WHAT MONEY COULDN'T BUY

Chapter 1 – Temporary Insanity

It was the fourth time that week that Haruhi found herself talking to a closed door. Her daughter's, to be precise.

"Kotoko," she sighed, tapping gently on the door, "open up, please."

"No!" Came the muffled reply from within. Something made a loud thump. Probably the person-sized teddy Tamaki had bought her last week for her fifteenth birthday.

"You're not in trouble," said Haruhi, repressing another sigh as she pushed her hand through her short hair – hair that had remained that length and style since she was sixteen. Every glance in the mirror made her smile. "I just want to talk to you."

"I don't want to talk!"

"Well I do. I'm coming in." Haruhi twisted the knob, rather relieved to find that Kotoko hadn't locked the door like she had three days ago. If there was one worry, it was that her unruly teenage daughter would do something she couldn't stop her from doing. Haruhi paused with her hands on her hips, wondering what to say.

Kotoko was stretched out face down on her bed, her blond hair fanned out around her, contrasting sharply with the deep red of her duvet cover. It, and her fair hair, was the only spot of colour in her daughter's bedroom. The rest was black. The curtains, the table cover, the pens and pencil case...Haruhi sighed. The carpet even...

She was never really sure where her daughter's attraction to such darkness came from, but suffice to say, Kotoko had stricken up a firm – though rather temperamental – friendship with Nekozawa's son, Hideaki, the moment they met four years ago. Even the person-sized teddy was actually a custom-made Beezlenef doll that Kotoko had begged from Tamaki. Haruhi sweat-dropped. Even twenty years after their marriage, she had to wonder at the happy-go-lucky generosity of the rich. The doll was actually quite intimidatingat times.

"Kotoko," she said gently, sitting down on the edge of the bed, and putting a hand on her daughter's head. "Tell me what's wrong. Why are you crying?"

"No," sniffled Kotoko. "And I'm not crying."

"Did you have another fight with Hideaki-kun?"

"No...yes..."

"Well?" Haruhi didn't press her daughter. Being fifteen was a tricky business, though she'd never really experienced it herself. She sweat-dropped again. Being sixteen had been far trickier, what with the Host Club and all.

"I...he..." Kotoko dragged herself up and looked disconsolately at her mother. "He – he kissed me!"

Haruhi blinked, stumped for a moment. "He – kissed you?" she repeated – a little too loudly, it seemed, for the door burst open and her husband came catapulting into the room.

"Who kissed my little princess aside from her daddy's pure lips?!" he cried, only prevented from smothering his only daughter with his hug by Haruhi's practised hand as she held him at bay.

"Go away dad!" yelled Kotoko, hurling her Beezlenef at him with such force that he cannoned back out of the door again.

Haruhi sighed as the door snapped shut. He'd be sulking and eating commoner's ramen for at least another two hours now. She'd sort him out later.

"Well," she said calmly, as though nothing had happened. "Do you want to tell me what happened?"

"He kissed me," said Kotoko, sniffling again, "and so I hit him."

Haruhi hid a smile. "You know, you really are like your daddy sometimes. You might have my eyes, but you've definitely got your dad's occasional lack of level-headedness."

"You mean stupidity," muttered Kotoko.

"Some call it that," said Haruhi, smiling. "But maybe that's why I married him."

"Okaasan," said Kotoko after a minute, "why did you marry papa?"

"Eh?" Haruhi paused, and looked at her daughter. "Why do you ask that?"

"Because of what you just said. You and papa are so different. Me and Hideaki are really similar but we're always fighting. And then I realised that our fighting might have meant something different to him, because he kissed me. But you and papa never fight, do you, even though you're so unlike each other?"

"I wouldn't say that," said Haruhi, smiling her brilliant smile, and chuckling a little bit as she thought back to the old Host Club days. "Well, it's more that your father never let me fight with him. I married him because I saw that, even though it took me four long years and several quite dramatic events to see it..." Kotoko, looking at her mother, suddenly saw a rare softness enter her face. "Your father loved me more than anybody else in the whole world, bar no one." Haruhi, still smiling, patted her daughter's head. "So you don't have to be afraid, Koko-chan, OK? I named you after a very clever, very pretty woman, and you've turned out just like her."

"That was obasan, wasn't it?"

"Yes." Haruhi got up. "Love isn't anything to be afraid of. It might make you feel like you're going mad, or someone else is going mad, but don't be afraid. Talk to Hideaki-kun."

Haruhi went out of the door, sighing slightly as she shut it, though she smiled. Hitting fifteen had been difficult for every one of their kids, and she'd had to deal with them differently. For example, their oldest, Tetsuya, had turned so wild and rebellious he wouldn't even listen to his mother any more - but all it had taken was to tell him that she was an honoured guest at the Haninozuka Dojo and that she'd spent most of her teenage years dressed as a boy and falling off bridges to gain his respect again. He was now in university studying Law.

Kotoko, despite her teenage obsession with darkness, was just a girl at heart, and loved her parents too much to not communicate with them, which is what often happened at her age. Haruhi supposed she had Tamaki to thank for that. She wasn't overly-affectionate with their kids, but Tamaki, true to form, spoilt them rotten. They balanced each other out.

It took her a few minutes to find her husband. He was, as she expected, in the smallest larder they had (about the size of her bedroom in her old house), poking disconsolately at a crop of mushrooms.

"Tamaki," said Haruhi, laying a hand on his shoulder. Even after all these years, it was hard not to tag 'senpai' on the end. "She doesn't hate you. She's just being a teenager."

"Somebody else kissed my beautiful princess!" wailed Tamaki, leaping up and embracing his wife. "Only daddy is allowed to!"

"That's what you said about me," said Haruhi, rolling her eyes and fending him off. "And besides, you weren't like this with our boys."

"Yes, but...but..." Tamaki looked, teary-eyed, at Haruhi, and for a moment this tall, handsome, forty-something-year old man looked just as he did at eighteen. He really was adorably ridiculous – Haruhi was secretly glad this aspect of him never disappeared. "But she's my daughter!"

"Funnily enough, so was I," said Haruhi sensibly, leading him out the closet. "Now please, it took me forever to clean out the mushrooms last week. Try growing them in the garden, hmmm?"

"She's not angry?" repeated Tamaki, pouting.

"No," said Haruhi calmly, "it's just temporary insanity."

"What'll it take to cure it?" called Tamaki, running after his wife who, as always, was thinking of more important things than his unreasonable tantrums. "Another Beezlenef?"

"No," she said cheerfully. "Though it'll take a few years, it'll be the same cure as for me. Marriage."

There was silence. And then,

"WHAAAAT?!"

Haruhi knew the mushroom-growing this time wouldn't stop for a week.

-End-

I'm not quite sure where I was going with this one, but I hope you enjoyed it! In my opinion nothing about Tamaki would change, even twenty years on, including his protectiveness of his daughter – his real daughter in this case, instead of Haruhi.

In this collection of one-shots I want to give a nostalgic spin on the lives of the Host Club, because I, like so many of us, love them dearly and want to give them happy endings :P

Just a few notes: Okaasan is 'mum' in Japanese, and obasan is 'grandma'. Kotoko is Haruhi's mum's name I believe, though I could've got that wrong – and naturally Haruhi would've called her first daughter after her. At least I think so :D

Please R&R!