Tamaki needed a date. Well, not a date in general. What he needed was someone to go with him to his parents' wedding. He was in the bridal party and his mother had, very heavily, hinted that he should bring someone. Tamaki really hoped that she wasn't expecting Haruhi.

"I was wondering," Tamaki said. He leaned against the couch, arm dangling off the back. Kyoya sat beside him, typing away on his laptop and all but steadfastly ignoring the movie on the television screen in front of them. "I need to bring a date to my parents wedding. I was wondering if you wanted to…"

"Help you find a date?" Kyoya asked, eyes not moving.

"No, go with me."

"Instead of a date?" This time Kyoya turned to look. "Sure." Tamaki opened his mouth to correct him, to tell him he wanted Kyoya as the date not instead of but Tamaki just smiled and nodded.

"Thanks." This felt like being seven again and going out to eat with his grandparents on special occasion, agreeing to eat wherever his grandparents took him, even though he just wanted to eat at home. Tamaki groaned internally and rested the back of his head against the coach. He looked up at the ceiling in his room, tracing the patterns and moulding.

One day Tamaki was going to ask Kyoya out properly. One day Tamaki was going to be firm and mature and just go for it. It's not like Kyoya hadn't sent receptive signals. Or they'd seemed like receptive signals. Tamaki hung off Kyoya more often then not, wrapped his arms around Kyoya's waist, linked their arms, and snuggled up close to him on couches. And Kyoya always seemed fine with it, but then he also always tried to brush him off. One minute he's be completely relaxed, allowing Tamaki to snake his arms around Kyoya waist, and then, without tensing or really asking or talking about it Kyoya would push him away. But then Tamaki would do it again and Kyoya never asked him to stop later. Did that mean he was okay with it? Was he trying to be say he was okay with Tamaki liking him, but didn't reciprocate?

"You'll have to come with me tonight to a family thing. My mom's side is flying in for a couple of days and they want to meet everyone."

"Sure." Kyoya was still looking at the computer. Tamaki sighed and blew a strand of hair out of his face.

"Also I have this new suit, but I'm worried the shoulders are too big so I was hoping you could help me with that before I took it to a tailor for no reason."

"Okay."

"And I need to take Antoinette for a walk."

"Alright."

"You want to make out?"

"Okay," Kyoya stopped typing a second to late. Somehow, he had seemed to sense that the topic had changed without his knowledge. It was impressive, the way he could ignore Tamaki while still responding. Tamaki hated it, but it was still impressive. Slowly Kyoya turned to Tamaki, like he was trying to gauge if what he thought he heard was what he heard. Tamaki just raised an eyebrow.

"Could you repeat that last thing you said?"

"Which one?"

Kyoya narrowed his eyes. "Honestly," Kyoya muttered under his breath and turned back to the screen. His hands hovered in the air an inch from his keyboard. He sighed and turned back to Tamaki. "Could you just repeat everything?"

"My mom's side of the family is flying in and you and I will have to go meet them. It's really important to me that you go. I…I want everything to go perfectly for my mom, she's gone through so much. They're family Kyoya…" Family was everything. Tamaki knew Kyoya had a complicated relationship with the concept, but they were best friends, surely Kyoya would understand.

"I'll go. I don't speak French though so I don't know how helpful I'll be,"

"A lot of them speak English. And then you'll have to go with me, a few days later to the big wedding shower with both sides of my family. Even though the weddings in Japan my mom insisted we have a shower since she's not going to have a bachelorette party." Tamaki loved French weddings. Japanese weddings were too short, how could someone really enjoy themselves and mingle in two hours? In France there was the registrations at city hall, then the church, a small midday break, cocktails around three where people would take pictures and wait at the venue until the dinning room was opened and then there would be dinner at eight and then sometimes an additional midnight buffet. That was a party. Tamaki was excited just thinking about it.

"I'm going to go. Don't worry I won't back out." Kyoya patted Tamaki's knee twice, then paused, his hand warm on Tamaki's leg. He removed his hand slowly, deliberately, like he was trying to stop himself from yanking it away. What the hell was going on in Kyoya's mind? Sometimes Tamaki was so certain about Kyoya's thoughts and other times he didn't even know if Kyoya liked him at all.

Tamaki blew air through his nose hard as Kyoya went back to ignoring him. Well, that wasn't going to cut it. Tamaki started to tickle Kyoya. He was fast and he knew all of Kyoya's weak spots.

"Pay attention to me!"

"You're not a dog…" Kyoya laughed. His laugh was still deeply unsettling, but cute in its own way. Kyoya's smile was honest and when his hair was messy and his eyes were real, not clouded by masks, that was when Kyoya was the most beautiful.

"I invite you to watch movies with me and you're not even watching!" Tamaki tickled him again and Kyoya focused only on placing his laptop on the table. Then he turned to Tamaki and grinned. Kyoya fought dirty, going for Tamaki's neck immediately, trying to stop the fight before it even began.

Tamaki grabbed Kyoa's shoulder and tried to pin Kyoya's arms to the sofa to prevent Kyoya from reaching him. Tamaki's heart was thudding and something warm was creeping up his spine. No. This wasn't what that was about. Tamaki shook himself, but Kyoya broke free and pounced, ticking Tamaki's neck until Tamaki was laughing so hard he couldn't breath.

"I submit. I submit. You win." Tamaki wheezed between laughs. Kyoya pulled back, satisfied. His glasses were askew his shirt was wrinkled and his hair was a mess. Tamaki wanted to kiss him, to thread his fingers into Kyoya's hair and just pull him in close. He swallowed and sighed again.

"I don't know why everyone thinks you're so much smarter than me, or more mature. From my perspective, it's about even." Tamaki shook his head. Kyoya snorted, but didn't reach for his laptop, instead he leaned back against the couch, half pressed into Tamaki's side. Kyoya couldn't not know, could he? Tamaki had thought he was dense about his own feelings, but it looked like Kyoya had beaten him.

n

Tamaki had seen most of his relatives sometime between earning his grandmother's approval and the announcement of his parents' wedding. That didn't mean that he had made up for all the years he had missed. Each aunt and uncle and cousin (who weren't literal aunts or uncles or cousins, but probably second cousins or third aunts or something) had decided they needed to borrow Tamaki personally and catch up.

There had been two options. Introduce them to Kyoya, or let Kyoya fend for himself in a sea of foreign strangers. And really, Tamaki could use the company. All his family was staying at the second Suoh mansion, which should have at least been comforting in its familiarity.

"My, my," his cousin Belle said in accented English. "You're grown both tall and smart, I didn't know you were studying economics and psychology at university." She was grasping Tamaki's shoulder. Kyoya was smiling politely, looking to Tamaki and wondering when the polite time to bud in was. Not yet.

"Yes, I thought it would be important to understand people from both those kinds of perspectives you know, and I have such a deep love for people and understanding…" Tamaki tried to think of a polite way to say that economics was boring and psychology was a lot more interesting. It also wouldn't look good if he admitted he was just taking psychology for fun.

"And your…Kyoya was it?" Cousin Belle asked. Her smile was morphing from the innocent wilting flower it had been to a serpent underneath. Really Tamaki should not have been thinking about Macbeth at a time like this, but Cousin Belle's had always been suspicious.

"Ootori—Kyoya Ootori." Kyoya smiled. Fake. Too wide.

"Ah, thank you. You two are very cute together, I hope I see more of you at the wedding, but alas, Uncle Jacque looks like he must speak to you immediately." Belle waved a sultry toodle-o and Tamaki was at a loss. He tried to smile before he took in the full implication of Belle's words. She thought he and Kyoya were a couple.

Uncle Jacque didn't come over, instead he made some elaborate hand signals that Tamaki took to mean he wanted to speak to Tamaki later, when Tamaki had time and was more relaxed. Some of his family members were more considerate than others. But why was Uncle Jacque winking at him?

No. Did Jacque think they were together too?

Part of him knew he should immediately tell Kyoya. Kyoya would definitely want to know, Kyoya who would be livid about any kind of speculative rumours getting out about him.

Whoops.

Tamaki tried to laugh it off, but as the day grew longer and faces blurred together Tamaki pressed more and more into Kyoya's side, played with Kyoya's shirt buttons and ruffled his hair into perfect messiness. This wasn't helping. But Kyoya was fine with it, so it couldn't have been that bad. Kyoya met everyone's stare confidently, he laughed at everyone's bad jokes and poked Tamaki playfully in the side whenever someone teased Tamaki, which was often.

Tamaki was just beginning to think he could get through things when his mother called them over. She ushered them immediately to the basement, shushing them whenever they tried to ask questions. When Tamaki and Kyoya arrived, Tamaki finally found the few cousins his age playing pool and darts.

His mother winked at him before pulling him in for a hug. Tamaki didn't let go. At one point, his mother did, but Tamaki wasn't willing to move. He was probably embarrassing himself, but it was only family in this room, and Kyoya who was close enough.

"I'm never letting you go." Tamaki mumbled quietly in French. "Never again." He was taller than his mom, so he buried his face into the side of her head, feeling her chuckle.

"I know sweetie, I won't ever let anyone take you." Her arms came back up around him and they stayed like that for a few minutes. "I do have to go back up, but I'll come down, okay?" She leaned away from Tamaki and pinched his nose. Her smile didn't quite reach her eyes. His mother left. Maybe he should follower her, stick close by her side. But she probably had other things to do. She had a life outside him, a life she was trying to recover and Tamaki didn't want to bother her.

When Tamaki turned back to his cousins, none of them were laughing at him. In fact, all of them were looking away, averting their eyes, mouths pressed firm, and fingers tapping idly. They felt sorry for him. No matter of teasing from other relatives could hide this fact. From the moment he had left, they were always going to see him as the tragic cousin, poor Rene Tamaki who had been forced into such a terrible situation. Kyoya would have hated it, would have complained about it and let it seethe, let it grow inside him into rage. Tamaki wasn't sure what to do with it, what to do with this distance they had placed between them.

"I don't know how to play pool." Tamaki confessed in English. Which was a lie that everyone in this room, but Kyoya knew. "Kyoya doesn't either, but if you show me, maybe I could teach him?" He slung his arm around Kyoya's waist, and he knew what they would think.

Cecile would think he was trying to show off in general but everyone else would think of him like any other teenage boy trying to impress his love interest. He wasn't going to be poor Rene Tamaki, taken from his mom. He was going to be Tamaki, teenage boy with a date.