Title: Reason in Madness
Character(s): Honey, entire club
Rating: G.
Disclaimer: Ouran High School Host Club belongs to Hatori Bisco and related companies.
Word count: 791
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REASON IN MADNESS
Haninozuka Mitsukuni is looking for a reaction.
It may never eventuate, but of course he knows that the lack of reaction may sometimes be the reaction.
Kyou-chan and Haru-chan smile, Takashi and Kao-chan don't, Hika-chan and Tama-chan simply fall over, pushed to the ground by a staggering blast of emotion.
To translate: Kyou-chan and Takashi knew before today, Haru-chan and Kao-chan didn't, Hika-chan and Tama-chan are just being silly.
"S-senpai," Hika-chan exhorts, "don't make hasty decisions!"
Kyou-chan blinks once slowly, the only rebellious action that defies his efforts to tone down his superiority amongst people he regards as friends – more than friends. There is nothing hasty about it.
Mitsukuni beams.
"There is nothing hasty about it, Hika-chan," he voices, and Kyou-chan smiles that shadow of a smile again, absently turning back to critiquing Kao-chan's painting.
"H-H-H-H-Honey-senpai," Tama-chan says feebly, reaching out a wobbly hand in his direction, "Honey-senpai, promise you won't abandon us!"
Kao-chan snorts, preparing and mixing the paints into a silver-specked ivory shade for the sun-illuminated castle with a concentration that isn't quite necessary for the task. "Honey-senpai will always love us first."
Ah, Kao-chan has caught on too. Mitsukuni knows what he will see in Kao-chan's eyes if Kao-chan wasn't trying so hard to avoid his gaze: possessiveness and fear, maybe with a dash of faith and that stillness that descends within people when the time comes for them to face something that they've long anticipated and resigned themselves to.
"That sounds harmful to Honey-senpai's marriage instead," Haru-chan says flatly. To him, she sincerely offers her congratulations. One by one, the others follow suit – Tama-chan fairly leaps on him in his enthusiasm and begins spouting all kinds of grand and romantic ideas for the ceremony and etc., ideas that Mitsukuni thinks he really wants to be keeping for his own wedding and not lending them out indiscriminately.
Soon enough Tama-chan will realise his own urgent desire to get married, soon enough Tama-chan will understand that if he asks Haru-chan right this instant – without a ring and without anything else except the strength of his feelings – she'd actually say yes after a great deal of blushing and stammering on both their parts.
But perhaps Tama-chan might never see that Kyou-chan doesn't know what to do with himself without them, without him, without their old club. Perhaps Tama-chan might never know that Kao-chan has already decided for himself that romantic love cannot exist in his future, or that Hika-chan will spend all of his life comparing every one of his girlfriends to Haru-chan.
Perhaps Tama-chan and Haru-chan don't know that if they marry and leave the group first to make their own world, to Kyou-chan and Kao-chan and Hika-chan it will be as tearing off a bandage before a wound has closed, ripping skin and flesh off in a lightning fast movement that gouges a deeper injury than the original.
With his life, Mitsukuni has bought time for his friends.
Clever Kyou-chan will rally quickly and re-learn how to stand after leaning on Tama-chan for so long, and Mitsukuni himself will galvanise his and Takashi's efforts to helping the twins. Together, they can stop their happiness from decaying into a source of pain; together, they can prevent the occurrence of that terrible twisted consequence that only Mitsukuni and Kyou-chan have dared to contemplate.
Sometimes, his juniors seem so young to him that he doesn't know how to describe it. Mitsukuni is not the type of odious person to parade through life believing himself to be mature and world-weary – he hates those pretensions to adulthood with a passion, yet when confronted with his precious clubmates he is suddenly inundated with these… almost-parental thoughts of wanting in equal measure to teach and protect them from the harsh lessons of reality.
Takashi is admittedly better at keeping his cool in this area; he sees as much but worries less. It must be nature, what Hika-chan labels as "Mori-senpai's chillaxed to the max personality". Mitsukuni is aware that he is not chillaxed in the least – privately he knows that many of the adjectives that can be and are used on Kyou-chan also apply to him – he's just better at deflecting attention from it because he isn't opposed to making a fool of himself like Kyou-chan is.
When Kyou-chan comes up to speak words of well-wishes to him, the kouhai dips his head ever so slightly: a recognition, a deference, a tacit expression of thanks.
Mitsukuni laughs and latches onto his arm like a child craning to see something that is blocked from view. "Kyou-chan, Kyou-chan, can you tell me the supplier for the black tea that we drink during club? We're ordering hundreds of cakes for the reception and so we need really – "
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12/04/2012