just a promenade around the park
1. Éclair is translating Goethe when Kyouya goes downstairs to eat breakfast. When he knocks gently on the doorframe and goes to partake of the sliced oranges, Éclair says something to him in fast and casual French without raising her head. Kyouya thinks she's asking him how he would translate du armes Kind (Child of sorrow? Poor child? Unfortunate child?) and is about to inform her that Tamaki doesn't take German, but then she actually looks at him. "Ah," she says, in what Kyouya wants to point out as almost insulting surprise. "I thought you were Tamaki."
Almost every day, Kyouya finds something new about Éclair that he'll fixate on with dislike. Today, it's the movement of her eyebrows, how they convey so clearly to Kyouya her disappointment. He knows that the only reason he can tell is because he's been raised just as perfectly as she has. Somehow, this only serves to irritate him more; he wonders if she does it because she knows that he will notice. "I would translate it as 'child of misery'," Kyouya says, peeling the orange away from its rind as he smoothly recounts the rest of the stanza. "I am more interested in knowing what you make of the getan in that line," he adds.
There are freshly baked croissants lying in a basket by Éclair's hand. She notices his interest in them and with fine-tuned movements of her wrist pushes them towards him, nodding slightly towards the orange marmalade. Because she's courteous, Kyouya has to be polite, so he pulls out the chair farthest away from her and starts to spread the marmalade on one bite size piece at a time.
Now that he is no longer jetlagged, Kyouya likes the mornings best: the three of them don't talk much before lunch, the heat is still manageable, and no one has made anyone else try to waltz yet. This morning Éclair is wearing the same red silk dress that she wore the day Kyouya and Tamaki first met her. Kyouya knows that it's petty to mark this against her, but to him, the dress has only unpleasant memories attached to it, made worse by the fact that it brings out her natural paleness, the golden brown parts of her hair, her violently blue eyes. If Kyouya were Tamaki, he would comment on all of this in one long winding speech that would conclude, inevitably, with an announcement of the day's agenda. But since he, in the end, is who he is, Tamaki's guest and not Éclair's, he opens his mouth only to taste the tartness of the marmalade and orange peel and admires the kitchen furnishings.
"Is he still asleep?" Éclair asks-- in Japanese, Kyouya notices, a language where pronouns are far more conspicuous, or maybe that's just because Éclair is literally translating it from French. Kyouya nods stiffly. Éclair is writing with an old-fashioned ink pen, the kind you still need to fill up by hand. Her handwriting looks oddly like Tamaki's when he's taking notes in class, but not like Tamaki's when he is actually writing. Kyouya ponders this for a bit, but is interrupted by Éclair who says, "It's not the final draft." She's mistaken his interest for him reading her translation over her slender arm, so now Kyouya wonders, should he tell her that he, quite honestly, couldn't care less about how she words her French when she tries to convey auf Säulen ruht sein Dach?
"Ah," Kyouya replies, noncommittally.
Éclair's pen scratches against the paper and then she says, "Tamaki tells me you are proficient in German."
"Perhaps he means to tell you that I have some knowledge of the language," Kyouya answers. Éclair seems to find this extremely amusing, and she is smiling to herself as she goes back to reading the second stanza of Kennst du das Land.
Finally, she shakes her head. Kyouya isn't sure if the ruefulness he detects is real or manufactured. Maybe, he concludes, it's been manufactured so often even Éclair doesn't know, like the way Kyouya's older brothers have imitated their father's tone so often that now they sound like him all the time.
"Why, Mr. Ootori, I do believe you are only saying that so I will not press you into assisting me."
This too, Kyouya thinks, is the same-- flirtatious wryness, the inflection bored and languid, only hinting at true emotion. He gazes at her German poetry book, weighing his options. If he says no to her, he can maybe escape to his room, lock himself in with the distant smell of horses and the hum of the air outside. Or he could claim to have business to do, and waste an hour or so flipping through the skeleton library in the study upstairs. Or he could try to wake Tamaki, but it would be useless-- Tamaki insisted on nine hours of sleep, and last night they didn't retire inside until 11 because Tamaki insisted on all of them making star charts. Oh, Polaris! Tamaki had exclaimed, pointing at Venus, and it had gone steadily downhill from there.
"Well--" Kyouya begins, but then Éclair says smoothly, "Of course you needn't do so if you feel obliged." She looks him straight in the eye. She has just the faintest traces of makeup, the darkened eyelid when she blinks, her lightly rouged lips. Her fingers are long and elegant and almost whiter than any other part of her body, and she doesn't have a drop of ink on them. She is gently kicking her foot as she contemplates him, waiting, daring, and Kyouya suddenly sees her opera glasses lying next to her poetry book. Also, the teacup by her hand, white edged with gold with ridged sides, almost an exact copy of the ones Kyouya ordered for the host club three years ago.
He gets up and walks over to her chair, puts his hand on the table firmly and leans his body weight against it. "If you would let me finish, Ms. Tonnerre," he says, careful about his annunciation, "I'd be delighted to assist you."
They spend the rest of the morning discussing Beschützer and what word could possibly mean Wolkensteg. Everything is made more difficult because Éclair doesn't understand Kyouya's instinctive Japanese translations, and when she tries to explain herself in French, Kyouya can't grasp the subtleties. After a heated and stilted exchange over Es stürzt der Fels und über ihn die Flut, Éclair praises Kyouya's pronunciation. "No, not at all," Kyouya insists like he's supposed to, and he's almost grudgingly enjoying this conversation with her, but then he catches sight of the smile she is hiding behind her hand. It's triumphant, like somehow she has won, and it derails Kyouya's composure just enough that he doesn't even notice the sound of Tamaki's footsteps descending the staircase, making their way to the kitchen.
2. "No," Tamaki pouts. "I want you to do it."
All afternoon, Kyouya has been looking at some maps of the area as well as an ancient rough sketch of the layout of the grounds. He tells himself he has been plotting their escape route; his finger has been tracing the same path-- past the stables, through the vineyard, the edges of the rose garden, all the way to the sea-- when he hasn't been daydreaming about air conditioning and the rainy season. At one point he even falls asleep on the old paper, wakes up to François pulling the curtains shut. "Pardon," François says with a smile, and Kyouya wonders what anyone in Ouran would say if they found Ootori Kyouya napping with his sleeves shoved up, wearing Tamaki's shorts, a crease on his face from where his cheek pressed against the folded paper.
Meanwhile Tamaki has been going through every nook and cranny of the house looking for Éclair's old art supplies. She made the mistake of mentioning how once when she was eight she came here with a whole suitcase of pastels and watercolors and lost interest in them by the time she needed to go home. They've been gathering dust somewhere in the summer house ever since. For Kyouya, that story crystallizes everything that disturbs him about Éclair. For Tamaki, that story inspired him to equip himself with Éclair's sketchbook, a few old pencils, and an afternoon's worth of patience.
Now Tamaki is sweaty, dusty, and has pastel dust and flecks of hardened watercolor pigment in his hair. "I'm not going to wash your hair just because you wouldn't look for a chair before moving the box off its shelf," Kyouya says pointedly. There is a piece of light sky blue dangling from Tamaki's bangs. Kyouya feels his skin itching under his clothes.
"Mother used to do it for me," Tamaki says, continuing to pout, and Kyouya refrains from pointing out that given their family dynamics, he is Tamaki's wife, not parent.
"You should be taking a shower," Kyouya says, trying to sound disapproving. He makes an effort to stop watching a drop of sweat travel from Tamaki's temples down to the edge of the jaw, lingering, suspended until Tamaki makes a running leap towards Kyouya. He buries his face in Kyouya's shoulder, and Kyouya, as usual, doesn’t know where to put his hands, how to turn his face so that he doesn't feel Tamaki's hair rub against his cheek. How to acclimate himself to the feel of another body thrown against him, hot and moving and resistant to Kyouya's commands.
"Kyouya," Tamaki whines, stretching out his name. His breath just barely brushes against Kyouya's neck as he speaks. It is softer than being touched by anything, and Kyouya shivers despite the heat. "I don't want a shower. I want you to wash my hair. Please, Kyouya."
Pressed against Kyouya's flushed face, Tamaki's skin feels powdery from the dust and surprisingly cool, and it smells like an art museum and fruit sugar, probably from the plums Tamaki has been eating while rummaging his way through the house. Kyouya pushes Tamaki away, both hands on Tamaki's bare chest under his halfway-unbuttoned shirt. He can't control his own body. His fingers keep shaking. He watches them absently, slightly darker skin and well-formed fingernails against Tamaki's pale collarbones. Tamaki's heartbeat, controlled and unhurried, and Kyouya can hear his own blood pounding in his ears.
"Fine." He manages to keep his voice steady. "Just this once," he warns, and there is a desperate moment when Tamaki nuzzles him again, his lips brushing Kyouya's ear as he withdraws, where Kyouya considers killing himself.
Tamaki's bathroom is bigger than Kyouya's and better lit. The sink is too low for Tamaki to stand over and too high for Tamaki to reach sitting down, so Kyouya calls up Marie for a stool, which she magically produce from the kitchen downstairs. Meanwhile Tamaki has raided the cabinets for shampoo. Kyouya pretends to read the labels while Tamaki strips off his sweaty shirt, beaming at their reflection in the mirror. "You should take off your shirt too, Kyouya," Tamaki notes innocently, like it's everyday that he prances around shirtless with another guy and that this is in no way scandalous. Kyouya's seen glimpses of Tamaki's world, though, and it's white as driven snow and involves storks and Santa Claus. It's not that Tamaki's childish, he reasons to himself. It's just that Tamaki truly believes in everyone being as simple as himself.
Kyouya is stubborn about his shirt, so Tamaki gives up and rests his head against the porcelain bowl of the sink. Kyouya gives himself to the count of fifteen to change his mind and leave, but Tamaki watches him through it, waiting patiently, so finally Kyouya turns on the water, guides it away from Tamaki's head, and waits for it to warm up. "Did your father ever wash your hair for you?" Tamaki asks. Kyouya considers the notion with absolute horror. "When you were younger! I'm sure you and your brothers all bathed together and washed each other's backs! I saw it all the time, in the dramas my father sent me," Tamaki admits, sinking in with a blissful sigh as Kyouya runs the wet water over the back of his head, pulling gently at the soft strands of hair.
Kyouya says nothing to disabuse Tamaki of the notion. Instead he keeps running his fingers against Tamaki's hair, lightly scratching at the area around Tamaki's ears, and Tamaki melts like a spoilt cat, occasionally producing soft exhalations of delight at being touched. Kyouya sets his mouth in a firm line, has to keep himself from grinding his teeth because he knows it'll hurt his jaw. By the time he's actually ready to put shampoo in Tamaki's hair, he's already regretted agreeing to this about twenty times. But Tamaki just sits there with his head almost touching the faucet, humming "Un bel di vedremo" to himself happily and in the wrong key, unsuspecting and almost purring every time Kyouya runs his hands through his wet hair.
The shampoo smells like orange oil mixed with pressed flowers. The label informs him that it was the fragrance Napoleon crafted specially for Josephine. Kyouya isn't sure he believes that, but it's a pleasant smell all the same when it wafts up from where Kyouya is spreading it on his hands. "I like Éclair's shampoo," Tamaki announces as Kyouya shuts off the water and starts massaging in the shampoo with rough, circular movements. "Have you ever noticed, Kyouya? It smells like strawberries."
Kyouya wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hands, wrinkling his nose. "It smells like Honey-senpai," he remarks, and gently lathers up the part where the base of Tamaki's head meets the beginnings of his neck. There's a soft indentation there, and Kyouya keeps rubbing his thumb there, as if hypnotized. Tamaki flexes his shoulders lightly, almost moans when Kyouya moves the pressure of his hands around the backs of Tamaki's ears toward the temples, and Kyouya wants to scream. This is verging on plain insanity. Everything smells like oranges and heat.
"You're right," Tamaki muses after a bit. "It does a bit." There is a meditative pause before he says, "What about you, Kyouya? What do you think?"
"About the strawberries?" Kyouya rubs his fingers down against Tamaki's head, then up again, gathering up the hair and just holding it there with the soap and the water and the weight. Then he starts to run the warm water again, watching all that white foam disappear, leaving him with only Tamaki's hair, darkened by the water, slick as it tries to run through the gaps between his fingers.
"No, Éclair's shampoo!"
Kyouya sometimes wonders what he is going to remember of France when it is years down the road and he has a wife, children, and a head of gray hair. Éclair, of course, but what about her? Maybe how incongruously blue her eyes are, the sharpened way she says "Mr. Ootori", like it means something else when it's translated. The heat, the well-defined flavor of the local cheeses, also the heavy scent from the vineyard. He's certain he'll remember Edith Piaf. He'll remember France as its southern provinces, a country full of sea and loaded questions and drowning above water. Tamaki asking him why there are no penguins in the Mediterranean.
Suddenly Tamaki snaps his head up, dripping water all over the sink, his back, and Kyouya's shirt. "Ah!" he says, grinning and straightening himself as he stands, Kyouya instinctively backs away from where he had held himself close enough to see the faint freckles on the back of Tamaki's shoulders, but Tamaki reaches out a hand towards Kyouya's face. Inexplicable panic, and Kyouya finds himself backed against the bathroom counter, and Tamaki's fingers make contact with Kyouya's forehead, all of him radiating the light he catches from the bathroom window.
"Tamaki--" Kyouya begins, tensed to break away, but Tamaki runs his tongue against his bottom lip, strokes his thumb against Kyouya's forehead.
"I saw it in the mirror-- you had some foam-- there--" Tamaki pulls his hand away, his expression faltering as he watches Kyouya, who leans against the bathroom counter for support. "Is something wrong? Are you feeling unwell?" Tamaki starts to fuss, and Kyouya has to break away to give himself some personal space. Realizes, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, that Tamaki wants to hug him again, feel his forehead for a temperature, be close enough to Kyouya to catch his illness.
"I'm fine," he forces out, his voice unwavering and normal, that dry practical Kyouya. He picks up the towel lying by the sink and tosses it to Tamaki without looking at him. "Dry yourself before you get sick."
"Shima-san says I have a healthy constitution," Tamaki proclaims proudly.
"She means you tire her," Kyouya says, and at last manages to escape from the bathroom.
3. His father calls him that evening. "Are you still in France?" he asks instead of saying hello. His voice is chilly, hinting at displeasure. "You said you would only be gone for two weeks."
Kyouya is out on the balcony of his own room. From the open window downstairs he can hear Tamaki trying at the same time to transcribe "Le burn et la blond" to the piano and to coax Éclair into singing. Éclair is protesting that she doesn't have the voice for it. Kyouya agrees, a little maliciously, in his head, but mostly he is trying to recall the day he left, what he told his parents, his brothers, and later Fuyumi on the phone. Probably said something about the Tonnerres, whims, a good educational experience. Hinting at the influence of the chairman's son as he eyed his passport critically.
"Is something wrong?" Kyouya asks, and there is a brief, adrenaline-filled moment where he wonders, if given a choice, what he would choose. Is Tamaki more important than his father's demands? If his father ordered him to come home (but he wouldn't, he would simply hang up the phone if Kyouya refused, and it would be weeks of nasty insinuation over the dinner table when he did return), would he follow those orders over Tamaki's pleading, Éclair's well-hid approval? Or maybe Tamaki would tell him he should go to his father instead of staying here in the Tonnerre's summer house, wasting away. Tamaki, who loves families and fathers and mothers, who once told him, I wish I had brothers like you.
Kyouya can already picture Tamaki's expression-- like a child who is trying to wrap his mind around the idea of self-restraint-- when his father says rather gruffly, "Of course nothing is wrong."
"That's good. Then...?"
His father coughs on the other end. Kyouya tries to imagine where he is. The study on the second floor, in the leather armchair next to the bookshelf. Maybe with a sturdily cut glass beside him, two fingers worth of whiskey. The hum of the laptop on his heavy cherry wood table. "What," says his disembodied voice through the cellphone, "is a small contingent of the private police doing in Belgium?"
Kyouya leans against the railings, pressing the phone to his shoulder as he opens the doors back into the room, starts walking slowly downstairs. The piano music rises to meet him-- one of Beethoven's sonatas, the first one Kyouya ever learned, a serious six year old child reaching up to flip sheet music already slightly wrinkled from Fuyumi. His father stroking the side of the grand piano, then blowing the dust off from his fingers. We would have too many violins, he said, meaning Kyouya's brothers. How do you feel about the cello?
Kyouya begins, "I believe you should have a copy of all their reports," but his father interrupts, annoyed, "Yes, yes. Kyouya, you're not still looking for the Suou boy's mother, are you?"
There are no lights on above the staircase. Kyouya is submerged in the dark. The tile patterns gleam as if they contained some refracted glow of their own. Kyouya closes his eyes. Tamaki has stopped playing the piano. He can hear Éclair's low, steady voice. He is seeing Éclair's red silk dress, the escape route, his own fingers in Tamaki's soapy hair. He murmurs into the phone, "Would leaving be giving up?"
"What?" His father, discourteous with confusion. So Kyouya shakes his head, still blind as he descends the stairs.
"If there's nothing wrong, I'll be back in two weeks then," he says finally, and hangs up.
When he opens his eyes, he almost runs straight into Tamaki, who is standing silently, one hand on the banisters, at the foot of the staircase. They are so close that Kyouya thinks he can hear Tamaki's heart beating. If he breathes deeply, he can maybe smell oranges and honeysuckle, the smell designed by Napoleon. Before Kyouya can say anything, Tamaki looks at his feet, knits his eyebrows, and says very softly, "We are supposed to go skiing in the Alps."
"When?"
"At the end of the month."
It is just at the beginning of August. The heat wave will be coming soon. Kyouya suspects it is already here. Tamaki raises his head. He is biting his lip. It makes him look ten years younger, or maybe that is the lack of light. Tamaki's face glowing like the tiles beneath his feet, that tiny moue of apprehension, like he is expecting Kyouya to scold him. Kyouya thinks, not for the first or the last time, that everything about his life is ridiculous. Tamaki isn't anything special, he tells himself. Tamaki is just someone's almost orphaned half-French son. Maybe he is sometimes attractive, sometimes magnetic, always illogical. Maybe sometimes he is intelligent in a way no one else has ever been in Kyouya's life. But mostly he is a ridiculous human being and he makes Kyouya's life a horror, and sometimes Kyouya wants to tape his mouth shut forever.
So instead he smiles, and pushes Tamaki towards the music room, towards Éclair and Edith Piaf and a dream of all three of them in France, holding hands and laughing. "The twins sent me an email today," he says, his hand on the small of Tamaki's back, like it has always meant to be there. "They went to visit Haruhi at the retreat. They sent me pictures of Haruhi wearing a dress." Tamaki opens his mouth to start demanding to see them, and Kyouya lets his hand linger on Tamaki's waist as he draws away, walking ahead of Tamaki. He can feel the heat of Tamaki's body through his clothes, so compressed, like someone squeezing out a candle. Like thawing.
"No rewards for eavesdroppers, though," Kyouya finishes.
In the room, Éclair is sitting at the piano, her head bent over her hands. She is humming a song and picking out the melody erroneously on the keys. Kyouya wants to take a picture of the moment just as he enters. For that one second, Kyouya and Éclair are in the room alone together. Tamaki is still just outside the doorway, on the rim of the lamplight, trying to catch up with Kyouya, his arm poised out to snatch Kyouya's hand, to draw him back towards Tamaki. Éclair has her face half-turned so she can glance briefly and dismissively at Kyouya, her hand lifted in the middle of transitioning from C to A sharp. Part of her registers Tamaki's voice behind Kyouya. Part of her is rearranging herself for Kyouya's presence. Her eyes are a little shrewd, a little curious.
In that photo, Kyouya and the furniture would be the only things holding themselves resolutely still.
note: really really long, to compensate the fact that i'll be gone for a week. bing is without internet access, so please forgive her. as for why jackie is holding out-- well, you'll have to ask her.