View source for 2322/Housecleaning

{{Log Header
|Date of Scene=2017/01/10
|Location=Earth Court Frat House
|Synopsis=Mamoru and Kunzite catch up on some outstanding issues. Miss White's Linker Core problems. Kyouko's Soul Gem. Naru's contact with the White Flower. Their own communication issues and recent fight. And banishing just a little more the shadow of the argument that hangs over all the other arguments since.
|Cast of Characters=109,38
|pretty=yes
}}
{{Poses
|Poses=:'''{{#var:109|Kunzite| (109)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>It didn't take ''too'' long for Kazuo to arrive, once texted; one piece of external bureaucracy not susceptible to Internet to hack through, that's all. And there is always the possibility that Mamoru might be intending to leave RIGHT NOW.<br /><br />Mamoru was not waiting at the elevator, though, nor at the door, so Kazuo takes the time to get himself a cup of coffee. Yes, that means making the coffee if necessary. Which means he can greet Mamoru's appearance with a 'want one?' glance along with actual words. "Miss White did consult me on something yesterday," he says. "She opted to talk to me instead of you specifically, but she was more intelligent than to ask me ''not'' to talk to you about it." A beat. "She did ask me not to talk to Usagi, though. Apparently she's afraid of being trapped in a sea of blonde hair, hugs, and milkshakes."

:'''{{#var:38|Mamoru Chiba| (38)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>'Appearance' is, in fact, the right word for it -- Mamoru's leaning in the kitchen doorway, arms not quite crossed, but definitely crossed ''over'', his chest. He's not scowling because he's had just enough time to settle his ruffled feathers between Kyouko helping and Ami finishing up and visitor girl actually taking a ''nap'', and he nods at the unspoken coffee question. "It's a valid concern," he says mildly, glancing at the freezer and smiling in spite of his still-crummy mood. "I'm pretty predictable too, though."<br /><br />He pushes himself off the doorframe and comes in, brushing past Kunzite on his way to the fridge and opening it up to get out milk and chocolate syrup. "There's a brand new magical girl and her talking service dog mascot taking a nap in the guest room in this apartment, just so you're forewarned. What did she consult you on? Or should I get whiskey to put in the coffee first?"

:'''{{#var:109|Kunzite| (109)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>"I thought that was a magical dog and her girl escort, from your texts." Kazuo is already reaching up with one hand to get Mamoru a mug; his other hand touches Mamoru's briefly in the course of that brush past.<br /><br />"When Riventon's mockery of Jupiter attacked here," he says, "Riventon manifested a concentration of his magical capacity and severed a piece of it to place in the construct." Less a 'do you recall that?' than a reminder, and one that might be a 'yes' on the whiskey. He doesn't stop long enough for Mamoru to actually ''get'' said whiskey, granted. "Apparently Miss White spent some time in 2015 making similar experiments with Grief Seeds. Apparently the problem with this is that a 'once touching, always touching' rule may possibly apply, and what she calls her 'Linker Core' has become notably infected with Witch energies."

:'''{{#var:38|Mamoru Chiba| (38)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>"Could be a magical dog and her service human," Mamoru grants; the brief touch reveals a simmering anger below the surface, controlled and contained and not affecting his manner overmuch, in addition and unrelated to his usual affection. "Her name's Nanami, the dog's name is Alcyone. They're both a little overwhelming. Saburo can show them out when she wakes up... we need to put a bench by the door for taking shoes off, incidentally."<br /><br />Mamoru doesn't get the whiskey, but he does half-fill that mug with chocolate milk before reaching it past Kazuo and plunking it down next to the coffeemaker. Then Kazuo starts explaining, and Mamoru reopens the milk carton and starts pouring the chocolate syrup directly into it. At the last part of it, Mamoru lets out a sound that could, with creative interpretation, be understood as a laugh. It bubbles up out of him with astonishing speed and he sets the syrup bottle down on the counter with a thunk, curling his hands around the edge of it and going white-knuckled. "Of course it does," he mutters.<br /><br />After a second his voice is under control, but he's still braced against the counter, head down. "You know... Doctor Shelby calls them all linker cores. It seemed like a pretty good term to use as a generic, but some of our friends objected on the grounds that it didn't sound emotional enough." He's quiet again, but it's a pausing silence, not a finished one.<br /><br />A moment later, still without moving, he says flatly, "She deliberately made herself a Witch and kept control of it. And then did it again. And again. And then she used four at once and nearly killed herself and me, which is probably why she's trying to keep me out of this. I don't remember what happened, but if you want to look, my psychometry probably does. And-- if there's a law of correspondence in play-- we'll have to watch Kyouko. There's a piece of Miss White's linker core in her soul gem."

:'''{{#var:109|Kunzite| (109)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>Coffee is poured on cue to complete the mug, whether Kazuo considers that a travesty or not. And his hand falls on Mamoru's shoulder this time, a moment after he braces himself. Not ''quite'' skin to skin. It'd take Mamoru all of, oh, a shrug to change that; but for the moment, his reactions are given a degree of privacy.<br /><br />"She's also concerned that you'll try to heal it directly and use energy we're going to need elsewhere." Kazuo's using ''that'' tone, yes. The one that has the impression of 'all of our friends are idiots.' "The timing is interesting. Two days before the Witch fight, Naru passed on to me an anonymous tip that Witches would become more common again soon. Apparently, the amount of contamination went from minimal to significant in an incident on the day between."<br /><br />They'll have to watch Kyouko.<br /><br />Kazuo takes that, processes it as information, leaves everything else about it aside. He doesn't work through the rest, right now. He can't. Mamoru is angry already; one of them needs not to be.

:'''{{#var:38|Mamoru Chiba| (38)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>The 'all of our friends are idiots' tone actually surprises Mamoru, given how Kunzite tends to feel about Mamoru potentially overexerting his energy. It earns Kunzite some side-eye, which at least is better than Mamoru looking at the floor. It also disperses a little of the anger, enough for the prince to let go of the counter and straighten up, then briefly put his hand over Kunzite's on his shoulder before picking up his coffee and sipping it. "There's a reason Kyouko hates Miss White," he says with a sigh. "Homura was involved in that debacle too, since at the time she was working for Hannah. She's forgiven Homura long since. Hannah's another story, and I don't blame her. But I can't give up on Hannah, and I won't. She can be a good person, and is, sometimes. But sometimes she gets desperate and makes stupid choices and dabbles with corrupting influences and loses her mind... and I really thought she was past that."<br /><br />Silently, he takes his phone out of his pocket and unlocks it, goes to his text conversation with Hannah from earlier, and hands Kunzite the phone.<br /><br />"At the last fight with Madison Perry that I was at-- the one where you caught I think Sakura?-- and Naru first had her henshin and I didn't know it was her... Hana Shiroi, as a grief seed, was talking in Naru's head. Naru hasn't wanted to talk about it. I think it's time I made her sit down and tell me what's going on, if she got an 'anonymous tip' about witches," the black-haired boy says quietly, just sounding tired for a moment. "Anyway I had an idea between texting you and you getting here. Before we go yell and loom at Hannah, respectively, we should go talk to Boris, her Familiar. He knows me, and he knows I genuinely want Hannah to be well, so he's much more likely to give us details easily than Hannah is."

:'''{{#var:109|Kunzite| (109)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>Sometimes the other word for Kunzite using that tone is 'hypocrisy,' yes. Fingers are lifted to interlace for a brief moment as Mamoru's drawing his hand back for coffee, but -- it's coffee; the gesture is not interrupted.<br /><br />"There's something she wants that she believes depends on her own individual power," Kazuo says. "As long as that's the case, she'll still make stupid choices." He exhales, and tilts his head a little to look at the phone, scrolling neatly through the text conversation. The urge to smile and the urge to frown harder conflict; he settles for a trace of the latter and handing the phone back to Mamoru.<br /><br />The comment about Naru does not provoke any surprise; Kunzite turns back to his coffee and takes a resigned sip. "She'd been getting the dreams," he says. "And she'd stopped talking with me much. There's somewhere she'd been going that she didn't want us to know about. I'd already planned to take someone and get a look, the moment crises stopped getting in the way."<br /><br />There's a brief nod to Mamoru's suggestion about Boris. "Agreed. She came to talk with me about it specifically, and she still didn't mention physical symptoms."

:'''{{#var:38|Mamoru Chiba| (38)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>Taking back his phone and replacing it in his pocket, Mamoru chugs the rest of the tepid half-chocolate-milk coffee and then pours a fresh cup of black. "Can follow her, sure. But I'm also going to be sitting down with her and convincing her to talk about it. I'm assuming you don't want me coming with you to see where she's been going," he says with a glance, carefully sipping the new coffee. "Which is fine. Maybe take Neph with you, just-- warn him about the Witch part first."<br /><br />Then he puts the cup down and hesitates for a second before turning to face Kunzite, leaning back against the counter and looking up at him. For a half-second, a smile plays at the corners of his mouth, and then he leans and reaches to pull Kunzite closer to him -- close, closer. Against him. Then he slides his hands up Kunzite's arms and lazily drapes his wrists on the man's shoulders. "I know what she wants," he says quietly. "And I know the kind of lengths she's willing to go to, and I know the lines she's not willing to cross. So you also need to know that she will fight with everything she has not to hurt me beyond what can happen in a sparring match, and that I'm willing -- and these days I'm ''capable'' of -- taking her down if she starts to lose that fight."

:'''{{#var:109|Kunzite| (109)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>"Welcome to come if you want to. We have a location already, no need to wait on her next visit." Kunzite tips his head toward Mamoru, setting his own cup down. "I was planning on Nephrite already, though. Zoisite's in Italy to begin with, and there's something Nephrite wants to talk to me about in private. Two birds with one stone either way; just a matter of which two."<br /><br />His hands are already free. He doesn't need to take time while Mamoru's actually drawing him over to deal with hot liquids. He can answer that pull, settle his forearms on the counter behind Mamoru, let palms and fingers come to rest slowly against Mamoru's back.<br /><br />"I know," he answers in turn, no louder. "I've seen the way the two of you deal with each other. And seen the way she deals with me because of how we work together. I know."<br /><br />He leans a little further, and his lips brush Mamoru's hair, just above the temple. "Thank you for taking care to make sure I knew."

:'''{{#var:38|Mamoru Chiba| (38)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>"Oh if Neph wants to talk to you privately, I definitely won't go," Mamoru decides, and there's no hint of disappointment in it. In fact, a sparkle glimmers behind his eyes for a moment. "For all I know, he wants to complain about me."<br /><br />And then Kunzite's slipping warm hands around his back, and the teenager's smile returns -- and is shortly thereafter accompanied by his face warming in a blush at the quiet reassurance. It, along with the smile, grows significantly when Kunzite murmurs his thanks, and he ducks his head a little and leans that temple against his guardian's face.<br /><br />With the contact comes the other warmth: his encompassing love and the delight at having done something to make Kunzite feel better, his fast-beating heart and the safety he feels, and the last of the anger vanished in the sea of that.<br /><br />"It's--" he says in a voice just above a whisper, close to Kunzite's ear, "--it's the kind of thing I should be telling you anyway. And-- and telling you when I ''know'' I'm taking a risk. Which I'm going to be doing-- and if I don't, if I don't, then please call me on it."

:'''{{#var:109|Kunzite| (109)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>Arguments are weather. Weather looms large in the day-to-day life of humans on the Earth. But work one's way a little deeper -- curl into a cave, settle down into the cold dark depths of the ocean, luxuriate in the unthinkable heat and pressure of liquid metal and rock -- and in the end, weather is a tiny fraction of what the world is, and less than an eyeblink in how long the world's been. The steadiness and calm and love that answer and anchor Mamoru have much less to do with the weather, much more with the world.<br /><br />And the barely half-voiced laughter that answers him is much the same.<br /><br />"Endy." Breathed, this time, as if to apologize for the shout a few days before. "You mean every promise you make, and you don't always think them through. The risk you took with that false-you girl -" He doesn't give her the title of Sailor Earth. Or any other. They've had that argument; he acknowledges that she may be an alternate, may be something else, that's all encapsulated in the emotional context of the words - "you couldn't tell us about that one, not in advance or at the time. We need to try to do better, yes. Both of us. I should've made it clearer last summer why I was worried. I ''will'' try. But conditions won't always let us. And we'll survive."

:'''{{#var:38|Mamoru Chiba| (38)}} has posed:'''<br><span></span>Mamoru's eyes are bright when he lifts his head at that specific invocation of his name, his own hands traveling up to thread through Kunzite's white hair at the back of his neck and then lace there, contact kept. There's a sharp little note of embarrassment, almost shame, at the subject of Sailor Earth, but it ends in sheepish acknowledgement instead of anything else. And he keeps listening, and then he nods, first slowly and then firmly. "I can at least promise to also try. Trying is a promise I can keep," he says, and it's not a protest, it's a resolution.<br /><br />Then one of his hands slides upward, further into Kunzite's hair, and he tips his face up to catch the taller boy's mouth with his own. Arguments are weather, but despite the solidity and timelessness of the bedrock beneath them, weather sometimes still takes cleaning up afterwards.<br /><br />Promises to try are part of that.<br /><br />So, comfortably, is this.
}}