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Disclaimer: DOOP
Warnings: Language
Control Freak Part XI
The phone was ringing. He knew he should answer it. Instead he rolled over and burrowed underneath his pillow, blocking out the sunlight sneaking through the curtains.
The phone was still ringing. He really should answer it. It was probably for him. Scratch that; it was definitely for him, Trowa never having received any calls to his knowledge. But, still, it was too early for phone calls and bed was just so enticing. He pulled the covers a little closer and huddled beneath them, stealing a few more glorious moments of respite.
He tried not to listen as the phone rang a few times more. It probably wasn't important. Phone calls were always insignificant… except when they weren't. He reluctantly decided that he really should answer it. If nothing else, it was keeping him from getting a proper day's sleep. He should just start turning the ringer off and be done with it.
Grudgingly, Duo pushed back the covers and forced himself into a sitting position. He stumbled out of bed and out into the hall, heading towards the kitchen. He grabbed the phone off the hook and spoke blearily into it. "Hello?"
He was startled into a semblance of wakefulness by the overly polite voice that rattled tinnily from the receiver. "Hello. This is Heero calling. Is Duo there?"
"Yeah, it's me," he managed, attempting to surreptitiously clear his throat. He'd be damned. Heero had actually bothered to look up his number. He almost felt guilty for thinking he wouldn't. Almost.
"Sorry, I didn't recognize your voice over the phone," Heero apologized, actually sounding a little embarrassed. Duo was willing to bet that he got embarrassed over a lot of things. "You sound really different."
He made a noncommittal sound in response. "I get that a lot." Especially when he had just woken up with the worst head cold this side of a congested elephant.
"Oh." There was an awkward moment of silence. Duo took the opportunity to wipe his running nose on his sleeve. He had to do the laundry soon, anyway, and paper towels were so rough.
"So… what's up, Heero?" he took up the conversational initiative, uncertain whether he did so to put Heero or himself out of his misery. "Anything exciting and titillating happening on your side of town?" he asked as he wandered back down the hall towards the bathroom. There were actual tissues in the bathroom.
His words apparently served as an impetus to remind Heero why he'd called. "Yes, actually. Are you busy today?" he asked enthusiastically. "There's a new action movie out that looks pretty good. Interested in going?"
"I guess so," he said, rifling through the medicine cabinet in search of cough syrup, throat lozenges, Dayquil, or anything else that would restore him to near-human status. He came up with a half-melted cough drop and a bottle of crystallized, red syrup that had expired a year ago. He opened the bottle and attempted to pour out a few drops. The syrup didn't even quiver. Had it really been that long since either of them had been sick?
He realized Heero was talking again. "If you don't want to go, I understand," he was saying and Duo suddenly realized he'd sounded far less than excited about the prospect of spending the afternoon with Heero. "If you're busy you can just say so. I didn't mean to impose."
Well, gosh. The boy was more polite than zebra at a lion convention. He was practically Canadian. "Trust me; you're saving me from an afternoon of boredom," he assured him. "I probably would have wound up watching infomercials or something if you hadn't called. The last thing I need is another set of knives that can saw through pipes."
"You actually fell for their pitch?" Heero asked with more than a trace of humor.
"Nah, they were a present from Trowa's sister, Cathy. Now there's a girl who knows her knives," he said, deliberately leaving the remark open for interpretation. He threw the medicine bottle in the trash and contemplated the odds of salvaging the half-melted cough drop.
"Remind me to mind my manners around her," Heero replied, sounding a bit disconcerted.
Duo began attempting to peel the wrapper off of the lozenge, but the two had formed an indelible bond and all he managed to do was get a wad of gooey sugar under his fingernail. He was less than overjoyed. "Just be careful where you walk. She has a tendency to display her skills on the street," he advised, not really paying attention to what he was saying, so consumed was he by the challenge before him.
"I can imagine."
"Hey, don't worry too much about it. Trowa's usually more than happy to serve as her target." In the epic battle between man and cough drop, cough drop was winning. Frustrated, he turned on the sink's faucet on to hot and stuck the lozenge under the stream of water. He'd melt that sucker out.
"Oh." Heero's voice was remarkably in its flatness. A Keanu Reeves monologue seemed emotionally charged in comparison.
Duo sighed inwardly. There was just no teasing the guy. "I wouldn't worry too much about it, man. She's harmless enough." The water grew hot enough to scald; he jerked his hand back to see that his ploy had indeed removed the drop from its wrapper. However, it had done so by melting the drop almost completely away, leaving him holding only a soggy shred of paper enveloping a tiny, red sliver. Such was the story of his life.
"Why do I get the feeling that you're not telling me the whole truth?"
"Probably because I'm not. But, anyway. When and where do you want to meet?" He threw the wrapper in the trash and dried his hand off on the front of his sweatshirt. Clothing could be so useful.
"Want me to pick you up in an hour?"
"That's so early. Geez, the theater won't even be open yet." He drifted out of the bathroom and across the hall into his room. The call would be over soon and he could catch a few more hours of sleep before meeting Heero. He plopped down on the edge of his bed.
"It's two o'clock, Duo," Heero said, definitely sounding amused this time.
Well. That certainly explained why he was getting calls so "early." He tried to make like he was well aware of the time. "Ha ha. Yeah. Sorry. Brain fart. That's fine by me. I'll meet you out front in an hour. See ya then."
"Good-bye."
Duo disconnected the call and glumly ran his fingers through his rather unwieldy mass of hair. He sighed. At least there was enough time to shower. Now if only he could dredge up a clean towel…
0-0-0-0-0-0
"I see an hour has drastically improved matters. Over the phone you sounded as if you were about six steps away from the grave," Heero greeted him as he pulled open the car door and dropped down into the passenger seat. "Isn't it a bit hot for a sweatshirt?"
"It's never too hot for a sweatshirt," Duo croaked in all his glory. When Heero's expression changed to one of concern, he grinned self-deprecatingly. "Rest assured, it is just a head cold. Should be gone in a couple of days."
"If you say so," Heero shrugged, waiting patiently for Duo to settle into his seat. "I guess it's a good thing I decided to leave the top up."
"Speaking of which, is this thing yours or your father's?" Duo asked, eyeing the leather interior as he fastened his seatbelt.
Heero sighed and fiddled with the climate control settings simply for the sake of occupying his hands. "Mine in ownership, his in taste. It was a birthday present."
"Not what you would have chosen for yourself, I take it?"
"Not at all, although it did come with a neat free gift," Heero grinned, gesturing towards a stainless steel pen clipped to the sun visor in front of him.
Duo laughed hoarsely. "The dealership spared no expense, I see."
"I have it on good authority that that pen is what cinched the deal," Heero said, shifting the car into drive and pulling away from the curb. "Father was showing very little interest in purchasing anything and was about to walk off the lot when, in desperation, the salespeople pulled out their trump card: a secret cache of promotional products."
"And hence won your father's interest and, ultimately, his patronage. Shit. And here I thought the way to a man's heart was through his stomach."
"Ahh, but that's where you're wrong. You can get a meal anywhere, but a pen such as this cannot be bought with money alone."
"The fifty thousand dollar free gift," Duo muttered. "They were right. Rich people are crazy."
"We prefer the term, 'eccentric,'" Heero deadpanned.
"Call yourselves whatever you want. It doesn't change the fact that you make about as much sense as a kangaroo on a pogo stick," he retorted, punctuating the statement with a rather loud sniffle.
"You want to stop somewhere and get some cough drops or something?" the other boy asked, briefly taking his eyes off the road and giving him a quick once over, probably trying to gauge his level of contagiousness.
Thanks to near-Herculean willpower, Duo fought back a spurt uproarious laughter. "I'm afraid cough drops and I don't get along very well."
"I'm guessing there's a story behind that, but I'm rather disinclined to ask what it is. Lord only knows what the answer would be."
"I guarantee it would make more sense than buying a car to get a pen."
"Buying a car to get a pen makes more sense than living your life from underneath a hood."
"What's wrong with that? Plenty of mechanics do it. Don't be jealous just because you have not achieved the level of coolness necessary to pull it off."
"What else is on that level? Pocket protectors and unwashed hair? I need that like I need a kick in the head."
"I still haven't forgotten about that, by the way."
"Forgotten about what?"
"The kick in the head you so generously bestowed upon me. I'm pretty sure you knocked a few screws loose in there."
"I'm pretty sure they were already loose to begin with. There's a pharmacy coming up on the left," Heero said, abruptly breaking the flow of the conversation. "Do you want to stop or not?"
"It would probably be a good idea," Duo reluctantly admitted, sniffling again. "I have this dream, see, that I will at some point be able to breathe through my nose again. Perhaps it's not much of a dream, but at this point it's really all I have to live for."
"If that's all you have to live for, you should maybe look into finding Jesus or something."
"I tried, but I got tired of being 'It.' Figured maybe it was my turn to hide, for once."
Neither boy laughed.
Heero remained quiet as he turned into the pharmacy's parking lot. It wasn't until he'd pulled into a space and turned off the car that he spoke again. "Just so you know, I'm buying."
Duo sniffled prodigiously, fiddling with the release on his seatbelt. He always had problems with those darn things. It was doubtful, however, that mechanical ineptitude was to blame. He could never be so incompetent. It was likely a vast seat buckle conspiracy, of which he was the soul target. Oh, seatbelts. How he abhorred them and their wily ways. After a near epic struggle, he managed to procure his freedom and happily allowed the seatbelt to retract. Only then did he deign to respond to Heero's rather arbitrary comment. "You're buying what?"
Heero had, of course, unbuckled his seatbelt with nary a hitch. He had then undoubtedly witnessed the battle against the evil safety device, since it would have been fairly obvious even to someone with eyesight like a naked mole rat. To his credit, and Duo's surprise, he did not appear at all amused by the struggle. Instead he wore an expression of near dire seriousness, which was, if possible, only heightened by Duo's question. "I'm buying the cough drops. And," he added as an afterthought, "the movie tickets."
Across the parking lot, a car alarm randomly went off, blaring without justification.
"I can buy my own movie ticket, thank you very much," Duo said sharply, abruptly on the defensive. Heero had sounded just a little too patronizing for his tastes. It was amazing how money could catapult him into a mood more horrendous than a McGriddle sandwich. "I might not be rich, but I don't need any goddamn handouts." Especially not from someone whose father bought a car for a pen.
"I know you don't," Heero said evenly, unperturbed by his sudden ire, "but I want to buy them."
Recently acquired evidence was indicating that he was just another charity case taking a ride on the Good Ship Heero. The thought stung, a fact he was loathe to admit. So, he did what any person with the preservation skills of a cow would do when confronted with a harsh reality: he made an effort to ignore it.
"If you're on another guilt trip over kicking my sorry behind, get over it," he glared, gathering the shreds of his dignity and binding them together with healthy dosage of self-control. "It's over and done with, you ass-pony. Now let's just forget about your idiotic comment and go buy some friggin' cough drops." He started to open the door, stopping only when Heero grabbed his wrist. He glared and jerked his limb free, but remained in the car.
"It's not about that."
"I thought I said we were done talking about this?" He made a show of rubbing his wrist, despite the fact that it didn't hurt in the least.
"I said, it's not about that," Heero reiterated, sounding rather… intense. Duo begrudged him a searching look and found him looking affronted. He allowed himself to relax minutely. If he was that upset, there was a chance that he had been incorrect in his estimation. He silently admitted that he may have jumped to conclusions over Heero's motivation. He blamed it on his cold. One could not possibly think straight when one was forced to breathe through one's mouth like a carp or scrod or something.
On second thought, any fish that were scrod weren't really doing too much breathing anymore. But, he digressed. "If it's not about that, then to what do I owe this sudden outburst of benevolence?" he asked once he had achieved mental coherence once again.
"You're my friend," Heero said simply. "What good is money if I can't use it to help a friend?"
It was amazing how three words were all it took to reduce him to a complete bastard.
Bastard. n. A person, especially one who is held to be mean or disagreeable. Similes include heel, idiot, nitwit, cur, lowlife, knave, brute, creep, sleazeball, miscreant, SOB, snot bucket, and all other manner of unflattering terms that most definitely applied to him.
Duo deflated, his self-righteousness abandoning him as a rat would a sinking ship. "How do you do that?" he muttered.
"Do what?" Heero had managed to catch both his abrupt change of mood and his sub audible words, contemplating him intently.
He did his best to avoid Heero's piercing stare, slouching deeper into his sweatshirt. "Do something that should by all rights make you a complete jerk, but winds up making you look like the goddamn pinnacle of human goodliness."
"I guess my level of coolness is just that high," he said lightly.
"Stop it," he demanded exasperatedly, smacking a hand to his forehead in a demonstration of clichéd annoyance.
"Stop what?" Heero echoed.
"Repeating me, for one thing," Duo fumed. "Speaking, for another. Every time you open your mouth you demonstrate your status as the shining beacon of humanity, however marred it is by your blaring egotism. It's nauseating! How am I supposed to function normally when I've got Tiny fucking Tim sitting next to me? I feel like my entire worth as a person is being usurped by the near-perfection you've cultivated, a perfection apparently achieved completely unconsciously and by accident!"
"Duo," Heero said, interrupting his diatribe against perceived flawlessness, "shut up."
"Excuse me?" he gaped, after having adopted an appropriately pole axed expression.
"Shut up," he repeated. "We're wasting time we should be using to buy cough drops." Heero smiled winningly and Duo felt any further objections he might have uttered shrivel into oblivion. Sensing he had won, Heero opened his door and climbed out of the car. Duo sat limply in his seat as Heero patiently stood waiting in the oppressive warmth, waiting for him to likewise emerge.
"Cough drops," he said weakly. "The story of my life." Then he, too, abandoned the coolness of the car for the heat of the world outside.
-End part 11-
A/N: (shrugs) Cough drops make for good symbolism.
This should wrap up the Issues With Money aspect of their relationship. Thank God.
The movie scene will be in the next chapter. This section turned out a lot longer than expected..