Title: Thaw
Author: Ysabet MacFarlane
Pairing: Sohma Hatsuharu and Sohma Isuzu (Rin)
Fandom: Fruits Basket
Theme: # 30  (kiss)

Disclaimer: Fruits Basket belongs to Takaya Natsuki and Hakusensha;
English-language versions by FUNimation (anime) and Tokyopop (manga).

Notes:  Set during chapter 70 / volume 12 of the manga; if you've read it, you
know what kiss this is.  If not, please note that this contains fairly mild
spoilers and has a distinctly sexual undercurrent.


***
"I want to be completed
I want to disappear
I want to be uncovered
Take me down
Take me down
Let me drown"
	--October Project, "Deep As You Go" (Falling Farther In)
***

And in the end it took so very little for him to slide under the defenses she'd
built and guarded for months.  Only a few words and a touch to undo her: one
hand at the base of her spine, pulling her closer while he tilted her head up to
look at him.  Whatever he was searching for in her eyes, he found it; he was
kissing her before she could protest, tongue brushing lightly against her lips,
and then inside her mouth.

Rin caught at his arms, meaning to push him away--trying to push him--but the
dizzying closeness, the way he teased her lips and returned to kissing her, left
her clenching her hands in his shirt, holding onto him while their bodies moved
together.

*I have to get away--*  Haru's fingers in her hair held her still, a gentle,
familiar restraint.  *Yuki's watching us.*  She tried to gather up her
evaporated rage, her contempt for the Rat, anything to distract herself from the
inexorable tenderness of Haru's mouth.  *--like he's never seen anyone kissing
before--*  But maybe he hadn't, not up close and personal; Yuki seemed the type
to look away from displays of affection, and what Haru was doing to her went far
beyond the casual kisses she sometimes saw people exchange in public.  *Maybe
it's no wonder he's staring,* she admitted to herself, before Haru stopped being
gentle and she forgot Yuki's presence entirely.

She'd thought she remembered the way he kissed her, all the ways: sometimes soft
and precious, sometimes bordering on violent.  There had been enough restless
nights, thinking about him, that she'd been sure she remembered everything.  In
his arms now, clinging to him in spite of herself, her body filled in the gaps
that her memory had kindly blurred.  She shuddered and tightened her grip on
him, too breathless and hungry to do more than hold on while he kissed her--more
than that, while he devoured her mouth with his, no gentleness left at all
except in the way he held her.  She remembered him making love to her,
everything tender but his kisses, the contrast enough to leave her shaking and
blissful for hours.

And she remembered slowly becoming addicted to his mouth, as he had learned her
body's secrets.  His embrace was comfort; sex, an insatiable need to get closer
than their bodies would allow, no matter how sweet or fierce he was; but his
mouth . . . she pressed closer, craving the bright pleasure and soft contentment
in her memory.

When he stopped kissing her, only his arms kept her on her feet.  She leaned
against him, soaking up his warmth and strength.  *I was right not to touch
him,* the logical part of her mind whispered bitterly, while the sound of his
voice lulled her--gentle, full of love and confusion and need.  Without looking,
she could feel Yuki's gaze still on them, and she wondered how they had looked
in their nearly-motionless dance of desire, if he had seen her weakness so soon
after she disparaged his.  *I'm pathetic.  Letting him hold me like this, as if
nothing has changed--*

"Are you still the same?" Haru asked quietly, as if he had read her mind.  "The
same as you were then . . ?"

She took his meaning instantly, with the clear certainty that love and the bond
sometimes granted, and something deep inside screamed at it--the unwanted memory
of a sidewalk scraping her face raw, the pain of blood pooling unseen in places
it was never meant to be.

*NO.*

He stood still under her hand when she hit him--no attempt to stop her, no
surprise in those unfathomable eyes, only an attempt to understand.  Not quite
pleading with her.

Lust and sanctuary in his arms she could almost endure.  It was his eyes that
made her bolt, running with the unnatural speed the curse had granted her human
body, without looking back.  She ran long after she knew he wasn't going to
follow her, any more than he would have held her if she'd struggled; ran until
her breathing was as ragged and painful as the sobs she didn't dare release.

*I haven't changed.*  The loathing that washed over her when she finally stopped
moving made her raging at Yuki pale into nothingness.   She stared blindly at
the sky, trying to suppress the dull emptiness that twisted inside her chest. 
The frustrating afternoon she'd spent with Shigure had ended with a long silence
that let her imagine she was a child again, that nothing had changed between
them.

Rin closed her eyes and tried not to think about Haru's hands on her body, or
the bitter knowledge that she would have let him take things much further if
he'd tried, despite Yuki's presence and Shigure's careless mockery.

*I can't do this anymore.*

She sat still until the sky began to darken, struggling to think of nothing at
all.