It was warm, like a bath scorching Kyoya, like flames licking pleasurable lines up his sides until he would writhe about in his container. The walls were silken and white, snowy sheets sealing him and another human being from the outside world. Kyoya couldn't say he minded that. The outside world was too complicated. So many opposing sides clashing and fighting for this goal and that, only to wither away and die. What a waste of time! The Shadow King would much rather stay in bed and enjoy the company of whoever the minx below his bedsheets was. It was so warm, wonderful. Comfortable. Safe. Though he didn't fear the sides outside his pocket of heat, he knew that they couldn't hurt him here.
He himself knew that it wouldn't last, however, and forced himself out of the façade, up and into the light of the room around him. Rays from the sun glinted off of the windows and his glasses on the bedside table, one alabaster hand reaching for them and grasping them in dainty fingers. The arm poked out from under the sheets and sucked the glasses back down into their monochrome depths. Kyoya reached exasperatedly for them and instead found his own fingers around a throat, rather than the hand and glasses he'd intended.
"Oh, sempai," the other person said, definitely a female, and one Kyoya knew most deeply. "I didn't know you liked it like this."
Haruhi's blushing face emerged from the sheets, a coy smile on her face and Kyoya's hand around her throat. She bit her lip and leaned up to kiss him, biting his lower lip and trailing her own down his neck. The Shadow King shivered and his breath hitched as he moved her off of him with his hands. "W-Why're you here, Haruhi?" he asked with genuine curiosity in his voice.
"You don't remember, Kyoya?" Haruhi replied, smiling at him still. "We were in a party at Tamaki's home and you approached me late after it started, brought me here...Oh, I'm so sorry I resisted you at all...I'll never go back to Tamaki again..." Her auburn hair brushed his chin as she nuzzled her head into Kyoya's neck, running her hands down his back slowly. "So rough...so fast and hard and needy...I don't think I've ever screamed that loud in my life, sempai..."
And then he attacked her again, teeth clamping onto her neck and his hands carving marks down her body, handling it as roughly as he wished while she was reduced to a mewling mess under his touch...
Kyoya awoke abruptly, a sheen of sweat covering him from head to toe. He was wrapped in a sleeping bag, lying peacefully on two of the plane's seats with his feet facing the aisle. One look out the window told him it was night, but he assumed from the various brown stains on the floor that Remi had been steadily consuming coffee to be alert enough to pilot the craft, and so the weren't in any danger of an eminent crash.
To make matters worse, Mori had been standing there and watching him from across the aisle, and by the entanglement of his limbs in his sleeping bag, he'd been shifting around in his sleep. By the look on Mori's face, he'd also been speaking.
"Listen very, very carefully, Mori-sempai," Kyoya said, his eyes flashing dangerously as he spoke to the Host who was easily a head taller than him. "I know what you heard, and if I hear a word of it being mentioned to Haruhi, I won't care how skilled you are in martial arts. I. Will. Destroy. You. Are we clear?"
Mori wasn't frightened in the least by the Shadow King. Kyoya's true power rested in his brain, not his brawn. If need be, Mori could break every limb Kyoya had, but he wouldn't need to, fortunately for the Ootori boy. Kyoya was his friend, and there was no way he would tell Haruhi about something like this, if it was indeed why he thought it was Kyoya was muttering her name in his sleep.
The tall Host knelt down to Kyoya, sincerity showing in his eyes and his small smile.
"Kyoya," he spoke softly after looking over his shoulder to make sure they wouldn't be eavesdropped. " I won't. But are you in love with Haruhi? Or was that just wishful thinking?"
Kyoya pondered that for a moment. He remembered that wonderful warmth in him, her lips on his, her blush and her smile and her hair and her throat...oh, Kami, her throat...but Mori's train of thought was only serving to disrupt him, and unintentionally, make him doubt his own assurances. He loved Haruhi. He knew he loved Haruhi. It wasn't a question of if, it was a question of how much, how dearly he wanted to hold her to him and kiss her, how badly he wanted her touch, her smile, her laugh, her presence, to be his and his alone. A selfish lover, Kyoya Ootori was, if such a thing existed.
"Yes," Kyoya replied, his eyes closed and his breathing regular. "Yes, I love Haruhi. More than life itself."
Kyoya's livelihood was out of his control now. Mori could destroy him, tell Haruhi, ruin whatever chance was there, and leave Kyoya a shattered husk. Or Mori could store the information away, deep and far away, and keep Kyoya from sinking so low he'd never be able to rise again. She could never know. If she did, all he had done would have been for nothing.
He'd stayed his hand, kept her from knowing how he felt, kept himself from swooping on her and making her his, because Tamaki deserved her more. Tamaki was his friend, and he couldn't be with Haruhi knowing that Tamaki loved her almost as much as he did. It would destroy Tamaki, and Kyoya would rather rot in solitude than do that to the one who had pulled him from that ancient and eternal darkness of his father's manipulation.
Let the brightest star in the whole universe bequeath itself to the noblest traveler.
The star in question, still yawning from her recent slumber, sat in the co pilot's chair in the cockpit, peacefully watching Remi guide their stolen craft through the clouds. The man's eyes were wide and his pupils were dilated, probably from the massive amounts of coffee he'd ingested to hold him over through the night. As far as using the restroom, Remi had insisted that a cup they dumped down the restroom at the plane's other end would work just fine.
Not that it made Haruhi feel any less disgusted about having to carry a cup of piss across a stolen plane.
Stolen. The word echoed through her head. They had stolen an aircraft from a highly-respected airport, in broad daylight. Stolen! What would they face once they returned home, probably life imprisonment, or execution. Or something worse, though Haruhi couldn't imagine what could be worse than those. In that case, was their venture even worth it? Even if Tamaki came back, Mori, Kyoya, and herself would all face serious charges for their methods of retrieving him.
Which brought up the question: how much was Tamaki worth to each of them?
To her, Tamaki was worth any crime. He was their leader, their guide, their king. They needed him back and without him, all of the rest of the Club was lost. She'd already witnessed this in the time since his departure from Japan. Each Host, Hosts who Tamaki had led through dark and light times, was broken, reverted back to whatever they had been before he'd come in to their lives(Kyoya and Haruhi being the exceptions). And from seeing how horrific that had been, she couldn't let the rest of them suffer with themselves.
Kyoya, she knew, would do anything in his power to get Tamaki back. Other might mistake this as something else, but Haruhi knew the dynamic between them and that any suspicions on Kyoya's preferred gender would be silenced. But in all seriousness, Tamaki meant almost as much to Kyoya as the Host Club did. Tamaki had helped his get out of that great chasm, that spiraling downfall that Kyoya had so hated. Being used to fulfill the wishes of others. Kyoya wouldn't abandon somebody who freed him from that, under any circumstance.
Mori, self-efficient being that he was, perhaps, Haruhi thought, did not think the Host Club was his destiny. He was a martial artist, not a Host. While all of them would eventually have to move on, Mori, she imagined, would be the least broken up about it, though she knew that he did in fact enjoy doing work for the Club and the company of his friends.
"What's on your mind, girlie?" Remi inquired from the next seat over. " The consequences? The merits? I understand. Things I've had on my mind many a time."
"I'm sorry, sir?" Haruhi replied, slightly confused at the man's question, which had probably been fueled by his hopped-up-on-caffeine state. She'd heard that Kaoru had the same problem when under substance influence. He started to become very deep and philosophical, which had bee quite the laughing stock. Apparently Remi had this same problem. "I'm not entirely sure what you mean."
"Of this venture, of course. The consequences once we part ways, and you return home with whoever you came for. The merits of coming at all. You understand right?" He eyed her for a moment before returning to the console.
"Oh well, I suppose I was," the crossdresser replied thoughtfully. "Really I was just weighing out both and thinking about whether this was worth it. A pros-cons kind of thing. But I guess whether or not it was worth it doesn't really matter now. We're here, and going through with it. Kyoya-sempai...said he found you at a fast food restaurant at the airport, a chance encounter. What were you doing there anyway, and to end up stealing the same plane we were going to board?"
"Since we're probably all facing life imprisonment the moment we touch Japanese soil again, I guess there isn't any harm in telling," Remi said with a small, wry smile. Sitting up properly, he cleared his throat. "I had just turned 21, and had myself a girlfriend who was, in her opinion, at least, one of the best thieves in the world. Obviously this wasn't true, but I loved her, so I never did tell her how stupid the title sounded. Anyway, for my birthday that year we were in America, and we'd decided to attempt the first bank robbery we would together. It all went pretty smoothly, up until the authorities showed up. This we hadn't planned on, and so I hadn't brought a weapon. I hadn't but she had. She tried to pull it on them and they..." He paused for a moment and covered his face, sobbing quietly into his hands. Haruhi hadn't expected to see him like this. Here he was, a criminal of apparently epic proportions, a massive coffee addict and indifferently exuberant man, reduced to nothing in a matter of minutes.
His sobbing ceased, and he started to continue his tale.
"She died in my arms and they dragged me into the back of a police car," he resumed. "They left her in the road. Didn't even bother to move her body and given her a proper burial. They locked me in prison and I stayed for a little over six years until someone, not sure who, managed to dig me a hole out of my cell. The prison was in California I think, and so I didn't have much trouble getting to the East Coast after a week or two. A boat was there waiting for me, and I sailed the Pacific. Ended up in Japan and haven't left since. I was safe there, it appeared, 'cause nobody came across either ocean to bring me back. I only steal now to honor her, and I think it'd be wrong to abandon her trade."
Haruhi never would have thought that underneath all of Remi's layers, which even though they hadn't known him long, she could see through with no effort at all, there could be a being wracked with such pain and loss. And yet, this spirit stayed above the waves, for he had someone waiting for him at the shore. In that she supposed her and Remi were not all that different.
"Bored with my tale? Eh, its alright, girl. The exploits of some old thief understandably wouldn't interest a younger one like yourself."
"No its not li-"Haruhi started, but Remi activated the microphone near his head, just as the sun began to rise up over the horizon, miles and miles away.
"Attention, passengers," he spoke loudly. "Wake up because we'll be in Germany in about an hour and a half. Seeing as we're all wanted criminals, I cant exactly land us in the airport we were going to, so I've looked at a few maps and found a large enough field to land this boat. Denken Sie daran, eine Stunde(Remember, one hour!)!"
Half of their journey was up. Whatever loose ends were left, or fears to be confirmed would have to be shoved out of the way, Haruhi decided.
Now came the hard part. Stealing a giant aircraft in the middle of the day was difficult.
But convincing Tamaki to actually return with them to Japan?
Question of the Episode: Would you have stolen the plane, as our three Hosts have?
*roll end credits*
