Title: Hummingbird, Summer Song
Summary: "Maybe I should have dreamed of you. Maybe someone like me needs someone like you the most… or so I've been thinking these days." A retelling of Fruits Basket where instead of Akito, Shigure dreams of Tohru.
Pen Name: TheQuintessentialFicWriter
Hummingbird, summer song, has it brought my life back?
Hangin' in the balance, have you brought the light back?
Penpal on the night shift, she's who I get away with
Realizin' she might be all I need in this life
ー Metro Boomin' ft James Blake
Chapter 01: Sunflower
大好きな人の夢をみた。そしたらもう… どうしようもなくなってしまった。
It's the call of a hummingbird and the rapid beating of its wings that Shigure opens his eyes to.
Strange, he thinks. 'Strange' isn't the fact that he clearly went to sleep in his futon and is now staring out at a field of hundreds and hundreds of sunflowers. It's the appearance of the hummingbird itself. Didn't that book say that hummingbirds were only in found in the Americas? Shigure wonders as he watches the creature flit about from flower to flower. He's definitely dreaming the young boy decides, taking the scene in. At the very least, as far as dreams went, it isn't the most terrible place he could be.
The warmth of the sun is kind and the touch of the breeze that kisses his skin is just as gentle. All while the sound of nearby waves lull in his ear, distant but persistent.
It's paradise on earth, objectively speaking.
It's only then that he finally notices the humming dancing on the wind and Shigure realizes that he isn't alone in this field of yellow flowers.
The girl not too far away is a little younger than him with chin-length brown hair and a pink dress, kneeling over a pile of the flowers surrounding them. Gray meets brown when she looks over her shoulder back at him. "What are you making?" Shigure asks the little girl with a small but polite smile.
"It's a surprise!" She tells him cheerfully before turning back to her work with seemingly more determination than before.
I already know it's probably some sort of flower crown, Shigure holds back a snort but it's amusing to see her try and hide the obvious anyway. "So I can't have a little peek?"
With a pause, the girl seems to consider it glancing back at him with hesitant eyes. However, her hesitance goes out the window a moment later with a firm shake of her head. "I'm almost done," the girl swears. Shigure sighs loudly as if he truly feels upset and inconvenienced. Still he makes no effort to jerk the girl's chain any longer. Instead, he ops to close his eyes and relish the pleasant warmth surrounding them while her humming begins anew. For someone who doesn't yearn for much, Shigure can't help admitting he wouldn't mind living in a place like this forever.
When the girl's humming stops, Shigure feels the sun's rays disappear from his face and he opens his eyes in time to see his companion placing her clunky masterpiece on his head. "Tada!" She laughs excitedly, pointing at the newfound crown on her own head. "Now we match!"
"Are we supposed to be a prince and princess?" She's unable to answer, far too caught up in how pleased she is, but her giggles are enough of an answer. Amused, Shigure doesn't argue against it. Why not let this girl do as she pleases before this dream becomes nothing he can't even try recalling. If that's the end goal here, it would be better if she's a prince though, wouldn't it? Two princes wouldn't cause the transformation he's been stuck with since before he could remember. "And I guess this is where we're supposed to live happily ever after together forever. Just like in the stories."
The girl's expression is dreamy, seemingly recalling those very kinds of stories. "Those stories are nice, aren't they?" So she was thinking about them. "You won't feel lonely if you have a princess or prince with you."
"I guess, if that's what you want," Shigure had never been one for those sorts of stories. That's more Ayame and Ritsu's things. They were the ones who enjoyed musicals with happy endings and vibrant costume design.
"Wouldn't you get lonely sometimes if you were by yourself," the girl cocks her head not disparagingly but out of curiosity.
"Only people who hate being alone get lonely," Shigure yawns, the afternoon sun making him tired. "Those kinds of people are the most miserable." That's what the old maids that gossip about the clan head and his wife say, at least. Shigure found that to be true after his own observations. It didn't matter if it was in books, movies or those wandering around the Sohma compound. The people that seemed to be at the worst were the ones who hated being by themselves. It's pitiful, he thinks. "Not that it's bad if you get lonely," Shigure reassures after a beat, not wanting the girl beside him to cry or shout in upset.
But she does neither of those things, only looking at him carefully with those large eyes of hers before she finally asks, bizarrely, "are you lonely?"
Where did she get that from anything I said?
"Not really," Shigure shrugs truthfully. "I don't really care about whether or not my parents love me. And it isn't like I feel all that bad if Hatori, Ayame or Kureno aren't around either. Maybe that's sad... but to be honest I don't really even find that sad." It's just something that is.
"You are," her eyes hold a sadness in them as she looks at him. "you're lonely."
The girl hugs him before he can make to move or protest, tucking him under her chin as if he's something to be protected in those small arms of hers. This really is a dream, Shigure thinks dumbly at the lack of wispy green smoke clouding the air. Shigure isn't sure when the last time it was he received something as simple as a hug, if ever had one to begin with. It never occurred to him to care; he's never been one to care much about being on the receiving end of someone's affection.
But this warmth is nice.
"It's okay," the girl whispers into his hair, nuzzling closer. "I'll come see you so you won't be lonely."
When Shigure woke up, he was crying.
Seven months later when God was born, Shigure wonders what the muted stirring in his heart is when he first sees the small baby. Her eyes are wide with wonder as she tugs on Ayame's snow while the white Snake coos excitedly. Hatori smiles in exasperation, taking Akito in his own arms.
"Be more careful, she's small," Hatori says, kneeling so Kureno can see her better. Ritsu is napping elsewhere, too young to meet her at this present moment in time. It's probably for the best, Shigure decides. The only members of the Zodiac meeting her today are the ones who already know Akito is a girl.
"She looks a lot like Ren," Shigure observes when the baby finally comes to him. A fact Shigure is sure undoubtedly pisses the woman off. Maybe things would have been different if Akito had been a boy. Or maybe if she favored her father, her mother would have been able to bring herself to love her. Despite the musings of the 'what could have been's, Shigure has his doubts. The adults call Shigure a little kid who didn't understand everything about the world of adults, but Shigure is at least confident enough to say that Ren's more than a bit crazy.
Sohma Akira's smile is weak but warm, resting a hand atop of Shigure's head. "I thought so myself," he looks at his daughter as if she's the most precious treasure in the world. Hatori, Ayame and Kureno all have expressions to match.
Their God is here after eons and eons of waiting; all for the sake of their precious banquet.
"I'm coming," Akito had apparently told his cousins when the night she was conceived. All in a dream that brought them to tears as they ran to meet Ren in reverence. All while Shigure laid in bed clutching his chest painfully as someone else's words echoed throughout his body.
"I'll come see you so you won't be lonely."
You aren't that girl, Shigure pokes at Akito's cheek and her small grubby hand clutches his finger. That girl's hair was a brown the color of chocolate with eyes a similar shade; Akito's hair is as black as a starless night with gray eyes nearly as dark. A sunflower and a camellia. Nothing about them is remotely similar.
"Akito is a special child," Akira reaches over Shigure's shoulder to caress his daughter's cheek. "A child born to be loved."
That's just what these bonds tell us to do, right? Shigure was smart enough to keep those thoughts to himself, passing the child to her father.
"You didn't seem that excited when we finally met Akito, you know," Hatori tells Shigure later when it's just the two of them.
"I was excited," Shigure replies with a shrug. There's truth to that statement. He had been interested in meeting Akito. How couldn't he be with all the buzz that had been generated by her mother's pregnancy? How couldn't he be when there was a chance, no matter how dim, that she was the someone he'd been waiting for? That hope may have been proven wrong in the end, but there were still other things to feel excited about. "She's the god we've been waiting for all this time. It's pretty cool, don't you think? The grownups said the God hasn't been born before ever."
The look Hatori gives him is one that is unconvinced, "you were different though."
"My parents said I've always been different, though," Shigure laughs lightly, staring out at the clouds that stretch over the Sohma compound.
"You know what I mean," the Dragon persists, more concerned than annoyed. "You've been different about Akito since before she was born."
"You mean since the day we cried, right?" Hatori doesn't say anything else, probably wondering how to best say things. The side of Shigure's thumb taps the tiles his sitting on. He really is the odd one out. "You guys dreamed of a completely different person than me." Or perhaps it's more correct to say that he was the odd one out? He was was the one who dreamed of someone completely different. Shigure still remembers when he saw his cousins that day that day, how they looked at him like he'd grown several heads as he described a dream completely unlike theirs.
A person completely unlike theirs.
"I've been thinking about that, you know," Shigure murmurs more to himself than to Hatori. "Why was I was the only one who dreamed of someone else? It must be because that person is going to be someone more important to me than even Akito, right?" It must be that pesky sense of canine loyalty or however his mother put it. "That dream," Shigure closes his eyes as he tries to remember every detail of it.
The beat of the hummingbird's wings.
The sound of her humming.
The warmth of that hug.
The affection that still lingers in his person. An affection that was solely meant for him.
The heartachingly sweet loneliness he's been left with.
"I want to make that last forever," Shigure's eyes open with conviction. "I want to give it form and make it mine. And I will."
Shigure looks for that girl in the zodiacs that follow.
Rin the Horse.
Kagura the Boar.
Kisa the Tiger.
None of them are her.
Ha, the Dog laughs bitterly, scanning over the same sentence in his book again and again. You aren't part of this final banquet, I guess.
He supposes he shouldn't have been so disappointed. Nothing in that dream he had indicated that the two of them would be members of this shared curse. We won't be able to touch then; not like how lovers normally would. Normal lovers could kiss and embrace without a care in the world. It's such a random thing to be deprived of ー those that bear the burden of shouldering these bonds. It would have been nice, though. Growing up together. Being able to hold one another all they wanted. What difficulties would a body like his cause whenever they finally met? Shigure can't stop himself from chuckling. Maybe it would have been better if you were a prince, after all.
"Shigure," Akito's voice cuts through Shigure's thoughts. He'd heard someone approaching not too long ago, though they stayed silent through all of his musings. "Do you love me?"
The young man gives the girl an inquisitive look of his own, raising an eyebrow, "have you been walking around asking everyone that question?"
"I'm the one asking the questions here," Akito dances around his query. "Do you love me?"
Love.
Will she love me, if she knows I'm cursed?
He can't stop his mind from wandering again. It's been several years since the dream that set his being ablaze and Shigure still remembers that hug. Her laugh, mellifluous. The saccharine look on her face as she told him she'd come be with him so he wouldn't be lonely. That was love, wasn't it? One that would last until the universe was set aflame by the last sparks of a dying sun and not even ash remained.
A promise for no one else but him.
A dream solely for him.
A love just for me.
That's an unwavering truth.
Yes, Shigure rests a palm on his chest, smiling to himself. She will. "You were born to be loved, remember?" Shigure says at last, remembering the young girl staring down at him. That's as satisfactory an answer he can give her.
It's easy to spot when you see one of your own kind. That's what Shigure considered Mayu when he met her one late March evening over drinks.
For the longest time, the world outside the confines of the Sohma compound offered little comfort in finding her.
He could see it in the little glances she sent Hatori's way when she thought no one was looking. How she'd be able to show even a glimpse of the tender yearning she held for him disguised as good-natured affection whenever their group met for up for drinks.
Spring came early for Hatori when he met Kana.
Ayame on the other hand? He lived in an eternal spring, as far as Shigure was concerned. He fell out of love as quickly as he fell in. But something sparked eternal with Mine, his coworker at some clothes shop Ayame took interest in. It was lucky for him that he moved outside of the compound not long after they graduated. It took little effort in swaying Akito to let him; not even the man's mother put up a fuss. Ayame was a lot to handle, even for someone who feared change more than anything. So if the zodiac's Snake wanted to go about gallivanting in a shop that sold men's dreams, as he so eloquently put it, Akito wasn't going to stop him. It was just nice to see he wasn't alone while he did it, even if Shigure couldn't help the small bit of envy.
Shigure could understand why his cousins fell for the people that they did.
Kana and Mine were warm, bright people. (Just like her.) Beacons of warmth and love that came at no extra cost. The warmth that made someone feel like just by virtue of being born, they deserved love. They didn't have to do anything else. What a beautiful thing, to be loved like that.
Maybe that's why he reached out to Mayu on a calculated whim. He just hadn't actually been expecting her to agree his lackadaisical proposal to date to pass his boredom while actively soothing her loneliness.
"You seem lonely," Shigure drawled out an explanation when Mayu asked where on earth that idea came from. "You just want someone to be with and anyone will do, right? I'm getting bored myself; I'll go out with you."
"You must be pretty lonely, yourself. To offer an idea like that."
Shigure laughs lightly at Mayu's look of skepticism. "Well, even I get lonely, you know," he doesn't argue with the woman, amused. "I'm only human after all."
There's a pause before Mayu goes, "so?"
"So what?"
"Who is it?' Her gaze is curious as she looks his face over as if that will somehow give her the answer she seeks. "The person you can't have."
"Who is it, I wonder," Shigure turns the page of his book with a thoughtful hum and a slight smile. "I'm just chasing someone I met in a dream." When Mayu snorts in disbelief, Shigure can't help chuckling. "Is it that hard to believe I'm a romantic?"
"You don't have a romantic bone in your body," despite her harsh words, Mayu sounds more amused any annoyed.
Their relationship lasts a total of one month and, in that time, they never so much as held hands let alone kissed.
He dreams about his mystery person not too long after on a late summer night that has the early tinges of a cool autumn wind on its breath. In his dream, they're sitting on the egawa of a home he can't recognize. Maybe it's their own. His head is resting on her lap as she gently runs her fingers over his face as if she's trying to etch his features into her fingertips.
She's a lot older now than the first dream, hair more than double the length it used to be, he had when they were both children. Yet Shigure knew this face; he's sure he could recognize it even in a blizzard.
"You again," Shigure nuzzles into her hand with a sigh. The gold-colored warmth that floods his chest is indescribable. He doesn't close his eyes despite his comfort, though. He doesn't want to miss even a single moment. "It's been a while."
Her giggle is sheepish, not disagreeing with his sentiment. "I'm so sorry."
"I missed you before," Shigure says quietly. Speaking almost sounds too loud. "You should visit me more like this if it's going to take so long for you to see me otherwise."
Her soft fingers caress his forehead gently before carding through his hair before she places a kiss on his forehead as he lays there, head nestled on her lap. This is nice, Shigure thinks as her hair acts like a silk curtain blocking them out from the rest of the world. His beloved pecks his forehead again before tenderly pecking his eyelids one after the other. "You're missing a spot," Shigure whispers, his hand reaching up to rest against her cheek. She doesn't fight it when he lightly wrests her head down in order for their lips to meet each other.
Her kiss is sweet. Almost too sweet for someone like him. Like when you're struggling to eat the last spoonful of cake on your plate because the concentration of sugar is too much even though earlier it was unmistakably good. It's so sweet but Shigure can't separate his lips from hers, fingers latched onto her hair in a juxtaposition between firm and soft.
How beautiful.
How beautiful it is to be loved like this.
When he can longer feel her lips on his own, Shigure wakes up to a world gone blurry and the distorted image of black eyes looking down on him. Akito's eyes had darkened as she's grown older. Her hands aren't jarringly cold, but they are cool enough to dash away the last of sleep from his eyes as she wipes away the tears collecting at his eyes. "It's hard to imagine someone like you crying," Akito hums thoughtfully. "What were you dreaming about?"
"I forget," Shigure lies smoothly with a chuckle.
"Liar," Akito comments with a giggle of her own. "I bet you were having a nightmare. Was it really that scary?"
"Something like that."
"I'll help you forget it."
(Forgetting that loneliness even for a second isn't that bad an idea, right?)
It's a kiss that tastes cool like mint and black cherries.
When Akito slept with Kureno, Shigure slept with Ren.
There's no real rhyme or reason as to why. It wasn't out of hurt in the traditional sense, more so that it was based on principle. Akito could sleep with who she wanted.
But the principle is the fact that Shigure won't find what he wants if he is stuck in the compound waiting on Akito's hand and foot. But leaving is easier said than done when she clings to those of the zodiac like they're toys. (Look what she did to Hatori, after all.)
So it was easy accepting Ren's advances when they presented themselves.
It was easy leaving when Akito shouted at him to leave.
So easy.
His dreams are where Shigure feels most at peace.
Only in a dream can he hold a woman this close without things ending abruptly in a cloud of green smoke. He breathes in her scent, sweet like sunflowers. "I've waited so long for you to come and see me," he nestles his nose into her chocolate brown hair. "Come see me soon, okay?" Shigure smiles at the woman somberly. He doubts he'll ever meet her after so long of searching.
She smiles back so softly his chest aches. "I will," she promises, cupping his face in her palm. It's not enough to be this close. He wants her in his skin. Her touch, her taste, the curves of her featuresー he wants every bit of her to fill every one of his senses until there's nothing left that remains of himself but every piece of ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ that she's etched inside of him and he wishes for nothing to remain of her except every piece of him.
He tells ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ as much, resting his forehead against hers with a soft tone, "If you come see me, I won't let you go," it's not a warning but a promise. There's no turning back the moment he meets her in the realm of waking day. "I'm a selfish man. Childish and petty too, I don't like losing or feeling left out. I've never been the 'if you really love someone, you should let them go' type. I've never understood that notion in the slightest," Noble quotes like that were nothing but fancy words to self-soothe after losing a relationship one should have fought harder to keep. But perhaps to a more rational person, they likely wouldn't label that feeling as love. No, Shigure is sure they'd just tell him that what he feels is nothing more than a self-catering obsession. Love? Obsession, it's the same thing, no? "Your only way to run is by staying away."
"I'm coming to see you," she reaffirms, voice as saccharine as her smile and something about how gently she says it breaks him.
"Are you lonely?" ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ asked him all those years ago in that first dream.
Yes, he is. Shigure is body-rackingly lonely.
Shigure makes quick work of disregarding their clothes. Who knew when he'd wake, only to be left with this nameless woman permeating his every thought.
He's been waiting for her.
For 25 years, he's been waiting for her. Why else would he dream of her when it was Akito who haunted the dreams of the rest? This was something in the making long before he was conceived and he had been waiting diligently ever since ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ first came to him, awakening his senses. Awakening him to who would truly become the most important person to him.
He wonders which will come first as he settles atop her, caging her to the floor between his arms; her arrival or him collapsing underneath the weight of his yearning?
"I've been waiting for you," Shigure's heart aches something fierce. "⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛," he whispers desperately, trying to feel for the distinct syllables that make her name. He never can though. Somehow her name is both formed and formless; no matter how hard he has tried to over the years, he can never truly say it and it is nothing more than a forgotten memory when he wakes. "⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛."
Her hands cup his face like he's something worth treasuring and she thumbs away the tears pooling in his eyes despite the ones in her own, "I love you."
He's taken her in his dreams more time than he count. He memorizes everything, refusing to forget a single detail. The way one set of her fingernails dig into his back while he envelopes her other hand with his, their fingers intertwined tightly. How amazing she feels squeezing around him tightly. The speed of her pulse as he peppers her throat with kisses and soft nips. The ache between his legs as he rolls his hips into her gently yet persistently, chasing his high but wanting their lovemaking to last long beyond the confines of a fleeting dream. This fervor, so thrillingly sweet. How she sings again and againー
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
It's here, Shigure gasps like a man starved for air before claiming her lips with his. Eternity is here.
And then he wakes up, eyes blurry from the tears that spill the moment he opens them and a name on the tip of his tongue that he can't remember. ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ is gone and only the scent of sunflowers somehow remains. "Ah, qué será será," Shigure laughs humorlessly, resting his forearm atop his eyes. Waking up in tears and with sticky underwear is never quite how he would like his mornings to begin, but it seems it's his curse to bear in this waiting game.
Maybe it would have been easier if I had dreamed of Akito all those years ago. Cruel she may be, Akito is someone within reach. Tangible. And the wait for their god to grace them with her presence wasn't even that long. Then he remembers Kureno and Ren and a knowing, twisted smile forms on Shigure's face. He can only imagine the mess that would have occurred had those events followed him dreaming of someone as vindictive as Akito. Theirs would have been more of a bare knuckle fight than a love story with the hurtful actions they've directed at each other regardless of their motivations. A love like that would have made me more twisted somehow, I think. No, Shigure is quite positive it definitely would have. With that truth decidedly clear, Shigure pushes away his tired musings of the 'what-ifs' in favor of taking a bath.
Mornings in this house are quiet save for the morning birdsong and the gentle dance of the windchimes.
It's grounding, in its own way as Shigure grabs the morning paper before heading to check on his drying zodiac knickknacks he left on the egawa in front of the living room.
That's where he sees her. With those long brown locks and those very same brown eyes that he could recognize even in a blizzard.
Ah.
"How cute," she swoons quietly at the painted stones.
You came.
Author's Note:
Can you tell I was listening to Mitski while I wrote this?
This was originally supposed to be a oneshot. A cute little 'how Shigure thought things would go if Tohru was the one he dreamed about' when he briefly contemplated how maybe he should have dreamed about her instead and ending with the Shigure coming out of his thoughts in the canon universe. Then I went "okay maybe it will be a two-shot" then a three shot and then it became a full-fledged retelling. It's just so easy! The characters involved make it so easy. Tohru and Akito are literally the same character on two opposite ends of the spectrum: female character with a masculine name, clinging to the ghosts of a deceased parent they cherished and deathly afraid of being alone. They simply go about two different methods of keeping people in their lives but Tohru and Akito are simply what the other could have been in very different circumstances. So when you take that and add it to Shigure's introspection into how sad his twisted personality is and how maybe it was Tohru he should have dreamed of because someone like him needs someone like her, it does things to my shipper heart.
Kyoru is and always will be my favorite ship in Fruits Basket since I read the manga years ago as a kid, but Shigure and Tohru were on my mind constantly the moment he whispered "It's a 'what if' story." So I have to get this out of my system and write a slowburn Furuba fic about how I think this 'what if' story would play out. Sorry Momiji, one day you will get your tape.
I'll be crossposting this on AO3.