Title: At Dusk
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters! "Moon Memory D" and all of the people therein are all the property of their respective creators (which, from what I understand, number too greatly for me to really start listing here). I'm not making any money off this, and no infringement is intended!
Spoilers: None
Pairing(s): Jezza/Osamu
Summary: After Kapek's world. While on a random world in-between adventures, Jezza and Osamu try to come to terms with their growing attraction to each other.
Author's Notes: I'll be honest, this is my first MMD fic. x.x It was supposed to just be a one-shot piece of fluff, but I think it's going to go further than that. I promise to do my best to do JezAmu justice!

The light bounced off the copper hair happily, shimmering as it dispersed into the slowly-darkening sky. The sun had almost set, but in some ways Jezza's hair managed to make the light's absence less noticable.

Osamu averted his eyes as Jezza looked upwards into the evening sky. He wasn't ready to tell her how he felt - he wasn't even sure himself about how he felt. But he didn't want to make her uncomfortable, and forced himself to look away from her shining scarlet eyes as they scanned the heavens above.

"Is it like yours?" Her voice came softly, showing no weakness but not as stern as it usually rang. Osamu looked down to her in surprise, his contemplations interrupted by her question.

"Is...what?" he said, and kicked himself mentally for saying it so poorly.

She looked at him curiously, pinning him with a red gaze that threatened to melt his trained heart. "The sky. Is this one like yours?" Her head turned back towards the heavens, her eyes skimming the brightening stars until they rested upon the purple moon that had already drifted into the sky.

Osamu looked upwards at the dark curtain as it settled itself into place over the world. "A little. The colors are different and..." He trailed off as he began focusing on the stars and their formations, unfamiliar to him in this universe. He shook his head. "The constellations I know are missing. The stars...they're all wrong."

He continued to study the sky, and thus missed Jezza's head turn back towards earth - or, more accurately, towards the man standing only a few feet from her. Jezza's cool crimson eyes studied Osamu's figure, softly silhouetted against the background of shining stars. She knew the basics of seduction for power, but had never once employed them herself. The idea intrigued her, but disgusted her at the same time. In the end, she preferred to earn her rewards fairly, leaving her opponent no opportunity to cry foul.

The solemn scholar looked back down towards Jezza, accidentally fixing her eyes with his. "You know what my sky is like," he pointed out, trying desperately - and failing - to break their locked gazes. "You've been to my world."

Jezza nodded slowly, then broke the gaze by shifting her eyes back towards the sky. "Yes," she admitted nonchalantly, "but I wasn't paying attention."

Silence fell upon the two, stretching its legs and getting ready for a long run. Its preparation was shattered, however, by Kaiyu's shouting down below. "Jezza! Osamu! We gotta go now!" The flash of blue hair bobbed for a moment, then bolted off in search of the other crew members.

Suddenly indecisive, Osamu unintentionally stared as Jezza climbed to her feet, then tore his eyes away as she noticed his gaze. "I, ah, suppose it's time to go, then," he stammered, fiddling nervously with the hem of his sleeve. He gave her a moment to leave, then glanced towards her again.

She stood there, watching him fidget, with something resembling a knowing smile growing on her face. "Yeah, I suppose so." A fizzling sound echoed throughout the valley at the end of her sentence, and the Slipstream slid into existence over the next hill. Kaiyu was bounding up the grassy hillside, dragging an exhausted Martyr behind him. Jezza smirked as she watched the rest of the group start loading into the ship.

Osamu realized this was his chance to say something, to say anything, to express to Jezza how he may or may not feel. His conflicting emotions roiled inside him, and he managed to choke out, "We should go," and take a few meager steps down the hill. Internally, he kicked himself for his inability to be truthful with Jezza, but rationalized it with the certainty that he would have several more opportunities to do so.

All this bubbled in his head before Jezza snatched his arm and pulled him back up the hill. He looked up at her in shock, his brown eyes swimming with confusion and speculation. Beneath the surface of his skin, he could feel all-too-familiar demonic rage starting to boil in response to being manhandled in such a way. But before he could utter a word in protest, her lips had met his and then parted, and she was down the hill before he had the presence of mind to blink.

He watched, dumbfounded, as she climbed the hill and boarded the Slipstream without even taking a single glance back. For a moment he pondered sitting, but his vision was quickly obscured by a large anthropomorphic cat that had just arrived.

"We have to go," Kapek said, keeping the same stoic demeanor as always. If he had seen what had transpired between Osamu and Jezza, he made no mention or indication as such. Osamu nodded, steadying his balance and following Kapek back towards the ship in silence.