Author: Anita
Fandom: Takarazuka
Characters: Asaka Manato / Nozomi Fuuto
Genre: romance
Rating: PG
Status: complete
Summary: It’s raining torrentially and Fuuto appears on Manato’s doorstep looking disrupted. All she wants is for Manato to just listen.
Notes: Story written for the Yuri Week 2017, a fic event promoted by the OA Fanfics Community.
Disclaimer: None of the characters belong to me and all written below is pure fiction.
On Her Doorstep
End of February, 2017
Eyes bulging out, skin so pale and covered in sweat, a vein pulsating on her forehead. “Just listen,” Fuuto pleaded while panting so hard Manato wondered if she shouldn’t be calling the ambulance instead of complying. Her hair! What had happened there? How to even start a description? In all honesty, Fuuto looked like she’d just broken free from the loony bin.
Manato chuckled. “Are you sure you don’t prefer coming inside first? You did notice it’s raining cats and dogs out there?” Though judging by how her clothes dripping had formed a small lake, she probably hadn’t.
“I need to say this now, Maa-san. Please, stop talking.” Fuuto focused her eyes on her and added, “And stop thinking of jokes!”
“Hey, that’s like telling me to stop breathing. Look at yourself, so much material!” She was now openly laughing. “But I’ve learned some things already, since you got there. There’s no zombie apocalypse, the building isn’t on fire. So let’s get you inside before you catch pneumonia.” She stretched her arms toward Fuuto’s drenched shoulders only to be refused, as the other recoiled back. “Aya-chan?” she asked in confusion.
Fuuto looked downward, and one could see from her trembling shoulders how much tension she felt. Well, someone showing up that derailed did hint enough things were wrong. But Manato only now accepted that. Nonetheless, aside from making her come inside, what was to do?
“So…?” Manato now just observed, her arms just hanging beside her body.
“I wasted so much time,” Fuuto mumbled at the limit of what was audible.
“You did?”
“I thought…” She shrugged. “It doesn’t even make sense what I was thinking!”
Not the only thing not making sense tonight, Manato thought, but remained inert.
“I believed that I would know it. But you had so much, and I had a lot too. It didn’t seem like it. No. If I knew anything it was that it couldn’t be. We needed each other.”
“Yes…” Manato said unsure.
“If I went for it, you’d lose me. I’d lose you.”
Now she frowned. “Aya-chan, I really have no idea—”
But Fuuto interrupted her, not showing any sign she had even heard Manato. “I really love you.”
Manato smiled at those words. “Me too, you silly.”
Fuuto straightened herself and looked back appalled. Then whatever thunder that had lit her up suddenly became a dark, cloudy sky. She displayed a quiet smile and shook her head. “Not that way, no.” She took a step forward and her face became so close Manato could smell toothpaste mixed in the humid fragrance from the storm. They were hardly any centimeters away.
And then they weren’t. Fuuto had suddenly pulled back, standing now as far as possible. If she could, she would visibly mix into the neighbor’s wall.
“Don’t you—”
“Don’t,” Fuuto interrupted once more, as though reading Manato’s mind, “ask me if I have a fever. I’m not talking crazy. This is really me. The real me. The me I never ever let you see before.” Her words came out fast, one over the other. “Now listen. Really listen.” She paused. “I love you. For real. As a woman loves a… Um, as a woman loves another woman, I guess. But not like you’re saying. I really love you.”
“Oh,” Manato said.
“Yes. I love you, and I didn’t want to tell you before because I’m this stupid. Now you’re going away, and we’ll never meet again.” She stopped, looking downward again. Her right hand opened and closed and opened and closed. “Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to go? We could have talked, sorted it all out! Why couldn’t you confide in me?”
“Aya-chan.” So that was what she was going about. No wonder Fuuto had acted—or better, not acted at all when, a couple of days before, Manato had invited her for a few drinks and revealed her imminent taidan. Talk about delay!
“Now I can’t make you change your mind because it’s all about to go on the freaking message board! It’s all in freaking motion! I keep all these feelings so you’ll always have me and then you ignore everything and do this all by yourself? You didn’t tell me!”
Manato raised her eyebrows. “And what does one thing relate to the other?”
“I can’t believe you have the nerve to show that smirk to me!”
Was she smirking? Well, that situation was too unexpected to keep her calm.
“Maa-san. I think I really hate you. This is what I came to say.” Fuuto turned her back and started walking toward the elevator.
Huh? “Wait!” Manato her own door close with a bang behind her. At least, the noise had been more efficient in making Fuuto stop than her calling out to her.
“I don’t think there’s anything to make it better. So you’d better not.”
“You were going to kiss me just now, right?”
Fuuto turned her face away but not enough to conceal the redness.
“You shouldn’t have stopped,” Manato said.
“I know I shouldn’t have,” Fuuto blurted out but then her expression froze, as realization seemed to dawn on her. “Stopped, you said?”
“I suspected it. Your feelings, I mean. And also the reason why you never did nor encouraged me to do anything about them. I know you for much more than a decade already. You wouldn’t want us to mix everything.” Manato chuckled. “I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of here and go look for you. Though, with you being a Top Star, it’ll be quite hard. Lucky us I’ll have more free time than in all my life. And you did regret not trying.” Noticing the confused face receiving those words, Manato offered a smile and nodded. “You should just kiss me, Aya-chan.”
And they did it right there for what felt like hours, years. There had already been too many kisses in daydreams not to experience them all mixed in that very first they shared in reality.
“Wait, you’re leaving because of me?” Fuuto asked, parting slightly.
“No, I’m leaving because it’s time I do. But I’m certainly leaving with a smile because of you.”
“What if you were wrong? What if I had met someone?”
“Yeah. There was that…” It was the only answer Manato could give. “Presumptuous much, huh? I never considered it.”
This time, Fuuto chuckled. And resumed their kiss. “Not that it’ll happen, anyway.”
“Yes, I knew I could trust the bothersome to you.” Manato stretched her hand to Futto’s wet hair, lifting a lock up. “You should really come inside and do something. It’s no good getting a cold at this point of your career.”
“That reminds me of how I hate you for leaving me like this.” Fuuto enlaced her arms around Manato’s neck and rested her head on the other’s shoulder. “I really hate you,” she repeated.
Patting Fuuto on the head, “There, there,” said Manato as she returned the gesture and finally guided her inside her house.
The End!
Anita, May 3rd, 2017
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