A/N: This was somewhat oddly inspired by the song "Stars" by Alison Krauss and Union Station (originally by Dan Fogelberg, but Alison's version is just *chef's kiss*). That's where the title and the verses are from. My dad introduced me to this song as a kid, and it's amazing how much it fits Act III Kyoru, so I highly recommend listening to it. Enjoy!
I spend my nights alone, catching falling stars
to give to you, love––they're just for you.
Stars fall every time lovers have to face the truth,
and far too many stars have fell on me.
There's supposed to be a meteorshower tonight. Tohru used to watch these with her mom whenever they happened. They'd bundle up in their worn-out fuzzy blankets and camp out on their apartment balcony all night, eating junk food and staring at the sky together. It's one of her favorite memories. But this is the first one she'll have to experience without Mom. How cruelly fitting that it's come just a handful of days after the second anniversary of her death. Now, as she plops down on the lawn and draws her knees up to her chest, that thought makes Tohru snort out a quick breath, something that might have been a self-deprecating laugh if she'd given the sound more time to form in her chest before releasing it.
She doesn't want to be alone when this happens, but she also has no one to be with. Yuki is at Kakeru's place. Kyo is probably just up in his room, but she can't very well ask him to come down and sit in the yard with her to look at the sky. He was so weird when she went to the graveyard the other day; he probably wouldn't like hearing her bring up her mom again now. Maybe he's getting tired of Kyoko's overbearing presence in Tohru's life, and consequently, in his. Tohru can't really say she blames him.
And besides, the way Kyo usually looks at her now is awful.
She can see it in his eyes, the way he doesn't really want to be near her, but how he's also so intimately familiar with her soul that distance is often hard to maintain.
Because she knows that he knows how she feels about him. She's not subtle. She never has been, when it comes to her feelings. And she half-understands why he might be trying to push her away because of it, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't still rip her apart at the seams.
So Tohru sits in the yard alone. Before coming outside, she'd briefly considered escaping up to her room, playing some random Pandora station on her phone with her earbuds in, making it so loud that she couldn't think, and therefore just forgetting about the meteorshower outside altogether. But somehow, covering her ears and shutting her eyes to this tradition of theirs would feel even more wrong than it does to be sitting here without her mother.
It feels like she's been waiting forever. And maybe she really has been. She's always waiting for something, really, though she's not entirely sure what––and she's not sure she'll ever figure it out, either. She doesn't like it, though––the waiting. The empty time makes her think, and when she thinks she feels, and when she feels she spirals, and when she spirals she thinks about just leaving this pointless life she's living to go somewhere far away and find her mom. And that's not proper, she always has to remind herself.
It's cloudy. It doesn't really occur to her that it might rain, though, for some reason. Not until she feels the first splatter of a raindrop on her wrist. She blinks and looks down at her thin arm, watching the water droplet slide down toward her palm before falling off and watering the earth below her. By the time Tohru truly recognizes what she just saw and felt, it's pouring. She doesn't understand how it happened so quickly, but now she's suddenly soaked.
She rushes to her feet, thinking uselessly that she should go inside, but it clicks in her mind that she's already here and already wet, and it actually feels kind of good, so really, why should she leave?
She can't tell if she's laughing because it's actually funny that she would get caught out in the rain like this after hearing about this meteorshower on the news weeks ago and planning for it, or if she's laughing because it hurts and she's maybe finally starting to go insane––there's only so much pain one person can take, after all.
And then she's biting down on her tongue hard, so hard she thinks she might draw blood if she doesn't knock it off, but she also can't stop and doesn't really care. All that matters is the aching in her bones and the tears that start leaving her eyes.
So much for the meteorshower. But maybe it's better like this. It's more fitting for her mood to be standing in the middle of a rainstorm than it would be to be sitting on the lawn and gazing up at one of nature's greatest miracles.
She cries. She cries and she cries and she cries.
She thinks about her mom, and she cries. The two of them would think this was a hilarious situation if they were still together. They would have embraced this and managed to turn it into something fun.
Mostly, though, somehow, she thinks about him. Because in spite of everything, if she had to pick anyone to stand out in the middle of a rainstorm with, it would be him.
She thinks about the way he's somehow managed to infiltrate her carefully built walls and get straight to her heart without even really trying. She thinks about the way that he bops her on the forehead, the way he calls her a dork but somehow makes what would usually be an insult sound so good, the way he makes her ache and ache and ache.
She thinks about it, and she cries.
But soon Tohru's knees hurt from being locked in place, and her throat burns from sobbing for so long that it's become raw, and she finds herself back on the porch. She dangles her legs over the edge, feet swinging, and takes deep breaths in an attempt to settle her heartbeat. As soon as she's breathing somewhat similarly to a normal person again, she hears footsteps behind her, as if on cue.
She knows who they belong to. Because who else could they possibly belong to? She tries to ignore the sound, hoping naively that maybe Kyo will disappear if she just pretends he doesn't exist.
"Hey," he calls, for perhaps the second or third or fourth time now, nudging her spine with his foot.
"Oh, hi." She looks at him because she has no other choice, but just for a second. She doesn't quite know if she could bear any longer than that.
"You're soaking wet. What've you been doing?" He sits next to her, and her chest burns when she realizes she can feel the warmth of his shoulder against her arm.
Tohru wants to wipe at her eyes, but can't think of a way to do it discreetly without him noticing, so she just hopes her leftover tears blend in with the raindrops streaming down her cheeks, instead.
"I was standing out in the rain for a bit."
"Eh?" Kyo asks, and she can't help but smile, albeit a bit sadly, at the underlying tone of surprise in his voice.
"It's nice. It's one of those kinda warm summer storms, you know? It felt good."
"I have literally never seen you do something like that before."
"No?" she asks, then ponders it for a moment. "Yeah...I guess not, huh?"
He's silent for a beat before asking, "Are you all right?"
"Fine," she lies immediately, her voice a fake-chipper that she's sure he'll see through, but in the end, he doesn't mention it, so maybe he never actually heard it at all. She's gotten pretty good at lying lately, it seems. When she was younger, she couldn't do it to save her life. If someone even told her to keep a secret about something as simple as a surprise birthday party, she'd turn into a blubbering, red-faced mess, because sweet Tohru Honda just couldn't bear to lie.
What a load of bullshit, she realizes now. She was never that person. It was an act. She's been acting for her entire life.
He's still silent, but she hears what he doesn't say: Weirdo, I can tell something's up, so just talk to me.
But no. No.
She can't.
It's too much.
Kyo sighs, then, and reaches out. He lays a hand on her shoulder. Tohru feels like she might crumble under the weight of his palm.
"If you need to talk, I'll listen," he reminds her gently.
You can't, she wants to scream. She wants to yell at him and flail her arms and cry like a child throwing a tantrum, because her heart feels like it's being ripped apart in a million different ways. Because she just doesn't get it. Because he can't be so nice to her one minute and then ignore her the next. He can't hold her through a sheet on the balcony, take her grocery shopping the next morning, but then three days later act like she doesn't exist again until he sees her looking like a mess on the porch. It hurts.
It tears her to shreds.
"No thanks," she chokes out. It's a rude sentence, she knows. He's offering to try and help her through her problem, to try and take the weight off her shoulders. But he can't do that when it's him that's heavy on her back.
He pulls his hand away. "'Kay," he says quietly. He sounds hurt. And Tohru wants to pretend that she doesn't care, maybe even pretend that she's glad he's sad, because now maybe he'll understand what he's been doing to her. But she can't do that, and she damn well knows it. So she scoots closer to him, quietly leaning her head on his shoulder. She doesn't look at him at all through this process, but she can feel his gaze on her just the same.
He doesn't say anything, and neither does she. Maybe that's how it's meant to be. Maybe they're not truly meant to be part of each other's lives outside of stolen moments like this, small touches they're allotted on begged and borrowed time before he gets sent away and she has to deal with whatever that'll make her feel.
He opens his mouth to speak, and for a fleeting moment, she hopes for an explanation, for him to give a reason as to why he's slowly leaving her behind just like everyone else important in her life has done. He has no choice about whether or not to go into that cage after graduation, but he does have a choice about how he spends his time now, and she wants to know exactly why, in his own words, he chooses to spend it gutting her and then sewing her back together before just ruining her all over again.
"Your hair is getting me wet, you dork," he says instead. And Tohru can't help but giggle a little bit at that.
"Sorry," she whispers.
When he says back, "it's fine," she can hear the smile in his voice.
And then they're quiet again, just watching the rain together. It's the opposite of watching a meteorshower with her mom, but somehow also exactly the same.
She doesn't really know if that's good or bad.
Kyo rests his cheek on her head, then, and she feels her world jerk into a tipping point upon its axis.
And she can't really tell if that's good or bad, either.
And it's getting easier each day to weep about you,
harder every night to sleep without you.
How many years must I be driven by this dream of love with you?
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