A Gundam Wing Fansite
Artless and Assuming
II - WUFEI
White is for mourning. So is black, but put them together and it’s jazz. Wufei scrutinises himself in the mirror, tightening the bowtie for the second time, and doesn’t wholly dislike the effect.
It doesn’t make him look any taller, mind.
The rap on the door comes precisely at six o’clock. Lady Une is never unpunctual. He opens the door to her, jacket over his arm.
“I won’t be a moment.”
She’s willowy in the grey dress, neck and shoulders bared, with only the faintest of gold chains at her throat. He ducks back to collect his room key from the holder, pulling on the jacket.
“You look nice,” he says. She likes to be complimented.
Une doesn’t hear it, however, reaching out to touch the smooth black plane of his lapel. “Where’s your commendation?”
Wufei buttons his jacket. “I haven’t put it on.”
“So I can see. You were supposed to.”
“I didn’t think decorations were permitted at this event.”
“They aren’t. Old ones. Yours is post-war.” She frowns. “Put it on.”
“I don’t have it.”
Une isn’t very pleased with him, as an understatement. Still, it doesn’t strictly count as insubordination if you’re out of hours, but he’s disappointed her and her marketing campaign.
“It was a reward,” she says, not angrily, as they move towards the lift. “I wish you wouldn’t see it as such a punishment.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not ungrateful,” he says. He isn’t, but people died, their people, and everyone wants to ignore the fact shining silver doesn’t make up for that. A brave death is still a death. A loss is still a loss.
Une walks lightly on her heels into the lift. Something catches his attention.
“Are you armed?”
“No,” she lies. “Are you?”
“No,” he says, honestly, and a little annoyed.
She smiles then, one of her little conspiratorial smiles, although Wufei’s never sure if he’s inside or outside of the conspiracy. “I don’t think you could fit a pistol in that suit anyway. And I suppose you’re handsome enough without the medals.”
“Lady Une.”
Une laughs, the softer side of her, behind her hand, and spares him an apologetic look even though she’s always going to do it again, the cat.
“Relax,” she advises, “Follow my lead. And try to remember you’re not my bodyguard.”
As the lift pings she touches him in the middle of his spine with two fingers. “We’re on show, not inspection.”
Wufei ducks his head and tries to stand less rigidly.
___
There had been wealth on L5, but had been historical, recycled and stagnant. Besides, the colony had been a generation in decline by the time Wufei was born, and dwelt in a strange truce between old opulence and modern austerity. A closed culture, a shuttered economy, L5 hadn’t even owned much in the way of mineral mines or large-scale industry. Primarily what they had excelled at was agricultural self-sufficiency, and learning.
To hear Master Long speak of it, L5 was the pinnacle of development: rich, cultured, ideal, full of technological marvel. To the Alliance, they had barely qualified as a settlement.
Over time on Earth, Wufei has come to understand that the general perception of L5 from the outside was less of a daring new order and more of a crumbling embarrassment. Backwards. No better and no different to any other collection of cultists scraping a life in the backwoods.
In truth, of course, they’d been neither extreme. Just people. But they hadn’t had palaces like this. Hotels like this.
Wealth on Earth is something altogether different.
Wufei turns a blind eye to it all. The party extends only as far as the face in front of him, and even that’s held off at the distance of small-talk and pleasantries. Doubtless this will change as glasses empty and opinions come out, but for now it’s just chit-chat.
He follows Une around the mingle feeling a little like a road sweeper, tidying up the frayed ends of conversations as they pass on to another one. He brushes people into the edge of her reach - silently herding them sometimes in a very literal way, which amuses him.
No one here knows who he is, really. He’s Une’s star agent, a pedigree policeman with an impeccable track record (officially anyway), medalled (internal committee, first class honour) polite, with a useful memory for facts. He provides the gravitas, Une the charm, like a couple of theatre masks.
Wufei holds a glass when it’s given to him, but refrains from drinking.
Une, meanwhile, is hitting her stride. She’s a natural people-person. Unkindly, Wufei can’t help putting that down to being more than one person herself, and then he feels bad for thinking it. She’s not the Lady Une of the past; either of them, but he’s quite sure she remembers their mutual history when they’re thrown together like this. He does. It’s unavoidable, like a smell.
All these chandeliers and polished gold. Treize would have enjoyed this. Maybe. There’s something of the man’s spirit clinging to the place anyway; an atmosphere of bold youth.
Even as Wufei looks around the room there’s a noticeable disparity in ages. A missing generation. To the older people this ball perhaps represents a return to some golden age, that nebulous once upon a time when things seemed better because everyone’s understanding was narrower. To the young, this is new, exciting. Wufei sees it in their postures. They stand with hands clasped and eyes open.
He hopes they all look far enough ahead, and remember to look back.
Then he just feels jaded.
He’s turning back to Une’s conversation when he sees them. They’re far across the room, and the sight of them still hits home hard. He sees Trowa first, a long line of elegance gesturing as he talks, and then a heartbeat later, Wufei recognises who he is talking to.
Duo.
There’s an open connection between the other men. Duo smiles as he talks, and the smile makes a dimple in his cheek. They look happy. Next to Wufei, Une is discussing their work relating to arms smuggling, making it sound easy.
Wufei’s stomach knots.
He hasn’t seen either Duo or Trowa in a long time. More to the point, they haven’t seen him. At this stage, Wufei has no idea of where he stands with the group any more. Would they be pleased to see him if he went over, or not?
He tries to follow the conversation by lip-reading but can only pick up words in snatches. Trowa bends his head to talk down towards Duo’s ear, and from this angle, Wufei can mostly only see the back of Duo’s head, or the side if he moves.
The snatches he does get are weird. Duo seems to be saying ‘lying’ a lot. Wufei watches intently, wanting to be part of it, right up until he reads Trowa say ‘sperm collection’ and then suddenly he doesn’t.
What the hell are they talking about?
“Agent Chang here has been responsible for much of the data analysis.”
“Yes,” Wufei says, turning at once to the people next to him. “Fortunately the local police have been able to repair a good number of records that were damaged or destroyed during the war, and we’ve been able to keep to the timetable set out in the three-year plan.”
Une is watching him from the corner of her eye, cool as ever, but doubtless the only person in the room aware of how high his heart rate just spiked.
“And of course,” she adds seamlessly, “with the information in hand we’re now able to start building a better picture of the wider movement of smuggled arms and where the potential sources are.”
Duo and Trowa haven’t moved. Haven’t noticed anything either, which rather surprises Wufei. Not so long ago, Duo would never have turned his shoulder to a room like that, not completely. Acting, yes, but the sharp awareness of everything around him, that constant edge they all lived on would still have been there. No more, it seems.
This works in Wufei’s favour, he supposes, inasmuch as it allows him to stand and stare as much as he wants.
“-and my nephew, Rames,” someone says and Wufei snaps his head back in time to take the offered hand. “Pleased to meet you.” He’s not been paying close enough attention. He hadn’t noticed them join the group.
“Likewise,” says the nephew. He has an honest face that betrays that he is a little awed by the situation. He appraises Wufei with the quick look that Wufei is used to from his peers. Uncertain if Wufei is really the same species as them at all.
“You must be roughly the same age,” says the Aunt, a Mrs. Someone from L1, Wufei recalls. Banking or finance. Her comment shocks him but when he looks again, she must be right. It’s just on first impression, he’d assumed he was looking at a tall child.
“Agent Chang is something of a prodigy,” Une says, “We have a number of staff who are the product of exceptional circumstances, and his track record has more than justified his promotion.”
“No one had any time to relax,” agrees the Aunt. “It might do us good to slow down. But Rames is doing well.”
“I’ve just completed my degree and intend to stay in academia for the meanwhile.”
Rames talks politely of his studies, and Wufei says nothing.
‘That’s who I wanted to be.’
The words circle through Wufei’s thoughts round and round until they lose all meaning. It seems ridiculous, but it’s true. Once he’d wanted very little more than a computer and a library, and the opportunity to use both as much as he wanted. In fact, there had been a time when if Master Long had tapped him on the shoulder and said ‘Sorry, we’ve changed our mind. We’ve picked someone else to be heir. Go home,’ he would have gone with only a token protest.
Even Rames seems more ambitious than that. He’s got friends at least.
The aunt carries the talk on until it’s clear that Wufei is as sociably able as a block of wood and no shining influence for her nephew. ‘How could I be?’ Wufei wonders. ‘I got it all so wrong.’
But then so few people seem to realise that.
Une nudges him, but the nephew is now questioning her and she has no opportunity to chide Wufei further. Wufei ducks his chin and feigns deep thought.
Une understands him, even if he finds her complicated, but they’re not really friends. It’s possible that they won’t be either, not for years and years anyway. Treize, and quite what went on between the three of them, remains hanging in the air. To openly tell her, ‘I wanted to kill him but I didn’t want him to die,’ is worse than saying nothing at all, isn’t it? At any rate, that’s a knot he’s going to be unpicking for quite a long time.
And there’s Sally, who does consider him a friend and would very much allow him to make one of her if only he weren’t such an idiot about it. He tries, but it gets sticky around the fact that he’s well known as a misanthrope and the rumour mill wants to make something of their relationship that it isn’t.
“You shouldn’t let it bother you,” Sally says, and this is worse than the rumour.
It’s that tone she gets sometimes when they both remember she’s that crucial bit older and that much better at normal life. And as he always accedes to her good advice, because he must, things get skewed between them. Unless she needs someone shooting, there’s very little he can do for her in return.
And Sally tends to do all her own dirty work anyway.
Meilan would scold him for thinking like this. Hands on hips, finger right in his face, she’d say, ’Look at you, Chang Wufei. What kind of excuse for a man are you?’
And she’d be right. He needs to do something.
He misses her all over again.
In short, he regrets keeping himself so distant. Duo is still talking, bright and passionate. Trowa chuckles, responds. It’s a back and forth as simple as tossing a ball, but how do you find someone to do it with you? Trowa’s got his own life now, from what Wufei has heard.
As for Duo…
Duo left.
Right out the gate, before any of them had thought of leaving, without even saying goodbye. No message, nothing. At least not for Wufei. He must have kept in touch or allowed contact from Trowa though, or Quatre. Why not Heero as well, in that case? And if Heero, then Relena would have been in the loop.
But not a word in this direction.
Wufei’s jaw tightens, and then Trowa looks up.
There’s a long way between them, but his eyes flick unerringly to Wufei’s and go still. Wufei’s brain goes from blank to four letters long faster than Duo can start to turn his head. Before Duo can meet his eyes, Wufei snaps his attention round to the collar button of the man Une’s talking to at once and pins it there hard enough to cause a momentary ripple in the conversation.
“..and uh, his estate,” concludes the man.
“We will certainly be working with the police should they require our assistance in cases like that,” Une says, and Wufei’s painfully aware that she’s noticed his error. “Particularly if the theft appears to have any relation at all to anti-peace movements.”
“That’s just it. How do you expect to find them?”
“We have our ways,” Une says lightly.
Wufei wishes he could pull at his collar. The suit feels incredibly hot, especially now the room is becoming more crowded. The talk is interminable. Wufei stands, feeling uncomfortably trapped. He can’t walk away, and he can’t turn around, and now that he’s apparently so keen on the talk, he’s made involved.
He stands, bolt to attention, and mouths out information as required, all the while certain that they’re both over there, discussing him.
He’s made a complete fool of himself.
Une brushes against him as he borders on the edge of curt, and he curbs himself again. The man has evidently also had more than he wanted from their encounter and removes himself from the talk. Une looks for another drink.
“Agent, as it happens, I’ve always thought of you rather as being of the strong and silent persuasion,” she murmurs over the glass. Embarrassed, he nods.
“Understood.”
When the crowd flows again and Une ensnares another partner, he steps back.
He shouldn’t look again. Shouldn’t check. Must. He needs to know if they’re still over there and what they’re doing, saying, if they’re busy acting judge, jury and executioner on his pride.
Wufei looks.
Duo’s alone. Not just alone, but apart. There’s a space between him and the crowd, and he looks lonely, draining the glass in his hand like he’s got nothing else. Wufei means to turn away again, but it’s the sense of loneliness that keeps him looking.
Their eyes meet.
Duo’s eyes are rounded at first, and then crinkle at the corners in puzzlement. He doesn’t blink. Wufei doesn’t either. ‘Say something,’ Wufei thinks. ‘Say something, you bastard. Anything. Just say hello.’
The distance between them seems to concertina up into a fraction of space. They could be nose to nose. Duo’s neck is bared almost to the collarbone. It’s the first time Wufei’s ever seen it like that. It seems to spell confidence, a kind of raw sexuality that Duo didn’t have before. Long-sighted, Wufei can make out the movement in Duo’s throat as he swallows, the muscle in the other man’s jaw moving as his tongue slides in his mouth. The knot in Wufei’s stomach sinks lower, becomes an electric tug.
And then Duo sticks his tongue out at him.
It’s like a dash of water to the face.
Turning yet again back to Une’s conversations, one where he’s not even needed, Wufei clamps down on all outward sign of fluster and inwardly screams to the heavens.
‘I am an idiot,’ he thinks, furiously. ‘What is wrong with me?’
Worse, he can feel his body getting unruly. It’s blushing, for one thing. His ears feel burning hot, and his hands slide on the glass from the sweat. Thank god everyone else is gently glowing as well.
‘Breathe,’ he commands himself, and this at least he is the full master of. Inhale, exhale, slowing everything down. His mouth is like cotton. Wufei takes a nip from the glass and regrets it. The champagne is dry.
Finally, the group next to them swells and cuts him free of Duo’s stare. The crowd is moving now, more purposefully, pulsing slowly towards the doors of the dining hall. Une laughs at something someone has said and there’s a natural lull to take advantage of.
“Please excuse me,” he says, bowing and pushing the unwanted champagne on to the nearest table. “I’ll be back momentarily.”
Une gracefully follows on his heels a short distance. “Where are you going?”
“Bathroom,” he says, so that she stops. She moves in close, however, appraising him.
“Agent Chang, you’re uncharacteristically nervous this evening. Your attention is wandering. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he says. “May I go?”
“Don’t be too long. They’ll call dinner soon,” she doesn’t frown, but she doesn’t blink either.
“May I go?”
She blinks then, and says, knowing full well how she says it. “You may, as your business seems so urgent.”
Flaming up the back of the neck, Wufei goes.
____
He does, in fact, head straight to the bathroom. Mainly because it doesn’t matter where he goes, as long as there aren’t too many people, and also because Une definitely (probably) won’t follow him in there, even if she changes her mind about questioning him further.
Once there, the sensible thing to do is to pee.
Dinner promises to run to a long first half, and there are speeches planned. Wufei’s at the urinal when the door opens and he realises everything he has just decided was a massive fucking mistake.
There are plenty of things you can do if someone corners you whilst you are peeing, but none of them are very dignified. And the suit is a rental.
Trowa unzips and with the kind of poor etiquette Wufei has come to expect from life, takes the urinal right next to him before proceeding to urinate like a racehorse. Wufei glares at a spot on the tiles ahead of him and wills himself to either hurry it up or stop, and can do neither.
Nevertheless he turns away first, the roar of the flush failing to fill the silence. Wufei scours at his hands under the hot tap.
A second flush. Trowa moves past him, not to the sink but to lean next to the towels, arms folded. He isn’t blocking Wufei’s access to it, but it’s a stand-off. Wufei stands there with dripping hands, irritated beyond belief.
“What?”
“I wondered when you were going to say something.”
Damn Trowa. Wufei elbows him to take a hand towel from the stack.
“How’s life?” Trowa asks, as Wufei scrubs his hands dry. “Seems like Une’s making a killing out there.”
“Mm,” Wufei agrees. “It’s not an easy sell. She does well.”
“Will you have any chance to socialise tonight? I think Quatre would like to see you.”
Wufei pauses, switching gear. “I can make time. It’s something urgent?”
Trowa just laughs. “No, he’d like to see you, Wufei. Unless we’ve all offended you somehow.”
Wufei refolds the towel, “No, of course not.” He drops it onto the discard pile and then his hands are too empty so he folds them behind his back.
Trowa clicks his tongue. He’s softer, Wufei realises. The mask is more mobile than it was the last time they met.
“Good,” Trowa says and then adds, “You know he’s moved? Duo. He’s left L2.”
“Where’s he now?” Wufei asks. Unspoken, he’s thinking ‘L2, so that’s where he’s been all this time.’ He’d had a hunch, but no confirmation. He hadn’t gone looking, or anything.
“Here.” Trowa shrugs like it’s no big deal. “Earth.”
“America.”
Trowa scoffs. “No, Europe. So that makes three of us,” he re-evaluates. “Quatre’s still on L4 most of the time. We move around.”
“Ah.”
Trowa pushes away from the wall and towards the door. “I think he could do with you checking in on him,” he says before he goes.
“Quatre?” Wufei asks, taken aback, but Trowa just shakes his head.
“I’ll see you after dinner,” he says instead, checking his watch. “If you’re not busy working.”
“After dinner,” Wufei agrees and the door hushes back and forth after Trowa steps through it.
The bastard didn’t even wash his hands.
____
Dinner is a revelation that he needs to cook more. Wufei plays his role diligently making small talk with a woman who would rather talk about art and culture than the pressing concerns of the fledgling Colony Preventers movement and this suits him fine. Une’s got a ball buster on the other side anyway, and doesn’t need his help.
Food on L5 was always good. Important.
Even if it was basic, it was treated with a consideration far removed to his habits these days, which usually revolve around eating whilst busy with something else. Food from take-out places, boiled in bags, reheated, eaten from the packet, cremated in a microwave.
“Is there much aquaculture on your colony?” the lady asks, as they contemplate the fish course. White fish that flakes under the fork, unctuous with butter, and almost perfumey with grilled fennel. The steam from it touches them under the chin, like a cat kisses.
“Freshwater,” he replies. “Crayfish, carp, bream and tilapia. The carp was both food stock and ornamental.” He remembers the fishponds at the school, and the old hall. Master Long had four carp in a tank, lumbering bars of gold that would rise and mouth at any hand within reach. The stock fish would leap, landing with fat splashes, according to some imperative of their DNA now confused by life outside of the atmosphere.
“How do they keep the open water clean?” Everything the lady says is accompanied by an anxious smile, like she’s constantly re-forming an apology in her mind for simply existing. She raises goldfish, she says. Her name is Ivy, surname old money and irrelevant. She’s curious about space, having never been there. Wufei’s glossed over the details of his origins, claiming to hail from a small colony on the borders of L4, and she hasn’t dug too deeply into it lest he poke holes in her geography.
“It circulates. The masters discovered a natural meander was more effective than a straight canal, and they built the aquaculture ponds to simulate that. The gravity system pulls the water around, and the sand and plants filter it. There are strict rules about its use as well.”
“That’s so clever.”
That gives him a flash of pride. Ivy talks about raising fantails at her boarding school, and Wufei thinks about his own schooling. “I attended a traditional school,” he tells her. “All boys.”
“All girls,” she says, in reply. “I had such a happy time there.”
“Yes. I don’t think I appreciated that at the time.”
“I did,” Ivy confides. “I remember just sobbing the day we all graduated.”
Wufei remembers the wrench of leaving. The closed mouth futility of standing in line for the very last time, shoulder to shoulder with his classmates and knowing that in two days he’d be meeting his wife. Up till then, Meilan had been as remote a happening in his life as an eclipse of the moon.
“It’s easy to be happy,” he reflects, “When you have very few real responsibilities.”
The lady hasn’t any answer to that. She has very few responsibilities now.
Chicken arrives, the skin blistered and crackling, perched on top of flash-fried greens that taste of the wok, and creamed potato, an earthy sauce of truffle and white port. Wufei remembers chicken from a pot, collected by each boy one at a time in a queue, each hoping for a flake of the burnt rice on the edges, chewy and toasted, the bowls loaded with straw mushrooms and bamboo shoots, the chicken falling off the bone and potent with flavour.
“Are you still in touch?” she asks, presently.
“Unfortunately, no.” He considers. “I was the Master’s favourite.” His cohort of peers had been good people, but he’d had no friends simply because of who he was and the pressure. They’d trained to be scholars, and to fight, and in both cases, Wufei had always entered the fray as though his life depended on it. He had as real a horror of failure as of death, and the others sensed it. When they sparred, his classmates fought to win. Wufei fought because to do otherwise was suicide to him.
This is not to say he felt anyone was out to get him, but the fear of ever being less than was expected of him, of his name, was overriding.
“That’s never easy,” she says. “You must have been a good student, though.”
“I never failed,” Wufei says, succinctly.
“I do feel like, if there’s one thing I regret,” Ivy begins. Unlike Wufei, she’s drinking, and his permissiveness of her talk has made her become confidential. “It’s that it was rather isolated. I had a friend, Clara, who had no brothers or boy cousins at all. She really had no idea about men at all, until she married.”
“None?”
“No. Not a thing. Many of us were perfectly ignorant. A wedding just sounded like a lot of fun. A sort of second debut. Lucky for me my older sister was married and I knew what to expect. But listen to me, I’m sorry. I’m being crass.”
That nearly amuses him; he works with people who are infinitely more direct, but he doesn’t smile. There’s an implication to her words that knocks him back a peg.
“It’s fine,” he says, as the plates are cleared. At the far end of the table, the head of ceremonies stands and rings a glass for attention. The speeches begin.
Wufei listens, and wonders how even the Ivy’s of this world have managed to pass that threshold into adulthood, and he’s managed to experience almost everything except that.
Well, he knows why he hasn’t. Deliberate avoidance of the opportunity; this habit cemented by the overall mess his life has been.
Orphaned by the age of four, in school by the age of six, all early memories of anything female in his life eroded to vague blurs by the time he was seven. He lived with a cohort of male peers, raised by school masters, in an exacting environment designed to create the living heritage of the colony. Sons of the important families, they were obligated to be warriors and patriarchs and no more. The school itself was physically separate from the main bulk of the colony. A self-contained system all on its own where they studied astronautical engineering and lived like monks.
Softness was refined to the art of oration, calligraphy, pragmatic horticulture. Dance was that of war; the rote movements of the sword or the pole or the fist. Music and story were an intermittent gift from the outside, but really the domain of old men past fighting.
Rank was manifested by name alone; they wore the same clothes, lived cheek by jowl in the same quarters, ate the same meals. Books were in the library, media stored on computers they were supervised when using. Personal belongings were kept in a single box next to each place that a boy slept.
Even these were Spartan; combs, lucky charms, a knife or a picture. Wufei had been sent with the grave tablets bearing his parents names, and something to light incense for them in.
Games needed no toys, or toys were simple, invented objects. Helicopters made from leaves, recycled robotics; things they programmed for themselves. They were always busy. Play was learning, the way everything there was learning.
Story books tended to be allegorical, or high literature. Wufei devoured them as soon as he could even begin to read, soaking up the beauty of the words of men who had never reached space, and the glory of the first men who did.
There were no low-brow romantic novels, and no pornography, except what was written and hidden by the boys themselves, and these inaccurate. Such writing often embraced their own ignorance by devolving into humour, which being put forward by eight year old boys hysterical with education, was usually scatological in nature.
Their only official source of erotica was a single volume containing the poetry of Wu Yong.
Ostensibly the works had been retained in that otherwise serious library for their literary merit and the quality of the calligraphy. Or maybe some poor innocent had taken them completely at face value. At any rate, the poems had formed part of the tradition of the school, generations of desperation gilding it with more importance than it really deserved.
The volume was bestowed like an honour, consulted like an oracle, extensively copied, passed around, and giggled over. It was as much of a rite of passage at the school as final examinations.
Her sleeves wet after washing,
Meets the messenger at the door.
What news, oh, my husband writes?
Put his letter in my sleeve,
He may not return for many days.
That had been the first one Wufei had understood. Someone had helpfully illustrated the copy with the lucky messenger putting his scroll in the lady’s garment.
So to speak.
They were all like that, their dirty nature like a hidden picture only knowledge could reveal. He remembers puzzling for a long time over some of them, trying to parse the connection between what grown-ups do and the image of the verse.
The planting of an iris,
bare roots in brackish water
against which the current trickles
and parts around the upward thrusting stem.
Boys wrote their own Wu Yong poems, making up for bad calligraphy and no literary merit at all with ribald enthusiasm. Found stuffed into a bedroll, the ink still damp, each one made for a moment of frisson in otherwise repetitive days; something to really feel about.
Wufei had written none that he’d ever shared, and received very few. Of those, only one had stood out as being more than just rude fun.
The clumsy wording of the poem is forgotten but the imagery is still vivid. A hunter has trapped a wild duck and the verse was the act of his removing it from the net.
The writer had brought to life the sensation of the moment. The softness and warmth of the animal’s flesh, the panting breast, the heaving wings. It had concluded ambiguously. The hunter holds, but the duck may yet break free, or he might let go out of pity. Or not.
Wufei had never discovered who had written it for him. Nor had he ever been able to decide if he were intended to be the hunter, or the duck.
He’d read it many times over in lightly sweating palms, however.
Beyond poetry, they touched. Without tactile affection by any other means, the boys formed their own hierarchy of petting and fighting. The informal fighting was tolerated a lot less by the masters, and would be punished if it graduated beyond fair play. But the petting was somehow expected.
Token gestures of affection or to signify an especial friendship involved petty acts like swapping combs or sharing soap. A popular boy may have the top of his head touched, or simply be openly praised. ‘Lifting’ was another unique ritual they took part in. To signal pleasure with another boy, if the mood struck, you went up behind him and lifted him up. The longer he would permit you to do so, the better friends you were.
Anyone who lifted Wufei had run the risk of being tossed on his head.
“Thank you,” says the speaker. In fact it’s Relena; Wufei wasn’t listening. The room erupts into applause and Wufei claps with them, feeling halfway between this world and another, fully in neither.
Lifting? Poems? In this context, the memories seem surreal, but at the time it held only the same level of significance as breakfast in the daily routine of the school.
Ivy smiles anxiously at him, and the next speaker rises.
Come down to it, Wufei thinks, as he turns away from Ivy’s face, at least in his school they hadn’t been ignorant of the facts.
Neither sex nor masturbation was purported to be perverse or taboo and the basic information was delivered pragmatically, on the basis that most of them were already aware of the principles of animal husbandry. Hygiene and manners were expected more than abstinence, and an understanding of the fine lines of what was acceptable and what was not. Carelessly starting a life, for example, was considered unacceptable when women on L5 ran nearly a twenty percent chance of death due to complications related to childbirth. Bloodlines and inheritance were important considerations as well, in a society where birth control was relatively difficult to manufacture, and could not be imported from anywhere else.
In fact, compared to the vexation Wufei has witnessed regarding these matters on Earth, they’d really had a lot of liberty.
That the petting sometimes became sexual, therefore, was not necessarily a problem. Wives were generally considered separate concepts to both pleasure and romance, and same-sex affection was just sort of a thing that happened. If the proclivity turned out to be a lifelong trait, well, that was just a quirk. It wouldn’t preclude a marriage, not if it had already been negotiated.
And he had married.
Not very well, either. They’d finished the actual ceremony without him. As for consummation, it had never happened. They were supposed to wait until they were old enough to enter into their own household, whether they were choking for it or not. They weren’t.
Meilan hadn’t considered any boy a worthy specimen for Nataku, and why should she? She was nigh on immortal, and they were disappointingly human, Wufei included. As for his own interests, he found her femaleness alienating and worrisome, and her scorn implied a greater degree of worldliness; the women weren’t so coy in their education.
So there was no way he could go fumbling into that trap.
And supposing she had been willing, where would he even have begun? His experience amounted to once, only, with the web-footed boy in the swimming pool.
The speech is still droning on. Wufei tilts his head to one side and tries to remember the boy’s face, but to his surprise, it’s gone. He remembers the feet and the name, though. Jianyu the frog.
Wufei has that surreal between-worlds feeling again. The light shines off the silver cutlery and crystal glasses, but the library of his school is dim and white. He has the screen pulled onto his knees, looking for a volume of something. History probably.
That day, Jianyu had been looking for someone else.
“Liao Bin?”
“He’s not here,” Wufei had said. “He’s gone to fly kites with the rest.”
That’s why he’d been alone. One of those rare afternoons, quiet, with no lesson, and rather humid. Jianyu had felt around the bookcases for a while and then poked his head back around. “Chang Wufei, come with me instead. I’m going to the swimming pool.”
He’d agreed.
They took nothing with them. It was only a scramble around the cluster of buildings through the agricultural section to the pool. Once used for fish, it had been turned over for swimming, being suitably deep enough for a man to dive into.
The two of them did not generally socialise much. Jianyu was close to Liao Bin, both from the lower families whose status came from their holdings in rice production, and Wufei was their future lord. Perhaps if Jianyu had been more self-centred, he might have tried to cultivate something, but he was a genial character and found Wufei stand-offish.
They had similarities, however; the frog was isolated, too, thanks to his genetics. But whilst Wufei held the final blood of the Chang family, Jianyu had webbed feet.
“Does it help you swim?” Wufei had asked afterwards, when they were both basking on the rocks in the shallows, sweating in the heat. The weather system on the school was old; it accumulated water in the upper vents for rain the old fashioned way; by evaporation.
Jianyu had just shaken his head. He’d heard it all before. “No. It’s just a sign of our family blood. We’ve always had it. Mother says it’s good luck for a rice farmer to have webbed toes. Here, see. It’s only the skin.” He had let Wufei touch them. The web was between the second and third toes on each foot, under which the separate bones and muscles could be discerned. Wufei had found it an interesting case study on the foibles of the human chromosome.
“It shows a strong water sign,” Jianyu had commented.
“I suppose it must.”
“It shows that if I pray for rain, the gods will always listen.”
Jianyu had grinned and then laughed at his own joke, his belly shaking, everything shaking. Pale in the water, he’d really looked like a frog, except for the peach fuzz on his legs and around the base of his sex. They must have been about twelve.
Sitting up, Jianyu had patted him on both shoulders. “Chang Wufei is a better swimmer. You can hold your breath much longer.”
“It takes practice.”
Jianyu had had dimples in both cheeks, like thumbprints in a dumpling.
“Ah, very strong.”
Wufei remembers the boy’s hands down his arms, feeling the muscle, and how it had become a grinning, monkey-like investigation and comparison of each other’s bodies. Whose bicep was bigger? Who had more freckles? Wufei’s birthmark. Jianyu’s wobbly back molar. Who was taller, heavier, had longer hair. Wufei wrapping his arms around Jianyu’s wet body from behind and lifting him. The covert, watery thrill of it when Jianyu had pulled him by the hand behind the screen of the bushes and they had done it, quickly, just a few tugs on each other before it was over.
Jianyu petting Wufei’s drying hair afterwards and laughing, saying, “Come on, I’m hungry. It’s dinner time.”
He never asked Wufei to go swimming again. At sixteen, he was due to marry a daughter of the Zhao family. They’d probably both died before the wedding.
The room breaks into applause again. Wufei glances down the table, where the speaker is stepping down. Then movement on the other side of the table catches his eye. Duo rises from his chair and all but bolts from the table, grimacing.
‘What’s wrong?’ Wufei wonders, wishing he’d listened with both ears to the speeches. Nothing very profound was said, he thought, but something’s upset Duo.
When Duo returns, he seems calm, engaging the man next to him. But he drinks. Wufei watches him, the absent nodding and the steady, ongoing pull from the glass.
Maybe Trowa was right.
____
The music plays. The people dance. Une, even in grey, is bright and alive. The politicking is more or less over, the party has begun, and Relena has control of the room.
Treize had held the power to draw people to him completely. Even those who hated Treize had let themselves be pulled hard into his orbit and fixated there. Needed him. That was a strangest thing of all, how much they’d all depended on him being there, the whole world clamouring for his attention.
There’s no one alive who has that gift now.
‘Except,’ Wufei reflects, ‘Perhaps Relena.’
It’s what she’s trying, but Relena doesn’t take any joy in having people in her thrall. She blazes a trail instead, and people stop to stare in disbelief or aspiration. He watches her fire up the orchestra and pull Duo onto the dance floor, the man looking comically out of his element. Wufei sympathises; Une is talking about roses with a man from L4. She doesn’t need Wufei’s help.
On the other side of the room he can see Heero, Quatre and Trowa all in a cluster. Heero takes it easy in a chair, Quatre leaning over the back of a second to talk to him, Trowa demolishing coffee and petit fours. Wufei stands stiff-backed and tries not to look bored.
He is, though.
It’s incredibly dull. He’s too full to enjoy any more food, and he doesn’t dance. Une’s gone through her hit list of influential people and is now on to just people. Friends and strangers. Not that this isn’t valuable too, for what she wants. You can spend an hour talking budgets with someone to no avail only to find that the powder room chat with their grandmother had more influence.
And she’s a natural flirt.
Which is awkward, considering she’s his boss.
When he looks again, the music’s changed and Relena’s got Trowa in her clutches for the quickstep. And it’s a very quick step. Right around the room like a whirligig, and then straight towards him. Wufei takes a step back, hoping to put himself out of reach. No such luck.
Relena practically canters over, prettily pink already, smiling broadly.
“Lady Une, good evening.”
“Minister.”
“Aren’t you dancing?”
“When I find someone willing to ask me,” Une replies, causing a little flurry in the group around her.
“Take mine. My partner’s too good. He’s making me look inadequate,” Relena says, laughing. Her smile flashes towards Wufei. “Could you spare me your agent for the next?”
“I can,” Une says at once. Wufei hates her. He hates everything. He has a visceral need to throw himself out of a window. Une just laughs. “Please humour the minster, Wufei. Really, I should have said you were free to mingle before dinner.”
Her eyes flash even without the glasses. ‘Go,’ they say. ‘Stop being a millstone
round my neck.’
She must like the man from L4.
“Wufei is very proper,” Relena agrees, for the benefit of the other guests. Trowa’s biting his tongue, the utter, utter bastard. He can hardly refuse, though, with Relena pulling on his hand.
“Oh good,” she announces, “It’s the foxtrot. That’s easy.”
“Mm,” he says. Over her head, Trowa flashes him a thumbs up. Wufei glares.
“Stop that,” Relena commands, hustling him into order. She says nothing for a minute or two while he finds his feet in the steps of the dance; the basic step-step-side-together. After a good look around the room to see what everyone else is doing, he adds a few embellishments.
“You’re a natural,” she says.
“Mm,” he says again, but Relena’s used to Heero so grunting is no way to dissuade her.
“I’m glad you were able to come. I want people to understand the Preventer’s better; see it for what it is and what it can achieve. I think it’s working.”
“Thank you.”
She sways in his grip, head cocked to one side, considering him. “I have to admit, I’m glad it was you who came, and not Agent Po. I know she’s the more likely frontman, but-“
“-But you wanted the whole set.”
She’s not at all cowed by his look. “If you want to put it that way, you may. That’s not how I see it. It’s just that I don’t really know you at all.”
“Do you need to?”
“Why not?” she poses. “What reason is there that we can’t be friends? I’ve just given Duo the lecture on letting bygones be bygones, but I’ll repeat it if I have to.”
He says nothing to this, mechanically moving through the dance, at odds.
She squeezes his hand, which startles him. “Don’t say anything to me if you don’t want to, I’ll be content if you just stop lurking behind Une and say hello to them.”
“I already spoke to Trowa.”
“You did? Why not Quatre then? Or Heero? What did Trowa say?”
“Stop lurking,” Wufei admits.
“There you are then,” Relena replies, pleased. “Talking of spectres at the feast, is Heero still sulking?”
Wufei glances, frowning. If she wants to bother Heero, he wishes she’d do it by herself, without dragging him into it. “He’s watching us.”
“Good. Would you oblige me by looking like you’re enjoying it a little more?” Relena asks.
Wufei doesn’t dignify that with an answer. They swing through the final part of the foxtrot, and he resolutely steers to the side to be free of her. When it ends, she curtseys.
“Thank you for humouring me.”
“It’s fine,” he says, and then freezes when she lays a fingertip on his lapel where the commendation should have been.
“You didn’t wear it.”
“No.”
“I heard about the incident,” she says.
Wufei is not surprised. Everyone heard about it. The biggest victory for the Preventer’s yet, complete with pomp in the aftermath: a funeral with full honours for the widow, and a shiny badge for the brave surviving agent.
Relena makes a soft noise. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
These aren’t the words he normally hears in relation to the incident. There are people nearby, listening in. He says, thickly, “He was a good Preventer. I didn’t work with him very long, but he did everything that needed to be done.”
“Agent Cooke was still your partner,” she says simply.
“You know his name.”
Concern flutters across her face. “I’m sorry, was it confidential?”
“No.” Wufei shakes his head. How many names does she remember? “I appreciate it. I didn’t think it would be appropriate to wear the medal.”
Relena touches the empty lapel again, right over the heart, considering. “I think all the best men I know would have made the same choice.” She turns her head towards the group. “Speaking of. Will you come over with me?”
“In a moment…You should go and put Heero out of his misery first.”
“I will. But if I may suggest,” Relena says, tilting her face to look up into his. “Don’t leave it too much longer.”
___
She goes ahead, bearing through the people like a ship through the sea, and she’s not even halfway there before she has eyes only for Heero again. Wufei doesn’t follow her through the crowd. Instead, he worms through to the wall and circles them. It takes him longer, but he needs longer to think what he’s going to say.
They’re talking, which means he needs to either wait for a pause or else create one. He follows up a waiter, but gets separated by a group swapping empties for fresh glasses, and misses his window. He’s too close to hang back, they’ll notice, so with no plan beyond ‘hello’, he approaches. All he has to do is act like a rational adult and avoid being completely backwards.
“So what’s the long term plan? After the parties?” Duo is asking.
“That depends on who stands up to carry it all forward,” Quatre says, “Relena knows she can only start this in motion. No one knows what the end result will really be. We can but hope it pushes enough people into a new era.”
“Boar’s tusk,” Wufei blurts.
Perfect.
Quatre turns, all sunshine nonetheless. “Wufei! We were just hoping you’d come round and join us. What was that about teeth?”
Even better. Now he has to explain it.
“The ‘boar’s tusk’. In the ancient Roman army it was a manoeuvre designed to break through the wall of an enemy’s ranks and disperse them.” He touches his fingers together in the shape of an arrowhead, thinking of Relena ploughing through her guests, spearheading for peace against such a long history of war. “Those at the front may not live to see the outcome of the battle, but the wall is broken.”
Heero’s whole demeanour turns sub-zero.
“She’s not going to die.”
Mission accomplished.
“I didn’t mean it as literally as that.”
“No, no, I understand it,” Quatre says, hastily, beckoning Wufei into the group. He flashes sympathy at Wufei and changes the subject.
“How was your dance?”
“Less onerous than yet another conversation about funding,” Wufei says, and then lies. “I meant to come over and greet you all sooner.”
“It’s fine, we knew you were here.” Quatre’s tone manages to be light but accusing at the same time. It doesn’t help that Duo hasn’t said a word. He’s between the tables and the dancers, mute, with a gleam in his eye that smacks of Shinigami.
The crowd bumps Duo closer, however, as the swing ends, and the group is cut apart briefly as the dancers swap around. Relena comes back for Heero, throwing Wufei just a glance before she’s gone again.
The lights go down, the candles flicker. The waltz is quieter than the swing, but so much harder to speak over in the dark. Duo still says nothing, and they stand, side by side, watching the dance.
Wufei risks looking at him. For a second it seems like Duo is going to speak, but then he doesn’t and the moment evaporates. Wufei hopes Quatre might say something, particularly after Trowa’s comments earlier, but when he turns to them, he realises he shouldn’t expect anything from that quarter at all.
Duo doesn’t turn his head from the dance floor. The look in his eyes is intense, his little finger rapping inaudibly on the bell of his empty glass, like inside he’s fighting again, making the sky blind with explosions.
Because of Heero?
They’d been close, Wufei knows. That’s how it had always been. Duo and Heero, Quatre and Trowa, lastly Wufei. Perhaps it had been more than close. There were long stretches of time in the war, and after, where Wufei doesn’t know what the others were doing. Heero had gone into a prison once with the aim of killing Duo, he knows that. And Duo’s returned to Earth, where Heero is.
Trowa had implied that he needed help.
Wufei thinks he looks desperate.
And beautiful.
Duo’s lips part, and the candlelight gleams on them. Wufei swallows back the cotton feeling in his mouth. Someone needs to say something.
“It’s… been a while.”
Duo blinks and turns, eyes brown in the darkness. They’re much closer than before but still the distance seems to fold up to nothing between them at all.
“How have you been?” Wufei asks. The knot in his stomach is back.
Duo puts down the glass he’s been squeezing, thumb hooked in his pocket, all swagger with a trace of something lethal. “How about you and I go and find the bar?” he suggests. “And I’ll tell you all about it.”
___
As soon as they leave the ballroom, Duo is lost. Wufei follows him around, as Duo gets increasingly flustered, and Wufei a little irritated. Duo’s dead set on finding a place that’s not the ballroom, which is fine, but they’re still crabbing around one another like a couple of morons, and Wufei’s stuck for another way to break the ice. It would be easier if everyone understood lifting, he thinks, following Duo into the lobby. Just a simple, wordless, ‘hi, we’re friends?’ and a quantifiable measure of how much the other person agreed with you. Genius.
It’d be one hell of a way to change gears on the evening, anyway.
‘Albeit a betrayal of how incredibly fucking weird I am,’ Wufei thinks.
Instead, he tries to be helpful. It doesn’t help at all. Duo waves away his suggestions, and thumbs towards the lifts instead. He has a pucker between his brows above the grin when he mentions the bottle in his room.
‘When did this drinking become a thing?’ Wufei wonders. Duo doesn’t look drunk though, just on edge. He agrees cautiously. “Alright.”
“Yeah,” Duo enthuses. “Who needs a bar? Come on.”
Duo dances around, jabbing the button. Once inside, the lift boxes them in with gold and mirrors. This close, the splotch of freckles on Duo’s collarbone is obvious, as is the gold cross on a chain that he wears. It rises and falls as Duo breathes. His lips part again.
Another of those downward rushes from Wufei’s stomach. The lift rises. Trying to sound composed, he scrabbles around and manages to say, “I heard you went back to L2.”
“For a while, sure. Didn’t stay.” Duo leans back on the glass, hands in his pockets, legs apart. Does he know? Is that on purpose? Either way, his body language is suddenly open and friendly. The raw edge is gone.
“How’s life in the law?”
Thank god, a question with a rote answer. “Underfunded,” Wufei says, “No one likes us, the work is dangerous and endless, and the paperwork is worse.” He feels the empty space on his lapel, and is proud of himself again.
Duo grins, a bright and encompassing grin, that makes the light seem to ping around all the gilt. “And you love it,” he says. He’s pleased for Wufei, that’s clear. Knowing that sends a hot little bubble of pleasure right up inside Wufei’s throat.
“It’s good. It feels like we’re getting somewhere.”
“Kill any bad guys?” Duo is teasing, but on Wufei’s side. It’s nice to have him there. Law and Duo Maxwell aren’t exactly a match made in heaven.
“Not officially,” Wufei says to the god of death, who grins back, brimming over with dark humour.
It gives Wufei the edge when the doors open. “After you.”
Duo grooves across the space towards the door, and Wufei’s glad he made the effort. Downstairs, Duo had looked so grim, and now a few minutes later he looks almost happy again.
Duo tosses open the door with a flourish. “After you,” he jokes. Wufei enters into darkness that changes to a soft glow as Duo turns the lights on. This was a good idea. It’s quieter. They can catch up without being interrupted or feeling like they’re stuck on ceremony.
“Did you-“ Wufei begins, with the idea of finding out where Duo lives now, and by extension how far away, and the likelihood of meeting again for a drink, dinner, something; a connection. And Duo kisses him.
Wufei doesn’t stop him because in the half second it takes for Duo to lean in and do it, Wufei’s gone through two different understandings of the situation. But Duo’s not moving to get past him, and he’s not suddenly turned aggressive.
He’s kissing.
They’re kissing.
‘I’m kissing,’ Wufei thinks, a beat behind his body. Duo’s fingers have found that same little spot in the middle of his spine that Une had prodded earlier. ‘Relax’, is the message.
He can’t. He’s fizzing over.
The smile is beyond his control, part relief, part thrill. The whole evening up till now compared to this suddenly seems ridiculous.
“What’s this? You laughin’?” Duo chuckles deep in his throat, hums, pleased, his hands tickling around Wufei’s hips, kissing the corners of his mouth. Up close, Duo is all smiling creases, and the warmth of it makes Wufei’s heart go boom.
The laugh fades to need. Like tracking the foxtrot, Wufei copies, so as to learn the steps. Like the foxtrot, it’s unexpectedly easy. His back touches the wall, Duo leaning supple against him.
Except in violence, no one’s touched Wufei skin-to-skin for a long time.
The brush of Duo’s fingers under his shirt, on his back, skimming his waist, makes everything below that point jump. He’s damp like he’s been swimming, the sweat sticking to Duo’s hands before Duo takes them away to start tugging off his jacket. Good idea. Wufei fiddles with Duo’s shirt buttons, slippery little bastards that he needs his glasses to see properly, or drier hands to undo them by feel. Duo does it for them, leaving his shirt hanging loose to push Wufei’s jacket down from his shoulders. They chuck it aside- sod that it’s rented. It’s on expenses anyway.
Duo’s thumbs are on his belly, making twitches. Wufei pushes his mouth back against Duo’s, satisfied he’s got the hang of it now; Duo can take a backseat, and Wufei can turn his attention to deciding where he wants to put his hands first. Duo makes a noise in his throat, grabbing him by the hips. His knee knocks between Wufei’s, and then there’s no more space between them.
“Fuck,” Duo rasps, his cock thrust into the crook of Wufei’s leg. The broad face of Duo’s thigh is solid against Wufei’s erection, the upward rub of it knocking the breath out of them both.
Duo tugs at Wufei’s collar, pulling it down enough to push his mouth against the hollow of Wufei’s jaw and kiss him there, hard, just under the ear, on some pressure point that makes sparks flash before Wufei’s eyes. The touch of teeth, just a touch, sends a bolt through his groin. Everything tightens. With a shock, Wufei realises he’s within seconds of spoiling everything.
‘No!’ Wufei thinks, wildly. Absolutely not.
He can’t come in his pants, it’s unthinkable.
In the next moment, Duo’s staring at him wide eyed, breathing hard, his back against the opposite wall, and a look on his face as though he liked it, a lot, which damn near does Wufei in after all.
‘Breathe. Breathe. Control yourself. Say something!’
“What happened to that drink?” Wufei says, which at least has nothing to do with Roman military manoeuvres.
The air of the room feels cool when they separate. He could use the drink, actually, it’ll take the edge off.
Duo silently pours for them, gaze dark and fixed. In Duo’s mind they must still be undressing each other. Wufei sips, rolling the liquor so that it burns against the roof of his mouth. He’s not a die-hard fan of bourbon, but the punch of it helps. His metabolism picks it up quickly, although the thrumming in his veins could just be the way Duo is looking at him, touching the button of his trousers.
This is moving fast, Wufei realises. Too fast to go back, and besides, he doesn’t want to. Duo’s game- all he has to do is keep up. It’s not like duelling. Confidence is probably enough to carry him through, as long as…
More bourbon. It’ll knock the urgency of his arousal down a notch. This one plus a bit should do it.
He knocks the glass back, and from the corner of his eye sees Duo do the same. Wufei reaches for the bottle, mind half-way through formulating the words ‘One more?’ when Duo moves.
It’s fast and serious, the hard kiss, with a grip on his hand that sparks the automatic impulse to pull himself free of. Wufei squashes back the years and years of training to break the hand of anyone who locks his wrist; surely on the scale of poor responses, fracturing Duo’s arm behind his own back would rank number one.
Wufei grunts, still trying to find the pace when Duo tips him over onto the bed. This is worse; better. Duo’s mouth is on that hot spot on his neck again, a hand up his shirt, but it’s unfair. Right hand pinned, legs tangled, there’s not much Wufei can do in kind. The grope at his ass is a wakeup call.
He squirms. They need to roll over. He needs to level the playing field again. Once rolled, maybe he can play lip service to Duo’s need. He’s sure he can. He can hold his breath for minutes. Mind over matter.
Then Duo grabs his other wrist and this time he can’t disguise how much that pisses him off.
“Don’t pin me!”
Duo ricochets away like a scalded cat, rolling back into the pillows, hands up in surrender. “I’m off! I stopped!”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fucking, fucking, fuck.
This could not have gone more poorly. Wufei stands, pushing his hair back even though it’s not fallen in his eyes. He should explain.
Instead Duo blunders straight back in. “It’s ok. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I won’t pin you.”
He’s shuffling in place - If Duo had a tail it’d be wagging with guilt. Wufei feels like an asshole.
“Ok?” Duo presses.
“I just don’t like it,” Wufei manages, burning up. “It makes me-“
“It’s ok,” Duo says again, at once, cutting him short. Insists, really. Duo shrugs, smiles. “We can do it how you want.” Wufei almost reels with disbelief. ‘Really?’ he wants to ask. Duo’s either mad or a saint to want to carry on.
“Come on. C’mere. It’s fine. We can start again. Just show me what you want.”
What he wants? Nothing much. To touch. To be touched. He wants it to be as simple as another person willing to push the wet hair back from Wufei’s face and kiss him. No baggage.
He shouldn’t waste this second chance. Duo’s waiting.
Duo inhales as Wufei peels back the shoulder of his shirt, baring the curve of it, those freckles, exposing the necklace at the back to the light. The mattress dips when Wufei sits to do the same on the other side. He rolls his palms over the hill of Duo’s shoulders and kisses him, the shirt slipping down to Duo’s elbows.
Duo keeps his hands to himself. But he kisses back, and when Wufei runs his fingers up his jaw, looking to see if Duo has that hot spot as well, the tension slackens out of him and becomes something else.
Wufei’s nails snag on Duo’s hair. He breaks the kiss to touch it, the soft bumps of the plait. “May I?”
Duo draws it over his shoulder, looking at it as if he’d forgotten he had this much hair. There’s such a pause before he answers that Wufei pulls back to see where he’s gone wrong this time.
“No, if you really want…” He undoes it, the hair falling loose, catching the light.
It’s not all one colour; on top there’s a touch of copper, and underneath where the sun doesn’t reach, strands of a deep loamy brown. It’s cool against his hand compared to the living warmth of Duo’s head, the hair sliding free of its braid fore and aft of Duo’s body.
It’s memory that makes him run his hand over the top of Duo’s head and down, to gather it all forwards in one beautiful trail of hair. Wufei touches the corner of Duo’s eye and knows what he wants to do next.
Kiss. Stroke the hair back from his face and kiss him and then wrap arms around as they lie down to undress. Pull the choking bowtie free and drop it on the floor, remove both shirts first then shoes and socks, then trousers and the rest, and kiss him again, deeper. On their sides, and touching, and then it’ll be ok to just figure out the rest as it comes.
He doesn’t get as far as the kiss. Duo’s eyes flash something hunted and he pulls back, already in apology.
“I’m sorry.”
Duo no longer exudes either interest or confidence. Wufei’s somehow gone and robbed him of both.
“No, not, it’s- it’s just, there’s,” Duo’s no longer even there, Wufei realises. He’s retreated into something else, fumbling with his hair, roughly pulling it apart and twisting, fingers shaking. “There’s a reason, ‘know, for all this. I don’t talk about it much, it’s just uh, it’s-”
“I overstepped a mark,” Wufei says, numb. He leans back. The hairband on the bedcovers seems like an open mouth of outrage. He picks it up and offers it back stupidly, like a little kid.
Duo takes it from him before he needs it, muttering. Then all of it disappears behind the mask of a laugh. “You can’t take it rough, I’m… this kinda mess. What’s it they’re supposed to say about ‘opposites attract’?”
And there it is.
That failure to live up to expectation.
That he can’t take it. And by extension, that he can’t have it. Wufei waits for anger, and instead feels only disappointment.
But where’s the surprise? Chalk it up with the rest of things in life that aren’t for him. It’s not like it’s imperative. Celibacy isn’t a death sentence and he’s managed it so far, so there’s no need to start getting precious about it. It just kills him to lose face in front of Duo. Anyone else, who cares?
But they’re supposed to be equals.
Wounded, Wufei’s mouth gets ahead of him again. “Perhaps this wasn’t a good idea. I didn’t intend to mislead you-”
“Mislead?” Duo’s expression clouds. Wufei panics.
“No, I- this isn’t something - it doesn’t matter.”
Duo’s brow wrinkles and then his neck arches back, and he knows.
“You’ve never done this before?”
The room’s too small, Duo’s understanding too acute. Wufei turns, defaulting to sullen, anything to disguise the welling shame. He snatches up his jacket so as not to leave anything of himself behind. “I should just go.”
The fucking thing won’t cooperate- where are the sleeves? He punches his arm down it - no messages from anyone in it at all, and reaches for the door handle. If he can get out first, it won’t matter. It’s the drink, it’s the stupid ball, it’s just a temporary madness.
“Oh my god, you’re a virgin?”
After that it all blurs into a fog.
___
___