It's evening enough that non-family visitors are no longer so likely -- granted, of course, that 'family' in this place means something somewhat different than it does in most. It's also evening enough that today's share of the preparations for the oncoming party have drawn to a close --
(The party is tomorrow. 'Oncoming' is very definitely in the sense that usually comes with 'train.')
-- at any rate. Makoto has relinquished the kitchen, and the food that is reserved for tomorrow has been squirrelled away somewhere in the four interlinked apartments, probably in multiple caches to keep the discovery of any one of them from becoming a disaster. Things have fallen quiet.
Which means that Kunzite, who has been present all day primarily in the role Mamoru assigned him last spring -- namely, Makoto's on-call assistant for anything she needs -- and remarkably absent when not directly assisting her ... Kunzite, or rather Kazuo, has settled down with the book Kyouko gave him a couple of days ago.
Somehow, reading about near-future developments of haptic technology is a good deal less stressful than trying to grasp how Large Hadron Collider results constrain brane cosmology theories with large extra dimensions. A good deal less stressful. He is never going to admit how close he came, more than once, to trying to fling himself on Ami Mizuno's mercy on the chance that she's willing to explain physics even to people she prefers not to talk with.
While it would be a mistake to say that Kyouko has been absent from the ECFH of late, Kazuo's book-in-hand being direct evidence, she has been noticably less present in the shared living space, especially in the evenings. This is not the same as being gone, or missing- she is Shitennou, and the others would know if she were actually not around. She has been around, within call, within 'earshot', but spending a good deal more time in her own apartment than upstairs in the common living room.
There's a reason for that. But that reason is currently not exerting it's weight, and as a result, Kyouko comes padding into the room on bare feet, her usual 'at-home' uniform of plaid, comfy pajama pants and tank top (black, tonight) demonstrating that she considers her apartment downstairs just as interconnected as the other four, even if it requires some building-scaling to traverse between them quickly.
She glances around, noting the quiet of the room, the sense of relative solitude. Her eyes then move to Kazuo. She notes what he's reading, and looks momentarily pleased with herself. Then she walks over and, silently, settles herself on the couch by his feet.
She sits there without saying anything for several minutes, fidgeting occasionally.
Those minutes are permitted to pass quietly; pages are turned, yes, but at a slower rate than might be expected. Gray eyes flick back toward the balcony entrance, once; then toward the door, a little later, and again perhaps thirty seconds after that.
Finally, the book is closed, and Kazuo leans to set it beside his phone on the coffee table. "No Naru tonight?"
Kyouko glances over as Kazuo speaks up, lifting her shoulders in a shrug which does its best to be casual. "No. She's gotta help her mom with something, I think."
A few moments of silence. Then: "Have you noticed.. um.. that things are a little different with me an' her, lately?" A darting glance, then studiously looking away. It's not embarassing. It's actually not embarassing. It's just saying it is embarassing.
"New Year's sales, I imagine." No particular worry on that front. No concern. There is, after all, a broken case to pay off.
(Not that paying it off will be much of a problem once the mural is finished, but that's not something Naru is likely to have thought about.)
There's the second, question, then, and the loooking away. Kazuo's response is steady, as if obviously Kyouko were merely observing the rare and mysterious white-paint-fleck bird, which so seldom is seen inside Tokyo apartments, and startles so easily if attention is drawn to it. "You were comfortable falling asleep with her in the room."
... which means that Kazuo saw them napping on the couch. Which means that Kazuo also knows Kyouko was comfortable enough not to wake up when someone else came into the room.
"..yeah." It's not much, really. For anyone else, it would be nothing. But Kyouko knows that Kunzite knows her, probably better than anyone else, even Mamoru. Or maybe it's more accurate to say he understands her better. For Kyouko, such things are not nothing.
"It's.. she makes me sleep better." Kyouko says after another moment of silence. "She's been.. sleeping over. Not every night, but.. a couple times, in the past couple weeks. She says.." Another moment of silence. Kyouko has trouble with words sometimes, even when the topic isn't difficult, but it's clear that she needs to say this stuff, that she needs to say it out loud to someone other than Naru. Kunzite is a convinient target.
But he also knows her well enough to know that not just any target would do, convinient or not.
"She says I help her, too. That she doesn't have nightmares. And.. she's been making dinner for me, and for Momo, in our apartment. Momo really likes her. It makes her happy." Kyouko falls silent again for a few moments, looking down at her lap.
It's Kazuo's turn to be silent for a little. Perhaps it's fortunate that Kyouko, looking at her lap, can't see where he's looking.
"Sleep," he says finally, "is the one time when we can't lie to ourselves."
Quiet for a moment again; and then he adds, "It's hard to admit these things. Until we acknowledge that something exists, we don't have to confront the possibility that it might stop."
Kyouko remains looking down for a few more moments after Kunzite speaks.. though she nods her heads lightly, her short hair bobbing against her cheek. Then she glances up, looking over at him.
"I just.. want you to tell me if I'm crazy. It's Naru. I've known her for.. I dunno, almost as long as I've known all of you guys. And.. and we've been friends for a long time, and we've always gotten along, and hung out, and y'know, normal stuff."
"But then this.. I dunno, it came out of nowhere, really fast. And.. it feels really solid, like, really solid already, which is so bizarre to me because when I step back and look at it, I'm just like What? What is this? But then I stop thinking about it again, and it just feels as natural as anything."
"But I guess.. she's not here tonight, so I been thinking, and you're good at thinking, nii-chan, so I just wanted to hear it from you, one way or the other. Am I nuts?"
"Please consider," Kazuo says calmly, "that you've just said that you've been friends for a long time, and always gotten along. That doesn't sound like nowhere."
He shifts, folding into a crosslegged seat as compact as the length of his limbs will allow -- angled in his corner of the couch, regarding Kyouko steadily. "Trust is a prerequisite for you," he says. "You need to know precisely how and when you can safely rely on someone before you can relax around them. You've reached that point with her. Further, she's proven that she trusts you; she's shown you some of her vulnerabilities. I'd doubt that she's shown all of them, but I'd also doubt that she's aware of all of them, and it's not a prerequisite in the first place; if it were, the species would have died out long ago."
Instead of ... only nearly doing so.
Granted, that wasn't precisely the fault of the species as a whole.
Kazuo skirts the edge of the awkward as usual, and continues. "It's not the safest idea, in many ways. There's her entanglement with the German boy. There's your history with Sayaka, and her instablity. There's the shadows Naru harbors herself; we don't know the shapes of all of them, nor the depth. But these things are never safe. Everyone has shadows. Sayaka is, ultimately, her own responsibility, not yours. And the German boy -- well. That's Naru's choosing. But he's made the mistake long since of wanting to be able to watch over her affairs while telling her little to nothing about his own.
"So. There may never be more between the two of you than there is now, true. And this might wound you in any of a dozen ways, true. But none of that means you're crazy."
"Yeah but.." Kyouko begins at Kazuo's first statement, then falls silent as he continues to speak. To her credit, she listens attentively. She values what he has to say, even if it's not necessarily what she wants to hear.
As he shifts on the couch, she shifts too, moving a little bit closer, facing him with one leg pulled up onto the couch. Trust is a prequisite, and she trusts Kazuo, too. She wouldn't be here having this conversation if she didn't, but that slight shift closer emphasizes it in a nonverbal way. When he finishes speaking, she mulls over his words, and her own, for several moments once again before replying.
"Sayaka.. what I had with her was intense, and it did come out of nowhere, and.. ultimately, I think it was what I needed at the time. But I don't.. think it's what I need now. I already told her that, face-to-face. I dunno if she really understood, but honestly that was a big part of the problem." She looks up, with a little half-smile. "I'll never forget what we had. But I don't think we have it anymore, and I'm okay with that. Because I'm not the person now that I was then. Neither is she, maybe, but that's not really my concern. Although, like I told her, I'm still her friend, and I will still be there for her if she needs it. Because just like I don't forget my enemies, I don't forget my friends, either."
"As for Alex.." She falls silent, then says, in a tone which has just a hint of fierceness, "That's up to Naru, too. But I don't scare off easy."
As for shadows.. "Nii-chan.. remember who you're talkin' to." This is said with the gentlest of chiding tones. "I ain't scared of shadows. I've been to their other side, and back. The thing with shadows is, they get a lot easier to navigate if you have a hand to hold."
Pale eyebrows arch, but Kazuo does not make any grand gestures -- does not change and brandish a cape and sink the room into darkness. "I don't believe I ever said you should be. Being aware that something exists does not mean being afraid of it, or turning away from it. It only means being aware."
Everyone has shadows.
"If she didn't have her own darknesses, after all. If you didn't know she did. How could you trust her to be able to navigate yours?"
"I'm aware." Kyouko says, just a touch of dryness in her voice. "I am aware."
A contemplative moment. Then, meeting his gaze, "But.. I mean.. do you approve? Not.. that I'm sure there's anything to approve of yet, but.. I mean.."
Verbal flailing in the form of silence and mouth-movements for a few seconds. "Mamoru, and my duty to him.. that comes first. That doesn't change, I want you to know that, and know that I know that, and no matter what.. that's who I am." Maybe such things never need to be said for the other Shitennou, but Kyouko still feels like she hasn't really proven herself beyond a shadow of a doubt yet.
Even Kazuo's arms aren't long enough to let him reach over to her properly, the way they're sitting. But he can put a hand on the foot she's put up on the couch, and he does.
"I know," Kazuo says quietly. "Mamoru knows. And he approves, I think. He offered her a name."
Kyouko looks at the hand, and doesn't move away, or comment. But that in and of itself says enough to those who know her.
"I know he did. I was here." She points out. "And I know he knows, because of course he does, but we both know that he doesn't know what's good for himself half the time which is why he needs us."
She gives a faint grin. "But in this case.. I think maybe he does know what he's talkin' about."
"We have to agree," Kazuo says gravely. "In these matters, he is the only one of us who's actually managed any kind of long-term success."
Very long-term.
"It's not a guarantee, of course. But, well. Kingdom of the blind."
Kyouko gives Kazuo a bit of a look.
"But you do know why I'm talking to you and not him, right?" She asks, a twist of her mouth which is amused and fond at the same time.
She shifts her hand, laying it on top of his where it rests against her foot.
"I can think of two possible reasons," Kunzite says. "One, because you don't want Mamoru starting a new Tumblr dedicated to the pair of you, or possibly merely working out cheerleading routines on the spot. Two, because you'd have to raise an objection if I took it upon myself to hold any conversations involving Naru, a shotgun, and detailed interrogation about her intentions."
The squeeze of his hand is very light, but it happens.
Kyouko doesn't even bother responding to his jibes, though she does squeeze his hand back just a little. Instead, she just gives him a bit of a grin.
"Because I know I can trust you to tell me all the ways its potentially a bad idea, which I might overlook in my enthusiasm, instead of blindly encouraging me."
Her smile is more genuine, then. "You did not disappoint. But I don't feel any different. And that's really what I needed to find out. So.. thanks. Again, and as usual."
"All of which," Kazuo says quietly, "you'd thought through some time ago. Or I wouldn't've found the two of you napping that night to begin with."
As if it were a casual certainty that Kyouko, with her history, with her time surviving on her own, would have thought of every possibility as easily as he would.
He unfolds and shifts, then, reclaiming his hand in order to lean and wrap that arm around her shoulders. This involves him getting a knee in the ribs, most likely, but he doesn't protest.
To Kyouko's credit, she lets him hug for a good few moments before the knee in the ribs.. slipping away from him, as ephemeral as smoke, and yet smiling. "You give me too much credit, nii-chan. My problem is, I never think enough. I just do what feels right. And a lot of times that's good enough. But sometimes, I do need to think. And you're good at helping me do that."
She bends, and gives him a good, firm squeeze around the shoulders with one of her own arms. (It's different if she's the one doing the hugging). "Thanks." She says, quietly, then pulls away and turns to exit the room the way she had come, a little more spring in her step than there had been previously.
"We need both," Kazuo says quietly. "The mind as a check on the heart, keeping us from being used by others; and the heart as a check on the mind, keeping us from being used by ourselves."
He leans into that squeeze for a moment. And then lets her go, without saying any more.