Warnings : Wufei POV, unrepentant dork humor, OOC, no pairings to speak
of.
No beta reader would touch this with a ten foot pole.
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I don't normally pay that much attention to my room-mates
when they're on the phone. Not that I'm overly worried about privacy...
if it was something I shouldn't hear, I figure they should know enough to
take the call out of the room. But I couldn't possibly miss it when I heard
Duo, who had been working with one of his employees on-site for close to
a half an hour, suddenly say,
'1 is yellow.'
Now... when walking a person through something of any technological complexity
over the phone, there will be periods of waiting, during which small talk
is made, but... '1 is yellow'?
I'm not ashamed to say I stopped paying attention to the check-book I had
been balancing and started listening in. Unfortunately, Heero, who had just
walked past the kitchen door, paused and started listening as well…
and he didn't seem pleased.
'No, absolutely... 1 is yellow,' Duo repeated, and Heero stepped into the
room, a glower on his face that should have made Duo think twice about his
words.
'And just what the hell is 2, then?' Heero growled and Duo actually waved
him to silence.
'2 is green,' Duo muttered distractedly, and waved Heero away again.
Heero blinked and glanced at me. All I could do was shrug.
Then Duo grinned, all his attention on the voice in his ear. 'Now that I'm
sure of! 6 is pink. Hot pink!' He nodded enthusiastically, even though his
tech couldn't see it.
There were a couple of moments of silence while somewhere in Detroit something
was tried and then Duo crowed triumphantly. 'I knew it! Ok... you should
be good to go now, just keep the damn coffee away from things from now on.'
They said their good-byes and Duo hung up the phone, rubbing ruefully at
a reddened ear. Then he finally seemed to notice the glare he was getting
from Heero. 'Hey... what's your problem? Need the phone or something?'
'What the hell do you mean I'm chicken?' Heero ground out, leaning over
Duo menacingly.
Even Duo the consummate actor couldn't have faked the look of utter confusion
that came over him then. I could see him retracing his conversational steps,
and he came up blank.
'Chicken? What the fuck do colored tape labels have to do with chicken?'
Now it was Heero’s turn to look blank. ‘Tape labels?’
he questioned. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Me?’ Duo grumbled, finally starting to look irritated. ‘You’re
the one who isn’t making any stinking sense! Tape labels? Those color
coded tape labels? Juan spilled coffee on the labels and couldn’t
make out the numbers on his backups.’
‘So,’ I supplied helpfully, finding the context before Heero
got it. ‘You were helping him figure out what the tape numbers were
from the colors?’
‘Well, duh!’ Duo burst out, pushing away from the table and
putting some distance between himself and Heero. ‘What the heck did
you think I was talking about?’
‘Never mind,’ Heero mumbled and it was interesting to see him
blush. I don’t think I’d ever seen it before. Then he turned
and stalked out of the room, back on his way to whatever errand he’d
been on when he’d been interrupted.
Duo looked to me for some explanation, but I opted not to give it…
it sounded too paranoid… so I just shrugged and went back to my check-book.
‘You guys are so weird sometimes,’ Duo muttered and headed out
himself, presumably to his room. He paused at the door and glanced back,
giving me a sudden grin. ‘5 is orange, by the way… in case you
were curious.’
Apparently, Duo is a lot better actor than I gave him credit for.
End