fic - i've got this friend... [haven]
Title: I've Got This Friend...
Series: Moments of Haven
Summary: A couple of short random scenes gluing together a couple of more interesting scenes, wherein they act all coupley.
Note: Also wherein I correct a factual error from a fic past. I think I only implied it, but nevertheless, shame on me for not doing my research.
I've Got This Friend...
A Moment of Haven
"Hey," Duo started once the waiter had taken their lunch orders. "Have you made any progress?"
"On what, exactly?"
"Moving. Come on, a stand-up guy like you? Tell me you weren't just all talk. That was, what, months ago!"
Wufei calmly wielded his straw against the slice of lime hiding beneath the ice in his glass of water. "I have in fact begun the process."
Duo eyed him carefully. "Which means you've thought about it. Anything else?"
"I did make some inquiries a couple of months ago, but there were no openings at that time in the places where I inquired."
"Maybe they've opened up now."
"Maybe. But I haven't had the chance to go investigate lately."
"Well, that's no fun. But you started. That's more than I expected."
Wufei gave him this look with a slanted eyebrow that wasn't half as good as Heero's, by Duo's standards, but still acceptable. "A 'stand-up guy' like me?"
"Heh, I guess. So, does that mean you've narrowed down the neighborhoods, and are just looking for a place? Or are you taking your time, still poking around?"
"Of course I am taking my time. If a place does not meet my requirements, then there is no point in moving. I do not dislike my current residence that much."
"I s'pose. You know, it's kind of funny. I've lived in a lot of places in my life, but I've never really gotten to pick and choose one, yanno?"
"Even your current residence?"
"Well..." he started easily, eyes sliding over to Heero in some small sign of a pinch of guilt.
Heero picked up the thread of the conversation. "I chose the city. I convinced Duo to come along for the ride."
"You didn't 'convince' me of anything."
"I invited Duo to come along," Heero corrected smoothly. "He convinced himself it wasn't such a bad idea. When we got there, we were assigned housing."
"But it's yours now, isn't it?"
"The paperwork says so. We took over the loan."
"You seemed pretty settled in there."
"Took a while. We've only recently started to treat it as our home, I think."
"Yeah," Duo chimed in. "We talked about some of that last time, right? We've just started our great backyard adventure. It's gonna be awesome. We're gonna grow food! Can you imagine?"
Wufei wasn't one-hundred percent certain what put that dreamy tone in Duo's voice, but it was clear it meant a lot to him, and that was all that mattered. "Good luck."
Duo blinked, and then his expression shifted into the next gear. "Hey, how about we do your recon for you? Whaddya say? We've got a free afternoon."
Heero felt it was his responsibilty to rein Duo in. "That might be fun for you, but don't you think that might take some of the fun out of things for Wufei?"
"Well I'm not saying that we'd be making any decisions for him or anything. Of course he'd have to go looking for himself! But he's a busy guy! It'd be totally easy for us to just go around some of the places he's been looking and see where the openings are, right?" He turned wide, innocent eyes on Wufei.
Wufei poked cautiously at the idea. "You're... volunteering to do recon on apartments for me?"
"You can ignore absolutely every bit of data we come back with, I swear."
"Then... you just want to... participate?" Yes, 'participate' seemed like a better word than 'live an apartment search vicariously through me'.
"Or at least see how your future place looks like. It'll save you the trouble of taking pictures later."
How considerate of him. "Strictly looking?"
"Of course. I mean, it's not like we would impersonate you and rent something in your name." His expression grew thoughtful for a moment before he shook his head. "Nah, that'd be silly."
How... not-reassuring of him. "Yuy?"
"Now he's going to want to look, regardless of whether or not you agree. Might as well not waste our time and tell us what you're looking for."
"This one's got a 'Now Renting' sign up. That's a good sign, right? No pun intended."
"I guess. The first place didn't have any sign. I'm not sure if signs are optional, or if that's supposed to mean there are no openings."
"See? This is totally useful for Wufei. That's not even a matter of opinion. Now he doesn't have to waste his time checking that place out."
"But what if there's a place on the way that catches his eye? What if --"
"What if he went and the apartment manager had a bad day and decided to flip out with a chain saw? Huh? Then what would happen?"
"...You probably wouldn't have good maneuverability with a chain saw. Wufei would probably be able to take him."
"...Dammit, now I want to rent one of those chain-saw massacre movies to see how the chain-saw guy did it. Wait, his victims were probably stupid civilians. Never mind. It'd probably be super easy to slaughter them all."
And it was with these words that they entered the rental office.
"I feel like that guy didn't take us seriously at all," Duo complained as they settled into the car they had taken out from the Preventers motor pool.
"We should probably leave it on the list. Maybe he'll take Wufei seriously."
"Maybe the whole 'let's not say we're looking for a friend because no one ever believes that' thing isn't a good idea, not if the result is us sounding like idiots because we don't know what we want and aren't willing to commit to anything."
"I'll leave that up to you. You're the one that's supposed to be good at reading people and playing by ear."
"Ooh, hey, let's go to that one next." He pointed down the street at the apartments the next block over. "I have this sudden urge to go shopping at this guy's competitors."
They took a break at a creperie, sitting at a small table outside to enjoy some springtime sun and discuss the arcane things they were wont to discuss without an excess of audience. "I probably shouldn't ask this," Heero started. "But... do you like where we live?"
"Of course I like where we live," Duo responded immediately. Then, a pause. "But maybe I shouldn't have answered that so automatically." He leaned an elbow on the table, idly stirring the sea salt foam into his iced coffee. "What, just because I didn't choose it?"
Heero just shrugged as he neatly bisected his crepe with a fork.
"Well... I mean, technically, I never 'chose' to live at a church, either, but I wouldn't trade that in for the world."
"That had a lot to do with the people there, though, didn't it?"
A touch of amusement alighted upon the corner of Duo's mouth. "And this doesn't?"
Heero glanced up from his work with a faintly surprised look. It lasted a second before he returned to his crepe, hiding a tiny pleased smile. "I suppose a home is... what you make of it."
Duo pulled his feet back toward himself to resist the urge to play footsie under the table with Heero. "Do you like it? You chose the town, at least, if not the house."
He had until he swallowed his bite to think, and he used the time well. "I'm not sure if I like it, or if I'm just not very picky."
"Hmm. That's a good point." They both meditated on that for a little bit. "It feels like home, though. I think. That's what's important, right?"
"Wufei once asked me how I felt about being tied down to a home, or specifically, he asked me what I would run inside to save if it were burning."
"Me, I hope."
"You. And the C4."
Duo laughed sharply. "I guess that would be hard to explain to the investigators."
"Harder still to convince them it wasn't the cause of the fire."
"Oh, come on. Any arson investigator worth his salt is gonna know that a little house fire's not gonna ignite C4. And vice versa. A little C4's not gonna start a little house fire."
"You want to explain that to the neighbors?"
"I guess there's no really good reason to stock a little C4... Well, except for emergencies. But now that we have it, it's not like you can just toss it out in the trash or something, so..." He shrugged philosophically. "What can you do, aside from keep it away from the detonators?"
Heero nodded sagely. They each spent a little more time with their respective crepes, and at the halfway point, switched. Heero accepted his new plate with a contemplative air. "Do you have to be sentimental to have a home, do you think?"
"Sentimental?"
"If it all burned down... I don't think I'd be too upset. Well, I might be upset at why it's burning to begin with, but aside from that... I don't think I'm that incredibly attached to it."
"Mmm, this is good," Duo answered, licking his fork. "Good choice. I don't think you need to be attached to the walls and stuff just to call it home. Aside from the people living there, you've got the memories and that sort of thing, but you've got that all in the pockets of your head, so... what have you lost, really?"
"Do you really feel that way? About..." He let the words be unsaid when it was clear Duo knew what he was referring to.
Duo let out a long exhalation. "Well... Like you said, there's the reasons why it's burning at all in the first place. And it was the people, yeah? They... burnt along with the walls, so..."
"Ah." Right. He should have known that. He offered a sympathetic smile in apology.
Duo shrugged and shoveled another bite into his mouth.
The time seemed ripe for a change in topic. "If we were to go looking for another place to live... I don't know what I'd be looking for. I had a list of requirements before, but they were all very... practical."
"Yeah, well, one man's practical is another man's what-the-hell-are-you-on, so... there's nothing wrong with practical. Me, personally, I think there's stuff you never really considered before, but you know it when you see it. Or when the rental person points it out. Like, I sort of thought that one small place was okay, up until we went to the next place and it was huge. Way out of budget, but man, what a difference. Not that that's a surprise, I guess. You can get practically anything with enough money."
Heero watched as Duo's fork snatched a piece of fruit from his plate. "I thought you liked that one."
Duo grinned with little to no repentance. "I do. I like that one, too. It's not either/or. That's why we got one savory, one sweet."
"I thought that was so we could figure out what the heck 'savory' is."
"And I still don't know. You?"
Heero shook his head. "Maybe you should eat some more of the savory one so you can figure it out," he said rather pointedly.
"Didn't seem to help you. Maybe we'll just know it when we see it. Or taste it." He returned to his own crepe. "What do you think of suburbia?"
"You mean, where we live?"
"Yeah, more or less. We don't have any creperies. Or historic sites. Or intellectual centers."
"Those are Wufei's preferences. Minus the creperie, perhaps. Are they yours?"
"Ha. Minus the historic sites and the intellectual centers, perhaps."
"We can probably figure out how to make crepes at home."
"Yeah? That'd be awesome." He paused to appreciate his coffee. "I dunno, I think it's nice to have a creperie to kick back at, or a historic site to visit, but I don't think I'd visit all the time, enough to justify living there. You're probably not even allowed to touch anything in a historic site! Where'd the fun be in that? I get kind of twitchy when I don't have my hands on something."
"Next time you're in the garage tinkering with something, I'll join you with some crepes and a coffee."
He laughed. "Now that would be awesome."
They settled back into their car in preparation for the next destination on their list. Heero paused after putting the key in the ignition and looked over to his partner. "Feng shui? Really?"
"What?" Duo blinked innocently. "Really. Of course, I could also just call being able to see straight through an apartment 'bad cover' or something, but really, that is totally bad feng shui."
"You've studied feng shui?" Heero asked somewhat skeptically. He knew better than to accuse Duo of outright lying about it, though.
"Yeah, when we were discussing interior design. And how much we suck at it."
"And clear sight lines from the front door straight out the back door is in some list of bad things?"
"Well, yeah. Don't you agree?"
"I agree, but not on feng shui principle."
"Me, too, but I thought feng shui would get rid of the clingy apartment manager faster than 'bad cover' would."
"Ooh, hey, look at this place," Duo cooed.
Heero walked past Duo and the landlord to study the view out the windows critically. By the time he completed his risk assessment, Duo had his head in a large closet. Taking note of the position of the landlord, Heero turned his back on them to inspect the bathroom. Before he was done, Duo was out engaging the landlord in discussion.
"Converted art studios, you said?"
"Yes," the man answered quietly, seemingly accustomed to the way sound could bounce around in the large, empty space. Heero liked him a little better than the others they had met today. He seemed content to let the space speak for itself. Perhaps that was the difference between a commercially-owned apartment complex and a privately-owned property with only a handful of units. "A converted factory space before that. Converted to residential lofts about fifteen years ago. I picked the building up a few years before the war. Didn't need much renovating. Concrete floors pretty much take care of themselves," he finished pragmatically, tapping his toe on the floor as if to emphasize his point.
"Well, I kinda like it, but I gotta admit, we're here scoping out places for a friend. He said he wasn't interested in a studio apartment, but..."
"Good price for the size. Space segments pretty well, I think. Set things up right, and you can get rid of the echo easy. Top floor, good light. Quiet."
Duo nodded at each of these points, prompting Heero to chime in with some concerns. "Heating and cooling?"
"Hey, don't forget to mention those birds in the parking lot."
"We didn't actually see any birds."
"But we saw evidence of them all over the cars. I think it's a pretty safe assumption that it's a popular bird hangout. What, hey, don't go to the next section. Birds!"
Heero's finger paused on his virtual keyboard. "Why don't you type up your own notes on each place, and then we can merge them into a single document before sending them? Then we can each have our own section for the things we each find important."
"Are you just saying that to get rid of me?"
"I'm offering you the opportunity to have an equal voice in this."
"You're just saying that to get rid of me."
"That, too."
Duo stuck his tongue out at him before retreating to the other side of the room to retrieve the laptop they had brought along. "Ha, well, you'll see. I can be all over you, back-seat-commenting even with my own--" Upon turning back, he saw that Heero had shifted into a sprawl in the middle of the modestly narrow bed HQ had seen fit to provide their temporary tenants with. "Wow. That's harsh."
Heero smirked faintly before gathering himself back onto one side of the bed.
Duo settled into the proffered space with a dignified air, spoiled somewhat by the way he bumped and nudged Heero into yielding most of the bed to him. Heero pushed playfully back, but gave ground. Duo would need a more stable surface to operate the laptop on, after all, while Heero could continue his use of the tablet while hanging half off the side of the bed.
"Hmph," Duo declared. "You're in a fine mood today."
Heero planted a kiss on his cheek. "I enjoyed today. It felt very..." He paused with a tiny frown as he searched for the proper description. "It felt very much like something a couple would do."
"Minus the 'for a friend' part, I assume," Duo couldn't help pointing out dryly, mostly to hide the warm and squishy feeling bubbling up from somewhere inside him.
"Of course."
"I'm not sorry we didn't get a chance to do this before, you know."
"No?"
"No way. You know how we were before. What would have been the point?"
"Things are better this way, huh?"
"Much better."
"And that's the end of that?"
"Yup."
"Okay."
back to previous part
on to next part
Series: Moments of Haven
Summary: A couple of short random scenes gluing together a couple of more interesting scenes, wherein they act all coupley.
Note: Also wherein I correct a factual error from a fic past. I think I only implied it, but nevertheless, shame on me for not doing my research.
I've Got This Friend...
A Moment of Haven
"Hey," Duo started once the waiter had taken their lunch orders. "Have you made any progress?"
"On what, exactly?"
"Moving. Come on, a stand-up guy like you? Tell me you weren't just all talk. That was, what, months ago!"
Wufei calmly wielded his straw against the slice of lime hiding beneath the ice in his glass of water. "I have in fact begun the process."
Duo eyed him carefully. "Which means you've thought about it. Anything else?"
"I did make some inquiries a couple of months ago, but there were no openings at that time in the places where I inquired."
"Maybe they've opened up now."
"Maybe. But I haven't had the chance to go investigate lately."
"Well, that's no fun. But you started. That's more than I expected."
Wufei gave him this look with a slanted eyebrow that wasn't half as good as Heero's, by Duo's standards, but still acceptable. "A 'stand-up guy' like me?"
"Heh, I guess. So, does that mean you've narrowed down the neighborhoods, and are just looking for a place? Or are you taking your time, still poking around?"
"Of course I am taking my time. If a place does not meet my requirements, then there is no point in moving. I do not dislike my current residence that much."
"I s'pose. You know, it's kind of funny. I've lived in a lot of places in my life, but I've never really gotten to pick and choose one, yanno?"
"Even your current residence?"
"Well..." he started easily, eyes sliding over to Heero in some small sign of a pinch of guilt.
Heero picked up the thread of the conversation. "I chose the city. I convinced Duo to come along for the ride."
"You didn't 'convince' me of anything."
"I invited Duo to come along," Heero corrected smoothly. "He convinced himself it wasn't such a bad idea. When we got there, we were assigned housing."
"But it's yours now, isn't it?"
"The paperwork says so. We took over the loan."
"You seemed pretty settled in there."
"Took a while. We've only recently started to treat it as our home, I think."
"Yeah," Duo chimed in. "We talked about some of that last time, right? We've just started our great backyard adventure. It's gonna be awesome. We're gonna grow food! Can you imagine?"
Wufei wasn't one-hundred percent certain what put that dreamy tone in Duo's voice, but it was clear it meant a lot to him, and that was all that mattered. "Good luck."
Duo blinked, and then his expression shifted into the next gear. "Hey, how about we do your recon for you? Whaddya say? We've got a free afternoon."
Heero felt it was his responsibilty to rein Duo in. "That might be fun for you, but don't you think that might take some of the fun out of things for Wufei?"
"Well I'm not saying that we'd be making any decisions for him or anything. Of course he'd have to go looking for himself! But he's a busy guy! It'd be totally easy for us to just go around some of the places he's been looking and see where the openings are, right?" He turned wide, innocent eyes on Wufei.
Wufei poked cautiously at the idea. "You're... volunteering to do recon on apartments for me?"
"You can ignore absolutely every bit of data we come back with, I swear."
"Then... you just want to... participate?" Yes, 'participate' seemed like a better word than 'live an apartment search vicariously through me'.
"Or at least see how your future place looks like. It'll save you the trouble of taking pictures later."
How considerate of him. "Strictly looking?"
"Of course. I mean, it's not like we would impersonate you and rent something in your name." His expression grew thoughtful for a moment before he shook his head. "Nah, that'd be silly."
How... not-reassuring of him. "Yuy?"
"Now he's going to want to look, regardless of whether or not you agree. Might as well not waste our time and tell us what you're looking for."
"This one's got a 'Now Renting' sign up. That's a good sign, right? No pun intended."
"I guess. The first place didn't have any sign. I'm not sure if signs are optional, or if that's supposed to mean there are no openings."
"See? This is totally useful for Wufei. That's not even a matter of opinion. Now he doesn't have to waste his time checking that place out."
"But what if there's a place on the way that catches his eye? What if --"
"What if he went and the apartment manager had a bad day and decided to flip out with a chain saw? Huh? Then what would happen?"
"...You probably wouldn't have good maneuverability with a chain saw. Wufei would probably be able to take him."
"...Dammit, now I want to rent one of those chain-saw massacre movies to see how the chain-saw guy did it. Wait, his victims were probably stupid civilians. Never mind. It'd probably be super easy to slaughter them all."
And it was with these words that they entered the rental office.
"I feel like that guy didn't take us seriously at all," Duo complained as they settled into the car they had taken out from the Preventers motor pool.
"We should probably leave it on the list. Maybe he'll take Wufei seriously."
"Maybe the whole 'let's not say we're looking for a friend because no one ever believes that' thing isn't a good idea, not if the result is us sounding like idiots because we don't know what we want and aren't willing to commit to anything."
"I'll leave that up to you. You're the one that's supposed to be good at reading people and playing by ear."
"Ooh, hey, let's go to that one next." He pointed down the street at the apartments the next block over. "I have this sudden urge to go shopping at this guy's competitors."
They took a break at a creperie, sitting at a small table outside to enjoy some springtime sun and discuss the arcane things they were wont to discuss without an excess of audience. "I probably shouldn't ask this," Heero started. "But... do you like where we live?"
"Of course I like where we live," Duo responded immediately. Then, a pause. "But maybe I shouldn't have answered that so automatically." He leaned an elbow on the table, idly stirring the sea salt foam into his iced coffee. "What, just because I didn't choose it?"
Heero just shrugged as he neatly bisected his crepe with a fork.
"Well... I mean, technically, I never 'chose' to live at a church, either, but I wouldn't trade that in for the world."
"That had a lot to do with the people there, though, didn't it?"
A touch of amusement alighted upon the corner of Duo's mouth. "And this doesn't?"
Heero glanced up from his work with a faintly surprised look. It lasted a second before he returned to his crepe, hiding a tiny pleased smile. "I suppose a home is... what you make of it."
Duo pulled his feet back toward himself to resist the urge to play footsie under the table with Heero. "Do you like it? You chose the town, at least, if not the house."
He had until he swallowed his bite to think, and he used the time well. "I'm not sure if I like it, or if I'm just not very picky."
"Hmm. That's a good point." They both meditated on that for a little bit. "It feels like home, though. I think. That's what's important, right?"
"Wufei once asked me how I felt about being tied down to a home, or specifically, he asked me what I would run inside to save if it were burning."
"Me, I hope."
"You. And the C4."
Duo laughed sharply. "I guess that would be hard to explain to the investigators."
"Harder still to convince them it wasn't the cause of the fire."
"Oh, come on. Any arson investigator worth his salt is gonna know that a little house fire's not gonna ignite C4. And vice versa. A little C4's not gonna start a little house fire."
"You want to explain that to the neighbors?"
"I guess there's no really good reason to stock a little C4... Well, except for emergencies. But now that we have it, it's not like you can just toss it out in the trash or something, so..." He shrugged philosophically. "What can you do, aside from keep it away from the detonators?"
Heero nodded sagely. They each spent a little more time with their respective crepes, and at the halfway point, switched. Heero accepted his new plate with a contemplative air. "Do you have to be sentimental to have a home, do you think?"
"Sentimental?"
"If it all burned down... I don't think I'd be too upset. Well, I might be upset at why it's burning to begin with, but aside from that... I don't think I'm that incredibly attached to it."
"Mmm, this is good," Duo answered, licking his fork. "Good choice. I don't think you need to be attached to the walls and stuff just to call it home. Aside from the people living there, you've got the memories and that sort of thing, but you've got that all in the pockets of your head, so... what have you lost, really?"
"Do you really feel that way? About..." He let the words be unsaid when it was clear Duo knew what he was referring to.
Duo let out a long exhalation. "Well... Like you said, there's the reasons why it's burning at all in the first place. And it was the people, yeah? They... burnt along with the walls, so..."
"Ah." Right. He should have known that. He offered a sympathetic smile in apology.
Duo shrugged and shoveled another bite into his mouth.
The time seemed ripe for a change in topic. "If we were to go looking for another place to live... I don't know what I'd be looking for. I had a list of requirements before, but they were all very... practical."
"Yeah, well, one man's practical is another man's what-the-hell-are-you-on, so... there's nothing wrong with practical. Me, personally, I think there's stuff you never really considered before, but you know it when you see it. Or when the rental person points it out. Like, I sort of thought that one small place was okay, up until we went to the next place and it was huge. Way out of budget, but man, what a difference. Not that that's a surprise, I guess. You can get practically anything with enough money."
Heero watched as Duo's fork snatched a piece of fruit from his plate. "I thought you liked that one."
Duo grinned with little to no repentance. "I do. I like that one, too. It's not either/or. That's why we got one savory, one sweet."
"I thought that was so we could figure out what the heck 'savory' is."
"And I still don't know. You?"
Heero shook his head. "Maybe you should eat some more of the savory one so you can figure it out," he said rather pointedly.
"Didn't seem to help you. Maybe we'll just know it when we see it. Or taste it." He returned to his own crepe. "What do you think of suburbia?"
"You mean, where we live?"
"Yeah, more or less. We don't have any creperies. Or historic sites. Or intellectual centers."
"Those are Wufei's preferences. Minus the creperie, perhaps. Are they yours?"
"Ha. Minus the historic sites and the intellectual centers, perhaps."
"We can probably figure out how to make crepes at home."
"Yeah? That'd be awesome." He paused to appreciate his coffee. "I dunno, I think it's nice to have a creperie to kick back at, or a historic site to visit, but I don't think I'd visit all the time, enough to justify living there. You're probably not even allowed to touch anything in a historic site! Where'd the fun be in that? I get kind of twitchy when I don't have my hands on something."
"Next time you're in the garage tinkering with something, I'll join you with some crepes and a coffee."
He laughed. "Now that would be awesome."
They settled back into their car in preparation for the next destination on their list. Heero paused after putting the key in the ignition and looked over to his partner. "Feng shui? Really?"
"What?" Duo blinked innocently. "Really. Of course, I could also just call being able to see straight through an apartment 'bad cover' or something, but really, that is totally bad feng shui."
"You've studied feng shui?" Heero asked somewhat skeptically. He knew better than to accuse Duo of outright lying about it, though.
"Yeah, when we were discussing interior design. And how much we suck at it."
"And clear sight lines from the front door straight out the back door is in some list of bad things?"
"Well, yeah. Don't you agree?"
"I agree, but not on feng shui principle."
"Me, too, but I thought feng shui would get rid of the clingy apartment manager faster than 'bad cover' would."
"Ooh, hey, look at this place," Duo cooed.
Heero walked past Duo and the landlord to study the view out the windows critically. By the time he completed his risk assessment, Duo had his head in a large closet. Taking note of the position of the landlord, Heero turned his back on them to inspect the bathroom. Before he was done, Duo was out engaging the landlord in discussion.
"Converted art studios, you said?"
"Yes," the man answered quietly, seemingly accustomed to the way sound could bounce around in the large, empty space. Heero liked him a little better than the others they had met today. He seemed content to let the space speak for itself. Perhaps that was the difference between a commercially-owned apartment complex and a privately-owned property with only a handful of units. "A converted factory space before that. Converted to residential lofts about fifteen years ago. I picked the building up a few years before the war. Didn't need much renovating. Concrete floors pretty much take care of themselves," he finished pragmatically, tapping his toe on the floor as if to emphasize his point.
"Well, I kinda like it, but I gotta admit, we're here scoping out places for a friend. He said he wasn't interested in a studio apartment, but..."
"Good price for the size. Space segments pretty well, I think. Set things up right, and you can get rid of the echo easy. Top floor, good light. Quiet."
Duo nodded at each of these points, prompting Heero to chime in with some concerns. "Heating and cooling?"
"Hey, don't forget to mention those birds in the parking lot."
"We didn't actually see any birds."
"But we saw evidence of them all over the cars. I think it's a pretty safe assumption that it's a popular bird hangout. What, hey, don't go to the next section. Birds!"
Heero's finger paused on his virtual keyboard. "Why don't you type up your own notes on each place, and then we can merge them into a single document before sending them? Then we can each have our own section for the things we each find important."
"Are you just saying that to get rid of me?"
"I'm offering you the opportunity to have an equal voice in this."
"You're just saying that to get rid of me."
"That, too."
Duo stuck his tongue out at him before retreating to the other side of the room to retrieve the laptop they had brought along. "Ha, well, you'll see. I can be all over you, back-seat-commenting even with my own--" Upon turning back, he saw that Heero had shifted into a sprawl in the middle of the modestly narrow bed HQ had seen fit to provide their temporary tenants with. "Wow. That's harsh."
Heero smirked faintly before gathering himself back onto one side of the bed.
Duo settled into the proffered space with a dignified air, spoiled somewhat by the way he bumped and nudged Heero into yielding most of the bed to him. Heero pushed playfully back, but gave ground. Duo would need a more stable surface to operate the laptop on, after all, while Heero could continue his use of the tablet while hanging half off the side of the bed.
"Hmph," Duo declared. "You're in a fine mood today."
Heero planted a kiss on his cheek. "I enjoyed today. It felt very..." He paused with a tiny frown as he searched for the proper description. "It felt very much like something a couple would do."
"Minus the 'for a friend' part, I assume," Duo couldn't help pointing out dryly, mostly to hide the warm and squishy feeling bubbling up from somewhere inside him.
"Of course."
"I'm not sorry we didn't get a chance to do this before, you know."
"No?"
"No way. You know how we were before. What would have been the point?"
"Things are better this way, huh?"
"Much better."
"And that's the end of that?"
"Yup."
"Okay."
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