Fruits Basket Fan Fiction ❯ Night ❯ Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don’t own Fruits Basket

Warnings: Alternate Universe, eventual shonen ai

It’s not that dark outside, Kyo notices with a triumphant grin. Not that cold, either, but he’s glad he brought a jacket. The cold air hits him in a burst and he feels goose bumps forming on his skin and adrenaline rushing through his veins.

He loves being out at night, when the air is clear and dark and the lights are off in the main house, and he can run as fast as he wants to without anyone laughing at him. The night-vision that comes with being the Cat is an added bonus.

It’s after midnight, so the throng of shoppers that once crowded the main streets are almost gone. They’ve been reduced to a few men smoking beside the bars, and a couple of young partiers who were out for a drink and a laugh not too long ago, now reduced to half-asleep drones muttering mumbled half-goodbyes to their friends and slamming their car doors loudly. Kyo glares at them all disdainfully, keeping to the shadows. Nobody notices him, nobody wants to notice him.

If they did notice him, he’d just seem like one of them. Clothes stained with dirt and skin rattled with cuts. In this dark, they wouldn’t recognize that his hair is the color of a raw carrot or question the meaning of the bracelet on his wrist. Nobody knows who he is.

He loves the smell of the night.

Then he sees someone coming towards him, someone who seems more at home here than the others. A boy, about his age, who walks with a haughty step and a vulnerable smirk. His hair is an odd shade of grey and his eyes seem to shine with the light from the moon.

Kyo feels a shiver rising in his throat, and without giving it a second thought thrusts his arm out to stop the boy mid-step. He stumbles, but doesn’t trip, looking up at Kyo with eyes of steel.

“Who are you? What do you want?” the boy asks, his smirk now confident.

Kyo gulps, trying to glare back at him with the same fearless intensity that he radiates. “Nothin’. I thought you were somebody else.”

“Really? I’ll be off, then.”

With nothing more, he turns away, leaving Kyo standing bewildered in the dust. But the Cat is still drawn to him, so shouts out the first thing that comes to his lips. Anything to get him to stay one second longer.

“Hey! You mean you’re not mad about that? You’re not gonna fight me ‘cause I tripped you?”

He turns and stops slowly, and there’s something in his eyes that makes Kyo quiver.

“No.”

That’s that, then. Kyo lowers his shoulders, defeated, and makes his way back to the woods. Being out at night doesn’t feel so heroic anymore.

But it doesn’t stop the fact that he knows that he’s coming back tomorrow night, to try to see that boy again. He could be a member of the Zodiac, and Kyo has always wanted to know someone who is going through the same thing that he was.

Yes. Kyo will find that boy again.