~*~ 35 Millimeters
by Lady Aishiteru
Email: lady_aishiteru@hotmail.com

Chapter 3: Rude Awakening

“You’re awfully quiet, Ami,” remarked Zoisite, after having driven 
a few miles of silence. 

“I guess I am.”

“Anything in particular you’re thinking about?”

I blushed, and he must have caught that, because I saw his smiling 
reflection in the perfectly clean and buffed windsheild. "Not 
really.”

“Are you sure? Is it my hair? Do I have B.O.?”

I couldn’t help but laugh at his obvious attempts at lightening 
the mood. “Too many split ends,” I said.

“Guess I’ll have to get that buzz cut I’ve been putting off.”

“Yeah. I don’t know if I could watch movies with a man who’s hair 
is longer than mine.”

“Come on! You know that’s not fair,” he said, pausing just long 
enough during a red light to give my hair a playful flick. “Your 
hair doesn’t go past your jawline.”

“Yep, yep, yep,” I said imperiously, enjoying our reparte’. “Guess 
you’ll have to get a haircut and join the rest of the drones over 
at Chiba Corp.”

“Of course,” he said, parking the car.

‘Strange,’ I thought. ‘This doesn’t look like a movie theater.’

“I thought we were going to see a movie,” I said.

“We are. I have a large collection of DVD’s.”

“Oh, okay,” I said a bit nervously.

Noting my apprehension, he sidestepped from standing next to me. 
“Don’t worry. I said I don’t bite, remember?”

I nodded, feeling foolish. I relaxed my guard, hoping that my hunch
was right, that I could take his words at face value, and that the 
sensual undertone was purely a part of my imagination. I scoffed 
silently at myself as he led me up the stairs. What would a man 
like Zoisite, tall, masculine, powerful, want with a woman like me? 

“Welcome to my humble abode,” he said, opening the door in a grand,
overstated gesture. “Make yourself at home.”

I smiled at his friendliness and put the borrowed coat on its 
respective hook.

“Any movie you have in mind, Ami?” he asked, gesturng towards a 
grand bookcase, stocked full of DVD’s.

My eyes browsed through the titles until I found the one I wanted. 
“This one,” I said, handing Zoisite the case.

He raised his eyebrow at me. “Spaceballs? You surprise me, Ami”

“This movie always makes me laugh,” I explained.

“Ah,” he said, popping the DVD into the player. I settled on the 
couch and he soon joined me. I was pleased to note that Zoisite 
was a man of his word, and stayed parked on the opposite side of 
the couch, keeping his hands to himself. It wasn’t that I wasn’t 
attracted to him. In fact, the proximity of the man was almost...
dare I say....stimulating. 

But somewhere during the course of the movie, everything got dark. 
I could hear people talking, but couldn’t see their lips moved. 
Time seemed to slow down, and the characters looked as if they were
stuck waist high in cold peanut butter. ‘Mmmmm....peanut butter,’ 
I thought lazily. Suddenly, Darth Vader was standing in front of 
me, offering me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. 

“Why thank you, Mr. Vader, sir,” I said. “I don’t know why everyone 
thinks you’re so evil.”

“Hm. Maybe it’s the black. Do you think I’d look better in 
pastels?”

I scrunched up my nose. “No way. Black is definetly your color,” 
I said, mouth poised, ready to take a bite. 

“Nooooo!” I heard a man shout. “Don’t eat the sandwich!”

I felt a curious sensation in my hand. The sandwich was...alive? 

“Eeek!” I screeched, dropping the sandwich. Suddenly, a freaky 
looking, green alien came out of the sandwich. The alien took one 
look at me, then burst into song,

“Is this the real life? Or is this just fantasy? Caught in a land 
mine, no escape from reality. Open your eyyyyes, look up to the 
skiiiies and seeeeeee!”

Suddenly, the alien, who was apparently a tenor, exploded in a 
mass of green goo. “Yuck!”

“I know,” said the man behind me. “It’s sad, really. The little 
critters explode whenever they go above the treble clef.”

I turned around and was face to face with Zoisite, decked out like 
Luke Skywalker. I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing.

~*~
The next thing I knew, I was in a spacious bedroom. Like any woman 
who woke up in a strange place, I panicked. I did not know where I 
was, and I waited for the digits on the clock to separate so I 
could look for clues. Then I heard rhythmic breathing coming from 
the other side of the bed.

Still panicking, I turned around slowly and collided with a firm, 
warm object. My eyes widened even more when the sunlight filtered 
through the venetian blinds, showing a striped portrait of a 
sleeping Zoisite, hair tousled, chest bare, a serene expression on 
his face. He looked every bit like the shepherd, Endymion, who was 
placed into an everlasting slumber, nightly collecting the kisses 
of the moon goddess, Selene. 

He must have noticed me staring at him and he smiled. “Mornin’,” 
he drawled lazily.

My heart was pounding against my chest, like an angry bird trying 
to escape its cage. As he looked into my still widening eyes, I 
wondered what exactly had we done last night...