Merry Christmas, everyone! Happy New Years soon, too!

Today I did my last bit of Christmas shopping. I had only one purchase, and I knew where I was going, so it took me less than a quarter-hour to finish my shopping! But then it took me half an hour to get out of the parking lot, and another half hour to be free of mall traffic. So this hour of mayhem was worth it, however, at a gift exchange this evening, when I received a Fruits Basket wall calendar for 2006. I think this completely satisfies the criteria for a full-scale obsession with Furuba: I also have a t-shirt, a wall-scroll, two 'fruits basket' ceramics, the full dvd & manga set - plus Jp. fan comics - and I have even had a themed party... Yes, a party. At one point, I even had Momiji's onsen (hot bath) song as my cell phone's answering message. But for most reasons, I don't find this too much of a reason for concern. More disturbing is most likely my constant need to rant about it! (I am also wondering what strange things also provoke other readers' obsession with Fruits Basket? What other weird things do you Furuba-loving people do/collect for this obsession...?)

Chapter Title Note: 'Jishin' is the Japanese word for earthquake.

Ache
by Lanie Kay-Aleese

Chapter Eight: Seismic Tremors of the Internal Jishin

Rating: Pg-13. Slash - sensuality - violence - light incest.
Category: Angst/Romance
Pairing: Kyou/Yuki
Length: 8 ?

- - - -

The sound of a shoji panel pushed aside. Kyou's eyelids fluttered apart; his body snapped rigid; his thoughts unmuddled from slumber. Still, exhausted, and silent, he listened.

"Tadaima. I'm home."

One word. One phrase, that nearly rendered Kyou of his stomach for the second time that afternoon.

He shot up from the heated table, his taste for watching television harshly abated by his rival's voice. Yet as he stood, he realized - too late - that he'd gotten to his feet too abruptly, and millions of black stars threaten to swallow the edges of his vision. Kyou swung his fists out to cover for his imbalance. Damn rat pissed him off so much. No way in hell that he was going to let the rat see him sick like this. He'd just... just have to go upstairs.

The show he'd been watching wasn't that good, anyway.

"Tadaima! We're home with all the groceries!"

The second voice... It was Tohru's voice. Kyou could hear the forced cheer in her exclamation, a sullen lilt that he had caused. That sorrow, that near unnecessary sorrow that was his fault - even it was still the right thing to do - suffered him with a guilt that swam through his veins and hummed hollowly in his bones.

Upstairs. He'd have to go upstairs, now, or else...

... Or else he'd hear more of Tohru and Yuki's conversation. And he'd have to deal with the feelings that their words were provoking, those feelings that were eating at his heart, threatening to shake foundations... He couldn't acknowledge those feelings, or else...

"Honda-san, are those Kyou's shoes?"

... Or else he'd have to confront them.

"I wonder why he's home so early?" said Tohru softly, "He never skips his martial arts training with Master Kazuma... I wonder if it was cancelled..."

Kyou hated to hear people talking about him, when he wasn't there, it didn't matter if it was good or bad because they would discuss him like an object and rationalize him, and to hell with that, maybe some things couldn't be talked over and made sense of like that!

"Stop talking about me!" he shouted and stormed out from the television room. Tohru and Yuki met him in the hallway.

"...Kyou? Are you alright?"

"Obviously!" he snapped.

"Sorry, I..."

"Don't speak to Honda-san like that," Yuki narrowed his eyes and stood in front of Kyou's path.

Kyou clenched his fists. "Get out of my way!"

"Honda-san asked you a simple question about your health," Yuki stated calmly, "Did you mishear her question, or are you simply incapable of responding to others as a human being?"

"Okay! Do you wanna fight over this!" Kyou grimaced, "I'll fight you... I will!"

Yuki folded his arms and shifted his weight back. "I thought so," he smirked, then turned his head to give a reassuring smile to the flustered 'flower' of their house. "Don't worry, Honda-san, there won't be a problem."

"You 'thought so' about what?" Kyou fumed, "What the hell is so funny!"

"You're always so impulsive, you generally announce that you'll fight me when you're already midpunch. But today you're all words and no action."

"Do you want me to hurt you?"

A muffled, sing-song voice rang out from a room further down the hall. "Hurt each other, do whatever, just not in the house!"

Kyou flushed with embarassment. Had he gotten that loud? "Shut up, you stupid mutt! Mind your own business!"

"It IS his business," Yuki countered.

"Wait! Please!" Tohru interrupted and came inbetween them, pandering and flitful, "Yuki-kun, please do not pester Kyou-kun like this, not while he is sick."

Kyou flared up. "I'm not sick! I'm just home early 'cuz..." Kyou broke off in his sentence when the words stuck in an itchy place in the back of his throat. "... cuz Master told me I couldn't practice today, that's all."

He'd have to clear his throat upstairs. Just not down here, where they might get the wrong idea.

"Oh, then... Kyou-kun is not sick after all. Thank goodness."

Tohru thus closed up the conversation with a delicately wrapped bow. Kyou wasted no time in walking around his two class-mates, his two house-mates, his two fearful voices, and stomped to the stairwell.

Even so he, could hear a quiet voice continue in dialogue.

"...He's feeling..." Yuki fell silent, and Kyou could feel the damn rat's stare on his back. They were talking about him again, before he'd even left!

"Hey, what were you saying about me?" Kyou turned around, his movements as sharp and shallow as his breathing. His eyes surveyed the hallway, quickly, realizing that only Yuki still stood there. Had he been talking to himself? Confused, Kyou stuck his hands deep into the pockets of his windbreaker. And even once Yuki met his eyes, he seemed to hesitate in his words.

"You're sick."

Kyou scowled. "So what if I am? It's none of your business."

Yuki paused, and his voice came out half-choked.

"...But were you sick already? Or is it just starting?"

Kyou, too, stood still. A strangely chilly draft filtered down the stairwell and wrapped around his shoulders. He repressed a shudder.

"What the hell are you talking about?" he replied, "Obviously I just started being sick, and I'm just finishing, too, so don't go worrying Tohru over it." Kyou's last word was broken by choked-back coughing, that he would liberate in the shelter of his room, but not where Yuki could see. Never where Yuki could see.

And what did that damn rat see? Was Yuki testing him? If not, what, exactly, was 'just starting'? Was it some sort of a riddle? Was it something that was supposed to trigger understanding, a memory, did it matter? Did it mean anything at all?

Yuki made a noise as if letting out a held breath. "Nevermind," he exhaled with the greatest finality, "But it would not be wise to let yourself get any sicker. You're worrying Tohru enough as it is."

Kyou wanted to laugh at the rat's maternal advice and practically, concern. It was ridiculous. Yet it somehow felt less strange than the haunted look in his cousin's eyes. It took the greatest strength on Kyou's part not to turn around and try to comprehend the rat's profoundest, most undignified silence.

But it took the most strength of all to not look - not even for a second, throughout the afternoon- at the face of Tohru Honda.

"Is it 'just starting'...?" He wondered to himself, shrugged his shoulders, and finally escaped upstairs.

He coughed.

Even with all these things, Kyou swore to himself that he would not surrender. He would not get worn out by something like this. And a cold wouldn't change any of it.

- - - -

"Hey, Kyou?"

It had been a couple of hours. Maybe. He wasn't keeping track because the moment he had unrolled his futon, he had mostly forgotten that he'd ever been awake. He'd forgotten that he'd been sleeping, until the door opened, and then everything became clear.

The unbidden noise had startled him, but Kyou didn't show it. He didn't feel threatened by it, and okay, mostly he didn't feel as if he could muster the energy to show an adequate response. Instead, he lay there, in the strange place between planes of consciousness. The raw thing in his throat seemed to stir and prickle at him. So he tuned into his other senses.

He watched the light filter in from the hallway, and Tohru's shadow made itself known, timidly peeking into the room. "Kyou?" her voice came out, softly, and distantly to his ears. "I hope I am not intruding so much..."

Chunks of orange strands cluttered Kyou's vision. Kyou felt his eyes blur and clear and he focused them on the panels of the wall across from him, and away from her.

"... I was just wondering if you felt like eating dinner..."

Stillness: no response, no movement, and yet somehow Tohru meandered, waiting to say something but never finding the words. Kyou could smell her tension, her confusion, her - near frustration - and her ever-present undertone of matronly worry. Kyou knew those feelings better than the backs of his palms; or the feel of his hands made into fists. He knew the feeling of being unable to express himself. He knew what it meant to be at a loss for words when it mattered.

Tohru let out a deep sigh. "...Get... Get well, Kyou."

Most of all, Kyou knew what it meant to say the wrong thing. Most of the times, it was easier to just lie... To keep those scalding feelings tucked inside. It was his fate as a half-orphan of the whole damned world to have things for himself, and only himself, that no one else could ever understand. If it ached, then that was -- his curse.

The door returned to its' comfortable close.

Kyou at last turned onto his stomach and coughed into his pillow.

A humming guilt? A gentle ache? The moment Tohru had closed that door, Kyou, from between his sheets, shivered for no reason at all.

It was like an aftershock from an earthquake that he couldn't remember.

The tremors inside felt like the after-shocks of an earthquake, the deep-down, distant-underground sort that didn't break down walls but threatened to shatter china dishes from their perches on the wall. When the dishes fell, Kyou remembered from a time long ago, that they made ringing, musical ting!s upon breaking into pieces. Just like when his Mama cried. Just like Tohru. She had cried, they had both cried, it was his fault for breaking them with his earth-shaking guilt... He wasn't able to be who he needed to be for them... Not a good son or anything... And it wasn't even his fault.

Was it? Maybe, maybe, he just couldn't tell.

.. whose fault was it, but his own?

Where had this sickness come from? Why was it such a big deal? Why did it only hurt so badly when he was in this room or thinking about food or fighting or purple -

Kyou didn't know the answers. At that moment, the world a bleak mirage of shadow and sleep, he didn't want to know anything except the solid ground beneath him. He kept on staring at the nothingness until at last, the exaustion overwhelmed his eyes, and he returned to the world that had never abandoned him. That never left things unsaid.

"That never left things unsaid," said Kyou, and his voice came out as a rough whisper.

It was in the midst of these tremors that the door to his room was thrown open, and Kyou's world swarmed with an overpowering golden light.

- - - -

Cheech'n'Chong, in a discourse concerning the value of 'magical dust' reviewing:
"Aw, did magic dust got 'em reindeer off, man? Are you kidding, man? They flew all da way around da world, man!"

Just think what all that stuff will do for my updating.