Fandom – Fruits Basket
Title – itsuka. (someday.)
Pairing – Haru x Yuki
Rating – PG

Description – (AU) It's been years since they've moved out of the main house after defying Akito. But the effects of their past still permeate to the present…

Disclaimer - Fruits Baskets isn't mine. The song at the end is from "Push It" by Garbage.

itsuka. (someday.)
By miyamoto yui

"AAH~!"

I immediately rushed into the living room and huffed thinking that I didn't get there fast enough. Then, I rushed over to the balcony as he put his camera on the stand against the wall. He leaned on the black metal railing of the balcony while his silver-gray hair shook from side to side.
His hands let go. He made fists as he lightly pounded on the railing.

"I can never get anything right. How can someone like me ever think he can present things as beautiful? I always feel like I'm lying to everyone…"

Despite my heart breaking over his comment, I let out a sigh of relief as I opened the sliding door and came onto the balcony while putting one hand on my hip and the other on the back of my head. I scratched through my mismatched hair and gave him a sleepy, yet very concerned look. "What happened, Yuki?"

A light breeze blew. As he pushed some of his bangs in back of his ear while glancing at me from the side. I looked into his profile as we both eyed one another.

It was then that I noticed all the pictures in the living room making a trail to the balcony. I looked at the camera with some of the film hanging out, laying discarded and almost appearing abused.

Yuki's gentle, yet exhausted eyes watched me as I found myself looking back at him.

"I don't know what to do for my next project. They told me I could do anything as long as it was thought-provoking. But I'm not inspired." He shook his head. "I knew I shouldn't have gone into this career. I'm no good at it."
"How can you say that?"

As I walked over to him, he looked up to the light blue sky. The white clouds were slowly passing with the help of the wind. Everything seemed so peaceful at eight a.m. in the morning, even if the city was rushing by in cars, school uniforms, and suitcases below us.
But of course, the peace wasn't always there.

We had gotten away from the main house, but the remnants of its pain would never leave us. The inadequacy that everyone feels was multiplied within our family and with our curse. There were times when small episodes would come back.

Just because you "grew up" didn't mean it went away.
It wasn't easier to deal with.
It just meant you found different ways of coping.

Yuki wouldn't overreact, but I could see his continuous struggle to accept himself became overbearing at times. As for me, I would become more withdrawn when things became a little more complicated than I wanted to deal with.
Yet, we were silently strong, weren't we?

I wrapped my bare arms around his small waist and touched my lips to the hairs on the back of his head. "Yuki, close your eyes."
I looked up to the sky as I said, "Now, point your head downward. What do you hear?"

"The wind," he answered me flatly as if he didn't have time to do this.

"Instead of trying to see with your eyes, feel the city with your heart, Yuki. Why are you here in the first place?"
"I wanted to capture the city in the morning. Even though there's all this traffic and all the complications, from up here, everything looks tranquil in a way."
"And why did you wake up so early to do just that?"
"Everything is quiet up here. In all this chaos, it still looks so peaceful."

I held him tighter as I whispered into his ear, "Now, open your eyes. Is this what you want to capture?"
Slowly he nodded his head. He looked down at the city as if he had seen it for the first time.

"We've lived here for quite some time, but why did we take this apartment? Not only for the view. It made us feel like we could fly," I whispered quietly to him. "Is this what you want to say the city is? As smoggy and as crazy as some people say it is and stay away, it's awesome, isn't it?"

He closed his eyes as he leaned his body on mine while I continued to hold him.

Then, I let him go as he went over to his camera and took pictures of the city from our apartment. After taking some pictures of people crossing the street or the buildings that seemed to stretch towards the sun, he grabbed my hand. "Come with me."

I quickly brushed my teeth and dressed up as he packed his equipment into his bag. We were at the lobby and pushing the doors of the apartment building. We walked onto the sidewalk and looked up. He took pictures from this angle. Then, he turned around and took pictures around the street.

Even though he wasn't always so forward, he simply clutched onto my hand and smiled. Then, we ran around the city taking so many pictures, even Tokyo Tower during sunset, both from the viewing dock and from the bottom of it.

When we went home, I bought us each a cone of ice cream. He got green tea while I ate chocolate.
Half-way, we exchanged.

It was already really late and I plopped myself onto the couch as soon as we stepped into the apartment. "I don't know how I'm going to get up for classes tomorrow."
Yuki sat next to me and looked up to the ceiling with his bag on the black coffee table.

"Sorry that I just dragged you all over even though I knew you had a lot of homework, Haru."
"Yeah, like I'd pick homework over my Yuki."
He laughed as he shook his head. Teasing, he said, "You are a fool."
I pouted as I eyed him with one eyebrow raised. Then, I closed my eyes. "Did you find anything that you wanted to put for the magazine special?"

"Humans and angels?" he answered me.
He was already looking at me with his head turned towards mine as I opened my eyes to watch him. "How are you going to do that?"
"You'll see."
I smirked. "You're so smart, Yuki I don't know how you do it."
Then, I got up. "And here I am. I try so hard to pass with decent marks. I hate college."

He caught my hand. "You're amazing, Haru. Just by being you. I've always envied you being able to do what you wanted. And to say what you do."

I held his hand. Why was it the one person I cared for most in the world always felt like he was the most
insignificant human being on the planet?
What do I ever do for you, Yuki? How can I ever make you feel that you're anything but that? Because you feel that way, where do I fit in?

Where am I? Who am I?

+/+/+/+/+/

Days later, Yuki the genius photographer, put pages of his pictures all over our living room floor. I put down my bag as I looked as his grinning face. "Look what I did."

I walked over each photograph and eyed them carefully.
One had children playing in the park with one girl passing a red ball to a little boy. There were the ones from the tower as well as from our drive through Rainbow Bridge on a taxi. But the last one was from our apartment.

And it was a night. It was a shot into the sky with the moon and the skyscrapers appearing as if they were only silhouettes.

"They're really gorgeous." I looked at him and held the last picture in my hands. "Why did you name this 'from the eyes of humans to angels'?"
He then took up all the pictures and gave them to me.

While I sat on the floor, he leaned his body on me while putting his head on my shoulder. I leafed through the pictures once more.

"Maybe this is how people were created. Did we fall from the sky?" He shook his head. "I think too much, don't I? I'm always unsure of myself. I want to touch things and people, but I'm so scared of being hurt or feeling too much sometimes."
"That's all right. This speaks more than being able to simply touch things, Yuki."
"I…I wanted to show the world how I saw you, Haru."
I gave him a surprised expression. "Me?"

He looked around the apartment. There were three pictures. One was my favorite of him grinning widely as he was playing volleyball in high school with half of his shirt showing his stomach. That was on the coffee table. The one on his working desk filled with papers was the one with me looking off to one side. It was the one I used when I modeled briefly. I hated it, but he liked how deep I appeared and he felt it captured what no one could describe in words.

But his eyes settled on the one of us on the white wall. It was as if the picture he had on his desk was looking at the picture of us on the wall. The one on the wall was taken by Momiji.

With this very wall as the backdrop, we were thinking of a way to pose.
Yuki was wearing a black tux while I wore black slacks with my white blouse. My sleeves were rolled. We were back to back. Yuki was glancing in my direction as I looked down at the floor while laughing. I was pulling on his tie over my shoulder.

It was a candid shot. We didn't plan for it, but it came out that way.

Isn't that how we always are? We look at one another wondering if we're good enough to be together. We are always thinking if we'll make it in the world as individuals.

But we know everything will turn out all right if we try our best.

"You're all right the way you are," he told me as he kissed my ear after whispering into it.
I blinked my eyes and I found myself so touched that a tear came out of my eyes.

"Isn't that what you've been telling me since you were little, Haru? Even though you thought you hated me?" He buried his head into my shoulder. "And all this time, that's how I thought about you."

I laughed as the tears were coming down. I shook my head. "We're always thinking the same thing, but it takes us how long to figure things out. We're hopeless."

Yuki nodded. He got up as he held out his hand to me. Just like when I was little, when I didn't hate him anymore, when I wanted to learn how he was so strong to protest to leave the main house…

I took his hand as he led me outside to look up at the sky. We leaned over the railing as we watched the whiz of lights go by with people running from place to place.

"There's a holiday somewhere else in the world, but we're celebrating it today," Yuki said as he turned his face to me with a smile. "It's called Thanksgiving in the States."
"You spend way too much time researching on the internet."
He chuckled.
"Okay, seriously, why are we celebrating it today?" I innocently asked.

He closed his eyes as he felt the wind that passed the contours of our bodies. "Because it shouldn't just be celebrated just there."
I gave him a skeptical look as I patted his head. "Are you stupid or something?"
"Why do you say that?" His beautiful eyes opened to watch me once more. He was surprised that I had answered that way.

I cleared my throat as I looked away from him while blushing. I hated getting all sentimental that way. I put my hands into my black jean pockets. "I get this everyday."
"How is that?" He leaned his face close to mine and carefully analyzed me with a curious expression.
I poked him on the forehead. "You're here, aren't you?"
"Huh? I don't get it, Haru."

We looked eye to eye.
Then, I looked up to the dark sky above us.

He slid over to me and we were leaning our backs to one another. He held my hands and put his fingers through all the crevices of mine. We watched the sky together.

I closed my eyes for a moment to repaint the scene in my head.
"I'm not a fool" I told myself that day while crying.
"I know," you had told me.

Opening my eyes again, I told him, "I couldn't be here if it weren't for you."

There are some times when we don't have money. There are other times when our family doesn't want to know us. There are many times when we hate ourselves because of the things we think we should do or be.

But through it all, we find happiness in things that are the most unexpected.

We see the world in pictures with colors and different kinds of scenes that bring about a range of emotions.

I turn around and hold him as he still looks at the sky above us. I look through the glass sliding door and see the picture on the wall. Quietly, I say,

"Thank you for being the way you are. Believe me, Yuki."

He holds my hand as he points his head towards the ground while trying to avoid my eyes and doesn't want to cry. "Same here, Haru. Same here…"

This is all anyone ever wants to know.
But after being told otherwise, sometimes it's harder to accept than to fight it.

At that moment, I pulled Yuki into the living room and pushed him onto the couch to kiss him. As I put my hand up his shirt, I kissed him harder.

How do we take the hurt away?

I open his shirt and kiss the light scars that are all over his body, both invisible and visible.

I want to erase it…Erase it all off you…

I know I can't because it made you into the compassionate and kind person you are now, even though you don't believe it.

Someday I will. I know I can.

And then I'll feel like my life meant something. I was able to do something for the person that changed my life.

Trying to get deeper into you, I hold you closer as I softly say,

"Don't worry baby.
No need to fight.
Don't worry baby.
We'll be all right."

I'll always believe in that. We're almost there, aren't we?

Someday, I'll convince you that it's true, Yuki. You'll believe me when the time comes.

My tears fall onto the pillow.

Someday…

Owari. / The End.

-
Author's note: It's been a long time since I've done a Furuba fic and so I've wanted an opportunity to do one. And the day was today. There have been quite a few reviews for various furuba fics and I'm touched that I've been able to convey so many things through these fics, especially Yuki.
I don't know where this came from but I wanted this to be an AU fic with Haru and Yuki grown up. Yuki is this famous photographer while Haru's trying to get through college. I was just thinking, what's another fic I can write to say thank you to my readers for Thanksgiving? This was it. I hoped you liked it. (I needed fluff.)

Love,
Yui

Wednesday, November 24, 2004