Chapter Text
“How do you,” Natsume says, and hesitates.
Kaname waits. He always will, for Natsume. It’s not often that Natsume offers him these moments—these gifts, glimpses into a world Kaname wants to know better, desperately. He wonders at how a person’s presence can be a gift. How his words feel like offerings.
This act of receiving, a challenge he shouldn’t look forward to as much as he does. But he can be patient. He can, he can.
He wonders, idly, if this is love.
“How do you,” Natsume tries again, and it’s all he can do to not surge forward. Kaname realizes he is not patient, not really. He is greedy. “How do you always know?”
Kaname blinks. “What?”
Natsume flushes, beautiful as ever. He scratches his cheek—he’s embarrassed, for some reason. Kaname wants to press their fingertips together, wonders if the skin of his cheek is as soft as it looks—what else looks so soft? Perhaps Sensei’s belly, or the rice cakes Touko-san buys. Soft, like his voice now.
“I mean,” Natsume says, fingers back in his lap, clasped around each other as if to weave. “You, ah. You always know what I’m trying to say.” He looks at Kaname. “How?”
Kaname can’t tell him. Can’t tell him he spends the majority of his waking hours thinking about the gaps in what Natsume doesn’t—can’t—say. That he’s become fluent in Natsume’s hesitancies, the flow of his words as familiar as the stream behind his home. How when he laughs, it’s quiet and all-too-fast, as if the time he allots for joy must be carefully measured. It always makes Kaname ache—Natsume’s joy should never have to be rationed; Kaname will give him all he needs, he wants to say. If only he would let him.
Natsume’s still looking at him, hands in his lap a basket. Kaname wonders what would happen if he placed something there—his own hands, or perhaps a cup of tea, or perhaps his heart—right there, where Natsume’s hands form the basin. His fingers are wound so tightly, so tight that Kaname is sure they could hold even water.
He realizes that they’re both waiting for his answer. He doesn’t know what to tell Natsume, because Natsume is wrong. Kaname very rarely knows what Natsume is thinking, and even less so when it really matters. He can attribute meanings to all the glances he wants, can step in front of every invisible thing that comes out of the trees, but the words. The words are hard.
He has never been able to hide the pull, the desire to be closer. Even if it’s impossible—we’re the only ones who can see this, how embarrassing—even if it’s water in his hands, and even if the distance between what he wants and what he is a great, impenetrable gulf—
Still, he must try. He feels himself tip towards the truth.
Kaname opens his mouth to speak.