Thank you to everyone who reviewed. Sorry it took so long; I've been sick for the past 6 weeks. Anywho…

Happy Birthday, I.C.! It's early, even. Kind of.

Disclaimer: DOOP

Warnings: Retardation.

Control Freak XI

To call the cinematic experience sub par would be akin to calling Hitler mildly disturbed. Heero wasn't sure quite what was to blame for the massive amount of suckage he was currently enduring. Perhaps it was the fidgeting children seated in front of him. Maybe it was Duo's incessant sniffling right beside his ear. It might have been the piece of popcorn he had lodged between his teeth. Most likely, however, the movie itself was to blame.

Its directors having apparently decided that gratuitous explosions more than made up for a lack of actual plot, the movie had henceforth shown its protagonists engaged in myriad adventures that were connected only by virtue of being in the same film. How two people could go from sipping martinis at a cocktail party to riding motorcycles across Los Angeles rooftops to robbing a casino to defusing a bomb in the Statue of Liberty to delivering a premature baby with nothing but a bottle of Poland Spring was beyond him. It was like watching an episode of "Gumby." Things just sort of… happened. Heero wondered if the Blockheads would be making a cameo appearance at some point.

Oh, wait. They already had. They were cleverly disguised as the main characters. Right.

The movie aside, the other distractions were more than obnoxious enough to be gifted his everlasting hatred. He desperately wanted to reach forward, grab the loathsome children by their scrawny, little necks and shove their faces into the nice movie seat upholstery. Maybe a near death experience involving petrified gum would straighten out their undisciplined behinds.

As for Duo, Heero knew he should have insisted on getting REAL cold medicine instead of cough drops that were ninety-nine percent sugar and hence about as potent as watered down kool aid. Besides which, cough drops, to the best of his knowledge, did precisely nothing for nasal congestion and very little for sore throats. Yet when he had pointed that out back at the pharmacy, Duo had stalwartly refused to drop the package, claiming stronger medicines made him woozy. Heero had pressed the issue and they had compromised by picking up a pocket sized package of tissues. Even in the dim theater lighting Heero could see they were nearly gone.

He would be damned if he could figure out how Duo had gotten a cold at that time of year, anyway. Unless it was really a bad case of allergies, in which case the cough drops were going to be doubly ineffectual.

Well, at least he could do something about the popcorn. "I'll be right back," he whispered to Duo. The other boy flapped a hand at him, eyes riveted to the screen. Apparently someone was enjoying the movie. Shaking his head, he rose and carefully picked his way through the darkness, headed for the exit and ultimately the men's room.

He took perhaps more time than was warranted to remove the offending piece of kernel from between his teeth, needing a moment to get his head together. It always amazed him how quickly the atmosphere at the theater could utterly annihilate whatever good spirits he'd been enjoying. His mood would plummet faster than Gary Coleman's career. He was sure it was due to some deficiency on his own part, but stoically watching several hours' worth of badly enacted scenes torturously edited to resemble some kind of epileptic seizure was not what he'd consider a character building exercise. It wasn't even what he'd consider sane. And so he stood in the bathroom rather longer than necessary and wished whatever god had inspired him to suggest this outing would smite him dead, or at least send a nice power outage his way.

By the time he returned to the theater, the film had decided it wasn't a member of the action-adventure genre after all. Rather, it was a complicated romance that just happened to have flying body parts and crew members throwing buckets of blood around the set. Heero sat down just in time to see the main male character stagger across the screen clutching his stomach, his bumbling sidekick faithfully trailing after him.

"You look like you got gut-kicked. What's the matter? You sick?" the sidekick asked in a voice flatter than Calista Flockhart's chest.

"He--- Helen. Helen—it's Helen. It's Helen, Gib," the hero sputtered out, his eyes darting around in search of the cue cards that were surely just off-screen.

"Something to do with Helen is what I'm getting," Gib brilliantly deducted.

"She's having an affair," the hero ground out, looking about as shell-shocked as a Ninja Turtle with a concussion. 1

Heero was pretty sure there was more dialogue after that, but he was just going to have to miss out on the movie magic because he was too busy trying not to punch a hole through something. Something preferably insentient. He didn't have the patience right now to aim for a moving target. The gods of anger were demand a sacrificial offering and woe be unto he that stood between him and his fist's target.

He became aware that he was displaying rather visible signs of enragement and had, in fact, shot out of his seat, when Duo leaned across the armrest and touchingly inquired after his well-being.

"Look, dude, I don't know what the hell's wrong with you, but if you're going to flip out, don't do it here. You'll scare the kids, man," he whispered nasally. His hood was still up and, in the fluctuating glow of the film, it cast ominous shadows across his face. Heero watched the light flicker over his profile for a moment, glaring harshly.

"I'm not going to flip out," he denied severely, dropping back into his seat.

"That's not what your fists're telling me," Duo returned hoarsely, nudging Heero's hand where it was propped on the armrest.

He was not surprised to find that his fists were clenched so tightly that the knuckles were white and the tendons clearly visible beneath the skin. Annoyed as much by his own lack of self-control as by Duo's insistences, he jerked his hands into his lap and forced them to relax. "I'm fine," he stated in a tone that, for normal people, brooked no argument.

He had forgotten, unfortunately, that there was not one thing about Duo that would commonly be deemed normal. He almost seemed to cultivate an aura of abnormality, a habit that would normally instill respect, but at the moment did nothing more than abrade his already eroded patience.

"I can hear your teeth grinding over the movie," Duo pigheadedly pursued, frowning beneath his hood without the least sign of trepidation.

"I'm fine. I can deal with it," Heero bit out, having to remind himself that his patellas were, in fact, located beneath his epidermis and no amount of squeezing was going to convince them otherwise.

"Well, why don't you go deal with it elsewhere," Duo insisted. "People are starting to stare."

Heero looked up to find that people were indeed shooting more than casual looks in their direction. Many were blatantly ogling, having obviously decided that he provided a far better means of entertainment than "Cradle of Lies" or "True Grave" or whatever the heck movie they were supposed to be watching instead of him. He aimed his Death Glare into their general vicinity before turning back to his companion.

"They wouldn't be staring if you hadn't opened your fat mouth," he said flatly, glaring daggers or Death Stars or H bombs or whatever else caused massive amounts of destruction.

"Think what you want, asshole," Duo shrugged exasperatedly. "Let's just get the fuck out of here before they make us leave." He jerked his chin in the direction of the aisle.

Now that it had been brought to his attention, Heero belatedly noticed several ushers poised to leap upon them. Abruptly ashamed of himself, he took a calming breath and stood. "Stay here," he instructed Duo. "I'll be back."

"I sure as hell ain't following you," Duo snorted, leaning back into his seat and burying his hands in his pockets.

"I'll be back," he repeated. Then he left once more for the men's room because, well, it had been a whole five minutes since his last visit and he so missed the smell of disinfectant and urinal cakes.

Heero allowed the bathroom door to slam shut and went to stand in front of the sinks, leaning up against the counter with his back to the mirrors. With a slight frown on his face and his eyes focused dully on the stalls across from him, he gave off every appearance of impatiently waiting for someone to emerge, which, of course, he wasn't, especially since he was the only one in the bathroom.

Taking a shaking breath, he allowed his head to fall backwards. He knew if he rolled his eyes all the way up, he could just catch a glimpse of himself in the mirrors. He didn't make the attempt.

"God, I'm such a jerk," he admitted to himself, the words ringing hollow in the starkness of the lavatory.

"I would have used the term aggravated asshole, but that's just me."

Heero snapped his head to the side to see Duo quietly slipping through the door, easing it closed behind him.

"I thought I told you not to follow me," he glared, shoving himself off the counter.

Duo shrugged. "Figured the end of the movie wasn't worth seeing, anyway," he smirked. "Besides, it's not like I paid for the ticket or anything."

Heero sighed. "I'm sorry about… back there," he said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the theater.

"No worries," the younger boy replied nonchalantly. "We all have our days. Heck, I seem to have nothing but."

"Life's a kick in the head, huh?" Heero said, startling a laugh out of the other. "Seriously, though, I'm sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me. I just got so angry…"

"Things at home aren't so good, huh, Heero?" Duo said quietly.

His heart stopped for a second; he was sure of it. "Why do you think that?" he asked carefully.

Duo propped himself against the wall, a pose Heero thought awfully casual for someone who was on the fast track to disembowelment. "I noticed there were certain… aspects of the movie that bothered you."

"What gave you that impression?"

Duo rolled his eyes. "Are you kidding? Every time it was even insinuated that the wife was having an affair you got so tensed up you made a mummy look languid."

Heero turned to face the mirrors, relentlessly staring into his own eyes. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Fine. Have it your way," Duo shoved off the wall and meandered his way towards the exit. "Ignoring it isn't going to change anything, though. What'll happen when next time you really can't control yourself?"

The eyes didn't blink, just stared back dispassionately. "That won't become an issue."

Duo paused, his hand already on the door handle. "You can't say that for sure, Heero. If there's one thing I've learned in life, it's that guarantees mean shit."

"Duo?" The word was terse, near dripping with serpentine tocsin, a veritable quagmire of peril. He prepared himself to revel in the glory of his soon-to-be-won solitude, certain the unnerving complexity of his tone had aptly secured his place in their little hierarchy of two.

It would have, had the other not completely failed to register the overtones. "Yeah?" came the egregiously casual reply.

The eyes finally blinked, allowing him a brief interlude from the surreal nature of the situation. "I just wanted you to know that I am trying very hard not to hit you right now," he grit out.

Duo laughed. "Thanks and all for a swell time, Heero, but I think I'll cut our little tete a tete short and find my own way home. I promise not to cry too hard if you never call me again. Nothing personal. You just have a few too many issues for this simple guy to handle."

"Go to hell," Heero snarled, but the door was already swinging closed. He sighed heavily, but there was no one but the urinals to hear.

-end part whatever this is-

1 The previous four lines were all taken directly from the script of "True Lies," which was used without permission and, needless to say, does not belong to me.

Cookies to whoever can guess the other movie referenced and parodied here.

A/N: This is only half of the chapter. The other half will follow shortly, and by shortly I do mean within the next two weeks, not within the next two months. Part II will contain major plot advancement, which is probably why it is so hard to get written. But get written it will… right after I move.