My Funny Valentine...
Amidst studying for a bio midterm (which, contrary to the definition of midterm is in the last week of class...) and thinking about my last two essays, I managed to finally finish a chapter of "Love Note" at long last.
Yes, the_dw. It is done with the requisite allusion to her voice and such. <3
Disclaimer: Still don’t own Death Note or Ouran…Eros, in all his snarky glory, is mine, however. As is the OC at the end...
Warnings: This chapter contains such forced sweetness and OOC that your teeth might fall out. The authoress will not be held responsible for dentistry bills nor the spasms that results from the people revolting against said sweet and fluffy goodness. Also, clichéd phrases and bad romance writing (all intentional...it kinda hurts my soul to write like that…) are prominent parts of this.
This chapter is dedicated with shiny love to the_dw…who certainly knows why. ^_^
OH YES AND IKA! I SHALL USE YOUR GIFT WITH GREAT DISCERNMENT!
Note 4 - Counter Measures
Much to her horror, it wasn’t at all in Haruhi’s imagination that Tamaki had gotten…stranger…than before.
She actually took the time to ask if anything was different about him, but he predictably lapsed into his troublesome, “Daddy was just trying to, um, er, well - “ with an attached and completely nonsensical excuse.
Haruhi had no idea whatsoever what her wearing a “cute” bunny costume had anything to do with anything…it seemed annoyingly superfluous.
When she told him such, Tamaki promptly hid in his accustomed corner and after a while began talking to himself again. It made her wonder that, if perhaps, all of Tamaki’s antics up to this point were merely manifestations of some very latent psychiatric disorder.
But that seemed too convenient even for all the sense it made.
Haruhi knew that, unfortunately, Tamaki’s strangeness couldn’t be explained away that easily. Someone, she hoped, would have given him the proper medication by this point in his life if that were the case. That left her with an equally troubling notion…
…Perhaps the parallel universe of the Host Club had finally driven her insane. And everything she was witnessing was some strange kind of normal behavior.
It was deep, entirely too deep to fathom…but, much to her chagrin, no one else seemed to notice.
She had made an annoyed mention of it to the twins who, as always, immediately became bored the moment the sentence was finished.
“Haruhi,” they both chimed, collectively turning back to their video game screen.
“Tono’s brain has always been - ” began Hikaru amidst vanquishing an alien invader on screen.
“To a great extent - “ Kaoru was noting the score shoot up as a golden alien dissolved into pixels.
They both seemed to waver from the game’s attention for a small bit, searching for a word, before saying in unison with great relish and emphasis, “absent.”
However Tamaki had the wonderful fortune to hear this and went on to his normal business of hiding in the shadows.
…Then the talking began again.
And the mumbled denial that he was not a “strumpet” was completely baffling.
Haruhi couldn’t even put together half of a plausible suggestion for that.
So, once more avoiding the one she was pretty sure might know - and thereby also avoiding a sharp increase in her already crushing debt - she sidled over to the table where Mori and Hunny were seated.
“Hunny-senpai,” she said tentatively when she was sure that the senior’s attention had left his cake and traveled to her, “Do you think that Tamaki-senpai is acting a bit, um - “Haruhi still felt nothing short of ridiculous asking such a question “more…strange…than usual.”
He placed an exorbitant amount of cake in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a moment before setting his fork down, and with great gravity responding, “Tama-chan hasn’t had enough cake!”
Mori grunted an ambiguous “more sleep” in response.
Haruhi merely sighed deeply and looked with perturbation back at the corner of the room where Kyouya was typing up…whatever Kyouya typed…and pondered the idea of how it might be to be bound by debt to all of these people until the age of thirty-five or more.
Deciding that Kyouya couldn’t add any more than a year to her debt - and that was merely a drop in a vast ocean - she decided to approach him with extreme caution.
Haruhi hadn’t even opened her mouth when the Shadow King stated in a bemused tone, “You’ve noticed as well, I see.”
Haruhi tried valiantly to prevent herself from gaping at the older boy…it was times like these that she wasn’t sure if he simply was as omniscient as he seemed, or he was simply a master of very ambiguous questions that caused the listener to jump to conclusions about what he was talking about.
“He is behaving stranger lately, even if that idiot was already mildly insane to begin with.”
Haruhi froze for a second and wondered why it always had to be the worst-case scenario with Kyouya.
“You mean-“
“It’s true Tamaki is in need of constant stimulation - lest he drain valuable funds or formulate some act of expensive idealism - but there has been a definite increase in…” Kyouya trailed off for a moment and adjusted his glasses reflexively, “abnormal behavior patterns.”
Haruhi responded with a mixture of relief that someone else had recognized the disturbing change in the Host Club’s King and evident irritation because her already overwrought and emotional senior could only become more difficult to manage.
“I think Tamaki-senpai has been talking to himself more in that corner than he has to his customers lately.”
Indeed, as if to underline her statement, a steady babble began flowing from Tamaki’s chosen location.
“Haruhi,” Kyouya said, shifting himself in his chair and turning his full frigid gaze on her, “Have you noticed anything else?”
Haruhi blinked.
There was the incident with Hunny…but she had already had such a significant increase in her debt as a result of that particular incident that she thought it nothing short of financial suicide to even mention it.
But now that he mentioned it, the strangeness wasn’t at all confined to Tamaki’s psychosis.
There had been a good deal more…emotion? Haruhi didn’t know if that was a proper term.
She briefly considered saying “love,” but that was a fairly empty adjective these days anyways…
“Emotion” it would have to be. But, terminology aside…Ouran had been fairly saturated with it.
Besides the incident with Mori and Ayame…who now ignored each other fiercely and dodged the fan club that had formed for in support of the alliance (who, for some strange reason, created entire pamphlets in iambic pentameter and slogans in sonnets…).
Then there was the day that school had been canceled due to flowers.
…And the time when a student from class 2-C bungee jumped out of an airplane that was busy writing “I LOVE YOU MY DEAREST MOST WONDERFUL HIMEKO!”
And, in Haruhi’s practical opinion, the elephants were much too excessive.
But, taking all of the incidents as a collective trend, she couldn’t logically assert that it could be attributed to the fact that Ouran was a high school populated by human beings that did such strange things that they might as well be aliens from a parallel galaxy.
Kyouya, noticing the expression of increasing horror on her face, knew that Haruhi had drawn the same conclusions that he had from the past few weeks’ events.
He had only to wait while she drew the impossible parallel that he had already decided had some sort of validity.
With the mental acuity that had secured his position as the Shadow King within the club, he had observed that every bizarre occurrence within the past few weeks bore what seemed to be - however impossible it may be - Tamaki’s distinctively flamboyant signature upon it.
Finally, Haruhi’s face assumed a look of abject terror that said she had also arrived at the same conclusion and, without any trace of her characteristic bluntness, stammered, “It’s like…the world is becoming a figment of Tamaki-senpai’s imagination.”
She looked at Kyouya so that he could dismiss her ridiculous statement as her having been too long in Tamaki’s company…or the twins’s…or simply in a nightmare that she hadn’t quite woken up from.
Surreptitiously, she pinched herself and found that she was impossibly awake and alert because Kyouya didn’t so much as refute a single word…rather, he looked over at Tamaki with so grave and serious an air that Haruhi knew that he must be thinking the same impossible thing.
“We should, I think,” he said carefully, very much aware of the ludicrousness of the entire situation - but still haunted by the overflowing feelings of love and devotion he had passionately felt for Hunny just weeks ago - and of what he believed was going on now, “observe Tamaki for a short period.”
Haruhi, finding herself nodding in dumb agreement, hoped beyond hope that the Host Club had merely driven her crazy at last.
------------------------------
Eros did not like Glasses and Androgynous at all. Rather, at the moment, he found their snoopiness exceedingly annoying.
They had seemed - completely without the knowledge of the strumpet who owned the Love Note - to have formed a coalition that was always watching the ever-oblivious boy.
While he had to admit the fact that Androgynous Girl now thought that the two brain cells that the blond had to rub together had fried was exceedingly amusing…the fact that it kept him from doing anything to alleviate the boredom that had settled since the wonderful thespian performance they had all received from the Silent Man was aggravating to say the least.
And, unfortunately, he had paid dearly for that small moment of fun.
Unfortunately the Strumpet decided he would be all honor and chivalry and blah, blah, blah and not involve his fellow male escorts in any more situations.
And, of course, now the blockhead thought that Eros himself was out to trick him into making fools of these people for the purposes of making trouble.
Which was, in Eros’ opinion, quite preposterous.
Trouble, of course, was the bare minimum that he wanted. Unrestrained, unmitigated, and absolutely overpowering chaos would be far more amusing than simply trouble.
Bored of his pursuit of fanning rose petals into the tea cups of the ever present cloud of estrogen than lingered in the room with his wings - his current record was four petals in seven seconds….and the girl had thought herself so exceedingly unlucky that she got up and ran sobbing away from the Strumpet - he decided since the Love Note’s owner hadn’t the genius necessary to make the appropriate counter measures…
…And that was, unfortunately, assuming he ever did notice that counter measures were necessary…
…Eros would have to take matters into his own hands.
Everything else, he thought, watching another girl look disturbed as the fourth rose petal in a minute floated squarely into her cup of Darjeeling, was a matter of simple physics.
------------------------------
“Tamaki-sama,” said a girl with a pout borne of her lush upbringing, “what are you looking at?”
Eros let out a loud raspberry directly in his direction where Tamaki saw something that he would have rather had five billion pins forced into his lovely violet orbs and bear such exquisite wrenching pain than see…
Kyouya was talking with Haruhi…again! With a great deal of repetition! Indeed the event was at the extreme risk of being repeated almost…ad nauseum!
And not once did his straining, listening ears - for it absolutely would not do to admit he, a gentleman, was eavesdropping - hear the word “debt” in their hurried dulcet tones.
“Tamaki-sama…” his customer replied again, he looked over to find tears glistening in her eyes at his own negligence.
“Ah! The pearl of my heart who glistens amidst the rough shod shell of the world! Excuse my excessive absence of mind, for I was merely struck with deep contemplation or the wonderfully indulgent sensation of our love that glistens with such a blinding iridescent sheen!”
With each word he said the tears vanished and a delicate blossoming appeared on her cheeks.
Somewhere behind him he heard Eros chuckle disdainfully and remarked tastelessly, “Kind of like casting pearls before swine, if you ask me, Mon cherie Strumpet!”
Tamaki jerked violently around to take a look at the cupid…who took the opportunity to dump an entire fist of rose petals into his customer’s tea with a look of positively sadistic joy.
Seeing this, the woman screamed and, flinging the Foley patterned cup away, ran from the room.
It was the third customer that Tamaki had lost that day due to cupid related interference.
Kyouya, sighed noticeably and walked towards him.
“Perhaps,” he said, shifting the weight of his notebook to his other hand, “You should come back when you are feeling more…capable, Tamaki.”
He noticed Haruhi staring at…Kyouya from across the room.
It was too much…there was something going on between them.
Kyouya was trying to steal his lovely daughter in his absence. A conspiracy! Betrayal! A veritable plot to usurp his position in the affections of his wonderful -albeit rather oblivious - daughter!
As these thoughts went through his head, he danced around, pulling at his hair and failing to notice that the rest of the club members - with the exception of Haruhi who he was sure was currently staring longingly at Kyouya! - were herding the rest of the customers out the door, citing that their club president must have quite a bit of a fever and, my what a pity it would be should any of their princesses catch it.
During Tamaki’s throes of mental agony - and probably more than a few phrases that made no sense to any of his companions - Eros merely giggled.
Before he knew it, Haruhi had come over and had placed a hand on his head.
Noticing this, he immediately blushed a deep crimson color.
Extracting her hand and frowning, Haruhi looked over him critically, “Senpai…although for some reason you’re all red, you don’t feel like you have a fever.”
In the aftermath of this gesture, Kyouya and Haruhi exchanged a look - no doubt a significant look of longing passion! - between them.
“Hikaru, Kaoru,” the Shadow King said, casually looking over his shoulder at the waiting Hitachiin twins, “If you would.”
Before Tamaki knew it, he was being pushed and prodded by the Hitachiin twins straight out of the door of his own domain.
“Tono,” they chorused, “Come back when you won’t make all of your customers cry.”
Tamaki’s second to last vision of the Third Music Room that day was the twins’ strutting about and making rather risqué impression of lugubriousness, at last ending in each other’s arms.
In wrenching his head backwards towards the two people who had so bothered him, his last vision of his beloved domain was of them falling into a fiery embrace.
His worst fears were confirmed. They had removed him to partake in an illicit tryst!
What Tamaki didn’t see, however, was the banana peel that Eros had carefully placed - to everyone else it had simply appeared from nowhere - to create this entertaining scene.
As the cupid flitted home after his depressed toy, a smile simply radiated from his golden features.
The names “Ootori Kyouya” and “Fujioka Haruhi” were written within the Love Note that night - an act so painful to its master that they were unadorned with any additional instructions and were written with a careless hand.
It didn’t even take a great deal of convincing for the flighty bloke to do it.
Eros’ counter measures against boredom, it seem, were going to be very successful.
------------------------------
The next day was, usually, the day on which the Host Club gathered to do administrative business.
That is to say, Kyouya did administrative business…while Tamaki threw out several ideas that didn’t make much sense and would run far over budget, Hunny ate cake, Mori watched Hunny eat cake, Haruhi tried to study, but was usually prevented from the doing so by the twins’ own attempts to stave off their boredom.
But, for the sake of generality, they called it their administrative business day.
However, suffice it to say, on the one day off from customers that he had in which to do such business…Kyouya was attending…well, to other business.
He was staring longingly at Haruhi and Haruhi was staring longingly back.
In fact, Kyouya sitting there, delicately running his long fingers through a tendril of Haruhi’s hair and Haruhi - her head tipped at a girlish angle and a tittering giggle upon her lips amidst batting her eyes back at him - made nothing short of a nauseatingly frightening tableau.
On first seeing this, Tamaki had gone directly into the corner and was now singing a flat and overly minor version of “Hotaru Koi” and tracing his finger in a slow circle on the ground.
Upon his entrance, Hunny - the only one who could perhaps defend himself in such a situation - sidled up beside the Shadow King and poked him on the cheek.
Kyouya did not so much as blink and merely wrapped the short strand of hair around his finger and said, “Haruhi-chan! The sonorous quality of your voice at last convinced me there was no merit in a life without you.”
At the sickening sing songy lilt of “Haruhi-chan,” Hunny backed away slowly and withdrew - Mori and cake in tow - to a corner of the room opposite of Tamaki’s.
The Hitachiin twins, however, were not one’s to allow such an opportunity to pass.
“Kyouya-senpai~!” They both intoned, placing an elbow on each of his shoulders.
He ignored them and took a hand and trailed it along Haruhi’s cheek…Tamaki (who, for all his moping, kept an attentive eye on the situation), jerked in such a violent fashion that one might have mistaken him for having a sort of epileptic seizure.
The twins, by now used to their Tono’s antics, merely righted themselves and walked in a suspiciously casual manner off towards the table where Kyouya stored the club finances and exchanged glances and smiled in a positively demonic fashion.
The dependable threat didn’t come as the encroached on the taboo territory.
“We just thought we could look at your notebook!”
“We are very curious to see what you always write in there…!”
The dependable threat still didn’t come…not even when they had firmly taken possession of the notebook and were now cracking it open.
Suddenly, however, Kyouya stood up.
Hikaru - who currently had possession of the seemingly offending item - dropped it as if it was a plague-ridden rat.
However, oozing a passion no one ever thought him capable of, Kyouya grabbed Haruhi around the waist and said, “Haruhi-chan, you know when you told me there was no merit in sleeping with you…?”
In the silence that followed this question there was the distinct sound of a cake plate shattering and the squish of strawberry cream exploding over the marble floor.
The only things that could make Haninozuka Mitsukuni drop his cake were events that were a little less than Armageddon.
“At the time I rationalized that I did such a thing for that idiot, Tamaki.”
Tamaki outright fainted at such verbal abuse which, from his friend’s scathing tone, was not his usual light mockery at all.
“But, I really wanted you in tha - “
“AH!” Hikaru and Kaoru shouted, because, having grown bored after the shock of the initial speech, they had begun to jointly leaf through the notebook while the Shadow King was…otherwise involved, “Kyouya-senpai writes fanfiction worthy of Renge in his spare time!”
Hunny - now busy trying to distract himself from the scene in front of him by directing Mori to place Tama-chan on the couch and intermittently fanning and poking him - looked up and said pointedly, “Kyou-chan is becoming more and more like what I think Tama-chan’s brain comes up with sometimes...”
“Disturbing,” responded Mori with an almost uncharacteristic emphasis.
And, indeed, the disturbing scene was still playing out as Haruhi - so demure and girly as to be rendered unrecognizable by any sharp observers of her character - said, “Kyouya…I may be in debt to the Host Club for the rest of my life…but if I could meet you,” she paused quietly and looked down, “I’m glad that I did break that vase…you help me discover the femininity that I had forgotten for my entire life due to the strange habits that I was brought up with.”
Tamaki - doing an admirable impression of a zombie - sat bolt upright on the couch he was placed on and stared before standing up, running to seize Haruhi by the shoulders, and beginning to shout, “HARUHI~~! My precious daughter, how can you have done this to your doting and devastatingly handsome father who has wanted nothing but the best for you to bring out the natural cuteness that should not belong to - and Kyouya! Kyouya! You’re as bad as the worst Benedict Arnold in history, a genuine, ‘Et tu Brute!’ and I am the bloodied and sullied Caesar into whom you’ve stabbed the vile knife of the most villainous and unsavory of all sins! Indeed, you shall go to the Tartarus and languish in the place for traitors and, oh! Kyouya!”
The indignant tone had quiet faded from the last tone.
Indeed, Tamaki trailed off into a nervous laugh as the other boy - glasses glinting quite ominously - slowly and purposefully walked straight for him. Moreover, Haruhi was now clinging to his arm.
To add insult to injury, Eros chuckled, “Well, your little friends grow incredibly interesting, my fair Tart…indeed, from my vantage point,” he tossed his golden curls and made a show of pointlessly appraising the situation, “…at least on one part, you’ve gotten rather too close to an ideal match…and, of course, that could be messy…”
All throughout the cupid’s speech, Kyouya continued to advance threateningly.
Tamaki, however, was merely waiting for anyone to save him or Eros to murmur one phrase of useful advice.
At last the cupid obliged.
…However it was not as useful as he could hope.
“That is to say, dear golden haloed blockhead of mine…you should…well, run like Hermes before Glasses bifurcates you…and let me tell you, I have my money on him.”
Tamaki happily obliged, running out to the sanctity of the gardens and, once in their privacy, whipped out the Love Note.
“Displacement, displacement,” sang Eros with a note of slyness that was particularly lost on Tamaki, “you wouldn’t want to damage the emotional well being of those who you care so dearly about…”
Tamaki - already far over his quotient of extreme emotional trauma for the day - nodded and, eyes wide waited for the cupid to explain.
“Eaaaase them off into a less ideal match…perhaps? Just a stroooke of the pen…”
Eros was quite amused at this attention…however, Tamaki quite mistook the fact that he was grinning malevolently ear to ear for the smile of a friend giving wise advice.
Unfortunately, the blond was paying so little attention that, rather than writing a new name for Haruhi - for she was certainly not as much to blame as Kyouya for this mess - he wrote it upon the wrong line and quite, in his trembling mood, missed the names he meant to strike out.
When he returned to the Third Music Room, all hell had broken loose.
And, by all hell, I mean fierier and mentally scarring than before.
Haruhi was now - oh! It was far too much to verbalize - with Kyouya…and Kaoru. At the same time! His dear daughter!
Now, Hikaru - seeing his twin do…that…with…them…was now being carried over on the couch, which had now, apparently, been designated for people who were overcome by the implications of the Love Note.
Eros flipped over on his back in mid air and yawned.
“Really, that is rather unexpected…I thought for certain that would work to ease things off nicely…”
Tamaki stared, unable to utter something more than a faint, “Aaaaaah” in response.
“More and more ideal…” Eros muttered lazily.
Tamaki backed out of the room and, hiding behind the closest available statue, he crossed out the entire catastrophe with two lines meant to send the entire arrangement into unequivocal oblivion.
The Host Club was closed for a entire week after what merely became “Incident Three” while they all recovered from their individual mortifications.
Eros, however, was pleased for a time at all the havoc he had managed to wreak.
------------------------------
The doilies were looking rather droopy these days…it was…depressing…to say the least.
Eros - off gallivanting on one odyssey or another - was not available to indulge her customary cross-dressing exploits at all.
Fingering her necklace, - a Brisingamen original - Freyja let out a melodramatic sigh.
Ah, she thought sadly, Even the hearts have lost their brilliant sheen…
She wiped away a tear at the debasement of her condition and, looking out of the sheen of roses, she located Eros and - carelessly tossing her Love Note out in that general location - daintily spread her wings and followed it down, mindful that she hadn’t yet completed her lovely doily…
Fin of Part 4
A/N: Wow…my soul hurts writing that…beautifully! But, I’m not dead, I promise! I’m back and extra cracky and…long. But, do remember that I am a full time university student - and one who has read 16 novels in the last 9 or so weeks, as well (not light stuff…like all six of Jane Austen’s major novels…).
But, the next chapter shouldn’t take as long, because it is more or less planned out.
Well, the_dw wanted to see Kyouya/Haruhi…and I must oblige her with a parody of some wonderful works of fanfiction I have come across (she provided me with some truly quality fics, as well…). But I addressed my pet peeves of that pairing (if you can make it work, I have nothing against it…if you can’t and Haruhi becomes really girly or Kyouya randomly insults Tamaki….not so much, thanks). And I threw in the cracky OT3 for imaginative purposes. Exactly what they are doing depends on how perverted you are. ^_^
Also, Freyja is from Norse mythology and you shall be seeing more of her…I actually am far more at home with Norse than Greek mythology, so the Norse fertility goddess is now a cupid…shhh…I claim cultural syncretism!
^_^
Yes, the_dw. It is done with the requisite allusion to her voice and such. <3
Disclaimer: Still don’t own Death Note or Ouran…Eros, in all his snarky glory, is mine, however. As is the OC at the end...
Warnings: This chapter contains such forced sweetness and OOC that your teeth might fall out. The authoress will not be held responsible for dentistry bills nor the spasms that results from the people revolting against said sweet and fluffy goodness. Also, clichéd phrases and bad romance writing (all intentional...it kinda hurts my soul to write like that…) are prominent parts of this.
This chapter is dedicated with shiny love to the_dw…who certainly knows why. ^_^
OH YES AND IKA! I SHALL USE YOUR GIFT WITH GREAT DISCERNMENT!
Note 4 - Counter Measures
Much to her horror, it wasn’t at all in Haruhi’s imagination that Tamaki had gotten…stranger…than before.
She actually took the time to ask if anything was different about him, but he predictably lapsed into his troublesome, “Daddy was just trying to, um, er, well - “ with an attached and completely nonsensical excuse.
Haruhi had no idea whatsoever what her wearing a “cute” bunny costume had anything to do with anything…it seemed annoyingly superfluous.
When she told him such, Tamaki promptly hid in his accustomed corner and after a while began talking to himself again. It made her wonder that, if perhaps, all of Tamaki’s antics up to this point were merely manifestations of some very latent psychiatric disorder.
But that seemed too convenient even for all the sense it made.
Haruhi knew that, unfortunately, Tamaki’s strangeness couldn’t be explained away that easily. Someone, she hoped, would have given him the proper medication by this point in his life if that were the case. That left her with an equally troubling notion…
…Perhaps the parallel universe of the Host Club had finally driven her insane. And everything she was witnessing was some strange kind of normal behavior.
It was deep, entirely too deep to fathom…but, much to her chagrin, no one else seemed to notice.
She had made an annoyed mention of it to the twins who, as always, immediately became bored the moment the sentence was finished.
“Haruhi,” they both chimed, collectively turning back to their video game screen.
“Tono’s brain has always been - ” began Hikaru amidst vanquishing an alien invader on screen.
“To a great extent - “ Kaoru was noting the score shoot up as a golden alien dissolved into pixels.
They both seemed to waver from the game’s attention for a small bit, searching for a word, before saying in unison with great relish and emphasis, “absent.”
However Tamaki had the wonderful fortune to hear this and went on to his normal business of hiding in the shadows.
…Then the talking began again.
And the mumbled denial that he was not a “strumpet” was completely baffling.
Haruhi couldn’t even put together half of a plausible suggestion for that.
So, once more avoiding the one she was pretty sure might know - and thereby also avoiding a sharp increase in her already crushing debt - she sidled over to the table where Mori and Hunny were seated.
“Hunny-senpai,” she said tentatively when she was sure that the senior’s attention had left his cake and traveled to her, “Do you think that Tamaki-senpai is acting a bit, um - “Haruhi still felt nothing short of ridiculous asking such a question “more…strange…than usual.”
He placed an exorbitant amount of cake in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a moment before setting his fork down, and with great gravity responding, “Tama-chan hasn’t had enough cake!”
Mori grunted an ambiguous “more sleep” in response.
Haruhi merely sighed deeply and looked with perturbation back at the corner of the room where Kyouya was typing up…whatever Kyouya typed…and pondered the idea of how it might be to be bound by debt to all of these people until the age of thirty-five or more.
Deciding that Kyouya couldn’t add any more than a year to her debt - and that was merely a drop in a vast ocean - she decided to approach him with extreme caution.
Haruhi hadn’t even opened her mouth when the Shadow King stated in a bemused tone, “You’ve noticed as well, I see.”
Haruhi tried valiantly to prevent herself from gaping at the older boy…it was times like these that she wasn’t sure if he simply was as omniscient as he seemed, or he was simply a master of very ambiguous questions that caused the listener to jump to conclusions about what he was talking about.
“He is behaving stranger lately, even if that idiot was already mildly insane to begin with.”
Haruhi froze for a second and wondered why it always had to be the worst-case scenario with Kyouya.
“You mean-“
“It’s true Tamaki is in need of constant stimulation - lest he drain valuable funds or formulate some act of expensive idealism - but there has been a definite increase in…” Kyouya trailed off for a moment and adjusted his glasses reflexively, “abnormal behavior patterns.”
Haruhi responded with a mixture of relief that someone else had recognized the disturbing change in the Host Club’s King and evident irritation because her already overwrought and emotional senior could only become more difficult to manage.
“I think Tamaki-senpai has been talking to himself more in that corner than he has to his customers lately.”
Indeed, as if to underline her statement, a steady babble began flowing from Tamaki’s chosen location.
“Haruhi,” Kyouya said, shifting himself in his chair and turning his full frigid gaze on her, “Have you noticed anything else?”
Haruhi blinked.
There was the incident with Hunny…but she had already had such a significant increase in her debt as a result of that particular incident that she thought it nothing short of financial suicide to even mention it.
But now that he mentioned it, the strangeness wasn’t at all confined to Tamaki’s psychosis.
There had been a good deal more…emotion? Haruhi didn’t know if that was a proper term.
She briefly considered saying “love,” but that was a fairly empty adjective these days anyways…
“Emotion” it would have to be. But, terminology aside…Ouran had been fairly saturated with it.
Besides the incident with Mori and Ayame…who now ignored each other fiercely and dodged the fan club that had formed for in support of the alliance (who, for some strange reason, created entire pamphlets in iambic pentameter and slogans in sonnets…).
Then there was the day that school had been canceled due to flowers.
…And the time when a student from class 2-C bungee jumped out of an airplane that was busy writing “I LOVE YOU MY DEAREST MOST WONDERFUL HIMEKO!”
And, in Haruhi’s practical opinion, the elephants were much too excessive.
But, taking all of the incidents as a collective trend, she couldn’t logically assert that it could be attributed to the fact that Ouran was a high school populated by human beings that did such strange things that they might as well be aliens from a parallel galaxy.
Kyouya, noticing the expression of increasing horror on her face, knew that Haruhi had drawn the same conclusions that he had from the past few weeks’ events.
He had only to wait while she drew the impossible parallel that he had already decided had some sort of validity.
With the mental acuity that had secured his position as the Shadow King within the club, he had observed that every bizarre occurrence within the past few weeks bore what seemed to be - however impossible it may be - Tamaki’s distinctively flamboyant signature upon it.
Finally, Haruhi’s face assumed a look of abject terror that said she had also arrived at the same conclusion and, without any trace of her characteristic bluntness, stammered, “It’s like…the world is becoming a figment of Tamaki-senpai’s imagination.”
She looked at Kyouya so that he could dismiss her ridiculous statement as her having been too long in Tamaki’s company…or the twins’s…or simply in a nightmare that she hadn’t quite woken up from.
Surreptitiously, she pinched herself and found that she was impossibly awake and alert because Kyouya didn’t so much as refute a single word…rather, he looked over at Tamaki with so grave and serious an air that Haruhi knew that he must be thinking the same impossible thing.
“We should, I think,” he said carefully, very much aware of the ludicrousness of the entire situation - but still haunted by the overflowing feelings of love and devotion he had passionately felt for Hunny just weeks ago - and of what he believed was going on now, “observe Tamaki for a short period.”
Haruhi, finding herself nodding in dumb agreement, hoped beyond hope that the Host Club had merely driven her crazy at last.
------------------------------
Eros did not like Glasses and Androgynous at all. Rather, at the moment, he found their snoopiness exceedingly annoying.
They had seemed - completely without the knowledge of the strumpet who owned the Love Note - to have formed a coalition that was always watching the ever-oblivious boy.
While he had to admit the fact that Androgynous Girl now thought that the two brain cells that the blond had to rub together had fried was exceedingly amusing…the fact that it kept him from doing anything to alleviate the boredom that had settled since the wonderful thespian performance they had all received from the Silent Man was aggravating to say the least.
And, unfortunately, he had paid dearly for that small moment of fun.
Unfortunately the Strumpet decided he would be all honor and chivalry and blah, blah, blah and not involve his fellow male escorts in any more situations.
And, of course, now the blockhead thought that Eros himself was out to trick him into making fools of these people for the purposes of making trouble.
Which was, in Eros’ opinion, quite preposterous.
Trouble, of course, was the bare minimum that he wanted. Unrestrained, unmitigated, and absolutely overpowering chaos would be far more amusing than simply trouble.
Bored of his pursuit of fanning rose petals into the tea cups of the ever present cloud of estrogen than lingered in the room with his wings - his current record was four petals in seven seconds….and the girl had thought herself so exceedingly unlucky that she got up and ran sobbing away from the Strumpet - he decided since the Love Note’s owner hadn’t the genius necessary to make the appropriate counter measures…
…And that was, unfortunately, assuming he ever did notice that counter measures were necessary…
…Eros would have to take matters into his own hands.
Everything else, he thought, watching another girl look disturbed as the fourth rose petal in a minute floated squarely into her cup of Darjeeling, was a matter of simple physics.
------------------------------
“Tamaki-sama,” said a girl with a pout borne of her lush upbringing, “what are you looking at?”
Eros let out a loud raspberry directly in his direction where Tamaki saw something that he would have rather had five billion pins forced into his lovely violet orbs and bear such exquisite wrenching pain than see…
Kyouya was talking with Haruhi…again! With a great deal of repetition! Indeed the event was at the extreme risk of being repeated almost…ad nauseum!
And not once did his straining, listening ears - for it absolutely would not do to admit he, a gentleman, was eavesdropping - hear the word “debt” in their hurried dulcet tones.
“Tamaki-sama…” his customer replied again, he looked over to find tears glistening in her eyes at his own negligence.
“Ah! The pearl of my heart who glistens amidst the rough shod shell of the world! Excuse my excessive absence of mind, for I was merely struck with deep contemplation or the wonderfully indulgent sensation of our love that glistens with such a blinding iridescent sheen!”
With each word he said the tears vanished and a delicate blossoming appeared on her cheeks.
Somewhere behind him he heard Eros chuckle disdainfully and remarked tastelessly, “Kind of like casting pearls before swine, if you ask me, Mon cherie Strumpet!”
Tamaki jerked violently around to take a look at the cupid…who took the opportunity to dump an entire fist of rose petals into his customer’s tea with a look of positively sadistic joy.
Seeing this, the woman screamed and, flinging the Foley patterned cup away, ran from the room.
It was the third customer that Tamaki had lost that day due to cupid related interference.
Kyouya, sighed noticeably and walked towards him.
“Perhaps,” he said, shifting the weight of his notebook to his other hand, “You should come back when you are feeling more…capable, Tamaki.”
He noticed Haruhi staring at…Kyouya from across the room.
It was too much…there was something going on between them.
Kyouya was trying to steal his lovely daughter in his absence. A conspiracy! Betrayal! A veritable plot to usurp his position in the affections of his wonderful -albeit rather oblivious - daughter!
As these thoughts went through his head, he danced around, pulling at his hair and failing to notice that the rest of the club members - with the exception of Haruhi who he was sure was currently staring longingly at Kyouya! - were herding the rest of the customers out the door, citing that their club president must have quite a bit of a fever and, my what a pity it would be should any of their princesses catch it.
During Tamaki’s throes of mental agony - and probably more than a few phrases that made no sense to any of his companions - Eros merely giggled.
Before he knew it, Haruhi had come over and had placed a hand on his head.
Noticing this, he immediately blushed a deep crimson color.
Extracting her hand and frowning, Haruhi looked over him critically, “Senpai…although for some reason you’re all red, you don’t feel like you have a fever.”
In the aftermath of this gesture, Kyouya and Haruhi exchanged a look - no doubt a significant look of longing passion! - between them.
“Hikaru, Kaoru,” the Shadow King said, casually looking over his shoulder at the waiting Hitachiin twins, “If you would.”
Before Tamaki knew it, he was being pushed and prodded by the Hitachiin twins straight out of the door of his own domain.
“Tono,” they chorused, “Come back when you won’t make all of your customers cry.”
Tamaki’s second to last vision of the Third Music Room that day was the twins’ strutting about and making rather risqué impression of lugubriousness, at last ending in each other’s arms.
In wrenching his head backwards towards the two people who had so bothered him, his last vision of his beloved domain was of them falling into a fiery embrace.
His worst fears were confirmed. They had removed him to partake in an illicit tryst!
What Tamaki didn’t see, however, was the banana peel that Eros had carefully placed - to everyone else it had simply appeared from nowhere - to create this entertaining scene.
As the cupid flitted home after his depressed toy, a smile simply radiated from his golden features.
The names “Ootori Kyouya” and “Fujioka Haruhi” were written within the Love Note that night - an act so painful to its master that they were unadorned with any additional instructions and were written with a careless hand.
It didn’t even take a great deal of convincing for the flighty bloke to do it.
Eros’ counter measures against boredom, it seem, were going to be very successful.
------------------------------
The next day was, usually, the day on which the Host Club gathered to do administrative business.
That is to say, Kyouya did administrative business…while Tamaki threw out several ideas that didn’t make much sense and would run far over budget, Hunny ate cake, Mori watched Hunny eat cake, Haruhi tried to study, but was usually prevented from the doing so by the twins’ own attempts to stave off their boredom.
But, for the sake of generality, they called it their administrative business day.
However, suffice it to say, on the one day off from customers that he had in which to do such business…Kyouya was attending…well, to other business.
He was staring longingly at Haruhi and Haruhi was staring longingly back.
In fact, Kyouya sitting there, delicately running his long fingers through a tendril of Haruhi’s hair and Haruhi - her head tipped at a girlish angle and a tittering giggle upon her lips amidst batting her eyes back at him - made nothing short of a nauseatingly frightening tableau.
On first seeing this, Tamaki had gone directly into the corner and was now singing a flat and overly minor version of “Hotaru Koi” and tracing his finger in a slow circle on the ground.
Upon his entrance, Hunny - the only one who could perhaps defend himself in such a situation - sidled up beside the Shadow King and poked him on the cheek.
Kyouya did not so much as blink and merely wrapped the short strand of hair around his finger and said, “Haruhi-chan! The sonorous quality of your voice at last convinced me there was no merit in a life without you.”
At the sickening sing songy lilt of “Haruhi-chan,” Hunny backed away slowly and withdrew - Mori and cake in tow - to a corner of the room opposite of Tamaki’s.
The Hitachiin twins, however, were not one’s to allow such an opportunity to pass.
“Kyouya-senpai~!” They both intoned, placing an elbow on each of his shoulders.
He ignored them and took a hand and trailed it along Haruhi’s cheek…Tamaki (who, for all his moping, kept an attentive eye on the situation), jerked in such a violent fashion that one might have mistaken him for having a sort of epileptic seizure.
The twins, by now used to their Tono’s antics, merely righted themselves and walked in a suspiciously casual manner off towards the table where Kyouya stored the club finances and exchanged glances and smiled in a positively demonic fashion.
The dependable threat didn’t come as the encroached on the taboo territory.
“We just thought we could look at your notebook!”
“We are very curious to see what you always write in there…!”
The dependable threat still didn’t come…not even when they had firmly taken possession of the notebook and were now cracking it open.
Suddenly, however, Kyouya stood up.
Hikaru - who currently had possession of the seemingly offending item - dropped it as if it was a plague-ridden rat.
However, oozing a passion no one ever thought him capable of, Kyouya grabbed Haruhi around the waist and said, “Haruhi-chan, you know when you told me there was no merit in sleeping with you…?”
In the silence that followed this question there was the distinct sound of a cake plate shattering and the squish of strawberry cream exploding over the marble floor.
The only things that could make Haninozuka Mitsukuni drop his cake were events that were a little less than Armageddon.
“At the time I rationalized that I did such a thing for that idiot, Tamaki.”
Tamaki outright fainted at such verbal abuse which, from his friend’s scathing tone, was not his usual light mockery at all.
“But, I really wanted you in tha - “
“AH!” Hikaru and Kaoru shouted, because, having grown bored after the shock of the initial speech, they had begun to jointly leaf through the notebook while the Shadow King was…otherwise involved, “Kyouya-senpai writes fanfiction worthy of Renge in his spare time!”
Hunny - now busy trying to distract himself from the scene in front of him by directing Mori to place Tama-chan on the couch and intermittently fanning and poking him - looked up and said pointedly, “Kyou-chan is becoming more and more like what I think Tama-chan’s brain comes up with sometimes...”
“Disturbing,” responded Mori with an almost uncharacteristic emphasis.
And, indeed, the disturbing scene was still playing out as Haruhi - so demure and girly as to be rendered unrecognizable by any sharp observers of her character - said, “Kyouya…I may be in debt to the Host Club for the rest of my life…but if I could meet you,” she paused quietly and looked down, “I’m glad that I did break that vase…you help me discover the femininity that I had forgotten for my entire life due to the strange habits that I was brought up with.”
Tamaki - doing an admirable impression of a zombie - sat bolt upright on the couch he was placed on and stared before standing up, running to seize Haruhi by the shoulders, and beginning to shout, “HARUHI~~! My precious daughter, how can you have done this to your doting and devastatingly handsome father who has wanted nothing but the best for you to bring out the natural cuteness that should not belong to - and Kyouya! Kyouya! You’re as bad as the worst Benedict Arnold in history, a genuine, ‘Et tu Brute!’ and I am the bloodied and sullied Caesar into whom you’ve stabbed the vile knife of the most villainous and unsavory of all sins! Indeed, you shall go to the Tartarus and languish in the place for traitors and, oh! Kyouya!”
The indignant tone had quiet faded from the last tone.
Indeed, Tamaki trailed off into a nervous laugh as the other boy - glasses glinting quite ominously - slowly and purposefully walked straight for him. Moreover, Haruhi was now clinging to his arm.
To add insult to injury, Eros chuckled, “Well, your little friends grow incredibly interesting, my fair Tart…indeed, from my vantage point,” he tossed his golden curls and made a show of pointlessly appraising the situation, “…at least on one part, you’ve gotten rather too close to an ideal match…and, of course, that could be messy…”
All throughout the cupid’s speech, Kyouya continued to advance threateningly.
Tamaki, however, was merely waiting for anyone to save him or Eros to murmur one phrase of useful advice.
At last the cupid obliged.
…However it was not as useful as he could hope.
“That is to say, dear golden haloed blockhead of mine…you should…well, run like Hermes before Glasses bifurcates you…and let me tell you, I have my money on him.”
Tamaki happily obliged, running out to the sanctity of the gardens and, once in their privacy, whipped out the Love Note.
“Displacement, displacement,” sang Eros with a note of slyness that was particularly lost on Tamaki, “you wouldn’t want to damage the emotional well being of those who you care so dearly about…”
Tamaki - already far over his quotient of extreme emotional trauma for the day - nodded and, eyes wide waited for the cupid to explain.
“Eaaaase them off into a less ideal match…perhaps? Just a stroooke of the pen…”
Eros was quite amused at this attention…however, Tamaki quite mistook the fact that he was grinning malevolently ear to ear for the smile of a friend giving wise advice.
Unfortunately, the blond was paying so little attention that, rather than writing a new name for Haruhi - for she was certainly not as much to blame as Kyouya for this mess - he wrote it upon the wrong line and quite, in his trembling mood, missed the names he meant to strike out.
When he returned to the Third Music Room, all hell had broken loose.
And, by all hell, I mean fierier and mentally scarring than before.
Haruhi was now - oh! It was far too much to verbalize - with Kyouya…and Kaoru. At the same time! His dear daughter!
Now, Hikaru - seeing his twin do…that…with…them…was now being carried over on the couch, which had now, apparently, been designated for people who were overcome by the implications of the Love Note.
Eros flipped over on his back in mid air and yawned.
“Really, that is rather unexpected…I thought for certain that would work to ease things off nicely…”
Tamaki stared, unable to utter something more than a faint, “Aaaaaah” in response.
“More and more ideal…” Eros muttered lazily.
Tamaki backed out of the room and, hiding behind the closest available statue, he crossed out the entire catastrophe with two lines meant to send the entire arrangement into unequivocal oblivion.
The Host Club was closed for a entire week after what merely became “Incident Three” while they all recovered from their individual mortifications.
Eros, however, was pleased for a time at all the havoc he had managed to wreak.
------------------------------
The doilies were looking rather droopy these days…it was…depressing…to say the least.
Eros - off gallivanting on one odyssey or another - was not available to indulge her customary cross-dressing exploits at all.
Fingering her necklace, - a Brisingamen original - Freyja let out a melodramatic sigh.
Ah, she thought sadly, Even the hearts have lost their brilliant sheen…
She wiped away a tear at the debasement of her condition and, looking out of the sheen of roses, she located Eros and - carelessly tossing her Love Note out in that general location - daintily spread her wings and followed it down, mindful that she hadn’t yet completed her lovely doily…
Fin of Part 4
A/N: Wow…my soul hurts writing that…beautifully! But, I’m not dead, I promise! I’m back and extra cracky and…long. But, do remember that I am a full time university student - and one who has read 16 novels in the last 9 or so weeks, as well (not light stuff…like all six of Jane Austen’s major novels…).
But, the next chapter shouldn’t take as long, because it is more or less planned out.
Well, the_dw wanted to see Kyouya/Haruhi…and I must oblige her with a parody of some wonderful works of fanfiction I have come across (she provided me with some truly quality fics, as well…). But I addressed my pet peeves of that pairing (if you can make it work, I have nothing against it…if you can’t and Haruhi becomes really girly or Kyouya randomly insults Tamaki….not so much, thanks). And I threw in the cracky OT3 for imaginative purposes. Exactly what they are doing depends on how perverted you are. ^_^
Also, Freyja is from Norse mythology and you shall be seeing more of her…I actually am far more at home with Norse than Greek mythology, so the Norse fertility goddess is now a cupid…shhh…I claim cultural syncretism!
^_^