sweetestsurrender | { Chance Encounter Meme }

It was more the hiding in the hold part that he was being punished for. Wufei stepped aside as Duo emerged, giving him room to get his space legs back. "Well, there aren't many places quieter than a Preventer's shuttle unless there are prisoners onboard," he replied blandly. "You're welcome to stay aboard as long as you can put up with my company."

In fact, he'd kind of prefer it. His trip was supposed to be months long, going from colony to colony doing inspections. "Do you want me to tell Quatre you're with me? He's going to drag me to at least two fancy dinners while we're at L4," he warned. "And Trowa's with him," which meant plenty of jokes at Wufei's expense. And lovebird banter that just made his whole chest ache.

Duo sat himself down and eased out his legs, stretching first one and then the other. He leaned forward to rub at his knees, each in turn. He stilled only when Wufei began talking. His hands stilled and he looked up at Wufei in something akin to surprise. "Wufei..." With a sigh he looked back down at his hands and gave a slight shake of his head. "You're good company. Just not sure I am. So circle back to me about Quatre, yeah?" Especially dinners... Trowa was good people but even that couldn't make one of Quatre's fancy dinners bearable.

Wufei snorted softly. "Says the guy who can cheer up an entire room in under five minutes. When I step into a room, people just try to get out of my way," he shook his head a little, and offered Duo a hand to help him up. "I'm putting you on the manifest so he might find out on his own, but I'll tell him you're busy until you tell me otherwise," he promised. He wanted to ask what Duo was running and hiding from this time, but he knew better -- Duo would share when he was ready, or when Wufei had earned it.

"When's the last time you ate?"

Duo didn't feel like the life of the party. He gave Wufei a half smile and took his hand to bring him back up to his feet.

"Thanks, Fei. I... can't remember, actually. A day?" How Duo has lost count was beyond him. But he was glad that Wufei wasn't pushing. He appreciated that about the other man. Quatre would ask questions after questions, but Wufei? Wufei would give him time.

"... Hey uh... I'm sorry about sneaking on here and not talking to you about it. Didn't wanna cause trouble."

"Then the first order of business is feeding you," Wufei replied lightly, releasing Duo's hand once he was on his feet again, and turned to head for the shuttle's kitchen.

He waved a hand, dismissing Duo's apology. "You rarely bring me trouble, and never undeserved," Wufei replied as he stepped into the kitchen, pulling open a cupboard and digging out a big bag of uncooked rice, and tossed a few pouches in Duo's direction. "Pick one to put in the rice," he instructed, and measured some rice into a rice cooker. The pouches were all meat-based gravy packets. Chicken, beef, pork, or fish, with some sort of mushroom or vegetable with each one.

Maybe more than a day. Duo had been known to go for several without eating, it didn't usually bother him until around the fifth or sixth day so he didn't think it had been that long. There was no use in arguing with Wufei when he was like this so Duo didn't bother. He just followed him. If he'd had a tail it would have been tucked in like a scolded dog.

Stepping into the kitchen, he slid into a chair just in time to catch the pouches. "With rice? Alright, this one." He slid the beef packet across and placed the others on the table.

Wufei glanced at the selected packet, humming his approval as he took the beef one and dumped it into the rice, along with a carefully measured scoop of water. He was not, generally speaking, good at cooking, but these glorified MREs were almost impossible to screw up, especially with a rice cooker. He stirred the rice, closed the lid, and pressed a few buttons.

He disposed of the trash, then gathered the unused packets and tucked them back into their crowded compartment. "Do you have any injuries that need tending?" he asked as he finally turned to face Duo, leaning against the cabinets. He wanted to ask, to hound and pry, but he knew Duo hated that kind of thing just as much if not more than he did. So he stuck to the safe, surface-level questions, and would wait until Duo was comfortable enough to explain himself. "And just how much sleep have you had in the last week?" he added, sizing Duo up. Gundam Pilots weren't as susceptible to sleep deprivation as the rest of the population, but that didn't make them entirely immune.

He could have lied, but he really didn't want to. So he shrugged. "I've slept. And not really hurt... Bumped my head, couple scrapes, nothing broken. I'm tough." Duo gave a low laugh and found himself pulling up a leg, knee bent into his chest with his heel on the seat of the chair. He wrapped his arms around his bent leg and leant his cheek against his knee.

Duo wasnt stupid. He knew what Wufei wanted. What he wasn't asking. His restraint was admirable. But as much as Duo would have loved to have kept his silence he knew he couldn't.

"... I got into it with Heero. Its..." His eyes closed. "It's an important anniversary coming up, I wanted to head out to L2. He said he'd come along, moral support, yeah? Now he can't. Queen of the World says jump and he fucking jumps."

And Duo kind of hated him for that. But hated him more for what he did next...

"The bastard called Hilde to 'talk sense into me', so I got into a fight with her. And when I went to Howard to get a ride... Heero was one step ahead of me. Howard seemed to think I wasn't 'in my right mind' to go out on my own. So he pissed me off too." and he'd yelled and said some things he would have to apologise for later.

Duo looked over to Wufei then. "I was kinda afraid he'd gotten to you too. That's why I snuck on board when I heard you were outbound. I didn't mean to be an ass, Wu. But I couldn't risk it... The bastard cockblocks me at every turn! What kinda friend does that?"

He listened in silence, blinking at Duo a few times until he was suppressing a grin, and then he wasn't, and he was laughing.

"I'm sorry," he said quickly, shaking his head. "It's just that he probably did try, but I hung up on him. That does explain Quatre going on about wanting to see you while inviting me to dinner; You might be stuck coming with me after all."

He was being laughed at... Duo wasn't feeling the greatest, but even tired he felt anger warming him right the hell up. Anger and hurt. His leg dropped back to the ground and he looked as if he was about to get his ass up and... what? He was stuck on the ship. Maybe he could just vent himself. That was one way of getting away from everyone fucking with him.

Luckily before Duo managed to get his ass up off of the chair, Wufei was explaining himself. It didn't immediately make the anger go away though. Now it just made him irritated.

"... How the fuck does Quatre know I'm here...?" Was he that predictable?

Wufei shrugged. "You think Heero wouldn't call him, too?" He asked lightly. "And he knows you well enough to know you'd find a way up on your own, and me well enough to know I wouldn't refuse you passage."

And since Duo was looking like he needed to blow off a little steam, Wufei pulled open the cold compartment, plucking out a glass bottle and tossing it to Duo. It wasn't Duo's preferred brand, but it was beer. And an olive branch, of sorts. "That or his so-called empathy is up to no good again." He pulled one out for himself, too, closing the fridge door and twisting the cap off with his palm. "If you tell me the date of the anniversary, I'll make sure we have an excuse to make it to L2 before then."

"He doesn't know me at all..." Stupid bestfriend can't even take the time to fly out with him for something important, then sics the rest of their friends on him. As if Duo was going to like that? How stupid did you have to be? Maybe Heero had been blown up one too many times during the war and now had brain damage? That would explain so much.

His angry thoughts were disrupted by the sound of a door opening. Luckily Duo raised his head in time to see what Wufei was doing and catch the bottle that was thrown at him.

"... He's a jackass. They both are, especially if he's doing that weird thing on me." He opened the bottle and took a deep drink before he replied. "... 8 days."

"I don't know, your tenacity is pretty widely admired, I think," Wufei replied lightly, taking a first swig of the beer. He nodded a little when Duo told him how long, and cast his gaze to the ceiling. "Ship's scheduled to be there by then anyway, but I'll make sure nothing gets in the way." Whatever the anniversary was, it must have been a big one to make Duo play stowaway and Heero go off the deep end.

"Would you like me to come with you? To whate..." he cut himself off as he finished the math, realized exactly what it was. "Ah. The one for my colony is on the itinerary, too."

Duo looked away. Wufei had got it. Wufei had understood. He rubbed the glass of the bottle with his thumb slowly, trying to think of what to say. It was a rare thing for him to be lost for words, but with the last week being such a stress for him, his energy levels were at an all time low. For once a quiet place was what he'd been looking for.

"... You don't have to. Come, I mean. It's just a ruin and a plaque. But..." He swallowed thickly, still not quite able to look over at Wufei. He hated not knowing if Heero hadn't really gotten to him. But Wufei had said he'd tried but had been hung up on. Duo desperately wanted to trust. He wanted to believe that he had at least one friend who gave a shit. "I'd like the company..."

"It's not," Wufei replied, more firmly than he really meant to. "It's not," softer this time. "It's your heritage. Your ancestors, in a way, and I would be honored to accompany you." To pay his respects.

It left an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, and his gaze lowered to the floor as he picked his words carefully. "I've always observed mine alone, but you're welcome to join me if you like," there was a public ceremony, of course, one that he always attended but never participated in, and a separate private one, late in the evening, when he went to the ancestral shrine alone and let his grief swallow him whole for a few hours every year. "But I should warn you it is... ugly."

His heritage. His ancestors. Yeah, that was a way of looking at it. A shit kind of heritage to have, but Wufei had his own as well, on a much bigger scale than Duo's. It made him feel selfish for making such a big deal out of it all.

"You don't have to..." He shook his head and sighed. "I'll come with you if you want me to, but if you need to be alone for it, that's fine. I get that. So just lemme know if I'm a bother, okay?" Because these things were hard enough as it was.

Wufei forced a smile. "You should know by now that being alone with it is the hardest part. I may be about as friendly as a rabid dog, but I am still human, somewhere under that," and losing everyone that mattered to you was a special kind of hell.

"You're never a bother," he said it with the sort of finality that said he wouldn't tolerate any argument. "You're family, and I don't have an abundance of that."

That had Duo frowning. He didn't like Wufei talking like that. But the frown cleared when he was called family, and he was able to give him a smile.

"Then as family, I'm lettin you know you're no rabid dog. And I'm glad to have you with me. I'd be honoured to go with you, too." They'd help each other out. Like family.

Wufei nodded, smiling as well, and didn't even try to argue the point with him. It was a stupid argument, and a pointless one, so he'd just skip it entirely.

And then nearly jumped out of his skin when the rice cooker let out a loud beep as it finished. He cursed at it in Chinese for almost ten seconds straight as he popped it open and stirred the contents, before scooping it out into dishes and handing one over to Duo, following it quickly with a spoon, and grabbing chopsticks for his own share before settling at the kitchen table. "So, aside from unpleasant anniversaries, is there anything else you'd like to hit up on our tour of the colonies? We're going to be hitting each cluster at least once."

Duo couldn't help laughing. Seeing something spook Wufei and then the language, most of which went over his head, but he was able to pick out a few choice words that let him know that his friend really wasn't happy with getting scared.

He kept quiet though and just sat and watched and waited for the food to be done. It was telling of his mental state right then that he wasn't prattling on and filling the kitchen with the sound of his own voice. Duo, even if he was on his own, could talk and talk. Silence tended to make him uncomfortable. And if he wasn't talking he'd have music to fill the void.

Food was delivered and Duo took his and set it down on the table. He thanked Wufei when a spoon was offered and then paused at the next question. "Honestly... no. That was just my plan. Just L2... But if you'd like the company, I can come with you when you." Otherwise he'd probably just hand around on the ship or in the ports.

"There are quite a few factory inspections on my to do list," Wufei agreed as he sat down at the table. "I could have you brought on as a contractor, make sure they're not trying to pull a bait and switch. It's a surprise inspection, but they always seem to know when we're coming," and as careful as he was with these inspections, there was always something to be said for an extra set of eyes, and if it meant his friend could get an extra payday, well. Why not?

{ Chance Encounter Meme }

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