Whew! I wasn't quite sure how to go about this chapter... but I think I did it pretty well! We haven't heard from Tamaki in quite a while (two chapters is a while, I guess!) so I think it's due time to give him some lovin'!

Thanks you everyone for reviewing! You guys totally ROCK MY WORLD UPSIDE DOWN! Seriously.

So, care to come with me to the land of romantic Eiffel towers, red scarves, and cafes? Bonjour, Paris!

"The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose is a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.
But I send you a cream-white rosebud
With a flush on its petal tips;
For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips."

- John Boyle O'Reilly "A White Rose"

Only the White Roses Wilt

:Chapter Three:
The Stupidity of Stupid People

Tamaki Suoh let out a long and tired sigh as he lugged his backpack onto his shoulder and exited with the steady stream of people disembarking from the red-eye flight to Paris, France. He never thought he'd ever breathe Paris air again after Eclaire. Or even think about Paris after Eclaire. That's what his life felt like. B.E. -- Before Éclair, and A.E. -- After Éclair. It gave him comfort to split his life so simply when he knew that nothing was simple about it.

He especially tried to not think about the Host Club. It wasn't simple enough to split in two.

As he stepped off the plane, the rich buzz of French filled his ears like cotton candy. It had been so long since he had last heard such a sweet, romantic language. He had missed it terribly.

His blue eyes scanned over the awaiting crowd to greet their loved ones, and managed a smile. There, on the far end, was a small cardboard sign that read "TAMAKI!!" with a big scrawling heart around it. A young woman waved it at him with a flourishing smile. She wasn't Éclair. He tried to place her in the scant photographs his mother had mailed to him in the past years -- the ones his father didn't know about.

Oh, it's Mrs. Kanan's daughter. Blaise...? I hope so. He debated whether to call her by her name when she beat him to it.

She stuck out her hand promptly when he waded through the crowd to her, and said in a bubbly voice, "Bonjour! I'm Blaise Etoile! You're Suoh right? Right?"

"Bonjour," he greeted with a half-smile and kissed her hand. Just has he would in the Host Club. He grimaced when he remembered, and a well of sorrow filled his chest. Her hand was just as soft as the girls at Ouran, and just as pretty.

Haruhi's fingernails were always chewed off, his mind observed before he could stop himself, and it only caused more guilt. He shouldn't have done this to them. To her. He shouldn't have. But he had no other choice.

"Tamaki, please," he corrected her in his velvet voice, and Blaise blushed at his debonair smile. All girls around the world were the same. All for one exception.

Once, he'd tried to kiss that exception's hand, too.

"What the hell are you doing, Senpai?" the exception cocked her head to the side, her voice level and unreadable. Her voice was always unreadable. He had clasped her hand in his, and had unconsciously raised it to his lips at the end of their wonderful waltz. His suit had still been sloshy from the dive into the river, and her hair was still dripping droplets of water onto her face. That did not stop them from dancing, though.

He had realized that his lips were pressed against her hand all too late. A rabid blush rushed across his cheeks.

Haruhi snatched her hand away and rubbed it off on her gown. "You're impossible," was her reply.

"It -- It's a habit," he stammered. "I'm so sorry, my daughter! But you need to be courted once in a while!" He flourished his hands to take attention away from his still-red face, and he had desperately hoped she wasn't mad.

"Feh," she rubbed her nose and gave a sidelong look at the crowd. "What would your fangirls think of you falling for a boy, huh?"

Tamaki blinked stupidly, then turned his head towards the crowd. About a dozen girls oogled at them with hearts blooming in their eyes. He gave a haggard sigh. "Touche," he replied dismally.

He had thought he saw a ghost of a smile play upon Haruhi's lips before she turned to watch the first burst of sparkling fireworks light the evening sky.

Blaise Etoile giggled and folded the cardboard up to stick it in the trashcan on their way to luggage check. "Oh, my mistake, Tamaki. I'm not that hip on Japanese culture, you know? Forgot the whole last name/first name caboodle."

"It's been a while since I have been in the French culture," was his reply as his mind spun 3,000 miles away to a small music room. He wondered if the Host Club was courting yet (it was afternoon there, wasn't it?), and who would take his place. And, distantly, he wondered if Haruhi ever read the letter, and if it meant anything to her at all.

"Everything and nothing has changed. You'd think that things change over time, but they don't. Everything repairs itself and goes back to whatever its done for however long its done it." Blaise tagged Tamaki's luggage before he could get to it, and hauled it off the conveyor belt. "But I'm blabbering, right? C'mon, the taxi's waiting."

Tamaki gathered his other suitcase and followed the golden-haired Blaise Etoile out of the airport and into a small, cramped taxi that whirled across Paris, in all its delicate splendor and romance, to a small cornflower-blue cottage nestled beautifully between a picket fence, and a sprawling oak tree.

Tamaki got out of the taxi, and froze. His breath stopped, and swirled homesickness in his chest.

A woman stood on the porch, her golden hair ringed up in cascades around her face. She outstretched her arms, her dazzling blue eyes sparkling with all the universe inside of them, and Tamaki went running.

-- -- --

Haruhi knelt in front of her mother's picture, and lit a candle. The room smelled like burnt bacon from her father's breakfast escapade. (He thought that maybe if he cooked a good breakfast, he would cheer his daughter up. He ended up roasting his eyebrows off.) She inhaled the vanilla and lavender scent and exhaled through her mouth slowly to calm herself. Her fingers gripped tightly to her dress, white-knuckled and shaking. The letter from Tamaki was safely in one of those clenched fists, crushed beyond repair.

Stupid Senpai, she cursed him. Stupid, ignorant Senpai!

What gave him the right to do this? Wasn't it clear when she drove a carriage up beside a car on a bridge (and then fell off that bridge) that she was devoted? -- an everlasting friend?

Isn't that good enough for him? She asked herself angrily.

Apparently not.

"Mom," she forced the syllable out, trying not to choke on her anger. "I need your advice."

Like always, she was greeted with acute silence.

"This stupid guy from Ouran has stupidly gone and disappeared on all of us stupid Hosts. And now he's in stupid Paris for some stupid God-forsaken reason because he's so stupid that he doesn't understand... he doesn't... HE'S SO STUPID!" She rabidly wiped her hand over her eyes and swallowed hard.

"You know," said her father from the doorway, "I think she gets the point that he's stupid, darling."

Haruhi quickly rubbed her eyes free of tears and stood in a rush. "I was just... just -- just talking to her about school is all."

"Huh," he replied, taking his shoes off and coming up to her. He put his hand on her forehead and looked into his daughter's swollen eyes. "My Haruhi doesn't cry over boys at school, now does she?"

"No," she replied curtly. "No way."

He frowned, then patted her head softly. Timidly, she looked back up into his eyes, and he knew she was lying. He might not have been the brightest bulb in the pack, but he knew when his daughter lied. Her mother couldn't lie either. Not really. "Haruhi, lemme tell you something. You can sugarcoat the world in monotonies and levelheaded nonsense but it won't help you in the end. Sometimes you just have to go with whatever this thing right here," he pointed at her heart, "is telling you to do. And I wouldn't warrant that you ignore it either." He kissed her forehead, and knew the reason for his daughter's moodiness. Whatever man made her cry, the poor bastard would feel his wrath whenever he returned. He wouldn't mind yanking every last golden hair from the boy's precious head. "If you do ignore it, Haruhi, then you might miss the best thing in your entire life."

Haruhi's eyes widened. She wanted to laugh. Tamaki -- the best thing in my life?

"Oh, my little Haruhi's growing up!" her Dad squealed, and wrapped his arms around her. "I'm so proud of my daughter!"

"I'm so proud of my daughter!" Tamaki squealed as he wrapped his wiry arms around her and spun her into a tight and suffocating hug.

Her heart stopped in her throat. And in that moment, pressed up against her father's fake boobs, she knew exactly what she had to do.

I wonder what her Dad uses for fake boobies... Hmmm.

Continue? Or No?