Moments of Haven Part 139
In the Market
Heero stood up for a moment to stretch his legs, his back. He wondered if he was getting old, or if it was only natural to need a good stretch after crouching and bending over and working at the weeds. He wasn't sore at this point, not yet, even he wasn't that old, but circulation was a good thing. Plus, he looked at the indentation his shoes left in what once had been loose dirt. He'd felt it sink when he settled into his position, and logically, he knew it wasn't the sort of thing that would spring back on its own, but he still regarded it with a certain amount of dismay after the effort put into loosening it the first time around. Perhaps it was still loose enough that they could work it by hand and forgo another run of the tiller, whose emergence would surely coincide with a reminder of its name, which he also still regarded with a certain amount of dismay.
Duo tossed his handful of the tiny greens into their collection bucket and also claimed an opportunity to stretch lazily before studying the patch of ground they had cleared. "So. I'm thinking there's a more efficient way to do this."
Heero looked at him, looked at the dirt, and back again. "I feel like we've had a conversation similar to this before."
"Aw, come on, you like efficiency, right?
"You're building up to something. I don't always like what you're building up to."
"That's not what you said last night."
Heero stared at him. "...Did you really just go there?"
"Heh. Sorry. Weed killer."
"Weed...?" He shook his head. "Weed killer is just plant killer. And we don't want to kill our plants."
"Yeah, but I found this totally targeted weed-killing solution. Fire. And you really can't get any more organic and all-natural than fire."
It took Heero a moment to realize that Duo hadn't just dropped a random word into the middle of his sentence. No, he actually meant exactly what he said. "Fire? You want to set the weeds on fire?" His tone went beyond mere skepticism and into the realm of disbelief.
"Yeah. Well, no. I mean, they're so small and not-dry, they wouldn't actually catch on fire. They'd just burn up, I'm pretty sure."
"Pretty sure?"
"Not like I've tried it myself. But I saw vids of it online!"
"Seeing it online doesn't make it a good idea, Duo."
"I've also seen actual torches they sell online for exactly this purpose. Big box stores and everything, so it seems legit. Not 'as seen on TV' or anything. Though I wouldn't want to go out and buy one. Not like we don't have a torch in the garage already."
His brows furrowed. "The acetylene torch?"
"Sure, seems like..." Duo stopped and peered at his expression intently. "You look alarmed. Are you alarmed?"
"I'm..." Heero paused to take a slow breath and evaluate the situation. "I'm not alarmed. You just... escalated much more quickly than I was prepared for."
"Oh." Duo also took a moment to analyze the last minute of conversation. "Huh. You mean like, going from zero to setting the backyard on fire in about three seconds? I suppose some people might find that alarming. Figure you'd be used to that by now, though."
"I'm..." He wasn't sure if he wanted to agree with or deny that statement. Some days he followed Duo's leaps of logic and changes in direction better than others. Maybe he really was getting old.
Duo grinned. "Well. I'm glad I still have the ability to strip your gears. Gotta return the favor once in a while, donchaknow." At Heero's perplexed look, his grin softened. "Okay, we can slow down for a sec, talk things through. Come on." He tugged Heero back toward the house.
Heero dragged his feet a little, but allowed himself to be led. "It's a bit early for a break, Duo. We won't get anything done that way."
"We're not taking a break. We're heading for the garage."
"What are we going to do in the garage?" Heero couldn't help asking, perhaps with just the slightest tinge of dread.
"Get the torch. Well, and maybe snog a bit," he added cheerfully once they were within the safe confines of their kitchen. "But mainly, get the torch."
"This is your idea of slowing down? I thought we were talking things through first." Heero put in about a second's worth of resistance before letting Duo set the pace again.
"We are talking things through. We're talking things through right now. And then you're going to agree to let me try out my idea, so we might as well just get a head start on it." He grinned impishly. "Hate to break it to ya, but I've kinda got you wrapped around my little finger. Well, I mean, not in a way that in any way compromises your badasshood, 'cuz that just wouldn't be right. Okay, in all honesty, you probably wrapped yourself around my finger, and you could unwrap yourself any time you wanted, but we can pretend, right?"
Heero blinked at him.
Duo stopped in front of the door to the garage to give him another searching look. "You feeling alright today?"
Heero blinked some more, then shook his head to clear it. "Sorry. Just feeling a bit... slow today, I guess."
"Yeah? Guess I relaxed you just a bit too much last night." Duo sidled into his personal space and wrapped arms around his waist. "I bet I know what would get your blood flowing this morning." He leaned in close and Heero was somewhat automatically leaning in to meet him when Duo enthusiastically declared, "Fire!" and pulled away to open the door to the garage.
Heero stumbled along in his wake. "What is it with your fascination with fire?"
"It's no greater than any other colony kid's fascination with fire, I bet. Even yours, pyro."
"I'm not the one proposing we set the backyard on fire."
"I'm not proposing that, either. Just a few weeds here and there. You know, all the small little ones that were the biggest pain in the ass to get. We can still hand-pick the bigger ones. That makes sense since their roots probably get down below where the fire can toast 'em. But those tiny things probably don't stand a chance. I mean, let's be reasonable. We're probably not going to be able to pick them all anyway. Even the old dude said it might take a few passes before it gets down to a decent level. And you know I'm not going to burn the house down, don't even go there. So, what else have you got?" He hooked his thumbs in his beltloops and waited patiently for Heero to scrape together an answer.
"...It just seems a bit early to go resorting to brute force?"
"You don't sound very sure."
"I just made that up. It seemed plausible?"
Duo snorted. "You know... you have many things going for you, Yuy. And one of them is your adorable honesty. Now, as I said... we tried doing it manually. Maybe you have mad weeding skills that I don't, but it seemed like all those little weeds were breaking more often than not. Yeah?" He waited for Heero to concede with a slight nod before continuing. "And we were really hoping to be done with it this morning so we can go shopping this afternoon, right? So either it works and we win, or it doesn't and we're no worse off than we were to begin with and it probably won't take much time to try out. What do you think?"
"Well..." Heero buckled down and gave the suggestion the consideration it deserved. Really, the prime consideration was that Duo wanted to try it, and if he trusted Duo with explosives, it only made sense to trust him with flammables as well. But he tried to think beyond that, too, and didn't find anything truly objectionable about the idea. This was Earth, after all, and the colonist's traditional disgust for anything that would consume precious oxygen in exchange for only pollutants was irrelevant. He thought perhaps he could even recall that people long ago used to burn their greenwaste, so it probably wasn't even valid to protest that this wasn't how things were done. "I guess there's only one way to find out."
Duo rewarded that answer with a big fat kiss. "Alright! Let's get back to work."
Heero called his name to stop him and pointed at the handheld torch they'd bought for work on their plumbing. Its output was modest in comparison to the acetylene welding torch. "Start with that one first."
He made a contemplative sound as he readjusted the calculations in his head and found them acceptable. "Okay, fine. But if it doesn't get the job done, I get to come back for the big guns."
"And we finish pulling the bigger weeds first."
"Huh. I sense your brain has started coming back online."
"It will tend to do that when you, fire, and that unholy glee in your eye come together like this." Heero trusted Duo with flammables, but oh how volatile that combination sounded, and that was the sort of thing Heero's brain would always respond to.
"I thought you liked my unholy glee."
"That doesn't mean it can't benefit from a little oversight."
"Guess that means my window for pulling one over you has closed." He grabbed the handheld torch and headed out.
Heero turned off the light and closed the door before turning back to Duo, who was waiting for him. "Is stripping your gears a bad thing? It sounds like a bad thing."
"It's a figure of speech, babe."
"That only means I'm not literally stripping your gears. That doesn't make it sound like any less a bad thing."
"It's a thing. It's not a bad thing. Might as well call it throwing me for a loop or shorting out a circuit or something. Or just catching me off-guard, if you want to be boring about it. Either way, it's not a bad thing."
"Oh. So... it's not something I should do anything about?"
"That's another one of those things you've got going for you, Heero. That you always try. Well, I guess you're you, which means there's no trying, only doing, so maybe I should say that you actually put, like, effort into things. Not that I should be surprised. I mean, you did say you were committed to this, after all, and when you commit to something, you naturally put like a hundred and ten percent into it, so I guess I'm nothing particularly special, but still, it's nice that you --"
Heero was suddenly between him and the backdoor, laying a gentle, firm hand upon his cheek. His expression was serious, his eyes tinged with reproach. "You did not just imply that."
Duo found himself reviewing his thoughtless words for a second time that morning, and when he hit upon the offending phrase, he turned to kiss Heero's palm. "You're right. I didn't just say that. Your brain's still half-asleep. It was just a dream."
"It was not a good dream."
"Ah, sorry to hear that. Let's go burn away those dark thoughts with a little fire, hmm?"
OWARI
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