A/N: Again, a big thanks to everyone that reviewed. Saying that I kept everyone in character is one of the best compliments you could give me, so thanks! I hope all you readers out there are enjoying the story...I'm certainly having a blast writing it.
I do not own Ouran High School Host Club; it belongs to Bisco Hatori.
Roughing It
"Boss, do you remember when you made Haruhi take us on a commoner's camping trip?"
Hunni's hand shot into the air, nearly upsetting his hot chocolate.
"I remember, Kao-chan!"
Kaoru grinned at the older boy's enthusiasm.
"That's right," Tamaki said thoughtfully. "I'd forgotten. We went so many places back then."
"You saw it on a TV show," Hikaru reminded him. "You were so excited about the idea of 'rustic living' that you made us cosplay as American pilgrims."
"And then you made Haru-chan arrange a camping trip for us!" Hunni added.
"That was not a camping trip," Hikaru said darkly. "It was a brief foray into the bowels of Hell."
Haruhi smiled into her coffee cup. It occurred to her that she'd only meant to stay for half an hour; she was fifteen minutes behind schedule. But one more story couldn't hurt. She had all night to study.
"I tried to warn you guys," she said. "Camping isn't as easy as it looks on TV. But once an idea took root in that head of yours, Tamaki-sempai, there was no shaking it loose."
"Why do you say it like that?" Tamaki demanded. " 'That head of yours'. Is there something wrong with my head?"
There was a sudden and desperate scramble as everyone attempted to muffle their laughter with their respective beverages.
"There are many things wrong with your head, Tamaki," Kyoya said. "Most of which remain undiagnosed."
Half the table snorted into their coffee cups, which resulted in a brief moment of communal choking. Mori helpfully pounded Hunni's back.
"How can you be so mean to Daddy, Mommy dear?" Tamaki wailed.
"Is he still calling you that?" Hikaru asked, once he cleared his airway.
"He never stopped."
"Come on, you guys," Kaoru said, bringing the conversation back to center. "The camping trip wasn't all bad." A wicked smile lit up his face. "I have some really great memories from that particular experience."
Kyoya's voice was serene, even pleasant, when he spoke. But his glasses flashed dangerously.
"Must you tell this story?"
Kaoru bit his tongue as what felt like a block of ice dropped down his spine. Hunni tilted his head, his little brow scrunched.
"How come you don't want to talk about the camping trip, Kyo-chan?" he asked curiously.
Kaoru gave a nervous laugh.
"You mean you don't remember, Hunni-sempai?" he asked.
Kaoru made sure to keep his eyes off of Kyoya as he started to speak. Just feeling the frozen darts of dissatisfaction that those dark eyes were shooting his way was unsettling enough.
Even though the other occupants of the car were chattering with obvious enthusiasm, Haruhi sat completely still and silent. To be honest, she was completely dumbfounded. She couldn't speak because in her mind she was trying to figure out exactly when she got roped into this ridiculous scheme. It had all happened so fast; one minute she was running into Music Room 3, running because she was a couple of minutes late and she knew that the shadow king would be quick to comment on her tardiness. Fifteen minutes later she was making reluctant arrangements for a weekend camping trip. How had she gotten sucked in so fast?
Haruhi scowled a little at a certain blonde passenger, who was all but bouncing in his excitement. Of course. He was the answer to her question; he always was. When Tamaki got his mind wrapped around something, you couldn't talk him out of it. Trying to argue with him was completely useless. He'd twist you round and round, until your eyes spun like roulette wheels, and eventually you'd agree out of sheer self-defense. Really, Tamaki was like a steamroller wrapped in velvet; what else could flatten you with such civility?
Now they were headed to some secluded spot in a forest somewhere. And they were driving there. In a limousine. That contradiction in itself was enough to boggle Haruhi's mind. All the boys were wearing brand-name hiking boots that had never been out of the box before this moment, and they were dressed like models on the cover of some sporting magazine. Kyoya was typing away on his portable computer. Hikaru was playing his Gameboy, while Kaoru watched. Their idea of roughing it was staying somewhere with no servants. Out of all of them, Haruhi was the only one who'd ever been actual camping.
Inside her pack, Haruhi had crammed an extra five pounds worth of food. She was convinced that the boys would starve otherwise.
Eventually, the limousine stopped at a tiny rest area. The boys piled out with their packs, all energy and enthusiasm. Haruhi followed with the air of someone being dragged to their death.
"Thank you very much, driver man!" Tamaki said to the chauffer. "You can pick us up in this spot at the end of the weekend."
"Yes, sir."
Haruhi watched the limousine drive away and tried to ignore the sense of impending doom in her stomach.
"So, Haruhi," Tamaki said. "What do we do now?"
"We hike to where we want to set up camp," Haruhi said. "There's a nice spot down by the river."
"All right. Lead the way!"
Haruhi briefly considered the merits of gagging her obnoxiously chipper Sempai as she turned and started down the familiar path. Within fifty yards of entering the canopy of trees, the complaints from the crowd behind her were loud enough to startle the animals into hiding.
"Hikaru, my feet hurt!"
"Takashi, will you carry me?"
"I find it excessive that we are required to walk all the way to our camping site. Is there no alternative means of transportation?"
"This sucks. How far do we have to walk, Haruhi?"
The snarl Haruhi let loose would have scared the boys senseless if it hadn't been under her breath.
"It's about two miles," she said.
Her answer caused a new chorus of complaints that shook the trees.
By the time they reached the site, Haruhi's eye was twitching dangerously, and the boys were dragging themselves forward like they were on their deathbed. Only Tamaki bounced along, still fueled by his enthusiasm. And Kyoya, of course, who's composure couldn't be shaken even by a two-mile hike in unbroken boots.
"What do we do now?" Tamaki asked again.
Haruhi couldn't bring herself to look at him. He'd spent the entire hike comparing the beauty of nature to his own considerable good looks. Haruhi thought that if she looked at him, she'd either beat him dead or laugh herself into hysterics.
"We set up camp. We need to raise our tents, and gather firewood."
"There's more work?" Hikaru asked incredulously. "When do we start camping?"
Things spiraled down and out of control from there.
When setting up their tents, only Haruhi was able to rig hers up in a timely fashion. Two hours later, she was still helping the boys connect poles and hammer stakes into the ground.
"Hey Haruhi, if we don't get our tent set up right, does that mean we get to sleep with you?"
"Drop dead."
Tamaki got lost while gathering firewood, and ended up stepping straight into a hornet's nest that had fallen from a nearby tree. When Kyoya found him an hour later, he was miserable and covered in angry red stings from the knee down. Kyoya dragged him back to the campsite, and Tamaki found himself red-faced and tongue-tied as Haruhi wrapped his legs in bandages.
"You've got to be more careful, Sempai."
While Haruhi took the boys to the river to catch dinner, a meandering bear sniffed out the cake Hunni had crammed into his pack. The gang returned just in time to see the bear rip Hunni's bag apart with razor sharp teeth. They hid in the trees, trembling and terrified, until the bear finished gorging itself and wandered away. A tearful Hunni had to be coaxed back into the campsite by Mori.
"Takashi, it didn't look anything like Tama-chan's teddy bear, did it?"
Finally, the sun set, and the group sat around the campfire Haruhi had built. Haruhi passed out granola bars with grim resignation; all of the boys, except for Mori, refused to eat the fish Haruhi had caught. They preferred their meat neatly packaged and sold in some upscale grocery store, not roasting on a spit over an open flame, and still in the shape it died in.
'Who knew you were such a nature girl, Haruhi?" Hikaru said, scratching furiously at the bug bite on his upper arm.
"Yeah, you're like a pro," Kaoru added, rubbing his blistered feet.
Haruhi considered as she took a healthy bite of fish. The boys gagged in unison, save for Mori, who was contentedly devouring his own.
"My mom used to love camping," Haruhi explained. "Whenever she won a big case, we used to come out here to celebrate. She said it made all of her stress go away. But my dad never liked it much, so when my mom died, we stopped going." Haruhi smiled a little. "It's nice to be back here, after all this time. It kind of reminds me of her." Haruhi turned that smile in Tamaki's direction. "I guess your idea was a good one after all, Tamaki-sempai."
Haruhi's brown eyes sparkled in the firelight, and her smile was warm and soft. Tamaki flushed as red as his bandaged legs.
After a while, Tamaki insisted on making s'mores and telling scary stories, since the television had convinced him that this was a part of camping norm. The boys enjoyed the s'mores, but Kaoru's story had Hikaru, Hunni, and Tamaki huddling together on the ground, whimpering in fear. Haruhi had to convince them that no, there was no such thing as a face-eating samurai ghost, and that even if there was he most likely wouldn't be in this particular forest, before they would go to bed.
Things settled down fairly quickly after that. The boys, exhausted after a day of actual work, fell asleep almost as soon as their heads hit their specially made, super expensive camping pillows. Eventually, the dark softened into the muted light of early dawn, and a lone figure stumbled from his tent.
Kyoya was not in a good mood as he wandered into the trees a little. Under normal circumstances, the idea of performing basic human functions outdoors would be distasteful to him. But when he was barely awake and sore from sleeping on the ground, his mood leapt from mild annoyance to seething, simmering rage.
Finished, Kyoya stumbled back to his tent. He fell face-first onto his top-of-the-line sleeping bag, and spared a single dark thought to how horribly Tamaki would die if the idiot tried to wake him up before he was ready. As Kyoya drifted off, his arm wrapped around something warm. Confused, but not concerned enough, (or awake enough) to open his eyes, Kyoya simply snuggled down and slipped into sleep.
A few hours later, after the sun had finished rising, the scream ripped through the campsite and startled everyone awake.
..............................................................................................................................................................
When the driver pulled in at the rest stop two days later, he couldn't help but gape at the sight before him. Gone were the elegant and upscale men clad in impeccable attire. The boys that stood before him were dirty, covered in bandages, and miserable.
Hunni was perched on Mori's shoulders, shaking and obviously traumatized by the whole experience. Hikaru was slapping wildly at the mosquitoes that had honed in on him like tiny missiles from the beginning of the trip. Kaoru was furiously itching his arms, where an accidental fall into a patch of poison ivy had resulted in a red and swollen rash. Tamaki was hobbling along on his bandaged legs. And Kyoya was radiating waves of dread and despair so intense, the animals in the forest behind them were still frozen in terror. Only Mori and Haruhi looked semi-normal and intact.
Wordlessly, the driver opened the door, his jaw still scraping his shoes. The boys piled in silently, all of them giving Kyoya a wide and careful berth.
"Please take us straight home," Tamaki said, his purple eyes staring at nothing. He held out his pack. "And burn this for me, will you?"
"Yes, sir."
………………………………
During Kaoru's story, the temperature around the table had dropped little by little. Now Haruhi was blushing furiously into her coffee cup, and Kyoya's drink was all but ice in his hand.
"I completely forgot about that!" Hikaru cried, taking in Kyoya's arctic expression with wild glee. "Haruhi screamed the trees down, and we all rushed in there, expecting to find a bear in her tent or something."
"Only we found Kyo-chan instead!" Hunni said cheerfully.
"Haruhi was on her feet, with her sleeping bag wrapped around her," Kyoya added. "And Kyoya was sitting on the ground, completely red-faced. It's still the only time I've ever seen him flustered!"
Across the table, Tamaki was having what appeared to be a breakdown of his central nervous system.
"Kyoya…," he sputtered. "You…I forgot…Gah…tried to molest my Haruhi…,"
Kyoya scowled in Tamaki's direction.
"I did not try to molest her," he said. "Moron. I went into the wrong tent and fell asleep."
Haruhi's face flamed even brighter.
"That little moment aside, I still stand by my opinion," Hikaru said. "That trip was one of the more horrible of all the boss' crazy ideas."
Tamaki instantly regained his ability to use complete sentences.
"My ideas were not crazy!" he protested. "They were creative and artistic plans designed to enhance the Host Club experience! Remember when I set up the gift exchange for Christmas? That wasn't crazy!"
While Tamaki continued ranting, Kaoru leaned back in his seat, and smiled.
A/N: Okay, I think I'm done picking on Kyoya...for the time being. Tamaki sets up a gift exchange in the next chapter, but what about Haruhi? What can her meager funds buy them that they don't already have? Stay tuned to find out. Happy reading!