Uniform Opinions
by Stacy
"It could be either one of them, you know."
"It's the only way that makes sense. I mean, look at the evidence."
Wufei was only listening to the conversation at the table with half an ear. The topic came up often enough, generally when they were at this disreputable dive Maxwell swore had good beer. More specifically, conversation would return to this topic whenever Yuy and Maxwell would abandon their companions and take over the one pool table. Wufei could only speculate the presence of pool cues and all the bending over was the reason for returning to the subject.
Noin, Relena, and his partner, Sally Po, sat watching the objects of their debate through a forest of empty drink glasses and beer bottles on the small table, paying no attention to Wufei as he nursed his beer. They observed every small detail of the interaction between the two agents at the pool table with all the attentiveness of a highly trained anthropologist faced with a previously unknown group of exotic natives. Granted, it was a very small tribe of two, but that didn’t seem to matter at all.
Over at the pool table, Duo was leaning over to line up his next shot. Heero, standing behind and a little to side appeared to consider the situation for a second, head tilted slightly to the side before smirking and tapping the end of Duo’s cue with his own just as Duo was preparing for the shot. He missed, scratching the felt and whirled around, glaring. Heero was wearing a patently false "who, me?" look, although he wasn’t able to keep it straight for more than a moment under the glare his partner was giving him. A smirk tugged at his lips. Duo snorted and turned back to his shop, but grinned as he leaned back over. It looked like Duo was rubbing off on his partner a just a little, Wufei observed, although not in the way his companions at the table might prefer. A collective sigh rose from the estrogen brigade at this little scene.
"It's so damn suggestive. Look!" That would be Relena. She did tend to swear after a few drinks, he mused.
"I know," sighed Noin. "It’s obvious. Heero must be topping."
"But Duo’s taller," Sally pointed out, her words slurred as only the earnestly drunk’s could be, "so he may be topping."
Wufei rolled his eyes. Like that has anything to do with it. The other two at the table met Sally’s suggestion with raised eyebrows and a dismissive wave. The three heads leaned towards another and he heard only muttering with the occasional "dominant," "obvious," and "stick" clearly heard. They sat back after a few minutes, clearly satisfied with the conclusion reached in that conference. He stiffened as the three turned towards him with expectant looks.
Relena leaned across Sally and laid her hand on his forearm. He steeled himself for the inevitable question. "What do you think, Wufei?"
Instead of evading the question as he usually did - which wasn’t that difficult, given the general state of intoxication by this point in the evening - he fired back with one of his own.
"What about Trowa and Quatre? They’re close friends."
Three disbelieving sets of eyes focused on him. "No way." "Not those two!" "I don’t see it." Clearly dismissing him from the conversation, they resumed discussion of Heero’s merits as top.
Incredible, he thought, looking down into his bottle. They manage to completely miss out on the two men that are sleeping together and obsess over the two that weren't. Though, to give them credit, they didn’t see those two very often. And Trowa and Quatre were very discreet. Once he had control of his eyebrows again and he was sure his expression was one of bland disinterest, he looked back up. He wondered idly if they ever wondered at the strangeness of asking a straight man about the sleeping habits of his friends. He himself was a little disturbed at the amount of thought he put into it, when he thought about it.
Duo’s triumphant "Ha ha! Take that, you jerk!" cut across the room. Evidently the game was over. Wufei sat up straight and stretched, then picked up his jacket. The evening was more or less over. He waved at Yuy and Maxwell and got a thumbs up in return. They would see to it that rides home were found for the ladies.
"Good night." He rolled his eyes and stood up. "So glad that a consensus was reached."
"Wait!" Sally said. "Really, what do you think? I mean, you must know something."
Wufei shrugged, then tugged on his uniform jacket. He downed the last of his beer, considering whether or not he should break his silence on the subject. He gave Maxwell and Yuy a sideways look as they started back over to the table, then raised an eyebrow at the ladies at the table.
He leaned down and said quietly, "If you must know, I’d put my money on Maxwell." As he straightened up and headed towards the door, and incredulous chorus of "Duo!??" followed him.
Behind him, he heard Duo’s cheerful "Duo what?" followed by decidedly unladylike sputtering. He grinned as he closed the door.
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