Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The thing is, Satoru kind of absolutely loves Natsume. It’s not even really a secret.

Kitamoto will always know him better than anyone, and Taki and Tanuma are the best school buddies a guy could ask for, but Natsume is somethingspecial.

“Heeey!” he calls across the room the second a dusty blond head appears in the doorway. “You finally showed up!”

A few of their classmates shoot him long-suffering looks, and an exasperated Tsuji says, “You see him every day, Nishimura. Tone it down a little.”

But Natsume smiles, his face going soft the way it does for Touko and Taki and his ugly cat, and says, “Good morning” so fondly that everyone else just sort of sighs and leaves them to it. His voice turns teasing when he adds, “You’re gonna get us thrown out one of these days, you know.”

“Their loss,” Satoru announces. “We’ll just take the party with us!”

It makes Natsume laugh, a sunny sound, and Satoru grins at him. Just like that, he thinks, it’s going to be a good day.

The bag in his lap is bursting with promo posters and demo CDs, the kind of painfully exclusive merchandise that would make him the envy of every person on every Natori Shuuichi fansite. Of course they’d never believe that Natori handed him the bag himself, in person, with a warm smile.

And of course, Satoru knows the only reason he got the VIP treatment was thanks to Natsume’s gentle presence at his side.

He’s eager to go through the contents of the goodie bag—he hasn’t had a chance to look yet, afraid to drop it in the hustle and bustle of the crowd at the station—but even now, in the middle of the long train ride home, with the rest of the car all but empty, Satoru can’t bring himself to open it.

He can’t bring himself to move at all. Or even breathe too hard.

Because Natsume is asleep, with his head on Satoru’s shoulder. His hair is soft under Satoru’s cheek, and his breath is warm. Satoru’s arm was stretched out along the back of the bench when he dozed off, and now—very gingerly—he brings it closer, curling around Natsume’s shoulders.

Just in case the tracks get bumpy. Just to make sure he won’t slip down the seat or bump his head.

Natsume’s cat is on the bench on his other side, staring sidelong at Satoru with judgmental green eyes.

“I didn’t do anything!” he hisses at it, hardly more than a whisper. After a long moment of mutual glaring, it heaves a put-upon sigh and settles in for a nap. Well—whatever. Satoru didn’t need its approval, anyway.

They get a few odd looks as people get on and off at every station, but Natsume sleeps right through most of the trip, and Satoru can only find it in his heart to wake him when theirs is the next stop.

“Rise and shine, sleeping beauty,” he says lightly, poking Natsume’s forehead. “Or do you wanna ride the line all the way back to Higasaki?”

“Higasaki, please,” he murmurs without budging an inch. Satoru grins at the top of his head.

“Dude, how long have you been awake? My arm is like, numb.” It isn’t really, but it’s worth lying about when Natsume finally wakes up all the way and blushes red to the roots of his hair. He jerks away with a babbled, “oh my god I’m so sorry” and Satoru laughs and laughs and laughs.

“You should have woken me up the second I fell asleep on you!” Natsume is still griping ten minutes later, on the dark walk home. His face is still flushed faintly pink, and his shoulders are bunched up by his ears, and Satoru is hopelessly enamored by all his weird social failings and prickly temper. He can’t help smiling, totally without cruelty, as Natsume stops short at the point where their paths divide and says goodbye in clipped tones.

“See you, Natsume,” Satoru replies warmly. “If you’re still mad tomorrow, I won’t even steal out of your lunch box, okay?”

Satoru can see it, the moment he relents. Can never hold a grudge for longer than a heartbeat, that Natsume. He gives for Satoru, the way he always does, and finally smiles back.

No matter what anyone says, there’s no way Satoru is monopolizing Natsume’s free time. Not with all those secret shenanigans he gets up to with Taki and Tanuma. Not with all the times they pack up and go fishing with Kitamoto.

No way. It’s rare for Satoru to have Natsume all to himself. And that’s exactly why his stomach has started doing this unpleasant twisty thing when it’s just the two of them in a corner booth of a restaurant, just the two of them in a row of squeaky theater seats—when Natsume smiles over the top of his drink and offers him his last bite of dessert, when Natsume’s hand brushes his on the shared armrest between them as the lights in the theater go down. 

There’s no other reason for it, right?

“Thanks for inviting me out tonight,” Natsume says. “I needed that.” 

He’s still pale, but not as pale as he was this morning. The circles under his eyes seem less pronounced, too, where they stand together under the yellow glow of a buzzing streetlight. He looks better. 

“We’ll do it again,” Satoru blurts without thinking. “Soon. This weekend. We’ll do it again, you and me.”

Natsume softens, starting in his eyes and ending in the curve of his smile. 

“Goodnight, Nishimura,” he says fondly. It isn’t a no.

“Touko-san said it was alright if I stay the night,” Natsume says quietly, handing Satoru’s cellphone back. “She doesn’t want me coming home in all this rain. But—are you sure it’s alright with your mom? She seemed—”

“Nah, she’s always like that, it’s okay,” Satoru says, waving a hand. “Besides, she likes you.”

“She does?” Natsume looks unfairly surprised by that. “Um. That’s good. Why, though?”

“I guess she hasn’t forgotten about that time I got hurt and you carried me out of the woods on your back, all the way to the hospital,” Satoru says dryly. “I haven’t forgotten either, by the way. It’s a pretty memorable thing that happened.”

Natsume flushes, and looks down at his hands. “That wasn’t anything special. And it was so long ago.”

“Oh, shut up and go take a bath,” Satoru says without cruelty, throwing a pair of pajamas at him. Natsume catches them with a sideways grin and does as he’s told, closing the door behind him silently. 

Satoru finishes cleaning his room and dragging out a spare futon from the linen closet in the hall and setting it up for his impromptu guest in the time it takes Natsume to finish up in the bathroom. 

“Oh, I would have helped with this if you would have waited,” comes the reproving voice at the door, and Satoru rolls his eyes, glancing up with his mouth open around a retort. 

He snaps it closed, so fast it hurts his teeth. 

Natsume, warm and clean from his bath, in Satoru’s rumpled pajamas, damp hair curling slightly with clinging moisture. He tilts his head a little, a big question mark all but visible in his eyes. 

“Nishimura? You okay?”

“Fine,” he says lamely. “Yes. Good. Time for bed.” 

He normally counts himself lucky that Natsume seems to find his shortcomings charming—but in this case, he kind of wishes he could sink through the floor and disappear. Because his stupid stammering makes Natsume laugh, muffling the sound in the towel draped around his shoulders, and it’s altogether much too much for Satoru to process all at once. 

“Time for bed,” he says again, with more determination. He can feel his face burning and a little bit wants to die when Natsume smiles indulgently at him, soft and sweet in his borrowed clothes, in Satoru’s bedroom. 

He reaches up and yanks on the cord of the overhead light, and the amused shape of Natsume’s mouth is the last thing he sees before the room goes dark. 

“See you in the morning,” his friend says wryly, and Satoru mumbles something back through his hands. 

Natsume wakes up slowly, as though his dream relinquishes its hold on him reluctantly, a finger at a time. His long eyelashes stir and open around warm amber eyes, hazy and distant with sleep. He lays that way for a handful of long, unhurried moments, reorienting himself to the world. 

The early sunlight from the window above Satoru’s bed is bracketed by the blinds, and falls in broken bars across the floor. Natsume’s eyes burn an impossible gold in that light. 

He hardly looks human. He hardly looks like he should be in Satoru’s bedroom, in Satoru’s loose-fitting T-shirt, rubbing an elegant hand through a fluffy cloud of bedhead.

“Hi,” he murmurs, when he notices Satoru is awake already.

Weak to his bones and helplessly charmed, Satoru musters what might pass for a smile and whispers back, “Hi.” 

Chapter Text

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 thatNatsume 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.

Chapter Text

Natsume is really easy to hurt. In the almost two years he’s been here, Satoru has seen Natsume be hurt, has encountered people from Natsume’s old life who decided to show up in his new one and take advantage of his soft nature, throwing words at him that were cruel enough to really stick.

Satoru hates those people. He hates that he’s acted just like them once before.

“Are the people around you really that useless?” he yelled at Natsume one day, nothing but a few scant inches and the quiet of the library between them—yelled at Natsume and his painfully wide eyes and transparent expression, like there was any way Natsume could have deserved that.

The worst part is that Satoru sort of missed his chance to apologize for that day. After a disorienting trip to and from the forest, most of which he doesn’t remember, and then waking up in the hospital with his mother fussing at his bedside, Natsume slipped seamlessly back into Satoru’s life as though their friendship had never trembled.

It felt like a kindness at the time, but Satoru can’t forget that it happened.

And the closer he and Natsume become—every night he spends at the Fujiwara’s house, every lunch they share on the rooftop, every singular instance of Natsume laughing, smiling, rolling his eyes that makes this warm pulpy nameless mess living in the pit of Satoru’s stomach squirm gleefully—the worse Satoru feels about being so needlessly mean so long ago, over an origami book.

Natsume is easy to hurt, but it’s also easy not to.

It’s easy to spare his feelings once you learn how to navigate his pitfalls, once you’ve been friends with him long enough to recognize the difference between a smile and an empty slant of his mouth. At this point, Satoru thinks he could probably tell what Natsume is thinking from fifty paces away, with one eye closed, in the dark.

It’s so easy Satoru doesn’t know why everyone doesn’t just—do that.

And he figures, with knowing Natsume so well, it’s going to be the easiest thing in the world to make sure Satoru never hurts him again.

It’s not.

“You gotta pick something, you know,” he says one day, when Natsume hesitates for the hundredth time over the career path form that’s been blank since the day he transferred in. “It’s not like you can stay here forever.”

And somehow, Satoru thinks, watching his words cut through Natsume’s unguarded expression like a knife, that might have been the meanest thing he's ever said to him.

At times like these, he goes to Kitamoto.

But it’s not reassuring, the way Kitamoto buries his face in his hands and breathes in for a controlled five seconds and out again for just as long. If anything, the icy pit in Satoru’s stomach sinks a little deeper, because Kitamoto only does little breathing exercises when Satoru has done something particularly thoughtless.

“That might have been the meanest thing you ever said to him,” Kitamoto finally says, muffled. Satoru nods miserably.

“That’s what I told me. He looked really—hurt.”

Something in his tone makes Kitamoto look at him, hands falling to rest on the tabletop between them slowly. He can’t look his friend in the eye, staring at his own hands where they’re balled into scared fists in his lap, and so he starts when Kitamoto touches his arm.

“You didn’t mean to,” Kitamoto says fairly. “At the end of the day, Natsume knows that.”

“But I don’t want him to do that thing where he pretends like nothing happened,” Satoru replies quickly. “He’ll do that, he’ll just show up at school tomorrow smiling like everything’s just fine, and I don't—want that. I want to apologize. But I gotta know where I went wrong, or what’s the point?”

Kitamoto sits back in his chair. There’s an unfamiliar gleam in his eyes. It matches the beginnings of a smirk tugging smally at one side of his mouth.

But all he says is, “Okay, Satchan. I’ll tell you what I know.”

For all his dozens of layers and barbed wire fences and secretive smiles, Natsume is practically see-through. His steps falter when he comes around the corner and spots Satoru, where Satoru is planted, unmoving, in front of the school gate. Something fleeting darts through his expression like a handful of startled minnows.

Then he smiles, and lifts a hand. “Good morning, Nishimura. Sorry for taking off on you yesterday, I just—”

Satoru moves in the second he’s close enough, and snatches up his hands. A few of students around them give them odd looks, but a few others are from their homeroom—all they do is roll their eyes and nudge the rest of their peers into walking away.

Natsume starts. Satoru leans in, the way he did months and months ago, with probably the same dark scowl on his face from that time, for all he knows. But this time, he’s angry at himself. This time, he’s not looking at Natsume with the intention of hurting him.

He doesn’t think he’s capable of looking at Natsume like that again.

“I’m the one who’s sorry,” he says. “You don’t have to cover for me. I said something dumb and hurt your feelings. Only this time, I’m fixing it.”

Confusion filters through Natsume’s surprise, an almost visible ‘this time?’ floating like a thought bubble above his head, but Satoru doesn’t give him the opportunity to derail this very important conversation.

It’s tricky to do with both his hands wrapped around both of Natsume’s, but Satoru manages to bow at the waist anyway, and all but yells, “I’m really sorry!”

“Nishimura,” Natsume says, stricken. He’s tugging on their hands. “Nishimura, don’t do that. It’s okay.”

Satoru looks up. There’s a few people still watching them, grinning without cruelty, but Satoru only has eyes for the uneven flush on Natsume’s face. That seamless smile from moments ago is gone to worlds unknown and now he looks nervous and uncertain and a little embarrassed, still trying to pull Satoru back upright.

“It’s not okay,” Satoru says, straightening anyway. “And it’s okay that it’s not okay. You can be mad at me.”

He squeezes Natsume’s hands a little tighter, trying to impress how serious he is into his recalcitrant friend.

“You can stay here forever if that’s what you want,” Satoru says, loud and firm and undeniable. “Of course you can. You could get a job here and live here for the rest of your life, and no one would ever make you leave.”

Natsume’s eyes are wide and glassy. It’s hard to look at him, but Satoru does it anyway. Talking to Kitamoto made Natsume’s odd reluctance to part with this town make sense, and Satoru regrets ever making him feel like it might only be another temporary stop. 

“Or you could go away to school, and open up all those opportunities for yourself that you said the Fujiwaras want for you, and you could come back and visit them all the time. Just like how I’ll come back and visit my family, and the Kitamotos, and all my favorite spots here in the country when I get homesick.”

The first period bell is ringing. Neither of them move.

“This place will always be here, and we’ll always be welcome back, no matter how far away we go,” Satoru tells him, meaning it. “Your parents will be right here when you come to see them. You’ll be right here when I come to see you. That’s what home is, and it’s not going anywhere without you, Natsume. No matter what stupid stuff I say.”

Natsume ducks his head and nods, fringe falling into his eyes. Satoru can’t see his expression, hopes that wet sheen in his eyes hasn’t given way to tears—but when Satoru gives a testing tug on their hands, Natsume crosses that single step between them and leans in for a hug.

“Apologies are awesome,” Satoru decides, accidentally out loud.

“You’re embarrassing,” Natsume replies hoarsely. His fingers find footholds in Satoru’s jacket and hold tight.

Chapter Text

Somewhere in the latter half of their third and final year of high school, Natsume comes to a decision.

It's lunch period, and Satoru is digging through his bag for some change for food from the newly installed vending machine on the first floor when Adachi calls across the room, “Nishimura! Someone's here to see you!”

The whole class “ooooh”s, and Satoru looks up from his bag to find Natsume lingering in the doorway. He gives up on finding any change and heads for the hall, giving the snickering Adachi a dirty look as he passes him.

“You can just come in next time, you know,” Satoru points out, stretching his arms above his head. “No one cares. Half of those guys were in our class last year.”

“That's okay,” Natsume says. “I wanted to talk to you alone, anyway.”

Ignoring the automatic way his heart picks up at the implications, Satoru gestures towards the stairs with a flourish. Natsume smiles at him, quietly radiant, and leads the way up to the roof.

“Well, you've got me where you want me,” Satoru says, stepping out into the gray afternoon. It isn't wet yet, but the sky has been threatening rain all day. “What's up?”

Natsume shuffles for a moment, then visibly squares his shoulders. Brushing some of that long fringe out of his eyes, he meets Satoru's eyes bravely and says, “I'm going to college.”

It takes a minute for that to sink in. They haven't talked about their future plans in—months. It always made Natsume act cagey. Satoru had all but given up on having another conversation about this anytime soon.

“You—what? Seriously?” he says dumbly. Natsume's eyes are bright as he nods.

“I told my parents last night.” His smile becomes a touch wider, more pleased, bringing a flush to his cheeks. “They're—really proud. But Touko-san made me promise to visit every weekend, and Shigeru-san wants me to be very careful about the schools I apply to. And they're not letting me move out until I find a decent apartment, since a dorm probably, uh. Wouldn't work. And—apparently there's going to be an “empty nest” thing I have to look out for with Touko-san? But I'm not sure—”

Satoru all but lunges at him, snatching up his hands. “Natsume! Are you serious? You're really going to college?”

He nods calmly, beaming in that blink-and-you'll-miss-it blinding way of his. Satoru, previously reluctantly resigned to parting with this boy when he parted with this town, could just about burst.

“Natsume! That's awesome! We should—hey, let's try to get into the same one!” He tugs on their joined hands, almost vibrating with excitement. “We could study for our entrance exams together! We could even be roommates! Who'd want a dorm when I could share an apartment with you?”

Something affectionate joins the quiet joy in Natsume's expression and he warms with it. The wind picks up, and blows a small leaf into his hair. Satoru doesn't say anything. He hopes it stays there.

“I'd like that,” Natsume says, pretty even with the piece of green in his hair.

“So, the thing is,” Satoru explains, pacing slowly from one end of the room to the other, “I have this friend. And he—they—they're like, probably the best ever. The best ever. You know?”

The voice on the other end of the phone sighs patiently. “Okay.”

“Okay. So, it's possible that, I kind of—you know—I'm kind of—like, ridiculously in love with them.”

Saying the words out loud makes his whole face burn and Satoru buries it in his free hand, even though he's alone in his bedroom with the door firmly shut and the blinds drawn. There are no outside witnesses around for this confession; only an older brother, sworn to secrecy and silence.

“Go on,” Kiyoshi nudges, not unkindly.

“But the thing is—the thing is, I don't think I'm ever gonna tell them that,” Satoru says slowly. His face is still cradled against his palm, the grip on his cellphone turning white-knuckled. “And that kind of sucks.”

Kiyoshi is quiet for what feels like a long time. If not for the soft, tinny music Satoru can hear behind him, he would feel a little abandoned in the silence. His heart is a lump in the bottom of his throat.

“Do you want my advice?” his brother asks in a soft tone.

“No,” Satoru replies quickly. “No advice. Just—”

“Yeah,” Kiyoshi says, “okay.” His voice is more gentle and more fond, now, the way it always was when Satoru was much, much younger. For all that Kiyoshi is a hundred miles away at university, this is the closest Satoru has felt to him in a long time. “That really sucks, little brother.”

It surprises Satoru into grinning, albeit a little wetly. He rubs his eyes, then finally drops his hand, and flops backwards onto his bed.

“Thanks, bro.”

“But you know,” Kiyoshi adds carefully, “he wouldn't hate you if you told him. You know that, right?”

“I know,” Satoru says. And he does. He could upset this friendship they've built and shove a bunch of selfish feelings at him and Natsume would still be as kind, as accepting of Satoru as he's always been.

But he doesn't deserve that.

They're about to take a big step, moving away into the wider world—and it's big for both of them, but its huge for Natsume. This is the first time he's ever left on his own terms, the first time he's had a home to leave behind that he'll miss, and he's already looking over his shoulder before he's even gone. Already missing it before he's had a chance to try anything new.

Now, of all times, Natsume needs something tried and true, something to fall back on when he starts to falter. He deserves to be happy, and safe in his happiness, with people he can count on to not go springing heavy confessions on him at the worst possible opportunities.

So.

At the end of the day, this is fine. This is good. Satoru really just wants to be what Natsume needs, whatever he needs. His dumb crush can sit on the back of the shelf and collect dust for the rest of his life for all he cares. But—

“I just,” he says lamely, “wanted to say it.”

“I understand,” Kiyoshi replies. And it sounds like he does.

He's late, and his sneakers slap across the wet sidewalk as he runs. It's finally raining, just as the heavy gray clouds looming across the sky all day promised, and Satoru was supposed to meet Natsume at the bus depot ten minutes ago.

They're going to the city, to stay with his friend Shibata. There's a mock exam tomorrow for the university they've decided on, and Kiyoshi insisted they should go try their luck and see where they need to improve.

The rain is coming down in sheets, but Satoru can see his friend clearly as he rounds the corner. The street is otherwise deserted, and Natsume's fair hair and white umbrella stand out like a tiny beacon, and Satoru smiles across the street at him, opening his mouth around Natsume's name.

He stops.

His mouth clips shut.

Natsume is laughing, his open umbrella on the ground by his feet. He lifts his hands, fingers spreading open, arms stretching up and out on either side of him, and the rain falls around him in a wide dome. The ground at his feet is dry, the weeds tucked between cracks in the pavement waving briskly in the wind.

His ugly cat sees Satoru first. It blinks, unhurried, and considers him for a long moment with that expression of smiling disdain ingrained in all cats everywhere. Then its smile becomes more of a sneer, and—and impossibly, it speaks. 

“Good luck explaining this away, Natsume.”

Natsume looks down at the cat with a frown, and then looks up, directly at Satoru. Their eyes meet, and in an instant Natsume's laughter disappears. The bubble of dry air around him seems to pop, and rain pours down on him as immediately as a faucet turned on above his head.

At some point, Satoru dropped his own umbrella. The cold feeling of water soaking through his hair and dripping down his face is secondary and far away.

Natsume moves a step forward with jerky, anxious motions. His face is white with fear. “I—I can—Nishimura, listen. What you saw—I can explain it. Please.” 

Satoru stares at this boy he knows so well, at the cat he's carried around in his arms when it refused to walk in the heat, at the rain around them that's beginning to balloon up and away again—as though something big and invisible is standing above and over Natsume, giving him shelter.

Satoru stares, and slowly shakes his head. His breath trembles. Natsume's expression is impossible to look at, so he closes his eyes. And he hides there, in the darkness behind his eyelids, as he says, very quietly, “No.”

Chapter Text

 “I'll see you again on Monday,” Satoru promises, meaning it. The boy clinging to his knee looks up at him with solemn brown eyes that peek wide and lamplike out of a round face. “Hey, don't look at me like that. It's only three days away.”

Words notwithstanding, Satoru crouches and offers one last hug. Susumu lunges for him, attaching to his chest like a limpet, small hands folding into fists in the back of his shirt.

The tiny body in his arms doesn't tremble at a touch anymore, has stopped flinching at every sudden movement, and it only took seven long months and two different foster homes to get to this point.

Satoru is Susumu's third social worker, assigned after the first two washed their hands of him. Susumu is the twenty-sixth or so child to land in a heap of files on Satoru's desk, and quite possibly the most endearing little person Satoru has ever met.

“You're such a good kid,” he says, so full of fierce affection he might come apart at the seams with it. “There's a place for you somewhere, and I'm gonna find it.”

The woman fostering Susumu steps out to take his hand and draw him back into the house, and Satoru tries not to feel bereft as they go.

“See you Monday,” Susumu calls softly over his shoulder, more of a plea than a reminder.

“You're not supposed to get attached,” Satoru reminds himself sternly, for the one millionth time, on his way back to the car. “You're never supposed to get attached.”

It gets harder and harder to leave every day.

When he was in high school, near the very end of his third year, Satoru saw something unbelievable. He saw rain fall around Natsume without touching him, in a clean, wide dome of dry air.

“I can explain it,” Natsume said fearfully. White-faced and trembling, he took a single step forward, begging, “Please.”

And Satoru shook his head.

“No,” he said firmly, even though his voice came out hardly louder than the drumming rain. His hands shook, and he couldn't look Natsume in the face. “I don't want to hear it.”

“Nishimura,” was Natsume's stricken reply, and Satoru clapped his hands over his ears.

“I don't want to hear it!” he all but shouted, eyes screwed so tightly shut that he started seeing stars in the dark. “You're gonna make up a story, aren't you? You're gonna make this go away. Don't do that.”

Silence sat between them, heavy and full. Satoru couldn't risk opening his eyes yet. Didn't dare lower his hands.

“You can keep all the secrets you want,” he said. His voice was too loud. Each word broke free like a gunshot. “Just be honest when you talk to me.”

Because it was too much to be lied to now, when he carried around so much care for this boy. He'd rather be kept in the dark, would rather walk a wide circle around this subject forever, would rather never truly understand what just happened than be lied to.

“And if you can't be honest yet,” Satoru went on, hating how soft and shaky he sounded, “then I can wait.”

Satoru sheds shoes and coat and bookbag at the door and leaves them where they fall, dead on his feet almost as soon as the cool, comfortable air of his apartment wraps its fingers around him. He wanders down the hall, nudges open the bedroom door, and falls into his bed with his eyes closed already.

The curtains at the window are drawn, but the sun is setting so the light is low, and the room is painted in rich red and orange. The bed behind him shifts and fingers settle in his hair.

“Tsuji called six times since you've been gone,” Takashi murmurs sleepily.

“Of course he did.”

“Kitamoto called eight times. I unplugged the phone.”

Satoru grins into his pillow. “They probably think we're gonna try to weasel out of coming to visit this weekend.”

“We promised we'd be there,” Takashi says primly, as though he's not the absolute worse when it comes to avoiding any social interaction at any cost. Satoru rolls his eyes, and then rolls over to look at him, and Takashi blinks when it puts them neatly nose-to-nose.

“We gotta be back by Monday, though,” Satoru says sternly. “I have an important meeting.”

The corners of Takashi's mouth quirk with the beginnings of a knowing smile, but he only nods solemnly and says, “Of course.”

He's golden and beautiful in the dying sunlight. Sometimes Satoru can hardly believe he's his.

“You can wait?” Natsume repeated slowly, sounding a little odd for reasons Satoru didn't have the mental capacity to guess at at the time.

He nodded, still holding his hands over his ears, still squeezing his eyes shut.

“Yeah. Forever, probably. So if you can't ever talk to me about this, that's fine, I guess. That's okay. You're off the hook. I'll still wait.”

Satoru lost the sound of Natsume’s footsteps to the rain, and jumped at the cold fingers that suddenly curled around his hands. His eyes shot open, and Natsume was half an arm's length away without any warning, staring at Satoru like Satoru was something totally impossible.

“Why?” It came out so urgent and so clear, it hardly felt like a question. Natsume looked equal parts stupefied and stubborn, like he’d weather a storm to get his answer. 

“Because I want to,” Satoru said, trying to summon frustration to stand in the way of this aching sadness. The effect of his scowl was probably ruined somewhat by the wet fringe dripping into his eyes, but he scowled anyway. “I want to do everything with you. I want to go to a stupid college with you and live in a stupid apartment with you and pay stupid bills with you and keep a million stupid secrets with you, because I like you, and that's what stupid people do with the stupid people they like!”

Natsume's grip on Satoru's hands tightened. His mouth trembled. But his eyes were blazing with something tiptoeing the line between disbelief and wonder, and the words that tumbled out of his mouth were a soft, certain, endlessly hopeful, “I like you, too.”

And the very careful way he smiled at him was the same way he always smiled at him, with that warm indulgence and that warm affection that made their classmates roll their eyes, that made their friends trade knowing looks with each other, that made Satoru flush and preen like a cat in a patch of sunshine.

Oh, Satoru thought.

Oh.

“I’m an idiot,” he realized.

“Me too,” Natsume said fairly.

“I wasn't gonna tell you,” Satoru said, sounding weak to his own ears. He was too stunned to do more than stare as Natsume closed that last step between them.

“You would have figured something out,” Natsume said, with a faith in him that felt totally unfair.

“You brats are gonna miss your bus,” Nyanko-sensei said grumpily from somewhere behind them. It was much easier to ignore a talking cat than Satoru would have guessed, and he did exactly that.

Because Natsume's arms were around Satoru's waist and his face was tucked neatly into Satoru's shoulder, and he only pressed closer when Satoru dared to press his lips against his hair. And it was the best thing ever, even with as cold and wet as the whole situation was, and Satoru probably could have happily ignored the entire literal end of the world just then.

After a few moments, though, the rain above them stopped even while the rain around them continued to pour in heavy sheets, and Natsume looked up at something Satoru couldn't see.

Quietly brave, he said, “She likes you.”

And Satoru clutched him that much tighter, trying to remember how to speak through such a surge of unrelenting, remarkable joy.

“Tell her I said thanks,” he managed to say, and he meant it.  

A decade later, the year Satoru turns twenty-seven, it's on a similarly rainy afternoon that he signs the last of a truly intimidating stack of legal forms.

“Thank you, Natsume-san,” the woman across the desk from him says with a smile. “That should do it.”

And when he goes home, it's to find Susumu curled up around Nyanko-sensei on the couch, the credits of a cartoon movie rolling across the television screen. Takashi is flipping through takeout menus at the kitchen counter, long hair pulled up out of his face.

For the last two years Susumu has insisted on growing his dark hair out to match. It's currently a fluffy mess around his head while he sleeps, and it's going to be a royal pain to brush out again later. It's adorable.

Takashi looks up as Satoru steps inside, and straightens. The restless tapping of his fingers is the only thing that gives away his nerves. “How'd it go?”

“The name change finally went through,” Satoru says, beaming, as he flops a folder full of proof on the counter. “He's gonna go bouncing off the walls when we tell him.”

Takashi smiles back, more of a knee-jerk reaction than anything else, and then eyes the folder warily.

“You know there are ugly connotations to it, don't you?” Takashi says for the seven millionth time, give or take. “We'd have been much better off taking your name, Satoru. Mine is dangerous.”

“Sure it is,” Satoru says agreeably, propping his elbow on the counter and his chin in his hand. “But we want it anyway. ‘Cause we love you, and we’re proud to be your family.”

Takashi colors and glances away quickly. 

“You're hopeless,” he mutters, trying to look irritated.

“Yeah,” Satoru says, totally at peace with the fact, “I really am.”