A HINT OF TONGUE: A ONE SHOT
For perhaps the thousandth venture, a certain doctor found himself leaving the confines of his office to take a walk. Each venture was the same, each movement precisely executed from consistently practicing old habits, so much that Hatori Sohma was overwhelmed with the tiniest variation. This walk of his would put him into cardiac arrest.
The afternoon started normally enough. Akito had been running a minor fever, one that usually peaked in the dinner hour and, with a healthy dose of rest, dissipated in the morning—only to return in the late afternoon, sometimes accompanied with violent coughing. It was expected that Hatori check in on her hourly during this dangerous lapse, and this he did with no complaint or grudge. After all, the Sohma wealth had fed his medical career.
Akito's health had mutinied at around noon, her coughs bringing forth phlegm tainted with red. Yet she had threatened to throw a temper tantrum at any well-meant suggestion of hospitalization.
Finally, having brushed off many inquiries on her state of health, she said, "I am God, and I will smote the first one to come near me with a bed pan." Not a single cough racked her frail body nor marred the imperious tone of her decree.
They left her alone after that, save Hatori. Anyone looking in would think the doctor was tenderly holding his God's hand. In reality, he was checking her pulse and making sure Akito did not get more blood on her hands in covering her mouth mid-cough.
Hatori administered a more potent dosage of the usual antibiotics; the cough obediently subsided upon running its course, leaving behind a clan master who drifted into an uneasy sleep. Unfortunately, tiny tremors took hold of her and gradually increased in severity. Akito was thrashing, Hatori realized. Restraints would have left marks on her bird-bone wrists and she, in return, would have left marks on anyone who tried to bind her.
The doctor called for a sturdy assistant and for a grueling hour, forcefully prevented Akito from ripping the hair from her scalp and shredding her china doll complexion into something resembling hamburger meat. Hatori cursed when he realized that she was gnashing her teeth together, which were already weakened from scanty eating, as well as a side-effect of her heavy medication…
All in all, the Sohma house was plunged into the darker grips of anxiety and foreboding: Would their God perish? Even the outsiders fell to the disquieting aura emanating from the main compound. Akito might have been proud of the far-flung reaches of her incapacitation. Perhaps it was at this consolation that she bested her night terrors and dozed peacefully.
'I wouldn't be surprised,' Hatori thought as he tucked an unlit cigarette between his thin lips. He gave his pack a slight squeeze, frowning when it crumpled easily. The cigarette in his mouth lowered when he counted two left, one of them bent nearly in half.
Ordinarily, this would not have fazed him, but he was on his first cigarette and he felt that he could finish off a whole packet within the hour. Given how his day had gone, it was understandable.
Sighing, he continued his silent trek under the falling snow, ignoring the fact that he was the only soul meandering in such bleak settings. Everyone else in Tokyo, no, Japan, was probably gathered around a tiny heater, hogging oranges and basking in the jolly cheer of family and the holidays. He shuddered. The New Year would be 2000, his year. It would be fitting if the world were to end on the year he pranced around in that silly costume. Of course it would. Damn world.
Inwardly, he wouldn't have minded. The one thing that had meant the world to him, meant nearly more than family to him, was dead to him and her memory buried in him. As he faced a near-oblivion offered by the vast, encompassing blanket of dull white, he could see her, turning her head as he reverently spoke her name. On such a naturally monochrome screen, his mind underhandedly projected his reoccuring desire for the Christmas season.
Her short hair billowed out, the ends catching the light and producing a halo he never believed possible in anyone. The same light sparkled in her bright eyes as she beckoned him, the slow-poke, to hurry up. Her laughter echoed in his cavernous mind: It was meant for him and only he would ever hear it and know whom it was for. The joy of this knowledge withered in the face of certainty. Hatori would never—could never—have any of it again.
He had seen it in her eyes as that glow deadened under his guilty touch.
"It's okay, Kana," he whispered as his lips grazed her brow. "You don't need to cry anymore."
And just like that, water sprang from his useless eye, barren and unreachable the rest of the year. The parts of him she had tenderly and unintentionally melted leaked outward, more precious than the blood, the perfect vision, he had sacrificed keeping her out of Akito's talons.
The perfect vision in both eyes. The perfect vision of his future with her. So utterly gone.
Exhaling shakily, Hatori put down the hand that had reached for this mirage, cutting through his condensed breath. It was her, but that Kana no longer existed. He had accepted it years ago and was not about to change his decision. His life demanded cool efficiency and she had no place in it. Consequently, he had no place at all.
But Hatori had not come out here for self-pitying thoughts. The weather, the sudden dip of temperatures, the hardened air, suited his nature. He had immersed himself in it to draw strength from the chill, relieved to feel that it worked. A gust of wind erased the telling, shiny trail on his cheek and chipped at the flimsy smile he had given into. Color deserted him, and he was Dr. Sohma again.
Dr. Sohma needed to feed his nicotine addiction NOW. A click of his lighter, a greedy inhalation, and the heated smoke of the cigarette curled once more in his lungs. It warmed his insides and he could pretend for a moment that he always felt so cozy.
Lost in the soothing chemical reaction, it did not immediately register that he had collided with something squeaky, or nearly collided, as instinct caused him to throw out his arms, keeping another body at safe distance.
It might've been a squeak he heard or a highly pitched "Sorry!"
'Squeaky… huh?' he opened his mouth and thick wisps of gray exited.
The apologetic squeak turned into fits of coughing.
"I- Iie…" more coughing, "…Sorrysorrysorry, I was trying to catch snowflakes on my tongue, and I am very, very sorry!"
Yes, he understood that much the first time. What he didn't get was that this squeaky thing, bent over in apology, seemed familiar. He succeeded in not smacking himself square in the forehead when the squeaky thing straightened itself and Tohru Honda's broad smile greeted him.
'I should've known from the pink ribbons,' he thought.
"It was my fault as well," Hatori said awkwardly, recalling their last run-in from the last winter.
It was evident that she did not understand, guessing by the curiously raised eyebrows.
"…blowing smoke in your face. That's not too pleasant, especially for a pink set of lungs."
"Oh!" Tohru said, clapping her hand together and beaming at him. "I bumped into you first out of carelessness! I'm so glad that you didn't trans—" She stopped for a moment and looked around..
"I was worried that you'd change!" Her wide-set eyes brushed over his lithe frame to check for any visible harm, relaxed upon seeing none, and promptly lowered themselves in shame for looking at all.
He was faintly amused as she waved her arm around to distract him from her flushed cheeks and discussed the negative effects of snow on unsuspecting sea horses.
It was a discreet upturn of his lips (he refused to say that it was a smile) that stopped the flailing, and once she'd calmed down, Honda tentatively stepped in the direction she was headed. For some reason, he joined her. He had nowhere else to go.
It proved to be a bad idea because, all apologies aside, they had nothing to say to each other.
Hatori soon craved another cigarette, as his first one had not survived Tohru Honda's clumsiness, but he felt bad about earlier, and resolutely stuck his itching fingers into the pockets of his trench coat, twitching when they touched the remaining cigarette and a half. It was quiet still, and he could sense that the gears in her head were rotating desperately to devise conversation.
'Well, what to say,' he thought. Out loud, he asked, "Honda-san, where are you going in this weather?"
Her beaming smile returned with full force, causing Hatori to see a few spots in front of his eye. In answer, she shook an inflated, ornate paper bag with bright red and green patterns. "I have to give Haru-kun, Kisa-chan, Momiji-chan, and Hiro-kun their gifts! There are so many of them, and I only had a little left over…" she bit her lip and laughed nervously. "I really hope they'll like them." He raised a brow, wondering how the prickly sheep would accept a token from his 'competition.'
"Don't worry about it. Between Momiji bouncing off the walls in joy and Kisa-san never letting go of your leg, they're not going to refuse whatever you give," he said wryly.
She laughed again, this time without a break. Something in Hatori gulped.
"Thank you, Hatori-san," she said, skipping a little ahead as the gates of the Sohma loomed closer. A yard or so in front of him, she twisted around and exuberantly, if haltingly, walked backwards. It seemed that the Cat was rubbing off on her. In spite of the pronounced distance, they were able to hold a pleasant conversation. It felt nice to make her giggle over an incident regarding Momiji, a beloved plush, and a microwave. It was too much like—no, he couldn't finish the treacherous comparison.
He did not know how she guessed his sudden mood, but Honda paused until he was almost beside her and reached out to touch his arm, worry creasing her forehead. "Are you okay, Hatori-san?" she asked, making him ache from her concern.
'Expressive eyebrows,' he thought, and squelched an insane urge to brush one of them with his thumb. He expected her to pull away and heartily apologize, but she steadily held his gaze; he uncomfortably noticed her green irises darkening into blue.
"Honda-san, what do you think of melting snow?" he blurted.
"Eh?"
Even to him, it sounded like a weird question. He shook his head and was about to tell her to forget it. What happened to cool efficiency?
"Ah…"
He wanted to tell her to forget it, but he could see an answer slowly marshalling itself in her mind. In the way she looked away from him and stared hard at the white caking her shoes. Both of her hands had shifted to hold the bag; it now shielded her from him.
"It makes me sad."
'Huh?' He was blindsided by the confusion, so much that his jaw slackened.
"It makes me sad, because snow doesn't want to change," she clarified. Her head was no longer bowed and he had the strangest feeling that, though he had one eye, Hatori could see directly into her soul as she gently smiled up at him.
"It might take the snow a little longer to become spring, but it will be wonderful," Tohru sighed. "…when it happens." Though her eyes were only halfway open, eyelids drooped in thought, Hatori decided that it was the other way around: She was peering into his soul.
Pangs of fear stole into him. '…and I'm letting her.'
She blinked wildly as he, hypnotized, inched forward, his shadow falling over her. When he inclined his head and, after a long pause in which neither of them moved, kissed her, she wasn't blinking at all.
He nearly laughed when he discovered that she even tasted pink (it was that unsurprising), but then he would have to stop nibbling on her lip and willingly surrender himself to the chill of a family bound by a curse. He also wanted to place his hands on her back and draw her closer, but that too, would have interrupted the proceedings. A reminder of what he was in the midst of Tohru's sweetness.
'Not…yet, Akito.'
She had accepted his kiss and was in the process of returning it, mittens squeezing the straps of a slightly crushed bag. His tongue stroked the sensitive roof of her mouth and she promptly dropped the bag to drape her hands behind his neck; its contents miraculously did not spill on the snow. Hatori would find out later that Tohru had bought a present for him, too… besides what she was sincerely giving him in the snowfall.
A/N: (stretches) Finished! And not a sprig of mistletoe in sight. Hope you liked! I don't normally ship that pairing, and I took some liberties. Like that Y2K thing.
SPOILER: For those relatively unacquainted with Furuba, Kana is Hatori's old lover, whose memory he was forced to erase. She liked teasing him. The first thing she asks him is "When snow melts, what does it become?" Being the logical man he was, he said, "Water."
She laughed and corrected him: "Spring. When snow melts, it becomes spring."