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He sees him across the room like a predator clocks another across the watering hole. This man is tall and lean and powerful, jaw angled down, eyes up, dressed sharp and sleek. Watching tiger-silent with his claws on hair-trigger, lurking in the jungle shadows behind Peng’s shoulder. Wolf can already tell: he deserves better than Peng. A prize stallion, wasted in a little rich girl's backyard barn. Tiger in a zoo.
Wolf catches his eye as it shifts, his own gaze flinty and unmoving, locked, and the word boils down to nothing for a long, precise moment, blood pumping a deafening tattoo in his skull. Then Lau Hu’s tiger eyes flick away, to attend to something Peng whispers in his ear. The moment dissipates and Wolf hears the world again, Chandler asking him if he’s present. Wolf grunts, shivers, and stalks out behind Slattery’s broad shoulders. Trouble, says Wolf’s tingling spine, and his nerves sing.
They meet again in Shanzhai, and when you say it like that it almost sounds charming. Lau Hu strikes out of the shadows like he’s stalking prey, but Wolf is no fucking gazelle and he bites back. His jaws snap and he tastes nothing but his own blood and sweat and sweet adrenaline and it's delicious. Lau Hu is a machine and a beast, Wolf could tell this from across a stupidly big wooden table in a stuffily diplomatic room, but up close and personal it's a different story. His form is impeccable, his strikes are measured, but there's a raw force of energy in him that makes the hairs stand up on Wolf's arms. This is it, he thinks without thinking. I've been looking for you. A partner for his dance. Like throwing magnets together.
They should just shoot each other, but Wolf pretends to forget about the Glock in his belt and Lau Hu seems to have no idea which vest pocket he’s put his sidearm in. Instead he flicks out a pretty little knife and shows off with a twirl of it, and Wolf thinks yes, you beauty.
Chandler asks what the hell happened. Wolf is aware he looks like he's been kicked around. His face hurts. He feels like a live wire. He doesn't bother hiding how impressed he is about it, but if he thinks about it during a cold, quick shower nobody needs to know. He hasn't felt this alive in a long time.
There is a heady pleasure in holding a gun point-blank to the tiger’s head. Lau Hu has no idea he’s behind the door and Wolf itches to pull the trigger, just for the thrill of it. It's intoxicating, being this close and not allowed to make himself known.
When Peng lets them waltz out through the front door Lau Hu stares at them -- at him -- and looks so fucking cut-snake mad that Wolf chomps at the bit and sneers. Lau Hu’s lips peel back from his teeth in a snarl that looks almost wildly indulgent and Wolf wants to tear him apart.
Wolf respects this man, if not for his morals then for his skill and discipline. He loves this man for what he gives and takes. They’ve never spoken a word to each other but Wolf suspects that even if they could they’d never need to. He wonders, once or twice, what the sex would be like. It’s a shame they’re on different sides, but then they wouldn't get to try to kill each other so often. It’s not really even a matter of life and death, just two unstoppable forces ricocheting off of each other, gravitationally bound, until they break each other to pieces.
They part unceremoniously. It's tense and tight and regrettably hurried; Chandler has got reasons, good reasons, for being here other than Wolf chasing a high. But Lau Hu seems to be waiting for him and Wolf seeks him out, doesn't even try to pretend otherwise and nobody stops him. He has the feeling it'll be the last time. It has to be the last time, or Lau Hu will be a problem. Wolf takes care of problems.
He feels bone snap and body slacken and he almost has time to regret it. Lau Hu was a force of nature, after all, and survived the end of the world just to die in a shitty shack of an apartment as collateral damage. A pity. The tiger is endangered.
Wolf lets Lau Hu slide away and pats his shoulder, as if he were only unconscious, playing dead. Good fight, he tells him.
Maybe soulmate is too charged a word, but Wolf knows he'll never meet someone like Lau Hu again. A mirror to his soul, if he has one.
Chandler stomps around the corner then, spattered with blood. He looks at Wolf oddly, like couldn’t you have just shot him, and Wolf just shrugs in lieu of saying well, sir, it wouldn’t have been very romantic. He shoulders his gun and thinks about beautiful tiger rugs.
The wolf is also endangered. He is alone again, and howls at the moon.