Disclaimer: Not mine.

A/N: It was my birthday last week, so I wrote this as my gift to myself. It's disjointed and a little crazy, but I hope you like it anyway.

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Duo hates tea. It is either bitter or tasteless and it makes his face feel hot. He hates tea, but Wufei loves it and so Duo always gets up early to drink it with him. They don’t live together, so Duo wakes up at five every morning and walks to Wufei’s house, whistling with the morning birds and wishing he had something besides tasteless tea waiting to warm him up.

Wufei never waits for him. By the time Duo lets himself in, Wufei is halfway through his first cup. He drinks two in the morning and one just before bed. Duo is left to pour his own mug from the small pot and sip at it, studying Wufei and wishing that he would look up and notice Duo, notice that he spends all his time watching and waiting for him, but Duo knows that Wufei will never take that first step and look up. So he sips his tea and fills the silence, cradling the small mug in his hands. The one good thing about tea is that his hands are never cold. Even when he’s with Wufei (especially when he’s with Wufei), Duo needs that extra bit of warmth.

Most people consider Wufei to be unkind, and the rest write it off as being bad-tempered. But Duo knows better. Wufei’s kindness is harsh and rough and awkward, and Duo understands that. Sometimes he wonders if that’s why Wufei still lets him come around the house and bother him. The reason doesn’t really matter, though. Not anymore. People seem to think that it should, but Duo knows that what really matters is how when Wufei is angry he drinks three cups of tea before he goes to sleep at night and that he loves to fall asleep on his couch and that he harbors a secret passion for watercolors of flowers. These seem more important to Duo, because these make Wufei real to him, even more real than himself. Duo knows that if he didn’t cling to those kinds of ideas he would drift away, like the lost soldiers of the war. And he’s not so sure that anyone would chase after him.

---

One of Duo’s favorite things about Wufei is his pigheaded perfectionism. He wants everything to be perfectly ordered, all the time. There’s never a loose strand in his ponytail, never a spot on his kitchen counter, not even dirt inside his mailbox, which really drives Duo crazy because who the hell cleans their mailbox anyway? Come to think of it, who checks the inside of a mailbox to see whether or not it’s dirty unless they’ve forgotten the key to the house again, like Duo always does? He’s forever forgetting his keys at home, especially when he breaks his normal routine and comes to visit Wufei in the afternoon. Duo tried to break in once by forcing open a window, but Wufei nearly killed him when he found out, so now Duo sits and waits and wonders, if he moved even a rock out of place in the garden, would Wufei notice? He probably would.

“Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror, Wufei,” Duo always tell him, but the Chinese man simply snorts and goes back to reading his book or straightening his massive pile of paper work (neatly ordered in a perfect stack and separated by categories, of course.). Duo still thinks it’s true, though. He sometimes worries that Wufei works too hard at straightening up his life and organizing it into neat little piles. But Duo once shuffled around the books in Wufei’s living room, and wasn’t allowed inside the house for a week. He’s not sure what would happen if he tried to shake up Wufei’s life as well.

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“I like everything about you,” Duo announces one day, because he had been watching a cheesy soap opera on TV earlier that day wherein a girl was struggling over her reasons for liking some bozo with black hair. Wufei eyes Duo warily, having no idea (like always) what he is talking about but letting him talk anyway.

“Except for maybe when you’re acting like a stubborn bastard,” adds Duo after a pause. “But no, I like that too. I mean, if I didn’t like everything about you, I wouldn’t like you at all, right? I’d like some alternate Wufei who probably braids flowers into his hair when he’s bored.” Wufei chokes on his tea, and Duo slaps him a few times on the back until he stops coughing.

“You are an insane fool,” he says bluntly, and Duo does his best to look offended. “I don’t know why I’m still your friend.”

Friends. It’s a nice word. Duo has always liked the way it drops off his tongue. He’s a little afraid to find out if there’s something even nicer.

---

Duo knows that Wufei likes the quiet and that he would rather sit in the silence of the early morning and sip his tea than listen to Duo chatter on and on like a bird. But Duo can’t help himself. He jumps at any chance to spend time with him, and their morning meetings are sometimes the only way he can get through the day. And even then, he doesn’t want to just stay quiet and let the time slip by, because time is precious and the amount of time they even spend together anymore is getting smaller and smaller, and Duo wants to squeeze as much out of each moment as he can. And he knows that Wufei doesn’t like it, doesn’t want this forced friendship, but it’s the only way Duo knows how to hold on to him. And he can’t let go. He’s not sure what it would do to him to let go of Wufei. He doesn’t want to find out. Ever.

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Earl grey. Wufei always buys earl grey tea to drink in the mornings. It’s bitter, even after Duo adds some milk, which he only did once and stopped after hearing Wufei’s disapproving snort. I guess real men drink plain tea. Figures. One day Duo will somehow dump one hundred packets of sugar in Wufei’s teapot and force him to drink it, if only to see the look on his face. It would totally be worth it. Unless, of course, Wufei didn’t let him drink tea with him anymore. Duo wouldn’t give that up for anything.

At night, he bundles up all of his day that had Wufei in it, every gesture, every insult, every argument, and all the rare compliments. He studies them from every angle and commits them to memory, waiting and living for the next ones to come. It's hard, harder than the war in some ways, loving Wufei and being with him every day without saying a word of what's really on his mind. Hard.

He’s still waiting for The Day (as he calls it in his mind), when Wufei will finally look up and see him. Duo wants it to come so badly, but he does his best not to push, fearing that it might completely shatter before he gets his chance. That could very well destroy both of them or so Duo likes to think, because it depresses him a little to consider that something that might destroy his world would hardly affect Wufei’s. More than a little, actually.

---

It’s just flavored water, Duo always thinks to himself. Heated water flavored with dried out herbs. What could Wufei possibly find so calming about it? Duo would rather sit outside in his garden and stare at the clouds. He has tried to introduce this way of spending time together with Wufei, but Wufei just scoffed and refused to “lower himself to the level of a worm by creeping around in the dirt.” Even so, Duo keeps tending his garden and lying among the leaves. Sometimes he needs to get away from Wufei and his stupid tea and his over-obsessive tendencies. But it’s still a little lonely. Worms aren’t much for company.

---

It’s true. Duo hates tea. One day he'd really like to throw his cup of bitter water at Wufei's head and announce just how much he hates tea but he probably won't. Because even if he hates tea, he loves his mornings with Wufei, and sometimes that’s enough.