Well, I think this officially
makes the "After Hours" thing an official
series...^^;;;
Disclaimer: Okay, do I look like a rich schmuck to
you?? I am a measly little 17-year-old who spent her all her money yesterday on
candles and mice. Just what makes you think I own Gundam Wing?
Hmmmm?
Notes: Oh boy. Here we go again. If you haven't read
"After Hours" along with "After Hours: Starlit Gazebos", please do so now. This
is the third part in my newly christened Wu/Sally series, and if you start
here...you're gonna be a tad bit lost. Trust me.
Once again,
thanks goes out to all the people who gave me such kind reviews and to the
people who stalked me and sent me e-mails! You guys made this a series (so if it
sucks, it's your fault! ^_~ Just kidding! Just kidding!!) and I thank
you.
Warnings: This one is strange. ~VERY~ strange. ^^; Just the
local focal couple, driving each other batty. I also use, to quote my favorite
Vulcan, many more "colorful metaphors" in this one than the previous two, so let
your virgin ears be covered. As usual, I haven't had this beta'd, but I ran it
through the
spell-checker.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~**~*~*~*~*~
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"To
be loved is very demoralizing."
--Katharine
Hepburn
~Po Apartment, 6:45 AM~
Damn it.
Damn, damn, damn, damn. Damn. Dammit to hell.
She was out of
conditioner.
Sally grumbled several various curses as she twisted
the cap off the bottle and peeked inside. Yup, not one blob of conditioner to be
seen. Rather peculiar considering she had just bought the bottle ~two~ days ago.
Where had all her lovely off-brand, lavender scented conditioner gone? Nobody
was in this apartment besides herself, and she hadn't used it
all...
Of course.
Sally narrowed her eyes as the
answer struck her. Little conniving bastard would do such a dastardly deed to
repay her hospitality.
"Injustice," she mumbled. "This is just
pure injustice."
This is what she got for letting Wufei stay in
her apartment. This is what she got for taking pity on the poor dear who was
collapsing from overwork and bringing him to her humble adobe. This is what she
got for loving the little jerk enough to care for him.
Sally
sighed and tossed the empty bottle over the shower door. She was just going to
have to go to work with limp spaghetti hair. Oh well, no one would
notice.
Sally splashed some more water on her face before she
switched the faucet off. She'd kill Wufei later today, if she had time. She
popped open the shower door and groped blinded for a
towel.
Fortunately, someone kindly handed one to
her.
"Arigatou," she said as she accepted the towel and began to
dry her face.
Wait a minute. Someone handed her a
towel?
Sally cracked open an eye and
screamed.
Wufei casually stood there in his Preventers uniform,
his black hair free of his ever-present ponytail and he practically ~reeked~ of
lavender!
"Onna," he greeted and inclined his
head.
Sally frantically covered herself with the dinky towel.
"You...EECHI!" she spat and smacked him across the face.
Wufei
remained nonplussed as he rubbed his now stinging cheek. "We're late for
work."
Sally growled as she tried to think up a clever, witty,
and insulting reply. Nothing was forthcoming.
"There is coffee in
your travel mug downstairs. I also fixed you a bagel and I expect you to ~eat~
it before we leave. And thank you for the kind use of your shower facilities
earlier this morning," Wufei gave her a small kiss on the cheek and proceeded
out of the bathroom.
Sally grinned dumbly for a moment, touched
that he had gone through the trouble of assembling a quick breakfast for her.
And then she remembered the conditioner. And the fact he had just snuck up on
her in the shower. Not to mention he had probably spiked her bagel with
something too.
I'm going to kill him, she vowed as she stepped
out of the shower stall. I am going to kill
him.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
~Preventers HQ, 7:40
AM~
"T...h...e...space....e...n...d...period....file...save
as...report...one 't', baka, one...enter...and DONE!!!" Duo slid back from his
desk in exaltation. Finally, FINALLY, the damned report was OVER and DONE with!!
He could go home EARLY! He could wake Hilde up and get some breakfast! He
could--
The computer beeped.
Duo leaned forward,
an eyebrow raised. "'Not enough memory to save file,'" he read from the monitor.
Duo felt his jaw sag. "Wha--? No! Just...just no!!" he pulled open his desk
drawer in the vain hope that he had a computer disk or something else to save
his work to. "Bubble
gum...stapler...flashlight...screwdriver...headphones....hair ties...rubber
newt...a quarter...dammit! Don't I have a friggen' disk in here! Wait!" he
exclaimed as an idea struck him. "I can ~print~ it out! Yes! I have the answer!
Lesse...file...print...okay!"
Duo breathed a sigh of relief.
~Now~ he could go home to Hilde and the cat. Now he could reap the rewards of
spending six hours on his report. Now he could--
The computer
beeped again.
"'Cannot find printer.' Figures," he mumbled. Time
to break out the big guns. "Quuuuaaaatrrreeeeeeeeee!!!!" he bellowed, "Do you
have a spare disk or something so I can save my report and go the hell
home?!"
"Sure thing!" came the cheerful reply from across the
office. "Just give me a minute!"
"Take as long as you want,
Q-chan," Duo answered with a cheerful grin, already envisioning his homecoming.
"Say...does anyone else smell lavender?"
"Itai!! Baka onna, do
NOT kick me!!"
"Oh, you mean don't kick you like
this?"
"OW! What did I just say??"
"Chang, do you
honestly think I ~care~?"
"Yamero, onna!"
Duo
blinked and exchanged the same bewildered look with Quatre at the conversation
floating up the stairwell. His eyes shifted over to the clock and confirmed his
suspicions. Seven forty-five. Wufei and Sally were arriving.
The
stairwell door flew off its hinges as Wufei limped in, favoring his right leg.
Sally followed closely behind, her expression unbelievably
smug.
"Mornin' Wu-man! Mornin' Sally!" Duo cocked his head to the
side in confusion. "Ano...Sally? Why is your hair so
stringy?"
Duo was amazed at how perfectly Sally duplicated
Heero's Glare of Death.
Wufei gimped into his office, purposely
slamming the door behind him. Sally stuck her tongue out at the door and
smirked. "Jerk," she grumbled before stalking into her office and slamming her
door.
Duo groaned and hit his head on the desk, "Not again!" he
moaned, "Oh God, pleasepleaseplease, don't let them be in their stupid prank
phase again! Pleeaaassee!"
But his prayer went
unanswered.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
~Preventers HQ, 11:30
AM~
Duo sighed and threw yet another data disk into the
mountainous pile behind him. Nothing was working. He'd tried Quatre's disks,
Trowa's disks, official office disks and none of them had worked. He'd tried
coaxing the computer into cooperation with bribes of upgrades, repairs, and
games. He even tried having Quatre try to sweet-talk the machine! But somehow,
the computer was immune to Quatre's sweet charms.
Wufei and Sally
still had not budged from their respective offices, which was fine and dandy by
Duo's standards. When they got in the mode to pester each other, nothing, not a
jar of whiteout, not a coffee mug, not a desk lamp, and most certainly not
innocent ol' Shinigami were safe.
Unfortunately, Wufei and Sally
had the same lunch break in fifteen minutes.
Hell was about to
break loose and soon.
Duo sighed again. Hopefully, they'd have
enough sense to leave the computer system alone until he had managed to get his
report saved...
The door to Wufei's office creaked open and a
pair of onyx eyes peeked around the corner.
Duo cursed mentally.
Of course Wufei would want an early start on Sally! Why be considerate to the
people actually ~trying~ to do their jobs after all?
"Hey,
Wu-man," he greeted unenthusiastically and then crinkled his nose as he caught
an overwhelming whiff of lavender. "Damn! I didn't know you were a lavender
buff, Wu-chan!"
Duo was amazed at the second perfect rendition of
Heero's Glare of Death. And through an oak door,
nonetheless!
"Baka."
The rest of Wufei came around
the door carrying...Duo rubbed his eyes to make sure he was seeing correctly. A
piece of plywood and a hammer??
Wufei grinned maliciously and
limped over to Sally's office door.
Duo popped another disk into
the computer drive and pretended not to watch.
Wufei drew several
nails from his uniform jacket with one hand, while holding the plywood up to the
door with another. Very slowly, very deliberately, he started to pound one of
his nails into the board. When he finished, he held another nail in place and
started the process over again.
Duo swore he heard an evil
chuckle coming from Wufei's general direction.
Task completed,
Wufei pocketed his hammer, and then rapped on the door with his knuckles, "Onna!
Will you accompany me for lunch?"
Duo didn't hear Sally's reply.
He was too busy puzzling over how Sally could hear such a quiet little knock,
but not Wufei hammering her door shut.
He was snapped out of his
mild reverie when he heard Sally attempting to open her door, to no
avail.
"Dammit, Wufei!!" said the voice behind the sealed door,
punctuating each word with a pound on the door. "Wufei!! *pound, pound!* Open my
damn door! *pound, pound, fiddle with knob, pound!*
Chang!!"
Wufei meandered back on over to his office, ignoring
Sally's demands. "I ~told~ that baka onna to get a door that swung ~in~ not
~out~..."
His door clicked shut and Sally continued her futile
banging and cursing. Duo decided it was time for lunch, and bolted for the
stairs.
~*~*~*~*~*~
~Preventers HQ, 2:08
PM~
Duo was really beginning to wish for a window. With a window,
he could throw his computer out into the street and back to whatever dimension
of hell it had come from. As Shinigami, it was his job to kill and send those he
killed to hell...And he could always blame Wufei for such gratuitous acts of
violence...
He had given up the saving battle about a half-hour
ago, and opted for the all-too-productive staring at the screen and thinking
about
flyswatters.
"Aiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!"
Quatre
burst into the main office, sopping wet. Duo didn't even flick an eye. He
couldn't, for it'd require thinking about something else.
"WHERE
ARE THEY!?!?!?" Quatre demanded, eyes narrowed, fists clenched, and dangerously
close to a ZERO flashback.
"Who?" some little office lackey whose
name no one bothered to remember asked.
Quatre didn't bother to
answer his question. "One of them busted the water pipe that runs above the
bathroom!" he managed to spit out as he began to search the office for some sort
of deadly weapon.
Sally fell through the
ceiling.
All routine activity stopped so workers could stare as
she picked herself up, brushed some of the plaster remains off her uniform, and
picked up the enormous wrench that had fallen with her.
Sally
took one good look at Quatre and winced. She'd gotten the wrong one. She had
meant to bust the pipe when Wufei was in the bathroom. Unfortunately, it was
difficult to tell who was who through an opaque ceiling. Quatre glowered at her
and Sally swallowed. She'd heard stories of the Arabians unstable temper and had
no desire to have it played out on her.
"Ano...thank God for
hollow ceilings?" she tried, hoping to lighten the mood. "I mean, I might have
never gotten out of my office without one!"
Quatre twitched.
~*~*~*~*~*~
~Preventers HQ, 4:00
PM~
"Onna."
"Sally, Wufei. Say it
once."
"Onna."
Sally glanced up irritably from
picking up the pieces of what had once been her desk. "What? Come for payback?
It's your turn, right?" she shook her head, "No more today. I have to clean up
what Quatre tore up."
"I'm ahead, anyways."
"Wanna
bet?" she grumbled and turned back to the remains of her office. At least Quatre
had had the decency to wreck only ~official~ Preventers property and not
anything personal...Of course, Trowa had managed to talk to him and calm him
down before Quatre had gotten that far...
"I have the shower, the
conditioner, and the door on my side. You have measly little
kicks."
"I hurt you, didn't I?"
"Only a weakling
would admit to such things."
"I knew it," she smiled as she
pulled a miraculously intact vase and daisy from the wreckage of her
desk.
Outside, Duo continued to stare at his
monitor.
"Find a place for this, will you?" Sally asked as she
handed vase and flower up to Wufei.
Wufei took the vase and set
it back down on the floor. Sally sighed.
"Marry me,
onna."
Sally craned her neck around to get a good long look at
Wufei. He looked back at her; his face his normal impassively arrogant
mask.
"You're joking," she stated, "Have to beat me today, right?
Not just by one prank, but how many? Dozens?"
"I'm
serious."
"Sure you are." Wufei glared at her. Not just any
glare, but the how-in-the-hell-can-you-be-such-a-baka-onna?!?! glare. "You ~are~
serious, aren't you?"
Wufei rolled his
eyes.
"Ano...demo...ah..." Sally stuttered, suddenly at a loss
for words.
"Yes or no, onna," Wufei
prompted.
"SALLY," she corrected him before she went back to her
stutters, "...Wufei, we've...ah...been together for what now?...A week? Don't
you think...well, you know...don't you think it's a
little...~soon~?"
"No."
"How eloquent," she
remarked dryly. Sally picked up a wood splinter and twirled it about in her
hands as though it were suddenly the center of the universe. "I don't know,
Wufei...you pick such ~romantic~ times to ask questions like
these..."
Outside, at the computer, Duo blinked for the first
time in an hour.
"I suppose so...yes..." Sally finally settled
on.
Wufei then did something she never thought she'd see. He
smiled. Not one of his cute little grins, but a genuine, broad,
put-Shinigami-to-shame smile. He snatched the wood piece from her hand and
tossed it over his shoulder. "Thank you," he breathed as he brushed her knuckles
with his lips.
Duo cricked his neck and scrubbed at his eyes, and
desperately tried to figure out how long he'd been staring at the
computer.
Wufei glanced over his shoulder and stood, "Excuse me.
The baka is back among the living," and with that, he left.
Sally
gaped at the empty spot he had left behind for several moments, wondering just
what the hell she had gotten herself into. "Wait a minute..." she shot
indignantly to her feet. "That's it!? You ask me to marry you and you just
leave? That won't do, Chang Wufei, that just won't do at
all!"
Wufei ignored
her.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
~Preventers HQ, 8:13
PM~
Duo glanced at his watch and yawned. Being up and awake for
considerably more than twenty-four hours working on the exact same damn report
was not good for the soul. Or anything else for that matter. And it naturally
didn't help that Wufei had left his marriage proposal to Sally just to come
outside and snicker at him.
As the grump would say,
injustice.
On the other hand, the stupid Chang-Po War had ended
early with minor casualties. And he wasn't one of them! That was always a good
thing. Plus his computer decided to cooperate and read disks! (Strangely enough,
it had started working when Wufei had come over to laugh at him...) Now it was
only a matter of finding one that was ~empty.~ Then he was finally, ~FINALLY~,
home free.
Duo grinned in triumph as he finally found what he was
looking for. "Oh, thank you...lesse...file...save...how sweet the sound of a
disk being used!"
The office went stark black.
Duo immediately sat up and reached for his gun that he no longer
had. What was happening? An attack?
"Ha! Gotcha Chang! We're even
now!"
"Only weaklings fight through the circuit
breaker!"
Duo felt his lower lip begin to quiver as he realized
what had happened.
"They...cut...the...power...they...cut...the...po...wer..."
His
report he had spent so long typing up, thinking up creative euphemisms for, and
of course, the entire battle to get the thing saved...all
gone...
Duo let his head fall back down to his desk. He hoped
Hilde had a picture of him in the apartment somewhere to remember him
by...
~*~*~*~*~*~
--Dedicated to
Starlight. (even though you haven't READ any of my Wu-bear/Sally
stuff...>_<) I know I'm not ~THE ONE~ anymore, but I still love ya to
pieces. ^_~ Besides, I can see us acting like this...you say "silly girl", I
kick you in the shin...you sneak up in my shower, I have you beheaded in
France...
Yup, that's the peculiar third part. Got really strange
near the end...maybe a relapse from the drugs I was on for part
one?
And as for more inane holiday advice...Broadswords make for
very effective Christmas crowd control.
^_^
