There are things that certain of them need to talk about, and during the week, schedules warped by school and other requirements don't always align. It's Saturday now, though, and Infinity doesn't have classes on Saturdays. Therefore, at what Zoisite most often considers a reasonable hour, Kunzite moves through the apartments in search of him. There's music coming from the segment that the two of them share. That's a promising sign; someone must be playing it.
Somehow, despite having known Zoisite both now and in the Dark Kingdom and in lives before, Kunzite is still enough his modern self never quite thinks of 'playing' as being on an instrument rather than a recording. Not until he comes face-to-face with the reality.
And shifts, quietly, to lean against the wall -- entirely out of the way -- and watch and listen. There are things they do need to talk about. But those things will wait.
Granted, Zoisite's 'playing' of an instrument is mostly because he's been doing an entirely different sort of playing- in idle moments here or there, or when he's been frustrated with his homework, he's still been plugging away at Majora's Mask.
Of course, this means he's had certain songs more or less stuck in his head, and this is purely an effort to get them out. If he ends up getting the Song of Healing stuck in anyone else's head, that's just a fringe benefit.
He notices Kunzite entering, of course. That doesn't mean he stops playing, because that's simply not how they do things. Kunzite entering a room isn't cause to stop doing what he's doing, it's just something to add to the mental queue- he could just be there to listen, could just be there to watch. If he's not, only something urgent would cause him to interrupt. When Zoisite comes to a good stopping point (being that the piece he is playing is easy to modify into a loop until it leaves his brain) he stops, instead of heading back to the beginning. He doesn't even speak up, just looks at Kunzite expectantly.
Kunzite is silent for a moment longer, while the resonance of the music still lingers in wood and strings and air. Even then, he moves before speaking; straightens up, first, crosses the distance between the wall and the bench. Pauses beside it, arm's reach away, to bend his head a little and look down at Zoisite. His hair's finally recovered enough from the incident when Fiore tried to burn him, months ago, that it reacts properly to that again: catching on his shoulders, sliding past, a straight fall of bone-white.
"I do you a disservice too often," he says. "It's too easy for me to forget how beautifully you play."
There is a moment where Zoisite's features flicker into brief surprise- then blossom into enitrely unselfconscious pleasure at the compliment. Where some people might consider being modest, Zoisite does nothing of the sort. "You also haven't had much chance to be reminded," he offers instead. It's true- Zoisite hasn't been playing as much as of late, and that's something he's correcting now.
Instead of nagging Kunzite to state his purpose, Zoisite stands and leans against Kunzite, reaching up to trace fingers through his hair. "Or is your urge to compliment me just coming from realizing I've been making passes at you for the last epoch?" His tone is teasing as he says this, and he's grinning. Granted, the grin might also do with the fact that he's reaching down and pinching a meaty bit of Kunzite.
It's a feedback loop, really. Zoisite brightens; Kunzite shows an actual smile. Not that Zoisite himself is often reminded of how rare that is, when Zoisite's mere presence gives Kunzite more expression. "We have time, now." His hand is already coming up to settle on Zoisite's far shoulder as Zoisite's stand and lean makes that easier by far. "And not at all. My urge to compliment you comes from your playing. My looking for you might --"
Be interrupted by mischief. Kunzite's hand drops away again, fingers locking neatly around Zoisite's wrist. He gives Zoisite a level look, taking half a step away, keeping his grip...
... because that gives him enough time to lift Zoisite's hand, bend a little over it, and kiss the backs of his fingers. His voice is lower, the threat in it transmuted by the amusement and affection. "I'd think twice about doing that again, if I were you."
It's at least a good feedback loop. At Kunzite's smile, Zoisite practically beams. "We do," he says, all innocence. Really, it should have been a warning, how cheerful he is. At the interrupted statement, Zoisite tilts his head back and laughs. The laugh stops when Kunzite grabs his wrist, and his eyes follow the movement.
He shivers pleasantly at the drop in Kunzite's voice and the kiss to the backs of his fingers. "What if I told you I'd thought about doing that more than twice?" the strawberry blond asks. He's smirking slightly.
Zoisite's good cheer is always a warning for someone, it's true. And his laughter is generally enough to make Kunzite not mind when it should have been a warning for him.
He lifts his other hand, now, to tuck one of the curls framing Zoisite's face behind his ear. Fingertips trace from temple to jaw in the process. "I'd ask how your talk with Usagi went," Kunzite answers. Zoisite hasn't told him that it happened, yet. Apparently, Zoisite didn't need to.
There's a very content, catlike lean into the hand running from the loose curl to his jaw. Zoisite even closes his eyes in pleasure, lips quirking up in a smile. "Predictably, she did something unpredictable," he says with soft amusement in his tone. "Apparently she's decided to keep the numbers even for 'amount of people she and Mamoru are flirting with' by deciding to flirt with me."
It's fairly obvious Zoisite doesn't mind this, though it was a bit 'oh dear god, what do I do, this was not in my plans' at the time. And an excuse to spoil Usagi a bit and get to know her better is always a good idea in his books. Not least of all because he's a likely candidate for 'decoy Sailor Moon' if it ever comes to that again.
They've each captured the other's hand, then. One directly, one because Kunzite is distinctly disinclined to draw away from that lean. Fingers slide into bright hair, instead, cradling the warm curve of Zoisite's head. "Which leaves the three of you all even. And all with complicated schedules, I imagine."
That's the first reaction: amusement to match Zoisite's own. Kunzite considers the matter for a moment longer, though, and then another moment still, because the curve of Zoisite's mouth is distracting his attention a little. "Good," he says at the last. "She tries to hide it from Mamoru when she's upset, at times, or at least to hide the reasons. That won't work as well with you."
Zoisite grins. "No, it won't, and there's always fringe benefits in case she's ever a direct target again." He's taken a liking to Usagi on her own merit, not just as the Prince's Princess. "And I figure the schedules might be 'whenever people are available' for a while-- at least Mamoru, Rei, and I all go to the same school."
Zoisite's eyes open, and he leans his forehead against Kunzite. "We might be more comfortable sitting down, you know." He's teasing, but gently this time. And he's not going for a pinch, mostly because he rarely tries the same trick twice in such a short period of time, unless it's to prove a point.
There's something close to a muted laugh, and Kunzite lets Zoisite's hand go. If only in favor of sliding that arm loosely around Zoisite instead. Not at his waist, precisely. Low on his shoulderblades. "We might," he allows. And doesn't actually move to remedy the situation.
"Mn. I suppose the three of you being close makes things convenient for Usagi, at least." His tone shifts, just slightly, indulgent and teasing. "Or were you planning to flirt with Rei, too? Has she heard about this yet?"
Zoisite reaches up, tugging a little on Kunzite's arm to signal unsubtly that he wants to sit on the couch. "If I do, it's only to see how she reacts," Zoisite says idly. "For now, anyway. And I planned on calling her to let her know- I sort of suspect she'll have about the same reaction I did, taking it in stride like some people would with earthquakes and the like." Point unsaid: Usagi is a force of nature.
Usagi is. And heaven knows, if anyone protested, Usagi might cry on them. At length. With words broken up by sobs. See how long that lasts.
Zoisite is also a force of nature, to a certain degree; it's merely that that force is not actually a tidal wave. Kunzite draws toward the couch under that direction, seating himself at one end and letting Zoisite settle where he likes. Next to him, on him, sprawled across the entire thing; the only certainty about it is that Zoisite will do exactly as he pleases. "Still. That's the greatest uncertainty weathered. Good."
(The fact that Rei unnerves the hell out of Kunzite does not need mentioning; it's entirely irrelevant, as far as he's concerned, to what Zoisite and Usagi choose to do.)
He lets out a breath before adding, ambiguous, "You know what it's like here."
Zoisite opts for laying on the couch, with the back of his head pillowed on Kunzite's lap. "I do." It's said with a small smile.
"Usagi knew I was trying to bribe my way into her good graces, at least," is murmured with the attendant amusement. It was a fairly transparent ploy, but also worthwhile to see how Usagi would react to it. "I might ask Usagi to speak to Rei first- after all, it was her idea and not mine, I just agreed to it." It's said with the air of someone who had their arm twisted into it- even though Zoisite is precisely the kind of person who would enjoy the excuse to take Usagi clothes-shopping regardless.
Kunzite doesn't say any of the rest, then. Why he and Mamoru rarely make contact in public, and then only when Mamoru's clearly in need of physical support and maybe medical care. Why there are things they don't say, don't even talk around, when there are others there. Mamoru wants to go to medical school. Usagi has years left in a place where rumors can distort lives. Usagi may or may not be giving indirect notice that she doesn't care; Zoisite does precisely what he wants to do, and may make entirely different choices on the subject than Kunzite does; Kunzite still chooses to err on the side of caution. At least for a few years.
He doesn't need to talk about it, because that small smile says enough, all too well.
The side of caution does not preclude stroking a hand over Zoisite's hair, mind. No more than it precluded Zoisite occupying Kunzite's lap a few weeks ago. "You are," he says, "clearly innocent of all responsibility. And therefore should not be required to risk holy fire on the young lady's behalf. Besides, I imagine either Rei will be disarmed by the stammering and flailing, or Usagi will present the matter in such a matter-of-fact way in passing that Rei won't realize what she's agreed to for two days."
Zoisite laughs out loud at that comment. "Plus, at this point, all I really want to do, and the only thing I implied I would do, is something that could just as easily come from a friend. I'm not entirely sure if she just wants to try flirting with me to make the numbers even, or if she's actually interested, but..." Zoisite shrugs a little. "As far as the casual observer might note, what I plan on doing looks startlingly close to a friend giving another friend tips on how to flirt with a mutual friend."
As opposed to what Zoisite and Kunzite are doing now, anyway, which is clearly far more intimate. Especially given how obvious it is- at least to those who have seen Zoisite or Izumi- that he is relaxed, his body language taking up far more space instead of folding inward. He reaches up to stroke at Kunzite's hair with a small smile.
"And all she asked you to do." The note of amusement is if anything even more distinct now. "She's still fifteen. And flirting is an art and a skill, if one sadly neglected in the present age. She may very well have wanted most someone she felt safe practicing with."
He falls silent at the touch to his hair, bending his head a little to bring more of it into Zoisite's reach. It's not quite its proper length again yet. Given how many years it ought to have taken to regrow, that's still a minor miracle. He stays quiet under the touch, and still, for several slow breaths. Everything communicated is in that bowing of his head, in the closing of gray eyes, in the way a certain subtle tension near the corners of those eyes relaxes itself. In the way his eyes are already focused on Zoisite's when they open again.
His hand lifts from Zoisite's hair; his thumb traces the curve of an eyebrow lightly, then fingertips drift along his cheekbone, touch for a delicate moment the edge of his upper lip. Only for an instant, as if he thought he might have pressed too far.
Zoisite snorts softly, but makes a small noise of agreement in the back of his throat. "I wouldn't be shocked, honestly, if that is what she wants." And it's left unsaid, but implied, that he does not mind at all if this happens to be the case.
Instead, Zoisite enjoys the quiet moment of contact, watching Kunzite lean forward, his own eyes half-lidded when Kunzite opens his.
The brief touch to his lips does spur Zoisite into action- namely, grabbing Kunzite's fleeing hand to press a kiss to his palm, a silent assurance that instead of going too far, Kunzite hadn't gone far enough in the strawberry blond's mind.
Between these two -- Kunzite is not the one whose breath an outsider would expect to catch at the touch of the other. Outsiders are by definition ill-informed.
He speaks again after a moment, voice low as that kiss and as gentle. "We're still out of the habit," and his fingers curl against Zoisite's skin, "of having nothing to fear."
The touch lingers, this time.
Zoisite practically beams at the catch of breath, waiting for Kunzite to speak before saying anything. At the curl of fingers against him, Zoisite smiles even more broadly. "Speak for yourself about 'out of habit'. It was never a habit for me, as far as I can tell." It's a sideways admission that he remembers very little about his life before the Dark Kingdom- though that fact is something Mamoru probably could have gleaned from the lack of associated incident with Zoisite's fears and hangups from his early life.
Instead of lingering on the topic, Zoisite kisses Kunzite's hand again.
He tried. Even in the Dark, Kunzite tried to create a place, a context, in which Zoisite did not need to fear the consequences of what he might say or do. A haven.
It didn't work, of course. Not with the nature of the place, not with what had been done to their minds. But it came close to working, in a limited way. It was enough to keep Kunzite something close to sane; he thinks, he hopes, it might have done something for Zoisite too.
He doesn't ask. He likely never will. The thoughts are allowed to slip away with that second kiss, and he stays still for its duration. Allows Zoisite the time and freedom to explore it as he will; 'allow' is the wrong verb, no less, since it suggests that Zoisite might only have it at his sufferance, or might ever not have had it.
All the same, he keeps his attention on keeping his breathing level, keeping his reactions patient. And only after does he reclaim his hand. It's a necessary move; how else could he gather Zoisite up, an arm around his shoulders and a hand cradling the weight of his head, and draw him up and in to return a slow, proper kiss in trade?
And it is slow. Not out of any caution, this time. Simply because the last thing he wants to do is let the memory of their first real kiss be a hurried thing, impatient, incomplete.
There are, of course, other reasons as well. But that's the first and the truest.
Zoisite only admits this because he knows Kunzite will not pester, nag, or harass him to try pursuing those memories. The surest sense he has of life before time in the Dark Kingdom is that he is not native to Japan, that he was probably native to somewhere close to his palace, and that he was not happy with that life. Literally everything he cannot logically trace back to 'something that happened in the Dark Kingdom' feels a great deal like something he does not want to dig up, like something that would cut deeper in some ways than what he experienced in the Dark Kingdom. After all, what happened there happened under the guidance of a being- he doesn't think of her as a person- who found torture of her subordinates to be perfectly acceptable. In some ways, the 'beyond normal human belief' levels makes everything that happened there somehow cleaner than the petty cruelties humans inflict on one another.
Even without clear memories, he's pretty sure whoever gave him those feelings of being infinitely replaceable did not have the same excuse of being a literal supervillain.
Still, even in the Dark Kingdom, Kunzite was his rock, before the stupid stupid plan. And even after, honestly. There was a sense he could trust Kunzite, that the older, pale-haired Shitennou wouldn't do something just for fickleness's sake, and that even if Zoisite did somehow disappoint him, it would not be something where Kunzite would indulge in petty cruelty over the matter.
It's this trust that means Zoisite doesn't bristle as he's drawn up for a kiss. It takes him half a moment to process the likely intent behind the gesture- and with the average person, that's half a second where they would have a hidden knife or fire applied violently to their person.
Kunzite is not an average person. And all Zoisite does is close his eyes, and wrap his arms around Kunzite as he returns the kiss, following Kunzite's pace.
There will be a time when it will be necessary. Zoisite's seen the warning as well as the others have, and Zoisite's far more likely to recognize it for what it is. If they don't look at, look for, their histories, their histories may well come looking for them.
But Zoisite's seen it -- and Kunzite trusts him to be able to gauge when he's ready to deal with it, when he's capable of withstanding the pressures. Or whether he'll be capable of withstanding them at all. It's perhaps unfair of him, but ... Zoisite is the one that Kunzite might let get away with never looking, if it were entirely up to Kunzite's choice.
Not now, in any case. Not this moment; not this month. Not now at all.
Even in the Dark Kingdom, there was no replacing Zoisite, not for him. Even if he worked with Jadeite in Zoisite's absence, or half-adopted a bright-haired and violent trickster girl. Those things patched the surface, but not the hollowness beneath. Even after -- when Zoisite had returned, or when he was still watching and waiting to see if their prince would recover -- there were wounds that did not start to heal until Zoisite started treating Kunzite's personal space as his own personal property again.
He didn't have a word for these things before. He hasn't spoken it yet, doesn't speak it now.
But the way he holds Zoisite for that kiss, the utter care he takes when he lifts his head at last to look down at him again, the faint roughness to his breathing...
Zoisite never needed a knife to maim him. All he needed to do was not be there.
And that he is here, now, like this ... takes all of Kunzite's words away.
Zoisite knows better. At least with Kunzite, they had some idea of what to expect, some idea of how to circle the wagons. With Zoisite's background in this life being utterly unknown, there's no chance to know where the potential attack could come from.
Even if he was given that chance, Zoisite knows his own nature well enough to know that he would never want to leave it alone. He would always be nagging at it, like a permanent, aching loose tooth. He's always dealt better with threats when he can identify them, and a large part of his problem with feeling replaceable, inferior, is that he cannot mentally 'pin the blame on the donkey' responsible. It's not like his (possibly permanently) damaged reaction to severe pain, or even the high pain tolerance, where he can blame that she-demon squarely. With what came before that... there's nothing, except a vague haze of being the unwanted black sheep.
Plus, he owes those people. The day he lets a slight like what he obviously endured from them go unchallenged (without Kunzite or Mamoru to temper that response) is a cold day in Hell indeed.
It's a testament to how secure Zoisite feels that he doesn't feel the need to say what he feels right now, though it's a very simple four-letter word in English, and even shorter in Japanese. Instead, he lets his body and expression tell the story for him, open and honest and happy. He rests his head against Kunzite's shoulder, smiling softly.
No words, then. No words when zoisite leans his head against Kunzite's shoulder. No words when Kunzite bends his own head down again, lips and breath against Zoisite's hair. No words when that evolves into silent kisses laid upon Zoisite's forehead. No words when those slow again.
No words. But the warm awareness that at least one person in the world (and more than one; empathy's told him that) would rather be with him in silence than be anywhere else. Not just with someone; with him. Knives and fire and temper and vindictiveness and all.
It doesn't last forever. Times like this one never do. But the murmur of "Plans for the evening?" is by far not the worst way to break it.
If Kunzite had half the empathy that Mamoru has, the sheer outpouring of love, trust, and affection would probably be utterly breathtaking and possibly brain-melting, given Zoisite's usual emotional intensity being what it is. Instead, there is silence that practically radiates it for Zoisite.
Kunzite has always been that person for him. Even at his worst moments, there has always been an instinctive desire to seek emotional shelter with Kunzite, and that can only be from some part of him knowing that Kunzite will be there for him.
"I didn't have many," Zoisite murmurs back, smile quirking slightly as he pecks the corner of Kunzite's mouth.
That touch wins a smile in turn, another of the kind that softens all the lines of Kunzite's face ... not to something harmless, no. But to something more human than the mask he so often makes of himself. It would be so very easy just to turn his head and leave talking aside for a moment again...
There's a compromise possible, there.
"It occurs to me ..." The kiss brushed against Zoisite is light, more a promise than any real contact. "If you're set on spending it lying down with your head on me." A little more of a kiss this time, to forestall any complaint about Kunzite's phrasing. "There might be better places than the couch." -- just one more. "Unless you're comfortable where you are. Of course."
Zoisite brushes lazily at Kunzite's hair, eyebrows raised slightly. "Better places, hm? I like the sound of that." It's one benefit to knowing one another so well already.
Even when the song guiding it changes, they already know the steps the other is going to take in this dance. "It's not like it would be difficult to head that way."