Title: Midnight Calls
Rating: K
Genre: Humour, angst, character study (I suppose)
Pairings or Characters: Haruhi, Tamaki, Kyoya, Hikaru, Kaoru, Honey, Mori, slight Haruhi/Tamaki
Warnings: A little bit of fluff... not much else.
Summary: The Host Club members all have different reactions to phone calls in the middle of the night.
A/N: I am eternally sorry, but this is unbeta'd, due to my lack of a BETA reader who watches this show. All mistakes are entirely my own.
When the phone rang in the Fujioka household in the middle of the night, it was safe to say that it would be Haruhi who would answer it. Ranka rarely left his bed between the hours of twelve midnight, when he got off his shift at the bar, and eleven am, when he got up for work. So, as the only even semi-conscious member of their small household, it fell to Haruhi to drag herself out of bed and answer the call, muttering all the way about the kind of person who calls in the middle of the night.
It was also safe to say who would be on the other end of the line. A fact that Haruhi had brought up more than once with the culprit, every time receiving an utterly sincere and yet completely meaningless apology, and an empty promise never to do it again.
“H-hello?” Haruhi’s voice was sleepy and followed by a large, unladylike yawn.
“Haruhi!”
“Sempai?” Haruhi frowned, and rolled her eyes, recognizing immediately the overly awake voice of the host club’s King. “Look, it’s two AM, what do you want?”
“I just realized!” Oh dear, that was never good, “We’re all out of instant coffee!”
“You woke me up in the middle of the night for coffee.” It was a statement, not a question. Haruhi wasn’t even surprised. This was the sixth time since she’d unwittingly given Kyoya her home phone number for his ‘records’ that Tamaki had called her at home, usually after some midnight revelation.
As she hung up, with the promise that she’d pick some up on the way to school the next day, Haruhi swore to herself that she would take her sleepless irritation out on the King when she next saw him. Even though, she admitted, she had been half-awake anyway, unable to sleep due to stress over the coming exams.
What she wouldn’t admit, even to herself, was that she didn’t actually mind him calling. She wandered back to bed, somehow more at peace now that she had heard his voice, and fell asleep easily.
---
When Kyoya Otori’s mobile phone rang in the middle of the night, it was safe to say that whoever was on the other end was a dead man. The third son of the Otori family, after finally rousing himself, would answer the phone with a muttered “Hello?” - the most courteous response he could muster at that particular moment - and hope that it was someone he could punish later.
Of course, Kyoya didn’t receive many midnight phone calls. There had been three non-business calls in the past six months, two of which had resulted in nothing less than Tamaki Suou’s pain and suffering the next day. The third call had been from Fuyumi, one of the few people Kyoya would always have time to speak to, and it had been about how she was locked in her bathroom down the hall, a situation which Kyoya had to admit warranted the rather unwelcome wake-up call.
That didn’t mean that she hadn’t received some of the third Otori son’s most evil and concentrated death-glares the next morning, from across the breakfast table.
---
Hikaru and Kaoru Hitchin’s phones almost never rang, let alone at night. They had no business contacts, few friends who would require midnight contact, and their parents were only just down the hall, with their own bedside phones.
However, the few times they did ring, they were answered immediately. An unsolicited phone call, especially in the night, would only mean one of two things: an emergency in the family, or an emergency in the Host Club.
A family emergency would most likely involve Grandma Hitchin, who had never been a well woman, and whose medical condition worried the twins more than they’d care to admit.
A Host Club emergency would most likely involve Haruhi Fujioka, who meant more to the twins than anyone else their age, and the first few times the Boss had rung about her they had both answered with shaking voices and pounding hearts. However, as it became apparent that the Boss had developed a serious overprotective streak and an even stronger tendency to freak out when it came to the girl, the twins had began to relax, and even tease Tamaki about it the next day. After all, out of all his panicked, Haruhi-related calls, only one had ever been mildly serious.
They still answered every time, though.
---
Tamaki Suou’s phone rang in the night quite regularly. Due to the considerable time difference, it was often the only way that he could communicate with his old friends from France, few though they were, and he was always happy to answer such calls.
Of course, he was usually the one making the calls to others, which meant that his mornings were often spent on the receiving end of considerable wrath from one Host Club member or another. But sometimes it was an emergency, and he needed their aid right away, and really, if he worried alone, then he would get worry lines and ruin his perfectly chiselled features, and that wouldn’t do at all.
Yes, every call made from his phone, no matter what the time, was infinitely important. He just couldn’t wait till morning to inform Haruhi of his brilliant choice of theme for the following day. A good father always ensured that his little girl was prepared for anything, as soon as the opportunity arose.
It was his duty really. And those stupid twins knew nothing about that, did they? So, really, their claims that it was perverted to want to hear his Haruhi’s voice in the night, to check she was okay, were totally inappropriate.
It wasn’t like her complaints were entirely convincing, anyway.
---
When Mitzkuni Haninozuka took a call in the night, bad, bad things happened. Sometimes they were small, like the total destruction of his brother Chika’s room after the younger boy had awoken him on purpose, as revenge for Honey daring to speak to him at school.
Sometimes they were bigger, like the collapse of half the Eastern Wing of the Haninozuka family mansion after Honey had been up for forty-eight hours straight studying an ancient, recently revived, form of karate and had only just then fallen asleep.
The Suou family received a hefty bill a week later, much to the young heir’s chagrin.
---
Takashi Morinozuka rarely awoke to hear his phone ring in the night. The stoic martial arts champion went to bed very late in the evening, and awoke at dawn every morning, and so he slept very deeply in the hours allowed to him.
The one time he actually heard it, it wasn’t a call that Mori wanted to take. Of all of his friends, Mitzkuni Haninozuka was the only one who actually knew anything about the Morinozuka family, but the others had all received pointed instructions not to call him, at any time between ten pm and five-thirty am. The one midnight call that Mori actually took, told him only to get to the hospital immediately, to his mother’s room, before his father hung up.
It was the call that Mori had known would come soon, so when the phone rang, he was ready to receive it. He had answered with an impending sense of dread; he knew who it would be, and what it would concern.
As he stood to get dressed, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. It was the only time he could remember that anyone, including he himself, had seen him scared.