A/N: Okay. I lied. I had nothing to do today, so I wrote this up in something of a frenzy. I like it, myself. I feel like I could have added another part to it, but I frankly don't have time. I know it's kind of short-ish, but with therapy you might forgive me. I'll see you all next month, and I give you cookies for reading/loving/reviewing.

Disclaimer: Obviously, not.

Chapter Fourteen

Legal Paper and Mansions

The car was deathly quiet, and Haruhi felt like she was riding to her death. Mori sat impassively opposite her, his gaze fastened on her. Not that she didn't like it much, it was just that she never knew what he was thinking—I made such a mistake looked exactly like I'm so happy to be with her.

Her things were in a car behind them, a small moving truch she felt was completely unnecessary. She didn't have that much, and her belongings occupied a small corner of the truck's covered bed.

The limousine they were riding in was made for comfort, and it supplied. There was a mini-fridge and a small bar, the crystal bottles chattering to each other as the car glided down the road; and the soft leather seats were plush and comfortable. Mori glanced out the window.

"We'll be arriving at Mitsukuni's residence soon," he rumbled, and Haruhi smiled somewhat weakly.

Mori had promised to visit often, but the lack of him was odd—she was used to having someone older than her around, be it the careful, tentative presence of Mori, or the paternal, misled aura put out by her irresponsible father, Ryoji. The guilt for keeping Mori from his business nearly pulled her under, but apparently his empire was soundly afloat and he needed only to reorganize everything to his specifications, and she comforted herself with the fact that that was the worst of what she had done.

"I'll miss not—not having you around," she said, struggling with the syllables but feeling that it had to be said. His mockery of a smile twitched at the edges of his lips, and he nodded impassively. Haruhi, despite all her façades and disguises, was a heavily emotional person with strong beliefs, and sometimes she despaired at this non communication.

Flickers of a past life with emotions running high, proclamations abound, and no secrets crossed her mind, and she reassured herself that Mori would miss her, inwardly.

The limo took a sharp turn, and Mori looked out the window again.

"We're here."

-x-

Hunny's house, unlike the classical style of the Hitachiin mansion and Suou mansion No. Two, was modern and beautiful, all cut glass and color. The gardens that surrounded the semicircular drive were fragrant and bright, and there were elaborate gates at either end of the curved gravel drive, and a long, low wall ran around the entire grounds, punched through with cloudy windows of seaglass, which threw blue and green shadows onto the bright green grass. Maids were marching out of the house, butlers were lifting her meager suitcases out of the truck and bringing them inside faster than she could blink. Overwhelmed was, well, an understatement.

Mori got out of the car and stretched, and she caught some of the maids glancing meaningfully at him and then at each other, and words passed behind hands that made it obvious secrets were being shared. A redness started to burn under her cheeks, but it was quelled by Mori's glance at her and his worried expression, like he feared she wouldn't like the beautiful mansion.

"Haru-chan! Takashi!"

Turning dazedly from the elaborate garden, towards the house, she saw Hunny bounding down the stairs in front of his face, and caught sight of little but his blond hair before she was pelted in the stomach.

Hunny's eyes sparkled when he looked up at her, but her eyes were drawn lower where they remained glued, incredulous.

"Haru-chan!" he exulted. "Haru, you're going to be my foster child!"

"Right," she said in a slightly strangled voice. She couldn't believe this. It was Hunny, after all. So what was up with this recent . . . development? It seemed gross and wrong on him, on his clean-cut face.

"Haru, what's wrong?" Hunny asked, somewhere between bewildered and concerned for her as she stared at the odd place.

"Your . . ." she gestured to the problem area. "Your . . ."

"Oh!" he said in his happy, light voice, his hand sliding over his chin while he laughed. "Right! I'm sorry, Haru, I forgot to shave this morning! I was so excited you were coming over I completely forgot!"

"You have . . . " What was the word? Stubble? On his face? Hunny's childish face? She still almost expected his parents to come out and give her instructions on how to take care of Hunny while they were out, and it seemed nearly absurd that he would be taking care of her, and that he was capable of growing stubble.

"He is able to grow a beard, Haruhi," Mori rumbled, and she glared at him, but sparingly, as she was being hugged by Hunny so fiercely, and really, she didn't mind. She had missed him so much. She had missed all of them so much, really, but she didn't want to break them all apart. Best to just cut herself out quickly, leaving them with their friendships.

"I know but . . ." she looked at his face again. Hunny, who she had thought had stolen a high school uniform when she first saw him, from the elementary school, with gold-white hair sparkling perversely in the sunlight. "Ah, well."

"I feel old, Haru-chan," the oldest child she knew informed her with the air of a person who has forgotten something they felt should make them sad, like a person smiling at an acquaintances funeral.

"Hunny, you're nineteen," she said, trying to comfort.

"That's not it," the tiny blond said glumly, tears leaking from the edges of his eyes—Haruhi was alarmed, but not unduly, Hunny needlessly wept quite often. "My uncle is g-going to pass away soon."

"I'm so sorry," she said, bewildered by what this had to do with this feeling of elderliness.

"His uncle holds the empire," Mori said in his careful monotone, and rested a giant hand of Hunny's head. "He's leaving it to him. He'll have to manage the dojos."

"But you'll have help, won't you?" Haruhi asked, desperately trying to comfort him and erase the sad sight of a crying child—or what looked to be a child.

"Why don't you show Haruhi where she's to live, Hunny?" Mori said helpfully, and the tiny character snapped back into the cheerfulness.

"Oooh! Did I tell you, Haru-chan, you'll be living here for a year--" Haruhi flinched slightly. Wouldn't her father turn up by then? "So I set you up in a room and bought you lots of things."

Haruhi winced. He had bought her lots of . . . things, had he? She could envision them—sparkling necklaces and silk clothing, trinkets and furniture and other things that would take her years and years of hard work to even think of buying, merely chump change to the boy.

"This entire house is mine," Hunny said, seemingly somewhat troubled by this. "It's so empty, and I have nothing to do all day because I have no business and I have no school. But now I have you! It will be so much fun!"

"The paperwork is taken care of," Mori intoned over her shoulder. "And you'd do well not to make him ground you, Haruhi."

Mouth half-open at the amusement with which these last words were spoken, Haruhi gaped at him. Had she really been softening him up as much as she had allowed herself to fancy she had?

"I'll visit often," he said, and Haruhi felt herself tingle slightly as Hunny looked at her with a renewed interest. Mori's eyes flickered, and he leaned down and pressed a hasty kiss to her lips before turning around and getting back into the limo, slamming the door.

Why was it that he always seemed angry after he kissed her?

Hunny's impassive face as they ascended the front steps to his house told her that Mori had taken care not to tell his charge who, while if told not to tell a secret would give his all to keep it . . .while he remembered.

"So," he said in a deceptively light tone. "You and Takashi."

It wasn't a question. Haruhi was studying the stairs, which while made of concrete, sparkled with the brilliance of quartz where the crystal had been mixed in. When she stopped on the top step, he paused next to the grand, glass doors that opened onto his luxurious foyer, slightly ajar, and glanced back at her, concerned, looking older than ten for once.

So, you and Takashi.

". . . Something like that," she said, and followed him inside.

-x-

Haruhi was sitting on the floor in a daze.

Truth be told, she wasn't sure that she could touch anything else in the rooms (Rooms! She thought inwardly, incredulously, rooms! Plural!) without an alarm going off, or her sullying it somehow. Nope, she felt perfectly safe here on this . . . carpet. Even that felt too nice for her.

The bed was huge. She was pretty sure that there wasn't a sheet category for the oddly shaped thing, a sort of semicicular wedge designed to fit into the acute angle of the vertices's of the wall (A/N: too...much...math...jargon...for..summer...). The rooms in Hunny's house were all modern and cold, completely at odds with his energetic character, and she found hers frankly bewildering. One of her walls was a window—the entire thing. It stretched from floor to ceiling, wall to wall. The sunlight steaming in highlighted all the sharp angles of her new room, all the stark colors. How strange. She would have pinned Hunny for classical.

And she had a walk-in closet, all to herself. There were three small closets in her closet, actually. Closets in her closet. She couldn't believe it.

If it had been anyone but Hunny, she would have been muttering her charming refrain of 'rich bastards', but Hunny wasn't trying to showcase his wealth, but anxiously welcome her, and she felt an affinity for the little Host more than any other students at Ouran. Except for Mori, of course. She just liked who used to be seniors—she really didn't have a title for them now, and she found that vexing.

Oh, and her bathroom. Not only did it have two separate facilities for bathing and showering, it also had a jacuzzi and a three sinks. Three! For a single person suite. Plus a shelf indented into the wall stacked with white, fluffy towels.

But she was kept from despairing over how she was spoiled for much longer in the form of Hunny bounding in, all smiles and dancing flowers.

"Haru, what are you doing on the floor?" he asked, puzzled.

"Um. Sitting," she stated the obvious.

"There are chairs for sitting, Haruhi." His voice implied he worried for her mental health.

"They're too nice."

This he got in an instant, and he giggled, an all-out, fifth-grader giggle.

"You're silly, Haru," Hunny said, but plopped down on the floor opposite—Haruhi was struck but the thought that maybe he preferred to sit this way too. "Mori gave me a list," he explained.

"A list."

He nodded vigorously.

"To be a good foster father, I have to make sure everything is okay." He stumbled a bit with the last part of his sentence, as if he didn't really believe it himself, and pulled a yellow, lined piece of paper clearly ripped from a legal pad and unfolded it.

Haruhi repressed the urge to smile. Mori was like the anxious parent, leaving Haruhi with an irresponsible babysitter, along with a list of instructions. She also reflected that this was the second time that day she'd made a babysitter comparison.

"Okay," he said. "School. You're going to Ourin, right?" He frowned, but she pretended not to notice.

"Yes."

"Well, I'm signing you up for Ouran."

Haruhi spluttered.

"I'm sorry, what?"

Hunny looked pleased with himself.

"As your temporary legal guardian, it's my choice where you go to school, and I don't approve of Ourin. So you're going to back to Ouran and be happy again."

She wished it was as easy as he said it was. Go back, be happy, no strings attached. Breaking a friendship and breaking a heart didn't even come into the equation. Easy, like crayon scrawls on paper.

"Please don't, Hunny," she begged. He looked at her for a second.

"Fine," he said. "I don't like it when you're sad, Haru-chan."

"I don't like it when you're sad, either," she said, and he hugged her. No surprises on who initiated, but what did surprise him was what force she exerted when hugging him back.

They sat there for a while, awkwardly hugging each other, before relinquishing each other and laughing nervously.

But then Hunny went back to his legal paper, and either he had grown up a lot since she had seen him last, or there had always been some smart eighteen year old below, because they chatted and laughed and went over her list of instructions, and Haruhi saw Hunny in a new light, as a person and not a charge, and she thought, maybe, living with him wouldn't be so bad.

Another short-ish chapter. Ah, well. You'll live.

I remind you that these chapters only came into being BECAUSE YOU REVIEWED. Without the feedback, I'm at a loss at what to write. It's odd, but it's true, and if you've ever posted a story, you know how infuriating it is when no one gives reviews.

& I have an idea as to what to do to persuade you to review. If you review with an alias/name you can be called by, after the final chapter I'll add one in which I'll write you into a romance scene with the Host of your choice. ;D I'll end up with a lot of pleas and it'll take a while to write up, but I'm going to do it because it seems like fun.

See you in August!

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