The Limits of Practicality
Chapter 1
Haruhi had been staring into her teacup for a long moment, the pink on her cheeks slowly spreading until it reached her ears. Finally, she dragged her eyes to his, because her frank manner wouldn't allow her anything else. She pulled a long, deep breath through her teeth, almost as if she were witnessing someone experience a particularly painful fall—or an excruciatingly humiliating faux pas.
"I need to ask you something, Kyoya-sempai." At last speaking, her voice was measured, even, betraying none of the qualms he could read so easily on her face.
He cocked an eyebrow at her and waited.
Rather, he continued to wait, he realized in that analytical part of his head that never turned off. They had been dancing around this confession for weeks. He had to admit, she had taken rather longer to reach this point than he had calculated. As always, her fortitude against his machinations impressed and ever-so-slightly irritated him.
She had not paid off her debt by the time she had graduated from Ouran. He had planned it just so, adding to her balance at every opportunity. Mostly the opportunities were provided by the twins' careless antics, as beyond occasional clumsiness (and frequent but harmless cluelessness), Haruhi was very careful to provide Kyoya with no excuses to increase the original eight-million-yen debt. He'd had to get a tiny bit creative in keeping her.
At first, of course, the chance to both have the power of revealing the accidental secret of her gender and the thought experiment of adding her as a variable to the known equation of the host club was enough to make him ensure her continued presence. Despite his wide net of influence, Kyoya had no previous ties to the commoner world beyond the connections of his family's staff, and using them in such a manner would have been terribly inelegant. But the Fujiokas did not depend on Ootoris for their livelihood, which made it a tad less unfair to keep them as cards in his hand. He hadn't taken advantage of those cards too much, beyond occasionally collecting gossip from Ranka about some of the wealthy patrons of Ranka's workplace.
As for Haruhi herself, he actually hadn't taken too much advantage of his ability to blackmail her if he so chose. He did sometimes accompany her to expositions after he had realized the duplicity of some vendors claiming to sell high-value items. There had been no further incidents where he had felt the need to intervene on behalf of the Ootori Group's interests, however—most scams he'd encountered were of the inconsequential variety.
Nevertheless, as her time at Ouran passed, her debt grew. It had been easy to keep abreast of the happenings of the host club—Kaoru and Hikaru were not exactly reticent to share. It had been even simpler to make the occasional offhand comment to the first-year member who had taken over Kyoya's position as vice president after his own graduation. He had chosen his successor carefully, a young man who was not terribly observant, but who had a good memory for details and a shrewd sense of self-interest. The boy's family manufactured service vehicles. Service vehicles that included the Ootori Group's ambulance fleet and the fleet of their private police force. It had not been a subtle choice on Kyoya's part, but it was effective enough.
Now, Haruhi tripped on her own inhale and made a hiccupping sort of cough. She took a sip of tea and tried again.
"I've been spending a lot of time here," she began.
It was interesting, Kyoya noted, that her word choice was not I've been spending a lot of time with you. He had purchased her debt upon her graduation, and as a gift to her for maintaining her position as top student, had lowered her interest rate by a full percent. After all, paying off the debt was a matter of principle, but it wouldn't do to have a university student acting as the host club's dog. Acting as his dog, however…
When he said nothing to help her ease into the conversation, Haruhi huffed in frustration, blowing a bit of hair out of her eyes. She really ought to get it cut—it was getting quite ragged again. The Hitachiins would be appalled. But she never had the time!
"Look, senpai. I've been here every break and most weekends for the last year and change. Even evenings sometimes. I do your shopping, laundry, cooking, and cleaning. Pretty much if I'm not studying, I'm here."
Kyoya sniffed delicately. "I do permit you to join me for meals and include your laundry with my own. I could require you to take care of your errands on your own time," he reminded.
Haruhi snorted inelegantly. "My roommate called me Hiroe last week. That's not even close!"
Was that mirth ticking Kyoya's mouth up at the corners? Rich bastard.
"The point is," she ground out, "I don't have a life outside of you."
His smirk widened marginally.
Haruhi hurried to add, "and my studies! It's not like I don't hear my classmates talking about their social lives. Their friends and… and… parties. Outings?"
"Outings, hmm?"
The flush that had long-since reached her ears began to seep down her neck.
"Shut up, Kyoya-senpai. You know what I mean," she grumbled.
Oh, this was fun. "Ah. So what you are saying is that I am the entirety of your social life?" He adjusted his glasses, knowing the carefully chosen lighting in his apartment would make them flash at her. "You make that sound like a bad thing."
"Well, no," she backtracked. Her eyebrows knitted together, alerting Kyoya to her regret, her concern that she may have… what? Hurt his feelings? "I may not appreciate being the reason you don't have to hire a maid, but that doesn't mean I dislike spending time with you."
Ah, now we're getting somewhere. "Then what is the issue, Haruhi? Are you envious of your friends who get to go to parties?"
"Not exactly." Now her blush had very nearly met the collar of her baggy crew-neck tee shirt. It painted the hollow of her throat a charming cherry blossom pink before sweeping below her collar, undoubtedly to her collarbones and perhaps…
"End of semester exams are coming up!" she exclaimed abruptly, her voice raising nearly to a shout.
Huh? "So, you need more study time," Kyoya hazarded. "You know you are welcome to study here." Why bring up her lack of social life if what she wanted was more time to study?
"I already do! And that's not the issue anyway!"
At some point, Kyoya had lost control of the direction of this conversation, maybe even lost the thread of it.
"Explain it to me." He had turned his host voice on, the tone charming and cajoling. Haruhi knew damn well it was still a command, but couldn't the bastard see she was trying? She took several deep breaths, counted slowly to ten. It didn't help her frustration at all, but it allowed her the time to call up her own host training, and a serenity appeared to wash over her features.
"I can't focus!" she growled in spite of herself. Kyoya held her gaze silently, in that way of his that meant he would have been rolling his eyes if such a lowbrow affect weren't beneath him.
"Haruhi. I have no damn idea what you are talking about."
His churlish tone shattered her irritation. Was there anything in the world worse to Kyoya Ootori than not knowing exactly what was going on? With as many cards as he had stacked against her, her occasional ability to set him off-balance was her one ace up her sleeve, even if she only ever played it unintentionally.
"I study here or at my dorm. Or I am here, cleaning up after you. You really are a slob, you know. Most people wouldn't guess that."
"Haruhi."
She busied herself refreshing his tea, giving her hands something to do. Driving him crazy at having to wait was just an added benefit.
"I run your errands, or I check on Dad to make sure he hasn't shopped himself out of house and home and is eating something that doesn't come out of the microwave once in a while. It doesn't leave a lot of time for me to… to be a university student.
Kyoya wondered how going to and studying for her university classes and living in a university dormitory failed to make her a university student. His head was starting to hurt.
"My roommate has a boyfriend, you know."
He levelled his gaze to her. "Why on earth would I know that? And why would you think I should care?"
She shrugged. "You know everything else about the people around me." He had to concede it was mostly true. And he had looked into Honoka Ruiko when she had been assigned Haruhi's roommate at the beginning of her first year at university. The girl's mother managed a chain convenience store. The father was a low mid-level bureaucrat. Lower-middle class family of decent stock and no interest to Kyoya at all.
"So, Ruiko-san has a boyfriend. That's lovely for her. So what?"
Haruhi shrugged maddeningly. "They are cute. They seem happy when they are together. I learned…" She paused to swallow and winced. "I learned what a scrunchie on the doorknob means."
Understanding flooded Kyoya, along with relief that he finally knew what they were talking about again."
"You want a boyfriend, too," he stated, satisfied, only for her to scoff at him.
"Hardly. I told you I don't have time for that. Someone keeps their pet dog on a rather short leash. And exams are coming up. I need to focus on my studies."
She met his eyes meaningfully. "I can't focus on my studies, Kyoya-senpai."
This conversation was not going at all the way Kyoya had planned. It was true he kept her here at his apartment, to the point that he considered one end of the sofa hers. He chose to place his own chair directly across from it, so if he happened to glance up from his own studies or business, she would be right in his line of sight. Sometimes she fell asleep over a case study, and her head would tip down and toward her left shoulder. Sometimes her mouth would fall open just a little bit.
In any case, she was meant to be confessing to him now. Cute, shy Haruhi was supposed to be telling him she liked him. Instead, he got this embarrassed but determined Haruhi, who was also familiar, but was not one to ask him to date her.
She continued, "I know you mean to come across as dark and clever rather than kind, but really you're just practical. I admire that about you, that you can prioritize so single-mindedly. I need to be practical right now, too. I don't have time for a boyfriend, but I don't want to miss out on what it's like to be a university student, either. And I need to focus on my studies, though that's been hard lately."
Again with the university student stuff. What the hell what she talking about?! He took a sip of tea to hide his annoyance.
Haruhi sucked in one final, steadying breath and got to the heart of it. "So, I was thinking, um, something like a boyfriend, but without the time-consuming part… And you can be practical about these things… Ugh, I don't know why this should be so hard to say to you. You of all people should understand. That is, thinking about my classmates and Ruiko-san having boyfriends makes me want some of those experiences myself. But it would need to be someone who would get that I can't date right now. It would need to stay, just, well, friendly. And I'm here all the time anyway."
She caught Kyoya taking a sip of tea, and it very nearly went up his nose. He dabbed it with a linen napkin.
"To be clear, Haruhi, you are asking if we can be friends with benefits, yes?"
A/N: Oh hi! Thank you for reading this far! I'm using this story as an exercise to practice writing sex scenes, so please let me know how those are once things get a little more lemony. Praise, criticism, and suggestions would all be enormously appreciated! This and chapter two both ended up being quite short, so I'm going to post chapter two immediately after this one.