A/N: For Psythia who requested #23 from the 54 Writing Prompts, "Is that my shirt?"

Warnings: language

Pairings: 2x3

Twenty Three

"This is pathetic, you get that, right?"

Duo glared but Wufei, as supremely unconcerned by Duo's ire as he always had been, didn't appear phased by the irritation in Duo's eyes.

"You're basically Prince Charming looking for Cinderella at this point. It was… misguided but typical Duo at first, when you were just going around our dorm room asking if anyone knew who had dressed up as Zorro for Halloween, but when you started posting about it on Yik Yak and twitter it got sad. But now? Now?"

"You know," Duo finally spoke up as he took a flier out of his mouth and taped it to the wall of the science building, smoothing his hand down over the illustration of Zorro's mask and the words Have you seen this man? Please call Duo -7892, "no one asked you to tag along."

"If by no one you mean you didn't ask me to, I am well aware."

Duo frowned at the wording and then sighed. "Hilde. Hilde told you to tag along."

Wufei sniffed and affected a long-suffering expression. "She asked me to supervise this delusional manhunt, yes."

Duo rolled his eyes. Sometimes it was nice to have friends who cared. Sometimes it was annoying as hell.

He counted out the fliers in his hand - another twelve left and he still wanted to head over to the Student Center and the library before he had to go to work in half an hour.

"C'mon, we need to head across campus," he told Wufei.

His roommate sighed but fell into step beside him as they left the science building and walked back out into the harsh winter weather.

"You realize you've become a joke on our floor," Wufei said, shoulders hunched against the wind and the cold.

"I was always a joke on our floor," Duo muttered in response, flicking his long braid in Wufei's direction to emphasize his point.

Wufei rolled his eyes.

"You can't tell me this guy you hooked up with on Halloween was so amazing that you have to find him again but you didn't even think to get his name?"

Duo flushed.

"I… we didn't actually hook up."

Wufei arched an eyebrow.

"We just talked."

"You barricaded yourself into Hilde's room for three hours to talk to this guy while we were stuck using the third floor bathroom and you didn't even get his name?"

"Okay, if you two sex maniacs could just, you know, not have sex every time you start to argue about justice and the environment or whatever you could have waited until later instead of having to fuck in a bathtub. And we were talking about other stuff."

"Like what?"

Duo shrugged and turned away. "Just stuff."

They had talked about everything - from the Star Wars posters all over Hilde's room to their unease about the Presidential election the next week and their hopes for a Bernie victory to their mutual loathing of peanut butter. Duo had never connected with someone so quickly - and maybe it had been the six shots of tequila he had done with Wufei and Hilde when he first arrived at the party, but Duo had felt a genuine and deep connection with Zorro.

He had first spotted him across the crowded living room of the house, leaning back against the wall, arms crossed and cape arrayed perfectly as he surveyed the party with what looked like boredom behind his mask, his wide lips tilted upwards in a laconic smirk. Their eyes had met and Duo had felt the tequila kick in very fast - so fast that he and Zorro were stumbling up the stairs, away from the party, hands and mouths all over each other, without saying anything to each other at all. They had only stopped kissing, only stopped trying to reach for each other's dicks, when Duo tripped over the stuffed Ewok near the foot of Hilde's bed and Zorro had caught him, had actually laughed when Duo called himself a dude in distress and from that moment, even though the sexual tension was there, they had just sat and talked. And talked until Duo fell asleep leaning against Zorro's shoulder.

When he woke the next morning, Zorro was gone and Duo was naked. He'd managed to find most of his clothes - Hilde and Wufei had decided to hide them all over the house as revenge for losing out on the chance to fuck horizontally instead of vertically that night - except for his shirt.

The t-shirt, Duo's only effort to put on a costume for the party that he hadn't wanted to go to in the first place, was a long sleeved tuxedo t-shirt that Duo knew, from several lengthy diatribes on the subject, annoyed the shit out of Wufei.

He suspected that instead of hiding the shirt, Wufei had decided to burn it and he was still thinking of how to best avenge the much loathed piece of clothing.

Still of thinking of that, and of Zorro.

"When I said you needed a rebound after Heero, you spending three hours talking to some guy in a mask wasn't what I meant," Wufei huffed.

Duo gave him a look. "You'd rather I spent three hours fucking him?"

Wufei nodded.

"Sex doesn't solve every problem, you get that, right?"

Wufei smirked. "Maybe you're not doing it right."

Duo managed to control his shudder. It just wasn't right to hear about the sex of life of his best friend since childhood - Hilde - and his uptight roommate who bizarrely treated sex like something he was double majoring in.

They made it to the library and took a moment to just stand in the heat and thaw out before Duo headed towards the coffee shop and the cork boards set up for students to post fliers on.

He had to wait for a few students to finish adding obscene amounts of sugar to their coffees before he could get to them, but then he posted yet another flier, keeping his head down because as much as he tried to seem unconcerned by how lame this course of action was, he was very, very aware of what an idiot he must seem.

Flier up, Duo turned and bumped into someone.

"Shit."

He didn't know who said it - himself or the unfortunate student whose way way too hot coffee was soaking through Duo's clothes and -

Duo frowned, momentarily distracted from the heat and wet of the coffee as he looked at the t-shirt of the student.

At the tuxedo t-shirt of the student.

"Is that my shirt?"

He looked up, way up and holy shit.

It was Zorro.

Amused green eyes, no longer behind a black mask but now obscured by auburn hair. Laconic smirk on a mouth that really must have been genetically engineered to be that distracting.

"Zorro?"

The smirk increased and the eyes turned warm.

"Duo."

-o-