"Reputation"

By: Princess Sassafras

Notes: The pilots have been placed in their first year at a university (their high school transcripts were faked) post-Endless Waltz. They get to be "normal students" for a while…but Duo can't even fake normal. And Trowa's at his mercy. Humorous Fluff! Implied 3x2x3.

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"Puritan, Deist, and Transcendentalist writers differed in their views about whether man is inherently good or inherently evil and what his purpose on earth is, what the purpose of nature is, and what the nature of the Almighty is…" Duo trailed off, looking extremely exasperated.

"God, how boring! How did I ever write something so boring?"

Trowa was leaning back lazily in his desk with a perfectly original and completed essay on his own desktop. He gave a small smile. "Simple. You took bits and pieces from the works of well-versed people and stuck them together. Every college student has done it."

"Well…I'm not reading it out loud! I might fall asleep and drool all over the podium!"

"We're required to read them to the class, or else have a classmate read it for us. It's for your grade."

Duo paused for a moment, chewing ravenously on his ballpoint. Then he got a dangerous gleam in his eye. "You're reading mine, then."

Trowa blanched.

"Cummon, Tro! Plea-ease!" Oh God, the whining!

Trowa weighed his options: refuse, and have Duo whining at him all day and then sniping at him under his breath for the rest of the week, or accept, and risk social deflation. Trowa didn't talk enough to gain that much notice anyway. So there was nothing to deflate.

"Alright. Hand it over."

"Wait! I have to do a final spell check!" And with that, Duo turned his back and began flipping pages and scribbling furiously. Trowa decided not to mention that spell checks are supposed to be done the night before, not the morning of.

The bell rang.

"Class, attention, we're having a reading today…." The parrot-like Mrs. Burns stood up, wringing her clawed hands. "And we are reading the ESSAYS you have written for this class. Not magazines, not beer commercials…" someone in the back sniggered. "ESSAYS about the religious views of EARLY AMERICAN WRITERS…I am sitting down, I am observing!" She plunked down dramatically, leaving the room in silence.

A boy with glasses and a very bad haircut that looked like his mother did it got up first. Duo wasn't paying attention. He was still scribbling, and grinning. Trowa tried not to look. He hoped it wasn't too badly misspelled. He'd just have to remember to mention that it was a friend's essay, and not his own.

Time flew by. "Barton, you're up next."

Trowa raised an eyebrow at Duo. "Got it!" Duo shoved the now mangled essay into his hands. Trowa sighed and walked the length of desks to the podium at the front of the class.

He decided to read Duo's first, get it out of the way, and focus on his own. He looked down and began to read:

"Duo Maxwell, American Literature I… 'Three Ways of Fucking.'" The classroom was silent. It looked as though Duo had crossed out half of the nouns and verbs on the page and replaced them with sexual expletives.

Trowa looked up to see Duo crying silent tears of mirth and sticking his own fist in his mouth. He paused in his reading only momentarily. Okay, Duo, if that's what you're after…

"Sex is divine. This is indisputable. 'So they committed themselves to the will of Sex and resolved to proceed'… William Bradford believed, like most of the early Puritan authors, in a very active Sex. The Puritans had a deeply instilled belief that circumstances were the will of Sex, whether good or bad. The Deists were not afraid to question anything, and figured in a Sex that welcomed questions and who answered them in direct ways through nature."

The class was on edge now, hanging on every syllable that came out of his mouth. It made Trowa slightly uncomfortable, but he was going to finish what he…what Duo…had started.

"The Transcendentalists believed in fornication and rationality, but their primary way to commune with Sex was through their intuition. They figured that in every man's conscience was the voice of Sex. In Emerson's "Self-Reliance" he urges his reader to fuck for himself..."

Trowa could actually hear Duo choking on his own fist. He was afraid to look at Mrs. Burns…that is if she were out of sight on the floor. Heart attack.

"In his American Scholar, the image of the American scholar is 'man fucking.' The Transcendentalist way of fucking was even more free than the Deist way… Bradstreet took a different view, seeing nature as Sex's gift to man: 'What nature would, Sex grant to yours and you.'

"Jefferson even got his inalienable rights from nature in his Declaration, saying that 'We hold these truths to be self evident: that all partners are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of pleasure.'"

"MR. BARTON!"

Trowa looked up calmly. "Yes ma'am?"

"WHERE DID YOU GET THIS…THIS RIDICULOUS NONSENSE?"

"It's not mine, it's…"

"It's mine!" said Duo. "But I have a copy of the real one. I like it better than Trowa's version." The room exploded with laughter. The bell rang again, signaling the end of class…and Trowa's torture.

"Mr. Barton…just, you…!" But whatever Mrs. Burns was going to say was lost to him as Duo latched onto his arm and swung him out among the throng of students hurrying to lunch.

Duo began to sob dramatically into his shoulder. "I hope you're happy Trowa! My reputation is ruined, just ruined!"

Trowa had no idea what to say.

When he was silent, Duo increased his efforts. "I mean, YOUR reputation is still in tact! Well I guess, that's, all, that's, important, to, you, MISTER!" He was banging Trowa's chest with his loose fist for emphasis with every word. And he was speaking quite loudly; they had attracted a crowd. Trowa heard several girls giggling.

"Yeah, it's really important Duo."

Duo put his hands on his hips and whipped his head around like an African American woman might. "I know it is! You just publicly humiliate ME, you just make a fool out of me in front of EVERYONE, while all YOU CARE ABOUT IS…Mpff!"

Word would travel across the school like wildfire; it always did. Trowa was already famous because of that speech. Might as well be infamous.

Duo was laughing, even though Trowa's tongue was in his mouth, even though Trowa's hands were grabbing his butt. "…hey! You-! Hey!"

"What?" Trowa leaned back from the kiss, smiling innocently.

"You're evil!"

Trowa nodded.

"I like you!" Duo kissed him back.

Like wildfire. And they would probably be in the school newspaper. Trowa heard cameras clicking in the background. What is a reputation really worth, anyway?

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