Well, finals week shall be upon me after tomorrows classes (where exactly did the time go...I swear yesterday I was stacking 16 novels on my desk and wondering how I was going to get through all of them in 11 weeks...).
But I may go to Disneyland for Spring Break! Woot (I haven't been...for a 2 or 3 years...).
But it also means (traditionally) that I write more fic because I avoid studying or writing my essays or...whatever. Procrastinators of the world, un- Oh, nevermind.
So the product of this is one of those fics based on the proverbial LJ template of "5 Things blah blah blah" that you have to do at least once if you write fic and have an LJ. It's a tacit rule, I swear.
And it is Tamaki-centric because I <3 him.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Ouran. I just play with it sometimes for my own amusement, for I am a poor commoner who cannot afford anything but free flights of fancy.
Explanatory Note: Each little drabble is a stand alone within its own time frame and universe. Some of them, however, have referents back to specific scenes or rewritings or addendums to some scenes. Keep the title in mind, though!
Spoilers: Tamaki’s family background, as always.
Five Things That Never Happened to Suou Tamaki
~ sciathan file ~
I. Advice
He pauses at the door and his father, seeing that look on son’s face, makes a small little joke and backs out with a small deft comment made to his wife and a dramatic sigh of “This really is your department anyways, my precious jewel.”
Suou Tamaki takes his father’s place and sits down on the rose strewn quilt next to his mother.
She smiles at him - just a tiny bit that’s reflected in her eyes more than her mouth - because she can read her son’s mind and she knows why he is there.
Before Tamaki so much as broaches the subject there is a vibrant, obvious blush that colors his cheeks that only a mother knows how to solve.
“Mother,” he says, as she picks up a hand and gently runs her fingers through her teenage son’s hair, “If you feel like you want to kiss a girl…does that make you a pervert?”
She smiles, but knows that laughing at her rather silly son will simply make him cry in just as silly a manner.
He’s a good boy and hates his father’s teasing about such things.
“No, Tamaki,” she says in a soft, breathless voice, “It simply means that, maybe…just maybe…you love such a girl.”
Of course, Tamaki starts at the word “love” because he has always structured his funny little world around it.
“…Like a parent’s love?” He says, his eyes flickering in a way that tells her that he is wrapping his mind around it and coming to terms with something he has never felt by putting it into a lens he thinks he understands.
“No…” she responds, her eyes all the brighter, “Something…different.”
She watches his features contort around this concept and sees as his flights of fancy take a hold of his mind and let go of it at intervals.
The workings of his imagination are all scrawled right across his features.
But it is okay for her son to dream like this. All it takes is his tentative request for her advice to bring him down again from the blue, blue sky.
2. Catharsis
The maids talk amongst themselves and trade their usual gossip and idle chatter while they slowly shine the mahogany and marble of the second Suou Mansion.
But rather than their preoccupation with the usual dramas and wild flings of the idol culture that most indulge in regularly as a guilty pleasure, their gossip is centered on one event…or rather, one person.
The new master who has failed to come out of his room for a week.
Some proclaimed him sullen and spoiled while those who knew more of his situation wondered if he would ever recover from such heartbreak.
The night maids reported that the boy cried himself to sleep every night.
The day maids said that he looked just plain angry when they went to clean his room.
But, no one blamed the new master for cursing his fate. It was a hard thing to be forcibly extracted from your mother at such a young age.
Indeed, they all quietly assured each other that no matter what your disposition before such a trauma, such a thing inevitably leads to a change within a person so young.
Everyone, the Suou maids agreed, was entitled to a little bit of catharsis.
3. Messiah
With a deft glance at the list of names provided, Ootori Kyouya made several mental notes as to the strangeness of his friend’s tastes for probably the umpteenth time within their brief acquaintance.
Tamaki had explained - using some nonsensical theory of type categorization - the reason for each name upon the list and why each person was necessary for a Host Club.
But, frowning mentally as he thought such a thing, such an explanation - although expected - was simply not satisfactory.
Kyouya still wanted to believe that, for all he had seen to the contrary, Suou Tamaki had ulterior motives for what he did.
“Tamaki,” he said pointedly, looking at him with the sort of steady gaze that often made people flinch away in a matter of moments, “Why these people and not others that could fit their so called type…?”
The boy opposite to him blinked before saying plainly, without a hint of deception, “I want to save them all.”
Ah, thought Kyouya, turning the statement over in his mind, So that is what Suou Tamaki is motivated by.
Now he knew that Suou Tamaki was conscious of what he planned to do with his Host Club, or rather, the members in it.
4. Pedigree
The girl - certainly not garnering much attention due to her general unkempt appearance and the fact that she was lost in a world of glittery opulence that everyone else was already accustomed to - did not so much as bat an eye when one of her upper classmen walked by, flipping a stray tendril of hair strategically and giving a speech that sounded a little bit too much like a sales pitch for her tastes.
The girls who were graciously showing her around - although rather obviously at their own displeasure - stopped and whispered among themselves for a while in the wake of the blond haired student they had seen.
She heard excited wisps of conversation pass between the members of the group.
“Suou-senpai is so cool!”
“I’ve heard a number of families are already negotiating a marriage alliance with his family…”
“Well, Sayako-san, the heir of the Suou Empire and the son of the superintendent of Ouran would be quite a catch.”
The scholarship student - still a bit overwhelmed by the extravagance and not at all impressed by the people - looked after the boy who had just passed her without much more than a glance.
How would she know that, as the heir to one of the greatest and most prestigious families in Japan, he was raised in a strict manner that was most fitting for one of his station? How could she know that his grandmother had supervised every minute of his education and his father found it necessary to bow to her wishes?
How did she know that she had seen a product of what happens when notions of superiority and the influence of a name are constantly impressed upon a single person from birth?
She did not know. Nor did she care.
The only time she ever communicated with such a preeminent student in her entire high school career was when she had accidentally bumped into him in the hall when he had not been paying attention.
Suou-senpai had merely looked at her, noting her clothing disdainfully, and muttered a cold “Excuse me” before proceeding down the corridor without so much as a backward glance.
5. End Game
When Suou Tamaki, former king of the Ouran Academy Host Club, walked out of his high school life - crowned with all the laurels of graduation and displaying a radiant smile that would certainly make the sun itself jealous back to the world in front of him - he walked out without a backward glance.
There were visits from the family he had founded in high school, at first frequent and obsessive and leaving little by which one could differentiate life in high school and life after high school.
But after a duration of time the friendships cultivated at Ouran Academy did what so many friendships cultivated in the times of brash youth - especially when one has always lived under the impossibly blue sky of a world that is your monetary plaything - faded and dulled with time.
“Family” passed into “friend” and then into “acquaintance” and then out of the waking mind, except for nostalgic perusals of photo albums on infrequent evenings followed by lonely nights.
A cell phone’s buddy list lost its cosmic, magical significance in the midst of its use in he every day rituals of business and life and routine and work dulled social charisma down to polite niceties.
Suou Tamaki, despite the fact that he never physically looked back or made any move to revive relationships with the people who had once been such intrinsic parts of him, still liked to occasionally live in the sepia tinted photographs of long ago afternoons.
But the world had long ago impressed on him that he shouldn’t dream such silly dreams all of the time.
It had been so insistent that he had at last complied, giving his little family over to fading memory and the dust within boxes of old curios and knick-knacks.
Suou Tamaki stopped dreaming and let the world and what it could do wash in and flood his mind.
It was “The End” of the fairy tale he had woven…except for those quiet evenings and photographs.
…An end.
Except on quiet evenings when he remembered and dreamed. Just a little.
Fin
A/N: My, that’s all rather different from my usual fare…but I’ve been wanting to do two of these for a very long time…coming up with three more was a bit challenging, however.
Anyways, although I don’t much care for them and probably won’t even use the actual prompts, I’ve hijacked the “5 Things” form for one fic at least. I think it is a staple of LJ…you have to have done the whole “5 Things” schtick at least once…
It is, however, kind of fun. Especially these “Never” kind of deals. When I look back over each piece, they’re all rather two toned…the happiest ones, when considered, make you sad and the other way around certainly applies, too. It’s an interesting mechanism and fun to use a lot of different POV’s and such. I could probably say geeky lit things about all of them, but I’ve rather had it with essays for a while. ☺
Hope you enjoyed!
^.^