#fujiwara touko x fujiwara shigeru

[dragon-in-a-mug]

To Be Worthy Of The Title

Heya, @drunk-nyanko! I'm your secret santa for @natsume-ss. I wish you a happy new year and I hope you enjoy your gift!

Summary: Natsume's first year with the Fujiwaras and how others perceive their family - or 4+1 times people call the Fujiwaras Natsume's parents

Additional: mention of Natsume's childhood, slight emotional hurt/comfort, misunderstandings

1.

Natsume had become a staple in their friend group surprisingly fast. When they first discovered that the mysterious, aloft boy was actually just a painfully awkward teenager, with next to no experiences in the friendship department, they didn't really have another choice, but to socially adopt him and show him what it was like to have real friends. It was basically the law!

They hadn't had Natsume for long, but it was already hard to imagine how it would be again without him there, if he would leave again. Not that any of them expect him to leave. It was very unlikely after all.

Something Satoru had picked up fast on was that Natsume had a hard time with the concept of acceptance. But because Natsume couldn't be simple for the life of him, even his problems had to be extra complicated.

Because on the one hand, Natsume was one of the sweetest and most kindhearted people Satoru had ever met. He was always nice to everyone, even if they were being anything but pleasant in return and he was oh-so forgiving to people who, in Satoru's humble opinion, really didn't deserve it.

But on other hand, as soon as someone showed Natsume even the slightest bits of care or kindness he would look at them with his wide, weirdly cat-like eyes, that invoked the immediate need in Satoru to punish every single person who had ever wronged his friend in any way. Of course, Natsume probably wouldn't approve of it, that loveable bastard.

To be honest, sometimes Satoru got the feeling that Natsume thought he didn't deserve any warm-hearted behavior towards himself. It was weird. Especially because Natsume was living with the Fujiwaras, two more of the warmest and sincerest people Satoru ever had the fortune of meeting. Even with those two Natsume had the issue of receiving their kindness without having any strings attached.

There was an instance, not too long after Tanuma had joined their friend group. Himself, Atsushi, Sasada, Tanuma and of course Natsume where walking home from school, chatting. The conversation had moved to the weekend.

"We should do something together!", Satoru exclaimed excitedly, whirling around to face the others.

Atsushi nodded along. "Yeah, that'd be fun. But we are not going fishing again!" At that Satoru started pouting.

"You know, fishing is not the only thing I do. I'm able to suggest other things."

"Oh really?", countered Atsushi with a teasing smile. He answered with an indignant squawk and hurled himself at his friend, clinging to his shoulder. Atsushi was only able to stay upright because of his life long experiences with Satoru's antics.

"A-chan, why are you always so mean to meeee?", whined Satoru. The prompt reply "Because you deserve it." was only followed by more whining. Atsushi just snorted and pushed his friend's face away, which only led to him tightening his grip on Atsushi's arm.

Sasada, who was walking behind the two boys, let out a long suffering sigh. "What did I do to deserve this?", she mumbeld, head turned up as if to ask the heavens. Then, before one of the others could make a remark, she perked back up again.

"Oh, I heard their is a nice art exhibit in the next town over! We could go there for the weekend." She eagerly clapped her hand together, smiling brightly.

Satoru let go of Atsushi's arm to turn around. "Sasada, noooo! That sounds educational. I don't wanna learn stuff on the weekend," he moaned in agony as if Sasada was actively torturing him. Next to him, Atsushi just shook his head, mirth dancing in his eyes, but Sasada wrinkled her forehead and glared at him. She huffed annoyed before she turned around, to look at Natsume and Tanuma, who were walking behind her, watching the exchange with amused smiles.

"I'm sure Natsume and Tanuma would love to go to that exhibition, am I right?"

"Ah, sorry, I actually don't have time this weekend. I already told my father I would help him clean the temple," Tanuma said apologetically. Natsume nodded along. "Me neither. I promised Touko-san I would go shopping with her. I'm sorry." They both looked sheepish into the round.

Satoru waved them off with a grin. "If you really wanted to go and you'd ask, I'm sure your dad and your mom," he pointed at the two boys in front of him respectively, "would let you. Just sad that art exhibits suck and no one wants to go there." He wanted to triumphantly stick his tongue out at Sasada, but he was interrupted in his actions by loud coughing. Because when he had called Touko Fujiwara Natsume's mom the other had choked on his own spit.

The whole group came to a stop, the others were looking at Natsume worriedly and Tanuma was rubbing his back, while the boy himself was trying to reign in his coughing fit. Satoru wasn't sure what, but he was positive that he had done something wrong. When Natsume was able to breathe normally again, he turned towards Satoru. As soon as those light brown eyes met his own, he felt immense guilt crawling up his body and settling in his chest. Natsume's face was beet red (Satoru had never seen so much colour on the boy's pale cheeks, not even when he caught one of his worser fevers) and his eyes were slightly wet from the exertion of the coughing. And oh, the expression in those eyes. Satoru almost flinched back when he was faced with the sheer panic and distress in Natsume's expression.

"My mom?!", Natsume repeated, his voice more a wheeze, than anything else. Satoru cocked his head to the side. That was the big problem? "I mean yeah? Fujiwara-san is basically your mom, isn't she?", he asked confused. Natsume shied away at his words, faintly curling into himself.

Now Satoru was officially lost. He looked to his other friends for help, but all he got in return was Tanuma, who gave him a weirdly pitying face and an angry glare from Sasada, who sharply shook her head at him, to signal him to stop talking. Then, she softened her expression and turned back to Natsume and spoke to him in a gentle voice. "It's alright if you two are already busy this weekend. We can postpone the visit to the exhibit. Let's go home for now, okay? We can talk about it more tomorrow," she steered the conversation away from any upsetting topics. Natsume just nodded, still looking slightly dazed.

Next to Satoru, Atsushi put his hand on his friend's shoulder and gently turned him around. With that their procession started moving again, but this time it was uncomfortably quiet. Satoru wanted to break the silence so badly. He felt responsible for it, even though he was still not really sure what he did. His hands fidgeted with the strap of his school bag when he was pulled out of his musings by Atsushi lightly squeezing his shoulder. He looked up to his best friend, who gave him a reassuring smile, before leaning in a bit. "It's gonna be okay. No one is mad at you. I just think you overwhelmed Natsume. I think he's not ready for the m- or the d-word. Don't beat yourself up about it. Give him some time before you talk to him and then everything will go back to normal, you'll see," Atsushi whispered comfortingly and gave his shoulder a final squeeze before letting go.

Satoru risked a quick look back at where Natsume was walking between Sasada and Tanuma. He wasn't paying attention to his surroundings, his eyes distant. It made Satoru's gut twist.

It was hard to forget that Natsume grew up constantly on the move, being passed from one relative to the next like some used toy, having nowhere to settle down, no one able or willing to provide him with a permanent home in which he'd be supplied with unconditional love and acceptance. It was hard to forget, but it happened, like in this instance and Satoru felt all the more guilty for it. He wanted to immediately turn around, hug the boy and apologize and then, just for good measure, assure him that the Fujiwaras loved him very much, even he could see it clear as day, so Natsume shouldn't even think about doubting it. But of course Atsushi was right. Satoru had to give Natsume some time to think. He could right his wrongs tomorrow.

An inaudible sigh left his lips when their ways home separated. He timidly bid his friends farewell and, though the mood was still subdued, the others waved their goodbyes as well, except Natsume who seemed to be knee-deep in his own thoughts. Ah well, Satoru would get his chance tomorrow.

The next day Satoru would apologize for having said something that had made Natsume feel uncomfortable and Natsume would in return apologize for his reaction. After that, they wouldn't speak of the incident again, unless it was Natsume who brought it up.

It was still way too early for Natsume to use them, Satoru supposed, but hopefully his dear friend would soon grow to find comfort in those words as much as in the people, who would, Satoru had no doubt about it, love to earn the honor of being called parents.

2.

Things during his current exorcist job had gone a bit south and of course Natsume had gotten himself involved in it yet again. In the end, everything had worked out just fine, but Shuuichi could definitely do without the constant near heart attacks he experienced, whenever his young friend got tangled up in his work.

Shuuichi sighed as he looked at the boy, who sat in the train seat opposite to his own, double checking that he was alright and hadn't gotten injured. Of course, he had already looked Natsume over as soon as they had finished sealing away a particularly nasty yokai, but sometimes Shuuichi thought the boy was able to get in trouble the second he looked away.

Natsume was looking out the window, but turned his head to face him when he felt Shuuichi's eyes on him. They stared at each other for a bit before Shuuichi had to blink. He had no idea how Natsume did that. His unblinking gaze was almost as bad as his useless bodyguard's. Though Shuuichi wasn't even sure that the pig cat needed to blink. It was a bit unnerving at times. He was snapped back to attention by the sound of Natsume's voice.

"Is something wrong, Natori-san?" Shuuichi couldn't help but smile at that. Natsume always showed more concern for others than for himself. It was an admirable trait, especially for people like them, but Shuuichi worried. He was always worried about his friend even if he wasn't able to show it in the way he wanted.

Natsume had lived through so many hardships already and he was still so young. They shared quite a lot of childhood experiences. Both had grown up shunned by their family because of their sight, but despite all that, where Shuuichi had become bitter and disillusioned, Natsume had gotten to be understanding and compassionate.

The simple truth was that Natsume was a genuinely good person, who deserved nothing less but the world. Natsume was certainly better than Shuuichi and significantly better than all the other exorcists combined. Shuuichi was amazed by his strength time and time again. Not only his physical strength, but also his mental strength.

When he was out with Natsume, the boy made him want to do better, to be a person that he could trust in when he struggled with something. He hoped that no one would ever be able to break Natsume's bright spirit and he sure as hell didn't want to become the person who dragged him down and poisoned his pure soul. So he tried his best. For his friend.

Of course, Natsume had something that Shuuichi had never had the luck of getting. Natsume had the Fujiwaras. They didn't know of many of the struggles their foster son was facing on a daily basis, sure, but they were patient and determined to not give up on him so easily.

At first, Shuuichi wasn't sure if their relationship would be durable. Natsume didn't tell them about the yokai and for people, who didn't know about them, some of the things that happened to those with the gift (or curse, depending on how you want to view it) of being able to see the supernatural were just too weird, too unexplainable, just too much.

People often don't like what they don't understand. Not the Fujiwaras. They were always there for Natsume. Obviously they wanted to ask him questions when he came back home to them, again with dirty clothes and all scratched up, but they never pressed him for answers because his comfort and his trust in them was far more important to the Fujiwaras.

Shuuichi was thankful for them. Just like he had told him, Shuuichi would have taken Natsume as his ward in a heartbeat, but he was glad that the Fujiwaras had proven themselves to be such caring people.

They could provide Natsume with the stability and the understanding he deserved. It was clear that they loved him like their own flesh and blood, as if he was their biological child.

Shuuichi shook his head to bring himself out of his thoughts.

"No, everything's fine, Natsume-kun," he finally answered the question. "I just hope your parents don't mind if you come home so late," Shuuichi added, more to himself than to Natsume. At the mention of the word "parent", Natsume had turned an interesting shade of red. The exorcist watched fascinated as the blush crept up the ears and down the neck, as his friend's mouth started opening and closing like that of a carp out of water.

"They're not… I mean… I… they… my parents…" Natsume turned into a sputtering mess, not able to bring out a single coherent sentence. Shuuichi still understood what the boy wanted to tell him. His face became indescribably soft as he watched his young friend struggle with his emotions and thoughts. It was an expression that was pretty much reserved for Natsume, even though he'd probably never admit that, especially if that damned cat was around to hear it.

Shuuichi was quite familiar with the tactic Natsume was using right now, hidden between his stuttered words and burning red face. Denial. Squashing down any feelings of hope to prevent the possibility of disappointment. He had done that plenty himself when he was younger, before he had grown to be more confident in himself and his abilities. After all, there was nothing more dissuading than repeatedly getting your hopes crushed and blown into your face. So, Shuuichi understood what Natsume was doing. He understood so well. His smile turned a little sad.

Then, when he got his facial features back under control, Shuuichi finally took mercy on the boy. He lazily waved his hand like he wanted to shoo away Natsume's thoughts. "Ah, sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. Anyways, you think Fujiwara-san will try to force feed me again, to gain some weight, when I stay for dinner?" he asked, changing the topic in the process. It wasn't very smooth, but Natsume looked thankful for his efforts nonetheless and immediately jumped onto the new topic. Shuuichi could feel two green cat eyes boring into him, but he didn't pay them any mind.

"Definitely. I think she doesn't believe that you can sufficiently feed yourself. In her defense, you really should eat more," Natsume huffed out exasperatedly. Shuuichi scoffed. "You're on to talk, bean pole." His witty reply was answered with a light kick to his shin. Their small squabble continued for the rest of the train ride and Shuuichi was happy to see that Natsume was able to relax again.

Shuuichi understood that Natsume didn't want to get his hopes up, but he also knew that the Fujiwaras would never let Natsume fall. They were different. They'd do anything to lift him up so he could spread his wings and take flight. Shuuichi only hoped that Natsume would be able to see that the Fujiwaras were there to stay and would be there for him for as long as he would let them. All in due time, the exorcist presumed, as he watched his kind friend, talk about his kind parents.

3.

Natsume sneezed. Hinoe laughed. Natsume glared. Hinoe laughed some more.

"Stop laughing, Hinoe. That could've happened to anyone," Natsume grumbled, wringing out the ends of his shirt. It wasn't dripping wet anymore, but still way too wet to be comfortable. Lucky for him, the weather was still warm and would help him dry quickly.

Madara snorted. "I'd say it was something very Natsume-typical. No one else would be capable of falling into a river in such a stupid manner. Congratulations, Natsume, you're uniquely dense!", jibed the beast, grinning like the cat who got the cream. Quite literally. Natsume glowered at him, muttering about a useless bodyguard.

Hinoe raised her hand to her mouth to at least try and hide some of her amusement, but she just couldn't contain her mirthful giggles. Oh well, nothing to be done about it. Natsume sneezed again. Then again. He looked so much like a drowned rat, Hinoe was actually feeling bad for him. She lowered her hands, her laughter now contained, but a smile still present on her face, though it was more fond than mean-spirited.

"Don't look so grumpy. It doesn't suit that handsome face of yours," she complained, as she draped herself over Natsume's frame. It was a bit uncomfortable to do so while walking, but Hinoe was consequent in her decision to use him as a body rest. Now that she was closer, she could smell the river water in his limp hair and feel the wet clothes hanging from his thin form. There was also something else.

Natsume briefly swatted at her hand as she brushed a few damp strands from his forehead, but ultimately let her pass. She put her hand on his forehead to get a reading on his temperature. It was unusually caring of her. The temperature didn't seem to be off, at most a bit warmer than normal. She breathed out an inaudible sigh before she ruffled Natsume's hair back in his face and retracted her hand. Then she straightened back up so that they were walking next to each other again.

Normally, keeping someone warm with your own body temperature would be beneficial to ward off sickness, but unfortunately Hinoe couldn't do that for him because yokai were naturally cold to the touch. All she could do was make sure that Natsume got home as quickly as possible.

"I hope you're not planning to get sick again?", she asked chidingly. Natsume smiled softly at her while shaking his head. "Don't worry, Hinoe. I don't intend to get sick," he assured her. "Good." She nodded approvingly as if Natsume's sheer will power would actually be enough to prevent any sickness.

"I heard human parents don't like it when their children get sick and start fussing over them, isn't that right, Madara?" Hinoe turned towards the other yokai,but instead of looking at her, his sharp eyes were trained on the boy, looking for or maybe waiting for something to happen. Although she had no idea what that could be. "You're correct. Our dear Natsume over there isn't too keen on having people fret over him, though," he answered, not looking away from Natsume.

Natsume looked thoughtful, eyes glued to the dirt path they were walking on. "Hm, yeah, I wouldn't want Shigeru-san and Touko-san to worry about me. They already do that too often," he muttered, a tender expression forming on his face. You could practically feel the positive emotions radiating off of Natsume, as he thought about the people who took him in.

To be honest, Hinoe had often thought about spiriting Natsume away, to become a part of Yatsuhara forest, where he wouldn't be troubled by human burdens. She had already lost Reiko, a peculiarity between humans, who was treated like less than dirt by her own kind, but ended up meaning the world to her. She didn't want to fail this child, who looked so much like her, but was so different in character, that carried a flame in him that was bright and soothing and oh-so pure. It was nothing like Reiko's lively fire that roared in her chest, yet it was just as beautiful and worthy of protection.

Hinoe didn't trust in humans. Yokai usually don't. However, when she looked at the Fujiwaras and saw them interact with Natsume, all she could see was sheer, unadulterated love. Natsume had found a good home, full of warmth, that Hinoe could never give him in the same way they could. It didn't make her sad. It only made her happy, that that special little human boy, who's heart was too big for his own good, had found a family

4.

Something was going to happen. Madara could feel it in the tips of his whiskers. There was a certain nervousness in the air, surrounding the people in the house like the static of an old tube tv. But there was also something else. Beneath the heavy blanket of anxiety was also a thin sheen of excitement, wanting to break through the uncertainty in a way like flowers in early spring attempting to break through the snow. All these waves of emotions were coming from the same source. That source being the Fujiwaras.

The whirl of emotion was starting to get to Madara, which meant it was absolutely eating Natsume alive. The boy was constantly on edge, his eyes wandering, his gaze calculating. For the past few days he hadn't seemed to be able to relax, as if he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. It irritated Madara.

He was used to Natsume's odd quirks, especially his own brand of nervousness, which came from being bothered by yokai his whole life, but currently his weirdness was reaching new heights, that would almost make Madara worry if he weren't so emotionally constipated. The whole "I'm only with you because of the Book Of Friends" drama.

He'd rather swear of sake than admit that he worried about that stupid human who somehow managed to always get himself in the worst predicaments possible, where he ended up needing to be saved from the great and generous Madara. Natsume was truly ridiculous in everything he did.

He was getting carried away. The only important thing right now was that the other occupants of the house were being stressed out by something and although he shouldn't care, Madara could already see himself biting the bullet and trying to get to the bottom of this. Even though he kept telling himself it was only because their stress was making him antsy, but deep down he knew it was because he truly cared about them, but again he'd rather die than tell them that.

That's how Madara found himself on his way to Natsume's room. When he got there, he waddled through the door before he closed it behind him. Natsume was sitting at his desk. He was looking out the window while worrying at his lower lip, not even noticing Madara's entrance.

"Oi, Natsume, stop daydreaming," he complained. Natsume's head snapped around so fast it was almost giving Madara whiplash just from watching.

"Oh, I didn't hear you coming in, Sensei," he remarked, still a bit absent. An annoyed huff left Madara. "Really? I couldn't tell," was his snarky reply. But Natsume didn't pay any heed to his tone. Instead he turned his head back towards the window, lip between his teeth again.

Madara trudged over to the boy and slapped at his knee, claws carefully retracted so they wouldn't get stuck in the fabric of the pants.

"Hey, what are you doing?", Natsume protested, pulling the assaulted knee out of the fat cat's reach. The slap hadn't been hard, just enough to sting a little. Madara rolled his eyes at Natsume's dramatic reaction, then he glared up at the boy.

"Stop chewing on your lip," he ordered. "If you keep it up, you'll break skin and bleed all over your shirt and I know for a fact that you don't want to bother Touko because of a bloody shirt. Which is for the best, because she'll start on dinner soon and I don't want her getting distracted."

Natsume finally released his lip. When Touko was mentioned, he grimaced slightly, a look in his eyes that Madara couldn't fully decipher. At the last sentence, it was Natsume's turn to roll his eyes. He waved the beast off.

" Yeah, yeah," he mumbled. "You're right, I wouldn't want to bother Touko-san."

Madara studied Natsume intently. The boy's posture was drawn in, his eyes somewhat vacant. In lieu of biting his lips, he was absentmindedly pulling on his fingers. His face wasn't expressionless, it was just that Madara had a hard time reading the emotions behind him.

That didn't happen often. Normally, Madara was quite good at seeing through the other. But despite all that, he could still tell that there was something weighing down the boy, which led him back to the reason why he entered the room in the first place. Now, how to go about this? Indirect? Delicate? Nah, he'd just be direct, determined the beast. It wouldn't make any sense to dance around the topic.

"What's up with you guys anyway?", Madara finally asked. Natsume blinked at him. "Huh?", he replied confused, cocking his head to the side like a puppy. "What do you mean?" At that Madara groaned, displeased that he had to further explain himself. "I mean," he answered, "why are you all so tense, you and your parents?" At his question, Natsume flinched back violently, as if he'd been hit square in the face, which was coupled with a pained expression, as though he had actually been struck. Madara looked at him surprised. What the hell got into him? Was he missing something here?

"D-Don't call them that!" Natsume's voice sounded near hysterical as his words came out louder than expected. He was looking at everything but Madara as he nervously picked at his hand.

Madara curiously raised one eyebrow. He hadn't expected such a negative reaction, considering he had the feeling that Natsume was warming up to the term "parents". Not that Madara cared or paid close attention to it, of course! But it was still noticeable that Natsume's response right now was much stronger than the last time Madara witnessed someone calling the Fujiwaras his parents. How odd. Madara shook his head, refocusing.

"Whatever. You and the Fujiwaras then. What's the matter with you? Why is everyone in this house (except me, of course) a bundle of nerves?", he questioned as he tried to catch Natsume's gaze. Natsume met his eyes for a few seconds before he wasn't able to withstand Madara's scrutinizing and had to avert his eyes again. The boy shrugged.

"I don't know. It's probably just work and school stress. I haven't really noticed a change in atmosphere though," he told Madara. A clear lie, but Madara wasn't sure what Natsume was trying to accomplish with it. There wasn't any reason why he should feel the need to keep anything like that secret. It was nothing life threatening after all, more an inconvenience for Madara than anything else. Knowing Natsume, it was probably for a stupid reason. Most things Natsume did were done for one stupid reason or another. 'I have to help them because nobody else can', 'It was the right thing to do' or something along those lines. It almost always ended with Madara having to pull off some kind of rescue.

Before he could call the boy out for his lie, Shigeru's voice sounded up from downstairs, asking Natsume to help him carry something. Natsume immediately shot up from his desk, more or less bolting out of the room, probably incredibly glad to be able to escape their conversation so easily.

Madara huffed. What a brat. He'd get to the bottom of this, if Natsume wanted or not. It was likely that the boy's nervousness was caused by the jittery Fujiwaras. The problem at hand may have something to do with the whole parent thing, though Madara wasn't sure what the actual issue with that was. Though, that also didn't explain why Touko and Shigeru were so high-strung all of a sudden. Despite his efforts to come up with an answer, there were just some puzzle pieces missing and without them Madara wouldn't be able to see the whole picture.

He let out a long sigh. All his pondering would lead to nothing right now, decided Madara. Instead he would conserve his strengths and chance a look into the kitchen to see if Touko had already started on dinner. Maybe he could get some scraps if he waited patiently enough. Touko was amazing like that. While he walked back downstairs his mind briefly wandered back to Natsume. He could distantly hear Shigeru and the boy somewhere further inside the house.

Madara just hoped that the Fujiwaras would be able to regain their nerves and at the same time quell some of Natsume's fears. They seemed to be quite good at that. Like parents.

They wanted to pass him on, Takashi just knew it. He wouldn't even be able to be mad at them. It was what everyone did, after all. They had also lasted astonishingly long. He had gained so much, thanks to them. In the one year they had spent together, he had been able to make incredible friends, learn more about his family, had found himself a purpose and most of all, he had found a place with them that felt so much like he imagined home to feel like. It reminded him of his dad and their porch.

+1

But of course, it was all too good to be true. Natsume knew that everything good was temporary, never long-lasting. Not for him at least. It always came to an end, most of the time sooner rather than later. And now the time had come. The Fujiwaras were going to pass him on to someone else. Maybe he'd end up in an orphanage next? Takashi was pretty sure he had run out of distant relatives. He'd have to wait for his answer even if not for long. Touko-san and Shigeru-san had told him that they wanted to talk about something important during dinner.

That's how it went most of the time. Takashi would hear his relatives talking on the phone, complaining about him and asking, sometimes even begging, the person on the other side to take him, to free them of the curse that was Natsume Takashi. There weren't any phone calls this time, at least none that Takashi had overheard, but there were other signs that his time with the only people, who had actually wanted him, was running out.

An unease permeated the house like a foul smell, whispered conversations that stopped when he entered the room and all the looks that were being sent his way as if they were already trying to gauge his reaction to the upcoming news. All that was proof enough for him, that his days in this cosy little house were numbered.

Takashi only wondered what the final straw was, that broke the camel's back. Maybe it was one ripped trouser too much? One lost pencil case too many? Maybe it was his fragility and the constant bouts of sickness? Or maybe it was his overall weirdness that drove them away? Him staring at nothing with an intense gaze, yelling at empty air, reacting to invisible forces, he could see how all that could become too much quickly.

In the end, it didn't matter. Takashi had long accepted that he was bound to a life of never-ending movement, with nowhere to settle down and grow roots. Why should it be different now? Sure, his stay with the Fujiwaras was the longest he ever had until then, but that only meant that the departure would be that much more painful this time.

Because for the first time in his life, since his parents died, he wanted nothing more than to stay, to bask in the warmth of the people and the places he had learned to call his home for just a little longer and then some. But he wouldn't dare to be this selfish. He didn't want to force himself on those kind people. That simply wouldn't be fair to them. Takashi would take whatever fate the Fujiwaras decided on for him with open arms as a final farewell gift from them to him.

When dinner rolled around Takashi was completely on edge. He swallowed thickly. The time had come. The impending conversation hung over him like a heavy storm cloud, waiting to hail down on him.

They started eating, but Takashi could barely force anything down. He constantly threw looks up at the adults, but neither of them said anything, not noticing his rising trepidation. After a few moments, he couldn't stay quiet any longer.

"Y-You wanted to talk to me about something?", he blurted out, barely able to suppress the shaking of his voice. They both looked up at him with their typical soft expressions, but Takashi could also see apprehension and unease in their eyes. At that view, his insides started to painfully twist together. Shigeru smiled reassuringly at him. "How about we talk after dinner?", he suggested. Takashi could only nod in agreement, paired with a small "Okay". Getting out anything more felt like a herculean task, so he gave up on it.

After that, dinner was pure torture for Takashi, but he tried really hard to not let it show on his face. He could only hope he was being successful at it. Shigeru-san and Touko-san were chatting like usual, asking him questions from time to time, but despite his best efforts, his replies were monotonous and brief. If they noticed, they didn't mention it and to be honest, Takashi was glad about that. He forced his food down, everything tasting like cardboard in his mouth (although he was sure it actually tasted amazing, just like always), ignored Nyanko-sensei's eyes attempting to burn holes into his skin from under the table and desperately tried to not fall apart right where he sat. He'd say he'd managed alright.

When they eventually finished their dinner, Takashi could have wept, if it was because of sheer relieve, that he would finally be able to get this conversation over with or if it was due to overwhelming heartache because he didn't want them to tell him, what he already knew, that he was too much for them and they wanted him out of their house, he couldn't tell.

After they had cleared the table, they returned to their seats. Takashi watched the two adults through his lashes, not capable to meet their gazes head on. He watched Touko-san fidget with her sleeve and listened to Shigeru-san lightly tapping at the desk. None of them seemed to be willing to break the silence.

Then Touko-san finally worked up the courage and shattered the tense silence with the clearing of her throat. Her hands let go of her sleeves and one of them slipped under the table, presumably so that she could hold Shigeru-san's hand. Takashi wished he could have that kind of comfort right now. At that moment Nyanko-sensei jumped up on his lap, kneading his legs before settling down. The pressure of Sensei's round body was grounding and Takashi didn't hesitate to encircle the cat-like creature with his arms. He gave Nyanko-sensei a thankful smile, however shaky it may have looked. His bodyguard blinked slowly at him. That was more than enough for Takashi. It gave him the strength to look up at his still-foster-parents.

Takashi would never be truly ready to hear whatever earth shattering words these kind people had for him. He just hoped they wouldn't try to justify their decisions. Most of his other relatives did that, when they told him someone else was going to take him in. He hated it when they did that. It always made his bones itch and his skin crawl. The justifications were never for his sake. Their sole purpose was to make his former guardians feel better about themselves. Not that he took offense at that. Takashi was well aware that it was hard work to take care of him, that's why he never protested when it was his time to move on.

He wouldn't make this hard for the Fujiwaras. They had already put up with so much for him. Takashi had also promised himself not to cry, even though he really wanted to right now. Tears would only make them feel guilty and he definitely didn't want to make them feel awkward or the need to console him over a decision that was more than valid.

Touko-san had seemingly found the right words to start their little conversation because she began talking. "Takashi-kun, you've been living with us for around a year now. A few weeks more and it's exactly one year," she started, shooting a quick look to her husband for reassurance. Shigeru-san smiled warmly at her before the pair looked back at Takashi, then Touko-san continued. "It was an amazing year with you. You filled this house, which always felt too big for just the two of us, with life and laughter and I want to thank you for that from the bottom of my heart." Next to her Shigeru-san nodded approvingly.

Takashi hugged Nyanko-sensei closer to him. He could feel the tell-tale pressure of tears slowly rising in his eyes, but he fought them down. It was so nice of them to say all that, but it made what was about to come feel even more cruel. He could already taste the 'but' that would now follow on his tongue and it tasted like blood in his mouth. He closed his eyes, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And then everything came different. "You gave us so much," Shigeru-san picked up where his wife had left off. "You brought us so much happiness and let us explore a completely new kind of love, that we had never been fortunate enough to experience on our one. We don't know if we will ever be able to repay you for this kindness, but we thought it might be a good starting point to officially make you a part of this family. Not that you aren't already a part of this family, of course, but you know, in legal terms."

Takashi's eyes flew back open and he sat up ramrod straight, almost dislodging Nyanko-sensei from his place on his lap. His shock-wide eyes were racing back and forth between the two adults sitting in front of them. "What-?", was all he could choke out, his voice slightly raspy.

Touko-san smiled at him, her kind expression feeling just as warm to the skin as a hug, and reached out her arm, laying her hand, palm up, on the table top between them. Natsume losend one of his arms from the death grip he had on Sensei and shakily raised it. He stopped his hand inches before Touko-san's, as if he were afraid she'd rethink her decision and pull it back. When that didn't happen he slowly put his hand in her, which she grasped gingerly in return. Then she brought up her other hand that was still holding Shigeru-san's and placed them both on top of his hand.

Takashi stared at his enveloped hand, feeling the warmth of their hands seeping into him. It made him feel so safe. He moved his gaze back up to their faces when Touko-san started talking again. "If you'd allow us, we would like to adopt you, Takashi-kun," she said softly, giving his hand a gentle squeeze which was followed by another squeeze from Shigeru-san. Takashi stared at them, thunderstruck.

He understood what they had said, he knew what they meant, what they wanted to do, but something in his brain was just not clicking into place. They actually wanted him? They wanted to have him around? No, that couldn't be right. They wanted to pass him on to someone else. That's why they had been so nervous and stressed the last few weeks. Right?

Apparently he'd been quiet for too long because Shigeru-san chimed in again. "Of course we understand if you're not ready for that yet or don't want this at all. Neither would be an issue. We're still more than happy to foster you. Like I said earlier, you're already our child in every way that truly matters." At that he tapped the place of his chest where his heart was, before he moved on. "We just want you to think about it. You don't have to make a decision immediately. You have all the time in the world." Touko-san nodded vigorously and squeezed Takashi's hand again.

"Exactly! Take your time. Just do us the favor and consider it. We don't want you to feel as if we are trying to replace your parents. That is not our intention at all. We'd love to have official papers saying that you're our son, but we don't want you to feel pressured into doing anything you don't want to. Whatever you'll decide on, we'll always be here for you. Because we love you."

That was the end of the line for Takashi. He couldn't keep his tears at bay anymore and in the next moment they were already streaming down his face. It was weirdly similar to his first official meeting with the Fujiwaras when he was in the hospital after he fell off that cliff.

At the sight of his tears Touko-san and Shigeru-san had jumped up from their seats in alarm. They had already rushed towards him, now standing to either side of him, hovering worriedly over Takashi. He brought his now empty hand, on which he could still feel the warmth of their hands, and the other hand, that had previously held on tightly to Nyanko-sensei, up to his face to wipe at his eyes. His efforts to stem the tear flow were pretty fruitless, but that wasn't really a concern of his, at the moment.

"Are you alright, Takashi-kun? I'm sorry if we upset you," said Touko-san, concern and a hint of guilt lacing her voice. The Fujiwaras looked ready to fret over him, but they obviously didn't want to intrude in on his personal space.

A wet giggle left Takashi's lips, which quickly turned into soft laughter. He raised his head out of his hands and beamed up at Fujiwara Shigeru and Fujiwara Touko, the people who wanted him to be their son, who offered to become his parents.

"Yes," he chuckled, "I'm feeling more than alright." He heard a relieved sigh from the two adults.

Slowly his laughter died down, but the smile on his face was permanent. He watched his guardians. Their postures were now relaxed, their faces open and full of love. Takashi's heart swelled in his chest.

He took a deep breath, preparing himself for what he was about to say. Then he was ready. He looked down at Nyanko-sensei, who started purring, then at Shigeru-san and finally at Touko-san. His decision hadn't been a hard one to make.

Sometimes you just have to listen to the voice of your heart, no matter how frail it may sound or how loud your brain is yelling over it to abandon all hope, lest you get hurt. Right now Takashi's heart was singing and it was the most heavenly sound he'd ever heard, a sound telling him to trust, to settle down, to accept that he was loved.

New tears of happiness welled up in his eyes as he finally translated the song in his heart for everyone to hear. "If you want me, I'd love to get adopted by you, Touko-san, Shigeru-san. I want to become your… son." That word was foreign in his mouth, but it tasted oh-so sweet on his tongue. Takashi could definitely get used to it.

Then Touko-san suddenly barreled into his side, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him as close as possible, now tears of her own streaming down her face.

"You already are," she wept into his shoulder, sounding happier than he had ever heard her. Next Shigeru-san joined the hug, holding them in his strong arms while he as well had tears running down his cheeks. "We're so glad. Of course we want you. Our child," he whispered into Takashi's hair, his smile almost splitting his face in half.

They sat there for a long while, just hugging and crying and laughing (or in Nyanko-sensei's case, loudly purring). Neither of them wanted to let go, so they just basked in each other's presence. Of course, the adoption process would be a significantly longer one, but the first step was made. And oh, what a glorious step it was.

While being held by the two people, who were so kind and compassionate, who loved him unconditionally, Takashi thought maybe, the word "parents" didn't sound too bad. It would fit well in this house. His home. Together with his family. It definitely would fit snugly together with "son" and that was all that really mattered right now.

#natsumess2022 #natsuyuu #natsume's book of friends #natsume takashi #nyanko sensei #fujiwara shigeru #fujiwara touko #adoption #fanfiction #nishimura satoru #kitamoto atsushi #hinoe #sasada jun #tanuma kaname #emotional hurt/comfort #misunderstanding #mentions of hinoe's infatuation with reiko #nothing detailed #fujiwara touko x fujiwara shigeru #natori shuuichi

[taizi]

come inside, can i get you to stay?

@natsumeweek 2022 day 6; unexpected meetings

read on ao3

(previous) 

x

He’d never admit it on pain of death, but Takashi has always quietly envied any of his classmates with siblings. He was even a little jealous of Taki, Kitamoto and Nishimura—as stupid as that last one was, in hindsight. When he was a child, it’s one of the things Takashi daydreamed about the most.

He’s had foster brothers and sisters before, but it never felt real. They were always aware that the placement wasn’t permanent, that Takashi would be moving on again soon, and it wouldn’t make sense to waste their time getting close to him. Kids in the system are very pragmatic.

This time, it doesn’t feel real for an entirely different reason. Takashi thinks maybe it’s because he wants this to work so badly.

For his friend’s sake—because his friend deserves to live where people like him, where he’s safe—but for Takashi’s sake, too.

Nishimura is acting like it’s just an extended sleepover. On one hand, that means he accepts the Fujiwaras’ hospitality as readily as he always has, traipsing around their comfortable old house like he’s certain of his welcome there, lazing in Takashi’s bedroom and trying to distract him from homework in favor of Mario Kart.

On the other hand, it also means he hasn’t unpacked his own room yet. He hasn’t put any of his clothes in the closet, or put up his posters. When he wants Takashi to watch a movie with him, he has to dig around in his box of DVDs, even though there’s a shelf he could stack them on.

When Touko asks what foods he likes over dinner on their first night together, Nishimura grins and says, “I’ll eat anything!”

And Takashi is forcibly reminded of every single time he’s ever been asked that question. How many times he smiled politely and said, “I don’t really have any favorites.” How he forced himself to eat things he hated, because he didn’t want to lose the privilege of having anything to eat at all.

It took Touko ages to coax preferences out of Takashi. He has no idea how she did it, so patient and implacable, never minding the constant way Takashi danced around letting himself belong here—always one step forward, two steps back, and the occasional sideways shuffle.

Clearly, she’s prepared to go through the whole routine all over again, smiling kindly and letting the subject drop, but Takashi says, “He hates spicy food.”

Nishimura elbows him hard enough that Takashi misses his mouth with his cup and spills water down his shirt.

“I totally eat spicy food,” Nishimura asserts loudly.

“You eat spicy food when Shibata bets you money you won’t,” Takashi replies. “And afterwards you act like you’re having an asthma attack and someone has to go buy you a milk tea. Tanuma started bringing his inhaler with him when we go out.”

“What?” Nishimura looks like he doesn’t know if that’s hilarious or embarrassing. Normally he has no sense of shame, so it probably has something to do with the way their parents are spectating avidly from the other side of the table. “Did you tell him I don’t even have asthma?”

“Better safe than sorry,” Takashi replies mildly.

It takes like three seconds for hilarity to win, and then Nishimura throws his head back and cackles. There’s always going to be a thin white scar through his left side of his mouth, but for now it’s just a week-old wound that doesn’t split open anymore when he laughs.

Takashi catches Touko’s eye and has to look away quickly from all the warm pride on her face.

He doesn’t want it to be as uncertain and scary for Nishimura as it was for him. He wants to make it easier where he can. He wants it to work.

“Shigeru?” Takashi asks, leaning around the open office door. When his foster father looks up from his desk, Takashi swallows, squeezes the hand he has wrapped around Nishimura’s wrist so he can’t escape, and manages to ask, “Are you busy?”

“Of course not,” Shigeru says easily. He puts his drafting pencil down and turns his chair toward the door. “What do you need?”

“Nothing,” Nishimura calls from behind Takashi, out of sight. His arm is fully extended so he can stand as far back from the office door as possible. “Natsume just likes watching me squirm. He’s kind of a sociopath, you should keep an eye on that.”

Takashi rolls his eyes. Shigeru grins, and gestures for him to go on.

“We’re kind of struggling with our math homework,” Takashi explains. “Nishimura missed a couple lessons and I’ve been—distracted at school.” Worried out of his mind, more like, but that probably goes without saying.

It costs him a little to ask for help. He’s always prided himself on being low-maintenance. But Nishimura adamantly won’t admit he’s struggling until he’s got a failing grade, and even then he’d probably go to someone else first.

But Shigeru is right here, and he’s an architect. He’s brilliant at math. There’s a design sketch spread across his desk even now, all clean lines and tiny details. He’d be happy to help.

Takashi has made this argument with himself a dozen times. It feels strange to finally act on it.

“Understandably,” Shigeru says without judgment. His smile widens when Nishimura dares to peek over Takashi’s shoulder into the room. “Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve had to wrestle with high school algebra, but three heads are better than two. Maybe if we’re studious enough, Touko-san will forget we were supposed to go have tea with Watanabe-san.”

Nishimura scoffs quietly, and Takashi wrinkles his nose a little before he can help it. Neither of them like the grumpy old man across the street, in part because he takes umbrage with everything anyone under the age of thirty has to say about literally anything, and also in part because of that time he chased Nyanko-sensei off his yard with a water hose in February.

Shigeru seems delighted at their reactions. And now that they’re in on a scheme together, Nishimura comes into the office much more willingly. He ultimately leaves with a greater understanding of algebra than he’s ever had before in his life (his own words) and calls Tsuji on the landline before dinner to crow “now that I know numbers it’s over for the rest of you!!”

When he’s lived there for about a week, he finally cracks.

“Where are you going?” Takashi asks, staring blankly at his friend, who is suspended half out of the bedroom window and looking increasingly like a kid caught with his hand in a cookie jar.

“Out,” Nishimura says conversationally.

“At nine o’clock at night?”

“I want chicken nuggets.”

Takashi knows that Touko will be an order of magnitude more upset over a broken bone than a broken curfew, and says as much. He hauls Nishimura back inside and manages to convince him to sneak out the front door instead.

“Hang on, you’re coming?” Nishimura says, realizing belatedly that Takashi stepped down into the genkan with him. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

“Should have thought of that before I found you dangling out a window.”

“Bakashi,” Nishimura heckles without heat, but then he catches Takashi’s arm. “Seriously, wait a sec. I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“I don’t want you getting in trouble by yourself,” Takashi counters. It makes Nishimura grin crookedly, seemingly despite himself, and by the time they slip out the door, he’s humming the Mission Impossible theme song and generally being his usual energetic, unsubtle self.

The row of buzzing orange street lights overhead are a familiar guide through town. All the roads and sidewalks are mostly empty, a few stragglers on their way home for the night and not much traffic otherwise. Takashi doesn’t count a single car.

It’s just the two of them, walking close enough that their shoulders and elbows bump. Their voices carry in the stillness, but for once, Takashi doesn’t feel self-conscious just for existing. He feels like he belongs here.

The neon sign of the combini blazes through the twilight, but Nishimura doesn’t go inside. He plops down on the curb outside and pats the spot beside him.

“Did you forget your wallet again?” Takashi asks, not entirely surprised.

“That only happened twice, and no,” Nishimura replies haughtily. Then, less performatively, he adds, “I guess I just wanted to go for a walk.”

Takashi sits beside him, drawing his knees up and folding his arms on top. Resting his chin on one of his elbows, he gazes across the little parking lot, letting the silence unfold into something comfortable and weighted around them.

There’s something standing in the shadows just beyond the light of the convenience store, a little too tall and tapered to be human. He doesn’t think it means any harm. There are a few little ghost lights drifting by, too, off on some merry escapade.

He’s never truly alone. Still, it’s nice to have company.

“It’s been two weeks,” Nishimura says suddenly. “Isn’t that weird?”

Takashi tilts his head, watching the ghost lights. “Weird how?”

“I dunno. It feels like it happened years ago,” Nishimura says. He touches his ruined lip with the backs of his fingers, like he’s not fully aware he’s doing it. “But it also feels like it happened yesterday. It’s weird. I keep waiting for everyone to realize they made a mistake. Mom’s always been that way, and it never mattered until—until this one time, when she went a little too far? That doesn’t make sense. They can’t just change the rules. It’s not fair.”

It’s not fair. It’s not fair that it happened at all. It’s not fair that apparently, the entire time Takashi has known him, the entire time Nishimura has been flooding Takashi’s half-empty life with noise and color and light, he’s been going home to a place where he wasn’t wanted. He’s been lost the way Takashi used to be lost, the way people aren’t supposed to get lost in this town.

He learned to live that way. Anyone can learn to live with anything, if they’re left alone with it long enough. And now he’s struggling to un-learn it, because no one helped him until it was something they couldn’t ignore. It’s not fair.

A neighbor called the police that night, because they heard glass breaking and feared it might have been a burglary. Nishimura only called Kitamoto from the station because Detective Genta made it clear he couldn’t leave until he called someone.  

Nishimura would never have called the police on his mother. Takashi tries not to think about what might have happened if Nishimura’s neighbor hadn’t been awake.

“You’re half-right,” he finally says, when he’s pretty sure he can speak without crying.

Nishimura scoffs. “Which part am I wrong about?”

“Getting you out of there wasn’t a mistake,” Takashi tells him, as firmly as he’s able. “It isn’t fair that it took this long. And someone should have helped you sooner. But she—your mother didn’t deserve you.”

“Does anyone really deserve me? I don’t know if I should be allowed to inflict myself on others. I’m kind of a mess. And I know how annoying I can be, I’m not completely oblivious. My own family didn’t stick around.”

“Your real family did,” Takashi says, thinking of the way Kitamoto’s mom flew out the door the second she got that phone call, the way his dad and sister stayed up to bake a two-layer cake when it would have made more sense to be asleep, the dogged way Kitamoto refused to let Nishimura make ugly jokes about himself or spend his time alone. The way they fought for him around that little kitchen table, refusing to give ground until they found a solution that would work. “And—and we—Shigeru, Touko, and I—we could try to deserve you. If you’d let us.”

That finally provokes a reaction. Nishimura jerks around to look at him, wide-eyed.

Takashi lifts his chin bravely and looks right back.

“I’ve always wanted a brother,” he says, parting ways with just one of his carefully-kept secrets.

All of Nishimura’s walls come down. He searches Takashi’s expression for something, and he must find it, because he laughs. It’s a barely-there, disbelieving sound, more of an exhale than anything, but it counts.

He’s sitting there on the curb, washed in all the bright lights from the 7-Eleven behind them, the red-brown in his hair and his eyes very warm and very soft. He’s open and unguarded in a way that was beaten out of Takashi years ago.

“Well, if that’s all,” he says grandly, but he’s smiling again—crooked and fond and strangely shy. “I think that ship has sailed, Natsume. You snuck out of the house with me in the middle of the night to get snacks. That’s peak sibling behavior. You’ve had a brother for at least twenty minutes now and you never even noticed.”

Takashi grins back at him, wide enough that he probably looks stupid. This moment was worth breaking their curfew for. This moment was worth almost everything it took for him to get here. If he could go back and tell himself, at six, or nine, or twelve years old, everything he had to look forward to, maybe his childhood would have been easier to survive.

Movement across the parking lot catches his eye, and he ignores it at first—he thinks it’s probably that tall creature lurking around in the shadows, and he doesn’t want Nishimura to see him jumping at things that aren’t there—but then Nishimura says, in a tone of total disbelief,  “Nii-san?”

And, sure enough—it’s Nishimura Kiyoshi, tearing across the lot towards them like there’s a hungry monster at his heels. Dumbly, Takashi glances behind him to make sure there’s not one.

“Satoru!” Kiyoshi shouts on approach, causing Nishimura to scramble to his feet, dragging Takashi up with him. “What the hell are you doing out here? Are you fucking kidding me?”

It’s kind of a strange tone for him to take, given everything he’s missed. He can’t just show up out of nowhere, two weeks after the fact, and start yelling. Takashi hates how tense and nervous Nishimura is now, even though he’s already scowling, already opening his mouth to give back as good as he gets.

He doesn’t get a chance. The second he’s within arms’ reach, Kiyoshi is yanking him off the curb. Nishimura stumbles, wide-eyed, straight into an embrace. Kiyoshi’s arms wrap him up securely, one hand fisted in the back of his jacket, the other pressed firmly to the back of his head, and he hugs him like—like he’s scared of losing him.

“I think I lost my mind like four separate times on the train ride here,” Kiyoshi snaps. His voice is wavering, coming apart, and the fury begins to sound more like fear. “My phone died last month, you idiot. I haven’t had the extra money to replace it until—and when I did, and I found those voicemails—”

He takes a deep breath and stands back to hold Nishimura out at arm’s length. Nishimura is staring up at him wide-eyed, like this version of Kiyoshi is some alarming new species he’s never encountered before.

“Why didn’t you call me?” Kiyoshi demands. “All those messages were from other people. The detective, and the social worker—Aunt Mikako left me about a hundred. Why didn’t you—”

“They took my phone as evidence,” Nishimura blurts. “And I didn’t want it back. I think they gave it to Uncle Hakaru. I dunno. I didn’t want to call anyone, or talk about it at all. And—and I didn’t know why you didn’t answer anyone else, so I figured—I thought you must not—”

“No,” Kiyoshi says harshly. “You thought wrong.”

“You’ve been busy!” Nishimura shoots back, eyes glassy. “You haven’t come to visit in ages. You don’t have time for me anymore. How was I supposed to know you’d want me to call you? And I already ruined mom’s life just by existing, and I nearly ruined Auntie’s and Uncle’s, so sorry if I decided not to make a targeted attempt at ruining yours, too!”

Kiyoshi makes a furious, bitten-off sound, and gives Nishimura’s shoulders a solid shake where he’s still holding them.

“You ruin my life every time you open your stupid mouth, that doesn’t mean I don’t want you in it! Why do you think I’ve been killing myself at university, huh? I had to get out of there, so I could get you out of there, you moron.”

Nishimura looks rattled. “I didn’t know that.”

“Clearly,” Kiyoshi seethes. He jerks his hands off of Satoru’s shoulders and paces a few steps away, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. “You—you scared the shit out of me, kid. And then when Auntie finally told me where you were staying, and I get there, and Fujiwara-san said she didn’t know where you were—”

“Oh, great,” Nishimura says, and turns to Takashi, “great, he’s been back in town for two minutes and he already sold us out. God works fast but big brothers work faster.”

“You zip it!” Kiyoshi snaps. “I can’t stand you! What are you doing sneaking around anyway?”

“Snacks,” Takashi volunteers.

The elder Nishimura pinches the bridge of his nose, clearly searching deep inside himself for some extra, untapped well of patience. But instead of blowing up at them, or bullying them back home the way Takashi half-expects him to, he folds himself into their quest instead; spending two thousand yen on chicken nuggets and Chocorooms and these little steamed cheesecake sandwiches that caught Takashi’s eye by the register.

And as they walk back together, in between the bickering and sideswiping, Kiyoshi asks careful, casual questions about what the Fujiwaras are like, and how Nishimura has liked staying with them so far, almost as though he’s feeling something out. He studies the easy way Takashi and Nishimura walk together, like they’re walking right where they’re supposed to be. He mentions that he took a leave of absence from his classes, so he’ll be around for the next couple of weeks.

“Are you staying at the house?” Nishimura asks.

“Satoru, I would sooner sleep on the street corner than go back into that woman’s house,” Kiyoshi says pleasantly.

“A little dramatic, but okay. Touko will probably gently bully you into staying with us, then. It’s best not to fight it too hard. And, uh—I was thinking.” Nishimura swings the plastic bag in his hand back and forth a couple of times, and pointedly doesn’t look at either one of his brothers. “I know it’s late, but. Maybe when we get home, you guys could help me unpack my room.”

Takashi feels the breath fly out of his lungs. He nearly trips over his own feet in his haste to turn around and throw his arms around Nishimura’s shoulders. It startles Nishimura into laughing and returning the favor, and their plastic shopping bags are banging around stupidly and probably close to spilling, but Takashi doesn’t care.

Home.

Kiyoshi can’t really know how much that means; there’s no way he could. He’s missed these last two weeks, and it sounds like he missed a lot more on top of that.

But the joy on their faces must tell him all he needs to know. Or maybe he decides this one thing isn’t worth arguing about. All he does is roll his eyes and nudge them into walking again, towards the warmly-lit house waiting for them at the end of the road—a gentle beacon leading them through the dark.

#natsumeweek #natsume yuujinchou #natsume takashi #nishimura satoru #fujiwara touko #fujiwara shigeru #nishimura kiyoshi #my writing #natsuyuu #natsuyuu fic #now that you dont have to be perfect #I DID IT!!!! I DIDNT KNOW IF I COULD DO IT BUT I DID IT #sad that shibata didnt make it into the fic proper but he was with in spirit the whole time

[madame-vera]

Bad Bitches Masterpost To Be

For now I'm noting down ideas for every prompt but once the card's complete I'll either edit it into a masterpost or reblog as a production reference for a masterpost.

Detective AU

Gosick - FMC starts a casual Detective business

Tortured For Information

Takako Toshiro from Elegant Yokai Apartment Life gets tickle tortured by her friends for the tea on Hase/Inaba.

Artificial Intelligence

Tohru is delighted by the AI program she finds online and chats with it. Sometimes lighthearted, sometimes to vent.

Carving Initials In A Tree

Mirai (and maybe Mari and that robot kid) come to visit Yuukis tree 10 years later when it's grown some. Mirai carves Yuukis' initials into the tree in memoriam. (tokyo magnitude 8.0)

"It sucks. Because I want to hate you, but I can't."

Sarah venting at Shu (ntht)

CC or Nunnally venting about the Zero Requiem.

Oral Sex

Miss Sunflower - They deserve some fun

Bartender AU

That lil' cutie with the fox window stand from Miss Sunflower grows up to become a bartender and serves her specialty cocktail, Foxes Window to Shiori and Matsuri for their wedding anniversary.

Plane Crash

I could have the FMC from Daites Ryou Koubouki (Offense and Defense in Daites) test out her plane developed to obtain mobility over the mountain ranges and water crops. But it crashes and she gets lectured and pampered by her loved ones.

Or the FMC from Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead could maintain her working lifestyle after her mothers plane crashes.

Accidental Marriage

When Ayumu and her brother are taken in by Kite in Estonia, Ayumu and Kite sign what they think is a sponsorship agreement to house them and maintain guardianship over Go. They probably should have waited for the stress and medicine and wear off. Platonic accidental marriage agreement.

Matching Tattoos

Fujiwara Touko and Fujiwara Shigeru (a fun story from their youth, maybe a heart or something) (natsume yuujinchou)

"Well, this is awkward."

blank

Mistress Kink

That Mai Hime lady. from Mai Hime and Mai Otome. I might need to give them a re-watch

Free Space

blank

Emergency Surgery

Merope Gaunt wanders into a midwifery and both she and her child are saved with an emergency C-Section. (Harry Potter)

Addict/Dealer

MDZS - WQ & WWX platonic or WQ & JY romantic - Underground doctor supplies recreational drugs to patients in order to help them safely use it and hopefully kick it.

Cuddling in Bed

blank

"You can't say 'back in my day' if you're you're younger than me!"

the teacher and brother (the two authors) from Miss Sunflower

Masturbation

Kallen discovers an interesting use for her nightmare pilot seat. based off of an old fancomic from goodness knows where, probably deviantart. (code geass)

Narnia AU

Sarah is so spooked by Jareth she develops a tendency to hide with Toby when the night scares her, especially when their parents aren't home. One day she hides a little too well and wound up in another fantasy land entirely. (Labrynth x Narnia)

Too Late To Save Them

blank

Best Frenemies

Ishtar forces Darres, Yujinn and Duzell to get along. (the story will follow her and her whims apart from the occasional perspective shift, it still counts

BBQ Cookout

Hitoka Yachi (Haikyuu) - bbq take 2 or manager only bbq

"Oh, I love that sound you make."

Kyoko tickling tiny little one Tohru (fruits basket)

Edging

Any chance I can make this about the edging of a blanket? I got more of these than I expected. I should've had two of them switched out. Ah well. Now I know I guess.

Komari does it to Liberta from the yuri manga Liberta

Ballet AU

CC takes up ballet so she continue her comfy cat like rest poses and eat all the pizza she likes without Lelouch nagging at her (code geass)

#bad bitches bingo #fic list #masterpost to be #bingo challenge #ideas #madame vera

[ao3feed-natsume]

by SUGAR_DEMON

su dulce aroma atrae a los youkai trayéndole muchos problemas.

- Eres muy lindo y tu aroma es muy dulce- dijo Nyanko-sensei al chico que tenia delante - seisei!!!- grito Natsume, con su rostro sonrojado por la vergüenza de las palabras que su gato le dijo a su reciente compañero de clase.

Words: 59, Chapters: 1/1, Language: Español

Fandoms: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M, Other

Characters: Natsume Takashi, Natori Shuuichi, Tanuma Kaname, Matoba Seiji, Matoba Clan, Taki Tooru, Madara "Nyanko-sensei", Shibata Katsumi, Kitsune | Fox Boy (Natsume Yuujinchou), Natsume Reiko, Nansen Ichimonji, Hinoe (Natsume Yuujinchou), Fujiwara Touko, Fujiwara Shigeru, Sasada Jun, Kitamoto Atsushi, Nishimura Satoru, Hiiragi (Natsume Yuujinchou)

Relationships: Natsume Takashi/Original Male Character(s), Matoba Seiji/original Male Character(s)

Additional Tags: Romance, Canon - Anime, chico x chico, bi panic, Yaoi, male reader - Freeform

#IFTTT #ao3feed #fanfic #natsume yuujinchou #fan fic #ao3

[taizi]

the heavy world’s upon your shoulders

@natsumeweek 2022 day 4; isolation/loyalty

read on ao3

(previous) (next)

x

After Kitamoto’s family, Touko and Shigeru are probably the most qualified people to look after Nishimura in the entire Kumamoto prefecture, let alone Hitoyoshi.

Takashi doesn’t know the details, but he knows that the Fujiwaras jumped through hoops to keep him. They fought with family members, and had long, tense discussions with Takashi’s then-guardians, and marched through the long, complicated journey of obtaining a foster license—all for the sake of offering their home to a strange, recalcitrant boy who had nothing to offer in exchange but more baggage than anyone could have truly been prepared for and a long history of failed placements.

He thinks of how unfailingly kind they are, even when he comes home late, or forgets to call, or makes a mess of the house. Even when he’s more difficult than they probably signed up for. Sometimes Touko lectures him soundly, and he’s been grounded more than once, but it so clearly comes from a place of caring.

He’s lived without for so long that he knows the difference when he sees it. He knows, better than anything, how good his foster parents are.

But knowing that and knowing it are two separate beasts.

Takashi’s hands are sweating when Touko and Shigeru finally arrive. He’s waiting on the stairs, and takes the last few steps down to meet them. Touko’s already-quick pace picks up even more when she sees him, and her hands go out to him the second he’s within reach.

“Are you alright?” she asks immediately, her eyes searching his face like its an open book.

Her gentle voice disarms him completely. Something tender and flinching in his chest that he’s been tiptoeing around for the last twelve hours gives right then and there, and tears spring to his eyes.

He ducks his head and holds onto her hands, struggling not to burst into hysterics in the bright afternoon sunlight of what would otherwise be a perfectly lovely Sunday. He hears Shigeru move closer, and his broad hand lands gently on the nape of Takashi’s neck. Takashi stands between them, where he’s always been safe, and tells himself that they’re good.

They’re good. They wouldn’t raise their voices or their hands against him for anything, ever, and he knows that. No matter what the tiny little part of him that will always be five years old and orphaned and terrified has to say about it. He knows better.

They like when he asks for things. This is bigger than asking for a bike, or a cat, or bus fare to visit a friend outside of town, but—they won’t hate him just for asking.

“What is it, sweetheart?” Touko asks him, ducking her head slightly to meet his eyes. She squeezes their joined hands gently as though to remind him that he’s not alone. Her voice is low and sweet and grounding. “Whatever it is, we’ll fix it. We’ll make it better. There’s nothing Shigeru can’t rebuild, you know, he’s the best in the business.”

Her husband sighs, an architect who’s heard every pun in the book by now, and somehow Takashi begins to feel like maybe he isn’t about to drown at sea after all.

“Nishimura’s mom hurt him,” Takashi forces himself to say. “Really badly.”

Touko and Shigeru each go very still.

Takashi knows he probably looks pathetic, and to be honest he feels pathetic. Both like his head is made of solid concrete and like the next strong breeze might blow him clean away. It’s partly because he hasn’t slept at all, and partly because he’s sick to his stomach with dread and grief and worry for his friend, and partly because he would almost rather fake his death than say what he has to say next.

But he has to. Because when he decided to come outside to wait for Touko and Shigeru, Nishimura was still arguing his case. To Kitamoto’s horror and everyone else’s grim understanding, Nishimura seemed to think the best thing for him to do would be to just go home.

“It’s fine,” Nishimura had said, as though his bedroom wasn’t literally an active crime scene. “It’s not like I spend that much time at my house anyway. I just sleep there,” he added, as though that was supposed to make anyone feel better about it.

He’s not-quite-pushing them away, but it’s the beginning of that. It’s the first step. He’s trying to wrap his tragedy up in something more in-character and palatable, something easier to look at. He wants to hide the real, ugly shape of it—from everyone else, and from himself, too.

But these things don’t stay wrapped up and hidden. They’ll spring out at random, all jagged, tender edges, and suddenly it’ll hurt just to breathe.  

Takashi knows. He wants, more than anything, for Nishimura not to know.

“He didn’t deserve it,” Takashi says, more to the ground than to his guardians. “He needs someplace to go.”

Touko frees one of her hands and touches Takashi’s chin. There’s just enough pressure behind her fingers that he lets his face be guided up. When he dares to meet her eyes, she smiles at him.

He’s gone without love almost all his life. He thinks he recognizes it in her smile.

“You’ve had a scary night, haven’t you?” she says softly. “It’s alright now. We’re here, and we’ll make it right.”

“Always,” Shigeru adds. “All you have to do is call, and we’ll come running.”

And Takashi realizes, with a dull pang of surprise, that he knew that already.

When he leads them inside the apartment, only the grown-ups are left in the kitchen. The atmosphere is so tense and wired that it almost feels like they’ve interrupted a war council, and Takashi instantly feels distinctly out of place without his friends in the room.

“They’re in Atsushi’s room,” Kitamoto-san says pointedly.

All too happy to oblige, he still glances up at Shigeru for permission. The man gives his shoulder a companionable nudge. “Go on,” he says. “Leave the rest to us.”

As he heads down the hall, Takashi hears Ono say, “You must be Natsume’s parents,” and swallows the knee-jerk, bitter tang of dread lodged in his throat. He was never so wary of social workers before he came to live here. Ono-san isn’t Sakamoto, and she doesn’t have the power or the authority to take Takashi away, but the possibility lingers in the back of his mind where the rest of his irrational fears and anxieties all live. He thinks that if he was ever forced to leave Touko and Shigeru, it would feel like being orphaned all over again.

But he doesn’t regret this. Bringing them here was the right thing to do. If they can help Takashi, they can help anyone. They’re good—they’re the best—and that’s what Nishimura deserves.

He pushes Kitamoto’s door open. It’s equally as tense in here as it was in the kitchen. Mana is sitting on Kitamoto’s desk, swinging her feet, an uneasy look on her face. Moomin is playing on the laptop again but no one is watching. It’s just background noise that feels mildly out of place, given the way Nishimura and Kitamoto are glaring at each other.

“You’re not going back there,” Kitamoto is saying, in a tone that sounds a lot like his mother’s did when she was vying desperately for patience, “I don’t care if I have to extort Shibata into getting on the train in the middle of the night to come here and kidnap you.”

“You’re jumping straight to extortion?” Mana asks. “I think he’d do it on a dare.”

“Why are you making this such a big deal?” Nishimura bites back. “It’s over with! It was one really bad fight, and then the police took her away, and now it’s done. I’m fine. It’s not like she killed me!”

Mana looks down quickly, eyes wet. Kitamoto turns completely away from Nishimura, like he knows he’ll say something he’ll regret if he even looks at him for one more second, but his arms are folded tight across his chest like he’s hugging himself together.

Whatever ointment Kitamoto-san put on Nishimura’s bruises last night has brought out the color in them even more. It probably means they’re healing a bit quicker, but they’re not nice to look at. They must still hurt. Nishimura must be sore and aching. He must be exhausted; the aftermath of terror and adrenaline can linger for days. The stinging betrayal from his mother is probably still fresh, too, and now his best friend is arguing with him on top of that. The adults aren’t listening to him. Decisions are being made without his input. His whole life has gone into complete upheaval, literally overnight. Nishimura is clearly at the end of his rope.

This is the part where he pushes them away. It’s the only control he has anymore.

Takashi crosses the room to him. His hands flutter tentatively, wanting to reach out but unsure if they’ll be welcome. The version of his friend who glances at him is almost unfamiliar, but only because this version doesn’t reach out and bridge the distance between them right away.

For all that it happened nearly a year ago now, Takashi doesn’t think he’ll ever forget what Nishimura sounded like when he was possessed. How the yokai that attached itself to him made him quick to anger, quick to lash out.

“Why don’t you just ask for help?” Nishimura had shouted, in a voice that didn’t really sound like his own, if only because it was so raw and unkind. “Do you think everyone around you is really that useless?”

Take away the influence of a malicious spirit, and it’s obvious what his true feelings were. Takashi’s never forgotten.

“We want to help,” he says, returning the favor with his heart in his throat. “You’re not alone. You can ask for anything. We’re right here.”

When Takashi finally dares to offer his hand, Nishimura takes it. He sighs, looking distinctly unhappy with all of them, and a little bit like he’d rather jump out Kitamoto’s second floor bedroom window than have this conversation for one minute longer, but he still takes Takashi’s hand.

It’s a fundamentally Nishimura thing to do. It’s how Takashi knows they’re probably going to be okay.

#natsumeweek #natsume yuujinchou #natsume takashi #nishimura satoru #kitamoto atsushi #fujiwara touko #my writing #natsuyuu #natsuyuu fic #now that you dont have to be perfect

[taizi]

This is pretty vague but i love the way you write the fujiwaras and tanuma both watching over natsume together?? Or like, the fujiwaras observing tanuma and natsumes relationship?? If you could write something about that that would be swell 💕💕💕

x

"Goodness, you got here quickly," Touko says, ushering Kaname inside. "It's as if you flew!"

For whatever reason, the boy immediately looks shifty, glancing at Takashi's silly cat and then away again. Honestly, she really shouldn't be surprised that he sprang on the invitation to come over; Takashi has been home sick from school for the last week or so, and keeping his friends away while he was contagious has been like herding cats.

"You said I could come right away," Kaname says, awkward and earnest and uncertain of himself, as if he hasn't spent countless afternoons here over the last three years. "So I... I'm sorry, should I have waited?"

"Of course you shouldn't have," Touko assures him. "You're right where you belong."

"Here, Kaname, bring this upstairs with you," Shigeru says from the kitchen door, holding a tray loaded with tea and a selection of snacks. "It'll be a miracle if you can convince him to eat anything, but I wouldn't put it past you."

Kaname blinks, confused by that, even as he reaches out to take the tray. Touko smothers a smile behind her hand.

He's a tall, gangly thing, with inches of height on even Atsushi-- practically towering above Satoru and Tooru-- but he's never once over-shadowed any of his friends. He still shrinks like someone half his size if you look at him for too long. It doesn't seem to occur to him that he could be anything special to anybody.

"Um, I'll do my best!" he says, and Shigeru fondly waves him away.

"He's such a sweetheart," Touko says when he's gone upstairs with Nyankichi. "But he seems so lonely all the time."

Just a little bit, he reminds her of a scarecrow. Head and shoulders above everything else, arms always outstretched.

"Not all the time," Shigeru says fairly. He pulls a chair out from the table for her, and sets a fresh cup of hot tea in front of her when she's settled. Joining her across the table, he adds, "He and Takashi are good for each other."

Touko brightens, curling her fingers around her cup to soak in the warmth. "You've noticed, too! They're like two pieces of a matching set. I used to think they just sort of gravitated towards each other because they were both the same sort of quiet, you know? But I think there's more to it than that."

"You remember how we were at their age?" Shigeru asks with a smile. "We could sit together for hours without saying a word. Our best friends didn't realize we were a couple until we'd been dating for a month."

"It took me kissing you on the cheek after school for them to get a clue!" Touko laughs, sitting back in her chair. "They were stunned! Do you remember, Hana-chan said something like, 'how were we supposed to know? The two of you are just the same as you've always been!' And you told her-- "

"'Exactly,'" Shigeru says, with as much certainty as when he said it back then.

It's too soon to tell, but Touko thinks that's the shape of things. It's not that Kaname loves Takashi more than the rest of their friends do; it's certainly not that he's more demonstrative, or that he understands Takashi in a way the others don't.

It's just that he's so gentle, and stubborn when it matters, and no amount of bad moods or bad weather is enough to make him bend. He waited patiently this last week, but he ran all the way here the moment he was allowed.

If she were to go upstairs right now, Touko knows that she would find Kaname and her son deep in conversation, working their way through the snacks as they catch each other up on everything that happened while they were apart, more talkative and lively when they're alone together than they are virtually anywhere else.

It's very sweet. They both deserve to have that. There were multiple reasons that Kaname was the first one she called, but above everything else, it's because he deserves it.

And then the front door rattles open.

"Sorry for intruding!" Satoru's voice rings out from the genkan. Unlike Kaname, he's certain of his welcome, and trips right inside. He makes big, wounded eyes at her from the kitchen doorway. "Auntie, Tanuma’s bragging in the groupchat that he got to come over! Is that true? Is Natsume not sick anymore?"

Tooru is leaning over Satoru's shoulder, ever his partner in crime, and Atsushi is a little further behind them, clearly having lost this contest of wills somewhere along the way.

Shigeru hides his face behind his mug, so Touko is the one who tells them, "He's still a little ill, but he's not contagious. You're welcome to go upstairs and keep him company if you're not too rowdy."

With a cheer, Tooru and Satoru race each other for the stairs. Atsushi trails after them, calling, "You guys, she just said--"

"Good thing Satoru showed up. We couldn't ask for a better chaperone," Shigeru manages to say with a straight face.

Touko only feels a little bit guilty for laughing. She gave them as much of a head-start as she could. 

And later that week, on her way back from the grocery store, Touko will look out over a vegetable garden and spot someone's handmade scarecrow listing over the neat rows of sprouts. There are birds perched along its arms, and one pecking playfully at its head, disrupting the peaceful evening with their noisy chatter.

She'll smile the rest of the way home.

#natsume yuujinchou #natsuyuu #tanunatsu #tanuma kaname #fujiwara touko #fujiwara shigeru #my writing #prompt #anonymous #natsuyuu fic #nishi and taki out here thirdwheeling like its their JOB

[taizi]

Could I request some good bro Natori and Natsume stuff for prompts 1,2,3, or 5? Either separately or merged into one frankenfic?

PROMPTS LIST

1. “I apologise in advance for the inconvenience my murder is going to have on your life.” +2. “I hate you.” “Why? I’m lovely.” +5. “This is my life now. I have climbed this hill and now I will die upon it.” “Shut up. We’ve only been hiking for twenty minutes.”

x

When Shuuichi called the Fujiwara house to invite Natsume to the upcoming wrap party, he was braced for the type of dogged, exacting negotiations better suited a hostage situation. 

Instead, after a pleasant fifteen-minute conversation with Touko, he was painlessly gifted custody of his friend for the weekend. 

“Shigeru-san and I need to meet with one of his relatives about some of Takashi-kun’s missing belongings,” she says, a sliver of steel in her sunny voice that promises, in no uncertain terms, that these relatives will almost certainly have a fight on their hands. “I’d hate to have to bring Takashi-kun along, but I don’t like to leave him here alone, so this is quite the neat solution!”

Natsume is grim and resigned when they meet at the train station, an overnight bag slung over his shoulder, his ugly cat tucked into his arms. Shuuichi can’t help but beam at him, having come out of this arrangement fully on top. 

“Shopping!” he announces gleefully. “You’ll need something fancy for the party. And then we’ll get lunch-- my treat, of course. And if you don’t listen to me, Touko-san will be sad!” 

If looks could kill, Shuuichi would almost certainly have met his unfortunate end right then and there. 

xx

Natsume has been uncomfortable all evening, in a fixed position at Shuuichi’s elbow and nursing the same flute of champagne that was foisted upon him at the door. 

He’s in dark-washed jeans and a smart blazer, his hair tucked out of his face with a few strategic hair clips. He toes the line between youthful and stylish well, and his quiet personality comes across as shy instead of standoffish. The cast and crew are all delighted to finally meet the kid Shuuichi talked so much about, and Natsume is doing his best to hold up under all the attention.

So it had taken a bit of blackmail and bribery to get him here-- was that so unusual? 

Networking is a necessary evil, and usually Shuuichi is stuck at these functions until the early hours of the morning. But it’s only a couple of hours before Natsume starts to flag. He’s edging into nonverbal territory, only mustering eye contact for a few seconds at a time, and Shuuichi doesn’t waste time in steering him away from the press of the party and into an out-of-the-way office. 

“Who’s office is this?” Natsume asks quietly. When Shuuichi presses lightly on his shoulders, he sinks into a leather armchair without fuss. 

“Doesn’t matter. I’m famous, I can do whatever I want,” Shuuichi says with a winning smile. 

Natsume is recovered enough by then to scowl at him, a knee-jerk reaction. 

“I hate you.”

“Why? I’m lovely.”

After that exchange, Shuuichi feels alright about leaving Natsume alone with Hiiragi while he sweeps off to make their excuses, and say his goodbyes, and steal some food for the road. 

And now they’re bundled in coats and scarves, making their way back to the hotel. Natsume looks much livelier now that they’re outside, working on the second half of an egg sandwich that Shuuichi smuggled out for him. 

“I can’t believe you do that for a living,” the boy murmurs after a moment. “It’s exhausting.”

“You get used to it,” Shuuichi says. “And I’m good at talking.”

Being charming and personable on cue is one of his greatest skills. No closed door, or VIP entrance, or members-only sign has ever kept him out. 

When they get back to the hotel, an ugly cat is waiting for them outside. Natsume smiles to see it, his pace quickening, and offers the yokai the last bite of his sandwich. 

Madara takes it with a scoff. “This is all you brought me? I want barbecue!” 

“What kind of party do you think we were at?” Shuuichi mutters. 

“Maybe tomorrow, sensei,” Natsume says agreeably, lifting the cat into his arms. 

“Hmph. In that case, I guess I’ll pass the message along.” Settling into a comfortable loaf in the crook of the boy’s arms, the cat squints at them with shining, dark eyes. “Someone came for their name while you were gone.”

Shuuichi stiffens in alarm. They’re hours away from Hitoyoshi, where Natsume’s reputation proceeds him at every turn. To have been tracked this far, despite the wards... 

Natsume only looks mildly surprised. “Are they still here?”

“No, they’re waiting for you in the woods,” Madara says. “Human settlements make them nervous.”

Nodding as if this is all perfectly reasonable, Natsume glances at Shuuichi. Shuuichi, waiting for his cue, says, “Absolutely not.”

“Natori,” his friend says, with the same tone of a tired mother attempting to wrangle an unreasonable toddler.

“In what universe would I allow you to wander off into the forest in the middle of the night?” He opts to ignore the rich orange dusk above and around them, and the fact that the streetlights haven’t kicked on yet. Natsume’s eyebrows are inching toward his hairline, so he decides to play his trump card. “Your parents said I’m in charge.”

Hiiragi sighs deeply. It’s only after Shuuichi says it that he realizes how juvenile it sounded, but by then it’s too late. He has to double down. 

“Let’s just go inside, and we’ll discuss it over a proper meal,” he says with a smile. He waves Natsume toward the door, but Natsume doesn’t budge.

Shuuichi realizes he used up all his authority earlier, in forcing Natsume to the department stores and restaurants and the wrap party. The boy has played along thus far but he’s clearly reached his quota for the evening. He doesn’t even entertain the idea of listening to Shuuichi this time. 

“I’ll be quick,” Natsume says plainly. He turns back the way they came without another word. 

Shuuichi struggles with it for a moment, but he really doesn’t have any choice but to follow. It doesn’t help that the ugly cat is laughing at him, or that Hiiragi is judging him silently with every step.  

xx

Honestly, if Shuuichi were feeling marginally more generous, he would admit that there was some sort of cosmic justice at work here. He had forced Natsume out of his comfort zone all night, and now the tables have turned entirely. 

The trees tower around them as they pick their way up a faint foot trail, stretching up into a dark, endless canopy. The wind combs through branches and leaves in eerie, hushed whispers. They only have the shiki’s night-eyes and the flashlight on Shuuichi’s phone to see by. 

“This is my life now,” Shuuichi complains, out of breath. “I climbed this hill and now I’m going to die on it.”

“Shut up,” Natsume replies mildly. “We’ve only been hiking for twenty minutes.”

He certainly seems comfortable here, for all that he’s never been in these particular woods before. With his green eyes and silvery hair and thousand-yard stare, Natsume might as well be a mountain spirit himself sometimes. 

The thought cinches painfully in Shuuichi’s stomach, and he speeds up a bit until they’re walking alongside one another. 

“How do you know you can trust this spirit?” he asks.

“I don’t,” Natsume says, sounding surprised by the question. “How do you know you can trust any of those humans you work with?”

“Because they’re human.”

For a moment, they just stare at each other. Shuuichi can see his own incomprehension reflected in Natsume’s expression. There’s a sudden chasm open between them, a lack of understanding that goes both ways.

Natsume looks away first. He doesn’t quite hang his head, but he isn’t standing as tall as he was before. Shuuichi remembers, belatedly, just how many humans have hurt Natsume up to this point. He realizes that what he just said was very stupid. And on top of being grossly inconsiderate, he managed to alienate his friend at the same time.

This is what he gets for being so smug all day. 

He puts a hand on Natsume’s shoulder, throwing a line across the chasm and hoping it will hold. He squeezes, waiting until Natsume has mustered the courage for eye contact once more, and only when he has the boy’s full attention does he say gravely, “I have a lot to learn from you. I’m only sorry I won’t have the chance. And I apologize for the inconvenience my murder is going to have on your life.”

Natsume splutters, and then laughs, and those sad, clinging shadows peel away from him as easily as a broken spiderweb. “You’re not going to get murdered!” 

"Hm,” Shuuichi says, deeply unconvinced (and deeply relieved to hear his friend laughing).

“Honestly, if you’re this worried, why not just wait at the hotel?” Natsume asks. He’s animated again, picking his way ahead confidently. Shuuichi is happy to follow, leaving that painful, aborted conversation behind them for another day. 

“Because Touko told me to look after you this weekend,” Shuuichi says mulishly. He’s still clinging to the thin veneer of being in charge, for all the good it’s doing him. “How could I look her in the eye if I let you go charging off into danger?”

“Easily,” Natsume mutters. “Charmingly. And with a bouquet of roses, probably. You said it yourself, you’re good at talking.”

Now it’s Shuuichi’s turn to laugh. He thinks of his conversation with Touko earlier that week-- he thinks of how, even now, she and Shigeru are off getting into a fight with their family for their foster son’s sake, with Natsume none the wiser. 

“You’ve sorely underestimated how protective she is of you,” Shuuichi says ruefully. “That’s fine. I’m sure you’ll get to see it firsthand when I take you home, since I’ve made an absolute mess of this weekend so far.” 

Natsume tips his head curiously, but whatever he might have said is interrupted as they come around a bend that opens up to a glade.

There’s lantern light up ahead. The glow is unnatural, slightly off-color, and the lights sway even though there isn’t a steady wind. Hiiragi goes tense and alert at Shuuichi’s shoulder, and Shuuichi himself feels a cold thrill of anticipation, his fight-or-flight reflexes primed. But Natsume lets out a little huff of relief, and Madara says, “Finally!” as a rabbit spirit steps onto the path to greet them. 

It’s about as tall as Shuuichi’s waist and dressed in a neat yellow yukata. It greets them politely, and apologizes for making them go out of their way, and invites them into the glade. Madara jumps out of Natsume’s arms to lead the way, and Hiiragi follows distrustfully, but Natsume lingers for a moment. 

“What if Touko hadn’t said anything?” he asks, in the tone of someone testing a theory. 

For all of about three seconds, Shuuichi considers lying to preserve his dignity, but he gives it up for a lost cause. He sighs, and musses his hair up even more, and admits, “I’d still be here.”

Natsume might as well be a mountain spirit himself sometimes. But then there are times like these, when his face lights up like a summer sky, and he smiles as though he’s never been hurt, and Shuuichi has never met anyone more human than him.

#natsume yuujinchou #natsuyuu #natori shuuichi #natsume takashi #nyanko sensei #my writing #prompt #natsumiyasblog #natsuyuu fic #this one got away from me lemme tell ya

[taizi]

hello my old heart

natsume yuujinchou word count: 2798 written for @natsume-ss !! my giftee this year was @frootysparkycakes. two of your prompts were ‘everyone gets a nap’ and ‘parental fujiwaras’ and i thought a little of both would be good :) i hope you enjoy !!

read on ao3

x

Takashi’s face is wind-bitten and his feet are freezing in their damp canvas sneakers, but the cold air around him is clouded with laughter, and all the noise his friends are making rings up and down the empty streets.

“I hate snow!” Nishimura says brightly, clustered against Takashi’s left shoulder like a barnacle. He’s a bundle of scarf and coat and oversized beanie with a ridiculous pom-pom on the end. “God, who’s idea was it, anyway? Snow.”

Taki is on Takashi’s opposite side, her arm threaded through his as much for warmth as for support. She giggles every time they slip on a patch of ice, and Takashi’s smile grows every time she does.

“This is your fault, Shibata,” Kitamoto says darkly, a hand hooked under Tanuma’s elbow to keep him upright. It looks a little bit like he’s wrangling a lanky scarecrow. Every ten seconds Tanuma punctuates another near-fall with a flustered ‘sorry!’ and Nishimura counts each one under his breath. “You just had to have chicken nuggets.”

Right on cue, an affronted noise of protest: “Excuse me,” Shibata says from somewhere behind Takashi, “I’m not the only one who wanted snacks! Besides, it wasn’t supposed to start snowing until later tonight.”

“Stop whining,” Ogata demands. “You’re making this walk take even longer.”

She’s been out of breath since they hiked back down the mountain from Tanuma’s house, not used to the altitude and the terrain that Takashi and his classmates know so well, and the sudden snow doesn’t seem to be helping. Takashi glances over his shoulder to make sure Shibata still has an arm around her and they both make faces at him when they notice.

Nyanko-sensei bumps the underside of Takashi’s chin with his head curtly. If they were alone, he’d probably be squawking something like ‘watch where you’re going, clumsy brat!’ but as it is he has to settle for a very telling glare. Takashi mutters, “Yeah, yeah,” but he makes sure the cat is buttoned up all snug inside his coat anyway.

“We’re nearly there,” Taki says cheerfully. And then, “Oh, look!”

Takashi’s heart does something complicated and acrobatic in his chest when he spots a familiar figure through the snow. Touko is standing in front of the house, wrapped in Shigeru’s coat and glancing around anxiously. She lights up when she spots their group making its ungainly way down the road, clasping her hands together under her chin and smiling in that beaming way she has.

“There you are! Oh, I’d hoped you wouldn’t try going back up to the temple in this dreadful weather. Come in, come in! Let’s get you all warm.”

They make a commotion in the genkan, because Takashi’s friends can’t go anywhere together without making at least a little one. They lean on each other to help get out of boots and undo shoelaces and wrestle off various winter wear. Nishimura is shaking his damp scarf at Kitamoto just to be annoying. They’re all exhausted and sort of giddy with it. Shigeru is laughing behind his newspaper as they all pile into the sitting room.

“Snowed off the mountain, were you?” he says warmly. His smile is as much a welcome as Touko waiting outside for them was. “You’ll probably be stuck here for the night, I’m afraid.”

“There’s no probably about it,” Touko insists. She touches Takashi’s hair, the barest pressure that smooths the fringe out of his eyes. She is somehow both soft and stern as she looks around at all of his friends, a contradiction made easy by her caring. “And I want each of you to call your parents and let them know, alright?”

Tanuma’s father is away for work, Taki’s whole family is overseas, Shibata’s parents only know that he’s staying in Hitoyoshi, and as far as Ogata’s mother is aware, Ogata is still in her hometown having a sleepover with her friend Junko. The only one who takes out his cellphone is ever-agreeable Kitamoto, and he shares the call with Nishimura; the two of them pressed ear to ear as Kitamoto’s mother tells them to ‘behave, and thank Touko-san for her hospitality,’ and then tells them both goodnight.

Nyanko-sensei picks his way out Takashi’s lap and over to Tanuma’s. Tanuma looks a little pleased to have been chosen and then tries not to at Taki’s broken-hearted expression. Everyone starts to slump where they’re sitting, fighting yawns. Shigeru and Touko trade knowing glances, and Shigeru gathers up his newspaper and beer.

Takashi is watching them, because it’s been three years and he can’t help but watch them sometimes. Studying their expressions, the barest twitch of their mouth or eye that might mean they’re— upset, or that he’s done something wrong. It’s hard to break those habits that kept him safe in those other places.

If they’ve ever noticed the watching, they don’t seem to mind. Presently, Touko glances over and meets Takashi’s eyes as Shigeru steps out of the room, and she only smiles when she meets them.

“You’re all so tuckered out,” she says. There’s a kind laugh lurking in the back of her voice somewhere. “Why don’t you rest until it’s time for dinner?”

Shigeru comes back with all of the blankets from the linen closet, and Takashi’s friends make mindless noises of appreciation as he hands them out. His lined face is fond as Tanuma tries to juggle a fat lucky cat to the crook of his arm to take the blanket Shigeru holds out to him. Nishimura’s already half-dead to the world, face buried in Takashi’s stomach and a leg thrown over Shibata’s knee.

“How did this happen?” Takashi whispers as his foster father makes his way around to him. “They were wide awake ten seconds ago.”

Touko’s laugh finally makes its escape, a light and pleasant sound that doesn’t disturb a single drowsing body.

“You’re the same way,” she murmurs. “Ever since you first came to live with us, there were times when you’d drop off so suddenly, and sleep as though nothing short of a hurricane would wake you.”

Takashi gazes up at her, picking at the blanket Shigeru gave him, and thinks about how strange it is, that’s he’s been in this place for so long that Touko has little stories like that to share. That he came here, and he stayed here, and the Fujiwaras never asked him to move on or tried to send him away. They like him, and they notice and remember things about him that no one else ever bothered to notice or remember, and they would rather let all of his friends take over their sitting room than let them be cold for a moment longer than they needed to.

It’s a complicated train of thoughts, and it ends up a knotted, jumbled thing that he can’t put into words at all, and so he says, “Thank you,” because that’s what it usually circles back to in the end.

Thank you for the blanket, and thank you for thinking of me, and thank you for taking a chance on that strange orphaned boy you heard nothing but bad things about.

“Of course,” Touko says, reaching for the light switch on the wall. “We’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything.”

Takashi manages to lay down without disrupting Nishimura’s complicated-looking sprawl. The sitting room is warm enough that he doesn’t need the blanket, but the weight of it, and its worn-out softness, and the familiar smell of their laundry detergent, is a strange amalgamation of slow, syrupy comfort that Takashi kind of wants to bury his face in.

The wind outside is a dull roar, leaning up against the porch doors like an uninvited stranger testing the locks. It must be snowing harder, the promised overnight storm sneaking out ahead of schedule to make mischief, the way all winter spirits like to do. Comparatively, snug inside and surrounded by his closest friends, Takashi feels warmer than he thinks he ever has before.

“It’s strange that we’re graduating next year,” he murmurs into the dim room.

“About time,” Ogata replies sleepily.

It sends a pang through him, but he smiles anyway. “Yeah. I’ll just miss days like this is all.”

There’s a bit of a rustle, and someone grunts in protest when someone else digs an accidental elbow someplace soft, and then Taki’s tousled head pops up over Kitamoto’s shoulder.

“Natsume,” she says in her most sensible tone of voice. “If you want to cuddle at our new house, all you have to do is ask.”

“Not really,” Shibata yawns from some other corner of the room. “Even if he didn’t ask, you’d have to pry Satchan off him with a crowbar.”

“Green’s not your color, Sumi,” Nishimura replies without even bothering to open his eyes.

Shibata makes a sputtering noise at the new nickname, like a car engine trying to turn over. Tanuma snorts with laughter and then immediately tries to pretend like he didn’t think it was funny when Shibata whirls on him.

Takashi blinks up at the ceiling, turning Taki’s words over in his head. He says, “What new house?”

“Natsume,” Kitamoto groans. “Come on, buddy. We’ve been talking about it for months. Since last summer.”

Takashi starts to sit up, remembers that he’s acting as a pillow, and manages to hold himself still while his brain starts spinning around in confused circles.

“But that was,” he says, and stops. Another false start: “You were— “ He bites the inside of his cheek, wrestles the right words out, and says, “I thought it was a joke.”

Nishimura turns his head, hair still a mess from the weather and his stupid hat. His eyes are round and incredulous but not judgmental, and not mocking, and not mean. He says, “Why the hell would we joke about that? We’re sticking together. We have a whole plan.”

The plan is to get into the same university and rent a big house together in the city. Gotta be one that’s cat-friendly, his friends have laughed, bringing it up over dozens of lunch periods and two-day weekends, one with room enough for all of us, but he hadn’t taken them seriously.

“You said you wanted to,” Tanuma says. He sounds upset now. Takashi hates it.

“I do,” he replies quickly, because of course he does. He’s always wanted impossible things, what he knew he couldn’t have. When his friends talked about a future together, he smiled along and thought wouldn’t it be nice, and that was as far as he dared let those thoughts go. “I just thought it was… hypothetical.”

“Our parents are already looking at properties,” Kitamoto says dryly. “Touko and my mom were discussing it on the phone like three days ago. It hasn’t been anywhere in the realm of hypothetical.”

Takashi feels the familiar weight of his cat coming back to him, the split-second glint of sensei’s green eyes the brightest thing in the room as he settles into the crook of Takashi’s arm. Silent, necessarily so, but present, just in case Takashi needs to borrow strength from him.

“Are you serious?” Takashi asks, of no one in particular.

“Why do you think I started going to cram school?” Nishimura says, sounding offended, of all things, like this is a sacrifice he’s made that should have been respected. “Of course we’re serious.”

“We would miss this, too, Natsume,” Taki says. She sounds much more awake now, and he can only imagine the look in her eyes. After looking through a window into the face of a monster all those years ago, Taki can see through people with an ease that Takashi thinks even Natori is probably jealous of. “That’s why we’re going to make it so that we don’t have to.”

But it’s not that easy. It can’t be, it never is. Takashi doesn’t say anything else, but Tanuma asks, “Why not?” as if he heard anyway.

Takashi thinks of the half-empty book upstairs, guarded by a ward strong enough to make the chuukyuu’s eyes water from the backyard. The secret that only half the people in the room are aware of. The wall between himself and everyone else that he built stone by stone by stone, to keep them— and himself— safe from inevitable hurt.

“You don’t even know me,” Takashi blurts.

Nishimura sits up. Kitamoto makes a grumbly noise and starts extracting himself from blankets. Shibata says “No no I finally got comfortable, Tanuma, come on,” but Tanuma is moving, too.

Ogata says, in a kind, careful voice, “Natsume, of course we know you.”

“Not everything,” Takashi insists, feeling his heart start to move a little faster. “You don’t— you don’t know everything.”

Tanuma, Taki and Shibata are watching him with understanding and grim determination. Nishimura, Kitamoto and Ogata’s expressions are surprisingly similar.

“I just found out last week that Satchan is still afraid of dogs because one chased him when we were four,” Kitamoto says plainly. “I’ve known him since kindergarten and I found out last week.”

“I don’t make a habit of going near dogs,” Nishimura retorts in a conversational tone that also manages to sound like he’s picking a fight. “So it never came up until my stupid neighbor adopted an evil Corgi. That’s not my fault.”

Ogata whispers, “Evil Corgi.”

Going on as though he wasn’t interrupted, Kitamoto adds, “You can’t say I don’t really know him, can you? Even though I didn’t know he was still afraid of dogs?”

“I feel like that’s different,” Takashi says slowly, though he can’t think of a reason why.

“It isn’t,” Shibata says. His expensive shirt is all wrinkled, and there’s a pink crease on his cheek from where it was pressed against Tanuma’s sleeve. “Are we on the same page now? Can we go to sleep?”

There’s a gentle clamor of shifting and resettling, everyone sinking back into cushions and soft blankets. Nishimura lays down next to Takashi instead of perpendicular to him, tipping over to use his shoulder as a pillow instead.

“There’s no getting rid of us, Bakashi,” he says in a voice as low as it can go before it becomes a whisper. “You don’t have to be scared.”

And the thing is…

The thing is, he isn’t.

The storm is picking up outside, wind and snow battering against the porch doors with a vengeance; but the sitting room is snug, and Nishimura’s eyes are deep and dark in the low light, and Takashi marvels at how safe and warm he feels.

He brings a hand to his chest, as if to feel for the wall he built there, and finds it much smaller than he remembers. As though it shrank with time, or maybe Takashi outgrew it.

It’s either bravery or the lack of any real need for bravery that pushes Takashi to open his mouth without killing himself over what-ifs and say, “It’s just that any house I live in is going to be haunted. Really, actually haunted.”

Taki giggles, and Shibata makes that sputtering noise again, and Takashi can almost hear the pleased way Tanuma is smiling. Ogata hums a half-surprised little “oh” that sort of makes it sound like her best guess was just proven right, and Kitamoto sighs.

“Ghosts. That explains so much.”

Nishimura squeezes Takashi’s hand until Takashi looks at him. He’s grinning, the sight of him sleep-ruffled and safe and familiar.

“Shibata’s grouchy morning self is way scarier than any ghoul you manage to bring home, Natsume,” he says happily. “Nice try, though.”

In an hour, Takashi will wake up to the sound of poorly stifled laughter and a handful of ineffective ‘shhh’s. He’ll roll his head to follow the sound, and he’ll see his friends grouped around his cat, listening to him tell a widely embellished story about the kind dragon Takashi hatched once.

“It flew away?” Kitamoto will ask, sadness in his voice. “He never saw it again?”

And Nyanko-sensei will flick an ear at him, derisive. “It didn’t have any business staying as long as it did in the first place. But things have an unfortunate way of sticking to that Natsume, always leaving without asking and coming back just the same. Knowing my luck, he’ll probably see that Tama again someday.”

“I hope we’ll be there,” Taki will whisper.

And Takashi will look at them and realize Of course. Of course you will.

But for now, the room is dark and warm, and his friends are finally quieting down. Nyanko-sensei’s eyes are closed but Takashi has the sense that he’s keeping watch. If he listens very hard, he can hear his parents in the kitchen. He falls asleep still holding Nishimura’s hand.

The storm passes eventually. It leaves behind a blanket of fresh snow and a bright, starry night sky.

#natsumess2019 #natsume yuujinchou #natsuyuu #natsume takashi #nishimura satoru #taki tooru #kitamoto atsushi #tanuma kaname #shibata katsumi #ogata yuriko #nyanko sensei #fujiwara touko #fujiwara shigeru #my writing #natsuyuu fic #natsumess #frootysparkycakes #wanna find a home (wanna share it with you)

[taizi]

Random thought- suppose Natsume gets the guts to tell the Fujiwaras about Youkai on his own, without any accidents forcing the conversation. What do you think that would look like?

x

It looks like this: 

They move tea into the sitting room when the kitchen became too small to accommodate. It seems as though none of Takashi’s friends are willing to be left behind this evening, showing up in harried ones and twos and brimming with stubbornness. Just try to turn them away now, when Takashi is so quiet and afraid, when he so clearly needs the courage they can give him.

Even Katsumi and Yuriko are here, muddy up to their knees from whatever adventures they’d been coaxed into down at the river. They’re visiting for the holiday, and the whole lot of them are staying at Kaname’s big house since it’s empty while his father is traveling. Touko hadn’t expected to see much of the children until school started again. 

But then Satoru arrived on their doorstep, the scowl set deep on his face incongruent with the careful way he was holding Takashi’s hand. He said, “We need to get this over with,” and “I texted the others, if they don’t make it in time that’s on them,” and Takashi only clutched his friend tighter and seemed not to know how to keep his breathing steady. 

Touko’s heart had leapt into her throat. She asked “Are you hurt?” and then “Is there something you need from me?” and then “What on earth is it, sweetheart?” when both the first questions earned her a quiet ‘no.’

Shigeru said, wryly, that perhaps they ought to give the boys’ friends more than a few minutes to get here. “They won’t thank us for starting without them,” he’d said, and led the way into the kitchen for tea. There was the beginning of a smile on his face, almost knowing. He had some idea of what this was about, but when Touko pressed into his side as he filled glasses with iced tea, nearly frantic with the need to understand, he only shook his head.

There’s nothing to worry about, her husband told her gently. It’s Takashi, after all. 

And it only took about ten minutes for Kaname, Atsushi and Tooru to burst through the door. They’re winded, as if they ran the length of town to get here, and Nyankichi squirms from Tooru’s arms to waddle with a proprietary air into Takashi’s instead.

“Where’s everyone else?” Satoru demands. He’s still holding Takashi’s hand, as though he’s forgotten it’s there, or as though he very much hasn’t. No one does anything to upset this status quo; Kaname moves over to sit on Takashi’s free side, leaning their shoulders together. Atsushi and Tooru settle next to Nishimura and Kaname respectively. It’s almost ritual, like they’ve sat this way a hundred times before. “We’ve been waiting forever.”  

“Shibata fell in,” Tooru says plainly. 

When Katsumi, Yuriko and Kei arrive, Katsumi is dripping water and clutching a stitch in his side. “I’m gonna kick your ass, Nishimura,” he wheezes. “A little heads-up would have been choice.”

“You’re lucky we didn’t start without you,” Satoru says waspishly. 

“Start what?” Touko can’t help but ask, a hand pressed to her chest. The worry has mostly gone now, at the easy way they’re bickering, but she can’t help lingering on the pale fear in her son’s eyes. She wants to reach out and soothe it away, but he’s so firmly ensconced in the honor guard of his closest friends that it almost feels as though it would be an act of trespassing.

“A conversation,” Kaname says, in his gentle, implacable way. “One we probably should have started years ago.”

The ‘we’ is a kindness. It bolsters Takashi into speech. “One I should have started. I should have– I was just– “ He digs his fingers into Nyankichi’s fur, but the silly cat only purrs a little louder. “It’s not fair to not have told you. Not when everyone else has found out one way or another. I just didn’t want you to… I didn’t want… “

How many families turned him away? How many times was he rejected? How many months did it take him to feel safe enough to talk freely in their home? How on earth could Touko begrudge him this small means of safety?

“You don’t owe us anything, Takashi,” she says firmly. “Your secret is yours. If it isn’t hurting you, you can keep it.”

The way all the children– young adults, really, by now– smile at her is like sunshine filling the room. The very air feels warm with it. Satoru nudges Takashi as if to say ‘See? What are you so worried about?’

“If I had to guess,” Shigeru says, “I would say this has something to do with a strange girl I once knew.” 

Takashi steadies himself with a breath. He glances around the room at his friends; his eyes even linger in the empty spaces in between them, as though the room is fuller than Touko is aware of. And then he looks at his parents the way he’s looked at them for the last three years, full of hope, full of the aching, tentative little creature called trust that will sometimes skitter back at a sharp noise or sudden move, but always, always comes inching forward again. 

Touko does reach out to him then. Takashi meets her with his free hand, clings to her the way he clings to Satoru, as though he might fall if she lets go. 

She has no plans of letting go. She can see that absolutely none of them do. Takashi is held here, and safe, and whatever secret he’s carrying, it can be held and safe here, too. 

“It starts with her,” Takashi says softly. “But it ends, I think, with me. It’s not– it’s not a bad story. I used to think it was. It’s sad sometimes, and lonely sometimes, but it’s funny and clever, too.”

“It’s noble,” Tooru interjects.

“Ballsy,” Kei supplies. 

“Kind,” Katsumi says, then looks embarrassed for having said it.

“It’s a good story,” Satoru says. “You should tell it, Natsume.”

And so, with one last look at his cat, he does. 

#natsume yuujinchou #natsuyuu #natsume takashi #fujiwara touko #fujiwara shigeru #nishimura satoru #tanuma kaname #taki tooru #kitamoto atsushi #shibata katsumi #ogata yuriko #adachi kei #my writing #prompt #natsumiyateirin #natsuyuu fic

[taizi]

Ooooh how about some natsume&exorcist interactions??? Ive been in a super angst mood lately and nothing qualifies as angst quite like the various exorcist clans

x

Touko may be a lot of things, but she likes to think that she is not a fool. 

When Takashi comes to the door with a stranger in tow, and the stranger introduces himself warmly as Matoba Seiji, what a pleasure it is to finally meet you, Touko smiles politely but all of her attention is on Takashi.

He’s clutching his cat like it’s a lifeline, the only thing keeping him afloat at sea, and his eyes are bleak. His hair is a curtain that he’s hiding behind, the way it only rarely is anymore. He is so tense beneath Matoba’s hand that it would be impossible to mistake them for friends. 

This man is not kind, she realizes instantly. Whatever business he has here, it’s nothing good. 

And she has to struggle for a moment against the very real impulse to reach out and snatch Takashi safely away. 

“And here I thought I’d met most of Takashi’s friends already,” Touko says instead, drying her hands on her smock in case they’re still wet with dishwater. “They come by so often, you know. Even our neighbors recognize them. Everyone knows everything that goes on around here, I’m afraid.”

Matoba’s eyes narrow just a fraction, even as his pleasant expression doesn’t change. He seems more aware, now, of Watanabe-san across the street sweeping leaves off her porch and pretending not to eavesdrop. Of old Saito-san walking his dog slowly past the unfamiliar car in the road, disapproving of its showy, sleek black lines with a scowl. Of the cluster of retirees with their easels and paints, heading past to the hill nearby where they’ve taken to painting the bright countryside, sparing Touko a friendly wave as they go, and Matoba a lingering look of small-town curiosity. 

It is not quite a warning, and certainly not a threat, but a gentle reminder. Touko is alone in this house until Shigeru comes home from work and Takashi comes home from school, but she is not without help if she needs it. 

“I’m usually too busy for house calls, unfortunately,” Matoba says. “I’m the head of a rather large clan, and there’s always work to be done.”

“And how is it that you know Takashi?” 

“He’s done some work for me before. He’s very talented. I was actually hoping to talk to you about a possible apprenticeship. We’ve reached an understanding, he and I, about what is important.” 

Touko laughs, though she doesn’t feel much like laughing, and presses a hand to her face. “Oh, dear, what a silly thing to say! Takashi is a smart boy. He knows very well what is important, with or without your understanding.”

They’re still standing in front of the house, Takashi and Matoba on the porch, and Touko just inside the genkan. There’s no invitation to come inside, and Takashi finally seems to realize he’s not on his own. He lifts his head to look at her, something like hope bleeding in his eyes.

Touko keeps smiling, and holds out her hands. 

She doesn’t have to say anything. This is her home, and this is her son, and when Takashi dares slip out from beneath the hand on his shoulder, Matoba only hesitates a moment before letting him go. 

Touko touches Takashi’s hair, a reassurance– for him or herself, she isn’t sure. 

“Why don’t you go inside and help me put away the laundry?” she asks him gently, eager to see him away from this stranger. “Your friends are coming over later, and I’d hate not to have the chores finished before they arrive.”

He hesitates. He badly wants to go, she can tell, shaken by whatever close call this was. But then his cat digs its claws into his arm– not hard enough to cut, just to startle– and starts to squirm. Takashi says “oh” in a quiet voice and hands the silly thing over to Touko, where it curls up in the crook of her arms guardedly. 

Takashi looks relieved that his guard cat will keep her safe, the sweet child, and ducks past her into the house. Matoba looks unsettled, close to anger, off-kilter without Takashi under his hand. He’s giving the cat a hateful look, and Touko has had enough of this shadow darkening her front porch. 

“I’ve no interest in letting Takashi go anywhere with you,” she tells the man with a frown. “And neither will his father. Please leave my family alone from now on.”

Matoba blinks, slow and thoughtful. Every move he makes is languid, self-assured, but when he takes a step forward it’s quickly aborted; Nyankichi growls low and deep in his throat, a clearer warning than any flashing sign. 

“There is a lot about that boy you don’t know,” Matoba says. He still hasn’t lost the half-smile on his face, as though it’s just another strange article he’s wearing like the patch over his right eye. “A lot I could tell you that would make you think of him differently.”

Touko presses her mouth into a thin line, trying not to give into anger. She thinks of the rumors that followed Takashi since he was a young child, and the countless homes he was recycled through, and his medical history of bruises and broken bones and the clinical, objective charts of abuse. She thinks of the boy who came home to them that first time, little more than a golden shadow with faraway eyes, and she thinks of the boy who comes home to them now, with a gift of fresh flowers in his hand, or a pack of rowdy friends at his heels, or a laugh tucked away in the corners of his smile like a timid creature not yet sure of its safety. She thinks of a white crow, and the softness on Takashi’s face when he called it beautiful, gazing up into the sky at something only he could see. 

She looks at the young man in front of her, dark in all the places Takashi is light, and says, “What on earth do you think you could tell me, to make me love him less?”

It throws him off. She sees the surprise bloom in his cold eyes like winter flowers, and his smile finally falters. Nyankichi purrs in her arms as if in triumph. 

“I think you should leave,” Touko says firmly.

Matoba’s eyes move. He’s looking at something outside the house, around it, and above, on the roof. One would think Touko had a guard assembled around her, for the way Matoba seemed to be weighing his odds. But it’s just her, and Takashi’s spoiled cat, and a gentle wind that stirs up the dead leaves at their feet, that presses against her like a half dozen supporting hands. 

He takes a step back, then another. “I think you’re right, Fujiwara-san.” 

It’s polite, with another one of those unfeeling smiles, and then Matoba bows shortly and leaves. Touko watches him walk away, and sighs her relief when she’s sure that he’s gone. 

“My, my,” she tells Nyankichi, heart racing now that the confrontation is over, “Shigeru will hardly believe it when I tell him how we protected the house!”

“He’ll believe it,” Takashi says from right behind her. He must not have gone far. His expression is impossibly caring, as close to love as he’s capable of yet, and he looks at Touko like a child looking at the moon for the first time. When his eyes move around her the way Matoba-san’s did, whatever invisible things he sees there make him smile. “I’ll tell him, too. He’ll have no choice to believe us then.”

Touko laughs brightly, meaning it this time, and passes his heavy cat back. A good boy I’ve got, she thinks fondly, and closes the front door behind them when they’re all safely inside. 

#natsume yuujinchou #natsuyuu #fujiwara touko #natsume takashi #matoba seiji #my writing #prompt #orangecatinabasket #natsuyuu fic #that rare and elusive matoba fic :0

[taizi]

Maybe 9 with natsume and the Fujiwaras

9: things you said when i was crying

x

“I don’t understand,” Takashi says quietly, but it’s mostly a lie. 

He thinks he does understand, and that’s why he had to sit down as hard as he did. His head is spinning. He’s staring at the stack of paperwork on the kitchen table like it might come alive at any moment and try to run away. 

Touko and Shigeru are sitting in their seats across from him, as if it’s any normal mealtime. As insistent as Touko was about pouring everyone tea, no one’s drinking it. 

“What part don’t you understand?” she asks. She’s smiling at him, and it’s as gentle as it was the night they met, when she was so kind and strange that Takashi wasn’t sure she was even human. “I’ll explain it to you.”

Takashi’s grip on Nyanko-sensei is probably too tight, but the cat doesn’t squirm away or even grumble. He starts to purr instead, a throaty, grumbly noise that Takashi can feel in his bones. It gives him something to focus on. 

“It’s just– you want to?” Takashi whispers. “Keep me? You’re sure?”

Touko gets up from her chair as though she’s been waiting for an excuse. She rounds the table and kneels by Takashi’s chair. By the time she puts her arms around him, he’s crying. He lets go of his cat to hold onto Touko instead, half-afraid she might disappear. Half-afraid this is all some spirit’s elaborate trick. Half-afraid it’s a joke or something they’ll take back or something they don’t mean. 

But they have all the paperwork ready. It’s sitting right there, waiting for his decision. 

“I wish you knew how good you are,” Touko says softly. “I wish you knew how much we love you.”

A hand settles in his hair– Shigeru, leaning against the table on the other side of Takashi’s seat– and the needle pricks of sensei’s claws dig painlessly into his knee. 

And this is–

Takashi has no precedent for this. He has nothing to compare it to. The closest his mind can dredge up was a day in homeroom when Nishimura clung to his shoulders and refused to let Tsuji partner him with anyone else. It was silly and the rest of the class laughed but Takashi was touched by his friend’s stubbornness. People are stubborn when they care.

Touko and Shigeru argued for him, he remembers. They got into a fight with their relatives for a chance to bring him home, before they even knew him. For long, long months they’ve been going through hoops with child services and Takashi’s former guardians just to present him with this choice.

They’re the most stubborn people he’s ever met. And they want to keep him. 

“So you’ve finally taken a name, brat,” Nyanko-sensei says much later, in the darkness of Takashi’s bedroom, when Takashi is laying awake hours after he should have been asleep. “Took you long enough. By the time she was your age, Reiko had taken a hundred.”

“This one is different,” Fujiwara Takashi tells him firmly. “This one is mine.”

The lucky cat’s smile curls, in what is either amusement or disdain or affection or pride, and he settles into a comfortable loaf on Takashi’s stomach. The fourth member of Takashi’s family, and every bit as stubborn as the rest of them.

“Then we had better take good care of it.”

#natsume yuujinchou #natsuyuu #natsume takashi #fujiwara touko #fujiwara shigeru #nyanko sensei #my writing #prompt #anonymous #natsuyuu fic

[taizi]

If you're still taking Natsuyuu requests, could I ask for something fluffy with Nyanko-sensei and the Fujiwaras, or else the Fujiwaras and Natori?

x

“Nyankichi is a very smart cat,” Touko says brightly, catching Takashi in the act of palming a piece of mackerel to the spoiled pet waiting beneath the table. “He can talk!”

Takashi freezes, eyes wide. Shigeru stifles a chuckle against the rim of his glass. 

“He can…talk?” the boy asks slowly, looking back and forth between them.

“He has a distinct meow when he’s looking for you,” Touko explains. She reaches over to portion more food onto Takashi’s plate, since he’s sharing. “Like he’s calling your name.”

“Thanks to him, we always know when you’re home,” Shigeru adds fondly.

Takashi colors a bit and ducks his head, studying his meal more closely than it deserves. But there’s a pleased smile peeking out from the corners of his mouth, and beneath the table, Nyankichi meows.

Touko is laying out the futons in their bedroom when Shigeru suddenly remarks, “We have a visitor.”

She looks up to see Takashi’s cat crouched in the doorway like a squat little sentry. He looks so serious and still for such a silly little creature that she can’t help but smile.

“My, my, you never come in here, Nyankichi. Is something the matter?”

He doesn’t move right away, staring at them with those dark animal eyes. Then he paces in a tight circle, and meows Takashi’s name. 

Shigeru only needs a moment to make up his mind. He pushes himself to his feet and sets his book aside. “Lead the way, Nyangoro,” he says with good humor. 

Touko busies herself with straightening out the duvets, but she’s counting her husband’s footsteps down the hall, and listening for the hushed slide of Takashi’s door. Her pillow is just about out of shape from all her distracted patting when Shigeru calls her name. 

She meets him in the hallway. Takashi is in his arms, head listening against Shigeru’s shoulder and face burnt red with fever. 

“Oh, dear, this came on suddenly! He was fine at dinner,” Touko frets, touching his flushed cheek with the back of her hand. “I’ll get his coat and medical papers and meet you at the car.” 

Nyankichi rides in her lap on the way to the hospital, silently suffering her worried petting and watching everything with slitted eyes. He doesn’t make a sound until she smuggles him past the nurses and deposits him in Takashi’s waiting arms. 

There, he settles into a comfortable loaf on Takashi’s stomach. His job is done and now he’s content to ignore the rest of them, putting his head down and closing his eyes to prove it. A rumbling purr builds up from deep in his little chest, and it makes Shigeru and Touko trade fond smiles.

“You’re such a phony,” Takashi rasps, but he looks happy to see him. 

It’s been a week since Takashi never came home. 

The police are working tirelessly, and friends and neighbors have exhausted all resources in trying to find him. His classmates are distraught, and Touko herself is faring no better. 

Their relatives call when the news reaches the rest of the family. 

“We knew something like this would happen eventually,” they say, sympathetic for all the wrong reasons. “He’s not worth the trouble.”

Shigeru throws the phone across the room, hard enough that it breaks against the wall. The sound is almost impossibly loud. He apologizes immediately, pressing a hand to his eyes, and Touko hurries to put her arms around him. 

“We know better than that,” she tells him fiercely. “We know our boy. He’ll come home.”

There’s a commotion in the entry way, and Touko’s heart reacts so fiercely that she nearly chokes on hope as she darts from the sitting room with her husband fast on her heels. 

The front door is wide open, and Takashi’s cat is sitting in the genkan. 

“Oh,” Touko says softly. Disappointment and sorrow make gravity twice as heavy. “Hello, Nyankichi. We haven’t seen you in awhile. I had hoped you would be keeping an eye on our Takashi.”

Nyankichi studies them, his eyes a brighter green than Touko is used to, and then he makes a familiar sound. Touko’s eyes fill with tears. 

“Sorry, little one,” Shigeru tells the cat, sounding aged and sad. “We don’t know where he is either.”

The calico stands up, and paces in a tight circle right there in front of the open door. He meows again, and Shigeru shakes his head, running a hand through his hair. Touko ushers the pet into the house and pulls the door closed. 

It takes a hard yank, and she wonders how on earth a little cat managed to get it open on its own. She puts it out of her mind quickly, because her new cellphone is ringing from where she left it on the kitchen counter. 

She hurries away to answer it. Behind her, the front door slides open again, as if pushed by an unseen hand, and a lucky cat says Natsume.

#i mean....touko was right. he did come home #natsume yuujinchou #natsuyuu #fujiwara touko #fujiwara shigeru #natsume takashi #nyanko sensei #my writing #prompt #natsumiyateirin #natsuyuu fic

[taizi]

put your empty hands in mine

chapter ten: 3 years later

natsume yuujinchou pairing: kitanishinatsu word count: 1122 summary: Kitamoto and Nishimura are soulmates, to absolutely no one’s surprise. But they’re also soulmates with a very shy boy who lives somewhere far away, who writes to them in tiny, careful letters right before bed, who apologizes when the mimicry of bruises pop up on their arms and backs because of him. And that’s a surprise to a lot of people. read on ao3

x

“Takashi, you’re literally my favorite person in the entire world,” Ogata says with feeling, clutching both of his hands in both of hers. There are stars in her eyes. Behind her, Junko looks longsuffering and unsurprised. “I can’t believe how much I love you.”

Takashi laughs, swinging their joined hands back and forth. There’s sunlight in his hair, spinning the color into something close to gold, but it’s no match for the brightness of his smile when he tells her, “I owed you one, didn’t I? You missed a movie because of me, once. Hopefully this makes up for it.”

“He’s unreal,” Shibata mutters. “He’s bringing Natori Shuuichi to meet Yuriko personally, at his house, and he’s acting like he’s just giving her a free movie ticket or something.”

Satoru grins at him. “And you came over a whole weekend early when you heard he’d be here. Hiding a secret crush I should know about?”

His friend gives him a glare that could have withered fresh flowers. “I’m only here because I knew everyone else would be, and Kaname doesn’t do well in a crowd. As soon as he needs an excuse to bail, I’m staging a very elaborate emergency phone call and we’re out of here.”

Shibata goes through a lot of lengths to be sweet to his soulmate without coming across as sweet. Satoru would be impressed if it wasn’t so annoying.

The big sitting room is packed, porch doors slid open to let in sunlight and the occasional squawk of a nosy neighborhood crow, but there’s always room for one more; proven when the front door slams open and Taki calls out in a harried voice, “Forgive the intrusion! Natsume-- !”

“Oh, god,” Atsushi says dryly, palming his forehead. “I know that tone.”

Takashi scoots around Ogata and Satoru in time to meet Taki in the doorway. She looks flushed and teary with frustration. She seizes his hands when he offers them and wails, “I got cursed again.”

“There it is,” Atsushi mutters.

“Oh, my,” Natsume’s foster father says, looking a mix between concerned and amused. “I thought you promised to stay out of your grandfather’s study unless your brother was home to supervise.”

“Isamu is home, that’s the problem. He still doesn’t believe in this stuff and he’s always goading me into doing something stupid, and I get so frustrated I take the bait!” Taki works her sleeve back to show Natsume her bare forearm. He sucks in a hissing breath through his teeth, though, so there must be a spirit mark there somewhere. “Nyanko-sensei, you ought to curse him for me as payback.”

“I will consider it,” the cat says immediately, blinking lazily from his patch of sunlight. Tanuma pets between his ears, and his next blink is even lazier. “If you bring me a piece of chocolate cake.”

“No cursing,” Takashi says quickly, darting a quick glance at Shigeru. “And Hinoe will be able to fix this for you, Taki, it’s pretty weak.”

Taki brightens, looking relieved, and Shigeru folds his newspaper with a chuckle. He’s had several years to get used to their odd brand of shenanigans, and he’s met most of Takashi’s ayakashi friends thanks to one of Taki’s circles. He always seems to know when he should get involved and when it’s something he can leave in Takashi’s hands.

“I can hardly remember the last time we had a dull afternoon around here,” Shigeru says warmly, and tousles Takashi’s hair on his way out of the room. “Thanks for making this old house feel lively again.

Something very important in Satoru’s chest melts into absolute goop at the look on Takashi’s face. Sometimes he still looks like that when someone’s nice to him, like it’s a gift he has no idea how to repay. Then Atsushi calls his name, beckoning him over to where Nyanko-sensei is trying to eat an entire tray full of their snacks, and the fragile moment is broken.

Satoru ends up next to Tanuma, the two of them watching their soulmates chase a fat lucky cat around the room. Tanuma’s smile is a soft, crooked thing, like a slant of sunlight pouring through a crack in the curtains. Satoru nudges their shoulders together.

“Alright?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” Tanuma says. He’s hugging his legs to his chest, chin propped up on his knees. For such a tall guy, he tends not to take up very much space. “I know Katsumi worries, but I really am fine. I just don’t always know how to-- you know. How to jump in.”

Satoru doesn’t know, not really. He’s always known how to jump in. If he didn’t, he doesn’t know where he’d be-- but he doesn’t think he’d be here, in this sunny room, surrounded by the people he loves best.

The front door opens again, and this time a familiar voice says, “I’m home!”

Takashi abandons the hunt for Nyanko-sensei like a flip was switched and makes a beeline for the entryway, calling out, “Welcome back! Oh-- you got a lot of stuff, you should have told me you’d need help-- “

“Nonsense,” Touko says brightly, stepping into the hall. “You should spend time with your friends when they come so far to see you!” She sets a grocery bag down and touches Takashi’s face, a gentle press of her fingers to his cheek, and her smile is as loving as it was the day she brought him home. “Besides! Kai was all the help I needed.”

A walking pile of vegetables turns out to be Takashi’s little brother, staggering into the house under his own weight in cabbage, and he wails, “Takashi, help me.”

Takashi and Shigeru both laughingly come to his aid while Touko tut-tuts about Kai trying to carry too much in from the car at once. Satoru leans back on his hands to watch the scene fondly.

Shibata and Atsushi have finally managed to corner Nyanko-sensei and repossess the stolen dango. Atsushi hauls the cat over to the Fujiwaras to make him pay for his crimes while Shibata makes a show of flopping over on his back in exhaustion. Tanuma is watching him with wanting eyes, so Satoru digs out his favorite felt-tip pen.

“Lemme show you a secret,” Satoru tells him conspiratorially, putting the tip of the pen to the palm of his hand. He draws a symbol there, and holds it out so Tanuma can see.

Across the room, his soulmates notice their messages at once. They glance up and their eyes find his unerringly, knowing and loving and familiar, and it fills his whole body with warmth.

“Circles are hugs,” Satoru explains, grinning like stupid. “Takashi taught me that a long time ago.”

#natsume yuujinchou #natsuyuu #nishimura satoru #kitamoto atsushi #natsume takashi #fujiwara touko #fujiwara shigeru #nyanko sensei #shibata katsumi #tanuma kaname #taki tooru #ogata yuriko #ishio kai #my writing #natsuyuu fic #empty hands #it's finally finished ! <3

[taizi]

38 “I like your laugh” with NishiNatsu?

100 ways to say “i love you”38: “i like your laugh.”

x

People come and go. From an early age, this is a lesson Takashi learns well. 

He comes to Hitoyoshi when he’s fourteen, with a bag over his shoulder and a kind woman’s hand on his arm. They make sure he’s settled, make sure he likes his new room. They’re good people, and he won’t hold it against them when the day comes that they send him away.

(But the days stretch and accumulate. Each time he tears a shirt or breaks a dish, chased home by a shadowy figure or startled by a sneering face in the window, Touko shakes her head with an indulgent smile and gets out her thread and needle, Shigeru lifts the dangerous shards away before he can try to pick them up in his hands. They let him say he’s sorry, and then tell him there’s nothing to be sorry for. He’s never met anyone like them before.)

“It’s your first day tomorrow,” Touko-san says over dinner one night, halfway through his first week in their house. “Are you nervous, Takashi?”

He isn’t. He’s changed schools the way some people trade jackets for each turn of the weather. It isn’t hard to stand in front of a room full of strangers and introduce himself. People come and go, and Takashi is no different. He’s only going to be allowed to stay in this quiet town for as long as it takes to make a bad impression, and then he’ll be gone again.

So he keeps his eyes down, and smiles when someone says his name, and snatches sleep in unused classrooms instead of trying to make friends.

Somehow, friends find him anyway.

(Nishimura was heavy against his back, and it was a long walk back to town. Nyanko-sensei’s true form was a warm support for Takashi to lean against when it felt like his legs were about to give out. 

“Let me carry the brat,” the beastly yokai said, pinning him with a large gold eye. Takashi shook his head, hands tightening around Nishimura’s torn knees. 

“I can carry him,” he said. “I want to.”)

“You need to ask Touko-san for a bike,” Nishimura says one day, looking perilously close to a pout. He likes Takashi’s foster mother. He once spent hours and whole afternoons helping Takashi fold a thousand crooked, lopsided origami cranes for Touko’s sick friend. He seems to think Touko would pull a bike out of her pocket for Takashi if he said he wanted one. “That way we can hang out together after school.” 

Takashi smiles at him, meaning it. Nishimura is guileless and undaunted and kind, and Takashi is hard-pressed not to smile at him most days. “That’s okay, just go without me. I can’t ride a bike anyway.” 

Nishimura seems to need a moment to digest that. Beside him, Kitamoto is giving Takashi an unreadable look. “Why not?” 

“I never learned,” Takashi says easily enough. “It’s not something you can learn by yourself.”

And the very next day, his friends corner him after school again, and he finds himself walking between Nishimura and the bike Kitamoto is pushing along at his side, towards the riverside on the far edge of town. 

“No one will bother us here,” Kitamoto says cheerfully, and pats the seat. “Hop on, Natsume.”

They’re eager and earnest as they teach him what they both must have learned as little children, no trace of condescension in their faces when he gets a shaky start. Nishimura whoops and runs alongside the bike, beaming at him, and Kitamoto makes a sudden strangled noise and a grab for the handlebars, but it’s too late and Takashi is careening down the sloping riverbank. 

They scramble down after him, and the overturned bicycle’s tires make a gentle ticking noise as they spin through empty air. Takashi is knocked dizzy and breathless and bruised. He tips his head back and laughs. 

The day is golden and the grass is soft, and his friends settle on either side of him. When he looks over it’s to find Nishimura with a look of delighted wonder on his face, chin propped up in his hands, fingers cradling a bright smile.

“Hey,” he says, “I like your laugh.”

Takashi’s face is warmed by the sun, and by an unfamiliar feeling that twists his stomach into pleasant knots. Kitamoto laughs when he gets a look at his expression and won’t say why.

“Oh my,” Touko-san says when they pile inside the Fujiwara’s house. Their clothes are dirty, and the bike is banged up, and Takashi can barely lift his head as he steps out of his shoes – he should have called ahead, right? It’s rude to bring guests over without warning, isn’t it? – but then his foster mother is laughing. “What on earth have you three been up to? Come inside, tell me all about it.”

Shigeru-san folds his paper closed and smiles when they pile into the sitting room, greets Nishimura by name and introduces himself warmly to Kitamoto. Touko-san has snacks prepared already, as if she’s been waiting for him to come home. Nyanko-sensei is a heavy weight in his lap, purring idly in his sleep. 

“We can practice some more tomorrow,” Nishimura says, slanting a grin Takashi’s way. And tomorrow is Sunday, their day off, and surely Nishimura and Kitamoto have better things to do – but Kitamoto grins back and says he knows a great spot they could ride up to near the old Futaba Village, and Touko-san says it’s a wonderful idea, and she’ll pack them a picnic.

Takashi looks down at Nyanko-sensei, hiding hot eyes behind his hair. 

People come and go. But Takashi is an exception to every other rule – the ones that make fathers and mothers stay with their children, that make relatives smile and show him the way home and remember to make dinner – so maybe he can be the exception to this rule, too. For the first time, he wants to be. 

He wants to stay. 

(”Of course you do,” Nyanko-sensei scoffs, when Takashi dares say the words aloud into the dark of his bedroom. “I’ve never known a better cook than Touko-san. If you ever left this place, I’d have to leave with you, and we’d both miss out on her food. You’d better not let it happen, Natsume.” 

‘You won’t ever go alone’ remains unsaid, but Takashi hears it anyway. 

And he hears it from Touko-san when she hands him his bento in the morning, packed with all the things he doesn’t remember telling her he liked, and from Shigeru when he makes time to walk home with Takashi after work, and from Nishimura, when he reaches over to brush fringe out of Takashi’s eyes with a petulant, “I want to see you when you talk. What if I miss another laugh?”

Takashi can’t help thinking that maybe it would be safe, this time, to believe it.)

#natsume yuujinchou #natsuyuu #natsume takashi #nishimura satoru #kitamoto atsushi #fujiwara touko #my writing #prompt #anonymous #natsuyuu fic #this came out more gen than anything else??? my bad

[taizi]

this mess was yours

@natsumeweek​ 2017  Day 2; Celebrations/Get-togethers

pairing: nishinatsu

title borrowed from mess is mine by vance joy.

x

Satoru's doing homework downstairs with his brother when his cellphone goes off. Kiyoshi gives him a dirty look and Satoru masterfully ignores it, abandoning his workbook in favor of the call without missing a beat.

He knows it's Natsume. He set a different ringer for him.

“Hey, dude,” he says cheerfully, tapping his pencil against the table obnoxiously. “What's up, I thought I was seeing you later.”

“Hi,” Natsume says quietly, followed by, “Sorry, that's why I'm calling. I can't make it.”

It's hard to hear him. He always mumbles on the phone, and it's only worse when he's upset. Tucking his phone between his head and shoulder, and flapping a hand at Kiyoshi to shut him up, Satoru scoops up his homework and heads for the stairs.

Once he's in his room, and his things are dumped unceremoniously on top of his bed, Satoru says, “Everything okay?”

“Oh, yeah. Everything's fine. Um, it's—Shigeru-san's cousin, Katsuya-san, is having a retirement party tonight. He invited the whole family, it sounds like. That means me, too.”

Satoru scowls at the wall. “Can't you just tell your parents you'd rather stay home?”

There's a pregnant pause on the other end of the line, and then Natsume says softly, “Shigeru-san wants me to go. I don't want to disappoint him.”

“Yeah, but—”

“He said it would be okay. I don't think he would bring me along if he thought it wouldn't be.”

“Yeah, but—”

“I was just calling because we had plans, and—I'm really sorry for canceling last minute—”

He's not even there yet and he sounds miserable, Satoru thinks, mind racing. He glances at the clock on his desk, then paces a tight circle around his room, then speaks without thinking.

“Think they'd mind if I tagged along?”

Natsume doesn't answer for a long moment. Satoru pictures him standing by the house phone with that doe-eyed look of surprise on his face—the one he adopts when he's confronted by any small, just-because kindness—and feels a surge of something simultaneously toothed and tender lay claim to most of the gooey insides of his chest.  

“Um,” his friend says, in a very small voice. “I could ask.”

And that, right there—the fact that he doesn't turn him down right away—the absence of those endless frustrating layers of “oh, don't worry about it, I'm fine”s that Satoru normally has to dig through to get to the heart of how he's actually feeling—sits between them as stark proof that Natsume would really really love not to have to go to this get-together alone.

“Ask,” Satoru replies firmly, and takes the stairs back down two at a time to beg a similar permission from his mom.

The Fujiwaras are too good for this earth, really, Satoru thinks, straightening the collar of the dressy-casual double-layer shirt he borrowed from Kiyoshi without asking. Touko-san all but plucked the phone out of Natsume's hand before he could finish the question and insisted that of course Satoru was welcome to come along, it was a party after all, and the more the merrier! And did he need them to come pick him up?

“Okay, so what's the gameplan,” he mutters, as they follow Shigeru and Touko through the gate and up the path to the front door. “Do we tag along and make small talk, or find somewhere to hide as soon as we can?”

“Oh, god,” Natsume replies, just as low, “hide, as soon as we can, please.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Satoru doesn't blame him for a second. He doesn't know any of these people, in their fancy house with its spotless, polished surfaces that make him afraid to touch anything for fear of leaving dirty smudges, but he doesn't like them. He doesn't have to know them to know they're no good, not with the way they've treated his friend.

Natsume was miserable before the Fujiwaras found him. He moved around constantly and didn't have a home and because of all that he carries this big heavy weight around on his shoulders, in the back of his eyes, in the sad way he takes up as little space in a room as he can.

Because of all these people.

Ugh, Satoru thinks with feeling. It's like walking into a snake pit. It's like walking into a snake pit with a present and a pleasant smile for the snake guest of honor. Ugh.

“What's that face for?” Natsume asks, glancing at him sidelong. “You don't even—do you know someone here?”

“What? No way. Don't worry about it, just follow the leader.” He pokes Natsume in the small of the back, propelling him forward to follow Touko when she moves ahead with Shigeru into the kitchen. “We have to make it look natural when we fall away and hide out in the yard for the rest of the night. It's all about timing. Trust me, I know my way around family gatherings.”

A woman in the hall with a glass of wine gives them a dirty look as they pass by. It takes an amount of willpower Satoru didn't even know he had to refrain from shooting her the same look right back.

It's not all dirty looks, though. A few people greet Natsume warmly, and the majority of the crowd seems happy just to stay away from him, and Katsuya and his wife Hiromi are actually pretty cool. They look pleasantly surprised to see him, and beckon him closer, and ask about his school and his classmates and how he's doing.

“This is my friend Nishimura Satoru,” Natsume says after a moment, looking like he has no idea where to put all this kind attention he's getting and passing it off to someone else the first chance he gets. “I hope it's okay that he came along.”

“Of course it is,” Hiromi says brightly. “Thank you for coming, Satoru-kun. You boys don't have to hang around here and listen to us talk, either, go help yourselves to some food and have a good time.”

It's the break they've been waiting for. They make their plates quickly and then head for the porch, and if Satoru cuts rudely in front of a guest or two he's meanly pleased with himself for it.

The night air is warm, and the sound of the party inside is muted as soon as Natsume slides the door shut behind him. Satoru sits, dangling his legs over the yard, and pats the spot beside him with a flourish.

“Pull up some floor,” he says primly, and Natsume huffs out a laugh. There are a few fireflies out already, and one drifts past Natsume's head like its thinking about landing on his nose. Satoru kind of wishes it would. “So it's weird you didn't bring your ugly cat along. Where is he?”

“Sulking at home,” is the dry reply. “I'll have to bring him back some food to make up for leaving him behind.”

“You spoil that thing,” Satoru tells him, and that makes Natsume laugh again, a little longer this time.

“Speaking of which,” Natsume says, with the footprint of that warm humor fading out of his voice, “you didn't have to come along with me tonight. I know this isn't what we had planned.”

“It's pretty much the same thing we would have done otherwise.” Satoru shrugs gamely. “The most important parts are the same, anyway.” He holds up his plate in something like a salute and grins. “You. Me. Food.”

Natsume brightens, and his small smile turns into one of those rare blinding ones. “All the important parts, huh?” he says, a little knowing, a whole lot pleased.

And Satoru—wow, Satoru is in so much trouble. He takes a bite of tempura that's about three sizes too big to fit comfortably in his mouth, so he won't say something stupid, and munches obnoxiously around a chipmunk smile. 

Natsume rolls his eyes and that oddly tender moment is gone to a more comfortable, far-far-away place.

Almost half an hour later, when they're halfway through a Youtube playlist and the battery on Satoru's phone is in the red, the door behind them rattles open again and a girl their age says, “There you are! Come inside, Natsume and Natsume’s plus one. Katsuya won't let anyone have cake until we find you.”

That doe-eyed surprise is back home on his face. That fierce surge of relentless care is back home in Satoru's heart. He shoves his phone in his pocket, and stacks their plates into a neat pile, and climbs to his feet.

“Back into the fray,” he says, and offers Natsume a hand.

For a second, Natsume's expression is a lot of complicated things it hurts to look at, all at once. But he puts his hand in Satoru's, and lets himself be hauled to his feet and led back inside.

Satoru is prepared for Natsume to drop his hand as they come around the corner into the kitchen and the majority of the packed room greets their arrival enthusiastically. 

Surprised when he squeezes Satoru's hand instead, warmly, and keeps it right where it is.

#natsumeweek #natsuyuu fic #natsuyuu #nishinatsu #nishimura satoru #natsume takashi #my writing #never mind the bus fare #i told u katsuya and hiromi would be back ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) #natsume yuujinchou

[taizi]

If you're still interested in Natsume prompts, maybe something where the Fujiwara''s are invited to a family reunion and Touko and/or Shigeru use that opportunity to scold the family or something. Maybe say something to the effect of "do you see this precious child? He's ours now!"

x

When his cousin asks, “So how have things been with that boy around?” something bitter fills the back of Shigeru’s throat. 

It must show on his face, at least in part, because Katsuya’s wife lays a hand on his arm and scolds him, “That was rude. We talked about this on the way over.”

Of course they did, an uncharitable part of Shigeru’s heart remarks. Among his relatives, Takashi is a popular conversation topic, and very rarely in a kindly way.

The silence is something uncomfortable for a moment. Touko, pausing in refilling teacups, laughs airily – sitting back and pressing a delicate hand to the side of her face, as though simply caught off-guard by the question instead of perturbed by it. 

“Oh my. It’s been such a welcome change, hasn’t it, Shigeru? This house was built for a bigger family than two.” Her voice is remarkably warm when she adds, “Such a welcome change. I can’t even begin to tell you!”

And she really can’t begin – in much the same way Shigeru doesn’t have longer than a few seconds to enjoy the twin looks of stupefaction on Katsuya and Hiromi’s faces – because at that point the front door rattles open, and Takashi’s voice is calling “I’m home!”

Like a flower unfolding to spring, Touko rises to meet him without missing a beat. Takashi comes around the corner with a crooked smile on his face, an autumn-colored boy kissed by the summer heat and summer sun, and he carries some of that brightness with him into the room.

His cat is perched on his shoulder, his hands folded behind his back. For a brief moment, he’s the perfect picture of teenage mischief. Then his eyes stray farther into the room, and a door slams shut in his face. 

“Oh, I – I didn’t know we had company.” It’s amazing, in an awful way, how quickly he loses his footing. “I’m sorry – I brought – “

And a familiar face slams into Takashi’s shoulder, rocking him sideways. 

“We beat the rain!” Satoru crows enthusiastically. “We ran all the way here!”

Nyangoro huffs and leaps to the floor, trotting across the room to settle on the cushion by Shigeru’s knee with a put-upon sigh.Behind Takashi, Tooru, Kaname and Atsushi are milling comfortably in the doorway. They offer polite hellos, and Atsushi says “Sorry for intruding,” even as he expertly peels Satoru off of Takashi’s person. 

“Well, we had to,” Tooru says practically, in response to Satoru’s remark. “Natsume had precious cargo, after all.”

Takashi’s face turns pink, and he shuffles in place. His shoulders curl a little tighter, as he hides whatever he’s holding more securely behind his back. 

Impossible fondness folds like fingers around Shigeru’s heart, expands beneath his breastbone like something physical. He can’t help smiling, the force of it crinkling his eyes, and teases, “It isn’t another cat, is it?”

Nyangoro huffs again. Takashi shakes his head quickly.

“No, it’s not – I mean, it’s nothing. I mean, it’s – “

“Dude, this is painful to listen to,” Satoru says, not unkindly. “Just give them to her.”

Touko tilts her head curiously, just a little bit like that crow of hers that hangs around the yard. Takashi glances towards Katsuya and Hiromi a little uncertainly, but then his eyes dart to Shigeru, sitting across the table from them. And there aren’t words for what it makes Shigeru feel, when his encouraging smile fills Takashi’s face with confidence. 

Takashi draws a bouquet of wildflowers from behind his back. 

“I thought you’d like them,” he says bravely. 

Shigeru can’t see his wife’s face, but he doesn’t need to. She makes a soft sound and hurries forward, and all the delight Shigeru can imagine in her expression is clear in her voice when she says, “Oh, they’re beautiful! Where did you get them?”

“Some friends showed me where they grow, up on the mountain,” Takashi says, smiling widely. “You like them?”

Touko cradles his face in much the same way she cradles the flowers, a press of her fingers to the curve of his cheek, and says, “I love them. Thank you so much.”

Tooru follows Touko into the kitchen eagerly to find a suitable vase, and Kaname touches Takashi’s shoulder, grinning and saying, “You look like you just faced down a monster,” to which Takashi replies, “Oh, that would have been much easier.” Atsushi catches Shigeru’s eye, and rubs the back of his head sheepishly.

“We didn’t mean to interrupt your visit. Nishimura insisted we all come as a group.”

Satoru squawks in outrage, presumably at being made the scapegoat, and Shigeru chuckles. “That’s quite all right. Do you have plans for the rest of the afternoon?”

They do, as it turns out – Satoru says “Natsume’s never gone beetle hunting!” in a way that indicates it’s a wrong he has set out to right at the first opportunity. Takashi rolls his eyes, but he looks at Satoru so fondly that Shigeru is nearly staggered by the difference in this boy and the one who first came to them nearly two years ago.

Touko insists on sending them off with iced tea and sandwiches and all three of the umbrellas from the rack by the door for the five of them to cluster under; and Takashi leaves with his cat in his arms and his friends by his side, and a soft smile for his foster parents that lingers in the room long after he’s gone. 

“Well,” Hiromi says, “I think someone gave me the wrong idea about Takashi. He seems like a lovely boy. You know how long it’s been since anyone brought me home flowers?” Katsuya has the good grace to look ashamed, rubbing a hand through his hair. Gentling with a smile, Hiromi adds, “His friends look like a good bunch, too. You must be so proud.”

When she takes her place beside him, Touko beams so brightly at Shigeru that he would be hard-pressed not to grin right back.

“Of course we are,” he says. He can’t think of anything in their life together more worthy of pride.

#natsuyuu fic #my writing #fujiwara shigeru #fujiwara touko #natsume takashi #prompt #anonymous #natsuyuu #katsuya and hiromi are characters i more or less made up on the spot #but its been about 5 minutes now and ive decided i love them #they will probably return #natsume yuujinchou