Find two 2x5 fics and one DxR under the cut, all largely SFW.
Within 6 seconds, Duo’s face lighting up at the long-awaited arrival of both man and package, riding on the back of a good day; a day that has been nothing special but one minor boon after another. The blabbergab of the lunchroom like a cocoon. Four seconds out and Duo says, ‘Oh yeah! Thanks babe.” Words from their own table and from behind closed doors and within the last second Wufei leans in to catch what he is saying, and Duo’s smiling without intention before habit takes over.
1 First Kiss – 2x5, SFW.
It is their first kiss; a blind moment of relaxation, a blink in the passing of a wanted item from one hand to another. The rationale is as insubstantial as that. “Your mail arrived,” Wufei says, less than ten seconds beforehand, taking a seat at the table (Formica, full of cafeteria trays, finger marked and jostling with their colleagues). Less than 8 seconds beforehand, their fingers brush on the padded envelope, Wufei making the bench tilt as he sits, hip to hip against Duo because there’s no room otherwise.
First kiss, and no one looks twice.
_______
Not the argument, or the heat of it. Not the truths that lanced them both. Not the world that doesn’t exist, where he’d said it differently, or not said it at all, or said it but Wufei had known it wasn’t cruelty just immaturity. Where he’d said it, but it was a world absolved from having to stew over his actions later. Where you can yell at the person you love, yet remain blameless?
2 You’re on my Mind – 2x5, SFW, Having a tiff.
‘No,’ Duo thinks, rolling over into the lump of the pillow. He screws his mouth shut, his eyes shut, his body into a ball. He is going to think of his to-do list for the early end of tomorrow (wash hair; empty bins; replace filter; buy sugar soap and batteries), he is going to hum the music in his head, he is going to whisk away in imagination to a land out in the stars and build a city there one schematic at a time, but he is not going to think about Wufei.
‘No,’ Duo thinks, and then, ‘Dammit!’
He doesn’t want a world where you can yell at the person you love without remorse. Deep down he knows Wufei doesn’t either.
He instructs himself not to get out of bed, not to go and listen at the door, not to peek, not to see if Wufei is sleeping or just hurting. He warns himself he’s not to go and stand there, frowning (or worse, pouting) and try and ascertain if Wufei is also thinking ‘no’ into the couch cushions. He orders himself – Well, it doesn’t matter what he tells himself. He’s terrible at doing what’s he’s told.
When he finally has the nerve to jerk the door open, he finds apology on the other side.
_____
They touch each other’s hands, applying polish, making shapes, trading secrets between howling. They touch each other’s eyes and cheeks and chins. Look up, look at me, purse your lips, smile. Intimate with or without supposing innocence. They touch each other’s shoulders, comparing in the mirror – your arms are longer than mine are, your face is heart-shaped and mine’s a fox. They dress one another, with this or that for secretive photographs, adjusting collars, belts. The touch at the neck and the waist and the feet and the legs.
It’s supposed to be no-holds barred. Proprietary has no place at a sleepover. It’s supposed to be part indulgence, part confessional, part laboratory, part cinema, part fantasy. It’s supposed to be running through the house in nightclothes and sleeping at angles on the floor, on makeshift beds… on one another? Sure. Girls touch, and that need not be new or meaningful. They touch each other’s long blonde hair, Dorothy inventing twists with her witch’s fingers, braiding enchantments over Relena’s scalp. Must be enchantment, because no other hands leave the skin tingling like that - like a slap but moreish.
She is a friend. That’s true. That’s first and foremost, even. It’s nobody’s business what else.
There is, of course, a ‘what else’.
They don’t touch under the covers. Not right away. For a while they only swap whispers in the dark of an unorthodox bed. Coverlets on the carpet with a blanket canopy, Caravaggio-painted by flashlights alone. Put the light out, and the whispers deepen. Girls touch, and that’s nothing new, arms around waists, heads upon breasts, lips against throat.
