The tub is one of those poxy western ones, too shallow to sink to the ears in, and too short to stretch out in fully. Wufei has an honest struggle to understand why a culture would have adopted the damn things with such prolific consistency. It’s like as a whole, England has taken the concept of bathing to heart, and yet utterly missed the whole damn point. 

 

Still, beggars can’t be choosers. 

 

And at least there isn’t carpet. The last place they’d had to put up had had carpet throughout, including the ensuite; a fact that still gave Wufei a creepy feeling of uncleanliness. 

 

London was brisk today. There was a sharp bite in the air, which could mean that summer is over, or could just be yet another of the climatological bait-and-switches these islands seem fond of. Wufei has given up trying to figure out the seasons here. 

 

The bath takes an age to fill, and it demands some very focussed knob twiddling to work out the exact combination of both taps to get the water temperature right as it splutters from the mixer. But it fills, and it fills hot, throwing up steam to obscure the windows and make the room pleasantly warm compared to the chill of the rest of the house. The radiator he has folded his towel over churns out additional heat, chasing the cold from his bones. 

 

Outside, of course, it is raining again. A pathetic, tepid sort of rain that has persisted on and off all day, and which at first glance, Wufei had underestimated. It hadn’t appeared quite enough rain to warrant the thicker jacket or anything as much as an umbrella. 

 

Which is why he’d come home looking thoroughly bedraggled and soggy in unreasonable places.

 

Hence the bath. 

 

When the tub is brimming nearly to the overflow, he turns off the taps and shrugs out of his bathrobe. He sinks into the water, wincing at the heat, elbows and ass squeaking against the plastic as he settles. If he sits with his knees poking out of the water and arms propped on the edges, he can sink up to his collarbone and rest his head on the back of the bath, and it’s very nearly perfect. 

 

And it helps if he closes his eyes. 

 

In his head, the water stained ceiling doesn’t exist, and neither does the ailing spider plant straggling down the side of the medicine cabinet. The verdigris on the mirror does not exist, and the cracked tiles and the shaggy, silly, little mat beside the toilet - all of it can be neatly ignored and replaced with something better. 

 

The tap drips and the gentle hiss of rain; the smell of it through the open window; hint at a retreat somewhere far away. Outside there could be greenery instead of concrete, and birds other than the letcherous, leprous pigeons that seem to be everywhere in London. If he really works at it, he can almost transport himself back to the bathhouse of his childhood home. 

 

The rattle of a passing freight train is a bit off putting, but he rewrites it into the narrative as one of L5’s industrial units, moved a bit closer to the house. 

 

Harder to write in is the slam of the front door. A crease forms between Wufei’s brows and with a mounting sense of time running out, he tries to force himself to relax. 

 

Boots stomping, accompanied by cursing. Both progress right past the bathroom door to the bedroom, where one by one the boots thud against the floor as they are discarded, followed by the boom of a rucksack tossed against the chair in the corner. Wufei’s frown deepens. That damn chair’s going to leave a mark on the wall and Wufei is categorically not going to explain that to the landlord. 

 

No chance. 

 

More swearing. The metallic ring of keys abandoned on the bed and then a whole minute of near silence, which if anything makes Wufei more tense. He takes a deep breath and counts down, and doesn’t hit zero before Duo makes a strangled noise of exasperation and the footsteps come stomping to his door. 

 

“Fucking morons!” Duo says, shouldering the door open and coming in. He shoves it closed with his foot and thunks his ass down on the closed lid of the toilet. “You would not fucking believe the day I have had.” He swigs angrily from the can of soda he’s clasping, which he has already half crushed in his fist. 

 

“So get this, I’m going through their system, right? And-“ 

 

Wufei lets the finer details of Duo’s carping blur into mere noise. He lets it wash over him as an ongoing ‘blah-blah-blah’ interspersed with the bits he actually has to listen to, allowing Wufei to apply his attention to more interesting matters, like topping up the hot water by manipulating the tap with his toes. And it’s only a petty issue anyway. If Duo were really angry, he wouldn’t be making such a melodrama of it. He’d have come in with grim silence and a decision already made or a body he needed help hiding

 

“And then at lunch, which they made me fucking late for with all of this bullshit, who turns up but fucking Steven Henson, and he’s like ‘oh, I heard they were changing out the blah blah blah blah-“ 

 

Wufei leans his cheek on his shoulder and watches only the nuances of Duo’s rant. In some ways it’s remarkable how much Duo is able to conceal about himself. His face is a flickering reel of minute expressions. Some are mimicry as he relates things other people have said, and others mere visual punctuation to his dialogue, but others run deeper. He’s expressive with his hands, playing out meaning in the air that is sometimes a different conversation to the one that is audible. Point in case, he’s in the middle of expounding how Henson is a fucking idiot who couldn’t find his own arse with both hands and a diagram, but he’s pulling on his lower lip, which is a habit Wufei has learned that Duo only does around certain people, and only when privately he’s worried that he’s wrong. 

 

“Are you even listening?” 

 

“I’m tuning in between technical details,” Wufei replies. “Go on.” 

 

Duo rolls his eyes and then drains the last of his soda. He crumples the can up and it bounces loudly against the skirting board when he drops it, making him tsk and curse again, annoyed with himself. 

 

“I just don’t see why it’s so fucking hard to blah blah blah when it’s perfectly fucking obvious that if you don’t blah blah blah blah blah.” Duo’s bitching is temporarily muffled when he drags his sweatshirt off over his head and dumps it on the silly little mat. “I mean, am I on another fucking planet here?” 

 

“Mm.” 

 

“Exactly! And then Sibbald, that little shit, he sends me through the code he’s supposed to have been writing for the past week and a half, and fuck my ass, this shit reads like someone let a toddler pound a brick against a keyboard for an hour. It’s just a complete shitting mess, so I can’t blah blah blah-“

 

Duo leans forward and rubs the fluff from between his toes, rolling it into little pills. Wufei moves his gaze to the nipped part of Duo’s waist, and tries to still love him through the revulsion.  “Mm,” he says again. 

 

“I know. And no one can find the fucking comma that’s fucked up the whole fucking thing-“ Duo stands, pacing the narrow confines. He leans over the bath, helping himself to one of the sticks holding Wufei’s hair out of the water, and his rant goes muffled around it. 

 

“Don’t bite that.”

 

“I’mna’,” Duo replies, frowning, twisting his braid up at the back of his neck. “Sho anyway-“ he takes the stick from between his teeth and skewers the braid. “I have to patch together these two sets of code these goddamn clowns have written-“ Duo grunts, jerking the button of his jeans free and dumping both denim and pants on the silly little mat. “And I’m using ‘clowns’ really fucking generously here. And it’s gonna take me fucking hours to fix.” 

 

He hisses as he shoves a foot in the water but doesn’t waste time hesitating. 

 

“Steady,” Wufei warns, hastily tweaking the plug loose to counteract as much of the inevitable slopping as possible. Duo slows, and once settled, eases the plug chain from Wufei’s toes and replaces it. 

 

“So that was my fucking day,” Duo concludes, leaning back. “And it’s raining.” 

 

“I got rained on too. You smell like rain. And cola.”

 

Duo slides a hand up to pat Wufei’s knee. “How was your day?” 

 

“Mediocre.” 

 

“Aww. Bad?”

 

“Just mediocre,” Wufei repeats. “It’s improving.”

 

Duo’s hand squeezes a kneecap turned pink with the heat of the bath. “Oh yeah?”  His cheek crinkles up against Wufei’s. “How’s that?” 

 

“You stopped talking.” 

 

Duo reaches behind him and pinches the first thing he finds, which results in water on the floor after all, and an interesting undulation right against his bare skin that has Duo thinking of other things that might improve the evening. 

 

“Cut that out,” Wufei complains. “I’m trying to relax.” 

 

“Alright, alright. Keep your dick on.” Duo chuckles to himself and settles his head back, likewise tracing the shape of the water stain on the ceiling. “‘m not squishing you too much?” 

 

“I’m good.” 

 

“K.” 

 

Outside a blackbird is singing though the rain still hushes. The tap dribbles suddenly and stops. Wufei mouths the steam that’s dewed on Duo’s temple as the radiator clicks and ticks, and throws out the comforting smell of warm towelling. 

 

“Kind of looks like a hippo,” Duo says, of the water stain, but Wufei isn’t listening. He’s closed his eyes again, and it’s not such a hardship to follow suit. The blackbird ripples on in phrases, steady and sweet, a sound that sweeps across Duo’s thoughts each time they try and form, and so clears them away. Instead he idly rocks his knees a fraction side to side, just to make the water patter against the sides of the tub. 

 

“Mm,” Wufei says, nose against Duo’s ear as he sighs in contentment down the length of his neck. 

 

“Mm,” Duo answers, in agreement. 

​

___

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END