Suddenly I have more followers, 10 away from 100, wow! Never expected that to happen. Thanks guys! And thanks for enjoying these so much. These have become sort of fun writing exercises for me :) This is the longest one so far.
I’m really glad people are liking these :)
***
Naoto Shirogane is not planning on having a family. Not now. Not ever. She has a career. She’s a detective. There’s no room for family on her busy schedule.
She barely has time to fit husband into her impressive resume, but somehow Kanji Tatsumi wormed his way in there – sometime between “Midnight Channel,” and, “Am I really wearing a wedding dress,” she thinks.
Kanji Tatsumi, however, wants to be a dad. He’d be a kick ass dad, he thinks, able to make dresses for the girls – nevermind the look Naoto gives and the lecture of “What if she does not want to wear a dress? Do not assume blah blah blah he tunes her out after that, already picking out pink fabrics in his head. As for the boys, well, he’s sure he can make some adorable teddy bears that wear baseball jersey’s, or something, or maybe he can teach them how to sew like their good ol’ dad.
"So you are willing to modify the stereotype for sons, but not for daughters?” Naoto asks.
“Careful, that sounds like family planning.”
At this Naoto says nothing else, burying herself in the notes of a case. Kanji just gives her an annoying smile, says something about how “deep down she wants to be a mother, wants to settle down,” and she pretends like she’s too busy reading to hear his words. He couldn’t be more wrong, you know, she has no deep down feelings, or urges, or anything like that. In fact, she should lecture him on his assumptions about what she feels “deep down.”
So, of course, when she ends up pregnant about a month later, it’s strictly accidental. A malfunction in her birth control, or the condom, or the nine-hundred and sixty-nine other ways they use protection. She plans on writing several strongly written letters to these companies and their defective merchandise.
For now, she’s going to select a worthy name for her first born. She’s going to make sure she follows all of the proper diets, gets the very best crib, and prevent her husband from showering their home in pink and/or blue – not that blue is a bad color, and not that she had been planning a child in the first place!
“Stop smiling at me, Kanji.”
But Kanji never does.
It is not Kanji Tatsumi’s idea for him and Naoto Shirogane to break up. It’s one hundred and ten percent her idea.
She has some fancy dancy case to do, one where she’ll be away for a long while. He insists that they’ll be fine, but she’s done research, you see, that shows that long-distance relationships don’t work.
So she decides that it would be best to end things now, while they are on good terms with one another, “That way, no one is hurt,” she says.
Right. Of course. No one is hurt, obviously.
In the days, weeks, months after the break up Kanji decides to focus on being angry. It’s much easier to be angry than it is to be hurt. Let her go and do her detective gig, whatever, it doesn’t matter to him. He even goes so far as to tell himself that he doesn’t need her.
It’s all a fucking lie. He misses her like crazy.
What he doesn’t know is that she misses him as much as he misses her. Naoto rarely regrets the decisions she makes. She’s a rational person, she thinks things through, but in this case she knows that she has been absolutely wrong. She’s written about five hundred and seventy-two emails – she knows this because she’s counted them – but she can’t make herself hit the send button. It feels too impersonal, too half-hearted, to simply send him paragraphs of apologies. If feels even less sincere to ask for another chance, especially since she isn’t coming home for a while.
Meanwhile, Kanji isn’t counting the days until Naoto comes home. He’s not. Totally not. They’re broken up, so what does he care? In fact, you know what? Who needs Naoto Shirogane, anyway? He’s Kanji Tatsumi, goddamnit, he doesn’t need some pint-sized detective. He doesn’t care when she’s coming back. She can do whatever she wants. From this moment on he’s going to go out there and live a life without-
Knock.
Knock Knock.
When Kanji answers his door the last person he expects to see is Naoto Shirogane. According to the calendar he’s been marking – not marking, totally not marking – Naoto wouldn’t be home for another forty-eight days. Before he can ask why she’s standing at his door she starts going on and on about being foolish, about being sorry, about trying to come up with the proper apology, about coming here and only having a few hours before she needed to go back, but she really didn’t want to I would much rather stay and talk and work things out and-
He has her in his arms in seconds, completely dispelling any earlier thoughts about not needing her, “And sorry I called you pint-sized, too.”
“… wait, when did you call me that?”
Today (oops, yesterday, it’s after midnight) is/was “National Coming Out Day.” I already posted some long emotional blar blar on my facebook, so I decided to do something a bit more fun on tumblr.
***
Yosuke Hanamura discovers that today is “National Coming Out Day” thanks to the powers of the internet. Being the awesome friend that he is, he tells Kanji Tatsumi about this day, because if anyone needs to “come out” it’s him. Not that Yosuke has a problem with it, the two have been through too much for a little thing like sexual preferences to get to him anymore.
Besides, he had mostly been joking.
And double besides… there’s a certain someone he…
… but this isn’t about him, o.k.?! This is about Kanji and coming out!
So he tells Kanji about “coming out,” how it’s when you stop hiding and… yeah, just come out already, Kanji, he says.
Kanji mentions that, um, duh, he had already done that before. Shadow? Bathhouse? All that flamboyant jazz? He’s been there, done that, and has made plenty of plushies for his mother’s shop to show for it.
But this is different, Yosuke says, that was inside the T.V.
So Kanji takes a deep breath and does it.
He comes out.
… and… tells Naoto Shirogane that he has a crush on her.
He tells her how it’s “National Coming Out Day… or whatever the hell.” It’s a day to stop hiding, and thus, he stops hiding, and nervously waits for some sort of reaction.
The logical part of Naoto wants to explain to Kanji what the day really means. However, the way he shifts from one foot to the other is a bit endearing. She supposes that, deep down, Kanji sort of has the meaning of the day correct. He isn’t hiding his feelings – though, if she thinks about it, had he really been hiding them? The blushing, the stuttering, it was all out in the open.
So perhaps… she is the one who needs to come out.
So she smiles and comes out with him.
Yosuke sighs, once again marveling over how Kanji can be so dense sometimes. But hey, Naoto is kinda a boy, right? So Yosuke considers the day to be a success.
These are getting kind of long now, putting it behind a cut :) Souji and Yosuke feelings, ahoy!
In which gender and sexuality debates of Kanji and Naoto are turned upside down, right-side up, and every which way they can be. Behind a cut for naughty thoughts. Guest appearances by other Persona characters, too.
Note: maybe, someday when life isn’t terribly busy, I can transform these into lovely fics. For now, this is all I have, though people seem to like them :)
Naoto Shirogane is actually one hundred and ten percent aware of Kanji Tatsumi’s crush on her. She is a detective, after all, and has researched things like dating, and romance, and matters of the heart. That’s how she knows that she has no time for such things, as she told senpai after receiving a love letter in her locker. Such things are much too time consuming, and she has cases to solve – one in particular involving televisions and murders.
However…
Deep down, she knows that such logic is an excuse to hide the truth of the matter: she rather likes Kanji Tatsumi, too, in more than a teammate sort of relationship. Granted, he is extremely reliable in battle, but her feelings are past that point. It’s hard not to notice someone who thinks the world of you, especially if said person would pretty much do anything for you. Facing a crazy shadow of yourself? Sure. Catching you when you fall? Absolutely. Comfort you when you blame yourself for the injuries of a young child? Definitely. Standing by your side when facing a psychotic cop? Hell yes.
So she likes him. You know, likes him, as a normal teenage girl would say, but truthfully, she has no idea what to say to him. His flustered mannerisms over her mere presence, in turn, makes her flustered. She can’t help but feel flattered and left at a lose for words – especially since his feelings started back when he believed her to be male. They haven’t changed since that day, and he holds her on such a high pedestal that she’s worried that she’ll say the wrong thing and botch it all up.
Though how much could she botch things up when he, in fact, did see her at her very worst?
So once senpai left she wanted to try, but the words were always trapped in her throat. Then, suddenly, it was Golden Week and she had received a call for a case. Said case somehow led her back to the beginning, back inside the T.V., and much to her heart’s dismay she had to face Kanji in ways she hadn’t wanted to. But he had said something important, told her that she was much too formal with him.
Shadow or not, there was some truth to those words, so when that adventure ends Naoto decides to, finally, do something. Less formal, he says?
A kiss is not formal at all.
And that is exactly what she does, give or take a blush or two, and Kanji is more than happy to be informal right along with her.
Naoto Shirogane likes things neat, tidy, organized, and all that jazz. She likes things to be consistent – not predictable, per say, she just likes to have a steady routine, especially at home.
This all changed when meeting Kanji Tatsumi, and it – to this day – drives her nuts.
It’s not that Kanji is unorganized, far from it actually. He’s actually very organized, especially when it comes to his sewing. The threads are put away in their own spot, the fabric is folded, things like that. Granted, the area around his sewing machine can get messy – especially when he’s sewing – but Naoto is the same way with her cases. Books, folders, all of that is scattered about in its own spot, but she knows where everything is and that’s all that matters.
What drives her nuts about Kanji is that, even after all this time, he still leaves her emotions in disarray.
Naoto Shirogane is under the impression that you’re supposed to love your husband. Til death do you part, all that stuff, and she does, in fact, love Kanji Tatsumi. But it’s never consistent feelings. One day, she’ll love him. One day, she’ll be angry with him. Sad, happy, turned on, and it’s never the same, it’s never organized. Just because she loved him last Wednesday doesn’t mean she isn’t going to be exasperated with him this coming Saturday.
But he just smiles, tells her something like that’s how marriage goes and gently kisses her on the lips. And in the end she smiles, because in the end the gentle pitter patter of her heart never goes away when his lips touch hers.
Hello, let me introduce you to my OTP :) All of these handmade items are crafted by me, showing off my Kanji and Naoto feelings that will never, ever go away. This is an assortment of things, from their shadows to Naoto’s new look in the novel and even their persona being adorable (why for I ship the persona, too >.<).
As always, you can check out my store for what’s available now. You can also make custom requests: http://www.etsy.com/shop/snowtigra?ref=si_shop
Naoto Shirogane watches the hell out of Elementary. She watches it with Kanji Tatsumi, who makes dinner for the both of them so they can watch together. Kanji doesn’t really pay attention to the show, instead he watches her as she deduces things. In fact, she tries to deduce things faster than Sherlock Holmes does on the show, pointing out clues, and perhaps getting a slightly British accent as she does it.
Kanji thinks her deducing things is quite attractive, though honestly, Kanji thinks everything Naoto does is attractive. Quite.
