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Ena stormed into the living room of Nightcord’s apartment, and immediately flipped off Mizuki.
Now, one might assume that this was unfair, if they happened to be uninformed of the reasons why Ena was flipping off Mizuki, and why Mizuki was laughing like a hyena at the sight of it. Whatever the case was, surely Ena would have a good reason to be throwing the bird at one of her girlfriends, right?
“Mizuki.” Ena hissed, the bags under her eyes all the more evident from her lack of sleep, making her look similar to a very irritated raccoon, “What in the name of Miku possessed you to play country music at eight in the morning?”
Mizuki looked extremely unrepentant at that.
“I think it’s perfectly valid to be playing music at an hour where most normal people would be awake.”
Before Ena could fire back, Kanade ambled into the room with a mug in her hands, pausing briefly to stand on her tiptoes to kiss Ena’s cheek and then pushing the mug into her grasp.
“Mafuyu made coffee earlier. It’s probably a little cold now, but it should help.”
Ena deflated and collapsed onto the couch, taking a sip and then grimacing. Cold coffee was never pleasant; but it was the pick-me-up she needed to feel a little less grumpy toward Mizuki.
“So what are everyone’s plans for today?” Mizuki asked, after a short while of comfortable silence.
Kanade hummed quietly, a brief snippet from one of the songs she was currently in the process of composing, Ena recognized. She had been hard at work for days, but her habits had improved from the past, being that she actually went to bed before midnight some days.
“Mafuyu is attending classes. I don’t have any plans. You?”
Mizuki responded to Kanade with a smile of their own, the softer, more genuine one that they always seemed to have in store for her.
“If you don’t mind, I thought I’d go outside for a little bit, the weather's lovely today.” Mizuki chirped. “Ena, do you want to come?”
To be honest, Ena didn’t have very many plans except to curl up with her drawing tablet in a dark corner of her room and work on her most recent commission, a drawing that the commissioner had reassured her that she could take her time on, but they were offering a good amount of compensation for the piece, so she felt beholden to at least not procrastinate.
“I’m just going to stay home and work on something.”
Mizuki reached over and patted her on the head, and it took all of her willpower to not bite their hand off.
“Okay, but just remember to touch grass later.”
Before Ena could even snap back, Mizuki was gone. Ena was left staring at the door, before huffing and turning to Kanade, pulling her into her arms and burying her face into her neck, a frown on her face. The long, soft strands of Kanade’s silver hair pressed into her face. Kanade therapy: the best type of therapy.
Kanade, for her part, seemed content to snuggle into the hug.
After replenishing her already low energy levels and working away the irritation that she had felt at Mizuki during the morning, the thought that she might need to work on her project hit her.
Curses. She nestled a little closer into Kanade’s neck, grumbling to herself.
“Ena, didn’t you mention that you had something that you wanted to work on?”
“It can wait.”
Kanade let out a little sigh with just a slight bit of amusement, the gentle sound lifting Ena’s spirits.
“If you don’t make some progress on it right now, won’t you regret it later?”
Ena reached for Kanade’s hair, running a bit of it through her fingers. Even though Kanade wasn’t quite known for decent self-care, both she and Mizuki had insisted that if she wanted to keep her hair so long, she’d need to at least take care of it just a bit. It was nice to run her fingers through, at the very least.
“I mean, they said I didn’t need to hurry, so…”
Kanade shrugged.
“Up to you. It’s less work for you later if you work on it now, I think.”
Ena huffed a lot but ultimately decided that Kanade was right, but in order to work on her sketch, she’d have to pull herself away from Kanade. An impossible situation.
“Ena, if I sit beside you while you work, will you do it?”
That did seem like the best compromise. Even in the days of working on Nightcord, just having Kanade there in the call as they worked on their respective projects was enough to give her the boost of extra motivation that she needed.
She sighed, pulling back slowly as if she was magnetized to Kanade, and shuffled over to her room, flicking on the light and searching through all the clutter on her desk for her sketchbook, deciding that it would do both of them to do some good for her to work offline for a little bit, so that they weren’t staring at screens all the time. (How Mafuyu was the only one of them who so far needed glasses would forever remain a mystery in her head.)
Ena brought the sketchbook outside, reasoning that she could just use the traditional art to brainstorm her ideas and then switch to digital when she had something more concrete.
She took a seat beside Kanade, beginning to draw.
…
Or, she would’ve begun to draw, if not for the fact that as soon as she gazed upon the blank page, all of her thoughts suddenly reflected the state of the page. Empty.
“Ena?” Kanade questioned, seeing her stare at the page, which had all of a sudden become rather intimidating.
“Yeah, just, give me a second.”
…
No such luck. She had no ideas.
Kanade reached for her hand.
“Maybe… if you try doing something that you don’t usually do, it’ll help you think?”
Ena hesitated, then passed the pencil to Kanade.
“Ena…?”
“Why don’t you try drawing something?” Ena asked, perhaps with a little more force than necessary. If she just got stuck every time she tried to draw something, then was she even-
“I… don’t know how to.”
Kanade drew a wobbly line, adding a circle to the top and a few more wobbly lines.
“This is probably the best I can do.”
What the fuck is that?
Ena stared at it for a few moments before realizing, oh, that’s a person.
She couldn’t stop a small smile from slipping onto her face at the drawing; it was very Kanade, somehow. It was charming, and even cute, in the same way that Kanade was.
Kanade gave her a hesitant smile.
“I mean, I think your art’s pretty great. And none of us can produce the same type of art, so I’d say that it’s sort of… signature, for Nightcord? At this point.”
Oh…
Ena picked up her sketchbook, put it aside, and pulled Kanade into a hug again, mumbling a quiet “thank you” to the other.
“Oh- you’re welcome?”
Kanade hesitated for a moment.
“Are you still going to work on your art?”
“Later. I just want to do this for now.”
“Okay.” Kanade relaxed into her, and she let herself fall into a lazy day of cuddling with her girlfriend. Not a bad day, all things considered.