Notes: The arc begins between one and two years after Endless Waltz. Duo POV in this story.

Life With Heero Arc Part 72
Planning

Duo collapsed into his chair with a sigh of relief. The day was only half over and it felt like it had lasted forever already. "What the hell was I thinking when I agreed that Hilde and Rick should take six whole weeks off for their honeymoon?" he muttered, dropping his head onto the pile of paperwork awaiting his signature.

From the doorway, Heero snorted and offered, "Maybe that we owed her one after the way my little life-crisis distracted you when I moved here?"

Duo groaned and lifted his head, agreeing, "Yeah. That and the way she had to cover for us both while I had my little meltdown several months ago..." He made a face at the new pile of papers Heero added to his Inbox. "I think we're going to be even by the time they get back though. Maybe she's even going to owe us a few favours..."

Heero raised one eyebrow and said, "A few?" before leaving for his own office.

Looking around at the piles of work waiting on his desk, Duo groaned again before tackling the next stack. They certainly didn't need to worry about having enough work to keep four co-owners busy. They had more than enough for that.

Environmental awareness was the current "in" trend in business and companies were rushing out to find firms willing to help them reuse or recycle their old equipment and facilities. The old days of simply filling abandoned resource satellites with junk were disappearing fast. Space - the colonies - didn't want their own trash left kicking around like that, let alone Earth's junk. And Earth didn't want her own garbage let alone the colonies'.

Governments had already tried legislating things and it had pretty much failed. Ordering people to recycle just didn't work very well. There were two different problems to deal with really. Consumer waste and commercial/industrial. Consumer waste was harder to handle in a lot of ways than that from businesses and industries. Individuals didn't want to be bothered with sorting their own garbage before it was collected. Companies on the other hand were willing to do so - as long as they received some sort of benefit from it in the end. Right now, that benefit took the form of various grants and tax breaks from the ESUN government and the local governments that it represented. Which meant companies were getting seriously involved in recycling and reusing which in turn meant plenty of work for salvage firms. Which was a good thing - but Duo was starting to think that there was such a thing as too much of a good thing.

'Dammit, here it is almost lunch time and I haven't even had a chance to plan tonight's date!' he realized with a start. Reminding himself that he hadn't even had a chance to take a break earlier so he really didn't need to feel guilty about slacking off now, Duo dug the morning paper out of the pile of mail on the corner of his desk. Flipping it open to the entertainment section, he skimmed through the ads, hoping something would catch his eye. If he'd decided to do this a few days ago, there might have been a chance of getting tickets for tonight's ballgame but he was pretty sure it was a little too late at this point. A suspicion that the bold "SOLD OUT" printed across the game listing in the sports section confirmed. "Damn," he muttered. "Okay, what else..."

Well, dinner and a movie was - so cliche - and there really wasn't anything worth seeing at the show right now anyway. Plays - anything worth going to suffered from the same problem as the ballgame. Bands... Duo made a face at the few concerts listed. Nothing there that he and Heero would both enjoy. And while there were certainly times that one of them suffered through something they didn't like just for the sake of keeping the other one company, he didn't think that would be a very nice first date.

Actually, it would be sort of nice to do something really different for their first date. Something that they hadn't done dozens of times already as friends. Duo backtracked through the entertainment listings again, hoping to spot something promising. Running his finger down the page to make sure he didn't skip anything, Duo halted abruptly. 'Hmm... Maybe... It's been a long time since I went and I know that I've never taken Heero... Heh, with any luck Heero hasn't ever gone... Not exactly the kind of thing that would have been on J's list of "Things a Gundam pilot might need to know" after all...' In which case, Heero would need a few lessons. Duo grinned. That would work.

So, that just left picking a place to eat. Well, they hadn't had pizza in quite a while. And that kind of went along with the rest of the evening, being just as informal as the planned activity. "Perfect," Duo said with a grin as he reached for the phone. Reservations weren't absolutely necessary but - well, better safe than sorry. He didn't want to end up spending the whole evening waiting in line. Not when he and Heero could be having fun instead.

TBC...

 

To The Next Chapter

To The Previous Chapter

Back to Calic0cat's Fanfictions Page

Back to Guests Fanfictions Page

Back to Main Page