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"A Christmas Tale"Written By: Mookie
Disclaimer: I don't really need to be Captain Obvious here, do I? No ownership, no money being made. Written for fun, not profit. Rating: Let's call it NC-17 to be on the safe
side. Warnings: Some angst Spoilers: Entire series and EW. Pairings: I don't want to exactly give away pairings,
and most of it is more implied than anything, but let me just say
that it doesn't stray from my favorites. Notes: OK. Don't fall over in shock. You can thank
my daughter for this, because after we watched this movie together
on Christmas Eve, I confessed that I was a sucker for all variations
of the same story. So I decided to write my own. Summary: Wufei is not exactly the Christmas type.
Wufei never set his alarm clock. He was too accustomed to waking at the same time every day, and hearing a loud incessant beeping was nothing that could start anyone's day off on the right note. It was, therefore, a shock in more ways than one when he first heard it, and it took a while for it to penetrate his dreaming mind. He was at work and the phone began to ring, but answernig it did absolutely nothing, and he punched at the OFF button several times to no avail. When he was awake enough to figure out the source of the noise, the beeping had grown louder, and he fumbled with the switch for a while before it finally ceased. He wiped his hand over his face and was about to turn over and go back to sleep when he noticed the time. 12:59. He stared at the numbers, knowing he had no more than sixty seconds to go, and probably less. A shiver ran down his spine the moment the numbers changed to 1:00, but he refused to be a coward. He turned on the lamp, threw the covers off, and shoved his feet in his slippers, as ready as he could be. He looked around, in all corners of the room, but there was nothing to be seen. "As I suspected," he muttered. "Nothing more than a dream." He'd just settled himself into bed again and had turned off the light when the room was illuminated again. This time the source came from a single candle, suspended in midair, and it shed enough light that he could see a swirling mist surround it. It seemed to take quite a while for it to actually do anything, but a quick glance at the clock showed it was no more than five past the hour. "You're late," he said sourly, as a vaguely human shape began to appear. "No, Wufei, I'm not. You didn't always set your clock five minutes ahead. I wonder why you feel the need to do so now." Wufei knew, even before the ghost's face was visible, whose voice it was that haunted him now. "No," he whispered, choking off a sob. "Meiran, I'm sorry." She approached the bed, the candle lighting up her face. "You know there is little room in life for regrets, husband. I have none for myself, for I died fighting for a cause, as I know you would have done many times." Husband. Meiran used to call him that when he'd try to talk sense into her. To him, he was doing his duty, but in Meiran's eyes, he was acting as her lord and master. Acknowledging him as her husband had been her way of letting him know that she was not his property but her own person, for all the good it did her in the end. "Meiran," he said again, reaching his hands out as if to touch her face. She took a step back and shook her head. "Do not," she told him. "There is no substance to what you see before you." He ignored her and took another step closer. "You have more substance than anyone I know." He tried to cup her face, but as she'd told him, there was nothing there. His hand passed through it completely, and all he could feel was a bitter cold. "I had substance, when I was alive," she said. "I am no longer your wife." "Of course," Wufei said, rubbing his hand against his thigh to warm it. "You are one of the ghosts, sent to haunt me." "Haunt is a relative term, Wufei." "Again with the riddles." Meiran rolled her eyes. "You always were a stickler for plain speaking. Let me be frank, then. I am the Ghost of Christmas Past." "Of course," Wufei said, shaking his head. "What else would you be?" Meiran frowned, as if he were not following the script. When he remained silent, she brandished the candle toward him. "Not of long past," she said, sounding impatient, "but of your past." "Well, then," Wufei said, grabbing the robe that was hung on his bedpost. "Let's take a walk down memory lane." Truthfully, he was scared to the core, and if the ghost had appeared as anyone but Meiran, he might have trembled visibly. She might not be Meiran in the flesh, but in spirit she was certainly the young woman he remembered. Perhaps it was not a dream but insanity that was upon him. When she touched his arm, it was just as icy as when he'd tried to caress her cheek, and he glanced down at the spectral fingers. Unfortunately it also meant he could see the floor, or the lack thereof. In all his time traveling in outer space and piloting Nataku at incredible speeds, he'd never felt a sense of vertigo the way he did now, and he attempted to take hold of her arm, even knowing there would be nothing there. He had to close his eyes, overcome with dizziness, and when he felt his knees touch something solid and cold, he opened his eyes. He looked up, to ask where they were now, but Meiran was no longer there. The smell of lemon, vinegar, and fresh paint assailed his nostrils, he knew immediately where he was, just as he knew who he would see the moment he turned his head. He'd expected to see his mother. He had not expected to see himself as a young boy, dutifully wiping down the hearth with a rag soaked with his mother's homemade cleaning spray. His mama stood nearby, scrubbing the mantle with a matching rag. "We are almost done," his mother told him. The sound of his native language from his mother's lips hit him hard. He'd assumed he'd forgotten how to speak it, having used it so rarely since then, but the familiarity of these surroundings brought him right back to the moment he was now watching. "And then may I have lunch?" the younger Wufei asked, without pausing in his task. "And they you may have lunch," she said affectionately. She bent down to ruffle his hair, which was long enough to just brush his collar. He remembered that day. He and his mother had been preparing the house for the upcoming New Year. He and his mother would clean the house from top to bottom; his father would brush the door and window frames with a fresh coat of red paint, and there were always new shoes to look forward to. Wufei looked forward to his new shoes each year, for it not only symbolized a fresh start, but it meant he was that much closer to being a man. There was nothing quite like taking those first few steps in his new shoes; he'd forgotten the joy such a simple thing had once brought. He was struck with a wave of homesickness and an acute sense of loss. The worst of it was how sadly misdirected those feelings were. Instead of sorrow for his family and home, he felt the loss of anticipation, of having something to look forward to, that this young Wufei had. He was in a foul mood when Meiran reappeared beside him as a result. "I thought you were the Ghost of Christmas Past," he lashed out. "This is not Christmas." "Christmas does not need to be represented on a given day of the calendar year," she said with a shrug. "I'm not here to debate the semantics. But since you've so astutely pointed out that we're revisiting things in the spirit of Christmas, let us move on." The next place they stopped was a prison cell, where his fifteen-year-old self was lying on the floor, eyes closed, trying to ignore the ramblings of his cellmate. "Can you imagine?" Duo said, holding his hands out about two feet in front of his stomach. "Getting something that big down a chimney!" Wufei-the-prisoner sat up and pulled his knees to his chest. "No, I can't. Nor can I imagine a moment's peace in here." "Seriously?" Duo was incredulous. "We've been in here for what, weeks now?" "Days." "I'll be damned," Duo said, scratching his chin. "Seems so much longer. Do you know why?" He didn't wait for Wufei to answer. "Because all we have to do in here is sit and wait for something to happen!" Wufei lifted his hands, showing Duo the cuffs that bound them. "Get these off me and we can stay in shape with a sparring match." Duo actually dropped to one knee and examined the cuffs carefully. "Shit," he said. "I would, but ya see," he flung his head so his braid flipped over his shoulder and hung down over his chest. "It seems I lost my picks." "You keep them in your hair?" Wufei had a grudging admiration that the other pilot would even think of such a thing. Duo grinned at him and then scooted over to sit next to him against the wall. "So since we have nothing else to do, come on," he cajoled. "Something. Anything. Categories, charades, knock-knock jokes. Oh! I know! We can come up with a list of reasons why they should have picked one of us instead of Heero to test out that mobile suit!" That's what they'd ended up doing. Wufei had been completely honest with his reasons, but Duo had come up with increasingly ridiculous ones, right up until Heero had been tossed back into the cell with them. "Still not Christmas," he pointed out to Meiran. "Fine, Wufei. Fine. You want to see Christmas? Here it is." She made a sweeping gesture with the candle. The light was bright and yellow and blinded Wufei to his surroundings. He knew they'd changed only because of the rhythmic thumping sound off to the side. "Wufei, oh Wufei, please!" He didn't need to see to know where he was now. Sally was on her knees in the bed. Wufei was behind her, his hand covering one of her breasts, and he was nipping her neck lightly. She arched her back as he thrust. It was a technique he'd learned. Despite a long period of celibacy, Wufei was not ignorant. He read a lot, and some of those books had been far more informative than he could have imagined. He'd never expected to use any of it, not until they'd returned from that mission. Five years ago, he and Sally had finished a major undercover operation. They'd nearly had their cover blown, followed by a lengthy exchange of gunfire, and it had somehow just happened. Wufei had never been a fan of pornography and would never consider video taping his moments with any woman. That didn't mean that he wasn't affected now, watching. He knew exactly what he, the Wufei in bed with Sally, was doing. Each thrust was shallow. His long hard shaft slid against her, back and forth, stimulating that small sensitive bud. Her head was back, her hair brushing his shoulder, and she gripped his arm as she moaned. She had been so wet by that time that he'd slid inside her effortlessly, and he'd been completely unprepared for the spasms around his cock. He came right away, deep inside her, and she shuddered, as if she could feel each and every pulse. He knew he could, and for a while he'd wondered if it would ever stop, not that he'd wanted it to. It wasn't until his cock was flaccid and slipped out that he realized what he'd done. It hadn't stopped him from fucking her three more times that night, in different positions. If anything, he'd rationalized it was a single misstep in their working relationship, and he'd wanted to get as much out of this night as he could, before facing reality. It hadn't happened again; he made sure of that. When they'd gone back to work, he'd requested another partner. If Une suspected why, she'd never asked. Watching it now, though, was different. He could see the expression on Sally's face that he'd missed when he'd fucked her from behind and the way the corners of her mouth turned to a smile when his shrunken member made a little popping sound when it slipped out. He remembered the way she'd turned to kiss him, and how he'd let her, and how they'd spooned together for a while before he'd flipped her onto her back and plowed her again. This was that in-between time, when they were lying together. The scent of sex was heavy in the air and Sally's hair was becomingly mussed. He was holding her close and she was dragging a fingernail up and down his forearm, murmuring his name quietly. Her lips were barely moving at first, but then he saw
her mouth the words, the words, and he felt as if he'd been
kicked in the balls. She'd never said them to him aloud, and had apparently
not wanted to, but she'd said them. More than once, this night, he
wondered if what he was watching now was the way it had really happened. "Oh, it is," Meiran's voice said in his ear. He whirled around, his face blazing hotly as he remembered Meiran had been the one to bring him here. She waved her hand, the one not holding the candle, around. "Relax, Wufei. I wasn't here watching it with you, and I'm not jealous, if that's what you were worried about. You and I never really did get to the good parts, did we?" She was referring to the embarrassment of their wedding night. Arranged marriage or not, Wufei had still been a young man with raging hormones. He'd been hard and more than eager, right up until he tried to push himself inside. Back then he'd known nothing of foreplay at all, and Meiran had been just as stubborn at wanting to get it over with, but the lack of proper lubrication and the pressure of consummating their marriage did nothing to fan the flames of passion. Inevitably, his erection began to flag, and no matter how they both still tried to stuff it inside, it had been like working with a water snake toy. "At least you learned something since then," Meiran said, and then he felt the cold touch on his arm, and closed his eyes as the floor fell away. When he opened his eyes, he was back in his bed. The weight of the covers seemed incredibly heavy when he attempted to fling them from his body, and his eyes would not focus on the digits of the clock, and he finally gave up struggling and fell deep asleep.
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