When Naru comes in the door, none of the usual crowd is around-- just Mamoru. Either rumors were true and Zoisite is actually here, or Mamoru's keeping company with yet another girl, because Usagi's still in detention and there's a frothy confection on the table near where he's got his homework spread out. Also, it seems like too many textbooks to be just Mamoru, senior year notwithstanding.
The place isn't too crowded, at least. Seems like a lot of students have been going home after school, even if they have clubs, due to being too tired to have fun.
Homework is all fine and good, but Naru isn't headed home just head. She pushes her way into the Crown, an extra bag over her shoulder as well as her school bag. She smiles as she spots Mamo, waving in his direction, glancing around for his companion before coming over to slide in at the booth. "Hi."
"Hi!" the black-haired upperclassman says cheerfully, most decidedly shutting the textbook he'd been glaring at. "I swear my English teacher is trying to turn us all goth. She's got us reading this Irish fairy tale that's a tragic romance where literally everyone dies. It's all I can do not to make the most sarcastic possible interpretations." He runs a hand through his hair, looking exasperated, then reaches for his coffee. "I can't even complain to Usa about it, she'll get that look on her face with her eyes brimming over, about to wail, and if I don't distract her really fast she'll cry forever. And dammit, it's homework."
All that out of his system, affectionate though the last part is, he gives Naru a crooked smile. "He's around somewhere. His pink whatever is melting so he won't be gone long."
"That.. sounds really /cool/, actually." Naru comments about the fairy tales and then looks a little rueful. "My English is so not up to reading tragic romances. Maybe eventually." She sounds hopeful and then she laughs softly at the idea of Usa crying forever over homework.
She has the grace to flush a little. "Just set this bag in his seat then.." She offers the extra bag, with something square within it, to set where Zoi will be sitting when his pink whatever finishes melting. "Other than homework, how are you?" She asks of Mamoru.
"Philistine." All that the word is lacking is an honorific, and it'd do double duty as both a greeting and a name. Zoisite comes up beside Naru, leveling a pen mock-threateningly at Mamoru. He's dressed in the Infinity uniform, which means that the only real splashes of color are his bright hair and brighter eyes. "No appreciation for the classics. I suppose you'd have been happier if she picked the next incident instead, where literally everyone dies because of a really picky cow." He tosses his head, giving an exaggerated roll of his eyes; it ends with his head angled so that he can wink at Naru without Mamoru officially seeing it. The same way that he's pretending not to officially see the bag yet. Appreciation and deprecation must of course be separated.
"I'll--" starts Mamoru as he takes the bag, but then there's Zoisite, and the black-haired boy almost gets a visible thundercloud on his face. He huffs indignantly. "Look," he points out righteously, "I've had ENOUGH tragedy. You should see me reading Shakespeare. I'm always yelling at the book. The only thing less inspiring to read is Dostoyevsky. Or Dickens. Why we can't read the actual Western Classics is a mystery to me. Or hell, if we have to go Celtic, I'll take the bloody cow. Or the war about the pigs. Or Cuchullain! Come on. A guy getting screwed over because of angry girls is one thing, but a series of massively unfair things happening to a girl protagonist is like... you know, I could just read Euripides. Or Sophocles. Then there's at least over the top theatre instead of over the top goth!"
One thing Mamoru doesn't realize is that as he's going on, he's getting louder and more flustered with every word. By the time he finishes, people are staring. He flushes red and sinks down in his chair, then halfheartedly kicks at Zoisite's ankle.
Naru Osaka leans a little in towards Zoisite and she 'whispers' in a voice that Mamoru can easily hear. "I don't know any of those stories. Like even a /little/ bit." Ahhh, the younger student, who hasn't quite gotten this far in her English classes. She grins at Mamoru and reaches over to pat his arm gently as he sinks in his chair. "It's okay Endy, tell us how you really feel about it." She gestures towards the bag that waits in Zoi's seat. "That's for you. Wickedly and wildly belatedly, but hopefully you still like it."
The forgotten synonym for 'Zoisite' might be 'unrepentant.' "Oooh, are we going to see you reading Shakespeare?" he asks, apparently delighted at the prospect of in-house theater. Whether this is the Shakespeare, Mamoru yelling at the Shakespeare, or Mamoru getting into fights with Nephrite over Nephrite's reaction to Mamoru yelling at the Shakespeare, is left as an exercise for the audience.
His yelp at the ankle-kick at least spares anyone from his pointing out that Cuchullain is in the war about the cow. Well, the bull. Some form of cattle, anyway. One exaggeratedly woeful betrayed look for Mamoru, and then he's simultaneously sliding back into his seat, extracting the bag carefully with one hand, and patting Mamoru's other arm. Not, thankfully, in unison with Naru. Enough people were staring at the last reaction. "It'll be all right," he assures Mamoru. "It's short. We'll be out the other side soon enough. Maybe she'll go on to something more reasonable, like _The Castle of Otranto_."
He's holding Naru's bag. Hopefully this means Mamoru will only throw a napkin at him, not a drink. Either way, it's only after any vengeance that he makes a brightly inquisitive noise and investigates the contents.
Mamoru, thankfully, only threatens vengeance-- in the form of taking the sopping napkin where his coffee cup sloshed into its saucer, picking it up and letting it drip menacingly, and eyeing Zoisite's spotless school uniform meaningfully. Naru only gets a faintly betrayed look and then he's dropping the napkin back where it was and sulkily flipping open his textbook again. What he mumbles sounds astonishingly like 'Norton Anthology of My Ass', but he otherwise behaves himself, because appreciation time.
Naru Osaka can't help but giggle softly as she watches Mamoru go back to his homework, because clearly that is going to make this go all better.
The bag holds a square canvas perhaps 10" x 10" or so, with what's clearly an original painting within. The background is an abstract of dark grey and purple, very much like the purple goop that creeps the walls in the dark kingdom. The foreground, however, is a large bloom, in brilliant reds and oranges, one of the flowers that had been in Zoi's garden there, but rather than struggling against the darkness, in the painting it glows against the darkness behind, as if its brilliance has been sharpened and bloomed all the brighter for the depths behind.
Naru watches him anxiously as he looks into the bag, chewing on her bottom lip as he does.
Menacing drippings are met with wickedly merry eyes; mocking Gothic horror is, apparently, worth the horror of coffee stains. Mamoru's retreat to his textbook instead wins him another consoling press to the forearm before Zoisite investigates the bag --
-- and it's as well that he took his hand back first, because it means more time's likely to pass before Mamoru notices that he's gone very, very still.
He remembers to breathe after a little; lifts his head to blink at Naru, the green of his eyes all the brighter for how pale his face has gone around them. "You painted that? From memory?"
Given how constantly Zoisite's in motion, even when ostensibly sitting still, Mamoru only doesn't instantly notice because he's making a decided effort to concentrate on the noble, manly, handsome youths with beauteous, brown locks contained within the text he is reading. It's just before Zoisite remembers he needs to breathe that his prince glances up in concern, reflexively seeking along their link-- and he sees the whiteness of the strawberry-blond's face and his own shifts immediately to alarm.
He puts down his text and reaches to touch his fingertips lightly to Zoisite's hand, glancing at the painting as he does so, and his own eyes widen fractionally. As he looks up from the painting to Naru, his hand slips further around the back of Zoi's, but he doesn't say anything. He doesn't look angry or upset, just open.
"Yes?" Naru offers to Zoisite, hesitant as she watches him get pale and still. "If.. I realized much later that you might not want the reminder, and if you don't, that's cool. I can paint you something else. I .. just.. " She trails off, uncertain all over again, managing not to reach across the table to just take it back, and not make Zoi all pale. "I'm sorry?" It too is offered, hesitant.
The 'if you don't' suggestion does not result in Zoisite grabbing protectively at the canvas, because, well, canvas and paint. It does result in his sliding an arm around the entire thing, bag and all. Defensive and possessive, even if both are unnecessary. (And the motion is not on the side that Mamoru has the hand of. That stays just where it is.)
Zoisite's expression stays under better control; there's half a laugh stifled in his throat, and he lowers lashes and glances down for a moment. "What I wouldn't have done for more people with memories like that." But that was in another country, and besides, the -- well, everyone -- is dead.
His attention flicks back up to her a moment later, focused again and oddly fierce. "Don't be sorry. Art isn't designed to make people comfortable, is it?"
"It's true, too, though," Endymion tells Naru quietly, then looks at Zoisite; with the contact is offered, of course, all the familiar warmth and reassurance and brightness-- but it's an offer, never forced. "You did shine in spite of it, and you did triumph."
He manages to keep the reasons for his eyes stinging out of the contact, but only just; the memories are clear and stark and fierce, but they're full of as much pain as pride. The pride, he lets flare brilliantly. Twice over. Naru saw it once. Both of the times Zoisite denied the darkness utterly, and bought the fate of the world with it. The prince in his school uniform: he's sitting, interacting, the way he was the first time she met him in Jadeite's palace; he's not wearing any masks. And it's with that, warm and affectionately amused, that he looks at Naru again. "You have a wonderful gift. I told you you weren't boring."
"Well..." Naru tips her head as she considers that question. "Yes and no. Some art is to push, to find the edges and push past them. Some are for comfort, though. Some is to work through what's in your head, and get it out in paint and drawing." She relaxes a little as it seems he's not going to throw it back at her, the possessive gesture making it seem like he's not about to let her take it back. "But art isn't about making friends sad and uncomfortable because it's too soon to remember hard things.. or at least /my/ art isn't."
Naru blushes a little as Mamoru praises her skills. "Thank you. It's still not exactly world saving. It's not even super /useful/, but it's what I do."
"But it's important to remember. Even hard things. Sometimes, especially hard things." Zoisite tips his chin a little upward, defiant. Defiant of whom or of what is an excellent question, since it's not as if Naru or Mamoru are doing anything to prompt it.
What Endymion says undercuts it for a moment; there's a more hesitant glance Mamoru's way. What Endymion's seeing in the painting is not what Zoisite's seeing, not at all --
Which just underlines what he just told Naru about her gift, doesn't it?
Then Naru's demurring, and Zoisite's sitting up straighter again in indignation. "It's important. Being able to do this is important --" He quite literally bites his tongue a moment later, stopping a flood of words, making a frustrated sound instead. "I'll show you, later. I can show you."
There's a glance returned, then, and it's not so much uncertain as, again, open. Receptive. Show me, Endymion tells Zoisite without saying it out loud, show me what's wrong, later. He tentatively makes a motion to withdraw his hand, contingent on Zoisite's wishes, but what he says with words (like a grown-up) is, "One of the guys should be here soon, can take over babysitting duty. So: your 'later' can definitely be 'in short order'."
"It is important to remember.. and this wasn't going to go away forever, just I was worried it was too soon, that I should have waited longer.. but.. apparently not." Naru finishes, a touch lamely and she fiddles with the end of the strap of her school bag. "Um." She looks as if she's going to attempt to protest the importance of being able to capture a scene, a mood even, on canvas but she just looks at Zoisite with a faintly skeptical, but trying to be open minded nod. "I'm not sure.. how, but whatever you want to show me, I'll look." She glances to Mamoru as he notes that 'later' could be soon. "Whenever. I don't have any plans."