08.13.11

A SECOND INTERMISSION

For the next few days, everyone was normal. Well, Hikaru and Kaoru were separated now and could act on their own, but other than that, nothing much had changed. Business as usual, if you will.

One day, Hunny found out that the food channel was running an all day marathon on cake and sweets making. He hogged the TV for the next fourteen hours and bodily threw Tamaki into the next room when he tried to politely ask that they watch something else.

Kyoya was on my laptop constantly. Whenever I tried to look over his shoulder and see what he was doing, it was always something with a lot of words and numbers in languages I didn't recognize. Though I do recall one instance were it appeared to be binary code. I didn't bother asking questions and just let him be, hoping I wouldn't come to regret it.

Hikaru and Kaoru seemed to be enjoying their newfound freedom, though they still stuck together like glue and took to finishing each other's sentences wherever possible. I think they mostly did that because it bothered Tamaki. Quite frankly, nothing those two did could shock me anyone. Even the whole 'twincest' thing lost whatever edge it had after the third day or so.

It was basically just a lot of that. Little things that start off mildly amusing, but get progressively less interesting or amusing the more you think about it. And if you think that's bad, try living with it.

One afternoon, about a week after my family's visit, I was in the kitchen carving up a turnip to be used later on for dinner. Tamaki entered the kitchen as well, pulling a glass out of the cupboard and filling it with water. I had given him this job some time ago: to water the plants once a day. He'd always been good about fulfilling this duty, unlike Hunny, who never seemed to remember that he had to make his bed every other morning.

When the glass was full, Tamaki shut off the water and carefully carried it into the living room were the plants were located. He didn't say a single word to me the entire time. That was when I first realized something was wrong.

In retrospect, I probably should have figured it out sooner. Tamaki would never miss an opportunity to talk to me no matter how trivial the subject. It could be about dead leaves in the rain gutters, and he'd still do everything he could to make it sound romantic and charming. It had been days since he last initiated conversation. I would have to say something to him first, and he was cheerful enough when I did, but there was something missing from his face and tone. Something small, but very noticeable.

Come to think about it, the others had been acting weird too. Kyoya spent far more time with his face on that screen and barely spoke a word to anyone. Mori was the same as ever, but Hunny was in a kind of somber mood. The only thing that seemed to perk him up was his Usa-chan and the sweets on TV, and even that was becoming kind of hit and miss. Hikaru and Kaoru focused most of their energies on taunting Tamaki, an incredibly easy task I must say. Though they would occasionally poke fun in my direction, it still felt detached.

We had been living together for a month and a half at this point. It had gone by so fast, and every day their antics bothered me less and less. They were a routine now. I'd wake up, they'd make a fuss over something. Tamaki and the twins would fight. I'd make myself breakfast, lunch and dinner. They'd try to get me to take them somewhere and most of the time I'd say no. They'd pout for a while before finding something else to do. I went to bed and, depending on what day it was, so did they.

Now, at least half of all that was slipping away. They were quieter, calmer, more subdued. More like what I would have wanted weeks ago, but made me want to cringe with anxiety now.

I didn't like it. I wanted it to stop. Why were they doing this?

I confronted Tamaki about it the next day. He was the most emotional and more attached to me than the rest. If anyone was going to spill the beans, it was him.

I waited until he was out getting the mail, another task I had left to him. I watched him from the window while the others were distracted, making my move when he was climbing down the stairs and out of sight. I slunk outside, my body pressed flat against the wall. I took to a run once I was outside, but kept my footfalls light. I wanted to catch him, but not put him on the alert that someone was following him.

He was inserting my key into the mail slot marked with my apartment number when I got there. I stayed to the side, examining his strong posture and serene face. He looked like someone without a care in the world. I knew that wasn't true.

I stepped into view when he started the walk back, taking him by surprise, though he didn't show it beyond a barely there frown.

I wasted no time.

"We need to talk. Now."

As expected, there was no solid reaction to that. No questions, no defensiveness, no trying to make an excuse and leave, Tamaki just nodded his head and said not a word to me. His silence was deafening, and brought my guard up even higher. I know I'm probably not describing it well enough for you to picture it in your head, but I'm not really sure how to do that beyond, 'it really bothered me' and other variations of said statement. But really, if you're reading this, you've hopefully also read my last 20-something posts and know that this is out of character behavior for him.

And it gets worse.

"I um…" his silence unnerved me. "I've notice in the past few days… you've been kind of quiet. I was wondering if something was wrong."

Wind blew around us, the only visible sound as Tamaki remained tight lipped despite my making it clear that I wanted an answer. He stared back at me, unblinking, while my anxieties slowly boiled over. I don't think I'd even been this upset with any of them since the Usagiuma incident.

"Tamaki, if there is something bothering you, you know you can tell me."

He shook his head. It was something of a relief to finally get a reaction out of him, but it wasn't as good as actual words.

"What do you mean by that?" I demanded more than asked.

"I can't tell you," he answered.

I furrowed my brow. "Why not?"

"Because as your lover, I'm supposed to always be loving and kind. I'm not supposed to feel anything negative towards you."

Now that was unexpected. I mean, I'd been going over in my head all the things that could be causing their slump. From battery issues to pure boredom, I thought I'd taken them all into consideration, and yet somehow, that idea never occurred to me. Perhaps it was because they'd spent so much time singing my praises and treating me like a goddess (when they weren't making trouble of course).

Either way, I had to press further.

"I don't understand."

He sighed and looked away, almost as if ashamed of himself.

"It isn't right for me to feel this way," he whispered, his mind far away. "I'm supposed to only love you, not be angry with you."

"Wait," I cried, my head feeling like it was about to burst from all that was going on inside. "What are you saying?"

And then he turned his head again, and looked directly at me, and he said:

"I am very angry with you, Haruhi."

Just like that. Nothing more, nothing less. Those seven words were my explanation for everything. He was angry with me, and I had to presume the others were too. They were giving me the cold shoulder as best as they could with their programming (what was left of it anyway) in place, and they did it out of legitimate anger with me.

Oh I believed him, alright. Tamaki was many things, but he wasn't a liar. He always said what he meant, and he meant what he said.

Now that that was out of the way, there was the matter of working through this so everything could go back to normal. I started with the most obvious question.

"Why?"

"Well, why not?"

I jumped and whirled around. It hadn't been Tamaki who said that. Rather, it was Hunny, leaning against the railing right above us with Hikaru and Kaoru on his left and Kyoya and Mori on his right. The five of them wore frowns similar to Tamaki's. I fidgeted under the intensity, now multiplied by six. It made me feel guilty, and I still didn't even know what I had done!

"Haruhi," this was Kyoya. "You put yourself in danger last week, and you almost got seriously hurt. Do you understand that?"

I blinked once before it came to me: the night of the prison break. The night I'd taken running leap into an extremely dangerous situation in my quest to keep the six of them unharmed and in one piece. Of course, I'd realized once the adrenaline wore off what an incredibly stupid decision that had been. Apart from Kaoru's near catatonia, they probably could have gotten out without too much damage. Logic just doesn't register when you're running on pure instinct.

"Yes, I know," I answered, pushing a stray piece of hair behind my ear. "I know it wasn't my smartest decision, but I had to make sure you were all okay. It's my as your…"

I paused to backtrack. 'Owner,' the word I'd been about to use, wasn't right anymore. It hadn't been for a long time and not just because they were sent to me by mistake.

"I had to do everything I could to make sure you were safe. If anything happened to you, I don't know what I would have done."

I felt a pair of hands on my shoulders, an iron gripping holding me tight and physically turning me around to face pained violet eyes. I swallowed, feeling absolutely miniscule under Tamaki's gaze. How on earth could someone so silly become this serious, and with so little effort?

"But that's just it, Haruhi," he said. "You couldn't have done anything, and you would've been seriously hurt with Hikaru hadn't saved you that night. I wasn't there to help you, neither was Kyoya, or Hunny or Mori… what if a time comes when none of us are around anymore?"

He reached down and took one of my hands. His were warm to the touch, so much like a true human's, but when he guided my hand to his chest and pressed it down, I was reminded, with chills going up and down my spine, that he wasn't.

"You see? I'm made of metal. So is Kaoru, so are all of us. But you, Haruhi, you're a flesh and blood human, and you don't know how to fight and defend yourself. Kaoru would have been fine if you hadn't intervened. He may have sustained mild to moderate damage, but we are far more durable than you are giving us credit for."

"He's right, Haru-chan," Hunny spoke up, his Usa-chan squeezed between his arms and the railing as he leaned dangerously far over. "We've all been so afraid, thinking about what might have happened to you!"

"No matter how fast we run, we wouldn't have gotten to you before they did," Mori said, probably the longest sentence he'd ever spoken at that point.

"The things they could have done to you in the time it would've taken," Kyoya said, shaking his head. "I don't want to imagine it."

Hikaru and Kaoru said nothing, and merely stared at me blankly. That alone made me feel worse than all the other's had combined.

"Do you see now, Haruhi?" the sound of Tamaki's voice made me return to staring at him. "Do you understand how we're feeling?"

My toes curled inside my slippers and it was all I had to look down and try to watch them through my shoes. I couldn't believe they were doing this to me, making me feel so horrible and ashamed. The worst part was that they were exactly right. No matter how everything turned out in the end, even though I'd been able to, at the very least, prevent Kyoya from being molested and get Hikaru and Kaoru to full separate, I knew that was beside the point.

It didn't make a difference to them what I had accomplished. The point was that I had put myself in danger in the first place, while they were in positions that left their ability to help me severely restricted. It was the principle of the thing.

And I understood this even then, even at my most stubborn and indignant. Hell, I still believe I did the right thing since it had such a good outcome, but I know that, if I could do it all over again, I might have tried to making some smarter moves.

What I think really made this such a milestone in my little saga is what it showed about the androids. It was that fact that they did not understand how they were feeling. They didn't realize how human they were acting. Of course they were angry at me for putting my life in danger, what sane person wouldn't?

I know I'd have felt the same way if one of my friends did that.

Because that's what we all were from that point on. Maybe we had been for a long time, and I just wasn't ready to acknowledge it yet.

Through all the insanity they got me into, or was brought upon us by outside forces; though all the fits of rage and tears and laughter we experienced; though everything that had happened to us, we had become friends.

They were my friends.

They could (and would) call me their 'beloved' as much as they pleased. What we had wasn't like that. What we had was friendship, and I didn't want that to ever change. I didn't want them to ever stop being mad at me when I did something wrong, or concerned when they thought I was in trouble, or noisy when we all sat down to watch a movie together.

I don't think I would've changed them for anything.

Of course, I wasn't about to tell them any of this. Not by a long shot. Instead, I gave a sigh and shrugged my shoulders before offering Tamaki, and the rest of them indirectly, a low bow.

"You're right," I said. "I made a mistake and I'm sorry. I never meant to worry you guys."

"You mean it?" Tamaki asked moving in close. Up above us, everyone but Kyoya and Mori did the same thing.

The attention didn't bother me too much. Actually, I was started to feel a lot better. I smiled and nodded my head, and I guess that was all the answer Tamaki needed to completely forgive me. Next thing I knew, he was swinging me around in his arms while the others sprinted down the stairs and pulled us both into a group hug. Even Mori was pulled into it by Hunny. Only Kyoya stayed on the outside, his only contribution to the golden moment being a pat on my back.

"Okay! That's all done!" Hunny cheered. "Let's go watch the cake channel!"

"Again?" Hikaru groaned.

A quick and deadly glare from Hunny silenced him.

We headed back upstairs in a messy line, two at a time. I walked beside Tamaki, who was suddenly much more talkative, going on about a radio show he'd been listening to the other day about the dynamics of romantic novel characters or something along those lines. Leave it to Tamaki to get excited about that.

"By the way," I said as we were re-entering my apartment. "How did you guys know I was out there?"

The six of them looked at each other, as if sharing some kind of telepathic conversation and intentionally keeping me out of the loop. That they all broke out into sly smiles didn't help matters.

"Oh, Haruhi, don't be silly," Hikaru said.

"We knew you were gone as soon as you left," Kyoya continued for there. "You're not very good at stealth, I'm afraid."

The others started to snicker while I glared at Kyoya. He, of course, brushed it off completely and went back to my (really his at this point since I hadn't actually used it in weeks) laptop.

Even so, things were really brightening. The metaphorical grey cloud hovering over us had started to dissipate. I felt like they were more at ease now. When Hunny all but dragged me to the couch to watch the cooking channel with him and Mori, and Hikaru, along with a somewhat less enthusiastic Kaoru, tried to convince me that they were bored and wanted to go for a walk with me, and Tamaki subsequently accused them of being evil perverts out to seduce me into sinfulness, it honestly made me happy.

I mean that with total sincerity. Their insane behavior, which the week before made me want to smack my head against the wall, was bringing a smile to my face.

It was just normal for them, I guess. I was finally seeing and accepting that.

And it's a good thing that happened when it did, otherwise the next big event in my story would have ended much differently and with a great deal more pain for all of us.

Since I may not be able to post tomorrow (my friend Mei and her father are coming for a visit in a few days and we're cleaning up the house in preparation), I'll leave you a little hint of what's to come next.

Remember in my first post, I mentioned that they guys almost destroyed my school's gymnasium?

Just keep that in mind.

posted by Haruhi at 11:32 pm 0 comments