A/N: Due to my love of ALL of the Host Members x Haruhi, and I'm finding that I can only do one in the long-term projects, I'm doing a snapshot-series. Be forewarned, this is going to go far and wide. No male at Ouran is safe from my shipping fury.

Anyway, I gratefully accept ideas for a fluffy chapter, and thanks for clicking!

Disclaimer: I totally own OHSHC. And thats why I'm writing fan fiction xP

-x-

Kyoya Ootori

First Year at Ouran

Snapshot One:

He didn't need to, but he'd do anything for her

The picture frame was cut in a modern fashion, all hard, definitive edges and sharp corners. That frame left no room for contemplation, and neither did it's occupants.

Haruhi sat cross-legged under on a bed of bright green grass, a bough of pink blossoms hanging over her head, her eyes on a textbook in her lap, addressing Kyoya Ootori, her mouth slightly open, brandishing a yellow pencil, a few petals drifting behind them, while Kyoya leaned against a white-brick wall opposite her, staring intently at the face of the girl in front of him.

-x-

"Therefore x is equivalent to the square root of y, which we use the second equation to determine . . ."

Her mouth moved along the words, tumbling out of her lips as quickly as her pencil moved, skating across the ultra-white of copy paper, making numbers appear out of graphite. He liked the way she wrote. Her strokes were thin, stick like, but her characters were finite, making an intricate, elaborate bed of intertwining lines.

". . . which is nine," she finished, looking up from her paper which was sitting on her thick textbook, obviously a little proud of herself, searching his face for confirmation.

"Very good," he said, managing to keep his voice detached."You will obviously not lose your scholarship this year, Haruhi."

"Good," she exhaled, flopping onto her back on the grass, her legs still crossed. "When you asked for me to show you how I was doing in my courses I was afraid you knew my grades were slipping somehow."

"Are they?" he asked, feeling the slight glimmer of panic that was the furthest extent of confusion he ever experienced, already assigning himself as her tutor.

"No!" she said, offended. She propped herself up on her elbows and eyed him warily. He tried not to let on that her big, innocent brown eyes were sending a slight shiver down his spine. "They're not, are they?"

"How would I know?" he asked. "Any better than you?"

"The Shadow King knows all," she mumbled superstitiously. "And I thought I'd failed a test or something in all of my classes or my report card got defaulted to all failing grades . . . no one would know better than you . . ." she paused. "You don't think they will, do you?"

"No," he replied with surety, and she exhaled again.

"Why aren't they out here harassing us for missing Host Club activities?" she wondered vaguely. He knew who 'they' were instantly—one of them was blond and the others were his personal hell.

An image of the sandbags they'd used for an army cosplay heaped against the Third Music Rooms' doorway flitted into his mind.

"Too busy, most likely," he answered truthfully. Too busy clawing through tons of sand.

"It's so lovely out in spring," she sighed, plucking up a piece of grass from the manicured lawn and rolling it around in her fingers absently until it formed a green cylinder. They were surrounded on all four sides by cool white stone walls, but the sun shone brightly down through a skylight that covered the enclosure, and two corridors that led outside coaxed tentative breezes into the enclosure. A cherry tree gave them shade in a corner of the square courtyard, with the corners filled with lush, green grass and splashes of flowers at the circles' center.

"It is beautiful," he agreed, staring solely at her face, gaging her reaction. A slight wind stirred the boughs of the tree above, and a few petals drifted down, frosting-pink, settling in dark strands of her hair. He knew what his father wanted him to do, he knew why Haruhi had consented to coming down here with him, to avoid Tamaki, who was building up steam to try to pursue romantically in earnest, which scared her. And, faintest of all yet somehow the most important—why he liked her, more than he should, associated with her gladly, though there were no merits assured.

"Do you enjoy nature, senpai?" she asked, her large eyes boring into him. "You spend so much time on your laptop."

"I . . ." He was stuck, because simply, he didn't know. Did he enjoy nature? The only thing that sprang to mind was cherry-blossom festivals and how the cool, airy weather made the clients more inclined to spend time at the Host Club when it featured outdoors activities.

"I love nature," she declared. "When I was little, my house was tiny, but we had a park just across the street. I used to spend all day climbing the trees, having picnics with my mother, she told me I might as well be a monkey, with all the time I spent up in trees."

"A monkey?" he choked, and he couldn't help it, he laughed. For the first time in front of her, he laughed—not, because she'd said anything particularly funny, but that she had classified herself as a monkey and not a beauty, an intellectual, an equal—no, that she had just told him something that the Host Club didn't know about her, something deep, something about her mother, and he didn't know what to do with the feeling of pity and grief for her, so he displayed it with something equally strange for him—laughter.

"Senpai!" she said, her face dusted with pink at his laughter.

"I'm sorry, Haruhi," he said, chortling. "But you, a monkey?"

"I was good at climbing trees," she said crossly.

"Why don't you climb this one, then?"

She stared at him oddly, like she didn't know who he was—fair enough, he was losing caution and showing more and more of what he sometimes longed to be—Tamaki Suou, carefree, sunny, full of shining happiness.

"For marketing. A romantic lunch with Haruhi Fujioka in the canopy of a tree . . ." he did the calculations. "I could get a thousand yen for an hour."

She choked, and this time it was her laughing.

"No, thank you, senpai."

They sat in silence for a while.

"Senpai?" she asked tentatively, folding her blazer nervously. Fold, unfold. Crease. Uncrease.

"Yes, Haruhi?"

"Why did you ask me out here today? If you knew my grades weren't slipping."

"I just wanted to make sure you're doing well in your studies," he lied easily. "After all, I am your mother."

She turned her head away at his small joke, and he felt regret settle into his heart. It was fine for Tamaki to be her father, as she still had one, but his masquerading as her mother—infrequent as it was for him to take the part—must have caused a pang.

But why had he asked her to show him how she was doing in her studies? The answer was simple:

He didn't need to, but he'd do anything for her.

I know it's not too long, but well. Snapshots can get pretty short. I think I'll like writing like this—one-shot ish, but better. You know? 'Cause they're all congregated.

You know, if you've ever read one of my Authors Notes before, I do not forgive those who Author Alert and Favorite without reviewing. I want to know WHY.

Trés Adore,

-Vacancy