Disclaimer: Fruits Basket belongs to Natsuki Takaya
Welcome-home gift fic for Katia-chan, as no one should ever have to get up at 3 in the morning in order to catch an 18 hour flight. In compensation for your suffering, a fic that won't make you cry.
Rakuen
(Paradise)
Although she does not know when, Machi is certain a day will come when she can be herself without feeling threatened by perfection.
But before then, she worries that being with Yuki may become too perfect, too frightening. And she wonders if he is aware of that.
It would be terrible if the whole thing were too good to be true, because she loves being with him. Sometimes, together is holding hands or being pulled into his lap—as if he has never enjoyed the experience of holding and she of being held. Sometimes together is cleaning a haphazard path through her apartment or avenging themselves against Kakeru. And sometimes, together is doing the same thing separately, like making footprints in the snow.
It had always been an empty feeling, trampling the perfect blanket of fresh snow. A sad, despairing feeling; a cry for help. Now it is a warm feeling.
Yuki is not pitying. He said it was cute—she yelled that it wasn't—and that he had never really played in the snow as a child. Making footprints isn't playing, she mumbled, just weird. He simply laughed in her face—he did that a lot after spending time with Kakeru—and explained that it was a proven fact that everything tends toward disorder and chaos. Machi is really just enthusiastically normal.
If he says such kind things, and they make her so embarrassed, what part of that is an ideal love?
She can hear his boots crunching the snow in the street as she meanders along the sidewalk. He coughs occasionally in the cold air, and she hopes he will stay for hot chocolate. She glances over to ask, but stops.
Yuki is oblivious, walking very slowly down the street. Concentrating deeply, he carefully lines his feet toe to heel in crisp straight lines between the sidewalks, each one evenly spaced. And he is smiling as he does so, looking so proud.
There is a roaring in Machi's ears—he's teasing me!—and her face gets very hot. She runs over angrily and shoves him in the chest, pushing him down into the icy street. She yells in his ear, "You're doing that on purpose!" but he only looks up at her and laughs, unrepentant.
"Didn't you like it?" he asks, trying to keep an innocent expression.
Still flustered, Machi rakes her mittened hands through his flawless pattern and grinds the snow into his hair until he yelps, "Ah, cold! It's cold!"
A day when loving Yuki is too perfect? No… that is not likely to ever occur.
…
Owari
…
-Windswift