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Gundam Wing Drabble Series
By ishkhanuhi

[Pairing]: Whole thing will be 1x2x1

[Rating]: G

[Warnings]: post-EW, angst in this one (totally unexpected on my part!)

[Disclaimer]: Don't own the boys, just the prose

[Author's Note]: A series of 500-word drabbles describing the various ways Heero and Duo adjust to living their new lives together. The title of each drabble will reflect how long they'd been living with each other in that piece, and the series will proceed with increasing time.

I've noticed a trend in these so far – each of them seems to revolve around the bathroom. LOL. Not intentional, but an interesting observation… Maybe it's because I tend to have my deepest thought processes in the bathroom, so I imagine others having their own epiphanies there, too? Hmmm~


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One Month


Heero sighed heavily upon entering the bathroom, rubber gloves and cleaning supplies dangling from his tired hands. In a vigorous attempt to clean the apartment, he finally made his final stop at the bathroom, only to find standing water in the bathtub after Duo's morning shower a few hours prior. An eye twitched upon seeing the long strands of his lover's hair netted over the drain, loose ends floating in the water left behind. Heero's cleaning supplies were dropped to the floor in frustration.

It was an easy fix to unclog the drain. If Duo's notoriously long and difficult hair couldn't be dislodged manually, Heero enlisted the help of a variety of store-bought chemicals and even toolbox staples to pick apart the drain. Heero had done so many times over the past month since moving in. Duo always apologized and promised to pick up after himself each time, but hadn't yet made the effort.

It was the same routine every other morning when Duo washed his hair; since the process took so much time and Duo failed at waking up earlier those mornings even though he resolutely declared he would, Duo would breeze through the bathroom in a rush to get dressed and be out the door for work without picking up after himself. Heero worked midshift, so would take his time in the mornings, enjoy an extended jog, and then go about cleaning up in Duo's wake before he finally went in for work at the same corporation.

At first he didn't mind Duo's apparent lack of order. He knew when he moved in that the two of them were near polar opposites, and he would have to endure a lot of compromise with their new arrangement. Heero was steadfast in his own routines. He had a certain way of doing everything and wasn't used to accommodating others in any measure. Duo assured him when he seemed hesitant at first that those were common feelings called "cold feet", and his fears were not at all unusual. Heero was set at ease and allowed himself to become carried away by the hasty romance they'd created for themselves after their long-felt-feelings-confessed, lust-induced encounter a month before in Duo's bed.

Now, as Heero stared at that floating lump of chestnut hair in the drain of their bathtub, and then at the wrinkled heap of Duo's laundry futiley hidden by the toilet, and then at their toothpaste on the edge of the sink with the cap nowhere to be found, Heero thought sadly to himself that maybe they should have moved slower.

Duo teased him on a daily basis, saying Heero had obsessive-compulsive disorder. And maybe he did, he thought, feeling a sense of anxiety perpetuate in his chest at the bathroom's disarray. Or maybe Duo said such things in defense so Heero would quit chiding his less-than-meticulous lifestyle. But deep within, Heero felt a lingering fear suspecting another reason for his current anxiety, and that was the idea that maybe he and Duo weren't meant to be together after all.

Because even more than a clogged drain and uncapped toothpaste, Heero hated failure.


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Love,
Ish