257/With Me

With Me
Date of Scene:	07 August 2023
Location:	Radiant Heart Academy
Synopsis:	Darien finally has a moment to recruit Kazuo.
Cast of Characters:	Mamoru Chiba, Kazuo Saitou
Tinyplot:	Lost & Found

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Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Finally -- after he was given a chance to fuck it up, took it, then given another chance and shot himself in the foot with his heart in his mouth -- Darien's put his bag of trash and garbage in the dumpster, and Koji is clearing up the last of what was in their clearing, and Chiyo and Naru and Usagi have all left, and there's a fraction of a second...

...and Darien's mouth opens and shuts once more.

He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Table," he says, then, "I have to move the table back where it goes."

And his other hand opens and shuts, and he's so tense it's making the air into a crystal lattice of bated breath.

"... and the more I can't get it out, the more of a weirdo I look like," he says in a painful little chuff of what ought to be a laugh by how hard it's trying.

It's like the words get kicked out of him when they finally come. "This is a sales pitch for a job. If I don't actually convince you, then someone way hotter than me will come try and seduce you into it, but he can't wake you up. I'd be your immediate boss, but we all answer to our division's executive officer. It-- sucks, I don't want to put you in danger, I don't want you to get stuck like the rest of us, but that's not my decision. You'd be fighting magical people, employing youma to drain human energy, looking for the Phantom Silver Crystal, and keeping me from getting myself killed pulling stupid stunts. If you're not looking for someone or something, or haven't been looking for most of your life, I'd be really surprised -- but..."

He's not even remotely standing in one place; he's not pacing, but he's having trouble looking at Kazuo directly, and he wishes they were still in the woods in the dark with the fireflies, and he turns and takes his glasses off, and he looks-- his hair's tied back, and he looks like he's someone different but the same. His voice is small. "If you remember being Kunzite, then-- I miss you. If not, then... my soul shall leave my body."

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
Darien has to move the table. Kazuo's response to that is absolutely practical, as if nothing had ever happened, as if there had been no foot-shooting and absolutely no chopstick transfer. "Do you want a hand with it?"

That ... probably doesn't help the situation any for Darien. The normal might just be worse.

Kazuo's expression, as Darien is spitting out the words that are not his own decision, might also be worse. But he's having trouble looking in Kazuo's direction. So he doesn't have to see most of it. Just the way Kazuo looks when Darien turns.

But Darien looks different but the same. And so, instead of the laughing comment he was about to make, Kazuo stops. Grows still.

That is a small but terribly familiar frown.

"Your soul had better not leave your body," he says. A careful breath. "Tell me about Kunzite?"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Some of the tension -- a lot of the tension -- bleeds out at the frown, of all things.

"He looked-- just like you. The same, but different. He put up with all of us, taught us to fight, protected us until we could watch his back too-- I was pretty young when he started. He used to bring me things with apples in them, apples were my favorite? And he didn't make me put the candle out if I had nightm--"

Darien stops short and puts his hand over his mouth, looking like he's been hit, shoulders drawn in and body language all turning inward, turning defensive. "Just. A second."

Memory issues.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
Kazuo's already taking a step when the 'just' happens, and the 'a second' doesn't stop him particularly. A hand finds Darien's shoulder. No more direct contact than that; that's close enough, that's breaking enough boundaries. But it's still touch.

"You have nightmares too, huh."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"I-- I don't remember any dreams anymore, but I used to have nightmares all the time. And I didn't remember that. And I didn't remember any of, of that, just now, I just reached in when you asked," Darien says, his voice unsteady. He wants to lean in to that touch.

He wants.

"I wasn't kidding about the memory issues. I haven't remembered anything that big before, that I remember. I only remember about two years. You have nightmares?"

He wants to take Kazuo's hand from his shoulder and hold it in his own hands. Instead, he doesn't pull away, but his arms close across his stomach, loose. He's making himself breathe until it's normal; he closes his eyes and the hand is still on his shoulder, solid, a familiar-unfamiliar weight, and Naru said it, she said, he's a steadying presence.

"Fire, swords, a purple sky with a huge grey-brown moon in it-- a lot of marble and blood and yelling," he says, and one hand does come up to close over Kazuo's, the other arm dropping. "Those ones? The others had them too, I think. Something like them. And someone you're looking for and looking for, and can't find until it's too late?"

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
"Fire and blood and a purple sky," Kazuo repeats quietly. "And - and swords. I didn't remember the swords till you said that. They - it - just felt ... familiar." Like the hand closing over his. Familiar. "I don't - remember looking for someone. I remember - too late, sometimes. Not why. Just that."

His breathing is normal. But his breathing is carefully, studiedly normal. It is, quite specifically, the breathing of someone who is falling back on a long history of practicing meditation in order to force his lungs to keep cooperating. To give a cue that models what breathing is supposed to sound like. To help - well - steady.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"There was someone," Darien says, his voice firm and quiet. "And it wasn't too late until it was. But--"

His hand tightens over Kazuo's, and he turns in a little further toward the taller boy. "But it's not too late now. Everyone's still alive."

He swallows, and he takes Kazuo's hand from his shoulder, now, and holds it in both of his, and he says in such a low voice, "I need you with me."

Unsteady, his own hands not shaking, NOT shaking, Darien grits his teeth. "Or. I need you on my side," he says with a breath less pressure, with the fresh air of a loophole, with the fraught hope of something that feels like a disaster looking away. "I need you to make sure the candle's still burning. I need you with me. Kazuo. Please."

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
Kazuo's other hand comes and covers one of Endymion's in turn. All hands on ... something. "That might be a better way to put it," he answers that brief instant of maybe-loophole. And then his eyes silver, and his mouth turns up at the side. "I don't know if you've had time to notice," he adds, "but I don't exactly get along with things that have executive officers."
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Mamoru Chiba has posed:
And then -- ah, an exhale so spiritually large, so very. Mamoru's eyes shut tight and he lowers his head and lifts their clasped mess of hands, puts his forehead against it. "Good," he breathes, practically through his teeth again, but this time because his face is doing the thing. The thing that's a physiological response to high emotion.

And he lifts his face and his eyes are overbright, but turned-up mouth is met with crooked grin-- and that also looks familiar. "I'm hoping we can be close anyway, but you will get more job offers. I have to tell them something. So far as I know for sure, you didn't remember anything, so that's what I'll say."

A beat. "They miss you too. I'm no substitute for you. We have to work around you not being there. But I feel like they keep slipping away from me, more and more, and-- and maybe we can all be salvaged-- but it's nice to know one of us isn't making any shitty deals."

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
"I'm sorry," Kazuo says, low and earnest. Well. Sort of earnest. "I'm really sorry. But all I can think of right now, with all those words, is you in a fishing boat, bracing your boots against the side, rocking over almost into the waves, trying fiercely to haul in a giant net full of really annoyed Monster Resources professionals."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Inhuman resources," corrects Darien with a completely straight face. Because of course.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
"That's entirely unfair," says Kazuo, his habitual cheer - or at least amusement - surfacing a little more plainly. "Aren't at least some of the monsters human?"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
The response to that is grave indeed: "Monster resources is the entire company. Inhuman resources is for youma accessibility issues."

That solemnity lasts approximately a second before he's grinning and squeezing Kazuo's hands again. "It's so good to meet you. It's been forever."

He wants. He wants to hold those hands close to him, he wants to let go and hug Kazuo, he wants Kazuo to hold him, he wants to be tactile in the same way that he wants to be tactile with so few people.

He wants.

He's so--

A little chuff of a laugh, and Darien's hands loosen, finally, and Kazuo can pull his loose without resistance if he wants to.

He doesn't say, I want to be close to you. He doesn't say, I like you. Both of those things, he feels, are obvious. What he does say is, "I could use a hand with the table."

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
Kazuo's hands tighten around Darien's, and he's laughing aloud. It's like a hug. Just a very localized one. "Table it is," he says. "Unless it tries to eat my leg. If it does, you're on your own with it, I'll help haul the carcass later."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
And there, like a breeze, is another space in which Darien can act normal. "Tables have their own legs," he says back, grinning, breathing normally for the first time all night, relaxed and -- for right now -- not afraid. "But if it gets obstreperous, I'll protect you!"