Author: Jei

Warnings: Humor

Pairings: hint of 1+2

Rating: PG-13

Summary: A little bird gave me two words: 'writer's block' and 'zombies'. (okay, so that's three words, but whatever.)

Disclaimer: Standard disclaimers apply.

Notes: Possibly a little rambly, because as promised, the bulk of it was scribbled down while sitting in the jury selection room. (where unfortunately i was selected and now i'm sitting a criminal trial. boo.)

Dear Heero...

"Dear Heero..." He sat there staring at the cursor blinking for all of five seconds before he hit the cancel button and shut down the new message window. "This is stupid," he muttered to himself, telling himself to just finish his card game instead. Just a little bit more time to kill before he could get out of the office to get some lunch, and get his mind off stupid things. Stupid, and crazy, and maybe even slightly suicidal. He tried not to think 'desperate'.

He lost a game of cards rather miserably before admitting that things had gotten far enough, in his mind at least, for action to be necessary. Rash impulse had gotten him far enough to open the message window in the first place. Now resignation led him to open a second one.

This couldn't be all that hard. He'd faced down whole squadrons of various mechanized weapons bent on his destruction. This was nothing. Nothing, except that it would dictate the course of the rest of his life, rather than the manner of his death.

All he needed was an approach. That was all. Once he had a good start, he was confident he could finish without problems. Just needed something less stupid than 'Dear Heero'. Okay then, they were at least close enough that he could forego the greeting words and just start with a simple 'Heero', right? He typed the name triumphantly into his message draft.

And then erased it after a few seconds, the decisive action accompanied by a shake of his head. Of course the message would be for Heero. It was being sent to his inbox, after all. Who else would it be for?

The name came back in another ten seconds. It seemed far too abrupt to start the message without a greeting of some sort, and he had to admit it was a little intimidating to stare at the completely blank message, waiting for him to jump directly into all the hard stuff. And yet now that that salutation had kindly opened the floor for him, now he was still stuck staring at the nearly blank and still intimidating expanse waiting patiently for his message.

Okay, he asked himself what he wanted to convey. How far did he dare go? A little something just to break the ice? Maybe he could find some interesting article to forward along, say he thought Heero might be interested. But what if he wasn't? He didn't want to completely blow his chances by forwarding something completely wrong. Maybe he could make it work-related. That seemed safe. Only to then have to turn it from work-related to personal, Duo didn't think he had the patience or the fortitude for that. If he was going to bite the bullet, he had to bite the goddamn bullet and go for broke. He'd chicken out otherwise.

Alright, so he was set on going at it. Now how did he want to convey it? What did he think would capture Heero's fancy? He had no idea, and that was really a large part of the problem, wasn't it? He didn't know Heero as well as he wanted to.

Now there was a start. "Heero, I want to get to know you better." The sentence was snuffed out of digital existence almost before the last letter had been typed. No way, that was far too... something. No matter what adjective he found to describe it, it boiled down to 'unacceptable'.

"Hey, Heero," he started again. "I've been thinking lately that we don't hang out as often as we should." He sat back and scrutizined the living daylights out of that line. 'I've been thinking...' Yeah, that was good. Heero liked thinkers, right? Maybe? And the rest was just simple fact, right? Couldn't go wrong with the facts. Then again, 'I want to get to know you better' was a sad fact, too, and that was very definitely going wrong.

And 'as often as we should'? Who was he to make judgment calls on something like that? Maybe Heero was totally happy with how little they hung out with each other. They saw each other at work enough, had offices only sort of in proximity to each other. There was the occasional pilot get-together. Yeah, see, he was just proposing a get-together. Just the two of them. Nothing wrong with that, right?

Except that it was out of the ordinary. Heero would ask him questions, questions he wasn't quite ready to answer. Not yet. Not until he had gotten some answers out of Heero first. Answers he would never get if never managed to send off this damn note.

Okay, justifications. If Heero asked, what could he say in response that was totally innocuous? How about, um, well, it always took time and effort to get them all together, so maybe he just thought that that was no excuse for them to not hang out and if they had to get together in smaller groups, well, why the heck not? Heero was the kind of guy that didn't tolerate excuses, right? Which kind of made Duo feel guilty about making up an excuse about not liking excuses. And what would happen if Heero found him out? It would be easy for him to ask Wufei if he had been asked to this little informal get-together, and since the answer would be no, surely Heero would begin to question his motivations, and he didn't want that. Maybe Duo could sniff around Wufei's schedule a little and choose a day when he was busy. But that was deviously dishonest and Wufei didn't really deserve to be manipulated like that.

Maybe an approach without artifice. No, wait, he'd already tried that with his first attempt. Maybe another try wouldn't hurt. "Heero," he started assertively. "Busy on Friday? Wanna go out with me?" He shuddered as he erased the line. Just seeing himself be so forward about things gave him the willies. He didn't think Heero was interested in that kind of approach. Sure, the guy liked straightforward, as far as Duo could tell, but he was pretty sure Heero had never responded affirmatively to the various people who had been crazy enough to actually ask him out or leave him their number.

Wait, why was he voluntarily joining the ranks of the crazy people again?

Oh yeah. Because Heero had been haunting the subconscious corridors of his mind for years now, and if Duo didn't do something about it to settle things one way or another, he was going to go crazy. Damned if he did, and damned if he didn't. Well, not a situation he was unfamiliar with dealing with.

Okay, one more try. Maybe an offer Heero couldn't refuse? "Heero," he tried seriously. "I need your help. The zombie apocalypse is coming and we need to be prepared. We're the only thing standing between--" Okay, maybe not. Great, now he was officially even more crazy than all the crazy people that had come before him. He certainly hoped it would take a little less than World War Z to get Heero to spend time with him.

There was a knock on his office door. "Yeah?" he automatically called out, minimizing his message window, and then changing his mind and closing it altogether. He looked up and accidentally let loose a swear word. "Whoa, shit, are the zombies ready to attack or something?"

Heero blinked at him. "I beg your pardon?"

Duo blinked back at him. "Um. Never mind." An eyebrow rose at him. "No, really. Never mind. So. Something I can do for you?"

The skeptical look lingered for a few more seconds, but then he finally moved on. "It's quiet in the office right now."

A simple observation, perhaps, but so simple that it threw Duo off. "Um, yeah. People taking off early for the holidays and all that. Even the bad guys seem like they're giving it a rest right now."

"Yeah. Want to grab some lunch? It's not quite noon yet, but there's not really much point in waiting around here."

If Duo were any less crafty and slick than he was, he'd be gaping. Instead, he answered, "Yeah, sure, that sounds like a great idea. Why didn't I think of that?" He pulled his jacket off the back of his seat and shrugged it on, trying not to be too obvious about kicking himself for overcomplicating things.

Heero didn't like overcomplicating things, right?

OWARI

 

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