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The first time Natsume noticed it, it was so obvious even he couldn't dismiss it.
Looking back, there were probably other, more subtle signs he had ignored over the years. He thought maybe this was because of his own complete (and blissful) ignorance of flirting and the strange world of innuendo and body language it entailed. But he also thought most people would hesitate to admit to themselves that their big brotherly movie star and occasional exorcist friend was trying to put the moves on them. Too complicated, who wants to deal with that sort of realization?
But that first time he noticed, it was too obvious to avoid.
Natori had invited him out for some training in basic youkai defense techniques. Nyanko-sensei had declared it an acceptable idea after Natsume had had a particularly close call, kidnapped by a Snow-Woman who thought he was her lost human husband. In Sensei's words, "I'm more than enough bodyguard for anyone, even kind of a wimpy human like you, and I could teach you to defend yourself if you'd listen. But if you think learning some moves from Mr. Natori 'Sketchier than any youkai' exorcist will help, fine, make my job a little easier." Which in Sensei-language meant he had been pretty worried about Natsume and wanted him to have a variety of weapons in his arsenal, so to speak.
So Natori was showing him how to draw some of his exorcism circles with chalk on the floor of the house he stayed in - rented? owned? - while he was in town.
"Close, close. That symbol's almost right. Here, let me-" As Natori reached out a hand, Natsume thought he was going to take the chalk. Instead, he settled his own hand over Natsume's and guided it in what ended up being the closest imitation of the symbol he had drawn yet.
"You see how it's done? You have to move smoothly and confidently. Any jerkiness in the lines could affect the power behind it." Natori was sitting next to and a little behind Natsume and he wasn't letting go of his hand. There was a pause. Natsume thought Natori was trying to think of some more advice to share about exorcism, but instead, Natori half-mumbled, "You really do have exquisite hands." His hand curled around Natsume's in a way that was increasingly un-teacher-like, stroking his fingers lightly. Natsume dropped the chalk, needless to say, but Natori didn't let go of his hand.
He turned slightly to see if Natori's expression would give away any clues about what he was talking about, and he realized how close they were. His shoulder was against Natori's chest, their arms were parallel, stretched out over the diagram, and their faces, well. If Natori's hadn't been fixated on Natsume's apparently quite fascinating hand, they would have been centimeters from a kiss.
"Uh?" Natsume said, trying to dispel the tension.
And, just like that, it was dispelled. Natori dropped his hand and stood, somehow getting as far from Natsume as he could in one movement.
He then, somewhat anticlimactically, yawned. "I could use a break. Do you want to get dinner?"
Natsume nodded and tried to ignore the lingering heat where his hand had been in Natori's.
---
Once he started noticing it, he couldn't exactly stop. And now that he had noticed, he couldn't help but think that Natori was obvious bordering on embarrassing.
Natsume hadn't experienced much romance (read: any) and he hadn't observed much in real life beyond the usual high school students' serial crushes and Touko-san and Shigeru-san's sweet, comfortable love, which, during the rare times he thought about it, struck him as the perfect type of relationship: understanding, unconflicted, supportive. But most of what he would call his "image" of romance came from TV and movies, including Natori's own, some of which, yes, he had watched out of morbid curiosity. He and Sensei had mocked them for hours: it was hard not to, with Natori playing characters who were so good but so misunderstood. His rotating cast of heroines tried to get through to him but failed, until he realized at the climax that he had never been so happy as he was with her and he gives up the other woman / his intense office job / black magic / motocross (in one memorable film that relied heavily on obvious stunt doubles for Natori, though Natsume knew he could pull off some impressive stunts in real life under youkai threat) and together, Natori and his girl open a bakery / solve a mystery / curl up under a kotatsu, surrounded by the lovable and goofy caricatures the screenwriters gave them as family and friends.
In the midst of all the ridiculous plots, Natsume sometimes wondered if that was how Natori actually tried to pick up women.
Once Natsume realized that Natori might be trying to pick him up, he quickly realized that yes, Natori did flirt like someone who had just stepped out of a bad drama.
He, first of all, was more physically affectionate than anyone Natsume had met in his life - casual touches that wouldn't mean anything on their own, but now that he had noticed, there was a definite pattern of entwining arms and hands on his thigh and just a sense of being slightly closer than necessary in general. This was especially troublesome when Natori was out of his disguise and attracting the attention of everyone within a twenty meter radius even without the slightly homoerotic subtext going on.
He would occasionally pause and stare into Natsume's eyes, as though lost in thought; Natsume imagined that Natori was narrating in his head about "dark amber pools" that contain "all the depths of the universe" or whatever sort of drivel gets written in the scripts Natori had to read for work. He would tease Natsume about being thin or young or innocent or anything and then wrap it up with, "But I like that about you," accompanied with a head pat or an arm around the shoulder, as soon as Natsume acted outraged.
He once invited Natsume back for dessert and then tried to feed him strawberries, as in literally "hold up to his mouth for Natsume to take a bite" feed him. Which was just. Did people do that in real life, even if they were lovers? Not that Natsume had refused, since, well, Natori had seemed so eager for him to try the strawberries. But he had tried to downplay any eroticism to the activity. Though it's possible Natori's fingers had brushed his lips once or twice and it's possible he had pressed his tongue against Natori's hand briefly to catch a stray trickle from a particularly juicy strawberry. They were good strawberries.
Natsume was sure that he had seen Natori's eyes go from their usual calm laughter to an intense dark lust more than once. And yet. And yet.
Every time one of these moments reached the point where the only escalation would be a kiss, a confession, something real, Natori promptly backed off. It was like there were two Natoris: one, an incorrigible flirt, the other, a perpetual cockblock. It got bad enough that Natsume started wondering if he shouldn't just take matters into his own hands - but whenever that thought crossed his mind, it was followed immediately by "what, wait, do not want!" With the constant missed moments, however, that accompanying thought gradually became "not sure if want?" and then suddenly "want at least so there's something different from this ridiculous teasing." It was boring and frustrating and he was a teenager, after all.
At which point, Natsume started to think Natori's teasing really was only teasing and he was pulling back because he only wanted to tease. The thought made him feel sad and sick and the fact that it bothered him made him feel even sadder and sicker.
"Ugh. What am I going to do?" He mumbled to himself one night.
"Bring me some curry rice," answered an oblivious Nyanko-sensei.
---
Natsume reached his breaking point over the flower petal incident.
"You have a petal in your hair," said Natori. One hand casually brushed through Natsume's hair in a caress noticeably more intimate than his usual fatherly head pats (which had been getting less and less fatherly as Natsume got older anyway.) A lone white petal floated gently from where his hand had brushed. Watching the petal fall, Natsume thought that someone else would think it was very poetic.
In fact, he imagined that a lot of other someones had sighed over the beauty of Natori's sensitive hands lightly skimming a petal from their hair while he smiled sweetly down at them. Like he was about to go in for a kiss. Like he was doing right now.
But Natsume had been listening to youkai complain about how a sudden cold snap had ruined the blossoms in this area for the season. He had noted sadly how bare the trees were. Not to mention, he had seen Natori palm a petal into his hand when they had passed a tree that still had a few flowers ten meters back.
"Are you kidding me?"
Natori's eyes widened.
"Do you ever say anything that isn't straight from one of your movies? Have you been fed a steady diet of shoujo manga and romance novels since birth?"
"Natsume, I -"
"Do those sorts of lines work on your fans? Because I can't believe anyone is so dazzled by you that they can't tell that stuff is full of shit."
"Hey, calm down." Natori actually did look hurt and confused, so Natsume did his best to take a deep breath and slow down.
"I know you can be serious. You're serious about your side jobs, at least. I just wish you would be serious about me for once." Natsume paused and tried to fight the blush that came when he realized what he had said.
Natori blinked and then grinned slowly. And moved closer. "I am. Serious, I mean." His voice was low and soft, almost like a cat's purr, which, ugh, suddenly and awkwardly reminded Natsume of Nyanko-sensei, until Natori's hand on the small of his back made him forget everything else. "I didn't think you wanted me to be serious," Natori said, mouth close against his ear. "Do you think you can handle me being serious?"
Underneath his flirtatious purr, there was a question in Natori's words, as though he was insecure about the possibility, as though Natsume being all right with it was all that held Natori back from some outrageous outpouring of feeling Natsume didn't quite grasp. He tried to focus, tried to block out any purely sexual drives from his long-deprived teenage body, so he could give the question the consideration it deserved. Did he want to be the object of Natori's serious attentions, Natori who was cool and intense and utterly confident even when he was being ridiculous but who sounded unsure about what Natsume would do next? Natori, who had argued with Natsume about spirits with an air of condescension more than once, but who was always, in the end, alone in the way Natsume remembered being for his entire life until he had come to the Fujiwaras?
Looking up at Natori, his face too close to focus on, he saw a white petal drift and settle at the corner of Natori's eye and suddenly, Natsume did see the poetry of it, understood the heart of Natori's cliche. He smiled. "All right." He wrapped one hand around Natori's neck and pulled him down into a kiss.
"I came up with that petal move myself, you know," Natori said when the kiss ended. "This is the first time it's worked."
Natsume rolled his eyes. "It didn't work."
"Didn't it?" he said, smiling and leaning down to kiss him again, and Natsume thought, Yeah, maybe.