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GW - newtypes, scenes 4&5
Scene 4... I don't like it. I suck at introducing OCs, I have no clue how people like that behave and interact in a professional setting, and it just rings false to me. Also the pacing seems off and I'm not sure I'm describing people's actions and the undercurrents that drive their reactions properly. But try as I may, I can't figure out how to fix it. If you have suggestions, I'm listening. This scene is going to need a lot of betaing before I'm comfortable posting it anywhere else.
Scene 5 is really just me cheating like a cheating cheater who cheats and re-using that one-shot 1+5 thing I wrote a couple of months ago. Edited it a bit to fit, and totally changed the end, but mostly it's the same. It just worked too well for me to pass up.
Previous
"Oi, Yuy, food time!"
Heero looked up from the report he was checking for mistakes and gave the young man leaning through the door of his cubicle a weird look, complete with eyebrow arched quizzically. "Dietrik. The panel won't support your weight for long," he pointed out.
The man just laughed and stepped inside, all six foot three of him plus linebacker shoulders, considerably shrinking the rest of the space. "Aw, you do worry for me! Come on, I'm sure you're hungry. It's noon already."
Heero didn't bother checking his computer clock. "Still ten minutes to go for that."
Another head popped in sight, hair dyed green and purple and twisted into strange loops, on top of an exceedingly proper woman's business suit. "You know what they say, the early bird gets the worm!"
"You can have my worm," Heero deadpanned. In his opinion, it hadn't been terribly funny, but the two laughed anyway. At least they recognized it as an attempt at humor, which was better than many of his other coworkers. His supervisor, Heero knew, would have stared at him with faint horror and believed he really was that ignorant.
The forty-something woman with the strange hair gave him a stern look. "Stop it, we know you're not that busy or you'd have just pretended we weren't there. My treat?"
Heero arched an eyebrow. "Generous." Mostly because the meals were practically free.
He'd planned on having a sandwich with Wufei as they discussed the results of his search on Kamenov, but Wufei hadn't reappeared. Heero was reasonably sure he would have sent word not to wait if something had prevented him from coming back to the cubicle after leaving the infirmary. Heero briefly considered the likelihood of Chang Wufei, pilot 05, getting kidnapped on the second floor of a high-security building full of armed and intensively trained policemen, and decided that he was probably being debriefed on some minor point of his report. That, or Sally had locked him up for incubating some strange jungle sickness.
Heero noticed that Sofia had been giving him a narrow-eyed glare while he'd been thinking, but the second he looked at her she switched it for an affable smile. "We've got a puzzle for you."
Heero blinked. "Puzzle?"
Smugly, Sofia rattled out a list of computer specs and security measures -- both on the computer itself and in the building it was housed -- that would have made even Heero think twice. "There was no internet. There was no intranet. The computer wasn't even equipped for wireless. The next Monday, the info had been sold to three separate parties."
"Inside job."
The woman's smugness went up a notch. "Not in that case."
"... Give me thirty seconds." Heero speed-read the rest of his report, didn't find anything worth correcting, and hit send, close-program and shut-down in under five seconds. Two seconds later, he was out of his chair and slipping between Dietrik's imposing frame and the wall. "Let's go."
They were almost to the cafeteria when Sally's voice called his name. Heero paused and turned to look for her, finding her emerging from a conference room. Sofia and Dietrik kept walking for at least a dozen steps before they noticed he was gone.
"Heero!" Sally crossed the growing flow of people emigrating to the cafeteria. "Just the man I wanted to see."
Huh. "Sally," he acknowledged, neutral. She was smiling, but it looked more like habit than amusement or happiness.
"So, reassure me, you managed fine without Wufei?" she asked briskly.
Heero nodded.
"Good! So I won't have to feel guilty. Your partner is taking a nap in the infirmary, room 10-C. Will you wake him up? I'm not going to be able to get away for a few more hours here."
"... Sure. Did you drug him?"
Sally let out a laugh that was more surprised than amused. Though knowing her, Heero didn't think it had been such an unreasonable supposition.
"I thought about it, but he must have been more tired than I believed; he barely protested. I hope he won't be annoyed at me for messing up his sleep cycle."
Someone called her back from inside the conference room, and Heero nodded. "He'll deal. Just go."
"Alright. I'm counting on you!"
Sally strode away and disappeared. Heero turned around to find his two colleagues waiting a few polite steps behind. It wasn't far enough not to hear anything, though, and Dietrik made disturbingly anguished puppy eyes at him. "You gotta go?"
Sofia nodded sadly. "Such a shame, I bet by the time we get this mystery unraveled you won't even be back yet."
Wufei came before irrelevant computer mysteries, of course; but he also needed all the sleep he could get. Heero shook his head and started walking toward the cafeteria again. "I'll go afterward."
The cafeteria was already filling up, though due to the absence of three field teams it wasn't packed as thick as it could have been; but the rest of the Geek Squad -- the Computer Crimes Division -- had decided to gather at one table instead of spreading onto two. Dietrik dragged an extra chair to sit at a corner, and they started debating. Heero didn't say much at first, listening with one ear as he read over the case file. Without being able to inspect the computer itself, Heero couldn't rule out external tampering. Still, it was an intriguing mental exercise. And contrary to his other headache -- the case he and Wufei were working -- it didn't suffer from lack of theories and difficulties to prove or disprove anything. Either something was doable or it wasn't.
The table was animated, and a few of the guys were noisy. Heero disliked trying to speak over someone else, but Sofia and Matthew from Accounting didn't see anything wrong with digging their elbows in people's ribs to make them pipe down.
Of course, elbowing too hard provoked short spats that were even noisier than the rest. Vaguely annoyed, Heero reclined in his seat and tried to ignore them -- and that was when he noticed Commander Une making the rounds.
Stiff and stern, she led a pair of men in beige suits through the floor; a secretary trailed after the three of them. Heero had known Une for quite some time now, and while her expression was still that of long-practiced neutrality, there was a tilt to her shoulders that reminded him more of the ex-OZ colonel than the ex-ambassador. The two men -- no doubt the Health Ministry envoys -- chatted amiably at her as they looked around.
Heero had noticed them eating when he came in, though he hadn't paid much more attention to them than to the fifty other people in the mess hall. He had no doubt it would be counterproductive to interrupt Une's business meals with random requests; she was liable to send them back to the bottom of the priority pile. But now it seemed like she was introducing people here and there on the way out of the cafeteria...
Looking back at her guests, she waved her hand toward Heero's table. Huh. She didn't look at Heero, only at a blond guy with floppy hair who was busy making sure one of his coworkers knew exactly why he was right and she was wrong.
"Agent Ling, if I could..."
"--Are you blind or what, it would blow up in your -- oh, Commander."
Une's eye twitched a little, but she didn't say anything, only waving at the two men following her. "Agent Ling, Eric Madison and Cliff Branforth from the Health ministry. They're heading a national effort to chart some unknown parts of the human genome. Director Madison, Mr. Branforth, Edward Ling, biochemist."
Human genome, huh. Considering the current news, there wasn't much of a question as to what this was about. Heero's gaze sharpened. Now the real question was why would people researching Newtypes stress out Une so much.
Madison had cropped, graying honey-blond hair, and a winsome smile. Branforth was older, fifty perhaps, and with a sharper, more prominent bone structure; but the graying haircut was about the same, and the suits matched, apart from the nuance of blue of their shirts. The discussion at the table died down as the two newcomers flattered Ling and joked about trying to tempt him away from the Preventers and in one of their own labs. Une didn't look impressed; thankfully Ling didn't seem to be all that interested by the offer.
They did a token effort at being polite by introducing the rest of the members. Sofia stretched out to shake hands over the table, but Heero only nodded his greeting, unwilling to bend over and unbalance himself. He hadn't expected Director Madison to takes a couple of steps between the tables to get closer to him. It was hard to refuse to shake hands now without being grossly impolite.
"Agent... Yuy, was it?" Madison said, glancing down at Heero's badge.
Heero frowned a little; it might have been paranoia, but he had a feeling the man's glance had only served to confirm something he already knew.
"Heero Yuy, huh. Like the great pacifist? That's strangely appropriate," the man joked. "A relative perhaps? Where are you from?"
Une hadn't told them his first name when she introduced everyone, and the badge only had his last. "The Sank kingdom," he replied blandly, declining to laugh along. Madison's chuckles died down.
"Ah. ...Well. I heard you were partnered with an agent from L5?"
They definitely were too aware of who he was, who Wufei was. And perhaps even of what they had in common, apart from currently being partners. Was it about their shared past? "...Yes."
"Would you happen to know which specific colony he's from?"
Heero frowned. "No. Why do you want to know?"
Madison chuckled. "Nothing bad, nothing bad. We're conducting a little survey, and we would be very interested to have more participants from the L5 cluster."
At least they hadn't looked deep enough to know that while Heero's ID listed him as a Sank citizen, it was just as likely he'd been born there as anywhere else in the Earth Sphere. They didn't seem to have much of an interest in Earth-born people -- not very rigorous as far as sampling procedures went. "We don't have time for surveys." Heero caught Une's eyes. "We're waiting for orders to leave on a mission."
Une's eyebrow twitched upwards in an interrogative fashion, but Branforth looked at her and her expression smoothed out again. Madison was still talking at him.
"--wouldn't take much longer than it takes to get a blood sample. One of our projects deals with correlations between an individual's genetic predispositions and their chosen career, you see."
Heero arched a doubtful eyebrow.
"So you want to know if Newtypes have favorite jobs, then?" Dietrik joked.
Neither Heero nor Madison acknowledged him. "The same kind of correlation between people with good physical coordination and people who practice sports," Heero suggested blandly.
Madison and his colleague laughed, and the rest of the table gave a polite chuckle, though Ling and Sofia's expression was attentive and Dietrik's a little worried . "I suspect as much," Branforth said from where he was standing, a step beside Une. "But we have to make sure anyway."
"All genetic samples are to be anonymous, of course, and we welcome all kinds, but I thought it might be especially interesting to get Agent Chang's. For reasons which you're no doubt aware of, samples from a few specific areas of that cluster are, ah, something of a rarity."
Due to the cluster not being very large even before the Dragon Clan colonies self-destructed, and the sole Dragon survivors being people who had been stranded on Earth or other colonies at the time of its self-destruction; yes, Heero was aware.
"I'll pass the invitation along," Heero promised neutrally. Except that by invitation he meant warning. Even if those men's project came from innocently academic motives, the last thing Newtypes needed was to end up on a list -- and field agents already at risk of being attacked just for doing their job needed it even less than the rest. Even anonymously given, a genetic sample wasn't untraceable; if it were, the forensics department would be out of a job.
Une apparently had had enough; she checked her wrist watch briskly. "Gentlemen, we're going off-schedule. I suggest we proceed to the next department now."
Madison laughed, of course; Heero wondered if he ever truly stopped. "Ah, of course, of course, my apologies. Well, Agents, nice meeting you. Agent Ling, don't forget about our proposition, eh?"
Madison waved genially, Branforth nodded a salute to the table, and they left with Une, whose eyes had a steely glint Heero found a lot more Colonel than Lady.
"Well, uh." Dietrik frowned worriedly and gave Heero a puzzled look. "I'm sure they mean well, but it's kind of a silly idea, isn't it? What with how messy things are out here."
"Yeah," someone else agreed. "Also you need just one dirty official -- and voilà, a whole convenient list of Newtypes in the government, complete with name, address and position, for them to do god knows what with. Oh, you lost your job? Sorry, just budget cuts, you know how that is. No, nothing to do with that innocent blood test at all."
"Yeah, or... 'use your mind powers to kill the President or we out you!'"
There was laughter. "You read too much comics!"
Someone started teasing Ling for flirting with big manly men for money; Heero decided he'd socialized enough. He got up, his tray in hand.
"Yuy?" Sofia asked, startled. "You're already leaving? You haven't eaten anything..."
"I've got to get Wufei now."
But when he was in the corridor, he wasn't sure anymore that he needed to rush. Wufei was in the infirmary, in a room out of the way. If he was still sleeping, good; he needed it. And even if he woke up at the wrong time and met those men, what could happen? They wouldn't get much past the confirmation that he existed and a marked lack of interest in participating. They weren't going to force a blood sample out of him right on the spot; besides, in the unlikely event that they were crazy enough to try, Wufei would bleed them right back.
Wouldn't be impossible to borrow a lost hair, though.
Heero had a tendency to paranoia. He knew that. So instead of going straight to Wufei, he went to his desk first, to get the files he was supposed to work on.
He could work on them just as well in the infirmary.
+
Wufei woke to a faint rustle of paper sheets under a scratchy pen. He expected Sally, but when he opened his eyes just a crack and slipped a stealthy glance to his companion, he saw a head of messy brown hair leaning over a huge pink folder. He sat up; Heero looked up and nodded a little in greeting.
"What are you doing here?" Wufei asked. He rubbed the back of his head; the impromptu nap had left him a little muggy.
"Sally told me to wake you up."
Wufei frowned. "... I notice you didn't."
"I wasn't that quiet. Figured it would wake you once you had slept enough." Heero looked up at him, and then went back to his report. "It's four PM."
"-- What?" Wufei checked his watch. So it was. "Yuy!"
Of course, Heero entirely failed to look guilty. "Une is still too busy to deal with us. You didn't miss anything. Apart from some paperwork."
Wufei glared, and then sighed heavily. "Now I'm going to be up all night."
"You would have been anyway." Yuy pulled an envelope out of his pocket and threw it on Wufei's lap.
Huh. Short-term mission : high-kidnapping-risk child needing a bodyguard from five PM to whenever her guardian would come back in the evening... Wufei wasn't on the bodyguard roster, but he'd been known to make exceptions for one person, and he relaxed a little. He hadn't seen Mariemeya in over five months now, between her school obligations and his undercover mission.
"Ah, but the affair..."
"We have no info today that we didn't have yesterday," Heero commented philosophically. "Who knows, maybe you'll have a flash of genius over dinner."
Wufei would have snorted to hide his smile, but Heero's expression didn't quite match his words. Too serious. The man leaned forward, index finger brushing along the lines of the message. No name, he mouthed in silence.
... No name, he was right -- Mariemeya was designed as 'your usual charge.' Strange. Wufei frowned at Heero. Someone listening? he mouthed right back, but Heero only shrugged, as if he had no clue.
"Has Une been in reunion all afternoon?"
"Mmh. Messenger said she hasn't left that room since lunch."
So she was still around the Health Ministry representatives. He wondered if that was relevant. At the very least it meant he couldn't go and ask if the lack of name had a reason.
Wufei took a pen out of Heero's backpack and started filling the Mission Accepted paperwork.
"By the way," Heero said casually, "the ministry is trying to figure out what kind of newtypes work in the Preventers."
Wufei didn't pause at all, handwriting neat and regular. "Oh?"
"Probably in other ESUN-run organizations as well. Maybe even in civilian groups. They're curious to see if special talents benefit to specific jobs, apparently."
Wufei grunted, and started ticking off boxes. "Interesting."
"Director Madison said he'd like you to participate. Seems like L5 genotypes are rare nowadays."
Wufei's eyes narrowed, though he pretended he was only glaring at his incomplete badge number. "Really."
So they wanted his genotype. Or so they said. And Sally arranged for him to spend the day asleep in a corner, and Heero chose to work at Wufei's bedside rather than at his desk where he could be found. Add that to the strange formulation of the message, and the fact that Une had spent all day with the two men; it made Wufei wonder if perhaps Une didn't want said Health Ministry representatives to know that Preventer Agent Chang was routinely trusted with the safety of her adoptive daughter. Or maybe just that she didn't want him around them. He was grateful, but he could have rejected the offer on his own. ... Or could he have?
Or their interest could be entirely innocent, and Sally just wanted to mother something and it just so happened her latest cactus had died on her so Wufei was it, and Judy Carlson from Accounting had tried flirting with Heero again so he'd retreated where she wouldn't think to look for him, and Une did not, despite appearances to the contrary, know every single form by heart and like all common mortals she sometimes forgot unimportant details.
Wufei shrugged philosophically. He would know soon enough, and in the meantime he would keep his eyes open. He smirked wryly. "It's too bad I have no time to get poked and prodded with a needle these days, isn't it."
"Heh. I didn't get the feeling it was mandatory anyway."
Wufei allowed himself to roll his eyes in amusement; he hid the sharp wariness he felt deep under it. "Thank all the gods and ancestors it isn't. And I doubt many of our colleagues will go through with it, for the same reason as mine." Paranoia was a way of life for a Preventer. "As if we don't get shot and stabbed full of enough holes on the job."
Heero hummed in apparent disinterest.
"Still..." Wufei mused. "It might be interesting to know what kind of jobs newtypes prefer, from a purely scholarly point of view."
Because all practical applications of those results gave him thoughts of potential disaster. From favoring those with powers and fostering resentment and fear in the ones without, to putting newtypes on file and restricting their freedom for being born potentially dangerous... Wufei could see the ghosts of frankly dystopian futures on either end of the spectrum. Hell, it didn't need to go too far to become unfair and discriminatory -- many jobs asked for a drug scan at employment.
"...You know, when you look at the psychic ability test results, most of those people probably had no clue they were in any way different before they got the results..." Wufei mused. "It's just too subtle most of the time."
... Was he one, too? If the progression on L5 had been the same as the other Colonies, then there was about a twenty-five percent chance he carried at least some of the genes -- maybe even a higher possibility. His colony had been one of the oldest; on his mother's side, he'd been a fourth generation.
Meiran had been fifth generation Colony-born on one side, and, in some way, sixth through her father's mother's lineage, though personally Wufei didn't think immigrating just before the baby was born really counted. The argument had been fierce, bitter, and was still unresolved...
...Never mind. Whether he had some subtle, unremarkable ability or not, it didn't change who he was. And if he was, better if people didn't know it. Himself included. He might start depending on it, or wondering what he could have changed if he'd known how.
Wufei's laptop was in his bag, at the foot of the table. He started working, with little enthusiasm, knowing he had to leave soon but not wanting to have come to work just to end up sleeping the day away.
He clicked absently on a news site's link, even as he gathered authorizations and cost sheets and the info he needed to tidy up his reports. Read the whole article. Clicked two links open, so as not to lose the first. Summarized more case reports. Opened five articles, plus an online encyclopedia page to clarify some background assumptions. Hit a search engine. Remembered that he had pictures to include in his second report, swore a bit, had to reformat the whole thing so they would fit. Went right back to his newtype articles. Geneticist shop talk and religious flailing, enthusiastic geek blogs and worried watchdog sites, a so-called true newtype's own point of view and at least twelve he was pretty sure were fakes. So many sides of the issue.
He would have probably kept reading past the time to go get Mariemeya if Heero hadn't smirked at him. Damn, five minutes left.
"What's so funny, Yuy?" he growled as he started closing tabs.
His partner smirked at him. "You. It's only now you're starting to think about what that newtype business actually means. Humanity turned out to be 'a sci-fi fan's wet dream' and your first thought was 'what kind of riots is this going to cause?'"
"That's the only relevant one!" Wufei grouched back, and clicked 'print' on his report. Heero only shook his head in fake sadness and kept smirking. "And what was your first thought, hm?"
Heero's expression slid back to cool and unconcerned. "That it was interesting, and that it would get messy."
Wufei frowned faintly. Yuy rarely lied to him; that didn't make him like it much better when it happened. It was useless to try to guess the truth, though; knowing Heero, it could be just about anything, from "it was traumatic" to "I've always known about them" to "they get me hot and bothered." On second thought, Yuy would need hormones for that last one.
"You're going to be late," Heero said without looking at him.
Well, maybe he'd tell him later. And maybe it was just a way to tell Wufei to back off. Without a word, Wufei powered down and packed up his laptop, picked up the printed pages, and walked out of the infirmary and down toward the motor pool. He'd get a car, go pick up that brilliant, teenage ex-World Sovereign, and spend an entertaining evening attempting to verbally spar her to a standstill. At least he would be able to clear his mind of all that L2 and newtypes rubbish and relax a little.
+
"Mariemeya, you're fourteen."
"You were married at fourteen!"
"Not to someone seven years older!"
+
"Then of course it degenerated into 'are you calling me immature' and 'I'm not a child' and 'how dare you tell me what I feel is just a silly crush' and 'I would know if it were just a crush'." Wufei groaned and massaged his temples. He'd forced himself to go to bed anyway, but he hadn't slept too well.
"She's not entirely wrong. She didn't get the luxury of being a child very long either."
Wufei glared nastily at Heero, who sat on the other side of the table, totally unperturbed, and kept making little annotations in the margins of Wufei's case report.
"That was helpful, Yuy. Really."
Heero shrugged, his nose still in the report. Wufei glanced over his shoulder at the rest of the café, just to check that Heero wasn't the only one being totally indifferent to the fact that an underage girl had propositioned him. Heero wasn't; Wufei didn't know whether to be grateful or annoyed. The matter was more delicate than his partner seemed to realize. Granted, they had other things to worry about at the moment, like the fact that they'd wasted another half-day and Une still hadn't had an occasion to see them and approve their trip...
"... Never mind. I don't know what possessed me to think you might have some insight into the situation."
A corner of Heero's mouth tilted up in a fleeting smirk. "I lack your experience with jailbait."
"Don't make me hurt you."
Heero didn't even dignify the empty threat with a response. He picked up his coffee cup and took a sip, eyes still fixed on the sheets of paper in his hand. "The numbers are wrong. Divergence of zero-point-seven percent. I'll check the database to see where the error occurred."
Wufei frowned, and leaned over the table to check what Heero was pointing at. They bowed their heads together over the paper as Heero's finger tapped the wrong numbers. Wufei was good at math, but not by nearly enough to pick up on the discrepancy Heero had found.
"... There's a calculator in your brain, isn't there," Wufei commented.
"Doctor J thought it might come in handy," Heero retorted dryly. Wufei rolled his eyes at him, and sat back down.
The back of his neck prickled with the awareness of a whole roomful of people behind him. Next time, he would reach the café early, so he could steal the bench against the wall from Yuy. He vaguely thought of shoving Heero in the corner and sitting beside him -- craning his neck to see the paperwork was getting annoying as well -- but while Heero wouldn't care what that looked like, there were enough colleagues coming here on their break that Wufei did.
"So you're not interested in her."
Wufei twitched. "Yuy, for god's sake, she's fourteen -- of course not!"
"If her age is the only deterrent, you could just tell her you'll talk about it when she's eighteen. She's smart enough to understand the legal ramifications." Heero quirked an eyebrow. "She might grow out of it in the meantime."
Heero looked too placid to really get angry at, and his tone of voice just too reasonable to take offense. Wufei was tempted, though. "Grow out of it? You're talking about Mariemeya Barton Kushrenada. The only person more stubborn than her is--"
"You?"
The bastard was smirking. Wufei growled. "One of these days I really am going to hurt you."
"If you meant it, you'd challenge me to meet at the gym for a spar."
Wufei gave him a teeth-baring grin. "Good idea. How about tomorrow?" They would have the time, if the PR circus in Une's office was anything to go by.
Heero seemed more amused by the second. Wufei was starting to look forward to an occasion to slam him down into the tatami.
"So it's not simply that you've never considered her, but that you're actively against it?"
And now he looked thoughtful. Wufei wondered why he had ever thought it a good idea to mention the situation to him. Sure, they were great partners on the field, and his insight was invaluable on a lot of Wufei's cases, and they had a common interest in hand-to-hand and good guns, and Wufei might even -- god forbid -- enjoy his subtle sense of sarcasm and his strange philosophy of life. But like he needed Yuy to turn that brilliant analyst's mind to such a delicate and -- well -- mundane matter.
"... Yes. I am."
"Did you tell her so?"
Wufei sighed. "Yuy... I like the girl. She trusts me. I have no wish to hurt her feelings by telling her the idea of sleeping with her makes my skin crawl."
It was really too bad that neither Wufei nor Mariemeya were Heero Yuy; the man could take and dish out honest criticism point-blank without flinching. It was a very admirable trait, and one Wufei wished more people shared. Not that Wufei couldn't do blunt with the best, but -- not with Mariemeya. Not about that. He gazed at the table without really seeing it, thinking back to her confession. It had to have taken a lot of guts, and with some distance, he was almost proud of her for being so brave and tenacious... Almost being the key word. Damn it.
"Why does it?"
"What does what?"
"Make your skin crawl. Why?" Heero picked up his cup of coffee and raised it to his lips, his eyes still fixed on Wufei.
"I met her when she was eight," Wufei snapped.
"She's not eight anymore."
Well -- of course she wasn't! It didn't mean Wufei didn't remember her being eight. "Do you want me to molest her, Yuy?"
Heero snorted. "From what you tell me, she would be the one to molest you." He shrugged off Wufei's frustrated glare. "I'm just curious."
Wufei sighed and leaned back in his chair, staring away from the table. He couldn't meet Heero's frank stare and just be objective and cold about the situation. "... She's -- it's not ethical."
"Hm?"
Wufei set his cup down and nudged it around by the handle, watching the cold tea slosh around inside. "We are not equals there. The relationship is closer to mentor-student. It wouldn't be right."
"Ah."
Wufei sighed again -- he was doing it a lot, it seemed -- and admitted, more quietly. "I killed her father. There is a debt there. There always will be. Telling her of him... That can never compare. I must strive to compensate for her loss anyway -- in part by being an older male figure in her life. Children need those."
Heero's voice was just as quiet when he answered, "She never knew him."
"Because I killed him before she could!"
Heero didn't flinch in the face of his anger, but then he never did; his voice stayed perfectly steady. "Then it's more about your feelings toward Treize than your feelings toward Mariemeya."
Wufei stared at Heero, dumbstruck. "...My -- what toward Treize?"
Heero arched an eyebrow. "Guilt is a feeling, isn't it?"
--Oh. Of course. What had he thought Heero meant? It was a good thing Wufei's skin didn't show his blushes much. He lifted his cup of tea to his lips, and grimaced when the cold liquid hit his tongue. That was what he got for getting distracted by the conversation.
"If I tell her that, she might believe that our whole relationship is nothing more to me than trying to soothe my guilt, though." And it wasn't -- he enjoyed their long political talks or the triumphant smiles she gave him when managing a new kata without stumbling more than he'd ever thought he would enjoy being around a child -- but it wasn't romantic, would never be romantic, and the idea it might felt, in fact, slightly incestuous to him.
But if he told her that, she'd probably retort that he was an only child, so what did he know about incest. And he really, really wanted to turn around and check whether anyone was listening in on the conversation, but surely Yuy would signal him if that happened. Bastard and his back to the wall.
"So you have good reasons why, but explaining them to her would hurt her feelings." Heero leaned back and crossed his arms, contemplative.
"Yes." Wufei massaged the bridge of his nose. "She's a smart girl, but you know how difficult and contrary she can get. I can't possibly find a way to explain that she cannot take as a personal slight, if she puts her mind to it."
"So you need to give her a reason that has nothing to do with her at all. Hm. You haven't gone out with anyone since the war, have you?"
Wufei rolled his eyes. "Are you channeling Sally? I'm busy, Yuy, busy and in no mood to make time for inane chattering with people I don't connect with."
"Hm." Heero frowned thoughtfully, gave him a long sober look that was probably his equivalent of a 'this might hurt, please don't take umbrage' caveat. "Does this have anything to do with your wife? Mariemeya would probably accept that."
"... Hah." Wufei couldn't help a small, rueful smile. It did hurt, a bit; he tried not to dwell on it. Heero's obvious awareness of the old wound helped; he wasn't gentle with people's feelings very often. "Mostly insofar as it's rare to find people with Nataku's fire and her sense of justice."
"Of which Mariemeya is one," Yuy commented pseudo-innocently.
Wufei's eyes narrowed. "That's it. Meet me tomorrow evening at seven at the gym."
Heero smirked faintly at him; Wufei gave him a threatening glare, that he couldn't keep up. Heero really was annoying when he put his mind to it, but he had to admit, he was glad to have him around. ...Sometimes. Somewhat. Bastard.
"So you have no objection to dating other people."
Apart from his own high standards, no, not any objection that would stand a Sally-counter-examination. He switched tracks. "I can't tell her she doesn't meet my requirements."
"But you could tell her you're already dating someone else."
Heero looked so matter-of-fact; Wufei almost forgot to be offended. Almost being the key word. "Are you suggesting I lie to her?"
Heero paused, tilted his head as if he were considering it. Taking a sip, Wufei watched him, eyes narrowed, just waiting for him to dare agree.
"Tell her you're dating me."
Wufei almost spat his coffee on the files. "What?"
"We've been meeting for more or less social purposes for a while now. I'm sure for some people that counts as dates."
Wufei stared at him, and almost sagged in relief when he caught the glint in Heero's eyes, like a smirk that wasn't allowed to reach his mouth.... His sense of humor was completely twisted. "Oh, great idea," he retorted, only a second too late for a natural comeback; Heero's lips quirked up smugly. "You're so right, all those meetings, nothing different from a real date at all." Wufei paused. "Save for anything remotely romantic at all. Ever."
"Hm..."
Heero tapped his chin with his fingers, giving the perfect appearance of being deep in thought.
"That's right."
And then he shrugged, leaned forward, and pressed his lips against Wufei's in a quick, entirely casual kiss. Every single of Wufei's brain cells crashed and burned.
"Now it's not a lie anymore." Heero sat back, and picked up his own coffee to finish it.
Crunch. Wufei unclenched his fingers from their tight grasp on his ex-cup and blotted cold coffee off his lap, mind whirling, unable to do anything but staring in disbelief as Yuy took sip after sip.
What the hell?
"... Yuy."
"Hm?"
"Did you just. ...Kiss me?"
Heero shrugged, indifferent save from the devilish glint in his eyes. "That makes our meetings dates, technically, so you're not lying. You're safe from the jailbait."
Wufei kept staring. Heero couldn't mean that, could he? It was probably a joke -- he'd done worse, Wufei just knew he was behind Cadet Jenson's bothersome cellphone ending up serenading the newbies from the very tall, very unclimbable radar tower, there was just no one else, and there had been other times...
Wufei just could see his face, too, using his supposed social cluelessness like a weapon. 'I just provided you with a way out of your little dilemma, Chang. Who cares?' And he'd arch an eyebrow like he didn't know what the fuss was about and wasn't too impressed with his reaction either way. Argh.
Unless he was testing the waters, and then -- argh. Augh. Urrgh. Gah.
Where were his words? Wufei couldn't find any, not even to tell himself what the hell he was thinking right now.
"... Uh."
Heero picked up his backpack and slung one of the straps over his shoulder, and looked at him as if nothing abnormal had ever happened. "Still on for that spar tomorrow?"
Wufei stared at Heero. Heero just tilted his head patiently, all calm blue eyes and floppy bangs and utter ordinary-ness.
Wufei threw up his hands. "Oh, fine." He wasn't sure what he was agreeing to; fine, I'll meet you or fine, I'll pretend-date you. Thinking wasn't working right now. But if Yuy wanted to give him occasions to beat him up... "What do I say when she asks me why I didn't tell her I've suddenly gone gay?"
"The truth." Heero allowed that smirk to bloom. "You're not gay; I'm just that good."
Wufei lunged over the table; but Heero dodged his swipe with irritating ease, escaping into the crowd, and strolled away without turning back.
Cocky bastard. Wufei was going to hurt him tomorrow.
Next.
Scene 5 is really just me cheating like a cheating cheater who cheats and re-using that one-shot 1+5 thing I wrote a couple of months ago. Edited it a bit to fit, and totally changed the end, but mostly it's the same. It just worked too well for me to pass up.
Previous
"Oi, Yuy, food time!"
Heero looked up from the report he was checking for mistakes and gave the young man leaning through the door of his cubicle a weird look, complete with eyebrow arched quizzically. "Dietrik. The panel won't support your weight for long," he pointed out.
The man just laughed and stepped inside, all six foot three of him plus linebacker shoulders, considerably shrinking the rest of the space. "Aw, you do worry for me! Come on, I'm sure you're hungry. It's noon already."
Heero didn't bother checking his computer clock. "Still ten minutes to go for that."
Another head popped in sight, hair dyed green and purple and twisted into strange loops, on top of an exceedingly proper woman's business suit. "You know what they say, the early bird gets the worm!"
"You can have my worm," Heero deadpanned. In his opinion, it hadn't been terribly funny, but the two laughed anyway. At least they recognized it as an attempt at humor, which was better than many of his other coworkers. His supervisor, Heero knew, would have stared at him with faint horror and believed he really was that ignorant.
The forty-something woman with the strange hair gave him a stern look. "Stop it, we know you're not that busy or you'd have just pretended we weren't there. My treat?"
Heero arched an eyebrow. "Generous." Mostly because the meals were practically free.
He'd planned on having a sandwich with Wufei as they discussed the results of his search on Kamenov, but Wufei hadn't reappeared. Heero was reasonably sure he would have sent word not to wait if something had prevented him from coming back to the cubicle after leaving the infirmary. Heero briefly considered the likelihood of Chang Wufei, pilot 05, getting kidnapped on the second floor of a high-security building full of armed and intensively trained policemen, and decided that he was probably being debriefed on some minor point of his report. That, or Sally had locked him up for incubating some strange jungle sickness.
Heero noticed that Sofia had been giving him a narrow-eyed glare while he'd been thinking, but the second he looked at her she switched it for an affable smile. "We've got a puzzle for you."
Heero blinked. "Puzzle?"
Smugly, Sofia rattled out a list of computer specs and security measures -- both on the computer itself and in the building it was housed -- that would have made even Heero think twice. "There was no internet. There was no intranet. The computer wasn't even equipped for wireless. The next Monday, the info had been sold to three separate parties."
"Inside job."
The woman's smugness went up a notch. "Not in that case."
"... Give me thirty seconds." Heero speed-read the rest of his report, didn't find anything worth correcting, and hit send, close-program and shut-down in under five seconds. Two seconds later, he was out of his chair and slipping between Dietrik's imposing frame and the wall. "Let's go."
They were almost to the cafeteria when Sally's voice called his name. Heero paused and turned to look for her, finding her emerging from a conference room. Sofia and Dietrik kept walking for at least a dozen steps before they noticed he was gone.
"Heero!" Sally crossed the growing flow of people emigrating to the cafeteria. "Just the man I wanted to see."
Huh. "Sally," he acknowledged, neutral. She was smiling, but it looked more like habit than amusement or happiness.
"So, reassure me, you managed fine without Wufei?" she asked briskly.
Heero nodded.
"Good! So I won't have to feel guilty. Your partner is taking a nap in the infirmary, room 10-C. Will you wake him up? I'm not going to be able to get away for a few more hours here."
"... Sure. Did you drug him?"
Sally let out a laugh that was more surprised than amused. Though knowing her, Heero didn't think it had been such an unreasonable supposition.
"I thought about it, but he must have been more tired than I believed; he barely protested. I hope he won't be annoyed at me for messing up his sleep cycle."
Someone called her back from inside the conference room, and Heero nodded. "He'll deal. Just go."
"Alright. I'm counting on you!"
Sally strode away and disappeared. Heero turned around to find his two colleagues waiting a few polite steps behind. It wasn't far enough not to hear anything, though, and Dietrik made disturbingly anguished puppy eyes at him. "You gotta go?"
Sofia nodded sadly. "Such a shame, I bet by the time we get this mystery unraveled you won't even be back yet."
Wufei came before irrelevant computer mysteries, of course; but he also needed all the sleep he could get. Heero shook his head and started walking toward the cafeteria again. "I'll go afterward."
The cafeteria was already filling up, though due to the absence of three field teams it wasn't packed as thick as it could have been; but the rest of the Geek Squad -- the Computer Crimes Division -- had decided to gather at one table instead of spreading onto two. Dietrik dragged an extra chair to sit at a corner, and they started debating. Heero didn't say much at first, listening with one ear as he read over the case file. Without being able to inspect the computer itself, Heero couldn't rule out external tampering. Still, it was an intriguing mental exercise. And contrary to his other headache -- the case he and Wufei were working -- it didn't suffer from lack of theories and difficulties to prove or disprove anything. Either something was doable or it wasn't.
The table was animated, and a few of the guys were noisy. Heero disliked trying to speak over someone else, but Sofia and Matthew from Accounting didn't see anything wrong with digging their elbows in people's ribs to make them pipe down.
Of course, elbowing too hard provoked short spats that were even noisier than the rest. Vaguely annoyed, Heero reclined in his seat and tried to ignore them -- and that was when he noticed Commander Une making the rounds.
Stiff and stern, she led a pair of men in beige suits through the floor; a secretary trailed after the three of them. Heero had known Une for quite some time now, and while her expression was still that of long-practiced neutrality, there was a tilt to her shoulders that reminded him more of the ex-OZ colonel than the ex-ambassador. The two men -- no doubt the Health Ministry envoys -- chatted amiably at her as they looked around.
Heero had noticed them eating when he came in, though he hadn't paid much more attention to them than to the fifty other people in the mess hall. He had no doubt it would be counterproductive to interrupt Une's business meals with random requests; she was liable to send them back to the bottom of the priority pile. But now it seemed like she was introducing people here and there on the way out of the cafeteria...
Looking back at her guests, she waved her hand toward Heero's table. Huh. She didn't look at Heero, only at a blond guy with floppy hair who was busy making sure one of his coworkers knew exactly why he was right and she was wrong.
"Agent Ling, if I could..."
"--Are you blind or what, it would blow up in your -- oh, Commander."
Une's eye twitched a little, but she didn't say anything, only waving at the two men following her. "Agent Ling, Eric Madison and Cliff Branforth from the Health ministry. They're heading a national effort to chart some unknown parts of the human genome. Director Madison, Mr. Branforth, Edward Ling, biochemist."
Human genome, huh. Considering the current news, there wasn't much of a question as to what this was about. Heero's gaze sharpened. Now the real question was why would people researching Newtypes stress out Une so much.
Madison had cropped, graying honey-blond hair, and a winsome smile. Branforth was older, fifty perhaps, and with a sharper, more prominent bone structure; but the graying haircut was about the same, and the suits matched, apart from the nuance of blue of their shirts. The discussion at the table died down as the two newcomers flattered Ling and joked about trying to tempt him away from the Preventers and in one of their own labs. Une didn't look impressed; thankfully Ling didn't seem to be all that interested by the offer.
They did a token effort at being polite by introducing the rest of the members. Sofia stretched out to shake hands over the table, but Heero only nodded his greeting, unwilling to bend over and unbalance himself. He hadn't expected Director Madison to takes a couple of steps between the tables to get closer to him. It was hard to refuse to shake hands now without being grossly impolite.
"Agent... Yuy, was it?" Madison said, glancing down at Heero's badge.
Heero frowned a little; it might have been paranoia, but he had a feeling the man's glance had only served to confirm something he already knew.
"Heero Yuy, huh. Like the great pacifist? That's strangely appropriate," the man joked. "A relative perhaps? Where are you from?"
Une hadn't told them his first name when she introduced everyone, and the badge only had his last. "The Sank kingdom," he replied blandly, declining to laugh along. Madison's chuckles died down.
"Ah. ...Well. I heard you were partnered with an agent from L5?"
They definitely were too aware of who he was, who Wufei was. And perhaps even of what they had in common, apart from currently being partners. Was it about their shared past? "...Yes."
"Would you happen to know which specific colony he's from?"
Heero frowned. "No. Why do you want to know?"
Madison chuckled. "Nothing bad, nothing bad. We're conducting a little survey, and we would be very interested to have more participants from the L5 cluster."
At least they hadn't looked deep enough to know that while Heero's ID listed him as a Sank citizen, it was just as likely he'd been born there as anywhere else in the Earth Sphere. They didn't seem to have much of an interest in Earth-born people -- not very rigorous as far as sampling procedures went. "We don't have time for surveys." Heero caught Une's eyes. "We're waiting for orders to leave on a mission."
Une's eyebrow twitched upwards in an interrogative fashion, but Branforth looked at her and her expression smoothed out again. Madison was still talking at him.
"--wouldn't take much longer than it takes to get a blood sample. One of our projects deals with correlations between an individual's genetic predispositions and their chosen career, you see."
Heero arched a doubtful eyebrow.
"So you want to know if Newtypes have favorite jobs, then?" Dietrik joked.
Neither Heero nor Madison acknowledged him. "The same kind of correlation between people with good physical coordination and people who practice sports," Heero suggested blandly.
Madison and his colleague laughed, and the rest of the table gave a polite chuckle, though Ling and Sofia's expression was attentive and Dietrik's a little worried . "I suspect as much," Branforth said from where he was standing, a step beside Une. "But we have to make sure anyway."
"All genetic samples are to be anonymous, of course, and we welcome all kinds, but I thought it might be especially interesting to get Agent Chang's. For reasons which you're no doubt aware of, samples from a few specific areas of that cluster are, ah, something of a rarity."
Due to the cluster not being very large even before the Dragon Clan colonies self-destructed, and the sole Dragon survivors being people who had been stranded on Earth or other colonies at the time of its self-destruction; yes, Heero was aware.
"I'll pass the invitation along," Heero promised neutrally. Except that by invitation he meant warning. Even if those men's project came from innocently academic motives, the last thing Newtypes needed was to end up on a list -- and field agents already at risk of being attacked just for doing their job needed it even less than the rest. Even anonymously given, a genetic sample wasn't untraceable; if it were, the forensics department would be out of a job.
Une apparently had had enough; she checked her wrist watch briskly. "Gentlemen, we're going off-schedule. I suggest we proceed to the next department now."
Madison laughed, of course; Heero wondered if he ever truly stopped. "Ah, of course, of course, my apologies. Well, Agents, nice meeting you. Agent Ling, don't forget about our proposition, eh?"
Madison waved genially, Branforth nodded a salute to the table, and they left with Une, whose eyes had a steely glint Heero found a lot more Colonel than Lady.
"Well, uh." Dietrik frowned worriedly and gave Heero a puzzled look. "I'm sure they mean well, but it's kind of a silly idea, isn't it? What with how messy things are out here."
"Yeah," someone else agreed. "Also you need just one dirty official -- and voilà, a whole convenient list of Newtypes in the government, complete with name, address and position, for them to do god knows what with. Oh, you lost your job? Sorry, just budget cuts, you know how that is. No, nothing to do with that innocent blood test at all."
"Yeah, or... 'use your mind powers to kill the President or we out you!'"
There was laughter. "You read too much comics!"
Someone started teasing Ling for flirting with big manly men for money; Heero decided he'd socialized enough. He got up, his tray in hand.
"Yuy?" Sofia asked, startled. "You're already leaving? You haven't eaten anything..."
"I've got to get Wufei now."
But when he was in the corridor, he wasn't sure anymore that he needed to rush. Wufei was in the infirmary, in a room out of the way. If he was still sleeping, good; he needed it. And even if he woke up at the wrong time and met those men, what could happen? They wouldn't get much past the confirmation that he existed and a marked lack of interest in participating. They weren't going to force a blood sample out of him right on the spot; besides, in the unlikely event that they were crazy enough to try, Wufei would bleed them right back.
Wouldn't be impossible to borrow a lost hair, though.
Heero had a tendency to paranoia. He knew that. So instead of going straight to Wufei, he went to his desk first, to get the files he was supposed to work on.
He could work on them just as well in the infirmary.
+
Wufei woke to a faint rustle of paper sheets under a scratchy pen. He expected Sally, but when he opened his eyes just a crack and slipped a stealthy glance to his companion, he saw a head of messy brown hair leaning over a huge pink folder. He sat up; Heero looked up and nodded a little in greeting.
"What are you doing here?" Wufei asked. He rubbed the back of his head; the impromptu nap had left him a little muggy.
"Sally told me to wake you up."
Wufei frowned. "... I notice you didn't."
"I wasn't that quiet. Figured it would wake you once you had slept enough." Heero looked up at him, and then went back to his report. "It's four PM."
"-- What?" Wufei checked his watch. So it was. "Yuy!"
Of course, Heero entirely failed to look guilty. "Une is still too busy to deal with us. You didn't miss anything. Apart from some paperwork."
Wufei glared, and then sighed heavily. "Now I'm going to be up all night."
"You would have been anyway." Yuy pulled an envelope out of his pocket and threw it on Wufei's lap.
Huh. Short-term mission : high-kidnapping-risk child needing a bodyguard from five PM to whenever her guardian would come back in the evening... Wufei wasn't on the bodyguard roster, but he'd been known to make exceptions for one person, and he relaxed a little. He hadn't seen Mariemeya in over five months now, between her school obligations and his undercover mission.
"Ah, but the affair..."
"We have no info today that we didn't have yesterday," Heero commented philosophically. "Who knows, maybe you'll have a flash of genius over dinner."
Wufei would have snorted to hide his smile, but Heero's expression didn't quite match his words. Too serious. The man leaned forward, index finger brushing along the lines of the message. No name, he mouthed in silence.
... No name, he was right -- Mariemeya was designed as 'your usual charge.' Strange. Wufei frowned at Heero. Someone listening? he mouthed right back, but Heero only shrugged, as if he had no clue.
"Has Une been in reunion all afternoon?"
"Mmh. Messenger said she hasn't left that room since lunch."
So she was still around the Health Ministry representatives. He wondered if that was relevant. At the very least it meant he couldn't go and ask if the lack of name had a reason.
Wufei took a pen out of Heero's backpack and started filling the Mission Accepted paperwork.
"By the way," Heero said casually, "the ministry is trying to figure out what kind of newtypes work in the Preventers."
Wufei didn't pause at all, handwriting neat and regular. "Oh?"
"Probably in other ESUN-run organizations as well. Maybe even in civilian groups. They're curious to see if special talents benefit to specific jobs, apparently."
Wufei grunted, and started ticking off boxes. "Interesting."
"Director Madison said he'd like you to participate. Seems like L5 genotypes are rare nowadays."
Wufei's eyes narrowed, though he pretended he was only glaring at his incomplete badge number. "Really."
So they wanted his genotype. Or so they said. And Sally arranged for him to spend the day asleep in a corner, and Heero chose to work at Wufei's bedside rather than at his desk where he could be found. Add that to the strange formulation of the message, and the fact that Une had spent all day with the two men; it made Wufei wonder if perhaps Une didn't want said Health Ministry representatives to know that Preventer Agent Chang was routinely trusted with the safety of her adoptive daughter. Or maybe just that she didn't want him around them. He was grateful, but he could have rejected the offer on his own. ... Or could he have?
Or their interest could be entirely innocent, and Sally just wanted to mother something and it just so happened her latest cactus had died on her so Wufei was it, and Judy Carlson from Accounting had tried flirting with Heero again so he'd retreated where she wouldn't think to look for him, and Une did not, despite appearances to the contrary, know every single form by heart and like all common mortals she sometimes forgot unimportant details.
Wufei shrugged philosophically. He would know soon enough, and in the meantime he would keep his eyes open. He smirked wryly. "It's too bad I have no time to get poked and prodded with a needle these days, isn't it."
"Heh. I didn't get the feeling it was mandatory anyway."
Wufei allowed himself to roll his eyes in amusement; he hid the sharp wariness he felt deep under it. "Thank all the gods and ancestors it isn't. And I doubt many of our colleagues will go through with it, for the same reason as mine." Paranoia was a way of life for a Preventer. "As if we don't get shot and stabbed full of enough holes on the job."
Heero hummed in apparent disinterest.
"Still..." Wufei mused. "It might be interesting to know what kind of jobs newtypes prefer, from a purely scholarly point of view."
Because all practical applications of those results gave him thoughts of potential disaster. From favoring those with powers and fostering resentment and fear in the ones without, to putting newtypes on file and restricting their freedom for being born potentially dangerous... Wufei could see the ghosts of frankly dystopian futures on either end of the spectrum. Hell, it didn't need to go too far to become unfair and discriminatory -- many jobs asked for a drug scan at employment.
"...You know, when you look at the psychic ability test results, most of those people probably had no clue they were in any way different before they got the results..." Wufei mused. "It's just too subtle most of the time."
... Was he one, too? If the progression on L5 had been the same as the other Colonies, then there was about a twenty-five percent chance he carried at least some of the genes -- maybe even a higher possibility. His colony had been one of the oldest; on his mother's side, he'd been a fourth generation.
Meiran had been fifth generation Colony-born on one side, and, in some way, sixth through her father's mother's lineage, though personally Wufei didn't think immigrating just before the baby was born really counted. The argument had been fierce, bitter, and was still unresolved...
...Never mind. Whether he had some subtle, unremarkable ability or not, it didn't change who he was. And if he was, better if people didn't know it. Himself included. He might start depending on it, or wondering what he could have changed if he'd known how.
Wufei's laptop was in his bag, at the foot of the table. He started working, with little enthusiasm, knowing he had to leave soon but not wanting to have come to work just to end up sleeping the day away.
He clicked absently on a news site's link, even as he gathered authorizations and cost sheets and the info he needed to tidy up his reports. Read the whole article. Clicked two links open, so as not to lose the first. Summarized more case reports. Opened five articles, plus an online encyclopedia page to clarify some background assumptions. Hit a search engine. Remembered that he had pictures to include in his second report, swore a bit, had to reformat the whole thing so they would fit. Went right back to his newtype articles. Geneticist shop talk and religious flailing, enthusiastic geek blogs and worried watchdog sites, a so-called true newtype's own point of view and at least twelve he was pretty sure were fakes. So many sides of the issue.
He would have probably kept reading past the time to go get Mariemeya if Heero hadn't smirked at him. Damn, five minutes left.
"What's so funny, Yuy?" he growled as he started closing tabs.
His partner smirked at him. "You. It's only now you're starting to think about what that newtype business actually means. Humanity turned out to be 'a sci-fi fan's wet dream' and your first thought was 'what kind of riots is this going to cause?'"
"That's the only relevant one!" Wufei grouched back, and clicked 'print' on his report. Heero only shook his head in fake sadness and kept smirking. "And what was your first thought, hm?"
Heero's expression slid back to cool and unconcerned. "That it was interesting, and that it would get messy."
Wufei frowned faintly. Yuy rarely lied to him; that didn't make him like it much better when it happened. It was useless to try to guess the truth, though; knowing Heero, it could be just about anything, from "it was traumatic" to "I've always known about them" to "they get me hot and bothered." On second thought, Yuy would need hormones for that last one.
"You're going to be late," Heero said without looking at him.
Well, maybe he'd tell him later. And maybe it was just a way to tell Wufei to back off. Without a word, Wufei powered down and packed up his laptop, picked up the printed pages, and walked out of the infirmary and down toward the motor pool. He'd get a car, go pick up that brilliant, teenage ex-World Sovereign, and spend an entertaining evening attempting to verbally spar her to a standstill. At least he would be able to clear his mind of all that L2 and newtypes rubbish and relax a little.
+
"Mariemeya, you're fourteen."
"You were married at fourteen!"
"Not to someone seven years older!"
+
"Then of course it degenerated into 'are you calling me immature' and 'I'm not a child' and 'how dare you tell me what I feel is just a silly crush' and 'I would know if it were just a crush'." Wufei groaned and massaged his temples. He'd forced himself to go to bed anyway, but he hadn't slept too well.
"She's not entirely wrong. She didn't get the luxury of being a child very long either."
Wufei glared nastily at Heero, who sat on the other side of the table, totally unperturbed, and kept making little annotations in the margins of Wufei's case report.
"That was helpful, Yuy. Really."
Heero shrugged, his nose still in the report. Wufei glanced over his shoulder at the rest of the café, just to check that Heero wasn't the only one being totally indifferent to the fact that an underage girl had propositioned him. Heero wasn't; Wufei didn't know whether to be grateful or annoyed. The matter was more delicate than his partner seemed to realize. Granted, they had other things to worry about at the moment, like the fact that they'd wasted another half-day and Une still hadn't had an occasion to see them and approve their trip...
"... Never mind. I don't know what possessed me to think you might have some insight into the situation."
A corner of Heero's mouth tilted up in a fleeting smirk. "I lack your experience with jailbait."
"Don't make me hurt you."
Heero didn't even dignify the empty threat with a response. He picked up his coffee cup and took a sip, eyes still fixed on the sheets of paper in his hand. "The numbers are wrong. Divergence of zero-point-seven percent. I'll check the database to see where the error occurred."
Wufei frowned, and leaned over the table to check what Heero was pointing at. They bowed their heads together over the paper as Heero's finger tapped the wrong numbers. Wufei was good at math, but not by nearly enough to pick up on the discrepancy Heero had found.
"... There's a calculator in your brain, isn't there," Wufei commented.
"Doctor J thought it might come in handy," Heero retorted dryly. Wufei rolled his eyes at him, and sat back down.
The back of his neck prickled with the awareness of a whole roomful of people behind him. Next time, he would reach the café early, so he could steal the bench against the wall from Yuy. He vaguely thought of shoving Heero in the corner and sitting beside him -- craning his neck to see the paperwork was getting annoying as well -- but while Heero wouldn't care what that looked like, there were enough colleagues coming here on their break that Wufei did.
"So you're not interested in her."
Wufei twitched. "Yuy, for god's sake, she's fourteen -- of course not!"
"If her age is the only deterrent, you could just tell her you'll talk about it when she's eighteen. She's smart enough to understand the legal ramifications." Heero quirked an eyebrow. "She might grow out of it in the meantime."
Heero looked too placid to really get angry at, and his tone of voice just too reasonable to take offense. Wufei was tempted, though. "Grow out of it? You're talking about Mariemeya Barton Kushrenada. The only person more stubborn than her is--"
"You?"
The bastard was smirking. Wufei growled. "One of these days I really am going to hurt you."
"If you meant it, you'd challenge me to meet at the gym for a spar."
Wufei gave him a teeth-baring grin. "Good idea. How about tomorrow?" They would have the time, if the PR circus in Une's office was anything to go by.
Heero seemed more amused by the second. Wufei was starting to look forward to an occasion to slam him down into the tatami.
"So it's not simply that you've never considered her, but that you're actively against it?"
And now he looked thoughtful. Wufei wondered why he had ever thought it a good idea to mention the situation to him. Sure, they were great partners on the field, and his insight was invaluable on a lot of Wufei's cases, and they had a common interest in hand-to-hand and good guns, and Wufei might even -- god forbid -- enjoy his subtle sense of sarcasm and his strange philosophy of life. But like he needed Yuy to turn that brilliant analyst's mind to such a delicate and -- well -- mundane matter.
"... Yes. I am."
"Did you tell her so?"
Wufei sighed. "Yuy... I like the girl. She trusts me. I have no wish to hurt her feelings by telling her the idea of sleeping with her makes my skin crawl."
It was really too bad that neither Wufei nor Mariemeya were Heero Yuy; the man could take and dish out honest criticism point-blank without flinching. It was a very admirable trait, and one Wufei wished more people shared. Not that Wufei couldn't do blunt with the best, but -- not with Mariemeya. Not about that. He gazed at the table without really seeing it, thinking back to her confession. It had to have taken a lot of guts, and with some distance, he was almost proud of her for being so brave and tenacious... Almost being the key word. Damn it.
"Why does it?"
"What does what?"
"Make your skin crawl. Why?" Heero picked up his cup of coffee and raised it to his lips, his eyes still fixed on Wufei.
"I met her when she was eight," Wufei snapped.
"She's not eight anymore."
Well -- of course she wasn't! It didn't mean Wufei didn't remember her being eight. "Do you want me to molest her, Yuy?"
Heero snorted. "From what you tell me, she would be the one to molest you." He shrugged off Wufei's frustrated glare. "I'm just curious."
Wufei sighed and leaned back in his chair, staring away from the table. He couldn't meet Heero's frank stare and just be objective and cold about the situation. "... She's -- it's not ethical."
"Hm?"
Wufei set his cup down and nudged it around by the handle, watching the cold tea slosh around inside. "We are not equals there. The relationship is closer to mentor-student. It wouldn't be right."
"Ah."
Wufei sighed again -- he was doing it a lot, it seemed -- and admitted, more quietly. "I killed her father. There is a debt there. There always will be. Telling her of him... That can never compare. I must strive to compensate for her loss anyway -- in part by being an older male figure in her life. Children need those."
Heero's voice was just as quiet when he answered, "She never knew him."
"Because I killed him before she could!"
Heero didn't flinch in the face of his anger, but then he never did; his voice stayed perfectly steady. "Then it's more about your feelings toward Treize than your feelings toward Mariemeya."
Wufei stared at Heero, dumbstruck. "...My -- what toward Treize?"
Heero arched an eyebrow. "Guilt is a feeling, isn't it?"
--Oh. Of course. What had he thought Heero meant? It was a good thing Wufei's skin didn't show his blushes much. He lifted his cup of tea to his lips, and grimaced when the cold liquid hit his tongue. That was what he got for getting distracted by the conversation.
"If I tell her that, she might believe that our whole relationship is nothing more to me than trying to soothe my guilt, though." And it wasn't -- he enjoyed their long political talks or the triumphant smiles she gave him when managing a new kata without stumbling more than he'd ever thought he would enjoy being around a child -- but it wasn't romantic, would never be romantic, and the idea it might felt, in fact, slightly incestuous to him.
But if he told her that, she'd probably retort that he was an only child, so what did he know about incest. And he really, really wanted to turn around and check whether anyone was listening in on the conversation, but surely Yuy would signal him if that happened. Bastard and his back to the wall.
"So you have good reasons why, but explaining them to her would hurt her feelings." Heero leaned back and crossed his arms, contemplative.
"Yes." Wufei massaged the bridge of his nose. "She's a smart girl, but you know how difficult and contrary she can get. I can't possibly find a way to explain that she cannot take as a personal slight, if she puts her mind to it."
"So you need to give her a reason that has nothing to do with her at all. Hm. You haven't gone out with anyone since the war, have you?"
Wufei rolled his eyes. "Are you channeling Sally? I'm busy, Yuy, busy and in no mood to make time for inane chattering with people I don't connect with."
"Hm." Heero frowned thoughtfully, gave him a long sober look that was probably his equivalent of a 'this might hurt, please don't take umbrage' caveat. "Does this have anything to do with your wife? Mariemeya would probably accept that."
"... Hah." Wufei couldn't help a small, rueful smile. It did hurt, a bit; he tried not to dwell on it. Heero's obvious awareness of the old wound helped; he wasn't gentle with people's feelings very often. "Mostly insofar as it's rare to find people with Nataku's fire and her sense of justice."
"Of which Mariemeya is one," Yuy commented pseudo-innocently.
Wufei's eyes narrowed. "That's it. Meet me tomorrow evening at seven at the gym."
Heero smirked faintly at him; Wufei gave him a threatening glare, that he couldn't keep up. Heero really was annoying when he put his mind to it, but he had to admit, he was glad to have him around. ...Sometimes. Somewhat. Bastard.
"So you have no objection to dating other people."
Apart from his own high standards, no, not any objection that would stand a Sally-counter-examination. He switched tracks. "I can't tell her she doesn't meet my requirements."
"But you could tell her you're already dating someone else."
Heero looked so matter-of-fact; Wufei almost forgot to be offended. Almost being the key word. "Are you suggesting I lie to her?"
Heero paused, tilted his head as if he were considering it. Taking a sip, Wufei watched him, eyes narrowed, just waiting for him to dare agree.
"Tell her you're dating me."
Wufei almost spat his coffee on the files. "What?"
"We've been meeting for more or less social purposes for a while now. I'm sure for some people that counts as dates."
Wufei stared at him, and almost sagged in relief when he caught the glint in Heero's eyes, like a smirk that wasn't allowed to reach his mouth.... His sense of humor was completely twisted. "Oh, great idea," he retorted, only a second too late for a natural comeback; Heero's lips quirked up smugly. "You're so right, all those meetings, nothing different from a real date at all." Wufei paused. "Save for anything remotely romantic at all. Ever."
"Hm..."
Heero tapped his chin with his fingers, giving the perfect appearance of being deep in thought.
"That's right."
And then he shrugged, leaned forward, and pressed his lips against Wufei's in a quick, entirely casual kiss. Every single of Wufei's brain cells crashed and burned.
"Now it's not a lie anymore." Heero sat back, and picked up his own coffee to finish it.
Crunch. Wufei unclenched his fingers from their tight grasp on his ex-cup and blotted cold coffee off his lap, mind whirling, unable to do anything but staring in disbelief as Yuy took sip after sip.
What the hell?
"... Yuy."
"Hm?"
"Did you just. ...Kiss me?"
Heero shrugged, indifferent save from the devilish glint in his eyes. "That makes our meetings dates, technically, so you're not lying. You're safe from the jailbait."
Wufei kept staring. Heero couldn't mean that, could he? It was probably a joke -- he'd done worse, Wufei just knew he was behind Cadet Jenson's bothersome cellphone ending up serenading the newbies from the very tall, very unclimbable radar tower, there was just no one else, and there had been other times...
Wufei just could see his face, too, using his supposed social cluelessness like a weapon. 'I just provided you with a way out of your little dilemma, Chang. Who cares?' And he'd arch an eyebrow like he didn't know what the fuss was about and wasn't too impressed with his reaction either way. Argh.
Unless he was testing the waters, and then -- argh. Augh. Urrgh. Gah.
Where were his words? Wufei couldn't find any, not even to tell himself what the hell he was thinking right now.
"... Uh."
Heero picked up his backpack and slung one of the straps over his shoulder, and looked at him as if nothing abnormal had ever happened. "Still on for that spar tomorrow?"
Wufei stared at Heero. Heero just tilted his head patiently, all calm blue eyes and floppy bangs and utter ordinary-ness.
Wufei threw up his hands. "Oh, fine." He wasn't sure what he was agreeing to; fine, I'll meet you or fine, I'll pretend-date you. Thinking wasn't working right now. But if Yuy wanted to give him occasions to beat him up... "What do I say when she asks me why I didn't tell her I've suddenly gone gay?"
"The truth." Heero allowed that smirk to bloom. "You're not gay; I'm just that good."
Wufei lunged over the table; but Heero dodged his swipe with irritating ease, escaping into the crowd, and strolled away without turning back.
Cocky bastard. Wufei was going to hurt him tomorrow.
Next.
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Oh Heero... marry meeeeeee. XDD Also, I think you've done an awesome job characterizing Wufei. It suits him very well, given the time and whatever events might have occurred between EW and the setting in this fic =P MOAR NOA?
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Sorry, teamwork turn now. ;.;
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"The truth." Heero allowed that smirk to bloom. "You're not gay; I'm just that good."
Dammit, I am not allowed to go rolling on the floor while I'm at work! And laughing my head off disturbs the patrons too.
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:D thank you! (and reading at work is bad, bad, baaaad. D; You naughty girl you.)
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You sneaky person you. u.u
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I don't even particularily like this pairing, and yet... XD I almost want to plead for the right to bare either yours or Heero's children. The winning-ness, it wins!
Also, the first part looked okay to me. Mind you, I would suggest more Preventer!paranoia and General Une, and maybe a touch more ulterior motives!Health Department. For the most part it's perfectly fine, just not up to your usual standards.
Otherwise, I'd like you to know that this makes me dance around my house like an idiot on a sugar high... And I like it XD
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Hmm, good suggestions, thank you. I'll go back to it after a few days, when I can look at it more objectively. Right now i'm still right into it. ~____~
^___^ ♥
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♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
*goes and rereads*
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... I really have to work to keep that side of Heero down to a believable level. 'cause no matter how much he's relaxed, he's still not king of snark. *reminds self to watch out for that* >(
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I've missed reading Wufei and Heero in ANY sort of context, especially romantically and this was simply an injection of PURE JOY INTO MY LIFE. ♥
Okay. This is officially my new favourite WIP.
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@____@ gah, favorite. THE PRESSURE D; (no i kid. ♥)
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And hey, don't feel bad for
being a cheaterrecycling bits of writing--look at it this way, it was a scene you wrote before you knew what you were writing it for. It's not like you're the first person to write a scene and then find context for it. <3no subject
... I think I'll go with that
excuseexplanation, yes. Thank you. u.uno subject
I don't think I've ever laughed until i simply could not breathe, before. Wufei and his strict senses, and his self-control, and Heero with his slight cockiness while still maintaining the silent "heero-ness". Omg.
YOU KEEL ME DED!
And D'aww, Mariemeya, poor thing. it's hard getting out a crush like that and having a rejection like that. and then fighting with him about it!
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Where were his words? Wufei couldn't find any, not even to tell himself what the hell he was thinking right now.
"... Uh.""
Dammit I'm a geek. Why is that set of lines my favorite? I want more GW stuff now and it's all your fault. I need to go watch my boxset now, no thanks to you. GRAR!!
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Best Line EVER! I love how you write Heero, still in character but not a total "I have no sense of humor" dork. Great Can't wait for more
*loves on you for the great Gundam Wing goodness that is rare nowadays*
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Ah uh question ! Is Wufei drinking tea or coffe ? *search*
Ahah , there : "He lifted his cup of tea to his lips, and grimaced when the cold liquid hit his tongue. That was what he got for getting distracted by the conversation."
After that sentence he is having coffee ^^;;
Preveners paranoia = love
(and I'm contaminating all the girls in my house with your drawing and writting and VSD mwahwahwhawaha !!!)
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...hee! >:3 bwarharhar.
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