Disclaimer: Ouran High School Host Club, its plot and characters, belong to Hatori Bisco, and not me. Also, the song lyrics belong to HIM and not me.

Note: Oh dear, I did promise that this would be the last chapter, didn't I? I'm a big fat fibber. The final chapter was getting too long, so I split it up. This is NOT the last chapter, the next one is!

CREATURES OF SENSATION

Chapter 5/6

Under the Rose

"I've been burning in water and drowning in flame
To prove you wrong and scare you away
I admit my defeat and want back home
In your heart under the rose."
-H.I.M.

Fujikoa Ryoji, alias Ranka-chan, secretly considered himself far more adept at being a woman than most women.

He knew the feminine arts of manipulation and flirtation. When he fell into character, he could be coy, subtle, bubbly, graceful, demure, or delicate with the best of them; bombshell or blushing beauty, Ranka could play the part.

He could also sprint a 100-meters dash in pantyhose and high heels and even pull off wearing polka dots with stripes if he had to. And he was particularly well versed in the art of applying make-up. He had once driven a greyhound bus through a tsunami while touching up his eyeliner and lip gloss and managed to arrive safely in Okinawa looking like he'd just stepped out of the salon – ah, for the good old days!

So when he accidentally smeared a jagged line of red across his cheek, ruining his favorite tube of lipstick as it broke along his cheekbone, it was clear that Haruhi's question had disturbed him considerably.

"Dad, how can you tell if you're in love?"

A fine, hairline crack appeared in the shell of reality.

"Ah, hah! Oh, dear, Haruhi," Ryoji laughed anxiously, "My ears are playing tricks on me! I thought I just heard you ask how to tell if you're in love! As if my precious little girl would need to know about something like that. Isn't that funny?"

He laughed some more, a little too loudly, as he cleaned up the mess on his cheek with a cotton ball. There were still smudges of red when he began frantically applying mascara to get his mind off the impossible.

Haruhi's eyebrows shot up into her bangs at her father's actions. It had just been a simple question. She tried again.

"I did," she told him, then flinched as the mascara wand trailed a dark path down his cheek.

Ryoji watched helplessly as the crack in his world widened, creating a slow leak of unreality into his universe. He turned to regard his daughter, who was doing a remarkable job of not commenting on his appearance; he looked like some kind of avant garde sad clown. She was also, incredibly, not snickering behind her hand or grinning at her clever joke.

She was just looking at him patiently, expectantly. Awaiting an answer. An answer to her question. The question about how to tell if you're…

No, no, don't even think it, he told himself soundly; a puddle of impossibilities was forming around him, threatening to ruin his shoes, If you don't think it, you can ignore it. If you ignore it, it will go away.

He smiled and nodded approvingly at his flawless logic as impossibility sloshed around his knees. Haruhi was still watching him with her large, adorable eyes, that wonderfully placid expression on her cute little face that she had been showing him for the past fifteen years.

"You're so adorable, Haruhi!" he cried delightedly, pulling her into a hug so tight there was no room for some horny, zit-faced, no-brain teenage boy to come between them.

"Dad!" Haruhi cried, trying to squirm out of his grasp and getting globs of black and red makeup all over her cheek in the process. It took only moments before she was free, having had years of practice escaping her father's sudden hug attacks, then stood up and set off towards the kitchen, rubbing absently at the errant makeup plastered on the side of her head.

"Never mind, I have to make breakfast anyway."

Fujioka Ryoji, alias Ranka-chan, secretly considered himself far more adept at being a woman than most women. But when it came right down to it, he was still a man; he was not a mom, he was a dad, and it was a dad's job to protect his daughter's virtue, not facilitate its destruction. He looked in the mirror and began touching up his face. When it was once more impeccable, he glanced at the picture of his dead wife he kept on the dresser. It was floating the rising tide of irrationality like a tiny island in the middle of a desolate ocean.

"Kotoko, what am I going to do with our baby? She's being very naughty; she just won't stop growing up."

He sighed and plastered a smile on his face as the unreality leaking into his world closed over his head, submerging him completely and making it a little hard to ignore. His shoulders were a little too rigid, his air of blithe ambivalence a little too forced as he bid his daughter an overly-fond farewell and headed off to work. He was glad he worked at a bar, because he really needed a drink just then.

Onii-chama sighed a lot lately. He sighed when he walked through the front door and said "I'm home." He sighed as he trudged up the stairs. He sighed as he picked at his food at the dinner table. He sighed when he was playing with Kirimi in the playroom. He even sighed in his sleep.

Kirimi knew because she thought it was funny to sneak into his room early in the morning and pounce on him to wake him up. This morning, as she crept on her tip toes into his dark room, the hem of her pink princess nighty whispering along the carpet, to see him curled up under his big black blanket, she heard him sigh a name. Carefully, so as not to wake him, she climbed up on to his bed and crouched over him, staring at his normally serene sleeping face. His eyebrows were scrunched together as though he were thinking very hard.

"…Fujioka…" Sigh. "…mmm…mm mmm…wait for me, Fujioka…" he mumbled. Then another sigh.

Kirimi knew what sighing meant. Plenty of characters in Kuretake-chan's shoujo manga sighed. As she stared down at Onii-chama, he stirred, then cracked opened his eyes and looked right at her, surprised yet not that she was hovering above him.

"Ohayo, Kirimi," he yawned and smiled a small, sleepy smile.

"Onii-chama is in love," she informed him in return, then nearly fell off the bed as he sat bolt upright in bed to stare at her in surprise. She had to grab one of his pillows to keep from toppling over, which she lobbed clumsily at him. He caught it easily and bopped gently over the head with it and she fell in love with him all over again. Onii-chama was always so gentle, even though he acted scary when other people were around.

"What a silly thing to say, Kirimi," he admonished, his outburst of shock hidden behind a sleepy expression as he tweaked her ear, though he looked her in the nose as he said it. Onii-chama always looked at her nose when he was fibbing. He pulled his hand back quickly as she batted at it. Onii-chama was so fast, she could never catch him!

"It's not silly," she insisted, climbing off the bed and scampering over to the table where Onii-chama kept his 'dark icons' and carried Onii-chama's cursed doll, Bereznoff, back over to where Onii-chama had scooched up to settle his back against the headboard. "You sigh and sigh and sigh all the time. That means you're thinking about the woman you love, and you 'feel a deep longing inside' and you have to sigh to 'fill the emptiness where she belongs in your arms,'" she told him astutely, quoting from something Kuretake had read to her the other day.

Umehito cocked his head to one side and gazed at Kirimi thoughtfully. Kirimi fell in love with him all over again as he smiled wistfully at her. Then he shooed her off the bed.

"Alright, little one, out now," he ordered, "Get back to your room before they come looking for you."

Kirimi giggled and scurried out the door. Onii-chama didn't seem to notice that she left the door ever so slightly ajar, or that she stopped just outside to peek in through the crack. Instead he sighed again.

"Am I in love, Bereznoff?" he asked the puppet that was laying on his bed. Bereznoff didn't answer, and Onii-chama didn't speak again. He stared at nothing for a moment, then suddenly jumped off his bed and crouched down to root around underneath it. When he stood back up, he was holding a familiar notebook. He was always writing things in it. Kirimi had looked through it when Onii-chama wasn't home. It was mostly full of words that Kirimi couldn't read, but that wasn't what she checked for. What Kirimi loved to look for were Onii-chama's drawings.

Kirimi watched through the sliver in the door as Onii-chama fished a pencil out of his desk drawer and settled back on his bed. She could tell he was drawing by the way his head bent so that his hair fell over his cheeks. If he was writing, he would tuck his hair back behind his ears, but if he was drawing, he didn't seem to notice it.

Kirimi watched, fascinated for several minutes until, at last, he straightened up and observed the notebook page with a look of resigned satisfaction. He sighed again.

"Fujioka-san. Ha…Haruhi-san…Haruhi. Fujioka Haruhi…you are beautiful…"

Then he sighed again and Kirimi giggled and had to run down the hall as fast as her little legs would go so that he wouldn't hear her.

She had tried to study. She really, truly had. She wanted to. She needed to.

She couldn't.

Every time she stared at the black ink on the white pages, she saw a black figure, framed in the white light of mid-afternoon sunlight walking away from her, ignoring her as she called his name, leaving her alone with strange and uncomfortable questions and without any answers to make them go away. It made her feel helpless and lonely.

She had tried to do chores. She really, truly had. She wanted to. She needed to.

She couldn't.

Every dish she washed, every pass of the broom, every task she completed reminded her of the debt she no longer had to repay, which reminded her of his generosity, which got her thinking of all his other endearing qualities, his shy smile, his darkly gentle nature, his determination, so passionate that it bordered on comical. It made her feel warm and content.

She had tried to go to bed. She really, truly had. She wanted to. She needed to.

She couldn't.

Every time she turned out the light, her memory showed her the darkness under his hood as he'd drawn near her, and every time she closed her eyes, she felt the sensation of his lips ghosting over her own. It made her feel flushed and desperate.

This was why, when the door to the Fujioka residence swung inward at 3:30 in the morning, a very inebriated Ranka, arm slung over a fellow okama, found Haruhi still awake and doing something she rarely ever did: watching TV.

Ranka turned to his counterpart.

"Better bring an umbrella," he slurred, snickering as he stumbled in, "It's gonna rain tomorrow."

Half an hour later, with the help of Ranka's coworker and some industrial strength make-up remover, Ranka was transformed back into Ryoji and tucked into bed to sleep off his bender. After showing the harried okama out and tidying up the living room, she wet a cloth with cool water and knelt beside her intoxicated father. Sake gave him a monstrous hangover, but Haruhi had found that a cool cloth on his forehead while he slept alleviated the worst of his headaches.

She pursed her lips as she gazed down at him, drunk and disheveled. His love for her mother, and the loss of her, was what had done this to him. Was this what became of those that fell in love? Why would anyone willingly subject themselves to this lonely desperation? Shakespeare may have preferred to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all, but did her father? And, premature as it may be…did she?

Maybe…it was better just to leave it alone, to lock away that creature of sensation some where dark and barren, where it couldn't do any damage, and live in a vacuum.

With a sigh, she made to move away when Ranka's hand curled weakly around her wrist. He wasn't coordinated enough to stop her, but she paused anyway. She'd assumed he was asleep and wanted to make sure he was comfortable before she returned to her own room to fail to sleep.

"Your moo--ooother," he yawned blearily, "She was kind…strong…beautiful…good cook…loved her …still do…" he smiled crookedly to himself and turned his blood-shot eyes in Haruhi's direction, though his pointed look landed somewhere over her left shoulder. His deeply serious expression was just a bit too comical, but something in it made Haruhi pay attention. "She also snored, always took the last piece of sushi and was a closet Zukabu fanatic…" He stretched stiffly, letting his eyes slip closed, though a ghost of his smile remained, "…I loved her anyway…its how I knew...how I could...tell…little Haruhi…"

Haruhi's eyes widened as the point of her father's broken lecture dawned on her.

"That's how you tell? How you can tell if you're in love?" she pressed, slightly embarrassed at the eagerness in her voice, "As in 'like them for their good points, love them for their faults'?"

The only answer she received was a light snore.

Haruhi remained by Ryoji's side for a few moments more before tucking the covers up to his chin and retiring to her own room to stare at the dark ceiling.

…Like him for his good points, love him for his faults…

She needed to think about this concept. And what to do with it.

The following days were an exercise in inefficiency and first class futility as both Haruhi and Umehito went to remarkable lengths to avoid one another. Unfortunately, since neither realized that the other was avoiding them, they both tended towards places that neither of them usually ventured, and in doing so, bumped into each other far more than they normally would. These unexpected meetings usually ended in one or both of them running back the way they'd come, and left them frazzled and agitated, late to class or club activities and generally put out and frustrated.

Unbeknownst to either of them, their antics did not go unnoticed. Interested eyes observed covertly, glancing askance at the display of distraction, their odd movements and flushed appearances. Speculations abound, conclusions were drawn and an agreement reached. The Black Magic Club was encroaching on Host Club territory. This insurrection could not go answered.

Umehito trudged dejectedly up the stairs towards the Third Chemistry Lab (with dark room function). Meeting with the Black Magic Club was usually the highlight of his week, but today the plush carpet under his shoes was sand and his legs were lead. He paused midway up, gazing forlornly at the opposite wall of the staircase, the very spot where he'd thrown himself willingly into the flames and been happily immolated.

He could almost have believed it had been a dream if it weren't for the way Fujioka had been acting all week long. Some cruel trick of fate had thrown them together more often in the past few days than they had ever been in all the time they had been going to Ouran Academy together, and where before Fujioka always had a kind smile and a word of greeting, now he received only shocked embarrassment and the sight of her back as she fled his presence.

He bit his lip. Clearly she hated him. Why else would she literally run from him?

And what had he expected, really? Umehito was a moth. He of all people knew that if you walk into the fire, you're certain to be burned, no matter how gently the light beckoned or what warmth lay therein.

To his surprise, however, his personal metaphor didn't entirely sync up with what he was experiencing. It wasn't a burning, this feeling inside. Rather, it was cold and hollow; a heaviness that ached horribly, like something had been carved out of his chest and set as a yoke upon his shoulders.

The darkness in which he'd always thrived was cold and lonely as never before, yet the light remained terrifying and unattainable. Even as he retreated into the comfort of the shadows, he couldn't help but long for the warmth promised by the flickering flame he now knew existed somewhere inside him.

He was not himself at all.

Umehito was resting all his hope on Bereznoff and the comfortable familiarity of the dark rites of the Black Magic Club to ease his sorrows. Though his trudging had made him late, he'd been looking forward to it all day long, the security of routine a respite from feeling and thought.

So imagine his surprise when, upon arriving at the door to the Third Chemistry Lab (with dark room function), he found a note taped to the door informing him that he had cancelled the Black Magic Club meeting for today.

For a moment he stood, blinking in bewilderment through the fall of his dark wig, at the slip of paper bearing his signature that he was certain he had not pasted there. Then the time for idle wonderment was over as the door suddenly swung inward with a sucking whoosh! and a none-too-gentle pair of hands at his back shoved him firmly over the threshold and into the inky darkness beyond.

End Chapter 3
Note: Cliffhanger! Muwahahahahaha::is evil:: I also kick puppies for fun!

Nah, puppies are alright, though I might not be for making everyone wait so long for an update. I fear I have sock puppets in my future...::bows:: Gomen nasai!

Thank you so much to all my reviewers, you make my world go 'round! The more I get, the faster I write, so don't forget to click the little button just south of here and leave me one!

I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Please stay tuned for the final chapter in which we learn the fate of our unlikely heros!

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