Just a Smile [Chapter 5]
Title: Just a Smile
Originally Published: Mar. 30, 2006
Pairing: Kyou/Haru
Genre: Angst/Romance
Rating: PG
Words: 2,055
Summary: Kyou gets caught out in a downpour one evening miles from Shigure's house, but he's not the only one wandering the woods! Kyou doesn't like to talk, but Haru has a habit of understanding things that aren't said.
Disclaimer: Nothing from Fruits Basket is mine.
Warnings: Some possible definite language and lots of teen angst.
A/N: I think this was where the view count started picking up... I don't remember enough about this story. >.>;
'Shit!' Kyou was screaming in his mind. 'We didn't move fast enough! Aaagh, if only we'd gone out earlier we could have lost him or something…that damn Yankee, this is totally all her fault!'
"Ah, Hatsuharu-san! Are you joining us for lunch today?" Tohru asked, approaching the younger boy while Kyou was silently passing the blame around for getting caught in this situation.
Haru shrugged. "I guess. I was looking for Momiji."
"And you're well? You didn't catch anything from being out in the rain, did you?"
"Not at all. And Ha'ri was only mad at me for most of the night."
"Eh…"
Haru had yet to even look in Kyou's direction, while the cat on the other hand was busy trying to burn holes into him with his eyes. 'That bastard thinks he can just ignore me, huh? Well fine! I'll ignore him TWICE as hard as anything he can dish out!' Kyou promptly huffed and turned away from the entire group, crossing his arms in front of his chest as he began walking off in the general direction of the cafeteria.
"Oi, where do you think you're running off to, Kyon?" Uo called after him. "No way are you leaving us behind when you kept us here for so long!"
"Shut up, you damn Yankee! Go find your eyebrows or something!" Kyou yelled back, irritated and not stopping.
From out of nowhere, Uo promptly whipped a spare desk chair above her head and made to chuck it at the moving target while the others watched. Tohru nearly let out a shriek and attempted to stop her rampaging friend, but was saved the trouble by a flash of black and white.
As Uo threw all her weight behind the throw, she suddenly found herself…stuck? She turned her head around to see what was going on behind her, only to discover that Haru had a firm grip on the chair leg. "Hey, let go, damn it!" she yelled at him, tugging viciously at the chair.
Haru, once again in true rock fashion, remained unmoved. "If you break it, the school will make you pay for it," he said blankly, his face mirroring his tone.
Uo blinked; her arms wavered for a moment and then slowly lowered, bringing the chair down with a heavy thump. Tohru, looking incredibly frazzled if not relieved, felt like joining it on the floor after such a fright.
"Aw, that was nice of you, Haru!" Momiji beamed up at the only one there wearing the male's uniform. "Now Kyou-kun won't have a lump on his brain!"
"You mean his head," Haru corrected automatically, staring off into the distance as Kyou rounded the corner of the hallway, oblivious to how narrowly he had just avoided having his brains knocked out through his nose.
"Anyway…" Uo muttered, putting her arms up behind her head and looking back at the others. "We should get going, that stupid jerky cat-lover wasted ten of our precious lunch minutes already."
Said stupid jerky cat-lover was currently lounging in one of his usual haunts - the roof of the school building. It was pretty nice there in the sun, eyes closed against the bright blue sky that held no trace of yesterday's storm. Whenever there was trouble Kyou felt compelled to head for the hills, and the bigger the better. Up here no one could see him; up here no one could look down on him.
Unless they happened to be standing right over his prone form, blocking his sun, like someone was currently doing.
'Inconsiderate bastard,' Kyou thought, refusing to open his eyes and instead trying valiantly to glare through shut eyelids.
"Are you having a bad dream?"
'Shit. It's that dumbass Haru AGAIN,' Kyou thought, a bitter taste rising from his stomach into his mouth at the realization. "Nothing I dream could possibly be worse than what's happening in my real life right now," he said aloud, his face contorting into a grimace.
The shadow that had fallen over Kyou's face moved away, and for a spilt second Kyou's heart leapt in the hope that the idiot cow had taken the hint and gone away - until he felt someone plop down right next to him on the roof. His roof. A low growl, barely perceptible to the human ear, began from somewhere deep down in his chest; he still refused to open his eyes though. 'If I can't see him, he's not really here…maybe this really is just a dream…but then why the hell am I dreaming about Haru!' He let out a groan and turned away from the boy sitting next to him, hands cradling his head.
"Is it really that bad?" Haru asked quietly.
Kyou blushed fiercely and flinched. Haru couldn't read minds, could he?
"Whatever's going on in your real life that's so bad right now, I mean."
'Oh.' Kyou's blush deepened, and he was immensely grateful that he'd had the foresight to turn away before it had become an issue. How did Haru always manage to make everything sound so wrong? "How…how can you ASK me that, you idiot? You were there, of course it's bad!"
"You really are bothered by it, aren't you," Haru observed, casting a sidelong glance at orangey.
"OF COURSE I'M BOTHERED BY IT! More importantly, why are YOU so okay with it?" Kyou finally broke, turning around to yell into Haru's face.
Haru didn't even blink. "I thought you knew that I like that stuff," he said plainly.
Kyou was flabbergasted and spluttered for a minute before managing to spit out a response. "M-me? Knowing about…why the hell would I want to know something like that! I don't even want to think about what you do in your free time, you pervert!" He promptly scrambled back a few feet and turned away again, muttering under his breath about 'stupid horndogs worse than Shigure.'
Haru blinked. "I don't know what you may have heard, but I don't do the dirty pictures anymore. And that was really just the one time for Ayame's PR."
Kyou looked back at Haru, opening his mouth to respond; unfortunately he couldn't get his jaw back up to do so. Thus he settled for a wary grimace while he managed to turn a remarkable shade of green. "Ayame-no, no. Please don't elaborate, I just ate." A bead of cold sweat made its way down the back of Kyou's neck.
"Are you alright, Kyou?" Haru asked, raising an eyebrow. "You like kind of sick."
"You would too if you had even the slightest semblance of a shred of normalcy in your entire body! What the HELL do dirty pictures of Ayame have to do with YOU falling onto my face last night!" Kyou yelled, realizing a bit too late that privacy wasn't exactly guaranteed at school, even up on the roof.
Haru stared for a moment. "Is that what you meant by the bad things going on in your life?"
"OF COURSE IT IS! What the hell else would it be?" Kyou huffed, trying his damnedest not to turn pink at the subject he'd wanted to avoid for the rest of his natural life - hell, if no one mentioned it in the afterlife it would still be too often.
"Oh. I thought you meant your thing with pictures," Haru said, directing the comment to his feet for some reason as he looked away from Kyou.
"Thing with pic-you're STILL going on about that? Either you've got an extremely one-track mind that's a lot less perverted than I thought, or your current track is stuck in a loop. When are you gonna get over the fact that pictures just BUG THE SHIT OUT OF ME?" Kyou glared for all he was worth now that the cow was no longer meeting his eye.
"Well you don't seem to want to talk about our kiss from last night," Haru provided helpfully.
A few stray syllables fell from Kyou's lips at that. "Sh-shut up, you moron! There's nothing to talk about!"
"It's really bothering you though," Haru persisted. "It helps if you talk about what's bothering you, you know."
"And what, you're okay with it?" Kyou demanded, incredulous.
Haru shrugged. "I admit I'm more bothered by your hatred of photos; the rest isn't really a huge deal to me."
"Ha," Kyou scoffed, crossing his arms. "Yeah right, moo-juice. I saw you go from Black to White faster than you ever have before after….after…."
"The kiss," Haru said for him. "Wow, you can't even say it. That wasn't your first kiss, was it, Kyou?"
"Don't try to change the subject, idiot!" Kyou cried, though his tomato-red flush gave Haru all the answer he needed.
"I'm sorry," he said earnestly to Kyou. "I don't imagine that was the way you would have wanted your first kiss to be."
"SH-SHUT UP, GODDAMMIT!" Kyou yelled at the top of his lungs and delivered a vicious punch to the wall behind them, humiliated beyond all belief. "I don't need sympathy from a deranged twerp like you!"
"It's not like either of us were really at fault," Haru tried to reason. Was he actually trying to make Kyou feel better about it? "If you'll recall, nothing was happening until Honda-san came in and-"
"Don't bring her into this!" Kyou raged. "She wouldn't have had anyone to push into my face if you hadn't…if you hadn't l-leaned in so close…" he trailed off, his voice growing quieter with each word. He turned his face away to glare at the treetops.
Haru's head tilted slightly to the side as though letting the words roll around in it to get settled in his brain. Then he stood up slowly, deliberately; he walked carefully over to where Kyou was standing with his hand still resting in the dent his punch had created. A fine trickle of blood made its way down from his knuckles to his wrist, dripping onto the ground. The sight of it made something in Haru snap - but it wasn't Black Haru.
Kyou's eyes widened, frozen by shock as arms wrapped around him from behind. The taller boy's mouth was too close to Kyou's ear for his comfort, and he flinched when Haru spoke quietly into it. "I am sorry, Kyou. Don't hurt yourself on my account." Haru gently pulled Kyou's hand from the wall as he spoke to illustrate his point.
Growling, Kyou shoved Haru away and took a few steps forward, his body trying to shiver away the memory of the contact. His instinct to run away as fast as his legs would allow was rendered incapacitated by his conflicting emotions; his anger, his confusion, his humiliation, his somewhat vague sense that by sticking around he would get more answers than if he were to high-tail it out of there. Unfortunately it all balled up into a giant lump that lodged itself in his throat and prevented any words from making their way out of his mouth, and the force of it all caused him to shake faintly.
A line of worry broke Haru's usually tranquil demeanor at the cat's reaction; 'He looks like he's about to explode,' he observed inwardly. Normally this could be fun to watch - Kyou always had such interesting facial expressions at times like these - but for once it hadn't been what Haru had intended. He wasn't oblivious as to when he was less than welcome, but he didn't want to leave Kyou unless asked. He had gotten Kyou into this state, and Haru wanted to rectify the situation.
Kyou's mind was racing so fast, every thought he had blurred into the next until they were such a muddled mess that he might as well had not been thinking at all. So he stopped; he turned around, his face blank. He passed Haru without sparing him a glance, opened the door leading back downstairs to the main building, and shut it quietly behind him.
Haru didn't know what to make of this exit; it contradicted everything about Kyou. He had no idea what it signified, or how it needed to be dealt with. He had never seen this kind of Kyou, one who couldn't even yell out his frustrations.
The two-toned teen heaved a small sigh. 'Nice going,' he thought to himself. 'You broke him.'
Originally Published: Mar. 30, 2006
Pairing: Kyou/Haru
Genre: Angst/Romance
Rating: PG
Words: 2,055
Summary: Kyou gets caught out in a downpour one evening miles from Shigure's house, but he's not the only one wandering the woods! Kyou doesn't like to talk, but Haru has a habit of understanding things that aren't said.
Disclaimer: Nothing from Fruits Basket is mine.
Warnings: Some possible definite language and lots of teen angst.
A/N: I think this was where the view count started picking up... I don't remember enough about this story. >.>;
'Shit!' Kyou was screaming in his mind. 'We didn't move fast enough! Aaagh, if only we'd gone out earlier we could have lost him or something…that damn Yankee, this is totally all her fault!'
"Ah, Hatsuharu-san! Are you joining us for lunch today?" Tohru asked, approaching the younger boy while Kyou was silently passing the blame around for getting caught in this situation.
Haru shrugged. "I guess. I was looking for Momiji."
"And you're well? You didn't catch anything from being out in the rain, did you?"
"Not at all. And Ha'ri was only mad at me for most of the night."
"Eh…"
Haru had yet to even look in Kyou's direction, while the cat on the other hand was busy trying to burn holes into him with his eyes. 'That bastard thinks he can just ignore me, huh? Well fine! I'll ignore him TWICE as hard as anything he can dish out!' Kyou promptly huffed and turned away from the entire group, crossing his arms in front of his chest as he began walking off in the general direction of the cafeteria.
"Oi, where do you think you're running off to, Kyon?" Uo called after him. "No way are you leaving us behind when you kept us here for so long!"
"Shut up, you damn Yankee! Go find your eyebrows or something!" Kyou yelled back, irritated and not stopping.
From out of nowhere, Uo promptly whipped a spare desk chair above her head and made to chuck it at the moving target while the others watched. Tohru nearly let out a shriek and attempted to stop her rampaging friend, but was saved the trouble by a flash of black and white.
As Uo threw all her weight behind the throw, she suddenly found herself…stuck? She turned her head around to see what was going on behind her, only to discover that Haru had a firm grip on the chair leg. "Hey, let go, damn it!" she yelled at him, tugging viciously at the chair.
Haru, once again in true rock fashion, remained unmoved. "If you break it, the school will make you pay for it," he said blankly, his face mirroring his tone.
Uo blinked; her arms wavered for a moment and then slowly lowered, bringing the chair down with a heavy thump. Tohru, looking incredibly frazzled if not relieved, felt like joining it on the floor after such a fright.
"Aw, that was nice of you, Haru!" Momiji beamed up at the only one there wearing the male's uniform. "Now Kyou-kun won't have a lump on his brain!"
"You mean his head," Haru corrected automatically, staring off into the distance as Kyou rounded the corner of the hallway, oblivious to how narrowly he had just avoided having his brains knocked out through his nose.
"Anyway…" Uo muttered, putting her arms up behind her head and looking back at the others. "We should get going, that stupid jerky cat-lover wasted ten of our precious lunch minutes already."
Said stupid jerky cat-lover was currently lounging in one of his usual haunts - the roof of the school building. It was pretty nice there in the sun, eyes closed against the bright blue sky that held no trace of yesterday's storm. Whenever there was trouble Kyou felt compelled to head for the hills, and the bigger the better. Up here no one could see him; up here no one could look down on him.
Unless they happened to be standing right over his prone form, blocking his sun, like someone was currently doing.
'Inconsiderate bastard,' Kyou thought, refusing to open his eyes and instead trying valiantly to glare through shut eyelids.
"Are you having a bad dream?"
'Shit. It's that dumbass Haru AGAIN,' Kyou thought, a bitter taste rising from his stomach into his mouth at the realization. "Nothing I dream could possibly be worse than what's happening in my real life right now," he said aloud, his face contorting into a grimace.
The shadow that had fallen over Kyou's face moved away, and for a spilt second Kyou's heart leapt in the hope that the idiot cow had taken the hint and gone away - until he felt someone plop down right next to him on the roof. His roof. A low growl, barely perceptible to the human ear, began from somewhere deep down in his chest; he still refused to open his eyes though. 'If I can't see him, he's not really here…maybe this really is just a dream…but then why the hell am I dreaming about Haru!' He let out a groan and turned away from the boy sitting next to him, hands cradling his head.
"Is it really that bad?" Haru asked quietly.
Kyou blushed fiercely and flinched. Haru couldn't read minds, could he?
"Whatever's going on in your real life that's so bad right now, I mean."
'Oh.' Kyou's blush deepened, and he was immensely grateful that he'd had the foresight to turn away before it had become an issue. How did Haru always manage to make everything sound so wrong? "How…how can you ASK me that, you idiot? You were there, of course it's bad!"
"You really are bothered by it, aren't you," Haru observed, casting a sidelong glance at orangey.
"OF COURSE I'M BOTHERED BY IT! More importantly, why are YOU so okay with it?" Kyou finally broke, turning around to yell into Haru's face.
Haru didn't even blink. "I thought you knew that I like that stuff," he said plainly.
Kyou was flabbergasted and spluttered for a minute before managing to spit out a response. "M-me? Knowing about…why the hell would I want to know something like that! I don't even want to think about what you do in your free time, you pervert!" He promptly scrambled back a few feet and turned away again, muttering under his breath about 'stupid horndogs worse than Shigure.'
Haru blinked. "I don't know what you may have heard, but I don't do the dirty pictures anymore. And that was really just the one time for Ayame's PR."
Kyou looked back at Haru, opening his mouth to respond; unfortunately he couldn't get his jaw back up to do so. Thus he settled for a wary grimace while he managed to turn a remarkable shade of green. "Ayame-no, no. Please don't elaborate, I just ate." A bead of cold sweat made its way down the back of Kyou's neck.
"Are you alright, Kyou?" Haru asked, raising an eyebrow. "You like kind of sick."
"You would too if you had even the slightest semblance of a shred of normalcy in your entire body! What the HELL do dirty pictures of Ayame have to do with YOU falling onto my face last night!" Kyou yelled, realizing a bit too late that privacy wasn't exactly guaranteed at school, even up on the roof.
Haru stared for a moment. "Is that what you meant by the bad things going on in your life?"
"OF COURSE IT IS! What the hell else would it be?" Kyou huffed, trying his damnedest not to turn pink at the subject he'd wanted to avoid for the rest of his natural life - hell, if no one mentioned it in the afterlife it would still be too often.
"Oh. I thought you meant your thing with pictures," Haru said, directing the comment to his feet for some reason as he looked away from Kyou.
"Thing with pic-you're STILL going on about that? Either you've got an extremely one-track mind that's a lot less perverted than I thought, or your current track is stuck in a loop. When are you gonna get over the fact that pictures just BUG THE SHIT OUT OF ME?" Kyou glared for all he was worth now that the cow was no longer meeting his eye.
"Well you don't seem to want to talk about our kiss from last night," Haru provided helpfully.
A few stray syllables fell from Kyou's lips at that. "Sh-shut up, you moron! There's nothing to talk about!"
"It's really bothering you though," Haru persisted. "It helps if you talk about what's bothering you, you know."
"And what, you're okay with it?" Kyou demanded, incredulous.
Haru shrugged. "I admit I'm more bothered by your hatred of photos; the rest isn't really a huge deal to me."
"Ha," Kyou scoffed, crossing his arms. "Yeah right, moo-juice. I saw you go from Black to White faster than you ever have before after….after…."
"The kiss," Haru said for him. "Wow, you can't even say it. That wasn't your first kiss, was it, Kyou?"
"Don't try to change the subject, idiot!" Kyou cried, though his tomato-red flush gave Haru all the answer he needed.
"I'm sorry," he said earnestly to Kyou. "I don't imagine that was the way you would have wanted your first kiss to be."
"SH-SHUT UP, GODDAMMIT!" Kyou yelled at the top of his lungs and delivered a vicious punch to the wall behind them, humiliated beyond all belief. "I don't need sympathy from a deranged twerp like you!"
"It's not like either of us were really at fault," Haru tried to reason. Was he actually trying to make Kyou feel better about it? "If you'll recall, nothing was happening until Honda-san came in and-"
"Don't bring her into this!" Kyou raged. "She wouldn't have had anyone to push into my face if you hadn't…if you hadn't l-leaned in so close…" he trailed off, his voice growing quieter with each word. He turned his face away to glare at the treetops.
Haru's head tilted slightly to the side as though letting the words roll around in it to get settled in his brain. Then he stood up slowly, deliberately; he walked carefully over to where Kyou was standing with his hand still resting in the dent his punch had created. A fine trickle of blood made its way down from his knuckles to his wrist, dripping onto the ground. The sight of it made something in Haru snap - but it wasn't Black Haru.
Kyou's eyes widened, frozen by shock as arms wrapped around him from behind. The taller boy's mouth was too close to Kyou's ear for his comfort, and he flinched when Haru spoke quietly into it. "I am sorry, Kyou. Don't hurt yourself on my account." Haru gently pulled Kyou's hand from the wall as he spoke to illustrate his point.
Growling, Kyou shoved Haru away and took a few steps forward, his body trying to shiver away the memory of the contact. His instinct to run away as fast as his legs would allow was rendered incapacitated by his conflicting emotions; his anger, his confusion, his humiliation, his somewhat vague sense that by sticking around he would get more answers than if he were to high-tail it out of there. Unfortunately it all balled up into a giant lump that lodged itself in his throat and prevented any words from making their way out of his mouth, and the force of it all caused him to shake faintly.
A line of worry broke Haru's usually tranquil demeanor at the cat's reaction; 'He looks like he's about to explode,' he observed inwardly. Normally this could be fun to watch - Kyou always had such interesting facial expressions at times like these - but for once it hadn't been what Haru had intended. He wasn't oblivious as to when he was less than welcome, but he didn't want to leave Kyou unless asked. He had gotten Kyou into this state, and Haru wanted to rectify the situation.
Kyou's mind was racing so fast, every thought he had blurred into the next until they were such a muddled mess that he might as well had not been thinking at all. So he stopped; he turned around, his face blank. He passed Haru without sparing him a glance, opened the door leading back downstairs to the main building, and shut it quietly behind him.
Haru didn't know what to make of this exit; it contradicted everything about Kyou. He had no idea what it signified, or how it needed to be dealt with. He had never seen this kind of Kyou, one who couldn't even yell out his frustrations.
The two-toned teen heaved a small sigh. 'Nice going,' he thought to himself. 'You broke him.'