Disclaimer: I do not own Ouran High School Host Club, nor a French phrasebook, and I do not wish to own either. That's where fanfiction comes in.
She was dumped in a café in France.
"I love you too much, Haruhi," his words hung in the air long after he was gone. "I want to abandon my whole life just to be with you every waking moment, I don't want to do anything else but be in your presence." He had choked on his words, holding back a sob. "I can't do that. My life… I can't just leave it all behind just to bask in your radiance." He looked up sharply at this point to her unmoving face, presumably, she thought, to see if she was crying. She wasn't. "I need you to understand," he said softly. "I want to be with you always, but I can't if I want to continue to be who I am. If I can't be with you all the time, then… then it's better for me not to be with you at all."
He had dropped a kiss on her hand and without looking her in the eye, tossed his jacket over his shoulder and walked off down the street, leaving her sitting there in a dumpy sun hat, looking in all ways like a tourist who'd just been abandoned by her tour group.
The thing that frustrated Haruhi most at that moment was not that he had taken her away from a lucrative career and her family and friends, nor that he had promised her the world and refused to make the delivery; it was that the French phrasebook he had presented her with did not have the phrase she wanted in it. "Where is the train station?" was there. "Where is the bathroom?" also made an appearance. "Could you direct me to the nearest tall building so that I can throw myself off?" was not to be found.
Finding an airport was not the hard part. Booking a ticket and flying sleeplessly across the continent was also not a problem. She realized, however, as she stood outside Narita International Airport that she had no idea where she was going.
In her left hand she clutched the magazine she'd bought in Paris before leaving, in which she'd found an article about Mori-sempai and Hani-sempai and their amazing efforts to train the armies of the world ("where will they go next?" the article wondered) and a full spread advertisement with a Pisces symbol imposed over an Italian model wearing the latest Hitachīn.
Her feet took her to the train station and she noticed as she stepped off of it that it had taken her home. Only it wasn't her home. Her father had emailed her two weeks ago to inform her that he was moving to the other side of town with Mitsuru-chan and that he would ship her important things to France.
As she looked up at her old apartment door, she realized that there was only really one place that she wanted to go, and she needed to be there. Now.
A taxi was hailed and an argument was had with a doorman and a maid and an attendant and she won them all, pushing them aside with her unyielding stubbornness and assurances that "Tachibana, there's no way your master will be angry later."
His bedroom. His bed. When she hit the pillow, for the first time since she'd heard the words "too much, Haruhi, I love you too much," she burst into tears. She sobbed and wailed and screamed and thrashed, tearing the immaculately tucked sheets off of the bed and onto the floor. "Why, Tamaki? Why…"
She stared at the ceiling hours later, clutching a pillow and wondering when it was when she last slept.
"I see you've made a mess of things," came a familiar voice from the door.
"Are you talking about the bed or my life?"
"It could apply equally," he wagered, putting his briefcase down on the floor next to his desk.
"A plane ticket to Italy probably would have been cheaper," she muttered, rolling away from his approaching form.
"But the twins haven't spoken to you since the two of you ran off to Paris," he argued. "And Morinozuka and Haninozuka are in Australia." She could hear him smirk as he sat down on the bed. "Am I really the one you should have gone to? Your father's place isn't far—"
She threw her arms around his neck and buried her face in his chest, her tears finding refuge on his new Armani suit. "Shut up, Kyōya," she advised.
He didn't say anything, just pulled her closer into his arms.
"I'd rather have not enough," she yawningly admitted later, "than too much."
Kyōya nodded, leaning down to grab a comforter she'd kicked off the bed in her rage.
"If too much means he's going to leave me sitting in a smoky sidewalk café in Europe," she continued, "I'd rather sit waiting for a man who doesn't love me enough to come home." She sniffled and looked up at him. "At least he'd be there."
He spread the comforter across her and stood, ridding himself of his jacket and tie. "Maybe someday you'll find a man who loves you too much but will take the opportunity to never let you go."
She grabbed his arm, pulling him back down onto the bed. "Then don't."
Author's Note: What happened to studying for Japanese and Chinese and a 400 level history class? This fic happened. Ah, finals. I will not miss you when you're gone.
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