garden of the ancients

Title: withdraw your good intent
Prompt: 21. learn how to lay me down in something other than danger other than fury
Fandom: Natsume Yuujinchou
Characters/pairing: Natori/Matoba
Rating: T
Word Count: 2,211

Notes: Domestic verse?! Artery clogging sappy pairing fic with no real plot, don't be fooled by the premise.

( Natori had always been good at jousting. )

Title: Count on the Ghost
Prompt: 5. You are a phantom in that far-off city where daylight climbs cathedral walls
Fandom: Natsume Yuujinchou
Characters/pairing: Matoba/Natori
Rating: all audiences
Word Count: 1217
A/N:

- hitting these prompt deadlines like a boss, aw yeah
- AU - they both lose.
- Seiji's predictions about Natori losing his left leg come true.
- Seiji loses against the monster after his right eye.
- Natori is the nice guy that reaches out, Seiji makes a power grab.
- (of course, it's all domestic, sappy pairing fic here)

( “Come here, before you get lost.” Seiji’s lips drew back and he tried not to scowl. Hard to do these days when half his face was tissue that didn’t move. “Lost,” he mocked, pressing back into Shuuichi’s space, watching a hundred shadows pace around them like a blind moving with sun streaming through. 'Could happen,' Shuuichi murmured. )

Title: light the blue paper and turn
Prompt: 1. something has tried to kill me and has failed
Fandom: Natsume Yuujinchou
Characters/pairing: Natori/Matoba, pre-slash
Rating: all audiences
Word Count: 1,003

1. Blue touch paper: commonly used when lighting fuses, also an idiom for igniting an angry/violent conversation among a group of people.
2. Trying to capture Shuuichi's particular brand of prickliness and angst is making me realize how alone he actually is as the sole heir of the Natori clan.
3. Seiji already being familiar with how to navigate bad situations because that's just his family's style, and realizing that Natori's a wreck in the face of it is also a particular brand of D: D: D:

( Seiji is wearing a fox mask when Natori spots him. It’s different from his usual getup. His white kimono is overlapped with a gray robe, and it softens the shock of dark hair draped around his shoulders -- longer, Natori thinks absently, tugging at his scarf, then the last time he’d spotted him at an open door meeting like this. )

Title: darling of every muse or fair weather friend
Prompt: 15. Foaming with loneliness
Fandom: Natsume Yuujinchou
Characters/pairing: Natori-centric, Uruhime, Matoba, and some OCs
Rating: Gen
Word Count: 6,288

A/N: Shuuichi, those first months after leaving his home behind. He has emotions about it.

1. Title from Yeasayer's Folk Hero Schtick.
2. Plates and plates of food.
3. Revised/Complete. Not great, not terrible.

( At the least, he thinks blithely, eyes scanning across the backs and heads of strangers, these people don’t look like enemies. No curses to be found in the way their shoulders glide past one another. He can already forgive them for killing his character later. )

Title: A Peeling Veneer
Prompt: 8. My endangered bones are sweet.
Fandom: Natsume Yuujinchou
Characters/pairing: Natori/Matoba
Rating: low-level schmoop
Word Count: 624

1. Still trying to grasp how these two interact?
2. An established relationship of sorts -- mentioned trust issues.
3. It's mushy, because I'm a sap.

--

( He knows a creature with its back to a wall when he sees one. He doesn’t want to wonder if he looks the same. )