Disclaimer: I do not own Ouran High School Host Club or any of its characters. That would be Bisco Hatori. Same goes for the song "Bang Bang," it belongs to its creator; the version in mind here is Nancy Sinatra's, as heard at the beginning of Kill Bill.

Warning: BL, boy's love, yaoi, M/M, whatever you wanna call it. Tamaki/Kyouya love. Don't care for it, don't read it. Oh, and for those who hate sad endings, listen to the song and/or read the title. I mean, just how do you think this is going to end?

Author's Notes: I wrote this, oh, a few months ago. It's my first/lengthiest piece of fanfiction, as well as my first song-based piece, but I love it lots. I tidied it up several times, then readied it for publication in a school anthology by inserting some story-explaining sentences and removing some Japanese terminology. Due to some cuts (and it being 20 pages long when the entire anthology was shooting for about that many), it didn't get in, but that's 'kay! So, posting it here to get reviews instead. I replaced most of the Japanese, but I'm hardly knowledgeable about such things, so it might be misused. Corrections are welcome...

This fic is set canonically, and this chapter is just before Kyouya and Tamaki's last day of middle school. There are four parts in all, and I'll upload them after I re-edit them for the, um…sixth time? Anyway, pay attention to suffixes and names! And there's an index of the Japanese (and French) at the end. Finally, make sure you've at least seen episodes one and twenty-four of the anime. Enjoy!

X

Verse the First
I was five and he was six

We rode on horses made of sticks…

Mere months had passed since that fateful meeting, but it felt as if they had known each other forever.

Sometimes, lying awake nights, instead of forcing himself to work, Kyouya would gaze dispassionately up at the ceiling and fabricate stories.

His sister was the only one to sense anything amiss; yet, after seeing the two of them together, her air of concern evaporated. Now her manner was tender, and tinged with what Kyouya suspected was a hint of amusement. It irked him to no end.

All the same, she was the only one permitted to remain in these bedtime fantasies he kept meaning to give up. The only one, that was, aside from him.

X

He wore black and I wore white…

A dream-world is a foolish, fragile, and above all impossible thing, Kyouya knew. These stained glass windows of false memory, which he had so carefully cut and set, were exactly that: false. But something about framing the two of them as childhood friends - he an only, cherished son; Tamaki happily running to his mother's arms at the end of their play - was more captivating than any future the innumerable numbers in his trademark black notebook might determine.

There was one future he was interested in, though. The future he inevitably extrapolated every night. The future where, one day, they would stand side by side, one in a suit of black and the other a suit of white….

His cell's alarm sounded, jolting him awake. Eternally a late sleeper, he found getting up for school on time a chore, and getting up early - to speak privately with Tamaki - was exponentially more difficult with each hour added. So it was that the unfortunately late hour displayed on the vibrating, buzzing cell phone elicited an oath, a curse against his anti-alarm abilities, and a tumble out of bed into his neat white uniform and black pants.

X

He would always win the fight…

"Kyouya!"

The addressed smirked, glasses glinting in the light filtering through the pillars of the shaded area of the Ouran High courtyard as he inclined his head. Any thoughts on how today's field trip would be his last chance to see Tamaki in his pristine white middle school uniform were completely undetectable.

"Hai, Suou-kun?" he replied in greeting.

"Noooo!" cried Tamaki tearfully. "You MUST call me by my first name! Or do you want me calling you Ootori-san?" he quipped, still overdramatizing and secretly thinking himself ever so sly, Kyouya was certain.

"That would be quite acceptable."

"WHAAAT?" exclaimed the blond. "Oh, don't jest so, Kyouya-kuuun! If we're going to make this club together, we must be the thickest of friends! True confidantes who know each other's thoughts from a glance!"

Kyouya studied the rambling beauty as he elaborated on the intimacy required to properly manage a club together, energetic hand gestures sprinkled heavily throughout, of course. The cool one's face grew heated, though he quickly concealed any visible traces with a well-timed adjustment of his glasses. By the time he had composed himself, however, Suou was silent, waiting for a response and studying the studier. Kyouya straightened abruptly.

"How many times have we been through this argument, Tamaki-san?" he asked, feigning exasperation. "I shall address you as is proper."

The ridiculous fool blinked twice, bewildered, before breaking out into his characteristic huge grin and attacking his companion. Despite being braced for this typical show of Tamaki-style affection, Kyouya was still knocked off his feet when the delighted foreigner pushed back for room to celebrate.

"KYOU-ya! Mon A-mi!" he shouted, jumping for joy and nigh knocking his heels together.

"Yes, well." Kyouya rose, brushed himself off and adjusted his apparel. "Now, what shocking new revelation do you have for me today, hm?"

Solidly on the ground once more, Tamaki grinned.

X

Bang bang

He shot me down…

"You…don't want me to be a host?"

"No, no!!" the blond protested. "I just didn't think you'd like having to interact with all those girls and be so false and calculating! I mean, you already have to practically all the time—why add to that? I thought you were tired of hiding the true you! Even if the true you is a bad guy face…"

Kyouya said not a word. He couldn't find one, not in the whirling gyre within him at that moment. Tamaki, concerned for his reputation? For his mental state? For his happiness? Or for his precious Host Club? That he couldn't keep up the façade? He should have known better than that. Kyouya was the master of masks. He always knew exactly which was needed to get what he wanted, so he always got what he wanted. And no one, not even Tamaki, could stand in his way, not when he wanted something this badly.

"But," he demurred, briefly assuming his usual flattering disguise and cutting into Tamaki's ponderings, "I doubt many girls would designate me, anyway, what with your irresistible charm about. So you wouldn't have to worry about that. And besides," he continued, resuming the brusque manner he frequently used in manipulating his friend, "left to you the club would be run into the ground. You haven't the slightest idea what it takes to manage something like that."

"I don't want you out of the Club!" Tamaki insisted. The capital letter was immediately apparent to anyone listening - in this case, just Kyouya. "How absolutely totally cruelly unfair would that be! I could never abandon you to a life of boredom, slowly driving you mad with its lack of meaning! After all, didn't you and I come up with the Club together?"

"Actually, it was all your crazed idea…"

It took several minutes to appease the wounded blond, and several more to convince him that Kyouya was by no means being pressured into this club. Despite his philosophy that time was money, and money was power, and each bit of power brought him one step closer to finally rising above the brothers who had overshadowed him his entire life, Kyouya would willingly have spent hours.

"…to conclude, Tamaki, I wholeheartedly wish to be in this club and have chosen to do so of my own free will." He did not add, As if you could ever force me to do something I didn't want to already. As if anything you ever wanted me to do was something I didn't want to do for you already. "And I am more than fully willing to host whoever may see fit to designate me." He did not add, Even if it means I must feign disinterest while I watch a thousand girls fawn over you. Even if it means I must forever wear this mask while secretly I nurse a thousand broken hearts.

Tears welled in the club poet's ever-so-sensitive eyes, and Kyouya knew he was about to be tackled again. But the night before, he had made a resolution he could not renege upon. Time was always of the essence; it was now or never; so he could not let Tamaki overwhelm him again just yet, not before he finally explained exactly why he had chosen so, before he confessed that-

X

Bang bang

I hit the ground…

Wincing, Kyouya propped himself up on his hands and wistfully watched the eternally evasive Tamaki jump gleefully about yet again. It was not meant to be, he told himself, reluctantly at first but then more sternly. Foolish. Dangerous. Impossible. Never meant to be. No more than you were ever meant to inherit anything from your father….

But rather than brush himself off and stand, he remained still for a moment, caught in a paralysis of memory. The blond idiot dancing in front of him had admonished him for exactly such thoughts as he had just now entertained. Fate, birth, predestination, impossibility; all were but excuses for a lack of action caused by fear. Fear of rejection; fear of loss; fear of failure. Fear of breaking.

Ootori Kyouya, however, accepted no rejection; grieved for no loss; brooked no failure. He did not break. And he most certainly was never, ever afraid.

He stood, marched over in two long strides, grabbed a prattling Tamaki by the shoulders and shoved him up against the wall of the school. Staring into those stunned, quavering violet eyes, vaguely conscious of his hovering over a sweet mouth and just slightly parted lips, he willed himself to speak. Words bubbled up inside him, rose from a butterfly-besieged stomach up a breathless windpipe and into his aching mouth, filling it to bursting, desperate to spill out his heart's contents. He opened his mouth to let the torrent flood forth.

X

Bang bang

That awful sound…

"What's going on here?"

Kyouya slowly, hatefully turned his head to confront his interrupter, thoroughly prepared to lance him with a death glare and to hell with the consequences.

What he found set him reeling back against the wall himself.

"S-...Suou-sama."

Tamaki's father looked coldly down at him.

"And just what is the meaning of this?"

Composing himself as best he could, Kyouya stole a glance at his apparent "victim" and found him to be watching as well, a strange, indecipherable expression on his face.

"My apologies, Suou-sama." The words rolled off his tongue as easily as those other words had refused to, the deferential, apologetic, humble and self-deprecatory masks sliding into place. "I'm afraid your son can be a bit, ah, aggravating at times, and being an impatient person, I was attempting to get his attention."

"I see." The father turned to the son. "Is this so, student?"

Even the master of failing to notice subtlety, Tamaki, recognized the attempt to avoid favoritism and adhere strictly to duty.

"It is, Suou-sama."

"I see." The school superintendent looked them both over once again, then nodded. "Carry on, then." And with that, he strode off, never once glancing back.

X

Bang bang…

Kyouya was just breathing an inward sigh of relief when Tamaki turned on him, gaze piercing through the masks and knocking them away out of reach.

"Yes, Ootori-san," he said. "Carry on."

X

My baby shot me down…

If Kyouya reddened slightly while explaining the situation in strictly matter-of-fact tones, Tamaki turned pure crimson and had to clap a hand over his mouth. When the self-conscious raven finished, there was a deadly silence that stretched to infinity…until the blue jay suddenly burst into a merry song.

"K…Kyouya," he gasped, tears of mirth streaming down his flushed cheeks. "Your face..! I just-!" And with that he was so seized with laughter he collapsed to his knees, clutching his sides and sending his ringing tones throughout the empty campus.

Had it not been so early, and had students been around to peer curiously at the source of this disruption, to all appearances it would simply have seemed that the overly sensitive Tamaki had been told a rare - and probably not very funny - joke by the cool, composed Kyouya. Yet had Kyouya's sister been the spectator, she would have perceived how horribly reversed the situation was: for while Tamaki knelt paralyzed with laughter on the ground in the physical world, truly in all others Kyouya was the one bent to the earth.

Even lacking an Ootori's power of perception, it was possible to see, by looking closely, that both boys were shaking. Immediately after noticing, however, one might have doubted one's senses and sanity, for no sooner had Kyouya begun to tremble than he brutally stilled himself. Unaware, the blond finally laughed himself out and stood, genteelly dabbing his eyes dry with the back of his sleeve.

"Ah, gomen yo, hime," he apologized, flashing a brilliant smile - and barely avoiding another paralyzing fit of laughter. "Oh, Kyouya, I had no idea you were such a joker!"

The shaking began again.

"I really must thank you, though, for pointing out how intolerably unfit I am to handle being a host! By all that is compassionate, what if a customer should propose her love to me?"

It was different this time, though.

"Why, I could hardly laugh in her face as I just did yours."

There was no fear.

" Imagine how crushed she would be! Yes, I shall need to practice over the summer; compose a kind, gentle refusal of affection."

Not even embarrassment.

"Would you help me compose, Kyouya? Oh, and practice too! You were so very good at acting lovestruck - I almost believed you!"

Just pure, unadulterated…

"C'mon, Kyouya, one more time! Confess to me again!"

Rage.

This time Tamaki was actually borne up off of his feet, legs dangling like a rag doll's as the scorned princess choked him furiously against the stone wall.

"Ai…shi…te…ru," he hissed, obsidian eyes chiseling away at aubergine ones, willing them to see the truth.

They did.

In the space of a few seconds housing a kick powerful enough to shatter the sturdiest glass, the ill-fated raven was sent doubling over on the ground as the frightened blue jay took flight. And stretch its broken wings though it might toward the receding sun of its life, our poor little black bird now knew just how foolish, fragile, and impossible its dreams had been.

It was never meant to be.

X

Index: "Hai" means "yes." "Mon ami" is French for "my friend." "Gomen yo, hime" is an informal "sorry, princess" (remember when Tama says this in ep one?). And "ai shiteru" is a really serious "I love you," not like the usual "daisuki" (which, like "je t'aime," translates literally to "I like you" but is usually used to tell someone you love them).

More Notes?: Um, wow. All the lines look really short and strange stretched out like this. They looked like such big paragraphs in Word... Also, argh formatting. The X's (added on an edit) should make things better...maybe?

Please review! I'm constantly re-editing….really. You don't believe me but I am.