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To call Natsume lonely would be an understatement.
“Lonely” implies one simple emotion, but what he feels is more than just one singular thing and it’s far deeper than he knows how to express. It’s a need. A scrambling desperation that runs deep within him, constantly begging for more every moment that he’s awake.
It is an ache that can’t be absolved simply by being with others. It calls out for an intimacy deeper than he’s ever known, one that is maybe deeper than even possible. He wants to know somebody on a level that usually only they would know themselves.
It’s not romantic, or attractive. It’s desperate and ugly and Natsume knows that it’s also just the huge hole in his chest begging to be filled with something. He’s achingly lonely in a way that his parents and Sora and the Oddballs can’t fulfil. He loves them, dearly so, but those relationships aren’t the intimacy he’s craving.
Natsume needs more.
And because nothing can ever be fair, it just had to be Tsumugi that he ended up projecting that onto. Someone who is hesitant to give much at all and even then seems to be unable to help himself from making things over-complicated. It makes it so hard to be around him sometimes.
If only Tsumugi wouldn’t say such nice things while using such a condescending tone that it made Natsume’s skin crawl. If only he wouldn’t use the nickname he knew Natsume hated.
If only he wouldn’t grow his hair out like that but then refuse to admit it was because of their promise.
God.
The red string of fate, huh.
He wants to take that string and wrap it around them both until it’s so tight that Natsume can say for certain that Tsumugi won’t leave him ever again.
It isn’t fair.
Why is it so hard for Natsume to just communicate what he wants? To be vulnerable, to open up about his real desires, his fears, everything weak and vulnerable inside of him. There’s nothing more he would want than for someone to hear him out and accept that part of him, but every time he tries to verbalise it, Tsumugi makes too much of a deal about it and it becomes too awkward.
And before Tsumugi, Natsume had always thought of jealousy as something below him but, as it turns out, it very much isn’t.
He even gets jealous when he catches the way Tsumugi still looks at Eichi, which is ridiculous because Tsumugi had chosen to leave and he’d chosen to be with Natsume instead. Yet that insecurity eats away at him more viciously each time he has the displeasure of passing the student council president in a hallway.
Natsume was the one who Tsumugi had stood by when the war had come to an end, after he had willingly left Eichi alone on stage once their final performance was over. But was that only because he felt obligated too after the pain he had caused Natsume and those around him, wasn’t it?
… No, that was different. Despite the contract binding him and Eichi together, Tsumugi had happily proclaimed that he did everything in the name of friendship. He’d even gone as far as to dismiss the contract’s importance entirely with a smile on his face, brushing it off as a formality and claiming that he had only ever worked with Eichi because it’s what a good friend should do.
If somebody had asked him why he was staying with Switch now, Natsume wonders, would he answer in a similar way? Would he giddily smile and tell people that they were simply friends in a unit together?
Or was it different? If there were no debt to be repaid, if fine had never hurt people in their attempt at revolution, would Tsumugi still be by Eichi's side, signing contracts without thinking to read them?
The insecurity eats at Natsume constantly. He doesn’t know and he never will. He certainly can’t ask.
Sometimes, although he doesn’t like to admit it, Natsume wishes for a relationship similar to what Tsumugi’s had been with Eichi in the past. If it were him, he would reciprocate everything. It wouldn’t have to fall apart and neither of them would have to leave the other.
He knows it’s wrong. He knows that the way Tsumugi had offered everything he had to Eichi was unhealthy and if it had been mutual it wouldn’t have been any better. He knows that it’s dangerous, that codependency is a terrible thing and that a good relationship doesn’t require giving so much.
And even then he still finds himself wanting a similar thing.
To openly devote yourself to someone. To offer them every part of yourself, knowing that you would get every part of them back. To dedicate yourselves to understanding each other.
To be understood and wanted and for it not to matter what flaws you have because you know all of theirs too.
Wouldn’t that be safe?
Sure, it would be wrong. But Natsume wouldn’t ever have to feel lonely or unloved or unaccepted again, nor would Tsumugi.
…
Sometimes, Natsume thinks about kissing him, too. He’s never particularly had any interest in it before and he can’t say he’s exactly dying to know what Tsumugi would taste or feel like, but he craves the sheer intimacy of a kiss. Of closing the distance between them completely and of the implications for their relationship. Of, in willingly choosing to be intimate, showing vulnerability and receiving it in turn.
Naturally though, Natsume doesn’t make this desire known. He doesn’t make any of his thoughts known and he knows that as long as he stays in this state, he can’t. Natsume doesn’t have the sense to completely squash his silly, insecure cravings for unrealistic intimacy but as long as he yearns for things he knows he doesn’t truly want, he doesn’t let himself try to obtain them either.
The hole in Natsume’s chest is covered up, although not filled, because he hopes that in ignoring it he can either make it disappear eventually or fill it in another way.