New Title

Heero stopped at the doorway to his office. Wufei had dropped his end of the conversation, something that rarely happened seeing as the Chinese man always had something to say. Turning, he found Wufei staring intently at Heero’s nameplate while he fiddled with the roll of black electric tape in his hand. 

He glanced at it and found it was mounted securely on the wall, the same as always: Room 214-1. Heero Yuy. CTU, Field Officer. Turning his eyes back to Wufei he asked, “…yes?” 

Ignoring the prompt from the other man, Wufei deftly taped over Heero’s job description. Pulling a small notebook and black felt-tip pen from his inner jacket pocket, he bit the cap of the pen between his teeth while he wrote on a scrap of paper. Using two smaller pieces of electrical tape, he fixed his makeshift sign next to the name plate. 

Heero eyed his new title and then his partner warily. Wufei was grinning in a sadistic sort of way that Heero was convinced he’d picked up from Une or Sally. “…thanks?” 

With a sidelong glance and still without a word, Wufei turned and walked down the hallway. 

The Japanese man watched his partner go before shaking his head and walking into his office…being sure to leave his updated name plate as it was.

*****

“Don’t you have any actual work to be doing?”

Duo shook his head from where he was slowly spinning on Heero’s desk chair. “Nope, not till later this morning at least. I figured I’d come over and bug you so I wouldn’t look like the only slack--” Duo stopped speaking suddenly. Heero looked up and felt the muscles in his body tighten, a reaction he’d never really gotten a handle on. He felt the tension melt away when Duo smiled. “I hear interns,” he said with a nod, continuing to spin on the swivel chair.

Sure enough, there were sounds of discussion heading down the hall at a surprising rate. Heero groaned, “Run.”

“So…do you know who this ‘Heero Yuy’ is?” the first, a woman, asked. She sounded uncertain. They had probably gotten lost in the maze of hallways just moments before, Heero predicted. Everyone did the first week or so: getting hopelessly turned around before finally realizing that they had just walked in a gigantic circle.

“No,” responded the second intern, a man this time. It sounded like they had just reached the office. “…but apparently he’s a bad ass.”

Duo burst out laughing, his head falling back against the top of Heero’s office chair. Heero felt the tips of his ears burn just a bit as he stood and strode defiantly to the door, shouting so as to be heard over the noise coming from the other man, “I didn’t write that – my partner did.” Throwing the door open, he looked down at two college-aged interns. “What do you want?”