I Backward Cast My E'e Part 28
"Hey," Duo called out as he came up the stairs. He gravitated toward the kitchen table to give his boyfriend a quick kiss, noting that Heero's fingers continued their tapping on the surface of the table next to his laptop the whole time through. He plopped down in the chair next to him. "What, waiting for something to download?"
"Waiting for Trowa to get back to me," he groused, fingers only stopping after Duo laid a hand atop his. He looked up with a brief smile. "I was IM-ing him when Quatre called."
"Are they going to have 'the talk'?"
"They have to. Trowa only has a couple more days before he has to send in his responses." He sighed and leaned back in his chair.
Duo scooted closer to read the most recent lines in their IM conversation. "Is he really as neutral as he sounds?"
"All of the schools he applied to have pretty good post-grad programs. I think he likes two in particular, but he's been pretty careful about not getting attached to one or the other. We all know what the deciding factor is going to be."
"Or who."
He sighed again. "Yeah. Or where, I suppose you could say."
"What's Quatre's angle on this? Do you know? I've kinda been wanting to stick my nose into things on his end, but I swear, I barely ever see that guy online and available."
"He's trying, as far as I've been able to tell. But trying can only get you so far. If he'd already heard back from which companies were interested in hiring him, this would be done. But all they can do right now is guess. Quatre thinks he's got a pretty good read on which places were going to go for him, but..."
"It can't be a total disaster, right? I mean, worst case, Trowa can just transfer in a year or two, right? Less than ideal, sure, but always a possibility."
"Yeah, but..." Heero's eyes reviewed what was displayed of their conversation history, and his mind reviewed what came before. "It'd be nice if they could come to some sort of joint decision. I don't think Trowa should have to arrange his life and his future around Quatre."
"What would you do? If this were our situation?" Duo waved his free hand at Heero's laptop. "What if I really wanted this aerospace gig, and you really wanted to... I dunno, go off and work for Google or something?"
Heero hesitated for obvious reasons. His laptop's screensaver came on in the time it took for him to answer. "Someone would have to give."
Duo scooted over one more inch so he could lean comfortably against Heero. "Not exactly the kind of thing you can meet in-between on, huh? No point in both of you ending up somewhere you don't really want to be."
"I think... I would look closely at why we wanted to work at the places we wanted to work at. If you wanted to work in government aerospace R&D, well, you really don't have many options, but... If I only wanted to work at Google because of their creativity and philosophy, well, there are other places out there that share those things. I'd just have to look a little harder to find them."
"Hey... once you work in the government, you're allowed to leave, right? I mean, it's not like a top-secret sort of thing where they have to kill you, right?"
"Seriously?"
"Well, of course I don't expect that they would kill you, but... I dunno, do you have to sign away your soul, maybe?"
"...Seriously?"
"Just... what if this job isn't for me? What if government cramps my style?"
A surprised furrow got its act together and settled on Heero's brow. "You're having doubts all of a sudden?"
"No," Duo refuted immediately, scornfully even. "This is totally what I want to do... right now," he appended tentatively. "I just... Like I said, I don't really know why, though. This isn't something I ever really dreamt about or anything. What if it's just 'cuz it's all shiny and cool, but it doesn't last?"
Heero offered him a smile. "It's okay, Duo. Then you decide you want a different job, and you go out and get one and you don't have to worry about men in black suits showing up at your apartment one day to flash you with one of those... memory-zapper things."
"Are you sure? I mean, how would you know? No one in your family's ever left the government!"
"Odin's had friends who have left the job and entered industry. None of them are missing any chunks in their life."
"That's 'cuz they plant a cover story when they zap you."
Clearly, a different approach would be required here. "Okay, fine, maybe that's the case. But if so, then it's really not so bad, now is it? Compared to being killed or signing over your soul, that is. You just forget you ever worked on classified material."
"But what if I met you on the job? Then I'd forget you!"
Heero paused. "Then I'd just have to meet you again."
"But maybe you'd forget me, too! Maybe they have to zap you so you can't mess things up."
Heero never really enjoyed arguing hypotheticals. "We can ask that they plant a cover story where we met some other way, then. Maybe we can meet somewhere innocuous, like a bar."
"What would you even be doing in a bar? You're not the kind of guy I could pick up at a bar."
He refrained from rolling his eyes. "At a summer fair, then. We both showed up at that summer fair and ran into each other there."
Duo smiled a bit, remembering the first full day they had spent together. "Literally?"
"Well, it was something of an accident that had us both going there that day," Heero recalled wryly.
"That was no accident, babe. That was Blondie all the way."
He chuckled. "Maybe. But I doubt he ever intended for us to end up like this." He leaned in to press his lips to Duo's cheek.
"Well, okay, but then whatever cover story they come up with, it better be at least as good as the original."
"Hmm, alright, maybe we were coincidentally playing that squirt gun race game at the same time, and you were losing, so you decided to shoot me with your squirt gun instead of the target."
"I told you that was an accident."
"Twice?"
"A very, very fortunate accident. Hey, has Trowa answered back yet?" Duo tapped the touchpad and the laptop came back on online. "Hell, yeah, baby, check that out."
Heero looked at the little smiley face emoticon that was the only thing Trowa had input before logging off two minutes ago. With a sigh of relief, he replied using a smiley face with a victory sign and shut the lid of his laptop. "Well, that's that. I'll get the details out of him later. Weren't we going to an ice cream social?"
"Oh yeah, almost forgot. You distracted me." It was that very physics department ice cream social that had Duo coming up the stairs to fetch Heero in the first place. He got up to take a quick bathroom break before they left.
"I distracted you? You're perfectly capable of distracting yourself," Heero called after him as he tidied up a few of his papers. He was practically family these days, but it still wasn't polite to leave a mess on Howard's dinner table. "Luckily, ice cream is just the memory zapper you need to take your mind off things."
It wasn't long before Duo was done with his business and came out. "Hey, how are Wufei and Meiran doing? What were their plans again?"
"They both got in where they wanted. Two different grad schools, but the same city."
"Cool, so they've got it worked out, then. Kinda sucks, if you think about it, that T and Q have been together the longest of us, but..."
Heero shrugged. "They worked things out."
"My lame-ass parents got together in high school, too..."
"And Trowa and Quatre are nothing like them." Hearing Duo's sigh, Heero stepped into Duo's personal space and squeezed his arm gently. "What's got you so down today? Are you just nervous about hearing back about our jobs in a couple of days?"
"No," Duo answered defiantly. He deflated slowly, but steadily. "Not really. Kind of. Maybe. I dunno. I'm not really worried about hearing back from them..."
"Then...?"
Duo bumped him a little, but Heero barely budged. "It's almost worse if they do. Almost. Maybe."
"Because...?"
"Because..." He shook his head impatiently. "It's a job! It's a commitment! I don't know."
"It's not really your first job."
"Working for Howie doesn't count, man. And think about that for a second. I did freshman year in the dorms, but other than that, I've been here practically my whole life. And since the dorms are practically down the street, it's pretty much the same thing."
"We're not exactly planning on going very far."
"And... And... And basically, I don't know if I'm ready to go out there and join the real world yet. Be a fully contributing member of society and all that. That's a kind of scary thought, isn't it? I mean, shouldn't someone be in charge of clearing me for that kind of thing? You can't just let me loose on the innocent population willy-nilly like this!"
A few thoughtful breaths later, Heero slid his hand underneath Duo's braid to rest reassuringly on the back of his neck. "Yes, some things are going to change, Duo. But some things... won't."
It took some time to soak in, but soak in it did, leaving a smile on Duo's lips. "Ice cream just makes the problems seem not so bad. But you... actually make them not so bad." He thanked Heero with a heartfelt kiss.
TBC...
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