Disclaimer: Ouran is not mine.
Author's note: Oh, I'm just too tired right now. Please imagine something witty of your choice right here. Thanks.
Chapter 2
The twins played a game.
They played and played and played all throughout the school year.
The difficulty was getting Haruhi to join.
Often, they would just resort to dragging her right into the game, to the point that wherever brown eyes, blank expression, and blunt remarks went, amber eyes, sly innuendos and a lot of touch followed.
So, they played, day after day.
Until, one particular day, amber eyes had to face a final boss with light-brown eyes, lips made for pouting and short arms around the waist of brown eyes and blank expression.
"Oh," Haruhi said as she entered music room number three, her gaze wandering between some brochures in her hands, the wrist-watch at her right arm and the boy draped around her.
"For a moment there, Hunny-sempai, I thought you were one of the twins."
She could feel the arms around her tense, ever so slightly.
"Haru-chan," the boy released her name in a breathy whisper, drowned out by the volume of his next words, "Haru-chan, I grew, see, see?"
Haruhi took a step backwards, out of his embrace, to regard the boy before her.
When she found his eyes to be level with hers, the corners of her mouth tugged up. "Yes, you-"
"-are late," two voices identical in pitch threw in, their comment not directed at Hunny at all.
Checking her wrist watch, Haruhi's face drew a blank.
"I was at a postgraduate study information lecture," she held up the brochures, "A lecture which you should have attended as well. It's important for your future."
Hikaru took a step closer to her left side as Kaoru did at the right, so that the only obstacle in their way to free Haruhi-access was a boy with lips made for pouting.
(Which were, right then, indeed pouting.)
"We're going to inherit the company anyway," both twins leaned into her face, "Why should we-"
They paused, exchanged a glance over Hunny's head.
Haruhi knew what was about to happen the moment dual grins of impending commoner abuse spread across their lips.
Hikaru turned to Hunny while he slung an arm around Haruhi.
"We know you can't visit often, what with all that dojo and studying business going on," with a jerk, he pulled Haruhi to his chest, "But this is important school… stuff."
"Yeah," Kaoru added in a theatrical sigh, "Important for our futures and more… stuff."
With that, the twins hoisted each half a sighing Haruhi over their shoulders and carried her to a more secluded part of the room.
Watching Haruhi 'depart' with a weak wave at him, Hunny unclenched his fists only when a heavy pair of arms settled on his shoulders.
"Ah," Mori commented, his gaze on two boys and a girl, and gave his cousin a slight squeeze.
"Yes," Kyouya's voice rang out from somewhere to Hunny's left.
(In the meantime, Tamaki gave chase after his daughter to 'preserve her undiluted pureness of mind from dual defiling by wicked doppelgangers'.)
"Lately, the twins seem to demand an… inappropriate amount of attention."
Hunny laid a hand atop Mori's.
"We should visit more often," was all he said and, his line of vision full of red mingling with brown, Hunny began to suspect.
Other days, the twins got bored and attempted a different level of difficulty.
Kaoru put his hands into his pockets and examined Tamaki's newest cosplay suggestion.
(Impressively presented by Tamaki hopping around in a furry, pink bunny costume.)
"That's..."
"…stupid," Hikaru finished for his brother as Tamaki made an extremely elaborate twirl, his long stuffed ears flopping up and down
Kyouya levelled a look at them, pen poised on a blank page of his notebook.
This made both twins take a step closer to their handy commoner-sized shadow king protection shield.
Yet, instead of telling them off, Kyouya did something unexpected.
He coughed, a low, rumbling sound.
The twins sensed a weakness.
Naturally, being the good little boys they were not, they chose to exploit it.
It took a quite suicidal bravado, the ability of selected obliviousness to death glares sent their way and four exactly carried out motions.
Then, Hikaru and Kaoru were dancing around a still coughing Kyouya, his glasses crooked, the knot of his tie loose, and, most importantly, his notebook in the twins' captivity.
"Dear notebook-diary thingie," Hikaru sing-songed, the aforementioned book pressed to his chest and fluttered his eyelashes for emphasis.
Kaoru snickered so hard he almost forgot to keep in motion, what with being on the run from certain death and all.
"Once again, these devilishly handsome twins have outwitted me with their sheer brilliance," Hikaru continued and presented the book to his twin with a flourish.
Kaoru held their stolen treasure high up in front of him, as if auditioning for a stage play, his eyes closed.
"Alas, woe is me! How am I ever supposed to plot against someone so much more attractive than me?"
Amid a blurry of red hair, amber eyes and alike faces, Kyouya just went very, very still.
Despite the tangible feeling of a disaster about to strike in the air (Or more so in Kyouya's grip on his cell phone, one speed-dial away from his body-guards), the twins would have gone into their self-imposed doom snickering, if not for a pair of slender hands taking the notebook from Kaoru.
"Stop it," Haruhi told them and handed the book back to its owner, "Why don't you go and talk to Tamaki-sempai about the costumes."
(About Tamaki right at that point; his vision impaired and his hearing muted by the furry mask of his costume, he bravely kept on hopping around in the background, still trying to make everyone see the greatness of his latest idea.)
"And no, you can't 'accidentally' take me along with you," Haruhi stated.
Both twins heard the no-nonsense tone of her voice; saw the way her face lost its softness around the edges.
"Fine," they grumbled, and with Hikaru adding a mutter of "I can't feel the faith 'cause there's none.", they stalked over to the over-sized, over-enthusiastic Tamaki-bunny.
Kyouya wasn't surprised when he had to cough another time, after all, he had done this ever so often all morning,
He wasn't even surprised by not quite warm fingers gliding across his forehead.
"I'm sorry for-" Haruhi stopped herself, blinked and continued to press her hand against hot skin, "I don't even know why I'm apologizing for them."
Kyouya regarded the girl before him. "I might."
Haruhi, being Haruhi, just shrugged and didn't ask further.
"I think your temperature is a little high," she let him know and the not quite warmth faded from his forehead.
"My clinical thermometer this morning would beg to differ." Kyouya made a considerable effort to make the cough those words came out in seem completely intentional.
"I'm sure," Haruhi said in a tone he certainly wasn't surprised about (and that made him consider accruing to her debt).
What surprised Kyouya though, were fingers not his own, straightening, pulling, tightening.
He observed the knot Haruhi had made into his tie.
It was sloping on the left, still quite loose and looked as if it might fall apart at any moment.
His gaze wandered to Haruhi. "That was executed without any skill at all."
"You're welcome," she informed him with a roll of her eyes.
Then, there was a muffled shriek coming from within the depths of pink fur accompanied by two not so muffled snickers.
Haruhi, ever the twin disaster prevention control, went to investigate across the room without any haste.
Yet, before she did, big brown eyes gazed up at Kyouya. "You should lie down for a few minutes, just in case your thermometer mightn't be begging to differ anymore."
Rather watching her make her way across the room than heeding her advice, Kyouya, being Kyouya, didn't lie down, of course.
But not once that day he bothered to retie a knot executed without any skill at all.
Sometimes, the twins would even forget they were playing (but never what the reward was supposed to be).
When Haruhi entered, she encountered darkness.
Among the darkness, she found a single pool of light.
It took one or two moments for her eyes to adjust and her mind to catch up.
The second it did, she realized someone had drawn the curtains of every window in their clubroom shut, of every window but one.
Standing against this lonely window, bathed in sunlight, she could make out the silhouette of Tamaki.
Five steps, two more and she was beside him.
Tamaki inclined his head towards her, the only sign he had noticed her, and continued his surveying of the school grounds below.
"I'm very lucky," the boy whispered to no one in particular, not even to the girl beside him,
"To have all of you as my friends."
Haruhi noted that Tamaki's voice, lacking its usual volume, sounded completely different.
Without any of the two being aware of it, they took a step closer to each other.
For three heartbeats, two breaths, one moment, they shared a silence.
Another breath afterwards, Tamaki was the one to break it when he faced her, the sunlight tinting his features a shade of glowing softness.
"Do you think we… That is… Could we write each other letters?"
Haruhi's answer was a stare.
"Tamaki-sempai," she said, something like exasperation in her tone, even though there was a smile hidden in the corners of her mouth, "You're going to attend Tokyo University. We can even phone, if you want to."
Tamaki scratched the back of his head. "I was just…"
"I know," she told him and took his hand into hers, "But we're friends, aren't we?"
Tamaki's face acquired several shades of a very dark colour. "I…"
He stared at their linked hands.
"Haruhi," he whispered, everything about him soft with light, "You're so…"
By now an expert in rich bastard behaviour patterns, Haruhi braced herself in anticipation.
"…so cute!" Tamaki shouted, his volume returned, and crushed her to him in a forceful hug that knocked all the anticipation right out of her.
"We're going to talk on the phone very single day! Oh, and of course, we'll share all your innermost secrets and then we'll be the best friends ever and then you can't help but to confess all your passionate (completely pure!) feelings for m-"
Tamaki stuttered.
Haruhi tilted her head at Tamaki's rapidly darker turning face, by now srely permanently attached to his skin.
"Your feelings for… er…"
"Why, for this attractive set of twins, of course," two sly voices sneaked up on them the same way two pairs of arms did around a certain commoner.
(Completely coincidentally, Tamaki's hands had to be pried off that very same commoner to do so.)
"Who, by the way, are having their rights reserved on the title of 'best friends'."
Tamaki felt the lack of Haruhi in his arms and set his face into rant mode.
"You lecherous imps! Shouldn't you be obeying Kyouya's orders from his sick bed?"
"All slaved off, all costumes finished," Kaoru was (suspiciously) happy to inform his king, "That means no more orders for us…"
"…and more playtime with our toy," Hikaru finished and drew even closer to Haruhi, who was already sandwiched between him and his brother.
Tamaki attacked with a screech and crammed a marvellous amount of red hair into his hands, wrenching and yanking.
Haruhi just gave a sigh, was tugged into painful directions, and checked her wrist watch, only to sigh yet again.
There was a particular hard tug, a falling sensation, an engulfing warmth.
"Hey there," Kaoru greeted, grinning widely at his function as the safety cushion for Haruhi's fall.
The girl blinked at him, their noses barely brushing against each other. "Didn't we talk about you stopping this kind of thing?"
"Saw nothing sharp there," he observed the obvious while Hikaru warded off an enraged Tamaki with a drawled "We just won her fair and square, tono, so back off."
Kaoru gave her a contemplative look, his grin growing even wider. "You know, you could always kiss it better."
"No, I couldn't," Haruhi stated bluntly and detangled her limbs from his, "It's scientifically proven that kissing anything better doesn't work."
With a third glance at her watch, she stood up and slowly walked past a squabbling Hikaru and Tamaki, in direction of the exit.
Kaoru was up in a rush, dragging his brother along, away from his first-rate insult-serving with Tamaki, and after their toy.
"Bye tono," he called out whereas Hikaru waved at Tamaki in departing, a grin as wide as his twin's on his lips, "Business calls. We've got to measure Haruhi."
By then, Tamaki's face was very dark for completely different reasons. "You two-faced imps! You already did that!"
"Yeah, but her old costume was bo-oring," they exclaimed as one while Haruhi, face void of expression, twisted back to them, "So, we decided to change it. She'll be a teddy bear now."
Tamaki was left sputtering at a closed door.
Most days though, the twins played by all those rules that didn't exist.
Warmth and touch settled on either side of Haruhi.
Sitting on a couch in a terribly fuzzy and warm teddy bear get-up, plush-ears sticking out from her hair, she didn't look up from the university brochures in her lap.
With a simultaneous whine of "Haru-hiii", fingers started to ghost over her forearms and face, the only body parts not covered by her costume.
Haruhi found the ease with which the twins were able to wear their bright orange cat costumes mildly disturbing.
(Perhaps, she thought, it was the lack of metres upon metres of thick fuzzy fabric not restricting their movements.)
There was another whine of her name and was Kaoru… purring?
Her look went to her right arm, checked once, twice, and she shook it slightly.
"There's still more than half an hour left before the first girls arrive," she said after checking for a third time, "So, don't say. You're bored."
"Yup." They grinned at her. "And it's your duty as our toy to entertain us."
Haruhi tried to shrug and found the twins hadn't left enough distance between their bodies for her to do so effectively. "Well then, why don't you go do some un-boring."
"Can't," both twins intoned lazily and leaned right into her face, their glued-on whiskers scraping along her cheek, "Too bored for that."
Sighing, Haruhi stuffed her brochures into the schoolbag at her feet, less one of the twins might deem doing… something to them temporarily entertaining.
"Not even Kyouya is ordering us around by phone," Kaoru complained into her hair and Hikaru snorted, "You'd think he would be healthy twice over again by now."
"Mhm," Haruhi commented while she had to keep the hairband the plush ears of her costume were attached to from slipping into her eyes for what must be the umpteenth time that day.
"What about Tamaki-sempai?"
"He's busy having a 'strictly private conversation' with our flu case."
Haruhi fumbled with the advanced physics of hair accessories.
"You got bored eavesdropping," she stated, willing gravity to bend to her (non-existent) hair-styling resolve.
The twins lifted an eyebrow each, Kaoru his left, Hikaru his right, as if to say that should've been a given.
"Anyway," they pushed on, "If he's well enough to put up with tono's delusions of 'the grandest common graduation party in existence and don't forgot the dancing, equally common flamingos, Kyouya!' he should be healthy enough-"
"Stop worrying," the girl interrupted them, no-nonsense tone and loss of softness back again.
"He was sick before you made him your harass-victim of the day."
Both brothers went rigid against her at precisely the same moment, tense stillness in all their limbs, a shine to their eyes usually reserved for Hunny when he discovered an especially tasty sweet treat. "How-"
"I told Hikaru before," Haruhi said, a supposedly fixed hairband slipping into her eyes and her expression turned to half a smile for each of them, just a hint of softness in it,
"I just know you."
Rigid tension gave way to boneless relaxation as the twins seemed determined to melt into her and put as less distance between them as possible and replace it with more touch, always more, more, more.
Haruhi thought she might have felt one or both of them tremble at one point, but then again that might have been the sensory overload she was assaulted with.
She heard them breathing in, out, in and the twins' hands might or might not have been touching.
"Ts," Kaoru mumbled at last into her ear and it sounded like an army of endearments pressed into just one word, "No sense of fashion whatsoever."
"We'll just have to fix her and share the work," Hikaru said a tad more gruffly, a bit louder than his twin, his army just as large, "You take her right side and I the left."
Haruhi heard the differences in their similarity.
They knew she did (and that made all the difference).
So, the twins let their hands wander across her hair, each at his side, easily fixing and defying all those laws of hair styling gravity that always seemed to work against Haruhi.
And, as her vision became fur-free again, Haruhi, amidst professional and less professional touches, wondered at the fur of her costume for barely a second.
Then Haruhi, never one for being curious, simply dismissed it without another thought.
Who had ever heard of a blue teddy-bear anyway?
Stages after this, all levels of difficulty tried, the game took its players for a turn they didn't find in the least amusing.
"Kaoru?" Hikaru asked, standing just a joining of hands away from his brother.
There was no answer and he didn't need one, for both of their eyes were full of slim waist, slender neck, brown eyes, just the whole distance of half a room away.
Together, they watched Haruhi congratulate an ecstatic Tamaki (who was crushing her to him, ever so often) a still pale looking Kyouya (who was smiling at her in his usual way, just fake enough to appear real) on their graduation.
"Whatever we're doing," Hikaru said just when a not very amused Haruhi was being whirled around the room by Tamaki (and through a throb of other not very amused students), "I don't think it's working."
This time, his brother faced him. "You want us to stop?"
"No way!" Hikaru cried out, just a bit too loud, a bit too forceful.
A few passing students gave them those strange looks the twins had been blind to by the age of ten.
"No," Hikaru continued, quieter, calmer, but with just as much vehemence, "No, I… It's just… argh. Argh."
Out of the corners of his eyes, Kaoru took notice of the fleeting moment Kyouya's smile appeared too real to be fake.
A smile at something Haruhi, just escaped from Tamaki's clutches, had said to him.
"I know," he whispered softly to his twin, "She's part of our world."
Hikaru dug his fingers into his hands, just deep enough for it to hurt. "Yeah, but that doesn't mean a thing if we aren't part of hers."
Neither said something after this.
Instead, they buried their hands into their pockets, as deep as they could.
Between them, a whole distance remained.
Minutes, hours, days ran through their fingers, by their eyes, too fast for them to catch up.
An indefinite amount of time later, (they would only get lost determining how much later exactly), six boys sat together at a table, awaiting a girl.
She arrived breezing through the door of the restaurant, her cheeks faintly flushed and a calm explanation ready. "I'm sorry I'm late. I couldn't find-"
"Doesn't matter," two boys with red hair butted in and still possessing the ability to ignore any glares sent their way, they drew the girl to sit beside them with a pull and a lift of their arms.
Next, Haruhi was assaulted by an arsenal of differing greetings; hugs, cries, smiles, nods, looks.
Used to all this noise and the sometimes bruise-inducing attention, Haruhi shifted in her dress, her movements made awkward by the unfamiliar piece of clothing.
(A few days prior, Tamaki had shoved a dozen dresses into her arms and insisted she chose one.
Naturally, she had refused, until he had asked her to wear it as his 'parting gift'.
He had been dismayed, however, to discover she had selected the simplest one, which lacked any delightful amount of frills or bows.)
"How do you like it?" Tamaki asked her, his voice hinting at a lack of volume she remembered from features tinted in light.
Haruhi looked around the room from beneath arms, hands, fingers braiding, styling, fixing her hair, because the twins appeared to have taken it upon themselves lately to save her from her 'sure sense for anti-fashion'.
(Apparently, this meant they took any opportunity they could to do her hair and put her into girly clothes.
She still had absolutely no idea where they hid all those fancy dresses and hair extensions, not to mention their seemingly infinite supply of hairspray.
For some reason, she also supposed she was better off not knowing.)
Tamaki had held steadfastly unto his idea of a 'commoner graduation party'.
Of course, 'commoner graduation party' had translated into Tamaki renting a whole middle class restaurant for a day, not that far away from Haruhi's own neighbourhood.
But by then, Haruhi had already been exhausted enough by getting Tamaki to realize that dancing flamingos weren't all that common animals.
For that reason, she wasn't shocked to find a large banquet on her right, consisting of delicious looking dishes she knew for a fact weren't on the menu of this restaurant.
The table next to the banquet, solely dedicated to drinks of all kind, even the bottle of sparkling champagne on it, she had fully expected.
Then she discovered the soft music resounding around the room wasn't coming from a tape at all, but being played by an actual string quartet.
'Commoner party indeed,' she thought wryly and turned back to a wide-eyed Tamaki.
"It's…" Haruhi struggled for the right words in face of Tamaki's anticipation.
"…too much for just the seven of us."
Wide eyes got wider.
"Ah, my sweet deprived daughter," he said and leaned forward to ruffle her hair (and thus undid all the twins' work, which was effectively a declaration of war.),
"Nothing's common enough for us at our commoner graduation party, isn't that right, Kyouya?"
Mentioned boy took a sip from his glass of especially for the occasion imported table water. "Quite."
Haruhi was about to answer but snapped her mouth shut when she felt herself being hauled away from the twins' renewed administrations, her hair only halfway done.
Next, she was pushed gently from Mori's large arms to a grinning Hunny. "Let's dance," he chirped and dragged her away from the others.
(There were shouts of protest by three of them.
They were more or less effectively quieted by a glance from Mori and his usual stoic silence.
The fourth boy didn't protest.
Instead, he downed the rest of his glass, stood up and walked over to the banquet, to platters full of seafood, he himself held only a minor interest in.)
Not caring that the floor of the restaurant had never been intended for dancing, Hunny twirled Haruhi around eagerly, just one time.
Then he started to lead her smoothly through the motions of some slow dance she couldn't remember the name of, his body movements as poised and controlled as if he were executing a karate stance.
Haruhi saw the changes in his demeanour, noted them and accepted.
Hunny saw her note the changes and accepted the way his stomach clenched as if someone had delivered a particular hard punch to him in training.
"Haru-chan," he heard himself speak, the words simply dropping from his lips, belying the control he had over his body, "You won't continue the Host Club?"
Haruhi shook her head, brown wisps of hair trailing after her as they went through a particular difficult step. "Kaoru and Hikaru don't think it would be the same without all of you."
Hunny moved closer to her in a turn, eyes level with hers and not at all childlike. "But what about you?"
Haruhi tried to keep up with his pace and pondered. "I agree. It'd be too different with just the three of us."
(In the background, the twins went through with their war declaration and perfected the look of Tamaki's suit by setting stylish accents of vanilla pudding.
Tamaki followed suit with a cry of "You'll pay, you double-crossing goblins!" and a gunfire of melon slice projectiles.
Kyouya simply took a step backwards, now standing next to a platter of ootoro, and distanced himself effectively from the battlegrounds.
When Tamaki moved on to flailing around an ice sculpture flamingo (he hadn't been able to resist the pull of the pink birds completely in his preparations), Mori took it upon himself to step between them and start negotiations.
He was immediately covered in chips of ice and pudding leftovers.
Thus, the twins, an admirable amount of fruit salad in their hair, were forcefully banned to the beverages table, while Tamaki, his suite now a nice yellow-brownish shade, had to sulk in a corner next to the string quartet.)
"Tama-chan said you ranked second-best this school term," Hunny's mouth went on without the consent of his mind.
"Yes, though it's a wonder I got any learning done at all," she replied and he saw her looking at the twins, both of them looking right back, champagne flutes in their hands.
"Haruhi," her name fell off his lips along with another punch to his stomach.
She didn't hear him.
He noticed her eyes then, big and brown and very, very full of red hair and mischievous grins.
The music faded into a new piece, their dance ended.
He bowed to Haruhi, watched her smile at him and walk away.
There was a new feeling in his stomach, or an old one, he couldn't decide, one he remembered from his childhood, from every time his father had defeated him with ease and he had met the mat in a hard, painful thud.
Someone, and he just knew it was Mori, put a plate of chocolate cake and a fork into his unresisting hands.
"I'm not hungry," he murmured and took a large greedy mouthful, tasting all the bitterness of sugar and whipped cream on his tongue.
"Mitsukuni-"
"No," Hunny told Mori, not even bothering to look at the middle-sized package he knew to be in his cousin's hands, "I don't want to give it to her now. And I'm really not hungry."
The rest of his cake was consumed in one swoop.
Mori remained at his side for the rest of the evening, attentive of his cousin's every move.
Hunny's own attention, though, was focused on a girl with large brown eyes full of all the wrong things.
Like red hair, for example, mostly fruit salad free once more, and grazing the heads of two (devilishly handsome, they will have you know) boys who played a game.
Kaoru tried to take the champagne flute from his brother. "I think you've had enough."
"Don't always act like you're the boss of me," Hikaru replied, quite loudly.
And, to prove his point, he downed his flute in one gulp and refilled it straight away, against his brother's objections.
Haruhi went past them rolling her eyes, her mission objectives clear.
Secure a plate, retrieve the ootoro and hide somewhere far away from any possible standard rich bastard interruptions.
Halfway into her mission (the plate had been secured), something solid ran into Haruhi.
(Really, it was that way around, because she could swear that it hadn't been there before.)
"Kyouya-sempai," Haruhi blinked and checked if the impact hadn't broken the plate in her hands, for there was no reason to provoke another accretion to her still very intact debt,
"I didn't see you there."
Kyouya couldn't decide if he should feel mildly annoyed or very amused by the fact that Haruhi was oblivious to his presence as long as there was the right kind of food around.
"You're aware I'm not attending Ouran any longer."
She blinked again, the plate in her hand feeling very empty without any ootoro on it. "You want me to drop the honorific?"
The over the years perfected illusion of a smile on his lips, Kyouya inclined his head. "It'd only be appropriate, don't you think?"
"Fine then," the girl said and turned back to important matters, like say, ootoro.
Kyouya supposed the ease with which he was dismissed called for appropriate repercussions.
He enlarged his illusion. "Would you like to dance?"
"Actually," she started to say and was cut off before the last syllable had left her mouth.
Behind her, a half-filled plate of ootoro clattered to the ground.
The rest of the night passed for Haruhi in a blur of familiar faces, laughter, one dance after another, and snatches of bickering from the twins.
Surprisingly enough, the first to retire for the night were Tamaki (business trip to Europe with his father the next morning) and Kyouya (inspection of potential universities for a week).
Directly afterwards, Hunny and Mori decided to call it a night and left the restaurant, a package still clutched to the smaller boy's chest.
Hunny was very aware of the weight of Mori's gaze on him.
"I know," he whispered, his shoulders dropped so low Mori instinctively checked his cousin's body for injury, "It's just… She takes me for who I am, without question."
Hunny shifted the package from hand to hand.
"Please, Takashi, you give it to her, tell her it's yours. She'd like sharing it with them better, I suppose."
Mori bowed his head, took the package.
A smile was inflicted upon Hunny's face like a wound, but the drop of his shoulders disappeared.
"Great," he chirped, rubbed at his eyes, "But don't take too long. I'm so tired already!"
With that, he skipped off to their limousine, a bounce to his step, no wounds visible on his body, and left Mori to worry.
Meanwhile, inside the restaurant, it was only Haruhi and platters upon platters of seafood.
(The twins had just walked out, Hikaru leaning heavily on his brother, Kaoru talking wildly into his cell phone.)
Yet, when her hand went for a fork, it was instead guided into a different direction, gently forced as if her bones were fragile, and closed around something white.
Haruhi blinked up at Mori, then stared at the package in her hands and realized that this was definitely not ootoro.
"It's cake," Mori informed her, voice barely above a murmur, "Mitsukuni made it himself."
"Oh?" Haruhi asked and remembered all the male Host Club members' distinctive shortcomings at anything remotely related with cooking.
"Tell him thank you for me."
Mori put a hand to her head, patted it in an almost touch. "You should visit us sometime. You could teach him how not to burn everything he makes."
Haruhi's smile was plain, simple, just a smile and absolutely beautiful. "I'll try."
That was enough for him and so, he nodded and pulled his hand back, nearly brushing her left cheek as he went.
With a last almost glance at her, Mori took off, out of the restaurant, past a pair of distressed twins, back to his waiting cousin.
Still inside the restaurant, Haruhi, having made sure Hunny's gift wasn't squished in her arms, finally, finally managed to take up a fork and-
"Haruhi?" Kaoru asked, poking his head back into the restaurant, trying to restrain his twin on the outside, "I need your help."
Haruhi considered.
Hikaru chose that moment to poke in his head as well, declaring in a slurred speech,
"The flower of youth blooms in spring and yes, I'd like some apples with that."
With a sigh, Haruhi bid farewell to her last chance at seafood goodness for the night.
Then she stalked outside, to a crookedly grinning Hikaru and a decidedly pale Kaoru, the package held in her arms, and looked at them expectantly.
Kaoru released a long suffering sigh and gave Hikaru his patented 'told you so'-glare. "See, Haruhi, the thing is… Hikaru's drunk."
"Your breasts are really tiny," Hikaru notified her, happily leaning half on his weight on her, half on his brother, "'Like them anyway, all nice and firm."
"Really drunk," Kaoru added and elbowed his brother sharply into his side.
Haruhi staggered slightly under the added weight of half a twin. "So what?"
Kaoru shifted, just once, while his twin waggled his eyebrows at the girl. "Could we crash at your place for the night?"
"No," Haruhi stated, ducked out from underneath Hikaru's heavy limbs and began to walk away.
They hurried after her. That is, Kaoru did. Hikaru did more of a wobbling, barely upholding kind of thing.
"Please, Haruhi, our mother would have our heads if she knew…"
Hikaru staggered one more time and hit the ground, hard, and laughing.
"…this," Kaoru ended, "Please, just for tonight and we promise to behave. Don't we?"
"Yeah, yeah," his twin muttered, momentarily transfixed by the incredible amazing texture of his own hands. "Promise whatever."
Haruhi didn't answer although she slowed down a bit.
"You'd spare us a lot of trouble," the sober brother continued.
"Please, it'd really mean a lot to us."
Pondering the both of them with a backward glance and the novelty of hearing one of them use the word 'please', Haruhi felt her practical side wrestling with her nurturing one.
"Fine," she relented in the end, before they started the puppy eyes-treatment on her, "But we'll walk." (A compromise (pay-back) both of her sides had agreed to.)
"Walk?" the twins asked as one, Hikaru suddenly coherent enough to follow their conversation.
"Yes, walking, my flat is just two blocks away, you want to get there, you walk,"
Haruhi picked up her faster pace again.
The twins glanced at the other and started to walk, matching grins on their faces.
After listening to Hikaru's interpretation of every single song figment he could remember strung together, three times, each croakier and more innuendo-laden than the last, Haruhi had a whole new appreciation for the opening click of the front door of her home.
"Hush now," she whispered, the twins squeezing into the flat after her, "My dad's still working but we might get in trouble with our landlord."
The twins zipped their mouths shut, whereas Hikaru seemed to have aimed more for his nose.
With a shake of her head, Haruhi slipped out of her shoes and momentarily placed the package next to them.
"Drop the act. It's physically impossible to get drunk on cranberry juice."
Hikaru and Kaoru paused in taking off their respective shoes, looked at each other.
They started to laugh, low, deep, amused, at the same time.
"Aw, look," Hikaru panted out in-between beats of laughter, miraculously all sobered up
"Our toy noticed us this evening. A shame, when it was such a good scheme, too."
"How… Why?" was all Kaoru got out, for once he being the one to lean against his brother, his body shaking with mirth.
Haruhi disappeared in a room, not responding.
When she returned, hands full of blankets, the twins had calmed down mostly, dual grins splitting their faces into half.
Nonchalantly, she handed them two blankets each. "I figured if you went through all this trouble, it must mean a lot to you to sleep on my cold, hard floor."
"What?" Hikaru cried, mock-scandalized, "You mean we aren't going to share a bed?"
Haruhi rolled her eyes for what must have been way too many times that day as Kaoru bend down to pick up the white package. "You got a secret admirer?"
Immediately, Hikaru's face appeared at his brother's shoulder, inspecting the all of a sudden very threatening package.
"Has to be more of a secret assassin the way this smells," he corrected, sniffing at the contents of the package.
"It was a gift," Haruhi insisted impassively and took the package from them, "You've to treat something like that with respect."
"Not if it's out to kill you," Hikaru muttered into his brother's ears, who snickered as they trailed after Haruhi into the living room.
"Hikaru, Kaoru, meet the floor," she told them dryly, placing the package atop the living room table.
The twins suspected they were (finally!) having some kind of bad influence on her.
They plunked down beside the table, the blankets spread between them, and exchanged a glance they shared with Haruhi.
"We're hungry. Fix us something."
"I'm not your maid," she explained to them calmly, "You want something, you go get it yourselves."
The twins managed the physical impossibility to broaden their grins.
For barely a second, Haruhi's world turned to a whirl of colours and forms.
When everything came to a halt again, she was seated on the floor, flanked by the twins, one of Hikaru's arms around her waist, one of Kaoru's around her shoulders.
"What-"
"Well, we got us something we wanted," Hikaru drawled and to his words clung the faint smell of cranberries.
"All on our own, too," Kaoru took up for his brother, his fingers drawing lazy circles on her bare shoulders, "Aren't you proud of us?"
"Yeah, where's our reward for being good little students?"
"I'm going to bed exactly about… now," Haruhi declared bluntly and started to extract herself from their grips with an expertise born by two years of constant Host Club-commoner abuse.
"Wait, wait," Kaoru called out, frantically searching his pockets.
"We got your wrist watch," Hikaru stated, seeming more than satisfied with himself.
Haruhi didn't pause in her detangling. "If you do, it'll still be there after I've slept. Besides, if you have it, I'm sure you stole it from me."
"Stealing is such a harsh word," Hikaru admonished and tightened his grip around her waist right as Kaoru presented her a small green box,
"We merely repaired it."
Haruhi stared at the contents of the box, temporarily forgetting all about untangling. "That isn't my watch."
"Repaired, improved, it's all the same." Hikaru whisked her to the floor again and Kaoru dropped the box into her lap.
"Yeah, we repaired it by buying a new one."
"Thanks, but I can't accept this," Haruhi said and meant it, "My old watch worked just fine for me."
It was the twins' time to roll their eyes. "Oh, pluu-ease. Did you think we wouldn't notice you running around with a misbehaving wrist watch all year?"
Haruhi still insisted on pushing the box back at Kaoru, who persisted in not taking it back.
"It's a gift," they declared, their grins turning into to smirks, "You've got to treat a gift with respect."
Haruhi didn't make another attempt to shove the box back, which the twins took as (albeit reluctant) acceptance.
In an instant, Kaoru had fastened the watch around her wrist.
Its material felt soft against her skin and she had to discover it also fit perfectly.
Lips brushed against her forehead in something you might call a kiss and she was trapped between a pair of arms in something that could have been an embrace.
What she knew to be two voices mingled into a joined caress against her ears she was completely oblivious to.
"We know you."
Limbs were draped over hers, skin was claimed.
"Just stay five more minutes," their one voice pleaded in a whisper.
Haruhi sighed, completely blank-faced, and knew they wouldn't leave her in peace for the rest of the night if she didn't grant their request.
"Okay," she told them in another sigh, "Just five more minutes."
She could feel them grinning into her neck and draw even closer to her with a one-voiced repeat of "Just five more minutes."
Just five more minutes turned to eight, then fourteen and there was talk and laughter and three slices of a shared burned cake.
Half an hour found one of them yawning, the others draping their own blankets around the tired one, two more slices of cake gone, touch flowing freely between them.
An hour and two minutes and there was no more cake, the taste of coal on all their tongues, the tired one fast asleep against the others, all three lying on the floor.
"Somehow," one of the others voices rang out, "I thought sleeping next to Haruhi would be less uncomfortable."
"And, per chance, involve less cold, hard floor?" Kaoru shot back, a bundle of warmth, blankets and asleep Haruhi shifting against him.
"Yeah, that too," Hikaru snickered, his fingers tangling themselves further in brown tresses,
"Want to know something funny?"
He brushed his right hand, the one not tangled in hair, across his twin's.
"I feel… kind of bad… for having done this."
"So do I," Kaoru murmured with a look at a face not completely soft and relaxed in sleep, "I also don't regret it."
"Me neither," Hikaru whispered, the warmth of two other bodies close to him.
They shared a glance, in the dark of the room, over Haruhi's sleeping form, more having to guess at the other's expression than actually seeing it.
But then again, they never had had to see the other to know his state of mind.
"We're in so deep we can't get out anymore, uh?" Hikaru stated in front of the frown he knew to be on his twin's face, "I mean you still got that stupid paper bird thing and think I wouldn't notice."
Kaoru sent his brother a glare he was sure to catch. "There are worse places to be."
Haruhi turned around, realising a sigh, sleepy, soft, glorious, unlike her usual sighs.
"Maybe," Hikaru whispered and then added,
"Want to know something even funnier?"
After a pause where both read the other in the dark, Hikaru went on, "I'm scared shitless."
"Scared?" Kaoru sniggered and was secure in the knowledge that Hikaru would get his meaning, "Try terrified."
"I still don't regret it."
"Neither do I."
As one, they closed off any distance left, their free hands joining, caging a sleeping girl between them.
"You know," Hikaru breathed into the dark, into Haruhi's ear, to Kaoru, "Your bird isn't all that stupid."
"Hikaru?" his twin asked, voice soft and toneless with tiredness, "Shut up."
Hikaru complied with a snicker, soon changing into a snore as he joined Haruhi in sleep.
Kaoru let his fingers glide along something stolen, repaired, improved and bought around Haruhi's wrist.
There, trapped between distanced wakefulness and near slumber, Kaoru realized it had never been a question of who of the six of them would get closer to Haruhi, no, his foggy mind supplied him in a second's moment of clarity; it had always been just a matter of time.
That night, he fell into sleep, warmth on all his sides, and drawn around him like a blanket was a wish, a prayer, really, the first one he had ever uttered and meant.
It was a wish, a prayer, for any extension of time he could grasp at, even if it would be just five more minutes.
