Work Text:
透明じゃない あたし
透明すぎる あなた
わかるくせにと
言われたとたん うなずけないの
そのせいで あなたは
驚くふりをする
そのせいで あたしは
ほほえみを返すの
I, who am not transparent
You, who are too transparent
Don't you know full well, you say
But when I hear that, I can't just nod
And thus you
Feign surprise
And thus I
Smile back
-- Sasagawa Miwa, "The Contrarian" 「天邪鬼」
"I like you," Natori said, every syllable perfectly enunciated.
He gazed at Natsume, whose room they were currently occupying.
Natori had ostensibly come to keep Natsume company while the latter studied for his final exams. No one else was home. The Fujiwaras had left on a weekend trip, leaving Natsume with a refrigerator's worth of meals and permission for him to have visitors in their absence, if he wanted. Nyanko-sensei, thankfully, was out chasing news of a sake spring that had appeared in the vicinity. These days he seldom stayed with them when Natori came over, in any case. (Hanging around the two of them as they were now, he swore, would turn his fortune-cat fur completely white.)
Natsume, facing his desk, had been holding a textbook in his hands.
He dropped it.
*
Up till that point, Natsume had spent a considerable number of sleep-deprived nights weighing this very issue. Should he say it? Was it somehow unfair of him not to say it? (It being, of course, the confession apparently essential to officially launch a romantic relationship.)
Did he, Natsume, want to say it? He would have put anything else he was thinking about into words, after all. His normal feelings weren't usually so resistant to expression. But this - this somehow stuck in his throat, every time the emotions behind the words rose up. It was reminiscent of the Book of Friends, as a thing he had and hadn't wanted Natori to know about. It felt like a part of himself that was vital and tender and required guarding.
In this case, though, he kept running into the fact of how they both already knew. Implicitly. At least, he was sure they did.
He never wanted to see his own face when they were together. Nyanko-sensei assured him that it got absolutely ridiculous and goopy and he was going to draw pictures so the Circle of Dogs could laugh at him too. Natsume also knew, from Hiiragi, that Natori's three shiki regularly discussed them. He really never wanted to know the specific topics, but the point was that it was obvious.
It was obvious. It had to be. It didn't seem possible, by this point, for them not to know how they felt about each other. Their relationship had changed, regardless of what they hadn't said about it. He didn't dare to think too closely about how happy he was, these days; it was overwhelming. Somehow he thought about Natori even more than he'd previously done. His stomach sprouted butterflies every time Natori looked at him, his eyes warm and his smile real. Every touch they shared still made his skin tingle. And they'd begun spending more and more time in each other's company, whenever Natori's schedule allowed, even if it was just walking and talking or reading in the same room. If that wasn't dating, what was?
How was one supposed to say it, anyway? According to some of his peers, the ideal process involved going up to someone, handing them a letter you'd written, and giving them time to respond. (They never specified if you should wait there while they read it, or if you should run away right afterwards.) Alternately, you could leave the letter somewhere for the object of affection to find, their school shoebox being the default option. (What to do if the person wasn't a student anymore never came up.) The particularly brave or thick-skinned could also confess face-to-face. This last method had the advantage of your being allowed to kiss them, if it went well. If they said it back to you.
But none of that explained exactly how to express it. Natsume had limited experience with the epistolary mode. He certainly didn't feel like writing to Natori, who owned several sets of stationery, and who had a perverse liking for difficult concepts and words.
Moreover, their particular situation had begun with a kiss, in direct contravention of all he'd heard from those stray bits of class gossip and Nishimura's occasional dramatic monologues. He couldn't do anything about that. The aforementioned kiss had been Natori's fault, although Natsume admitted to himself that he'd rather wanted it to happen, too. They'd been sitting on a verandah under a waxing moon; it had felt right.
Was Natori secretly upset that he hadn't said it yet? He didn't think so. Natori never looked like he was expecting anything when they were together. Anyway, Natsume thought, it's not like he's said anything either. To be sure, whether or not Natori said it to him wasn't the point. Nonetheless.
Maybe grown-ups didn't actually need to bother with those words? He'd never heard Touko and Shigeru say them to each other, after all. Possibly they were just the stuff of movies and TV and adolescent dreams. That would explain why Natori, who dealt in all those things for work, hadn't said them to him. They certainly seemed that way, whenever he listened to Nishimura fantasise about plans to confess his True Feelings to a girl who might just happen to have a strong resemblance to Taki.
Hopefully Nishimura wouldn't be too upset when he found out Tanuma had already beat him to that. Or had he, actually? Natsume didn't know if, or how, Tanuma had said it to Taki. Or vice versa. He'd been too embarrassed to ask either of them, and he'd figured they would feel the same way about replying.
He wondered how many people Natori had dated before. He didn't think this was something he could ask, either. Not without somehow sounding childish, or risking an awkward situation.
That was another problem. Maybe saying it would just make things heavy or complicated, and their current state of affairs was vaguely terrifying enough, as nice as it also was. And besides, Natori had experience in this area, didn't he? Which meant it was safe to assume he knew what to do, wasn't it? It was all a haze of bewildering sweetness, but there didn't seem to be any actual problem. Natsume, for his part, had no objections to how things were going between them. Even if, say, a small voice inside him pointed out that Natori hadn't kissed him again since that night. Probably the way of adulthood called for restraint.
Natsume eventually shelved these worries, although he couldn't help occasionally retrieving them to mull over. One meeting at a time, he told himself.
*
"Wh - what?" he heard himself ask, his voice unsteady.
"I," Natori began, and paused. "Like you." He sounded almost contemplative, as if he was trying out lines from a script. But there wasn't a hint of sparkle anywhere.
Now he cocked his head to one side. "Natsume?"
"What on earth's gotten into you, Natori-san?" Natsume finally managed, his face on fire. He picked up the book he'd dropped from the floor and turned away, flipping its pages determinedly. "Are you - are you feeling all right?"
"I'm not sure," Natori said, dryly. "I've never said this before, you know."
Natsume dropped the book again, and stared at him.
"That can't be true."
"I've said it for the camera," Natori said defensively. "Not, well." Hesitance coloured his face. "In real life."
There was another pause.
"Are...are you serious?"
"Do you think I'd embarrass myself like this if I wasn't?" Natori replied, a touch peevishly.
"I'm sorry!" Natsume gulped, wishing he could press a cold towel to his cheeks. "I, I just. Didn't expect this."
"Why not?"
"How should I know? I thought that was how things worked!"
"What do you mean, 'things'?"
Natsume glared at him. "Don't ask when you already know!"
"No, I'm not actually sure I do." Natori sighed, taking off his glasses, and put his own book down. He got up from where he had been sitting some distance away, leaning against the wall, and moved to sit beside Natsume, his eyes serious.
"I like you, Natsume," he said, for the third time, very gently.
"I know! I know." Natsume buried his face in his hands; it felt like it would never cool down. "I know...so you can stop saying it. Please?"
"If you want," Natori said, furrowing a brow. "But don't you have something to tell me too?"
Natsume, instinctively understanding, and unwilling to comply right away, shot him another glare from between his fingers.
"Why are you being like this, all of a sudden?"
"It's not sudden," Natori said, patiently. "I just need time to think about 'things', as you call them. But I also want to do things properly, especially when they involve you."
He reached out and tugged Natsume's hands away from his face, holding them tight.
"I wasn't wrong to say it, was I? Natsume."
Something in his voice made Natsume's heart beat faster. He shook his head, unable to look Natori in the eye.
"I wish I was better at this," Natori said, half-smiling at his downcast face. "But again, I've never done this before."
"I haven't either," Natsume mumbled.
"It sounds self-serving, maybe. But I wanted to be honest with you. The way you've been with me. I didn't want to feel I could only say this to actresses on screen. And, besides...I wanted to make sure."
"Why? You know, Natori-san." Natsume protested. "Don't you? I - I'm not that difficult to understand, am I?"
Not as much as you are, he managed to refrain from adding. He sounded desperate, he knew, but this wasn't anything he'd imagined would happen, and he was a few steps away from panicking.
Natori's fingers tipped his chin up, firmly but gently. Their eyes met, and Natsume swallowed; their faces were suddenly a lot closer than they'd been moments ago. He couldn't help noticing a dark blot peeping out from under Natori's collar: a small, saurian spectator.
"Incantations work only when they're said out loud, Natsume. The voice is a channel of power. It isn't any use just thinking about the words. That's why you need to speak, too, when you return names."
Natsume nodded, despite himself. It sounded convincing when put like that. Trust Natori to know how to explain things, he thought, even as he also pictured Nyanko-sensei rolling his eyes at the gullibility of human children.
He could feel himself giving in. If Natori wanted this, he decided, he didn't have any good reason to refuse. He'd already trusted Natori with so much. It didn't make sense to hold back on something that wasn't as complicated as he'd thought. Something which, he now sensed, mattered as much as the movies and his schoolmates said it did, if not quite for the same reasons.
Natsume took a deep breath, willing himself to be calm. Then he shut his eyes and said it, including Natori's name. The words left his mouth, soft but clear.
When he opened his eyes again, Natori was smiling at him, his expression tinged with uncharacteristic shyness. Natsume felt his insides turn to liquid caramel, at the same time he was gripped by a distinct urge to push Natori away and make a run for it.
Natori was beginning to say something. Natsume fought the latter impulse by the simple expedient of leaning forward and cutting him off with a well-placed mouth.
After a few moments Natori pulled back, arching a brow at him.
"You're not difficult to understand, Natsume," he said at last. "But you always surprise me."
"I'm not a script, Natori-san."
"I don't make sweethearts out of scripts, or with people in scripts, Natsume."
Natsume flushed to the roots of his hair, and Natori beamed, sparkling.
*
Perched on the Fujiwaras' roof, outside Natsume's window, two figures had been observing this exchange for the last few minutes.
Hiiragi looked at Nyanko-sensei. Nyanko-sensei looked back at Hiiragi.
"Perhaps you'd better get dinner somewhere else tonight," Hiiragi suggested.
"I think I'd better move out, while I'm at it," Nyanko-sensei muttered.