(no subject)
Warning: Another chapter for the perverts.
Chapter 7
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For the following two weeks, Duo went away almost every day. Wufei wasn’t sure just what took them so long out there, but he had been told that everything was going well, but there was a lot of land to cover so it was going to take a while.
Wufei hadn’t commented, but the truth was that he didn’t like the situation at all. He didn’t like that Duo was out all day and he liked the way the farm was run even less. Duo still milked the cows in the morning and let them out for the day but after that, the rest was done by the hired personnel. Wufei usually didn’t have anything against the farmhands, but he didn’t like to be alone with them. He usually ended up staying in the forest a lot longer then he usually did, just to get away. It was just as well that he stayed at a distance, he figured. None of them seemed to like him very much and very rarely spoke to him if they ran into each other. Not that Wufei went out of his way to interact with them either, that was for sure.
They were there to do a job and, in a way, so was he. Even if his job was to sleep with their boss. He also knew that they knew, the word for “whore” was after all pretty close to the English one and not hard to detect when the person who whispered it had a voice level above average.
The whispers and the looks didn’t bother him on a normal day but without Duo there, he felt exposed and outnumbered.
It was usually the same two men and one woman on the farm. The men were brothers in their early twenties, probably a year or two different in age. Duo had told him their names but Wufei mentally referred them to the names he had given them in since they were more fitting. First it was the Twig. Wufei guessed he was the older of the two brothers, his hair was dark brown and constantly looked like it needed a haircut. Wufei had named him Twig because of his tall, scrawny body. The guy looked like he would snap like a twig under pressure, even if Wufei had seen him lift, drag and pull weight that looked like it should be far too much for him.
Then it was the blond, younger brother who Wufei called Bear. This was because he was kind of built like one and because of the picture the young man had tattooed on his biceps, a large head of a bear that was roaring out its anger. Wufei found the Bear to be more than a little intimidating with his wide shoulders, muscles bulging from every part of his body and his small dark eyes. The guy always looked like he was about to strike someone, his face set in a frown as if he was thinking about it. At least that’s how he looked every time Wufei met him.
The third was Jamillia, the short but muscular girl with her blond hair cut short in an almost boyish hairstyle. He had named her from Hilde’s old romantic novel because her situation reminded him a lot about the story and the characters in it. One single minded girl, two very different men to choose between and an exotic location. Jamillia obviously had a thing for the younger brother, who in turn barely knew she was alive on a romantic level, while the older brother seemed to fall all over himself to get her attention. The biggest differences were the lack of pirates and that in the book, Lord Barton had his blond man servant that he should hock up with while the Bear seemed more interested in his hunting, his guns and himself.
She really should wake up and see what was right in front of her. People were so stupid. She had a perfectly nice guy right there who worshiped the ground she walked on but instead she was more interested in chasing something she only thought she wanted. The Twig couldn’t get his ass moving and just say something to her and the Bear barely knew she was female.
They were all fools, Wufei decided. But entertaining fools. He had pretty much grown bored with his books and while he was making some progress with his new language, he did not understand it well enough so that he could actually read the other books available. He had never been much for watching TV for entertainment and the radio never played anything good. This land just seemed to be obsessed with music that sounded like a traffic accident.
The drama outside his window was therefore a welcome distraction. It was a strange sort of love triangle that Wufei watched with interest. Or at least he would have before this forest cutting business, now it was simply irritating.
Wufei had now been at the farm for two months. Two months that felt like half an eternity but also like no time at all. Sometimes he would still wake up and expect to see the sun-faded walls of the dating sites’ dorm or even the concrete walls of the factory dorms. Sometimes he could hardly believe his luck as he looked around the only room that had ever been his own. Sometimes he woke up with a sinking feeling, like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Duo to grow sick of him and send him away, for something to go wrong with his paperwork so that he would have to leave or for the damned sun to fall down on his head for the simple reason to stop Wufei from getting what he wanted.
Wufei, who had never gotten anything he wanted, who never got a helping hand, who had fought with everything he had to follow his dream, now had more than he could have ever wished for. Or would have, as soon he got the whole thing with the divorce out of the way.
His business was up to a good start. His homepage was going to be up and running by next week and in a few days he would finally start to receive the deliveries he had ordered. Duo had cleaned out a shed for him behind the barn where he was going to stored his products and all he had to do now was wait. He admitted every day that he was lucky that there was an airport not far from town where he could pick up his orders instead of being forced to go into the city, almost two hours away to pick up his deliveries instead of the twenty minutes it would take them now.
The airport was small and had no passenger traffic but the mail plane came in every two days. He had an order of silk rolls coming in next week and he hoped Duo would be back by then or he was going to have a hard time getting it home. He wasn’t sure what he was going to use the silk for but he had a few ideas and he had gotten it really cheap so it wasn’t a horrible loss if he found no use for it. If nothing else, he could probably make a couple of pillows to put on the couch because the gods should know that the whole house needed a bit of color.
Duo had probably never done anything about the inside of the house. There was not a single piece of furniture or painting that looked less than twenty years old. Everything looked and felt old, not in the type of way that things did when you enjoyed antiques but in the way an old person’s home did.
Just looking at the décor would make Wufei nauseous and that was another reason besides the unfriendly atmosphere to not stay around the farm. Instead he would be out all day, not turning back to the house until the sun started to go down.
He felt a bit like a coward for retreating from the farm hands and briefly thought about asking Duo to have a talk with them, being treated like a pest-infested prostitute got old pretty quickly after all, but had chosen not to. It had a lot to do with not wanting to appear like a woman needing to be saved, but also because talking about it would be to acknowledge that their attitude bothered him. He had lived through far worse than some gossiping children, after all.
So instead he chooses to hide in the forest. The air was getting a bit colder, but it was uplifting and the wet ground smelled fresh and alive. If it weren’t for a lingering feeling of being in hiding, Wufei would have enjoyed every second of his walk. He had noticed that the forest was starting to fill with berries and before the farmhands had showed up, he had found a clean looking yellow bucket in the barn and taken it along with him. There were mostly dark purple and red berries around, then some strange orange raspberry looking berries. He had no idea if any of them were poisonous and he hadn’t thought to ask Duo before the man left but the bottom line wasn’t about the berries, it was about having something to do.
It was a dangerous thing to walk around feeling like you weren’t accomplishing anything. If you had no goals, no work, no projects, then you had no life and in Wufei’s mind, no reason to live.
He had had almost a year left until he could expand his business and move into a larger city where he would be able to start up his store. There was no point in working on that part of his plan when he had no way to make it come true just yet. So for now, there were berries to pick.
It reminded him a bit of working in the rice fields but without the muddy water and sun torturing his back. It was cool and nice down under the tree tops, a soft breeze playing with his hair as he bent over to collect the small berries that soon colored his fingertips purple. The undergrowth wasn’t too thick and he had no trouble moving around. It felt strangely nice to stretch his back out and he quickly got into an almost hypnotic state as he worked. By the time his bucket was filled, several hours had passed and the light were starting to dim.
Feeling accomplished, he walked back with his treasure and came back just in time to see Duo’s mud streaked truck come to a stop at its usual spot at the corner of the house.
Wufei walked over to the bottom of the two steps leading up to the porch, waiting for his husband as the other man got out and got his scruffy looking backpack out. “You been hard working.” Duo grinned when he saw the bucket at his feet. Wufei shifted in embarrassment, feeling a bit stupid. What the hell was he going to do with a bucket filled with mixed berries that might as well be deadly for all he knew?
“What you find?” Duo asked, peering down.
Wufei shrugged, not lifting his eyes off the yellow bucket. “No idea.”
“We go in to light and see.”
Wufei glanced up at his husband, feeling that his light words felt slightly forced. The man looked worn and tired, his clothes dirtier than usual and his usually so neat looking hair was sticking out all over the place.
Wufei followed the slumping shape, mimicking the motions of kicking off the mud against the bottom step before wiping his shoes on the rug just outside the door. The door was unlocked as usual and they stepped right in, getting their shoes and jackets off in an unbroken silence. Wufei rubbed his purple fingertips against each other as he waited while Duo got his over shirt off and hung it in the long line of jackets and coats hanging along the wall. For a second he wanted to wipe his hands off against the ugly green wallpaper, but knowing that he wouldn’t encourage Duo to put up new ones by doing so. Most likely he wouldn’t even notice. Duo was very male that way.
They continued inside, the floor boards creaking as they walked. Wufei took the bucket with him and placed it on the kitchen table when Duo flicked his hand to encourage him to do just that. There it stood like a strange looking monument in the pale evening light coming in through the kitchen window. He took a couple of steps to the side to wash his hands and Duo followed him, standing by his side as he turned the ancient knobs by the tap. The old pipes thumped deeply for a moment before a cough of water got tossed out, followed by a steady stream. Waiting for warm water took too long and Wufei put his hands in it, getting them wet before reaching for the soap. While he lathered his hands, Duo got his hands into the water, rubbing his dirty palms together. The water in the bottom of the sink went from black to brown in seconds and Wufei handed the soap over, letting his hands dip into the water. Then while Duo started on the soap, Wufei tried his hardest to get his hands clean. The purple stains on his fingertips and under his nails were stubborn and wouldn’t rub off. He was so into his scrubbing that he startled as Duo’s hands joined his under the water. A flash of memory from the sex they had gotten into a habit of having in the shower every few days flashed before his eyes and he felt excitement tickled his inside. He glanced up at Duo to see if he felt the same, catching only a glimpse of his husbands face as the man turned away, pulling his hands back and shaking off the dripping water. There was a thickening mood in the air but Wufei couldn’t tell if it was only in his head or…
Duo reached out and flicked on the ceiling lamp, bathing the room in warm light before moving over to the bucket.
Wufei followed him, watching as he scooped up a handful of berries. He came to a stop next to his husband, feeling his heartbeats speed up as the back of his hand brushed against Duo’s bare forearm.
“These barriers not for eating.” Duo said, picking up one of the small almost black berries from the palm of his hand, letting the rest fall back into the bucket. “Bad for stomach. Leaves look different, small and sharp. Not make you bad if only little in it.”
Wufei nodded, memorizing them. He wasn’t sure why since it would be kind of dumb to come home with even more berries when he didn’t even know what he was going to do with the ones he had.
“These only grow where wet.” Duo collected a couple of orange raspberries in a small pile on the wooden table. “More hard to find.”
Wufei nodded, knowing that he had a lot less of those.
“These good with food.” A handful of red berries was pushed together in a pile on the table next to the orange ones.
“And these my favorite.” Duo grinned and scooped a couple of the dark purple berries into his mouth, chewing happily, leaving his lips violet. Wufei felt an almost insane need to kiss him. But it didn’t seem fair to do that, it would imply romantic feelings that Wufei didn’t have and lying, quite literary, in Duo’s face was more then he could stomach.
But he wanted to do something, so without hesitating he went up on his toes and kissed Duo’s throat instead, pushing his hands in under Duo’s worn gray t-shirt. Duo startled, dark berries raining from his fingers as he stumbled a step until he was sitting on the edge of the table. This lowering in height fitted Wufei very well and he got working on the shapeless t-shirt Duo had worn all day, pulling it up over his head.
Chapter 7
-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-
For the following two weeks, Duo went away almost every day. Wufei wasn’t sure just what took them so long out there, but he had been told that everything was going well, but there was a lot of land to cover so it was going to take a while.
Wufei hadn’t commented, but the truth was that he didn’t like the situation at all. He didn’t like that Duo was out all day and he liked the way the farm was run even less. Duo still milked the cows in the morning and let them out for the day but after that, the rest was done by the hired personnel. Wufei usually didn’t have anything against the farmhands, but he didn’t like to be alone with them. He usually ended up staying in the forest a lot longer then he usually did, just to get away. It was just as well that he stayed at a distance, he figured. None of them seemed to like him very much and very rarely spoke to him if they ran into each other. Not that Wufei went out of his way to interact with them either, that was for sure.
They were there to do a job and, in a way, so was he. Even if his job was to sleep with their boss. He also knew that they knew, the word for “whore” was after all pretty close to the English one and not hard to detect when the person who whispered it had a voice level above average.
The whispers and the looks didn’t bother him on a normal day but without Duo there, he felt exposed and outnumbered.
It was usually the same two men and one woman on the farm. The men were brothers in their early twenties, probably a year or two different in age. Duo had told him their names but Wufei mentally referred them to the names he had given them in since they were more fitting. First it was the Twig. Wufei guessed he was the older of the two brothers, his hair was dark brown and constantly looked like it needed a haircut. Wufei had named him Twig because of his tall, scrawny body. The guy looked like he would snap like a twig under pressure, even if Wufei had seen him lift, drag and pull weight that looked like it should be far too much for him.
Then it was the blond, younger brother who Wufei called Bear. This was because he was kind of built like one and because of the picture the young man had tattooed on his biceps, a large head of a bear that was roaring out its anger. Wufei found the Bear to be more than a little intimidating with his wide shoulders, muscles bulging from every part of his body and his small dark eyes. The guy always looked like he was about to strike someone, his face set in a frown as if he was thinking about it. At least that’s how he looked every time Wufei met him.
The third was Jamillia, the short but muscular girl with her blond hair cut short in an almost boyish hairstyle. He had named her from Hilde’s old romantic novel because her situation reminded him a lot about the story and the characters in it. One single minded girl, two very different men to choose between and an exotic location. Jamillia obviously had a thing for the younger brother, who in turn barely knew she was alive on a romantic level, while the older brother seemed to fall all over himself to get her attention. The biggest differences were the lack of pirates and that in the book, Lord Barton had his blond man servant that he should hock up with while the Bear seemed more interested in his hunting, his guns and himself.
She really should wake up and see what was right in front of her. People were so stupid. She had a perfectly nice guy right there who worshiped the ground she walked on but instead she was more interested in chasing something she only thought she wanted. The Twig couldn’t get his ass moving and just say something to her and the Bear barely knew she was female.
They were all fools, Wufei decided. But entertaining fools. He had pretty much grown bored with his books and while he was making some progress with his new language, he did not understand it well enough so that he could actually read the other books available. He had never been much for watching TV for entertainment and the radio never played anything good. This land just seemed to be obsessed with music that sounded like a traffic accident.
The drama outside his window was therefore a welcome distraction. It was a strange sort of love triangle that Wufei watched with interest. Or at least he would have before this forest cutting business, now it was simply irritating.
Wufei had now been at the farm for two months. Two months that felt like half an eternity but also like no time at all. Sometimes he would still wake up and expect to see the sun-faded walls of the dating sites’ dorm or even the concrete walls of the factory dorms. Sometimes he could hardly believe his luck as he looked around the only room that had ever been his own. Sometimes he woke up with a sinking feeling, like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Duo to grow sick of him and send him away, for something to go wrong with his paperwork so that he would have to leave or for the damned sun to fall down on his head for the simple reason to stop Wufei from getting what he wanted.
Wufei, who had never gotten anything he wanted, who never got a helping hand, who had fought with everything he had to follow his dream, now had more than he could have ever wished for. Or would have, as soon he got the whole thing with the divorce out of the way.
His business was up to a good start. His homepage was going to be up and running by next week and in a few days he would finally start to receive the deliveries he had ordered. Duo had cleaned out a shed for him behind the barn where he was going to stored his products and all he had to do now was wait. He admitted every day that he was lucky that there was an airport not far from town where he could pick up his orders instead of being forced to go into the city, almost two hours away to pick up his deliveries instead of the twenty minutes it would take them now.
The airport was small and had no passenger traffic but the mail plane came in every two days. He had an order of silk rolls coming in next week and he hoped Duo would be back by then or he was going to have a hard time getting it home. He wasn’t sure what he was going to use the silk for but he had a few ideas and he had gotten it really cheap so it wasn’t a horrible loss if he found no use for it. If nothing else, he could probably make a couple of pillows to put on the couch because the gods should know that the whole house needed a bit of color.
Duo had probably never done anything about the inside of the house. There was not a single piece of furniture or painting that looked less than twenty years old. Everything looked and felt old, not in the type of way that things did when you enjoyed antiques but in the way an old person’s home did.
Just looking at the décor would make Wufei nauseous and that was another reason besides the unfriendly atmosphere to not stay around the farm. Instead he would be out all day, not turning back to the house until the sun started to go down.
He felt a bit like a coward for retreating from the farm hands and briefly thought about asking Duo to have a talk with them, being treated like a pest-infested prostitute got old pretty quickly after all, but had chosen not to. It had a lot to do with not wanting to appear like a woman needing to be saved, but also because talking about it would be to acknowledge that their attitude bothered him. He had lived through far worse than some gossiping children, after all.
So instead he chooses to hide in the forest. The air was getting a bit colder, but it was uplifting and the wet ground smelled fresh and alive. If it weren’t for a lingering feeling of being in hiding, Wufei would have enjoyed every second of his walk. He had noticed that the forest was starting to fill with berries and before the farmhands had showed up, he had found a clean looking yellow bucket in the barn and taken it along with him. There were mostly dark purple and red berries around, then some strange orange raspberry looking berries. He had no idea if any of them were poisonous and he hadn’t thought to ask Duo before the man left but the bottom line wasn’t about the berries, it was about having something to do.
It was a dangerous thing to walk around feeling like you weren’t accomplishing anything. If you had no goals, no work, no projects, then you had no life and in Wufei’s mind, no reason to live.
He had had almost a year left until he could expand his business and move into a larger city where he would be able to start up his store. There was no point in working on that part of his plan when he had no way to make it come true just yet. So for now, there were berries to pick.
It reminded him a bit of working in the rice fields but without the muddy water and sun torturing his back. It was cool and nice down under the tree tops, a soft breeze playing with his hair as he bent over to collect the small berries that soon colored his fingertips purple. The undergrowth wasn’t too thick and he had no trouble moving around. It felt strangely nice to stretch his back out and he quickly got into an almost hypnotic state as he worked. By the time his bucket was filled, several hours had passed and the light were starting to dim.
Feeling accomplished, he walked back with his treasure and came back just in time to see Duo’s mud streaked truck come to a stop at its usual spot at the corner of the house.
Wufei walked over to the bottom of the two steps leading up to the porch, waiting for his husband as the other man got out and got his scruffy looking backpack out. “You been hard working.” Duo grinned when he saw the bucket at his feet. Wufei shifted in embarrassment, feeling a bit stupid. What the hell was he going to do with a bucket filled with mixed berries that might as well be deadly for all he knew?
“What you find?” Duo asked, peering down.
Wufei shrugged, not lifting his eyes off the yellow bucket. “No idea.”
“We go in to light and see.”
Wufei glanced up at his husband, feeling that his light words felt slightly forced. The man looked worn and tired, his clothes dirtier than usual and his usually so neat looking hair was sticking out all over the place.
Wufei followed the slumping shape, mimicking the motions of kicking off the mud against the bottom step before wiping his shoes on the rug just outside the door. The door was unlocked as usual and they stepped right in, getting their shoes and jackets off in an unbroken silence. Wufei rubbed his purple fingertips against each other as he waited while Duo got his over shirt off and hung it in the long line of jackets and coats hanging along the wall. For a second he wanted to wipe his hands off against the ugly green wallpaper, but knowing that he wouldn’t encourage Duo to put up new ones by doing so. Most likely he wouldn’t even notice. Duo was very male that way.
They continued inside, the floor boards creaking as they walked. Wufei took the bucket with him and placed it on the kitchen table when Duo flicked his hand to encourage him to do just that. There it stood like a strange looking monument in the pale evening light coming in through the kitchen window. He took a couple of steps to the side to wash his hands and Duo followed him, standing by his side as he turned the ancient knobs by the tap. The old pipes thumped deeply for a moment before a cough of water got tossed out, followed by a steady stream. Waiting for warm water took too long and Wufei put his hands in it, getting them wet before reaching for the soap. While he lathered his hands, Duo got his hands into the water, rubbing his dirty palms together. The water in the bottom of the sink went from black to brown in seconds and Wufei handed the soap over, letting his hands dip into the water. Then while Duo started on the soap, Wufei tried his hardest to get his hands clean. The purple stains on his fingertips and under his nails were stubborn and wouldn’t rub off. He was so into his scrubbing that he startled as Duo’s hands joined his under the water. A flash of memory from the sex they had gotten into a habit of having in the shower every few days flashed before his eyes and he felt excitement tickled his inside. He glanced up at Duo to see if he felt the same, catching only a glimpse of his husbands face as the man turned away, pulling his hands back and shaking off the dripping water. There was a thickening mood in the air but Wufei couldn’t tell if it was only in his head or…
Duo reached out and flicked on the ceiling lamp, bathing the room in warm light before moving over to the bucket.
Wufei followed him, watching as he scooped up a handful of berries. He came to a stop next to his husband, feeling his heartbeats speed up as the back of his hand brushed against Duo’s bare forearm.
“These barriers not for eating.” Duo said, picking up one of the small almost black berries from the palm of his hand, letting the rest fall back into the bucket. “Bad for stomach. Leaves look different, small and sharp. Not make you bad if only little in it.”
Wufei nodded, memorizing them. He wasn’t sure why since it would be kind of dumb to come home with even more berries when he didn’t even know what he was going to do with the ones he had.
“These only grow where wet.” Duo collected a couple of orange raspberries in a small pile on the wooden table. “More hard to find.”
Wufei nodded, knowing that he had a lot less of those.
“These good with food.” A handful of red berries was pushed together in a pile on the table next to the orange ones.
“And these my favorite.” Duo grinned and scooped a couple of the dark purple berries into his mouth, chewing happily, leaving his lips violet. Wufei felt an almost insane need to kiss him. But it didn’t seem fair to do that, it would imply romantic feelings that Wufei didn’t have and lying, quite literary, in Duo’s face was more then he could stomach.
But he wanted to do something, so without hesitating he went up on his toes and kissed Duo’s throat instead, pushing his hands in under Duo’s worn gray t-shirt. Duo startled, dark berries raining from his fingers as he stumbled a step until he was sitting on the edge of the table. This lowering in height fitted Wufei very well and he got working on the shapeless t-shirt Duo had worn all day, pulling it up over his head.