Duo tensed until the muscles in his shoulders stood out drastically.
"You have to be kidding me!" he shouted, pulling away from Master's grasp. "You're not cutting my hair off! I'll kill you first! I'll-...!"
"Sit down!" Master snapped, getting to his feet. "Cutting your hair is probably a breach of contract anyway, now sit down!" he hissed. Duo obeyed and, once he was seated, Master stormed out of the room.
"Trowa!" I heard him call as he stormed down the hall. I turned to Duo.
With Master gone, all the anger that had held him up poured out of him and left him slumped in the shallow water, his arms wrapped around himself protectively, his head hung. He didn't move as I approached, but his head came up as I laid a hand on his shoulder.
"He's gonna cut it, isn't he?" Duo asked despairingly.
"I don't think so," I told him, but he wasn't assured.
"He is! I know he is! Why would he bother to clean it when he's only got me for two days, and then I'll probably be dead anyway?" he gushed, putting his head back down.
I moved to comfort him, but Master's voice came from the bedroom before I could move.
"Heero! Finish Shini's bath, pronto!" he snapped. "Then get him dressed."
"Yes, Master," I sighed, even though I knew he couldn't hear me.
"I can bathe myself," Duo said, grabbing the washrag from the side of the tub. "You don't need to help me," he said sullenly, beginning to slowly wash his legs.
"Then I'll go get you some clothes," I said, then rose and went my dresser in the master bedroom to get some of my clothes. In the bedroom, Master was busy pulling his hair back into a severe bun. In light of the recent catastrophe, he was probably very nervous about his own hair.
"You're going to have to be de-bugged, too, you know," he said, never looking away from the mirror. "It's possible the other three haven't caught it, because they stayed away from Shinigami, but you were far too close to risk infection. Once you're clean, we'll get rid of the clothes you and Shinigami are wearing, and the sheets in the slaves' quarters. The mattresses, too, probably. Do you think we should have the carpet cleaned?"
"Master... it's just a little bug."
"Uh..." he stuttered, coming back to himself from the "mission mode" he had put himself in. He blushed, and laughed. "I guess you're right. Suppose it will be enough to have everything washed thoroughly?"
"I should think so."
"Now," he sighed, "the big problem. Is Shinigami the only one with lice, or..."
"The rest of us do not have lice. The warehouses check for lice before any slave is allowed in. I don't know how he got them."
"I escaped," Duo snapped, leaving the bathroom to enter the bedroom a towel wrapped around his waist.
"You what?" Master asked.
"You heard me. I escaped. Jumped on a ship headed for L2 and hid in a pile of old rags. That's were I got the little buggers, so don't go blamin' anybody else or yellin' at the other slaves. It was all me, because I'm such an idiot that I decided it was better to go for two weeks without food in the hanger of a stuffy shuttle than stay in this hole another minute. If the damn captain hadn't kicked me in the balls I'd already be three days out on a fourteen day trip to freedom. 'S why those jerks at the warehouse were so eager to shove me off on the next dumb-ass who walked by."
"I see," Master said, giving no indication as to whether or not he was insulted by Duo calling him an idiot. I decided that I had better intervene, before Duo pushed Master too far. He was, after all, my responsibility.
"Come on," I ordered, pushing Duo back into the bathroom. "We need to get you dressed."
I closed the door. Once the door was closed, he immediately quieted and put on the clothes that I handed him. The shirt was a little too big, and the pants were a little too short, but all in all it fit well enough.
"Do we have to go back out there?" he asked me, and I noticed that the melancholy had settled over his body again.
"Yes."
"Can't we just... you know... hole up in here?"
"We have to fix this problem."
"I'm really sorry," he said suddenly, grasping my hand and looking into my eyes. "You know? I really didn't mean to give this to you or anything. If I had known, I wouldn't have gotten so close. Really."
"I never thought that you deliberately would have infected me," I told him, "but I can't condone your wanting to stay infected. You have to let Master fix this."
"Master, master, master," he said disgustedly, tossing down my hand. "He's not superman, you know!" he growled, and wouldn't look at me.
"I know, but he is very kind to us," I replied, uncertain of what I should say. Again, the anger drained out of Duo as though some kind of plug had been pulled. I wished he'd choose a mood, all these changes were beginning to give me a headache.
"I felt the same way about my first master..." he said, his voice trailing off. His eyes went misty with remembrance, and a slow smile crept onto his face.
"Master Zechs is not my first master," I told him.
"What? Oh. Well, I guess it's not really because he was my first. He was just the best," Duo said, the joker's grin back on his face. "The best at everything, know what I mean? But Zechsy is pro'bly pretty good, too, if everything is in proportion. Is it?" he asked, raising his eyebrows several times in what seemed to be some sort of twitch.
"I'm not certain what you're asking. Do you want to know the size of his penis?" I asked. Duo looked for a moment as though he had been punched in the gut, then suddenly doubled over with laughter. I wasn't sure what he found so funny.
It didn't matter, though, because Master called us out before I could say anything else. Master's voice killed any mirth Duo might have gained, and he was instantly the spitting cat he had been in the cage. I led him out of the room, careful to keep him close enough to grab if he were to lash out.
I found that Trowa had returned from the pharmacy with medicated shampoo to kill the lice, which Master and Trowa applied to my and Duo's hair unsparingly. We were then forced to sit in the bathroom for fifteen minutes while the shampoo took effect, a trial that I bore with much more patience than Duo. After that, we had our hair thoroughly rinsed out and were whisked into the kitchen, where we were forced to sit still while Master combed out Duo's hair with a tiny comb and Trowa combed mine. Duo, of course, found that sitting still while a near stranger played with his hair was nearly unbearable.
"Ouch, damnit! You're supposed to get the bugs out not yank the hair out by the roots! Shit! You'd be better off using a lazer to get them out!"
"Be quiet or I'll use a steak knife," Master threatened, not even glancing away from his task. Behind me, Trowa was having a much less difficult time with me, for I was not only holding still and had short hair, but also probably did not have any or many visible lice or eggs. Duo, on the other hand, was constantly moving, had extremely long hair, and had given the lice enough time to breed. Master was doing his best by pinning most of the hair up and only working on tiny sections, but it was still so long that it became knotted or wrapped around the comb when he tried to pull it out. There was also the fact that master was somewhat terrified of the tiny insects, and was actually dipping the comb in a small bowl of acid to be sure the bugs and their offspring were completely dead.
"Ow!" Duo cursed as Master once again hit a snag and had to unknot the hair. "What the hell, I want him!" Duo griped, pointing at Trowa. "He's nice and doesn't pull out all the hair!"
"Trowa's not being more gentle that I am, Heero's just less of a baby than you are," Master replied, still working on Duo's hair.
"Hey!" Duo hissed, turning to glare at Master. In response, Master used the hair he was holding to twist Duo head back to where it should be. Duo yelped, tears springing to his eyes, but looked more humiliated than injured. I would have felt bad for him, but he really did bring it on himself, and Master had been more than lenient with him. Any other master would have severely beaten him, even for something as accidental as picking up lice. The curses and attacks would have been dealt with swiftly in another household. Duo was lucky he had been given to Master, and yet all he had done all he could to get sent back to the warehouse. In a way, I couldn't understand it, but in other ways I knew exactly what he felt like. Who didn't dream of yelling at the cruel masters of Collar? Who didn't want to disobey them? As Shinigami, Duo could do that without being punished. But why live the life as an unwanted slave when Master was offering so much more? Couldn't he let go of the anger long enough to see how good living with Master was?
And why did I feel that I needed to show him, to prove to him that life could be worth living?