Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kyoya’s whole life had always revolved around someone else. That’s what happens when you are the third son. His brothers, his father; they were his entire world, and he was just the moon, orbiting around them. He could say that he can control their seas, control their night and day, but the truth is that if he didn’t, then he wouldn’t be worth anything to them. 

If Kyoya is the moon, then Tamaki Suoh is the sun. Tamaki Suoh is simply a force greater than life; this overwhelming light that Kyoya had centered his very being around. But the sun is deadly, whether it knows it or not. Each direct look that lasts too long, each gentle tap on the shoulder or unintentional brush of their hands burns like a flame. It’s safer to stand at a distance, to give quick glances from afar. To look, but never to touch. Never to be his. 

It’s a bit pathetic how true that statement had become, as Kyoya stood upon the balcony, watching him. Tamaki was like a child, standing knee deep in their school’s fountain, alongside Hunny, Mori and Hikaru, all searching for a coin that belonged to Haruhi that Tamaki threw in to ‘make a wish’, before one of the twins made an off-handed comment that that was probably Haruhi’s lunch money for the week. Of course, ever the fool, Tamaki swiftly jumped in to right his wrongs and, probably because they simply had nothing better to do, the rest of the host club followed suit. Well, except for Haruhi, who swiftly took the opportunity to discreetly slip off to the library and get an early start on her studies. He’s one of the only members that seemed to have a functioning brain, more often than not, of course, excluding Kyoya. 

Not that it’s any good when he longed to switch it off. 

“So, this is where the Dark Lord sneaks off to plot his evil schemes? Bit disappointing. I was expecting an evil lair.” The sound of the voice made Kyoya jump, a quick slip of his mask that caused the intruder to chuckle. He quickly turned around whilst trying to regain his composure, flicking his eyes up to see him. Of course. He should have figured that when he didn’t see the twins glued to each other’s sides that something was most certainly up. Kyoya never had the time, nor the patience, for the twins' schemes. He refused to let today be any different.

"What do you want now, Kaoru? I'm not in the mood for your games," Kyoya asked, sighing as he pushed his glasses up to get a good look at him, pushing back his auburn hair to the left, trying to contain the mischievous grin that pulled on his lips. He was failing miserably.

“You’re never in the mood and, besides, it’s not a game, it’s... definitely way more your speed. A proposal, if you will.” 

Typical. Practically all of Ouran’s students were part of the elite or the wealthy; from Kyoya’s knowledge, which was always up to date, Haruhi was the only student with no real social standing. The school basically existed to function as a mini network system; for parents and guardians to direct their children into friendships and relationships, tying the families' together in order to start pushing business plans and proposals. The only thing that really shocked Kyoya was that it had taken so long before the twins’ parents finally made use of their children's connection to the Ootori family. 

“You have my details, Kaoru,” he waved a hand whilst turning his back towards him. “Just send them my way and, if it’s worth our time, I’ll send them to my father.” 

“No-no. Not that kind of proposal. And, to be honest, I don’t think this is something the Shadow King’s dad would probably want to know.” 

Now that caught Kyoya’s attention. 

“Just what is it that you’ve got up your sleeve?” He turned to face him once more, crossing his arms across his chest. Kaoru was shorter than Kyoya- much shorter, he should add- and yet there was something about the glint in Kaoru’s eye that sent a chill down Kyoya’s spine. And the host club said Kyoya was scary. 

“A fake dating plan.” 

Kyoya cocked his brow, his interest fully piqued. “Between?” 

“Isn’t it obvious? Geez, I thought you were meant to be the smartest guy in the whole school- you and me.” 

That made Kyoya laugh. It’s not often Kyoya heard something crazy enough to make him smile, let alone laugh- when you hang around with Tamaki long enough, that will happen to you- but even he wouldn’t suggest something so bizarre, and he’s the one who seems obsessed with turning the host club into a textbook definition of a nuclear family. 

“Why on earth would I ever do something like that? No, why would you ever even ask something like that? That is, truly, the highlight of my day,” he sighed as he shook his head, taking a step past Kaoru as he prepared to return to the others, before suddenly, a hand tightly gripped his wrist and he heard a desperate voice cry out, “I know how you feel about Tamaki.” 

As quick as lightning, Kyoya shoved his free hand against his lips, muffling the other’s voice as he growled out, “Are you insane? Don’t scream out such idiotic- Ugh! ” He pulled his hand back in disgust, wiping the boy’s saliva on the side of his slacks. “You’re disgusting,” 

“Huh. You didn’t deny it. Well, that’s the hardest part already over with.” 

“What are you talking about?” 

“You admitting that you’re gay and completely head over heels for Milord,” he shrugged like it was completely obvious. Maybe it was. Maybe it always had been. Maybe even Tamaki knew. That still wouldn’t stop Kyoya from denying it. 

“I’m not-” He had never even said the word out loud before. It felt foreign on his lips. He lowered his voice, started again, “I don’t have... feelings... for Tamaki.” It felt futile to deny it, if Kaoru was willing to confront him about it, then that meant he knew, knew enough to be confident about his assumption. All he really wanted to ask was how did he know? 

“Huh, really? I didn’t realise you gave all the other members wistful, longing looks? Seriously man, every time you look at him, it’s like a fiancée seeing her husband-to-be return from war. It’s so dramatic,” he rolled his eyes, biting his lip to contain his laughter. It wasn’t working. “Honestly, if everyone wasn’t so caught up in the whole Tamaki-Haruhi-Hikaru love triangle going on, they would have figured out what was happening ages ago.” 

“So, what? What’s your plan? You and Hikaru are going to blackmail me for everything I’ve got?” 

“No- what the- Jesus Christ, Kyoya, your mind lives in some dark places, let me tell you that much. A gay guy using another gay guy’s sexuality to blackmail him? Yeesh. No man, this is a proposal, a deal that benefits you and me." 

“I highly doubt how your ‘fake dating’ plan does anything to benefit me at all, besides expose me to potential ruin and getting me kicked out of the will. And I’m not... that... so don’t say that I am.” 

“Yeah, yeah, you identify as Tamaki-romantic or whatever, I get it. If you let me say more than two words before making some smart comment, maybe you’d finally know what I’m trying to tell you.” 

He paused for a minute, as if waiting for Kyoya to interrupt him once more, but when it became clear that Kyoya’s lips were tightly sealed, he continued. 

“I’ve been... observing you and Milord for a bit now, and I’m 99% convinced that he genuinely does have feelings for you, he’s just too stupid to realise it. It’s the same thing with Haruhi- obviously, he’s liked Haruhi for ages, but it’s only now that he knows Hikaru also likes her that he’s finally figuring it out,” he explained. 

“And what does that have to do with us?” Kyoya questioned. 

“Okay, hear me out, you and me start ‘dating’,” he mimicked air-quotes around the word, “Once Tamaki sees the two of us together, he’s going to be so overcome with jealousy and realise that you’ve always been the guy for him. Boom!” He smacked his hands together. “We break up and you two finally get together and my brother will actually have a real shot at winning Haruhi over,” he smiled triumphantly with himself, as though he had just conducted a brilliant plan and, Kyoya had to admit, it was kind of genius. There was only one problem. 

“You said you were 99% sure. That means there’s a 1% chance Tamaki doesn’t have feelings for me,” Kyoya pointed out to him. 

“That’s just a turn of expression! It doesn’t really mean anything.” 

“It means there’s still a chance he doesn’t like me, and your entire plan was for nothing. What happens then?” 

He gave a half-hearted shrug, “then you lose him. But at least you tried and lost. And, from the looks of it, you’re already going to lose.” 

Kyoya turned back to look at the Wasian male down below, his pale skin practically glowing in the sun light and his slightly damp, blonde hair perfectly framing his face. It struck Kyoya then that someone thought he had a chance. That the moon and the sun could do more than simply orbit each other. 

It was Tamaki that first saw Kyoya for who he was, who saw him as the ambitious and ruthless monster and pushed him to escape the frame that confided him. It would be a failure to Tamaki to not fight for this, for them. Kyoya owed him that much. 

Kyoya was telling himself this, but something else seemed to hold him back. 

“How is word of the two of us dating not supposed to travel right back to my father?” 

“Easy, it stays between the host club, We’re the only people that need to know about this for our plan to work.” 

“You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?” 

“Of course I have. This isn’t for me; this is for Hikaru. I’d do anything for my brother.” 

“So, he doesn’t know, does he?” 

“No,” Kaoru said, shaking his head. “The less people that know the truth, the better. Nobody in the host club can know the truth.” 

Kaoru Hitachiin was like a black hole. That smug expression spelled out the word danger in flashing lights, yet Kyoya still couldn’t stop himself from getting sucked in before it was too late and he was completely tangled in his world, to the point where it became completely intangible from his own. Kyoya stuck his hand out to him, thinking that he was still on even ground, not yet knowing what he was getting pulled into as Kaoru slipped his hand into his and they shook hands, 

“Kaoru Hitachiin, you have yourself a deal.” 

“The pleasure is all mine, Kyoya Ootori.” 

They say black holes form when massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. Stars passing too close to a supermassive black hole can be shredded into streamers that shine very brightly before being swallowed. All these years, and Kyoya had never thought to wonder what had caused Kaoru to collapse in on himself. All these years, Kyoya had been standing at a distance from the sun, that he never noticed when the darkness had swallowed him whole. 

Chapter Text

The sky was a grey overcast, the wind picking up the trees and forcing them to dance to its melancholic tune. A storm seemed to be brewing on the horizon, in much of the same way that Kyoya’s thoughts began to battle within himself. They had originally been the inklings of annoyance that, fifteen minutes after the school day had ended, not Tamaki, nor his limo, had arrived. Kyoya couldn’t exactly place a date on when it became part of his routine to go home with Tamaki each day, but he felt agitated that their plans would be dropped at such short notice, not just because Kyoya enjoyed following a strict structure, nor because it was the height of unprofessionalism that Tamaki really should have grown out by now, but because he simply enjoyed the other’s company. Sure, it took Kyoya twice as long to do his homework, which he would typically be forced to abandon and complete at the stroke of midnight at home, but it seemed worth it, just for a single minute longer with Tamaki, and, as an added bonus, another minute away from the judging eyes of fathers and brothers. It seemed a cruel thought, too cruel for even Kyoya to admit out loud, but at least at the second Suoh mansion, there was only the accompaniment of servants and the loyal dog, Antoinette. There was no grandmothers to sneer when Kyoya allowed his fingertips to brush against Tamaki’s a second too long, or disgusted stares when Kyoya “unwillingly” let himself be trapped in Tamaki’s goodbye hugs for an extra moment. They could just be themselves, or as much as Kyoya was willing to be with Tamaki. 

Another minute creeped by as Kyoya mindlessly entertained himself with his flip-phone, the repeated open, shut, open, shut, doing nothing to ease his cloudy thoughts of the plan him and Kaoru had discussed mere hours before. After a quick scan of the area to see not a single soul was lurking, their personal limos and private cars having no need to wait, and even Haruhi’s public bus, which triumphantly wasn’t fifteen minutes late today, had all departed. Here, Kyoya was king of banks and stones and every blooming thing- minus the limo, or the self-respect to not ring Kaoru to ask if this was really worth going through. 

“What’s up, lover boy? How’d telling Tamaki go?” 

“I really don’t think your ‘fake dating’ scheme is actually the brightest idea,” he confided, taking another glance over his shoulder to check Tamaki hadn’t snuck up out of nowhere. 

“What?” There was shifting at the other end, the sound of movement as Kaoru walked across the room, shutting the door, before, most likely, pacing back. “This is probably- no, most definitely, the greatest scheme I’ve ever come up with. Jealousy is like, the greatest motivator after financial gain. Do you even watch true crime?” 

“Your idea is based on a hunch of how Tamaki might act. It’s completely theoretical. He can just be completely unpredictable.” 

“You do realise that even if this doesn’t work out, which it will, might I add, you’re going to have to come out to him eventually, right?” 

“I- What?” If Kyoya wasn’t simply standing impatiently at the side of the road, he would have no doubt stopped dead in his tracks. He hated being caught up in a trap, being tongue-tied, so he regained his composure enough to blurt out, “What does that have to do with our situation?” 

“Kyoya, dude. Even if you never tell Tamaki how you feel, which you literally don’t have to by the way, you still have to mention the whole ‘I like guys and I don’t like girls’ thing to him eventually. We might all act like Tamaki is stupid, but even he’s competent enough to notice when everyone else gets married with six kids, and you’re still a fucking bachelor, right?” 

There was a minute of silence, only interrupted by the swaying trees and Kaoru’s movement, as if he were pacing from one corner of the room to the next, then: 

“I’m not trying to be a dick, dude. But you’ll have to tell him you’re gay eventually .” 

“I don’t even know if I am...” His voice cut-off midway, leaving the sentence hanging between them, before Kaoru let out a laugh. But it was different, different from the mischievous chortle of a trickster. It almost seemed sad, pitying. It was something Kyoya had never heard before, and a feeling he gained little enjoyment from. 

“Gay? You can say gay, Kyoya, it’s not like, an insult or whatever. I’m gay, I say gay all the time. Gay, gay, gay gay gay. Gay. Homosexual. Men-loving-men. Queer,” he clicked his fingers as he mentally chased after synonyms “Boy lover? I guess? LGBT+? I guess that doesn’t make sense individually, ‘hey, I’m the whole community’,” he seemed to laugh more genuinely at that, only stopping as Kyoya’s line remained quiet. 

“Unless... You don’t know if you’re gay?” He asked, and God, it felt so stupid to not know something that felt so obvious. 

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t.” Silence. 

“Tell you what. Tonight, I will open up and take you out on a surprise date that will maybe help your whole sexuality crisis thing . And you won’t even owe me, long as you stick to the plan.” 

“You didn’t say dates were part of this.” 

“If someone said, ‘hey, me and this guy are going out,’ and literally never posted pictures or, y’know, talked about their dates, would you actually believe them?” 

No. No, obviously not. In a school where connections meant everything, it was pretty common to lie about a rich European boyfriend here, or a powerful royal suitor there. 

“I suppose not.” 

“Great. I’ll be at your house around midnight. I’ll be the guy throwing rocks at your windows. Wear something black when you’re sneaking out but please wear something bright underneath. It’s not a funeral.” 

Rocks? Midnight? Funeral? What? 

“Kaoru, what are you-” 

“Peace out.” Before Kyoya could get a word in, Kaoru was gone, replaced with a single, almost angry beep as the line went dead. Needless to say, calling Kaoru had the opposite effect on his nerves, before Kyoya’s vision went dark. 

“Guess who.” 

“Tamaki, you’re getting fingerprints all over my glasses,” Kyoya sighed as he took Tamaki’s hands in his, gently lifting them away from his face, and unconsciously keeping them in his grip as he turned to look at the blond. Tamaki only pulled back when he seemed to realise, yeah, he actually had smudged Kyoya’s lenses, handing him a cloth that he always carried around in his front pocket and Kyoya never seemed to do. 

“Can you explain why we’re the only people here and where our ride home is?” Kyoya questioned as he wiped the glass, furrowing his brow when Tamaki answered matter of factly, “Oh, I cancelled.” 

“And... why did you do that?” 

Tamaki shrugged whilst a fat drop of water plopped down from the sky, onto the specs Kyoya had just cleaned. 

“It’s just too nice a day to waste inside,” Tamaki proclaimed, gesturing up to the heavens, as black as the night was long. 

“It’s raining,” Kyoya pinched at the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses up with one hand before handing Tamaki back his cloth. 

“You act like those things contradict each other. Besides, why do you think I took so long?” He slipped the cloth into his front pocket and, with his other hand, lifted up the umbrella he had been holding the entire length of their conversation. Opening it up, the two of them shuffled underneath it together. They were so close, too close, that if they both turned to face each other, there was only an inch between their lips. If Kyoya just leaned in closer, then... He stepped slightly to the right, away from Tamaki, even if it meant his shoulder was exposed to the elements, as rain came pouring down and the booming of thunder echoed. 

“You’re going to kill us. You do know that. One of your insane ideas is going to leave us dead.” 

Tamaki looked at the sky, weighing Kyoya’s words before laughing, and it almost shocked Kyoya that the clouds hadn’t parted upon seeing Tamaki’s smile. 

“Is that so bad?” He asked him, gesturing for Kyoya to clutch onto the handle with him, and the left part of Kyoya’s brain must have malfunctioned because he couldn’t come up with an answer that wasn’t ‘no’ and he might have just said it if Tamaki didn’t take off and they were sprinting through the streets whilst the heavens rained down, but right then, it felt like nothing- nothing- could dampen Kyoya’s spirits. 

Their soaked uniforms were draped on a clothes rack, nestled close to the open fire in one of the sitting rooms, after they had changed into something more casual. Technically, Kyoya was wearing Tamaki’s clothes, the ones that were too long for the blonde’s shorter stature. They might have resided in the second Suoh mansion and be in Tamaki’s name, but in every other way, they were Kyoya’s. Without the grand entrance of a limo and a chauffeur to escort them directly to the front door with an army of maids, butlers, housekeepers, you name it, waiting in the front hall, the two boys were given the rare luxury of slipping through a side door and attending to their own needs. Upon meeting Haruhi, Tamaki seemed more and more interested in living ‘as the common folk do’. Kyoya had pointed out that Haruhi didn’t seem to have the pleasure of hiding away in one of a hundred rooms, but they just had to make do with what they had. The two of them were on Tamaki’s mattress in his bedroom; Kyoya lying down ontop of the sheets and staring at the ceiling, whilst Tamaki sat at the top of the bed, scribbling in the margins of their assigned English novel, blabbering about how, somehow, Shakespeare. He seemed about two seconds away from marching to their English teacher’s home and begging they study Romeo and Juliet instead. 

“I just think it’s such a waste that we’re not studying the greatest romance of human history,” he exclaimed, tossing what he proclaimed was ‘unworthy literature’ during his passionate ramblings. Kyoya didn’t see it, only heard the thud of the paperback as it hit the floor. 

“You just think that because you’re a hopeless romantic. There’s other works of literature far greater than two lovesick fools killing themselves after a week-” He started, cut off as Tamaki gasped an offended “Kyoya!” whilst smacking him with a pillow. The blond dramatically sighed as he practically flung himself down, staring at the ceiling parallel to Kyoya, with his head at his feet. 

“You just think that because you’re the opposite of a romantic. Pity we don’t have time machines yet, otherwise I’d take you to the first ever life performance of it. As soon as you see the actress weeping for her loss love, you’ll understand why it’s such a classic to this day.” 

Kyoya could just about hear Kaoru screaming in his ear, “Look, it’s an opening! It’s an opening! Say your sappy gay shit!”  

“Well, it wouldn’t have been an actress. Women weren’t allowed to perform in the theatre in the age of Shakespeare. It would have been two boys playing the roles of Romeo and Juliet.” 

“Really?” He could perfectly envision Tamaki’s furrowed brows at the thought of it, and that opened the floodgates of every off-handed homophobic comment Tamaki had thrown out there ever since Kyoya had known him. Still, Kyoya moved forward. 

“It’s pretty ironic, if you think about it. The rampant misogyny at the time ended up making multiple romantic pairings...” Jesus, why couldn’t he just say it? 

“Yeah. The irony of it all.” 

Kyoya’s breath hitched, his heart pounded at a mile a minute whilst this image of Kaoru screamed at him to say it, say anything at all. 

“I think what’s really... ironic... is even though I’m supposedly the ‘anti-romantic’ out of the two of us I...” 

I’ve been in love with you for years? I’m willing to destroy our friendship because if I don’t, I might choke on my feelings? I stay awake at night, praying that when I tell you this, you won’t look at me and stay with me because you think I’m sick, and you still care for me, so you beg me to torture myself to get better, to get rid of this thing infecting me?  

“Kyoya?” Tamaki’s voice shatters the silence, and it forces not the first lie from Kyoya’s lips. 

“I’m seeing someone.” 

“You’re seeing someone? Who is she?” 

“It’s Kaoru.” Why does he want to add ‘I’m sorry’ onto the end of it? 

“You’re- What?” They both sit up to look at each other at the same time, but Kyoya can't read the look on Tamaki’s face, a foreign language he’s entirely unfamiliar with. Is he scared or just hurt, betrayed? Kyoya ignores it as he rattles off the script Kaoru fed him. 

“I’m seeing Kaoru. We’ve been together the past month, so you know, it's still early days, But we’re really happy. He makes me really happy.” Of course, Kaoru had to take possibly the most damming moment of Kyoya’s life and throw in a line about how great he is. 

Tamaki’s brow is still furrowed. He’s adverted his gaze, opting to look at the white bedsheets of his king-sized bed. White, the colour of purity. Maybe he’s worried Kyoya had dirtied them with his general presence. Finally, he looks back at him. His expression is still the same. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” 

Kaoru had instructed him to give some throw-away comment about how they weren’t sure if it would even work out, if it was worth telling anyone at all, but Kyoya needs this moment to have some semblance of truth. 

“I didn’t know how you would react.” 

“Because you’re both...” 

“Yeah.” 

Silence. A deafening silence. 

“This won’t affect the host club, Tamaki. It will stay private between the members.” 

“I- That’s what you’re worried about?” The blond can’t help but laugh and obviously, they both know that’s not the issue, but it's nice to pretend for a moment that it just breaks the fantasy of the host club if the members are in relationships. It doesn’t last long, then Tamaki is looking at Kyoya in every way he wishes he wouldn’t. 

Their night ends swiftly and awkwardly after that. Kyoya is acutely aware of the absence of Tamaki’s signature goodbye hug, and the fact that his clothes are still slightly damp. The way they cling to his lean frame does little to ease the sudden loneliness as he climbs into the backseat and is whisked home. To any outsider, his night continues as normal- dinner, homework, a hot shower- but Kyoya can feel the earth has shifted underneath the soles of his feet. In a peculiar way, the repetitive tap, tap, tap, of the stones upon glass are reassuring. They’re a reminder that things really are different and not just in his head. He flings the window open to peer down below, flinching as a small pebble smacks him squarely on the forehead. 

“Jesus, Kaoru-” 

“Keep your voice down before one of your bodyguards shoots me!” He hisses back at him, giving a frantic glance at their surroundings. “Can you get down from there?” 

Kyoya brushes himself down, regaining his composure. He can’t deny, there’s a certain thrill at the prospect of disappearing out into the night, an idea he had thought of often but never once acted upon. With a house of their size, and with Kyoya’s role, of being a back-up heir to a back-up, fire escape practices were practically mandatory. He highly doubted that his father, nor his brothers or the security guards, assumed Kyoya would use the fire escape- climbing from the balcony to the gutter pipe- to simply escape, not when Kyoya continuously tried to be the perfect third son that he still failed at. Once he gained his footing on the ground, he couldn’t stop himself from watching Kaoru’s expression. No signs of hurt, fear, betrayal, just that mischievous glint that seemed numbed down when Hikaru wasn’t around. 

“How’s sneaking around on my own property supposed to help with, as you called it, my ‘sexuality crisis’?” Kyoya whispered at him as Kaoru snatched at him wrist and dragged him into a nearby rose bush upon hearing the footsteps of an approaching guard. 

“We’re not just sneaking around your house. We, my good friend, and worse fake boyfriend, are having a night on the town,” he explained, in much too close proximity to Kyoya. It was still hard seeing in the dim light, but Kyoya could pick up that the relatively simple black jeans and hoodie Kaoru wore was some outlandish designer brand. Not that Kyoya could say much when he was relatively dressed the same- ‘black with something bright underneath’ wasn’t really the best descriptor. He ended up just throwing on the off-white shirt that he wore the last time he had been reluctantly forced out by the host club members, at the commoner’s shopping centre. 

“That still doesn’t-” He was caught off guard as Kaoru shoved a hand over his lips, silencing him, the footsteps of security guards getting louder, louder, then almost fading into the night as Kaoru whispered-yelled, “Run, go, go, go!” 

They darted off at the same time, mostly because Kaoru tugged Kyoya along like a sack of potatoes, the two somehow managing to fling themselves over a low wall and land on the other side. 

“Now what?” Kyoya gasped, a man who clearly was not used to fleeing from the very people employed to protect him. 

“Now,” Kaoru said, with all the conviction of a man who was very much used to doing just that, “We walk.” 

Maybe Kyoya was just that privileged, but he hadn’t expected this glorious ‘night on the town’ to include a walk to the nearest bus station and a trip to the nearest city on said public transport. Even if it was just a simple commoner’s bus, Kyoya couldn’t help but think of how much delight Tamaki might get from it. He could see him now, swooning the coffee girls going home and the bar girls going out, or cooing at the sleeping baby, nestled into her father’s arms. Even though this was supposed to be one of, assumedly many, ‘fake-date nights’, he was still tempted to message Tamaki if he was up for the ride. He was still debating it up until the vehicle stopped on a, for this time, busy street, with its neon lights flashing on buildings boasting the finest girls and drinks that all spelled out ‘DANGER’. They only seemed to flash more rapidly as the two stood in line outside of a bar, Kyoya examining the fake ID for a twenty-year-old 

“Huckleberry Finn?” He glared at Kaoru, then grimaced back at his ID. It wasn’t even him in the photo, and if you looked at it for longer than 0.2 seconds, it was blatantly obvious the male wasn’t even Japanese, but Korean. 

Kaoru bit the inside of his cheek as he shrugged. His own fake ID was much more polished- at least his had his own photo, or at least one of Hikaru’s- and a name that didn’t sound like a rip-off Strawberry Shortcake character. 

“To be fair, I literally only had an afternoon to sort this out. You should be thanking me for getting you one at such short notice.” 

“This was your idea, not mine. Our family’s reputations will be destroyed if we get caught. And this still doesn’t explain how you’re helping me with-” 

“The glass closet you’re still stuck in? All will be revealed, my good friend,” he even had the audacity to wink as he stepped forward when the line moved up, and, without missing a beat, turned on the Hitachiin twin charm as he exploded into conversation with the bouncer. He was so caught up in their conversation that he spent only a second looking at Kaoru’s ID, and even less with Kyoya’s before waving them through. 

“See, easy peazy, lemon breezy. Poor guy doesn’t get paid enough to stand there, reading everyone’s shit. If they like you enough, they let you pass,” Kaoru shrugged, effortlessly zigzagging through the crowd as the music pounded and the lights danced to the beat. 

“And you know this why, exactly?” Kyoya sighed, pulling a seat up to the bar next to the other. 

“I dunno. I guess I just do this kinda thing a lot. I’ve basically made a list so I can hit all these bars in Japan. Hey, s’cuse me!” He called over to the server. “Can I just get a highball and...” 

“Just water. Thanks.” 

“Water. Jesus Christ, Kyoya. You’re not at school, and you’re not at home. Live it up a little!” Kaoru insisted, taking a swig from his own drink. Kyoya ignored him, swirling the ice-cubes in his glass with his straw. 

“So, you and Hikaru do this together? I’m assuming.” 

Kaoru shook his head, took another sip, “I started sneaking out after our fight. I think I needed something that was mine, instead of ours. Like, to prove that I’m actually an individual, sometimes, if that makes sense.” He laughed, pushed his amber hair out of his face, looked back at Kyoya. “It’s ironic. I want us to be different people, I don’t want us to be different. I know I gave you a hard time for not telling Tamaki, but it’s not like I’ve told Hikaru, even now.” 

“Because then you’d be too different?” 

“Because then I’d be too different. I’ll have to actually deal with all these things he won’t have to. We’ve never actually had to do that before. And I just know that he’ll try so hard to get it, to get me, but he won’t. We’ll be too different.” 

Silence. 

“Jesus, that was depressing. I guess it breaks the illusion of the ‘Brotherly Love Shtick’ if one of us is actually gay and doesn’t actually have the possibility of falling for one of our customers. Or maybe it makes it more real? Who fucking knows anymore. Who knows anything, Kyoya.” 

Tamaki would know what to say at least. He usually did at least, but maybe this was out of his reign of jurisdictions. Haruhi would definitely know. She might be a bit too blunt and straightforward for some people’s taste, but he knew what he was talking about when it came to all this stuff. Maybe that was just a by-product of being raised by a bisexual drag queen. Whatever the reason, Kyoya knew he was too logical to come to a conclusion to this emotional conflict. Whatever he said, would it even really help Kaoru? Was it worth saying if it didn’t? The moment passed, and the lights dimmed around the bar, a spotlight lighting up the women on the stage as they broke out into their choregraphed routine. For whatever reason, the woman at the far left had a familiarity to her that Kyoya couldn’t place in that second. 

“Oh hey, show’s starting.” 

“Show?” Kyoya cocked a brow, and Kaoru looked at him, dead-panned. 

“It’s a drag show? Y’know, those things they do at drag bars?” 

Drag... what? Wait. 

Kyoya practically snapped his neck as he turned to look at the woman on the left, who stared right back, direct eye contact. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

“Get down. Now,” Kyoya demanded, not giving Kaoru much choice in the matter as he grabbed his wrist and dragged him down. 

“Jesus, Kyoya, you almost made me spill my drink. What is your problem, man?” 

“When you said you wanted to see all the drag bars in Japan, did you also have to include the one Ranka works at?” 

“Did I- Holy shit, is Haruhi’s dad here?” 

“Yes, and he has every legal obligation to report us to the police because neither of us are twenty, and you’re drunk-” 

“On half a glass?” 

“And your parents won’t even get the chance to kill you because I’m not letting you walk out of this place alive.” 

“Kyoya,” Kaoru placed a hand on his shoulder, and they were so close, too close for comfort, and Kyoya couldn’t move because they were in a prison of barstools. “Ranka’s cool, you guys are basically best mates. He’ll probably just let us off the hook and not say anything.” 

“I don’t remember saying that.” Speak of the devil. “What the hell do you boys think you’re doing here?” Ranka hissed as he crouched under the bar with them. 

“Kyoya’s real deep in the closet. Thought him seeing queer expression in public might change his mind.” 

“Kaoru, Jesus,” Kyoya sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“Oh, sorry Ranka. We’re actually just two straight guys who are just really into the drag show-gay bar scene. Must have forgot my sexuality at home,” Kaoru sarcastically remarks back. “Seriously, is that what you want me to say?” 

Ranka’s expression softened. He already had a soft spot for Kyoya- he was the one that constantly kept him updated on Haruhi at school, sure, but the few glimpses he got into Kyoya’s personal life gave him the impression that Kyoya’s life wasn’t just some fantastical billionaire’s son’s fantasy. Well, for the most part, at least. They might not be entirely there yet, but Ranka was still open, still waiting, for when Kyoya needed a parental figure to lean on. But Kyoya would have to be the one to make that jump. 

“Don’t out people without their consent. That’s just decent behaviour 101,” Ranka snapped his fingers in Kaoru’s face before he moved to stand up. “Come on, I’ll book you both a taxi home.” 

“Can I finish my drink at least?” 

“No,” they both said in unison. 

The rain had picked up again when the trio walked outside, Ranka and Kyoya huddled under the shelter of a cafe’s canopy, whilst Kaoru peered into the window of a nearby charity shop, having insisted that the cashmere sweater was definitely designer. 

“You know, you can talk to me about these things, Kyoya. I’ve known I was queer longer than you’ve been around. I guess that makes me some of kind of expert on all this stuff.” 

Kyoya didn’t say anything, just watched the way Kaoru moved. He really was different without Hikaru- more easy-going, insightful. Even the way he carried himself, it didn’t have the forced confidence the twins usually had. It just came naturally, even if it was less overbearing. 

“I do like him. I know that much. I like him, and he’s the only person I’ve ever felt that way for... But it still feels like there’s something missing. Like I’m not really all there, or all whole, or something along those lines. I’m missing something that would make our relationship complete,” he sighed, pushed his glasses up his nose. “It sounds ridiculous. I do apologise.” 

“I can tell you really like him. That much is obvious,” Ranka laughs gently as he tilts his head in Kyoya’s direction. “I’m not a professional or anything, but to me it sounds like you might be on the ace spectrum. I can’t tell you if you’re asexual or demi or whatever, but it might explain why you feel you’re ‘missing’ something.” 

“Maybe,” Kyoya exhaled, but he didn’t sound convinced. 

“Kyoya, you’re not missing anything. You can’t be missing something you never had. You’re already complete, and you don’t need someone to try to ‘complete’ you either. If he really loves you, he’ll know that.” 

He stopped for a moment as the taxi pulled over resting his elbow on the open window of the passenger door after Kyoya had slid in, whispering in a hushed tone, “For whatever it’s worth, I think you too make a lovely couple,” then disappeared inside without another word. 

“What was that about?” Kaoru perked up from the other seat as he buckled his seatbelt, Kyoya still gazing out the window on that dreary night. 

“I think Ranka just gave Tamaki and I his blessing.” 

“Whew,” Kaoru exhaled. “That’s big coming from Ranka. He hates Tamaki’s guts.” 

“Yes,” he answered back. “He does.” 

That’s what made it all the more confusing. 

It was already half-way through their journey that Kaoru made a startling realisation. 

“We forgot to take a single photo tonight!” 

“And that’s bad because...” 

“How are we supposed to convince anyone we’re all loved up and coupley if there’s gayer pictures of me and my brother than with you?” He hissed back. He wanted to avoid the taxi driver taking an interest in their conversation, this was far too much of a complex story to explain in one car journey. “Here, scoot over, we’ll just have to get some now.” 

Kaoru’s fake-dating plan seemed to become more complex by the hour, but nevertheless, however begrudgingly, Kyoya shimmed closer next to him as Kaoru took the shot. 

“How’s it look?” Kyoya asked, fixing his glasses and comfortably pulling back to his side of the car. 

“Like two bros chilling in a taxi,” Kaoru flipped the screen around, with an inch the length of a mile between them, it was hard to imagine any kind of romantic chemistry between them. 

“You can stop here,” Kyoya instructed the driver. They were still a good fifteen-minute walk from home, but he assumed that he was getting in the same way he had gotten out. Plus, it was completely unwise to assume a stranger would give them the courtesy of a private life, instead of blabbering to the tabloids that he was sure the Ootori and Hitachiin boys weren’t on the ‘straight and narrow’ in more ways than one. Kyoya thanked the driver and paid the fee, while Kaoru stood under the yellow glow of a streetlamp, frowning at his screen. 

“You’re just going to have to kiss me,” he decided as the taxi driver sped off down the empty street. 

“Kaoru, I’m not going to kiss you.” 

“Okay, well, have it your way, I’ll just have to kiss you. Either way, this plan isn’t going to work unless there’s photographic evidence of one of us being kissed.” 

Kyoya hated to admit it, but he did have a point. 

“Fine. It’ll make more sense for you to kiss me, and I’ll take the photo, you’re shorter than I am. Only on the cheek, might I add,” he muttered, snatching the phone from him. “And whatever you do, make sure only the host club members see this. Otherwise, you’ll get us killed.” 

“Hey, you’ll go out knowing one of the certified most attractive guys at school kissed you. Is that so bad?” He laughed, whilst Kyoya fixed the camera into position with one arm. Then, without warning, Kaoru had planted his lips on the taler boy’s cheek, and there it was: the black hole. All sense of reason, of logic, sucked away from Kyoya and he just felt Kaoru so close, squeezing Kyoya’s hand with both of his, which didn’t make sense because the camera couldn’t see it. It didn’t matter, none of it, not his father, or the host club’s reputation, or the Tamaki-Haruhi-Hikaru love triangle that was the reason for this charade. It was just the two of them, underneath the glow of a yellow streetlight. Kyoya wasn’t adequately sure they would have stopped if the bright flash of the phone camera hadn’t snapped them back to reality. 

“Sweet, lemme see,” Kaoru exclaimed, snatching away the camera to examine Kyoya’s handiwork. “Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.” 

It was a good photo, and that one screengrab made one thing crystal clear: they did make a lovely couple. Aesthetically, at least. 

“Kaoru, are you alright?” 

“What are you talking about?” 

Maybe it was just a trick of the light, but Kyoya was convinced there was a tint of pink on Kaoru’s features. Perhaps he was actually drunk or coming down with some kind of sudden fever because when Kyoya cupped Kaoru’s cheek with his hand, his skin seemed hot to the touch. Maybe Kyoya had unknowingly caught some sickness after running through the rain and changing back into damp clothes, because he seemed to be burning up in much of the same way. 

“Oh, wow, look at the time,” an eruption of nervous laughter from Kaoru as he suddenly pulled back. He couldn’t get away fast enough from Kyoya fast enough as he continued, “Well, shit, nice seeing you, Kyoya, yeah, ha, okay, well. I’ll see you at school. After the weekend. Peace out,” and Kyoya was left standing in the glow of the yellow streetlamp, wondering what was wrong with the two of them. 

Chapter Text

The night was pitch black. Even the stars had disappeared, as though they too had switched off their light and drifted off into a peaceful slumber. Kyoya had tried to follow suit, but after what felt like hours of restless twisting, the boy had given up. He sat up in bed, glaring at the clock on his bedside table. His vision readjusted as he pushed on his lenses. 3:00AM. The so-called ‘witching hour’, which he had a plethora of useless knowledge about, as it was one of the countless stories the twins had told Haruhi in order to scare him. Needless to say, because Haruhi had a functioning brain, it didn’t work. Rather, it had Tamaki convinced he was seeing ghosts, and Kyoya had to deal with late night calls for a week straight every time the blond heard something go bump in the night. Not that Kyoya minded at first. There was something special about it; feeling like their conversations were something else, something deeper, as Tamaki’s drowsiness made him whisper sweet nothings before dozing off. The calls only stopped when it became apparent Kyoya became a huge prick without his eight hours, and Haruhi informed Tamaki that his ‘visions’ were just linked to his increased melatonin at the time. She had definitely helped Kyoya, of course, but there was a slight resentment that it was just another thing she had taken from him. 

Fuck. Jealousy was not a good look for Kyoya, especially when Haruhi had done nothing wrong. She didn’t want to be dragged into all this in the first place! If Kyoya was going to be awake at this hour, he might as well do something productive, instead of just performing psychological torture on himself, thinking about Tamaki, Haruhi and now... He shook his head. Never mind. 

He climbed out of his king-sized mattress, pulling a sleeping gown around him as he restlessly made his way to his desk, the home for his top of the range computer. The light almost blinded him as the screen switched on, and he grumbled in irritation. He was going to be a pain in the ass by daybreak, something he could not afford to be in front of his father, even if he had all the money in the world. 

What did people even do at this hour, besides the poor souls slapping together a project they had put off for too long at the last hour, or the busy bodies tied up with overtime and night shifts? Even though his mind was still pondering, his fingers had taken on a life of their own, typing out what Ranka had mentioned mere hours before: asexuality. Even though the word was staring right at him, just begging for him to hit the enter key, there was a nagging feeling in the back of his mind, like what he was about to see wasn’t going to make him happy. As if one simple Google search was going to take away his already vanishing feeling of normalcy. 

Although he had avoided thinking about him as much as he could all night, his mind drifted back to Kaoru. He wasn’t as secure in his identity as he had first made out, not when it was just another pressure point between him and his brother. Maybe, if Kyoya simply ignored this, all this talk about being gay or asexual or what-have-you, he could just kid himself that he wasn’t. Kid himself and... Oh, he couldn’t even do that. He was long-gone by that point. He clicked enter and, after the longest second of his life, was bombarded by search-results, a catalyst of answers to his question. 

‘Asexuality 

Sexual Orientation 

Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to others, or low or absent interest in or desire for sexual activity. It may be considered a sexual orientation or the lack thereof. It may also be categorised more widely to include a broad spectrum of asexual sub-identities.’ 

Kyoya shifted in his seat, pushing his glasses up his nose. Ranka had really hit the nail on the head- the ‘lack thereof’ stood out to Kyoya, that part of him that felt missing. The longer he held on to that definition, the more it seemed to click in place. The years he spent rolling his eyes at his peers who, in his mind, swooned over attractive classmates and celebrities alike, without so much as sharing a single word between them. 

The moment was tarnished though as he scrolled down for a second, being jump scared by the DSM who felt his lack of sexual desire was brought on by ‘marked distress or interpersonal difficulties.’ So much for there not being anything wrong with him. So much for Ranka’s inspirational speech about how Tamaki would accept him as he is. 

He let out an exasperated sigh as he clicked out of the tab, absentmindedly tapping into social media, Ouran students had access to their own social media platform, a courtesy of the computer club. Kyoya had never posted on his own account before- hadn't even opted to change his profile picture from the faceless shadow person staring back at him. He spent most of his time running the Host Club page, and as it was the most followed page at their school, he must have been doing a pretty good job at it. He contributed a lot of its success, though, to the lacklustre accounts of the other members- Haruhi and Mori’s were similarly barren, Honey’s was a couple dozen shots of food with none of the boy in sight, and the twins’ shared account had these cryptic ‘memes’ that made them look like members of the Dark Magic Club. Meanwhile, Tamaki looked like he couldn’t go a day without posting at least twice. There was the occasional image of his dog, or the handful of behind-the-scenes shots at what the Host Club was working on, but the vast majority were Tamaki, Tamaki, Tamaki. It made sense that he was just shy of being the most followed page after his own club. 

Kyoya’s interest piqued at the follow request in his inbox, the profile showing one half of the Hitachiin twins- Kaoru. 

“This must be where he’s posting the photos,” Kyoya mused aloud as he hit the ‘friend’ button and was given access to Kaoru’s page. Their selfie was currently the only picture up, the caption bedazzled with a million hearts and ‘me and the boyfriend (Kyoya)’. You know, as if Kyoya wasn’t clearly the guy being kissed in the photo. Subtlety was certainly not Kaoru’s forte. 

The only thing left to check out was Kaoru’s friends list, which included exclusively the members of the host club, minus Hikaru. Kyoya figured as much, all the other members had flocked to the comments to wish the two a congratulations, bare Tamaki. Had he not seen the post? It was the middle of the night- he might have just accepted the friend request and immediately dozed off afterwards. Or maybe Kyoya coming out and Tamaki having to see that all in one day was just too much for him. 

His late-night rendezvous online was supposed to help him relax, but Kyoya had more pumped-up energy than he ever had before, his mind racing at a mile a minute. The longer he spent stuck in his own head, the greater his anxiety became. He swivelled around on his chair, snatching up his discarded mobile of his locker, but when he went to dial the number, his mind went blank. He could call Tamaki, sure, but Tamaki was the problem. The only other person he could confide in was Kaoru, but after his disappearing act tonight, would he even bother to pick up? It’s not like they were particularly close in the first place. Outside of club activities and the occasional group outing, usually organised as ‘family-bonding’ by Tamaki, Kyoya was certain that tonight was the only extended period they had spent in each other’s company. 

Acquitances. Club members. Fake boyfriends. None of these seemed like the sort of connections to pick up a phone at 3:30 in the morning. Yet, for the second time in a row, Kaoru answered his call. 

“Kyoya? Is something wrong?” He murmured on the other end, clearly having been just awoken from his slumber, Then, another sleepy voice mumbled, “Kaoru? You alright?” 

“I’m fine, Hikaru. Just go back to sleep. I’ll be right back,” his footsteps could be heard padding across the floor, trying to silently inch the door close so as to not further disturb his sleeping sibling. “Sorry, I’m back. What’s up?” 

“Were you sleeping with your brother?” 

“Why? You jealous Kyo?” He snickered. Kyoya couldn’t even get mad at him, he had walked right into that. 

“Christ, you know I didn’t mean it like that.” 

“I know. It’s still funny though,” he pointed out, wiping at the sleep clinging to his lashes. “I don’t know. He gets lonely at night. We both do, but it’s mostly him. It’s probably something to do with all that being in the womb together bullshit. Y’know. Twin-science shit,” he shrugged. It was deeper than that, and they both knew it. Maybe if they were still little kids, it could be overlooked, but they were fifteen now, so it was another item on the growing list of their glaringly obvious co-dependence issues. “Anyway, what do you want? Or do you just miss me?” 

“Hardly. I think Ranka just diagnosed me with some illness,” Kyoya replied as he clicked back onto the DSM criteria. 

“What, did he tell you about the huge stick constantly up your ass?” 

“I’m not even going to address that. He said I might actually be asexual.” 

“Like, a plant? I guess a fly-trap really suits you.” 

“It’s basically just that I don’t experience sexual attraction, but according to the DSM-” 

“The DS what now?” 

Kyoya blew out an exasperated sigh. “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders. How do you not know that?” 

“Dude, I was raised by a fashion designer. Not a doctor. Course I don’t know that!” Technically, Kyoya’s dad was a CEO of a medical company, but Kaoru was most likely only saying ‘doctor’ to get under Kyoya’s skin. 

“It doesn’t matter. What I’m saying is I’ve got some illness caused by stress. That’s what’s wrong with me.” 

“Not surprised, since your dad’s a huge dick,” said Kaoru, clicking away at his own keyboard. “What, fucking hell, Kyo, you don’t actually believe this garbage, do you? This is the same stuff they said about gay people up until the 70s.” 

“Neither of us had heard about this thing until five minutes ago. You really can't say it's the same thing at all,” Kyoya tilted his head back onto his chair, looking up at the ceiling. “Hopefully they have some type of medication that can fix me.” 

“Medication. Geez,” Kaoru tsked, typing away until he made what a considered a momentous discovery. “See, look. There’s a group called AVEN in the states trying to get asexuality declassified as a disorder. That’s enough to prove my point. There’s nothing wrong with you, at least, not that. Don’t call you Dark Lord for nothing.” 

“That’s reassuring. I’d hate for our little arrangement to make you forget the power I held over you,” he joked back, a smile creeping on his lips. 

“Heh,” he laughed. “You have no idea.” 

Before Kyoya could ask what he meant, there was a knock on the redhead’s door. “Are you coming back to bed yet?” 

“Yeah, yeah. I am. Just give me one second, promise.” 

“Who are you even talking too?” 

“Nobody. It’s not important. Don’t worry about it.” 

“Right... Whatever you say,” followed by the sound of footsteps getting quieter and quieter, a door closing shut behind him.

“Not important? Ouch,” Kyoya sarcastically remarked, raising a brow, even though Kaoru couldn’t see it. 

“Sorry, didn’t mean that. Of course, you’re important to me. Or,” he groaned. “I’m real fucking sleep deprived. I’ll talk to you at school, okay?” 

Kyoya’s cheeks lit up the same way they had underneath the streetlamp. The words of affection came as just a surprise to him as that kiss, maybe even more so. The only people who would shower Kyoya with affection was his sister or Tamaki. Other than that, he could count on one hand the amount of smiles he got from his brothers or parents. He wasn’t entirely opposed to adding one more person to his relatively short-list of genuine compliments. 

“You’re important to me too,” he interrupted Kaoru, even though he wasn’t sur that statement was the absolute truth. Hadn’t he just labelled Kaoru an acquaintance a mere five minutes ago? Maybe he was just as sleep deprived. 

“Oh, wow, okay,” Kaoru laughed, caught off guard. “Didn’t expect that. Text me though, if you need anything, right?” 

“Right. Okay.” 

“Sleep well, Kyo,” he said before hanging up. But Kyoya still couldn’t sleep that night. 

In fact, Kyoya was convinced that he wouldn’t get a good night’s sleep ever again, but, thankfully, after surviving on coffee and over-priced energy drinks to get him through both Saturday and Sunday he slept like a log the night before school. He was going to need it- he had to be on his toes as he played the part of Kaoru’s boyfriend. He arrived at the school earlier than usual that morning, as Tamaki had arranged what he called a ‘family-meeting’. ‘Family-meetings’ were typically just to do a final rundown of the club’s activities, crossing the t’s and dotting the i's if you will, but they also served as a so-called ‘safe-space’ for Tamaki to go on unnecessarily long tangents about whatever minor issue he could make a mountain out of a molehill of. Considering all they were putting on today was a tea party, an event that had pulled off flawlessly countless times before, Kyoya was certain this meeting was the latter. And he had an inkling he knew exactly what, or rather who, this meeting was about. 

It surprised Kyoya when he swung open the door to the Music Room and, instead of it being empty, as it usually was at this hour, Tamaki was there, playing keys on the piano. It wasn’t like Tamaki to be there first, he usually arrived what he said was ‘fashionably late’, swinging the door open when all the members had arrived and seated, rapidly jumping into the day’s topic. Always a flair for dramatics. Even his music seemed strange. Kyoya felt like Tamaki’s skills were like a seductress casting a spell over him, a siren’s song to a sailor. This was just a boy, playing notes at random, his mind elsewhere. 

“Tamaki,” Kyoya said, dragging Tamaki back down to earth. “It’s not like you to be on time,” he continued speaking, though he was frozen in place, awkwardly standing in front of the door, which closed with a far louder bang then he intended. 

“Uh, no. I suppose it’s not,” he practically had to drag his gaze away from his music sheets to look at Kyoya from across the room, forcing a pitiful attempt at a laugh. The tension in the room could have been cut with a knife. Was this what it was going to be like between them now? Had this great plan blown up in Kyoya’s face, destroying all the years him and Tamaki had been as thick as thieves, reducing them to strangers? Had this all just been one big mistake? 

“Tamaki-” 

“Kyoya-” he said at the same time, standing up from his seat at the piano. Whatever the blond was about to say was lot as another member entered the room, slipping his hand into Kyoya’s as if it was an everyday occurrence, as normal and as uneventful as the sun rising each day in the east.  

“Morning, Tamaki,” Kaoru smiled at the blond whilst simultaneously resting his head against Kyoya’s shoulder. He flicked his eyes away from Tamaki to look up to Kyoya. “You still up for our study date tonight?” Kaoru was like a natural born actor. He played the part of the doting boyfriend perfectly without missing a beat. Even with the eight hours of sleep underneath him, Kyoya still stumbled over his words. He felt hot, and he wasn’t sure if that was because of Kaoru latching onto him, or the look Tamaki was giving them, this pained expression of despair. Like watching a puppy getting kicked whilst it was down. It made Kyoya squirm. 

“Of course. I have it pencilled into my journal,” but it was so unnatural, so stiff, so forced. Public displays of affection really weren’t Kyoya’s thing in the first place, let alone when he had to put it on in front of the guy he actually liked, who looked like he was boiling in a hot pan. 

“On second thought, I think I left my pen in the common room. One moment,” Tamaki stammered out, grasping at straws to find any reason to escape the situation, bursting out of the room just as Honey, Mori and Haruhi strolled in. He was in such a frenzy, he didn’t even give a passing glance to his beloved Haruhi, who had cocked an eyebrow at all the commotion. 

“Uh, what was that all about?” She asked, pointing a thumb back at where Tamaki had just vanished. 

Kaoru shrugged nonchalantly, like their Club President hadn’t just deserted them. “Just Tamaki being Tamaki. Always having a flair for the dramatics,” he drawled, still leaning up against Kyoya. Kyoya had hoped whatever tension had come between him and Tamaki would have left with him, but it settled between the five members. The all gawked at each other like strangers, and Kyoya had to hold himself together not to bat Kaoru off him, to call off this whole charade. 

Haruhi, still with her brow raised that if Kyoya hadn’t spent dozens of hours looking at her face, putting together novelties like calendars and posters for their patrons, Kyoya might have thought it was always a resident halfway up her forehead, finally said, “Congrats again on,” she waved a hand in their direction. “This.” 

Mori was still a stoic presence; Kyoya couldn’t decide if that should reassure him or not. 

“Yeah, congratulations!” Honey was slightly more upbeat, but with the forced enthusiasm you would congratulate a needy child who kept shoving their half-finished colourings in your face. 

“We don’t have to make a big hullaballoo out of it. We’re together, nobody else needs to know so our sales won’t decline,” Kyoya sighed, reaching for his little black book and the luxurious diamond encrusted fountain pen that lay on the coffee table in the room, then swiftly sitting down on one of those fine couches. He didn’t have anything particular in mind to write down, but he couldn’t stand being watched any longer. Kaoru didn’t seem to get the hint, or purposefully ignored it, whichever was more in character for him, opting to continue crowding Kyoya. He carelessly flung himself down, resting his head on Kyoya’s lap, his head twisted to look at the other members. 

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” he drawled effortlessly in response to the looks of the others. His eyes flicked up to Kyoya, and he bit the inside of his cheek to stifle a giggle at Kyoya’s look of mortification. 

“Right, uh,” the brunette gave a single clap of her hands. “We’ll just give you guys some... space then.” Thank goodness Ouran was privileged and wealthy enough that the other side of a room was light-years away so that they could talk privately in hushed tones without the fear of being overheard. 

“They think we’re a terrible couple. We’re completely incompatible and everyone knows that. Why, on earth, would anyone believe we’re together?” Kyoya muttered, running a hand down his own face in exasperation. 

“Ow. I know we’re fake dating, but that stings, Kyoya,” was the sarcastic remark back, clutching at his chest like there was a gunshot wound. He reached up lazily, twirled a strand of black hair around his pointer. “I think we could be pretty cute together.” 

Kyoay grabbed his wrist suddenly, stared down at the boy with an intensity that turned Kaoru red. It was meant to be frightening, a threatening way of getting Kaoru to back down. Threats were supposed to be Kyoya’s things, but this just seemed... flirtatious? He dropped his wrist like a hot coal, or Kaoru pulled away, both boys looking anywhere that wasn’t each other. 

“You need to cool it with the public displays of affection,” Kyoya said at last, pushing up his glasses. “Haruhi doesn’t buy it for a second. If anyone catches on, it’ll be her.” 

“Being touchy-feely is the only leverage we have to push Tamaki over the edge. Besides, we’re not meant to make a good couple. We’re supposed to be a terrible match. You get on my nerves; I get on yours. Everyone sees it, and everyone fucking knows it. Which is why nobody will even suspect anything when you’re hitched with blondie two minutes after we ‘break up’.” 

The ‘blondie’ in question still hadn’t returned, yet there was another member’s absence that weighed more on Kyoya’s mind in that moment. The bell was already ringing over him before he could get the words out, Kaoru lazily yawning and stretching his arms as he stood up. 

“Wanna walk me to class?” Kaoru suggested, a flirty side-smirk on his lips that he must have put on for the others, who had all turned back to watch carefully. Kyoya was certain Kaoru had this class with Haruhi, and that his own class was miles across campus in the other direction. He couldn’t risk being late- you weren’t star pupil with a reputation for tardiness- but such a hit would be relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, and knowing how it would rile up Tamaki when he got word of it... it was all too good to resist. 

“With pleasure,” he smiled back, and two walked off with the others in the dust. 

Chapter Text

“Flashcards for the Prince of Darkness,” Kaoru presented the plastic-wrapped pieces of paper with the grandiosity of announcing the arrival of royalty, before carelessly dropping them in front of Kyoya. It was time for lunch, and the two boys sat across the canteen from the other members–in their line of sight, but completely out of earshot. It was the perfect way to kill two birds with one stone: first bird, flaunting their relationship to the club without dragging much attention from anyone else, and the second, acting out the next phase of their plan, the details of which Kyoya had been left completely in the dark about.

He furrowed his brows together in confusion as he picked up the cards. “Why, pray tell, are you giving me these?”

“It’s for the next part of our plan. Plus, your whole personality, you know, being smart, the whole glasses thing, really makes me think you’d be a flashcards guy.”

“So, you used baseless stereotypes and decided from that I would be a ‘flashcards guy’.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Of course you did,” he muttered, tearing off the plastic film. “Thanks,” he said. He was, very much, a ‘flashcards guy’. “Now then, tell me what they’re for, because I can tell you have some ulterior motive.”

“We,” Kaoru announced, leaning over the table to pluck one of the cards out of Kyoya’s grasp, “are getting a head start on tonight’s study date. We’re going to learn everything there is to know about each other. Since you were super insecure about Haruhi figuring this whole thing out.”

“I really doubt me not knowing your blood type is how this entire thing falls apart,” Kyoya said, watching Kaoru, with distaste, pull a pen from his front pocket and immediately started chewing absentmindedly. Gross.

“You really want to take that chance?” Kaoru asked, cocking his head in her, Haruhi’s, direction. She was watching them with the intensity of a hawk watching their prey.

“No, I suppose I don’t,” he finally admitted.

“Perfect, because I’ve already made a comprehensive list of everything we should know about each other.” The list seemed to range from completely general knowledge–birthdays, parents and siblings–to increasingly weird and random things.

“When I was talking about knowing your blood type, you do realise that was a joke and not a suggestion?” He asked, peering over the list.

“That’s part six: I get involved in a terrible accident and you heroically save my life by giving me a blood transfusion on the spot. Nobody can ever question our relationship after that.”

“I would never do that for you,” he stated bluntly, filling out the list on his flashcards. By the time they were finished, each boy had a collection of answers to previously unasked questions of birthdays, star signs, heights, weights, relatives, favourite subjects and foods and, of course, blood types.

“I had no idea you had a sister,” Kyoya prompted as he flicked through Kaoru’s bundle of cards. “I always assumed it was just you and Hikaru. What's she like?”

“Oh, no way, Ageha? She’s like, a fucking genius, she’s already reading books way above her age level. My dad thinks she could be a brain surgeon or something. But I dunno, she’s really passionate about flowers and butterflies, so maybe she’ll be a gardener, something like that. I mean, who knows at that age?” Kaoru sighed, making his fondness even more abundantly clear and even just hearing that… it certainly pulled at Kyoya’s famously frozen heart at the pure excitement Kaoru had over getting to talk about his little sister. It was clear her older brother doted on her in a way Kyoya had never pictured. This twins’ attitude seemed mostly akin to spoilt only children, but then again, Kyoya had often been repeatedly asked if he was the oldest, despite being most definitely the youngest, his greatest downfall that he had no control of.

“You’re not 5’10 though. That I know for certain,” Kyoya didn’t just pull the rug away from Kaoru amidst this moment of unfiltered enthusiasm, he snatched it away, leaving him stumbling over his own words.

“What are you talking about? Hikaru and I have always been 5’10.”

“Always? Seems unlikely.”

“Well, since we started the Host Club, at least!”

“Interesting, considering I’m in charge of all the measurements for club outfits and, according to those measurements, you’re only 5’9.”

“Well, you messed up your measurements then. Shit, use your shady connections and get my medical records if you need proof,” he persisted, childishly kicking him under the table.

“I don’t get anything wrong,” Kyoya responded, with all the maturity and level-headedness of an adult, whilst returning the kick with much stronger force. He was not above such immaturity either.

The rest of the break went by in the blink of an eye, filled with such mindless and immature banter the two should have left behind in middle school, It was most certainly not the most natural way to ‘connect’ to a person, but they both surprisingly bonded over their shared common interests–spicy food and English class. The former prompted another fake-date idea from Kaoru to visit his personal favourite restaurant, whose hot karashi renkon was to die for. It actually caught Kyoya off guard when suddenly the painfully familiar bell had rung, bringing their meeting to a close.

“We’re still going to study together tonight, right? I do actually have stuff to revise for physics,” the look on Kaoru’s face communicated that he’d rather throw himself down from the school’s clock-tower than do anything of the sort.

“I could help you out. I’m fairly decent at physics,” Kyoya offered as he came to a stand. Plus, in addition to English and German, it was one of Kyoya’s favourite topics. It wasn’t that it just came easily to him, it was just simply fascinating.

“You’re ‘fairly decent’ at pretty much anything you put your mind to.”

“So, just about everything, you mean?”

“So, just about everything, I mean,” he smiled back softly. “Your house though. We can’t do mine, for obvious reasons.”

That obvious reason hadn’t shown his face all day, and the fact Kaoru hadn’t mentioned him directly once left Kyoya feeling awfully suspicious. It was as if Kaoru knew that as soon as Kyoya opened his mouth, he was going to ask about it, because before Kyoya could even do it, Kaoru gave a short and abrupt farewell of, “Right, cool, see ya,” and was gone.

It was hilariously ironic that, despite the overwhelmingly exorbitant size of the school, Kyoya still managed to stumble upon the conversation between the two brothers, and if Kyoya believed in such a thing, he would have thought it was fate guiding him. Sure, he shouldn’t have eavesdropped, he never should eavesdrop according to most people, but since it was usually just for his own personal amusement, or to generally determine how to best direct others, and this situation was teetering towards the latter, he gave himself a pass this time. He stood hidden around the corner in the maze of corridors as Hikaru bickered and Kaoru kept a level-head.

“I just don’t understand why you’d tell everyone I’m sick– clearly , I’m fine,” the older boy questioned, obviously irritated.

“We used to lie about that stuff all the time when we were kids to ditch school. Since when did you get so straight-laced about that type of stuff?”

“Uh, because we used to do that type of thing together ? Unsurprisingly, lying in bed all day with nobody to talk to and a bunch of adults fussing over me was mind-numbingly boring. I literally begged them to let me come in because I was so tired of it.”

 “Nobody’s going to believe we’re both ‘sick’ that easily anymore. I figured I was doing something nice. Doing you a favour.” There was a lull in the conversation. Kyoya could picture the way Kaoru’s features would soften as he looked at his brother, twisting him around his finger in the same way he’d pull their customers into their act. It was almost unnerving, even though it shouldn’t have been at all surprising. Maybe, it was just the fact that he was willing to play the game without Hikaru in the loop this time. “Come on, lighten up. You know I was just trying to do something nice for you.”

If Hikaru noticed the act, he didn’t say anything about it, even if there was a wary note in his tone as he muttered a half-hearted farewell. But just because Hikaru wasn’t going to push it, that didn’t mean Kyoya wouldn’t.

“You do realise the more convoluted this gets, the higher probability it has of failing? Are you just planning on keeping Hikaru out of school until this is finished?” Kyoya threw out the rhetorical questions just as Kaoru rounded the corner, who jumped away like a cat doused in water, cursing Kyoya under his breath.

If Kaoru knew what the definition of ‘rhetorical’ was, he certainly didn’t care, as once he had gathered up some composure, he remarked, “It’s not ‘convoluted’. I just… I didn’t factor Hikaru into the equation, and it’s creating a few bumps in the road.”

Considering the entire equation was devised solely so the solution would include Hikaru ending up with Haruhi, Kyoya highly doubted it. “You mean, you didn’t factor in your own personal feelings about coming out, correct? You’re the one who was left out,” he raised a hand to stop the onslaught of protests Kaoru had prepared as soon as he opened his mouth. “If it’s so much of an issue, why not tell Hikaru your plan? You’ve accomplished enough devious stunts in the past that I’m sure he could keep his trap shut. Just don’t mention that you’re…” he dismissively gestured with one hand, enough to get the message across.

“No way,” Kaoru exclaimed. “He’d freak. Think it’s wrong on Milord or Haruhi, or that I’m putting way too much of my reputation at stake for something that isn’t even real.”

“Glad to see I’m just not something he’d think about in this situation.”

“My point is that if I genuinely thought Hikaru would let me do this, I would have told him. And I do… I want to come out. I just… I need more time,” his sudden strength and persistence seemed to evaporate when his shoulders slumped. He was trapped between a rock and a hard place. So, in a sudden and usually uncharacteristic display of affection, the older boy placed a hand on his shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. Kyoya looked at his own arm with as much shock as Kaoru had, and it was Kyoya’s arm for God’s sake. Still, there was no point backing down now. Better follow through with something, instead of getting encapsulated in those seemingly endless amber-coloured eyes. They had often been written off by Kyoya as animalistic–wild, cat-like things–but there was something about the way the afternoon rays hit them now that flecks of a deep gold oozed over the boy like a warm honey. They were so different from the wide-eyed violets of Tamaki’s gaze. Everything about Tamaki divulged warmth, but his eyes made Kyoya feel like he’d be lost if he wandered into them. Kaoru’s gaze was different. This warmth, this security, this… safety .

… What?

“What?” Kaoru.

“What?” That was Kyoya.

“You said what first.”

What?

“What?”

“What- I- forget it, are you gonna let me go?”

What- oh, for fuck’s sake, they were going to be trapped in a vicious cycle for the rest of the day if this kept up. Kyoya dropped his hand, and, almost defensively, pushed his glasses back up. He was frozen in place except for his half-hearted fidgeting. Kaoru, all in one fluid motion, opened his mouth to say something and just as quickly dropped the subject with a shake of his head. Then, in a way that gave Kyoya a seriously bad case of déjà vu of so many countless times before, was gone.

What.

The fuck.

Was that ?

Chapter Text

Whatever had been in the air earlier that day still seemed to linger in the open hallway of the Ootori family home, as both Kyoya and Kaoru slipped their shoes off at the door. The walk back, which they had decided on beforehand in contrast to their usual private limo as it was the easiest way for them to slip out at the end of the day unseen, was uncharacteristically quiet, something that Kyoya might have typically enjoyed if not for the fact that Kaoru’s silence came across louder and more tortuous than nails on a chalkboard. It wasn’t like the other boy was outright ignoring him- Kaoru had exchanged all the average pleasantries, the polite hellos, the reaffirming ‘mhms’ and ‘yeahs’ at Kyoya’s desperate attempts to talk about the weather, before their footsteps were the only sounds made between them. So, to acknowledge that something was off, that something was wrong, would mean that Kyoya would have to bring attention to whatever had happened before, if anything even really did happen.

He enjoyed Kaoru’s company, sure, Kyoya could admit that. He was intelligent and quick-witted, all the skills that Kyoya prided on possessing himself, so he could respect when others’ could keep up with him, and ,yes, that respect had maybe turned to some sort of a fondness, but that seemed only natural given the unusual situation they had found themselves in. Sure, Kaoru was conventionally attractive, but so were all the other members of the Host Club, and whether that was a vapid way of viewing things, it was part of the reason the business worked so well. Yet, none of that indicated some sort of romantic interest. Just a fondness, a general interest or perhaps, an intrigue.

Intrigue was the best descriptor, the type that he could also see Kaoru viewing Kyoya with. They were revealing a side of themselves that they couldn’t share with Tamaki and Hikaru respectively. An investment in analysing their partner’s character was simply a given, especially when taken into the account the falseness constantly on display upon all the students who had their wits about them, as Ouran Academy functioned as their parents’ investment into long-term networking, disguised as high school friendships.

Whatever had happened, although nothing had happened, really, was just a side-effect of that.

Kaoru, now, after pushing his shoes into a corner, nodded at the room around him- it’s large, floor-to-ceiling windows that remained immaculately clean at any given moment, the dark onyx-black floor tiles that echoed loudly, especially when it came to the click of Kyoya’s mother’s or sister’s heels, the vastness and yet, what had never made Kyoya self-conscious until now, the emptiness of it. His father didn’t seem to think much about the interior design beyond its massive scale as some imposition of his power on the landscape.

“Your house is like being in the Microsoft building,” Kaoru finally broke the silence that had followed them from the school, his voice bouncing off the walls which he clearly took an interest in with the side smirk pulling at his lips.

“Don’t,” Kyoya could practically feel a migraine coming on, just from the idea of what Kaoru was about to do.

“What? I genuinely didn’t do anything.”

“You’re going to start shouting, or screaming, or something equally as ridiculous and annoying. This is my father’s house, not a playground. Don’t do that.”

“And you’ve never felt the urge when you get home to just yell out… Echo!” It wasn’t even that loud of a yell, it wasn’t even really a yell but a slight raise of his voice that ever-so-slightly rang through the halls. What was loud was the bang of the door that had swung open, and the figure that came through. All at once, Kyoya could feel himself stiffen, making a mental note of the things he needed to fix in the next two seconds, like the slight stoop in his posture and the fixture of an empty, hollow smile to replace his grimace as his older brother, Akito, approached, his own voice much louder as he ordered out, “Kyoya, stop that racket, Christ. Father and Yuuchi are trying to close an investment deal without you behaving like a child.”

It was only then that he seemed to notice Kaoru standing there, Akito glancing at him up and down as if trying to elevate the boy’s importance, trying to figure out whether it was worth dropping the subject so as to not damage some potential business partnership. Whatever he saw, or likely didn’t see, in Kaoru, clearly did not live up to his standards, directing his question of, “And this is?” to Kyoya.

“Kaoru Hitachiin. First year in Ouran. We’re in the Host Club together,” Kaoru smiled through gritted teeth as he stepped forward and took out his hand.

“Charmed,” Akito glanced down, seeming to wait for Kaoru to draw back, but when he didn’t, he was forced to shake the boy’s hand, grimacing at the iron-tight grip Kaoru locked him into for a moment too long, before drawing back. “I’m hoping you’re at least here to do something productive, and not more…” he waved his hand dismissively, “extracurriculars, if you can call it that.”

“Yeah, I’m here to study,” there was clearly something else Kaoru wanted to say, and it was taking his entire body to restrain himself, digging his nails into his fists.

“Good, good. Kyoya needs to learn that the internal exam for university isn’t to be taken lightly,”

“Good thing that Kyoya is easily the most intelligent person in Ouran then. Won’t be hard for him to pass,” Kaoru continued, the smile looking more painful by the second as it seemed to grow, and even if Kyoya could admire that determination, all he wanted to say was ‘let it go, just drop it already’.

Akito stopped, pondered to see if he could come up with anything and, dismissively shrugged. He had met his match, but he wouldn’t admit that now. “Just be quiet, Kyoya,” he finally mustered up, before stalking back the halls to the kitchen. It made Kyoya think about when Tamaki was here, which really, hadn’t been much different. Anytime he had friends over, which, well, was actually just Tamaki, his brother seemed to act like it was the greatest disservice Kyoya could do.

Not a moment after the door had shut, all Kaoru could mutter was, “What a dickhead. Jesus Christ, I actually thought I was going to punch him.”

“He’s still my brother. He earned his position to say all those things,” Kyoya said, his entire attitude shifting back to the way it was as if there had been no change at all, making his way toward the sitting room, with its equally domineering floor-to-ceiling windows, although the addition of a simple plain, white coach and a royal blue carpet.

“You didn’t even try to stand up for yourself,” Kaoru verbally pushed at him, dropping down on the sofa, taking up half the thing whilst Kyoya dutifully sat upright, cross-legged. “You didn’t say anything, for that matter.”

“You can’t understand the position I’m in. You don’t have anyone above you in the line of succession, besides the most technical of technicalities.”

A slight hum of disapproval from the younger boy as he shoved the back of his head slightly against Kyoya’s thigh, arms crossed, and that feeling, it was so small, but Kyoya was back there, back in the corridor, lost in his eyes, holding onto his wrist on the coach, letting him kiss him miles away from his home, the same home that he wouldn’t even let him come anywhere near that first night, watching him stalk off into the dark, and suddenly Kyoya was standing up with enough force that it almost threw Kaoru off the coach because no, whatever was happening right now, to him of all people, was completely and utterly forbidden.

“We’re wasting time here. Are you failing-failing physics or just Ouran-failing?” Kyoya finally said, trying to mask the fact that he was breathless, that his neck was burning, that his heart was travelling at miles per hour.

“Actually failing. It’s just this one topic,” he told him.

“Well, we can’t have that. So, lets just get this over with.”

Kaoru was failing resistance. That was the topic. It was beyond parody. It drove Kyoya crazy.

Pointing at where Kaoru had hastily scribbled some semblance of an answer, Kyoya stated, “No look, see that there’s three resistors in the equation? All you’re doing is calculating the current flowing in resistor X and resistor Y. So, it would be-”

“Multiply four by a third?” Kaoru butted in.

“Do you even need me here? You said you were failing, but you clearly understand the material,” Kyoya leaned back from where Kaoru was hunched over his notebook on the couch after the fifth question Kaoru had gotten right in a row.

“Yeah, when you’re basically here dictating everything. But in the exams, my brain, honest to God, tries to kill itself from the stress. Hikaru thought it was actually so funny when I said the teacher was threatening to give me detentions over it so she can ‘see what I’m doing’,” he rolled his eyes as he flopped back, letting the notebook slip to the floor with a thud.

“Pity Hikaru isn’t the one being threatened with detention. Make getting around the school without him seeing us a whole lot easier,” Kyoya laughed. Of course, life could never be that easy. It seemed to be only pure luck, and Kaoru’s semi-meddling, that they had managed to be working this whole charade well enough.

“Speaking of,” Kaoru pulled his phone out, a sign of their picture time to continue to give fake importance to their relationship. Yet, he didn’t even open the camera before he suddenly prompted, “Are you still completely against kissing me?”

“We’re not getting fake-married. I still don’t see what your obsession with displaying our fake kissing to the world would bring that us being fake together doesn’t already do,” Kyoya asserted.

“Sounds like you’re ‘wanting your first kiss to be special’,” Kaoru toyed at him, dramatically clutching his hands to his chest as he faked squealed like a schoolgirl, only stopping at the put-off look on Kyoya’s face. The penny dropped. His jaw was on the floor. “Oh my god. You are. Shit, I’m an asshole. Ignore what I said.”

Kyoya stiffened, “I’m not. I’ve kissed...” Plenty? That was too much. One? That was just sad, “a handful.”

“You haven’t. You’re lying. I can tell.”

“No, you can’t. I’ve lied about more things that are of much more importance, particularly to you, and you’ve never noticed.”

“You admitted it, you’re lying. I’m a genius.”

Fuck. That was such an easy trap too.

“It’s okay if you haven’t, Kyo. I’ve never, like,” Kaoru shrugged, “kissed anyone either. Who cares anyway?”

An idea sprung to Kyoya’s lips before it had even been processed in his mind, “Well, if we both acknowledge that we don’t actually care about this kiss, we can just consider it a write-off. It won’t count for either of us.”

Kaoru snapped his fingers, “I heard this thing actors do where they high-five after they kiss, so their brain automatically cancels it out and rewrites it as a platonic action.”

Kyoya blinked at him, “That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard, and I’ve known Tamaki since middle school.”

“It’s genius.”

Kyoya shook his head, “Let’s just get this over with.”

Kaoru turned to face him, then shifted up at the height difference, before opting to kneel on the couch. Kyoya wasn’t sure what to do, he honestly assumed they would be standing, but at least now he didn’t have to think about what he had to do with his hands. Or did he? He still had hands actually, even if he was sitting down, he thought to himself as he decided to copy the way Kaoru sat. His back stiffened as Kaoru placed a hand on his jaw, which he at first thought was Kaoru’s attempt to ease him, until he shoved his head sharply to the left.

“I can still move my head, Kaoru,” he muttered, irritated.

“Nobody ever says, ‘Hey, move your head. Coming in for a kiss’, in movies and stuff. Kills the vibe, probably”

“That’s not real life. And we’re not having a real kiss either anyways, nobody cares about ‘the vibe’. Where’s your phone, isn’t this for a picture?”

“We can’t take a picture of our first kiss, you’ll probably look really stupid. We’ll just do a practice one.”

“Just do it already, I thought you were worried about the mood.”

“ I’m doing it. Christ, Kyoya.”

Kaoru closed his eyes, and Kyoya knew he should have too, that was one thing he did know about kissing. But he was doing that stricken admirer schtick that his body had suddenly found itself falling into, and he was lost in the fact that this was Kaoru, Kaoru, and a scent of fresh orchard fruits, of summer days in Italy and the tinge of salty seawater. His shaky breath hit against Kyoya’s lips, somehow millions of miles away when he was so close, the closest he had ever been to another person.

Apart from Tamaki. Tamaki, who he had shoved off this very couch in a pure fit of rage and desperation and longing, wanting and needing and hating, because of all the people in the world, it had to be Tamaki, and it had to be Kyoya.

He couldn’t do it. It all suddenly felt too real, like waves crashing down on him and waking him from some sort of slumber. Kissing Kaoru, where he had wanted to kiss Tamaki again, and again, and again, and wasting that first kiss Kaoru truly deserved by thinking about Tamaki and Kaoru was most definitely not thinking about Kyoya, probably thinking about some other boy who he genuinely cared for that Kyoya didn’t even know.

Without thinking, some fight or flight instinct, his hand flew up to Kaoru, a sharp, definite slap across his face. The boy’s hands dropped from Kyoya’s jaw, clasping at own face.

“Fuck, my fucking nose. Shit. Fuck,” Kaoru lashed out in pain, hunching over himself, blood suddenly trailing between his fingers. “Kyoya, what the hell?”

“Shit, sorry. My bad. High-five.”

Kaoru groaned, pulling his hand away from his face, a bloodied mess. “I had no idea you were even that strong.”

“If it makes you feel better, neither did I. I am truly sorry,”

Kaoru snorted, then winced as a flare of pain rushed through him again. “No worries. We’ll just swap out kissing for teaching you how to high-five instead then.”

Chapter Text

“It suits you, surprisingly,” Kyoya mused aloud, two fingers pressed against his lips as he spoke, feigning speaking to himself then a sarcastic remark for Kauro’s easily tempered self. He circled the boy, weighing up his appearance up and down.

It wasn’t as if Kyoya was wrong, however he might have sounded- the snow-white gauze, stuck against the boy’s nose with a similarly coloured piece of tape, gave him this previously unseen rebellious appeal, more akin to the type of person to get into trouble for their constant aggressive fighting behind derelict city buildings, or rundown bars, but justified because of their ‘dark, mysterious past’. A tragic backstory is enough to make almost anyone suddenly attempt to justify the actions of the object of their affection.

Mori, Kyoya deliberated, would be the closest member of the Host Club, in relation to that kind of archetype, steady and stoic, and, for the most part, silent enough that the regular patrons could whisk up whatever hard-hitting backstory they wanted for their imagined romantic escapades. Yet, he still had that energy that was just slightly too elegant, too gentleman-like. Maybe they needed someone who could be more of a wild card, a loose cannon, on a full-time basis. It would surely be hitting a demographic they had failed to attract the attention of…

The illusion was promptly shattered as Kaoru uttered an annoyed, “Ah, screw you,” then, like a feral cat, clawing at the bandage that had been forced upon him, assumedly by some housekeeper or other who had most definitely overstepped her boundaries, the tape landing, sticky-side down, onto the pavement, in a way that made Kyoya scrunched up his nose in disgust. When his eyes darted their way back to Kaoru’s face, the now reddish skin that shone where the plaster had once been vanished any of the newfound business ventures Kyoya had. All he could think of now was how Kaoru looked like he had, stupidly, put sunblock all over himself, except the bridge of his nose, and now had horrible sunburn, right where the world could see it most prominently. Maybe inviting another loose screw into the group was the last thing they needed right now, profit be damned.

“I don’t understand why anyone thought putting that on your nose would effect your nose bleed,” Kyoya shook his head, as he stalked by Kaoru, iced tea in hand. It was a Saturday, a mere day after since what Kyoya had nicknamed Nose-Bleedgate had occurred, because all great scandals ended with the suffix -gate and inflating what had happened that afternoon with giving it a word of no real importance made Kyoya much more comfortable in the extreme feelings he carried with it. He was his father’s son, of course he knew how to treat the most basic of injuries, and had sat with Kaoru for fifteen minutes on the couch, instructing him to lean forward and breathe through his mouth the entire duration, even when Kaoru protested he was fine, that this was stupid, that him and Hikaru had gotten into plenty of scrapes and mishaps, either bickering with each other or doing something stupid, like ‘falling’ (jumping) out of trees. It was fine, Kaoru was fine, Kyoya was fine, etc.

That didn’t stop Kyoya waking up a dime a dozen times in the blackness of night, suddenly scavenging the Internet for the most basic of medical knowledge. Had he told Kaoru not to take any blood thinners? Had Kaoru always been that pale? How would they know if he wasn’t secretly suffering from haemophilia, and Nose-Bleedgate wouldn’t rapidly turn into Murdergate, and now Kyoya couldn’t think of anything wittier then Murdergate, which definitely deserved its own scandal title known as Stupidgate, or Please-Go-To-Sleepgate. It wouldn’t even be Murdergate anyway. It would be much closer to Manslaughtergate, and the idea of that suddenly struck Kyoya that his final downfall would not even be his own great scheme backfiring on him, but a stupid mistake, would be extremely mortifying.

Also, well, he would miss Kaoru too, if he happened to die. But he would rather not give much more thought to that now, with the redhead standing beside him.

He refused to showcase such a ridiculous display of emotions to Kaoru and ended up only texting him once that night with, ‘Since I know you have the manners of a barnyard animal when you’re alone, make sure not to pick your nose. It could start another nosebleed.’

Kaoru, for some reason, had chosen to ignore this advice and had only ended their conversation with, ‘Meet me at the fountain in the Town Square. Tomorrow. 11am.’ Payback for the nosebleed.

When Kaoru had finally met him, Kyoya had greeted him, with two iced coffees he had bought from a vendor around the corner, one dashed with pure maple syrup for Kaoru, overpriced in a way where Kyoya could tell he was being horrifically ripped off, but not enough that Kyoya would argue the logistics of the insane price or search for a cheaper alternative five minutes away. He would probably just install his own competitor vendor directly across the street, purely to bring the prices down, once he found the time for it. He could always do with a new summer project to keep him occupied.

He was hoping the coffee would communicate a lot, most importantly ‘I’m sorry for hitting you in the face, please don’t take it personally. I actually don’t know what’s wrong with me’. Whether Kaoru got that message was a different story, but, at least, he seemed touched as the taste of amber maple syrup washed over his tastebuds. The 2035 yen that Kyoya spent seemed worth it, just for a second.

He would still, definitely, have his own seller make a better coffee for half the price.

Kaoru sharply turned a corner left, and Kyoya followed him down a decaying alleyway, those images he had conjured up earlier seeming truer to life by the second. Well, if Kaoru was going to jump Kyoya now, he wouldn’t have much left in his pockets to empty. He followed him regardless down the twisting maze, this secret part of the city he had been blissfully unaware of, dotted with posters faded and tattered from their countless battles between rain, sun and snow, whilst the graffiti done in marker and spray cans stood out strong and imposing, dominating. When they escaped from the ruins, they were only greeted by one of the most ugly buildings Kyoya had ever seen, a mish-mask of rainbow stripes that looked like a kindergartener’s dream home conjured up in a single hour, and it had escaped into the safety where nobody would see it to hide from the all-judging eyes of the rest of the cityscape. Despite it being bright out, the lights of the sign were still on, although three-quarters of them had fizzled out, reading in English ‘ROLLERSKATING’. At night, it probably looked more like ‘RLERSKATG’. Very appealing.

“No,” was all Kyoya said, already preferring the option of getting forever lost in the maze again. Either this place was some money-laundering drug pyramid scheme, or it was, as it said, roller-skating. At least he could probably hold his own in a money-laundering drug pyramid scheme.

“You have to. Fake-dating scheme. And payback for the nosebleed.” Of course it was.

There was no point arguing as Kaoru still dragged him through the door, he seriously would spend hours trying to find his way out of here. The place, although massive and hidden from society, was overthrown with sticky kids and not a parent or guardian in sight, because Kyoya refused to see the bored, acne-ridden teenagers who couldn’t be much older than him, as any sort of authority figure. The black floors and walls were dizzying to look at, with the multitude of colour spirals and patterns thrown up on them. The red flashing lights were blinding. The crappy pop music was deafening. There was the putrid smell of vomit wafting in every direction.

“Have I told you that you are, by far, one of the worst people I have ever met?” Kyoya asked, but even when he was shouting it felt like his voice was drowned out.

“Probably,” he yelled back, “But I don’t believe that for a second!”

The boy at the desk, slouched over with his head resting on his hand, dark curls peaking out beneath the green cap with the business’s logo smacked across the front of it, didn’t pay a second glance to the two of them. He merely, with as little effort as he could, pointed towards the sign which outlined the payment for an hour (also massively overpriced), and the stack of roller-skates out on display. The lack of safety equipment, of any sort of helmet or kneepads, definitely violated some sort of law, and made Kyoya’s stomach churn in a way that made him feel both pathetic and childish, but it already seemed too late as Kaoru had somehow managed to slam down the right amount of change, and thrown out a pair of shoes in, conveniently, Kyoya’s size.

“If I just admit that I’ll be bad at this, would you not force me to do it?” Kyoya watched as Kaoru enthusiastically pulled on his own skates, shoving his shoes into the now empty cupboard space.

“I thought you were meant to be fairly decent at just about everything,” he laughed as he tightened the laces.

“Unfortunately, my father did not rigorously train me in the art of roller-skating by the time I could walk,” Kyoya had given up and began to pull on his own skates. He was being soft, he could admit that, but it was just to give Kaoru his moment to triumph over Kyoya. That was, at least, until Kaoru forced himself up to stand, and the tiniest roll backwards already had him clamouring for the ticket desk for safety.

He had royally fucked himself.

The rink itself felt like a battleground, children half their ages whizzing past twice as fast as they could even dream of. They had, miraculously, managed to get to the opening after struggling to tiptoe across the floor, and were both standing there, waiting for the other to make the first move. Kaoru had started to kill time in any way he could, taking pictures of their skates side-by-side or slinging his arm around Kyoya and taking pictures of the two of them, as ‘happily-in-love’ as ever. He only stopped when he nearly stumbled and dropped his phone in the direct path of a skater, who gave him the dirtiest look as she narrowly managed to avoid it.

“This was really the best ‘revenge’ you could come up with? Doing something you’re also deathly afraid of?” Kyoya snickered, even though his cold and aloof attitude seemed much too false as he clutched for dear life to the sides that his knuckles had turned white.

“It is not revenge. I totally get you must have been so overwhelmed at the thought of kissing moi,” he lambasted but in a way that seemed utterly flirtatious, but it was probably just the spiral patterns making Kyoya hallucinate. “But making myself out as an idiot who ‘walked into a door’ and having half the household staff cooing over me annoyed me enough that I did want to see you embarrass yourself. It really isn’t working out now though, huh?”

Kyoya took a breath, shaking, not just from the skates. “I am, truly, sorry, for acting out like that. It just felt wrong. It was your first kiss too. As overly romantic and cringe-worthy as it is, you do deserve to have it with someone who you like in that manner. And who likes you in the same way.”

Kaoru’s eyes flickered down to the floor, a forceful look of concentration. It was so small, so subtle, that anyone who wasn’t Kyoya, the keen observer, wouldn’t have noticed it, let alone pay it a second thought. But he did notice it, didn’t he?

Without thinking, Kyoya tore one of his hands away from the edge, and pulled away Kaoru’s hands, interlocking their fingers together, which dragged Kaoru’s attention back to Kyoya.

Breathless, and although only a whisper, Kaoru could still hear him, as Kyoya said, “Let’s just do this. You’ll still get to laugh at how bad I’m going to be at this.”

They were beyond awful. They moved slower then anyone else on the rink, when they were able to move at all, when one of them wasn’t gripping onto the edge for dear life whilst crushing the other’s hand as they squeezed it tight, and the other might have verbally persuaded them to keep moving, but were quite frankly deeply grateful to feel steady for once. It was nearly at the end of their allocated hour that they finally picked up speed, both literally and figuratively. Kyoya found the place becoming a blur around him, all the faces of these numerous strangers becoming mere whisps of colour and unintelligible noise, the only person in focus being Kaoru, always Kaoru, who never let go, always there, keeping up with Kyoya or pulling him along, when he just got the slight bit ahead.

It could be easy. This could be so much easier. It would still be hard, still be a pain, but it could be easier.

Kaoru, for no reason at all it seemed, turned back, just to look at Kyoya then. Checking if he was there, even when their hands were interlocked together. Looking at each other, and not the sporadic group of unsteady newcomers that came barrelling towards them, knocking Kaoru clean off his feet and dragging Kyoya down with him.

There seemed to be a flash of bright light as Kyoya lay there for a single moment, feeling the heavied breathing of Kaoru beneath him. He struggled to pull himself off of Kaoru, enough that he could just about see his face below him. They were still struggling to calm their equally laboured breaths, to stop looking at each other as if the world around them was still a blur of mere shapes and colours and inaudible sounds, as if they were the only two real people in it.

“Are you hurt?” Kyoya finally regained enough composure to ask.

“I’m okay,” it was barely a whisper.

It was only after he said that that he let out an ear-shattering scream.

The screaming had been followed up by, most likely, unnecessary shouting from Kyoya, lambasting the boy at the desk for not understanding basic First Aid, as the bandage he gave Kaoru was more alike to a decorative ribbon then any actual help. Of course, whilst they were lying in a heap on the floor, some younger kid had just managed to skate directly across Kaoru’s outstretched fingers. Kyoya still just about had enough self-respect to not chase down the youngster for what was clearly an accident, but clearly not enough to not shout at some underpaid student. Thank God nobody in the place seemed to recognise them to see how much of a show he had made over, really, nothing. This fact did not stop Kyoya rolling up Kaoru’s sleeve to carefully examine the bruising as they sat next to each other on the only deserted bench in the building.

“Can’t believe this is the second date now where I’ve managed to get myself hurt,” Kaoru rolled his eyes, but it still didn’t take the small grin away from him.

“Hm,” Kyoya nodded, pressing a frozen ice-lolly wrapped in plastic against his fingers to ease the bruising, because for some reason this place did not have a single actual icepack.

“…Are you okay?” Kaoru finally asked him.

Kyoya didn’t look up at him as he put more pressure holding the frozen treat against Kaoru’s arm. He wasn’t, he felt beyond foolish that ‘Stupidgate’ was now the least of his troubles.

Kaoru had feelings for him. And, if he didn’t, they were rapidly heading towards that territory.

He didn’t believe that Kaoru had always felt like that. Kaoru hadn’t gone into this with some reverse master plan to woo Kyoya off his feet, nobody, not even Kyoya himself, was that cunning. No, it would have started off as just that- a plan they both benefit from. A plan that reinforces the status quo, which stops the downfall of the club, their friend group, protecting the people they love the most. A plan where Kyoya gets Tamaki, and Kaoru knows his brother is happy with Haruhi.

It wasn’t recent. It wasn’t that day when Kyoya suddenly got lost in Kaoru’s eyes, and he, probably intimidated, scuttered off. It wasn’t even when he suggested the kiss that afternoon, because Kyoya knew, this intense gut feeling, that Kaoru wouldn’t have suggested such a thing with those types of motives, he was too good for that.

“… you do deserve to have it with someone who you like in that manner. And who likes you in the same way.”

It wasn’t that split second feeling, when for a moment, that kiss felt real. It was that moment, when Kyoya showed him that he deserved to share something special with someone special, that flicker of in his eyes as something shifted inside him. Kyoya had seen it, the exact second, the moment the pin dropped, that Kaoru’s feelings had twisted themselves from platonic to romantic. Just like that.

He had to end it then. He couldn’t drag Kaoru down with his feelings. Because however Kaoru felt about him, or however Kyoya felt about Kaoru, he was still utterly revolved around the only Tamaki Suoh, like he had always revolved around him.

“Kyoya?” Kaoru repeated himself, softly, just as an obnoxious buzz came from Kyoya’s pocket.

Kyoya shifted away from him to pull his phone out of his pocket, flipping the screen open. He brows furrowed together.

“It’s Tamaki,” he said quietly. “He wants to meet up.”

Chapter Text

Tamaki had always prided himself in his love of all the offerings that Japanese culture could bring. He had given Kyoya countless in-depth analyses about beloved anime and manga he had devoured during his childhood, from the DVDs and books given to him to improve his Japanese whilst in France. He could recount numerous historical myths and legends around the country, these loves often the inspiration for his extravagant cosplays and themed outfits for the Host Club. Yet, his French heritage oozed off, evident by his starkly unique haute couture clothing. Whilst upon his first arrival, Tamaki had seemed desperate to experience all the landscapes and cityscapes, all the museums and festivals, and still often prodded Kyoya to escort him to these outings, planned at the very last minute, the longer he was away from his home country, the more he seemed to long for it.

Kyoya could only assume that was why the two of them were here in silence, watching a rare screening black-and-white of some old, French New Wave film that Kyoya had never heard of, and truly didn’t care for, a day after he had texted him. Rather, he paid more attention to Tamaki, eyes fixated on the screen, holding bated breath. It was only the two of them here, and yet Tamaki still sat in idle silence. If it was anyone else, Kyoya would have just assumed they were ignoring him, but Tamaki was always like this, always wanting to play the role of the gentleman when nobody was there, sitting in silence in screening rooms that were completely barren. As Kyoya looked carefully, he could see the way the boy’s stunningly captivating eyes just avoided looking at the Japanese subtitles beneath the faces of the actors. Sometimes it was easy to forget that, that Japanese wasn’t his mother-tongue, because really, it seemed everyone was eager to separate Tamaki from his mother as much as possible, from an entire life that had been swept away and hidden under a rug on the other side of the globe. It was a real possibility that that was the language he dreamed in, that the people in the secret places of his mind called him René, and not Tamaki.

When the credits rolled, Tamaki didn’t leave, he never did. He felt it was his own responsibility, every time, to read off the names that had been put there. The simple act of reading their names, of knowing those words, was this grander gesture of respect, he had told Kyoya once when he asked, when he insisted there was no after-credits sequences worth staying for. It was recognising that he saw their names, and to know one’s name was to know their worth, their value, their personhood. Kyoya could recognise this had its own deeper meaning, an unspoken side-effect of Tamaki essentially having to drop half his name, his life, the transformation from a de Grantaine Suoh to just Suoh. His father’s son, his grandmother’s grandson, and that be it. All the name Kyoya Ootori did was mock Kyoya for the power that was so close, but then wasn’t. It meant nothing except all his dashed dreams that he was clawing to get back.

The credits had finished rolling. The screen remained blackened. The lights didn’t turn on. Nobody came in, not a lone worker to check the ground for the scattered mess of popcorn, or an overeager patron arriving much too early for the more popular blockbuster that followed up the showing after this one. Everyone had seemed to have forgotten that the two of them were even here, that this room even existed. It was just them, side by side, in the dark and the quiet.

They had barely spoken to each other once Kyoya arrived. It could be counted on Kyoya’s fingers the number of words they exchanged to each other, from the minute they saw each other, to the moment that the screening started.

“Hey.”

“Hey. I bought us the tickets already.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Do you want anything to eat?”

“I’m okay, thanks.”

“Okay.”

“Do you want anything?”

“No, I’m fine. Thanks.”

Now, Kyoya finally turned to Tamaki, who seemed to be looking at anything but him, and said, “Why did you ask me to come today?”

The blond shrugged; eyes fixed on the screen. Kyoya wanted Tamaki to yell at him, to scream at him, anything that would at least make him talk again like the Tamaki he knew. “We just haven’t seen each other in a while, properly, I mean. You’ve been so busy with, well… your boyfriend.”

This confirmed two things to Kyoya: one, despite Tamaki’s lack of engagement on the posts, he was still seeing them, enough to have a fair idea that Kyoya and Kaoru were living in each other’s pockets for the time being, and two, had got himself to some sort of place where he was comfortable enough to openly state Kyoya had a boyfriend.

“I haven’t been that busy. You could have still texted me. You’ve been borderline avoiding me,” Kyoya said matter-of-factly, because even though he hadn’t texted or called Tamaki, hadn’t been chasing him down. They both knew that it was Tamaki who had opened that distance between them as soon as Kyoya had planted the first seed of his fake-dating scheme, that it would take Tamaki to be the one to close it.

“I don’t know. When you told me, about Kaoru, I thought it was…” Kyoya filled in the gaps; gross, disgusting, wrong, but Tamaki opted to use the term, “different.”

Tamaki paused, to catch his breath. He was shaking. Kyoya wanted to reach out to him, take his hand in his, but he didn’t know if he would make it worse or what, so he just sat there and let Tamaki say what he had to, what had been bottling up inside of him.

“There was just this whole part of your life that I had no idea about, when I’m used to us telling each other everything. And I just thought like- well, okay, I was really frustrated at first, I thought you were going to ruin your life. But then I realised that there’s things that I’ve said, really awful things, and if I want all the parts of you in my life, I’d just have to get over myself,”  he turned then, slowly, gently as if dealing with a frightened deer, as he took Kyoya’s hands in both of his and squeezed tight, even though he still wouldn’t look him in the eye. “You’re my best friend. I want to be better, for you, Kyoya.” By the time Tamaki had the courage to look at him, their faces were so close together that Tamaki’s had become blurred in Kyoya’s vision. “I can’t imagine my life without you in it. I just hate seeing you with-”

The lights blared down on top of them, making Tamaki jump and turn away as Kyoya, flustered and crimson red, wiped down his clothes as he stood up, adjusting his glasses with a single hand. They glanced at each other, and laughed shakily, then mumbled a ‘thanks’ to the worker who was sweeping down the aisles, even though the only mess that had been made in that room was being brought along with the two of them.

It was still bright out by the time the two emerged out from the cinema. They stood, awkwardly, like two strangers trying to walk past each other, but both too anxious of making the wrong move, of getting in each other’s way, stumbling over and sending them back to where they were.

“What were you going to say?” Kyoya asked. He wasn’t going to let Tamaki just leave him hanging. He just... what?

Tamaki shrugged again; his previously restored confidence was gone. Suddenly, with a confused daze, his hand wiped at his own cheek, a short, abrupt laugh leaving him, “It’s raining. Pity I don’t have my umbrella today.”

Kyoya’s heart lurched. Tamaki kept wiping the raindrops that stained his face. The sun beat down on their backs. There wasn’t a cloud in sight.

Kyoya knew he had to end it, although his heart was battling with his mind, although really it felt like two halves of his heart were in turmoil together whilst his brain had snuck off somewhere else. He was so close. Tamaki wouldn’t have kissed him then, he would never betray Kaoru like that, but that seemed like the start of a confession, something different from the apology before it. He couldn’t imagine his life without him. Wouldn’t that mean he couldn’t bear to see him with someone else, someone who wasn’t him? Wouldn’t it?

He traversed down the extravagant drive-away of the Hitachiin household after asking Kaoru if the coast was clear for them to talk. Well, more accurately Kyoya commanded they speak as soon as possible when he texted him, ‘We need to talk. Now.’ It was just pure luck that the house was free, their mother wanting to whisk Hikaru away for an impromptu shopping spree. Kaoru said their mother wanted to spend ‘one-on-one’ time with them to know them more ‘individually’, but he just felt it was a haphazard excuse to avoid mixing the two of them up.

 If Kyoya ended things with Kaoru, Tamaki might feel there was no need to pursue anything more with him. Kyoya would return to be his friend, by his side, his right-hand man, even whilst Tamaki pinned after Haruhi. But if he kept the ruse up, kept using Kaoru, kept blurring the lines between their friendship and faked romance, it would only complicate things, confuse Kaoru, damage him. His relations with others was already strained, his friends few. Kyoya refused to have screwing up Kaoru on his already stained record as well.

But what would Kyoya even say to him? Was he willing to rip out the secret that Kaoru had embedded inside himself, the small part of him that had only just developed?

Kyoya was startled when the door was answered, not be a doorkeeper, but Kaoru himself. He leaned over on the doorframe slightly, but his eyes were wild, alert, and the slightest bit bloodshot.

“What’s wrong? Did something happen?” Kyoya asked as he approached, wary, not sure if he even really wanted to know, if he was even well equipped enough to be any emotional support.

Kaoru’s brows furrowed together, his voice cracking with desperation as he said, “The photos, I thought- You said you wanted to-”

“What photos?” He interrupted him urgently. “What are you talking about?”

Kaoru stammered, searching his mind for any of the words he wanted to say, before surrendering his phone to Kyoya. A photo, the two of them, all over each other on the floor of that skate rink. The bright dizzying flash that Kyoya had associated with getting winded and knocked to the ground, from the unexpected shock of it all, no, it had come from a camera, or a phone, or something, who knows what. Screenshots of all their most romantically charged photos from Kaoru’s page, the redhead’s arm slung around him, his lips pressed against Kyoya’s on their first fake-date. A single message twisting their stomachs.

‘This ends now.’

Kyoya could hear a dry swallow come from Kaoru.

“What are we supposed to do?”

Chapter Text

It had been Kaoru’s idea to list off any potential perpetrators, any person they knew that would be so willing, so eager, to throw the two of them under the bus, to threaten the destruction of their reputations, the ruin of their family name. This list had suddenly spiralled into a list specifically comprised of Kyoya’s enemies, indirectly seeming to imply that if anyone had felt so enraged to stir the pot, it was, undoubtedly, Kyoya’s fault.

The first suggestion had been Takeshi Kuze, the self-declared rival of Kyoya, ever since Kyoya had embarrassed him in kindergarten because he had, rather condescendingly, remarked that one should not eat the peel of an orange, due to the number of pesticides found in them. This had been enough to spur a competitive spirit in Takeshi to attempt to best Kyoya in just about anything for the last twelve years, like the cross-campus ultra race, and to Kaoru that seemed enough to be listed as their prime suspect. Kyoya only pondered on this for half a second, until he shut the whole thing down- a boy who still regularly ate the peel of oranges was far too stupid to do anything like this.

Then there was Akira Kotmatsuzawa, the editor-in-chief of the failing school newspaper, which the entirety of campus had rejected as a mere gossip rag. They had had run-ins with the Newspaper Club before, desperate attempts to besmirch Tamaki’s good name just to boost sales, which had only ended after Mori, Honey, Kyoya and the twins had successfully whisked up their own blackmail to get them off their backs. But then, if they had this scandal on their hands, a smoking gun to grab the attention of not just students and staff, but the huge news corps their families were connected to, why tell them to stop? Why threaten them, why not go straight to print? If it had been him, there would be no text messages to worry about, the newspapers would already be flying off the shelves.

Kyoya had then, much to Kaoru’s displeasure and evident discomfort, turned the suspicion around to the few people who were aware of their relationship, the only people who had access to their specifically designed private account- Mori, Honey and Haruhi. It was difficult to imagine the reasoning for Mori or Honey to do such a thing, but the motive for Haruhi was crystal-clear. It was easy then, to suddenly pin the blame on Haruhi, who had been entrapped into the Host Club with the debt of that broken vase. Why not blackmail the two of them, threaten them for the money he knew they had to pay off her debt, perhaps pocket a bit extra for himself, just to stop the looming anxiety about constantly being an academic overachiever, in order to secure their scholarship each semester? But that look of disbelief Kaoru had given Kyoya as soon as he had voiced such an awful thing, to blame a person who they considered a friend, to act as if Haruhi would willingly extort them when she had always rejected any of their financial offers to keep herself afloat, made Kyoya tighten his mouth shut. It wasn’t even jealousy talking, just complete paranoia as he realised this was where they were at, this is who they were considering, because if it wasn’t someone they knew, then it could be anyone.

Kyoya still paced the floor of Kaoru, and, from Kyoya’s observation of two twin-sized mattresses, Hikaru’s room, whilst the other stared at him from his seat on, assumedly, his bed, eyes following him back-and-forth, back-and-forth, across the room, like a spectator of a tennis game. He had been upset earlier, the texts having sent him into a frenzy of panic that had zapped his usual amount of energy, and his eyes gleamed red, but neither of them had broached the subject. The fact that Kyoya was clearly running out of leads and was desperately pulling at straws to blame Haruhi of all people was only furthering his anxiety, deepening the salt in the wound, and the way Kyoya was looking at him now- stopped in his tracks, questioning his words, the right way to put this, when Kyoya never questioned anything- had Kaoru immediately acting defensive.

“Whatever you’re going to say right now, just don’t,” Kaoru started, his voice harsh and demanding with every last bit of his strength, pushing himself to fix his stooped posture, still too weak to stand up.

“Doesn’t it seem the logical conclusion to come to? You do something foolish- leave your computer on, or your phone out- and Hikaru, most likely, stumbles across it, or goes purposefully looking for it, because obviously he knows you’ve been acting suspicious lately. He opens up on that account, and immediately feels betrayed, distraught, and decides to pull a stunt like blackmailing us, because of some petty sibling bond being broken,” Kyoya listeqd it off like he was recalling the contents of a shopping list, brows furrowed in concentration, rather than frustration or worry, his chin cupped in his hand. “He knows your number, obviously, and he easily could have followed you at any point. Did he tell you he was going on that shopping trip or was it your mother? Or, if it was a servant, he easily could have lied and-”

“Jesus, Kyoya, are you hearing yourself right now? First, it’s Haruhi, now it’s Hikaru. You’re completely paranoid right now. I know my brother; he wouldn’t do something so…”

“Petty? Manipulative? Hot-tempered and irrational? That sounds exactly like the Hikaru I know, personally,” Kyoya mused aloud, looking down at Kaoru. “You might not like it, but it’s more likely that Hikaru would be the one to do something like this, rather than Kuze coming across us whilst he was eating banana peels at a farmer’s market.”

Kaoru scoffed, his shoulders shook as he forced himself to stand, jabbing Kyoya in the chest with his outstretched finger, “Or maybe it’s your precious Tamaki that’s screwing you over? Why is our entire friend group getting shit for this, and not him, huh?”

Kyoya masked keeping his cool, but he couldn’t stop the hint of red in his cheeks as his frustration started to build, or the fact that Kaoru could evidently see it on his face. “Because you know Tamaki, and he would never even think of doing something like this,” his voice was stern, and he moved Kaoru’s hand away quickly, yet still gently. Kyoya knew Tamaki, that he too, could be outlandish or irrational, but deceit, that was never him.

Kaoru laughed, a harsh and sudden burst of sound, that was over as quickly as it had started, “He wanted to see you today, the same day I get some crazy person, who has literally started following us, telling me to call the whole thing of. We are in real danger right now. Are you sure he wasn’t acting weird, at all?”

Kyoya could see it then, Tamaki illuminated by the light from that screen in that theatre. He wanted to be better, he wanted Kyoya in his life, and then he hated seeing him with…

“Say no, and I’ll drop it,” Kaoru said.

He wouldn’t though. No, not Tamaki, never, standing shining in the sun, tears shimmering down his face whilst he talked about rain. If he had suddenly wanted to tell Kyoya that he did have feelings for him, he wouldn’t have done it by blackmailing the two into ‘breaking up’. And, if he had wanted them to end it for any other reason, he wouldn’t, it was entirely implausible to Kyoya.

“Kyoya?”

Why say those things about wanting to better? Kyoya, sure, had seen Tamaki and his outdated beliefs in play, especially when it came to the girls from Lobelia, but he was harmless when it really came down to it. Tamaki, at heart, was always a good person, and he wanted people to be happy. The Tamaki he knew did not exist in the same hemisphere as extortion and backstabbing- that had always been Kyoya. The fact that Tamaki was so entirely unlike him was what had drawn Kyoya to him, that someone could be so wholeheartedly good, even when everything and everyone around him was twisted.

“Kyoya.”

“No,” Kyoya finally said, and just like that any doubts were gone. He could feel it in every crevice of his being that he was right. “It’s not him.”

“Which leaves us back to square one,” Kaoru huffed, flopping back down onto his bed, running a hand through his hair, and Kyoya knew what that meant- if Tamaki could just get away with something as indefinite as a ‘gut feeling’ from Kyoya, then Haruhi and Hikaru were to receive the same. And just like that, any real suspects had dwindled down to zero. At least, for Kaoru, they had.

The following school day had dragged in a way Kyoya hadn’t imagined was possible. He felt his usually indifferent, but still pleasant, nature which he showed off to his fellow peers was beginning to slip, that he was jumping at shadows or every lone figure standing at length down the sweeping corridors was watching him. His head had spun during his classes- the words and pictures in his textbooks twisted themselves into the names and faces of anyone, even the most minor of people, that Kyoya had wronged in the past- a first year girl who he had less then delicately rejected when he was attempting to make business plans with an older student that Kyoya had found himself seeking his attention all week; a child in his middle-school class he had unintentionally sneered at when his essay, receiving a better grade then Kyoya, a massive hit to his ego and reputation, had been announced to the class to have been entirely plagiarised. There was that one student whose birthday party he had flaked out on at the last minute because he simply couldn’t see any benefits in socialising with such a person, who was stark mad to see Kyoya in the same restaurant where he was having his celebrations, or that boy whose shoes he had trod mud on by complete accident, and had only pointed out they were evident knock-offs when he had started shouting in Kyoya’s face how much money he owed him. All the carefully curated relationships that Kyoya had spent his life perfecting, masking himself to fit into the image people wanted from him, seemed to collapse around him, every perfectly networked connection had something he had done wrong to taint it. Was that enough to take such a level of revenge?

He turned the thought over in his mind, whilst he sat in the empty music room where the Host Club’s activities often took place, little black book in his lap, whilst he twirled his fountain pen in his left hand, only stopping as he felt the weight of someone’s hands on his shoulders attempting to take the pressure off them.

“You seemed tense all day. Something on your mind?” Tamaki asked in a gentle voice, like he had dozens of times before.

Kyoya remembered the first time he had done this, the massaging. In middle school, he had been pouring over some SWOT analysis he had drawn up for a potential business venture for his father, and when he had, quite literally, thrown it back in his face, it suddenly became a matter of life and death to prove what had gone wrong. It was when his feelings for Tamaki were at their most turbulent, their most self-destructive, when love and loathe were still intertwined with each other. He had practically jumped out of his skin like a cat suddenly drenched in water, and Tamaki couldn’t stop himself from laughing at him, saying Kyoya looked so tense he might burst. It took about a minute of coaxing before Kyoya would let the blonde near him, but after, it had become a regular occurrence. Any sudden exam stress, any bitter words from his father, any nuisance regarding the club- Tamaki would be there, relaxing Kyoya’s shoulders.

Kyoya tilted his head back to look at him, looking up at staringly violet eyes, shivering as he felt one of Tamaki’s fingertips softly brush against the back of his neck. It felt like eons had passed since they had been this casually close to one another.

“I’d tell you, but I don’t think you’d be all too happy to hear what I have to say.”

“Try me. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out together. Like we always do.”

He could tell him now, about the blackmail, and his two prime suspects. He wouldn’t be happy about it, and the weight of the accusation he was to place on the two, especially Haruhi, but maybe he would get a more thought-out explanation that wasn’t just Kaoru lashing out at him. Maybe Tamaki would put forward someone that Kyoya hadn’t thought about before, and it would suddenly click and all make sense, and then they’d know what to do, together, like they always do.

The door pushed opened then, and it was Kyoya, and Tamaki and Kaoru, and how many times had they done this song and dance by now? The look on Kaoru’s face, his features hard, teeth clenched, made Tamaki suddenly pull back from Kyoya, put his hands up, as if showing he was unarmed, but it wasn’t Tamaki that look was directed at, but Kyoya.

The red head shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose, muttering under his breath, “You’re unbelievable,” but in the silence of the room, you could hear a pin drop.

He gave one final pained look before stalking off, and Kyoya didn’t look once at Tamaki, before he was after him.

It felt like a game of cat-and-mouse as Kyoya sped after him, chasing him up the stairs to the school’s clock tower. Kaoru was illuminated in the light, a sharp silhouette of his back, arms folded across his chest, in view in the empty space, framed by the domineering clock face. Kyoya was already out of breath by the time caught up to him, staring at him from the distance across the room, and by the way Kaoru’s shoulders shook, he assumed that Kaoru was the same way, but when he finally turned around to look at him, he could see it was just the pure frustration rushing through his veins.

It had to be about his feelings, didn’t it? He just couldn't stand there and know that Kyoya was going to end up with Tamaki, one way or the other, and that he was a willing pawn in this game he had come up with. Kyoya cursed at himself for letting it get this far, this convoluted. The words that Kaoru spat out at him wasn’t the ashamed declaration of love he had expected to hear.

“It was you.”

Kyoya’s nose scrunched like there was a rancid stench in the room, his brows darting up in surprise, “Excuse me?”

Kaoru turned his head, like the sight of Kyoya suddenly made him ill, but his hands moved, wild and frantic, “You were always saying our plan wasn’t solid enough. It was based on assumptions and guesses, all that crap. And you just- You decide to get rid of your little ‘problem’ by turning Tamaki against her entirely!”

“What?” If Kyoya wasn’t so mortified by such an assumption, he would have cackled.                                                             

“You don’t think our plan will work, or you just hate that it’s not working fast enough and you- you use our relationship and pretend someone is blackmailing us, and turn around to Tamaki like, ‘look, I’m just an innocent victim! Look what horrible, awful Haruhi is doing to me! Help me, Tamaki, help!’” He mimicked this version of Kyoya he had suddenly spurred into being, his voice high-pitched and shrill, desperate and attention-seeking, hands clutching at his chest during his performance.

“Kaoru, stop it,” he was trying to be domineering, the way he always had been, but he suddenly found his voice shaking. After all this time, is that all that Kaoru saw in him? “I wouldn’t do something like that.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Kaoru’s voice caught as he threw that out, before a flood of words came spilling out of him. “Kyoya, you are the most calculating, manipulative person I have ever met. You only do anything to benefit yourself- we’re only together so you can run off into the sunset with Tamaki. The first person you genuinely accuse of doing this is Haruhi, who also, oh, just happens to be the person that Tamaki is falling for. The first chance you get, you run to Tamaki, because you were going to tell him just that.” He laughed as he rubbed at his eye, “You probably planted evidence on her phone to frame her. Then it’s bye-bye Haruhi, so you and Tamaki can go back to playing happy families.”

The urge to talk sense into Kaoru was submerged by the will to lash out at him. Had he just been foolish, self-conceited, to think Kaoru had fallen for him? He crossed his own arms, scoffed at him, “Well, you seem to have my ‘plan’ awfully well figured out. How do I know you didn’t just send those messages to yourself? Maybe you’re the one who wants to frame Haruhi. Get rid of her completely, and just have your brother all to yourself again.”

“Jesus, Kyoya, if you’re going to insult me, at least come up with something original,” he didn’t want to be upset by such an easy comment, but his voice was raised, it echoed around the room, “I’ve been hearing that kind of shit about me and Hikaru since middle school. ‘The Hitachiins are just obsessed with each other. The twins are just absolute freaks of nature.’ Like I’ve never heard that before.”

Kyoya could throw it in his face now. That he knew Kaoru was in love with him, just from a simple look, that he was obsessive and desperate for attention from anyone in his life, even if that person was from someone as awful as Kyoya apparently was, even if it was all a carefully doctored lie. Was he that entirely starved of affection that a few fake dates and false kindness was enough for that to happen?

Their chests heaved, their breathing heavy.

“You don’t believe I did this,” Kyoya stated, but it came out as a question. No, it was begging, and it embarrassed Kyoya that he would stand here and beg someone to believe him. He didn’t need Kaoru to believe him, but it hurt how much he wanted him to.

“You accused Haruhi. Then you throw it back in my face and say my own brother would hurt me like that, when you know that he’s the most important person in my life, that I would give up everything for him.”

“I’ll prove it’s not me. I can find who did it,” he started, whilst Kaoru approached him. The two looked into each other’s eyes- Kaoru’s glowing amber and Kyoya’s dark brown. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Kaoru.”

Kaoru watched him, seeming to believe him but only for a second. Then it was gone, replaced with, “I want to believe you Kyoya, but I just can’t. I just know that Haruhi wouldn’t do this, but that’s all you’ve given me. I don’t know if I can trust you, when you would benefit so much from this, from hurting her, from saying she would hurt you.”

“I would never lie to you about this,” he repeated, desperately. He didn’t want Kaoru to leave him, not like this.

Kaoru shook his head, “You would say that to Tamaki too. But look at us. Look at what we’re doing. All we do together is lie.”

Kyoya scoured through Haruhi’s online page- this took about ten seconds to load up the page and find that it was, still, entirely, empty- not even a bio intact. He didn’t know what he was expecting to find, but he had secretly hoped that Haruhi might have posted a smoking gun. The best way to pinpoint who was the mastermind behind this would be to find a person who had been at that skating rink.

He had decided, as a matter of fairness, to observe Honey and Mori’s pages too- Mori hadn’t posted anything, but Honey had snapped about a dozen photos of them, and their younger brothers, Satoshi and Chika respectively, at a local karate tournament. Kyoya had been dragged to one of these by Tamaki before, in order to show their unyielding support for the two, and it had left Kyoya snappy all day since he had been dragged out of bed to be there at eight in the morning. These competitions had the audacity to last hours, and when the final round had just ended up with Mori and Honey facing each other, (and Honey winning), Kyoya wanted to throttle someone for the huge waste of time he had endured. Still, it at least gave Kyoya enough background knowledge to fairly rule them off his list, not that either of them had been major suspects in the first place.

So now what? What to do with Haruhi? That had been what Kyoya had pondered over for hours, swivelling around in his chair opposite his computer, and now here, in what the local commoners called a ‘fast-food’ joint, rhythmically tapping his fingers on the table, watching Haruhi scoff down a burger.

If this was Haruhi’s doing, then Kyoya didn’t have any other option. He would just lay his cards on the table, even if it was desperate and self-pitying. ‘Please, I’m begging you. I’ll clear your debt- I’ll give you anything- if you just drop this.’ If he got her suspended, or even expelled, well, she could still go to the press, and what would it matter if he went to the press about her? Random commoner girl…does what?

“Are you not gonna eat that?” Haruhi asked, tilting her head towards Kyoya’s untouched fries, which he had been wordlessly poking at for the last five minutes.

“You can have them,” Kyoya sighed, pushing them towards her.

He let out a small laugh, pushing them back towards him across the table. “I meant,” she started, “are you okay? You seem…How do I put this? Uh, moodier, then usual?”

“Where were you, last Saturday?” Kyoya dodged her question by activating interrogation mode. If Haruhi noticed that Kyoya had, metaphorically, pulled on his detective’s hat, she didn’t show any signs of it.

“Probably with Tamaki,” she shrugged. “He’s mostly just been making himself at home at my house, ever since you and Kaoru started dating. Been real mopey about it.”

“Do tell,” Kyoya pushed.

“I think he just misses you. He didn’t get why you wouldn’t tell him sooner, I suppose. And it involved a lot of nudging to be like, ‘Hey, remember when you shouted at those girls from the academy,’ or, ‘You know how you want me to dress more girly all the time’ before he got the message on why you might not have told him.” She giggled then, to herself, “It’s funny, just cause he was so upfront when he thought I was a guy at first, but I suppose that’s all part of the Host Club charm, isn’t it?”

“Mhm,” Kyoya wordlessly agreed, not wanting to say anything, to string Haruhi one way or the other, just let him say what was on his mind.

“Anyways, so I’m trying to just do some chores, and Tamaki is all, ‘Haruhi, what do I do, help me!’ He was acting like you had died, it was very obnoxious, but that’s very Tamaki. And I just said, why don’t you just go back to being normal, if that’s what you want, y’know?” He stopped for a second, slurped at his drink- clearly never have been brought up with the etiquette lessons the Ootori family prided themselves in- said, “Are you sure you’re happy to pay for this?” Waited for Kyoya to nod, then finished with, “And suddenly he was up, raving about some weird French film to bring you guys to. I had never heard of it- À bout de souffle-” her pronunciation was fantastic, nothing less of an honour student, - “and then spent basically the whole night giving me an impromptu French film history lesson, until my dad came home, and he ran off.”

There was joy for a second- a mixture of pleasure that Tamaki had been so enthusiastic about them reconnecting, that he had lamented their time apart so thoroughly, and another, smaller one, that Kaoru was right, that it couldn’t have been Haruhi. It was quickly dashed by the fact that one, Kyoya was a massive asshole for lambasting her and two, Kyoya was a massive asshole who still had someone on his, and Kaoru’s case. He slumped down, picked up one of his abandoned fries, cringed at how they appeared… wet? And tossed it to one side on the table.

“So, what’s your deal then? You have your best friend back, and you and Kaoru are like, sickeningly in love with each other.”

“You really think that?”

“About you and Kaoru? Yeah, you guys are barely apart, and you’re way happier than I’ve ever seen you before.” She shook her head, smiling to herself, “I didn’t really expect it at first. I was really worried about…”

“Kaoru? About how I’d treat him?” Kyoya assumed, somewhat snarkily.

“Well, yeah, but about both of you. From what I know anyway, this is both your first real relationship, and dating people, especially in such a tight-knit group, it can just be hard if things get messy. And then you have to consider you guys aren’t the most… emotional stable people.”

“There was definitely a more civil way you could have worded that,” Kyoya pointed out.

“What I’m saying is, you guys are a sweet couple. It’s a pity you feel you can’t be more open about that. Even my dad thinks you’re both like, ‘the cutest thing ever’. He makes me show him like, every photo you guys have.”

Kyoya’s eyebrows almost shot off his head, “Ranka said that? About us?”

“Uh, yeah. Obviously, I didn’t get all the details, from your,” she snorted, “late night escapade, but he was pretty determined to make sure you two were ‘destined for each other’. Already talking about bridesmaids dresses, although I don’t know where he thinks we have the money for that.”

It came flooding back to Kyoya- that night felt like months ago, but he knew exactly what Haruhi was mentioning. Had Kyoya even mentioned Tamaki’s name? Had he just been so sure that Ranka could read his feelings on his face, that he didn’t even say who it was that he had fallen for? Had all Ranka done was look at him, and look at the way he looked at Kaoru and thought…

Did they even need to tell people they were together, for them to think it? Or did it just come naturally to them, to assume just that, the way that Kyoya felt his feelings for Tamaki must have been so apparent that Kaoru simply knew, from a look?

How was a look, a stare, a glance, a gaze, able to hold so much? How did it communicate one thing to a person, and nothing to someone else? A look told Kaoru how Kyoya felt, and the same thing spilled the ink of Kyoya’s soul out for Ranka to bare witness to on paper- and again, the slightest change on Kaoru’s face had shown Kyoya how the other boy felt. It was so overly dramatic and soppy, like 2000s romcoms, like Shakespeare, like poetry written on the walls of school bathrooms and the secret notes people left for each other inside lockers and schoolbags. It felt ridiculous until you found yourself living in it, and then it mirrored everyway you felt.

Haruhi slurped on her drink then, every drop as precious to her as the last, the idea of leaving even the slightest sip of ice-water behind unthinkable to her, as she said, “It’s good that you’re there, for Kaoru, right now. He’s probably driving himself up the wall, considering all the stuff with Hikaru.”

Kyoya put a pin in his spiralling thoughts, “What ‘stuff’?”

“Y’know, he’s like, failing one of his classes? He’s basically stuck in detention or trying to make up for it doing random jobs nobody else wants to do,” she rolled her eyes slightly, continuing with, “He keeps forgetting homework, just stuff like that. He’s saying he’s finished it, so honestly, I think he just keeps losing it. You know what Hikaru can be like though.”

“How curious,” Kyoya said, but in his head all he could think was of that little study session, of that meaningless comment where it would have made their lives so much easier if it had been Hikaru failing, faced with the possibility of over-the-top detentions to make an example of the reputation of every Ouran student and the absolute nerve of Kaoru.

“Unbelievable. Do you know how much worse you’ve made this for us?” Kyoya hissed at Kaoru between the bookshelves of the school’s library. . It had seemed, still, too risky to even text or call to organise a meeting and walking straight up to the Hitachiin mansion brought about its own further set of challenges. Kyoya had to bide his time, wait until he saw Kaoru at school, and whisper in Kaoru’s ear a time and a place. Now, they stood here, Kaoru pretending to pluck through the various texts from Oscar Wilde that had been left to gather dust in the English Classics section, whilst Kyoya contained his anger from boiling over and spilling out on the floor. “You knew there was no way Hikaru could be behind the blackmail because you’ve been- what- stealing his work- to trap him in detention? Do you think the staff of Ouran are going to push that to one side as some sibling bickering, some childish prank, once they found out?”

“They won’t find out,” Kaoru’s eyes lazily skimmed the pages of the text in his hands, drawing his finger over the top of the novel, dust dancing in the air. “I just thought it might have been the easiest option.”

“Kaoru. You’ve made this entire thing so unimaginably more difficult because you can’t say two words to your brother. You’re gay. Two words,” Kyoya berated, as Kaoru suddenly snapped to life and shoved what he was reading between a copy of poems from Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich- not where it belonged.

“We’ve already established that it is basically impossible for you to do that either,” Kaoru belittled him in his hushed tone.

“You should have told me what you were doing,” each word was punctuated by an unbearable pause. “Throwing it in my face that I’m this awful person, that I would attempt to blackmail myself for sympathy from Tamaki, when you’re the one who’s been keeping things from me this entire time.”

“You are an awful person,” he shot back at him then.

“Okay, fine. I am. I’m in this ridiculous fake relationship to manipulate our entire friend group like they’re pawns in my hand. The fake relationship you came up with, so you could play God with your brother and our friends. If I’m a terrible person, then you’re the exact same,” he spat the words out through gritted teeth, his hand balled up in a fist so tight he could feel his fingernails digging into his skin, suddenly so close to Kaoru he could see the way his jaw was clenched. “We are awful people doing a terrible thing, and now we’re getting completely screwed over, and I don’t know how to fix it,” his voice broke at the end of his sentence, and it suddenly felt like the flood was coming and all the tension was zapped out of him. Kyoya couldn’t remember the last time he had cried, he didn’t know if it was something he was even capable of anymore, or ever had been. But the sudden lump he felt in his throat was enough to shake him.

Kyoya sniffed, uncharacteristically wiped his nose with the front of his hand, then shakily said, “I’m an awful person. I lie to people all the time. I manipulate people, I do what I can to benefit myself, and only myself, and this whole thing is just another part of that. But I haven’t lied to you. You’re the only person I can trust right now, you’re the only person I talk to about this. So, we need to be on the same page. We need to tell each other everything. We can lie to everyone else, but we can’t lie to each other. Not until we both get what we want.”

Kaoru sighed, bit the inside of his cheek and mumbled, “Okay.” Paused, then, “I should have told you what I was doing. And I shouldn’t have accused you of setting up the blackmail thing yourself. That was stupid. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It makes sense, to assume I would do that,” Kyoya replied, a hint of a smile on his lips.

“I don’t think you’re an awful person, for the record,” Kaoru said, adverting his gaze.

“I know you don’t.”

It wasn’t the full truth, but for now, it was enough.

Chapter Text

“Run me through what the point of this is, again,” Kaoru asked, peering at Kyoya from the other side of the room, back turned towards him, buttoning up the cuff of his swan white shirt.

Kyoya smiled at Kaoru’s quizzical face that reflected in the mirror, as the older boy fixed up his shirt collar, “It’s simple. Anyone who is anyone would want to attend an Ootori party. But the person who would want to attend most of all…” Kyoya stopped midsentence, attempting to bring suspense with his pause.

“The blackmailer? Yeah, I got that much. You throw this big, super elaborate party, everyone shows up. The blackmailer won’t be able to resist, they spot us doing some romantic couple’s bullshit, we catch them in the act and put an end to this,” the other didn’t even have the decency to fake a care for Kyoya’s dramatics at the moment as he sped through the carefully devised masterplan. Did he know how much effort it took to throw a party of this scale in under three days? Good thing Kyoya always had plans lying about for a party or two (you can never know when you’ll have a grand achievement you want to show off, or if money for the Host Club was starting to dip. Or just general showing off), and a hundred willing servants ready to pull it together without delay.

“I’m glad we’re on the same page here,” he mused, turning around to face the other, who was now flopped on his bed like a starfish.

“I was wondering what the point of the masks was?” Kaoru gestured towards his own that Kyoya had picked out for him- a royal blue that brought out the gold specks in his eyes. Unintentionally, of course.

Kyoya shrugged, “I like to have a flair for theatrics. You don’t run a host club for this long and have a reputation for manipulation without it.” There was a consistent hum of delight at the thought of ripping off the perpetrator’s mask, like the final climax of an Agatha Christie mystery novel. Or an episode of Scooby-Doo. The comparison didn’t help, with the fact that Kaoru had insisted the best way to catch the perpetrator was with ‘a really big net’, (“You know, like the one we used during Halloween”), because only someone with a something to hide would bail on an Ootori party before its end. The net had been placed at the only viable exit, whilst everywhere else had been oh-so conveniently obscured by musicians and extravagant statues.

Kyoya slipped on his own mask, a Phantom of the Opera styled piece, before squinting as he looked into the mirror. “I can’t see anything.”

“Told ya. Either you wear contacts or be the only one without a mask at your own party,” the boy laughed. Kyoya shuddered. He had hoped to work up the eventual courage to put in his contacts, which he had tried before, countless times, (his father seemed to think it would elevate his status as a potential suitor), but it went against his natural instinct to put something directly into his eye. It made him queasy that Mori and Haruhi had the stomach for it every day, which Kaoru thought was beyond hilarious.

Kyoya grabbed the box of them which had lay, untouched, since he had bought them from the optician for this very occasion. “Give me five minutes, then meet me out on the balcony,”

It was closer to fifteen minutes- five of them used up just to work up the nerve to do it, and another five waiting for the redness to wear away. As he walked out to the balcony, watching the hundreds upon thousands of guests, in their floor length ball gowns and finely tailored suits (and their masks doing nothing to hide their identities), the classical music of the quartet he had on speed dial elevating that authentically aristocratic feel. He couldn’t help but have that sense of triumph come over him. God, he knew how to throw a good party. He hadn’t even needed to send out proper invitations this time around- just had mentioned it casually to a group of girls outside his maths class and let the grape vine work its magic.

Kaoru seemed to be doing the same, arms crossed as he leaned over the banister, unaware of Kyoya standing just a few feet behind him. Kaoru cleaned up well, in his own dark blue suit, with the subtle elements of Van Gogh’s Starry Night intertwined on the sleeves. When Kaoru had mentioned it to Kyoya, who just wore black to all these events (“Basic, boring, yawn,” Kaoru had booed), he couldn’t help but picturing something beyond gaudy but no, just like everything he wore, he somehow made it work. Work in a way that made Kyoya’s heart forget what it was supposed to be doing, sometimes.

“Hey, you finally made it,” Kaoru exclaimed when Kyoya finally approached. “I actually got worried you might have ditched your own party for a second.”

“And miss taking down whoever’s trying to extort us? Not a chance,” he smiled coyly.

“Yeah, well, if this keeps up till next Halloween, I’ll pick out a couples costume where you can wear your glasses,” he joked, elbowing him playfully. “Like, you could be Velma, and I’ll be Fred.”

“Wouldn’t it make more sense for you to be Shaggy? They’re like, an actual couple, I’m pretty sure,” Kyoya retorted, returning the elbow.

“No, no, okay listen- because,” he started to laugh, fighting against himself to get the words out, “Because then Mori could be Shaggy and Honey could be Scooby-Doo. Whatcha think?”  He beamed up at Kyoya, whose brow was furrowed in concentration.

“Hm, and then we could always get Haruhi to go as Daphne… But then what would our customers want to see Tamaki dressed as?” He thought aloud.

“Holy shit, forget what I said. Make Tamaki Scooby, and Honey can be Scrappy. Actual genius plan in the works,” and then he burst out into laughter whilst Kyoya looked him up and down.

“I don’t know, I don’t think Scrappy Doo has a lot of… How do I put this... sex appeal?”

“Oh my God, Kyoya, I’m fucking joking. Please don’t ever put Scrappy Doo and sex appeal in the same sentence again. That’s actually awful,” he cackled, pushing his knuckles up to his lips to stop himself from keeling over with laughter. “It’s so cute how serious you get with stuff like this.”

He felt the blush rush up to his ears after that, adverting his gaze to fiddle with his cuff link. He was partly embarrassed from having been so oblivious to distinguish an offhand joke to a real business opportunity, but he was more so caught off guard by, well… When he looked back, Kaoru had that same nervous disposition, twiddling with his thumbs on top of the banister.

“Sorry, that was weird, I shouldn’t have…” Kaoru trailed off as Kyoya stepped closer, placing his hand on the other’s, and giving it the smallest squeeze.

“It’s fine,” Kyoya told him when their eyes finally locked, even though his stomach twisted itself in knots. The longer this kept up, the more Kaoru would fall, Kyoya knew that. He knew that whatever happened tonight, he would have to put an end to all of this. He couldn’t hurt Kaoru anymore then he already had.

That was when he saw the flash out of the corner of his eye, that brought his heart into overdrive as Kaoru pulled away, darting down the stairs, with Kyoya close on his heels, Kaoru breaking left as he jumped the last two steps, even though whoever it was had broken right.

Kyoya didn’t have time to think about it, much less stop and question it. All he could think was don’t. Stop. Running. His legs shook, and his heart felt like it would give out, burst in this very moment as his target zig-zagged through the crowd. Girls in their sweeping ball gowns who screamed as Kyoya’s prey barrelled through them with all the strength of American football player towards the goal, before screeching to a halt. The fool had no escape route mapped out in Kyoya’s playground, the left blocked by the 15-piece chamber orchestra, the right with the ice swan sculptor.

Nobody else in Ouran could run like that. Nobody else would get tripped up because there wasn’t a bright red EXIT sign pointing how to escape. “Takeshi,” Kyoya hissed as he grabbed at the boy’s arm, holding him with an iron-willed grip, fingers digging into his skin. “Give me the phone.”

Takeshi practically cackled as he shrugged Kyoya off. “Too late, Ootori. Once this picture gets out, your reputation will be in shambles. Behold!” He declared, revealing his devilish plan in motion.

Kyoya stopped, stared. Blinked once. Blinked twice. “That’s just... a picture of me,” he observed, deadpanned. A very low quality one at that, considering how far away Kyoya was on the balcony.

“A picture of you… with spinach in your teeth! Once the press gets a hold of this, the Ootori name will be ruined, and the Kuze clan will have returned to their rightful place in society!” His laughter boomed between the two of them, as he started on his monologue…  ‘Something, something, orange peels are filled with flavonoids… Something, something’.

Kyoya had been so caught up in chasing after Takeshi that he had forgotten one key thing: the boy was an absolute buffoon. He hadn’t changed since they were six years old. In fact, Kyoya was pretty sure he had done the whole ‘you have food stuck in your teeth, now I’m going to destroy your family’s reputation’ thing back then too. Then when they were eight. And fifteen. Maybe in the last six months or so, but at some point, Kyoya had started tuning it out.

“Oh, that’s such a shame, my family will- Oops,” Kyoya said, flicking his hand up and knocking the phone out of Takeshi’s grip, as it flew straight into the fountain that was right beside.

“Oh my God, my phone! No! You’ll pay for this, Ootori!” Takeshi cried, and without a second thought, jumped in after it. As if he couldn’t have just stuck his hand in. All brawns, no brains. Kyoya might have been impressed if Takeshi had been the real blackmailer.

“Just fax the bill to me,” Kyoya dismissed him with a wave of his hand, turning his back. Any other day, he might have had fun toying with Takeshi. Now, he was just unamused. And annoyed he had wasted a good party on his antics.

“Kyoya, hey,” throughout the chaos, Kaoru, his mask vanished, had returned, and was lightly pulling at the corner of Kyoya’s sleeve.

“Dead end. Just Takeshi being Takeshi,” Kyoya started with a shake of his head, putting a hand to his mouth to get whatever was stuck between his teeth, but Kaoru wouldn’t let him finish.

“No, I’ve got them. But you’re not going to be happy.”

There was a part of Kyoya that didn’t want to open the closet door where Kaoru had barricaded their blackmailer, using a chair shoved up against the handle. The flash had come from the right, because Takeshi probably didn’t even know how to turn the flash off in the first place. But Kaoru had seen him, camera in hand at the bottom of the stairs on the left. Takeshi’s mistake had managed to be their gain. It almost made Kyoya feel remorse for destroying his phone. Almost.

If he didn’t go in, maybe he could kid himself into thinking it wasn’t happening. That it was all just a bad dream. That he wouldn’t be doing this to him. With pure will-power, he could somehow make this be happening to someone else, anyone that wasn’t him.

“Kyoya,” Kaoru whispered gently from behind him.

“I don’t want to see him,” Kyoya replied, his voice barely above a murmur, eyes glancing up at the doorknob, then down at the floor. He had dropped his mask somewhere on the floor when he had started to softly scratch his wrist underneath his sleeve. “I don’t think I can do it, Kaoru.”

“I know,” he told him, taking his hand away and giving it the tightest squeeze. It wasn’t the ‘You don’t have to’ Kyoya was hoping for, because he would have to face him. There was no avoiding it.

He didn’t feel like he was in his own body at that point. Just a distant observer at the party. Watching two boys, standing outside a closet door. One of them taking the deepest breath, before gripping the handle and forcing himself inside. The two of them disappearing. If he was just another person at this party, he probably would have lost interest, turned his attention to the chamber orchestra, or the buffet, or the chocolate fountain that stood as tall as a person. He wasn’t though. He was in that room. Him, and Kaoru, and his brother. Kyoya’s brother.

“I don’t understand,” Kyoya finally broke the silence, Akito finally daring to look at him. He wanted to cry, and he couldn’t, because he couldn’t stand to see Akito watch him fall apart.

“Understand what?” The older man scoffed.

“I’ve thought about it. The threats. Anyone else, they would have just leaked the photos. If they wanted to destroy my reputation, they would have just leaked them to the press. Or posted them online. If they wanted money, they would have set up a time, a place, for me to hand it over. Or they would have waited for me to slip up again. They wouldn’t have told me to stop. The bigger the mistake, the bigger the story. The bigger the cash prize. The more I’ll fall,” Kyoya paused to catch his breath. Every movement was the carefully calculated act of restraining tears from streaking down his cheeks, to be cold and distant like he was supposed to be.

“I don’t follow,” Akito responded, crossing his arms and leaning back against the wall of the claustrophobic room.

“I don’t understand how I was so stupid that I didn’t figure it out myself. That the only people who would want to hurt me without getting anything else was my own family,” Kyoya spat back out at him. “That’s the only thing you would get. You wouldn’t leak it to the press, because you would destroy our family name. You weren’t going to ransom me for your money. You just wanted me to stop seeing Kaoru because you absolutely despise everything about me that isn’t a carbon copy of you.”

“I wanted you to stop before whatever this thing is with him blew up this family,” Akito shouted back at him, waving his hand in Kaoru’s direction. “I 'blackmailed' you, or however you want to put it, because I knew you wouldn't listen to me if I told you to stop. I did what I thought I had to do to make sure you didn’t ruin the years we’ve spent building our reputation, our status, in this country. And then, all the servants are gossiping about this sudden little party you wanted, and I knew you hadn't listened. That you were going to bring him, and make another mistake that would ruin us.”

“What difference does it make? I have no status in this family. I’m a back-up to a back-up. I’m nothing to you people, and I’m still supposed to just give up everything,” Kyoya yelled back at him, his chest rising and falling in time with his heaved breaths.

Akito was silent for a moment, his breathing loud from his nose. “That’s just life, Kyoya. You play the hand you’ve been dealt. You’ll thank me for this one day.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Kaoru snapped, finally dropping Kyoya’s hand as he stepped forward. He was over a head shorter than Akito, yet it didn’t seem to deter him in the slightest. “You’re such an asshole. Get out of here, before I make a whole scene and smash that stupid swan over your head. Kyoya’s a fucking gift to this nightmare of a family. You should be grateful for him.”

“I’m not arguing with children in my own home,” Akito retorted, shoving Kaoru out of his way as he stalked over to the door. “You’ll grow up one day Kyoya, and you’ll realise I’m just trying to protect this family,” he spoke over his shoulder before slamming the door behind him.

Then Kyoya couldn’t hold it in anymore. He slipped down to the floor, his back hunched. As the tears escaped from him, Kaoru eased down next to him, so he twisted his head away from him, and pushed his fist against his mouth.

“Kyoya, it’s okay, I’m here. Fuck that asshole.”

Kyoya shook his head, sniffed loudly. His own pathetic nature, his self-wallowing pity, just made him more angry, more upset, and then that just made him want to cry more. “I really wish you weren’t here.”

Kaoru let out a shaky laugh, “Kyoya, I’m not going to judge you for crying or whatever, it’s fine.”

“Kaoru,” Kyoya sighed, wiped at his face as he turned to look at Kaoru. “I know you’re in love with me. You being here, it genuinely makes me feel like I’m using you even more then I already am.”

Kaoru stopped for a second, then softly to himself whispered, “Fuck.” Kyoya could hear the slight thud of the wall as Kaoru leaned his head back too suddenly. Kaoru pushed his hand against his mouth, a muffled, shocked laugh of, “Fuck. Fucking hell.”

“Kaoru, I’ve ruined your life enough. I don’t want to hurt you anymore then I already have. It’s better if we just…We just have to end whatever this is.”

Kaoru shook his head, “I don’t want to leave you when you’re like this. This isn’t like you at all.”

“You have a good life,” Kyoya ignored him. “Your family loves you. Hikaru adores the ground you walk on. They’re always going to love you. You’re so lucky, it makes me hate you,” Kyoya laughed through the tears, shaking his head.

“Kyoya, please. Don’t let my feelings stop my helping you.”

“You’re going to find someone who really does love you, and he’ll give you everything you deserve, and that will be real,” he went on, the softest smile on his lips with his brow furrowed.

“What about Tamaki? You deserve to be happy. Kyoya, I need you to be happy,” and hearing him say that only made Kyoya laugh. He hadn’t even thought of Tamaki until now. Now, he conjured up the image of the Tamaki who was so devoted to Haruhi since the day he met her. Of him being so easily manipulated to turn his head away from her, because Kyoya was no longer attached to his hip. What a foolish thought. Why did he ever think Tamaki would fall in love with him because he was with someone else? In what world would that be real?

“Tamaki loves Haruhi. We both know that. The only person who fell in love was you, and I don’t know why or how to fix that. I’m so angry at myself for not having put a stop to this as soon as you suggested it,” Kyoya’s voice was little more than a whisper as he buried his face in his hands.

Kyoya waited for a response, and when there wasn’t any, he was sure that Kaoru had left, until he felt the boy leaning against him, his head on his shoulder.  “Kyoya, you’re really funny, even though half the time that’s just because you’re so ultra-serious about everything. And you’re so snappy and rude and pushy. You shout at people because they’re incompetent, and you have so many enemies because you can never just let something go, or tell someone they’re right, because you always have to have the last word,” Kaoru chuckled softly to himself. “You’re definitely the biggest asshole I’ve ever met in my life, but that’s because you care so much about the people you do love. And I guess I’m just an asshole too, but when I’m with you, I feel like I have someone I can be myself with. I can be annoying and be a dickhead.”

Kyoya laughed, moving his hands away from his face, which allowed Kaoru to take them in his hands.

“And, you know, I’m saying that because I don’t want you to think you ‘manipulated’ me into this. I like you because I just like being with you. How I feel, that’s real. I’m not saying this because I think you’re going to fall in love with me or whatever. I know you don’t feel like that about me. But it’s fine. I just… I don’t know. I’m rambling.”

“No, that was…” Kyoya sighed, a smile on his face. “Thanks.”

“It’s nothing. Your brother is a complete moron. I’m here because I care about you. Regardless of whatever, we’re still friends.”

“Thank you,” Kyoya repeated.

“Also, you are just hot. I just thought I would put that out there,” Kaoru shrugged, a teasing grin on his face. “I always thought that anyway. That definitely isn’t a recent development.”

“Very funny,” Kyoya said, throwing his eyes up to Heaven, but he couldn’t stop smiling despite it all. Especially when Kaoru gave his hands a gentle squeeze when the other noticed his eyes pass over the door, the sound of excited guests weaving between the gentle elegance of string instruments.

“We don’t have to go out there. We can just, hang here. Or maybe not here specifically. My back is killing me,” Kaoru chided. “But I’m not expecting you to stay out there.”

It startled Kyoya to think about simply disappearing from his own party. It simply wasn’t in the Ootori family nature: how can one cultivate the perfect image of themselves hidden away? But the thought of it: all those girls, the patrons of the Host Club, pulling at him and trying to get Kyoya to catch their eye, of Takeshi pushing at his buttons with his pure stupidity, of Tamaki, hopelessly in love with Haruhi and hopelessly unaware of how much he loved her. All the things Kyoya had learnt to master now added a mountain’s worth of pressure to his chest. He couldn’t make himself go out there and be the idealist version everyone wanted him to be.

“Let’s go. The sooner I can get away from this, the better,” Kyoya remarked, Kaoru’s hand still firmly holding his as the younger boy pulled them up from the floor, before Kaoru suddenly seemed to think better of it as he pulled away.

“Sorry, probably need to… Just not do that anymore,” Kaoru laughed awkwardly, shoving his hand into the pocket of his waistcoat. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“Right, yeah,” Kyoya nodded in agreement, flexing his own hand. Open, closed, open, closed. Without Kaoru’s hand in his, the weight of its emptiness dawned upon him, like Kaoru had taken something else away from him in that very moment.