied warily. "I usually meet him in the library before my shift starts."
"Can we meet him at the dorms?" Quatre asked.
"I guess." Duo eyed his roommate suspiciously. "What do you want with him?"
"Nothing much," Quatre said breezily. "I just want to ask him a few questions, that's all."
Somehow, Duo doubted that that really _was_ all.
~*~*~
Much to Duo's surprise, when he and Quatre managed to locate Heero outside the dorms the next day, his roommate immediately engaged Heero in a lengthy discussion about cars. Heero obviously didn't understand the choice of subject matter either, but he went along with the conversation gamely enough.
Since Heero had not eaten lunch, they found themselves drifting towards the dinning hall. Duo trailed along behind the other two. He was just wondering if he'd mistaken Quatre's intentions when he suddenly found himself tuning in to their conversation.
"Of course," Heero was saying, "freshmen aren't supposed to have cars. The parking space on campus is too limited."
"But surely some freshmen bring their cars," Quatre said. "I mean, it's hard to do without them, especially for people who live far away."
Suddenly, something clicked into place in Duo's mind.
"Dorothy has a car, doesn't she?" he asked, interjecting himself into the conversation.
Heero blinked, surprised. "Yes, she does."
"Does she?" Quatre asked, doing his best to look innocent and failing.
"You conniving brat!" Duo addressed his roommate. "You already knew that, didn't you?"
Quatre nodded sheepishly. "Heero mentioned it just before the two of you left for spring break."
"Why are you interested in her car?" Heero asked.
"Well, she must be pretty attached to it," Quatre said. "I mean, she goes through all the trouble of paying for it, and you said yourself, the parking permits aren't cheep."
"You aren't planning on letting all the air out of her tires, are you?" Heero asked dubiously.
"Oh, of course not!" Quatre scoffed. "I would never do anything so crass and mundane. I happen to have something much better in mind..."
~*~*~
"I can't believe you agreed to point out Dorothy's car to him," Duo said as they walked along to the library.
Heero just shrugged. "It's not like he couldn't have found it without me. I think I described it to him briefly that time, and it is rather distinctive, if only because it's unattractive."
Duo nodded thoughtfully. "I have to admit, that's one of the ugliest cars I've ever seen."
"I wonder what he's planning to do to it," Heero mused.
"Don't ask, buddy. Sometimes it's better not to know."
That made Heero pause to think. "You don't think Wufei or I will be affected, do you?"
Duo's answer was not the most comforting thing he'd ever heard. "You shouldn't be, but you never know."
"Great," Heero muttered.
"I'll think he'll try to keep Wufei out of it, at least," Duo went on. "He won't want her giving Wufei credit for his work. Still, if you're worried about it, you can come hang out at my place this weekend."
"What makes you think he'll do anything this weekend?" Heero asked.
"Well, he can't very well do anything before then; he has a midterm on Friday that he's got to study for."
"Won't he care if I show up at your place for the weekend?" Heero asked.
"I know he's planning on spending Saturday night at least over at Trowa's place, so it shouldn't be a big deal," Duo answered carelessly. "You can probably have his bed."
Heero considered it. "Okay."
"You will? Great!"
~*~*~
"Just think, next year will be full of nights like this."
Heero paused in the act of adding a card to the pile. "Why do you say that?"
Duo shrugged. "Well, you'll be living with Trowa next year, and there will be nights like this that he wants to spend exclusively with Quatre, so you'll have to make yourself scarce. And since Quatre will be over with him, why not come here?"
Heero considered that. "I guess that would be another perk of living with Trowa."
"So you're getting into the idea, huh?"
"It's much better than the alternatives," Heero said. "Aside from Dorothy, the only other offer I got was from those two girls on the second floor. They seemed awfully disappointed when I said I wouldn't be living with them, but I'm kind of glad. One of them had a picture of Wufei during the whipped cream incident taped to the ceiling above her bed." He shuddered slightly.
"Yeah, I can see why you might not want to live with them," Duo said, absently slapping the pile of cards as he saw a pair of twos come up.
Just then, there was the sound of someone clearing their throat behind them.
Without turning, Duo asked, "What's up, Hilde?"
"I'm about to vacuum in here," Hilde said, "so you two might want to move your game somewhere else."
Duo frowned at her, looking at the clock on the wall. "It's nine o'clock," he said.
"But it's Saturday," she countered. "The night is yet young."
"Yeah, but isn't it a little late to be doing the vacuuming?
"Why not?" Hilde asked. "The people living above us do their vacuuming at three in the morning."
Duo muttered something about two wrongs not making a right, but he picked up the cards and headed for his room, Heero in tow.
After closing the door to block out the noise, Duo sat at one end of his bed and motioned for Heero to sit at the other end. "We'll put the cards in between us," he said. "It's not as good as an actual table, but it'll have to do. Now, whose turn was it to go?"
So, for the next quarter of an hour, they sat on Duo's bed, playing Egyptian poker. In the end, Duo won easily. Heero hadn't been as sharp as he usually was, and had missed quite a few pairs. He was too busy trying to figure out how he should word the proposition he wanted to make. He'd been too shy and a little scared to make it before, but now, with the end of the year approaching, he wanted to make it before he had to go away for the summer.
"So," Duo said, shuffling the cards, "Another round?"
"Actually," Heero suggested tentatively, "I was thinking maybe we could play a different game."
"Okay," Duo said easily. "What do you want to play?"
"You know how to play poker, right?"
Duo grinned. "Why certainly. Of course, we usually play for matches, not real money, but..."
"I was thinking we could play without matches," Heero interrupted. "Strip Poker." He shifted uneasily, waiting for Duo's reply. He'd never made such an offer before, and wasn't sure how it would be received.
Duo looked slightly stunned. Finally he said, "Yes, well, we could do that. Or we could do the stripping without the poker."
The cards went off the side of the bed and scattered on the floor as Heero took him up on that offer.
~*~*~
Hilde paused in her cleaning, then switched off the vacuum cleaner and listened intently. The sounds emerging from Duo's bedroom were suggestive, to say the least. "It's about bloody time," she murmured to herself, smiling slightly.
The smile turned into an all out chuckle as there came a loud *thump* from some body part, probably an arm or a leg, hitting the wall. It was followed by a soft curse.
"You'd think Duo would know after listening to Quatre that those beds just aren't big enough for that kind of thing," Hilde mused. Then she turned on the vacuum cleaner again and went back to her work.
~*~*~
In Duo's room, all was quiet. Neither young man felt particularly inclined to talk. Heero was too busy enjoying the feeling of being sprawled across Duo's chest, and Duo's face was buried in his lover's hair. Finally, however, Duo raised his head and said, "Your knee doesn't hurt, does it?"
"Huh?" Heero mumbled intelligently. His knee? Oh, yes, the one he'd accidentally banged against the wall. "It's fine." Truth be told, he'd forgotten all about it. He'd had other things to occupy his attention.
"Good," Duo said. "I know the bed's a little small, but just look on the bright side. It gives us an excuse to sleep close together."
Heero nodded drowsily and then subsided. A comfortable silence filled the room for a few moments, then Heero said, "Duo?"
"Hm?"
"You said next year will have lots of nights like tonight?"
"Oh yes," Duo said, smiling to himself and kissing Heero's forehead. "Lots and lots of them..."
tbc
Author's Notes: All right, I know I said that there would only be one more chapter of this to go. I lied. Well, I didn't really lie, I just changed my mind at the last minute. Chapter 19 was turning out a little longer than I'd intended, and then I talked to M.E., and she pointed out that it would be much nicer if there ended up being a nice, round, even number of chapters, like 20. Since I also like nice, round, even numbers, I decided to split the last chapter in two. So you can thank M.E. for the extra chapter. (I think the best way to thank her would be to go read her stuff and comment on it. Just an idea, mind you...)
I hope I can finish this by February 13. That will mean I've finished it within a year after I started posting it.
On another note, for those who haven't seen it already, I got fan art! My friends M.E. and Blue Jeans conspired to draw a picture of Wufei during "The Whipped Cream Incident." It can be found at http: //www. huntersglade. com/ art /a /wld_wcfei .jpg
Enough ramblings. On with the fic!
Disclaimer: Gundam Wing is owned by people far more rich and powerful than I am (for whatever that's saying). Warnings: AU, shounen ai (1+2) Author's Ramblings: Okay, when I went off to college, I started writing these "everyday life" stories. This is sort of the culmination of them, since it depicts what I think would happen if the guys lived "normal" lives and met in college. I know that this idea is far from new, but hey, you know what they say; you write what you know.
Welcome Distractions
By Rapunzel
Chapter 19: Developing Plots
For Heero, the next few days went by in a flurry of events and paperwork. By the end of the week he had worked out an arrangement, had his practically non-existent credit history checked, and signed the lease for Trowa's apartment. By the time all that was finished and Heero was finally through looking for an apartment, he was astonished to find how little of the quarter remained.
Since the apartment hunt had taken up so much of his time, Heero found himself scrambling in order to catch up with his school work. His time at the library was now spent doing more reading than chatting. Fortunately, Duo didn't seem to mind. He was preoccupied with problems of his own.
"I don't like it," Duo muttered for the third time. "It's like he's obsessing about it. Every spare minute he has when he's not eating, sleeping, visiting Trowa, or busy with school, he spends plotting against her. When I ask him what he's doing, he just mutters something about the perfect plan for revenge."
"He's starting to sound like Wufei," Heero muttered, tearing out a piece of graph paper and starting on his math homework.
"I know!" Duo said. "Except he's even worse than Wufei!"
"That's not possible," Heero said, pulling out a ruler and trying to get the axes for his graph perfect.
"Oh yes it is, because it's Quatre," Duo replied. "Every once in a while, something major will happen, and he'll go off like this. Trowa calls it going Zero System, because he gets this one fixed notion in his head and he zeros in on it and ignores everything else."
"Sounds intense."
"Scary, is what it is!" Duo said. "Fortunately, it doesn't happen very often. And usually, when it does happen, we can just turn him over to Trowa and let him take care of it. Unfortunately, that won't work in this case, since Trowa is kind of what started this in the first place."
Heero, absorbed in his graph, just grunted in response.
"Still," Duo mused, "I suppose I should be glad. If he's still busy plotting, it means he hasn't done anything yet."
~*~*~
"I've got it!"
Duo and Hilde both looked up from what they were doing to stare at Quatre. "What have you got?" Hilde asked.
"The perfect plan!" Quatre said, his eyes alight.
"Uh... That's nice," Hilde said cautiously.
"No." Quatre's smile was sly and calculating, very unlike his usual, sweet smile. "It's not nice at all. That's why it's perfect." Then he frowned. "There are still some flaws, things I need to work out. It might not be a tenable solution."
"If it's your idea, I'm sure it'll be brilliant," Hilde said.
"Hilde!" Duo hissed at her. "You're not supposed to encourage him!"
But Quatre didn't need any encouragement; he was already in motion. "Duo, can we go visit Heero tomorrow?"
"Uh, sure," Duo replied warily. "I usually meet him in the library before my shift starts."
"Can we meet him at the dorms?" Quatre asked.
"I guess." Duo eyed his roommate suspiciously. "What do you want with him?"
"Nothing much," Quatre said breezily. "I just want to ask him a few questions, that's all."
Somehow, Duo doubted that that really _was_ all.
~*~*~
Much to Duo's surprise, when he and Quatre managed to locate Heero outside the dorms the next day, his roommate immediately engaged Heero in a lengthy discussion about cars. Heero obviously didn't understand the choice of subject matter either, but he went along with the conversation gamely enough.
Since Heero had not eaten lunch, they found themselves drifting towards the dinning hall. Duo trailed along behind the other two. He was just wondering if he'd mistaken Quatre's intentions when he suddenly found himself tuning in to their conversation.
"Of course," Heero was saying, "freshmen aren't supposed to have cars. The parking space on campus is too limited."
"But surely some freshmen bring their cars," Quatre said. "I mean, it's hard to do without them, especially for people who live far away."
Suddenly, something clicked into place in Duo's mind.
"Dorothy has a car, doesn't she?" he asked, interjecting himself into the conversation.
Heero blinked, surprised. "Yes, she does."
"Does she?" Quatre asked, doing his best to look innocent and failing.
"You conniving brat!" Duo addressed his roommate. "You already knew that, didn't you?"
Quatre nodded sheepishly. "Heero mentioned it just before the two of you left for spring break."
"Why are you interested in her car?" Heero asked.
"Well, she must be pretty attached to it," Quatre said. "I mean, she goes through all the trouble of paying for it, and you said yourself, the parking permits aren't cheep."
"You aren't planning on letting all the air out of her tires, are you?" Heero asked dubiously.
"Oh, of course not!" Quatre scoffed. "I would never do anything so crass and mundane. I happen to have something much better in mind..."
~*~*~
"I can't believe you agreed to point out Dorothy's car to him," Duo said as they walked along to the library.
Heero just shrugged. "It's not like he couldn't have found it without me. I think I described it to him briefly that time, and it is rather distinctive, if only because it's unattractive."
Duo nodded thoughtfully. "I have to admit, that's one of the ugliest cars I've ever seen."
"I wonder what he's planning to do to it," Heero mused.
"Don't ask, buddy. Sometimes it's better not to know."
That made Heero pause to think. "You don't think Wufei or I will be affected, do you?"
Duo's answer was not the most comforting thing he'd ever heard. "You shouldn't be, but you never know."
"Great," Heero muttered.
"I'll think he'll try to keep Wufei out of it, at least," Duo went on. "He won't want her giving Wufei credit for his work. Still, if you're worried about it, you can come hang out at my place this weekend."
"What makes you think he'll do anything this weekend?" Heero asked.
"Well, he can't very well do anything before then; he has a midterm on Friday that he's got to study for."
"Won't he care if I show up at your place for the weekend?" Heero asked.
"I know he's planning on spending Saturday night at least over at Trowa's place, so it shouldn't be a big deal," Duo answered carelessly. "You can probably have his bed."
Heero considered it. "Okay."
"You will? Great!"
~*~*~
"Just think, next year will be full of nights like this."
Heero paused in the act of adding a card to the pile. "Why do you say that?"
Duo shrugged. "Well, you'll be living with Trowa next year, and there will be nights like this that he wants to spend exclusively with Quatre, so you'll have to make yourself scarce. And since Quatre will be over with him, why not come here?"
Heero considered that. "I guess that would be another perk of living with Trowa."
"So you're getting into the idea, huh?"
"It's much better than the alternatives," Heero said. "Aside from Dorothy, the only other offer I got was from those two girls on the second floor. They seemed awfully disappointed when I said I wouldn't be living with them, but I'm kind of glad. One of them had a picture of Wufei during the whipped cream incident taped to the ceiling above her bed." He shuddered slightly.
"Yeah, I can see why you might not want to live with them," Duo said, absently slapping the pile of cards as he saw a pair of twos come up.
Just then, there was the sound of someone clearing their throat behind them.
Without turning, Duo asked, "What's up, Hilde?"
"I'm about to vacuum in here," Hilde said, "so you two might want to move your game somewhere else."
Duo frowned at her, looking at the clock on the wall. "It's nine o'clock," he said.
"But it's Saturday," she countered. "The night is yet young."
"Yeah, but isn't it a little late to be doing the vacuuming?
"Why not?" Hilde asked. "The people living above us do their vacuuming at three in the morning."
Duo muttered something about two wrongs not making a right, but he picked up the cards and headed for his room, Heero in tow.
After closing the door to block out the noise, Duo sat at one end of his bed and motioned for Heero to sit at the other end. "We'll put the cards in between us," he said. "It's not as good as an actual table, but it'll have to do. Now, whose turn was it to go?"
So, for the next quarter of an hour, they sat on Duo's bed, playing Egyptian poker. In the end, Duo won easily. Heero hadn't been as sharp as he usually was, and had missed quite a few pairs. He was too busy trying to figure out how he should word the proposition he wanted to make. He'd been too shy and a little scared to make it before, but now, with the end of the year approaching, he wanted to make it before he had to go away for the summer.
"So," Duo said, shuffling the cards, "Another round?"
"Actually," Heero suggested tentatively, "I was thinking maybe we could play a different game."
"Okay," Duo said easily. "What do you want to play?"
"You know how to play poker, right?"
Duo grinned. "Why certainly. Of course, we usually play for matches, not real money, but..."
"I was thinking we could play without matches," Heero interrupted. "Strip Poker." He shifted uneasily, waiting for Duo's reply. He'd never made such an offer before, and wasn't sure how it would be received.
Duo looked slightly stunned. Finally he said, "Yes, well, we could do that. Or we could do the stripping without the poker."
The cards went off the side of the bed and scattered on the floor as Heero took him up on that offer.
~*~*~
Hilde paused in her cleaning, then switched off the vacuum cleaner and listened intently. The sounds emerging from Duo's bedroom were suggestive, to say the least. "It's about bloody time," she murmured to herself, smiling slightly.
The smile turned into an all out chuckle as there came a loud *thump* from some body part, probably an arm or a leg, hitting the wall. It was followed by a soft curse.
"You'd think Duo would know after listening to Quatre that those beds just aren't big enough for that kind of thing," Hilde mused. Then she turned on the vacuum cleaner again and went back to her work.
~*~*~
In Duo's room, all was quiet. Neither young man felt particularly inclined to talk. Heero was too busy enjoying the feeling of being sprawled across Duo's chest, and Duo's face was buried in his lover's hair. Finally, however, Duo raised his head and said, "Your knee doesn't hurt, does it?"
"Huh?" Heero mumbled intelligently. His knee? Oh, yes, the one he'd accidentally banged against the wall. "It's fine." Truth be told, he'd forgotten all about it. He'd had other things to occupy his attention.
"Good," Duo said. "I know the bed's a little small, but just look on the bright side. It gives us an excuse to sleep close together."
Heero nodded drowsily and then subsided. A comfortable silence filled the room for a few moments, then Heero said, "Duo?"
"Hm?"
"You said next year will have lots of nights like tonight?"
"Oh yes," Duo said, smiling to himself and kissing Heero's forehead. "Lots and lots of them..."
tbc
Author's Notes: All right, I know I said that there would only be one more chapter of this to go. I lied. Well, I didn't really lie, I just changed my mind at the last minute. Chapter 19 was turning out a little longer than I'd intended, and then I talked to M.E., and she pointed out that it would be much nicer if there ended up being a nice, round, even number of chapters, like 20. Since I also like nice, round, even numbers, I decided to split the last chapter in two. So you can thank M.E. for the extra chapter. (I think the best way to thank her would be to go read her stuff and comment on it. Just an idea, mind you...)
I hope I can finish this by February 13. That will mean I've finished it within a year after I started posting it.