"Hey, there's Perry."

"Well, duh, looks like he's sleeping."

Phineas turned towards his big sister with a worried look on his face.

"But that's the thing, he's right there. In fact he hasn't been disappearing for a week now."

Candace shrugged.

"Isn't that good, then? I mean, I don't see what the problem here is. That our pet is safe and sound?"

The boy sat down next to Perry's basket and petted him.

"I guess you're right. But he seems, I don't know, less energetic than before. Maybe he's sick or something."

"Well, he's a platypus. They don't do much."

Perry got up and walked to his food-bowl, trying to appear active enough to look healthy, but inactive enough to be described as 'not doing much'. He wouldn't want his family to worry about him, or start suspecting something was wrong.

But the truth was he hadn't left the house for a week now.

The doctor had apparently put his schemes on a hiatus, and hadn't given the organization any reason to send Perry to stop him for a whole week. And Perry had stayed away from D.E.I. But at this rate Major would eventually send him over to the doctor's place, if just to check on him.

And a part of Perry wished it would be soon.

Then he'd have to take some action, do something about this mess.

Maybe it would be better to request being assigned to another nemesis.

But that might also mean he'd be assigned a new host family.

So not only had he ruined any animosity he had had with his nemesis, he had also risked losing his family. How could he had been so foolish? Well, it was too late to worry about it. Regret wasn't one of the feelings Perry felt often. If a mistake had been made, it was no use feeling bad about it, that would only interfere with the efforts to fix the problem. You just did your best to set things right, and tried to learn from your mistakes.

But now he didn't have any idea how to go on about fixing this.

He was shaken from these bleak thoughts by a bleep from his wrist-communicator.

Perry crashed in through the window, landing on a fighting pose. Any hesitations he might have had disappeared as he worked almost on muscle memory alone, doing something he had done countless times before.

But as he was trapped in front of his nemesis, it all started to come back.

"Ah, Perry the Platypus, I was wondering when you'd show up. Do you like the trap? It's an old projector, I borrowed it from Professor Douser, actually, so I'd appreciate it if you escaped it without breaking it. Originally I was planning to trap you by wrapping you in film, but when I thought about it I realized I had already done that, so I had to improvise."

So this was it? He just planned to keep on going like they had before and pretend that it had never happened? It was definitely a relief. But on the other hand, part of Perry couldn't help but to feel disappointed. He had gone through all that worrying and planning for things to stay completely the same?

He wasn't exactly certain what he had expected, but maybe this was what must happen; things must stay the same. What exactly had happened? Had the doctor forgotten? No matter, Perry would worry about that later.

He started working on escaping from being squeezed between the projector reels, when the doctor spoke.

"So, Perry the Platypus, this is how we are going to do this,"

Perry stopped his escape-attempt, giving the doctor his undivided attention, ready to listen to whatever backstory he was about to give this time.

"See this?"

He gestured to the inator behind him.

"This is my latest invention. The Monochrominator! It drains color from things. I'll tell you the whole backstory that explains this whole scheme. Then you escape, we fight, and so on. The usual. But! This time there's something additional at stake. You see, Perry the Platypus, afterwards we are going out to have dinner and after that go to the movies. And if you manage to thwart me and destroy my inator I'll pay for the dinner and you get to choose the movie. And if I win, you'll treat me to dinner and we will see a movie of my choosing, a black-and-white film, I suppose."

The scientist stopped his well-rehearsed-sounding speech, and continued on a much more uncertain tone:

"So, uh, if, you know- If I didn't totally misinterpret that whole thing you did the other day, in which case this is kinda awkward, not that we couldn't just go on a date as friends or enemies, as the- Um…"

Silence, that mirrored the one when Perry had kissed him, fell. Like back then, Perry was uncertain how to proceed, but now there was the feeling things were moving to the right direction. And clearly it was his turn to respond, in order to move things along.

"Krkrkrt…"

"Really? I mean, I'm going to take that as a 'yes', because of how embarrassing it would be otherwise, and by the way, I'm sorry about this scheme, I mean, it's a great one, I actually think I have a slight chance of not ending up paying for the date here! Which might be a problem, now that I think about it, since I'm not sure if you have any money, although I guess that since you have a job, you must also be paid? Anyway, as I was saying, before I interrupted myself, I think it would have been nicer if this scheme would be something special, Charlene never forgot our first date, although that might have been because of the exploding water-heater and all the rather aggressive ducks, and now I'm thinking I probably shouldn't talk about my ex-wife, considering, but you already know about her and I guess you won't mind, since you know how it is, and I think I probably should stop talking?"

Perry nodded.

"Yes, thought so."

Another silence, but shorter and less awkward this time.

"Anyway, time for BACKSTORY! I never forget the first movie I saw, although you must remember that when I say ''movie', I mean the Druelselsteinian equivalent which involved the travelling barber-surgeon reenacting movies he had seen with some potatoes- "

And with that, all the awkwardness melted away, and both the evil scientist and the secret agent fell back into the comfortable routine.

Everything had gone back to normal. Well, almost.

Perry supposed there would be a lot of awkwardness ahead, for one he had no good idea what one was expected to do on a first date, but he was confident he could improvise.

And maybe, even if things went a bit wrong, it would all turn out for the best in the end.

A/N: The end.

I have plans for other Perry/Doof stories, both romantic and non-romantic, and maybe I'll update 'Recollection' one of these days too…

EDIT: I have now started the sequel to this story,
Moments when we got along (and some when we didn't)

Also, as a side note, Professor Douser is one of those characters I made up for something else that I might actually finish and submit here at some point, (so not an actual reference to the series). She is one of the L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N. members.