Disclaimer I don't own any of the HYD characters nor the original plotline of HYD, but I certainly own this particular plot and all the characters I created for it...

The ending verse is from the song "Dinner at eight", from Rufus Wainwright. I don't own it – it's quite obvious, though I wish I did since it's a most beautiful song.

Thanks : to my reviewer Juliana for having taken the time to type encouraging comments after chapter 10. I'm not going to let this fic rot : I have something close to obsessional behaviour : I won't stop until I'm satisfied with this fic... And I have to make my ideas as believable as possible, and it's not always that easy... ;o)

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11-What can happen in a few weeks

The following weeks were pretty calm and undisturbed. It was soon to be the summer break, and everyday went pretty smoothly. Sophie and Tsukushi were becoming closer and closer friends with each passing moment, and they spent a great deal of time together. Besides, Sophie had finally managed to get rid of the headaches that she got on a daily basis at the beginning of her stay for being in an all-Japanese environment, and that had allowed the girls to diversify their activities in their time together.

Quite unexpectedly, Soujiro had taken a – friendly – liking to the girl, whom he liked to tease and make fun of as often as he could – she reacted so quickly and with so much outrage at his remarks that he found it really funny. Most of the time, their exchanges were lively and ended by her threatening to pull his hair off his head with tweezers or him saying he'd never let himself 'talk to that crazy irrational girl' again. It was the first time, since Tsukushi had entered the F4 lives at least, that he managed to simply befriend a woman, without any ulterior goal to it. Sure, she was violent, hyperactive and an exhausting chatterbox, but he liked her constant good mood, her permanent laughters, the sparkle in her eyes and her witty way of seeing everything in her life. He could even forget that she could be beautiful when she wanted to, since she never made any effort concerning her looks when she was with them, and that she preferred large clothes to mini-skirts when she had her word in the matter – after all, clothes are meant to be comfortable, aren't they ?

Since it was quite clear she disliked strongly the playboy way of life, and though she would give no other reason for this dislike than she thought it offending to womankind, there was an unsaid pact between the two of them that he would never try to hit on her, and that she would avoid to meet his dates when it was possible. She had tried to lecture him once or twice to get him to settle for 'a real relationship with a real girl', but it was no use – Soujiro maintained he was too young to settle for anything : she found he was quite resilient about his one-week rule. And his maintaining that he never went after women that had real feelings towards him somehow pacified her a little with his habits.

She and Rui were quite a different story. She liked his calm and quiet ways – his simple presence could make her significantly quieter and calmer than she usually was. He had a soothing effect on her and her mind. And his knowledge of France and of French were always great – she missed her country very much, and enjoyed talking of it with someone who knew what she was talking about. And someone to whom she could speak in her own language.

As he had discovered during their first meeting, Rui liked her : her liveliness had the same effect on him than Tsukushi's – they made him laugh, they made him feel alive, and had this positive effect on his overall mood. And now that there were two of them, he was hardly so melancholic anymore : he didn't really have the time to be. He missed Shizuka more and more as their separation was lasting more time, but his growing to be friends with Sophie helped him deal with it a bit. He actually felt closer to Shizuka now that he had this link to France. He often surprised himself by telling the young girl about how he missed Shizuka, and how much he wanted to go to her, to see her in Paris. He didn't know why he let himself tell her so much about himself – it was so not like himself to talk about his life.

Maybe that was because she was such a good listener, maybe that was because he could sense she had a frailty behind all the bravado and smiles that made her kind of like him in a weird way, or maybe that was because she would make him talk, asking the right questions at the right moment. He didn't really know why he felt he could talk to her, and it didn't really matter – because in the end, the result was the same. His friends were amazed of the effect that Makino's and Dessay's arrival in the quiet and reserved boy's life had had on his usual mood. When Soujiro wasn't suspecting that either one or the other would smack his head for saying so – either because they were not there or they were too tired to bother with anything else than graphic threats –, he would actually say that it could easily take two hysterical woman like those to wake up a narcoleptic like Rui.

Tsukasa had taken more time than the previous two to accept the young woman in their circle. Sure, he had stopped suggesting the red tag after his birthday party, but he still did not see so favorably his Tsukushi spend so much time with that 'crazy psycho' girl, as he fondly described her. He didn't really appreciate being called 'cactus flower', since it didn't really inspire much respect. But Sophie could not prevent herself to make fun of the boy calling themselves the 'Flower 4' : she maintained that true manly men would never want to be named after flowers, but insisted that they ought to associate with specific flowers to live up to their group nickname, and she had decided that Tsukasa could not be compared to anything else than a cactus flower. Anybody can guess he didn't like the comparison much, and spent much time trying to shut her up one way or another.

Besides, from what he could tell, she was new money, and not that much new money at that. And she had that bad influence on Makino – they studied together at nights instead of going out with him and the F4. And since she wasn't alone to resist the calls, Tsukushi gave in to their requests a lot less often than before. Tsukasa tried to get Soujiro to 'influence the crazy Frenchie', but the playboy usually shrugged and laughed at the idea of making Sophie do anything she did not wish to do herself in the first place – 'as stubborn as any mule', according to him. Then he would just go and make another of his comments about 'hard working virgins in league being worse than taken apart', which, if said in their presence, would make him the subject of murderous glares and sometimes more direct proofs of resentment.

What of Akira in the matter? Sophie had accepted that they had friends in common, and that they would have to meet on a regular basis because of that, but, when that happened, she would ignore him more often than not, and discourage any attempts at peace he would try to make towards her with ironic remarks and disapproving glares. He tried to understand why she could resent him that much, but he couldn't, especially when he saw her becoming closer and closer to Soujiro. He hated seeing them spend so much time together and laugh at the same jokes, though he would have been at a loss to justify this feeling. Her icy coldness – unjustified if you listened to him – hurt him somehow, though he'd never admit it aloud.This couldn't be jealousy – how could he be jealous of that over-excited brat that refused to consider anything he said or did as other than moronic? Besides, he never had so many conquests in so little time – Soujiro's one-week rule seemed like a long term commitment compared to the speed at which women passed in his life and in his bed.

If asked about it, he would say he just felt like it, that it was a phase, that it had happened before, that it was fun. But it was more as if he had to bed more women to prove to himself something that never even felt real afterwards – that he was irresistible. He could not figure out why the quantity of women he invited in his bedroom didn't help him to just... go on with everything. That's how he had always dealt with his moments of insecurity – those he seduced proved to him that he existed, in a way, that he was wanted – hence, the more bedmates the better. But, those days, it didn't really help him to feel any better about himself, especially when he could see the image he gave through the eyes of someone who disapproved so completely of who he was, of what he was, of everything he stood for. Seducing, especially for those who make a such a sport of it, is really about seeking approval in someone else – being denied this kind of approval is all the more difficult to handle when you've based your life on winning it. And when you feel that failing to obtain this approval makes you void of meaning. The defiance and coldness of Sophie towards him just stirred this latent insecurity inherent to all serial seducers, and the fact she seemed to approve of his playboy alter ego – even if only on a friendly level, for what do we seek in friendship but approval ? – just gave more strength his inner feeling of helplessness. So he bedded more women than ever, but it did not help him at all – it even made things worse, even if he would never admit it.

As for Soujiro, he had to confess to himself this whole friendship thing had not started out of the pure kindness of his heart – accordingly to what Akira had surmised, he had approached Sophie that night at the party because he thought it would be funny to seduce her just 'like that', where his companion in vice was struggling so much to get her to be merely civil with him. He had used what he had learned from Akira's misadventures : no mock-love nicknames – just her own name, no misplaced hands, no obvious coming on to her – just himself at his sweetest, and his funniest, to avoid scaring her away. But as he himself had remarked before, the problem with this kind of girls is that they don't fall fast nor easily : you spend enough time trying to get them to like you to learn to know them, to respect them, to care for them in the process – and then you don't want to destroy them just for a whim's sake. At least when you still have a soul – and Soujiro prided himself in having a highly developed ethics on womanizing : only bed those you deem brainless and unable of true feelings.

Anyway, nothing in her attitude suggested that she found in him anything more than a good friend – she had that strange tendency to consider every man that became her friend a walking teddy-bear. And as any wise guy knows, once you've landed in the 'friend zone', it's way too late – or way too early – to make a move. So he had discovered that she was more that a pair of long legs, a slender body and silky curly hair – she was this unnerving girl that loved to startle people with sudden noisy appearances, that girl who thought you could put Teryaki sauce on nearly anything and make it taste better, that girl who always found something funny or strange to say, and that girl who knew so well how not to be girly at times, that it was kind of disturbing. And before he knew where he was headed, he cared enough about the girl to be sure he didn't want Akira to keep trying to exert his revenge on her. Well, of course, the woman could be real annoying at times, especially when she decided she had to lecture him about his choice of lifestyle, but, well, he had soon realized that he wouldn't have had her otherwise.

Akira had managed to convince Rui to teach him a bit of French, under a ridiculous pretense none of two were fools enough to believe, but the young Hanazawa always found it more problematic than not to say 'No', so he rarely refused his friends a favor he could easily grant. Akira struggled with the language, but he was making progress well enough, except on the matter of his accent – it remained quite dreadful, no matter how hard he tried to imitate the sounds that Rui was uttering. He kept his attempts from Tsukasa and Soujiro, lest they might laugh at him or turn his tries to ridicule.

In the meantime, he had stopped his more direct attempts towards Sophie – he told himself he was waiting for an opening. And he was betting his lucky star would not forsake him completely, and that it would come soon. At any rate, he wanted to be ready for it when it came – hence the French lessons, since he way trying to charm a French girl. Talking her language could not harm – it could only help, but it would be better if he managed to drop part of his thick accent.

No, no girl would ever be able to say she had succeeded in resisting Akira Mimasaka's seduction – he was determined not to let it happen, for he was sure to be the ultimate seducer. And the more he saw her growing friendship with all his own friends, and her constant disdain and exasperation with him, the more he was decided she needed to change her opinion of him. Then again, the endless stream of womanizing he indulged in these days didn't help at all in her eyes.

But she would see. She would fall. She would stop looking down on him as a moron. Because he would make her see. He would make her fall. He would make her look up to him. He would.

"No matter how strong,
I'm gonna take you down,
With one little stone.
I'm gonna break you down,
And see what you're worth,
What you're really worth to me"

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Okay... Not the greatest chapter ever, but I'm amazed at the difference between what I believe and what the statistics tell me – apparently people love chapter 4 (it has been loaded twice as much as chapter 8 for example) but dislike chapter 7, which I think is the best... I cannot say anything about chapter 1, because, well... people have to load it to access the rest... But still, it's strange !

Sorry for the inconsistent blabbering... My brain is suffering form a very bad case of exhaustion – too much work in a Molecular Biology lab will usually do it... ;o)

And as always, please review if you have time, it helps me and it makes me happy to have some feedback... You're nice people, you want me to be happy, don't you ?