Chapter Text
Have you ever had to set a book down just as it was getting to the good part? Or had Google Maps tell you to turn left in 600 feet just as the beat was supposed to drop? Felt the anticipation bubbling in your chest just for it to never burst?
Life for Rose Michaels, lately, had felt generally like that. Like she’d pressed pause at the precipice of something great, stopped the ride at the apex of the incline, and then just unbuckled the restraints and promptly walked off. A whole lot of lead-up, no resolution.
She’d done it to herself, don’t get her wrong. She was solely responsible for the metaphorical romantic blue balls haunting her life with residual pain, but that didn’t make the letdown any better. It didn’t make moving on any easier.
Was there a how-to book for this kind of thing? A “How to move past breaking your own heart” for, like, dummies or something? A “chicken soup for the soul that fell on their own sword.” No? Yeah, that wouldn’t sell. Too wordy.
It’d been months since she sent her heart away on a plane — kissed him, walked away, and then forced him to listen to her whine for hours on end about how lonely she’d be without him. God, she’d been insufferable and selfish. Being a teenager with big feelings and basically zero experience with how to handle them was so cringy. Just thinking about it made her want to scream.
But well, she was in public. And still trying to fool the world into thinking she had her shit together. (Spoiler alert: she did not.) It wasn’t really the time to let the neverending montage of regrets and embarrassments randomly playing in her head take over her rationality. There were things that needed to be done.
Rose sighed as she tucked her long brown hair behind her ear and continued gazing down at the textbook in her lap. Despite sitting on the grass between buildings in the warm sunlight and being surrounded by hundreds of echoing voices, Harvard was immensely quiet without a certain redhead and his black-haired twin around.
The silence was the perfect soundtrack to accompany the empty feeling at the bottom of her stomach that she just couldn’t shake. It had started the moment she had turned away from Hikaru and told herself she wasn’t allowed to look back — like the ground had opened up beneath her and she was just perpetually falling into endless, soundless darkness. There was nothing she could do to stop it. No amount of joy, comfort, or studying could end it. Nothing she could feasibly try would fill the void.
A whole 17 years of loss and rebound, goodbyes and new beginnings, disappointments and triumphs should have more than prepared her for this. For this loss, this goodbye, this disappointment. It didn’t.
Now, as Rose got up and made her way to her first fall class of her final year of college, she was breathing deeply in a failed attempt to keep the emptiness under control. This was her last year of school — her swansong — and she wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of her victory. (If that was the excuse she gave him when sending him off, she had better fucking stick to it.)
She had already made a mental list to ensure success. 1. Study your heart out, no matter the sacrifice. 2. Soak up every moment for what it's worth, never leave a learning experience unturned. 3. Do. Not. Think. About. Him. 4. Always keep your goal in mind. 5. Believe in yourself.
If she repeated them over and over to herself, the words lost their meaning and seemed easy enough to accomplish, but she had sabotaged herself along the way in more ways than one. (Because obviously reminding herself to forget his laugh, the way his hair swooped in his eyes, the look of utter betrayal on his face as she walked away that last time, it really only ensured she kept thinking about him.) In the midst of her mourning the loss of the only real friends she had ever had, she told herself she could replace their love with learning. If she had nothing to do, she could pick up new hobbies. If regular schoolwork wasn’t keeping her busy enough, she could find a niche interest to research. If she couldn't keep the Japanese twins around, then she could learn Japanese in her free time.
It was a critical error. The language was fascinating, in and of itself, but Rose often found herself drifting off in class, caught in memories of those two devil boys going off on each other in their native language. Without closing her eyes, she could see them in front of her, teasing her about her clothes or lack of makeup, see them slumped at the desks beside her, bored and making it everyone else’s problem. In a way, it was almost helpful to be learning the language — hearing those two berating her in Japanese — but it was murder on her heart and she wasn’t enthused with how quickly her brain learned new vocabulary if she just imagined him saying it to her.
“Come on,” he’d say to her as she struggled through the basics. “Even babies know this stuff.”
And she’d grumble back, likely aloud even if he was only in her head, and hunker down to study harder, to spite all the doubt pooling up inside her.
There was a determination that had settled into Rose even before Hikaru left. She had vowed she wasn’t going to let a single boy, and whatever affections she had for him, take control of her life. If she was resolved to let sleeping dogs lie, then she had better be ready to do what it takes to ensure it stays that way. She had even gone as far as to change her phone number, delete and create a new personal email address, and request her info be removed from several of those sketchy people finder websites, just in an attempt to prevent him from reaching out to her someway and becoming so much more than just a distraction. (And look, she knew that people with money can always find the information they want, but he couldn’t possibly care that much, okay?) She didn’t care how much it hurt to cut them all away. She could handle the pain, and take it all on herself.
She was strong, wasn’t she? She was resilient, right? She had gone through worse, weathered worse, continued living beyond every single thing she’d thought would finally break her. She could endure this thing she’d brought upon herself, for God’s sake.
But despite every action she’d taken, hearing his voice in her head couldn’t be prevented. He always found a way in, didn’t he? It was just in his nature. Hers too.
If it kept going on like this — this constant repetition of remembering and trying to forget, regret and longing — it was going to be an incredibly long school year. Likely filled with the type of days that feel neverending because sadness makes time drag, but in months she would look back and wonder when all those hours had passed. It would be excruciating and overwhelming. Though, still, the future held wondrous possibilities if she could just see Harvard through to the end.
It wasn’t like studying at one of the country’s foremost academic institutions was a chore. Sometimes she really had to stop in place and chide herself. Standing in the middle of an Ivy League campus, feeling the late summer sun on her face, in her place among the bustling noise of life she had an urge to tell herself “Boohoo, cry more college girl.”
“Get on with life,” the harsher, jaded parts of her would push. “Your struggles are nothing. This moment of pain is nothing.” You are nothing.
The voice inside wasn’t wrong. It was never really right either, but that didn’t stop it from following her around, every day, intruding whenever it saw an opening. It didn’t start with Hikaru leaving — it didn’t even start with Lance (that monster who last year had tried to break more than just her belief in people), whose voice her cruel subconscious had chosen as its own — and it wasn’t likely to go away anytime soon. All she could was keep moving forward and hope someday it would bow down to a greater force.
Someday wouldn’t come without getting through today, though, and so Rose continued on through campus, admiring how the sun filtered through the trees that shaded the grass-lined walkways, and smiled at the buildings’ particular shade of red that she would forever associate with this time in her life. She squinted as she entered her building and the dimmer hallways inside made her wonder what it would have been like to attend the university before modern technology. She winced when she rolled her chair too close to the stationary table as she took her seat and begged the universe that others were too busy with their own lives to witness even her smallest fuck ups.
(The universe hardly ever listens.)
“I hate doing that.” The words accompanied the slap of a backpack hitting the table and the slight rumble of the chair wheels beside her moving backward. “Ruins my whole day, honestly.”
Rose sighed a curse to the heavens before turning toward the witness of all of her most recent failures. “The whole day? Really?”
Caleb shrugged. “What can I say, I’m a man who hates facing his own mistakes. Namely, the lame ones.”
Rose tempered an amused smile as she turned away from him to set up for class, pulling endless materials from her bag and setting them in relative order in front of her. She dated her page before setting her pencil atop her notebook and turned back toward him, only to find him already staring on.
“What?” she asked.
“I forgot my notebook,” he replied and hesitated as he reached down into his bag. “... and my pencils.”
“What??” she asked again, turning to him fully while he dug around his Jansport. “What do you even have in your bag then?”
He gave her a sheepish smile as his hand emerged from within, full of tiny boxes of raisins, candies, and granola bars dangling precariously by the edges of their wrappers. “Snacks?”
The blank look she leveled at him would have frozen him solid if he hadn't grown up with the mother he did. As it was, he remained unfazed as he showered the collection of food upon the desk with a quick release of his fingers and put those business classes to work by offering a trade deal.
“Trade you some for a bit of paper and a pen,” he proposed. Rose’s amused, close-lipped smile returned. She thought it over a moment, eyeing the pile wearily. Gingerly, she pulled a fun-sized kit-kat and a honey and oats bar as her selections, handing a few torn-out notebook pages and a freebie pen over in return.
“You really should prepare better,” she teased.
“I know, I know,” he whined. “But this morning was crazy! You see…”
He started off with a story that began, if she heard right, three days ago when he went to Target to get supplies for this year, but he’d lost her past that point when her phone buzzed a few times in her pocket.
Texts. From Molly.
It was always surprising, the way love and care actually felt warm when it was directed her way. She’d read it described that way in books — warmth. She’d always thought it was a literary device, a metaphor maybe, an exaggeration but, really, it was warm. It lit her up inside and shone through her eyes, the upward turn of her lips. Fond. She was so fond of Molly.
She typed back a quick thanks, noting her class started soon, and tucked her phone away, tuning back into Caleb with full attention.
“And that was when he suggested we should hire monkeys, but I told him that was a ‘hard no’ for me. There were monkeys at my 6th birthday party and…”
Rose smiled to herself, trying hard to keep the bubbling amusement tucked inside. Fond. She was so fond of these people around her. So what if she pushed away the burning fire? So what if she had to bear a little cold? She was still so warm among everything she had left.
Just because a chapter ended doesn’t mean the story is over. She’d be 18 this winter, graduate in the spring, and start her career after. There was still so much left. All she had to do was turn the page.
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Porcelain is a weird material if you really stop and think about it.
For millennia, it was revered, sought after, held aloft, and admired for its elegance, its luxury. It can be so beautiful, and artistic, and delicate, taking the shape of magnificent vases, exquisite tea sets, charming figurines. And yet, as somehow Hikaru Hitachiin found the clarity to marvel from the tiled floor of his bathroom, the only worship it receives is when it is upholding its worst duty.
Do the mighty fall, or are they just returning from whence they came? Poetically speaking, the latter has more appeal, but Hikaru didn’t start life at rock bottom and yet here he was anyway. Prostrate before the god that most frequented his life these days, feeling as fragile as porcelain while the chuhai and whiskey made their Act II reappearance.
The tile of the floor was cool on his back, even through his tee. The lights radiating out of the crystal chandelier were just a bit too bright and flashy, and he had the distinct feeling that he shouldn’t be able to feel the music from his 6 am alarm in his teeth, but he knew by now that whiskey hangovers were not beholden to the typical rules of the universe.
At this point, honestly, Hikaru had never been more sure that the aftereffects of alcohol were the world’s great equalizer. There may be ceramic tiles flecked in gold below him and imported wallpaper all around him but there was nothing particularly more glamorous about his spiral than any other person. Sure, the main actors in this bathroom reappearance saga may be expensive liquor and gourmet snacks topped with caviar and truffles, but they swirl down the drain just the same as any other food.
And that’s the thing, isn’t it, Hikaru thought. That you can spend your whole life looking at the world as if you are above it. Think your rich parents, fancy school, designer clothes, untouchable looks and personality mean you are so far beyond everything around you, but the world — oh the world is going to make sure you understand that no one escapes the inevitability that one day you will return to dirt.
Hikaru had become quite the deep thinker, a little bit of an armchair philosopher, in the past months since his return to Japan. Heartbreak can do that to you, you know? Make you see the world in a whole new way. Feel like you’re the first person to ever feel the way you do. Make you think that you are so unique in the trials of life that no one in the world could possibly understand what you’re going through, understand you.
Understand how everything inside you has completely changed in the course of a few months, and yet nothing around you has changed at all.
That, one day out of the blue you find out that you know how to love and, despite how hard you try to ignore it and how long you’ve gone without feeling that way, you suddenly can’t live without falling in love. You fight for this unbelievable thing you’re experiencing for the first time, only for your heart to get broken. But you move on because real love means being happy for the one you love even if they can’t find happiness in you and somehow, you fall in love again in a whole new place. Differently. Deeply. Desperately. But the forces that be don’t play fair in all things love and war, and so that person you love so dearly it makes you sick inside decides unilaterally that this thing between you doesn’t have the space for its roots to grow.
Timing or something just as stupid gets in the way and you return to start, literally, back in the place you were before, looking at a world that was waiting for the you that you were before and not the you of now, expecting you to perform the same song and dance as if you haven’t found better steps, a better song. Expecting you to acknowledge that the world keeps turning when your own personal rotation has been knocked completely off-kilter.
And then they get mad at you when you’re not the same. When you don’t live up to the person they knew before, as if he was really all that great.
Of course, he wasn’t the same! Man didn’t discover fire and think ‘You know what, I liked who I was before this better,’ then walk away and pretend it never happened. He embraced the warmth, despite being a little afraid, despite the burns, and learned to live life in a new way.
Hikaru had learned, okay. He learned his goddamn lesson. The only common denominator in both love and life is a depressing end. So why bother letting either get to you too much? Especially when someone who says they love you — miraculously reciprocates all those indescribable, fluttery feelings inside you — pushes you away with a kiss and a wave, and moves on with their life as if you never existed. As if that connection you felt, that precious gift you were ready to give to them, wasn’t worth anything at all.
It’s what’s “best for you,” she’d said. As if lying on the floor of his bathroom was some great thing she’d done for him. What a beautiful future she’d made the sacrifice for, huh? Sure was a great thing she’d made the choice all on her own, totally stonewalled him and any chance he had for input, because of his needs, his dreams, his future, as if she wouldn’t be every one of those things once they were together.
That’s what’s supposed to happen right? When people love each other? They get together and their dreams of the future merge from two paths to one? They’re supposed to be together and happy and not care about what the world thinks.
But instead, he stepped off the plane into his individual storyline, in skin that didn’t fit quite right. Immediately back to Hikaru Hitachiin: Ouran High School heartthrob, Host Club twincest extraordinaire, aloof classmate, heir to the family business, older brother to, now, two. (Because his parents maybe relished the alone time allotted by children studying abroad a little too much and now he had a very new baby sister.)
Transitions, by their very nature, are never smooth. From the moment they landed, Hikaru felt like he was playing catch up, treading water with no shore in sight. They returned to school weeks into the first semester of their senior year, because of course, the school years between countries aren’t the same. Hikaru and Kaoru took a single day of rest before jumping into classes, make-up work, restarting the host club with Haruhi and their senpai's younger siblings, and the endless entrance exam prep. Hikaru went to shadow his father at his tech company, Karou their mother at her fashion house and the days blended together while they tried to keep it together.
In the midst of it all, Hikaru learned a new little trick. He could turn his brain off and completely float away from the host club while he let the fake Hikaru take over for all the fun and nonsense. It was a relief, at first, to disconnect from it all. To find a way to be exactly what everyone wanted without actually being it, but fake Hikaru wasn’t as good at his job as he thought.
Everyone noticed. That his smiles were a little muted, his antics more than subdued, his whimsies nonexistent, his pride in making the ladies swoon all but flown away. And his closest, those who saw him as family expressed their concern, first to each other when they thought he wasn’t around and then directly to him. Asking about his feelings, as if he wanted to talk about them. Asking about the pressures, as if he wanted to address them. Asking after him. Asking. Asking. Asking. Creating so much noise in his head that it began to buzz.
(And here — here is where he knows it could have been different. Here is where he could have changed any one little thing and not be where he is now, on this cold, tiled floor in this unbearable light, in yesterday's clothes.)
(But sometimes you can tell you’re a flaming pile of garbage headed straight to the fucking dump and not quite care. You can see the cutting words leaving your mouth as you say them and watch the petty, biting, harsh actions in slow motion as they happen and simultaneously want to stop it all and not be able to. You can live in a monstrous cycle that seems inescapable but far too comfortable to leave at the same time. You can tell the water is going to be too deep soon and still not swim away.)
It was too much. All of it was too much. The care, the work, the expectations, the endless need to be more, but not too much. To grow up but stay the same. To be someone’s idol, but human all the same. All of these standards held before him were impossible to live up to when he just wanted to live.
He couldn’t host right. He couldn’t study right. He couldn’t do anything right and after so many weeks of letting everyone down (even himself), he figured, really, what’s the point? If he couldn’t be perfect, maybe the opposite would be the right move.
He stopped trying to be the host the girls wanted and expected. Let Kaoru entertain with Haruhi, he’d be the aloof, mysterious, and brooding type. Girls with rose-colored glasses would wonder if he was tsundere with a secretly soft center, but really he was just being mean. In class, if he wasn’t spending hours staring out the window or on his phone, he’d be challenging the teacher and wasting time. He wouldn’t wear his uniform right. He wouldn’t ask to go to the bathroom. He wouldn’t extend any courtesies anymore. Helping people find their happy endings? As if. Escorting women to dances? In your dreams. Be a perfect gentleman? Don’t count on it, Tamaki.
He even tried dating — to the disappointment of not only his friends but to the girls who always felt the hosts should be untouchable. But who was he to turn away from girls who claim to like him as he was? Who was he to walk away from someone who wanted him and did something about it?
Akane was first and she’d been so surprised when he said yes. It was only two months into his return. The day after he’d fought with Kaoru again over their stupid brotherly love bit, but Karou had brought backup this time and Tamaki wouldn’t stop nagging. Just going on and on about duty and commitments and honor to the point that Hikaru walked away with the itch to really set him off. Such a fortunate daughter of timing and circumstance, that Akane.
She was so sweet on him, bringing him lunches (made by her family’s chef) and wanting to do homework together. It almost made him feel bad that he thought she was so boring. But not bad enough that he didn’t tell her as much, to her face, over dinner at the restaurant she’d begged him to go to. She stuck it out though. Whether it was because she liked him that much, liked the idea of him, or was chasing after his last name, he didn’t know. It was kind of soothing, though, to realize he didn’t have to do anything to make them stay, and he ended up not feeling particularly guilty when he tossed them away. Because of course, Akane didn’t stick. And after her was Hana. Then it was Aoi, or maybe it was Asami? Then Kyo. Then Chihiro. Then Saori. And then he stopped keeping track because they never lasted long.
His patience was as flimsy as their love and their spirit. They’d bend to his will, worship him as a deity, and cry at the smallest bit of teasing. It was useless. They weren’t enough. They weren’t –
“They’re never going to be her Hikaru.” Kaoru had been so mad the day he’d upset the prime minister's, best friend's niece, or whatever. “And you have to stop punishing them for it.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Hikaru had responded, not even looking at his brother as he gathered his books to leave the club room.
“I miss her too.” Kaoru persisted, grabbing his brother’s arm to keep him from physically leaving the conversation. “I’m mad too. But all of this — hurting a bunch of starry-eyed girls — it’s too much! You can’t keep doing this. They’ve done nothing wrong.”
Hikaru turned on him, pushing toward Kaoru in a rage. “They’ve done nothing wrong? Each and every one of those girls knew exactly what they were getting when they came up to me with their little letters and shaking hands. With the way this school gossips? Not a single one of them comes up to me not knowing how the one before them was left behind. And they come anyway. Why do you think that is?”
His question was met with silence, a frown, as Kaoru’s confusion outweighed his concern.
“They either think they can change me or they think the benefits of dating me will outweigh any hardship of doing so. They ask me to date them with a personal agenda and you want me to agree that that is not cruel? That it’s not wrong?”
“But you don’t have to say yes, Hikaru! No one is forcing you to take anyone out that you don’t want to.”
But Hikaru didn’t want to listen to reason. Not then and certainly not in the months that followed as he traded girls for parties, combined the two, and continued to ignore his brother and anyone else who had anything to say about it. It didn’t matter that they were trying to be supportive.
It didn’t matter that Kaoru was desperate to commiserate because he missed his new friend too and because he loved his brother so much. No matter how hard he tried to fill in the holes in his brother’s heart by spending time together, by offering to listen, by trying to find him better outlets for his anger and hurt, Hikaru wasn’t listening, wasn’t seeing. It was their last year of spending nearly every minute together (because they had different dreams ahead of them even if they’d likely share a dorm) and Hikaru was missing it all.
Though, Hikaru didn’t see it that way. Not that he was home enough to hear Kaoru’s worries, but Kaoru probably didn’t know that it’s easy to find a party any night of the week, so the ignorance on certain topics was split evenly among them, Hikaru figured. And it didn’t really matter what Kaoru thought, anyway. What any of his so-called friends thought, because as far as Hikaru was concerned, they didn’t genuinely care about him.
He was out having fun, living his life, being appreciated for the bare minimum and all they ever wanted to talk about was his reputation, the Host Club’s reputation, as if those weren’t all just thinly veiled concerns about their own reputations suffering for being acquainted with him.
It’s not like he’d made up that connection in his mind or something. Mori had even said that!
“Think of the others and how this reflects on them,” he’d said after no other plea had gotten through to Hikaru. “Your actions are affecting everyone. It hurts all of us to see you this way.”
Hikaru hadn’t taken it well.
“Why do I have to be the selfless one here?" He’d demanded. “Why should I care about how it makes you feel when you’re asking me to give up the only thing that makes me happy right now?"
Mori didn’t have an answer that satisfied Hikaru. He’d gone on a while, in his brief style of speaking, about true happiness and self purpose and other boring, self-important drivel but Hikaru had stopped listening after it was clear Mori didn’t immediately see his side of things. But there was one thing he’d said that had made it past stubborn barriers he’d put up.
“...because, if for no other reason, then this is our last year all together in this place, doing what this club does.”
It’d made Hikaru pause a moment but hadn’t stopped him from going out last night. He’d pondered it as he took sips of his vodka Red Bull, watching two college athletes settle a disagreement by wrestling in the living room of some heiresses' penthouse. Chewed on it a bit as he forgot the cardinal rule of drinking and washed down a whiskey with a chuhai (or three) and followed that all up with sake bombs.
That’s how he’d ended up here, waxing poetic about porcelain and hangovers lying on the floor of his bathroom. There were only a few, short months left of his senior year of high school. Everyone kept telling him so in all their pleas. And, while the anger and feelings of betrayal hadn’t magically faded overnight, he could admit to himself that he was worried he was giving up too much to feed the monster inside him. That, despite everything, he didn't want to lose these precious last memories of high school and the Host Club.
He could call a truce within himself, he thought, pushing up from the floor and starting the shower. He wouldn’t give up all his new pastimes and tricks, but he could dial them back. Maybe. He could do that, right?
Even if being more present for the happiness also meant fully experiencing his sadness. That even in this truce there still lurked the conflict that was to come. Even if he still wondered what the point of joy was, in those moments, if he kept thinking someone who wasn’t there would have made it better.