notes/warnings
+ the plot is still rambly and gentle.
+ I couldn't figure out the time period in which canon is set. I suspect it's actually several decades ago, so this fic can also be considered an AU in that people have mobile phones. other than the phones I've tried to leave out all references to technology, so as not to make the story disjointed.
Part Two
The evening kind of passes in a blur, and Natsume falls asleep with Tanuma's words repeating over and over in his head. In the morning, he gets dressed on autopilot and can barely muster up a few syllables in response to Shigeru's attempts at conversation.
He feels alien and unwieldy, like he's been stuffed too full of happiness. He touches the book of friends and for the first time in his life imagines actually summoning the spirits listed there.
"I want something to guard him," he says, quietly. "The way you guard me."
"Won't that just give him a headache?" Nyanko argues. "You're in a pretty ridiculous mood today, you know."
Natsume walks to Tanuma's house instead of school. He really doesn't care if he gets into trouble. He just wants to see his friend again, and hear Tanuma talk about college and living together like it actually might happen.
Natsume would do anything for Tanuma. Anything, anything, anything.
The more Natsume cares for someone, the more he wants to sacrifice things for them. People show him kindness, and he is driven to repay them in turn. But it's more than that, this time. He wants to be near Tanuma. He wants to get a job and help people and deal with spirits in the afternoon and come home to Tanuma asleep on the couch. And the mere thought of a life like that is enough to make him stop in his tracks, overwhelmed with how wonderful it feels.
Nyanko promptly runs into his legs, and calls him an idiot.
When they arrive at Tanuma's house, Natsume surprised to find his friend shuffling awkwardly around the garden. He's also struck momentarily stupid.
"Hi," he squeaks, eventually. "Are you feeling better?"
Tanuma flinches, clearly startled, and Natsume kind of wants to hide.
"I didn't mean to scare you," he says, quickly.
"Natsume," Tanuma says, slowly. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be at school?"
"I'm not going to school today," Natsume says, and the words sounded an awful lot better inside his head. "I'm visiting you, instead."
Tanuma shakes his head.
"I'm fine," he says. "You should-"
"But you're not well. You can't even walk properly!" Natsume protests. He hates seeing Tanuma so debilitated. Tanuma deserves to be healthy all the time.
"Hey, I'm good at not being well," Tanuma says, smiling slightly. "It's a natural state for me. Besides, I can't have you failing class on my account."
Disappointment hits Natsume like a blow to the stomach, crushing his happy little daydream-world into pieces. He's still awkward and he's still bad at dealing with people and Tanuma doesn't even really want him around.
Natsume wonders what he was actually expecting, coming here today. It's like he wanted the world to change, just because Tanuma said…
It doesn't matter.
"You're right," he says, wearily. "I should go."
He turns on his heel with a heavy heart, and is thrown off balance when Tanuma grabs a handful of his shirt.
"Hey," Tanuma says, quietly. "Do you want to stay over tonight?"
"Oh," Natsume says, lost. "Um."
Tanuma glances at Nyanko.
"We're having squid for dinner," he says, casually.
Nyanko actually sparkles.
"Squid! Squid! We're coming back here, Natsume, right?"
"I guess," Natsume says, uneasily.
"I'm glad," Tanuma replies, and it's hard to feel miserable when he's smiling like that. "It's, um. It's always good to have you around."
And Natsume almost forgot, for a moment there, that Tanuma is as bad at this as he is. He really shouldn't be so quick to feel sad.
Tanuma releases his grip on Natsume and frowns.
"Where's your coat?"
"I forgot it," Natsume explains, stupidly.
"He's been pretty dumb today," Nyanko adds. "I'm surprised nothing has eaten him."
"Don't joke about that," Tanuma chides. He tugs off his own coat and hands it to Natsume.
"Here. Bring it back tonight, okay?"
"I don't want you to get cold!" Natsume says, anxiously. Tanuma's immune system is already so poor, and the wind is sharp and bitter.
Natsume just didn't notice it until a moment ago.
"I have more inside," Tanuma says, easily. "You should hurry, or you'll be late."
"Oh," Natsume murmurs, unable to think of anything else to say. "Yeah. Okay. But…you go inside now."
"Deal," Tanuma says, and taps his knuckles against the back of Natsume's hand.
Natsume ambles off into the distance, and Tanuma watches him go. He's dwarfed by Tanuma's coat, and Tanuma regrets not having anything smaller to offer him. He'd do anything for Natsume but he's limited, as always, by his own wretched shortcomings.
He waits until Natsume is out of sight before he goes inside.
That was close. That was way too close.
"You're humming," Nyanko complains. "Idiot."
"Sorry," Natsume replies, entirely unabashed. "It's just…this is a good coat."
"Is he important to you?"
Natsume stops dead and Nyanko hisses, hackles raised. It's her. It's the spirit from before. The one with the fish mask.
"What are you doing here?" Natsume asks, carefully. "Are you following me?"
"You came to my river," she says, haughtily. "I can do whatever I want. Now, answer my question. Is that other child important to you?"
Natsume balls his hand into a fist, suddenly on edge.
"Leave him alone," he says, tensely. "He has nothing to do with spirits or demons or supernatural things."
"But he's important to you," Aoi presses, sitting down neatly on a low fence and crossing her legs.
"If you hurt him, I swear, I'll…I'll seal you."
"My, my."
"Go away, fish," Nyanko yells, waving a paw at her aggressively. "Stop tormenting my main course."
Aoi seems to consider him for a moment.
"I guess I can leave, for now," she says, shrugging. "But, grandson of Reiko, I won't be very far away."
She disappears in a flurry of fish-scale shaped sparkles.
"That was vexing," Nyanko says, rubbing at his face. "But you don't really need to worry about her. Fish spirits are kind of obsessive, but they're mostly harmless."
"She saved me," Natsume says, staring at the spot where Aoi had been sitting. "She saved me from that bacteria-spirit, Teacher."
"Call it a sickness-spirit," Nyanko suggests, pedantically. "It's more correct."
Natsume rolls his eyes.
"That's not the point," he says, slowly, because things are starting to fall into place. "The point is, she practically told me that she's deliberately staying close to me."
"And?"
"You're so annoying," Natsume retorts, but his mind is racing. A spirit is watching over him. And he knows a spirit is protecting his family and friends.
Is it you, Aoi? Could it possibly be you?
Natsume does not visit after school, and Tanuma spends a great deal of the evening sitting by the phone with his head in his hands, worrying.
He knows Natsume often gets busy, often has things come up at very short notice. And he's comforted by the fact that he can't reach Taki either, because that means she's probably with him, but still.
Tanuma worries. At times like this, he really worries. He needs to know what is going on.
Sometimes, he hates the fact that he's so weak. He hates that he can't see spirits, or draw circles, or do anything. He hates that Natsume leaves him behind.
"Kaname," his father says, quietly. "I'm going to get dinner from the store. Are you hungry?"
Tanuma tries to smile. He doesn't want to trouble his father. He doesn't want his father to be scared and miserable, like he was that time in Emukae.
"Yeah," he replies. "Bring me something fried?"
Tanuma is not the least bit hungry.
By the time Natsume gets home, Touko and Shigeru are beside themselves. Natsume feels horrible, because he knows. This is what he does. He hurts the people he cares about.
Tanuma probably went to bed hours ago.
"I'm sorry," he says, hanging his head. "I was playing board games with Nishimura, and I lost track of time."
In truth, he was trying desperately to stop an age-old feud between two spirit clans. Natsume can never stand to see people getting pointlessly hurt, regardless of whether those people are spirits or humans.
He's attached to both worlds. But.
"You threatened to seal that fish-girl," Nyanko points out, as Natsume is crawling into bed. "You've never threatened a neutral spirit before."
"She wasn't neutral," Natsume argues. "She was threatening to bother Tanuma."
Nyanko jumps onto the futon and settles next to Natsume's shoulder.
"It's freezing outside," he comments. "But it's quite warm in this room. Do you really need to wear that coat to bed?"
"Go to sleep," Natsume orders, ignoring the question entirely.
Sometimes, it's hard to find things to say. Sometimes Tanuma is scared of opening his mouth. There's always the possibility that he'll blurt out something horribly wrong and damaging. But if he doesn't speak, then Natsume is just going to apologise for the thirtieth time and if that happens Tanuma's heart is possibly going to break.
It's fine. Really, it's fine. It's fine because Natsume is here now, because Natsume is safe, because Natsume has to be a hero and Tanuma has to support him. It's fine because Tanuma can't ever possibly ask him to stop sacrificing himself, to slow down and breathe and have the life he wants.
Actually, Tanuma has no idea what sort of life Natsume wants. He picks up a discarded catalogue from the recycling bin and leafs through it, searching for a topic of conversation. He wants to treasure every second they have together, as best he can.
"I'm definitely staying over tomorrow night," Natsume says, decisively.
"If something comes up, you can stay the next night," Tanuma suggests. "Hey, this is really ugly."
He holds up the page, indicating a cheap-looking plastic dining table painted in an eye-gouging shade of green.
"Hm?" Natsume says, leaning over him, momentarily distracted. "Ha. It sure is. It looks like something Nishimura would buy if he was ever allowed to go shopping on his own."
Natsume grins, and Tanuma takes a moment to be thoroughly proud of himself.
"He will be allowed, soon," he muses. "We're all growing up, right?"
Tanuma searches for something funny to say, trying to hang on to Natsume's smile for as long as possible.
"Hey, we should get one of these," he suggests, cheerfully. "When we get our apartment. It can be a statement that we are independent. And also colour-blind."
Natsume positively beams at him. Tanuma wants to kiss him so much that it actually hurts.
Not that he ever would. He never would.
"Yeah," Natsume says, emphatically. "Let's do that."
The next spirit is barely a few days old, born from the well-worn tar on the road. He has a tendency to throw tantrums and unwittingly destroy buildings in his rage.
Natsume likes the good spirits. The ones who only do bad things because they've made mistakes. The ones who are trying to find their way gently through this beautiful world.
And the world is beautiful. Natsume wants to live in it for a very long time. The longer he lives, the more he cares for people, the longer he wants to stay.
And yet, paradoxically, the more he is driven to sacrifice anything – anything – to protect his friends.
At one point the spirit lashes out and knocks Taki off her feet. Natsume's heart plummets, just like every other time she's gotten hurt. He's partway through his usual guilt-ridden self-loathing vicious internal monologue when he remembers, abruptly, that the bruise on her knee will be completely gone by tomorrow.
Sometimes, Tanuma catches his father staring at him. Sadly. Like Tanuma is going to do something terrible one day.
Tanuma knows what happened the day his mother died. He knows that all the doctors said brain tumour, that the autopsy said brain tumour.
It was so long ago, Tanuma was only a baby. But his parents had been happy, up until that night. His parents had been celebrating, because…
It doesn't matter now.
Tanuma knows how his mother died. He's known all along.
Like clockwork, the next day, Taki's knee is healed.
"I tried to stay awake last night," she tells Natsume, voice low and a little bit excited. "I wanted to see how it looked when it was changing. But I guess I fell asleep."
"Did you sense anything?" Natsume asks her. He's feeling pretty good about this, actually. For once, a spirit is doing something for him. And this is a big deal. This is a spirit seeking to protect and defend Natsume's most precious, beloved people.
This is wonderful. Natsume hasn't felt this relieved – or this good – since that day in the hospital when Touko and Shigeru came to take him home.
"Nothing," Taki replies. "What are you going to do with this spirit if you find them?"
As a rule, Natsume doesn't like spirits who interfere with his friends.
But.
"Thank them, I guess," Natsume says, thoughtfully.
"Oy!" Nishimura yells, rushing over to them. "Natsume! What are you doing?"
Natsume blinks at his friend. Did Nishimura hear anything? No, he couldn't possibly have heard anything. Natsume's secret is safe with Taki.
His secrets are always safe with Taki.
"Nothing?" Natsume ventures. He's just an ordinary boy, having an ordinary conversation with his ordinary friend.
Nishimura grabs him roughly, dragging him a few feet away from Taki.
"You had your hand on her knee," he accuses, in a stage-whisper that Taki can almost definitely hear.
Natsume laughs and laughs and laughs.
tbc
a/n
+ thank you for reading
+ also, feedback and concrit are welcome