Disclaimer: None of the characters in this story are mine except for the alarm clock, which actually does sit on my dresser, and the pile of laundry, which I still haven't gotten around to doing anything about. Maybe I'll get to it tomorrow. If you want to know what Duo's whistling at the end, it's the Laundry song, by the Roaches. It's basically a narration of a trip to the laundromat, and I can't remember any of the words at the moment.
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This story, like so many others that I've written, begins with an alarm clock. This particular alarm clock, like quite a few of the others in my various stories, lived in a rather messy room on the third floor of the Winner mansion, and was usually covered with a combination of dirty laundry, spare change, hair ties, and bits of string. This story starts with the buried alarm clock ringing at the respectable hour of 10 am on a Tuesday morning.
"DUO!" came a shout from down the hall. "WAKE UP AND TURN OFF THAT DAMN CLOCK!"
"Clock--?" came a muffled moan from under the bed. A sleepy and disheveled boy with a long braid untangled himself from the mess of covers and slid out from under his bed. Duo rarely slept on the bed because it was covered with junk, the current junk being a partly assembled antique car's engine. Dodging a towering laundry pile, the former Gundam pilot crossed the room and fumbled with the screaming alarm clock, eventually shutting it off.
"There! It's off!" he hollered out the door, then grabbed a brush out from under the clock and attempted to brush his hair without undoing the braid first.
"Forget it.." he muttered. Duo tossed the brush at the pile of laundry, made a mental note to do the wash sometime today, and went downstairs to see about something edible.
Heero, his fellow former pilot, was already in the kitchen, helping himself to mid-morning snack.
"Why can't you have a normal clock, with normal volume?" the other boy asked.
"Cuz a normal alarm doesn't wake me up." Duo replied.
"Neither does that one. It just wakes up everyone else, and then everyone else wakes you up."
Duo grinned and grabbed himself a bowl. "You were all awake anyway. And if I got a clock that was loud enough to wake me up, I'd be waking up the whole colony besides."
Heero rolled his eyes, then went back to his snack, leaving Duo to help himself to breakfast.
"Hey Duo. You're finally up." Quatre said, coming in. "I was about to start planning lunch. Do you or Heero have any ideas?"
Heero muttered something about soba, then got up and left.
"Don't look at me, I'm still eating breakfast." Duo said. "But soba sounds good."
Quatre smiled. "Great! I'll go check with Trowa and Wufei." The blond former pilot went off to find the other two of their number.
"Yeah, you do that." Duo muttered and finished his cereal. He walked into the hall, trying to remember if he had anything urgent that he needed to do.
"I'm almost done with that engine, not really pressing though." he said to himself. "Laundry! That was it!" The braided former pilot turned to go back upstairs and take care of it.
"You."
Duo spun around, nearly whacking the speaker in the face with his braid.
"Relena?!" he said. "What are you doing here?"
"Came to talk to you." the blond girl said snobbishly, examining a pink painted nail.
"Um, okay."
"I wanted to know why you're spending so much time with my Hee-chan."
"Hee-chan?"
Relena went all starry eyed. "My prince of the star, my hero, my savior, my Heero Yuy!"
"Uh... " Duo couldn't think of anything to say, other than the fact that Relena appeared to be even crazier than usual.
"You've been awfully friendly with him lately." Relena accused.
"Well, we are both living here, and we've been friends for a while." 'Which is more than you can say,' he added silently.
"He hasn't spent any time at all with me, because he says he's been spending it with you."
"Yeah, and?"
"I want to know why."
"We're friends, you crazy moron! Of course we're gonna spend time together!"
"You're sleeping with my Heero! You're gay!"
Duo gave a sigh of exasperation. "No, we're not. We're friends. Really good friends, but just friends."
"Liar! Admit it!"
"I don't lie, I never do!"
"You are so! You're a sick, gay freak and you're raping my Heero! You-- " Relena was on a roll. She went on with her tirade, making comments on everything about Duo from his mother's hygiene to his former life as a thief and street urchin.
'Go on, hit her!' whispered Duo's left shoulder.
'No, I can't hit a girl!' the right shoulder insisted.
'But she's practically askin' for it!'
'She's still a girl.'
"-- and I you smell bad too!"
WHACK. "YEEEK! You hit me, you low down gay freak!"
"Listen." Duo said. "You haven't the faintest idea of what you're talking about, and you're really getting on my nerves! Now get out of Quatre's house!"
"You don't even belong here, you dirty rat! Quatre shouldn't have let you in the door! You blackmailed him into letting you stay here because you're too lazy to find your own place to live!"
Duo seriously considered hitting her again, but figured it wasn't worth the trouble. His knuckles were already sore from their first collision with Relena's skull. Instead he went inside and interrupted Quatre and Trowa's music session.
"Hey, Quatre? Could you do me a big favour?" he asked.
The blond put down his violin. "What is it?" he replied warily, having only recently recovered from a rather off-color practical joke that had started with the same question. Trowa didn't say anything, but stopped playing his flute to listen.
"Nothing much." Duo said casually. "Just a small annoyance in the form of a trespasser down in the hall."
Quatre relaxed a bit. It didn't sound like another trick. But then, the first one hadn't sounded like a trick either. The blond sighed and flipped open a small cellphone.
"Rasid? Yeah, Duo says there's someone in the downstairs hallway who shouldn't be there... Uh huh... No, I don't know why he didn't take care of it himself..."
"I tried!" Duo protested.
"... He says he tried... Yeah, that doesn't sound good to me either... You'll get someone on it? ... Okay, good. Bye." Quatre closed the cellphone and stuffed it back in his pocket. "Rasid's sending some of the Maganac Corps to take care of it." he said, then he picked up his violin and began sawing away in a rather business-like manner. Duo took this as a sign that he should leave.
Halfway down the stairs he remembered that he still had to do his laundry. He dashed back up to the third floor and stuffed the towering pile into two pillow cases, then lugged it down the stairs. Relena was still in the hall, screaming bloody murder at the Maganac corps who were trying to get her to leave. She pointed a finger at Duo.
"This is your fault!" she screeched. "I just wanted to talk to you, and you went and got armed ruffians! You coward, if you wanted me to leave you could have just asked! You didn't have to send a bunch of bullies! And is that your laundry?" She pointed to the pillow cases. "Because it's about time, you haven't washed anything in over a month and you smell!"
Duo was sorely tempted to throw one of the pillow cases at her, but he didn't know what he might have in the pockets of some of his pants, and he didn't want anything to get broken by accident.
"How the hell do you know whether I've done my laundry or not?!" he yelled instead.
"Because I've got hidden cameras to watch everything that my Hee-chan does, and I have one in your room because I know that the two of you are gay lovers, so there!"
Now, that was a scary thought.
"Isn't there something called privacy?!"
"I'm protecting my Hee-chan from you! I won't let him be raped!"
Duo looked over at the cowering Maganac corps.
"We're very sorry Master Duo!" one of them said. "She started screaming, and we couldn't move!"
"Looks like I'm going to have to take care of it myself." Duo muttered. He set down his laundry and came the rest of the way down the stairs to face Relena. He hadn't the faintest idea of how he was going to get her to leave. Then an idea struck.
"Relena, you have to understand. Heero doesn't want to spend time with you because he really doesn't like you that way." Relena opened her mouth to argue and Duo stuffed it with the first thing he touched-- a dirty sock. "So if you would please leave, and stop stalking him-- "
Relena wrenched the sock from her mouth and tossed it in Duo's face. "I am not stalking him! I love him, and he loves me, I know it! You're trying to hide him from me! You've probably got him all tied up in your room, ready for whenever you like!"
Duo ignored the fact that Relena had just created a major plothole in her own story. If she had a camera in Duo's room like she claimed, she would know that he did not have Heero tied up. But the image of Heero tied to his bedpost gave Duo an idea.
"Actually, it's the other way around Relena." he said, trying to keep his face completely straight. He wasn't a good actor, and he knew it, but maybe, just maybe, even a so-so performance would be enough to convince Relena to leave.
"You see, he actually does that to me. The only reason I'm not tied to the bedpost right now is because he told me to do the laundry. In fact if I'm not back up there soon, he'll probably get really upset, so if you would leave so I can get on with what I was doing--" He justified it by telling himself that he hadn't actually said that he and Heero were lovers, and it was true enough that that the cleaning woman had been threatening to tie Duo to his own bedpost if he didn't take care of the pile of laundry. And Heero had made several comments about the mess in Duo's room.
Relena fell for it, hook, line and sinker, then jerked the pole away and slapped Duo in the face with it.
"You poor, poor thing! I'm sorry I've been so mean to you! I'm so sorry!" she cried, trying to give Duo a hug. Duo jumped back. "I'm sorry, I must have brushed against one of your bruises. Does it still hurt?"
"I'll never lie again, I'll never lie again, I'll never lie again..." Duo muttered under his breath.
"Would you like to come to my house? I can protect you and I'll even let you use the bathtub, so you won't be all dirty."
WHACK.
"Um.. that's okay Relena." Duo said to the unconscious figure on the carpet. "Thanks for the invitation anyway though." He turned to the awe- struck Maganac corps. "You should be able to get her out now." he said, then picked up his laundry bags and hopped down the hall, whistling.
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So, what thinkest thou? Hit the review button, or I shall set the laundry monster on you!