A/N: So I realized always kinda thought of this fic in the 70's. Hence why there are no cell phones, no internet, no computers, no other big technologies, etc. And because this takes place in the 70s and because Duo is American and has the long hair and is so free spirited... he's a hippie. And he smokes a little.
First off I'd like to say that I am adamantly straightedge. So I can't stand drugs. However, hippies in the 70s smoked pot. Everybody in the 70s smoked pot. My Dad remembers in college when movie theatres would be so smokey that you couldn't see the screen. It's just what people did. Nobody do it though! It kills brain cells and the heat from the joint is far higher than even cigarettes and they WILL give you lung cancer.
The apartment reeked with the smell of pot but Wufei overlooked it. Duo was laying in his lap and there were streaks down his face from tears. He was shaking and his hair was a mess and Wufei understood.
They'd gone to see an American documentary, 'Our Hearts and Minds', that was playing at a local movie theatre. It was about the Vietnam war and it'd gotten good reviews, so they went. It was a wonderful documentary and it never lied. That was the problem, the movie didn't lie but the US government had. And Duo felt that deeply.
Fei took another hit of the bong. Normally he hated the stuff, it made him stupid and that was simply intolerable, but after seeing the deaths of god knew how many children who'd been unfortunate to be born in Vietnam, he needed to make his mind just stop for a moment. "That was a rough movie." He said between wisps of smoke.
"It was. I'd love to see the look on all of the politicians if they actually saw this thing. Maybe they'd actually call the boys back home."
"Probably not."
"Yeah." Duo nibbled at his lower lip before saying quietly, "I protested the war back home, you know."
Wufei looked down at Duo and stroked away a wisp of his long hair. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." He took a shaky breath, "It was during my senior year. Things were just starting to heat up over there, ya know? So I went with some of my college friends from the Art Institute and we joined a protest at the Pier. It was fun, we had this big talk about human rights and then we went over to Jeannie's apartment and took some acid." He laughed cynically, a rare thing that Duo never did unless his guard was down. "We really made a difference."
"You did something. That's better then what most people did."
Duo snorted and took another hit. "You know why I wasn't drafted? Because I got accepted into University of Chicago the day I received the draft card. I was so damned happy that I'd gotten that acceptance letter because I didn't want to go around the world to die in a jungle. But another one of my friends didn't get his letter in time and got drafted. Because I got out of it, some poor sap got sent instead. I'm here on borrowed time.
That was when I got off the drugs. Well, the bad ones like acid anyway. But when I realized that I'd killed some kid because I made it to college, I decided that I wasn't going to waste that life." Wufei stroked his hair and Duo buried his face in Wufei's tshirt. His voice was muffled, "I wish I could have said sorry to that kid. I wish he knew Wish I could've fully gotten myself off the drugs too."
"You did your best."
"Yeah well, it wasn't much."
Wufei snorted and shook his head, small chuckles escaping his lips, "And here I thought hippies were supposed to be happy."
"Yeah, I thought so too."
"I'm never going to be allowed into China again because I left." Duo looked up at him inquisitively, for good reason. Chang didn't like talking about China, he avoided it whenever possible. "We were getting our results and they were so good but we knew that the government wasn't going to let the results leave the country until we could fully bring the nerves back. And we couldn't do that alone, medical breakthroughs take hundreds of different ideas by different people. If we could get our data out there, we could help medicine along on it's search to regrow and restimulate nerves.
Instead we were stuck behind my motherland's rules. I spoke with my clan about it, and they decided that the only honorable thing to do was to get a doctor's visa out of the country along with Sally, leave and never come back. So I did. If I ever try to return, they'll arrest me and I will never be able to leave. I don't know how my family is doing. The government's been known to punish families of expatriots. But they wanted me to do this."
Duo sat up blearily. He cleaned the last bits of grass and soot from the bong and rinsed it clean. After he dried the piece he tucked it back into one their cabinets and opened the windows. As the twilight air came filtering in through the curtains the pair's silhouette was stark against the light. Duo had straddled his lover's hips and wrapped his arms around him and they sat for what seemed like an eternity, wondering who was holding whom.
Things were tense around Rm. 339. Quatre had stopped talking to Trowa, and Trowa'd stopped talking to Quatre. They refused to even acknowledge each other's existence, and Trowa was grudgingly realizing that he missed talking to the Dane. He'd missed talking to someone who was from Europe, missed talking to someone who understood what he was talking about. Missed the knowledge that he wasn't the only lonely person in the promised land.
But he was a stubbourn chit and he was in no way about to apologize to that anti semitic till he apologized first.
It was just so damned boring. He'd never been the type to enjoy watching television, so gave him no relief from the tedium of the hospital, and he couldn't exactly do physics with his muscle relaxants, so that was out of the question. Before he'd made fun of things with Quatre, they had bitched about their doctors and then they'd take their pills together and giggle in drug induced bliss.
Well, Quatre giggled. Trowa maybe smiled more, but giggling was out of the question for any well raised German boy.
Anyway, the talking ban just wasn't cutting it. One could only sleep so much before it got boring. But he'd be damned if he'd be the one to break the silence.
When Duo walked into 339, it was… awkward.
Quatre had snapped at Duo during one of their workouts but it was understandable because he was tired and cranky and he was hurting and it wasn't anything personal. But Trowa decided to 'defend' Duo and snapped back at Quatre.
Quatre threw it right back at him. Trowa threw it right back again. The fight escalated and Duo was literally holding the blond back, who had every intention of crawling over to Trowa on his stumps and beating the crap out of him. It was a good thing Wufei had an appointment with Trowa, because otherwise the physical therapist was going to be in some trouble.
In fact, in trying to calm down his patient Duo'd gotten an elbow to the face in return for his efforts. This made him cranky. So when Wufei found him in the lounge nursing his eye with an ice pack, he growled out, "We are putting them in therapy. NOW."