Work Text:
Beneath: Nails and Whiskey
by Duointherain
Disclaimer: I don’t own Gundam Wing
Notes: Just some bit of crack fic :)
Normal war stories are set on battlefields or military installations. Normal war stories are about men on the edge of violence and the lines are meant to read something like, ‘It is not ours to question why, simply to do and die.’ Lord Tennyson was always very good with ink and while Duo’s world had always been a little ‘red in tooth and claw’ it was also filled with a whole lot more anarchy than Lord Tennyson might have found seemly. Come to think about it, an awful lot of Duo’s life would probably have been unseemly to Lord Tennyson and probably to Chang Wufei too.
So there they were, in a safe house, which was probably not the first and barely the later. It was, more realistically, a barn with a rudimentary kitchen that Heero had rigged up to run off some solar panels that Duo had conveniently rehomed to their location. Duo had stealthed it up so that no light could get out, but the air inside was clean and comfortable. Wufei had foraged for food, which Duo found completely suspect - just like picking stuff up out of the ground in the forest hardly seemed like a reasonable way to get food, but they all knew that Duo would eat what was put in front of him and then some.
If they could have just continued that way, living in a barn, eating mushroom noodles, and looking at the stars, Duo would have considered it good. Nothing good ever really lasts though. Duo heard Wufei’s imperial gasp and he was pretty sure the good times were over.
He sat cross legged on a mattress, up in the loft which they’d swept as free of hay as possible. His shirt and pants were hanging to dry on a line a little farther back and he wasn’t of a mind to leave them. It was hot outside anyway and Earth’s atmosphere did jack all for getting radiation burns on hot days. Duo sighed back and kept his focus on what he was doing.
“What ARE YoU DoINg?” Wufei choked out.
Duo looked up, found himself smiling at his dark haired friend. Wufei really was very handsome, but there was always some drama. “Hey Wu! I’m doing my nails.”
For just a moment, Duo wasn’t sure that Wufei wasn’t just going to fall back down the ladder he’d climbed up. The drama was always about something incomprehensible too. Need help tricking out a shopping cart with stealth gear? Wu was down for that. Want to sneak into a political rally and steal all the beer and some pants? Yup, Wuffers was good for that. Just sitting there, minding one’s own business? Chang Wufei was going to lose his fucking mind.
Wufei’s knuckles paled, his jaw jacked up like over strained cable. “Where did you get that... stuff?”
Duo held up the bottle of nail polish, in a nice black matte color. “‘Lena sent it to me.”
Wufei’s face twitched. Over strained cables almost always break. “That woman knows where we are?”
“Probably,” Duo replied, going back to applying his second coat. “She sent you some tea too.”
Wufei finished climbing up into the loft, but stood over Duo with his arms crossed, dark eyes very cross. “Why?”
“Well, I told her you were feeding us forest marshmallows and they were pretty tasty. Her nails were like this titanium rainbowy color and I said they looked cool. So she sent me this. It’s neat. You want some, Wu? There’s lots.”
If Wufei had been ink, he would have run like the long rips in his mental well being. “Men don’t wear nail polish. You are a man. I can clearly see your penis.”
Duo looked up at him eyes wide and little to the side, lips squished up. “Well, that’s there for finding my dick. It wasn’t lost. Ain’t nothing on this bottle that says it can’t be used by folk with a dick.”
Wufei squatted down, fingers lacing together, the edge of his fingers pressing to his lips as those dark eyes contemplated Duo. “If you wear that, with your hair, people may think you are a girl.”
Duo arched an eyebrow, then yawned. “So?”
So there was Wufei with his mouth open, those clenched hands just slightly below. “But... they will think you’re a girl! A GiRl....”
“Wufei, there are two kinds of people that see me. There’s friends who know who I am and then there are people who are dead cuz they saw me. So what if they think I’m a girl? Who cares?”
The squeal that came out of Wufei sounded like Duo had splashed him with acid and melted solder at the same time. Standing now, Wufei knife handed the air. “YOU don’t understand.”
Duo pulled off a sock, dipped the brush back into the polish, then proceeded to do his toenails just to piss Wufei off a bit more.
Both hands up then, fingers pointing towards the sky, Wufei declared, “I will explain it to you!”
“Oh gosh,” Duo said, teeth on edge. Now was probably not the right time to tell Wufei that ‘Lena had sent some whiskey.
Moments later, Wufei was back in the loft with a presentation board and an improvised pointer. “Now, pay attention Maxwell. From time immemorial! Men have taken care of women! We are the fighters, the hunters, the heads of household! Women wear things like nail polish to attract us so they can get our money and resources! It is a behavior of the weak as they seek protectors! Now, Maxwell! You are not as strong as some of us, but you aren’t weak! Now not all women are weak! Some women have broken through their limitations and become stronger, though not as strong as a man can be.” Wufei smacked the presentation board with his pointer. “Are you understanding this, Maxwell?”
For just a second Duo considered if drinking the nail polish would get Wufei to shut the hell up. “Thanks for that, Wu. In the Sweepers, folk just go on about their lives and none of that matters. It’s got to be inconveneint as fuck not to have a dick to piss with, but other than that, it’s all the same.”
If Wufei’s hair could have caught fire, it might well have done! He flipped the page over to show a very quickly, but elegantly drawn woman who might have swallowed a watermelon whole. “Women carry children, so this makes them more vulnerable and dependent upon men. This is the purpose of a woman.”
“Are you sure that’s where kids come from,” Duo said, making a face, “Have you ever SEEN it?”
“I have seen photos,” Wufei said. “There are videos.”
“Yeah? How’s the kid get out?”
“It emerges from the birth canal after a long and painful process, during which time women are very vulnerable.”
Duo looked doubtful. “Well, I have seen ectogenesis pods.”
“Well, maybe you came from an ectogenesis pod, but most people are carried inside their mother. Sometimes the babies are born through a cesarean section.”
“Is that a neighborhood?”
“No, that’s when they cut the other open to take the baby out.”
“You don’t think that hurts? That’s fuckin’ gross! Who would do that on purpose? And you think that a person who would do that is weak? Really? Would you do it?”
“I can’t do it,” Wufei said with the last of his patience. “I’m a man.”
“Well, then you shouldn’t talk shit about people who do things that you can’t. If you stop being a dick, I’ll give you some of the whiskey I’ve got.”
“You’ve got whiskey?”
Duo grinned brightly.
Two hours later, Heero found them with half a bottle of whiskey and all their nails painted. He took photos.