Eclipse

3x5

It started with the Master and Kunzite talking in low, clipped tones out on the lawn, with Kunzite spinning a black-lensed telescope in his gloved hands and frowning a lot, but the moment Nephrite came striding over the new-mown grass it had turned into a screaming fight, and now Jadeite is hiding in the parlor, arms folded tight across his chest, hunched as though his half-cape can somehow cover him.

"I hate it when they fight," he mutters, and Zoisite, who's been in silence at the piano for some time, looks over with a distant note of sympathy.

"Could you close the blinds, please?" he asks, and after a moment, Jadeite shakes himself into motion and walks slowly over to pull the cords. Curtains glide smooth across the floor-to-ceiling windows; the yelling men fade from view; the light dims an octave.

Jadeite lights the lamps before he's asked, and doesn't need to know what they're fighting about, and doesn't ask if Zoisite wants to watch the eclipse. The moon will cover the sun, and Kunzite will watch it grim through his telescope, and they're fighting about the Princess.

Lately it's like everyone is becoming dim and dark and worried and no-time-for-jokes, like that bit near the end of a really rollicking adventure story when the writer decides to suddenly make it serious and boring, and Jadeite can't think what he could possibly, possibly do with himself.

He hears Nephrite yell, and startles, but can't make out the words.

"Jadeite," Zoisite says softly. "Let's do something worthwhile with our time."

He slides over a bit, and pats smooth dark wood beside him, and Jadeite comes hesitant to sit, the soprano end of the keyboard spread before him, the heat of Zoisite's body all up his side.

Zoisite nudges his foot out of the way so he can reach the pedal and begins to play, long swelling arpeggios, and Jadeite recognizes the piece and lifts one hand to pluck out notes. He'd tried to teach him once, a while back, and he'd been terrible at it, so they'd mostly played duets, easy stuff, with him playing one simple line, slow enough that it almost didn't matter if he messed up, and no matter what he did it sounded good anyway, because Zoisite could cover for him. It had never made sense to him, that the bad player gets the melody.

The piece ends; they let the sound fade. The sunlight leaking round the curtains is starting to darken. Zoisite puts his arm round his shoulders, beaded brocade crinkling, and then turns his head to look at him with a shimmer of earring, and there is a slight change to the set of his mouth, a slight flicker in his eyelids, and the message is clear, the command absolute, and they kiss, long and slow, with Zoisite's hand firm on the back of his neck, holding him. Because Zoisite never hurts him like Kunzite does; he merely controls him, all quiet and implacable mastery, and now that little falling feeling he gets in his stomach when Zoisite looks at him that way is a mooring line and a lamp.

When the light fades entirely, totality, Jadeite is curled naked in Zoisite's lap as he sits cross-legged, fully dressed, on the floor beside the piano, and he lets out a little frightened kitten whine as the curtains go dark, and Zoisite strokes his hair, white gloves in golden curls.