Moments in a Dorm Room Part 16
Caricature
When Duo met up with the others outside, he was whistling a jaunty tune. This should not have been the case after meeting with their doctors, so naturally Quatre was a little suspicious. "You're rather cheerful, Duo."
Duo grinned. "Eureka! I've got it!"
"Huh?"
He chuckled and did a little victory dance. But only a little one. Didn't want to take the chance of one of the shrinks looking out a window and catching him. "Damn, now I know why Yuy's so goddamn Yuy!"
A smile, a nod, and some polite interest was obviously the way to go in this case. "Oh?"
"You ever try it? Being Yuy? Damn, that was fun!"
Smile and nod. Just smile and nod and pretend Duo wasn't off his rocker. "How does one 'be Yuy'?"
Despite the smile and nod, Duo detected the skepticism. "Seriously! They were completely helpless in the face of the Yuyness. Aw, man, why didn't that bitch ever tell me how fun it was to be him?"
With impeccable timing, Heero came upon the scene then. Being told to go fuck himself didn't faze him, but this was something else entirely. "Did you just call me a bitch?"
Uh-oh. Uhm, well, this was Yuy, right? Smile and nod. Yuy would go along with it. If Duo pretended that there was nothing wrong, Yuy wouldn't even know he was going along with anything. "Yeah. So?"
It took only three heavy seconds for Heero to contemplate that and let it go with a minute shrug. It was just Duo being Duo. If someone else were trying to be Duo, though, repercussions would be had.
Phew, thought the one true Duo. Crisis averted. He went back to what he had been saying to begin with, only this time directing his comments toward his roommate. "You know, you may be one smug, straight-laced, straight-faced son of a bitch, but damn if it ain't the perfect way of dealing with those bastards."
Though these epithets also did not bother him, Heero turned to the others. "Is that supposed to make sense, or did I just miss something important in the beginning of this conversation?"
There was a faint curve lingering around Trowa's lips, implying that maybe he knew what this was all about, and it amused him. Quatre shrugged helplessly, just as lost as Heero was. He hoped that name-calling was a regular part of their relationship. It would be inconvenient starting a fight on Preventers ground.
It hardly mattered to Duo. He was very excited to share his new revelation. "It's like this, see? When the docs went about their doctoring business, I just thought, 'Be as one with the Yuy.' Don't react at all to anything they say. Answer everything in the calmest way possible. State everything mildly -- ask questions, even, but express very few opinions, share very few thoughts. Make everything neutral and completely unhelpful. Be polite, but show them no respect. It was sheer brilliance! It drove them absolutely batty, I tell you. Trust me, I know what it's like to be on the receiving end of it. Damn. If ever I slammed you for being you, I take it all back. Well, a good part of it, anyway. I never realized just how much fun you must have."
Despite the explanation, Heero did not see things too much more clearly. It was certainly not his intention to drive anyone 'batty'. In his humble opinion, it was Duo that had the ability to drive people batty, and he was in a position to know. "You think I have fun?"
He was subjected to intense scrutiny as they walked along. "Well, I certainly hope so. It'd be a terrible waste of a good armament, otherwise. Come on, you can't tell me you don't get the least bit amused by watching those shrinks flail around, trying to figure out how to get you to respond."
While he wouldn't really call it 'having fun', he supposed there was something to be said for complicating matters in this case. The psychologists asked the most inane questions. They deserved equally inane answers. They were constantly seeking what was not there. When fools groped around blindly for such things, it was not in his nature to offer them brushes against false baits. That would be cruel. It was not his fault that that only confused them further.
Picking up on the slightest crinkle around the eye, Duo laughed in triumph. "Ha! See, I knew you did."
*****
Falling back on an age old stalling tactic, Duo shuffled some papers around on his desk, eyes darting over to the other side of the room. The near silence was no more silent than it usually was, but it did seem different. At length, he sighed and bowed to the pressure. "Hey, what's eating you?" he asked indifferently.
Heero's eyes rose from the screen of his laptop to look at his roommate. Nothing more than the tilt of an eyebrow was necessary to imply a request for clarification.
"You've been looking kinda bummed since we left that place. Docs tell you something you didn't like?"
A minute movement of Heero's head indicated understanding. He followed it up with the barest of shrugs before returning his attention to his task.
Duo grumbled irritably in his head. Why did he get stuck with the taciturn one? Whatever. He had asked; his duty as attentive roommate was now discharged. He went back to skimming the required reading for their literature class, trying not to think about it. Unfortunately, the reading didn't take up all of his concentration, so some of his brain cells were free to jump the gun and start wondering if Heero was hiding some dire diagnosis. Had he suffered some long-term brain damage? When the doctors had nonchalantly mentioned the possibility of heart failure, had they really meant it? Or maybe it was the shrinks. Did they succeed in unearthing some long-buried trauma from his youth?
"...Do I show you no respect?" Heero interrupted abruptly.
He blinked a few times, trying to figure out where the reference to respect had come from. Eventually, he remembered his off-hand words from this afternoon. That was what this was all about? Talk about anti-climatic. "Aw, geez... I was just, yanno... characterizing? No, that's not it. Caricaturing. Yeah, I was just caricaturing you."
"Caricatures are not without basis."
Now was not the occasion to get all technical with him. Great. He suppressed the urge to mock his roommate. They had to live together, after all, and Heero didn't really deserve it, anyway. Besides, he'd just benefited from emulating Heero's little quirks. It wouldn't be nice to be ungrateful. He sighed and took up the task of damage control. "Just to make things clear here, 'no respect' is different from 'disrespect', yeah? Because people like us don't respect, let alone show respect to, a lot of people. And the docs sure ain't on that short list of people."
"You said you knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of it."
Damn. Since when was Yuy all bleeding-heart and sensitive? A sidelong glance at him showed a figure with no apparent interest in the conversation, however. "Not like I expect a guy to go bowing and scraping to me all the time or something. 'Sides, come on, you're a little rough around the edges, yanno? That's all. I just said you didn't show any respect. Don't mean you don't got any."
Heero locked stares with his monitor, but he wasn't focusing on it. After some quiet, contemplative thought, he turned his head in Duo's direction. His eyes didn't exactly follow. "You are a highly skilled individual, Duo."
The corner of his mouth tilted upwards without his willing it. In for a penny, in for a pound. "You, too, man. Kinda crazy in the head, but yeah." When his roommate snorted, he chose to take that as a sound of agreement rather than irony. Once he got to thinking about things, idle musings sprang to mind and out into the open air. "You got a different kind of respect, anyway. It's... simple?"
"Simple?" Heero asked, questioning the questioning tone.
He had said it in the form of a question because he wondered at his unexpected conclusion. It puzzled him, but he did enjoy a good puzzle. Leaning back in his chair and propping his feet up, he let it simmer good and long before he continued exploring the thought. "Dunno if it was the same for you, but me, at least... I had the respect of the Sweepers and all of the rest. But it was always, oh, he's so skilled despite his age, despite his size, despite his past, despite this, that and the other thing. You, and the rest of the guys, I guess, for each other it seems we all just got... respect. Not in spite of anything. Just is, plain and simple. Never any surprise about it."
Heero hummed in quiet acknowledgment, letting that stand as a placeholder while he ran over his own recollections. At length, he responded. "Yes... Except for Dr. J, perhaps. And maybe... maybe Odin, too."
Duo chuckled darkly, but not without understanding. "Long time ago, wasn't it? Kinda sad, too, when the only guys that take your potential for granted are a mad scientist and an assassin."
'Assassin' was an accurate label, but it was just a job. Odin had been much more than that. "You had a mad scientist, too."
"Whoopee. A mad scientist. This Odin of yours... He really treat you with that kind of respect?" He said it with more doubt than envy, though maybe there was just the smallest little scrap of that as well.
"The respect of a peer, in a sense," Heero mused. Curious. While he had clearly been the protégé, and Odin the mentor, Odin had never treated him as a child. Which was just as well, Heero supposed. The idea of Odin trying to handle a true child amused him. "He was like J, and G, too, I suspect. He just never expected anything less."
"Were you chosen by him?" Duo plucked a pencil from his desk and began twirling it across his nimble fingers.
"Chosen? How pretentious."
"Which just reinforces my point. J and G, yanno... they chose us. If they expected anything less of us, that would have reflected badly on them. The stubborn old goats would never admit to choosing anyone less than the best."
Sad. But true. "I don't know if I was chosen. I don't remember how or when I ended up with him."
"Ah." Probably a more interesting, adventurous tale of intrigue than what were likely Duo's beginnings. He'd just ended up on the streets. Nothing remarkable about that. Happened every day. "Heh, maybe I wasn't chosen, either. Guess I just sorta showed up on G's doorstep."
"But by your own volition." Heero had to wonder how or why Dr. J had found him in that alley that day. Chance? Plan? He'd never asked. He didn't expect J would tell him if he had. All he knew was that, when J had offered, he had accepted.
"Well, coincidentally, too."
Coincidences. Sometimes he believed in them, sometimes not. Even in the cases of these crossing paths, these seemingly random, perfect matches, it felt improbable that things could work out so neatly without an outside force guiding the events. "Chosen by God...?" he pondered, not meaning the divinity Himself, but simply something greater than they.
Hearing only the name of a god in which he professed not to believe, Duo snorted. "To suffer? Yeah, sounds about right."
"Hn. No... We're not so special." There was no destiny at work here, no distinct property that they all possessed. Nothing to distinguish them from the common man, except perhaps the drive to see things through, the will to back words with actions. That they were in the right place at the right time... Good fortune, perhaps. But that was all.
"Special?" Well, yes, Duo supposed that, in retrospect, maybe he was elevating himself to the same level as the son of God. Didn't he know for a fact that he meant nothing in the eyes of that god? Why would He turn attention either gentle or cruel on this one, insignificant speck? To claim the privilege of His animosity would be to acknowledge His existence and power, and that simply would not do. Duo grunted irritably. "Didn't we say the other day that we were the ones stupid enough to grab ahold of the shitty end of the stick?"
"Guess we chose ourselves, then."
"Yeah. We did." Yup, idiots through and through.
OWARI
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