Seasonal Greeting
Title: Seasonal Greeting
Description: During the Shitennou’s first Christmas, writing a Christmas card to Makoto becomes a joint endeavor.
A/N: Day 11 of Advent Drabblender 2011. Set in Messages-verse, in the middle of Winter (after Makoto sends her gift to the Shitennou and before Zoisite comes around to them bakery). Careful readers will notice that things don’t match up perfectly. First, Makoto sends her gift to the Shitennou’s address rather than Mamoru’s apartment but it’s later mentioned the Shitennou are all staying with Mamoru. Let’s stick with that latter case. Second, she sends the gingerbread house on Christmas Eve but for the sake of this piece and my sanity, let us pretend she sent it slightly earlier than that. Like a day or two before Christmas Eve. This is what happens when you insert scenes into a one-shot/wing it the way I usually do… ^^;
Prompt: Writing Christmas cards.
Mamoru and Kunzite came in together, dusted with a powdering of snow. As he unwound his scarf, Mamoru looked over at the blond sitting at the kitchen table and said, “Hey, Zoisite. What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” Unusually reticent, Zoisite dropped the pen, which he hadn’t been writing with anyway, and used his arm to shield his work from prying eyes.
“Where are the others?” Kunzite asked, hanging up his leather jacket.
Zoisite shrugged, keeping an eye out for any sudden movements. “Nephrite came in awhile ago and locked himself in the guest room.”
“Is he all right?” Mamoru asked, glancing at the closed door with undisguised concern.
“Yes. He’s listening to sappy Christmas songs and reading bad poetry,” Zoisite answered matter-of-factly, staring down at the object hidden behind his arm with renewed interest.
While Kunzite was deciding whether it was worth it to invade their privacy, the door opened again to reveal Jadeite, clutching a flimsy plastic bag in his chilled red fingers. “Hello,” he greeted them, looking mildly surprised to find everyone grouped in the living room. He looked towards the guest room and noted with a sigh that the door was closed.
Mamoru and Kunzite exchanged puzzled looks. “I’ll handle this,” Kunzite told him. “You should go; otherwise you will be late meeting the prin - Usagi.”
When Mamoru had left again, with many reminders to call him if they needed anything and checks that they remembered how to use a phone, Kunzite eyed his fellow Shitennou warily. “Where are you going, Jadeite?”
The blond man halted in the tiny hallway. “Well, since Mamoru went out, I thought I would borrow his desk.”
“To do what?”
He hedged. “It’s a rather private matter…”
Kunzite sighed. “Yes, there seems to be rather a lot of that going on around here.”
Just then, the guest room door opened and Nephrite stuck his head out. “Do any of you know what rhymes with…toe?”
“Foe?” Jadeite suggested.
“No!” he growled. “Useless. Utterly useless.” He was about to shut the door again when Kunzite stuck his foot in the door.
“Hold on, Nephrite. I need you to join us.”
“Right now? I’m in the middle of something important.”
“So am I,” Zoisite chimed in.
“Yes. It’s very important. It has to do with the senshi. Well, one of them, anyway.” They all perked up at this, and it was enough to bring Nephrite completely out of the room. Kunzite continued, “Since Jupiter was kind enough to send us a present, it’s only fitting we should give her our thanks.” With a flourish, he pulled out a gold card covered in red poinsettias. “Mamoru helped me pick this out.”
The other three stared at the card. “Are you sure that’s to her taste?” Jadeite asked faintly.
Zoisite was torn between speaking his thoughts and refraining from maligning his liege. As usual, speaking his thoughts won out. “It’s hideous!”
Kunzite squinted down at the card. “Well…it’s possible that he mistook them for roses. You know how he is about roses.”
They did know.
“And besides,” he continued defensively, “selection was limited. The card store had nearly been cleaned out. Now, the appearance of the card is less important than the sentiment behind it, right? So I thought we should send her this…Seasonal Greeting together.”
“It says ‘Season’s Greetings,’” Jadeite pointed out helpfully.
“Thank the gods,” Zoisite burst out. “I’ve been having a terrible time coming up with what to write.” He held up the card he’d been hiding to show them; the front was a dizzying geometric snowflake design in metallic blues and whites.
With a wry smile, Jadeite slid his own card out of the envelope. A discreet cream color, it was printed on thick paper with red lettering and featured a scattering of green holly leaves and red berries.
Nephrite stepped back into the guest room and came out with a tall, glittery card showing penguins sliding down a snowy hill.
Kunzite raised his eyebrows, impressed despite himself. “Well, men, it appears that we are in agreement.”
“What are we going to do with four cards?” Zoisite asked.
“We’ll figure it out along the way,” he said, motioning for Jadeite and Nephrite to join them at the kitchen table.
Nephrite did so, sulkily. “This is all fine and well, but why can’t we just each write our own?”
Zoisite shot back, “Because at the rate you’re going, that poem wouldn’t be done until next summer!”
He reddened but didn’t deny the accusation.
“Settle down,” Kunzite ordered. “Let’s have some cocoa and get the task at hand done, men.”
The other two brightened visibly, but Jadeite frowned. “You’re expecting me to make it, aren’t you?”
“Of course,” Kunzite said. “You seem to have the most luck with things involving fire.” He was deeply, unapologetically suspicious of the gas stove.
While Jadeite measured out the milk and chocolate morsels - no instant hot chocolate mix to be found in Mamoru’s kitchen, of course - his fellow Shitennou put their heads together.
“You write it,” Nephrite said, shoving Zoisite’s pen at Kunzite, “your handwriting is the neatest.”
Zoisite objected, “Hey! May I remind you that out of all of us, I was the only one to win a calligraphy contest and therefore am the best and only candidate for the task?”
“That was over a millennia ago, and if Makoto’s grasp of Ancient Terran is anything like Usagi’s, the card will be complete nonsense to her.” Kunzite accepted the pen and uncapped it swiftly. “So. ‘Dear Jup - Makoto-’”
“Why are you calling her ‘dear’?” Nephrite interrupted.
“According to Mamoru, that is how you begin correspondence nowadays - which you would know if you had been paying attention instead of watching the television,” Kunzite said stiffly. He now had two sulky Shitennou on his hands. “Jadeite, is that cocoa ready yet?”
“Water only boils so quickly,” he grumbled in response.
“Very well. Let us continue. ‘Thank you for the gift.’”
“No, it should be ‘thank you very much!’”
“No, that’s excessive.”
“Add it anyway.”
Faced with two against one, Kunzite sighed and crossed out the first line, adding in their revision. “I need white-out. I should have written this out on something else first.”
“That card is ugly anyway,” Nephrite said dismissively. “We’ll use one of the other ones as the final version.”
“Yes, like mine.”
“Or mine.”
“This one is clearly the handsomest.”
“Zoisite, get me a sheet of lined paper, please,” Kunzite requested.
“What for?”
“So I can draft this Christmas card.”
“No! Christmas cards are meant to be genuine, from the heart. We don’t need to write a draft!” Zoisite insisted.
Mournfully, Nephrite said, “My heart is a lonely and barren place. I don’t think Makoto would want to see my heart right now.”
“If that’s the kind of poetry you were planning to write, sparing her from it should be our Christmas gift to Makoto,” Jadeite muttered under his breath.
Kunzite’s voice was a little too patient when he asked, “Can we continue, please?”
Jadeite and Nephrite glared at each other until they were distracted by the hissing of the boiling water foaming over the edges of the pot.
While Kunzite got up to examine whether they had permanently damaged Mamoru’s pot, Zoisite snatched the pen back. “We could tell her it was delicious.”
“What if we weren’t supposed to eat it?” Jadeite asked.
“What?! It’s not meant to be eaten?” This from Nephrite, who looked more scandalized than the time Mamoru had explained to him that horses were not the dominant form of transport in this day and age.
“Well, all the ones in the store windows are whole, aren’t they?” Jadeite pointed out.
“Idiot, no one puts half-eaten cookies in store windows either, and those are definitely for eating.” Thanks to Usagi, they knew all about cookies.
“And on television?” Jadeite persisted. “We see children putting all the pieces together, but no one takes a bite out of it.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then Nephrite ventured, “But it smelled so good. Surely it was meant to be eaten.”
“Perhaps not. It does seem strange to eat an image of yourself,” Kunzite considered. That hadn’t stopped him from devouring his gingerbread likeness in two bites, however.
“Yes, well, I didn’t get to eat mine because Nephrite ate it!” Zoisite burst out, still annoyed even though he had already complained ceaselessly over the past two days.
“Well, I couldn’t help it! You looked delicious.”
“That doesn’t make it any better.”
“Hey, I let you eat my cookie.”
“Only your arm was left!”
Squabbling and suggestions ensued. In the end, they took a suspiciously bulky manila envelope the day after the post office reopened.
When Makoto opened the envelope, four cards fell out, and she read them in the order indicated by the numbered envelopes.
Dear Makoto,
Thank you for the gift. Thank you very much for the gift. It was very kind of you to think of us, and the gingerbread house was delicious. Some of us were not able to resist the temptation to eat more than our fair share -
Here there was an inky blot from Zoisite and Nephrite fighting over control of the pen.
so we hope you will take that as an indication of how much we enjoyed the present.
This was Kunzite’s quick fix.
Unless it was not supposed to be eaten, in which case we offer our sincerest apologies.
Jadeite’s scrupulous hand made itself known here.
Also, who knew that building a gingerbread house together (Mamoru came home in time to stop us from eating the pieces before the house was assembled) could be more challenging than commanding an army writing poetry?
For a brief time, Kunzite resumed control until he realized he had written something he shouldn’t have, and despite Nephrite’s protests, he let Zoisite’s correction stand.
One day, we hope it will be possible for us to find a home as beautiful as the one you made for us.
Here a few cocoa stains adorned Nephrite’s words, testament to the heated argument they had had over whether they could let this sentimental statement stand. They could, but only with the following additions:
Perhaps with central heating since the weather has been foul. If it’s going to be this cold, there should at least be snow.
Perhaps not all together, either. We didn’t live in such close proximity to each other even during the Silver Millennium.
I hope these cards haven’t caused any offense. Happy holidays and best wishes for the new year.
Sincerely,
Kunzite, Zoisite, Jadeite, & nephrite.
A/N: In case it wasn’t clear, italic was Kunzite, bold was Zoisite, underline was Jadeite, and small caps was Nephrite.