fic - two am : 7
Two AM : 7
"Hey, what do you think of Tad?"
Heero glanced up from his reader after a moment. "Tad from the range?"
"Yeah." Duo gave the wheel a good spin, pleased to find that it was now rotating freely and smoothly after his cleaning. With a satisfied nod to himself, he started removing his cleaning supplies from the top of the coffee table.
"What about him?"
"He's been eyeing me with some interest. I was thinking, yanno, what I might answer."
Heero ran the words through his internal translation program. "If he asks you out?"
"Yeah." He started putting the tools he'd need for reassembly of the robovac back onto the tabletop.
"I haven't spoken with him, any more than necessary."
"Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen him outside of the range, either, but we've made chitchat. Yanno?"
"And?"
"I dunno." His words were unsure, but the movements of his hands were not as he arranged his workspace just so. "He's... likeable. And, yanno, it's hard to hit that sweet spot of... someone who could even vaguely understand... someone like us. Without being, like, grossly older than us or something. Or just like a sociopath or something."
"So... he's relatively young, interacts regularly with law enforcement and such, and isn't a sociopath?"
"Um. Yeah."
"Hn. It's a start," Heero offered cautiously.
Duo put the first piece of the puzzle in place and carefully screwed it in. "So? Have any more thoughts?"
Heero had gone back to reading the news, thinking perhaps his part in this conversation was done. He set his reader down again while he pondered it. He stuck with the facts. "He is reliable enough to handle weapons and ammo responsibly."
Duo looked up from his work just long enough to raise an eyebrow at him.
"Though I probably wouldn't trust him to have my back in the field," Heero felt compelled to add.
He earned a full snort for that one. "I'm not planning to take him out in the field with me."
Heero rephrased it somewhat more like a civilian. "I probably wouldn't trust him to be that person I make an emergency call to at two o'clock in the morning."
"I'm not planning to call him in an emergency at two o'clock, either."
"Why wouldn't you?" Heero asked curiously. "Wouldn't you want that kind of person at your back?"
Duo set his screwdriver down on the table in exasperation. "Of course I want that kind of person at my back. That's why I have you! You are the person I would call in an emergency at two in the morning. It's not like I'm trying to replace you. I don't need that in a... a.... a romantic partner!"
"Oh." Heero thought about this for a moment. "Then... I suppose I have nothing more to contribute to this discussion."
They lapsed into a silence then, each going back to their own thing.
Duo thumped the table a couple of minutes later. "No, no, no, that makes it sound like I want a flaky boyfriend. Of course I don't. I just... I dunno, maybe I could have two...? No, no, that doesn't make any sense. It's not like you'd ever drop the ball on me, why would I need two. Unless you were, like, off being busy saving the world or something."
"Duo."
"Hm?" He looked over to see Heero regarding him quite seriously.
"I would take you with me if I were saving the world."
"Hm." Duo mulled that one over for a bit. He got a mental chuckle out of imagining Heero casually asking him if he might like to go save the world with him next Friday, as easily as someone might ask another out on a date. Hell, for all he knew, that actually was Heero's idea of a date.
He chided himself. No, he knew better than that. He knew Heero better than that. He hadn't the foggiest idea what Heero might consider a date, to be honest, but he knew there was much more to his friend than the occasional saving of the world.
Although it did occur to him that there were not many people Heero would ask to go with him to save the world, and Duo was pleased that he was on the short list, except gah now his head was getting Heero and dates all mixed up, and at this point, he was suddenly reminded that his hormones had almost always been pretty happy to see Heero, way back in the day. Then again, they'd been pretty excited by any number of things, appropriate and otherwise, so he'd never thought much of it. He'd just gotten good at putting them out of mind when he needed to, and it'd all faded with time.
Except. Hm. Now that he was paying attention, it seemed like this one hadn't faded much at all. Mellowed, maybe, matured with time, but no, not faded at all, and wasn't that quite the thing.
"What?" Heero asked cautiously.
Duo realized he'd been staring. And possibly grinning. He clamped most of it down and bent back to his work. "I think you're right. I'm a 'no' on him."
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