INBOX ☠ THE CITY

[braidedwonder]

"Yo, this is Duo. Sorry I missed you, but leave a message and I'll get right
back to ya as soon as I finish takin' care of business!"

Comments

In The Apartment Floor

[zerofive]

[Maxwell, come look at this. I need your advice, as a code-breaker.]

The message comes in the wee hours of the morning— or somewhat less than wee. Wufei had not slept, had no reason to keep a 'normal' schedule. There was no job to see to, no open hours for the shops to keep, no difference between night and day except for the light, and the habits kept by their fellows. Easier, sometimes, to sleep as long as you could, just to pass the time.

A strange prison, this.

When Duo finds him, Wufei is sitting out on one of the balconies, shoved against the side near the railing, and half-reclining on a pile of bedding stolen from one of the unused bedrooms. It's a comfortable enough perch, and could be made moreso with the addition of a high-powered rifle; none of them have ever been capable of a fear of heights.

The sun will rise, in an hour or so; for now, the sky is dimly grey with the rising light of false-dawn.

[braidedwonder]

“Wu..” Duo’s voice is soft, somewhat gravelly, as he comes through the sliding door of the balcony. By all accounts it looks like he’s been woken up from a cat nap, rubbing at one of his eyes as he takes in Wufei’s little nest out here.

It looks … comfortable, actually. Duo in all of his glory in a pair of cloth shorts and a T-shirt sinks down to beckon Wufei to allow him to join, bangs still disheveled from where ever he had fallen off to a doze.

Sleep has come more often in the aftermath of their lack of sleep after Don Quixote’s experiment for him, but Duo isn’t quite sure he likes it yet. Instead he dares to quest for a little peck of a kiss hello or good morning before they get to work.

“Whatcha got?”

[zerofive]

It ought to be more complicated than this, for Duo to simply assume his place, to drop down and curl up more on top of than next to Wufei. He ought to have stood up, or at least sat up a bit more, to acknowledge Duo's approach. It shouldn't have been so simple, nor so easy, to just open his arms and have the priceless reward of warmth and weight, and gentle regard. The sun creeps a little higher in the sky, and Wufei tilts the book in his hand away so that he can cup Duo's face with his free hand, and accept the kiss properly.

A little peck? Hardly. Wufei doesn't do things gently, or by half-measures. Even so, he can't help but feel the anxious simplicity of it, drawing back to allow Duo room to see, and recalling the half-forgotten book in his other hand. He can't help but feel the proverbial other shoe, somewhere, waiting to drop.

Alright, then: to work.

"Most of the books in the city are either tourist brochures, or blank, like the paperwork in City Hall" He says, opening to a random page, and showing Duo the exception to that rule, "But not all of them. Some of them are full of... this."

Gibberish. Or code. Or some other, third thing, he doesn't know. A puzzle.

[braidedwonder]

Duo settles in without so much extra thought. This is warm, comfortable, something akin to “homely” comes to mind but he isn’t entirely sure what home is, either. This fits, in this moment, and the braided pilot isn’t about to question it.

Not as Wufei takes his lead and keeps him in place for something a bit more solid than the fleeting kiss that Duo had intended. A soft, sleepy hum rolls up from Duo’s chest, content to kiss as much as Wufei wanted. Yes it would derail the reason he’d called him over but … it also wouldn’t be the first time.

Duo settles as they pull away, rooting for a moment at Wufei’s chest in a fond motion, something like a little hug as he wiggles some to settle in.

“Shame you can’t burn nothin’ either…” He mutters darkly as Wufei brings up all the blank paper around here. There’s a temptation to become lost in a plan to find something that would burn, of course, until the 05 pilot shows him the pages of gibberish. Immediately Duo perks up some, eyes scanning the pages more intently.

“… Oh. Oh, shit. So you’re thinking there may be a code here in all this, then? Have you noticed any patterns at all?”

[zerofive]

"No," Flat, stark, and purposefully discouraging; but then, he's mostly waiting for Duo to stop wriggling and settle in. There, that's better, "...I'm wondering if there even is anything to find."

Blank book after blank book; if you needed writing materials, or a sketchbook, or just something novel with which to wipe your ass, there was no shortage of beautifully bound and pointless tomes. The relative rarity of these gibberish books made them tantalizing and mysterious.

"It could just be the damn Library of Babel, for all I know."

[braidedwonder]

“Wufei -“ Duo begins in a most disbelieving tone as the 05 pilot immediately begins in the side of there being nothing to find. He’s happy enough to be out here, and all, but the point remains. “- If you want me to curl up with you, you don’t gotta get me out here by talking code breaking.”

He would come out here to snuggle up without any goals set at all, in fact.

Still, at the mention of Bable Duo manages to rouse up a little huff of a laugh. They’ve got to take their ins where they can, right?

“I guess that’s better than pointless gibberish.”

[zerofive]

"I meant I haven't noticed any patterns, not that there aren't any," He says, looking out over the city as if it resembled an enemy more than the sleepy urban sprawl it purported to be. Perhaps that was even true, "That's why I asked you for an opinion."

Not to snuggle, definitely not. Especially not with his hands tight on Duo's shoulder, and the other resolutely wrapped around the tuft-end of his hair, like a lifeline.

"If they at least had something to read here..."

Then he wouldn't be so inclined to obsess over this nothing of a lead. But they don't. It's empty, and boring. Not even ambient radio to listen to; even Wufei has limits to his tolerance for these things.

[braidedwonder]

“Now if I had said that you’d have a fit.” Duo stated it as though he’s insulted that he wouldn’t attempt to throw a verbal jab like calling Wufei out on not being able to find a pattern. It’s his own caution, but here he is pouting about it anyways.

Duo spends a long moment scanning the pages in front of him, brows furrowed a little in thought as he does so. He can spot out small repetitions, on further inspection, but their spacing seems … random.

“It’s … there’s repetitions in here but I don’t see any rhyme or reason for them yet.” A little pause, and then a sigh.

“But the cadence seems random.”