Title: Gothomance
Author: Tofurkey
Disclaimer: I wish for a lot of things: infinite mounds of money, a gorgeous boyfriend also in possession of infinite mounds of money, world domination, world peace under my world domination, my own private jet, and chocolate. But when I wished that I owned and was legally entitled to Fruits Basket, it was the last straw for the Wish Fairy. She poked me in the eye with her wand, and I won't lie. It hurt.
Summary: Unexpectedly, the most beautiful love blooms in the darkness, like a flower in the moonlight. Saki Hanajima/Shigure Sohma.
"It was then, staring into the shadows, that my dreams first became exquisite." Lemuel W. H. Ranier, Flawed, Flawed, Silent
Chapter I: Catch Me If You Can
Shigure Sohma hardly ever remembered his dreams upon waking; only a certain emptiness, a certain longing, that he had strived his whole life to banish. He had schemed, seduced, and skirted around for fulfillment ever since he could remember, but had never even glimpsed it. As a cursed member of the animal zodiac, reaching an ideal, satisfied state in life was as ridiculous as the notion of trying to grasp the moon from the roof of the house.
Yet…
Standing in the middle of the jungle that was his bedroom, Shigure dressed in silence, not needing much time to slip into the familiar baggy black yukata, the worn sandals. A dull moonlight pushed defiantly against the closed sliding doors, throwing the room into distorted shading, and before he could cross the room to close the window as well, a warm summer breeze blew in, lightly teasing the stray papers strewn about in odd places. Shigure shivered.
Yet…yet a lifetime so far of disappointment and he hadn't given up. Never. Disgustingly, he was reminded of those inane party questions, meant to stir trivial discussion. If so-and-so were to jump off a bridge, would you? To save them? To join them?
A smile played coyly on Shigure's lips despite himself, as he cleared a small path towards the doors lazily with his foot through the junk piling on the floor. When he had learned to disregard himself this way, to feed this inner hunger, fuel such an unhealthy ambition, was irrelevant. He would jump off the bridge only to save himself, plunge into the dark abyss only if when he resurfaced, gasping for breath, he had what he wanted: his life. Nothing and no one else mattered.
Throwing the sliding doors open, Shigure was assaulted by the scarce sounds of the dead night, a resigned quiet, and the illuminating light that shone down on him from the fat, full moon, hanging low in the sky, throwing beams of its tempting light into the shadowed porch where he stood.
Shigure stepped forward onto the grass, outstretched his hand and squinted; a distorted visage of the moon wavered brightly between his fingers, and if he squinted harder and twisted his wrist, appeared to be in the palm of his hand. Slowly collapsing his fingers around it, encasing it, enclosing it, he smirked to himself.
And yet, it wasn't really a long reach after all.
Shigure strolled in a content solitude down one of the many paths that wound through the woods on the extensive Sohma property, engulfing the house he shared with Yuki, Kyo, and Tohru.
His sleeping schedule being erratic as it was, rising at a little past midnight craving 'breakfast' was only a normality scraped daily.
Even though fairly private, the Sohma woods were close to a dense residential area, and the only sounds that seem to ring through the night were the deadened sounds of cars zooming incessantly on the streets beyond. Shigure breathed in the warm, sweet summer air deeply, the rhythmic scrapings of his sandals in the dirt lulling him into a state of waking-sleep.
Finally stopping when he reached the chain-linked fence that separated another little Sohma property from the rest of world, cut off no matter where the location, Shigure leaned his head against the cool, jagged metal, and felt as if observing from another world, patterns poking and molding into his skin. Lately these little strolls of his had ended with him here, at the gateway, just to stare out onto the cleanly molded, deserted street with its nearly identical house complexes, its average people.
But something was different about tonight, the quiet was…unsettling.
"It's too quiet…" Shigure mumbled under his breath to no one in particular, his fingers entwining themselves comfortably in the intricate pattern of the fence, holding the brunt of his weight, as he leaned limply against the feeble metal contraption. "It's---"
"---unnerving," a dark voice cut through the dense air from the other side of the fence, causing Shigure to stumble over backward in a mixture of shock and fright.
"Saki!" He exclaimed from his sprawled position in the dirt, startled and bemused. He should start failing to be surprised at these random appearances of her's. He stood up and wiped the dirt from his hands onto his yukata, and looked through the holes in the barrier to make sure he wasn't hallucinating from a lack of 'breakfast'.
No, not even in the dim light could he mistake her for anyone or anything else: the gothic-style outfit; the long, flowing black hair; topped-off with a stoic expression, he could all-over conclude with utmost certainty that she was none other than Saki Hanajima, Tohru Honda's mysterious, and slightly creepy friend.
Regaining some composure, Shigure kept his distance from the fence now, yet smoothly looked her over. "Now, Saki, I have to wonder: what brings you out so late at night?" 'And here, no less,' he finished silently in his head.
"I could ask the same," Saki replied in her monotonous voice, gazing steadily up at him. A stray, tumbling summer breeze gushed to fill the silence between the two, sifting through the dry leaves above and creating a quivering, impatient sort of rustle.
Shigure took a step closer. "And your parents? I'd imagine they'd be worried, you wandering out alone in the dead of the night."
"No," was the single, simple reply. The wind teased through her long hair, giving it the eerie look of floating, alive ribbons framing her pale face.
Stepping closer still, so that the only thing between them was the jagged, metal fence, Shigure looked down at her with a slightly puzzled expression. She was hard to read, and it was frustrating for him. People, by law, were supposed to be easy; like books walking around without the protection of covers. How such an enigmatic girl became friends with a spit-fire yankee that spoke her mind and a people-pleasing simpleton, he could only begin to guess.
"Why are you here, Saki?" He repeated softly, observing her with a bare curiosity that he didn't bother to mask with his usual, cheerfully ignorant façade. In the moonlight split into scattered shards by the trees above, her pale skin had unusual glower to it, her eyelashes casting dark butterfly-shadows across her face…
In the silence in which she appeared to be compiling some sort of reply, Shigure was belatedly struck with a sense of déjà vu: Him, Hanajima – engulfed by darkness. A year ago, on the way to the Sohma Estate for New Year's, she had approached Yuki, Kyo, and himself on a dim street, shocking them all of their wits. Her unexpected visit had been on the behalf of Tohru, and it was bare naked truth to any fool that she and Uotani had a steel-clad devotion to the girl. Could Tohru's welfare be the reason of her latest appearance?
"Why do dogs howl at the moon?"
Not really a long reach, after all..
Shigure felt his body go rigid. This girl…waves…his…
Grasp the moon…
After a few delayed seconds of his mind tripping over itself, Shigure regained his senses. Above the ghostly tumbling of the wind through the trees, he could hear a faint, mournful howl a distance's off: a wolf. His own kind; that is, by curse, by spirit, by force.
He nearly burst out laughing at his moment of disarming stupidity. Of course Saki couldn't be referring to the zodiac curse, about him, no matter what mysterious waves she read. It was a ludicrous notion, really, although he couldn't repress a coy, ironic smile.
Slowly, Shigure relaxed his posture and slid down, down, down, along the fence, until his glinting, gold-brown eyes were level with her deep, dark ones; until, if it weren't for the chain-link fence between them, their noses would be touching; until, he was sure, he was much too close for either one's comfort, though she only looked at him expectantly.
Why do dogs howl at the moon?
"Maybe they're lonely," He breathed out throatily, a small, twisted wry smile gracing his lips. "Maybe when the moon is full, and looks so close, they just wish they could somehow reach out and touch it…"
"So maybe," Saki continued in her monotone - Shigure was positive it was a trick of the light when he saw a tiny, fleeting smile flash across her face as well – "they're just foolish."
Before he could even register the labyrinth meaning behind her words, intentional or not, Shigure found him staring at the retreating, swishing ends of Saki's black cloak with a single blink of uncharacteristically dulled senses. His own inbred darkness swirled nauseously within him, as he watched, unable to move, the real darkness – humming and alive – swallow her up.
Shigure awoke sometime the next afternoon, his neck stiff (He had fallen asleep with two hardback dictionaries as his pillow), and his stomach protesting with loud, angry rumbles.
Grinning, trying to tame his wild, long hair down to something presentable, Shigure ambled along down the stairs, not a single thought to bizarre occurrence last night, merely following the pleasant, indecipherable hum of voices from the kitchen, singing loudly, skipping a bit, singing some more, rounding the corner, and…
Screaming. Out. His. Fucking. Mind.
Quite shrilly, too.
"Damnit, will you shut up for once?" Kyo snapped grumpily, leaning against the sink, next to a very frazzled-looking Tohru, staring at him in a worried wonderment, her wet rubber gloves dripping a small puddle of water on the floor, obviously distracted from washing the dishes.
"Really, Shigure, that was quite uncalled for." Yuki said calmly from the table, his eyes never even straying from his food.
Shigure, however, was trying to coax his nerves back to a soothed state, smiling wearily down at the too familiar person who he had bumped into around the kitchen corner.
"Saki," Shigure said with the most suave politeness he could muster at the moment, so recently after his mild spasm, as he deftly noted that his heart seemed to be doing somersaults in his stomach still, "what do we owe the pleasure of you joining us for breakfast?"
"Lunch." Yuki corrected.
Before Saki could so much as open her mouth, Tohru stumbled forward, blushing furiously, her eyes adorably eyes wide and apologetic, wielding a soapy frying pan like a weapon.
"Hana is just visiting - not to impose the company of my friends on your household, that is, if it's a bother – but she d-didn't have much company at her home, being the summer holidays, and wanted to visit for a while, but…"
"I wanted to check up on Tohru, make sure she was well, that her summer job and everything else wasn't causing her stress." Saki interjected quietly somewhere, between Tohru's aimless babbling and Shigure's mild squeals as he ducked wild blows from the sudsy frying pan, which swung around dangerously with Tohru's frantic, flailing arms.
Wiping a goop of soapy bubbles off of his cheek, Shigure felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise as if a heightened level of electricity was coursing through the room, and his eyes were instinctively drawn to Saki's, despite the fact that Tohru was still apologizing on like a lunatic, getting a couple whacks here and there that he suddenly failed to notice.
It was a bizarre sensation, but Shigure suddenly felt as though the room was thrown into a deafening silence, although his ears were buzzing irritably. He was hit with a sudden flood of understanding and grinned charmingly down at the gothic girl scrutinizing him fully, her hand rested protectively on Tohru's shoulder.
"…and I wouldn't want to impose inconvenience on the House of Sohma, after you've done so much for me, b—"
"Tohru, Tohru," He chided huskily, patting her head fondly. "Of course Saki can stay with us a while."
Shigure watched the gothic girl give a short, polite bow in gratitude, his boyish, lopsided grin widening when he couldn't help but notice the slight, suspicious narrowing of her eyes.
She seemed to be on to him.
Catch me, if you can.
A/N: My first Furuba fic! Oh, heads up strictly anime viewers – Shigure is based off how he is in the manga, with an ulterior darkness. I know - Yum.
