A/N: I have a tendency to listen to listen to eighties music to put me in the mood for writing anything for this piece of work. XD I think it helps me get into the mood of that sort of time period. So maybe it'll help you too. Unless you don't even like that type of music. Then whatever. XD To answer a few questions:
Yes, this is totally AU. All of the gang knows each other, except Tamaki is not apart of this gang. He's new.
This is supposed to be set in America, somewhere long the eastern states.
I don't care much for Haruhi, but she's just the bad girl in this because there merely needs to be someone who is. XD
Onto the story!
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BGM: You Should Hear How She Talks About You – Melissa Manchester
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I don't even remember how long I was staring at the blonde before me. I didn't want to make myself obvious in the least, but it was sort of hard when he was so gorgeously handsome, and smiling at me, expectantly. His hair was really shiny in the dim lighting of the restaurant, and I vaguely wondered what kind of shampoo he used, until an elbow was jabbed painfully into my ribs. I turned to see April smiling at me with that ever-innocent smile of hers, a tick in her eyebrow. She seemed peeved to say the least. "Kaoru, why don't you order your drink already?"
I couldn't help but glare at her, and turned back to the patiently waiting blonde, who seemed to let out a small chuckle of sorts. He made my mouth go dry, and my heart race, which was ridiculous. I was a Hitachiin, damnit! We didn't get sprung off of random, good-looking, probably somewhat French waiters (his eyes were slightly slanted, so he was some kind of Asian, I could tell that much)! They get sprung off of us!
I murmured my order of a raspberry iced tea, watching him walk off with a permanent smile across his face. God, he practically glided across the floor back to the—
"Kaoru."
Ugh.
I turned my attention back to the people at my table, meeting each of their gazes. Just in case, well, I wasn't obvious enough. Haruhi was staring at me with a different twinkle in her eye, as if she had realized something. With my luck and her insight, she probably had. Whore. April seemed angry that I had just stalled, not that I was staring at some other guy on our sham of a date. Hikaru stared at me in wonder, head tilted ever so slightly to the side. He looked confused.
April broke the tension. "What a barney(1)!" She threw out carelessly, crossing one arm over the other. "Really. He didn't even really seem that good of a waiter." She began to talk with her hands, making my eyebrow tick. But I didn't say anything, and threw on a stoic face, tracing little patterns of circles and stars with my finger onto the solid before me. "I mean, he rarely said anything. He just waltzed over here and…"
While the girl next to me ranted on like that for a while, the rest of us ignored her pointedly and Hikaru stared at me from his place across me, the confusion still stuck on his face. Aha, he looked like a fish out of water; his mouth looking like it was going to form words only to close again. Haruhi stared at April like she was listening (though I knew she wasn't) and nodded occasionally at whatever she was talking about.
Fed up with the endless stream of stupidity that seemed to radiate from next to me, I opened my menu and stared at it, glancing over the words but not getting a real good look at them. I'd just order whatever Hikaru had, if he got anything at all. He seemed pretty out of it the whole day. And him and Haruhi had kept a good distance away from each other, not even holding hands. Just standing/sitting there with each other.
I decided not thinking about it helped me ease through the rest of this so-called date, and even managed to keep my eyes and mind in check when that gorgeous blonde came our way.
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The next date was probably even more eventful than the first. Instead of company from April that I could have received "I'm never going out with him anywhere again! He's so dull, Haru-chan!", there was a new girl. She seemed to take a liking to me, to say the least, and followed me like a puppy. It was sort of pathetic. So I managed to tell her that swimming bored me, and that I was going to go fall asleep in the sun somewhere. Though she seemed keen to follow me, she gave up with a bit of a pout and said she was going to go swim with Haruhi.
The date was set up at a pool in our city. I wore a simple pair of blue trunks, my twin in red. This was the only way to tell us apart when we went swimming, since our parts in our hair were matted down by the water of the pool.
I rounded the corner of one of the edges of the pool, a fluffy, green towel slung over my shoulder. My eyes were stuck on a particular Haruhi, who was talking to a girl whom stood next to her in the pool, her arms wrapped around one of Haruhi's. She hair was similar to Haruhi's in terms of color, but hung long and wet around her shoulders, to her sides. Chocolate bangs were slicked back, revealing the slightly tanned skin of her face, and a set of large, hazel eyes that didn't take change their course from Haruhi's face. Slim, curvy lips smiled at whatever Haruhi was telling her, the latter seeming to wear a slightly less enthusiastic, mirrored expression.
Weird.
Shrugging off the girl I'd never seen before, I walked over to where the cement ended and grass began, lying down my towel next to another which was undoubtedly my twin's, being it was the same as mine. I stretched my arms high above my head, a yawn escaping me. I hadn't the slightest clue where Hikaru was though that wasn't entirely true. He might have been going off the diving board., and swimming wasn't all that great without him. Most of this was because I didn't know HOW to swim. He was the only one who knew this though, besides Haruhi.
That damn girl knew everything.
With the girl whom seemed attached to my hip left to drown in a pool for all I cared, I decided I could just sun bathe or something along those lines. I laid myself down, belly towards the ground, on the towel. The warmth of the sun had already made moderately warm, and was working its way to comfort my back. I'd always had problems with sunbathing for some reason or another; the warmth of the sun always seemed to put me right to sleep. And then I burned. And then I was not a happy redhead.
That very unhappy redhead decided to show it's ugly head when I heard a giggle right next to my ear. Well, maybe it wasn't quite that close. But it was close enough to make me growl softly to myself before I got up to see who had ventured to even dare to sit so close to me in this state of being so comfortable. I could have killed whoever it was, really. Upon lifting my head in quite a lazy, cat-like fashion that everyone had pointed out I shared with my beloved twin, my eyes met with the small back someone, probably a girl, due to the fact that dirty blonde hair was evident all the way down to her back, pulled back in a low ponytail.
Gross me out.(2)
I was not all chill with having some random girl's body, especially her lower back, five inches from my face. Not cool.
With a snort, I rolled to my behind, glaring at the back of her head, which had hair that probably stood out a foot from her actual skull. Never understood girls with their huge hair. I stood, fully intent on making a big deal about me having to move away from her grodie behind. I was, I swear.
Up until I saw who was sharing a towel with her, of course.
Across from this big-haired ditz sat, with some twist of fate, the very waiter that was at the restaurant from my last 'date.'
He sat there, in all his blonde, French glory, smiling prettily at the girl across from him. She must have been talking, because he nodded and said some sort of input to the one-sided conversation where all girls complete tards when it came to one-on-one conversation?.
And then it happened again.
That unwanted feeling of butterflies, fingernails tickling at my insides, urging me to do dumb things that had even dumber consequences. It seemed it was already too late for that fickle notion of not making an airhead of myself.
The blonde caught me staring. Yet again. He cocked his head slightly to the right, then gave me one of those most flange smiles I'd ever seen. He had nice teeth…
And the prettiest violet-blue eyes I'd ever seen.
These eyes glanced at me, then down to his side. Then back up at me. I couldn't tear my eyes away, even if my gaze was becoming more confused by the moment. The more confused I got, the more sense he seemed to make of the situation, until he gave me a full-out grin. I was surprised the pretty betty(3) didn't notice, she just kept talking. She might have even talked a bit more, seeing the smile on his face as if it were directed at her.
With a flick of shining blonde hair, and a reach of his hand, he grabbed something beside him and extended it to me, grin still present as ever. I looked down to what he presented to me. Aloe Gator. Suntan lotion.
I didn't know whether to be annoyed or praising whatever god there was that he had taken my attention as wanting this bottle for my own expenses.
"You were staring at it, right?" His voice came boldly, smiles obvious in it as well. "And I seen you laying down here earlier. I didn't know if you wanted to borrow it."
Finally, the girl accompanying him turned to me, frowning for a split second upon seeing me, but then her face split into a similar smile. Maybe they were related. By the looks of the way their face was structured, it was starting to look like it. I put all my hopes into this thought, seeing as it was harder to get jealous over a relative than a friend or even… girlfriend.
"You could have asked earlier," the blonde female said, taking the lotion into her own hands when I didn't grab for it right away. Her voice had a slight accent, obviously French as well. She squirted some into her hands, rubbing it between her finely manicured fingers. "Turn around, honey. You're gonna end up burning your back without it."
Words couldn't describe how confused I felt about the situation. Tamaki was smiling still, almost idiotically so. I had glanced at up a few times more before obediently presenting my back to the blonde female, who didn't hesitate to rub the concoction into my already slightly tanned skin. More so than theirs, anyway. They were both extremely pale. I sat there, wedged in between the two of them on the long towel, feeling just a bit awkward. How had I landed myself in this situation? The thought of it suddenly hit me when --
"My name's Tamaki!" The male suddenly exploded, extending his hand to me. I already knew your name, gorgeous. You told me when you were waiting for us at that restaurant, remember? "And that's my sister. Her name's Faustine. But no one calls her that, since it's kinda weird, you know. So they call her Faus. You can call her that too, if you want to."
Wait, what?
I had trouble keeping up with his face-paced, excited talking, and the hand that I had been expected to shake hadn't left the vicinity of my personal bubble. So I reached out a hand and cautiously took his. The guy could talk about a million words per minute. Maybe that's where his sister got it from, since I had heard her earlier in talking in a similar fashion.
Once my hand was in his and he shook it with a both gentle yet firm grip, another was slapped against my apparently lotion-applied back, and his sister Faus (probably French) spoke next, "There ya go. All ready to sunbathe. You could join me if you want."
I moved to the side to sit in a sort of triangle shape with them instead of between them, mumbling my thanks and bringing up amber eyes to see Faus give me a wink as she brought out a pair of sunglasses. But she didn't put them on. Instead, they just stared at me expectantly. And then I realized with an inner 'oh' just exactly they were waiting for.
"I'm Kaoru." I said in return to their introductions, though mine was a bit late. "I'm here with my twin, and his girlfriend." I didn't dare mention that I also had a date, though I could see her to the right of my peripheral vision, smacking a beach ball straight into the unsuspected face of the company of Haruhi.
"You're Japanese, aren't you?" Tamaki inquired, ever captain obvious. His excitement seemed to tone down a bit, and he didn't seem like the earlier three-year old he'd let himself to be seen. "I'm half Japanese too! Half French though, you know. Me and Faust here have the same mother, but different fathers. My father was Japanese, actually! Probably in Japan somewhere. Dunno where though. Faust here has a French father, so she's French born and rai…"
"Chill, Tamaki. No need to give him our life story." Faus interrupted with a wave of her hand, giving me a tight smile. Touchy subject?
There was a bit of an awkward silence, one in which Tamaki had made failed attempts to spice up the conversation. How'd I end up here anyway, with the object of my lust sitting to my left and his sister to my right? This had to be fate, or maybe it was bad luck. I was thanking every god I knew of that my swimming suit had stayed quite comfortable, not too tight. If you get what I mean.
And now a trip away from my ever-hormonal teenage boy mind.
I was saved by a quite ironical voice, and I heard dripping behind me that accompanied the voice. And giggling. High-pitched giggling. Coming from more than one girl. Sigh.
"Oh, Kaoru! You made friends all by yourself," came a voice, laden with enough sarcasm to sink a ship. Haruhi, you oh-so-clever bitch. I felt my fists tighten in response to her. And the giggling! It would not stop! "Why don't you introduce us?"
I turned to give the girl a sharp eye, knowing exactly what she was playing at. Being Haruhi Fujioka, she was queen at insight and knowing what was there when most could not see it with brightly colored signs. She would be the only one at the restaurant, out of both April and Hikaru, whom would suspect that I felt anything for this blonde beauty. And since here she was, seeing me with him yet again, the evidence was just too clear in her eyes. She may be good at reading people and their emotions, but little did she know how transparent she was to me.
"Tamaki, Faus, this is my twin's… girlfriend. Haruhi." I offered, idly flicking imaginary dirt out of my fingernails. "Those are her friends." Bimbettes, the lot of them.
Tamaki gave her an award-winning smile, offering his hand to her as well. "Nice to meet you too, Haruhi." She took it, of course, batting her large, brown eyes at him.
"The pleasure's mine, really." She said coolly, taking his hand in her own dainty one. She offered a brief smile to Faus, whom accepted it with a tight smile of her own. Maybe I would like this girl.
"You know," Haruhi continued, "The gang is having a party tomorrow tonight at Hikaru's – my boyfriend – house. And it would be bangin' if you two could come or something." She let her hand slip out of Tamaki's finally, tucking a strand of her short, brown hair behind her already sun-burned ear. I guess she didn't think of all the places the sun could get her. Or something.
Faus was about to object, it seemed, but Tamaki responded with a smooth answer of, "We'd be honored, princess."
The hell? Princess? I groaned internally. Smooth talker now, around her? What was this?
"They're pretty fun," came the long-haired brunette that was clinging to Haruhi's voice, sickeningly sweet. "Even this Boho(4) here knows how to throw 'em." She winked at me, which made me shiver in disgust. Never again, I would never be able to unsee that.
"The party's tonight," Haruhi cut in, offering a show of teeth to the siblings. "If you stick around long enough, we can get you the address by the time the pool closes. Or sooner, if Kaoru could be a bit helpful."
I waved my hand at her dismissively, managing to keep my cool. It was something that us Hitachiin could do, naturally. It amazed me really. I wanted to wring her neck, and yet here I was, able to sit down on the grass and sound like I was having a normal conversation with her. "On it already, Haruhi."
"Good!" Haruhi patted my cheek, before taking her and her little gang of banshees to the pool yet again.
Upon scribbling out an address upon an offered scrap of paper and handing it over to Tamaki, thanking me in great lengths. Faus merely smiled.
And thus, began the journey for every single one of us.
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A/N: Okay, so since this is an 80s fic… I had to throw in some lingo from that time period. So here's the small key for this chapter:
(1)Unattractive male
(2)Disgusting
(3)Bitch
(4)Short for Bohemian, artist
And I hope you enjoyed this. XD It was a killer for me to update. Constructive criticism is widely welcomed. I've received no flames, so let's keep it that way. Review please! Until next time.
