Lawn Sketching

[Jericho]

Pencils of varying colors lay spread out on the lawn in a semicircle around Jericho like a halo of color. The artist himself was sitting in the grass in the sunshine, sketching the fountain in front of him. His green eyes darted from his subject to the paper and back again, over and over as he took in the minor details: the way a particular tuft of grass fell, heavy weathering on part of the stone, lichen growing on the rim of the fount. He was absorbed in his work the way only a dedicated artist can be, growing and adjusting alongside his work, making him completely oblivious to everything outside of it.
Which, in a school full of abnormal students, probably wasn't the smartest idea.

[Raven]

Raven sighed and walked out to the courtyard, one of the places she was hopping would be quiet enough to read. Since the dorms seemed to be insecently loud the past few days. Sitting under the shade of a tree she noticed Jerico drawing in the grass. With a small smile, the dart titaness pulled up her hood and opened her latest novel.

[Jericho]

A small smile flit across Joseph's face as he put the final pencil touches on the drawing. Holding the sketch pad at arms length, his eyes appraised whether or not to add color to the work, before shaking his head and flipping the page. Now what to draw.... It didn't take time for his roaming gaze to stop on the dark and familiar figure of a reader sitting under a tree. A warm blush rose to the Titan's cheeks as he remembered her show of affection on Valentine's day and in another beat of his quickened heart, he decided on his newest subject. A few darker HB pencils jumped into his hands and he began sketching again.

[Raven]

Skimming the text of her novel, Raven could feel eyes on her. Looking up only slightly to scan the area she noticed that Jerico was now facing her instead of the fountain. His hands flying over the paper with a pencil in his hand, the dark girl could feel a hint of color rising to her ashen features. Consentrating bakc on her book she flipped the page.

[Jericho]

He started with the background. He drew the Emberclaw dorm behind her, though not in much detail, followed by the tree she was leaning against, before starting on her basic form. A circle for her hips, a triangle for her body... He glanced up again before making the triangle more narrow. Raven was thin, after all. A crease between his eyebrows, and he returned the triangle to its previous size and made the circle larger instead. Next the angle of her legs as she sat comfortably in the grass, her arms and how she held her book, then her inclined head and the line of her gaze.
Again and again, he glanced from her to his sketch, mind not entirely disconnected from heart. He wanted to draw her as she was, at the balance between how he saw her and how an anatomist might. No matter how difficult that might be.

[Raven]

Trying to keep herself from glancing at Jerico again, Raven tried to put herself into her book. Though the titans presence was truly distracting.

[Jericho]

As he began shading the picture with pencil, it dawned on Jericho that what he was doing might seem a little....suspicious to some: drawing people without their permission or knowledge. What's done is done; the sketch in his lap was not what bothered him. It was that he wanted to draw a close-up of Raven's face on the page as well. Shifting uncomfortably in the grass, Joseph stared into the space between him and her.
He couldn't just walk over, sit in front of her and start sketching. Asking would be the polite but much more awkward thing to do. As he picked up his pencils in preparation to move, still unable to decide which course of action to take, he barely noticed that he hadn't considered changing his subject to make it easier. Perhaps, he thought as he crept closer to her, trying not to interrupt her reading, that was because he liked her too much.

[Raven]

Raven glanced up again to see what Jerico was doing. Keeping her eyes on her book, yet on him at the same time. She kept her hood up, even though the shade from the tree combined with it, might have made it harder to read for most.
She noticed him getting closer and smiled to herself.

[Jericho]

She hadn't looked up at him yet; that was good. He had hoped to avoid disturbing her. He settled down perhaps seven feet from her, crossing his legs in the grass. Feeling the shadow of the large leafy tree above cooling his sun-hot skin, Jericho quietly spread out his pencils again, picking out a regular number 2 to begin sketching with.
Faces were a harder thing for the Titan to draw than places, so even just drawing her head and basic features took him longer than before. Perfectionism was rearing its head for once, making him struggle to erase his drawing quietly.

[Raven]

"What are you doing Jerico?" Raven asked finally unable to stand the suspence. He looked so fustrated with whatever it was.

[Jericho]

Had that voice been anyone's but her's, he would have paused for only a few seconds to answer the question in the simplest terms possible before returning to his drawing. But her voice, even in the monotone she always used, pulled up his head as though on a puppet string. Laying his pencil and eraser in his lap as a curtain of scarlet pulled itself across his face, he signed, Drawing you. I hope you don't mind, but I saw you as I was sitting over there and couldn't help myself. He blushed even deeper as he reflected on his word choice but it couldn't be helped now.

[Raven]

"Oh," Raven said thankful her hood hid the pink rising to color her ashen cheeks, "I see."
She turned the page of her book with a quick flick of her wrist and started reading again.

[Jericho]

The blush still burned in his cheeks as he returned slightly shame-facedly to his drawing. He wished she had said more. It was so hard to determine her opinion when there was so little she gave him. To keep him from more embaressment, he diverted his attention to drawing the hood over her head and what he could see of her face. The curve of her nose bothered him especially; Joseph repeatedly erased and redrew it until he felt satisfied that it had reached as close as he was going to get to actuality.
He wondered if he had embaressed her. He hoped not. What was there to be embaressed about? He was only drawing a picture of her. But her lack of any sort of indication of what she felt was nearly driving him batty. Insecurity (^{what if Valentine's day was a fluke?}) and compassion (_{Raven has always been quiet, so this is nothing new}) warred in his brain and found their outlet in his actions, a wrong stroke causing his pencil to break, making Jericho frown.

[Raven]

Raven looked up slightly, marking her page and closing the book. It was too hard to consentrate with the blonde titan infront of her. She could sence the confusion running threw him, it gave a unexpected squeeze to her heart. He seemed to be upset over soemthing that had happened.
"What is it?" she asked calmly.

[Jericho]

Joseph looked up in surprise, not expecting her to address him again. What's what? He signed in confusion, the knowledge that she was an empath and could sense his feelings momentarily lost. But his confusion still could not completely smother the embaressment he still felt. It smouldered bitterly in his cheeks and shifted in his stomach uncomfortably. He was bothering her, it screamed; he should not have been so bold as to sit so close to her. He should have been more considerate. He unconsciously began gathering his pencils into a stack, preparing to move again should she ask.