He's Running Through My Eyes

[selenias]

Title: He's Running Through My Eyes
Fandom: Natsume Yuujinchou
Characters/pairing: Tanuma/Natsume, preslash
Rating: all audiences
Word Count: 7657

Summary: Winter break. Natsume, Tanuma, something about the migratory flights of birds and the inevitably of colliding into each other eventually.

Notes: Title from Julia Holter's album Loud City Song.  

- - - -- - - - -  - - - - - - - - -

 

"Would that be dangerous, to not look while being looked at?"
-- Helen Oyeyemi

 

- - -

Tanuma lifted the birdhouse off the post for inspection.

 

“Birds are disgusting,” Ponta interjected, perched on the fence right beside it. “Sleeping in their own crap. Buildings nests out of their own barf. Don’t enable them by fixing that.”

 

“They don’t mean to be,” he replied, but he was only half listening.

 

Every winter, after the birds that wouldn’t be wintering over had migrated south to the more temperate side of the island, Tanuma and his father went around the temple and put away everything for storage in the back shed. It was one of the few times he witnessed his father with a power tool, unscrewing the back wall of the bird house, pulling out the nest from the spring and late summer. It revved in the air, noisy and hungry, reminding him that he wasn’t as tucked away in the country as he thought.

 

But the battery hadn’t charged right, so Tanuma was working the screws loose with the screw driver he found in the toolset in the closet beside the genkan, crouched at the far corner of the yard on the balls of his feet, mud on his knees, hoping they weren’t already occupied by mice. Wouldn’t be a first time.

 

“Don’t you think you should just leave them? Do it later. It’s cold out.” The cat shook a paw at him, then tucked it away again. At this angle, he looked like he had no limbs, just a round ball of mochi. Tanuma supposed neko-gami usually were depicted as round, wealthy creatures.

 

“Then go inside, Ponta. You don’t have to stay out here with me.”

 

“Natsume would starve me. Forget it.”

 

“Did I worry him?”

 

“You really need me to tell you that he’s always worried?”

 

The screw tipped sideways and Tanuma grabbed it before it disappeared into the grass, sighing as he pulled the side off.

 

Bird down stuck to the wall, fuzzy white feathers and black fluff. Tanuma scraped it off with a putty stick that had also resided in the closet. He was slightly disappointed that he had waited so long to clean them. Dust in February was never good to his sinuses.

 

“Humans build homes for themselves and for birds, but no other creature. That’s weird.”

 

He plopped the bird box onto a burlap sack and gave it a good shake. Dirt and thin, tall grasses tumbled out after it. He tried not to breathe the dust in too deeply. “Dog houses exist, too.”

 

“To shame them! Everyone knows that, fool.” Ponta’s grumpy old-man voice was always stronger when he was being critical of something.

 

“It’s a temporary home, for when their owners aren’t there,” Tanuma explained. He glanced up at the fence. The cat wasn’t normally so beast-like, but he could see it now -- a shadow stretching across the yard and over the fence toward the first patch of forest, gray clouds as patchy as the light. He blinked. “I suppose if the dog misbehaved...” he trailed off.

 

Ponta’s eyes were a little too abyssal sometimes. He jumped off the fence and circled around Tanuma’s legs, only to plop beside his knee. Tanuma rubbed behind his white ears carefully. He couldn’t explain the feeling to himself if he tried.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Do you have any plans for break?”

 

Tanuma clutched the phone to his ear, hands wrapping around the cord, round and round and round. Tanuma was usually the one that called, but he wondered if Natsume’s courage was quickly surpassing his own that he’d let the Fujiwaras hear him prattle about wanting to be with someone else from the kitchen. He could picture it: Natsume holding the receiver with both hands and talking as low as his voice could go. To be as small as possible, as small as the mouse in the bird house he’d watched bounce anxiously across the yard.

 

“Not really. My father’s gone for another week. We might go somewhere when he gets back. We might visit Satomi-san.”

 

“Did you -- would you like to hang out?”

 

He was glad Natsume knew how to take initiatve in times like this. “...Do you want to come over? Sorry, I’d come see you, but I don't want to leave the house unattended.” The most dangerous of burglars Tanuma had encountered was the youkai. Though there was an incident when he was twelve, where someone broke windows in the temple. He wondered if it had been a youkai then, too.

 

“No, it’s fine. I’ll see you this afternoon then?” 

 

“Yeah, later.”

 

They were both so eager to please one another, he supposed it couldn’t be helped that he said so little. Better than saying too much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tanuma pulled barely tea from the fridge and watched the liquid sway in the plastic pitcher. They’d been talking about waves all week in physics before break. How sounds were transmitted over great distances. That information was review. Science was interesting, but a distant relative to his reality that wasn’t notable at all.

 

How far could one travel between places? Between a shadow figure and a physical form?

 

Was that the same distance that kept Tanuma from reaching Natsume completely? He wondered.

 

He thought it was. He felt like the dog in the dog house, sometimes. But that was probably how Natsume had felt all his life.

 

Tanuma washed the two plates in the sink he’d made from breakfast that morning, washed his rice bowl, checked the rice maker to make sure he actually had remembered to stick the rest in the fridge and it wasn’t drying out, waiting on him.

 

He had.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ponta raced into the house before Natsume could even take off his shoes, but Tanuma was quick -- he grabbed the white hairball and tucked him into his arms, where he dangled, limp as the statue he was named for.

 

“Puny human, thinking you can man handle me!”

 

Tanuma stroked under his fuzzy white chin. “You’re not resisting at all, Ponta! For such a tanuki you’re pretty similar to most cats.”

 

“He even complains about as much as one,” Natsume interjected, slipping into the guest slippers. He hung his jacket up on the wall beside the row of coats and scarves. Tanuma grinned and started down the long hall. The few local cats he’d seen he’d caught lying in sunny high places, being independent tyrants.

 

“Have you eaten yet? I have leftovers from lunch.”

 

Natsume’s feet tmmp tmmped down the hall. “No,” he said shyly.

 

Well. That was a first.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The thing about bird houses is that they were all temporary homes. Several seasons in stranger homes in distant places left Tanuma with an understanding of how people came and how they left.

 

The spring that he was eleven he stayed with Aunt Satomi for ten days.

 

Ito-san was there, as always, and he was too old to be lead around by the hand anymore, but she knew the quiet nooks of the empty land around the spring, the paths that lead from one shadowed corridor to another, and so Tanuma walked between worlds of light and dark before he knew that such things were composed of different spaces. They couldn’t be liminal for him.

 

It made sense then, Tanuma thought, that he and Natsume would collide eventually.

 

Yatsuhara was a skip and a leap, another rock among stones not unlike the ones Tanuma already understood. Riverbeds all ran into each other like rivers to the sea, and it was the same with people, the migratory flights of birds, and the youkai who on the most fruitful of ocassions left flowers at his door. How those two weeks had passed so fast --

 

“Kaname-kun, come look at this plant. Do you know what this is?” Ito-san had her boots on, and they squelched in the muddy bank of the river that ran through the southern part of Satomi-san’s property. Ferns littered the banks, grasses green and short, not tall enough yet to tickle his knees. A persimmon tree at the corner of the yard drooped under the weight of it’s golden little gems.

 

Tanuma knelt down to examine the plant. “Watercress,” he announced.

 

Ito-san laughed, delighted. She was always laughing. “And you know what we’re going to do with it?”

 

“Garnishes? Soup?”

 

“That’s right.” The stems of the plant were not so tender that he could snap them off, so they cut them with a pocket knife and laid them out in the oval-shaped basket Ito-san carried in her arms. “And never pick the blooming ones; they’re bitter.”

 

Bitterness, as he understood it, was harsh for people who were so sweet.

 

-- Which was perhaps why Tanuma anticipated Natsume to be less jovial, less kind, less -- well, everything.

 

He stood silently by while Tanuma stared into the empty shelves of his fridge, hidden by his body completely occupying the space between door and cavity. He’d be embarrassed if Natsume saw just how horribly low it was. He hadn’t gone shopping since his father left four days before.

 

“I can make tea,” Natsume offered shyly. He knew where everything in the kitchen was.

 

Tanuma pulled the plate of sandwiches out of the fridge.  “Did the youkai drag you off this morning?”

 

“Hm? Well... yeah.” Natsume fiddled with the kettle, unsure, then began filling it with water from the sink. “The mid-ranks have figured out the duration of winter break, so...”

 

“Ha, were they going to keep you the whole time?”

 

“No. I told them I had plans.”

 

“I see. Did they show you anything interesting?”

 

“No. It was just a bird of some kind, but it was gone before I got there. They were pretty upset about it.” The stove clicked on and Natsume lowered the kettle over the open flame.

 

Tanuma fished a plate from the cupboard and wondered what sort of spell had passed him by.

 

 

 

- - -

 

 

 

Ponta pawed at the wooden fence, then leaped upward in an impressive display of agility. It was with that that he had exerted himself for the day.

 

“I’m almost done, Ponta. I promised my father I’d take care of this while he was gone.”

 

“Hurry it up.”

 

Tanuma wiped dirt from his face with his handkerchief and eyed the last batch of birdhouses. Perhaps his father had gotten overeager in his attempt to house a small flock. It seemed like there were so many more left to take apart. One on each post in the front yard, several scattered out by their respective rooms, a handful around the temple, where visitors in spring could watch the birds flutter from home to forest and back again.

 

“Hey Ponta, do youkai have houses?” he asked, then abruptly felt embarassed. Not like ours, of course.

 

Ponta squinted at him. He jabbed a chubby paw into the rotting wood grain and a dangerous looking splinter peeled up. “I suppose. Most youkai live in places that feeds their particular energy. The youkai in Yatsuhara are forest spirits, for example.”

 

“I see.” Tanuma popped the bird house from the post and unrolled the burlap sack again. “Where do you consider your home to be?”

 

Is Natsume your temporary residence? Do you care for him the same way the rest of us do? Where were you before he came along?

 

“The place with the best hospitality, of course! The Fujiwaras have room to improve. Their liquor cabinet is practically empty.”

 

“You probably drained it,” he grumbled, then protected his head from the cat’s short reaching paws, laughing.

 

Tanuma glanced at his watch, then at the soft pink color in the clouds. “You should go home before Natsume wonders where you’re at. I think I’m done for the day anyway.”

 

The cat’s eyes merely glittered. “He’ll be here again soon enough.”

 

“Tomorrow?”

 

“Probably, you brat. There’s a youkai in one of these bird houses, by the way. You should quit while you’re ahead.”

 

 

 

- - -

 

 

 

Natsume twirled the screwdriver around in his hands. It was amusing to watch, because as far as Tanuma knew Natsume was the least gifted with using tools. He looked a little too angelic with his morning hair bunched up around his face. It looked like the bobs the tough girls at school would wear, curling toward his chin in golden streaks, making the shape of his face a little more round, his eyes a little more glow-ey. He said he was overdue for a haircut. Tanuma thought he looked fine.

 

“--Tanuma, I think you should let this nest be.”

 

“Huh?” He looked up, startled. Snow crunched under his boots. “Is there a youkai in it?”

 

Natsume nodded. “A very small one. It... it says it would appreciate having a place to stay for the winter that it doesn’t have to rebuild.”

 

“What kind of youkai?”

 

He was quiet, head ducked, listening. “...A spirit from west of here. Oh. It liked the bird feed you put out.” Natsume grinned at him. “Touko-san does the same thing every winter. She likes to see what kinds visit.” 

 

Tanuma walked over and squinted at the nest, but was disappointed when he felt nothing. Maybe he could only notice powerful youkai? That was probably a good thing, or he’d be writhing from headaches all day every day. Natsume said nothing, but shrugged his shoulder reassuringly.

 

“I see. I won’t disturb it then. I hope I didn’t destroy any homes last year.”

 

Tanuma picked up the burlap sack and drew the strings closed. It was amazing how drastically his understanding of the world changed when Natsume -- and the youkai -- came into it. “Well, then I guess we’re done. That was the last one,” he announced.

 

Natsume took another glance at the birdhouse and then shivered. “Good. It’s freezing out here!”

 

They went inside, huddled around the tiny woodstove and poked through books on Tanuma’s shelves. Tanuma made them hot tea, peeled hazelnuts he’d gone picking in the backyard three months before, and they dozed off in each other’s presence.

 

Natsume fell asleep at some point. Tanuma watched his eyelids droop -- and then he’d catch himself, startled, and resume reading like nothing had happened at all. It went on like that for about five minutes, then Tanuma made a noise when Natsume looked like he was going to fall asleep again.

 

“Are you tired? I can put out the futon.”

 

“Ah...” Natsume looked at his lap, then glanced up again, apologetic. “Yeah. Sorry.”

 

Tanuma scratched at the collar of his shirt. “You know you’re welcome to help yourself to anything. I mean...”

 

Natsume smiled then, but it was more with his eyes than his mouth, cheeks pulling up and lashes blending in with his hairline. “Thank you.”

 

Tanuma wasn’t satisfied with that, but he didn’t think too hard about it.

 

He laid out the futon, Natsume took a shower, and then they both climbed into bed, Tanuma sinking into the familiar dip in his mattress -- probably past due for a rotation. He’d do it tomorrow, he decided.

 

“Tanuma. Are you awake?” Natsume’s voice was so quiet he almost didn’t hear it.

 

“Yeah,” he called softly back.

 

Natsume turned silent though, as though suddenly shy. Tanuma rolled over onto his side to stare over the side of the bed. He wasn’t looking at him, but the corner of the room, and Tanuma saw it, then -- water patterns on the ceiling, the shape of a fish floating on by. Were they okay in winter? Could a pond invisible to the rest of the world freeze when the worst of the frost came through?

 

“Some things are without explanation, aren’t they,” Tanuma said. Natsume’s voice was just a hum from his throat, quiet and agreeable, much like the rest of him. He hated to think that Natsume drifted through all these experiences. But he couldn’t, he realized, not when so few saw the same sight. How he must have felt stuck in between so often, living as a human but caught up in the flow of another, more fantastical world.

 

He hoped he wouldn’t choose one over the other.

 

“You said the fish were red?” Tanuma knew he had. He didn’t know what else to say to fill the silence.

 

“Yeah,” Natsume breathed. He tried to picture it. Blue water, red koi, light sparkling on the shouji screen. It gave him confidence.

 

“I don’t think I’m as disappointed as I used to be over not knowing what they looked like.”

 

Natsume craned his head up from his pillow. Moonlight spilled over him too. In the dark of Tanuma’s room, he looked like another shadow on the wall, just the suggestion of a boy, not real at all. There was something about that, too, that Ito-san had said once. How humans were herd creatures, gallivanting toward one another. He thought of himself, staying in a big empty house, his father phone calls and cities away -- how softly the dark called in the halls, and how Natsume spilled over everything.

 

“Good. You shouldn’t feel bad about it. It’s good that you can tell the difference, at least. I see everything so clearly -- I can only distinguish the youkai from humans by what others see. It makes for a lot of disappointment. I used to wish that others could see them, but now...”

 

“Because you want human friends,” Tanuma said. His cheeks warmed when he realized his words. He looked hastily to Natsume, who was staring up at him with wide eyes from his pillow. Right beside his cheek, Ponta stared too. Suspicious, he seemed to say. He cleared his throat. “I mean... I understand. Wanting to be around people who are similar. It must feel... awful, to realize someone isn’t who you thought they were.”

 

Tanuma slunk back into his nest of blankets. “Natsume -- thanks for coming over. Sorry if I said too much again.”

 

They’d wake up in the morning and who knows if either would remember. How they pledged to keep each other’s secret promises on courage alone, drifting through the same sound wave, the same stellar light passing them both by. Natsume was a steadying force. Did he know that at all? He should. He needed to know he was wanted.

 

Natsume’s voice was small, but carried. Tanuma’s ears strained to catch it but the “I like being here with you,” was undeniable.

 

And they were too tired, perhaps, that honesty came so easy when a bridge was presented. The only other house Natsume visited was his own.

 

At moments like these, he was so glad he wasn’t in this big temple all by himself, watching the fish swim on his ceiling alone. He was too spoiled to go back now. And he didn’t want to. He didn’t think things would ever be the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the morning, Tanuma cooked a simple breakfast of rice and eggs, and then they headed east from the temple, down the road for a quarter mile before they headed on a trail that cut through the trees, toward the rice paddies -- and the stream in between that Nishimura and Kitamoto frequented.

 

Tanuma watched Natsume look around dubiously, and so Tanuma mimicked him, looking for the trace of the thing that Natsume was hesitant about. There was just the trees though, the bubbling of the brook, the fish swimming in the shallows, hiding in the shade of the rock. He hadn’t gone fishing in winter for several years, but cabin fever was hard to drown out for too long.

 

Natsume noticed though, and then stilled, face turning red. He set the tackle box down with a thud and readjusted his scarf with great haste. “Sorry, didn’t mean to drift off. There’s nothing here, Tanuma. I was just admiring the view.”

 

“Oh,” he said, then grinned. “I wasn’t sure.”

 

They spent the afternoon fishing. Natsume had gotten particularly skilled during his trips with Kitamoto and Nishimura. He cast the line out about halfway in the river, but there was a breeze, and a heron not so far off, watching them watch it through a cluster of reeds and bubbling water. Wide blue eyes, assessing the fish from the rocks on the bottom, tracing movements as flashy as fireworks underwater. Its stick legs carried it only several feet a time, where it would stop and stoop, turning as still as glass.

 

“He’s probably eating the fish before we can even catch them,” Natsume murmured, pouting. The line drifted downstream and he reeled it in again a little, before it got tangled in the weeds.

 

“Or the kappa visited earlier,” Tanuma replied. Natsume snorted and leaned back in the grass on his hands, fishing pole propped between his foot and a boulder. It was striking when Natsume let his guard down; he wondered if he knew how at peace he looked, and if it was real, and if Tanuma were to ask him he would say it. He didn’t though.

 

In the end, Ponta chased the great gray bird off, and it honked its indignance as it flew for the next body of water.

 

He caught two fat fish to Natsume’s one, but that was plenty for them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They went home soon after. Tanuma gutted and washed the trout in the back yard, knife slicing head toward the tail. Ponta watched him. “What a waste of good guts,” the cat bemoaned. Tanuma considered throwing faucet water on him, but resisted.

 

Natsume was chopping vegetables when Tanuma came in through the back door and kicked off his shoes in the genkan, basket of fish damp from the water and snow on the bottom. Natsume peered over at them, part of a scallion root stuck to his sleeve. “Jeez, you’re good at this stuff.” Tanuma didn’t miss the way his voice sounded a little awed.

 

“Did Kitamoto show you how to clean them?”

 

Natsume shook his head. “We usually release them.”

 

“O-oh! I thought.” Tanuma’s cheek felt entirely too warm suddenly. “Wow, I hope I didn’t startle you when I killed them.”

 

“Tanuma. The number of fish the Kappa leaves on the Fujiwara’s porch is startling; you are not.”

 

Tanuma grinned. “That does make me feel better actually.”

 

“We only ever caught small fish, anyway. Too small to eat.”

 

They shared secret smiles, but then Natsume blushed, and it set off a chain reaction, and instead of talking about it Natsume asked him what bowl he should use for the cornmeal, Tanuma almost dropped the basket in his haste to find it, and so nothing important got talked about at all.

 

 

 

- - -

 

 

 

Herons were common sights in the rice paddies. Folks didn’t like them because they ate the frogs, but Tanuma had figured out long ago that other creatures had to eat too. Ao-sagi looked like guards, the way they stood long and still for large amounts of time, beaks angled down toward the muddy shores. Looking into their eyes was the closest Tanuma felt to looking into the eyes of a yawning abyss. They were excellent hunters. They swallowed their prey whole. And they weren’t loud, flighty creatures; they took great care in trying to disguise themselves.

 

He knew he had been safe at the waters edge though, by the way Natsume trucked along the shore without care. Touko-san must have bought him a new jacket, or it was one of Shigure-san’s old ones, because Tanuma didn’t see him shiver once, despite the beginning of snow twinkling all around again.

 

Natsume looked a bit like a youkai sometimes, too. Too kind, too soft, too pretty to be real.

 

But Tanuma couldn’t say that to someone who was trying so hard to blend in perfectly with the rest of them.

 

 

 

- - -

 

 

 

When it was time for Natsume to leave, Tanuma walked with him. Ponta trudged along in the snow that had appeared during lunch, a thin white blanket of crystal insulation. It continued fluttering down and Tanuma couldn’t stare at the snow for long, for it kept catching on Natsume’s eyeslashes, and like someone had stuck glitter to his face, it seemed to wink at him.

 

Natsume noticed, and this time Tanuma looked away hastily, too quickly -- Natsume stopped walking entirely. His gold eyes regarded Tanuma seriously, face difficult to read.

 

“Tanuma,” he said. “You have something on your face.”

 

“I do?”

 

“Yeah. Want me to get it for you?”

 

Tanuma swallowed. It wasn’t a question of want.

 

Natsume was waiting for his response, face as still as the misty, bright landscape around them -- and Tanuma wished his social skills were better. He had no idea what he was supposed to do in these kinds of moments. The heroine in a shoujo movie would move closer, maybe. Take some initiative to take the burden off the other’s shoulder, because heroines were considerate to everyone around them. But Tanuma was too transfixed by all the things he wanted to say and thought about saying. He wasn’t brave or particularly remarkable at all.

 

It was a good thing that Natsume knew how to adapt to different situations because Tanuma felt like a wall.

 

“I’m sorry,” Natsume blurted out. “That sounded really weird just now, didn’t it? Forget it.”

 

He was going to back out. Tanuma took several hasty steps forward.

 

“N-no! Um, would you show me?”

 

“You want me to?” Natsume’s voice was a little wondering. Tanuma inclined his head, then felt the snow melt against his cheeks. Now this was getting embarassing.

 

“Yeah,” he breathed, a little wondering in return. Natsume’s hand was trembling. Tanuma could tell the moment he swallowed his nerves, because his shoulder stilled, and Natsume’s fingers moved in the direction of Tanuma’s hair. He pulled back with a small branch, flicked it off into the roadside grasses. No way.

 

“I don’t think that’s it,” Tanuma said hoarsely. “There’s definitely another.” He gestured to the other side of his face. “Over here. I can feel it. Can you check?”

 

Natsume’s lips twitched, and he pursed them, considering, eyes roving over Tanuma’s hair with all the seriousness he could muster. “I don’t see it. How did you get a branch in your hair anyway,” he grumbled.

 

“Please look more closely? You definitely have something in yours too, you know.” And that last bit was true. A small piece of river grass in the longer parts of Natsume’s hair stuck out, tiny, the size of a paperclip. What luck. Tanuma reached for it the same time as Natsume, grasping for straws, grasping for --

 

Their fingers bumped, and instead of pulling away, Tanuma waited. If it wasn’t what Natsume wanted... he would tell him.

 

“Hey. Natsume. I um...”

 

Natsume very seriously laid his hand over his own -- and those fingers were cold and slender, curling over the back of Tanuma’s knuckles with a sandpapery lightness that made his heart jump. He didn’t push him away. Didn’t pull him closer. Over his shoulder, Ponta watched them.

 

“Did I get it?” he asked. His smile was as small and fragile and as fleeting as the shadows across Tanuma’s walls. It was precious.

 

“Yeah.” Tanuma breathed through his nose, in out, in out. “You did.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

It turned out that Natsume had cold feet.

 

Tanuma invited himself over after two days of silence, feeling bad about intruding for about five seconds before he spotted Natsume pouting in the Fujiwara’s back yard, dragging branches to the edge of the property that had snapped out of the nearby locust. He looked ruffled, a bit pale, entirely undone. Ponta spotted him and raced over to bat at Tanuma’s feet, chasing him into the space he wasn’t sure he could quite permeate. “Fix it,” he seemed to hiss, then left them, disappearing into the undergrowth.

 

Tanuma took a deep breath and pushed on.

 

They slipped into the forest. Natsume said he got caught up in the moment.

 

Tanuma clenched the sleeve of his long blue jacket until Natsume finally looked at him, a real expression of fear on his face. And Natsume was always thinking ahead, anticipating the moment where something would be taken from him. Tanuma had to remind himself that it drove him to nearly every decision he made; it was why Natsume pushed him away as much as he pulled him in.

 

Tanuma remembered, dimly, Omibashira mansion, Natsume talking over his head, voice trembling like someone who’d just lost their childhood pet. Natori’s voice, saying something important. It felt like a dream.

 

It was a dream. He hadn’t been awake for that bit. But the conversation felt real. His dreams of Natsume were always about his survival -- or the ways in which he failed to reach him. That invisible wall rose like a tsunami between them. He always felt like he didn’t stand a chance against such heights, but --

 

You need people. You need them.

 

Trying to explain that he wasn’t another ghost on the verge of disappearing was so very hard when he felt so small. Dream him was less fragile than the real him that woke up in the morning, flew into a panic, and stumbled to the phone in the hall.

 

Natsume answered on the third ring with enough cheer to make him sag against the wall. He brushed his bangs out of his eyes and forced himself to breathe. He hadn’t had such a visceral dream in months. And he never talked about them.

 

“Tanuma-kun, is there something wrong? You sound stressed. Are you -- did something happen?” Natsume’s voice was a quiet, steadying force. He heard dishes clink in the background. Had they just finished breakfast? 

 

“I’m sorry... I just felt like calling, even though I had nothing in mind to talk about. Sorry. I’m an idiot.” He pushed his bangs out of his hair, feeling the reality of the moment catch up. He hadn’t even slipped on slippers or trudged to the bathroom before he called. Priorities changed. Urgency caught him, too.

 

Natsume didn’t laugh. Several moments passed where he breathed into the phone, then: “Did you have a nightmare?”

 

Tanuma thought. “Not exactly... but you were in it.”

 

“I see. Don’t let it bother you. You know how I am, so whatever happened...”

 

Relief crept in. Tanuma leaned his forehead against the wall and felt a warmth so intense in his chest it burned as hot as the tears in the cold winter wind. “You’re right. I’m just over thinking.”

 

“Kaname, I’m coming over to check on you. I’ll be there soon,” Natsume said gently. And that was enough. The storm dissipated and that was that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Several days later Natsume visited again -- and it was just like any other time.

 

“We’re pretty uninteresting students, aren’t we,” he sighed. Tanuma flipped through his father’s books on birds, bookmarked the page with his finger and looked up. The ao-gami was known for it’s resemblance to ayashii, often called creepy, bewitching by people who observed them. The characters together made the word youkai, and it was a little strange he thought then that he could see the bird so clearly and not merely the shape of it. He didn’t say, you’re definitely the most interesting thing here though it must have shown on his face. Birds were interesting, but not quite. The book slipped shut.

 

“Because we haven’t gone anywhere?” he prompted.

 

“Well. I guess.” Natsume leaned back on his hands, chin tipped back so he was staring at the ceiling just above his head. “Kitamoto’s out of town, Nishimura’s stuck in cram school. Taki’s visiting her brother?”

 

Tanuma couldn’t help it. He laughed, then reached for his tea. “Well. I’m sorry you’re stuck with me. Want to help me shovel snow?”

 

“...Yeah.”

 

“--Or we could just stay here. ”

 

Natsume rubbed his chin, which was a decidedly silly gesture in that he could easily place it on Fujiwara-san’s face, and had Natsume picked it up from him?

 

“Actually...” Natsume began shakily. Tanuma drank his tea and waited. It wasn’t hot anymore, which was good. He was always burning himself. “There’s something I’d like to show you. It’ll involve some hiking, but... the youkai told me about something interesting happening up on the mountain.” He waved his hand toward the door, a vague gesture that meant so much, said so little. Tanuma understood it completely. “You should be able to see it, too,” he tacked on.

 

Tanuma caught his eyes, finally, noticed how wide Natsume’s were, the gold a little too bright, too warm for an icy winter day. It was all those emotions he kept neatly under wraps, leaping to the surface suddenly. He thought of Natsume’s hand over his.

 

“Did the mid-ranks find that thing from before?”

 

“Y-yeah, something like that!”

 

“Sound’s fun.”

 

“Great! I’ll go fetch Nyanko-sensei.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A hundred heart beats later, the great fog of birds lifted over Tanuma’s head. He startled and held perfectly still. Back in the snow bank like this, the cold was definitely coming through his coat. His left side was warm though where Natsume lay still and unmoving beside him, staring up into the icy air, hair streaked with frost by his chin. It was decidedly colder on the mountain than at the base of it, but Tanuma didn’t feel the cold as deep as usual. His legs were warm and felt a bit like soba. Like this he could stay until he was forced to move again.

 

“Woah, there’s so many,” Natsume exclaimed, shielding his eyes to stare at the flock overhead. “I had no idea they passed through here.”

 

“Yeah,” Tanuma murmured back. He’d done this with Ito-san before, right? This was less scary though, because it was Natsume who had lead him here, and even though winter was harsher on his bones than any other season, he felt deeply warm, over saturated, like he’d napped by the stove for too long.

 

At least fifty herons loomed over them, shadows fluttering over the snowy world below. The lake at the top of the mountain was small. It was why, he figured, it was only a partial flock. These birds would leave to find the rest of their kind or better hunting grounds.

 

And as they flew, they sang a ghostly melody that was not unlike the call of a swan -- a mourning, waning tune that only ever said goodbye.

 

Goodbye to them, maybe. Farewell, winter. Hello, spring. He remembered that herons had almost been hunted to extinction for their plumage and because of their ghostly correspondence. He was glad it wasn’t so.

 

“Did you know that they share the same characters as youkai?”

 

“Yes. I think it’s unfair though. They’re not monstrous at all.”

 

“They are sort of mysterious, I suppose.”

 

As the last bird passed them by, Tanuma sat up slowly to watch them disappear. Natsume didn’t move, but he could feel his gaze on his head, examining him for a reaction of some kind, any kind.

 

Tanuma took his hand without looking, which was a bit difficult, considering Natsume still had them folded neatly over himself. “You see some amazing things,” he said quietly. He hoped the awe came through. And it wasn’t even about seeing the birds, but being the one Nastume chose to see them with. That meant something significant.

 

“I didn’t learn about it on my own. Apparently this flock comes through here every winter. Nyanko-sensei mentioned it, but the mid-ranks knew the location.” He slipped his fingers between Tanuma’s, and they stayed like that, neither of them moving.

 

“Youkai like to watch birds?”

 

Natsume made a small noise. “Yeah. When they’ve decided they don’t want to eat them. They’re a bit human that way.”

 

Tanuma considered the implications of that. “Sometimes I think we might be the strange ones. Is that weird?”

 

“No,” he murmured. “I think there are things that can be universally enjoyed.”

 

“Like fireworks.”

 

Natsume grinned, remembering. Tanuma could never forget. “Like fireworks.”

 

“You can see them fine this time, right? No giant youkai blocking the view?”

 

“Kaname,” Natsume said, voice low and pitched. He rolled onto his side. “I wasn’t really watching them anyway.”

 

“I know, Takashi.” His mouth nearly stumbled over the shape of it in his mouth. Tanuma would have to fix that. He’d be more forthcoming, less shy. He’d be honest enough for the both of them. He’d say his name with awe every time until Natsume could trust it for what it was.

 

Natsume’s gloved hand slipped up from his to palm to his forearm, a task a bit difficult for the angle he was laying at -- then up to his shoulder.

 

Tanuma leaned into the kiss when he felt it coming.

 

Natsume’s eyelashes tickled his cheek like a piece of summer grass, like a sigh, like all that. And poems sprang to mind, classical studies, physics class, the study of sound and light and movement -- all those things moving in between, shifting from one plane of thought to another. How soft Natsume’s mouth was against his, how those lips probably hadn’t kissed anyone else, reserved for a moment just like this where they could meet at an equal distance. How, despite the snow and the cold and how nothing was more fleeting than this, warmth came through.

 

Oh, he thought, Natsume’s fingers in his hair, blunt nails combing along his scalp. He breathed in; Natsume’s mouth tasted like light.

 

The flight of birds overhead sounded like heartbeats in his ear. It was a long day already that just kept getting longer. Nobody could have convinced him that for winter break he’d get to kiss Natsume Takashi on a perfect blanket of snow.

 

“I’ve -- been wanting to do this for a while,” Tanuma managed in between kisses. “But I thought -- that might be embarassing to say out loud.”

 

“You could have suggested it -- I might have caught on.”

 

“Well, you did. Just now. Good job.” Natsume protested and then laughed right into his mouth.

 

Tanuma sighed and pulled away, Natsume’s forehead following the motion to keep the distance small. He slid his palm down his narrow shoulders, brushing off snow that clung to him. His jacket was thin enough that they shouldn’t stay for long. He’d managed to avoid falling sick himself before break and it wouldn’t do to have that happen now. He knew well enough that too much exposure to a good thing could have negative consequences.

 

“Thanks for sharing this place with me. It was a good idea.” He hoped it was enough to convey it all. They would have time later for him to say more, and for Natsume too, to say what he really felt.

 

“It was a date, actually!” Natsume blurted out, face rapidly turning red. He didn’t move away though, kept his hand right next to Tanuma’s neck. So awkward a picture they must have made, two boys wrapped around each other on a snowy slope in January.

 

Tanuma couldn’t help it. “I was worried about me, but actually -- you’re the embarrassing one.” He grinned and Natsume squawked and shoved him into the snow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They laid on Tanuma’s bed together, legs slotted, the CD player on Tanuma’s stomach. Tanuma watched Natsume nod off on his pillow, eyes closing and reopening, closing again...

 

“Hey Takashi...”

 

“Mmhmm?”

 

“In the future, we should get a house together.”

 

He knew the exact moment he stopped listening and partially fell asleep, for he sunk a little deeper on Tanuma’s arm, curled a little closer. Up close like this, Tanuma could smell the detergent Touko-san washed their clothes with and could just as easily see a freckle on the side of his neck, tiny and indiscriminate. He stroked his back with the palm of his hand, feeling the shirt bunch up and straighten again, creases as concrete as the line of his ribs. Natsume was small. He forgot, with the way he carried himself day to day, he projected an image larger than how he was.

 

“Maybe we could find an area with another youkai pond. That would be nice.”

 

“Mmhmm.”

 

“Another place, like this. I like this temple a lot.”

 

“Yeah,” Natsume yawned. The headphones slipped off around his neck and Tanuma tugged them off backwards, careful not to catch them around an ear. Natsume’s hair was messed up on one side, sticking up like unevenly cut blades of grass.

 

“Exhausted?” he teased. “Then take a nap.”

 

Natsume squinted into the sleeve of his shoulder and shook his head dully. Tanuma thought he couldn’t do this with anyone else.

 

“Kaname... you’re sure you really want this?” Natsume’s cheek moved along his shoulder, vibrating along the bone there. It did a funny thing to his heart.

 

He flicked his back gently, then rolled over so he could encase him entirely. “Haven’t we been walking circles around each other since sophomore year?”

 

“I suppose so... but then, I didn’t know...”

 

“I knew,” Tanuma said firmly. He was pleased when his face stayed cool. Natsume shifted in his grip to stare. “After Omibashira -- I started to figure it out.”

 

“I had never been more scared for you than then,” Natsume confessed. “And you’re a bit weird for choosing that moment! I think people are usually supposed to go in the opposite direction of danger.”

 

“Are you scared for me now?”

 

Natsume’s knees shifted awkwardly into Tanuma’s, putting distance between them. His face was smooth and warm and open, and Tanuma watched the way his eyes moved between his own -- calculating, quiet. He only had to look at his face to know if he was lying -- and he did, waiting for the telltale giveaway that maybe this would be too difficult. Maybe Tanuma was being too brave and he thought that meant that Natsume would be brave, too. 

 

“Yes. But I’m not going to change my mind, either. I’ll protect you.” Natsume’s hand rose to card through his hair, trembling fingers running down the back of Tanuma’s neck. “We’ll -- we’ll find a way to make it work. I’ll make seals for the both of us. Maybe I’ll get a cell phone, so you don’t have to worry when I’m not home at five. Nyanko-sensei will help.”

 

Tanuma drifted off. “We could go to the same university. I can cook pretty decent meals. We won’t starve.”

 

“You dad has clay he’d let us use, probably. We could make teacups. Since we’re both broke.” His laugh was just an exhale.

 

“That actually sounds pretty nice,” Tanuma murmured.

 

“It does. I made some with Fujiwara-san once. Touko-san uses it sometimes.”

 

“Was it ugly?” Tanuma whispered. You’re bad with clay.

 

Natsume’s mouth upturned, eyes half-closed with exhaustion. Tanuma’s world shifted with it. “The glaze was nice, but it was a pretty wobbly cup. She said she liked it anyway.” As kind people do.

 

He didn’t say anymore more after that.

 

Tanuma dreamed of their own flight from everything familiar. The journey wouldn’t be as terrifying with company to keep him, he decided, ugly cups and all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As winter break neared the end, Tanuma’s father came home on a calm, cold day. He pulled their car into the driveway, gravel crunching underneath black tires, shutting off the engine. Tanuma took the bucket of sunflower seeds over with him unthinkingly, greeted his father with a smile as he climbed out. Ponta sat down at his feet.

 

“Welcome home,” he said.

 

“Kaname-chan, are you feeding the birds?” He came over and slung an arm around his son’s waist, pulling him into a loose boned hug. Tanuma leaned into to his warmth, the heater’s efforts still clinging to him. It felt grounding to have his most important person home again. “Did you have any trouble while I was gone?”

 

“No. Everything was fine. I got a lot done while you were gone.” And it was true. “Natsume’s here, by the way,” he tacked on. “The Fujiwaras are going to be home later than they planned. Is it alright if he stays over for a bit?”

 

His father smiled and pulled away. “Of course. He’s a good kid, like you. I see you have a helper.”

 

Tanuma looked down at his shoes. Ponta glanced up at him, then gave his best attempt at a mrrow and wound himself imploringly around his father’s legs. Treats, he begged. Attention.

 

His father shared an amused look with him before scratching the cat gently behind the ears. “You’re a very special cat, aren’t you? You look out for the both of them, hmm? I appreciate it.”

 

Ponta shook himself and wandered off toward the backyard. “--Or not,” Tanuma finished dryly.

 

His father laughed. “Why don’t you finish up what you’re doing and then come sit for a bit? I want to hear what you and Takashi-kun got up to while I was gone. I’ll cook dinner tonight.”

 

“Dad, you don’t need to--”

 

“You’re the only person on this earth I get to spoil apart from my sister. Be a good sport.”

 

“Alright, fine.” Tanuma grinned helplessly. Natsume would protest and try to scurry off before his father could get words out of him, but Tanuma knew better now. Natsume wouldn’t leave him to his fate, not anymore.

 

“He knows you see youkai, doesn’t he?” Tanuma glanced down at Ponta, just in time to watch him leap a dangerous distance from the ground to his shoulder. He stumbled under the cat’s weight, then resumed his walk toward the back of the house, two gallon bucket of bird seed in tow.

 

“He believes what I say. I think Dad knows youkai exist, but I don’t like to worry him.”

 

“He suspects me.”

 

“What? Really?” Tanuma scratched Ponta’s chin with a single finger. “I suppose you’re pretty suspicious looking.”

 

“Brat,” he hissed, then was quiet again.

 

Tanuma stepped into the tracks he’d made days before, now solid and iced over, permanent and hard to break. He looked for animal prints, but it was just his and the scattered, broken trail Natsume had wound when he’d gone from one birdhouse to the next, inspecting Tanuma’s work.

 

“Do you think that youkai is still here?”

 

“Probably not. Migrating ones don't stay in any place for too long, especially since Natsume noticed it."

 

“Oh, that's kind of sad. I like it when they visit.”

 

“You are a peculiar one,” Ponta accused, but Tanuma didn’t think anything of it.

 

Seeing things that others would never experience had only ever felt like a gift. 

 

 

 

fin.