Title: Question Mark
Pairing: Heero/Duo
Rating: PG
Warnings: slight swearing, crappy humour.

++++

Duo Maxwell disliked routine. He had three methods of getting to work, four for getting home, depending on whether his bike tyres remained inflated long enough, five if Wufei could be persuaded to share his car. Every day was casual clothes Friday where he was concerned. And people all too often pitied his poor, staid, unimaginative room-mate, Heero Yuy.

Not as much as they pitied Duo for having to go home to that controlled environment every night. Dishes washed and put away before you were finished eating, was the rumour. Don't get crummies on the couch, Duo; whites separate from colours, Duo; squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom and for God's good sake put that lid back on when you were done or your life would be forfeit Duo.

Heero lived his life according to his own personal timetable... or so they thought.

Duo knew better.

It was why he didn't turn a hair when he came home one night, using method no. 2, and found Heero doing his best to wear a cat like a pair of glasses.

Ok, so maybe not quite like that, but it was close. Maybe more like a microscope, considering Heero had one eye closed and the other peering with more than a little interest, into the 'opening'. Said cat, or kitten when he looked closer (although not as close as Heero was looking), didn't seem unduly concerned by the rapt attention his room-mate was paying to its rear end and Duo took the time to remove his coat and hang it up before he leaned on the wall and asked conversationally.

"The fuck you doing, Yuy?"

Heero shrugged, pulling back from his scrutiny of the kitten's ass for a moment to reply. "What does it look like?"

"Honestly? Lets just say it's a cat not a crosshair." Duo chuckled and stepped a little closer, holding out his hand for the kitten to sniff. It gave him a blank look, shook its whiskers a little and backed up away from him, moving more into the protective circle of Heero's arms. "Obvious questions aside, where did this little guy come from?"

Heero took a while to respond, rubbing the pad of his thumb across the cat's head gently, right between its ears. It tolerated it for a while before deciding petting time was over, and tried to wriggle free from his grip. He let it go and watched with a faint smile as it began exploring the table top. "There was a girl selling them in the subway station. She only had the one left."

"You carried it home?" Heero nodded and Duo wished fervently that he'd decided to go the subway route home that night. He'd have paid good money to see Heero Yuy, arguably one of the deadliest men alive, definitely someone you didn't mess with in a back alley, sitting on the subway train with a kitten on his lap.

"It urinated on my jacket." Heero looked disgruntled at that.

"Is that why you were staring up its ass when I came in?" Duo asked. "You can't stick a cork in it, you know. That's what pets do, they sleep, eat and wreck furniture."

Heero gave him a look with eyes that seemed lazer sharp and Duo suddenly felt very sorry for the cat's ass. "I was sexing it," he said, as though it should have been perfectly obvious why he'd been glaring at the cat's backside like the eighth wonder of the world was hidden in there.

"Can't you just look for its, you know." Duo motioned southwards and waved his hand around a bit, indicating anything from the feet upwards on his own body. "boy yay, girl nay, it's not hard. Well, hopefully not anyway. Otherwise you might have problems."

The kitten meanwhile, had discovered the cable running from Duo's computer, which was sitting on the table close by. It pounced, nibbled, ran away and darted in sideways with its tail held high. Heero gathered it up again and held it up one handed in front of his face while his other hand made sure to keep the wildly swinging tail from hitting him in the eyes. "I can't tell if it's an exclamation mark or a colon. Here," and with that he thrust the cat in Duo's direction ass first. "You look."

"Woah, woah, woah, Yuy!" Duo backed away, like any sane man would do if he saw a kitten's tush heading towards him. The kitten was cute and all, but Duo didn't think it was that cute. "I prefer my piece of tail to be of the human variety thanks." Faced with Heero's glare again he capitulated and cast an eye over the kitten's rear. "What am I supposed to be looking for?"

"Punctuation." Heero replied, reinforcing his hold as the kitten began to nom on his finger.

"Punctuation? Like what exactly, because I'm not seeing any sideway smiley faces if that's what you mean."

In answer, Heero turned Duo's laptop to face him and allowed him to see the image on screen. Two pictures of cats from behind looked back at Duo, both with raised tails. One was female, and the other - despite the distressing lack of any kind of testicular action - was male.

Ahh.

"The female has an upside down exclamation point, the male has a colon. But I can't see either." Heero lowered the kitten to his lap and let it play with his fingers, batting at them and biting a little.

"Why does it matter?"

Heero shrugged again and looked down as the kitten got a little too into its game and bit him hard. He tapped its head in a reprimand that it took absolutely no notice of and continued. "Mrs. Harper down the hall said she'd take it, but only if it was female as her other cat wasn't neutered and she didn't want kittens."

"When did you speak to her?"

"She was in the elevator when I was coming in." Heero said. "She seemed to like the cat."

And the sight of the good looking man holding it would just be the frosting on the cake, Duo figured. "We're not keeping it? Now that's just mean, Heero."

Heero ran a finger down the little cat's back and looked down in surprise as it started purring like a motor boat at the action. Unbeknownst to himself it drew the tiniest of smiles from his lips. "How so?"

"You can't just dangle a pet in front of me and then take it away. That's cruel." Ok so perhaps his sudden desire for a pet came more from watching Heero twiddling his fingers at it in a motion he was fairly sure Heero had no idea he was doing than for any love of the cat itself - yet - but Duo was fairly sure it would grow on him. It obviously had on Heero and he was the tough cookie of the two of them.

Duo couldn't deny he enjoyed watching Heero's little softer moments. He predicted seeing a lot more of them in the future if the little scrap of fluff stayed with them. It wasn't hard maths to do.

Reaching over, he dared to touch his finger to its head. It jumped as though he'd electocuted it and hissed, sounding remarkably like a snake. "Little bugger."

Heero laughed.

And that sealed the deal.

It ate the computer cable despite their best attempts to stop it, scratched the hell out of the furniture, urinated on the rug instead of in the litter box, gave Duo a dead mouse one morning before breakfast - which prompted a hasty call to the building supervisor - and insisted on taking up over half of the bed space every night. But, despite all that, it was still their adored little question mark kitty.

Until one night six months later they received gender confirmation.

Trudy, as she was dutifully name-tagged, was spayed post haste and her singing voice was never heard again.

++++

END

++++