run like a race for family when you hear you're alone
I HAVE NO EXCUSE. THIS DOESN'T EVEN SOLVE ANYTHING. THEY ARE STILL IN SUISSE. MOST OF IT IS FLASHBACKS. YEah, seriously, I apologize for not making much progress with the plot, but I swear we have a plan.... I swear... it will end soon, really.
(SPOILER: EVERYONE DIES)
two weeks ago, france.
Maybe it's because he's three more angry emails from being disowned, or because he spent the weekend entertaining people with no benefit, but Kyouya declines play for work that afternoon. Regardless of protests, he's dragged laptop and all from his bedroom to the low, stuffy sitting room where Tamaki tries to cajole him into painting. There's an easel and brushes and everything, he presses. You could paint those lilies. What a beautiful shade of aquamarine! Éclair is in the sunlight and reading, seated as far from them as possible. Kyouya stares at the back of her head instead of his Excel spreadsheets or Tamaki's proposed still-life’s. Isn't she lucky you came along, he says to himself as he pushes Tamaki's fingertips away. You can have all of these grabby moments and she will escape with the rest, with Tamaki's host moments. He would never allow Tamaki to host him, though. Even if Tamaki doesn't entertain with bold-faced lies as the twins do, Kyouya thinks he likes Tamaki best when he's simpering and honest. When he's ruining your life? his mind chides, trying to drag Kyouya's attention back to the work at hand. A smudge of paint slips over the side of the monitor.
Show us your calligraphy! Tamaki sweeps the brush back up to drag out the characters of their names. His kanji is picturesque, and Éclair’s is in a short, slanted print Kyouya doesn't recognize. When Tamaki catches him looking, he writes out a slow message in simple French-- mon bon amie. That isn't a calligraphy brush, Kyouya informs him. For Tamaki's reply he gets a handful of pouts and cold dab of paint on his chin.
Éclair excused herself halfway through, but when she returns with maids and smocks, half of Tamaki's face is already covered in green paint. Tamaki strode to meet them in the doorway. Acrylic can't be good for your hair, Éclair notes when Kyouya brushes past them, ignoring the boy at his heels.
He hasn't forgotten the prospect of finding Tamaki's mother being withheld from her own son. Eclair's slip up had only led to a, if only momentary, strain between him and his friend. Kyouya knows it's what led to the night before, after the door to Éclair’s bedroom was closed. He could hear Tamaki working through Schumann's Traumerei muffled by the wood. In his mind he can still recall Tamaki's sloppy German pronunciation and guilty explanations to the club when he played it the first time ("Kyouya is the expert. I'm afraid I specialize with romance languages instead.") Kyouya stayed at that end of the manor's hallway for only a piece of the movement, wondering if it would have better to hear silence instead.
Tamaki always used to try going up the steps backwards, but Kyouya stopped him before he tripped and killed them both. Now he takes them two at a time, chattering the whole way. He's mercifully silent on their way to their rooms this time, where Kyouya imagines the joy of a cool shower, this shirt full of Tamaki's smell crumpled in the trash bin.
one week ago, france.
Kyouya gets carried away by his thoughts when Bernard announces that a car is waiting out front. For a blind moment he thinks his father has grown tired of these vacation games and the vehicle is there to whisk them to the airport (but he wouldn't go so far to wish it was Tamaki's grandmother who gave the order.) When Éclair rises and motions for the boys to 'regarde', he knows better than to keep hoping. Tamaki bobs along ahead of them, just behind the doorman, straining his eyes against the sunlight. Kyouya considers ducking out through the sitting room, but the help is bringing lunch out after them.
The car, she explains, was a graduation gift. Eclair is a year older than Tamaki and Kyouya. "Don't tell me you've never entertained an older woman," she'd joked, her voice too low, the drinks too heavy between them for her comments to be funny. She attends a university abroad and- with a strange look to Tamaki- she feels the two of them should consider that as well. Kyouya concedes if she can find a school that caters to her interests, why not. Eclair is hardly specific about her interests (In their short time together Kyouya can only count a few; horseback riding, Schumann, blackmail.)
Tamaki expresses an interest in learning to drive too, but he's shot down by both friends so suddenly that he spends the rest of the meal mournfully chasing his food across the plate.
She meets the driving instructor as he climbs out of the vehicle. While the man rattles off details of the antique vehicle, Kyouya finds himself thinking how the rich have such wasteful ways to spend their money. He doesn’t complain of course, it's why the Host Club was such a success. And he doesn't dare say any of this out loud, to keep from sounding like Haruhi. Watching Eclair slink between the humidity has made him forget such straightforward people. For a moment he's lost in the driveway, barely remembering the Host Club, or his home country. It's the heat, he swallows, shading his eyes from the glare off the hood of he vehicle. Switzerland will be a nice change- if they ever go.
"Tamaki," she instructs in crystal sharp French. "If you want to watch, go on the veranda. You're very distracting." Kyouya hadn't been paying attention, but Tamaki's guilty flush is proof enough of his antics. Kyouya takes him with a hand around Tamaki's bicep, ascending the stairs to collapse in the shade beneath the wisteria. Maids emerge from the cracks to linger around them, and while Kyouya is long used to ignoring wandering eyes outside of a profitable setting, Tamaki has always been an insufferable flirt on accident. When Kyouya asks for iced tea, Tamaki slides a hand over his, a motion that's as cold and clear as the edges of freshly cut ice, as sharp as a new love.
"Yes, wine will be fine," Kyouya chokes. His hand plunges back to his side as the thrum of the motor mixes with the pounding in his chest. His mind continues to linger on the people waiting for them countries and countries away.
“I’m feeling nostalgic,” Tamaki grins over his toasted glass.
"Have you been homesick?" Kyouya asks and surprises himself with the strength of his efforts to remain casual. As though he doesn't flinch every time Tamaki and Eclair slip into vocabulary he doesn't know, or ask each other about cities and people he's never seen. For a foreigner, Tamaki established himself quite readily in a Japanese life. For Kyouya he only grows more out of place during his stay in France. Their adaptation skills are too different. Or maybe, Kyouya thinks, he overestimated Tamaki all along ,and this is really the sort of place he belongs.
Yes, Tamaki admits, he misses the Host Club. Kyouya doesn't want to point out that Mori and Hunny have graduated, and although their younger brothers will be filling for their absence when the club reopened, the family Tamaki was so accustomed to won't reform. The mention of Eclair going to university makes their separation seem all the more imminent. The Host Club has always been a painful expense on his time and energy. It may even be holding him back, he considers on the less profitable days. At times it's almost an embarrassment when his brothers start in with their good-natured teasing-- four years too absent for any sort of brotherly connection with him, Kyouya feels. He has a different family now. How silly that sounds, he realizes and tries not to smile into his wine.
If anything, Tamaki's admittance that he misses their group calms Kyouya for the few moments they have alone. It feels as though they've been in Provence for so long, so it's refreshing to know someone else remembers his life past that long, elegant drive.
Éclair rises the stairs to meet them, peeling driving gloves from her fingers. Sweat glistening on her forehead, she pours herself a glass and sits along the arm of Tamaki's chair. Kyouya would be affronted by their closeness, but her position keeps Tamaki from rising and asking the driver for a lesson of his own.
"Go get packed," she commands, but with Tamaki her voice has become gentler. It must be the heat. In any case, her eyes on Kyouya will always be the same. “Pour la Suisse.”
"You should drive us there!" Tamaki bursts, as though he'd been holding onto that suggestion her entire lesson. It was probably true. Eclair smiles sumptuously and touches Kyouya's shoulder on her way inside.
-
present, switzerland.
Normally we wouldn't travel to such a place, Eclair explains and Kyouya is starkly reminded of their first day at her home. That almost apologetic tone (but not really, he knows better) is reminiscent for her apology about the heat. He tries not to let the disappointment show in his face, riding the cable car high into the atmospheres. It means nothing other than these Swiss Alps will only be as difficult as the French countryside.
Zermatt is riddled with tourists, though not quite as many in the summer. Normally, she tells them, they would stay in a separate resort farther south of here. But they've waited too long (doing what, Kyouya has no idea), and the trio has no choice but the venture deeper and higher into the Alps in search of snow. The sight of it in summer thrills Tamaki to no end.
"But," she smiles at the blond's excitement beside her and points to the nearing mountain peak. "There's the Matterhorn," she whispers while Tamaki presses his face gleefully against her cheek, and Kyouya finds himself suddenly longing to step between them. For as trying as she could be in her own environment, Eclair has proven to be a talented tour guide. She's not bored with this place yet, just like she still hasn't tired of Tamaki. That, above all else, has been the constant comfort in Kyouya's trials with Tamaki. Eventually, the sort of people that are most dangerous for Tamaki become tired of him. He's too innocent, too demanding and too bright against everything that he touches. Inevitably, whoever threatens the Host Club or Tamaki's well being becomes so intimidated they give up, or they grow tired of his antics. Unfortunately, neither of these tactics work against the Tonnerre heiress. With a tight prickling in his chest, Kyouya concedes such tactics will not work on him either, despite his best efforts to accept them.
"That's a common tourist spot, in the Alps, isn't it?" Kyouya asks, sending the girl a sidelong glance. She seems somehow smaller in her snow gear, though her gaze is as long as ever.
"It is," she admits. "But I thought he would enjoy it." Eclair's fingers slide around a railing at their side, her long nails clicking against them. From the force of her grip, Kyouya gets the feeling she doesn't like heights. Her smile is low and predatory when she says, "I'm getting the hang of it finally, our friend's little nuances." The words hang cold and low in the air between them, like icicles. Kyouya sets his jaw and stares at that distant peak, while Tamaki jostles their cable car in his excitement.
Their skiing lesson starts at one o'clock, so the trio swiftly changes into their gear while their instructor arrives. Kyouya, weighed down with the suit, meets Tamaki in the lobby of the building. He's wearing the same smile from the cable car to the mountains, from the airplane to Switzerland, from the airplane to France, from the day they met. Tamaki finally pulls his eyes and open palms from the window and seizes Kyouya's shoulders.
"I'm having the most wonderful time," he breathes and presses close to his friend with a laugh. Kyouya chuckles, though his body shifts uncomfortably beneath all those layers. Yes, but we've only just arrived, he reminds Tamaki. Don't wear yourself out early or it will be troublesome for Eclair and I. That second half slid so easily from his lips he almost missed saying it. It was impossible to miss the dawning thrill over Tamaki's face and Kyouya feels his previously genuine smile grow tight. It will never happen, he wants to tell the boy sternly. There will never be an us- you, me and Eclair. After all this nonsense we will return to our lives in France and that will be the end of this. But it won't be.
Instead of saying that- Tamaki's hands are cold, so Kyouya forces a set of gloves over them. Tamaki curls his fingers under his grip and the room is strangely, stiflingly warm. This is exactly the place you left, Kyouya realizes with that abysmal dread curling in his chest.
Tamaki is the only one of the three who doesn't know how to ski, so several instructors whisk him away to practice gliding through the snow. Somehow he learned the phrase 'bunny hill', bursting excitedly when the instructors mention the beginner slopes. Kyouya feels a funny, indulgant look cross of his features when Tamaki begins to tell each of his trainers about Hunny. Eclair slides past him after Tamaki's shaky progress, followed by instructors who resemble more attendants than teachers. Her expression was a mixture of amusement and concern and, with a lurch, Kyouya reconsiders his assumption on the depth of this girl's feelings.
Out of their sight, Kyouya claws out of his skis, thrusting the poles into a set of waiting hands. He doesn't offer a excuse past his own silence, and when he reaches his bedroom, Kyouya makes sure the heat is turned all the way up. He uses this time to call his family's secret police and explain the text message. The facts settle around him with the lingering heat. You've lost that one success story you could give him. The stifling feeling in the room is familiar when Tamaki leaps onto the bed. It's time for dinner, the prince type announces and talks non stop about his lesson all through dessert.
On the second day, two things occur almost simultaneously that shatter the benefits of being away from France. First, Eclair's parents arrive. Kyouya is relieved they don't arrive until after breakfast, just when his aspirin are beginning to settle in. He finds it strange that this couple only arrives when he feels particularly at his worst, though not half as strange as hearing Japanese from them. Mister Tonnere's clear suffixes ("Ohtori-kun,") break through a reverie Kyouya had built around himself in the last few weeks. Even drunk, Tamaki stays speaking French. He only switches back to Kyouya's native language when the situation needs it, such as a memory from Ouran. But those moment have lessened the more both men noticed the looks of boredom Eclair wears when they talk of their club. She's uninterested in things of leisure, Kyouya told Tamaki once.
"Maybe she's just jealous," Tamaki had pointed out, and left for her side before Kyouya could speculate the unlikelihood of that.
Eclair's mother takes Kyouya's hand in her own, and only years of good breeding keep him from ripping it back when she remarks, "How kind of you to keep the two of them company."
The second is a lingering dinner where the three children remained downstairs after the adults retired for the evening. They’re left with the familiar canopy of wine and food that’s a bit too rich. They drink to stay warm (though the private estate is perfectly well heated) and in between Tamaki’s loud plans for tomorrow, the three become hopefully, predictably drunk. It’s comfortable, Kyouya concedes, separating from the girl to enter Tamaki’s room, dragging the other boy after him. He’s not too drunk to walk, just enough to make obnoxious demands and Kyouya’s in a fine enough mood to oblige him. They collapse against the hardwood floors, fingers twisting between the final bottle, through one another’s hair.
"Are you homesick?” Tamaki echoes, breath against Kyouya's chin. Unfortunately, he also has to go and add the follow up, “Do you miss France?" It's a strange, sobering question and, just before answering, Kyouya catches the other boy's meaning. This vacation isn't going to end. Even if hey both fly home for the new school term, their final term, Tamaki is lost in that sweltering Provence manor of curved stairwells and starched memories. Even in Japan he'll carry that with him whenever he goes and, briefly, painfully, Kyouya wonders if he's finally lost to Eclair. He drank to forget that text message, the loss of that final card to play. Without resources, maybe this woman isn’t someone you can defeat.
"Do you miss Japan?" he retaliates and straightens up. Dropping his gaze makes it easier to hide the apprehension he can feel building in his expression. Tamaki lurches after him and presses his face against the back of Kyouya's neck, his lips a stab against Kyouya's skin.
"Of course!" The plush lips burn against him and if he stayed like that, Kyouya could believe everything Tamaki told him. Without letting the other man treat him as a client to a host, he had fallen for it completely, and Kyouya slips an arm around Tamaki's shoulders. "Of course," Tamaki purrs, voice heavy with the events of the day, "I love Japan." He falls asleep smiling, and Kyouya lies there all night, fully clothed and mad trying to discern which is hurting worse- the pain of losing or the ache of hanging on.
(SPOILER: EVERYONE DIES)
two weeks ago, france.
Maybe it's because he's three more angry emails from being disowned, or because he spent the weekend entertaining people with no benefit, but Kyouya declines play for work that afternoon. Regardless of protests, he's dragged laptop and all from his bedroom to the low, stuffy sitting room where Tamaki tries to cajole him into painting. There's an easel and brushes and everything, he presses. You could paint those lilies. What a beautiful shade of aquamarine! Éclair is in the sunlight and reading, seated as far from them as possible. Kyouya stares at the back of her head instead of his Excel spreadsheets or Tamaki's proposed still-life’s. Isn't she lucky you came along, he says to himself as he pushes Tamaki's fingertips away. You can have all of these grabby moments and she will escape with the rest, with Tamaki's host moments. He would never allow Tamaki to host him, though. Even if Tamaki doesn't entertain with bold-faced lies as the twins do, Kyouya thinks he likes Tamaki best when he's simpering and honest. When he's ruining your life? his mind chides, trying to drag Kyouya's attention back to the work at hand. A smudge of paint slips over the side of the monitor.
Show us your calligraphy! Tamaki sweeps the brush back up to drag out the characters of their names. His kanji is picturesque, and Éclair’s is in a short, slanted print Kyouya doesn't recognize. When Tamaki catches him looking, he writes out a slow message in simple French-- mon bon amie. That isn't a calligraphy brush, Kyouya informs him. For Tamaki's reply he gets a handful of pouts and cold dab of paint on his chin.
Éclair excused herself halfway through, but when she returns with maids and smocks, half of Tamaki's face is already covered in green paint. Tamaki strode to meet them in the doorway. Acrylic can't be good for your hair, Éclair notes when Kyouya brushes past them, ignoring the boy at his heels.
He hasn't forgotten the prospect of finding Tamaki's mother being withheld from her own son. Eclair's slip up had only led to a, if only momentary, strain between him and his friend. Kyouya knows it's what led to the night before, after the door to Éclair’s bedroom was closed. He could hear Tamaki working through Schumann's Traumerei muffled by the wood. In his mind he can still recall Tamaki's sloppy German pronunciation and guilty explanations to the club when he played it the first time ("Kyouya is the expert. I'm afraid I specialize with romance languages instead.") Kyouya stayed at that end of the manor's hallway for only a piece of the movement, wondering if it would have better to hear silence instead.
Tamaki always used to try going up the steps backwards, but Kyouya stopped him before he tripped and killed them both. Now he takes them two at a time, chattering the whole way. He's mercifully silent on their way to their rooms this time, where Kyouya imagines the joy of a cool shower, this shirt full of Tamaki's smell crumpled in the trash bin.
one week ago, france.
Kyouya gets carried away by his thoughts when Bernard announces that a car is waiting out front. For a blind moment he thinks his father has grown tired of these vacation games and the vehicle is there to whisk them to the airport (but he wouldn't go so far to wish it was Tamaki's grandmother who gave the order.) When Éclair rises and motions for the boys to 'regarde', he knows better than to keep hoping. Tamaki bobs along ahead of them, just behind the doorman, straining his eyes against the sunlight. Kyouya considers ducking out through the sitting room, but the help is bringing lunch out after them.
The car, she explains, was a graduation gift. Eclair is a year older than Tamaki and Kyouya. "Don't tell me you've never entertained an older woman," she'd joked, her voice too low, the drinks too heavy between them for her comments to be funny. She attends a university abroad and- with a strange look to Tamaki- she feels the two of them should consider that as well. Kyouya concedes if she can find a school that caters to her interests, why not. Eclair is hardly specific about her interests (In their short time together Kyouya can only count a few; horseback riding, Schumann, blackmail.)
Tamaki expresses an interest in learning to drive too, but he's shot down by both friends so suddenly that he spends the rest of the meal mournfully chasing his food across the plate.
She meets the driving instructor as he climbs out of the vehicle. While the man rattles off details of the antique vehicle, Kyouya finds himself thinking how the rich have such wasteful ways to spend their money. He doesn’t complain of course, it's why the Host Club was such a success. And he doesn't dare say any of this out loud, to keep from sounding like Haruhi. Watching Eclair slink between the humidity has made him forget such straightforward people. For a moment he's lost in the driveway, barely remembering the Host Club, or his home country. It's the heat, he swallows, shading his eyes from the glare off the hood of he vehicle. Switzerland will be a nice change- if they ever go.
"Tamaki," she instructs in crystal sharp French. "If you want to watch, go on the veranda. You're very distracting." Kyouya hadn't been paying attention, but Tamaki's guilty flush is proof enough of his antics. Kyouya takes him with a hand around Tamaki's bicep, ascending the stairs to collapse in the shade beneath the wisteria. Maids emerge from the cracks to linger around them, and while Kyouya is long used to ignoring wandering eyes outside of a profitable setting, Tamaki has always been an insufferable flirt on accident. When Kyouya asks for iced tea, Tamaki slides a hand over his, a motion that's as cold and clear as the edges of freshly cut ice, as sharp as a new love.
"Yes, wine will be fine," Kyouya chokes. His hand plunges back to his side as the thrum of the motor mixes with the pounding in his chest. His mind continues to linger on the people waiting for them countries and countries away.
“I’m feeling nostalgic,” Tamaki grins over his toasted glass.
"Have you been homesick?" Kyouya asks and surprises himself with the strength of his efforts to remain casual. As though he doesn't flinch every time Tamaki and Eclair slip into vocabulary he doesn't know, or ask each other about cities and people he's never seen. For a foreigner, Tamaki established himself quite readily in a Japanese life. For Kyouya he only grows more out of place during his stay in France. Their adaptation skills are too different. Or maybe, Kyouya thinks, he overestimated Tamaki all along ,and this is really the sort of place he belongs.
Yes, Tamaki admits, he misses the Host Club. Kyouya doesn't want to point out that Mori and Hunny have graduated, and although their younger brothers will be filling for their absence when the club reopened, the family Tamaki was so accustomed to won't reform. The mention of Eclair going to university makes their separation seem all the more imminent. The Host Club has always been a painful expense on his time and energy. It may even be holding him back, he considers on the less profitable days. At times it's almost an embarrassment when his brothers start in with their good-natured teasing-- four years too absent for any sort of brotherly connection with him, Kyouya feels. He has a different family now. How silly that sounds, he realizes and tries not to smile into his wine.
If anything, Tamaki's admittance that he misses their group calms Kyouya for the few moments they have alone. It feels as though they've been in Provence for so long, so it's refreshing to know someone else remembers his life past that long, elegant drive.
Éclair rises the stairs to meet them, peeling driving gloves from her fingers. Sweat glistening on her forehead, she pours herself a glass and sits along the arm of Tamaki's chair. Kyouya would be affronted by their closeness, but her position keeps Tamaki from rising and asking the driver for a lesson of his own.
"Go get packed," she commands, but with Tamaki her voice has become gentler. It must be the heat. In any case, her eyes on Kyouya will always be the same. “Pour la Suisse.”
"You should drive us there!" Tamaki bursts, as though he'd been holding onto that suggestion her entire lesson. It was probably true. Eclair smiles sumptuously and touches Kyouya's shoulder on her way inside.
-
present, switzerland.
Normally we wouldn't travel to such a place, Eclair explains and Kyouya is starkly reminded of their first day at her home. That almost apologetic tone (but not really, he knows better) is reminiscent for her apology about the heat. He tries not to let the disappointment show in his face, riding the cable car high into the atmospheres. It means nothing other than these Swiss Alps will only be as difficult as the French countryside.
Zermatt is riddled with tourists, though not quite as many in the summer. Normally, she tells them, they would stay in a separate resort farther south of here. But they've waited too long (doing what, Kyouya has no idea), and the trio has no choice but the venture deeper and higher into the Alps in search of snow. The sight of it in summer thrills Tamaki to no end.
"But," she smiles at the blond's excitement beside her and points to the nearing mountain peak. "There's the Matterhorn," she whispers while Tamaki presses his face gleefully against her cheek, and Kyouya finds himself suddenly longing to step between them. For as trying as she could be in her own environment, Eclair has proven to be a talented tour guide. She's not bored with this place yet, just like she still hasn't tired of Tamaki. That, above all else, has been the constant comfort in Kyouya's trials with Tamaki. Eventually, the sort of people that are most dangerous for Tamaki become tired of him. He's too innocent, too demanding and too bright against everything that he touches. Inevitably, whoever threatens the Host Club or Tamaki's well being becomes so intimidated they give up, or they grow tired of his antics. Unfortunately, neither of these tactics work against the Tonnerre heiress. With a tight prickling in his chest, Kyouya concedes such tactics will not work on him either, despite his best efforts to accept them.
"That's a common tourist spot, in the Alps, isn't it?" Kyouya asks, sending the girl a sidelong glance. She seems somehow smaller in her snow gear, though her gaze is as long as ever.
"It is," she admits. "But I thought he would enjoy it." Eclair's fingers slide around a railing at their side, her long nails clicking against them. From the force of her grip, Kyouya gets the feeling she doesn't like heights. Her smile is low and predatory when she says, "I'm getting the hang of it finally, our friend's little nuances." The words hang cold and low in the air between them, like icicles. Kyouya sets his jaw and stares at that distant peak, while Tamaki jostles their cable car in his excitement.
Their skiing lesson starts at one o'clock, so the trio swiftly changes into their gear while their instructor arrives. Kyouya, weighed down with the suit, meets Tamaki in the lobby of the building. He's wearing the same smile from the cable car to the mountains, from the airplane to Switzerland, from the airplane to France, from the day they met. Tamaki finally pulls his eyes and open palms from the window and seizes Kyouya's shoulders.
"I'm having the most wonderful time," he breathes and presses close to his friend with a laugh. Kyouya chuckles, though his body shifts uncomfortably beneath all those layers. Yes, but we've only just arrived, he reminds Tamaki. Don't wear yourself out early or it will be troublesome for Eclair and I. That second half slid so easily from his lips he almost missed saying it. It was impossible to miss the dawning thrill over Tamaki's face and Kyouya feels his previously genuine smile grow tight. It will never happen, he wants to tell the boy sternly. There will never be an us- you, me and Eclair. After all this nonsense we will return to our lives in France and that will be the end of this. But it won't be.
Instead of saying that- Tamaki's hands are cold, so Kyouya forces a set of gloves over them. Tamaki curls his fingers under his grip and the room is strangely, stiflingly warm. This is exactly the place you left, Kyouya realizes with that abysmal dread curling in his chest.
Tamaki is the only one of the three who doesn't know how to ski, so several instructors whisk him away to practice gliding through the snow. Somehow he learned the phrase 'bunny hill', bursting excitedly when the instructors mention the beginner slopes. Kyouya feels a funny, indulgant look cross of his features when Tamaki begins to tell each of his trainers about Hunny. Eclair slides past him after Tamaki's shaky progress, followed by instructors who resemble more attendants than teachers. Her expression was a mixture of amusement and concern and, with a lurch, Kyouya reconsiders his assumption on the depth of this girl's feelings.
Out of their sight, Kyouya claws out of his skis, thrusting the poles into a set of waiting hands. He doesn't offer a excuse past his own silence, and when he reaches his bedroom, Kyouya makes sure the heat is turned all the way up. He uses this time to call his family's secret police and explain the text message. The facts settle around him with the lingering heat. You've lost that one success story you could give him. The stifling feeling in the room is familiar when Tamaki leaps onto the bed. It's time for dinner, the prince type announces and talks non stop about his lesson all through dessert.
On the second day, two things occur almost simultaneously that shatter the benefits of being away from France. First, Eclair's parents arrive. Kyouya is relieved they don't arrive until after breakfast, just when his aspirin are beginning to settle in. He finds it strange that this couple only arrives when he feels particularly at his worst, though not half as strange as hearing Japanese from them. Mister Tonnere's clear suffixes ("Ohtori-kun,") break through a reverie Kyouya had built around himself in the last few weeks. Even drunk, Tamaki stays speaking French. He only switches back to Kyouya's native language when the situation needs it, such as a memory from Ouran. But those moment have lessened the more both men noticed the looks of boredom Eclair wears when they talk of their club. She's uninterested in things of leisure, Kyouya told Tamaki once.
"Maybe she's just jealous," Tamaki had pointed out, and left for her side before Kyouya could speculate the unlikelihood of that.
Eclair's mother takes Kyouya's hand in her own, and only years of good breeding keep him from ripping it back when she remarks, "How kind of you to keep the two of them company."
The second is a lingering dinner where the three children remained downstairs after the adults retired for the evening. They’re left with the familiar canopy of wine and food that’s a bit too rich. They drink to stay warm (though the private estate is perfectly well heated) and in between Tamaki’s loud plans for tomorrow, the three become hopefully, predictably drunk. It’s comfortable, Kyouya concedes, separating from the girl to enter Tamaki’s room, dragging the other boy after him. He’s not too drunk to walk, just enough to make obnoxious demands and Kyouya’s in a fine enough mood to oblige him. They collapse against the hardwood floors, fingers twisting between the final bottle, through one another’s hair.
"Are you homesick?” Tamaki echoes, breath against Kyouya's chin. Unfortunately, he also has to go and add the follow up, “Do you miss France?" It's a strange, sobering question and, just before answering, Kyouya catches the other boy's meaning. This vacation isn't going to end. Even if hey both fly home for the new school term, their final term, Tamaki is lost in that sweltering Provence manor of curved stairwells and starched memories. Even in Japan he'll carry that with him whenever he goes and, briefly, painfully, Kyouya wonders if he's finally lost to Eclair. He drank to forget that text message, the loss of that final card to play. Without resources, maybe this woman isn’t someone you can defeat.
"Do you miss Japan?" he retaliates and straightens up. Dropping his gaze makes it easier to hide the apprehension he can feel building in his expression. Tamaki lurches after him and presses his face against the back of Kyouya's neck, his lips a stab against Kyouya's skin.
"Of course!" The plush lips burn against him and if he stayed like that, Kyouya could believe everything Tamaki told him. Without letting the other man treat him as a client to a host, he had fallen for it completely, and Kyouya slips an arm around Tamaki's shoulders. "Of course," Tamaki purrs, voice heavy with the events of the day, "I love Japan." He falls asleep smiling, and Kyouya lies there all night, fully clothed and mad trying to discern which is hurting worse- the pain of losing or the ache of hanging on.