#shibata katsume | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

owletstarlet · 5 years

Note

1, 3, 14 pour Tanuma/Natsume :)

From the 21 otp questions meme! Sorry this took so long, I’m getting over an illness at the moment but these were awesome questions, thank you!

1. If you had to change the pairing’s very first meeting, how would you change it? 3. What is your favorite AU/trope/prompt idea for this pairing? 14. Is there a pairing that you think rivals them?

1. If you had to change the pairing’s very first meeting, how would you change it?

However unlikely, I really really want them to have met previously as children. I’m a talking a very brief encounter, which Natsume might have trouble even recalling but which Tanuma would turn over and over in his head for years after. I feel like I maybe(?) read a fic along these lines where they met at a temple when they were kids so if that’s your idea I’m sorry for shamelessly expanding on it and please link me to your fic! But how I’d imagine it would be as follows: little Natsume gets carted along to a family function by foster-parents-du-jour who don’t really want him there (similar to how Shigeru first found him). So he’s kind of wandering these temple grounds and making himself scarce, and he stumbles into this other boy sitting sort of hunched over beneath a very large very old tree. And up in the branches of the tree, watching all this, is a very intent, very hungry youkai (which possibly can’t come down out of the tree, it’s hallowed ground and whatnot). And little Tanuma here’s got a horrible headache, his forehead pressed against knobbly little knees trying not to be sick, and he just about jumps out of his skin when this other kid just bursts out of nowhere, yelps instead of introducing himself, then grabs his wrists and starts yanking him away from the tree like it’s on fire. And then little Natsume proceeds to haul him to his feet, steer him out from under the tree and over to the nearest temple building, but not before pausing to deliver a sharp “stay away!” back up into the tree branches. And little Tanuma just gapes, and little Natsume just gapes right back for a long moment, still holding onto Tanuma’s arms. Finally he blurts out a quick, “stay inside, you’ll feel better, don’t go near that tree again,” before excusing himself and taking off again. And Tanuma’s feeling too poorly to go after him or argue, but when he does go inside he feels much better. And he can’t get the encounter out of his head for years to come, wondering what that other boy saw, where he is now, if they’re the same. And he doesn’t immediately put it together when they meet again in high school, but when he does it takes quite awhile before he works up the nerve to ask Natsume if he remembers that day.

3. What is your favorite AU/trope/prompt idea for this pairing?

A perennial favorite trope for these two is just. Peaceful, idyllic fluff where they’re free to be Dorks In Love and neither of them has to be stressed out about anything, I can literally never get enough of that shit because god do they deserve it. But. The fics that are nearest to my heart are ones involving either of them being Very Gentle with the other during instances of Bad Brain Stuff. It’s really interesting with these two because I think they both generally have a pretty good intuition about when the other’s having a tough time, but they are really lousy at actually communicating which can just compound the issue, and that’s true in multiple instances in canon. But there’s a reason that there’s an abundance of fic featuring Tanuma being very soft and patient when Natsume’s under bombardment from anxiety or past traumas. And, of course the literal saved-you-from-a-horrible-death kind of fics, but usually the angsty brain stuff is pretty inextricable from the life-threatening situational fics. Another point strongly in the favor of the hurt-comfort trope in fics is the fact that Tanuma gets to feel like he’s doing something, like he can’t punch a youkai in the nose for Natsume’s sake but he’s got a first aid kit and a comfortable bed and empathy in spades when Natsume needs him.

Rarer and vastly underrated, though, are fics where it’s Natsume helping Tanuma through his own issues. He’s got like. Textbook anxiety symptoms, probably doesn’t do well in crowds, and his self-esteem’s (canonically) in the negatives— as of the Sasame arc Natsume’s only really just realized how deeply the self worth thing runs, and every time in canon Natsume’s ever tried to tell him “stop doing stupid stuff, I care about you, you idiot,” Tanuma’s just like *blink-blink-does-not-compute* “ok, see you at school, bye now—“ And Natsume understands so many of the things Tanuma struggles with, isolation, loneliness, feeling worthless and not really having anyone around to contradict that sentiment. And I just. I am so, so here for Tanuma feeling loved and cared for (speaking of, thank you taizi for my life).

Oh, and real quick, another great idea that needs more fic: Tanuma actually getting to become a badass exorcist. Actually just. Give this boy more fics in general because he deserves the whole world, and specifically give us exorcists who are decidedly not the two stellar examples of humanity we’ve got in canon. But I digress.

14. Is there a pairing that you think rivals them?

Ahh, nishinatsu, for starters. This is largely @taizi‘s fault in terms of the vast body of excellent work they’ve produced I have always always always been weak for loud bombastic ray-of-goddamned-sunshine characters paired with the quiet characters. That’s most often my go-to ship in any given fandom, and even as a side character Nishimura’s intuition about what Natsume needs or wants is so spot-on, and that of course is true of Kitamoto as well.

The other, much weirder ship, and this is ENTIRELY TAIZI’S FAULT, is Tanuma and Shibata. It just. Since they referred to it as a soulmates ship in empty hands, it just stuck in my head and refused to leave me alone, because I wanted to understand how that would even work because they’re so radically different, and tai’s got a wip which I love exploring the dynamic of this weird little ship that would require so much energy and effort from both parties.

#slight cw for mental health stuff #tanunatsu #natsume takashi #tanuma kaname #ask meme #owlet's meta #natsume yuujinchou #natsuyuu #natsume's book of friends #taizi #yume-x-hanabi #nishinatsu #nishimura satoru #shibata katsume #tanubata

45 notes · View notes

taizi · 5 years

Text

someday i’ll be so damn sublime

chapter one: a better person

natsume yuujinchou pairing: tanubata (+ background kitanishinatsu) word count: 1724 summary: Shibata Katsumi is a bully, but his soulmate thinks he’s a better person than that. He wants to be a better person than that. He thinks he can start right here. sequel to put your empty hands in mine read on ao3

dedicated to @owletstarlet, who was more invested in tanubata than anyone else ! you brought this upon us all :)

Shibata Katsumi is a bully. He figures it out when he’s nine years old, a few hours after he snatched little Natsume’s phone away and held it up out his reach, and thinking about it makes his stomach twist like it swallowed something sour.

His friends were laughing while he did it, but Natsume’s eyes were so big and dark and scared that Katsumi knew it was mean. He knew and he did it anyway.

It’s just--

Everyone else in Katsumi’s class is soulmates with someone they get to see every day. Classmates or neighbors or kids just a stone’s throw away from home. When they write notes to each other, it’s just for fun things, things like “where should we go after school” and “did you see the new episode last night?”

But Katsumi’s Kaname lives far away from him. He’s nine, and he’s never met his other half even once. And there’s good reasons for it, Katsumi knows that-- but it still hurts, an ache like a bruise somewhere in his chest that he keeps pressing on.

And then Natsume transferred in, shy and soft-spoken, sweater sleeves dipping past his hands almost to his fingers. And rumors flew around about who he was and why he came here, but Katsumi couldn’t care less about any of that. This was another boy who sat apart from everyone else at lunch and wrote and wrote and wrote onto his palm and his wrist and his arm and the back of his hand-- orange ink and purple and blue all mixing up clumsily, a jumbled conversation in three parts-- because these special messages were the closest he could be to his soulmate now.

Just like Katsumi.

And he was so excited to have this in common with someone else, but the excitement barely lasted the afternoon. Because, just his luck-- it turned out that Natsume was a freak.

“He talks to himself,” one of the girls in their class whispered to her friend. “Something must be wrong with him.”

“He told me he sees things that aren’t there,” her friend replied, brow wrinkled. “That’s scary. I think we should tell the teacher.”

And it wasn’t fair. Natsume was always writing, always being written to, while Katsumi was lucky to get a word or two from Kaname on a good day. Why should someone like him have a soulmate who liked him so much? Why did he even come here and get Katsumi’s hopes up in the first place?

Natsume’s weird, Katsumi’s friends all said, Natsume’s a liar. And Katsumi laughed along, made fun, spread rumors with everyone else, and tried to ignore the burn of hurt or betrayal that simmered away in his stomach. He couldn’t ignore it perfectly, though, or he wouldn’t have scowled at Natsume everytime he whispered silently into class like a ghost.

And he wouldn’t have snatched his phone away that afternoon.

He doesn’t know what he was expecting, when he put the phone to his ear to greet the weirdo’s soulmate. Katsumi knew it was wrong from the stricken look on Natsume’s face, but all of his friends were snickering like it was a great joke, and Katsumi thought it couldn’t have been that bad.

But Natsume’s other half-- other halves-- reacted explosively, so angry their voices were shaped like teeth and fire and all sorts of other things that could bite. They didn’t care what Katsumi said, they didn’t care when he backpedaled and tried to explain, tried to justify himself. They only cared about what they could probably hear behind him, Natsume teetering on the verge of tears, voice only barely not breaking when he cried out for Katsumi to stop. This quiet boy, inches shorter than even the girls in their class, who had never raised his voice in anger or hurt for all the weeks Katsumi had known him, who had never done anything to anyone except show up.

And, abruptly, Katsumi thought of Kaname. He thought of Kaname getting bullied because he didn’t fit in, of bigger kids taking his stuff and holding down his arms. He imagined how he would feel if he was on the phone when it happened, forever away and furious and useless.

Katsumi’s friends were still jeering, but Katsumi suddenly felt very cold. He passed the phone back, trying not to listen to Natsume’s shuddering breaths. He thought of Kaname every single step of the way home and was blinking back tears by the time he got there.

He shut himself up in his bedroom, huddling under the blanket on his bed. He dug under his pillow for the pen there, and wrote across his palm, I did something horrible today.

He wasn’t expecting anything back. Kaname didn’t reply to his greeting earlier that morning. But to his surprise, green ink spilled across his hand in reply.

What happened?

If writing could whisper, that was what Kaname’s always did. Katsumi traced the letters reverently, always greedy of them when they were from Kaname, and then wrote, Is it okay if I call you?

Almost a full two minutes later, Kaname said, Okay.

So Katsumi ran downstairs for the cordless phone, and huddled on the sofa, and told his soulmate the whole story. And Kaname listened gravely, not asking any questions until Katsumi was finished. And when he did, it was a soft, “Why did you do that?”

“I don’t know,” Katsumi muttered, even though it was at least partly a lie.

He did it because he was angry and hurt, because he wanted Natsume to be like him. He didn’t want Natsume to be strange, to be someone all of Katsumi’s other friends jeered about behind their hands, to be someone Katsumi couldn’t be friends with unless he wanted to be jeered about, too. It wasn’t fair.

But he couldn’t say that to Kaname, because-- trying to form the words out loud made him realize how stupid they were. Katsumi hated feeling stupid, so he didn’t say them. He sulked, and picked at a loose thread on the arm of the sofa, and listened to Kaname’s silence.

“Are you going to apologize to him?” Kaname asked next, each word very neat and careful, like organized steps across a wobbly bridge.

“I dunno,” Katsumi said sullenly. “Maybe. It would have to be when no one else is around, though. So they don’t see me talking to him. I don’t want my friends to think I’m a weirdo, too.”

Another pause-- this one longer than the last-- and Kaname said, “If you think that’s best.”

“What do you think?”

He regretted his tone immediately. Kaname was like one of the delicate creatures that washed into the tidepools on the beach, creatures that were thin and brittle and pulled up into their shells the second they sensed danger. Katsumi’s mother would usually give him a stern look when he started to get impatient with his shy soulmate, so he knew when to check himself, but mother wasn’t there and Katsumi might have just screwed up.

Katsumi opened his mouth to apologize, to try to salvage it, but Kaname surprised him again.

“It doesn’t matter what I think, Katsumi,” his other half said, his voice soft but only in the way running water was soft before it picked up speed, before it turned the bend and met a roaring river. “You’re not like me. You’re not scared of anything. You’re so cool. I don’t know why you were mean to Natsume, but I know you’ll make it better. You make everything better.”

Katsumi clutched the phone and felt something burning in his heart and his lungs and his eyes that might have been guilt and might have been vicious joy and might have been pride, or maybe it was all three.

“‘Course I do,” he managed after a minute, when he was sure his voice wouldn’t break. “You’re a smart guy, Kaname.”

Kaname laughed, but it turned into a cough halfway through, and the thing burning inside him cooled into familiar worry. Kaname murmured that his dad wanted him off the phone now, and Katsumi told him goodbye, and flopped over sideways on the sofa with the phone clutched in his hand, and stared up at the ceiling like it would give him all the answers.

He lied to Kaname again. He was scared of a lot of things. He couldn’t make everything better. He definitely wasn’t cool. But Kaname believed in all of those things, and if Kaname believed them--

Well, then it was Katsumi’s job to make them true.

The next morning, Katsumi steps into class before the bell with a mission in mind. His friends wave him over to their cluster by the window, grouped around a handheld game and having a fun time, but Katsume looks right past them. He spots Natsume in the farthest corner of the room, his bag in his lap and his empty hands folded in front of him and his eyes gazing past the window at something a million miles away.

Katsumi heads straight for him.

The other kids are already whispering by the time Natsume notices him. Katsumi hates the shadow of fear that makes his brown eyes go dark, hates the way Natsume pulls into himself like one of the shelled creatures from the tidepools, hates that it’s his fault.

“Sorry I was mean to you,” Katsumi says. He’s careful to say it gently, the way he talks to Kaname on the phone when Kaname’s having a bad day. “I wanted to be your friend.”

Natsume stares up at him like he has absolutely no reference for this. His eyes dart away, once, at something behind Katsumi, like he’s waiting for this to be another cruel prank and Katsumi’s friends will give it away and get it over with if he gives them an opening.

But nothing happens. Their classmates whisper and stare, Katsumi stands beside his desk and waits, and Natsume comes to a decision.

“It’s okay,” Natsume says. He even smiles, tentative and hopeful and setting himself up for hurt like he doesn’t know any better. “We can still be friends.”

Shibata Katsumi is a bully, but his soulmate thinks he’s a better person than that. He wants to be a better person than that.

He thinks he can start right here.

#natsume yuujinchou #natsuyuu #shibata katsumi #natsume takashi #tanuma kaname #tanubata #my writing #natsuyuu fic #empty hands #owl this is ur fault mkay

52 notes · View notes