February 14, 2001
Enjoy. <grin> Thanks to Tabs for working on this with me. Happy late anniversary! Eight years and counting...
Title: Mall Mayhem (Or Boys & Toys)
Author: Mouse (the_mac_mouse@yahoo.com) and Tabs
(puckrobyn@aol.com)
Archive: Tabs is archived at Tyr's GWA, so yes for
there if Tyr wants it, and for Natascha's Dragon's
Lair. Anywhere else, please ask. :)
Category: Humor
Pairing(s): 1+2, 3+4, 5+?
Disclaimers: We don't own anything but the idea. We
have no money and are getting none for our time spent
on this.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Maybe a little OOC, but it's all in the name
of fun... Very mild swearing. Mild shounen ai. And,
well...you'll see.
Spoilers: Not that we know of.
Notes: Ever been to the Discovery Channel store? If
you haven't, try to visit one with friends. It's an
experience, let me tell you... And yes, the sales
people are used to this kind of stuff. My friends and
I have done it before. Well, most of it, anyway. I'm
not saying which of our group has done what, either.
<grins> Lyric snippets from I Heard It Through The
Grapevine by Marvin Gaye.
Feedback: Please. Email is good. Either address will
work. Flames, though, will be used to toast
marshmallows.
//Battered. That's what we are.// Duo sat cross legged on the coffee table, staring almost blankly at the other pilots. //And old. So old.// Heero was slumped in the chair. Trowa and Quatre had the couch. Wufei was on the floor, leaning against the coffee table. They all looked blank. They hadn't even changed, yet; they'd simply dropped where there was space. Duo's gaze dropped to the surface of the table underneath him. Mentally, he reviewed that last battle that sent them 'home' to one of Quatre's estates like this. It hadn't been all that bad. Really, they'd had far worse times before. But they were *tired*. //We need a vacation.//
Violet eyes flicked from the table to Heero, then Quatre. He grinned. It was complemented with the brightest maniacal gleam in those wide eyes. //If we don't unwind, something is going to blow sky high. And it probably won't be us. The worry is whether it's OZ or civilians.// Quatre blinked, apparently just realizing Duo was almost leering at them. "Hey, guys? Guys? Guys!"
Quatre muttered and poked Trowa beside him. Heero and Wufei had looked up on their own, but they still looked as listless as Duo felt. The American's grin just broadened. //Break. We need a *break* before we break. Since a vacation is damn unlikely...// "Quatre, think we can drag out one of your limos?"
"Why?" Physical and emotional exhaustion warred in that simple question with curiosity.
"We are going to the mall." Duo leveled Heero and the Arabian with the full power of that manic grin. Quatre blinked, frowned just slightly, and glanced at Heero. The Japanese pilot shrugged. The blonde dragged himself off of the couch and fumbled for the intercom to order the limo brought around. //Good. They're too tired to argue.//
Wufei raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Duo knew without having to ask that the Chinese pilot was going to resist this little outing. The other boy's face was impassive, but Duo could easily see pain in the dark recesses of his eyes. The braided pilot jumped to his feet and snagged Wufei's arm. "Up, up, c'mon, this is a group activity, and you're not allowed to sit this one out."
Wufei grunted and glared at Duo, trying to extract his arm from the other's grip. Trowa raised a fine eyebrow. "Maybe if we hit him upside the head he'd pass out long enough to tie him up?" the green-eyed pilot suggested. Duo stuck his tongue out at him.
Quatre had the temerity to laugh. That earned him a narrow eyed look from the Chinese pilot as he managed to get his arm out of Duo's grip. His words, though, were to Trowa. "You're welcome to try it and see how much sword you can swallow."
Heero glanced between Trowa, Duo, and Wufei, then leaned forward and said something in Chinese a bit too fast for the others to follow. Whatever it was, Wufei stood moments after Heero, and centered a promising glare on Duo. "Fine. I'll go. But you'll leave me alone for the rest of the week."
"Scout's honor, Wu-man." Duo pulled off an erratic three-fingered salute, sidled, then gingerly shoved Wufei towards the door. "C'mon. It'll be fun. Promise. Q, where-"
"Out front."
Trowa favored Quatre with a, "Do I *have* to?" look, which Quatre's stern face answered yes. He sighed and stood up, forcing himself to join the others. Heero nudged him gently in passing. The two pilots looked at each other, their usually cool demeanors slipping slightly. Duo recalled that the two of them had traveled alone together extensively. He had never seen the depth of their friendship manifest itself in public before. Another causality to their mental and physical exhaustion; they couldn't hide how much they needed to lean on someone, at least, not from the other pilots.
The group piled into the limo, sitting stiffly, their body language in general sending wary messages to anyone who saw them. Duo tried to stifle a grimace and was only partially successful. They were going to collectively pop if something didn't happen to lighten them up soon. He poked Quatre and pointed to the intercom. The grimace stifled better this time. "Mall. Now."
The Arabian favored Duo with a polite, if long-suffering, look, then punched the button and directed the chauffeur to take them to the nearest mall. The long-haired boy took opportunity to chatter, somewhat stiffly, about the soothing effects of window shopping, music stores, and ogling. His fellow pilots just nodded along.
He half dragged Heero and Trowa out once they arrived in the mall's lot. Both of those delivered the remaining two pilots looks that promised certain doom if they didn't follow. Quatre ordered the chauffeur to go home and wait for them to call as the American continued dragging his reluctant entourage toward the doors. Wufei sighed, grabbed Quatre's arm, and followed the other three.
"Where should we go first?" the blonde asked. He fidgeted, twisting his arm away from Wufei's as they followed the American further into the mall. There were, of course, the standard clothing shops and book stores, a music store Trowa eyed speculatively, and several computer related shops, as well as a kiosk in the middle peddling essential oils.
At once Duo knew he was in trouble. Given the chance the others would split up to follow their own pursuits, and would still be utterly alone and able to sulk. They couldn't release the pressure inside if they kept it bottled up on their own. He had to find something that would catch all their interest. He continued his absent-minded dialogue, "Oh, hey Q-man, no need to map out the whole thing, just wander by and see what catches your eye, y'know?" But that was the wrong thing to say, because Trowa was opening his mouth to talk and would want to separate, since he'd already decided on visiting the music shop.
At that moment Duo's eyes fell on the answer to his prayers: The Discovery Channel Store. Sitting right in the window was an electric piano keyboard guaranteed to keep Trowa occupied, and he knew from past experience that there was enough eclectic junk in there to amuse even the most stoic of pilots. "Jackpot!" he announced, cutting Trowa off before he could say anything else. Tugging on Trowa's sleeve, he continued. "C'mon. This place is great."
Heero and Wufei exchanged a glance. Then Quatre, getting a *look* from Trowa, grabbed both of them before they split, and muttered. "If we have to suffer, so do you." Quatre dragged them in without more protest than a grimace.
Heero tugged his arm free and wandered over to where Trowa was slowly picking out a tune on the keyboard, when he was attacked with a hat. It slumped over one eye, nearly blocking the view of the unholy gleam in Trowa's visible eye. He sighed as Duo harrumphed behind him. "That's too big. But...hey. Now you know what Trowa sees."
The American grinned blithely at the half-glare from the green-eyed boy, and plucked the hat off of Heero, so he could get a smaller size. "You're not putting that on me."
"Aw, c'mon. You'd look cool in this one. Like Indiana Jones."
"Who?"
"Old movie. He was a fighter, sometimes." Heero eyed the American suspiciously. "Just try it on? There's a mirror."
"Yes, Heero. Try on the hat." The tone gave Trowa away. Heero gave him a dark glare but yielded, slipping on the hat in question. He took a good look at himself in the mirror. Actually...actually, it wasn't a bad fit. Nor was it a bad look for him. He looked a bit more rugged than usual. Trowa tilted his head speculatively. "Not bad," he admitted. Heero snorted, but his eye was caught by another hat, far more flamboyant. While he would never actually *consider* buying something so gaudy, he wondered exactly how the black fishing cap with hooks and multicolored worms stitched to it would look...
Meanwhile, Wufei discovered the miniature waterfall fountains by accident. He walked up to a sales clerk, intending to ask if they kept books on ancient swords. "Excuse me, miss --" That's when something that looked like a wet chess board came to life. Drops of water bopped out of tiny holes across the surface and fell back in again. The pattern of droplets changed with the tones of his voice. He stopped and looked at it, surprised. It had been sitting there so innocently before. "I -" he started again, and again the chess board, for lack of a better description, began spitting water in the air. He frowned, looking at the contraption next to it to compare, only to find that it was a completely different thing. This one looked like a rock garden set in a tiny pond, with mist shrouding lichen growing in carefully cultivated patterns along the rocks. The soft trickle of water over the stones was soothing. He ran his hand over the base of it, not noticing that the sales girl had completely ignored him.
In another corner of the store, Quatre was frowning mildly at a table display made of clear boxes and filled with a jumble of items. Gingerly, he poked at a strange, gushy-looking, clear green mass of plastic. It 'squeaked' at him. He picked the item up and realized what he was looking at. It was a squishable frog. Duo's voice sounded over his shoulder, and slim hand was reaching for the toy. "Oh, that's gross. Lemme play with it?"
"Sure." Quatre turned the frog over without a second thought. //Is that what I *think* it is?// Ignoring the fact that he was turning red -- Duo was chortling over the frog, anyway -- he picked up what looked suspiciously like a short, blue penis. Its surface rippled with silvery dust in the blue liquid. The wrapper on one of its mates said it was a 'pearlized wiggle'.
"It's not a good idea to practice those skills in public." Quatre dropped the, uh, toy and whirled around to find Heero standing behind him. The Japanese pilot had a hat tilted slightly on his head, one that looked surprisingly good, and was playing with something that looked like a long walking stick. When he flipped it over, the sound of hundreds of *something* running down the inside made it sound like a gentle rainstorm. Heero looked fascinated. He paused long enough to glance at the blue wiggly thing. "Or were you going to try to entice Trowa with that? --Ouch!" There was a loud slap as Trowa's hand connected with the back of Heero's head, nearly knocking off his hat. Trowa's other hand was occupied with a series of finger puppets of various sizes and styles, all of them animals from the tropics.
Quatre shuffled backwards, having reclaimed his wiggle without realizing it. Without warning the thing started to slip and squirm through his fingers, no matter how he tried to hold on to it. Trowa stopped playing with the puppets and watched in lewd fascination, his face an unreadable mask. Unreadable, that is, except to the other pilots, who could see the Ice King version of a leer on his lips. Quatre blushed and tried to get hold of the wiggle before it flew all over the place.
Too late.
"Ow -- hey!" Duo crashed into the display entirely from surprise as the wiggle smacked him in the back of the head. "Oh, so *that's* how you wanna play, eh?"
"Duo, I'm so sor--" A ball shaped bag of plastic tadpole eggs smacked Quatre in the chest, startling the Arabian into Wufei. The Chinese boy had innocently been attempting to play a small harmonica on the opposite side of the display from Duo.
Trowa's finger puppets nailed Duo in the face only seconds before Wufei's harmonica. Heero smirked, clutching his rain stick, and tripped Quatre as he tried to escape Duo's return volley of insect bouncy balls. The poor blonde tumbled onto a plush panda. Wufei looked incensed. He quickly rescued the panda, wrapping his arms around it.
"New girlfriend?" Trowa asked casually. He got a face full of panda fur. That knocked him off balance and into Heero, who was still playing with the rainstick and unaware of what was going on behind him. The momentum carried them both to the floor at Duo's feet. Heero gave his friend a hearty shove off of him and sat up, only to find himself entangled in long, er, rope? -- of interlocking plastic curves. Duo had effectively bound his arms and upper torso in the stupid thing, which was apparently some kind of toy, though there was no box with a description or name to be found. The braided pilot was having the time of his life and was *not* about to let Heero get away. He leaned forward and looked the Japanese teen in the eye. "Thinking of going somewhere, Heero?"
Heero glared at him. The effect was ruined by the smile threatening to break out across his face. "Your funeral?"
"Think again." The American winked, rescued Heero's rainstick from the floor, and poked Heero with it. "So. Think they'd mind if I spanked you here?"
While Heero was turning a delightful shade of red -- to the watching Quatre's glee - Trowa had a foam ball in one hand. Wufei eyed him, holding a wide, thin box of glow in the dark stars as an effective shield for himself and the panda. Those dark eyes narrowed as a gleam appeared in the unhidden green eye across the display. "You think that can hide you from the clown of doom?"
The Heavyarms pilot feinted left, then went straight over the display, and attacked on the left while Wufei was guarding his -- and the panda's -- right flank from the expected attack. The star box was shoved into Trowa's stomach, stopping the taller boy's advance enough for Wufei and the panda to make a strategic retreat behind the trussed up Heero, the leering Quatre, and the apparently reaping Shinigami.
Duo snickered as Trowa readied a second attack. The green-eyed boy grabbed the nearest weapon at hand, a plastic ball with gears and wires visible inside, and tossed it at Wufei, who ducked at the last second. The ball bounced off the wall and landed nearly at Trowa's feet, emitting the sound of a bomb going off as it did so. He caught it, fascinated, and began tossing it back to the ground. With each hit it emitted a new sound, from Alien Ray Gun to Exploding Sheep.
Duo watched this in amusement, the end of the rain stick resting on the ground. Heero took advantage of the other pilot's distraction to lever himself up using the stick for support, looking as if he was doing some kind of weird dirty dancing in the process. Duo turned around to see Heero pull himself hand over hand to a stand, eyeball to eyeball with the pilot of Deathscythe. Before Duo could react, Heero's tongue flicked out and brushed against Duo's lip. The American nearly fainted.
"Public...gentlemen." Quatre had what could only be called a whirligig in one hand, when both pilots turned. Heero smirked at the Sandrock pilot, and Duo was perfectly imitating the Yuy Death Glare. Quatre pressed the button on the pink whirligig, and the different sized knotted wires spun around, lighting up from within.
"Oo," was all Duo had to say. Heero, with less relation to crows than Duo apparently had, looked over the Arabian's shoulder and broke out into a broad grin.
"You have many facets to your personality, Quatre." The kaleidoscope covered Trowa's normally visible eye as the startled blonde whirled. Heero took advantage of the break in Duo's concentration to drag the American to the electricity ball he'd spotted. Wufei, in his turn, launched a plastic paratrooper attack on Trowa and Quatre with the panda's much appreciated assistance. The plastic soldier's parachute caught on a draft from the A/C unit and landed neat as can be on Trowa's head. He snorted and threw the thing back at Wufei. Unfortunately, it didn't go high enough into the air and fell to the ground with an audible thunk.
Quatre scowled at the toy and scooped it up, making eight vain attempts to get it to catch on the air currents again before succeeding. Trowa found a keychain with what looked like a lighter on the end. He squeezed the two side buttons and successfully blinded himself when the lightbulb lit up. Heero and Duo were too busy playing with the electricity globe to notice the commotion. Their fingers danced over the top of the ball. Long brilliant beams of electricity followed their every movement.
Until, that is, Quatre sent the toy spider walking across the floor toward the unsuspecting pair. When it started crawling up Heero's leg, the Japanese pilot jerked backwards. Duo snatched the rainstick and started beating at the tiny robot. Mostly, though, he was making Heero dance to avoid him and the plastic bug. Wufei eyed his fellow pilots, leaned in closer to the panda and began speaking in hushed whispers.
One sales clerk began noticing them now; she was just slightly frowning. The other changed the background music to vintage 1970s America.
The Chinese pilot nodded sagely at the panda, scooped it loosely into one arm, and, as stealthily as one can be with a stuffed panda, snuck to the back of the store. Returning with his newly chosen ammunition of dinosaur eggs and Heero's Indiana Jones hat perched squarely on his head, Wufei grinned wickedly at his fellows. Meanwhile Trowa, having recovered from his temporary blindness, found an interlocking wooden snake to slink around the laughing Arabian's upper arm. Quatre screamed like a girl and jumped about a foot in the air, then grabbed the snake and started beating Trowa with it. "Love hurts," Duo observed.
As the song wound down, another came on to take its place. "I bet you wonder how I knew," the singer belted out, "'bout your plans to make me blue..." Duo's hips swayed appreciatively to the music as he dodged the fake dinosaur eggs. Heero stared at him for a minute, then began to mimic his movements. The soft plastic eggs Wufei lobbed at them bounced harmlessly off the tables, walls, a mastodon bone, and a set of wind chimes. He lost interest in his bombardment of the others as Trowa and Quatre picked up the pace of the song and began dancing their way down the aisles toward Heero and Duo. The Chinese pilot dipped the panda low, then straightened and waltzed it over to his comrades.
Snickering, Duo winked at Heero and grabbed the Chinese pilot's waist. Wufei sniffed, but tossed the panda up and over so it was facing forward in his arms. The sales clerks were both watching the boys now, as the Japanese pilot's expression warred between laughter and a glare. When Quatre snickered and grabbed Duo's waist, Heero settled in behind the Arabian and joined the dance line. Trowa's visible eye was gleaming again as he followed suit.
"Oh, I heard it through the grapevine. Oh, I'm just about to lose my mind." Wufei was dancing the panda at the head of the impromptu dance line, and singing along surprisingly well. Quatre took over the next, while Duo steered Wufei, and their weaving line, towards the door. He knew that look the sales clerks were wearing. The man shifted behind the counter, opened his mouth to ask the girl to handle them, when she -- being a wiser person than he -- stepped into the store room and shut the door. "I know a man ain't supposed to cry, but these tears I can't hold inside."
The clerk looked on in bewilderment as Quatre suddenly thought of something. He mentally tallied up their goodies -- Heero's hat and rainstick, a similar hat for Wufei as well as the panda bear, two wiggles stuffed into his jeans pockets, Trowa's sound effects ball, kaleidoscope, and flashlight, as well as an assortment of things they pocketed on their way through the store -- and broke from the dance line to deposit a large sum of money on the counter. "I think that should cover everything... Have a nice day!" The clerk blinked, looked up to see him rejoin his friends, and blinked again.
The five boys sang along at the top of their lungs as they exited the store in a conga line. "Do you plan to let me go, for some other guy you knew before? Don't you know that I heard it through the grapevine..."
End
Mouse and Tabs
Please send comments to Mouse at: the_mac_mouse@yahoo.com and/or Tabs at: puckrobyn@aol.com