Author's Note: Written for Irony-chan for Christmas.
Shigure had been writing since he was a small boy. In fact, he was writing even before he knew how to write. His parents would humor him and pretend they could read his lines and scribbles, but he would always snatch his papers away from them and say, "No, no, the story goes like this!" He would write fanciful tales of children that could turn into animals and go on adventures and save the world, because he wasn't allowed to do any of those things.
The tales continued as he grew older and became readable by all once he entered school and learned to write properly - a task which he set to diligently. He still wrote his heroic fables, of course, but he'd also written a few about how it might feel like to be hugged by one's mother, because he wasn't sure if he'd ever had such a hug. He kept those stories tucked away under his bed, beneath a loose floorboard.
At the age of seven, after Shigure wept when Akito was born, and he began to write for her and her alone. She didn't understand his words for many years, but he would write them and read them to her anyway. Eventually she grew old enough to make requests, and he found himself writing about princesses locked in towers and princes to rescue them, and about girls being protected from evil monsters, and even about fairies and magic and other girly things like that, just to see her smile.
Sometimes, Akito asked him to write about what it was like to be hugged by one's mother, because she'd never had such a hug. He wasn't sure where those were hidden, but they were always gone when he returned to see her the next day.
After Shigure and Akito betrayed each other and he left his family home to live on his own, he was much older and more knowledgeable about the ways of the world. His writing drifted into romance, and he spun tales about handsome men wooing beautiful girls. He managed to find a publisher, and his novels were so descriptive and heartwarming and made people feel so easily that they seemed to disappear from the shelves. He wondered if Akito was reading them, too. After all, he was writing them for her, hoping that she would read them and see the words in his heart that he couldn't bring himself to say to her.
It wasn't until after the curse was broken that Shigure and Akito came together again. It was difficult, because Akito was still broken and unstable from her harsh upbringing, but Shigure stood by her and guided her and eventually their rocky relationship smoothed out into one that only had a few bumps and hills along the way.
One night, Akito shyly led a confused Shigure into her living room. She pushed a chair away from the wall and opened a hidden panel where she kept all his boyhood writings and copies of all the books he had published since he moved out. His heart aching with emotion, he gathered her up in his arms and they both wept silently before they made love on the floor.
Some people wonder why Shigure doesn't write anymore, and he gets letters every day from his fans. He dutifully replies to them all, giving them one excuse or another, but never the truth. He has no intentions of ever publishing another book because he has ever only written for one person's happiness, and now that person lays beside him at night, curled into his chest as he reads his stories to her, just as he had always done before.