Title: Aspiration
Couple: 1886 - HibaHaru.
Summary: Haru did not need a ring to know that she was loved.
Author Note: It's probably not much, but I wrote this without much sleep and... it's my first time writing for these two, so don't be too harsh~.
Haru woke up at eight in the morning, as was ritual for each and every day. And just as she did every single day, she did not bother to glance nor question the empty space within her bed where a warm body had occupied not even hours before. It was a simple process, and one she did not mind. It was easy: wake up, make breakfast, sip coffee, live - and if there was enough time left over after a long day's work, she'd allow herself the luxury of hoping for his return home.
Haru was no stranger to disappointment. She had come to accept it as a company of sorts as she spent late nights up, the bittersweet taste of her espresso drowning out the sorrow before it even piqued her tongue. He had told her, after all, at the very beginning of whatever they were had begun. He was not Sawada Tsunayoshi. He would not greet her every morning with kisses and warmth, or the promise of forever. But he didn't have to tell her that, right? She had already known; she had already hung up the idealistic dreams of a gown of white and smiling groom beside her, had already stopped frequenting jewelry shops in hopes to find that one special ring. She'd given up all of that the very moment she had admitted her feelings to herself.
"H-Haru loves Hibari-san…" The words a mere whisper, but in the silence of the High School halls in which she did not belong, they seemed much more like screams.
He did not answer those words for another two years, and when he did, even then he did not speak.
He came and went as he pleased in her life. Kyouya was a cloud, after all. You could never make him stay; if you tried to tie him, he'd only slip away. That was why every time he entered her arms, and every time he walked out of her door, she not once asked him to stay. She found, however, that she did not need to. She was, in some ways, content with the life he had given to her.
Haru did not need a ring to know that she was loved. She knew when he held her just a bit too tightly, or hit her a little less harshly over the head than the others when they did something to piss him off. She knew when he kissed her, and his eyes held a guarded kindness, and an emotion so fierce she couldn't put it in words. Haru knew that she was loved. She knew.
That's why, just as she did every other day, she left the house with a big grin on her face, eyes wide with dreams that no one had ever really understood. Because Haru was Haru, and when it came to love, she never gave up! Surrendering hope was not an option, because he'd come back to her soon enough, just like every other time.
She just knew it.