by Purple Mongoose/PallaPlease
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Curses: Urgh! Yet again, the site addresses weren't loaded. Garfunkel, that makes me irritable. Grr! _o; Behold my irritable face and quake in mindless fear before it! ~0! Uber-irritable face cannot be defeated, no matter what you try. Mwahaha. Right, okay, I'm marginally done being weird. I'll have links to the pics up on my bio in a day or so, okay? (With many apologies to Lyn's Kick Ass Sanji shrine for using them…sorry! Sorry! Sorry! *bows repeatedly*)
Sanji: He's a guy. With practically no form of self-control/morals. Fun!
Day: Picking right up where the last part left off! Sheesh, do you people really think I'm evil enough to skip to days later?
Continuity: My general reaction to the idea of canon is something along the lines of, what is this odd thing of which you speak? Nonetheless, I think it's after SMStars, with abso-posi-lutely no One Piece continuity in any form, manner, or whatever word that means the same thing as 'form' and 'manner.'
Gobble: Beware rampant dirty jokes, a still-blushing Ami, Sanji in his perpetual state of flattery, and fun things like plotholes. Mmm: plotholes are yummy.
Summary: [One Piece/Sailor Moon] When Minako's plan for a relaxing evening after defeating the universe's greatest evil involved a nightclub, Ami was by no means expecting to actually enjoy herself!
New: Following her unexpected third kiss in the past sixteen hours, Ami is nothing if not horribly mortified, while Sanji is somewhere on the opposite end of the spectrum.
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You're not the only table turnin' tonightYa know the beat is pumpin' from inside
Put down your headphones and come dancing with me
Let the vinyl go free
She's got a groove that will make you feel funky
She's got a body you wanna take home
She licks the lips that you gotta know better
Hey Miss DJ, how do I get you alone?
-Hall and Oates, 'Miss DJ'
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The taste of cigarettes was strong and bitter, peeking through the faintest part of her mouth and swarming in with all its thick grandeur as his lower lip rolled over hers, mouth closing in an embrace of cloying, heady dried moistness around the startled curve of her own lip. He was warm, his hand pressing with its open palm along the sensitive small of her back, and his lips were pleasantly damp; it was not half as undesirably moist as she might have feared it would be had she been given time to peruse the subject before he grabbed her and proceeded to kiss her with remarkable abandon. A foreign brush of teeth swept across the expanse of her captured lip and, horrified as she recognized the sound of Minako giggling uncontrollably, she jerked back with a violent stabbing of her feet to the tiles. She nearly toppled backwards over his arm and made a quite frightened 'oh' sound in spite of his protectively tightening grip.
I couldn't possibly die soon enough, Ami thought despairingly as she fumbled to pull his hand from her waist and regained her balance. She was very pleased that she managed to maintain a semblance of dignity, calmly brushing her hands over her skirt whilst keeping her head down for fear she might see his expression and be perpetually flustered. As it was, two thin hands plummeted to grab her shoulders in a gentle, if firm, grip and tilt her up so he could stare at her face, the grey of his gradually dying cigarette bobbing as though he was chewing or playing with the end in his mouth, his heavily lidded eye of icy blue specked with black slivering over her features.
She had the inane desire to spontaneously combust or be struck by a freak bolt of lightning, so long as the irritably present feeling of tangible discomfort, as well as that disconcerting tingling, would simply take leave of her consciousness and plague her at more reasonable times such as when she was battling indescribable evil. Embarrassing things such as this always made a great deal more sense when she was choking via a particularly vicious strangle hold. Briefly, it crossed her mind perhaps these strands of thought were not quite what one would consider in the vein of normal, but the feel of his smooth fingertips tapping the underside of her chin effectively disturbed her mind from completing its chosen quest of proving her insanity. "Um," she began intelligently, shifting her weight from one leg clasped in pastel blue leggings to the other, the cloth of her darker blue miniskirt rustling in quiet mockery.
"Ah!" he suddenly cried, an almost child-like expression of sly glee spreading over his fine features as she blinked and felt her own features contorting once more with the thick fiery flush combing her skin into shades of red usually not seen on the human face. "My exquisite nightclub angel!" He stepped back a glorious pace, shifting the cigarette more definitely to the corner of his mouth and absently flicking the soothingly warm pad of his thumb across the dip just below her lips, where a nearly imperceptible trace of ash had taken up residence following the unheralded kiss; she thought mayhap she had somehow frozen herself solid, and whether or not this sudden inability to move could mean nasty things in the future.
Somewhere in the unfortunately prominent background, both of her fellow omnipotent fellow senshi were making mortifyingly goopy comments she could only wish were not so painfully audibly, and she clenched her jaw in a wave of irritation that balled up in her gut almost angrily. Sanji's hands abandoning her small shoulder and tapered face stung her mind in a flash, tugging her from internalized fuming to a slightly more uncomfortable reality, and she prepared her limbs to hastily, clumsily stumble toward the door in hopes of escaping this situation, the sort she had avoided to the best of her capabilities for many a year.
This, sadly, was not to be, as his muted peach hand closed around the slender circumference of her wrist.
"Ami," said he in a light voice tinged with honeyed teasing, the thin corner of his mouth twitched up faintly in a manner that sparked a wave of self-conscious awareness in her throat and chest, completely tossed off-guard by the carefully guarded predatory undertones that crafty smile offered, especially as it was directed at her of all people. Instantly, as she attempted to beat back the urge to squirm and possibly spout off a nervous lecture over civility and basic human etiquette, his face adopted an innocently sunny grin that flashed teeth in a way that successfully avoided melting into toothy obnoxiousness. "I feared I'd never see you again!" he confessed, his sleek voice verging close to piteous sing-song, his one visible eye flickering shut playfully as he clasped her hand to his lips, brushing the roughened softness over one knuckle and sparking another flood of redness; had he just licked her knuckle?
There was absolutely no reason why God or Queen Serenity could not just tear her soul from her body right at this moment and spare her the agony of merely existing, what with the horribly public things that seemed to be stalking her over the course of the past sixteen hours or so. Casting a desperate plea for help from her two friends, she came close to groaning loudly at the sheer irony of her abnormally slow realization that, somehow, someway, Minako and Makoto had set the current scenario up. "R-really," she offered with a weak smile, tucking her hand away from his and clasping it, fisted, in the stern grip of her other hand behind her skirt. "That's, um, well," and she was fast losing whatever delicate thread of resolve was carrying her along, the blush spreading to her unusually choked-feeling throat.
Before he could act on the somewhat suggestive appearance warning he was about to throw general rules of society out the window and kiss her again, a devilishly grinning Minako was hovering distractively at her elbow, flinted blue eyes glimmering with what could only be described as demonic intrigue. Her lips curved up cattily as she touched a hand in cruel thought to her chin, catching both Ami's attention as well as that of Sanji's more flirtatious one. "Ami," she said in her songbird lecturing tone, "how rude of you not to introduce us!"
"Very unlike you, Ami," came Makoto's gentler rebuke and she twisted around slightly to see the taller girl standing, hands placed on her hips in jest as she shook her head mournfully. "I mean, really, how can we be good chaperones if you don't even help us out just a little with your boyfriend?"
"Makoto!" Ami shrieked, her face brightening with horror before she clapped her hands to her face, moaning pitifully and shaking her head side to side as her chin sunk to level with her dainty collarbone. "Oh, it isn't fair," she moaned brokenly in a voice that was incomprehensible past the shelter of her hands. The strong hand of Makoto caught her forearm, gently tugging her along toward one of the booths as the eldest of the three girls laughed comfortingly, her other arm winding behind Ami's back in a protective hug whilst Minako turned her stunning smile on the delighted Sanji.
"We're Aino Minako and Kino Makoto, by the way," added the cheerful blonde girl in sturdy reply. She gestured at the appropriate times, once at herself and the second time at her auburn-haired companion, and he spared a flashy bow for them both.
"So," she all but cooed, inwardly cackling, hooking her arm around his and sauntering to the booth Makoto was currently assisting a still-miserable Ami to its candy-red leather seats, "tell me about yourself, Mister Sanji."
He winked at her and she cackled even harder in her mind, to the point where a barely repressed giggle pierced her lips with its goofiness as he turned slightly to yell, "Hey, dumbass boss-man!" Motoki congenially turned to look, releasing his mop against the wall and preparing to do his rounds in the adjoined arcade, and gave him a friendly, if strained, look. "I'll be a minute." Motoki's nod was weary.
Minako took advantage of his temporary distraction, sharing a conspiratorial wink with Makoto, who mouthed something akin to we need to survey him!
"My name is Brooks Sanji," he said once the three girls were at the booth, the blonde girl scooting over the leather and grinning at the dark-haired genius pinned between herself and the athletic brunette. "The Japanese say it surname first, no?" he then asked, in precaution, pinning the cigarette with his thumb and forefinger, pulling it from his lips and twirling it for a moment around his fingers. "Anyway, my grandfather was from India and my other grandfather was Japanese, and they wanted me to learn the Oriental arts of cooking. As any artist knows, if one wants well to learn an art, it is best to go where the art is birthed." Ami nodded absently in sage agreement and he flashed a bright smile at her, the soft bangs of gold cast over his left eye shifting just so, and she suddenly seemed to realize what she was doing, her face switching to watching the table with great interest.
"So you came to the Crown Parlor," Minako said slowly.
"Side job," he said cheerfully, slipping the cigarette back into his lips and pinching his teeth around it. "I'm staying with my second cousin, or third cousin, it's mindlessly confusing either way," he waved his hand in a never-you-mind gesture, "and I'm in attendance of a university for traditional Japanese cooking." He placed his hand over his heart in a grand form, bowing just a bit and tossing his head lightly when he lifted it, in order to weave the dark gold strands away from his face. "But if I had known Japan had such lovely women, I would have come much sooner," he smiled cutely, one finger flying up to adjust the wound cord of his apron, moving it a little along his shoulder in order to stop the uncomfortable pinching feel.
"Ah, ah," Minako giggled, wiggling her finger joyously as she basked naturally in the attention, and she turned her gaze pointedly to her smallest friend. "Ami, isn't he such a doll? Funny, too?" Her one response was a brighter flush of red, and she clapped her hands together with a peal of unexplained laughter as Makoto pinched the bridge of her nose in amused recognition; it would take a miracle of the highest order for Ami to not piece together what, exactly, her two friends were attempting to do with her and the recently introduced cook.
"Well," he smiled slyly at the trio, filching a pen and a legal pad from the wide pouch of his apron, flipping over the nondescript covering cardboard of the front and pressing the pen's smooth point to the lined white paper. "Alas, I must do my job, so what will you three goddesses prefer for a light brunch?"
Minako leaned up instantaneously, easily plucking both pen and paper from his hands as the cigarette bobbed in surprise between his lips, and, with the sudden air of a gossipy tabloid reporter enveloping her much to the chagrin and exasperation of her two friends, turned to face him. "Brooks Sanji-kun," she said with a false seriousness in her voice, "I have some very important questions I must ask of you!" Before he could do much at all, in way of surprise, humor, or anything else, she had jabbed the pen under his nose, demanding suspiciously, "What are your intentions when you first meet a girl!" She said it more along the lines of a rhetoric cry than that of a protective question, and he merely adopted an enthusiastic pollster's response on his face.
"Now, now, we shouldn't talk about such things in front of innocents," he said in a sneakily playful tone, sharing a slightly embarrassing smile with Ami, who pretended she had not seen it. "But, ah, for Ami, my delightful nightclub angel," his smile changed into a dreamily romantic one she suspected was not quite what it seemed to be, "my intentions are what any man's would be: blindingly obvious!" To her immense mortification, he propped his hands on the table and swept forward, pressing a brief kiss to the small stretch of paled skin exposed between her dark bangs where the part shifted direction.
"Yes!" Minako agreed widely, scribbling some indecipherable note on the first page of the legal pad in her illegible, twisted handwriting. "Makoto, can you handle the next question?"
Ami realized with no small amount of terror that the tall brunette very easily and smoothly picked up right where the blonde had left off, indicating this had been practiced at length at some point.
"What is the first thing you look for in a woman?" demanded the tall, strong young woman with thick ruddy brown hair, her green eyes narrowed thoughtfully as she sized up his introspective look. His blue eye was rolled into the corner, tilted up as though he was considering it very hard and with much digging into his psyche, and he drummed his fingers over the table where his palms still cupped the rectangle edge, one of his shined feet lifting to prop on the enclosed toes over the tiled floor.
"Sexual compatibility," he finally answered cheerfully, moving forward to kiss Ami again; her face colored with the shades of red normally only found on notably ripe tomatoes, she blocked him clumsily, working her hand in front of the other and holding both up palms out, and instead his puckered lips landed squarely on the sensitive skin betwixt middle and ring. "That was hardly fair, angel love," he said sorrowfully, one hand striking free of the table and wrapping the thin fingers around both her wrists, tugging down so he could place the kiss properly on her cheek.
Her shoulder dodged up, rubbing against her cheek in unconscious shield, and he pulled back, smugly victorious amidst polite clapping from Minako and a muffled snort from Makoto. "Thank you, my ladies," he spared a broad smile while Ami slowly lowered her shoulder, touching fingertips to the spot he had so briefly past his lips over.
She would remove her own tongue, of course, with a rusty salad fork before letting on to anyone that she felt even the smallest marginal fraction of flattered affection for his actions, much less any form of attraction for the gangly man with seemingly no scruples answering the questions with great speed and teasing. Still, the traitorous pounding of her heart only served to remind her more of her need for academia, and she folded her hands together in her miniskirt, her lips thinning into a prim line frank and clean of anything that might prove her anxiety inside. The fact that he had kissed her a total of six times, three directly on the mouth and with a bit of teasing lip she had not expected, was by no means whatsoever, bar none and may hell freeze over if otherwise, responsible for the imperceptible quivering in her fingertips. Of course it wouldn't be, she reminded herself with a soft, self-deprecating laugh in her mind.
"He's perfect," Makoto hissed at her as Sanji took their orders and, presumably, whatever the other two girls had suggested for her; oh dear God, she hoped they hadn't made any form of sexual innuendo in the selection, because Crown Parlor certainly carried foods like that.
"He's delicious!" Minako chirruped in addendum, her grin and wink painfully promiscuous in meaning.
"I'm leaving," Ami announced in a tight voice, sliding under the table and ignoring the embarrassment of semi-crawling to the main floor, from which she bolted toward the door and vanished into the sunlight. None of it was because of him. At all. Because, quite simply, it was not, and that was all there was to it, for she had a very important project to focus on, and she was sure she would remember what it was by the time she had arrived at the library.
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The welcoming blasts of cool air from the air conditioning above greeted her with timing long perfected as she swung the door to the Mizuno penthouse flat open, carefully shifting the weight of her three bags of groceries from one hip to the other as she kicked her shoes off onto the mat beside the door. Pulling her keys from the lock, she ducked the thin pieces of metal into the bag nearest her, peeking around the bags and hurrying to the glazed counter lining about the kitchen, and let them fall limply, gracefully to the table, her hand flying up to still the tumbling motions of one. She deftly plucked the keys from their squished position near a large head of celery and placed them casually on the thin bar where a large box had been cut from the wall that bordered polished kitchen from stylish living room. Rifling through the bags, she busied herself in the few minutes before her mother's early shift came to an end, tucking vegetables and fruit, as well as other perishables, into the refrigerator before stopping, with a soft smile on her face, to smell the apple in her hand and decide this would be her evening snack.
Once the bread and other miscellaneous items had been placed into their designated spots, Ami bit gently into the crisp fruit clasped in her hand, chewing and wrinkling her nose a bit as the peel gave her a minor struggle. Wandering into the living room, she enjoyed the feel of the patterned tightly wound rug giving just so under her mild weight, her leggings still smooth on her calves and thighs, and she seated herself with a faint hint of regality. To her left, on the glossy wood of the table next to the steamed golden couch, placed ceremoniously on a perch over the thin silk cloth set up as a layered protection, a small fish tank boasted a small, rippling beta. It was a beautiful fish of Amazon descent, colored by tropical blues occasionally highlighted with deep purple and rich garnet, with a streaming tail and a genetic predisposition to masculine rivalries, ones that quite often ended in death.
Though the incident with Fish-Eye was a little too prominent in her memory, which she could thank the relative shortness of the Dead Moon Circus' end for, she had realized she liked having a fish to gaze at and wiggle her finger around in entertainment for herself and the tiny animal. Maybe, she conceded as she nibbled a second bite from her apple and rubbed her fingertip over the glass containing the wriggling fish, a little more for her entertainment than its own. She smiled at her thoughts and tapped her fingertip once on the glass, the fish's deep unblinking eye dolefully watching her with silent mechanics, and it flashed its tail at her, swirling into the seaweed that needed to be replaced once a week, anchored to the floor of the tank by countless shimmering marbles flattened by a machine.
Behind her, the front door creaked open and she turned, a friendly smile on her face as she bit into the apple again, chewing and swallowing. "Hello, Mom," she said, raising her hand in restrained greeting, and the woman sighed with the burdens of the day's job, and she nodded her own lopsidedly loving smile at her only child. "How was your day?"
"Oh, such and such," the comely woman answered in a manner that would have been breezy had her voice not been so exhausted. She slid out of her own shoes after a moment's effort, closing the door with a curt clicking sound and twisting the lock firmly in her hand, sending the tumblers into noisy action, and shuffled stately over the marble entranceway to the springy rug hosting everything in the living room. "And how was your study day at the library?" she smiled pleasantly, offering a genteel kiss to her daughter, who accepted it with her usual seriousness. "Fine, I'm sure," and she sighed, taking the apple momentarily from Ami and biting a small bit of it free on the unmarred side, handing it back promptly.
"In any case, you must forgive a prying mother's curiosity," she smiled again, with a congenial wink of her eye as she positioned her arm so her elbow hung on the supporting ridge of the couch, the smooth back of her hand angled toward her face so her fingernails grazed her cheek, "but did you enjoy your evening with Minako-chan and Makoto-chan? I hear they took you to one of those nightclubs along the strip, you know." At Ami's surprised look, the apple bulging comically in the smooth curve of her cheek, she laughed and rustled her daughter's hair, saying teasingly, "Concerned Mothers for Enigmatic Daughters Network. Aino-san and I spent a bit talking this morning before my shift began. She informed me her daughter woke her around two with some noisy shrieks, which, based on what little I know of Minako-chan, is rather normal. Something about a boy, though."
Ami blushed a little, rolling the bitten apple in her hands and prickling her fingers on the formed ridges as she bit her lip slightly, and she admitted in a quiet voice, "I met a young man at Party's Club, yes. It was nothing serious, though, Mom." She offered a smile that did not quite meet her eyes in subtle continuation of her reply, and her mother laughed in a chummy manner, her hand lowering from the couch to wrap her daughter in a loose, warm hug she easily returned. "His name is Brooks Sanji-san," she mumbled to a low, amused question her mother asked, and she hastened to add, "and he is very annoying. He's…" Words failed her and she settled for a telling blush intermingled with the bizarre mixture of skittishness and flattered emotions she was only now becoming acquainted with.
"Of course, Ami," her mother said congenially, patting her on the head in a jokingly patronizing manner, and she bit into the apple with a sigh.
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Notes: Still no plot, so far as I can tell. But, hey, at least I sorta maybe know what I'm doing. If you note, though, I used a few honorifics in this chapter (-san, -kun, -chan), but Sanji never uses them (and the senshi never use them with one another or Motoki, which I'll explain). Now, for the senshi (and even Motoki), I'm using the excuse of friendship here (honorifics can be dropped under certain circumstances), what with the fact that they know each other so well. As for Sanji…*grins* Cultural gag next chapter, all. Be on the look-out!
Brief: Sorry it took a bit to get this up – I came down with strep throat on Saturday, which, really, didn't surprise me. I get strep once every three years, and, alas, fifteen is a multiple of three. *sighs* But they gave me two shots! Big shots in my hips! Gah! They hurt worse than my throat. . And my meds taste horrid. Ah, well – I actually don't care that I'm sick. *giggles* I got Monday and Tuesday off, so I wrote all day while listening to Rush Limbaugh and country music.
Feedback: Yay! Reviews! *victory sign*
Disclaimer: *falls off chair laughing*
Thaaank Yeeew: Dee-Chan, this is turning out to be horrifically fun to write – apparently, I've been immersing myself in one too many plot-focused fics. (I was grinning when I wrote the ending to 'Cowboy.' Poor Ami, though.) De nada! *tips hat, if she only had a hat* And many, many thanks for the compliments (not that I haven't had my share of poor-quality fics *flashbacks to original stories*). Sadie Joyce – Myst Lady, love slaves are funny, aren't they? Usagi and Mamoru are each other's love slaves, Yuuichirou is Rei's love slave…but is Ami or Sanji the love slave? Or could they be *gasp* equal rights love slaves?! (*muffles laughter with hand*) I think I had to write this because I needed the escape from seriousness. Just a lighthearted endeavor, truly! (And I'm finally working on my first Makoto-focused fanfic! Hallelujah! Everyone, read Naruto and find out who Kakashi-sensei is!) Reihn MidNite, yes. I enjoyed writing Minako so much it was almost disturbing…but, hey, it was fun! And, unfortunately, I took out two gags from this chapter I was going to use (but I'm recycling them soon enough), both by mouth of Miss Aino. Don't worry – no plot for a while yet. Devils Little Doll, they aren't the best pics of Sanji, though (he looks somewhat druggie/sickly in the ones from ish three). I forgot one, too, that is in the second issue – at the tail end of the Valentine's Day special, on the Love Chocolate page, the torso pic of the guy adjusting a tie with a bouquet of flowers in the crook of his arm is none other than Sanji! I'm having an obnoxiously good time writing Sanji and Ami. Oddball, it's a compulsion to laugh, isn't it? Really, throwing opposites together is almost as funny as throwing together two people with unique 'likes' (such as Rei and Tasuki of Fushigi Yuugi). I'm glad you enjoyed it so much! And no fear – I doubt this or my upcoming Naruto/SM fic (yes, I know, shameless plug…*plug!plug!plug!*) will fall to the wayside. Too much fun writing! SailorPikaAngel, aw, glory, your reviews are so funny. *stifles giggle* And, sad to say, there was no kissing at the end of this chapter. I think it's safe to expect a kiss next chapter, though – because, gaw, Ami deserves it, with all the times she's been shafted in fics. Same for poor Makoto-san! Why aren't there more Ami or Makoto fics? Usagi, Rei, and – dare I say it? – Mamoru will get in on the matchmaking scheme soon enough. *hi-fives right back* BloodyVixen, are you suggesting there is something wrong with Usopp? *suspicious look* Usopp is my favoritest OP character…*laughs* Ah, don't worry! I don't think I could write Usopp and Minako, though, as Kaya is far too perfect for him, but thinking it over, I don't think any of the main Straw-Pirate crew goes well with her – and I think I know who I'm possibly going to pair her with…but it's a secret! *is hit by bowling ball* Ow…(Thanks for the feedback, ma'am!)
All of your comments mean a great deal to me! Seriously, whenever I'm writing, I keep a printout of the reviews near my computer so I'm reminded that people have expectations and whatnot. ;] I would still write even if there weren't reviews, but that makes it even the more wonderful to know people out there are enjoying what I'm doing. Thanks, all!