A/N: In this fic, Haruhi & Mei both go to Ouran. Haruhi has never met Kyoya, however.

"That guy is hot, isn't he? None of the other guys here are even kinda attractive, but he looks like a model. Maybe he IS a model. I wonder if I could get his number for you. You think he'd give you his number? Haruhi? Are you listening to me? He-ll-o? Snap out of it!"

Haruhi hadn't heard a thing Mei had said. Having been friends with Mei for eight years had taught her that when Mei saw a guy she thought would be suitable for Haruhi, she could chatter excitedly about him for hours. And once she got bored of talking about the guy, Mei would be driven to what Haruhi would call "ridiculous plans." To Haruhi, what Mei tended to do was drastic. To Mei, what she did was baby steps. She would, without fail, give said hot guy Haruhi's number and say that Haruhi was attractive and very single.

One time on vacation in Hokkaido, Mei had given this model Haruhi's number; the guy had called her five times, ten minutes after they saw him and he referred to himself in third person only. While this was weird enough, his vocabulary appeared to be composed solely of words such as 'buff' and 'devilishly handsome'. Mei had learned her lesson that, even if a guy is hotter than she believed possible, she should make sure he isn't certifiably insane first.

So whenever Mei began to muse on the possibilities of this guy or that, Haruhi just tuned her out, knowing that if she gave any acknowledgement or, heaven forbid, actually complied with one of Mei's schemes, something awful would happen. Be it crazed models or that hobo on the street who had only wanted their left shoes, bad things came from Mei's plans.

Now that she thought about it, Haruhi realized the guy Mei had pointed out was very hot. He had a lean build; muscular but still sleek. His hair was jet black, and when he turned to glare at the boy behind him, Haruhi saw that his eyes were such a dark shade of brown they were really black. The color was gorgeous – onyx or obsidian. The light from a skylight reflected from his glasses and flashed in Haruhi's eyes. When she could see through the colors, all Haruhi could make out was his distant figure.

BZZZZ! Haruhi jumped – her phone was vibrating in her pocket and had interrupted her staring. Reluctantly, she picked it up and answered without checking the caller idea as she normally did. Bad idea.

"The Matt-sama calling. So, are you doing anything tonight? He's in a modeling show, and would like to have you watch him…" Freaked out that 'Matt-sama' the creeper had found her number again, Haruhi shrieked, hung up, and then threw her phone as hard as she could.

Mei couldn't stop laughing. "He found your number again? I thought you had it unlisted and his number blocked."

"So did I." she grumbled, irritated that she'd have to get another number, and more likely than not another phone.

Now that he had stopped calling, Haruhi went and grabbed the phone to assess the damage. Crap. Dad's going to kill me. The back and sides of the phone looked relatively unscathed, but the screen had cracks spider webbed across the side. I've gone through three phones in as many months. Her dad never seemed satisfied with her explanations about why her phones never lasted long.

Haruhi's dad worked at a phone store on the side – his main job was as a bartender at a gay bar. The phone store deal was an extraordinarily boring job, but at least they got free phones, calling plans, etc. out of the deal.

Haruhi's father had some pretty stiff expectations of her – her mother had been a successful lawyer before she passed, and her father wanted her to follow in her mother's footsteps and run the courtroom. Haruhi wanted nothing less than a life lying; a life of putting up facades and dealing with criminals. Nothing seemed worse than a life composes of argument, anger, and sorrow.

One of the reasons he was so adamant about Haruhi being a lawyer was that he hated being poor, and wanted so much more for his daughter. Money was pretty tight around their house. Haruhi thought that is was because the job didn't pay much, when actually her dad spent much of his paycheck on entrance to high-class gay bars. His secret ambition was to own one instead of just working at one, and his justification for the money spent was that he was conducting research.

"Look at the bright side - at least you can still make calls." Mei consoled her, having not moved from the very comfortable leather couch they had both been sitting on. Before the phone commotion, they had been sitting on said couch in one of the relatively smaller areas of the Peninsula's ground floor lobby. The walls were actually glass windows offering panoramic views of downtown Tokyo; the floors were a light crème tile that was specifically chosen to make the hotel seem modern and airy while retaining maximum luxury. Everything in the hotel practically screamed rich, yet it still seemed almost…nonchalant. It was a carefully crafted and created air.

"True, but now I can't see who is calling me!" Haruhi was actually throwing a mini-fit. She was sick of breaking her phones. Mei checked her watch, and did a double take. Was it really 11 already?

"Haruhi!" Mei said. "We've gotta go do the last fitting with my designs! I completely lost track of time." She then grabbed her bag, and Haruhi, and nearly dragged her to the suite the two girls shared.

Once they were in the room, Mei forced the first outfit onto Haruhi, an off-the-shoulder, long sleeved, jersey dress that came to Haruhi's knees and was dove gray. As Mei stood there with seven pins in her mouth and hemmed, Haruhi just soaked in the atmosphere.

Being the Peninsula, the suite was, of course, grand, luxuriously furnished, and the views were amazing. Haruhi just wanted to remember everything she could about the room – the plush carpeting under her feet, the delicate chandeliers casting a surreal glow over everything, and the view. The entire eastern wall was a window, so that they could see the sun rising over Tokyo every morning. Being on the 34th floor meant that they could see a truly breathtaking, panoramic view of the busy city. Of course, neither of them would have ever been here if it weren't for the conference.

Mei and Haruhi were at the Tokyo art conference. Held once a year, this conference was a very, very big deal. If you won in your area, you could be guaranteed a full-ride scholarship to the university of your choice. Of course, the competition was tremendously difficult to even get entered into, let alone gain a spot at. Attending was every young artist in Japan's dream. Every possible type of art had a category: from the traditional arts such as sketching, painting, and sculpture, to more modern art forms such as fashion and digital arts.

The reason they had given Haruhi's dad for being at the conference was that Mei had entered in fashion design and needed Haruhi to model her outfits. It was true that Mei had entered in fashion design and needed a model, but the real reason Haruhi came along was to enter a graphic design competition. Haruhi was something of a computer genius, but not the stereotypical kind of genius one would expect when the word genius is used in conjunction with the word computer. She was an artist, but her brush was a computer mouse and her blank canvas was little more than her worn and well loved Macbook.

Haruhi still hadn't told her father that she wanted to study art, not law. She had kept up this lie for so long that her senior year arrived, and her dad knew nothing of her aspirations. She just didn't want to break his heart.

Haruhi had a very stealthy plan concocted, however. The college her father had in mind – the very college her mother studied at, the campus where her mother and father met, fell in love, and were engaged at- had a top-notch art program, as well as a world-renowned law program. The day Haruhi got her acceptance letter and her schedule would be the big confession – she would admit that the schedule stated that she would be taking a full complement of intensive art classes, not the insanely difficult Intro to Law. Until then, Haruhi was taking 5 AP classes and Media III. On her transcript, in the little quarter-of-an-inch square that was supposed to say 'Media Arts III – Mrs. Hirogashi', it actually said 'Introduction to Sculpture and Ceramics'. Her father would never approve of any class that wouldn't further her career in law or look phenomenal on a college transcript. When her father asked her about the supposed Ceramic course, Haruhi simply told him that she needed one more art credit to graduate. Knowing that Ouran had very high academic standards (when it came to scholarship students, anyway), he believed her.

Mrs. Hirogashi, the vigorous thirty year-old who ran the Media program at Haruhi and Mei's high school, was convinced that Haruhi's work should be shown to everyone in Tokyo, instead of being submitted under a pen name to various small-scale art shows. The culmination of this conviction was that she got Haruhi to attend the Tokyo art conference. Mrs. Hirogashi finally threatened to print every piece of Haruhi's and hang them in Haruhi's living room while her dad was at work. And if that still didn't scare Haruhi enough, she threatened to pour maple syrup into the hard drive of Haruhi's precious Mac. Because Mrs. Hirogashi was their landlady's sister and for some reason always had maple syrup near her (she liked to drink it), the possibility of this happening was very real. Scared to death, Haruhi was forced to agree.

Once Mei finished the fitting, she disappeared into the bathroom for forty minutes and came back all-glammed up in a tight white blouse with a dark gray plaid skirt that came to the small of her waist over it, and the skirt was belted with a thick patent leather belt.

Having finished her look for the evening, Mei proceeded to give Haruhi a complete makeover. She tied Haruhi to a chair with some spare pantyhose and gave her a full face of makeup, blew her hair dry and curled it, and forced Haruhi into what she thought were much better clothes than the ratty suit Haruhi had gotten secondhand – a knee-length black pencil skirt, tights, suede pumps (3 and ½ inches – Mei argued with Haruhi for ten minutes over them, before just forcing her into them), and to top it all off: a fuchsia blouse Mei had designed.

Dressed to the nines, both of them walked to the elevator. Well, Mei walked, and Haruhi tottered while grasping Mei's arm for dear life.

When they entered the grand ballroom where the preliminary fashion judging was going to happen shortly, Mei decided she just had to have some sparkling punch. And the second she left Haruhi and took her supporting arm with her, Haruhi tried to find somewhere to sit down. Spotting a nice, safe looking chair, Haruhi began to stagger in that direction, when she slammed into some guy. Caught unawares and off-balance, the guy fell over and therefore took Haruhi with him. The project in his hands flew through the air, and hit the floor with a very ominous CRAAACK.

When they had picked themselves up and brushed off the project shards, Haruhi finally got a good look at who the guy was.

The only coherent thought she could form was 'You have got to be kidding me'.

A/N: This is my first fanfic! I was super scared to write this - because it's 100% beta free. Scary, huh?

I hope you guys send me some love in the reviews...I don't care what ever you write, but I can only improve and reviews help! Please! More reviews will motivate me to get chapter 2 up. I just really want to know what you all think of this! Love it, hate it, just tell me so I can fix it!

And if that isn't enough motivation, chapter 2 is chock full of Kyoya-y goodness. Thank you for taking the time to read this and even more so if you left me a review!

-Kiri