Jadeite's phone rang, and he scrambled to find it before Rei could notice that he had a cute, bouncy J-pop tune as his ring tone—in his rush to get out the door, he'd forgotten to change it to something less embarrassing. Unfortunately, his scrambling was impeded by his current state of intoxication, and it was several seconds before he managed to dig it out. He recognized the number as Nephrite's and answered. "Hey, man. 'Sup?" he slurred, in what Minako referred to as his "drunken surfer dude voice."
"Hey. Are you anywhere near a video rental?"
"Uh…" Jadeite pondered. "Maybe. Rei, babe, where are we?" he shouted, as if she were a block away instead of sitting right next to him in the driver's seat.
Silence.
"Ri-ight, you're not talking to me right now. I forget why." Even through the haze of alcohol, exasperation was clear in Jadeite's voice. Moments later he brightened. "Oh, hey, I know where we are. Roppongi! I love Roppongi. Back in college I knew a guy who used to live there. Folks owned a restaurant. Great meat pies. Except I was a vegetarian in college." Suddenly, Jadeite remembered that he was on the phone. "You want a meat pie, Neph?"
"No, I do not want a meat pie. I want you to pick up a movie for the party tomorrow."
"Sure thing. What kinda movie do you want?"
"The girls want to watch 'Otoko wa Tsurai yo.'"
There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and Nephrite began to wonder if his friend had fallen asleep. "Are you sure?" Jadeite croaked, disbelief in his voice.
"Yes," Nephrite said grumpily. "What, do you think I picked it?"
"Well, all right. See you in a little while."
Three hours, a case of beer, a half gallon of milk, and a pair of migraines later, Nephrite and Makoto managed to herd their visitors out the door. Makoto yawned, stretched until her back cracked, and collapsed onto the couch, looking as weary as he felt. "That Minako," she sighed, frustration mingling with fondness in her voice. "She never runs out of energy. Or appetite."
Nephrite scowled. "She ate my entire stash of barbecue chips."
"Those things are bad for you, anyway," Makoto said, wrinkling her nose. She glanced at the clock. "Jadeite's awfully late."
"Yeah. And thoroughly besotted, as usual. He kept rambling on about meat pies on the phone."
"At least he's a happy drunk."
"Yeah," Nephrite half-laughed, half-grunted. "Better than my old man." His lips tightened in a rueful smile, and he turned away from her. The thought of his father, his wooden, cruel, deaf, stumbling father, his broken, weak, apologetic father, brought all the bitterness inside him rushing to the surface. And there it found an easy target. "It's no wonder Mizuno-san thinks I'll become a wife-beater, considering my family history."
"Stop it," Makoto said. She knew where this was going, and it usually ended with one of them sleeping on the couch.
"Setting aside the fact that she's not a psychiatrist, and that she made this expert analysis a scant day after our first date…"
"Neph, please. I don't need this right now." Beneath her grumpiness was a note of pleading.
He jerked his head around, anger twisting his features. She knew him well enough to know it was not directed at her, but it made her cringe nonetheless. "Maybe you should be afraid of me. Hell, I've half turned into my father already! Quitting my job for no reason, drinking myself stupid to avoid dealing with your friends…" He gestured toward the pile of empty beer cans for emphasis.
She crossed the room in quick strides and caught him by the shoulders, forcing him to look her in the eye. He didn't put up much of a struggle. No matter how dark a mood he was in, those verdant orbs drew him in, warm and cool at once like dappled sunlight in a forest. She held onto his arms until she felt him relax. "I will never be afraid of you," she said.
He took a deep breath and let his head tilt down to touch her forehead to his. "I know."
A spasm of relieved laughter shook her, and he realized for the first time how tense she had been. She reached up to run her fingers through his wavy hair. "You're going to get the job," she assured him, and she sounded so confident that in that moment he believed her. "And you are not an alcoholic. Zoisite drank more than you."
He managed a smile. She leaned against his chest, suddenly overcome with tiredness. Adding to her exhaustion was the knowledge that she would be incredibly busy come morning. Minako was great at planning, and Rei was paying for everything, but Makoto knew when it came down to it she was going to be doing most of the actual labor. She and Nephrite were hosting as usual, and that meant they would be doing all the setting up, cleaning up, cooking, and apologizing to the neighbors afterward.
"Come to bed," she said. "We've both got a big day tomorrow."
Hovering just out of sight in the hallway, Zoisite watched Ami review her packing checklist one more time. She had been through it twice last night, but she hadn't been very focused thanks to him. A weaselly grin crept over his face as he silently congratulated himself. He excelled at distraction.
Ami folded one more extra pair of socks, tucked them into her suitcase, and admired her handiwork. Good. All she had left to do was take a video of her lecture up to the university. This trip to Europe had unfortunately fallen right in the middle of the semester, but Ami was not about to leave her students without a professor, so she had recorded the next month's worth of lessons in advance. They were a bright, dedicated bunch, and she knew her assistant could field any questions they might have. She would still worry, of course, but in the worst case she was only a phone call away. Technology was wonderful that way.
She reached for a marker to label the disc.
Moments later, Ami's startled cry brought Zoisite running. He stopped short on the threshold of the living room, unsure whether to groan in dismay or break out laughing. She sat on her knees in the middle of the room, arms out from her sides, hands twitching in small frantic motions. Blue ink had sprayed all over the front of her shirt and speckled the clothes in her suitcase. Her hands and face were covered with the stuff, and her attempts to wipe it off her glasses only made matters worse.
"I-I just… all I did was take off the cap and it… I can't see… help!" she finished pathetically. Zoisite felt a rush of warm fuzziness at being needed, followed by a small prickle of guilt at enjoying her distress. He scooped her up bridal style and carried her to the bathroom.
"Oh no! It got all over the suitcase!" Ami cried.
"I'll take your things over to the coin laundry across the street. But first, let's get you cleaned up. Here, I'll help."
She protested. He persisted. And she got distracted again.
Nephrite's weathered hands pressed an orange down over the juicer. He squeezed every drop of sweet liquid out of the fruit and tossed the peel into the sink, licking his fingers afterward.
"Jadeite didn't come home last night, did he?" Makoto said, glancing at the door with a worried frown.
Nephrite smirked. "I knew he and Hino-san were back together, but I didn't know they were that back together. I expected her to hold out a little longer than the first date."
"I don't know," said Makoto, "does it really count as the first date if he's your ex?"
"The kind of fights they have, you can't just pick up where you left off. It gets brutal at the end."
"I know. I was there for the last one," she reminded him. "But maybe some people enjoy that sort of thing." Makoto certainly wasn't one of them, but if near-constant strife somehow made Rei happy... well, she was a grown woman, and she'd never had a problem saying no to something she didn't want.
"Still, after the seventh or eighth go-round I'd think it would get old," Nephrite said with a snicker.
Makoto felt suddenly guilty for mocking her friends behind their backs. "I just hope they're safe. They could be lying in a ditch somewhere," she pointed out.
"Well, wherever he is, he'd better have my car back by noon."
Makoto glanced at the clock. "Then you'd better get that jacket to the cleaner's before noon."
Nephrite downed his glass of juice and sighed. "I'm heading over right after breakfast."
Ami sat at a table in the coin laundry, drumming her fingers impatiently on the linoleum as she watched her clothes tumbling behind the dryer's circular window. Zoisite had no business complaining. She had tried to stop him. It was his own fault that he'd gotten ink all over his clothes. And his hair. And his… well anyway, he wasn't the one about to leave on an international journey!
She forced herself to take a deep, cleansing breath and think positive thoughts. The stains would come out. There would be no need to find a new lab coat or reschedule her flight. In a few hours everything would be back on track, and would stay that way, because she was well prepared for this trip.
She had nearly convinced herself when a rich baritone intruded on her thoughts. "Mizuno-san. Fancy meeting you here."
Closing her eyes, Ami steeled herself for what she knew would be a thinly-veiled confrontation. It figured that at the third most stressful time of her life (first place was that whole Mercurius incident, and second was pre-allocated for the rise of Crystal Tokyo), she was confronted with the one person who put her on edge more than Zoisite.
"Hello, Shimeba-san. How are you?"
"The usual." Nephrite leaned against the wall with an air of casual elegance. In spite of herself, Ami felt a tiny bit jealous of his natural confidence. Self-assurance was something she'd had to learn over the years, and there were days when it was still a conscious effort. Nephrite, on the other hand, always seemed to think he was the center of the universe, though Makoto said otherwise.
"There's a side of him you don't see," Makoto had told her when she'd mentioned it in passing. The way that she made excuses for Nephrite, the way that all her friends seemed to get defensive when she made honest observations about their significant others, bothered her more than anything. But she trusted their judgment enough not to make a scene about it.
"How is Mako-chan?" she asked in an effort to make polite conversation. Immediately she kicked herself for bringing up the very subject that caused most of the friction between them.
"She's doing well. We're doing well," he replied, with an edge of defiance in his voice as if he'd proven her wrong about something.
"That's good."
Awkward silence.
The dryer buzzed, and she bent to pull out her clothes. "So, what brings you here so early in the morning?" she asked as she started to match up stray socks.
"An unfortunate mishap," he said with a scowl. She had to remind herself that he wasn't angry with her, he just didn't mask his emotions—another of his habits that set her on edge.
"Me too, actually."
"Oh?"
Ami summed up the incident in one word. "Ink."
She wondered if he would explain what had happened to him, but he went back to staring into the washing machine with the same stormy expression. She was not inclined to seek trouble when there was none, so she finished folding in silence. It was a relief when his phone rang and turned his attention elsewhere.
Nephrite grinned as he answered. "Jadeite, you sly old dog. You spent the night at Rei's." Ami froze mid-fold, listening intently.
Jadeite laughed nervously. "Yeah, about that…"
"What?" Nephrite prompted when he wavered.
Ami shook her head and forced herself to focus on her clothes. It wasn't polite to eavesdrop, and anyway, she knew she'd be getting the whole story from Minako later. For all her complaints about the Paparazzi, the young talk show hostess shared a similar appetite for scandal, and Ms. I'm-too-good-for-you Hino Rei's spending the night with her ex-ex-boyfriend would never pass under her radar.
"I left your car keys at home when I came back to get dressed, so I couldn't drive back. It was so late that Rei's grandfather insisted I stay the night," Jadeite explained. "Which means your car's stuck here."
Nephrite rolled his eyes. He should have known it was something like that. "Fine, I'll take a bus up to get it. Where did you leave the keys?"
"They're in my jacket pocket."
Nephrite's shoulders sank as he stared at the swirling suds of the washing machine, and the neat line of warning text printed above the latch: "Door cannot be opened once cycle has started."
"Nephrite? You there?"
"I… have to go," Nephrite said numbly, and hung up before Jadeite could reply.
As Ami had predicted, Minako was at that moment pressing Makoto for information. Today was Thursday, and the two had a tradition of meeting for breakfast before Makoto opened her flower stand in the park. Sipping her tea and listening to her friend chattering happily about her latest celebrity guest, Makoto was amazed at how her voice could be a shrill harbinger of headaches one day and a cheerful balm the next. Right now, she felt content simply basking in her overflowing enthusiasm. It was almost the same feeling she got around Usagi, except with a little more dramatic flair and a lot less naivety.
Minako leaned forward and rested her chin on the back of her hands. Lowering her voice in a conspiratorial whisper, she asked, "So, did Jadeite really stay at Rei's last night?"
"Yeah. I think so," Makoto said, reminding herself never to underestimate Minako's rumor network. She was quick to add, "probably because he was too drunk to drive home."
Minako's sapphire eyes narrowed mischievously. "Maybe and maybe not, but you can bet I'll be dragging the details out of Rei-chan later."
Makoto felt sorry for Rei. They had all come to dread Minako's post-date interrogations.
"I wonder when they're gonna get serious," Minako pondered.
"Honestly, I don't know if they ever will." Makoto felt bad for saying it, but it was true. Maybe both of them enjoyed the rocky ride, the thrill of the chase, more than sharing a lasting relationship.
"Hmm. I'm not sure yet," Minako said. "There won't be any progress the way things are now."
"Progress?" Makoto repeated dubiously.
"With couples like them, something has to snap first. They've got all this tension building." She illustrated by wiggling her fingers menacingly at one another. "And because both of them are so stubborn, it's just going to keep growing, until all of a sudden it breaks loose, like… like…"
"A bolt of lightning?" Makoto offered.
"Yes! Exactly! And after that, they're in balance."
"Let's just hope we're not around when it strikes," Makoto said with a shudder. They both laughed.
"So anyway. For Ami's party, I had this great idea for decorations. We'll get an inflatable airplane—"
"No."
"Come on! You haven't even heard it yet."
"No. You are not bringing an airplane into my house. Even a rubber one."
"Hear me out!"
"I still remember New Year's."
"Aww, come on…"
As fate would have it, the road Minako took home after breakfast brought her strolling around the corner just as a harried Nephrite burst out of the coin laundry. She waved at him, and for once, he looked excited to see her.
"Aino-san!" he exclaimed, his usual dread at talking to her overridden by the urgency of his predicament. "Listen, I need a favor," he said before she could launch into some elaborate story about whatever was going on in her life at the moment.
For a moment, she seemed taken aback at his abruptness, but she shrugged and agreed, "Okay! What?"
"In there," he said, pointing back toward the coin laundry, "is Jadeite's jacket. In about ten minutes I need you to get it out, dry it, and take it back to my place."
She gulped as the realization dawned on her. "That's right… he still has your car!"
"And my interview's at noon. It's a quick trip down the freeway, but it's forty minutes by bus."
"Man, you're screwed."
"You're telling me," he grumbled. "You've got the jacket, then?"
"Don't worry, don't worry. I'll take care of it," she assured him. "Trust me!"
"Thanks," he said. Then he was off down the street toward the bus station. Minako waved at him until he was out of sight.
It was approximately two seconds after that when she realized her grave mistake. She had a hair appointment in ten minutes, and there was no way she was rescheduling. Her stylist was the only one in the city who knew how to do her hair right, and he was booked solid for the next three weeks.
"No worries," she hummed to herself, whipping out her phone. "That's what friends are for!"
As Ami stepped out of the laundry room, teetering under a pile of freshly folded clothes, a male figure crashed into her. Both of them stumbled and dropped everything they were carrying.
"I'm sorry!" she apologized.
"My fault, totally," a familiar voice said.
Ami looked up and smiled. "Jadeite-san." Dusting herself off with one hand, she reached for the disc she'd dropped, just as Rei came running from the parking lot.
"You guys all right?"
"Oh, hello Rei-chan. Yes, we're fine."
Jadeite handed her the DVD. "Is this yours?"
"Ah, yes, thank you." With all the commotion she had forgotten to label it again, she noticed. She would have to take care of that later.
Rei and Jadeite helped Ami collect her laundry, which thankfully hadn't gotten too dirty. After a few minutes of small talk, Ami told them she'd better be on her way.
"All right. See you toni—" Jadeite began, before a sharp nudge from Rei reminded him that the party was supposed to be a surprise. "See you later," he amended. He turned to go.
An impulse seized her. "Jadeite-san. I know you and Shimeba-san are close. I was wondering."
"Yes?"
She hesitated, then shook her head. "Oh, never mind. Have a nice day!"
He watched with a puzzled face as she left, then shook his head and followed Rei inside. "So, what are we here for?" he asked.
"I'm not sure. Minako wanted me to pick up some kind of jacket…"
