Smells Like Teen Spirit
by Shannon the Twisted Link Worshiper

(x) X (x)

Game 8
Good Times, Bad Times

(x) X (x)

“Here you are, Maxwell,” Wufei approached Duo in the morning the next day, brandishing a thin stack of white papers held together with a silver paperclip. “Fresh off the press and ready to go!”

“What’s this?” Duo asked, pausing just outside his first period literature classroom to take the bundle of pamphlets from Wufei and flipping through them curiously with a flick of his thumb. They appeared to be a Xeroxed list of names, neatly organized in a bold typewriter’s font in two columns.

“Fool! It’s the list of final cuts for the lax team! As team manager, it’s your job to post them around the school!” Wufei snapped shortly, snatching the papers out of Duo’s hands and using them to bat him over the head. “Honestly, don’t you have any common sense at all?”

“I do, thanks much!” Duo snarled back in an equally biting tone as he snitched the lists back with a speedy pass of one hand. “I just wouldn’t expect a guy like you to understand,” he went on, flicking through the lists again, this time actually bothering to read it over a little.

“Oh fuck! I thought he was fucking kidding!”

“Kidding about what?” Wufei asked with an audible inhalation of air. He moved beside Duo so he could look over his shoulder to see what had angered the braided boy so.

“About that,” Duo pointed to the name typed above all the rest. Left Attack Wing: Heero Yuy—Captain. Duo flicked the name with his forefinger and thumb and frowned at it, as if willing the inked words to change magically. “What were you and Coach Treize smoking when you drew up this list?” He paused and added with a soft laugh, “Because whatever it was, I wanna know what it is and where I can get some!”

“We put this list together over delivered pizza, I’ll have you know!” Wufei retorted indignantly, obviously offended that Duo would even dare to suggest that he do something such as smoke, particularly with a teacher no less! He obviously did not share in the same dark sense of humour that Duo did. “And Yuy is team captain this year because he is a senior and the best player on the team. It’s only… fair….”

“You look at it that way ‘cause you’re still pissed that he got you nailed from the team,” Duo spat scathingly, not caring what effect his words would have on Wufei. “What did he even do to drive such a big stick up your ass anyway?”

Wufei’s face darkened as a flash of angry fire took light in his pitch black eyes, his slender onyx eyebrow twitching a little as he raised a menacing fist. “Don’t you… ever… talk to me… like that… again, Maxwell,” he ground out from between tightly clenched teeth as he fought to keep his rage under control. “It was an accident… and I broke my ankle…. That’s all you need to know! The rest is none of your goddamned business!” Duo could have sworn he saw a vein popping out on Wufei’s forehead as he exploded with that last sentence. “So don’t ever bring it up again, do you understand me, Maxwell!?”

Duo was about to open his mouth to say something he really might have regretted when a sudden deep growling yell echoed from somewhere down the hall. Duo’s face flipped completely around to one of glee as wild grin stretched across his lips. “Excellent. I guess he found it….”

“FUCK!!!” the still immensely agitated voice of Heero Yuy roared from further down the hall, punctuated with a loud slam of a locker door, backed by such strength that it rattled the metal cubbies all the way to where Wufei and Duo stood. Hostile footsteps were quickly becoming louder as Heero stormed closer to them down the hall. “I’ll teach that brat a lesson once and for all if it kills me!” he threatened loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Well, I gotta jam, Wuffers,” Duo chirped, winking at Wufei and wiggling his fingers in a dainty farewell gesture as he darted to the safety of his classroom. “Give that sugary Heero a shout for me, will you? Tootles!” Before Wufei had a chance to say anything else, Duo had hastily slammed the door behind him, leaving the Chinese assistant coach standing by himself and terribly flummoxed.

“I don’t care what Principal Une thinks,” he heard Heero’s deep voice growl dangerously from behind, causing Wufei to turn around to address him. “He is so mine.”

When Wufei finally got an eyeful of the state Heero was in, even he had trouble stifling a laugh. There was Heero Yuy, standing in the middle of the hall, dripping in what appeared to be a pretty good dose of whipped cream, looking for all the world like he was going to rip apart anything that even thought of looking twice in his direction. Most of the thick, sticky, sweet substance was splattered liberally across Heero’s stomach, little clouds of it dotting his face and arms here and there and clinging to his thick spiky brown bangs. There were even tiny flecks of the stuff speckling his long elfin eyelashes. Only the violent ireful blue smoldering in his eyes and the bright red colour of his skin contrasted with the unbelievable storm of white cream.

“What happened to you?” Wufei asked flatly, arching an amused eyebrow at his friend.

“I’ll tell you what happened to me—Maxwell happened to me!” Heero practically roared, his jerky movements causing bits of whipped cream to sail hither thither across the hall. “The little jerk somehow managed to rig a can of whipped cream on the inside of my locker so that when I pulled the handle up to open it, I got sprayed with more than half the damn bottle!” Heero recounted for Wufei as he cracked his knuckles dangerously. “And if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll skip town before I see him again.”

“A little drastic for such a juvenile trick, don’t you think?” Wufei asked calmly, that eyebrow still arched in the same fashion as before. He stepped closer to the classroom door Duo had ducked around and placed a hand on it as if to hold it closed in case Heero was considering an assault on the room. “I’m sure you did something to deserve it.”
Heero responded by simply thrusting a sodden yellow post-it note in Wufei’s face, the running blue ink scrawled across it just legible. ‘Sucks to you, Yuy! That ‘ought to teach you to talk shit about me. Haha, Maxwell strikes again!’

“There, see?” Wufei said, pushing Heero’s hand and the post-it away with a nonchalant backhanded swipe. “Perfectly justified.”

“Oh please,” Heero snarled, still beyond pissed at his current predicament. “All I said was that it figured he’d be such a prick to that blonde friend of his just because he’s so tight with Trowa.” Heero wrinkled his nose as he flicked his hands disgustedly, sending more droplets of whipped cream all over the place. “That kid is a damn menace, worse than ever! He’ll never change.”

“Well maybe if you had better people skills, you’d have been able to get along with him instead of having to deal with this,” Wufei returned eloquently, gesturing to the whipped cream. “He was fine about you until you went and blew up in his face that first day for breaking your fall. No wonder he hates your guts!”

“Yeah, no thanks to you, I’m sure,” Heero snarled bitterly, referring to Wufei’s blatant anger towards him for his injury, his body giving a tiny shiver and a sneeze. That whipped cream was cold and wet too, definitely not a good thing in an air-conditioned school in the thick of a rather wintry January. “You’re no better than him, still complaining about that.”

“Oh come on, Yuy!” Wufei scoffed with a roll of his eyes and a throw of his hands. “At least we can carry on a remotely civilized conversation without throttling each other. You have no excuse to carry on with that Maxwell boy like this—and neither does he for that matter…. Though I must hand it to him….”

“What?” Heero growled. “Go ahead. I dare you, Chang Wufei. Just know I won’t be accountable for anything that happens to you if you say something dumb.”

“…The whipped cream was rather ingenious. It’s a good look for you,” Wufei smirked as he quickly maneuvered around Heero to make for his own first period class before the morning bell rang, getting out of Heero’s reach before the small Japanese boy had a chance to react to his comment. “And clean that mess off before you go anywhere else!” the Chinese boy called over his shoulder as he went down the hall, almost blatantly false in his good cheer. “You’re a disaster waiting to happen!”

Heero only snorted irately at Wufei’s retreating back. He jerked his head to the side to glower angrily at the classroom Duo was hiding out in. “You’ve got one hell of an attitude, Maxwell,” he muttered darkly as his fists clenched unconsciously against his powerful thighs, still too annoyed to keep his mind focused. He hated being outdone more than anything and was determined to remind Duo that he had not won yet. His small pout deepened into an angry scowl as he silently shook his head at the door and stalked off, brooding.

(x) X (x)

Duo had gone through the day rather proud of his stunt against Heero with the whipped cream. After he had pumped Quatre for every minute detail about his weekend excursions with Trowa (to make sure that he was safe—at least, that was his excuse), Duo had found himself particularly ticked off that Heero had the audacity to make such commentary about him. He was the one who needed to take one damn good look in the mirror at his own personality issues before he started complaining about other people. And on top of that, he had been nosing into Quatre’s business, which bothered Duo even more, especially since Quatre’s business had quite a bit to do with his own personal affairs.

So to make sure the message that such behaviour was not acceptable stuck long and good with Heero, he decided to hoist things up to the next rung on the ladder of arch rivalry, just a step above snotty commentary and ‘accidental’ pushes, shoves and the like. Taking a page out of his bad habit of kleptomania and a line or two from his old gang days, Duo had not needed to use his teleporting powers to pull such a simple prank off. Only a few picked locks, a can of whipped cream, a bit of string and rubber band was all that stood between him and making a bakery tart out of the new lacrosse team captain. He only wished he could have thought of a way to top Heero off with a cherry or something. Now that would have been golden. He was so absorbed in congratulating himself on being so clever that he forgot to keep an eye out for retaliation. He never expected for Heero to exact revenge as soon as that afternoon at the first real lacrosse practice of the season.

“Huh, where’s Treize?” were the first words out of Duo’s mouth as he approached the lacrosse pitch that afternoon, team roster in one hand and a bag of extra balls in the other. He reached the bleacher along the sideline where most of the team had dumped their gear and looked around for said missing coach, or even a trace of Wufei.

“You won’t find either of them here, Maxwell,” that dreaded nasal monotone rumbled from a few feet away. Duo looked up to find Heero standing before him with his stick slung casually over one shoulder, looking very intimidating with all that extra padding on top of his under armor, the stretchy white material hugging his well defined stomach tightly. “Treize and Chang have gone register our team for the district roster so we can qualify for finals.” His eyebrows lifted slightly as an almost gleeful twinkle alighted his eyes and his plush pouty lips morphed into a rather devious smirk. “Which means, as team captain, I am in charge until they return.”

“Fuck me,” Duo muttered under his breath, dropping the bag of balls deftly as his skin pricked nervously, alarm bells chiming like crazy between his ears. “Not good.”

“What was that, Maxwell?” Heero asked almost too kindly, cupping his free hand around one small ear and leaning towards the braided boy a little as his smirk became even more prominent than before, if possible. “Didn’t quite catch that.”

“I said ‘Fuck YOU’!” Duo shouted defiantly, flinging the clipboard that held the roster aside in a worked up frenzy. He was breathing hard and trying harder than anything to keep from letting himself lose control. Revealing the fact that he could warp from place to place in a dizzying swirl of dislocated particles would not be a good thing right then with that particular company.

“Oh, demerits, Maxwell,” Heero purred softly, removing his stick from its spot across his shoulder and setting it down headfirst into the hard soil, leaning on it a little. It was almost sick how much he seemed to be reveling in this slow torturous game. “I think you need to learn your place here. Perhaps a couple suicides would be in order.”

“What the fuck? I’m not on the team,” Duo complained with a discontented sneer. “Why should I have to run?”

“Because I am team captain, in the absence of both Treize and Wufei, I am in charge,” Heero snarled, his calming, almost sensual purr gone like a wisp of cloud that had been snatched up into the atmosphere. “And I say that you, Mr. Maxwell, are overstepping your bounds and moving against the sense of team spirit and unity.”

“Yeah, well, I say ‘FUCK YOU YUY’!”

“Maybe more suicides would help bash the idea into that thick head of yours,” Heero said in a rather nasty and biting tone, grabbing up his stick and striding towards Duo with heavy footsteps that left cleat tears in the ground behind him. “I think running four sets of suicides up and down the field would help to make myself perfectly clear.”

“FUCK YO-O-O-O-OU!”

“You’re just adding to the pain, Maxwell,” he said angrily, those beautifully dangerous cobalt eyes piercing right through Duo’s body as Heero closed the distance between them, practically smeared right up against Duo’s chest as he glowered up at the taller chestnut haired boy. “Add two more sets to those four.” He grabbed Duo by the collar and yanked him with ease to the side, sending the black-clad team manager stumbling over his own booted feet. Heero jabbed him in the back with the butt of his lacrosse stick, forcing Duo down to the ground on his stomach. “I’ll get someone to make sure you run all six sets,” he spoke down to Duo, placing a cleated foot upon Duo’s bottom, applying just enough pressure to bruise with the spiked metal sole of the shoe but not so much that it wounded. “And don’t try and shaft any of them or else you’ll be running even more.”

Duo spat out a mouthful of grass and dirt as he tried hard to look over his shoulder and stare defiantly at his tormenter. “Treize’ll boot your ass out of here for being such a lunatic,” he threatened angrily as he tried to wriggle free of Heero’s tight hold upon him. “You’re abusing your privileges as captain.”

“Oh, I think you’ll find that Treize values my opinion highly, Maxwell,” Heero said smugly, removing his foot and giving Duo’s tight rump a little kick, sending him tumbling a little further down the sideline. “And I think when I inform him of your dirty mouth and maybe even a little mention of the whipped cream incident this morning, he’ll sympathize with my cause a bit easier than you think.”

“I still say ‘Fuck you’,” Duo ground out bitterly as he dragged himself to his feet and tried in vain to wipe off the mud that had caked itself all across his shirt and pants.

“Ah, more demerits,” Heero chided with a shake of his head. He turned and shouted over at the mob of players passing and catching in the center of the pitch, “Oi, Zechs! Get over here and make sure Maxwell executes eight sets of suicides the whole length of the field!” He quickly looked back at Duo with a triumphant smile that under any other circumstances Duo would have been drowning in his own drool over. “Have fun, Maxwell.”

(x) X (x)

The week ground on painfully like that, the both of them striking out at each other whenever either one got the chance. Duo conveniently left only one stack of sodden wet towels in the locker room when Heero went off to hit the showers after practice. The favour was returned graciously by the team captain when he ‘accidentally’ locked Duo in the equipment room the next day. By the time Duo had loosened the bolts that held Heero’s usual lunch chair together and was later found on the lacrosse field tied to one of the goals with two rolls of black gaffer’s tape, both Quatre and Trowa decided it was time to take some action. Both were getting tired of lecturing their respective best friends on the complete and total pointless rivalry they had with each other. It was wearing more than just them out.

“Duo,” the diplomatic blonde said, ready to confront his friend on the issue of Heero as they headed for their third period classes at the near end of that week, “I really think you’re letting this get out of hand.”

“Letting what get out of hand, Q?” Duo interrupted his jovial whistling to ask in a cheery yet uneasy tone.

“Don’t try and play dumb with me, Duo,” Quatre admonished with as much severity as he could muster. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” He stopped and pulled Duo to a halt beside him, deciding that he would not let his longhaired friend move until he had given him a piece of his mind. “You have to stop pushing Heero Yuy’s buttons. It’s making everyone in school absolutely insane!”

“Boohoo, what a crying shame,” Duo whined in a cynical and overly exaggerated voice of pity, turning a fist a couple times in front of his eye like he was wiping away tears.

“Quatre, someone has to take the bullet and let that guy know it’s not okay to be such a bastard and it looks like it’s gonna have to be me.” Duo threw his arms up in the air in exasperation, his voice threatening to be just a little louder than necessary, “Hell, even I feel bad for the rest of the lacrosse team! He’s a stony son of a bitch even to them. For crying out loud”—he stomped his foot, his eyes getting wide as he got more and more passionate about his stand against Heero—“even your boy Trowa gets the asshole treatment… and he’s supposed to be his best friend!”

“Okay, okay, Duo, pipe down! You made your point,” Quatre said with a frustrated sigh as he closed his eyes and waved his hand up and down as if he were trying to take Duo’s intensity down a couple notches. “But you know,” he continued when he had his patience back, looking up at the gangly mechanic again, “you’re being just as much of an asshole as he is, so don’t run around acting like you’re some kind of martyr. It’s hypocritical.”

“Fight fire with fire, I say,” Duo responded impassively, his eyelids lowered at half-mast. “Give me one good reason as to why I should sit back and let him push other people around.”

“Well maybe he has his reasons for being like he is! Maybe he’s not what meets the eye, just like you always like to preach about yourself!” Quatre pointed out, referring back to the conversation he and Trowa had on the bench in front of Nataku’s Board Shop without giving away more details than perhaps he should. “You just egg him on. It’s no wonder he gets so ticked off at you with the way you carry on! Hell, it’s a wonder I don’t get ticked off with you more often!”

“Yeah, well, he started it,” Duo snapped moodily, ignoring Quatre’s comment that he had continued ‘it’ and that he was damn annoying when he was bitter. He hated hearing Quatre go on to him about how he should live his life, especially since he had come around to allowing Quatre his own bubble of Duo-free space. “You just do your thing and I’ll do mine,” he huffed at his friend before stomping off to his math class at the end of the hall without even a backward glance at the stammering Winner he had left in the dust.

Things looked like they were just going to schlep into their ordinary mundane routine when Duo got to his class and collapsed in a desk near the back of the room when an extremely well-timed interruption from the norm knocked on the door. He watched from behind his wispy spikes of bangs hanging shaggily over his lazy purple eyes as his math teacher opened the door and quietly conversed with the person just outside in the hall. A few moments later, the math teacher stepped back and allowed Treize to pop his head just inside the room and give Duo a beckoning wave. Realizing that Treize had come to kidnap him for his art class, Duo quickly shoved his things into his bag and dashed out of that room as fast as he could, more than ready to skip one of the most painful classes of the day.

“Thanks, Treize,” Duo said as they walked through the silent halls, now empty of students who were just beginning third period. “You were a real lifesaver. I think I might have stabbed myself to death with a pencil if I had to sit through that.”

“Well I’m glad that I was able to save you from a tragic fate.” Treize chuckled at Duo’s never-ending irreverent commentary as he led the way to the art studio he held his class in. Duo followed behind, having only vague knowledge as to where they were going in the large labyrinth of a school, having never actually ventured off to the visual art studios before. They walked down to the end of the hall and started the long hike up the stairs to the top floor.

“So do I get to meet your darling artist?” Duo asked as they reached a narrow hall running through the attic of the building. It was lined with brightly painted shelves, lockers and display cases crammed with all kinds of art that ranged from sculpture to paintings to pottery to just about everything else that could possible be created in a studio. There was paint splattered all over the place and the floor was dusty from crushed ceramics; the faint scent of a heated kiln somewhere further down the hall filled the air. Music lilted from a radio hidden away in one of the classrooms for the entire floor to enjoy. Though it was all a very interesting environment, it was still extremely small and cramped, even for a skinny guy like Duo.

“Heh, of course you do,” Treize said with a sly grin as he stopped to allow a student carrying a portable fold-up easel to squeeze by them in the tight hall.

“Great!” Duo grinned happily. He was excited to meet this person. He found that people who were extremely creative tended to be wired the same way as him. Maybe this artist of Treize’s would prove to be the someone who could finally understand him. “What’s his name?”

“Never said I’d tell you that,” Treize answered, his smile becoming more of a smirk. “I just said you’d get to meet him… without knowing you’re meeting him, of course.” And with that last reply, he said nothing more on the matter and started to hum quietly.

Duo was silent for a while too, as they went onwards towards the end of the hall, passing a niche that housed the kiln on the way. He found himself taking interest in the activity going on in each of the studios they passed, always intrigued by people as they sank into the creative process. “Hey, how come none of these rooms have doors?” he finally piped up almost immediately after making the observation. “Doesn’t that make for a lot of unwanted traffic and noise?”

“We took all the doors off their hinges when this floor got converted into the art studios,” Treize explained, happy to indulge in conversation that had nothing to do with his fanatical anatomy artist. “I mean, this place is small enough as it is and with all the extra shelving we had to install to house artwork and stuff. Opening and closing doors just made too much of a hassle and took up too much space.” He smiled and said with a grin that meant that Duo would appreciate what he had to add, “Besides, it kind of makes it feel like a hippie commune-type thing here. We can have classes going on in all six studios and still have a sense of unity. Everyone knows everyone else up here. It’s actually kind of nice.”
“Huh, so it does,” Duo whistled appreciatively as he took another look around him, folding his hands behind his head as he was accustomed to do when he had nothing else to do with them. They finally stopped by a doorway at the end of the hall. “Maybe I should have crawled out of the darkroom in the basement and come up here for a change of scenery this year.”

“Eh, it’s really not all that less cramped up here than downstairs in the photography lab, really,” Treize replied, pausing in the sky blue doorframe. “There’s really not enough space up here for six classes and all the work that’s produced in each one. Then there’s the fact that half the period is spent with kids running back and forth between rooms in search of supplies that get scattered. And it’s bad enough there’s no AC up here, but it’s always at least ten times hotter than usual when something’s in the kiln.” He sighed and shook his head, “I do wish that they would do something about it, but it was hell enough to get this floor dedicated to just art in the first place. The administration won’t be so quick to jump on any new requests, especially since they’re redoing the whole theatre after that… Noodle Incident….”

Duo coughed audibly and looked up at the ceiling with his large purple eyes. Treize smirked and shook his head.

“You know, for a lacrosse junkie, you’re awful damn artsy,” Duo said as he followed Treize into the art studio. It was a fair sized room with uneven wooden floors and a ceiling decorated with piping, loose insulation and many posters that sloped from the inside wall to nearly touch the floor on the other side of the room. Two large arched dormitory windows graced the slanted ceiling, a metal supply cabinet was wedged into one window’s niche, a collection of light fold-up easels leaning in the other. A row of murky skylights ran between the two windows, the metal panes forming an intricate flower-like design in each square section of the glass. There was a large stainless steel sink at the back of the room underneath a wide rectangular two-sectioned window with white bars across the outside. A loose ring of assorted chairs and stools stood around the empty space in the middle of the room, most of them sporting a student with a large drawing board and a set of pencils.
Treize led Duo to a plain wooden chair sitting in the center of the students and directed him to sit in whatever position he was most comfortable. Duo slung a leg on either side of the chair, settling on it backwards, folding his arms atop the chair’s back and resting his chin in the cradle they formed as Treize set about giving his class a general overview of what he wanted out of the day’s session.

“Duo, my lovely new team manager here, has graciously volunteered to be our model for this term’s study on figure drawing,” he said while Duo occupied himself with taking a quick glance around the room. Just about everyone seemed to be a fairly serious art student, save perhaps one or two, which could be expected, as this was an advanced placement course. At present, the gingery haired coach was standing just off to Duo’s left, blocking a few of the students off in that region, his back towards the inside of the circle. “Loose sketches with a regular HB pencil to warm up, people, and remember, no erasers! I’d almost even prefer if you did a couple practice sketches of Duo here with a pen so you’re not tempted to cheat! Then when you think you’ve got the hang of it, let me take a look and we’ll see whereveryone’s at.”

When Trieze finished his little spiel, he wandered off to a drafting table set up outside the circle against the flat inside wall to work on whatever project he had set up there. The sound of fluttering paper and the hollow tap of pencils colliding filled the room, a light murmur and the faint notes of the radio down the hall accenting the rustle of materials. Duo suddenly became very aware that just about every eye in the room was focused intently on him, carefully scrutinizing every detail about him, each tiny curve and bend in his figure. To help calm his nerves, he absently reached back around his head and grabbed his thick plait of chestnut hair. He let his narrow fingers slide down the riveted sections of the braid until he found the soft tassel of soft hair that tailed it off. He quickly pulled it back with him as he resumed his former position, the only change being that now his braid fell in a U-shape on his back, tumbling down his spine and then turning upwards towards the black tail rubber band clenched between two of Duo’s fingers. He tried hard to concentrate on mouthing the words of the song playing on the far off radio to distract himself from thinking about it too hard.

“I wanna say one more last thing.
I didn’t mean to take up all your sweet time.
I’ll give it right back to you one of these days!
I said I didn’t mean to take up all of your sweet time.
I’ll give it right back to you... one of these days....”

“Stop fidgeting, Rapunzel,” hissed an unwelcome dark, accented tone from Duo’s left, bleeding right over the music and dragging Duo right back into the middle of that art studio.

Duo shivered unconsciously and squinted his eyes shut, praying that he had only made up hearing the voice of Heero Yuy so close by as he returned to singing his song to himself, focusing on it with all his mind.

“If I don’t meet you no more in this world,
I’ll meet you in the next one and don’t be late.
Don’t be late!”

“And stop that racket! It’s distracting!” came another one of Heero’s irritated commands to stop moving, his voice a sharp and gruff bark.

Cut off again, Duo opened his eyes once more, realizing at last that there was no escaping it and that he was stuck with Yuy for the rest of the period. He spied suspiciously out of the corner of his eye to see that beautiful face focused intently on him, a disgruntled frown riddling that ever-sour expression. Duo curled his lip in a nasty looking expression directed right at Heero and moodily returned to his former position, singing low under his breath as he scowled ahead, not really focusing on anything much, his vision blurry and hazed.

“’Cause I’m a voodoo child, voodoo child!
Lord knows I’m a voodoo child, heyyy!
I’m a voodoo child, baby.
I don’t take no for an answer!”

When his eyes fell into proper focus again, he was relived to notice Wufei sitting right in his line of sight. The Chinese youth was bent intently over his drawing board, his dark black eyes flicking up ever-so-often to make reference to his model. He seemed to working really hard on his work, though whether it was because he was just really into the exercise or simply to tune out the black-haired girl sitting next to him, perhaps even a combination of both. Said girl with the spiky black pigtails seemed to be constantly making haughty commentary at him like a housewife would her husband of many years and it was no wonder that Wufei looked so miffed. Then again, he also looked very, very serious about his drawing, practice sketch or not!

Wufei will keep Heero in check, Duo comforted himself, still staring almost unnaturally straight ahead. Besides, what’s Perfect Boy going to do with his dear coach sitting less than three feet away from him? Ha, nothing!

The class went on surprisingly well after that, considering that Heero and Duo were breathing so much of each other’s oxygen for one period. Soon before the bell was to ring, Treize stood up and started looping around the room, peering over the shoulders of his students and offering comments here and there before giving the final command to pack it up for the day. Duo was unable to discern from any of Treize’s interaction with the students as to which one was the favourite one that had gotten him mixed up in all this in the first place.

Wufei finished before Treize got around to him and began to gather his materials in a way that had a certain flair of practiced routine to it. From his vantage point, Duo was not able to catch a glimpse of his drawings as he stood and started to put his supplies away, still trying to give the black-haired girl the cold shoulder though it was painfully obvious to Duo that the Chinese boy was failing miserably. They were either really close or hated each other dourly, Duo decided after watching their interaction a little longer.

Giving up on trying to track Wufei’s movements, Duo turned his head slightly to catch a glimpse of Heero. Sure, the guy was a pretty poisonous son of a bitch, but there was still no denying that he was still a delicious piece of eye candy. Duo was not sure whether or not he was relieved of upset that Heero’s stool was vacated when he went to look though. His eyes flicked over towards the door just in time to catch Heero’s back as he turned out into the hall without so much as a word of goodbye to Treize or a backward glance, walking brusquely towards his next class.

Most of the kids had left by then, so Duo figured it would be okay to get up and stretch his achy limbs after sitting in that same position for nearly forty-five minutes. He turned around to face Treize, who was chatting softly with Wufei over by his drafting table, the girl no longer trailing Wufei. Seeing that Duo was watching them, Treize gave Wufei a little pat on the shoulder as if to signal for him to go and motioned for Duo to come over.
“Wow,” the gingery haired coach said when Duo was standing right by him, taking two fingers and pinching them around Duo’s chin as he turned the braided boy’s head in all sorts of angles as if he were looking him over. “You do have a very lovely face.”

“Uh… thanks?” Duo answered through a timid grin, unsure of what to make of the comment. “I guess….”

“Well, I think that having something interesting to draw tends to bump up the quality of the work,” Treize explained, gesturing to the stack of papers sitting on top of his drafting table. A quick glance at the top one proved them to be the products of the recent class. “It really was a good call having you as our model. You look so ordinary and yet, you have some of the most interesting features!”

“Like what?” Duo asked, a little confused. He never really noticed details like that about himself. He chalked it up to seeing his reflection every day in the bathroom mirror and just getting used to it. He supposed that if he occupied another body and seen himself from a strange third party’s view, he might have seen where Treize’s comment was coming from. I guess it’s kind of like how Heero has beautifully plain features and still has this sort of exotic wild thing to him, Duo thought to himself bitterly. Except I’m pretty sure that he notices that every day in the mirror and lets everyone know it! Duo snorted. Vanity was good in moderation, but he was willing to bet that Heero was pompous enough to make a king sized fuss over his handsome features. That is so like him!

“Those big eyes of yours for one thing—are they naturally that colour?” Treize cut off Duo’s inner grouse as he stooped a little so he could stare directly into Duo’s pupils. The braided boy inched back a little for more personal space as he gave a soft nod, not about to tell Treize that the uncommon colour probably came from yet another odd mutated gene in his chemical makeup. “You’re so slim and yet, finely built and your hair, Duo, your hair! You should let it out—I’m sure it’s magnificent!” Treize went on, trying to make a grab for Duo’s braid, which the thieving mechanic promptly snatched out of his teacher’s reach and cradled close to his chest with an air of frightened reflexes.

“It is… and it’s mine,” Duo ground out defensively, stroking his precious hair protectively as he wrapped the luxurious plait around his forearm. His hair was a very special thing to him that went a little beyond just being pretty. When he had been younger and he and his one mutant friend from his old gang had been brought to that church orphanage for the first time, Duo’s hair had hung only a bit past his shoulders. A nun who helped run the organization, a lady by the name of Sister Helen, had wanted to cut it off and give Duo a more regulation boy’s haircut, but the little devil had been very reluctant to do so. It had been his old friend who had suggested to the nun that she simply braid Duo’s hair as a compromise and had even stepped in to show the good sister what he meant by actually plaiting Duo’s hair for the first time. Duo had not stopped wearing his hair like that ever since, especially since he and his old friend parted ways. He liked to think that every time he was able to weave another plait into his braid he had somehow passed another phase in his life, like a timeline of sorts. He could specifically connect certain lengths of his hair with certain events in his life, both good and bad.

As far as letting it out went, well, that was just a complete other game. He hadn’t worn his hair free in front of other people since he was a small child in the gang, before the church. Duo never took his hair out of his braid unless he was absolutely sure he was alone. He felt like unweaving that rope of hair was like unweaving his life and letting go of his past, allowing him to be free and unbound by anything in the world. It might have sounded silly to someone else and Duo had never actually told anyone why he never took his hair out of the braid, but no one ever really bothered to ask, so he left it alone. Not even Quatre had seen Duo’s hair free of its customary style, and they were as close as best friends could get. Duo would only be his true free self for one person—himself—even if it did seem somewhat selfish to do so. Duo supposed he was just waiting for the right person to show his inner soul to and there would come a day when someone would make him feel like there was no need to hide anymore.

“I’m… I’m sorry Duo,” Treize apologized, having enough good sense to see that he had just overstepped some unspoken boundary.

“It’s okay. You didn’t know,” Duo said with a straight heavy wind of air as he slowly loosened his grip around the thick chestnut rope of hair and let it swing down over his chest again. “I can take a lot of shit, but everyone who knows me knows that the hair is off limits.”

“I’ll remember from now on,” Treize promised in a very dignified voice. Something in his tone suggested to Duo that his word was good and that when a man like Treize made a promise, come hell or high water, he was not ever, in a thousand million years, going to break it. “I’ll never make you wear your hair loose for a sitting, no matter how wonderful it would be to draw. Still…” he smiled as he turned towards the drafting table where the class’s drawings were stacked neatly and picked up the top sketch to examine it “…your hair is quite lovely, even in the braid.” He paused, smiled and said: “Thank you.”

“For what?” Duo asked offhandedly as he came closer to the drafting table to rifle through the pile of paper for anything that caught his eye. As he flipped through them, he found that there were a great many styles and skill levels to be had in that pile. Some pictures were very good, others not so much; some were drawn with a very loose and sketchy style, others precise and very attentive to detail, while still others seemed to have not quite picked up on the technique just yet and seemed a little iffy.

“For sharing it with us,” Trieze returned plainly as he laid the paper in his hands next to the stack, almost as if he were intending to set it apart and file it elsewhere than the others. “Your hair obviously means a lot to you.”

“Yeah,” Duo sighed softly as he turned his head to look at the picture Treize had just laid down. Fingering it gently, he pulled it closer and then gasped. Definitely, definitely the work of the kid that did the other painting in Treize’s office, Duo realized right away. Unlike most of the other drawings, which depicted Duo from head to toe floating in the middle of the paper’s white expanse, this one did not fit that mold at all. Whoever had created this drawing had chosen to zoom in close on Duo’s hands folded atop the chair as they toyed nervously with the tail of his braid, filling the rest of the space with the lower half of his heart shaped face, his lips delicately illustrated on the paper. Looking carefully, Duo could see that the artist had started out loose enough and then returned to darken and add detail, paying great attention to Duo’s hands and braid to make them the focus of the picture, the pencil strokes almost lovingly placed upon the page.

Annoyingly enough, the artist had done his work in such a way that it was impossible to tell where in the room he had been sitting and from what angle he had been looking at Duo. The braided boy looked down at the right hand corner where artists typically signed their work to find out who the creator of such a masterpiece was, but found simply a circled letter ‘W’ penciled there instead of a name with a horizantal line drawn over it. Not fair! Cheating! You can’t just rip me off like that! Argh!!! So close and yet so far away! Duo clawed the sides of his head and tugged at his hair, pulling little strands of it loose from its smooth arrangement, deriving a perplexed look from Treize, who clearly seemed to be thinking that Duo was insane.

“It’s good, isn’t it,” Treize finally commented at last as he walked to stand beside Duo, his voice drawing the mechanic out of his frustrated grumbling. He traced a pointed finger through the airspace over one of Duo’s drawn hands on the paper, “See how he’s been able to do your hands in such a way, it captures how nervous you were, even though the picture doesn’t fidget like the real you does!” He gestured to another element of the drawing with a flick of his wrist. “And you can see how he used much sharper, bold shading for your skin and clothes but softened them when he did your hair—see how wispy and gentle these few strands of hair are where they peek out between these two fingers? It’s a nice contrast, don’t you think? Very lovely, even if it’s only a rough, first-day sketch with a junky pencil.” Trieze laughed and shook his head, ambling away from Duo, who was still staring in awe at the drawing on the table. “Get on out of here, Duo. You still have the rest of your classes to go to before I see you again at practice this afternoon. We’ll save the art discussion for next time, alright?”

Duo had sincere trouble making himself look away as he started to leave, muttering something in return to Treize’s farewell, his mind too busy mulling over what this strange artist would cook up next time. His mind suddenly came to a very startling realization and suddenly, he was running down the hall in search of Quatre, unsure of how he would begin to explain how he was starting to become obsessed with a person who he was not sure he had even ever met.

(x) X (x)

//A-N// Chappy title is a Led Zeppelin song and the tune Duo’s singing is one of my favourite Hedrix songs, Voodoo Child. Come on, with a story like this, it had to be in there somewhere!!! Sorry it took me forever and a day to update! Exams were eating up my life last week, and then on top of that, I was working on my website, which I hope to have up in the near future (so keep checking)! Ahh, finally, the long-awaited modeling scene! Wha-a-at!? Did you really think I was gonna tell you who it was so soon? Tch, please; what do you take me for? A nice person!? Guess again, me hearties. ^__^

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