It was jarring to enter the dorm room for the first time, bag in hand, and find Wufei there. Duo’s first instinct had been that Wufei was there to read him the riot act and provide another ass-kicking, but Wufei’s reaction at finding him there had been one of...well, the best Duo had been able to identify Wufei’s expression as was ‘offence’, so the shock had been mutual.
But Wufei, clutching as pathetic an amount of personal belongings as Duo had been, had stepped back and given a nod that had meant something like pax. It still wasn’t worth a big fight, so they saved their energy for petty ones: Top or bottom bunk, big or little shelf in the fridge.
Where to store the weapons that they shouldn’t have.
Is it chance that lands Duo and Wufei in the same university dorm room? They're not stupid enough to believe that but too tired to fight it. Duo's dragged himself back from the brink of going too far and remains teetering on the edge while Wufei's doggedly trying to prove himself to the 'good guys' in the aftermath of the Eve Wars. Sleep and normalcy eludes them both. As they become increasingly aware how damaged they are, they start to edge towards friendship, or something more, but all too soon the peace seems jeopardized by a new and manipulative threat.
My notes: Wufei and Duo, trying to figure out how the world works and how they are supposed to work when they have been soldiers for more than half their lives, in a world that doesn’t trust them, and they are lovely, PTSD-ridden messes in a very realistic way. And then political machinations and the real world make things even more complicated.