A/N: You know who I like? Kyoya. You know what else I like? Kyoya/Tamaki. You know what else I like? Episodes twenty-five and twenty-six. Combine those things and you get this, apparently, which I wrote in a stupidly short amount of time and yet somehow it still turned out how I wanted it to turn out. Funny how that works.
It is day two of the Ouran fair, and everything is fine.
This is what Kyoya tells himself, as he smiles at girls and at their parents and busies himself with organizing and avoids his father's eyes. No one's world is crumbling. Nothing is wrong. We're fine.
"All right, gentlemen, no more idle chatter," he hears himself saying, as he approaches Mori and Honey and the twins—he knows the murmur of Hikaru's agitated-voice well enough by now to recognize it from across the room. "Our guests are waiting for us."
"Senpai," says Kaoru, and the look on Hikaru's face echoes his words, "it's like you don't even care."
They don't know.
They didn't notice him last night, after Tamaki's surreally grave announcement—didn't see him hanging back as they filed out of the room, Honey confused and Hikaru wounded and Haruhi staring at Tamaki for a long moment as though searching for something before slipping out the door.
"Tamaki," Kyoya said after they were gone, "could I have a word?"
Éclair raised an eyebrow at him. "Just club business," Kyoya clarified. "If the host club's to be dissolved there's some official paperwork and such that needs to be taken care of." He fixed her with his most serious gaze, but most of the effect was lost when not two hours ago he was slapped by his father in front of the entire school, and they both knew that. Éclair looked at him with some small amount of triumph, and for the first time in a long time Kyoya felt like he wasn't a threat. The thought made him shudder.
"…You can have a few minutes," said Éclair, and as she left the room, making sure Kyoya was watching, she brushed her hand slowly and deliberately across Tamaki's shoulders. He didn't react.
Kyoya waited until he couldn't see her anymore before he spoke—he couldn't trust her not to listen in on them, of course, but they didn't have time to deal with that. "Tamaki," he said, turning to look directly at him, "what is going on?" He struggled to keep his voice steady because somehow if he let himself waver, if he showed any of what he was feeling, it would all be over. They were fine, they were fine, they were fine.
"…Nothing," said Tamaki, after a moment, looking away and taking a step back. "I don't know what you mean."
He'd always been a terrible liar.
"Yes, you do," insisted Kyoya. "What is it?"
"I'm not—it's—I can't—" Tamaki stammered, still not looking at him; and then he said, in a small voice, "It's none of your concern."
You're my concern, Kyoya wanted to tell him, you've always been my concern, but Éclair was very probably listening to them and now wasn't the time, so he held back the sentence and said, "Tamaki, I'm not going to be able to help you if you don't tell me what's happening."
There was another long silence, and then Tamaki said, in a voice smaller than before, "Maybe this isn't something you can help me with."
He turned to leave; and Kyoya, before he knew what he was doing, reached out and caught hold of Tamaki's shoulder. They both stood stock-still for a moment, frozen with the significance of the gesture, and then Kyoya exhaled long.
"Tamaki," he said, his voice closer to trembling than it had ever been. "Please."
Tamaki turned slowly to face him, and his eyes, for an instant, were sorrowful and resigned and apologetic; and then his features shifted to smooth blankness, and he tugged his shoulder gently out of Kyoya's grasp.
"I'm sorry, Kyoya," he murmured, turning away once more, "but there's nothing you can do."
He headed slowly out of the room; Éclair caught up to him in the hallway and took hold of his hand before turning to give Kyoya a venomous smile.
Late that night, sitting on his bed, he tried calling Tamaki and was met only with an inappropriately chipper answering machine recording, and he flipped the phone closed before he could leave a message. He repeated this process exactly eleven times more—he was about to go to bed when his phone vibrated with a text message from Kaoru.
What do we do? it said.
Kyoya stared at it for a while before typing I don't know; he erased it, typed it again, erased it again, once more tried calling Tamaki and once more failed to leave a message, and slept for only two hours.
And now even as Kaoru tells him he doesn't care (which Kaoru knows, maybe more than anyone, is not true), Kyoya sees the same question in his eyes that he asked last night, and he sees his own unsent reply in his firm insistence that nothing is wrong.
I don't know.
He reminds them that their guests are what's most important right now, and none of them quite believe him but Mori and Honey, at least, understand. Because as hard at it is to admit, if Kyoya can't help Tamaki then there's only one person who can, and until then there's really nothing that the rest of them can do.
They'll be fine, he tells himself. They've been fine before and they'll be fine again.
And if we're not? he asks himself, for the first time.
He holds on to the question for a moment before pushing it to the back of his mind, because answering the question is defeat and somewhere he's certain that if he's defeated then all of them are. Smile, shake hands, don't look at your father. They could make it through this okay.