sweetestsurrender | { The AU meme }

He had, until things went sideways. Now he was happy for Wufei to go ahead of him.

While she did that, after he'd tossed the keys her way, Duo went ahead and grabbed the bags from the back seat and carried them all inside. There was food which he began pulling out, nothing flash since it had just been a basic store. A couple of ready-to-cook meals he ripped the packaging off and shoved in the oven which he was glad to see actually worked.

After that he dropped himself down in a chair at the kitchen table, folded his arms across the table and dropped his head into his arms.

He was exhausted.

She didn't take long in the shower, and since this was a Preventers safe house, there were clothes ready for her to change into, though she wasn't at all sure how it was going to go, because she was bleeding excessively.

Enough that she stuffed half a roll of toilet paper into her underwear and didn't risk putting on pants when she emerged, padding out to the living room in just that and a shirt. Without the binder her breasts were very obvious, and her hair down meant she, well. Looked like a she.

"I don't suppose you happened to pick up any feminine hygiene items? The bathroom was out of stock," which was just her luck. "I think there's enough toilet paper to make do until tomorrow if you didn't."

"Huh? Uh yeah... Yeah I grabbed some things. Not sure what I got." He'd made another call to Sally about the whole thing and she'd given him a bit of advice on the subject. He'd still panicked and grabbed what he could. "There was way too many types. But I was told the padded type...uh...would be best?"

He pushed the paper bag that contained it all over to her. There were even painkillers and chocolate because wasn't that a thing too? Or was that a stereotype he was buying into?

Duo finally looked up, he had to force himself to lift his head, and froze. Wufei...didn't look like Wufei. She looked like... She'd always been a pretty man. But as a woman? He dropped his gaze and pushed himself away from the table. "If the bathrooms free now...?"

She relaxed considerably, and even flashed him a smile. "You know," she said softly. "This is as weird for me as it is for you -- I've never dealt with this before. I'm glad that I'm not alone," even if the whole thing was confusing and upsetting and...

She blushed when Duo forced his gaze away, clearing her throat. "Yes, go ahead," she agreed, grabbing the bag and taking it to one of the bedrooms to figure that whole thing out. It didn't take long, with the picture instructions on the box of pads and pulled some pants on, too, now that she wasn't constantly at risk of ruining them. Then she went to the kitchen, took the painkillers, and settled into the sofa with the chocolate to nibble and wait. She hadn't exactly been fed properly while imprisoned, and the food in the oven was smelling heavenly.

A shower wasn't the best idea he'd had. Removing his clothes had been a task.

As it turned out, the adrenaline he'd been running on up until that point had been nice enough to mask the fact that he'd fucked up. He sat on the toilet seat and took stock.

He wasn't going to die, that much he knew for certain. But he needed to get hold of a first aid kit. First he got himself clean as quick as he could manage before he high-tailed it to a bedroom and hunted up the med kit he knew would be under the bed. Clothes would come after he'd patched himself up.

The worst was a bullet wound. Honestly, he was surprised he only had the one. There was as crease across his ribs that would irritate him but the bullet wound was a through-and-through. Duo hadn't even realised it was there until he'd removed his shirt. It was going to be a pain in the ass to sew it up himself, but it wasn't the first time and wouldn't be the last.

She'd heard him come out, rush to the bedroom, and knew immediately that there was trouble. Her chocolate was set aside as she pulled herself from the sofa, padding to the doorway to watch Duo, naked as the day he was born, trying to find the med kit.

"You've been shot," she said it matter-of-factly, stepping into the room. "Get back in the bathroom, I'll bring the kit and patch you up," she didn't leave him a whole lot of room to argue as she stepped inside just in time to watch him find the kit.

Duo once again froze when he was caught. He looked over at Wufei and had the most surreal moment of his life. He was caught between indignation at being ordered around and sheer embarrassment at the state he was in. If this was before he would have laughed the whole thing off. His state of dress wouldn't have bothered him. But he actually wanted to cover himself up. It was so fucked up it made him dizzy and he had to sit down hard on the bed.

"I can do it. My own fault anyway." the liberal array of scrapes and mild burns that scattered his body from his attack of the complex paled in comparison to a bullet wound. But it was something he could handle.

"... If you could grab me some pants though? That'd be great."

"I know you can do it," she replied, pointedly not looking at exactly what he wanted to cover up, as she found a pair of sweatpants that should fit and tossed them at him. "But it's a pain in the ass, and you can only really reach one of the wounds properly. So you'll bite your tongue and let me help."

She took the kit, setting it on the dresser and popping it open to get out everything she would need -- and as an added bonus, it meant Duo was presented with her back, so he'd have some privacy while he dressed.

A dark flush coloured his cheeks when the pants were thrown at him. But he grabbed them and pushed his legs in and while Wufei was pulling things out of the kit, he yanked them up and dropped back onto the bed.

Then he sighed heavily and looked to his side and the arm that had betrayed him by getting in the way of an enemy bullet.

"... Are you alright now?" he asked, deliberately not talking about himself. His way of consenting to her want to help. He as just going to ignore it.

"I am, thank you," she replied, much softer this time as she got out what she would need and turned to bring it to the bed. "The painkillers have kicked in, and despite my misgivings about chocolate actually being helpful... it did seem to make me feel better, too," she smiled a little, pulling on the gloves and getting a bit of gauze wet with antiseptic, carefully swiping it over both wounds.

"You know I didn't really expect it to hurt quite the way that it does," she said, trying to distract him as she got out the numbing agent. "Little pinch," she warned before the first shot, but didn't for the others because each following one was within the numb zone from the last. "I always thought it would feel like getting punched, but it's more like the ache from a charley horse that wouldn't go away. Like when you're tied up for too long and your muscles seize up, but you can't stretch it out and it just sits there, aching for hours and hours." She traded needle for needle and started stitching the wound closed.

"I'd heard it's supposed to be... Wasn't sure if it was true or not." Movies and tv would joke about it but he'd really paid attention outside of that. Why would he? He was a man without any kind of constant female presence in his life. These things were beyond him. But he was glad that he'd gotten it right this time.

Duo quietly listened and nodded at the promise of a 'pinch' and didn't react much aside from a little wrinkle of his brow.

"Sounds... like somethin you'd wanna avoid." Duo's eyes flicked Wufei's way. "Sorry I couldn't get to you sooner... If I had, you wouldn't have had to deal with any of this." And he'd tried. It had taken him a day and a half to get to L2 and the half a day to get his shit together to wage war. Too long.

"If Sally hadn't gone on about it being so helpful, I probably wouldn't have bothered eating it," she admitted with a chuckle. "It does sound an awful lot like bullshit."

She hummed in agreement about wanting to avoid it as she carefully worked to stitch him up. "Oh, it was coming with or without exfil," she grumbled. "I have an implant that's supposed to prevent them from happening, so it probably fell out sometime in the last few days and I just didn't notice. Sally warned me that could happen sometimes, but," she shrugged. She'd had the implant for years with no issue, and had practically forgotten it was in there. "At most you would've saved my clothes from their messy, messy fate." She finished the first wound, and moved to numb the second. "Little pinch," She warned again as she went in with the numbing agent.

The numbness in his arm helped a lot with the pain but he could still feel what was happening. Duo didn't look though. It was fine if he did it himself but if someone else did it it made him feel queasy.

"I'll get you back to Sally. She can help with... getting that back where it belongs." Because he had no idea where this implant went, but he could kind of guess if it 'fell out', and he was deliberately trying not to think about that.

He nodded again. "It's fine." The numbing agent was a novelty. He was used to doing this with nothing. The pain was almost welcome. But on the other hand, having someone helping him was alright too.

Wufei hummed in agreement, finishing up the second round of numbing and getting to the sewing part of the show. "I'll have to ride out this little wave of misery first," she murmured as she worked. "But once that's done with, she should be able to put a new one in and I'll be back to the status quo, for however long I can keep this little charade up. Hopefully until I have a fiance, at least," though how she was supposed to manage that while concealing her gender was going to be the real trick. "I don't suppose you know any men who wouldn't mind dating a woman pretending to be a man?" she snorted, like she'd just told a joke.

"Would you need to pretend to be a man if you found a fiance?" Duo shot her a funny look, lips twitching into a smirk. "I can ask around... But not sure how I'd start that conversation up. There's someone for everyone though, so maybe we could find someone?" Whether they'd pass his inspection or not was another question. Even if he hadn't found out Wufei was a woman, he would have judged any partner she had. Pulled them aside and given them The Talk. Hurt my friend and I hurt yoo.

She shook her head. "As long as I'm sure a wedding will follow, no," she replied. "If I get engaged, reveal myself to be a woman, and then we break up..." she wrinkled her nose, tying off a stitch. "Let's just say I'd be using your old motto to avoid ever meeting whoever they marry me off to. They've never been above in absentia weddings before." It was hard to believe there were still places doing that sort of thing, but L5 was its own peculiar brand of backwards. "Or worse, they'd try to be really clever and convince Quatre to marry me," just the idea had her laughing a little as she finished up the last stitch and snipped the thread.

"Good luck separating him and Trowa..." He sounded a bit distracted as he looked back over his shoulder at what Wufei was doing. The wound was stitched and, honestly, it looked good. Neater than he would have done it anyway.

Duo wasn't sure he liked the idea of his friend being forced imto marriage. It wasn't his culture and he probably shouldn't have had an opinion on it, but culture aside, Wufei was a friend. Someone he cared about. No way would he let some old farts try and hook her up with some random asshole.

The problem was he didn't know how he'd stop something like that.

"If you need somewhere to hide... You know where I am."

"The worst part is he'd probably agree just to spare me being sent to someone else," and as much as she would appreciate the gesture, it would complicate finding love for herself. She sighed softly, setting aside the needles and getting out some ointment, gently smearing it on the wounds before sandwiching his arm between two pieces of gauze and wrapping some self-adhering stretchy tape over the whole thing. "I do know where you are, and I won't hesitate to hide out if the need arises," she agreed with a little smile. "Maybe I should go back and admit to who I am and scare off every potential suitor," though that was much more likely to blow up in her face than not. Still, it was a nice thought, holding froggy old men at swordpoint to make them rethink taking her as a wife.

One eye closed in a wince. Numbing agent or not, that ointment had stung. He said nothing until Wufei had finished patching him up and he was able to give him a grateful smile, if a little weak.

"Why would learning who you are scare them off? They should be damn proud to be with you." Duo shook his head then and gave a low laugh. "Second thought, they're not worthy. We're gonna have to find you a Prince Charming."

"I don't think many of them would tolerate being held at sword-point very well. Or knowing how many guns I have access to," she smirked a little, sliding off the bed to clean up the used supplies and tucking the first aid kit away again. "Maybe I should commission a glass slipper and leave it behind at every gala I work," she teased lightly. "Do you have any other injuries?"

Duo laughed at that. It was a good point. Who liked being held at sword point, really? But he couldn't imagine Wufei's people being happy with the way things turned out for her. Or any potential husband liking that she was a soldier. Which was a shame. She was strong, capable, resourceful... Anyone would be lucky to have her. Or him. Either one of them.

He shook his head at the question.

"Nothing serious." He looked down at himself and lifted his arm slowly to show off the crease along his ribs where a bullet had grazed him but hadn't penetrated. "... Getting old. Not as quick on my feet I guess?" or he'd just been desperate and hadn't paid attention to anything that had happened to him so he could get to Wufei.

She hummed softly as she looked at the graze wound. "I'll put some ointment on it," she decided, bringing the ointment back over, and some bandages. "Little sting," she warned, and smeared it across the wound as gently as she could. "I suppose it's both of us starting to lose our edge a little. Maybe we should work out together after you're healed up. It'd be nice to be able to do sprints without a binder on."

She had no idea how much worse it would be to go braless while sprinting. None at all.

He hissed softly. There was no numbing agent on his ribs so the 'little sting' was a dirty, rotten lie. But he was grateful for the help so he didn't protest nor pull away. He just held still and waited for her to finish. Her fingers were gentle, even if she was actively causing him pain.

"Heh, so your idea of training is sprints? C'mon, Wu. There are better ways to keep fit." Running hadn't been the problem. Avoiding bullets had been. "... So are you actually gonna tell me what happened? How they caught you? And if you're hurt?"

Well, at least she'd warned him about it, even if she'd been a bit generous with her estimation of how it'd hurt.

"We'll put you in chest compression and see how easy you think those sprints are," she replied, playfully smug as she taped some gauze down over the wound. The questions had her sighing though, cleaning off her hands with a shrug. "Some pretty nasty bruising, but no open wounds; A cracked rib at worst, but more likely just bruised. And they caught me through sheer numbers. Fifteen of them with improvised weapons in a tight alley." So her usual fighting techniques had been less effective, and they'd simply overwhelmed her with numbers. She shrugged again, sitting on the bed next to him.

"Nah, I'm good. Thanks!" He laughed, and once he was patched up enough, he half turned to face her once she sat down beside him. Even though she'd told him her status, he couldn't help giving her a once over, checking on how she held herself. Cracked ribs could have meant broken, but she didn't seem to be favouring any particular side so Duo nodded, satisfied he was being told the truth.

"I'm glad things weren't worse." He'd worried. Remembering his own time being captured, the enemy had spent a great deal of time and joy in making him as miserable as possible. Duo was glad Wufei had been able to avoid most of that. "And thanks for helping patch me up."

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