Fruits Basket Fan Fiction ❯ A Single Note, Captured in Perfection ❯ Chapter 1

A Single Note, Captured in Perfection

By Chyna Rose

Disclaimer: Fruits Basket belongs to Takaya Natsuki.

Warnings: Homosexual relationship between persons of a single, large, extended family with shades of masochism.

It was but a dream. The most precious of dreams. Those that are possible but can never come true. And that is why it was all the sweeter.

We sit in your room, as we often do. You sit beneath the window, bathed in the lengthening shadows. I lounge at your side on the tatami. The summer breeze wound its way into the room, bringing with it the constant whir of cicadas and the random tinkle of the wind chime.

We say nothing in our companionship; just sit there in the still heat, undisturbed. Every so often, a crow would caw to mark the time. You idly run your fingers through my hair. It is an instinctual reflex, like the flurry of feathers at the hint of flight. And coming from you, I do not mind it.

Condensation forms on the forgotten glasses of tea, and fully saturated, slides down to the wood of the table. The ice slowly continues to melt, quietly chiming when a cube loses its base and crashes against the glass. And even that is barely audible.

I idly watch as a bead of sweat forms on your neck, and rolls down the pale lines of your muscles; the smooth column of your neck, the long line of the center of your chest, your slim stomach. To be absorbed by the light, thin cotton of your yukata, that in the heat had fallen open.

I would almost suggest that you take it completely off, but that seems like too much effort. And I do not wish to spoil the moment with loud words. That I am here with you is enough. That fact alone makes this moment perfect.

There is no one about to disturb us. No one begging you for a favor, or asking for a decision, or voicing a problem, or worrying over your health. Not even a servant silently waiting to cater to your every whim. Just you, and me, and the wild things in the garden right outside your window. It is easy to think that nothing else exists beyond your room and the garden.

I can't hear any of the normal everyday sounds that exist as life in the main house. In a way, that is quite eerie. Despite the general belief that everyone has to be quiet lest they disturb you and incur your anger, there is always some kind of noise. The laughter of young children on the wind as they play in the manner of all children (not us, never us. We who are cursed by the vengeful spirits of the Zodiac; your inner circle, could never laugh and run and play. That is our true curse. To forever be alone and separate). The murmur of the women as they cook, and clean, and wash, and gossip together (even you are not safe from their venomous tongues though they'd never admit it in you immense presence. Forgive them, they know not the truth). The low purr of the rare car as the arrogant display their so-called influence and the truly needy go about their official errands. Your own little shogunate in modern day Edo. But here, now, I hear none of that. It is truly just you, and me, and the cicadas, and the occasional crow.

The others, they do not understand how I can live like this. How I can dream this dream and treasure it. Why I would actually want to spend time with you. Why I dream of being with you, touching you, being touched by you. Laying under you, sweaty, as you take your pleasure from me, screaming out your name as I find mine. Why even with the pain of your rage it is not a nightmare.

I know that you are sick. I would have to be the complete idiot people think I am (the eternally laughing dog. Who lives to make crude innuendos and drives his editor to the brink of a nervous break down) not to. I know your rages, and mood swings; your fits and infirmities. I have been lucky enough to be spared the pain that others have encountered at your hand. To be one of the very few who has a chance of calming you down from your insanity. Yet even I am not completely untouched by your involuntary cruelties. You have never physically harmed me like you have Hatori, or psychologically like Yuki, but you have hurt me.

You hurt me by the very nature of your curse. I hurt watching you slip slowly away from us, from me, day by day. I hurt watching your confusion and frustration over a fate you can't control; as madness steals your mind and illness your body. I hurt knowing that you're dying. And that, as you are now, you can never return my feelings. You can never truly know my feelings. And perversely, I wouldn't have it any other way.

That is that; things are what they are.