#TFW U TRY TO WRITE SOMETHING LIGHTHEARTED AND IT TURNS INTO AN ANGST TRAIN RIP ME

[goodlucktai]

Nishinatsu 25+21??

two-part drabble game25: being somewhere you’re not supposed to be+ 21: “they’re wrong about you.”

i got 2 requests for nishinatsu + 21, you guys know me so well (ꈍ◡ꈍ)♡ 

x

Somehow, they got off on the wrong station. Kitamoto’s voice is loud where it’s coming out of Nishimura’s cellphone on speaker – not quite frantic but certainly agitated, because it’s late and it’s getting dark, and Nishimura and Takashi are more than a little lost. 

“Just,” their friend says, “find someplace and stay there, okay? Like, an internet cafe or something. We’ll get off at the next station and double back.”

“Tell him we’re sorry,” Takashi puts in quickly, anxious at how upset they’ve made him. Nishimura just rolls his eyes. 

“It was an accident,” he says instead, with deliberate enunciation, like it’ll change Kitamoto’s perspective to hear that excuse for the fourth time. “Jeez, Acchan, lighten up.” 

Before Kitamoto can reply to that the way Takashi can guess he would like to, Tanuma takes over from the other end and says, “Natsume, you left Ponta,” like the fat cat is a shield or a talisman he wandered off into certain danger without. Despite himself, the note of worry in his friend’s voice over so small a thing makes Takashi smile.

“Keep an eye on him for me,” he leans in to say, and he doesn’t know if he’s talking to Tanuma about Nyanko-sensei or perhaps the other way around. “I’ll see you soon.” 

It isn’t unsettling to be out in the dark. Takashi has spent a lot of nights by himself in parks or the woods or just walking through empty streets, and it’s never really bothered him. There are just as many monsters around when the sun is out, after all, that’s something he knew as a child. 

So when they pass under a flickering streetlight, and the shadows jump and stretch like a living thing, and Nishimura shivers a little and presses into his side, Takashi just smiles.

“Cute,” he says mildly, purely for the sake of Nishimura’s deeply offended squawk, and the way he blushes so hard it’s easy to see even in the low light. And then Takashi can’t help laughing at him, and that only makes it worse.  

“You’re a jerk,” Nishimura mutters, not nearly as annoyed as he would like Takashi to believe. “Hold my hand, you jerk.” 

So they head down the street hand-in-hand, and Nishimura jumps at every innocuous nighttime noise, and Takashi is still smiling as they round the corner and almost walk headlong into a couple of strangers. 

“Oh, sorry,” he says automatically, and the man lifts his head from where it was buried in his phone and – 

Oh. Not strangers. Takashi goes tense before he can help it, staring up into a pair of faces that haunted him for months after he left their care. His breath stutters. 

“S- “ He swallows and tries again. “Sorry. We’ll just – “ 

“I don’t believe it,” the woman says, sounding surprised in an unpleasant way. She’s a cousin, he thinks. Her name was – Kotone? He can’t remember, she didn’t like when he called her by her name. What was he supposed to call her instead? Obasan? 

He’s floundering. His chest hurts. 

“What the hell are you doing back here?” her husband says. Kenta, and his voice is – a nightmare, given shape and sound, and Takashi ducks his head before he can think better of it. 

The years fall away and fall away and he’s seven years old again, small and scared under their cold eyes. The air between them is tense, and they seem to be waiting for an answer from him, so he says, “We got lost.” 

“Of course you did,” Kotone says, world-weary. “You never change, do you? Good for nothing kid.” 

Takashi stares, unseeing, at the pavement beneath his feet. 

He’s lived in Hitoyoshi for two years now, has found a loving family, made friends with wonderful people, cultivated the kind of reckless courage he needed to ask Nishimura out on their first date nearly six months ago. He has more now than he ever has. His days are warm and sunny and infinitely precious, like pages torn out of some fairy tale book.

But he still has nightmares.

Sometimes he dreams that he never left those dark places that plagued him as a child. Sometimes he dreams he’s still with Kenta and Kotone, that he still has to wear long sleeves to school and go to bed hungry, that he stays out long after the street lights come on and plays with stray cats in empty parks until a concerned passerby makes him go home. Sometimes he dreams Shigeru and Touko don’t want him anymore, or can’t keep him anymore, and he goes back to that cold house because no one else will take him, and he loses all the wonderful things he has now.

And yet – despite how many bad dreams he’s had that started this way, despite all the variations of this same scenario that he’s envisioned in his lowest moments – this one is almost immediately something new. 

Because Nishimura is jolting a step forward and his expression is so angry it takes Takashi’s breath away. It cuts through the dark cloud of noxious fear in Takashi’s brain like a bolt of white lightning. 

“What did you say?” Nishimura demands, his voice too loud in the still of the night. They’re in a residential neighborhood, all but standing in front of someone’s home, and Takashi knows what it sounds like when he’s only going to get louder. “Good for nothing?”

It’s like they didn’t notice him beside Takashi until he spoke up, because Kotone and Kenta both shoot him startled looks. 

“Hey, tone it down – “ Kenta starts, eyebrows furrowing, but Nishimura is having none of it.

He was terrified of every dark corner a moment ago, but he’s fearless now, standing between Takashi and two of Takashi’s biggest fears like it’s the only place he belongs. 

“Say it again,” he says, scowling up at them. He never let go of Takashi’s hand, and his grip is so hard it almost hurts. Speechless, Takashi holds on just as tight, like he might fall if he lets go. “Go ahead. I wanna hear everything you have to say about Natsume, so start from the beginning. How old was he when you knew him? Ten? Eight?”

Something uncomfortable is settling on their faces now, and Kotone glances over her shoulder, as if expecting a judgmental neighbor to be watching the altercation from a row of hedges.

“Tell me,” Nishimura goes on, heated and fierce, too loud, all but filling the empty street. “Tell me what he did that was so terrible. Tell me what he did that made you hate him.”

“That’s enough,” Kenta says, sharp, trying to wrestle back control of this rapidly spiraling conversation. “Didn’t anyone teach you to respect your elders?”

“Nope,” Nishimura says with mean glee. “My big brother only taught me to respect my betters. Tough luck.”

Takashi stops breathing. Even Kotone’s face goes slack with shock at this russet-haired slip of a boy’s daring. Kenta’s mouth twists into an ugly frown, but at about that time a light goes on in the house nearest them. Kotone grabs Kenta’s arm, her desire to leave transparent. 

Heart in his throat, Takashi tugs Nishimura back and away from them as they shove their way past. “Go back to wherever you came from,” Kenta spits out, and then he and his wife are gone. 

Nishimura is trembling in the circle of Takashi’s arm. Takashi thinks he’ll have bruises on his hand tomorrow, an imprint of this moment, of how hard Nishimura held onto him. When he risks a glance at his boyfriend, he’s startled to find tears in Nishimura’s eyes. 

“They’re wrong about you,” he says, and his voice breaks. The brightest thing in Takashi’s whole life, and he’s crying, pressing the heel of his free hand into his eyes, like he can push back the wetness there if he digs in hard enough. “Natsume,” he sobs, helplessly angry, and Takashi pulls him in as close as he can. 

Shaken, but for a different reason than he might have been otherwise. 

“You’re – impossible,” he barely manages, wide-eyed and wondering. “I can’t believe you.” 

The gate behind them opens with a whine, and a middle-aged woman leans out with a look of concern on her face. She glances behind them sharply, and back again, and says, “Are you boys okay? I heard shouting. Was someone giving you trouble?”

“They’re gone,” Takashi tells her. A few more reassurances send her reluctantly back inside, and Takashi can focus on the task at hand. He rubs his hands up and down Nishimura’s back, trying to coax him back. “Right, Nishimura? They’re gone, we’re okay.” 

“Don’t comfort me,” Nishimura snaps wetly, rubbing harder at his face with his sleeve. “I’m – I should be – that’s my job.”

It should be impossible after what just happened – and if someone asked Takashi ten years ago, he would have told them so – but somehow, despite himself, Takashi laughs. It starts shaky, but it finds its feet as it goes, and it leaves him smiling. 

When Kitamoto and Tanuma find them an hour later, seated outside at a late-night cafe with a bubble tea and a plate of soft cream buns split between them, Nishimura’s eyes are still puffy and red-rimmed, but they’re watching a video on his phone that has them leaning on each other in their laughter, so their friends roll their eyes and assume the sorry state they’re in is their own fault. 

And if Nishimura holds onto him a little tighter than usual on their way back home, it’s not so strange. Everyone knows that Nishimura is afraid of the dark, and that Takashi is indulgent enough to hold his hand.