The next few weeks went by much more smoothly. No one new found out, as far as we knew, Haruhi's leg was out of it's brace and she was ecstatic. But my favorite thing was that Haruhi and I were doing better and better every day as a couple.
Each day she got more and more comfortable being in my home. Each day I got more comfortable sharing space with her, but what I thought was the most important to the health of our relationship, is that we were much more comfortable being away from each other. We no longer felt like we had to do every single thing together.
We'd started an unspoken schedule for our day. We'd wake up together, it would switch whose bed we were in, but we were always together. We'd get ready, and go to school. We spent most of the school days apart, other than lunch and Host Club. We left together every night, everyone being aware that I drove Haruhi home every day. When we got home, we'd normally hang out for a little while, watching television or something similar. Eventually she'd get up to go do her school work, so I'd always do the same. Whichever one of us finished first would go into the others room and just be in there with the other while they worked. Not bothering them. When I went into her room, I'd normally sit on her bed and work on Host Club things, which to my surprise, she'd started helping with.
She helped me pick out locations for trips, some themes for dress up days, and her personal favorite, picking food for those dress up days.
I loved her more and more every day, and from what she'd told me, she felt the same.
This particular day, I was doing some budget related things for the club, while she was sitting on her knees on the bed, wearing only very cute underwear and the new glasses I'd gotten her, folding laundry (a thing which she insisted on doing herself) and watching television. I was watching her from her desk, giving me a nice profile view. Being quiet, I took out my phone and took a picture of her. Candid pictures of her were always my favorite.
"Not allowed to be your wallpaper on our phone." She said, not looking away from the shorts she was folding. I was pretty much positive she hadn't seen me…
"I was unaware you had eyes on the side of your head." I told her, putting away my phone.
"Twins and Tamaki. They'll give you 360 vision after a while." She responded, pretty genuinely.
"I wasn't going to use it as my wallpaper anyways." I smiled. "I quite like the one I already have." I had a regular, basic lock screen photo, but my current wallpaper was a selfie Haruhi had taken a week prior of the two of us while we were at a mall. It wasn't a good picture by any means, but she looked really happy in it. I'd just bought her a fancy drink she really wanted. She got strawberry, and I had gotten myself a matcha one. The picture was just of her smiling with her drink, with me not too far in the background with mine, awkwardly posing for her picture.
I'd never taken her for the photo type, but I was really glad that she was. I had a small album at that point of just the two of us. A nice portion being photos of her I'd never let the other hosts see under any circumstances. Even if Kaoru keeps asking. He doesn't actually think I have any, but I get questions and comments about it a lot. It was basically my penalty for making him keep the secret.
We'd talked a lot about telling everyone, we just hadn't figured out the timing yet. There were a lot of "what if's" we had to figure out. What if Tamaki gets glasses-breakingly angry again? What if Hikaru finds out Kaoru knew? How would the girls take it? Honestly, they'd probably be really into the idea. Kaoru said they'd start calling us "HaruKyo" or something like that. And that Renge would make us merchandise. We joked about that a lot.
I closed my laptop and went and helped her fold. It was a Sunday morning, around ten in the morning. I looked at her. "Would you like to go to that newer mall I was telling you about?" I asked. We'd been going shopping kind of a lot. She donated all of the clothing her father had picked out or bought for her. So, we'd been slowly replacing pretty much her entire wardrobe. I was trying very hard to not just buy her a whole closet of designer clothing. She just seemed happier with mid-range type things. I told her she wasn't allowed to purposefully only buy budget clothing. I wanted her to at least have relatively nice things, and she seemed okay at the middle ground.
"Yeah, actually! I'd love to! I've seen this episode of this show anyway." She said, happily. "Let me get dressed really quick!" She said, getting up and walking over to her closet. I had a feeling she'd say yes, so I'd already gotten dressed.
She walked up to me with two outfit options in her hands. "Pick one." She said. One was a pair of denim high waisted shorts and a loose fitting white cropped t-shirt. The other was a blue mid-thigh length t-shirt dress. I sat and thought for a minute, and pointed at the dress. Haruhi had really found her style through all of these shopping trips. I don't think her father really took her shopping much. She just wore whatever she could find. Her style had landed in a place that was a mix of flattering and comfortable. Lots of basic t-shirts and jeans. But she was figuring out how to style the basics really well. She'd even let me pick out a few more complex things.
She quickly threw the dress on, and started fumbling around with her hair in the mirror, putting it in a very short little ponytail in the back, and pinning the pieces that wouldn't fit back. She looked over at her contact case for a moment, looked back to the mirror, and then back at the case.
"I think the glasses look cute with your hair like that." I told her, truthfully. She smiled and walked away from the mirror. She grabbed the bag I'd gotten her last week, a very small black leather bag that was technically a purse, but was more like a tiny backpack. She used it pretty much every time we went anywhere but school.
"Okay. Ready." She stood in front of me, still sitting on the bed. I stood up and kissed her.
"You look beautiful, as always, Love." She smiled and blushed a little. She was still very bad at taking compliments. She grabbed my arm and pulled me down a little bit, so she could comfortably reach my head. She ran her fingers through my hair, then tousled it a little bit.
"There. It looked a little too perfect, you know?" I smiled.
"Thank you." I said, kissing her again. I held her hand as we walked to the car, then did the same as we went from the car to the mall.
We spent about two hours shopping. She'd gotten a couple warmer pieces, sweaters and the like. I was planning on getting her a nice winter coat soon, too. She got two pairs of shoes, one a pair of heels she liked, to my surprise. But not to my complaint. She looked incredible in them.
She'd stopped trying to tell me I didn't need to buy her any piece of clothing she liked. She knew I'd just go off and do it myself if she didn't pick things out. She was still very sheepish putting things in our baskets though. It was very cute.
We were standing in line for a food place in the food court she really liked when my phone went off. I just ignored it so we could order.
We got our food and sat down across from each other. She always looked really happy when she had food. I already was planning on getting her ice cream from the place she liked before we left, too.
Not long after we'd started eating, we both got incredibly started by the Hitachiin twins, Kaoru quickly sitting by me, and Hikaru quickly sitting by Haruhi.
"Well, what brings you two to the mall today?" Kaoru asked. He kicked me under the table. I was starting to figure that that text I ignored was from him.
"Yeah! And why were we invited, huh?" Hikaru added.
"Oh you're wearing your glasses, Haruhi?" Kaoru asked, then looked over at Hikaru. "I thought some asshole broke them." He snickered at his brother.
"It was an accident, dude! She has already forgiven me and I refuse to relive the torture of being known as the glasses-smasher." Hikaru yelled back. Haruhi actually smiled.
"They're new, you assholes." She laughed.
"Hey wait." Hikaru said, putting her glasses off of her face.
"Hey! I need those!" She yelled at him.
"How the heck did you afford these? These are REALLY expensive frames…" He asked her.
"Oh shut up, I found the frames at a consignment shop, and had lenses made for them. Idiot." She said. She was apparently a way better liar than I had previously thought. I almost believed her, and I'm the one who bought them. She snatched them back and put them back on.
"You actually look pretty cute today, Haruhi." Kaoru said, smirking at his brother. This was revenge for me not looking at my phone, I was convinced of it.
"I have to agree, you actually look…" Hikaru trailed off for a second. "...like a girl for once!" He finished. Kaoru gave him a look I couldn't read.
"Can I eat my damn food?" She said to them both, taking a bite as she gave them a flawlessly executed death glare.
"Fine, we'll annoy the other one." Kaoru said. I raised an eyebrow.
"The other one, hm?"
"What are you guys even doing here together?" Hikaru asked.
Haruhi swallowed her food, and held up one of the bags on the floor. "Needed stuff and I don't drive. Needed a ride."
"I figured I'd stick around so she wouldn't have to find a ride home." I added.
"What did you need from THIS mall?" Hikaru asked. It was a higher end mall than she usually went too, so I assumed that's what he meant.
"Look, I'm trying to actually buy some nicer clothes, okay? Not that it's your business." She said, getting ready to take another bite of her food. Kaoru started going for one of the bags to look through. "I'll kill you." She said to him, right before eating her food. He dropped it back on the floor. It had happened to be the bag of a few pieces of lingerie I'd gotten her while she wasn't looking. She still didn't know about it, but that was a surprise for at home, so I was glad she chose that moment to threaten homicide.
I pulled my phone out and looked at the message while the twins and Haruhi talked.
"Hikaru and I are at this mall and found your car. Hikaru is on a mission to come annoy you."
Well that would have been nice to see. I set my phone on the table and excused myself to go throw away my trash. As I came back, Haruhi had finished hers too. "Hey, you ready to go? I have to get some stuff done at home tonight." Haruhi asked me. I nodded and grabbed her trash to throw away since I was already up. She picked up all of the bags, and said goodbye to the twins, who were still sitting at the table.
We started walking back to the car. "Well, I was going to surprise you with ice cream but the twins seemed to have ruined that plan." I told her.
"Oh! It's fine! Next time." She smiled.
I went to pull out my phone while we walked to find another ice cream place on the way home, but then I realised.
"I left my phone back on the table, wait here a moment." I turned around to quickly walk back to the food court.
The twins were still sitting at the table, Hikaru clearly trying to unlock my phone, and Kaoru just watching.
"Ahem." I said, behind Hikaru. "I believe I forgot my phone on the table." He slowly handed it up to me.
"I was just going to change Tamaki's name to something stupid." He defended.
I looked at my phone, and back at him. "And that was worth locking me out from too many failed passcode attempts for…" I looked at it again, "An hour and a half?"
"Sorry, senpai." Hikaru said sheepishly.
I told them goodbye again, and walked back to Haruhi. The two of us would decide how to punish him for trying to mess with my belongings on the car ride home.
I got back to Haruhi, and told her about Hikaru. She looked even more irritated than me. "They do that to me all the time. The record is locking me out for almost six hours."
As we walked to the car, I got a text, not that I could look at it, thanks to Hikaru.
I brought all of her bags in the house and to her room when we got home, leaving the one with the lingerie on her bed.
We ended up having a lovely time with it later that night.
Several hours went by, and I remembered I could finally use my phone again. I looked at the message I'd gotten hours ago.
From Kaoru. "How close was he to seeing nudes"
I stopped for a second. I hadn't even thought about that.
"Too close." I responded. He texted me back, almost immediately.
"I WAS KIDDING, WHAT?!"
I left him to think on that one, for a while.