Disclaimer: Jinx is written by Meg Cabot and all recognizable characters belong to her.
Pairing: Zack/Jean
Author's Notes: Just a drabble (if a drabble can be 509 words). I reread Meg Cabot's Jinx, and Jean comments that Zack will eventually figure out that she is a witch. It got me wondering about what it would take for him to believe. This is the first of what will probably be many "shots of life" that will hopefully lead up to a longer, more climactic piece.
He walks out of the back door and sees her kneeling there, hands in the dirt, hair piled messily on top of her head, tendrils falling softly around her face, and his heart squeezes tightly in his chest. He doubts that he'll ever get used to it-this punch he takes in the gut whenever he sees her. He stands there, just watching her work. He enjoys these moments when he catches Jean unawares, and can just watch her. She is so elegant in a totally oblivious way. And Jean loves her plants. She lovingly strokes a bud after tugging a weed out of the ground. She smiles softly and calls out, "Circe, get out of the chrysanthemums, please. You know they don't like it when you do that."
His forehead creases with a slight frown as he sees her cat, Circe, jump out of the flower bed behind her and sit next to her, meowing plaintively.
"I know you like how they taste," Jean murmurs, "but really, would you like it if someone nibbled on you?" Circe meows and she chuckles throatily, making something thrill up his spine. It doesn't distract him, however, from the fact that his girlfriend is talking to her cat and the cat is seemingly responding. He's always known that she was a little different, aside from the preacher's daughter in a big city thing. But he doesn't believe in that stuff, he never has, but the way some things happen around Jean makes him wonder that maybe, just maybe, there could be a little more than meets the eye when it comes to her.
Circe meows again and twitches her head, and Jean hums in her throat. "Company coming?" She pulls out one last weed and looks up at him, and his bemused frown softens as her glowing green eyes smile up at him. "Hello, Zack. Classes over for the day?"
He smiles. "Yeah. Thought I'd stop by before I went to work."
"Well, then," she says, standing up and wiping some hair out of her face, and in the process smearing dirt on her cheek. Something in his gut twists and he takes a sharp breath. "Let me go clean up and we can-"
He grabs her by the elbows and pulls her up against him. He barely sees the surprised expression on her face before he bends his head down and captures her lips. He's hungry, almost desperate for her, and it shows in his kiss. Her mouth is soft and warm, and it yields quickly under his.
He pulls away only when the need for breath nags at him. She looks up at him with glazed eyes and smiles slightly. "What was that for?" She wonders a breathlessly. He reaches up and curls his hand against her jaw.
"For just being you," he murmurs, and then he takes her mouth again and nothing else matters, not cats talking or the idea that maybe there could possibly be witches or even the dirt on her hands: just him, and her, and this moment. The rest could wait.