Kyouko's working fairly late tonight. She's been texting Naru all day- some good, some lovely, some worrisome. She's really not sure what state she's going to find her girlfriend in when she finally returns to the building, well past what is normally bedtime. She has a sack of doughnuts in her hand though, as promised. She lets herself into the apartment quietly, pausing in the hall to unbutton and unbundle, kick shoes off, and then venture further in.
It's quiet. She glances into the living room, but the lights are off. A quick peek into Momo's room reveals the younger girl snoring in her bed, and Kyouko quietly closes the door again, before turning to her own room. The door is closed, and she opens it after a brief hesitation, peering inside. "Naru?" The call is quiet, barely more than a whisper.
There are Naru's shoes by the front door, and her school books are stacked neatly on the table with her bag on the floor. She's certainly /here/.
While Kyouko's bedding often has lumps in it from comforters being just heaped there, generally they are slightly less Naru sized. She might be curled up in the dark, but she's clearly not asleep. Or at least not asleep enough to not reply to that quiet query of her name.
"Hi." Naru replies, dragging the blanket back from over her face. "You're off work already?"
"What do you mean, already?" Kyouko asks, with a faint laugh, although her insides are fluttering just faintly with worry. This is not the type of Naru she is used to- a hidey-in-the-dark Naru who doesn't seem particularly aware of her surroundings. "It's almost eleven."
She closes the bedroom door behind her, quietly so as not to risk waking Momo, then turns on the beside lamp. It's enough light to see by, though 'bright' would be the wrong way to describe it-a warm yellow glow that has more in common with artificial candlelight than bright flourescent faux-sunlight.
Then she walks over and sits on the edge of the bed. She places down the bag of doughnuts. "As promised." She murmurs, her eyes searching the Naru-face peeking out from the blankets for a moment. Then she's bending to tug her socks off.
"Apparently I fell asleep." Naru mmms softly as she pushes herself up to sitting, tucking her legs under her. "Cause I swear, it wasn't even nine when I wandered in here, and I was sure I'd be up before you got home."
Possibly, just maybe, not to literally be hiding under the covers when Kyouko got home.
Naru reaches for the doughnuts to ensure they dont get squished when she leans over to run her hand along Kyouko's back, gently. "Thank you for bringing doughnuts home." There's a touch of a smile to her voice, but it's subdued. Muted much as the light in the room is.
Kyouko straightens back up, socks disposed of, and glances back at Naru. She leans into the touch along her back slightly, and her smile is faint and lopsided. "Of course, babe. All you needa do is ask. I'd do a lot more than that to see you smile, y'know." Then she glances away, cheeks slightly flushed. Maybe that was a little bit too sappy for her, even here in the mostly-dark.
"Are you okay, Naru?" She asks a moment later, looking back again. "This isn't.. I mean, it doesn't.." She falters, struggling with her words. "Are you alright?" She finally returns to.. shifting slightly for a moment.
Naru wriggles over to be able to better lean on the headboard, rearranging pillows such that, ideally, Kyouko will come lean with her. Blankets get to come along too, cause of course they do, and doughnuts.
"I.. yes." Naru finally decides on to that question, after a moment of hestitation that doesnt give a whole lot of support to her words. "I'm just.. /done/ for right now. I'm out of worry, I'm out of stress, I'm out of fretting and fussing and overhtinking and complications and I'm just out of everything." She takes a deep breath and there's a slow sigh. "Sorry." She adds, more quietly.
That arrangement of pillows and blankets is indeed far too tempting to pass up. Naru soon has a Kyouko settling down beside her, leaning on the headboard, legs bent and leaning to the side so they cross partway over Naru's own. Blankets are arranged over both, and doughnuts placed on top. A most suitable arrangement, in the redhead's mind.
She listens quietly to Naru's words, and as the girl speaks, an arm winds around her waist, pulling her tight to Kyouko's side. After a moment, she nods. "I get that." She says, her tone soft, as befits the quiet of near-midnight. "I mean.. I'm not used to seeing you hit that point. You always seem so together. But I get it."
That arm squeezes. "And it's cool. You can be done, here. It's quiet and dark and I'm here, so just relax and.. be done for a little while."
"I slept through the enactment of that cunning plan of keeping it together, or at least getting it back together by the time you got home." Naru points out as she leans against Kyouko, her voice just a hint rueful and just as quiet in the quiet of the late hour.
There's quiet for a few heartbeats. "It feels just beyond pathetic." Naru notes quietly, curled up close and not in a rush to move from that contact. "I've had worse weeks."
The doughnuts are right there, but neither girl seems in a particular rush to dig in. This is probably more bizarre for Kyouko than for Naru, even if Naru was the one who asked for them in the first place.
Kyouko's hand lightly strokes Naru's back now, mirroring the contact that had been given her a few moments earlier. She doesn't rush Naru to speak, just lets the girl lean on her, curl up close to her, and say what she wants to, in her own time. At least part of this is because Kyouko is... not very experienced in this sort of thing and perhaps isn't quite sure what to say.
"You're not pathetic." She finally comes out with, a few more moments after Naru speaks. "You have a lot going on. And sometimes it just.. hits that point. Where you're just like.. 'fuck it, I am so done.' I've been there Naru. It's normal."
Even if 'my vampire ex-boyfriend stopped by and now I'm wallowing in guilt' isn't quite as normal a way to get there.
"Pretty much everyone I know has coped with more." Naru points out, but she does nod at the notion of just hitting the point of 'F it all, I'm out'.
"It feels like if I can keep it together 'til Saturday night, hold the status quo, then it'll be doable." Naru notes. "But .. I shouldnt have gone upstairs." She shakes her head a little. "I .. didn't expect a whole big conversation with Alexis. Or Kunzite. And I still can't find my book."
Because in all of this, clearly the book is the most dire bit.
"Everyone else isn't you." Kyouko points out gently. So easy to say to someone else, even when she herself has the same problems more than a little often. "And you help a lot of people cope, Naru. Like.. you get a lot of second-hand stress. It can't be easy, especially when you do have your own problems."
Then there's this fond little lopsided smile as Naru lists her problems.. and ends with a lost book. Kyouko tilts her head close, and brushes her lips just gently against the corner of Naru's mouth. "Babe. Take a deep breath. Have a doughnut. Soon we'll go to sleep, and in the morning, the world'll still be here, and I'll still be here, and we'll go find your book, and if Kunzite tries to bother you, I'll scare him away."
Well, maybe promising more than she has a right to with that last one, but she's trying to be reassuring.
The taking of the deep breath is easy enough. Naru does that pretty often. She inturrupts the flow of directions, however, by turning her head to steal a gentle kiss that wasn't part of the list, but possibly, just maybe, she might sneak in anyhow.
She does reach for the doughnuts though. "The world will still be there, and Kunzite lives there, he's allowed to bother whoever he wants." She points out pragmatically.
Naru offers the doughnuts to Kyouko first, not having moved from the curled up they are. She is still thoughtful, still well caught up in the cycle of overthinking and considering and debate and hamster wheel thoughts that she's probably been in for hours, if truth be told.
Kisses like that don't have to be stolen, although one should be careful what one asks for, because it's possible that ones goes on a bit longer than Naru originally intended. Still, when able, the list is finished. And doughnuts are offered.
Kyouko retrieves a chocolate doughnut from the bag, and chomps into it with obvious delight. Even a distressed girlfriend cannot stop her from enjoying a delicious snack. It's just the way of the world. A mild snort at Naru's words. "Maybe by law, but you underestimate the powers of little sisters, even adopted ones." Or maybe she overestimates them. Only one way to find out.
Kyouko can tell that Naru's lack-of-cope is not cured so simply. It will probably take sleep, but Naru clearly isn't ready for that yet, either. Licking her fingers after the doughnut has been consumed (with only a few tiny crumbs in bed- so decadent), she says, "Was it.. really that hard, talking to Alexis?"
"On another day, it would have been fine." Naru admits. "It was hard, it probably needed to happen. It might need to happen again." She is clearly out of sorts, her own doughnut is only half eaten, but she always eats more slowly than Kyouko at the best of times. "I got to feel like a jerk all over again. Then extra jerk because somehow my guilt feelings dont care that I had no way of knowing he'd be in whole new flavour of trouble like a week later. We both got to say some things that we probably should have said in the first place, but it wasn't the time, and I can't read him at all anymore, cause his emotions are completely arsed up, so I got to do the whole conversation with no emotional reads, no cues which is basically like landing a plane with my eyes closed for me."
Naru is clearly not ready for sleep, there are so many words and thoughts in her head, and Kyouko is likely to get drowned in the avalanche of them more than anything.
There's another deep breath, possibly making up for the breaths she skipped in that tumble.
This deep breath gets cut off after the avalanche of words, because Kyouko steals a kiss this time. The intent is to interrupt that tumble, not because she doesn't want to hear it, but to prevent Naru from careening off any mental cliffs when the breaks give out. Breaks are applied. In the form of kiss.
Only afterwards does Kyouko draw back, and squeeze with the arm she still has around Naru. "You're not a jerk." She says, her tone firm, almost demanding that Naru acknowledge this to be true. "And I know you already know this, but maybe if I say it it'll help. It's not your fault."
"And you got through, it Naru. You landed the plane, with your eyes closed or not. You're on the ground, you're taxing to the terminal. Maybe the next flight won't be so bad."
The tactic of halting the fall off the cliff with a kiss is a valid one, and certainly not one Naru is about to protest. Nor does she draw all that far back, still curled up close. "No. I know i'm not. Jerk would have been for us to have become /us/ before I talked to him, and I am not that kinda jerk."
There's a slow breath and another moment of slow pause, almost hestitation as Naru glances to her half eaten doughnut. "Have you ever.." She starts and then pauses again, as if second guessing her own words.
"Ever.." She pauses again and then shakes her head. Clearly a new tack is required and she's quiet again before she shakes her head. "This is going to sound like I'm possessed again, and I'm not, but apparently I also can't figure out how to talk about some stuff without my brain coming up with a thousand reasons why I shouldn't."
Kyouko watches with a certain fascination as Naru struggles with whether or not to say something, and how to go about it. This is a feeling she is familiar with, although for her part, it's usually the 'how' more than the whether. It's a bit of a bizarre experience for her to be on the other side of it, watching Naru's face as the girl tries to sort out the words in her brain.
"Naru," Again quiet, a slight pause, Kyouko doing just a bit of her own struggling. "It's me. Okay? I know.. I know us is still new. It's not like I can say I've always been here for you, but.." Her mouth shuts, and she gnaws her lower lip briefly. "I really can't figure out how to tell you how much you can trust me, and how much I'm here for you, and how-"
She pauses, as if having a sudden realization. Then she laughs softly, very quiet. "Or.. maybe it's right in front of my face, and I just can't see it because I'm so dumb." She leans down, and murmurs something very softly in Naru's ear.
Naru closes her eyes as Kyouko leans in, and there's a softly murmur. And one in return. And a kiss that is at once a delight in and of itself, and some degree of avoidance, especially as it lingers.
Eventually Naru's voice is barely more than that soft murmur. "Ever wandered so far down a rabbit hole where suddenly bad ideas that would have just been bad ideas have now been lingering and now there's not just the bad idea embarassment admission, but the how long its been around embarassment, mixed with a healthy dose of I still think its valuable, even if its a bad idea.. and somewhere in there you decide that clearly not telling anyone is the best course of action, except in those moments when you have brief flashes of 'You are probably an idiot'... and somehow eventually.. you realize you're rambling."
A kiss. A kiss to deal the promise of those whispered words. Kyouko doesn't mind if it lingers, even if it is avoidance. Because there are some things you just can't avoid, no matter how long the interlude.
She keeps Naru close, even after the kiss ends. Barely any space between them as the other girl murmurs to her of bad ideas and secrets, and she lets her ramble a little. Clearly she just needs to talk, and Kyouko is happy to be ears to listen, at the very least. Ears that won't judge or condemn.
"I don't know what's got you thinkin' like this, exactly," She murmurs, gently. "But.. yeah. Look.. for three and a half years my life was solid bad decisions, Naru, and I had nobody to talk to. I hurt people, I hurt myself, and I just kept telling myself there was no choice. I know how it feels to justify it to yourself. And maybe sometimes you're right and maybe sometimes you ain't but either way, you don't have to make those decisions on your own. If you don't want to."
"I haven't hurt anyone." Naru murmurs softly, her head resting against Kyouko. "I havne't hurt myself, at least that I know of. I can see it going one of those directions.. possibly both, but it hasn't yet. Which makes it easier to say that no one /really/ needs to know who I talk to. That it's not actually /that/ important. She hasn't done anything, I haven't done anything. It's just conversation."
Justification is terrible easy that way.
"It's even only conversation in Dreams, which is even more nebulous and uncertain and unreal and entirely possibly all in my head. Beyond literally."
Kyouko doesn't say anything for a few moments.. listening. Her hand raises to where Naru's head rests against her chest, just below her shoulder, and she lightly strokes the girl's hair, fingers combing through it. "Whether it's real or in dreams.. well.. I think you an' I both know that Dreams have power, Naru. That's not a justification to treat it lightly." There's maybe almost a very slight note of censure in that.
"If you can see that maybe people might get hurt.. that maybe you might get hurt.. Naru, you need to change that path." Theres the tiniest hint of desperation in her soft tones. "Naru, if you get hurt, now, after.. after all this, after I finally was able to.." She cuts off, falling silent.
"You can't get hurt, Naru." Is all she finally manages.
"I know." Naru murmurs softly, turning her head to kiss Kyouko's cheek lightly. "Its easier to see the holes in the logic when I have to explain them to you. When my own head isn't just ignoring the reasonable things as not important because it doesnt want to think about them." Her voice is so terribly quiet, but she's still talking, circling around as if using her own rambling to almost sneak up on her thoughts, to keep edging around them until she can't help it.
"I dont want you to get hurt either, and watching you in pain, evne knowing you'll heal makes me hurt." Naru gives Kyouko a squeeze, there's a lot of mutual injury avoidance going on here. "It got harder and easier, both, when her warning seems to be right. That there was a witch, probably not randomly when you called it more powerful than you expected. Which makes me wonder how many other things she's been right about, and that becomes a slippery slope too."
Kyouko doesn't ask who 'her' is. Not because she doesn't want to know- of course she does. But because she knows Naru needs to come to it on her own, if she's going to.
And maybe a little bit because she's afraid of the answer.
"I didn't.. even mean it like that, I guess." Kyouko says. There's a faint roughness to her voice. She isn't crying, she hasn't cried yet in front of Naru, but the threat is there, in her tone. "Getting hurt is sometimes part of my job.. part of our jobs. I'm a fighter. I mean.. really hurt. I can't even think about it."
The squeeze of arms gets tight, almost posessive, as if warding off this mysterious 'her' and her dreams and her warnings. Kyouko, all like 'my Naru, grrr' to the invisible dark.
"I get hurt too." Naru might have been near tears earlier, but she's calmer now, as if the focus of how to trick her own thoughts is enough of a puzzle to let her shove her emotional state down to something more usual. "I'm not a fighter, but I get in fights, and we get thrown around and these things happen.. but I know what you mean. Really hurt is different, and I'm ignoring /that/ idea even more than everything else I'm ignoring."
Naru snuggles into that possessive grip, perfectly willing to have a Kyouko barrier against all the crap that is trying to fight her in her own head. "You know how you were worried at one point, about me understanding that you'd made some not great choices in the past, and evne just now you talked about years of bad ideas.. love, I can never begrudge you bad ideas. I fight /all the time/ with how tempting it is to just say 'screw the consequences' and jump at something."
Like an emotional pendulum, it seems that somehow Naru is calming herself down by driving Kyouko near to tears. That certainly seems like a healthy way to deal with things. In reality though, it's not so much that as it is simply that Kyouko is being confronted, for the first time, with the reality that Naru isn't as unflappable as she always seems to be. She had known it, but she hadn't really known it. It's a bit unnerving. But it doesn't change her feelings.
Kyouko' grip is tight, Naru crushed gently against her, more tightly than is necessary, but the fact that Naru seems to encourage this instead of fighting it only makes her maintain that grip. "But you do fight." She whispers softly, blinking in the near-dark. "You fight Naru. You don't just do it. I know that fight. I know it every day. The fact that you're here now, with me, is proof that you win more often than you lose."
"Before I had magic of my own, I channeled dark energy into my art when I had it." Naru notes softly. "I only did once, probably for the best, but that's where I started.. and I had no clue what I was doing, and .." She shakes her head a little, as if dismissing that line of thought before its really gotten traction. "I know that I need to. I know that.. It sounds dumb, really." She takes a slow breath after that. "I'm sorry love. This makes no sense, and I sound like a lunatic. Even to myself, and I live in my own head."
Naru just leans into that tight grip, as if by Kyouko's grasp on her alone everything will be fine. "But when I startle and want to hide from Kunzite becuase he reads me too well, I am probably not currently winning as well as I think I'm winning."
Kyouko is silent for a few long moments, upon hearing Naru speak of channeling dark energy. This is something she herself is familiar with, of course, in the worst way. "It's.. like a drug." She whispers softly, lips close to Naru's ear. "Once it gets in you.. it's so hard to get it out. And it's always there.. whispering that everything would be so much easier if you'd just let it help you.. let it back inside."
"I understand." She murmurs. "I feel it too. I have to fight it, too." So does Kunzite, and the others. "You can hide with me." She assures the girl. She shifts, pulling Naru across her lap, on top of her, surrounding the slightly-smaller girl in her arms. "I'll hide you. Even from him."
"I am pretty sure I sounded exactly like a druggie afterwards." Naru agrees quietly as she is pulled almost bonelessly into Kyouko's lap. "I am also pretty sure that I asked Kunzite if my own magic was clean approximately a million times, because it even came /close/ to that feeling."
Million might be an exageration, but possibly not by all that much.
Naru snuggles in close, her head resting upon Kyouko's as she is quiet a few moments longer. "It wasn't the same, but touching the witch's art even for the flash of amoment I managed it.. it totally had the same rush."
"I know that feeling." Kyouko whispers, as she leans back on the headboard, closing her eyes, letting Naru settle as she will, but with arms still tight around her. "A while back.. I was in a fight with Takashi. Y'know, Ami's boyfriend? He's a jerk. Anyway.. he shot a bolt of dark energy at me and I.. channeled it. I took it, and turned it back. And it felt.." A pause. "Good."
"But it scared me because it felt good. That's always there in me, Naru. You're not alone in needing to deal with it." A soft sigh. "It's.. probably never going to get away. But maybe together we can remind each other why it's really not a good idea."
"Takashi is where, accidentally, I got the dark energy to begin with." Naru comments, just a hint of dry to her tone. "Ami could handle the low doses in the chocolate fairly well, but I was a mundane, and she didn't realize the chocolates were laced with it." She pauses and then nods. "Yeah, he's a jerk."
Naru gives her own squeeze to Kyouko. "It's not a good idea. It's probably also not a good idea to listen to a witch's theories of reality building."
Kyouko is very still beneath Naru as the girl speaks those words to her. She doesn't pull away- not in the least. But the change in her, the tensing, the faint tightening of arms, betrays her uncertainty. "Which Witch?" She asks quietly.
She knows of the White Flower. But not enough to really understand what Naru is telling her without some further explanation.
"Hana." Naru replies softly and then amends. "White Flower. She's.. not fully awake yet." Which does not make this any less creepy, but Naru clearly is going to Kunzite's school of reassurance training.
"I never know if you've woken up because I have, or if you can sense her in my dreams." Naru comments softly.
"The one.. from the weird dreams, about the Puella who.. went crazy?" Kyouko asks. Not the most accurate description, but her mind might be spinning just a little bit, and that's the best description she can come up with. Naru will know what she means.
"She's.. she talks to you?" She whispers, sounding very confused, and slightly alarmed. Witches, to her knowledge, don't talk. Not in a way that humans can understand, at least. She's seen a lot of Witches, but.. that's a new one on her.
Naru doens't answer the first, just nodding against Kyouko. That's the one, and the little gesture is enough to confirm it from the surprisingly enlightening descriptor.
"Mm mmmm." Naru confirms with another little nod. "She did at the fight with Madison, we've met in Dreams a few times since. Just talk." Naru reassures, in as much as it is not even a little bit reassuring. "Nothing's /happened/, we just talk."
That's.. almost more alarming to Kyouko. Because Witches aren't supposed to talk. They are supposed to be mindless.. or well, nearly-mindless, certainly indecipherable monsters. The idea that one can not only appear in Naru's dreams, but hold entire conversations with her. Kyouko feels a cold sweat slowly starting to break out over her body. The sudden clamminess of her skin may be noticable to Naru, close as they are.
"What.. does she say to you?" She finally whispers. Her arms are no less tight, but her tone is slightly shaky.
To Naru, Hana is the first Witch she's ever met. The fact that most of them are mindless will come as a surprise to her, just as that last one did in so many ways.
Naru tries to snuggle her as the conversation starts to go tense and challenging and weird and in some ways, much as Naru feared. "Um." She has to think about that. "We discuss.. um.. Art and the perception of it? The nature of reality? Philosophy and art and magic, to some degree, and how those interconnect."
"I.. see." Kyouko murmurs. Her tone is slightly steadier. Maybe it's the snuggling Naru attempts as a means to prevent freak-out doing its job. Or maybe it's just that Kyouko finds "art and the perception of it" to not be a very alarming thing to talk about. I mean, don't get me wrong, a Witch talking to you in your dreams is concern enough. But at least the answer wasn't "how to kill humans and drain their life essence."
"And you're.. sure she's a Witch?" Kyouko asks a moment later, then shakes her head. "No, I'm sorry, of course you're sure. You wouldn't say it if you weren't." She chews on her lip softly.
"Why?" She finally asks. "Why does she talk to you?" Not why do you listen, or why do you talk back. Either Kyouko knows, or can guess. She wants to know what Hana is getting out of it.
"Yes?" Naru offers at the question about her being a witch. "I mean, we've discussed that a little too, about emotions, but that's all tied in with art, really."
The next question gives Naru pause and she's quiet a moment before she gives a little shrug. "I think she's lonely."
Kyouko is silent for a few long moments after that answer. Her hand, slowly, starts to stroke up and down Naru's back through her t-shirt, in a gentle rhythm. "Would you still talk to me, if I were to turn into a Witch?" Kyouko murmurs.. a random thought leaking from her lips, as she tries to understand what Naru has told her.. and tries to decide what she should feel about it.
"If you talk to me, love.. witch or puella.. I will talk with you." Naru replies as she turns her head to nuzzle softly, less of a kiss against Kyouko's temple, and more a gentle brushing of her lips.
The touch on her back, the fact that Kyouko is still right there, lets Naru relax into her, finally settling some of the tension out of her. There's softer comments, murmured and barely audible, more sigh than words.
Kyouko is silent for a few moments still, even with that response, and with the kiss against her temple, with those murmured words. Naru is starting to relax. But Kyouko.. isn't quite ready yet. "I don't think you should talk with her." She finally says, though her hand, rubbing Naru's back, doesn't stop. "But.. I also think you're going to do whatever you think is right, no matter what I think. And that I trust you."
A faint squeeze with her arms. "Will you tell me? If she talks to you again?" Kyouko chews softly on her lower lip. She has a bad feeling.. but that bad feeling is warring with the desire not to upset the delicate thing that she and Naru have created between them. She seeks a compromise to try and assuage both. "Witches are.. bad, Naru." That sounds so lame, but she can't think of how else to put it. "All they want.. usually.. is to kill people. But.. maybe if she talks to you, you'll be able to find out what she's up to, or at least get some clues. And that.. might help us in the long run."
There's no sound of protest at the words 'I dont think you should talk to her', but Kyouko can feel the brief flicker of tension returning and flowing away again, slowly that the abruptness that it arrived, but relaxing a touch at the assurance of trust.
"I'll tell you." Naru nods, she can agree to that easily enough. "I almost managed to tell you before." She admits softly. "I .. I know. She's not a nice person. She and I know we're going to come into conflict, that's never really been in doubt. Her stance on most things and my stance on most things, they can't co-exist." She leans in and gives another squeeze. "She warned me about other witches being drawn to her. I just.. wasn't quite ready to talk about her yet, but I couldn't /not/ tell you about that."
Naru can feel it- the moment the tension flows back out of Kyouko as well. It's when Naru says that she knows that she and Hana will conflict, that their views can't co-exist. That is reassuring to hear. Many of her friends will insist on talking to enemies, much as Kyouko doesn't always like it. She can accept that. Hearing Naru say that even though she talks, she still considers this Witch an enemy..
For a moment, Kyouko almost goes limp beneath Naru, tension released that she hadn't even been aware was there. "Thank you." She says, this in reference to the warning, and that Naru felt she couldn't hold that back.
She leans forward then, and hides her face against Naru's neck, closing her eyes for a moment. Make sure that the tension is gone.
Naru lets her own eyes close, relaxing into Kyouko as they settle into a silence that isn't full of restless not coping, but instead full of closness and touch, in the dim of the room and with the doughnuts momentarily forgotten.
The sigh that emerges from Naru is wholly different than the careful ones from when Kyouko got home. This is full of contentment and lost tension that she didn't entirely realize she'd been holding for weeks. Her own murmur is barely audible just the edge of her words caught beyond the sigh. "Thank you, love."
Leaning back again, resting her head against the headboard and letting her own eyes close with Naru curled up tight against her, Kyouko smiles, just a little bit. "It's what we do.. love." She says, as if trying out the name, even if she won't use it in casual conversation the way Naru is wont to do. "We help each other." But it never feels as good as when you help someone you love.