Disclaimer: I do not and can never own Gundam Wing, any of its settings or characters. That fact kind of pisses me off, but hey, I didn't think up these guys first, so I can't claim them as mine. However, as I know I am consantly reminding any and all who actually read these kinds of notes, Sei is MY brainchild. MINE. No takee, and everything will be okie-day, ya?
Okay, enough of random tangents. Enjoy!
It was 1 o'clock in the afternoon. A horrible combination of screamo and techno music that, frankly, really did sound like cats being strangled suddenly blasted through the house.
"MAXWELL!" came the enraged shout from the direction of Wufei's room, where he had been sleeping peacefully. He wasn't the only one. After all, they had all gotten to sleep at around 4, due to the whole incident from the night before, which had continued with a long drawn-out conversation about various necessary issues (such as a further repetition from Sei as to what he was, and what household rules he was expected to obey—which were pretty simple, as there weren't any real rules except "clean up after yourself" and "don't invade anyone's privacy"), and culminated with Duo falling asleep while trying to stand up and doing a spectacular face-plant into a couch cushion. Only Heero, Trowa, and Tharasei—who had told them to just call him Sei—had risen to the day relatively early, which was, in this case, about noon-ish.
The three of them were in the kitchen, where Sei was helping Trowa to make breakfast/lunch for the three still-presumably-sleeping pilots, and Heero was typing furiously on his laptop. He didn't bother concealing the screen; Sei had already informed them during the late-night talk that he knew they were all Gundam pilots, thank you very much. When asked how he had found out, the demon eyed the ceiling and refused to answer.
After this revelation, Heero had gone to sleep reviewing every method he knew for killing a person swiftly and silently, and was still debating over which way he should dispose of the threat. But…each time he dwelled on it, he felt as though his heart was twisting like a wrung cloth. He could only ignore it with a lot of effort. Which he was struggling to do at the moment.
Sei turned and looked at the ceiling in the direction of the cacophony. "Does he always play his music that loudly?" he asked, flinching and laying his ears back in an attempt to muffle the noise a bit.
Trowa glanced at Sei amusedly from his work at chopping cucumbers for Quatre's salad. "Only to annoy Wufei," he said, smiling.
"Ah. Well, here's the celery for that salad." Sei spun and stalked out of the kitchen.
"Where are you going?" Heero called suspiciously.
"To smash that stereo system in."
"Oh." Heero and Trowa wisely stayed in the kitchen. They weren't going up into that black hole of sound and ensuring their deaths by threatening Duo's precious sound system.
Sure enough, there was a crash a minute later, followed by abrupt silence and then "WHAT THE HELL! YOU TOUCHED MY STEREO! I'M GONNA KILL YOU!"
"Ah. The start to a beautiful friendship," Trowa said, shaking his head and grinning. Heero's reply was a sigh of relief; at least the hell of sound Duo designated as "music" had been mercifully cut off, though there was much incoherent shouting and thuds from upstairs.
Quatre walked into the kitchen and plopped down into the nearest chair. He smiled gratefully at Trowa as the taller boy wordlessly handed him his food. "I got past him before he went into Duo's room. Somehow I expected them to clash over Duo's choice of music." He hoped, though, that Sei hadn't damaged Duo's stereo too badly. It had been quite expensive, which was one of the reasons that the longhaired boy worshiped it.
Wufei hurried into the kitchen and downed his waiting tea in one gulp, not caring that it burned his throat and the roof of his mouth. He then proceeded to wolf down his food. The other three pilots watched him with expressions that suggested the Chinese boy had just sprouted another head or two. The commotion overhead continued, but in the kitchen there was only a stunned, confused silence.
"Uh, Wufei? What are you doing?" Quatre finally asked in a small voice.
Pausing briefly to wipe his mouth with his napkin, Wufei said, "The both of them…if the upper stories are still intact, I'll be surprised." He nearly choked on a piece of bread he had crammed into his mouth as the shouting grew louder and turned pale. "They're coming downstairs. I'm getting out of here before the hurricane hits the kitchen. You'd all better eat fast and get out, too, while you still can. They'll probably turn over the table—" He took one last gulp of hot water before Trowa could put in the teabag and scurried out the door.
Quatre stared after him. "How long will it take him to figure out that he just walked into the pantry?" he asked Trowa, who had, with his usual calm, taken the seat next to him. "And we should really get out of here, if it's that bad."
Heero, who had typed steadily throughout the entirety of the exchange, said, "Wufei tends to exaggerate. Don't worry," without looking away from his laptop.
The yelling became more coherent as the two fighters approached the kitchen. Wufei came out of the pantry looking both embarrassed and hunted, and then the four of them froze into a stance usually reserved for cornered animals as the volume increased. They listened to the shouting match, in which it was obvious that Sei was getting the better of Duo. It went something like this:
"How come you smashed my stereo? My stereo, man! Do you have any idea how much it cost me?"
"I didn't smash your stereo, kid. I disabled it. You, of all people, should know the difference."
"Well, un-disable it!"
"Only if you stop playing shitty music. I've heard some pretty bad stuff in my time, but that crap tops them all. Learn some taste."
"…"
The two longhaired people entered the kitchen, still arguing, barely noticing that there were persons frightened for their lives in the vicinity. "What's your problem with music, anyway?" Duo grumbled as he sat down to eat.
"I don't have any problem with music. But that, that was not music. Duo, it sounds like constipated bobcats savaging each other." Sei poured some tea into a pair of mugs, and beckoned to Wufei to sit. He handed the apprehensive black-eyed boy the second mug. "If it had been music, I wouldn't have pulled the plug on it. But since all it was was inarticulate screeching, I didn't define it as music. And besides, if you could hear the…less-than-appropriate…undercurrent lyrics, you'd be offended by it, too."
"Whaddya mean, 'if I could hear the undercurrents'?"
"There are subliminal messages in that music, Duo," Sei said with a sigh.
Quatre piped up, interested enough that he was willing to risk possible Death-by-Knife-Thrown-by-Duo for interrupting. "Really? How can you tell?"
Sei tapped one of his hairy, pointed wolf's ears. "I've got good hearing," he said simply.
"Hn. Really." Heero wasn't impressed. He glowered at Sei as he spoke.
"Yeah. Really," Sei retaliated, giving Heero a look that said he wouldn't mind sending him to the Next World early.
"Erm…meanwhile…" Quatre broke off the glaring match in a timid voice, "we've all got stuff we have to do today, right? Heero, don't you and Duo have that mission this afternoon?"
The boy thus addressed nodded slowly and said, "Yeah. I'm ready to go now. Duo won't be ready for another hour and a half, though."
Duo sputtered. "Excuse me? Well, sorry for holding you up, Mr. Perfect Soldier. I'll prepare my gear toot sweet!" He shoveled the rest of his sandwich into his mouth, where it puffed his cheeks out so ridiculously that it made him look like a cute, violet-eyed, longhaired chipmunk with a day's worth of sunflower seeds in its cheek pouches; downed his apple cider without bothering to swallow what was already in his mouth, which made him look even funnier, cuter and more ridiculous; and leapt out of the room.
Another silence pervaded the kitchen as the assembled males—human or otherwise—listened to the thuds and crashes that were characteristic of Duo getting ready for anything. Quatre shifted.
"Um…what's 'toot sweet' mean?" he asked.
Yeah...sorry if ya'll were expecting something serious. I needed a break from serious. I'll be taking these aforementioned breaks rather often, you'll find, although I doubt they'll take up an enitre chapter again. Also, I kind of really want to show the G-boys interacting with Sei as they would with a good friend--it'll be important later.
Please R&R! Reviews make me so warm and bubbly inside!
