Pairing: Hatori Sohma/Ayame Sohma
Theme: #4 our distance and that person/キミとボクのキョリとアノコ
Disclaimer: I don't own Fruits Basket, nor its characters.

A/N: This takes place around the time when Hatori met Kana. I've looked over some of the chapters and found that most of them focussed on Ayame. Poor Hatori. So neglected by moi. TT

Isolated

Hatori had never expected his own pursuit of happiness, tentative as it may have began, to drive such a wedge between him and his friends. Not that he had seen them a lot as of late, for he had been off to medical college while his friends were following their far-fetched dreams. Hatori had supposed their choices of 'occupation' suited their personalities, just like he had supposed his future would be awfully lacking of Ayame- and Shigureness; he had never expected Ayame's frivolity and Shigure's perverted nature to merge well with his professional persona without school keeping them together.

Small steps, followed by even smaller ones, had driven him to his personal spring. He had not expected to find someone, but he certainly had not rejected it. Kana had been there for him, and had understood him and his needs in ways that Shigure and Ayame could not come close to. In comparison to Kana, Ayame and Shigure seemed egotistical, self-absorbed, and mainly just horrible friends.

Hatori had always felt isolated of the two eternally more sparkly and noticeable characters that were his friends, and at the same time had felt almost ashamed that he felt that way. That was just their personality. And even though, throughout the years, he had slowly peeled off both their layers and had seen them for who they truly were, sometimes he wondered whether their insensitivity wasn't an act.

Distance had always been between them. Hatori had maintained this distance, purely out of self-preservation. Try as he might, Hatori simply could not understand his friend's behaviour most of the time. For instance, he would never start writing perverted stories about his forty-year-old teacher while sitting in her classroom like Shigure, or poke said teacher in her chest with a needle 'to make sure they were real'. Ayame had convinced him later that Shigure had put him up to it, but Hatori had his doubts.

Ayame and Shigure never let him in on their schemes. This was probably due to the fact that if they were to tell him, Hatori would reason with them and stop them, ruining their fun and giving them a moral heaviness both chose they could very well live without.

All of these differences between them convinced Hatori that maybe the rift between them growing larger was not such a loss, even if his heart told him otherwise.

Kana, referred to by the rest of the family as 'that person', drove the wedge between the doctor and his friends only deeper. Less and less time was spent at his friends; shortly, the time spent visiting family decreased as well. On holidays, he would choose to remain at school, preferring that person's soothing voice over loud banter and uncontrollable laughter.

When he had come to announce the big news to his friends, Hatori had nearly forgotten that his friends could be quiet as well.

He had not expected the pain throbbing dimly in his chest when he also saw the eternally present smile vanish from Ayame's face before the Hebi could hide its diminishing, completely caught unaware.

Hatori reached out, then.

Tenderly, he placed a hand on the Hebi's head, but Hatori immediately felt that the touch was anything but soothing. More so, it was condescending, like he still considered Ayame as nothing but the fully developed child he still needed to baby-sit. Still, it made Ayame's smile return, although Hatori could easily see another layer with yet more forged delight merging itself on Ayame's face.

"I wish you well, 'Tori-san. You deserve all the happiness in the world." And if your happiness is not with us, then I guess I'll just have to accept that. Ayame tiptoed and quickly pecked his childhood friend on his cheek, then turned around and quickly linked arms with Shigure. Hatori did not see Ayame's face, for once rid of all layers as soon as Shigure held his hand in true comfort.

"You have my blessing." The sentence reverberated, sounding only vaguely like Ayame.

And suddenly Hatori felt the shattering pain in his chest which told him that he would never be close to his friends again. Ayame's retreating back, slightly hunched over from rejection, was forever burned in his eyes, and would not even be removed upon the loss of one of them.

Hatori turned his back on the scene, and went back to his fleeting Spring.