Moments of Haven Part 114
Splitting Hairs
Duo was finishing tying his hair back as he came into the bedroom, ready to settle down for the night. Heero was already sitting in bed, looking adorably studious as he tapped away at his laptop's keyboard. Duo had a moment of picturing themselves in a different life before he dismissed the errant thought and slid beneath the covers next to his partner. After getting everything arranged to his liking, he peered over to read the document on display. "Getting a head start on those reviews already, eh?"
"Hardly a head start, Duo," Heero answered, not breaking his stride. "Classes are almost over."
"And the reviews aren't due for a week or something after that."
"I want to get it down while it's fresh."
Duo took a closer look at the details Heero was typing up and chuckled. "I don't think they're expecting such an exhaustively detailed review, babe."
"I'm being thorough."
He was being Heero. "You want them to take as much away from your class as they can, hm?" Duo pressed his lips to Heero's shoulder. "Well, hopefully they take your notes to heart, then. You think they'll continue their training? Because telling that guy he keeps dropping his guard after a successful hit doesn't mean a thing if he doesn't have someone to beat up on him every time he does it."
Duo just reminded him of an extra note he'd wanted to leave for that agent. He backed up a few lines and added the information. "I hope they do continue their training. I think we're all supposed to be continuing our training all the time. But if they don't, then the least they can be is aware of the problem."
"Yeah, I guess." He stretched a little and tried to position himself in a way that wouldn't crowd Heero, but would still allow for him to see what was on the monitor. Nothing like a little reading before bed. "Well, don't call me a slacker if I don't start my report for a while yet."
Heero threw him a wry look out of the corner of his eye. "You don't really need to manufacture situations to apply your 'field improvisation' thing, you know."
"That's just a fancy way of calling me a slacker, isn't it?" He poked Heero's arm. "I never get stuff done late, and you know it."
"You just get started late," Heero answered, a tiny smile on his lips.
Duo shrugged cheerfully. "Some of us are just fast workers. Speed, flair... what can I say? I got it all."
Heero turned to him with an arch look. "Speed's not always a virtue." He demonstrated with a slow, leisurely kiss that completely proved his point.
Not that Duo had been inclined to disagree even without the supporting argument. "Mmm, didn't say I didn't know how to appreciate the stuff worth lingering over." He pulled back and let his attention linger on the way Heero got back to work, on the smooth, efficient typing action of his fingers, on the absent flick of his head to shift his bangs out of his peripheral vision, on the focus in his eyes. Duo sighed contentedly. "Hm, anyway, I just don't have as much stuff to write up. My class wasn't really about details, you know."
"Mm-hm."
"You planning anything special for the last day?"
Heero paused thoughtfully. "Do you mean like a party, or an exam?"
"Whatever. Just seems like the last day should be a little different than the rest of them, that's all."
"Did you have anything planned yet? Insofar as you've planned anything for your class."
"I plan," Duo murmured in defense of himself. "My plans just involve keeping everything free-form and flexible. Flexibility's usually a virtue, right?" He grinned. Perhaps it dipped a little bit into a leer.
Heero eyed the length of Duo's blanket-covered body, turned the idea over in his head for a few seconds, and then nodded his approval.
With a mild smirk, Duo answered the original question. "I dunno yet. I've already put them through some amusing obstacle courses, and I think the groundskeepers or somebody's probably gonna get pissy if I set anything else up. Heh, maybe my class and your class should get together for a little rumble, whaddya say?"
"Define 'rumble'." Heero had the good sense to ask for clarification of what he was about to get into when Duo had that look on his face.
"Well, I don't mean like 'free-for-all'... Maybe your class would like to see how well their skills stack up against people who can't CQC them right back, maybe somewhere other than on the mats. And maybe my class would like to, you know... 'cheat' a little in the field."
Heero leveled a steady look at him, one that was met evenly. After a few more seconds, he answered warily. "There would have to be guidelines."
"Only to level the playing field," Duo countered immediately.
"We'll see," was all Heero was willing to commit to at the moment.
Duo nodded agreeably, though the expression on his face made it look as if he were accepting a challenge.
Heero moved on to the next agent's review, but not without a few more sidelong glances to make sure Duo wasn't planning anything.
Duo blinked innocently, smiled sweetly, stopped short of batting his eyelashes, but was otherwise completely unreassuring as he resumed his Heero-watching ways. He waited politely for Heero to reach the end of a thought before he introduced a new one. "You need a haircut."
With an abrupt realization, Heero aborted the head toss he had been about to employ to get his bangs out of his field of view. Instead, he shrugged and casually tilted his head while doing it, coincidentally shifting his hair off his forehead. "Hm."
Duo reached out to ruffle his bangs, then let his fingers run through the rest of Heero's hair. "Yup. Definitely getting shaggy. You really need to find a new barber. You know, one who's actually on the same continent you are?"
Heero drew breath to protest, but he had to release it and concede to practicality... with perhaps just a token protest to appease himself. "I like Mathis. He follows instructions well."
"I'm sure we can find someone in the city who can follow instructions, too. I'm sure we can also find someone you trust not to slit your throat." Duo tread carefully, well aware of the fact that he had little ground on which to stand when it came to criticizing other people and their haircutting habits.
He pulled a lock of hair in front of his eyes and studied it critically. "I can trim it tomorrow."
"What, you mean by yourself? Nuh-uh, no way, not on my watch." Duo took a firm hold of his hand and pulled it away.
"I managed just fine all those years on my own," Heero protested.
"That's really ghetto, Heero."
"Never heard you complaining before. You couldn't even tell I cut my own hair."
"Yeah, until I caught you at it, and then it was like, 'Really? You're doing what?'" He remembered coming back to the dorm room one evening and finding Yuy staring at his reflection in the mirror, a pair of scissors in hand and hair fallen all over a newspaper he had draped over the sink. For a few seconds, Duo had thought for sure his roommate had finally gone off the deep end. Once he had it figured out, though, that distinctive style sure made a lot more sense.
"I told you what I was doing, and then you looked like you accepted my explanation just fine."
"Yeah, I accepted most of the things you said back then because I didn't want to upset the crazy person."
Heero understood the feeling. It had been quite reciprocal. "Am I any less crazy now than I was before?"
"You're crazy in whole new ways, Yuy. I mean, can't say that I don't like some of the crazy..." He stole a quick peck on the cheek. "Kinda gotta love a guy when you can ask him, 'is that a gun in your pocket or are you happy to see me?' and you never know what the answer's gonna be. But crazy all the same."
It took a moment for Heero to parse the meaning out of that sentence, but once he did, he blinked and moved on. "Well, it's not crazy to cut my own hair--"
"But you don't have to. That's the cool part, remember? You don't have to."
"True... but I don't have to not."
"Now you're just standing on principle, aren't you?"
He ran a hand through his hair experimentally. "It just... seems unnecessary to go through such a complicated selection process to get something done that I can do myself. And pay money for it. And a tip. There may well be a difference in quality, I'll grant you that, but I hardly need to look 'professionally styled'."
Complicated selection process. Right. "Heeeeeey...."
Heero was immediately on guard. "What?"
Duo turned a bright smile on him. "You trust me, right?"
Uh-oh. He maybe had a hint of where this conversation was about to go, but even if he was wrong, any conversation thusly started could never be good. "...To do what?"
"To not slit your throat?"
"Duo--"
"Oh, come on! If you can do it to yourself, then me doing it for you can't be any worse, right? I can actually see the back of your head. And I've watched Mathis do it all this time. I've seen the technique, I've figured out the tools..." He reached out and fluffed Heero's hair again, this time with an assessing eye. "I could totally do it."
"But--"
"You don't have to leave the continent -- you won't even have to leave the house! And you don't have to pay me! Though I might appreciate a tip or two." He winked.
"That... would depend on the quality of your work."
Duo latched onto his arm and shook it a few times. "Oh, come on! You know I like your hair a lot more than you do yourself. You know I wouldn't do anything to harm it."
"Deliberately," Heero muttered.
He punched Heero's bicep lightly. "At absolute worst, I mess up, and we go find someone professional to fix it. No problems. I'll even let you say 'I told you so.' But you have to promise to be objective about it. Ooh, and if it turns out good, you have to let me say 'I told you so.'"
Heero had to concede that would be only fair. If, in fact, he were to allow things to go that far. "We don't have any haircutting tools."
"An easily solved problem." Duo kept his delighted smirk to a minimum. When Heero started to get logical about things, that meant he was about to give in. Well, maybe not one hundred percent of the time, but he would if Duo was standing on solid ground. Which he totally was.
They stared each other in the eye for a few seconds, testing each other's mettle. Eventually Heero decided that this wasn't a battle he needed to win, so he offered up his conditional surrender. "You have to wait until classes are over."
Duo clutched his heart dramatically. "You totally don't trust me! I'm wounded. Wounded, I say!"
"Just in case," Heero answered placidly.
"You think I would mess up that badly?"
"I wouldn't want anyone to think I had lost a bet to you or something."
At least the implication was that Heero wouldn't be embarrassed enough to give some sort of cover story for his haircut. "Fine. We're nearly there, anyway. And it'll take some time to get the stuff."
Heero was prepared to nod his agreement when one last stipulation snuck in under the buzzer. "And you have to let me give you a trim."
Duo's good cheer immediately dissipated as he almost jerked back reflexively. "What?"
"You probably need a trim, too," Heero repeated softly.
"Hey, I don't get my hair trimmed, remember?"
Heero set his laptop aside and reached out to pull Duo's tail of hair forward. He ran his fingers through it gently. "Just a trim, Duo. Tidy up the ends a little, that's all."
Duo shook his head a little, as if he was trying to pull his hair out of Heero's grasp, but he didn't move back nearly far enough to accomplish anything.
"If it's important to you, Duo... there's nothing wrong with taking care of it." He slid his fingers free of the hair to stroke his thumb across Duo's cheek before retreating with a purposefully lighter air. "You let me trim it for you before. I've already proven that I can do a good job."
"That was more than an effing trim, Yuy." His words were soft and lacking in belligerence.
"Your hair's grown a bit since then. You said you wanted to keep it back at about that length."
He remembered. He remembered what had led him to that decision as well. It all still held true, but habit was often hard to break. He held himself back from the impulse to find the end of his hair with his hand and hang on to it. It took a sigh to release most of that tension. He took the rest of it and transformed it into a tight smile. "I suppose I can allow it. I gave you a chance to prove yourself on my hair once before, and you proved you can cut a straight line. But now you definitely have to give me a chance to prove myself on yours."
"Deal."
They sealed it with a kiss.
OWARI
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