Disclaimer: Again, I don't own Fruits Basket, just this little plot.
Oh, and by the way, there's heavy profanity in here. Just a little heads up.
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I couldn't stop staring at the letter in my hands. What in fucks name did Shigure want with me? After everything that happened, how could he still have the goal to ask me if I wanted to come and spend New Year's Eve with him when he knew in full that they would be there? Was he fucking piss drunk when he wrote this to me? Or did he think it was some type of fucking sick joke only someone like himself could find funny?
In any case, I wasn't going to sit there and actually debate about whether I was going to go or not, because I already made up my mind from the beginning, from way before I even got this letter, try a whopping few years before I got this letter. I decided against attending any family functions when I ended it with her.
The lighter was sitting right on top of the kitchen counter, all I had to do was reach for it, ignite the flame, and watch with a sick sort of pleasure as the paper burned and created that kind of smell one associates with ash and shit like that. I didn't though, I didn't light the flame to my Zippo, I just held it by the edge of the paper with the lid up, but the flames never caught fire as there was nothing there to catch.
I couldn't help but think that most of this shit was my fault, even though I would only admit to it in the safe haven of my mind. It really was, she didn't ask for any of this, all she was asking for I was too blind to see, I thought she wanted something else. I guess she got that now, even though he never was who she desired, that fucking rat, he's got everything now except for the person he loves. He sure knows how to keep up appearances though. The both of them sure know how to put up one hell of an act, I'd love to see them when the curtain closes on that performance. Probably just as miserable as I am, the whole fucking lot of us are and we're all too fucking stubborn to do anything about it. Holding onto pride we never had.
I remember the day it happened, the day I sent her off the goddamn edge, the day she actually left. I never thought she had it in her to do something like that, but then again, I never thought I had it in myself to hurt her like that. Fucking stupid ass I am. Now I'm beginning to see why the cat was left out of everything, it just caused misery and pain everywhere it went, a lot of people would be better off without me.
That day I don't think she could have looked more radiant, that day I don't think she could have looked more beautiful, that day I don't think she could have looked more pissed off than she already was. She wasn't exceptionally pretty, kinda awkward if you ask me, tall and lanky, but she lit up when she was angry, she fucking fumed with such fiery passion you couldn't help but kinda laugh at her sometimes. She blew everything out of proportion as though it were some kind of fucking past time hobby of hers. She used to choke on a single strand of hair that would always manage to find its way over her face, I always mocked her for that, she'd be ranting on about something and all of a sudden caught up with trying to blow a piece of hair away. Anyway, I always used to like getting her upset, just so I could see her yell. It was almost as if she changed entirely when she yelled at me, and only me. When she blew up at someone else, to be honest with you, she made me want to just look the other way. Maybe it was the fear she instilled in me, to which I still deny to this day except to myself, that paralyzed me into thinking her a Goddess of some sort, or maybe she really just looked that beautiful when she screamed her head off at me, but when her face got all red to the point where I thought she'd pop at any second and her eyes got all puffy and swollen from the screaming, I just thought she was the picture of beauty. Any sane person would call me crazy, any sane person would call her fucking mental and maybe even check to see if there was a psychiatric ward nearby that she could have escaped from, but the two of us, we weren't sane in the least bit, which is why I think maybe we idolized each other so much.
Truth be told, she could fucking scare you shitless with the faces she gave someone when she was pissed. Anyone, even sweet innocent Tohru would tell you she looked like a cracked up Barbie doll that some kid drew on when she was peeved. She was agitated easily, she contorted her face to images I don't even think the devil could come up with easily, over all she was fucking frightening and I don't know how that damn Yuki finds the strength to put up with her. You see I had no problem handling her because I was just as mental as she was. I wasn't scared of her screwed up face when she got angry cause I adored it, I wasn't turned off by anything she did cause I loved her that much, but Yuki, he felt that way about Tohru, not her. He went with her out of malice, he went with her to spite me, he fucking did it to show me the almighty fucking rat always wins, but what he can't figure out is that no one won by what he did. He's just as miserable as I am, he didn't find love, and he didn't find any kind of fucking victory.
What the fuck was I talking about again? Oh yeah, the day where pretty much my whole life, and everyone else's, went straight to the gutter.
It's funny how I can't remember what the fuck I ate for breakfast but yet I can remember that day clear as crystal, I watch it pretty much everyday like some sick American horror flick being reeled out. Gah, they're so damn cheesy, I almost felt privileged the day Shigure had to go and mention Jayson at the summer house and I didn't know what the fuck he was talking about. Not that I seriously thought it was a new type of bear, pshh, I'm not that gullible….
Man I really need to stop steering off topic. Anyway, me and her, we weren't officially going out, we really weren't a "couple" or anything to that extent, but she was crashing at my place for over a few months back then, and just living under the same roof with each other was enough to sort of make us feel like we were dating. Let me put it this way, if you asked someone like Shigure about our weird living situation he'd make fun of us and then tell you we weren't dating but argued like an old married couple in which case tying the knot was only paper work. There weren't a lot of restrictions living with her, and though the relationship was faulty it worked nonetheless. We never labeled ourselves formally or went public with anything, but it was sort of a silent agreement between us to not go with anyone else. That's where I fucked up, royally.
She was standing in front of the sofa, I remember cause she was blocking the TV and that made it a pain in the ass to keep track of what was going on. I remember thinking how matronly she looked with her hands on her hips, tapping her forefinger up and down. She wasn't doing anything, she was just… standing there, looking at me like she was waiting for something; like she was waiting for me to tell her something that would make everything better. I didn't realize at the time what she wanted me to do, how she wanted me to make it better cause I didn't know she knew about what happened, but when I think about it now, maybe if I just told her about that night, she wouldn't have left.
Maybe if I wasn't so preoccupied with what the fuck was on TV that night then I could have seen her face and how tragic she looked. The only thing I noticed was how cool she appeared with the light from the television illuminating the curves of her body and creating a really awesome silhouette. Then I just cursed her out for blocking the screen, jamming my fingers onto the remote control buttons to make the volume louder.
The last time she said my name I finally looked at her face, it was tear streaked and her eyeliner was all runny and shit. She looked like fucking death knocking on my door. Her blonde hair fell flat and her curls held no bounce, it lacked its usual luster and she looked like nothing I had ever seen before. She looked sad… for the first time in her life she actually looked like she couldn't afford to lose something and then went and lost it like the fucking screw up she was. She was always fucking up something, she couldn't do anything right, fucking klutz she was, but she always looked happy, she always looked so damn happy. Always prancing around with that doofus smile on her face like Tohru, the two of them just a pair of bobbling idiots mindlessly walking around Shigure-san's house.
But she was happy regardless, she was smiling and that's all that mattered. That night though, she wasn't smiling, for the first time ever, at least for me, she wasn't smiling, and that's a picture I won't ever be able to forget, even if I wanted to.
I watched her wipe some eyeliner off of her face, even though she only smudged it around worse than it already was, painting a big black circle on the apple of her cheek, it made her look all bruised up and shit. I shuddered at the thought of someone hurting her, subconsciously kicking myself for doing what it was I detested so much. She shut the TV off from the cable box and was just staring at me. The guilt was burning inside of me but like the stupid ass I am, I didn't say shit.
"Kyo-kun, isn't there anything you want to tell me?" She asked, her voice was all cracked and hoarse and you could tell she was crying. I cringed when she called me "Kyo-kun." I was always just "Kyo," and she was just my girlfriend. I was kinda scared, I had never dealt with her in that condition, I'd never dealt with her in that state, I never consoled her cause she always appeared so damn happy. Maybe if she was just fucking sad in front of me for once out of the goddamn year she was staying with me then I would have been more prepared, I would have known what to say to her, how to act, how to fix everything. What I didn't understand was that being myself and doing what just came natural was enough for her, being myself is what she wanted.
Of course, being the dumbass that I am, I stupidly shook my head no with that fucking blank expression on my face, feeling as guilty as ever and just really cursing myself out for what I did, for the way I was hurting her.
"Nothing?" She asked again, her eyebrows arching in disbelief at my mute self, as I never was that silent, never. I even yelled in my sleep, or so I was told by her that I did, couldn't shut the fuck up she said, told me I was unbearable. I always laughed at that cause she put up with it every night. She rolled her eyes not only because she looked like she was growing tired of my stupid ass self, but because she was fighting tears back. She was so stubborn, too much like me, she was trying so hard to hold her crystalline tear drops in, but a part of me wanted her cry. I wanted her to cry just to know that she could do so in front of me, just for my own fucking selfish reasons, just to make sure that she knew I accepted her just as much as she accepted me.
In some part of me that night, some part I buried beneath layer after layer of my exterior, I knew she knew about what I did. I knew she only wanted to hear me tell her, and that if I did she might have just forgiven me and that would have been the end of it, but being my usual head strong self, I didn't give into my better judgment. I went against it again and in result lost the only thing that mattered to me.
"Are you sure, Kyo-kun," She continued, hands on her hips as she tilted her head upward. Her voice was so fucking shaky she was putting me over the edge, she sounded so damn scared I just wanted to hold her and tell her I was sorry for being such a fucking screwball that did everything and anything wrong. I just wanted to touch her at that point, frightened that I may never have the chance to do so again.
"Kyo-kun, are you sure? You don't have anything you want to talk to me about. Nothing?" It was so painfully obvious, she was practically begging me, begging me! If there was one thing I never wanted to live to see, it was her pleading with some lowlife jackass like me. She was in so much agony because of me and that's what made it so much worse. It wasn't like I could go and just pulverize the loser who did this to her cause that loser was me, he still is me, and I don't think he'll ever change. I told her too, that's the ironic part, I fucking told her I would do some stupid shit like this. I warned her from the very beginning, I was pleading with her not to like me, not to accept me, not to fucking get attached to me cause I was just plain ignorant to the world around me. I begged her not to love me, but she did and I threw dirt back in her face. All I ever wanted was to be together with someone, together with them in the sense that they weren't ashamed to be with me, to be seen with me, but now I'm ashamed to be with myself. I honestly couldn't blame anyone for despising me now, I fucking couldn't hate anyone for hating me.
After she tried desperately to get me to say something, anything that would redeem me after what she was going to say, she eventually dropped the bomb on me. I was half expecting it too, I think from the moment I realized she had been crying I knew the reason and I detested myself so much that night that I thought maybe if I pretended it didn't happen, it would have just gone the fuck away. It didn't go the fuck away though like I had planned, nah, instead it hit me hard. I'm still recovering from the fucking punch it threw.
So yeah, she told me she knew about me and that girl whose name I wasn't even fucking aware of. I don't know how she knew, and I don't really want to know how she found out either, but she did and when I refused to admit to anything she blew up like I never seen her yell before. She wasn't this gorgeous goddess I saw her as when we fought over stupid things, when she yelled at me for just being me, that night she morphed into the epitome of tragedy. Her entire fucking essence was dripping with despair and she had an effect on me where the only feeling to flow throughout my body was a somber, morose type of tingling. The air looming over her was tainted by her heartbreak, she was so fucking infectious I just wanted to break down and weep, cry until I ran out of tears, cry for the both of us so she wouldn't have to. The pain she felt was so great that I could fucking see it etched onto her face, she looked like she was breaking and I couldn't help but wonder what bastard would have the chance to fix her. I couldn't stop myself from wondering who was going to pick up her pieces when I couldn't do it because I was the ass who shattered them in the first place. I couldn't prevent myself from thinking… from thinking if that damn rat was the one she would turn to for comfort. Was Yuki going to be the jerk who she confided in, who she sought out shelter in from the cat… from me? She was going to run away from me just like everyone else, the only difference was that this time, I cared.
An entire fight erupted from her confronting me, an entire fucking blow out fight. I handled it like an ass too, but then again, that's what I do best.
I was… such a jerk. I really flung her emotions around, thinking they'd never break. I really was full of myself.
I never meant to hurt her, I couldn't even imagine hurting her let alone actually doing it. When I went with that fucking chick that night I was… frightened. I got scared thinking about my relationship with her, I got nervous when I thought about our future together. I convinced myself I wasn't ready for anything too serious, I needed to know… I don't know what the fuck I needed to know anymore I just keep making up excuse after fucking excuse! But I wasn't lying when I said that I was afraid to think about me and her together in a concrete, stable relationship, where people could actually call us a couple. I think I was most scared of… rejection. What if she didn't want something like that, what if she didn't want what we had to change? I was scared she might want to just keep me out of the public eye, I was terrified that she would turn out to be like… my mom, as absurd as that sounds. Man does that sound sick… comparing my girlfriend to my fucking mom. But it was true. My mom lied through her teeth to me, she told me she loved me everyday and yet she couldn't bear to take me outside, she couldn't bear to be seen with me. What if it was going to be the same with her? What if we had stayed together and she would have been humiliated the entire time, ashamed every time she stepped out with me? I couldn't do that to her, I couldn't put someone I love so much through something like that. In all honesty, maybe I wanted her to end it with me. I wanted her to be happy, even if her picture of bliss excluded me. I managed to fuck that up too, though, even now that we're not together, it's not like she's with someone who loves her. That fucking Yuki will never bring himself to love anyone other than Tohru… just like I'll never bring myself to love anyone other than her.
I think I really pissed her off that night, the way I was handling it though would have pissed me off too if I had been dealing with myself. I just stopped listening to her after a while, I just blocked whatever the fuck she said out, it was too painful to hear her say words like "I hate you," to me. She told me she hated me that night, and I was okay, for a while, she threw shit at my head and I was still okay, but when she told me she didn't love me, I tuned the fuck out to everything, I might have even stopped breathing if I didn't remind myself to inhale and then exhale.
I don't think I comprehended what the fuck she was trying to tell me, I don't think I fully grasped the thought of her leaving until she was actually gone. Pretending she wasn't threatening to leave me was my way of making everything better, it was my way of thinking the next morning when I woke up, she would have been next to me in bed, her mass of curls annoyingly spread over my face.
The fight lasted until really late into the night, I'm talking three or four. I can't really remember, but it was late, and by the time her voice had given out and I just said to hell with it, she was all packed up and ready to go. She didn't have a lot of crap, as she just used most of my shit; she wore my clothes, used my toothbrush, she practically lived off whatever the fuck it was I was doing, and the moment she stopped I nearly fucking fainted. I was so used to having her scent linger on my shirts, finding stray pieces of her hair tangled up in one of my brushes, cursing her out for getting lipstick on my collar, stupid shit like that was something that, when threatened to be taken away, got me preparing for a really bad fucking case of withdrawal. When she left I just felt so… empty. Something was missing and I'd never get it back. Fuck, I'm sounding way too sentimental and cheesy…
She was standing in the doorway, her bags were carelessly thrown behind her as though she didn't want them there and I was standing in front of her still in our apartment. My arm was resting on the side of the door, my hand dangling limply over her head, I had the other one in my pocket and I had to keep catching myself from leaning too far into her. Even after she lunged a fucking paperweight at my head I still wanted her… typical guy for you.
"Are you leaving yet?" I asked her bitterly, boy what a way to tell a girl you love her right? I know, fucking stupid, you don't have to tell me.
"Do you really want me to? Is this what you want me to do, Kyo-kun?"
"Don't fucking call me that!" Yeah, cause what she calls you is really important Kyo, smart ass punk.
"Tell me exactly what I'm supposed to call you then? Should I refer to you as my knight in shining armor? Should I call you baby, should I call you honey, should I call you darling, what the hell do you want me to call you after what you did to me?"
"I just… I just want you to call me Kyo, okay? Like you used to… I just want us… to go back to the way we used to be." She kept on shaking her head "no," like I didn't know what the fuck it was I wanted from her.
"You're lying! That's all you know how to do! If you wanted us to go back to the way we were you would have said something before! You would have at least said you were sorry, you would have listened, or at least pretended to have listened! You would have done something, anything, to show me… to show me that all of this wasn't fake, that we really had something. But you didn't, you just ignored me, like you ignored me and what I would have thought when you were with her that night." I think I finally figured out why she was saying all that shit before leaving. The entire time I thought there was no changing her mind, while she was lecturing me about how I was supposedly feeling, it wasn't cause she was just angry, I think she wanted me to stop her, and I didn't. I let her walk out my fucking imperfect life that took a turn for the worst when she removed herself from it so easily because… because I honestly put my full faith in the idea that she was gone already, that there was no swaying her decision and that I lost her early in the battle. There was no hope for me, but now I think that even if I had just touched her, did something before she walked away, she would have been more than happy to reconsider everything and stay with me.
She did something really funny though before she left. At first she was just standing in front of me as stiff as a fucking board, my head was down cause I couldn't stand to look her in the eye, and I could hear her heavy breathing come out in ragged intervals, as though she was really nervous. I watched her left hand sort of spaz out, she picked it up, then looked as though she were conflicted between two things, backed away slightly, and then completely took me off guard by placing her hand on my chest. She was trembling, I could feel her convulsing, and it felt like my chest was thundering inwards at her shaky touch.
My natural reaction was to, of course, look at her, attempt to figure out what she was playing at. If she was leaving why was she making it so fucking difficult, that was all I could ask myself. I wanted her to just get out and get it over with as opposed to letting it loiter around and litter the already tainted atmosphere that would never recover from the things it witnessed that night.
She turned her head away, and then hesitated before looking back at me and then pushing her forehead onto my chest. We just stood there in that position for a good few minutes, I don't think either one of us wanted to let go. I think maybe, just for a moment, the both of us went backward in time, we both wanted to believe that everything was going to be okay when she pulled away, we both were expecting everything to erase itself so we could go on as though nothing ever happened. It was only for a moment though, so when she did pull away, all that was waiting for us was the same misery we temporarily left. Shit, I can sound artsy when I want to.
I felt her hand graze mine as she allowed it to drop from my body. Her palm was really sweaty, and I could feel how fucking nervous she was, she was beyond just uneasy, she looked like she was going to fucking vomit all over the place at just the thought of letting go of such a comfortable existence, of walking out of a lifestyle she had been accustomed to for so long.
"It's too bad… things had to happen this way." She whispered in my ear, her bottom lip skimmed my earlobe and I cursed her for having such an effect on me, for having the power to make me feel as though my life would end the minute she was no longer a part of it.
I was still impatiently waiting for her figure to just grace the halls of the outside of my apartment, eagerly anticipating the moment when I could breathe again, but instead she brushed her lips against mine and it took my entire being to hold myself back from just flinging her inside the house and throwing her into the bedroom. Even after we were practically through she was still a fucking tease.
"See you around… Kyo." She spoke to me against my lips. I managed a smile once her back was turned, despite all the shit that had happened that night, she couldn't help herself from calling me Kyo, she couldn't prevent the inevitable.
After that night, we never spoke to each other again, at least not in the same way we would have talked to each other had we been together. I saw her a couple times, hanging around Shigure-san's house, bouncing around here and there with Tohru, casually talking to Haru, even playing with Momiji when Kisa preoccupied all of Tohru's time. I might have even caught a glimpse of her with Kagura, but I'm little foggy on that last one, as Kagura never was one of her favourite people, but then again, I couldn't blame her. Kagura was off her fucking rocker, poor kid, still is.
I always wondered why the fuck she was tagging along with all the Sohma's. Did she have a thing for us? Was she trying to substitute for me? What the fuck kept her around I wondered, she was making it increasingly hard to go near any of my own fucking family! Not like I wanted to see them, it was just a pain in my ass to have to see her everywhere, to be reminded of what happened every time I saw her face.
Then I noticed her with that fucking rat, and that's when it clicked, she was hooked to the tails of every single fucking zodiac member the way she was cause she was fucking going with that damn rat. It was no wonder Tohru was alone so often, had so much free time on her hands to help with Kisa or play with Momiji. It was all so clear to me now, why I couldn't figure it out then was a mystery, why I couldn't put fucking two and two together boggled my mind.
When I saw them together the way we used to be together, it really pissed the hell out of me, it really got my blood boiling, I never hated Yuki as much as I did when I saw him holding her. He was fucking holding her as though she was his. She wasn't his, she didn't belong to him, she wasn't a fucking object passed from one Sohma to the other. When he got tired of her would he throw her away, would he pass her along like some fucking hand-me-down? Who would get her next, Haru maybe? I was sickened by him, I was sickened by her, by how she allowed him to treat her like that. She was never that way with me, she was so damn assertive, so fucking controlling, but I liked it that way. Looking at her submit to someone as low as the rat truly made me feel nauseated, watching her subject herself to him was just out of this world, it wasn't a sight for my sore eyes.
All I could do after I discovered Yuki's intimate relationship with her was think,
You won Yuki, you one the last fucking battle. You have her, the only thing that matters to me. Beating you in a physical fight seems so trivial when compared to her, it seems so selfish. But you have her now, and you don't have Tohru, the girl you really love. I guess we're pretty much the same now aren't we, both in a situation we loathe, situations we both could have avoided. How fucking ironic is that?
And that's pretty much how everything happened. I didn't want to go to that damned New Year's Eve party, I didn't want to fucking bring in a new year with those two pretending to be happy, yet somehow, I allowed the Zippo to fall out of my hands and I just left the letter on the counter. I told myself I wasn't gonna look at it, but I never brought myself to completely kill it, I never fucking threw it out, and that's how I found my idiot self at that cursed party.
But you know what they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder… or was that laughter? I can't fucking remember shit like that, what I'm trying to say is, you never know. Maybe there's a reason for us to be together in the same room again, under supposedly happy circumstances, though last I checked New Year's with the Sohma's was a fucking drag. Who knows, things always have a way of working themselves out.
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A/N: Okay, so maybe the plot wasn't so little… I know this one-shot was very long, but I had a lot to write. It was sort of pointless you could say, I just didn't have much to do with my time. It's very choppy, I already know, and the cursing is quite frequent, but I always thought if Furuba wasn't rated Teen, Kyo would curse… a lot. He just comes off that way to me, he's so pissy all the time. I started a second part to this but I decided to just chop it off here. And I'm sorry to all you Yuki fans (As I'm one as well), he doesn't treat the girl badly he only sounds like an ass because it's Kyo who's describing him. If all of Furuba was told through his eyes I think we'd all hate Yuki. Anyway, I know this wasn't anything brilliant and I hope no one was expecting that, just don't be too harsh in your reviews. Please? Kay, I'd love it if you reviewed so don't forget! Thanks!