Chapter Seven

Cursed Heavy Feeling

Minako

It had begun to rain, again, a soft, silent wash against the pane of the window, a drizzle that captured nothing of the imagination. Minako watched it with a feeling of utter detachment–nothing seemed farther away at this moment than the drops sliding through space, separated from her by a scant fingerbreadth of glass. In her mind she hovered between the sky and the world, clothed entirely in a substance that kept her separate from reality, in her mind the room behind her and all it's connotations had fallen like water from the sky, and she was all that was left, gliding over the city like a ghost.

Staring down now into the buildings she was struck by the smallness of it all, it's diminishment from her post. Before, the house they'd had was only two stories–she would look out it's windows and see the road and think that she could jump from where she was, land on that road and be carried to any part of the city. The connection, here, was lost.

She sighed and turned away from the view, throwing herself haphazardly into the nearest chair. Another person watching would have noted the underlying grace in that action, the smooth arc of her legs as they came to rest against the side of the chair, the turn of her neck as she reached toward the remote, the soft rounds of her eyes turning to face the screen. There was no other person, though; she was alone, and this beauty was lost to her solitude.

Minako watched a picture blur to life from the dark depths of the television with a quiet, uninterested focus, noting after five seconds that the volume was muted, but not caring enough to do anything. Two men sat before her, one obviously a newscaster, dressed in a suit perfectly accentuated by his tie that set off his hair and eyes, the other wearing a mussed button up lined with intricate embroidery–two halves of the screen almost painfully contrasting. They talked animatedly, though, the news man asking questions with a look of genuine interest, his subject answering with wide hand gestures and passion notable even without a voice. After a few minutes–Minako marveled at her attention span even as the time slipped away–the man turned towards the audience of one, and the picture changed.

In the chair, Mianko sat straight up and stared. The camera now panned slowly across the image of a naked woman, a chain draped about her form, catching the perfect detail of her feet and legs, the harsh iron against the pale skin of her stomach and breasts, her hands wrapped tightly around a loop of links, her eyes staring out of the portrait with a remorseful vindication. Apart from the beauty of the model, the quiet sharpness of the pose, and skill of the artist, there was nothing directly threatening or shocking about the piece–except for Minako, staring at it now, because the model was her.

In a daze, her hand found the control for volume.

"–piece is really the culmination of everything we've been talking about, all the art during the war had this sort of quality of accusation, and the soft details, if you take time to notice them, complete what might not be immediately apparant. It's called 'study of an innocent', for one thing, and general consensus is that the artist meant us to realize war affected even those not involved in it. If you look really closely at the individual links of the chain, you'll see written on them are dates–the days that major battles–"

With a frustrated click, the power was cut and the room returned to silence, apart from the heavy breathing of it's occupant.

It wasn't really so surprising, Minako told herself, unwilling to disturb the echoes of memory by speaking aloud, it was bound to happen one day. Rogan was too talented to avoid this, now that the war had ended and there was time again for art appreciation , all his work was bound to be noticed.

The words didn't cool the shock seething in her mind.

That picture had risen before her from a lifetime ago, the shod remnant of her balance on the edge of adult life; the experience behind it had given her momentum in her present direction. She remembered with clarity meeting the young, handsome artist on the curb, and the relationship that bloomed in the light of that meeting–a fascinating, passionate, torrid affair.

As she recalled the exact curves of her body upon the canvass, she recalled the exact moments that had led to the painting of them–a direct proportion that sent her spinning. That morning, as he had every morning, Rogan had read her every article in every newspaper he could find about the war. After she was sobered, he would have her sit fifty different ways, and as she assumed each pose he would reject it, quiet voice ringing through the empty apartment. Eventually he came to her in frustration, forcibly grabbing her arms and legs and molding them into the pose he'd wanted all along.

The contact of his skin on hers had seared, heating until it reached the point of impermissibility, and he had pulled her to him, and she had not resisted. Hours later, in the cool moonlight streaming from the window, she had stretched, and he kissed her languidly, and said "Just there, you're perfect just there."

And he had taken the chain from his closet, and given it to her. The metal had been cold against her skin, the rust had left orange streaks across her breasts and hands, the rough suddenness of the separation had shocked her. Staring at him with what a reviewer described later as, 'tragic, resigned indictment', she watched her first lover drift farther and farther away from her, ensnared by a beauty she could not control. That was the last time she posed for him.

Minako suddenly felt a terrible want to be with someone, anyone, again. The quiet of the house made her angry and frightened, she stood with a jerk and fled the livingroom for the comforting darkness of the hall. Passing down it with straight, quick determination, she opened the door to Kunzite's room and strode inside.

He was sitting on the bed, long hair hanging about his face and obscuring his expression. She stared at him, breath coming quickly in her lungs, as he turned his head towards her, surprise registering in his eyes. He paused a second, looking at her, she blushed under the scrutiny of his regard. His voice, when he spoke, was gentle and in no way accusatory, the sound of it was a cool reality spilling over her fevered mind.

"Minako?"

She said nothing, crossed the room and perched herself on the window sill opposite from where he sat on the bed. He watched her for a few moments, blankly, then returned to the book on his lap, one hand sliding back and forth across the page as he read. She tucked her knees to her chest and leaned back into the glass, lay her head against her legs and felt her hair slide from behind her ear and down her side. The palms of her hands were rough against the skin of her shins, the glass painfully cold against her back. She was aware of the breath in her lungs, and, if she kept herself absolutely silent, the breath in his. The imagined texture of the sheets he lay on itched along her fingertips, she clenched her hands. She thought about the cool leather spine of his hardcover, the way it's weight would lay in her palm. She thought about the security of a headboard to lean on, the polished feeling on the back of her neck. A thousand remembered sensations of skin on skin passed before her mind, tangible across her body. Thick yearning clouded her eyes, she shut them, almost in pain, almost in exhilarated joy.

Then she turned her head away, and watched the rain pound the glass.

Makoto

A crisp linen table cloth was spread before her, copious vegetation spilling across it in neat little white stitches. Mako traced one leaf with her finger, feeling the ridge of embroidery floss beneath her finger ebb away as she crossed back onto the cloth. She looked at her place, neatly set with three forks, two knifes and two spoons, and what seemed suspiciously like a single tong spread across the top the plate. She glanced about the room, taking in the fine lace curtains and tasteful rug, the display cabinet showcasing complex, ancient devices all seemingly enhancement for the ocular organs. She looked, in short, everywhere but directly in front of her–there was no need, because what was there hadn't changed for the fifteen minutes since her arrival. She could see it in her mind.

There was a place setting identical to hers, and a chair similar to hers, and nothing else. The chair was empty. He was late.

She frowned, slightly, and tapped one foot in an impatient gesture she'd picked up after years of meetings with high brow politicians that didn't think it worth their time. This time, though, the impatience was blended with a trace of disappointment. Not really disappointment, she told herself consolingly, just annoyance–it's not like I'm on pins and needles waiting to see him.

The door behind her shut with a soft click; Mako jumped three feet in the air.

Angry at the disturbance–as well as her embarrassment–she spun to face the intruder...

...who calmly crossed the room and took his place across from her, apparently oblivious to her suddenly crimson face.

"I apologize profusely for my tardiness," he said, tucking his napkin nicely in his lap without meeting her eyes, "I was caught up in something." Then he raised his head, and she caught the faint twinkle of irony in his gaze, and smiled. Then she said the first thing that came to her mind.

"Do you always talk like that?"

He smiled and shook his head. "Only when I feel like being anal."

She rolled her eyes, but that humor appealed to her–it was hard to keep a straight face when she replied, "Naturally."

He smiled, somewhat cheekily, Mako thought, and spread his napkin in his lap with a good deal of unnecessary bustle; she watched his face and noticed the twinkle in his eye, the quiet, sarcastic humor as he enjoyed his own frivolous action. She smiled, but without the warm feeling his joke had provoked in her a moment before.

Then he looked up and caught her studying him, and she looked away, blushing.

Staring out at the grounds, which were as he had said very beautiful, she fought with an inner dilemma. She wanted to ask why he had been late, but couldn't think of a way to word it that would be unintrusive. Chewing absently on her lower lip, she weighed the importance of being polite with the strength of her curiosity. The seconds fell away and she deliberated, until his voice startled her out of her reverie.

"You look like your thinking awfully hard." She turned to him, blinking in confusion, and was suddenly arrested by the look in his eyes. They were, as she had noticed when she met him, grey, but now had a muted, almost intimate look, like steel by candlelight. Unsure of how to respond to the focus of his regard, she said the first thing on her mind without conscious thought.

"I was just trying to think of a way to ask you what held you up without being rude."

His chuckle matched perfectly the warmth in his eyes, and it made her smile, happy that she had made him laugh, before she realized what he was laughing at.

"I mean...oh, screw it. Why were you late?"

He chuckled again, this time she admired the way his eyes crinkled up at the corners, and spoke, a teasing lilt to his voice.

"Curious, aren't we, Ms. Kino?"

She smiled at him in that particular way she had smiled at boys in high school–both mortified at the pathetic flirting and throughly enjoying this exchange. "No, sir, not out of the common way."

"Then can I expect this level of inquisition every time we eat together."

"Only when your behavior merits it."

His eyebrows quirked sardonically at her and the low tones in his voice made her face flush with heat. "Then I will have to make sure it does, to merit your interest."

Again, she could not hold his look, and her eyes retreated to the window.

He watched her with a small smile on his face for several minutes, before touching her arm lightly. She turned with slight alarm, hidden behind a rosy blush and sparkling eyes. He almost missed it, but it's shadow was a scar on her expression, diminishing her glowing vitality. What he'd planned to say left him, and so they sat and stared across the table, and his fingers became a gentle sensation almost like pain against her forearm.

Jadeite

The bar had opened at noon. He'd started his first beer at five past. The hours between his exit from the hotel room and the entrance to the realm of influence had been angry and embarrassed, but now he was inebriated to the point that he could hardly remember what it was to be embarrassed, and numb enough that the anger had faded to a dull buzz. What he could remember, what hadn't faded, though, was the feeling of silky white flesh beneath his hands, the heat of kisses against his face, and black hair that slipped like liquid through his hands. The burning thoughts ate away at his mind–he tapped the rim of his glass asking mutely for another drink.

"I think not." A voice sounded above his head, and he lifted blood-shot eyes to see the fuzzy image a tall blonde looking sardonically down at him.

"Fill me up" Jade mumbled, the words getting lost on the way out of his mouth and tangling in his tongue.

"I said 'no'."

Using his hands as a brace, he tried to assume a tall and imposing height, which proved difficult because it required coordination far beyond his current level. "Bartender! If I say I wanna drink, then I wanna drink!"

"And," now the blonde face was inches from his, forcing him to blink in an attempt to bring it into focus, "if I say I'm not going to serve you than I'm not going to serve you." The eyes peered closer at him, and the head leaned in, and suddenly there were four eyes and two heads, and then Jadeite's headache went off the wall and his head fell–thunk–onto the bar.

The head withdrew and he smelt a soft whiff of perfume. She was wearing perfume, he thought dully, and the exact shape of that fragrance filled his nose. He shut his eyes tightly only to see her exquisite violet eyes blinking up at him. He swallowed, and beyond the flavor of beer in his mouth, he could taste her.

He groaned.

"Anything I can do for you there, buddy?"

"Unless you can convince a lovely, stubborn woman to fall in love with me, then no."

The bartender smiled gently. This was what usually happened in this bar, far within the realm of experience. "I'm afraid my luck in love isn't much better than your own. Not much I can do with yours till mine's fixed." There was silence, the man seemed currently beyond speech, though whether from intoxication or heart-sickness could not be discerned. "You could tell me about it, though, if you want."

He snorted. "Come on. You're a bartender–you know what it's like. Boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy gets girl drunk, girl seems to be having a good time, boy screws girl, morning after, girl rejects boy." He marveled for a second at how prettily he could untangle the intricacies of his life–how neatly he could lay them out in front of him, like so many lengths of thread. "Only twist is, this boy and this girl happen to be perfect strangers, and they're married."

If he'd looked at the bartender, he would have seen an impressed expression. That had certainly been a totally unique twist. "Divorce an option?"

"I don't think so. This has been rather forced upon us." Jadeite sighed and let his head fall on his hands, the previously neat threads again a mess.

"By whom?" This case was steadily becoming more and more interesting. Who ever said being a hotel bartender was boring?

Jade leaned in, bloodshot eyes focused and interested. "That's the problem, isn't it? I don't know. All I know is I was living my life just like the next guy and then boom! I'm married and meeting my future spouse at the airport to enjoy two weeks in Hawaii because if I'm gonna get married I might as well have a honeymoon, you know? So, anyway, I meet her and she's a total bombshell. Absolutely the most gorgeous woman I've ever met, this long hair–so sexy, makes you want to twist your hands in it and these legs...So at first she seems a little anal, but I take her to the hotel and we eat and she relaxes and is actually fun, not cracking jokes or anything, but enjoying herself. And then we have sex, and when she woke up this morning it was total chaos."

The bartender stared at him, pitying. "I think you screwed up, buddy."

"Yeah." He stared into his glass, watching the drips of yellow liquid roll back and forth. "Yeah, I did."

Zoicite

Night had come to the city, soft and swift, and the lights shone off a sky heavy with clouds. What stars could be seen looked like ghost cities far away, dimmed by the vibrance of current life. Zoicite stared at a patch of them, remembering idly the astronomy courses he'd taken in his life, and the physics of the burning gasses that threw this pale light across the universe.

He was sitting on the floor of his kitchen. The cool tiles, pressing into the gap between his shirt and his jeans, had been what had woken him, and his first thought was, therefore, that he might want to adjust the situation. That urge left him, though, in the awareness that his skin felt warm, and the sensation was pleasant against the small of his back, a contrast to the heavy heat across his thighs. He yawned, and shifted each of his fingers in turn, enjoying the softness that greeted the motion in his left hand. He blinked, suddenly feeling perhaps a bit too warm, and shifted his legs accordingly.

His action was met with a soft moan that subsided as soon as he ceased the movement.

Blinking again several times, he saw a shape strewn across lap, and saw that it was a woman. She was, he thought, in this golden, streetlamp-light, very beautiful–very innocent. Her mouth was open slightly, and the shadow of her eyelashes made a soft halo of wings in the hollows of her face. Dark hair spilled in a pool across his leg, one slender hand rested on his slumped stomach. Her shirt had been unclasped three buttons down, through the gap he could see the rhythmical rise and fall of her chest. One of her hands was curled within the sphere of his, when he tried to withdraw it, she whimpered again. He smiled and, with his free hand, tucked one strand of hair that had fallen across her face behind her ear. Her eyelids fluttered for a moment, and she was still again.

He leaned his head back and felt the tickling onset of sleep on the fringes of his consciousness; his last thought before oblivion was 'My, won't this be awkward in the morning?'

A.N. Hope you liked it! Thanks to all the awesome people who've reviewed this so far, it really helped motivate me to finish this. Progress from now on is going to be slow, just like most everybody else, I have school and school related problem. I'm looking forward to the next one, though, and I liked all the stuff going on in this one! Please review!