garden of the ancients

Title: Special Effects
Fandom: Natsume Yuujinchou
Characters/pairing: Natori/Matoba, established
Rating: gen
Word Count: 387

( Matoba and Natori watch a movie. )

Title: just like blood
Fandom: Natsume Yuujinchou
Characters/pairing: Natori, Natori/Matoba
Rating: all audiences
Word Count: 567

( It’s lucky that what remained of the Natori family existed all in one place. )

Title: smoke signals
Fandom: Natsume Yuujinchou
Characters/pairing: Natori/Matoba
Rating: all audiences
Word Count: 550~

( Seiji smelled like wood smoke when he passed by. )

Title: no recognized pattern
Fandom: Natsume Yuujinchou
Characters/pairing: Seiji/Shuuichi
Rating: G, off screen violence
Word Count: 989
Notes: Needs to be poked at some more / streamlined, then it's done.

( He wondered what other things Natori might give him in time. )

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: draw my gaunt spirit to bow
Prompt: 23. scrape it down to the clean bone unbreaking
Fandom: Natsume Yuujinchou
Characters/pairing: Natori/Matoba
Rating: T
Word Count: 1721

Notes: Title from Joanna Newsom's Leaving the City. Not the worst I've written, but not great.

( How Seiji convincingly coaxed him from his bed and onto a night bus bound for the next town over was easy to solve, in retrospect. )

Title: every me and every you
Fandom: Natsume Yuujinchou
Characters/pairing: Natori/Matoba
Rating: gen
Words: 552

Title from a Placebo song. Below is from Myths Concerning Lizards.

"a Maori belief was that evil spirits in lizard form entered bodies of men and consumed their vitals, so causing death. When an expert was called in to treat the case he would pose as an exorcist and expel the malignant spirit from the body of the sufferer." and

"Lizards were sometimes placed at the entrance to caves wherein bones of the dead were deposited, and at other places whereat trespass by unauthorised persons was dreaded, and they seem to have been highly effective guardians. Not only would these creatures inspire dread in the minds of trespassers by their presence, but also would there be a conviction that some magic had been laid on the tapu place, all of which meant that the anger of certain atua would descend upon any offender."

Fascinating stuff. RIP me.

( What are you going to do if I win this one, he wonders. You could go anywhere. You could be anyone. )

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: you go on ahead again
Prompt: 29. I pledge my neck to every knife.
Fandom: Natsume Yuujinchou
Characters/pairing: Natori/Matoba
Rating: T (implied nsfw)
Word Count: 532
A/N: For context: AU? Natori unofficially joins Matoba's clan. They celebrate.

( '--it’s lucky I have the Matoba head at my beck and call to take responsibility.' )

Title: the house is (not) dust
Prompt: 7. My body is a house, but yours is a home.
Fandom: Natsume Yuujinchou
Characters/pairing: Natori +/ Matoba
Rating: all audiences
Word Count: 384

( You would have been in trouble if I wasn't here. )