fandom: Ouran High School Host Club
title: yuki no hana.
pairing: Kyouya + Tamaki
rating: pg-13
description – Tamaki's loneliness leads him to walk out in the snow in the middle of night on Christmas…
Disclaimer – Ouran High School Host Club doesn't belong to me.
yuki no hana.
(snowflake.)
By miyamoto yui
Winter bells ring silently with the snow falling to the ground. Slowly, it covers my footsteps and I look up to the sky wondering when it would all end. Snow is magic in the making, something we know exactly how it forms scientifically and yet it doesn't let us stop feeling awed every time we see it happen before our eyes.
I look down and then you are looking at me as if in shock. How long have you been there?
But from the details of the flakes, these trickles of miracles that melt so easily as they come to your shoulders when they touch your warmth and disappear instantaneously, you have been here for a while.
There is a little lump upon your shoulders as you watch me carefully and patiently.
I looked at my gloved, red hands.
Immediately, I avert my eyes as if I don't care, embarrassed that I didn't want to be one to say the first thing to you.
Eventually, my eyes slowly lift themselves from the ground, to your shoes, up your elegant figure, and finally look into those firmly intense eyes. You are still staring at me with everything to say.
But your mouth makes no attempt to clarify anything to me.
What do you hope to accomplish as I look straight at you there watching me under the lamppost?
This quiet city where people are sleeping and we are alone in this darkness that the moonlight doesn't touch us, but an artificial light on a public street, we slowly move towards one another in another realm. But as we exist now, we stand firm, holding back everything.
Your dark silver coat is shining with your checkered blue scarf and you keep your hands inside your pockets, making no effort avoid me or leave quickly.
Like the perfect businessman, always sleek in a suit with that long coat falling a few centimeters above this icy ground, you never seem to ever be outside of your sphere of influence: You always are on guard.
Even with yourself.
As if in a play, you make an entrance. You step forward. Smirking, you ruffle my hair with your fingers without saying a word. I look at your face and your profile stares back at me as you stop in the middle of passing me by.
Your eyes are closed, but through the white, frigid face, your cheeks are blushing red under this artificial light. Your mouth opens to smile, the perfect teeth aligned with a grin that is as rare as a perfect day of weather here in tempermental Tokyo.
And I, who was wandering in the middle of the night, wondering why I was here instead of France with my mother, suddenly felt lulled. The restlessness of my whole body which is shaking with the sleepless nights accumulating and the broken face I was holding back during the light of day, is temporarily at ease.
Why did I have a feeling that you would meet me here, even though you were coming back from a forget-the-year party? Yes, with all my pride, I was hoping that you would be here, on this street and at this time, to meet me.
In those few seconds that you brush the icy particles off my hair, I instantly feel the caring warmth of your fingers directly into a part of myself that I had cast away many years ago: The true innocence that I cannot show. No, not even in the smile that charms everyone.
You didn't ask me why I was there in my jeans and large coat walking around. You didn't scold me or tell me anything to make go back soon.
When your fingers leave the tips of my hair, I feel frozen again.
I have lost another opportunity to tell you again.
As you nod tiredly to take your leave, I turn around and catch your arm with my gloved fingers cringing upon your coat sleeve. I grin at you with my teeth touching my lower lip and my eyes becoming smaller.
It is the only way I can thank you since I don't know how to tell you 'Arigatou' without my voice changing…
…without giving you a hint of something that I myself have yet to realize: What your presence in my life means.
Excitedly, I tell you, "I woke up in the middle of the night because someone in my dream told me that if I walked around the snow and caught a special snowflake, I'd get a big prize! It must be because I went to the shrine today to pray-"
You close your eyes and squeeze my woolen fingers for three seconds.
Then, with that same hand, you put it over your mouth. Stifling a dry laugh, your eyes are sparkling in a way that I think sleeplessness, the miraculous snow, and the lamppost are making me see impossible things.
Then, you turn your head and say in an happy, yet exasperated tone, "What the hell?"
"But-"
"You always have this much energy to do such a thing…Amazing."
Standing there with your left hand over your mouth, the laughter you held back, but seeping out of your fingers, fills the empty spaces of my heart. You quiver from your laughter and can't look me in the eye.
With everything in my life, for once, I am glad that I spending my Christmas holiday here. This very small crevice is the 'home' I have spent so many seconds longing for when I retreated from the world.
Putting down your hand, you place it back into your pocket and walk away without looking back. Nodding your farewell, under the lamppost, I watched your shadow become swallowed by the darkness of the dark Winter night.
And all I could was smile from ear to ear. Heading back to my room, I rush back to go back to bed.
Everyone is the Host Club is always asking me what I want. What is the gift I want? But even I don't know. What I want can't be bought. It is something only other people can give me, but unless I guide them, they won't know. And it doesn't help that my pride and my habit of not wanting to worry people won't let me say what I really want.
Putting my hands in my pockets and running and running, I couldn't wait to go to bed though my gift already came early today…
Kyouya, your face under this small imaginary snow globe where I store all these special moments that change my life…
This is where I'll hide this treasure until the day I die.
Owari.
--
Author's note: Wow, time to write. Actually, even if I should be sleeping right now, I was suddenly inspired to do this waffy fic. I think it's been a while since I've done something warm and fuzzy.
It is a simple story, but I think I've got to sometimes remember that nothing is really complex if we are honest. It untangles itself even when the strings of circumstances wind themselves into its own self-contained pandemonium.
Merry Christmas and thank you for reading!
Love,
yui
12/23/2008 1:22:45 AM – Los Angeles