(Untitled)

[ootorospring]

Who: Tamaki and Haruhi F.
Where: Tamaki's apartment
Style: third
Status: closed, at least in the beginning-- possible intrusions needed.

Comments

[spectaculaire]

"It's open!" Tamaki answered as soon as he heard the knock. He would have preferred to answer it himself and let her in, but he currently had his arms full of various books and magazines that had originally been blocking the entrance way.

[ootorospring]

Haruhi opened the door fully and entered the room, stopping to mentally facepalm when she took in the full glory of the ransacked room. "...I guess at least you can say you searched every possible spot," she said dryly.

Sighing, Haruhi made her way immediately to a trail of feathers that could only have come from Marie's fun with a pillow-- the sooner she got started, the sooner the room would be clean. She was still uncertain how she even felt about Tamaki's having owned a figure of her in the first place; he'd never given a clear answer as to why she was his "most important thing", and she was very careful not to draw her own assumptions.

And it was probably better not to think about the shrine.

[spectaculaire]

Tamaki gave a small, sheepish laugh. "I spent the past fifteen minutes looking for it actually. I had just finished making--" and here he caught himself from blurting out his secret project: the ootoro. The blackout had completely ruined the first batch, and there was no way he would have given Haruhi that batch. On the upside, his new batch was much nicer looking...sort of.

But he quickly finished his sentence with "--Marie's dinner" before keeping his back to her so she wouldn't see his flustered expression.

[ootorospring]

Haruhi raised an eyebrow. Marie got homemade dinners? Haruhi thought dog food existed for a reason, but then again, rich people seemed to always do things in strange ways. Who was she to question?

"Well, I guess I understand how you feel at losing something important," Haruhi said absently, crossing her arms over her knees as she crouched by the now-growing pile of feathers she was sweeping. Her mind flickered back to the ootoro ring Tamaki had given her; it was stupid, really, that such a silly thing could mean anything to her, but she'd been disappointed to find that it hadn't come with her to Somarium nonetheless.

Very, very carefully, Haruhi added, "But... you know... as I said about losing my crystal, you have the real one here with you, after all."

She pushed herself to her feet. In an abrupt topic change, she then asked, "Where are the trash bags?"

[spectaculaire]

Marie and Antoinette most likely got the finest and purest grade of dog food available. Actually, if he could, Tamaki really would hire her a personal chef. Ah, the lives of the rich.

He was in the process of reshelving the books when he heard her words, causing him to falter and drop the one he was holding. She had changed the topic before he could properly respond and instead answered, "Er, in the kitchen! ...I think. Well they should be there." Unless they, too, were victims of his prior pillaging.

Tamaki really needed to settle down and stop being so nervous, so he just let out a sigh as returned to his task. It was true, however. He had the real Haruhi right there, and he stole a glance over to her.

He knew he loved Haruhi not as a daughter, but as an actual girl. The real problem was did Haruhi feel the same? Oh how he anguished over it. But he really should just be acting like his usual self and stop creating such an awkward tension. What if she started to hate him because of it?! No, no, that wouldn't do at all

[ootorospring]

Haruhi moved into the kitchen, where she found that while the trash bags had been victims of pillaging, at least that made them easy to find. She took just one-- there weren't that many pillow feathers-- and returned to the main scene of the crime.

She wasn't totally oblivious to the change in the air between them, though it had probably taken her longer than it should have to notice it. But one way or another, while there wasn't anything specifically different, there was something definitively noticeable. This hadn't happened before-- likely because at Ouran the moment things might have begun to change, Tamaki had been forced to cut off contact with her. She had no idea, then, what that might mean.

She made sure to collect every loose feather before tying off the bag and moving over to assist with collecting books and magazines. "Do you think it's just coincidence we both lost our crystals?" she asked. "I guess if they could just appear next to us, they could easily disappear. I wouldn't say anything is impossible in this place."

[spectaculaire]

Normal, normal, normal, normal--

"Some others have said the same thing," he answered as he continued to sort through the stack. "When I think about it, it's not too surprising...though still a bit unsettling. I just have to wonder why we were given them to begin with, if they were only to be taken away."

[ootorospring]

"It's probably better not to think about it," Haruhi said. There were many things that were better not to think about, it seemed. "I'm a bit more comfortable without a figure of myself enshrined in your cabinet, anyway."

Possibly half the reason she was so blunt with Tamaki despite her feelings for him was perhaps because of her feelings-- for someone so easy to read, he could also be impossible to read, especially when it came to herself, and that made her aggravated. If he was going to enshrine her, couldn't he come up with a good reason for it?

[spectaculaire]

"But it was made in your honor!" Tamaki protested. "And you weren't here, so it was the only thing I had to remind me of you!"

That and it only seemed natural to make the shrine, even if under slightly false pretenses. It did have to make him wonder if he already had feelings for her back then or not, but he would rather not dwell on that right now.

[ootorospring]

At that Haruhi found herself caught off-guard-- all right, so he could come up with a good reason for it, but that served only to make her flustered and grasp at how to respond.

"S-still, it's really weird, senpai!" she snapped to cover up her inner flailing.

[spectaculaire]

It was a perfectly sound reason. Perhaps creepy, but sound.

But at her remark that it was weird, Tamaki felt as if he had been stabbed in the heart. "Weird?!"

[ootorospring]

"Doesn't it seem more like something the Black Magic Club would do?" Haruhi blurted, perhaps a little more harshly than necessary. She was just thinking of the almost-similar habits of Kanazuki Reiko, which, when taken into account the other girl's reasons for stalking Hunny, simply made her all the more flustered.

...And then there was the matter of what had happened in Takuma's room.

Haruhi had done her best to forget about it until that moment, but all the lead-in thoughts made her remember. Tamaki-- there had been a moment, she knew, and had Takuma not walked into the room Tamaki would have been close enough to--

No, she wasn't good at dealing with this at all. It had been much easier the first time around, when there had been no mystery. Sure her face was now a flaming red, Haruhi turned her back to him.

[spectaculaire]

"That's not what I meant--" Ah. He had started to instinctively reach out to her, but she had turned her back to him by then. Of course he had no idea that the reasons were completely different than what he assumed. He just thought he had annoyed her because of the shrine.

It wasn't the first time they had these kind of "bad moments". In fact, they happened quite often back home, but they seemed sillier back then in retrospect. For some reason, this affected him a lot worse. And seeing her back to him, it took everything he had to not just hug her right there.

"...I'm sorry, Haruhi" he finally managed to say instead.

nnnnnnnnnnnnnyagh.... /must... not... lead into... confession....

[ootorospring]

Haruhi felt a jolt go through her at Tamaki's apology, a feeling that took her a moment to identify as guilt. She'd never heard him apologise before when she got angry; usually she would get mad, he would flail or retreat to his corner of woe, they would move on. But that time he'd-- handled it maturely.

And that made her feel small, because she hadn't been mature about it at all.

He'd given her a good reason for making the shrine, hadn't he? Maybe it was silly, but it was so very Tamaki. He'd always displayed his affection in obvious ways. She was just frustrated because she didn't understand why it had existed in the first place, and she was taking that frustration out on him. Maybe, she thought, she had been ready to tell Tamaki how she felt at home, but perhaps in Somarium she was the one needing to do a little more growing up before she could tell him, after all.

"Don't apologise," she muttered, afraid to turn around because of the shade of her cheeks. "I... just misunderstood."

/IT'S VERY VERY HARD.

[spectaculaire]

Though he knew Haruhi couldn't see him, a rueful smile formed on his lips as he shook his hand, a hand resting on the edge of the bookcase. "No, I've just been going at my own pace, unaware of everything that was going on back home."

He had been so...frivolous about everything. Of course, his stay in Somarium had matured in him several ways that a normal life at home would never do, but he had always thought this was just a dream world and it wouldn't matter. He had just assumed that everything was just fine back home.

But no. Things had happened. Things he never had even imagined could happen. And it had all been his fault. He had only begun to allow his ignorance about what Haruhi and Kaoru had told him about his family, but then after that conversation with Kaoru just a few minutes ago...he wasn't so sure.

So after a slight awkward pause, he finally spoke. "...Haruhi. When were you going to tell me about the kidnapping?"

[ootorospring]

Yet again Haruhi was taken by surprise. She'd never thought of the kidnapping as a big deal; but after seeing Tamaki's reaction after hearing things he'd missed at home, she been careful not to even mention it in passing. She'd known that he hadn't taken the affair nearly as lightly as she had, and after seeing how he'd felt after hearing he'd missed so many events at home, doubted he would feel any differently now.

Hikaru or Kaoru must have told him, she thought, a little disgruntled.

"It really wasn't anything big," she said honestly. "It got resolved very quickly, and the men treated me really well. I even woke up on really fluffy blankets. I didn't think it was anything worth worrying about."