Duo stood in his boxers, dripping and shivering in front of the token machine as it spit his creds out again, whirring spitefully. Slowly and purposefully, he fed the dripping card in again, watching as it whirred for a moment and spit it back out. "Just take the fucking creds," he hissed, two seconds from tearing it from the wall.
"It's broken," a male voice said from behind him. "It's always broken."
After taking three calming breaths that failed to calm him, Duo counted slowly to ten. "Fuck." His headache was getting worse and he was still cold, despite the ungodly warmth of the laundry room. A few girls passed in the hallway, giggling and whispering at the sight of him, still shivering and nearly naked, and he felt something inside him give slightly but not quite snap, under its maximum amount of pressure. "Why do they put the damn machine here if they're never going to fix it?"
"I have often wondered the same thing." The voice, pleasantly midrange, was slightly accented, and tinged with sympathy and dry humor. "I have extra laundry tokens, if you wish. I would be more than willing to share."
The raging explosion he'd felt building behind his eyes and in his fist lessened somewhat, and his cheerful mask settled more comfortably onto his face. In control again, Duo turned around and looked at the other boy for the first time. Short, Asian, athletic. Glasses. Stub of a ponytail. A contradiction. "You," he said clearly, meaning every word, "are a god."
Author: casrial (5x2) (1xR, 3xM, 6x9) 52k across three fics
After the war, Duo goes out looking for peace. He ends upon L4, in college, and finds someone else... a scholar who never got to fight in the war.
My notes: This is a lovely post-war AU where Meiran becomes the fifth Gundam Pilot after she believes that Wufei has died. Wufei is held in the wings as a "spare" and never sees combat. This has got a good balance of angst and healing; it's not Quatre-friendly, but Heero and Relena (especially Relena) are nicely portrayed here.