Comments/Author's Notes: So, this here is an old one-shot I posted to the ASuki FSN Fanfiction thread way back when, and pretty much left it to the mercy of others. I debated bringing it over to BL, but it happens to be a one-shot I'm rather proud of for some reason or another. So, here you go.
Sunlight
He wasn’t supposed to notice her.
It had been nearly two years. For two years, he had been with Sakura; he had been Sakura’s boyfriend, he had had sex with Sakura, she had lived with him ever since the War had ended. She was, in all likelihood, the woman he would one day marry. Taiga was already planning the wedding, he was sure of it (she’d been dropping hints lately, ever since they had graduated…).
He had gone through Hell to save her. He had literally walked in the valley of death, and only the sacrifice of the closest thing he’d ever had to a younger sister had saved his life, given him a chance to live with Sakura the way he had wanted to when he had stood before the womb, more machine than human.
Emiya Shirou, after going through everything he had to grant Matou Sakura happiness and stay by her side for the rest of their lives, wasn’t supposed to notice Tohsaka Rin.
Sakura’s older sister. The magus who had guided him through the start of the War; the girl who had been his companion and support, who in the end had proven that her golden heart was far too kind even for her own good. She was as much a contradiction as she was a mystery.
And Shirou noticed her.
Oh, how he noticed her.
Sometimes, he didn’t know if he ever wanted to stop noticing her.
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If Shirou blamed anything for it, he blamed the fact that Rin was like the sun.
She blazed. She burned. She blasted through anything with no apologies, a surge of black and red even now, after two years. Her light blue eyes held no promises and told no regrets. She smelled of the sky and the wind, and despite how firmly she kept herself in check, she was everything wild and natural about being a magus. Even when she was still, even when she was focused and calm, her whole being seemed to vibrate, to throb, with warm energy.
(If you had asked him, Shirou would have said he loved watching her the most when she was reading, hunched over a book, her long black hair spilling all around her, a pair of glasses perched on her nose. He found something incredibly sexy about how composed she looked when he could still feel the energy racing through her blood.)
Rin was like the sun, and she burned. Shirou sometimes felt if he got too close to her, he’d turn into ash.
The problem was, if Rin was like the sun, then she was also light; the sun to Sakura’s moon, the light to her darkness.
Shirou loved Sakura. He loved every part of her; and that meant loving her darkness, knowing her darkness, viewing the darkness almost like a second lover. But there was something oddly enthralling, incredibly pulling, about the light that shone on him whenever her sister was in his house.
Shirou was a man who would chase light, even if he loved the darkness. And if Rin was the light, then it meant he would chase her.
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Many times, Shirou contemplated getting far, far away from Rin.
Physically, distance was impossible. Rin was Sakura’s sister, and Sakura lived with him; it was only natural, then, that the heir of Tohsaka would come to his house whenever she was home, to visit or to spend a few nights. Trying to keep a physical distance from Rin would have been like trying to keep a cat from eating a fat canary that was out of its cage.
The next logical step, then, was to emotionally establish a distance; to be friendly, to be kind, but to not interact too much at all, or not let that interaction get too deep. So Shirou had done that, in the beginning.
At first, it had been easy; Rin had seemed to share his thoughts, somehow, as she also did her best to avoid emotionally connecting with him more than they were already connected. They were friendly, but otherwise reserved with each other, open but with some doors firmly closed.
They had interacted that way for awhile, and it had been easy.
Then Shirou had noticed: they just seemed to naturally drift to each other. He would get up to cook while Sakura set the table, and Rin would already have an apron on, scooting over to give him space, their elbows touching as they worked. She would be reading a book in the living room, one of her huge magus tomes, and he would peer over her shoulder, curious. It wasn’t even something they did consciously; they just somehow ended up that way, time and time again.
Shirou loved Sakura (he was certain he did), and Rin wouldn’t gun for the one thing that had given her sister true happiness, but it just happened. They were naturally attracted to each other somehow, in someway. Trying to ignore it and get away from it was like telling the ocean to stop rolling in waves.
One day, while cooking, he glanced at her cautiously; golden eyes met light blue, her shyly peeking at him from under her bangs. For a moment, they gazed at each other.
He sighed and slumped. Shaking his head with a small, cooked smile, he went back to work.
He didn’t see her, but he could have sworn he heard her laugh, and it made his chest feel odd and warm.
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In retrospect, Shirou should have probably seen this coming.
He didn’t know how he had ended up kissing Rin, or why he was kissing Rin, or how long he had been kissing Rin. They had been alone in the house; Rin was visiting, and Taiga had whisked Sakura away for shopping, or cooking, or whatever, Shirou currently couldn’t remember.
She had been reading, he knew that much. Sitting there with her legs folded, her glasses on, all focused and cool and calm, and somehow he had felt silly and lively and curious, and with all the innocence of a school boy he had reached over and plucked off her glasses. She’d looked up, and they’d stared at each other, and he had grinned; her eyes had slowly narrowed.
The chase had commenced then. She had pursued him through the hallway, out into the yard, back into the living room, and in the back of his mind he had admired her ability to keep up with him for so long. Finally they had ended up in the kitchen, his back against the counter, her hands firmly braced on both sides of him, so the only way he could escape was shoving past her. Her glasses hung between his fingers; they were both panting, their faces red, their eyes gleaming and lively, and she was smiling, actually smiling, and somehow he didn’t know how, but he had thought it was the most beautiful thing he had seen in a long while, and he had kissed her.
And she had kissed him back.
She had been warm and soft, she had tasted sweet and wet and everything he had ever dreamed, everything he had ever imagined her to be, and the real thing completely destroyed his dreams and imagination. Her glasses had clattered forgotten to the floor as she pressed up against him, her fingers running through his short hair, his sliding up her back and tangling in the long, silky black locks. They kissed each other desperately, hungrily, like it was the first and last time.
And then, in shifting, one of them—he didn’t know who it was—had stepped on her abandoned glasses.
The crunch of glass brought them both back to reality, but they didn’t jump apart; still holding on tightly, they just stared at each other, trembling, stunned. Very slowly, Shirou let go; getting the hint, Rin backed up, taking a deep, shaking breath as she reached down and grabbed her glasses, sliding them into her hair.
Silence hung between them for a long, awkward moment.
Finally, Shirou swallowed. “That was….” He gulped again. His throat was dry; his tongue wouldn’t work. “Tohsaka.”
She looked at him, and in that moment he was struck, truly struck, by how deep and blue her eyes were. He felt as if he could drown in those eyes; he felt that if he touched her now, she would shatter.
He licked his lips. The words sprang up his throat, pressed against his lips, but they wouldn’t come out. “Tohsaka, I—“
“Shirou—“
The front door slammed open. “We’re home!” Taiga practically sang out, bouncing in the house. “We got really good meat cheap, Shirou! I expect a feast tonight!”
Snapping back once more, he smiled weakly at the grin on his former teacher’s face, the blaze in her eyes. Sakura hovered beside her, her eyes soft and a smile on her lips already, as if the sight of him alone gave her peace.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rin slide her glasses back on, her hair spilling across those blue eyes that had struck him to his core.
And for some reason, he could have sworn his heart cracked, just a little bit.
“Welcome home. Did you cause any trouble for Sakura again, Fuji-nee?”
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Originally Posted by Komrade Kwestions
