[Fruits Basket] Night like the Sun
Title: Night like the Sun
Series: Fruits Basket
Rating: K+
Characters: Hatori/Mayuko
Word Count: 564; Short short
[Written for alphabet_love; 23. words]
She fixes his tie, carefully and meticulously, and does not say ‘good morning’ until he takes a sip of his coffee. He thinks their lives have become quite peaceful, in a way that he would have preferred over any other kind of roommate-but she is more than a roommate or a person that he shares a house with, except they never declare love. They eat, sleep, and kiss each other goodbyes on their separate ways to work. They live.
He also thinks the days consume his lifespan like fire. The hours fly by too fast for his wanting and it’s not as though they’re doing anything special; they have idle conversation, too thin but too deep to fill the space. He likes to come by and watch her from outside the old bookstore as she flips through a text she has read since her childhood years, the dust getting to her hands, marking stains of knowledge once more on the same palms. He knows she wants to look unoccupied, that she wants to appear careless and laid-back, but the truth is in her straightened backbone, in the corners of her mouth, where a secret smile of endearment resides.
They often eat dinner out in town and hop around restaurants that they enjoy. It has become his habit to park right next to her car, or to ponder a little to do so as close as possible when another vehicle gets in between. She questioned it once; he was unable to answer it. It is a strange phenomenon, but he wouldn’t know what to call ‘normal’ in his tendencies anyway.
Once they were in an Italian restaurant, and he remembers: she didn’t know what to order. Her face was hidden behind the menu and she couldn’t decide between spaghetti and pasta. She was a lover of European food, no matter how infrequently she went to diners. He learned this (one more fact about her, one more thought to consume) and had a brief idea of making the food for her with his hands. He would have to find the time alone at home; he didn’t want her to see the clumsiness he often had in the kitchen.
That was only a week ago. Today they eat at home, traditional Japanese dishes lying in front of them while the noises of chopsticks go ‘click, click’ upon the air of the table.
“Where did you learn to cook?” He asks her.
“Mostly on my own from cookbooks,” she replies, swallowing. “Sometimes from relatives.” She hesitantly looks up, half-serious and half-mischievous. “Why, you don’t like my cooking?”
He closes his eyes (and that means a gentle ‘no’). “I never said that.” (I actually enjoy the food you cook, very much so.)
She hears the veiled words and smiles.
.
The hour nears midnight and at exactly twelve, Mayuko falls asleep on the couch with books in her arms. He drapes a fresh blanket over her, the same blanket they have slept under last summer, and gives her hair a small goodnight kiss.
He picks up a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets from her hands and reads in the dark because sometimes one doesn’t need the aid of a lamp, or any light, for that matter. He mouths the old English words and the silence pours into the house’s shadows.
(She is the only kind of light he needs.)
Series: Fruits Basket
Rating: K+
Characters: Hatori/Mayuko
Word Count: 564; Short short
[Written for alphabet_love; 23. words]
She fixes his tie, carefully and meticulously, and does not say ‘good morning’ until he takes a sip of his coffee. He thinks their lives have become quite peaceful, in a way that he would have preferred over any other kind of roommate-but she is more than a roommate or a person that he shares a house with, except they never declare love. They eat, sleep, and kiss each other goodbyes on their separate ways to work. They live.
He also thinks the days consume his lifespan like fire. The hours fly by too fast for his wanting and it’s not as though they’re doing anything special; they have idle conversation, too thin but too deep to fill the space. He likes to come by and watch her from outside the old bookstore as she flips through a text she has read since her childhood years, the dust getting to her hands, marking stains of knowledge once more on the same palms. He knows she wants to look unoccupied, that she wants to appear careless and laid-back, but the truth is in her straightened backbone, in the corners of her mouth, where a secret smile of endearment resides.
They often eat dinner out in town and hop around restaurants that they enjoy. It has become his habit to park right next to her car, or to ponder a little to do so as close as possible when another vehicle gets in between. She questioned it once; he was unable to answer it. It is a strange phenomenon, but he wouldn’t know what to call ‘normal’ in his tendencies anyway.
Once they were in an Italian restaurant, and he remembers: she didn’t know what to order. Her face was hidden behind the menu and she couldn’t decide between spaghetti and pasta. She was a lover of European food, no matter how infrequently she went to diners. He learned this (one more fact about her, one more thought to consume) and had a brief idea of making the food for her with his hands. He would have to find the time alone at home; he didn’t want her to see the clumsiness he often had in the kitchen.
That was only a week ago. Today they eat at home, traditional Japanese dishes lying in front of them while the noises of chopsticks go ‘click, click’ upon the air of the table.
“Where did you learn to cook?” He asks her.
“Mostly on my own from cookbooks,” she replies, swallowing. “Sometimes from relatives.” She hesitantly looks up, half-serious and half-mischievous. “Why, you don’t like my cooking?”
He closes his eyes (and that means a gentle ‘no’). “I never said that.” (I actually enjoy the food you cook, very much so.)
She hears the veiled words and smiles.
.
The hour nears midnight and at exactly twelve, Mayuko falls asleep on the couch with books in her arms. He drapes a fresh blanket over her, the same blanket they have slept under last summer, and gives her hair a small goodnight kiss.
He picks up a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets from her hands and reads in the dark because sometimes one doesn’t need the aid of a lamp, or any light, for that matter. He mouths the old English words and the silence pours into the house’s shadows.
(She is the only kind of light he needs.)