Title: In the Third Music Room
Rating: PG-13 (just in case)
Characters/Pairings: Kyouya/Tamaki, HikaKao, features entire Host Club
Summary: Kyouya sees, but for all the observances he makes, he can be blind to what is right before him.
Warnings: BL, twincest
A/N: Eh, I tried writing one style in the beginning, but as you can probably see, it kind of trickled away from me, and then I tried to bring it back. orz. Sorry.


Kyouya's been there since the beginning, and he knows things, everything, in that quiet way of his. He watches silently, always there and never speaking, like a shadow, and catches the little things others don't.

He was the first one who saw that the new student was a girl. There was something in her face, something in her posture, her words, the soft line of her jaw, that showed that Fujioka Haruhi was not simply an effeminate boy.

He understands everyone in the Host Club, everyone who walks in through the doors. Each of the girls who is swept away by the whirl of rose petals and pretty words with a swoon is looking for something. This Kyouya understands, because he knows greed and selfishness. They are looking for their fairytales and princes, and he will happily spin them stories of dreams, laced with hope, even sprinkle fine gold dust across the finished masterpiece . . . for a price.

After all, he gives them good-looking boys and a time to get lost in a world of their own. Why shouldn't he get something in return?

The first thing he learns from the Host Club is that dreams can be bought after all.


Haruhi is quite simple in her needs. She wants to follow in her mother's footsteps, and so in order to achieve that goal, she needs to get good grades. The Host Club seemingly makes that goal harder to reach, but in truth, she learns how to interact with humans, which Kyouya knows is essential to her future career. She needs the Host Club as much as the Host Club needs her.

It's not hard to see that her debt will be paid off within a month at the rate she's being requested, and he knows that if Haruhi steps out of the Third Music Room for the last time, then Tamaki and the twins will be upset and moody, which will make the customers less inclined to come. So he adds to her debt, meaningless things, the tiniest details, adding a few yen for the little thread that came out of place during the last cosplay, even adding for every sip of coffee (commoner's coffee, he thinks disgustedly) she takes with the customers.

He doesn't need to add anymore, he knows, because now, she wouldn't leave even if he did tell her she'd paid off her debt. Through her indifferent face and idle comments, he can see that they've all grown on her; he could even go as far as to say that they are her friends.

She's not the type to abandon her friends.


Even Honey-senpai is slightly greedy, though his innocence seems to say otherwise. It's not only with his cakes and sweets, either. He comes to the Host Club because it is his own personal escape, as well as the customers'. Here, there are no expectations except for him to be himself, or to be cute, which is really himself, so it's all one and the same.

He doesn't have to worry about his father's disapproval or his brother's disappointment in the Host Club. He has his sweets set before him, and he can indulge to his content, each spoonful of delicacy and sugary sweetness offering a blissful amnesia to the world outside of the Third Music Room.


Mori-senpai wants to protect Honey-senpai, but it isn't all. He wants Honey-senpai to need him, so he uses the Host Club. Perhaps if Honey-senpai had not followed Tamaki to the Third Music Room, than Mori-senpai would be unneeded, left to his own devices. Kyouya suspects that had that happened, Mori-senpai would have allowed himself to drown in his own unspoken despair.

But Honey-senpai did follow Tamaki, and so he is clingy and needy, two aspects that make room for Mori in Honey-senpai's life, a safety and reassurance that loneliness will not pull him down to its depths.


The twins are something all on their own, Kyouya had thought amusedly the first time he saw them. They hold on as though letting go would cause them to lose each other in a sea of faces that are nonidentical to their own. They know nothing about other people, create a barrier between Their World and The Others.

They fear the world outside their own, Kyouya muses, because they are human, and they fear what they do not know just like everyone else.

Kyouya sees. He sees the light touches that last longer than they should, the flutter of movement that brings their thighs closer than needed. Their lips are just a millimeter closer each time, and it won't be long before they meet.

They think they're only using the Host Club for their own entertainment, but Kyouya knows better (he always does). The customers squeal and giggle when they pull their "brotherly love" act, but Hikaru and Kaoru know as well as Kyouya that the rest of the world will look upon their affection and flirtatious gestures with disgust and discrimination.

Within the walls of the Third Music Room, the outside world will become lost in a haze of high-pitched voices and easily satisfied girls. Without the Host Club, the twins would have remained in their own cage, blocked out from the rest of the world and unable to love.

Had they not found a haven with the Host Club, they would have continued to wind around each other, tighter and tighter with increasing desperation, until they choked in their own embrace and fell victim to the cruelties of the world.


Strangely enough, the person who should have been the easiest to understand confused Kyouya the most.

Tamaki was an idiot through and through. He was a simpleton, his thought processes should have been easy to pick apart. And they were, in a way. Kyouya knew that Tamaki had started the Host Club for the women, to make them happy. And he had recruited the people he thought most suitable for that job (though not without Kyouya's assistance).

But why?
What was there to gain in doing this? All of this, this extravagance, the expenses, and all the little technicalities that made dreams come true, if only for a little while. There was the money, of course, but he'd never seen Tamaki use that for anything except to make the girls happier, with cosplay and scenes and better food.

"Silly Kyouya," Tamaki laughed when Kyouya voiced his thoughts one afternoon. Kyouya always stayed behind after school to finish last-minute accounting, and Tamaki always stayed behind just because. "Not everything has to be about material gain."

Well, that was just stupid, and Kyouya told him just that. It only served to make Tamaki laugh harder.

"Think about it like this: is their anything to gain with us?"

No, there wasn't. Their relationship wouldn't result in joining their fathers' companies, because it was wrong, and no one would be able to know. But for all the sneaking behind their families', their friends', backs, restraining their fingers from brushing because they were surrounded by extremely intuitive people, there were also kisses shared behind locked doors, fingers laced through his in the dark, lying intertwined alone in the Third Music Room.

The fact that it was forbidden only made it that much more exciting, the danger of being caught giving an extra thrill when Kyouya held the blonde in his arms, muffling soft murmurs with his lips.

So no, there was nothing physically profitable from this, but the mere knowledge that after Host Club he had Tamaki all to himself was enough to keep him happy. Happiness was, perhaps, not the most important thing in life, certainly not the most lucrative. It was, however the best reward he thought the world could offer him with Tamaki.

"Yes, yes there is," he replied, and then he kissed away the confusion in his next breath.

END