Author's Note: This takes place during Episode 9, after Natsume finds Ema and she agrees to stay over.
Rain lashed the window, and outside, the night sky rumbled. It was strange to think that only hours ago, she had been out in that storm, with no thought of ever moving again beyond that lonely park bench and moth-traversed globe of streetlight. She might be out there still, her family register wet and disintegrating in her hands, if Natsume hadn't found her. So much had changed in the course of one evening.
She could still taste him on her lips. More than anything, he had tasted like the cigarette he had just smoked—but she hadn't minded. In that moment, the fact that she was being kissed by Natsumi at all had warranted all Ema's shock and attention; now, sharing the darkness of his small apartment, her past and his kiss were like twin weights bearing her down, anchoring her thoughts without allowing them to drift to sleep.
It was her thoughts, more than the storm outside, that kept Ema awake. Even if her status as a Hinata, much less an Asahina, was up in the air—how could they not be, knowing what she now knew?—her status with Natsume now seemed even less certain. He was still her safe harbor, especially on a night like this one, when the whole world was coming apart at the seams—but his kiss, his confession of his own growing feelings, had made her all at sea again. Of all her stepbrothers, he was almost the last one she expected to have "those" types of feelings for her. He was always stoic in all of their encounters. He had never talked about his feelings before.
Ema shifted on the fold-out bed, transferring onto her back to gaze forlornly at the ceiling. A flash of lightning lit up the room, followed almost immediately by a boom of thunder so forceful it shook the window in its pane and rattled all the dishes in the kitchen. Ema muffled a gasp; she was always soft-spoken, even when startled, but she hadn't meant to utter a sound.
"Tell me: would a brother comfort his sister if she was frightened?"
Ema was startled from the tangled wilderness of her thoughts. She rolled onto her opposite shoulder, but before her eyes had a chance to place Natsumi in the gloom, his body rose from the bedroll it occupied; the blanket she had thought too thin to begin with slipped down his waist to pool on the floor.
"Natsume…"
He lifted her own blanket and slid in beside her. Only one of the cats, Tsubaki or Azusa, protested, and leapt from his spot curled at the foot of the bed. Ema barely had time to register the loss of one body's warm for another; Natsume, somehow tall even went horizontal, burned like a furnace. He slid one arm around her waist and folded the other beneath his head on the pillow they now shared. The casual weight, nestled in her curve, made Ema flush; but where else was he supposed to put it? She supposed it was only natural.
"I'm sorry if I woke you," she whispered. She was hopelessly embarrassed.
"I wasn't sleeping." His steady reply.
"I—I just didn't expect it to be so close." She exhaled a steadying breath.
"We're in the heart of it now," Natsume mused. "If I'm right, it should be peaceful now for a while."
He seemed to be correct—but then, Ema was having a hard time hearing anything, even silence, over the racing of her pulse.
"I didn't expect you to be scared of storms," he admitted. "Not when you're blowing up zombies every night."
"I don't play every night." She winced. "I do have schoolwork, you know."
"It's a good thing that you don't. I doubt my company's production schedule could keep up with you. You're our benchmark, remember?"
"And I'm not afraid of storms," she insisted. She met his eyes in the darkness across from her own, attracted by the shiver of outside light pooled in their slanted depths.
"You're trembling," he said softly.
She had no easy answer to that.
"Is the storm keeping you awake?" she meekly asked instead.
"Not the one outside." He looked away, and appeared to study the shadows gathered on the ceiling.
" I… I know what you mean," Ema whispered.
She felt his fingers curl along her back, but he didn't press her.
"Natsume, can I ask… how did you know where to find me tonight? Am I that obvious?"
His amethyst eyes returned to hers. "Were you trying to hide?"
"No! I mean… no, not exactly," she admitted sheepishly. "I just—I didn't know how to go home again. After finding out about my dad…" For a terrible moment in time, she had had no conception of what 'home' was any longer. She had wondered if she ever really knew it at all.
The hand moved from her waist to idly shift the hair back from her forehead; it was soothing. It felt… natural, to be talking with him this way. "Ukyo told me where you'd gone during the day," he said it last. "I figured my chances were good if I started near his office. Don't ask me why the others didn't think of it."
"You must not have been looking long." She recalled that when Natsume had found her, he hadn't been wearing a coat. There had still been a cigarette burning in the ashtray when she returned with him to his apartment.
He grimaced. "Yeah, well, nobody thought to contact me until the residence was already in full-blown emergency mode."
Ema flushed. "I might have been with you the whole time." The fingers that swept her hair methodically stilled. She didn't know why, but she stopped breathing the same instant. When he resumed, she could breathe again. "I mean, because we've been spending so much time together recently—"
"I wish I had been with you," he said. Ema shook her head against the pillow, displacing all of his handiwork. "I mean it." He took hold of her shoulder. "Being a part of our family means you shouldn't have to do things alone."
"You're with me now, Natsume." She hoped to appease him. "And anyway, you do all sorts of things alone without your brothers."
"Our brothers," he corrected mildly, and Ema was instantly ashamed for her words. She hadn't meant to put them all at a distance. "But it's different with me. I…"
Whatever thought he had intended to articulate seemed to stick in his throat. Lightning flashed its own jagged punctuation into the silence, and Natsume's unhappy sigh was drowned out by the thunder; Ema felt it as a gentle gust against her cheek. "No, you're right about me," he admitted at last. "I keep people at arm's length. And I don't always know why."
His arm resettled itself loosely around her waist, and it felt strangely like a homecoming. "I've never felt… I don't feel like you keep me at a distance, Natsume," she attempted to console him.
"I've tried. With you more than anyone." Another fork of lightning bathed them in stark light, then faded. Cast in shadows, Natsume's expression seemed to close to her.
"Please, don't," Ema pleaded. Her voice came out small, but she spoke with an earnestness she hadn't known she felt until she heard it with her own ears.
"You don't want me to keep you at a distance?" His expression, his voice, were still impenetrable; his eyes were on her and nowhere else.
"I…" Her mouth went suddenly dry beneath the heat of his stare. She had a sudden, weightless feeling, like she was on a carnival ride about to plummet beneath her. Whenever she felt this way—around Natsume, always around Natsume, from their first meeting in that abandoned chapel—she cast her eyes down, and convinced herself and those around her that her sudden reticence was due to discomfort or embarrassment.
But there was nowhere to retreat to now. Natsume held her as much with his eyes as he did with his arms. And Ema couldn't be dishonest with him. "I don't want to be distant," she whispered. Whenever she was with him, even like this—maybe even especially like this—she didn't have to worry so much about home, or her place within one. With Natsume, she might not know where she stood; she might even feel in danger of falling. But this man, her stepbrother, would always be there to catch her—if he wasn't in danger of falling himself.
"You feel it, too," his rough voice seemed to marvel. He gripped her shoulder again. "That's why you haven't stopped trembling. That's why your heart is racing."
"Yes." Her helpless admission. Natsume, she thought. His hair fell in drifts across his startled eyes; they narrowed even more as his mouth closed in some unknown decision. With his face only a pillow's width from her own, there were still so much to take in. Ema had found herself wondering with increased curiosity the past days, weeks, if the freckle tended more toward one side of his chin, or if it was centered perfectly below his lips. She still couldn't tell for certain…
The freckle closed the distance. And Ema, powerless to deny the pull between them, eased across the pillow as if drawn by a string. She met Natsume there, in the space between, where they hung suspended for a moment more. Then the hand on her shoulder guided her close, and she went, eyes drifting shut—not just in submission this time, but in acknowledgment of the thing they both felt, the defeat that was theirs to share. The surrender.
His mouth closed over hers, and Ema received his kiss, hesitant, but no longer wholly unfamiliar. His lips were soft; she hadn't noticed before, in that first helpless collision they had shared earlier that evening. Before, it had only been Natsume, expressing pent-up feelings that he could no longer deny; now, she shared the kiss with him, a tentative second contact. It was slow, unexpectedly molten, and unbearably chased. It didn't seem to have an end.
Natsume groaned deep in his throat, as if in agony, and his grip on her shoulder tightened. He seemed to be at war with himself, wanting to deepen the kiss and fulfill the promise inherent to the mounting tension, and still wanting to keep her own feelings in consideration. Ema tipped her chin closer, and Natsume's hand slid slowly up the curve of her neck to sink his fingers into her tangled locks, still damp from the shower. Her lips parted in surprise, and he claimed her in a single, sensual thrust. She had forgotten how to breathe again.
"Ema." Natsume broke away to whisper her name. She clutched his T-shirt in small fists, eyes sliding half-open in recognition, and it was the stunned look from behind her lashes that had him pulling her in again with a groan. Her fingers clenched in the fabric of his collar as he took her lips for himself again. Ema felt something stir beneath the blanket between them, something rising, something about to burst—
—from beneath the covers, a curious chirp sounded. Natsume pulled back as a patchwork head surfaced between them, eyes shining with inquiry. "Tsubaki." Natsume hissed with mortification, and would have probably slapped the heel of his palm to his forehead if his hands weren't already occupied. This triggered a shy, good-natured laugh from Ema, which she couldn't altogether conceal despite her efforts. Natsume groaned again, this time in defeat at their situation, and pulled her in against him; Tsubaki yowled in protest and slipped out from between them like all three of them were a compressed tube of toothpaste.
"I'm glad you're smiling again." His words were a comforting, baritone thrum with her ear pressed to his chest. "I'm glad that you came over."
"I'm glad, too." Her own voice sounded small, buried in the cotton of his shirt; but the thin arms that stayed looped beneath his own, the hands that wound in the fabric at his back, spoke volumes.
They stayed intertwined; even as a storm played itself out; even after two furry bodies joined them; even into morning, when they both woke, minutes apart, in the faint light of dawn, and still pretended to be asleep.