A/N: GUYS GUYS GUYS I DIDN'T MEAN FOR THIS TO HAPPENED BUT IT HAPPENED AND NOW THINGS ARE HAPPENING AND-
I don't even know what's going on anymore, and this is my story, but I guess the new developments were screaming to be realized and thus, drama was born. Trust me, this chapter typed itself against my will, but as soon as the idea had been picked up I couldn't put it down anymore… sorry. Lol. BUT IT WAS FUN TO WRITE AND WILL ADD SOME INTERESTING DRAMA TO THE STORY … MAYBE.
So … um … if you hate it after reading it … review? Pretty please?
Also, I'm really sorry for disappearing for so long. I guess life happened and also decided to explode in front of my face without warning. Yeah. I'll try my best to update more regularly in the future, but this school year is crazy.
Disclaimer: I do not own Ouran, or Aaron would probably exist and wreck the entire plotline like he did just now.
The halls were empty, as it was summer and most of the students had gone home for the break. A fifteen-year-old girl was wandering the halls with a fifteen-year-old boy, pointing out the odd paintings and the overly serious portraits on the walls and occasionally running ahead just to hear the click clack of her high-heeled shoes against the marble floor. He followed her, coat draped over his shoulder, collar on the stuffy blue dress-shirt undone to let him breathe. The opera they'd gone to see together had been a long and overly fussy ordeal, but the music had made it well worth it. The two pianists had returned to the school campus exhausted, but content.
"Hey, Kiko, come here for a sec!" the boy called, running a hand through his curly, caramel hair, something she'd come to recognize as a nervous habit. She walked over to him curiously, enjoying the tap tap click clack of her heels against the floor. When she was arm's reach away, he looked away, as if avoiding her gaze. For a moment she wondered if he was just upset about her leaving so early. Ordinarily, she'd have stayed for the whole summer, but her parents were pulling her out early this year to prepare for her move to Japan and the various stops she'd make on the way for competitions and master classes and whatnot.
"Yeah? Are … you okay?" she asked, worried. Now that she was closer to his, she could see that he did look a bit red, and the opera house had been rather cold. Was he sick?
His eyes avoided her until the last minute, a clash of ocean blue connecting with her pale, icy eyes, and the look he was giving her sent the tap tap click clack from before echoing in her ears, this time uneven. Heartbeats. T-tap … t-tap … t-tap…
Suddenly he was reaching out to her, an arm on her waist, the other cupping her cheek, and his lips grazed hers in a chaste kiss, too gentle, too soft, too warm. He was scared, she could tell, and his nervousness almost convinced her to kiss back, just to bring back the bright, bubbly, smiling boy she'd come to like so much. Almost.
Like. Not love.
She wondered if it was enough. Maybe it was, for now.
And she wrapped her arms around his neck.
Tsukiko practically jumped out of bed the next morning when her alarm went off at 5:30 am, having been almost too shaken up by her dream to sleep afterwards. It was a memory, one that she'd tucked away in the back of her mind and forced herself to forget about. Until last night.
Shaking her head, she pinched her cheeks slightly to snap herself out of her thoughts. Daydreaming about something of the past would never get her through the day.
She took no time getting dressed and washing up, before skipping down the steps for a quick breakfast.
"Here's your breakfast this morning Shizukara-san. Fruit salad and a glass of almond milk, just as you requested," the house's main housekeeper, Shirako Mitsushi, said, passing her the tray of food with a wrinkled smile. "Oh, and your mother requested that I tell you when you woke up, she apologizes that she couldn't say goodbye to you last night. A sudden emergency came up at the main office of the printing and editing for some keyboard book, probably Chopin, she said. She promises to send mail and call as much as she can, but also said that her schedule would be blowing up around December," Mitsushi-san added, and Tsukiko nodded, having expected as much.
"Thank you for letting me know, Mitsushi-san. I'll be sure to send double the mail and call twice as much," Tsukiko joked, smiling. She took the food to the empty main parlor, where she often ate despite the odd looks she'd received from some of the younger maids when she'd insisted on eating alone there.
She enjoyed quiet during her breakfasts, it had been similar when she'd studied at the academy. She'd always wake up super early and make herself an early breakfast with whatever fruit was left in the student lounge, and then get a head start in the practice rooms. There was something about the quiet of early mornings that cleared her mind. It was refreshing.
It didn't take long for the fruit and milk to disappear, along with the dishes and tray that held them. Soon she was at the piano bench, fingers flying away across the keys as she ran through her warm-up scales and exercises. Practice went in much the same manner, efficient, but not skipping out on the time needed to secure something. She was thorough, having been trained to be, but not robotic. That was the last thing a musician wanted in their music.
She was done by 7:15, having gotten about an hour and a half on piano, a short practice, but enough to get some stuff done. Small practice sessions like this worked pretty well for her, since she often got impatient with things if she wasn't given breaks. It was part of the reason that she and Aaron had always gotten along. The two of them had always been getting into small trouble, but never anything too crazy. Just enough to keep them entertained, the both of them being as spontaneous and impatient as they were. That also served their friendship well too; they never had to wait for each other because they were both always trying to rush ahead and get the boring stuff over with, and then get to the fun stuff and do a bunch of what anyone else would see as weird and probably a little crazy.
Like having an ice-cream eating contest in the kitchens at midnight.
Or completely confusing the judges of a competition practice by playing all of the dynamics in the piece backwards, or even playing the piece backwards. (That one they'd done less often because it had basically called for rewriting the whole piece, which took much more time and tedious work than either of them had the patience for.)
Just as she had finished up remembering all of their crazy miniature adventures, she heard the doorbell ring.
Mitsushi-san reached it first, and Tsukiko had initially decided to let her handle whoever it was and tell them it was too early for a visit, until she heard the voice of the person at the door.
"Um … Tsukiko is up right? I heard the piano from the porch, sorry. Uh, can I speak with her? I actually don't have anyone to drive me to school today and she mentioned yesterday that she usually walks, so I was wondering if I could ask to join her?" Aaron had just finished saying when she peeked around Mitsushi-san, grinning.
"Morning, Aaron. Sure, I'll walk with you. Are you ready? I need to grab my bag but as soon as I've got that I'm ready to go," she smiled,switching over to English and gesturing towards the piano where she'd left her book bag.
Aaron's eyes widened when he saw her, probably because of the ridiculous Ouran uniform. She'd never been the type to wear the girly, frilly, ribbon-decorated stuff, and especially not yellow, and this uniform was all of those things.
"Pft, what is with that uniform? It's so not you! Oh yeah, and good morning Miss Frilly-Ribbony-Girly-Japanese-Porcelain-Doll," he chuckled, earning himself a mary jane heel stuck into the top of his foot. She smirked, the sweet taste of revenge written all over her face as he flinched in pain, trying not to show that he was actually suffering really badly. Thank you girly uniform with 1½ inch tall heels. At least they weren't four-inch stilettos.
"Uh huh. Right. Anyway, sorry I'm switching over to Japanese since you need practice, um … you want to walk to school with me, right? Do you have all your stuff and all that already? And it looks like you have your uniform, so that won't an issue," she mumbled, starting to feel rather out of things to say.
"Chill Kiko, I've got everything. You worry about your bag," he replied, using the nickname he's given her back in Germany when they'd studied together. Her Japanese name had felt out of place to pronounce at the time, so he'd often used the nickname instead.
She blushed, running off to grab her bag and skipping out the door ahead of his to hide the redness of her face.
"The school's this way, and we can get there in about fifteen minutes of we're taking out time, five if we jog. But class doesn't start for another hour and a half, so I usually get there early and mess around in the music rooms before class. The pianos there are as good as the ones that I have here at home, if not better," she said, kicking her legs out slightly as she headed down the street towards the school. Aaron smiled behind her, jogging slightly to catch up and walk beside her, to her right.
"So, will you introduce me to this host club that you've met? And the twins that you would never stop talking about in Germany when you first came? Kaoru and Hikaru, right?" he asked, and she nodded, grinning almost too widely for her face. She couldn't wait to introduce the twins to this guy. Hopefully they'd get along…
"Yeah, you'll love them. Hikaru is secretly a huge shojo fan, so you two will agree on a lot of things…" and thus her rambling about the twins began, and lasted them until they got the the front gate, where the more students were gathering to meet with classmates or spend some free time outside in the fresh autumn air before having to brave the stuffy indoors. There weren't that many people on campus yet, seeing as it was almost an hour before classes even started.
"Oh! Aaron, I forgot to ask your class! What class are you in?" Tsukiko suddenly asked, hopping slightly and stepping in front of his to face him.
They stopped, (seeing as Aaron didn't want to walk straight into Tsukiko) and he grinned, pulling out a slip of paper that read the class schedule for class 1-B.
"They put me in the same class as you since they know we went to the same music academy from checking my records. To help me 'adjust' and all that stuff," he smiled, putting the paper back in his pocket after she'd seen it and putting his hands on her shoulders, turning her around pushing her forward by force, as if he was teasing her.
"Hey!"
The two pianists turned, only for Aaron to be tackled away from Tsukiko by a pair of very fussy twins.
"Hands off our Tsukiko! She's ours, no touching," Hikaru snarled, and Kaoru wrapped his arms possessively around Tsukiko's shoulders. Aaron's expression, in any other situation, would have sent Tsukiko bursting into laughter. It was the most bewildered he'd ever looked; his hair was in complete disarray from being tackled, his mouth was wide open in mid-gasp/gape, and his eyes were so wide they looked like two huge, blue oceans separated by the landbridge of his prominently high-bridged nose.
"Are you okay Tsuki-chan? Did this pervert," Kaoru spit out the word like it tasted like poison,"try to hurt you or anything?"
Tsukiko sighed, wondering why she hadn't expected this.
"Guys, chill. This is my friend Aaron Walker from the academy in Germany. He was also the other transfer student that went to the England branch of the academy for a year, and I got to learn English while I was there with him. Hikaru, let go of Aaron, and Kaoru, I need to get to a music room to practice. Also, I'm not yours, I'm not Aarons, I can go walking with, holding hands with, hugging, kissing, and touching whoever I want because I am a free, independent woman and I don't belong to anyone," Tsukiko huffed, shrugging a more-than-slightly dumbfounded Kaoru off of her and pulling Aaron out of Hikaru's grasp, the older twin being equally dumbfounded.
"Sorry about that. I'm gonna ignore those idiots for a while, they've already managed to piss me off today. I'll properly introduce you to them when I've cooled off a bit, okay? I'm really sorry about that, they tend to get crazy when it comes to new people. They're world is ridiculously small, really," she sighed as they entered the building. She began to guide Aaron to Music Room #3, where she usually did a lot of her practice on the piano towards the left corner of the room. It was convenient because the room also had another piano behind the curtains separating the guests and most of the musical instruments and equipment. She hadn't even noticed that half of the room was covered until Kyoya had pointed it out to her to bring one for the pianos out for her new part-time job at the club.
"Are you okay? That was quite a speech you made for those twins back there," Aaron commented when she plopped onto one of the nearby sofas sitting almost directly in front of the piano and began to pull out music books from her bag. She stopped, briefly, and her eyes glazed over as if she was looking at something far in the distance, and then he saw her shake her head a bit and continue digging around in her bag for what was probably a thin Mozart score, based on the mumbling that he could hear coming from her general direction.
"I'm fine, I just need to cool off. Sorry your first day started off like this. Would you like to take the first turn on the piano? It's a lovely instrument, has the widest, fullest sound I've heard on anything smaller than a seven footer," she replied, not realizing she'd switched back to English. When the realization finally hit her she blinked, putting a hand over her mouth. "Hm. I'm getting really used to having you around. It's like academy days again. We'd always speak in English so that all the German students could tell what we were saying, remember?" she asked, smiling as he took a seat beside her on the sofa. He plopped down right beside her, accidentally grazing her skirt with his leg, and she scooted a good foot away from him, suddenly running out of things to say.
"Are we really gonna just ignore what happened the night before you left?" he asked, voice growing soft, another nervous habit. He scooted himself closer to her again, and this time she didn't run, choosing instead to curl up into a ball on the sofa, pulling her legs up to her chest.
"I … don't know. But I can't say that … I really minded it either… Of course, you'd have to ask for permission next time," she mumbled, burying her face into her knees.
"Then … can I kiss you right now?" he asked, and she looked up to find the same ocean blue eyes giving her the same look as that evening, in the empty hall that night this the tap tap tap of her heartbeat.
She slowly lowered her feet to the ground, nodding without really thinking, only to freeze when his hand touched her cheek, cupping her jaw with calloused fingertips.
What he did next was there and gone in a flash, and quite frankly confused Tsukiko to a point of speechlessness.
Her hand flew to her forehead, cheeks going red.
"Dude, either you're messing with me or you have really, really bad aim," she murmured, brushing her fingertips against the spot he'd kissed her.
"Naw, but you seemed kinda freaked out by the situation, and I didn't want to steal your second kiss in a way that made you so nervous," he shrugged, leaning back on the sofa and staring vaguely at the ceiling, smiling.
Tsukiko's heart was still echoing footsteps, but the color in her cheeks had calmed down a little, and her brain's geers had begun to turn again.
"I … yeah … sorry," she mumbled, and he chuckled lightly, putting an arm around her shoulder and playing with her hair a bit. Pianist's fingers ran through raven locks, and she shivered slightly, his touch sending tingles down her spine.
"Sorry, should I stop?" he asked, fingers pausing mid-way.
She shook her head slightly, letting him be. It was honestly kinda soothing, which helped after the emotional roller coaster that she'd been through just between waking up and that moment.
"Are we ever gonna get to actually playing the piano?" she asked suddenly, and he let out a short, annoyed whine.
"Nope. I finally get to cuddle with you after not seeing you for months. I'm not moving," he said firmly, and she laughed, grinning at how the comment made her feel warm and tingly.
The two of them stayed that way for a while, eventually getting up and messing around on the piano before going back to their spots on the sofa and leaning on each other's shoulders. Perhaps it had been the emotional stress of it all, but both musicians were really rather tired and thus fell asleep, Tsukiko's head on Aaron's shoulder, his arm around her, fingers tangled in her hair.
Little did they know, a certain pair of twins had decided to come to the club room to spy on Tsukiko's playing, only to find the two foreigners on the sofa. Asleep.
A/N: GUYS GUYS GUYS I REALLY PROMISE THAT I DIDN'T MEAN FOR IT TO HAPPEN I'M SORRY I KNOW! THE CHARACTERS MADE ME!
*Aaron snickers in the background*
HELP MEEEEEEEEEEE!
Also … Review! Please! I like talking to people! I am a lonely person!
And, here are the replies for the reviews on the last chapter.
lillyannp: Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed the chapter. :)
dkfan24: Yup, I'm synesthetic. It's a pain with crowds though, as you will see with Tsukiko later on. *hint hint hint* I'm so glad you're enjoying the story, I'm having a lot of fun writing it. Especially the musical aspects, and I've been worried about boring readers with those sections, so thank you so much for commenting on that! :D