Chapter 6

You know, sometimes, I wondered how in the world Heero was able to escape being touched at all, especially at public places swarming with people, like school for instance. Well, I wasn't wondering anymore.

He had this creepy touch-me-and-die air around him that just cleared a path for him more effectively than waving a freakin' gun would.

Well, bully for him. Wasn't going to work on me.

He was gone when I woke up, so I reasonably assumed he'd be in the cafeteria. He was. And he had a space around him big enough to fit a good-sized sofa.

Whistling, I picked up a tray and rejected the French toast for the waffles, declined having sausages but happily accepted scrambled eggs, and snatched a packet of ketchup as the cashier rang up my meal.

Then, with a bounce in my step, I headed straight for Mr. Look-At-Me-And-I'll-Kill-You. People all around wrote me off as dead right then and there. I grinned. I loved stunning people. Bug-eyed expressions were just the funniest thing in the world.

I slapped my tray right next to him, and merely smirked as he glared at me. "Hey Max!" I chirped.

"Solo," he said grudgingly. Heero is not a morning person. In fact, neither am I, but I was in a hyper mood that morning. Did I mention I like to shock people?

I chattered at him cheerily while squeezing ketchup all over my scrambled eggs. He looked at the mess of red and yellow with an expression of acute disgust. For him, anyway. His nose was wrinkling just the tiniest bit. Reading Heero's expressions really help teach you how to catch the most minute details.

"Ketchup on scrambled eggs?" He demanded.

"They're really good," I told him earnestly, "you should try them." I offered him a forkful.

He declined it politely enough.

"Oh well," I said with a toss of my head, "your loss." Then I stuffed the whole thing in my mouth and grinned at him.

He chose to look away, again with the little nose-crinkle. It was adorable. I felt tempted to tell him that, but decided I wasn't ready to leave the mortal plane for hell yet, and held it back.

Stealthily, I snuck a few glances at the people around me, and almost choked at their expressions. Bug-eyed it was.

When a couple bold spirits saw me happily eating breakfast next to Heero, and not skewered on the end of his knife, they edged closer.

Heero sent them an extremely threatening glower. They inched back.

I finished my Ketchup O'er Eggs, then started playing with my waffles. I don't know why I like poking holes in them so much, it's just one of my strange little quirks.

Sometimes, I pretend the boxes are windows, but they're so tinted you can't see through them. Poke, poke. "And the sun comes through!" I crowed.

Heero sent me a slightly frightened look.

I decided to quit scaring the guy and docilely ate my waffles without any further incidents.

Then I was finished, and an evil idea crossed my mind.

Grinning, I nudged Heero on the elbow. The stunned looks that garnered me were enough to keep my shocked-looks-count satisfied for a week.

He grunted.

"What's our first class?" I asked him. We shared all our classes. It's a simple matter for Heero to tweak the school schedules around; having Heero hack school passwords is kind of like using an atomic bomb on a cockroach when simple bug spray would've worked.

"Chemistry."

"And after that?" I said.

"Language Arts."

I sighed. He wasn't getting it. "And after that?" I prodded.

He glared at me. "History, Algebra, Physical Education."

I beamed at him. "Cool!"

He rolled his eyes at me infinitesimally.

Chemistry was boring. We got introduced, sat down next to each other, and then had to endure one hour of Mr. Baltzer droning on and on and on.

Language Arts wasn't much better. I don't remember a word that was said during the entire time. In fact, the highlight of the class was one of the more rowdy boys in back fell off his chair trying to escape a ferocious, terrifying, little bee. The crash his desk made when it smashed into the floor was incredible.

Some girls shrieked shrilly, and waved their arms around ineffectually.

I grinned at them. They looked freakin' ridiculous.

History wasn't bad. Apparently, this semester we were studying wars, and it was fascinating seeing how people fought way back when.

I almost stabbed myself with my pencil, though, when they mentioned us. Gundam pilots.

There was some speculation about what we were like, and I couldn't believe some of the outlandish rumors. Ugly, disfigured, scarred, disillusioned, cruel, crazy, deadly, devil in a human's skin, cold-blooded murderers, psychotic drug dealers, uncivilized barbarians, inhuman monsters, criminals given a choice to die or fight, freakin' politicians, you name it. If it existed, we were it.

Heero's expression twitched in the most alarming ways, and I was on the verge of just throwing caution to the wind and either howling with laughter or pounding some heads into the ground.

Luckily, History ended before we got to that point.

Nobody really talked to us at lunch. I guess my smile wasn't comfort enough for people to brave Heero's glares. Ah, well. I'd take Heero's company over theirs' any day.

Algebra was shockingly easy. I mean, really, what can you teach two Gundam pilots about math that they can't figure out themselves?

I spent half the class doodling on the back of my paper.

When the bell rang, I couldn't tell if I was relieved or disappointed. I hadn't finished my drawing of Wufei having a pie whammed into his face.

Heero looked at it for one long second, and then eye-smiled at me. I was floating on cloud-nine all the way to the locker room.

We stripped and donned our uniforms, this hideous combination of yellow and red. Okay, the colors themselves were okay, just a bit too bright, maybe…it's just that I've always had an aversion to uniforms.

Why? Don't ask me. Same reason I despise strawberry ice cream, maybe.

It was almost uncomfortably warm outside, and I couldn't believe how Heero could manage to look so…nice in the sweltering heat and wearing the stupid uniform.

The teacher arrived, carrying a bag of basketballs. I grinned. Basketball is fun, and what's more, it's actually a sport I know how to play. Back on the streets, sometimes, another gang who owned a beaten, but serviceable basketball would invite us over and we'd just have a day of running around. Those times were few and far between, though.

Mr. Gordon was a pretty lax teacher; he just tossed us the balls, told us to form some teams, and play basketball.

I grabbed one and turned to Heero. He was looking at them a bit warily, and I faltered.

"Max? Do you know how to play?" I asked him quietly.

Almost as if ashamed, Heero gave his head a tiny shake, and I stared at him, torn between incredulity and feeling so terribly sad that he didn't know a game a kid from L2 did.

So, I pasted a smile on my face and said, "Well, let me teach you?"

When he nodded, my smile grew into something more real, and I caught his hand and dragged him to a court.

He was a bit clumsy at first, and a few of his shots went wild, but after a couple false starts, he…bloomed.

It was almost awe-inspiring, watching him learn the whole sport in less than fifteen minutes.

I shook my head. Whatever J squirted into him, well…wow.

I just watched him make basket after basket, and I probably had the most godawful surprised expression on my face you've ever seen.

Unfortunately, even easygoing Mr. Gordon wasn't going to just sit and watch one of his students stare the class away, so before I knew it, we'd been lugged to join another group of boys.

Heero was exuding stay-away-from-me warnings into the air again, and I sighed.

I did a quick once-over on the boys standing in front of us, and was not…pleased with the results.

Typical jocks. And totally towering over us. The shortest one was at least a foot taller than I was, and half of them were unabashedly staring at my braid with a hint of a curl to their lips.

I could literally see Heero's hackles rising. Guess he didn't like the way they were looking at us any more than I did.

None of us wanted to break the increasingly tense silence between us, until Mr. Gordon yelled at us to, "Move your butts and play some basketball!"

I'd gotten really tired of their dismissive stares by then, so I set the challenge.

Slinging an arm around Heero's shoulders, I said, "How 'bout me 'n my best buddy, Max against you guys, eh?"

Someone guffawed, and the rest gaped unattractively.

I narrowed my eyes, and said sweetly, "Unless you'd rather not?"

One of the more reasonable jocks asked, with a raised eyebrow, "Are you sure you don't want another player or something?"

"We'll be fine," I assured him, "I work best just with my pal here." I grinned at Heero, when I realized, with a shock, that I had my arm over his shoulders.

Quickly, I moved to remove the offending arm, but Heero just sort of grinned at me, and I let it go, stealing half-guarded, half-astonished, and totally flabbergasted looks at his calm countenance.

Okay, I'm never going to get that guy.

I whispered, "Ready to kick some asshole butt, Heero?"

He gave me a tight little nod, and then we were squaring off in the middle of the court.

I decided to take the jump, since I hadn't gotten around to explaining that to him yet, and felt like a freakin' midget when I faced some guy whose head was practically in the clouds; he was that tall.

But I could jump higher, and as I grabbed hold of the ball, I had to almost clap a hand over my mouth to keep me from sticking my tongue out at him. I've really got to work on these childish urges.

Then we were off. Heero took to the game like a pro, and for every basket they managed to score, we matched it and more.

After Heero's third three-pointer, they kind of got that we could play basketball, and play it damn well.

Before, their efforts were half-hearted at best. You had to hand it to them; they didn't really want to pound us into the ground and bruise our egos that much.

But, well, given enough incentive, everyone got to playing like their asses were on the line, and I got totally caught up in the fierce game that set my adrenaline pumping.

Heero had this sort of feral look in his eyes, and I could tell he was enjoying it just as much as I was.

I could never get tired of watching him. He just split through the players like silk, and acted like the basketball was practically an extension of his own body.

The jocks were uncomfortably aware of the gap growing between our score and theirs, but, surprisingly enough, they didn't try any dirty tricks.

My estimation of them grew considerably after that, and I wasn't quite so brutal in stealing the ball.

At some point in the game, I realized we'd amassed an audience, but then Heero passed me the ball and my world narrowed back down to the wind whistling past my ear and Heero's grinning eyes.

The teacher had to call an end to the game to make us stop, and the score: 44 to 27, in our favor.

Then it was like snap! The world slid back into place, and the heat hit me like a blow.

I saw Heero blink for a dazed moment and knew he'd felt it too.

"Well, Max," I panted, "that was a great game, huh?"

"Yeah," he said, equally breathless.

Brenner, one of the jocks, came up to us and said ruefully, "I guess you didn't need one of our players after all."

I just nodded, deciding that rubbing their noses into the whole thing was a bad idea.

"Well, Lowe, Wellings," he said, eyeing the names on our uniforms, "you're pretty good, y'know. Definitely good enough to make the team."

The guys behind him agreed.

I grinned. These guys weren't half bad, actually.

A blond guy strutted up, not one of the guys we'd been playing against. Okay, now a preppy jock. Joy. "You'll have to get rid of the hair, then," he said scornfully. "No self-respecting basketball player has hair that long."

I resisted the urge to strangle him, and I'm really proud of the fact that I didn't just light into him. I was, however, going to give him a piece of my mind, until Heero spoke first.

"No, then," he said coolly. I whipped around, to stare at him.

"No?" Blondie repeated

"No." Heero said firmly. "Solo's hair is not to be cut."

I sent him a really, really grateful look for standing up for me. He did his almost-blush thing again.

"Aw, c'mon," one of the jocks I'd labeled as The Guys (meaning the ones we'd been playing basketball with), "you don't really have to cut off your braid or anything. Penn here's just joking." Penn, I assumed, was the blond guy.

"I am not," Penn said huffily, "the braid has got to go."

I felt like screaming, but managed a weak smile. "It's all right, guys. I don't feel much like trying out for the team. My mom'll kill me if I fail another subject." I rolled my eyes. If I had a mom, she would kill me anyway. God, having this "I don't lie" thing can get really problematic.

Several of The Guys sent me some sympathetic looks, and voiced their commiserations.

I tried my best hangdog look, and the subject was dropped.

Then we got to the whole male-bonding thing, and I ended up answering all the questions, since Heero was back to being silent.

Weaving a story of half-truths can be difficult, but nobody was suspicious really, and they weren't going to fall on little discrepancies like Oz interrogators do, so I just kind of relaxed into my Solo Wellings persona.

"Do you guys know each other?"

"Max and I have known each other for a long time. We've done things you wouldn't believe together." Okay, that was pure truth, right there.

"You move together?"

"Yeah."

"Are you best friends?"

"Yeah, I guess I'm his best friend, and he's really a great guy once you get to know him." Totally true.

"Does he ever talk?"

"Yeah, he talks. Not a lot though. I tease him about that a lot. But watch out, when he gets mad, he gets dangerous." You wouldn't believe accurate that is.

"Miss your old friends?"

My mind flashed to Quatre, Trowa, and Wufei, and I sighed. "Yeah, I miss 'em."

By that time, we'd finished changing, they were all as comfortable with me as they were with each other and I counted the day a success. What's more, they didn't think Heero was some kind of psycho, like the rest of the school did.

Yep, things were good.

We slipped into our room at 0200 in the morning, having just finished scouting the perimeters of the Oz base and determined that yes, they were holding some kind of important prisoner in there.

That was a good night's work, and now I all I wanted to do was collapse into bed.

We both shucked off our clothes, and pulled on a clean pair of boxers and a t-shirt. I was all set for climbing the bunk, when Heero sent me this almost hopeful look, and shifted to leave me some space on his bed.

Sighing, I climbed into bed next to him and let my braid be captured again.

The silence was heavy, and I could feel the weight of a question pressing on my head. Finally, I just said, "Heero, spit it out already."

There was a moment of hesitation, and then he said, "Duo, did you mean what you said about best friends today?"

"You know I never lie," I mumbled into the pillow.

"…so you meant it?"

I turned to look at him. "Yes, you are my best friend."

He had the strangest look on his face, and when I said that, his face cleared, and he smiled at me. Using his mouth.

I was frozen to the mattress.

"Are you my best friend?" He asked.

"Yes," I squeaked, still caught by that smile. "Yes," I tried again, giving a little cough, "I'm your best friend."

"Oh," he said.

Then he cleared his throat, and said, his voice a little choked, "That's good."

"'m glad you think so," I murmured, and cuddled into his side. I was half asleep, okay? My brain was burnt out. I wasn't thinking well. Luckily, he decided not to rip my head from my shoulders and that's how we stayed all night. I would be totally appalled the next morning, of course, but he'd just brush it off, like he did sometimes, when I did something I thought was unforgivable, and I'd spend the rest of the day staring at him. But hey, the next night, he let me snuggle into him again, and for that, I was willing to ignore any strange behavior he might be exhibiting and just revel in the feeling of his heart beating against my head.