Tamaki draped himself from neck to toe in the thin, silk sheets of the hotel room he sojourned. The silver duvet and comforter were nowhere in sight. The high ceiling was pure off-white with solid and deliberate elegant patterns embedded into it. The room wasn't the most convenient or favoured he had the choice of staying in—being farthest from the Geneva conference he was told to shadow in on—but he certainly couldn't go below a specific price range unless he'd risk his blue blood status being socially revoked.
"Why are you covering yourself like that?" said the deadpan woman sitting beside him, supporting her back against the California King bed headboard and arms crossed over her bare breasts.
"I'm sorry, my darling. I always get so cold after passionate lovemaking. Our bodies weren't made to be separate like this." Tamaki grinned as he remarked on her unclad state, perching himself onto his elbows. The distance also lessened the likelihood of being suddenly involved in an unbearably awkward situation with one of his employees. "Are you cold? I can't bear the thought. I'd trek a thousand arctic tundras if it meant keeping you warm, my Princess." He made a pass at her, placing a hand on her thigh. "Are you ready for more?"
"I'm fine. I don't even think I was ready the first time." She admitted. She pushed herself off the firm but soft mattress and bobbed down to grab her things. She was sore all around, but not in the good way. Was there ever a good way to be sore after sex? She wouldn't know as she hadn't had much of it with her husband yet and by then was starting to believe orgasms were a myth—until she finally met the blond behind her. She's always wanted to be married to the man still on the bed, the man giving her the grace of allowing her to dress in peace, but as she thought of the possibility that he more than likely was speechless due to admiring her body, she had shuddered with both arousal and disgust with herself. He was an attractive man, part of a wealthy family, and was a relatively good time when he kept his mouth closed. Her dream growing up all to face the disappointment of witnessing him gone by the time she had gotten to Ouran Academy. Out of Tokyo, out of Japan, and what felt like to her younger self, gone forever. Now, she couldn't believe she's ever cried over him. Her idealized expectations were shattered and she felt regret with the credence that she had ruined her marriage over trying to meet them.
"Good day." She bid as she shifted on her shoes, gesturing a refined wave as she made her way to the door.
Tamaki stretched his hand out for her, eyes shining with a begging nature behind them. "Wait! I know you're just teasing me! You silly girl." He dynamically flung his naked body up from the bed, forcing a guffaw. "I consider my love-making akin to stories written on the pages and preserved for eternity in the shelves of the most ancient bibliothèque, mon amour. Written for generations to admire the beauty of our forbidden dance! So passionate they burn the Notre Dame a hundred times over." Tamaki had put the space between his thumb and index finger on his chin, smirking confidently at the woman. "So tell me...you have any titles?"
At full tilt, she soberly turned to face him and adjusted her chestnut brown hair and perfectly poised dress with every enunciation "I'm Uwaki Onna of the Onna dynasty, wife of Hiroshi Yamada, and you're Tamaki Suoh of Suoh Enterprises. Two important individuals who had a brief...experience in this room." She downplayed. "That's our story that should be forgotten. I'm sorry, Mr. Suoh."
Tamaki blushed at Uwaki's demeanour; staring at the ring she slid onto her lithe finger, "Oh..." He coyly dragged the blanket over his overly exposed body. Face and neck almost deluged with sweat and the colour red. "Could you at least call me?"
"I don't know your number." She flatly told him, and Tamaki dashed for a pen on his nightstand as the woman who took up space in his bed not too long ago entered his hotel room's main threshold, "and I don't want it." She slammed the door behind her in her exit.
The pen dropped to his side as the blond remained disconcerted in facing the now nearly unhinged door. He smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. "She's married..." Tamaki frowned as he conceded to that crucial piece of information. "'Could you at least call me?' Ugh." Falling back onto his bed, his emotions began the process of eating away at his self-esteem and respect as he buried himself deeper into the many pillows that remained near. "Stupid, stupid, stupid. I rushed into things again and got used like some kind of courtesan."
At least the pain was less potent this time. It made room for the growing affection he felt in his heart for her, tasting her name on his lips. He should feel more guilty than he did, that much he understood about himself. Doomed to repeat his mistakes with the same goal in mind—he knew he still wanted her.
Cursive and the satisfying scratching sounds of its production always brought Kyoya bliss. As he skimmed at his desk over his notes relating to his Stanford class of core competency, he thought perhaps he'd finally grown to prefer it to the offbeat arithmetic of accounting for crazy schemes proposed by his best friend he hadn't contacted in a while.
BZZT! BZZT!
Kyoya picked the phone out of his pocket and answered right away after glancing at the dialer. "Yes?"
"Kyoya, mon ami..." He paused to inhale dramatically. "She's married," said the former Host Club King on the other end.
He felt his grip tightening on his mechanical pencil as he heard Tamaki blow into what he could only presume to be a custom-made handkerchief. "Are you telling me this before or after you slept with her?"
Tamaki sniffled. "After."
He couldn't believe he had missed this bothersome person.
"Then what? Are you're calling me to gloat about it...?" He asked with ill intent, leading. He was already at his wit's end as hundreds of thoughts, mainly of potential damage control, came to mind.
"No. Kyoya, please. I'm being serious!" Tamaki moaned, incensing the interrupted man on the receiving end of the phone call, pencil snapping and glasses pulled off from the heat radiating off his body that fogged the lens. "I didn't know! I think I'm a shitty person..."
Kyoya wanted to tell him to get over it—and he should. He, as a grown man, had put himself in that situation, and now he had to find a way out of it without the help of "Mommy" if things were to escalate from this point on. At least he wanted to believe that truly. Knowing his overly emotional best friend, things would inevitably get worse, and he wouldn't be able not to help him.
It was time to reflect, reassess and restart, and what Kyoya could offer at the time was a guiding hand. "Stop calling me every time you have regrettable sex, you idiot."
He brooded as his brows sunk and mouth outline creased from his frown. He was looking up to his ceiling and was growing impossibly angry that his eyes uncharacteristically started to water, but he hadn't noticed that yet.
Tamaki blubbered into his receiver, breaking off a piece of the complimentary confectionery and stuffing his face as if he had looked up to God for mercy. "Mommy!" Kyoya swore he only called him that now to irritate him. Tamaki stopped to blow his nose again, the bad-tempered man on the receiving end pulling the phone away from his ear out of disgust. "I think I'm in love for the first time since Haruhi!" He dragged out the last part of her name in an unbearable whine, fluids running out of every orifice of his face. The blond put his hand against his forehead, tapping it repeatedly to gauge a difference. "F-fever?! I have a fever! Kyoya-"
He couldn't stand it anymore. He ended the call.
Tamaki doused his face with the cold running water from the tap, running his hands down from under his eyes to his defined jaw. As he yet again became cognizant of his dashing features as the shades of red on his skin cleared, he couldn't believe himself to be crying over another rejection. "There's nothing wrong with me. I'm a painfully handsome genius!" He persuasively told himself. He shook his fist with resolve. "I'll just have to prove it to her."
His phone rang in the other room. Wiping his face with a towel and wrapping it around his shoulders, he, with ease, walked to his bed's nightstand and cheerfully answered.
"She's married. Give it up already." Kyoya said, evidently gaining his composure, but Tamaki thought of her running away with him, stealing a spaceship from JAXA and making the first ever human space babies with her. "When did you allow yourself to get so hung up on a taken woman like that?" Kyoya asked coolly.
Tamaki grabbed at his hair when he realized his fantasies of Uwaki immediately took over his train of thought when Kyoya's voice came through the speaker. He was shocked out of them by the reasonable question. "You're right! Why am I so dumb?!"
Kyoya felt his patience wearing thin again, gripping his phone. "You're seriously asking me that? How the fuck would I know?"
"It was a rhetorical question! Geez, Kyoya."
"Yet, I would seriously love to know the answer to it. Maybe if I let Akito dissect you after a tragic accident-"
Tamaki sobbed. "There's no way I'm a bad person knowing you."
"Whatever. Have you ever considered that maybe you're bored combined with some unresolved trauma?"
Tamaki almost pulled out his hair. "Enough with the trauma talk! I'm not in love with Haruhi anymore!"
Kyoya was hopeful of that—she always could've done so much better, he told himself. "I didn't say anything about Haruhi." He pried, almost desperately.
"I know, but it always comes back to that. We're friends now, and I want it to stay that way." Tamaki told himself that mostly, absentmindedly curling the phone cord around his finger. He let out a breath to calm the beating of his heart, keenly aware of his once strong feelings for her.
Kyoya was satisfied with his answer—his friend group still wasn't at risk of becoming awkward and uncomfortable with heartfelt, sickening dalliance at the centre of it. "Alright, I'd say you're just bored then. Maybe you should go back to Japan and enroll in university finally. April's around the corner, and you've had enough hands-on experience shadowing your father and his top employees for a while. Doesn't your grandmother want you to return and get some credentials to back it up?"
Tamaki felt nervous at the thought of returning to Tokyo for some reason. By the start of the spring term for the past three years, he always found some excuse to give to his father and grandmother on why he should continue travelling the world on business terms. The primary logic behind it was "experiences of all kinds," he used to say. He believed it was the path to becoming as well-rounded as he could be so that—optimistically speaking—he wouldn't be torn down by the brutality of the business world and maybe even change some cold hearts with his irresistible charm. "Hold on, what country haven't I visited by now? And when was the last time I visited my grandmother? She must feel so lonely right now! I need to see her."
"Were you listening to me?" Kyoya adjusted his glasses, eyebrow twitching. "Anyways, your grandmother will say the same thing to you."
"Huh? Same thing as what?"
Kyoya hung up.
The trip was fifteen hours, and Tamaki's impromptu flight booking back to Japan didn't give him time to prepare for the jetlag. When his father gave him his usual jocular greeting at the arrival terminal, however, his subdued reaction to seeing him was expected by now. "My beautiful boy." He pulled Tamaki into a warm embrace, "how was Geneva?"
"The conference was fine," Tamaki said, unsmiling as his father pushed himself away and looked up to his towering son with his hands on his shoulders.
"I didn't ask about the conference. I'm sure you got to see the beautiful city again. Ate some delicious food, met some intriguing characters?" Yuzuru queried with anticipation.
Trying to keep his face from showing signs of flush at the very standard questioning, Tamaki stumbled over his words to his immediate frustration, which only vitalized the reaction.
"Could you tell me more about her?" Yuzuru asked, pleasantly surprised.
"Ah! It wasn't a girl!" Tamaki lied, startled.
Yuzuru blinked once, twice. "Could you tell me more about him?"
"Lay off, old man! What are you?! Some pervert who likes hearing about his son's love life or something?" From there, he didn't care if anyone could hear him. If there were any unresolved trauma, then it'd definitely be from his lying, disloyal, and sneaky father who almost irreversibly damaged his own mother. Tamaki was fine though, relationships evolved, and he wasn't as close as he used to be with his father anymore. It was part of growing up, he told himself.
Yuzuru chuckled. "You should know I'm only teasing by now. I won't start seriously being interested until you reach a certain age. I hope by then you'll have decided what you want to do with yourself."
"Yeah, it's not up to you," Tamaki said, resolute.
"Mmm...Ashisutanto," Yuzuru snapped his finger to beck the dark-haired woman to his side. "Luggage."
When the woman tried to grab Tamaki's bags still in his grip, Tamaki gasped, appalled by what he had witnessed. "Father, how dare you treat a woman like that?" With his nose up high, he escorted himself from the unsavoury scene. "I am a perfectly capable ma-" One of his suitcases' wheels buckled and rammed itself into his leg, causing him to lose his footing, tumbling over onto the floor face first with a loud thud.
They had both quickly entered their company car after Tamaki's meltdown when witnessing some of the crowd spotting and chuckling at his ungraceful disposition, the chauffeur tipping his hat to them as he closed the door. Tamaki held tissue papers up to his nostrils to congest the gore threatening to pool out and sounding too frivolous for Yuzuru to listen to truly.
"They were laughing at me. I'm so embarrassed. Those people saw a person fall and get really hurt and they started laughing." Tamaki whined, directing his bitterness more to himself.
"Tamaki, my dear, I'm amazed you made it alone for this long," Yuzuru said, fingers to his temple.
The younger man grumbled something under his breath, but Yuzuru ignored it for now.
Tamaki specially configured the drive back to the primary Suoh residence to allow him to pass by all he had missed over the years, witnessing the subtle to explosive changes in his absence. Tamaki had his face pressed against the limousine glazing as he watched the streets with awe and occasionally would look back to his father and call to his attention whatever wonderful thing caught his eye. When they had made it to their sumptuous neighbourhood, however, Tamaki had leaned back against his seat and crossed his legs out of subconscious habit.
"So, son, tell me why you believe you're better off not bothering anyone like 'you always do here'. Do you believe you're cursed being in this country?" Yuzuru suddenly asked.
Tamaki thought himself to be more cursed in Spain than in Japan, but he'd be remiss to say that he hadn't had the most unpleasant experiences while studying in the country of question—his bruised nose being evident of it. "Not at all. I just need to get this travelling bug out of my system and..." He removed the tissues under his nose to speak more clearly, "Because I know what you and grandmother have in mind for me once I've returned."
"Yes, but it's not as rigid as for you to avoid it for the past three years." Yuzuru smiled. "Not anymore."
Tamaki shifted uncomfortably to face the passenger seat. "You know, you really don't have to force conversation, Father."
"Mmm...I'm trying to communicate because I still care deeply about you, my boy." Yuzuru had wondered if he felt the same way after all his time abroad.
Pulling up to the main gate, Tamaki and Yuzuru entered the mansion. "Grandmother! I'm home."
Shizue gracefully strode down the grand stairs, simpering. "Welcome back."
Her grandson blushed at the incredibly decorative yukata she wore, though she figured he didn't understand she had worn it for his arrival. "Could I hug you, grandmother? I missed you so much."
"There's time for catching up later, Tamaki. We need to talk about something more important immediately."
"You're right!" Yuzuru interjected, shooting up his finger assertively. "It's concerning your-"
"Quiet, Yuzuru. I meant just me and Tamaki." Shizue nipped that in the bud. She needed her grandson to know that nothing had changed drastically in his time away from them.
As Yuzuru retreated to his dark corner hunched over, Shizue directed Tamaki to her office. "Were your travels as actualizing as expected?"
"Y-yes, grandmother. I experienced so many more cultures, and the people everywhere were so lovely! It's amazing how the only real barrier between us is the languages we speak. I've even perfected my Spanish!"
Shizue took a sip from her teacup, warmed from her grandson's natural disposition. "That's good to hear. Does that mean you're ready to take over from Yuzuru if anything happens to either of us?"
Tamaki refrained from immediately answering, caught off guard by the sudden and almost brutal leading inquiry. "I can't imagine that as I don't believe so."
"So you were wasting precious time then."
He caught his breath. "Grandmother..."
"Tamaki, when I agreed to let you go on your adventure, it was because you gave me such convincing reasoning for why it would help you grow as a businessman, but now you are telling me that you still aren't ready. I understand now the importance of honing social connections by adapting and contributing to the rapport between yourself and others. I understand the need to make people feel good through entertainment." She knew her grandson's unfathomable need for copious amounts of love and attention. "You'd be a fine representative for our hospitality branch. However, you are a Suoh heir to the conglomerate brand. You've continued to do just as I feared of socializing, ultimately with nowhere to allocate it to something practical for the company. I've already forgiven you, however, boy. You are still very young with, for example, many of your friends still in school... Do you understand where I'm going with this?"
"Yes." Tamaki nodded gleefully. "You want me to start another host club!"
Shizue went blank listening to him. "What?"
"Oh, that's a perfect idea, grandmother! I need to contact Haruhi and Kyoya, Hani-senpai, Mori-senpai and the twins! Maybe I can recruit all the friends I've made from around the world to appeal to every woman on every continent. Marvellous! Yes!" Tamaki opened his phone and dialled Kyoya's number for it to go to voicemail immediately. "Huh? Is he sleeping?"
"Tamaki..." His grandmother started.
"Yes?" He replied, moving his head swiftly to attention like a puppy dog. "Oh, Haruhi must be awake, I should've just called her instead! Fufufu! One moment please, grandmother."
"Just what do you think you're doing?" Shizue emphatically asked, agitated.
Tamaki, realizing what he had said in front of her, dropped his hand, holding his phone behind him and stood straight. "I'm sorry, I just haven't seen any of my friends here in a while."
"You haven't seen me for that same length of time. Why haven't you called as much?"
"I wrote letters! That wasn't enough, though. I'm sorry." He dipped his head in shame, not wanting her to feel like she wasn't prioritized but perhaps making her feel that way anyway.
"Stop apologizing, boy. You're home now, and that's what matters. What steps should you be taking now that you're back?" Shizue asked, guiding once more.
Tamaki thought about it before coming to an answer that should've been easier than he made it to be. "I know! I should enroll in a university!"
Tamaki ended up at Keio University at the discretion of his grandmother, the respected business studies university model of the capital. The school was close enough to home and far enough away from Ouran University, where a certain distracting girl took up academically on another scholarship. Who Shizue still wasn't convinced of the sincerity of the friendship she shared with her grandson. She truthfully had told him that was where his grandfather studied before establishing the Ouran schools, and Tamaki just knew he had to go there instead.
A/N: This chapter was horrible to edit.
Hey, so later on I'm going to paint a picture of how exactly Tamaki gets women into bed with him without him being an ass along with an explanation of the why. A snippet is in his Host King ways and how he canonically needs attention to thrive. He always has good intentions, he's just the one with bad taste and is the one who ends up being used. There's an obvious reason for it.
Host clubs are notorious in Japan for basically allowing legal male prostitutes who sell their services in private business transactions. There's also lots of drinking involved at these clubs so I'm going to involve Tamaki in that as well, but he's the type who's a social drinker who barely gets anything out of alcohol so he doesn't rely on it as a vice. Right now I'm just explaining his thought process or hinting at it currently, but it relates back to the prologue I promise. I didn't think Tamaki was the type to sleep around either, but he's coping currently in a less than healthy way. Also, his body count isn't necessarily a high number, whichever number you think isn't that bad is his body count.