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When they'd chosen the piano — because they had chosen the piano — Tamaki had told him that he had wanted a white one, and they'd spent hours poring over the catalogues and looking at the eager faces of photographed craftsmen and their work to settle on a nice one, sleek and tonally indistinguishable (Kyoya) from all of the more decorative, garishly ornate options circled on the page (Tamaki). By the time it had actually come for the piano to arrive, Kyoya had cleared away his schedule to supervise its placement in his living room, and he'd called Tamaki, afterward, holding onto two glasses by the stem in one hand, uncorking a bottle of wine with the other: You should come over to look at the piano.
The piano?
The white one, the one we bought, Kyoya had said, and then, with an ill-omened premonition: You remember.
Silence on the other end of the line.
White? said Tamaki pityingly. His voice snapped at Kyoya's nerves even through the flawless connection that their state-of-the-art telecommunications provided: nothing less than the finest that money could buy. Kyoya, black's a classic for a reason.
They now kept that piano in one of the Otoori vacation homes. Sometimes Tamaki said that he needed a white piano — and would say, guileless, when have I ever said that black was the only way to go when it came to a piano? — and they would fly it in events, here and there, for parties where it wouldn't be remiss against the less-orthodox, less-severe settings of the nouveau rich that the Otooris sometimes lowered themselves to do business with, when Kyoya needed to endear himself to people that would look at it and think they had a measure of what type of man he was from an instrument: I suppose even old money can't buy taste, they'd say above champagne flutes, and Kyoya would swoop in with a smile, then, of course, to capitalize off of—
"Kyoya," said Tamaki. He was the picture of poised suffering, cloaked in gloomy shadow, somehow, underneath the lights where he sat in front of the piano. Kyoya looked up, then down again, unconcerned. "Save me."
"Go with the Beethoven," said Kyoya, flipping through the pages of his newest contract on the couch. Tamaki was sitting on the edge of the bench, examining folders of sheet paper he had kept inside of there; he didn't like the electronic kind. The ink had smudged on one of the sheets before drying. His brow creased.
"But the Mozart," said Tamaki, anguished.
"Then Ravel?"
"Liszt."
"Just choose the Rachmaninoff," said Kyoya, and he tossed the papers onto the coffee table. His glasses had slipped down the bridge of his nose.
"Rachmaninoff? Now?" said Tamaki, reproachful, or something approximating it — there was an uninhibited affection in his voice that made Kyoya's eyes close even sitting away from him that made it sting — or not sting — it would have smarted, back when they were second-year students, but not now, not any longer; all Kyoya felt was a wave of exasperated affection washing over him. He opened his eyes to see Tamaki sweeping his fingers over the tops of the keys, soundless, and pausing to turn and meet his eyes. "It wouldn't fit the occasion. I thought you would have better musicality than that."
"Why would I?" asked Kyoya. He rose from the cushions, sliding into the spot behind Tamaki's shoulder. His blond hair was getting long, brushing against the nape of his neck. "I have people for that."
"But you've never liked it when people tell you what to listen to and not listen to," said Tamaki, absent-minded as anything; he was beginning to run through his scales with one hand, thumb under fingers, tapping away.
"That's true," said Kyoya. And he leaned over, sliding the sheaf for the Rachmaninoff onto the stand.
The tailor had come some time ago. They were at Kyoya's — which could be discerned from the way the furniture's stark, severe modernity — and Kyoya was sitting, flipping through a catalogue of fabrics, and he was discussing with the older man the occasion, to which Kyoya had said, it's a gift. Perched upon the arm of the plush chair was Tamaki, who had to almost comically bend down to look at the same thing that Kyoya was: he had put his elbow on Kyoya's head, earlier, and then, when he'd found himself on the other end of Kyoya's withering expression, had wisely gone and retrieved his arm and kept it docilely by his side since.
"Purple," said Tamaki, delighted. He batted at the page, demanding their shared attention. "I've always liked purple."
Kyoya looked at the tailor meaningfully. The tailor met his gaze.
Flicking his eyes back to the catalogue, Kyoya said politely, in an Otoori's tones: "You should; it's the color of your eyes," and flipped the page with a sense of finality.
"I could match with myself," said Tamaki. He positively sparkled. "A rose should be among other roses, don't you think?"
"Not with my money."
Tamaki scowled; Tamaki pouted. He slumped against the back of his chair, draping himself across it dramatically — and attractively, with the practiced elegance of someone who had spent the vast majority of his highschool years playing to his strengths, the least of which was not the way that he aggressively took after his mother's looks and charm — and let his limbs turn liquid. "I don't want to wear black," he said, voice positively aghast. He had (in the same vein as the twins had) always made his opinion of Kyoya's austere wardrobe clear.
"Honestly, Tamaki," said Kyoya, amused. "It's like you don't think I know you at all."
He handed back the catalog to the tailor without batting an eye, tapping his finger against the swatch he'd selected. Tamaki craned his neck to try to sneak a peek at what Kyoya had chosen, but it was a foregone pursuit; the tailor had already stood up and bowed to them, beginning to make his exit, and Tamaki, in the wake of his defeat, merely slid off of the chair entirely, clumping less-attractively on the floor, and he only rose up when Kyoya reached down and hooked his fingers on the inside of his crisply-ironed collar with a faint tug.
Tamaki rose — begrudgingly — and bent one knee at the very edge of the cushion, facing Kyoya, the other one behind. The shadow of him fell over Kyoya underneath the lights that Tamaki had also complained about at length (you have to have warm lighting, mommy, I look ghoulish in cold—). It was a suggestive position, although — if you had enough money — it was also the type of position that you could worm your way out of when other people saw it, if you were willing to take enough damage from your reputation; it was certainly the type of position, Kyoya knew, that his father would not have ever imagined him allowing himself to be caught in, in a room that was not locked and cloistered away at the end of a long, separate hall, much less with the man that he was in the company of.
He reached out and closed his fingers against the edge of Tamaki's shoulder. His hand fit neatly, smoothly, satisfying there against the satisfyingly flat seams and the way that blazer slid over Tamaki's joint. Tamaki tipped his head forward, resting it against Kyoya's, and he could feel his dark hair bending and creasing underneath Tamaki's own gold, and Kyoya closed his eyes.
Fuyumi was like a dog with a bone: she could never leave anything well enough alone, and when she'd visited — unannounced — and forced her way into his mansion — unauthorized — and cleaned — unrequested — for her younger brother, saying that she was so worried about her antisocial, undersocialized younger brother (to which he had always pointed out that he was oversocialized if anything, considering his many, many business meetings and outings and conferences, to which she said that business meetings did not count), she'd noticed the piano, and the paintings, and the flowers sitting in the vases that Kyoya would have never bought for himself, and the sweaters that Tamaki had bought him that Kyoya would never wear in public but had, damningly, worn in the privacy of his home. The supposed privacy of his home.
She'd called him. It was only now that he regretted, not for the first time, spending so much time with his sister; if she were more like his brothers, she wouldn't have bothered coming over thinking — in the implicit, Otoori way — that he missed her; it would have saved him from the worse reality of her breaking into his property uninhibited from more militant military proving that she, at least, was held in a fonder regard than some other members of his family.
Hence: them sitting in one of Kyoya's rooms, a pot of slowly-cooling tea held between them. Kyoya had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, and he pinched irritably between his brows; he was holding the thin frame of his wire-rimmed glasses in his other fist, the humming of the air conditioning doing little to stifle the sound of Fuyumi's hemming and hawing, the nervous tinkle of her fine jewelry and wedding ring against their porcelain cups.
"Well, this is an excellent tea," said Fuyumi brightly.
It was, of course, but Kyoya would have never stood for substandard fare being served under his name. He scowled at her, unable to take her prevarication: but Fuyumi, like Kyoya, was not someone who could be rushed, although it evidently manifested in different ways; she toyed with the glossy strands of her dark hair, fiddling with the tips of her perfectly-manicured nails — there wasn't so much as a writer's callus on her fingers. She neatened the folds of her skirt. She commented brightly on how well the whites of Kyoya's furniture matched each other.
And then, finally, at long last: "That friend of yours," said Fuyumi. She tried not to sound knowing and aimed for casual instead, but didn't quite succeed. Her cup of tea had only drained to half. "He likes the piano, doesn't he?"
"He plays it," said Kyoya. "You've seen him do it before."
"Your piano," said Fuyumi, and here she leaned forward, crossing her legs; her teacup dipped, and then she hastily set it upon its saucer with an audible clink. She coughed delicately into her fist, and then tried to look sly; she had the juggling grace of a two year-old, Kyoya thought uncharitably, but he leaned back purposefully on the sofa and didn't let her see that she had gotten to him. "That's his, isn't it? And you got that shirt for him that he wore the last time we met — the family tailor's hands were all over those seams. Kyoya."
"What's your point," said Kyoya. His own cup was untouched. "I'm busy, nee-san."
"The Suoh boy," said Fuyumi. She looked at him. Searching: "You're — together?"
Tamaki and Fuyumi were similar people. He'd thought it before, seeing them talk to each other at events or (more often) whenever Tamaki invited himself to Kyoya's home, and they got along well; they both liked commoner's food, though Fuyumi did make a token attempt at pretending that she didn't, and they were both soft-hearted and romantic. It had been strongly suggested to Kyoya — from a number of sources — that he keep in contact with Tamaki, and keep their relationship close, intimate, although he suspected no one had anticipated that it would be so in this manner, in this regard: but although Fuyumi had been one of them, and although she had suggested it for his own benefit, Kyoya had always understood that she had meant it in a very different way than his father had.
"Don't be ridiculous," said Kyoya, his tone not impolite; it was too obvious, he thought, that he was smiling from the way that he sounded; Fuyumi would latch onto that, and he'd never hear the end of it. The glare of the overhead lights concealed his expression. Lightly: "When have we ever been apart?"