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It starts with a curse spreading from spirit to spirit, from an ancient, bitter, withered old tree that has finally fallen, releasing a curse that is difficult to contain, and even more difficult to purge.
Natsume first hears about it from Kaname, who heard it from someone Matoba, who goes to Kaname's father, of all people, to ask him to purify the area. Kaname's grateful that he cautioned his father to wait until he could ask Natsume about it, after seeing the look on Natsume’s face when he explained who who exactly had come to visit the temple.
Kaname insists on coming along, despite Natsume’s protests.
“I’ll be careful,” he promises, instead of arguing about how he’d feel if he put Natsume in harm’s way and left him to face it alone. It’s easier that way.
The spirits all cleared out of the area long since, when Natsume and Kaname and Ponta go to investigate. They find the tree, ultimately, at the base of a mountain, well off the beaten path, a ring of dead grass all around it. The winter wind whistles lonely and mournful around the clearing, and clawed, desolate branches ring the small clearing, blackened and gnarled against the gray sky.
Natsume stares, and Kaname watches him scoping out the area. His eyes are darting around with practiced, careful precision. The tip of his nose is pink in the cold, and he rubs his gloved hands together.
“I can't sense anything,” Kaname says finally, turning his gaze away from Natsume to eye the tree. “It seems pretty creepy, though.”
“Me neither,” Natsume admits. “Or not much, anyway. But…there’s definitely something strange about this place.”
“It smells like trouble.” Ponta waddles between them and the tree, hackles raised.
"What does?" Kaname asks. "The tree?"
“Yes, of course the tree,” he says scathingly. “Whatever it is, it's strong enough to try hiding its aura, but it’s definitely there.”
Suddenly, Natsume jumps as if stung and turns behind them, looking at something over his shoulder. Even Ponta twitches, his stance shifting so he can keep the tree and the spot Natsume’s staring at in his sight at the same time.
“Why?” Natsume asks the trees, and Kaname, realizing that at least one more youkai must have joined them, settles himself to wait for someone to explain to him what’s going on.
“It’s a curse left over from a spirit that’s long gone,” Natsume says, after a brief conversation that’s left him looking noticeably more worried than before. “It’s been attacking the spirits in the area. All of them have left, or are hiding.”
“They’re the smart ones,” Ponta says, nose in the air, still glancing occasionally over his shoulder. “Don’t underestimate that thing just because it looks like an ordinary plant. It’s pretty powerful. Just being around it is making my nose itch.”
“What does it do?” Kaname asks, when the clearing falls into an uneasy silence after that. “The curse.”
“It latches onto humans' secrets,” Ponta says grimly, “and eats away at them from the inside out.”
“Oh.”
Kaname wants to say something more, wants to have something to add, but he can’t think of anything. The two of them are the experts here, not him. Still, he can’t help but notice that suddenly, Natsume looks afraid, and that, more than anything else, puts him on his guard.
Natsume isn’t a liar, Kaname knows. He’s just been trapped by a world that refused to accept his view of the world, his suffering, the dangers he faces, so he learned to hide it all. Even a handful of good years with people who care about him aren’t enough to erase the fear of rejection that his childhood forced into him.
Because of that, it’s hard to imagine a spirit more dangerous to him than one that finds and exploits what you don’t want to say.
Worry keeps him on-edge and a scant two steps behind Natsume, so he catches the moment when Natsume first sees something amiss. His eyes widen, and following his gaze, Kaname is almost able to make out a shadowy presence from a hollow in the tree. He steps closer without even thinking.
He feels a deceptively gentle gust of wind in the next moment, barely a puff of air on his face—but Natsume suddenly jumps back, nearly knocking him over, and screams, terrible and shrill. He falls onto one side and starts clawing at his chest, and Ponta disappears just before the clearing is shook by a huge gust of wind and the old withered tree simply evaporates in a bright burst of light.
Kaname’s on the ground beside Natsume in a second. Natsume's not unconscious, but his hands are pressing against his chest and his eyes are so, so wide.
A small whirlwind settles around them, blowing Kaname's hair roughly into his eyes and leaving a faint-but-insistent impression of the scent of fur. Ponta must be panicking, Kaname thinks, but whatever he's doing doesn't seem to do anything but knock Natsume from his side onto his back, where he arches against the ground in pain.
Kaname's gloves are discarded on the ground beside him before he's consciously aware of what he's doing. "Let me see," Kaname bursts out, and wrestles away Natsume's shaking hands, forcing his coat open without waiting for a response.
Later, he won't be able to say whether it was his desperation in that moment, sheer luck, or perhaps a strategy on the part of the malevolent spirit, but in that first, crucial split second, he sees it: a seed, small and insistent, and the hungry roots that are already stretching out from it, digging themselves through Natsume's shirt and into his chest.
Natsume's already fighting Kaname's grip on his wrist, but terror and the beginnings of truly awful premonitions make Kaname faster. He grabs the seed as hard as he can between three fingers, his other hand trying to work its way under the thickest of the new roots. He pulls, a wordless prayer on his lips, and at the first sign of give, he pulls himself as close to Natsume as he can, tugging the seed towards his own chest.
Natsume looks more frightened than ever. “Tanuma, no!”
Kaname ignores him, feeling as well as seeing the roots tearing their way back out of Natsume's chest, leaving his shirt and chest unblemished as far as he can see. The roots stop offering resistance, and seem almost to slide of their own volition the last little way out of Natsume's chest...
...And then the seed slips backwards, out of his fingers, and Kaname loses sight of it as it shoots towards his own chest.
He's not sure what he feels in the moment the seed disappears. If there's a sensation, a tiny jolt of pain or some other sign of being cursed, it's covered by the weight of Natsume lunging towards him, the scrabble of his cold fingers against Kaname's chest. The wind howls around them once again, louder, and Kaname bites back a shout of surprise.
In the next second, though, the wind starts to die down. Natsume climbs off Kaname where he's half-fallen on him, still staring at Kaname's chest with an expression of horror. Kaname looks down at himself, alarmed by Natsume's reaction, but sees nothing amiss.
The wind dies completely, and there's Ponta, back in a form that Ponta can see. "Stupid human," he grouses.
For a wild moment, Kaname thinks Natsume's about to voice his agreement. Instead, he turns back to the clearing at large, voice grown loud and authoritative with panic. "Tell me what that was."
He starts having a conversation with someone right beside his head, and then with Ponta, judging by the angry huffs ruffling Kaname’s hair. But as he’s only privy to half of the conversation, Kaname can only wait and watch, and gather what he can from Natsume’s side of the conversation. Natsume looks so afraid, talking to Ponta and whatever spirits are watching them. And Kaname, though he can only follow part of the conversation, thinks he might have the beginnings of a guess as to why.
“Natsume,” he says finally, when the conversation seems to be winding down. “I’m not following everything they said. Can you fill me in, here?"
Natsume starts and looks back at him, eyes haunted. "Do you feel all right?" he demands. "Does anything hurt, or feel strange, or...?"
Kaname shakes his head, but Natsume doesn't look relieved as he begins to relay what he's heard. The curse that they’ve found—that the Matoba’s were too frightened to face themselves, that they’d tried to send Kaname’s father to encounter—is the last remnant of a youkai grown bitter in its final moments, a parasite that has so far proven impossible to destroy.
"You shouldn't have done that," he finishes. "I don't—even if it seems fine—I should never have let you come, it's too dangerous—"
“I didn't want you to face this on your own,” Kaname says, right over him, because this is no time to let him feel guilty for failing to be targeted. “Natsume. Listen, okay? Yes, it was a risky choice, but...I still think it might be better me than you. You have to keep your secrets. You live with the Fujiwaras, and you’re always seeing things nobody else can! There’s no way this curse, or whatever, wouldn't be incredibly dangerous for you. Right?”
Natsume looks like he wants to argue, and then stops, biting his lip. There’s sweat at his temples, and he’s looking more and more panicked by the second. He looks ready to shut down the conversation altogether, so Kaname presses on. “I don’t have to lie to the people in my life,” he says, voice and face hard, direct. He’s trying not to be unkind, but he isn’t sure it’s working. “I’m very, very lucky that way. I’m the safest person to bear the curse, until we can find a way to deal with it. Maybe it won’t even take at all.”
Natsume shakes his head. “I can’t…”
“I couldn't let you get cursed with this,” Kaname says. “Not if I could do something. It would really, really hurt you.”
“But—”
“You aren’t listening to me,” Kaname says. “You can’t say things even when you should, even when you seem to want to. I know that you keep secrets for good reasons. Do you really want to choose between frightening your friends and family by telling the truth, and worrying them when the curse takes effect?”
Natsume clamps his mouth shut, then, his face twisted in concern and guilt. He shudders.
“It’s all right,” Kaname adds instinctively, putting a hand on his shoulder, steadying him. "I can't even feel anything wrong. As long as I don't lie, maybe it won't even have an effect."
Ponta snorts. "That's a bit optimistic." He waddles over and sniffs at Kaname, then pauses, tilting his head. "But it's true I can't sense any curse at the moment."
“Are you sure?” Natsume asks him, but doesn't take his eyes off Kaname. He searches his face so, so carefully, looking for concealed pain or fear.
For a second, Kaname feels lighter than air, and can’t keep a faint smile from moving across his face. Natsume is so close and so open, where normally he’s guarded, his kindness couching itself in a thoughtful distance.
“Yes,” he says, the words floating out of him, effortless. “I’m okay. It doesn’t hurt at all.”
“Okay,” Natsume says. “Okay, then we should get home. I need to call Natori, and probably Taki…”
They talk about the curse on the way home, but Kaname can’t help but feel that Natsume’s worried over nothing. He’s blessed with family and friends he doesn’t need to hide from, not any part of himself; what would a curse even have to work with?
It isn’t until that evening, thinking over the events of the day and how it’d felt to be fussed over, that he feels the faint sensation, like a pinprick, in his chest, just under his ribs. He dismisses it as a phantom sensation and turns over, going to sleep.
Natsume talks to Natori that weekend, and gives Kaname a charm to wear as a precaution. He hangs it on a cord and wears it under his shirt, below his heart. He trusts Natsume enough to forget the matter there, though the occasional worried glance Natsume throws his way tells him that he might be the only one that’s comfortable forgetting.
A few weeks later, as winter drags its bitter way along into the first hints of spring, it takes weeks of a cold getting progressively worse for Kaname to even begin to wonder whether spirits are involved. Natsume’s suspicions come first, of course, and he ends up soothing them before his own even really start.
For a little while, in the first year or so they'd known each other, it had seemed that every time Kaname had so much as sniffled, Natsume would give him a certain carefully-calm-but-wary look, like he was trying to figure out if it was a sign of a spirit lurking nearby. After a while, he’d started to grow accustomed to the way Kaname was out of class more frequently than the rest of their classmates, how everyone accepts this as more or less normal for him.
It takes longer, now, for an illness of his to raise red flags for Natsume, as long as there are no sudden headaches or other telling signs.
“Are you all right?” he asks, with that one specific concern in his voice, the third or fourth day that Kaname's persistent cough just won’t settle.
“I’m fine,” he says, with a fond smile, because a week or so to shake off the tail end of a cold is still well within a normal period of time, and Natsume hasn’t adjusted that much, it seems. Kaname doesn’t like to worry Natsume, but it’s nice, when it’s something small and harmless and easy to reassure him of, to be reminded how much he cares.
When, a week later, it’s still not great—when the coughing is more violent and more painful, he still doesn’t think it’s any more than a nasty cold. He switches to a different kind of medicine, starts carrying cough drops in his bag, and still doesn’t suspect it’s anything supernatural.
Until, of course, he realizes that breathing hurts a bit more when Natsume’s around, and the pain lingers till a little while after.
It’s like claws digging into his chest, tightening ever so slightly every time he breathes. It’s like something rising up in his throat, occasionally choking him when he tries to brush off Natsume’s concerned questions. It’s a flutter in his heartbeat when Natsume stands by his elbow with an arm around him on the stairs, because he’s been a little shaky lately and sudden coughing fits sometimes threaten his balance.
Come to think of it, that last one might be caused by something else entirely. Kaname isn’t sure whether that would be better or worse. It doesn’t even feel like he has words for it, for the crest of emotion that comes over him when Natsume leaves and all the things he can’t say, can only feel, come crashing over him like waves.
What if he is lying, and it’s the curse after all? How can he tell the truth if he can’t find the words?
The next week, Kaname starts staying home from school. Natsume goes over from the first day to go check on him, and though Kaname wasn’t expecting it, Nishimura and Kitamoto and Taki all come along.
Kaname knows he sounds sounds awful—he’s definitely got a nasty cold—but he's had worse, and feels pretty energetic otherwise. Kitamoto tells Nishimura off for trying to bring him a bouquet, talking about allergies and spring fever. Kaname says cheerfully that he’s never had much trouble with anything like that, and bustles off to find a vase. They play card games and pretend they’re going to work on their homework, and when Nishimura has to leave for cram school and Kitamoto to make dinner, Natsume and Taki linger behind briefly.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Taki asks him this time, quietly. “It’s not the curse from before, is it?”
Kaname just shrugs, looking between them. “If I figure anything out, you’ll be the first to know. Probably I just need to sleep it off.”
“Okay,” Natsume says, but he doesn’t look terribly happy about it.
Natsume comes by every day after that, sometimes bringing others with him, sometimes arriving alone. Kaname would be lying if he said that he didn’t appreciate the company.
The flowers Nishimura brought seem perfectly healthy, a welcome spot of color in the room, but petals keep appearing in odd corners of the room. One morning, Kaname thinks he sees some on his pillow when he wakes up, but then he blinks and they’re gone.
He sits up, coughs, takes some more medicine, and stumbles downstairs for breakfast.
By the time Takashi comes over that afternoon, the coughing has gotten worse. They make a half-hearted attempt at covering what they did in class—Takashi’s grades might go up a little after all this, Tanuma teases him between coughing fits—and then try to play some shogi, but Tanuma can’t concentrate, and they put that aside, too.
Suddenly, a coughing fit starts and doesn’t stop. The tearing noise in his throat is painful just to listen to; Natsume doesn’t want to imagine what it feels like. His hands rise of their own volition, but he isn’t sure what to do with them.
The sensation of something slightly wet and oddly soft, cool even, lands on one of his palms. He lifts it to his face and sees that a flower petal has landed there. It’s stained with blood at the corner.
Takashi feels a completely different kind of sick from Tanuma in that moment, dizzy and terrified.
“It’s okay,” Tanuma gasps, breathless, when this fit is over. “I’ve had worse than this. Really.”
Natsume holds the petal to his face, examining it closely. The edges are ragged.
Tanuma blinks at him. “What is it?”
Takashi looks at him seriously. “Are you sure you’re not hiding anything?”
“…Ugh,” Tanuma says, and rubs his face, sounding resigned. “Yes, I’m pretty sure.” Still, he doesn’t look surprised when he adds, “Why? What are you looking at?”
“Flower petals,” Takashi says. “I think it’s the curse from before.”
“But…” Tanuma shakes his head. “It’s not like I’ve been lying to anyone.”
“I believe you,” Takashi says, frustrated. “Have you told your dad…what’s going on? Would it help if I talked to him?’
"Maybe,” Tanuma says. He’s leaning against the pillow, face gray. “Actually, yes. I guess. You could invite him up here, and we could do it now.”
They try. Takashi is intensely uncomfortable about talking about spirits with an adult who isn’t Natori. He pushes through it anyway, and Tanuma’s father, though he seems a bit lost, is also very grave.
At the end of the conversation, Tanuma has another coughing fit. The only thing that changes is that Takashi can double-check that Tanuma’s father can’t see the flower petals, either.
Tanuma’s father takes him to the doctor the next day. They aren’t sure what the problem is, but there seems to be something in Tanuma’s lungs.
“It’s liquid,” Tanuma said. “They think the tissue there is getting weaker, or something.”
Takashi isn’t used to things like this having tangible effects, not like this. He is very, very scared.
“This is all my fault,” he confesses, running his hands through his hair.
“It isn’t,” Tanuma says seriously, and how can he still have such an even keel about this? How can he still be looking at it logically when his life is in danger and Takashi is the one to blame? “I made a mistake. I thought I knew myself better than I did. It was hubris. Like we talked about in literature class, remember?”
Takashi smiles, but he knows the expression is pained. “Not really.”
“Maybe you were sleeping through that part,” Tanuma says, and it’s so gentle that it doesn’t even sound like a reprimand, barely like teasing. “I shouldn’t have been so proud. I guess…I guess I was a little mad, too.”
“Mad?” Takashi asks. He is not used to Tanuma being quite this honest, but he’s remembered of raised arms on a hillside, terror abating slowly into relief and deep, deep regret as Tanuma bares his soul to him without meeting his eyes.
“I guess I was a little mad at you,” Tanuma says in a tiny voice. It’s a steady one, though, and not as breathless as Takashi has gotten used to. “You…I know you have good reasons for hiding things, Natsume. I know you do. Even when they’re old reasons that aren’t true anymore, they were still good ones, once. But…I wished you didn’t have them. I thought that…that I wouldn’t be like that. That I could show you that some people weren’t like that, and maybe…” He pauses. “This is stupid,” he says, frustrated. “I was stupid about this.”
“No, keep going,” Takashi insists. “Please.”
Maybe this will help, he doesn’t say, but the hope hangs between them anyway. Takashi is pretty sure that secrets that are open between the people talking about them don’t count as secrets anymore.
“I thought…if I could show you, encourage you…then maybe you could change, too.” Tanuma’s shoulders hunch in on themselves. He looks miserable. “I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t work like that. I should have been more patient.”
“Tanuma…” Takashi puts a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s okay to be frustrated with me. I get frustrated with me, too, sometimes.”
“I’m mostly frustrated with myself at the moment,” Tanuma admits, voice tight.
“That’s okay,” Takashi says, because he isn’t sure what else there is to say.
He rubs Tanuma’s back when the next fit comes, and brushes the fresh petals off the covers.
When Natsume comes back a few days later covered in dirt, with twigs in his hair and a cut across one cheek, he tries to blow it off as no big deal.
Kaname's feverish and weak, but even so, he’s having absolutely none of that.
“Did they hurt you anywhere else?” he asks. He’s still mobile enough to shuffle to the bathroom and grab the first aid kit under the sink.
“I’m fine,” Natsume says, looking alarmed. “It wasn't anything serious. You should stay in bed—”
"Please don’t be like this,” Kaname says, sitting back on the bed and patting the space beside him. “Over here. It would really hurt if that got infected.”
Natsume looks very sad as he sits beside him, but something else creeps into his face as Kaname starts to brush at the wound on his cheek, doing his best to be gentle.
Kaname doesn’t let himself look. He’s trying to focus on doing a good job at this, and the pain in his chest is already distracting enough as it is.
“I don’t want you to leave me out of the loop about things like this,” he says. “I want to know what’s happening to you.”
He sees the corner of Natsume’s mouth turn down in a frown. “I don’t want to worry you when—”
"I’m going to worry anyway,” Kaname rasps out. “Please, don’t keep me in the dark. Tell me when you’re having trouble. At least let me be someone you can talk to. Let me do that much.”
He pulls back, and sees that Natsume is shaking. It’s hard to hide, when there’s only a few inches of space between them.
“I don’t…I can’t…” he says, but stops like the words are sticking in his throat.
“What?” he asks, softly. He squeezes Natsume’s arm, hoping to get him to lose that thousand-mile stare.
“You…if something happens to you…then…” Natsume finally manages to look at him. “I couldn’t stand it,” he says quietly. “I would rather have never…I can’t let the world of youkai harm you because of me. No matter what happens.”
It takes more than words for Kaname to really understand, so he does some careful thinking. He imagines being Natsume, and having only three people in the world he can talk to. (Kaname only has three people, too, but they’re all human and they’re his three most important people, and it’s enough.) He remembers the bits and pieces of the stories Natsume’s told, about spirits, and how so few of his friends aside from Ponta ever seem to stay.
Natsume’s not seeing him as lesser, not the way Natori did even when he was being (barely) polite about it. He’s afraid of being alone again, and the fear of Kaname not being there to protest someday in the future weighs more heavily than his fear of hurting Kaname's feelings in the present.
Kaname almost thinks, in that moment, that he’s pinned down what it is he has to say. There’s something on the tip of his tongue, and yet…
He can feel the vines sink in deeper as he makes an exasperated face and musses Natsume’s hair, but it doesn’t matter. Natsume’s shocked expression is almost worth it anyway.
“Silly,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere.”
When Takashi comes upstairs to visit the next day, Tanuma’s eyes seem glued to his lap.
“I went to the doctor again today,” he said. “They’re thinking about putting me in a hospital.”
Takashi just stares at him, fear freezing the pit of his stomach.
“I’m sorr—” Tanuma starts, and then starts coughing again.
Helplessly, Takashi bends down to help him, rubbing his back and hoping against hope for the fit to pass.
“Natsu…me…”
They’re barely even words anymore. Takashi is lucky he can recognize his own name from Tanuma’s lips. There are petals clogging his mouth that Tanuma can’t even see, can only half-feel, choking his every breath. This has gone altogether too far, and he’s scared that if Natori isn’t able to come up with the exorcism soon, there won’t be enough left of Tanuma’s lungs—of Tanuma’s life—to save.
"I'm sorry," he says his own traitorous throat trying to choke on the words. He's disgusted with them; what can they even do? What point is there in them? What more are they than useless frills, as intangible and unwanted as the the very flowers Tanuma's choking on? "I never wanted this to happen. I'm so sorry, you must be in so much pain..."
Tanuma's throat clicks as he forces the coughs back, stills long enough to shake his head. He mouths something, but Takashi can't make it out.
"Shh, don't try to talk," he says, "just breathe, can you turn on your side? Will that make it easier?"
Tanuma's eyes are wide and rimmed in red, but he nods and weakly starts moving to lie on his side. It's hard for him to look up far enough to see Takashi's seat from that position, so Takashi abandons it to kneel beside his head. He hears the moment that Tanuma start to breathe easier again. A small wave of relief washes over him, and before he realizes what he's doing he's running a hand through Tanuma's hair.
"Is that better?" he asks, softly. "Do you need anything? Is there something I can do to help?"
It's not just about this moment, he knows. All he wants is to find a way to make this better, and the knowledge that he doesn't have the first idea how makes him want to turn himself inside out in frustration. He'll have to speed up his plans further. Natori can probably be convinced to drop everything if Takashi is the one asking—he's certainly insinuated as much before, with all his promises, and while Takashi doesn't exactly feel right trying to leverage that to get what he wants, he's realizing more with every passing moment that he'll do whatever it takes to end Tanuma's nightmare.
When Tanuma tries to answer, though, he chokes and brings a helpless hand up to his mouth against a flood of petals. Tears fall from his eyes to decorate them like tiny, awful dewdrops amid the smears of blood. He forces himself to stop as Takashi rubs ineffectually at his shoulder, closes his eyes tight in concentration. "It's..."
Takashi waits one, two, three rapid heartbeats. "Yeah?"
"I..." Tanuma's breathing hitches, and his eyes squeeze shut for a moment in what looks like more than pain—sorrow? Concentration? "Can I—?"
The second coughing fit is worse than the first, and Tanuma's sobbing around them, now, and Takashi's been scared before in his life, plenty of times, but never, ever like this. It takes him far too long to realize what Tanuma's started to say, to connect it to the pleading look in his eyes.
It's a struggle to find words amid the fear, and if he's having trouble, how must Tanuma be feeling? If words are what's needed, then are they already too late?
He manages to string the words together out of sheer desperation. "Whatever you need to do, do it. Or show me what to—I want to help."
Another two heartbeats of silence, another ragged breath.
Then Tanuma’s shaking hands reach up, and Takashi takes one of them, and feels them pushing weakly upwards. He guides them up till they’re…on his face? But from the way they cling there, he hasn’t interpreted Tanuma’s gesture incorrectly. Tanuma tugs him slowly down, and Takashi moves with him, still confused. He tries to turn his head, thinking that maybe Tanuma wants to whisper in his ear, but Tanuma’s hands, weak as they are, resist the movement. Takashi instantly desists, holding still, trying with all his might to understand what Tanuma needs.
“Sorry,” Tanuma mouths, when their mouths are bare inches apart, “just…once,” and then he keeps pulling down and drags himself upwards at the same time, and the soft bitterness of flower petals fills Takashi's mouth, the taste of blood coppery on his tongue.
And then Tanuma falls back, and Takashi reels, and then realizes, and there’s a whirlwind of cherry blossoms.
There’s no flashback, this time. No compilation of images to comprise a secret. No glimpse at what it was Tanuma saw, the first time the shy golden-haired boy arrived at their school, the first time they talked, the suspicious skulking as Natsume tried to get the measure of him.
There’s only a warm body in his arms and Tanuma’s gasping breaths, deep whooping, hacking coughs that are stronger than he’s been able to manage in weeks. Petals and blood and other, worse things come up, and Takashi pulls himself behind Tanuma, rubbing his back as the boy wheezes, bent almost double.
There are tears streaming down his face by the time he’s finished, and tears in Takashi's eyes, too, of sympathetic pain. He’s trying to think through the panic, but his eyes keep being drawn to the bloody roots that only he can see, torn from the inside of Tanuma’s ribcage as the spirit-seed finally gives up its claim there.
“Why didn’t you say something earlier?” is what he says first. It’s impossible not to start there, looking at the evidence of all that pain and fear. “Why did you take the curse, if it was something you wanted to hide?”
“I didn’t realize,” Tanuma says. His voice is a haggard disaster of a shadow of itself, much like he is. “I didn’t know.”
“How can it be a secret if you didn’t know?” Takashi asks, suddenly angry on his behalf.
Tanuma stares down at his hands. “I guess it was a secret I was keeping from myself, too.”
“Well, just to be safe,” Takashi says. He climbs out from behind Tanuma and half-sits, half-kneels on the chair beside him. He takes Tanuma’s hands, blood-speckled as they are, and squeezes them, looking seriously straight into Tanuma’s eyes. “Tell me everything.”
So Tanuma does.
They can’t stay in that position for long; soon enough, Tanuma is hiding his face again, the embarrassment and the intensity of it all getting to him. Still, he keeps talking.
Takashi almost wishes he could turn away, too, but he doesn’t dare miss a single word. Not when it’s Tanuma’s safety on the line.
Not when he didn’t expect to have this conversation with Tanuma, ever, in either of their lives.
When it’s said out loud…it’s not as much as Takashi had started to expect, in those first wild moments of lips on his own. It’s still a lot—it’s incredible, it feels out of nowhere, it’s terrifying—but it’s really just a bunch of feelings. Very strong ones, but not so overwhelming that it didn’t take Tanuma months to track them down.
It’s a bunch of hopes for the future, but that’s just what they are—hopes. And the more of them Tanuma says out loud, the clearer they get, the more manageable.
It’s like a spirit. Shadows twitching at the corners of his vision will frighten Takashi every time—they can overwhelm him with fear, even when what’s causing them turns out to be something small, or relatively harmless.
But hearing Tanuma’s words out in the open like this…it’s different. It has Takashi thinking about things that he’s felt, and the longer he hears where Tanuma is coming from, the more the feelings inside him become less ambiguous, too.
As he listens, too, an answer starts to grow inside him, like a plant unfurling new leaves. He can feel it changing into something very different from what he would have expected even a few hours ago, when they both thought that Tanuma was dying.
“I.” He stalls, realizing he doesn’t even know how to start. Tanuma just watches, eyes still watery, face back to pale
“Tanuma,” he says, looking for the words that are true, because after what he’s gone through to bring the truth out, Tanuma deserves Takashi's very best effort, “I care about you, so much. I haven’t really thought about…the rest of it. It’s difficult. I know more about youkai than people, and the way youkai love is…complicated. I don’t know what’s different and what’s the same. But…”
He chokes, and isn’t expecting it. He’s terrified, for a second, of flower petals…but no, this is just plain old tears.
Tanuma’s scrubbing at the few drying flecks of blood on his hands, looking self-conscious. Takashi fetches the rag from where it’s lying over the edge of the basin on the bedside table and helps him start to clean them off on something that won’t stain the sheets worse than they’ve already been stained.
“I’m so…so glad that you’re not dying,” he says, finally, voice tight, knowing that it’s not enough. Waiting for the prickle of vines and leaves and roots, and feeling awful, because this is about Tanuma, not him. “I’m so sorry that I made you go through all of that. I don’t…I don’t understand why you haven't given up on me." And there’s the truth, because it’s coming out faster than he can control it. “I don’t know how you can feel any of that, and not hate me for what I did to you.”
“I don’t hate you,” Tanuma says simply, and if he’s irritated by how obvious that is, how far behind Takashi is in understanding him, he doesn’t show any sign. “I’ve never hated you. I’ve always been curious, and then I’ve admired you, and been scared for you, and angry I couldn’t help you, and…I want to be here for you, Natsume. Always.”
When Tanuma puts it like that—less of the hearts and star-crossing and more of the simple, steady practicality of it—Takashi thinks of how little he wants to leave now, how little he wants to leave ever, and smiles.
“I think,” he says, and has to take a breath against tears in his throat. “I think I’m okay with that. I want to, to help you, instead of hurting you and making you worry all the time, and I’m not sure I can, but…”
“You’re…already telling me so much more than you used to,” Tanuma says, and there’s a quiet peace in his voice. “I must have… somehow, this feels really, really good. I must have really wanted you to know.”
Something in Takashi's chest warms at the thought. “I definitely know,” he says. “I’m not…I don’t know how…ugh, I wish I was better at this.”
“You're fine,” Tanuma says. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to be anything you’re not. I just want to help you. And have fun with you.” He bites his lip with a tiny twinge of what looks like discomfort at first. “And…uh, maybe…”
His fingers find their way into Takashi’s. He’s starting to get red again, Takashi realizes, and it’s more than the leftover flush of fever, if his eyes aren’t deceiving him. Then again, he’s pretty sure his face is giving him away, too.
For someone who’s an expert at life-threatening situations, Takashi's bad at responding to sudden displays of emotion like this. But he twines Tanuma’s fingers in his own, and thinks about what he might do later, when Tanuma is feeling better…and for now scoots forward and sits behind Tanuma again, offering support for Tanuma to lie against him.
“Is this okay?” he murmurs in Tanuma’s ear, and Tanuma shivers slightly, and nods.
“Good,” Takashi says. “Lean back. You need to rest, after all that. We’ll clean up in a little bit, and you can ask your dad to set up a doctor’s appointment in a day or two, so you can be sure you’re really okay, and we can start looking at homework…”
“Ack, stop it,” Tanuma says, half-laughing as he slumps against Takashi's chest. “I’m feeling half-dead already, don't destroy my will to live.”
Takashi chuckles lightly, afraid of dislodging him, and strokes one hand absently against Tanuma’s hair before wrapping a reassuring arm across his chest.
They wake up two hours later, covered in small spots of drying blood and a mess of plant life only Takashi can see, and Kaname turns and smiles at Takashi, and they feel a flutter in both their chests.
They don’t say anything about it, not yet, truth or no, because this growing thing is still fragile, needs to be nurtured, not uprooted. It will take time, and care, and it could grow into something very dangerous indeed.
But none of that stops them from quiet smiles, and getting caught looking at each other for a moment too long. It doesn’t stop the lingering goodbye hugs, or cuddling the next two afternoons. And, when Kaname’s deemed well enough to go to school the third day after, it doesn’t stop them from walking most of the way there holding hands.