Moments of Haven Part 64
Candy
"I got it!" Duo hollered through the house on his way to the door. He heard Heero moving towards the top of the staircase despite his claim, however. Hmpf, didn't the boy trust him? He looked through the peephole and was confronted by a large red circle. That was odd. He opened the door. "Hey, Ami. A little early to be out trick or treating, don't you think?"
The sun was still lingering in the sky for afternoon tea, or whatever it was that suns did to pass the day, still casting its light on one red-felt-circle-clad young lady, within which she wore white pants and white sleeves. There was also a large white 'M' on her belly. Ami looked cheerful in the costume. "Of course. No one goes trick or treating while it's still light out. We just had a costume parade at school today."
Duo invited her in with a sweep of his hand. "You'll be heading out again later, then?"
"Will you come with me?"
"What about your mom?"
She rolled her eyes. It was fast becoming one of her favorite expressions. "She said last year that she absolutely refused to go out there again this year. It's all Bree's stupid brother's fault."
He cast his glance over to Heero, who was just coming now coming downstairs. "What do you say we save this kid's Halloween?"
"You're more than sufficient to scare off any ghouls by yourself," Heero answered calmly. Besides, Suzuhara-san wouldn't really refuse to go if Ami needed her to go.
"Boring," Duo threw at him. "You're just scared of Bree's stupid brother."
He shrugged slightly. Not 'scared', per se... but there was something about the stupid brothers of the world that made him unenthusiastic about the idea. Children made him nervous, and babysitting a bunch of kids that were nowhere near as intelligent as Ami was not high on his list of priorities.
"Come on, Heero. If you don't go out and save her Halloween, you're going to be stuck here answering the doorbell." He paused for a thoughtful second. "Come on, Ami. We have to save Heero's Halloween. There's no way I'm letting him man the door. He's morally opposed to handing out candy to children. Thinks it's bad for them or something."
"There are healthier alternatives to candy," Heero protested. "Ones that taste good, too."
"Heero, baby, people don't trick or treat for their health."
"Well, maybe they ought to." They were already walking more than they probably did on a regular day. Why waste the health benefits of that on candy?
"Heero, baby..." Never mind. "Well, we haven't bought any health treats, so too bad."
"We haven't bought any candy, either." Life was pretty much at a standstill, then.
"Candy's easy to come by. Healthy alternatives are not."
Duo just wasn't exercising his creativity. "Can't we just give out quarters or something? Teach kids the value of money these days?"
On the plus side, Heero wasn't suggesting that they turn off all their lights and pretend they weren't home. Though perhaps Duo wouldn't have been displeased to have a little fun with Heero in the dark all night. There were oh so many things that could be done, and quite a few of them delicious. Suddenly, he wasn't so keen on trick or treating that night. He could be saving Heero's Halloween all by himself. But he didn't want to let the kid down. There would be other nights. "Ami. Do you need to be taught the value of money?"
"She's different," Heero retorted immediately in her defense. Yes, she was going to grow up to be an intelligent lady with a dim view of kissing, and boys in general, and if he had his way, she'd be able to efficiently disable any unwanted suitors with quite a variety of moves, too.
"I'm different," Ami echoed proudly.
Duo smacked his forehead with his palm. "Oi." He turned back to Heero and tried to appeal to his baser instincts. "Heero, don't you think you have to protect this innocent child from all the baddies that lurk in the night? Who knows what mischief might fall in her path? Maybe some overenthusiastic teen will go overboard in egging a car or teepeeing a house, and don't you want to make sure Ami doesn't accidentally wander into his path?"
Heero Looked at him. He wasn't falling for it.
Hmpf. Fine, then. He'd have to pull out the weapon of last resort. "Come on. Give me one good reason why you don't want to go out chaperoning tonight."
Damn. The one thing that could work on him. Not that he had been planning on deserting Ami if she wanted him to go, but still. It was fun playing with Duo. He wracked his mind for an excuse to keep the argument going. "Someone has to stay home and answer the doorbell."
"We haven't even bought candy or anything, Heero. We don't have any decorations up. We've never done anything for Halloween. We didn't even notice it was Halloween until it showed up on the news. Don't tell me you suddenly have the spirit."
"We don't have costumes," Heero offered instead.
"We don't need costumes. We aren't the ones ringing the doorbells."
And then Ami got in the way with a frown. "You have to have costumes! It's no fun if you don't dress up."
True, but they hadn't been given much notice. "Well... how dressed up do we have to be?"
She made an exasperated sound. "Well, you can't go dressed up as my neighbors!"
Ooh, there was an idea. Unfortunately, she had just nixed it. He tried to think of an alternative. "Umm. I guess it'd be boring to cut a couple of holes in an old sheet and play a ghost."
Heero tugged the tip of his braid gently. "I am not letting you cut up any sheets."
"Not to mention the fact that we don't have any old sheets, let alone old white sheets. Hey, what about we bug your mom, Ami? Think she'll have some good stuff lying around the house?"
"I don't think she'll want us cutting up her sheets, either," Heero murmured wryly.
Ami pouted in thought. "Maybe. But you should come up with something on your own. That's half the fun!"
Well, okay then, Duo thought. She had majority vote in this matter. Her party, her rules. "Guess we better come up with something, then."
*****
Heero straightened Duo's already straightened tie. "This is by far one of your least creative ideas, Maxwell."
"Hey, shut up, you." How much experience did he really have with holidays, anyway? He batted the fussing hands away. "My talent lies in disguises that don't look like disguises. And we had very short notice and very few resources, okay? This is the only thing we've got that people won't have to ask us what we are. B'sides, there's gotta be someone out there dressed as a princess. In which case, we are so gonna rock."
"Ah, but will Ami forgive us for being someone else's bodyguards for the night?"
"Hey, it's Halloween, which means that candy is a VIP, right? And Ami's dressed as candy. So it totally makes sense that we guard her then, right?"
Heero fluffed Duo's bangs lightly. "That's a bit of a reach, Maxwell."
Duo smacked the hand again, then wrapped his arms around his rather unhelpful partner, pushing him back until he hit the bed, but didn't fall. "Hey, you want more creativity? Fine. I can make you look not just like a Preventer, but a Preventer that's just had sex with his partner on his desk at work. What do you say to that?"
He considered the question for a few solemn seconds. "Your desk or mine?"
"Yours. It's got less stuff on it."
"Hm. I'll think I'll have to pass."
"What? You like my desk better?"
"No."
"Une's?"
His words got stuck in his throat for a moment. "Ick. No."
Yeah, Duo thought so, too. "I'm sure we can find some ketchup somewhere."
Heero waited for the end of that statement, but when it didn't come, he asked. "What?"
"We can make you a vampire Preventer or something. Or a vampired one. You know, just splash some ketchup on your neck a bit. That'd spare us the trouble of fangs."
"Now you're really reaching, Maxwell."
"Aw, come on. Since when are you such a naysayer? You love me, baby, don't you?"
Duo only seemed to call him that when he was trying to get his way, but he would endure it gladly in combination with that other word. He was glad Duo seemed to be more comfortable with it now. Love only went so far, though. "That doesn't mean I'll let you splash ketchup on me."
"I can lick you clean afterwards," Duo responded with a bright, mischievous grin.
"I can get you to lick me without the trouble of ketchup."
Quite easily, too, dammit. Maybe there was a downside to this whole love thing, after all. It got harder to win arguments. "Well, at least I'd be remembering the sauce." He reached out to thumb the corner of Heero's mouth softly in remembrance.
Heero smiled faintly. "But it'd ruin the taste."
He leaned in close, leaving their lips scant centimeters apart. "Do you always have to be right, Yuy?"
"Life makes much more sense when I'm right." Heero closed the distance between them for a light kiss.
Duo exhaled contentedly in its passing. "If you dare say anything smug at all right now, I am so going to kick your ass down the--"
Who needed to speak to be smug? Heero expressed the sentiment adequately with another kiss, but forgot to be smug halfway through. He got distracted by turning the two of them around and nudging Duo back onto the bed, and Duo quite cheerfully complied, wiggling in reverse and pulling Heero on after him without breaking their stride.
Heero laughed low in his throat, stroking Duo's side. "I can make you look like a Preventer that's just rolled out of bed."
Duo figured that meant their activities had just unstraightened his tie, to say the least. He retaliated by sliding his hands into Heero's back pockets and squeezing. "And I can make me look like a Preventer that's just had his hands down his partner's pants."
"Keep it kid-friendly, Maxwell."
"There are very friendly things I could be doing with my hands in your pants. Like... getting your keys out because your hands are full."
Heero's hand slid lower, dipping between them suggestively. "And what would my hands be full of?"
He swallowed. Who was being kid-friendly now? "Um. Candy?"
Heero drummed his fingers once against Duo's body, right on his groin. "Candy, huh?"
There were so many innuendoes to be had in that innocent word that he couldn't even count that high. Though that may have been because Heero had made it difficult to count past two. "Shit, Yuy... how do you do it?"
"What did I do this time?" Heero asked, amused. His fingers retreated to neutral territory.
"Do you know how many dirty jokes I heard onboard the Sweeper ships? Do you know how many of them I made? How many of them I witnessed? They were nothing. Part of the daily language. And yet you... you..."
Heero hummed in understanding. "Should I waste time trying to come up with the correct answer to that?"
He shook his head. "Hell no. You'd probably just embarrass me even more." Then he frowned at Heero's uncertain look. "Stop that. I don't mean it like that."
"If you really don't like it, Duo..."
He squeezed his hands again. "I..." Did he like it? Not really. But... there was something. "Don't change, Yuy." When Heero opened his mouth again, Duo cut him off. "Yes, I'm sure. Yes, trust me. Yes, I'll let you know. Yes, we better get moving or else we'll be late and Ami will kill us."
Heero blinked at that last one, then smiled, indulged in one last kiss, and pushed himself off of Duo, eliciting a yelp-like sound from the supine figure. "Hands! Wait up." The hands were withdrawn from his back pockets, and the both of them got up.
Duo sighed as he fetched their uniform jackets. "You're right, this is completely uncreative."
"Only Suzuhara-san will know that we didn't get these 'costumes' from the store," Heero pointed out, accepting his jacket. "And maybe Keller, too."
"Shit, that's right." He made a face. "Let's hope Ami doesn't decide to go ringing his doorbell. Or we could always stick to the driveway if she does."
"Maybe he won't answer the door."
"Yeah, then it'd just be... Hope. God, there better not be throngs of teenaged girls wandering the streets tonight, or we are so screwed!" It'd been a while since he had thought about them, but he remembered now the last time the girls had nearly had the opportunity to see them in uniform. Suzuhara-san had wisely advised them to take off their Preventers jackets before someone swooned. That one piece of clothing was fortunately the only obvious thing that could give them away.
Heero frowned skeptically. "Aren't they too old for trick or treating?"
"We're going out tonight, aren't we? Chaperones or otherwise, doesn't matter. If they see us..."
"It's just one night, Duo. They'll just think we rented the jackets, or made them ourselves."
"That won't make us any less sexy!"
"My, someone's feeling cocky tonight."
Duo harrumphed. "Fine, you are taking full responsibility for any negative consequences that result from tonight."
"The 'costumes' were your idea," Heero protested mildly.
"Yeah, but I'm not the one that's totally jinxing us by saying that nothing's going to happen!"
Heero hid his face in his hand briefly. "Duo... the worst that can happen is--"
"Stop that! Don't you dare finish that thought, Yuy!"
He sighed and tried to find something reassuring to say that wasn't anything that could jinx them further. "Duo..." He reached out to smooth Duo's jacket across his shoulders. "You don't look sexy at all in your uniform."
Duo rolled his eyes, but a small laugh still escaped his lips. "Gee, thanks. That makes me feel so much better."
"I think you look sexier by far in... your pajamas." The way the sleeves hung over his hands a little. The way the pants caught on his hipbones. The way he only ever buttoned the middle three buttons. Oh yeah. It was good. And winter was coming. There were still the occasional days in the middle of autumn that were unseasonably warm, but the colder weather would be coming soon, and the pajamas with them. It was good.
Geez, Heero was weird some times. "I think you're supposed to say 'out of your uniform'."
Hm. "That, too."
"Ooh, got an idea. Gimme your jacket."
"What?"
Duo gestured impatiently for it while pulling off his own. "Come on, give it over."
Heero waited a few seconds before he obeyed, handing the jacket over and accepting Duo's in turn.
Duo shrugged it on with a grin. "See? Now I'm dressed as Preventer Heero! Let's go." He wrapped Heero's warmth around him and headed out the room, a bemused partner trailing in his wake.
OWARI
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