Hours later, Tamaki lay, propped up on his elbow, watching a thin ray of light that slid through the blinds play across his lover's pale face.

You're so beautiful when you sleep. Well, you're beautiful all the time, he amended, but that doesn't sound as good.

There was one part of the young man lying beside him that would not be seen as beautiful to the average observer, but, although it brought about horrible memoirs, the uneven scar on Kyouya's side was beautiful to Tamaki. He traced the thin, white lines delicately with his fingers. The wound, combined with total exhaustion and the loss of his will to live, had almost been Kyouya's death sentence, but thankfully Tamaki had found his friend in time. Now he lay beside the dark-haired youth running his fingers over the pale marks that had once bathed them both in blood.

"You really shouldn't be here you know," said Kyouya without looking round at Tamaki.

"Oh! I thought you were asleep."

"When I could be listening to your breathing? I thought you knew me better."

Tamaki blushed in the darkness.

"It's almost three in the morning," said Kyouya sitting up and putting his glasses back on. "You never even called home. Won't your father be worried?"

Tamaki shrugged. "Maybe. At least it's Friday"

Kyouya sighed. "Idiot."

"Hey!"

"You are and don't even think about trying to deny it. It's the middle of the night. No one knows you're still here. You're alone with me in my room – in my bed to be more specific and I very much doubt if you know what you did with your shirt," he pointed out.

"What I did with my shirt? As I recall, I was not the one who took it off." He made a face at Kyouya who rolled his eyes. It was true.

"Alright I'll give you that one, but tell me, where's my shirt?"

Tamaki did not have an answer to this as he had flung the garment in question across the room hours ago.

Kyouya smirked.

"You do know what this would look like if someone walked in here, don't you?" he asked.

Tamaki thought for a moment. "Isn't it?"

Kyouya sighed. "I don't know about you, but I still have my pants on,"

"Kyouya!" scolded Tamaki, hitting the other boy over the head with a pillow. "You and your dirty mind! I meant it'd look like we're together, which we are."

"It would look like a bit more than that," murmured Kyouya in a velvet and seductive voice.

Tamaki decided the best course of action was to ignore this comment and move on.

"My father might be a little mad when I get home, but I'm sure he won't mind. He seems to like you alright."

"He wouldn't if he knew," said Kyouya darkly, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and gazing pensively out of the black window.

Tamaki watched him with a worried expression.

"How would anyone even find out?" he asked, sounding slightly unsure.

"Same way anyone finds out about anything. Nothing stays a total secret forever and once one person knows the whole world knows." How much "secret" information had he found on the students at Ouran alone?

"Only Haruhi knows and it's not like she's going to tell anyone." He crawled over to where Kyouya sat and knelt behind him. He wrapped his arms around the dark-haired boy's neck.

"The others will notice eventually." By "the others" he meant, of course, the remaining members of the Host Club. "And how can you be so sure about Haruhi?" he added darkly.

"She'd never tell anyone!" Tamaki was very found of his "daughter."

"Anyone would say anything to anyone – for the right price."

"She'd never! You're so pessimistic, you know that? If she wanted to blackmail us or sell or info on us or something, she could have done it ages ago."

"But never anything like this," said Kyouya with a sigh. He stood up and Tamaki's arms fell away. He crossed slowly to the window. "I don't want you to get hurt."

"Me?" cried Tamaki in a hushed voice. He jumped off the bed and moved quickly to his lover. "You're the one-," his voice fell away at the memory. "Didn't we just go over this?" he asked, annoyed. "Trying to ignore this isn't going to do anyone any good, Okay?"

"Idiot," muttered Kyouya again as he pushed gently passed Tamaki. "Go back to bed."

"I love you," insisted Tamaki in a forceful whisper.

Kyouya sighed. He was not used to love factoring into a person's life. It was just an inconvenience, just as being with someone was simply another means to an end, another way to gain something. Love did not equate dating or marriage in his mind. Tamaki was right, it was the way he'd grown up and it was a hard habit to break.

"I do," Tamaki pressed.

"I know," he said to the wall he was staring at across the bed.

"You do want this, don't you?" the blond asked in a hurt voice.

"Of course," said Kyouya with no dedication in his voice.

"You don't sound sure."

"I do, of course I do. You know I do. It's just…" He didn't know how to say it or even if he wanted to. "It's too good to be true and I'm putting you in so much danger."

"Now who's the idiot?" asked Tamaki. "Lemme give you a new flash. Good things happen and even last." He smiled. "And guess what else? I don't care how much "danger" you think you're putting me in! I'm sticking with this, with you."

Kyouya sighed. "You always know exactly what to say, don't you?"

"Hey, I'm a host; it comes with the territory."

Kyouya sat down on the bed and patted the twisted blankets beside him for Tamaki. The blond slowly sat next to Kyouya. He curled up next to the stoic boy, leaning his head on his chest. Kyouya wrapped an arm around Tamaki's shoulders, holding him close.

"Kyouya?" asked Tamaki after a moment.

"Yeah?"

"This can't be wrong, can it?" he asked quietly.

"What?"

"I mean, sometimes- some people think that- stuff like this- that it isn't- right," he said haltingly. "That two guys shouldn't... It's not true! They're just being stupid… right?"

Kyouya had seldom heard Tamaki sound so unsure. He was usually brimming with confidence, even when he was dead wrong – especially when he was dead wrong.

Kyouya sighed again. Everything he'd ever learned about society, how to fit in, how to succeed, everything he'd been taught mattered, told him that, yes, it was wrong – that he was ruining both of their lives by not sending Tamaki home that instant and breaking all ties with the boy, However, everything he felt told him nothing in the world could be more right.

"Just because society says something's wrong, doesn't mean it is," he said at last.

"But is it?" pressed the blond.

"Does it feel wrong?"

"No," he murmured, pressing his body closer to Kyouya's.

"Then it doesn't matter."

"But people do bad things all the time without knowing it, don't they?" pressed Tamaki, not convinced that something feeling right made it right.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Like kids who grow up on the street and become thieves or something."

"Product of their environment," said Kyouya promptly.

"Drug addicts?"

"They know it's not right; they know it's hurting them."

"But you think this is hurting me," Tamaki said slowly.

Damn. Tamaki had hit the nail of the head. Tamaki: my drug. Kyouya tried to reason with himself. Sure, love's an addiction, but all love is that way, right? So it's Okay. It's supposed to be this way. I'm supposed to be with him. I don't want to hurt him; we both want this. It's right. The only way it might not be isn't that we're both guys, is that it isn't really appropriate for two people of our standing to be doing something so, well, scandalous. But just because they think it's scandalous doesn't mean it is. Even if one of us were a girl, it would still be a big deal, wouldn't it? We're just going to have to take it as it comes because this is right. It is.

"Kyouya?"

Tamaki's voice drew Kyouya's thoughts back into the room.

"Yes?"

"Well?" he prompted, his lilac eyes filled with battling emotions. Fear seemed to be winning.

Kyouya took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. The lilac eyes watched him, awaiting his verdict.

"It isn't wrong." There was not a trace of doubt in Kyouya's calm voice; it was filled with the firm and fervent convection of love.

"Then why-?" began Tamaki, his voice filled with the doubt Kyouya's mind had been emptied of.

"Like you said, people are stupid." He smiled at the blond.

"But why-?" Tamaki started again.

"Does it matter?" Kyouya asked in a voice that was too close to laughing to be sharp.

"But what if I don't want to be different?" he asked, surprising Kyouya with his words.

"It's not a choice," the burnet replied, his tone darkening as he thought of how people were often accused of choosing to be gay.

Gay. Kyouya hadn't actually thought of it in those terms. He knew he loved Tamaki, another boy, but he had never equated it with being gay. He was starting to see more of why Tamaki was freaking out all of a sudden.

"Then why?" begged Tamaki.

"Why does anyone fall in love?" Kyouya asked gently, running his fingers through the blond hair. "It's just the way life is, the way it's meant to be."

"You really think so?" the blond asked, his usual optimism retuning to his lilac eyes.

"Would I lie to you?"

"Never," said Tamaki happily, not even thinking about the fact that their whole friendship had, in a way, been a lie. He nuzzled Kyouya's chest with his face.

"You gunna be Okay?"

"As long as you stay with me," said Tamaki, peering up into Kyouya's face.

"Of course," Kyouya replied, inclining his head to kiss Tamaki.

"You promise?" he pressed, dodging the kiss.

"I promise I'll stay with you as long as you'll have me," said Kyouya and he meant it.

"Then it looks like you're stuck with me for quite a while, mon amour," Tamaki said with a little giggle.

Kyouya smiled and leaned down just enough to kiss the other boy, who tilted his head to accept the kiss.

Their lips gently touched, Tamaki straining his neck to get closer to Kyouya. Kyouya smiled into the kiss, feeling the stress in Tamaki's body. In one, swift, easy movement, he rolled both of them over onto the bed so that a very surprised Tamaki found himself flat on his back with Kyouya hovering over his body.

"Kyouya!"

"What?" he smirked. "This isn't what you want?"

"I- You just- surprised me," Tamaki stammered.

"I love you," said Kyouya appeasingly.

"You'd better," the blond sulked.

"I do."

"They're going to try to tear us apart, you know," said Tamaki, turning his face away from Kyouya.

The burnet closed his eyes in pain for a moment.

"I know." And he did. He knew it was only a matter of time until someone less trustworthy than Haruhi found out about the love he shared with Tamaki. He knew that when that moment came, their worlds would shatter and he and Tamaki would be, at the very least, separated forever. However, "they" could never take away what he had with Tamaki. They couldn't even understand these feelings; they were too cold. They couldn't stop love, but they could do some bad damn things. He tried not to think about those things. For now all he could was try to keep Tamaki safe, try to keep them away. What else could he do?

"Hey, it'll be Okay," said Tamaki, reaching up and touching the worry lines creasing his lover's forehead. "They can take me half-way round the world, but they can never stop me from loving you. They'd have to give me a lobotomy and even that probably wouldn't do it." He smiled at Kyouya, moving his hand down to the boy's pale cheek. "As long as we have each other, what else matters?"

"And what about when we don't have each other?" asked Kyouya darkly, sitting up, but remaining on Tamaki's lap.

"You'll always have me," said Tamaki, also sitting partway up and speaking in a somewhat seductive voice, "even when I'm not next to you, you have me. I'm yours. Anywhere and always."

"You could drive a boy mad talking like that," he said, wrapping his arms around the blond.

"It's true."

"It'd better be," said Kyouya with a bitter-sweet smile.

Note: I'm sorry I haven't updated it such a long time, but I'm hoping this will make up fir it 'cause at least it's long. Someone asked for somemore straight up (ok, bad word choice since they're both guys) T/K so I hope that met some of your needs. It's angsty, but they're teenagers with many, many problems. Anyway, hope you liked it!