Erza opened the front door of her apartment and was greeted by the scent of pine. That could only mean one thing; Lucy was about to miss a deadline. She walked through the apartment to the kitchen and found Lucy on her hands and knees scrubbing at the tiles in the corner with a toothbrush.
"You know you're just avoiding your writing assignment, don't you?" she asked the blonde.
"Erza, I have plenty of time," was the reply. "And did you see the state of this kitchen this morning? It was a complete mess!"
"As I recall," the redhead said as she leaned against a cabinet, "the breakfast dishes had been washed and were drying before I walked out the door," Lucy looked ready to object, "Aaaannnd there weren't any dishes left from dinner last night," she quickly added. "The sink was empty, the trash was taken out, and the counters were free of crumbs, as you've requested. So how could you say it was a mess?"
"Did you take a good look at the stove?" came the accusation. "The drip pans under the burners were filthy! And the gunk under them was just so gross," Lucy gave a shudder remembering the feel of the burned crunchy bits mixed with the greasy goo sliding under her fingers. "How could I possibly let you live in a house that had such terrible living conditions?" she said as she smiled up at Erza.
Erza smiled back but shook her head, "That couldn't have taken you very long and you're not cleaning the stove now," she pointed out.
Lucy sat back rolling her shoulders to ease some of the tension. "Well, once the stove was cleaned to my satisfaction I knew I had to do the oven because it's been ages since that was done." She stretched her arms above her head with a sigh. "What? Don't look at me like that," she said. "It all kind of snowballed from there. The cabinets had fingerprints along the edges and I noticed a lot of the shelves were dusty, too. With all of the dust in the air I turned on the vent and then realized that the filter was so clogged with grease and dirt that the air could hardly get past it. So of course I had to get out the degreaser to deal with that mess. But that meant the counters were dirty again so I had to clean them and noticed there were crumbs behind some of the canisters," she shot Erza a familiar look. It implied that Erza had not done her best to clean up, but had done just enough to be able to say she did what Lucy asked. "You know I don't want ants or other creepy-crawlies in here so I moved everything off of this side, cleaned it, then put it back and did the same for the other side. I swept the floor, but that just let me see how dirty the whole thing was, so I mopped but there are just some places that mop can't get," she said as she turned back to the corner to attack the grout again.
"Lucy," Erza asked incredulously, "what time are you supposed to have that article in?"
"Six o'clock," was the reply.
"And you remember that I got off work late today?" she prompted. "I told you we had to schedule a late meeting because one of the parents couldn't get out of work before four?"
"What?!" Lucy turned around to stare first at Erza and then the clock.
"You have twenty minutes to get your article written and sent in," Erza said and grinned.
"What? No way!" she wailed.
Lucy hauled herself up onto her legs. They were a little stiff from having been scrubbing for so long. She heard Erza laughing as she hobbled out of the room like an eighty-year old gnome. The laughter followed her as she sat down in front of the computer. Moving the mouse she found the blank screen staring at her. The few sentences she had managed to write sitting forlornly at the top with the cursor blinking in readiness.
"Procrastination is a thief of time. All it does is rob you of opportunities to actually do what you really want because you're putting off doing what you need to do..."
Lucy groaned.
"The kitchen looks great, by the way," Erza said from the archway.