Commitment
Based on a line from a Jewel song that caught my attention and ended up inspiring this quick, less-than-one-page ficlet/drabble thing. I don’t own Ouran, and I don’t own some of the lines that inspired me- they’re from the song Long, Slow Slide. More-than-slight KyouxHaru. You can read with that in mind, or not if you prefer. It’s very vague.
His manners are charming,
But who are you fooling?
You're still nobody's bride.
Is it bad?
That she can’t do this anymore?
Is she letting him down?
Has he misplaced his faith?
So she hesitates for a moment, before sealing the letter. But she seals it. And she stamps it. And in what feels like only a minute, the letter is off. She slips it into the mail bin and walks a little more quickly along the street. A spring of anxiety is added to her step.
He’s at a function that she knows he doesn’t want to attend, with a beautiful girl she knows deep down he doesn’t really want to be with, smiling a smile she knows he doesn’t mean.
She wonder briefly, once again, how she let this happen to her.
She thinks about the way he shrugged when he knew something she didn't, but didn't want to tell her; the way he would open doors for her (always such a gentleman when he felt so inclined); the way he took her hand in his to help her out of the car, and gave hers just the tiniest squeeze.
But then she lets all thoughts of him go.
It could be love, but she shouldn’t fool herself any longer.
She’ll never be his bride.
***
His eyes scanned the letter in quiet.
Then he reads it over again, more carefully.
No one in the room, with their tiny sips of wine and pseudo-cheerful laughs, notices the change in his eyes. The part of his lips. He is a master of suppression.
She’s leaving him.
She’s leaving him, if you could even call it that. They weren’t a formal couple; no, the girl his father wanted him to give a ring to - he and she were a formal couple. A couple that was formal with each other; was formally announced in the tabloids and the papers and spoken of with a formal sweetness by others like them.
He shouldn't have led her on. Shouldn't have told himself that she was okay with it, even though she said she was. She wasn't.
She was the only thing real in his world.
She was the hope he had hidden and nurtured; only to be polished and put into his closet with all his other skeletons.
He wanted her so badly, but who was he kidding?
She’d never be his bride.