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"You kiss the back of my legs and I want to cry
Only the sun has come this close
Only the sun."
– Shauna Barbosa
Haruhi wiped her mouth lazily as she looked down at the sink, the faucet running hot enough for a gauzey haze of steam to float a few inches above the nozzle as the water ran around the marble bottom.
What a waste of a good meal, she thought to herself as she pushed some soap that was kept in a shell shaped soap dispenser beside the sink bowl into her hand.
Of course, Haruhi knew what caused this whole vomitting episode, and it wasn't up for debate: she ate those crab legs far too fast and ate far too many for her stomach to simply carry them without distress.
She also probably shouldn't have eaten a few certain things before dinner, either - compliments to Hunny, who made her try at least three bites of the thirteen different flavored cakes that he had ordered from some upscale bakery farther inland.
She couldn't just say no to his expectant, flowery smile - no, he wouldn't let her say no.
Naturally she was paying for it.
Haruhi put her hands under the steady stream, the white hot temperature stinging her enough for her to turn the cold knob on to ease the burn.
But why did she drink too much? And why did she drink so fast that she felt her stomach expand until she could feel the slime of saliva coat the inside of her mouth and fiery bile burning the back of her throat?
She felt the urge, she assumed. Suddenly, startlingly, strangely.
Back home, there was never an overabundance of food, not to say there was a lack thereof, though. There was always just enough for her and her dad to live off of to the point of being barely full at mealtime.
The habit of overeating, for pleasure or comfort, never took off with Haruhi, but occasionally, at school parties and sleepovers at friends houses, where there would be an profusion of sashimi or tempura - she would eat more than she was used to.
Tonight was another one of those exceptions, but it felt different. She was mindlessly eating, her hand moving almost mechanically as Tamaki questioned her 'silence' (only answering his questions, never involving herself more) with his own 'silence,' which meant that he simply would not stop going on and on about how she simply must talk to him.
She couldn't seem to stop when she started, and the thoughts in her head and Tamaki's whining in her ear kept her going back.
Haruhi looked up in the mirror and met her face.
She had dark, tired circles under her eyes and her skin was a shade paler than what she remembered it being just an hours earlier. She was all waxen and glazed over.
Her thoughts kept repeating themselves, and she couldn't seem to keep track of them. She could feel thoughts slipping out of through her fingers, like sand, like ocean water.
That's what puking will do to you, she managed to think as she wrung her hands under the faucet, scratching her fingernails deep into her left palm until she could feel a distant, but still remarkable sting.
But her physical discomfort (the aching, swollen stomach, the gritty feeling in her mouth, the wobble and jelliness of her limbs) and emotional exhaustion wasn't just from throwing up.
Or eating too much at dinnertime.
Or perhaps taking one too many bites of coconut cream cake just an hour before then.
No. It was about something much bigger than getting sick after a binge eating episode.
It was about Tamaki.
No, she stopped herself. It was about the incident that happened with Tamaki at the beach, not about Tamaki.
When she stood up to those guys who were harassing those girls on top of that rocky precipice, when she saw the disgust and sick laughter at her bitebacks curve their mouths, when they got close enough to her that she could feel their hot breath splaying across her face and neck, when she felt their rough and callused hands wrap around her arms as they thrusted her backward.
When she fell, the rocks caught the back of her ankles and the space between her calf and Achilles tendon in a long, burning scrape.
When Tamaki caught her after they both plunged into the wave trodden, ice cold waters that chilled her ribs and caught her breath beneath them.
Haruhi bit down on a piece of her gums below the inside of her bottom lip.
She could still feel his arms around her back and shoulders, his left hand grasping a fistful of her sweatshirt, his right hand cradling the back of her head. His chest was pressed up against hers, and his heartbeat - thrumming, drumming under her hands.
Haruhi had never felt his bare skin before, even with all of the times he had gotten close to her. His hands would touch her clothed shoulder, fingers would never reach farther than her wrist, and touches never lingered.
Once they did, hands flew up in poorly veiled surprise, eyes wandered away from hers but always found their way back when he thought that she wouldn't notice or be aware. He would keep rubbing the hand that felt her.
As if touching her had burned him - horribly, painfully, damaging the nerves.
His skin was still warm, even under water.
She started scratching her right palm now.
Haruhi tasted syrup thick salt water in her mouth, and she could still feel it somewhere in her belly, swimming around as turbulent as the sea. Her cut legs stung in the cold, salt ridden waters, the nature of the water digging into her wounds as if they slitting new cuts inside of the old ones, with the fresh sharp of a blade.
Tamaki was flushed, droplets and spray of the sea framing his face and running down his neck, the sun glinting in the small dribbles. She peered up at him through half-closed lids, trying her best not to stare for too long, for the possibility that he would see her.
In that way, they were similar.
Afraid of being perceived by the other, though they would never admit it.
She turned the faucet off, her wet hands leaving a glittery, sloppy residue on the white knobs. She wiped her hands on the length of her nightgown, fingers scrunching hard at the silky polyester.
Haruhi didn't want to think about the incident or what happened thereafter, though Tamaki's words after he set her down still rang in her head like bells, chiming at the moment when she was sure she had forgotten them.
"What made you think you could take those guys on?"
Haruhi opened the door and stepped outside into the hallway, her left hand reaching round back into the bathroom. She fumbled about the wall until she found the lightswitch and turned it off.
She needed to stop thinking about him because it wasn't about him - it was about the fact that Tamaki didn't think she was capable of taking care of herself.
She'd been taking care of herself (and at times, her dad) for years: grocery shopping, sorting bills and paperwork, cleaning up the house, doing the dishes, cooking dinner...the list was near endless.
She was not, under any circumstance going to let some rich, vain, superficial third year from an esteemed private school, who never raised a finger in his life towards anything work related (besides charming and hosting girls) tell her that she couldn't take care of herself.
Not ever.
It was oddly quiet out in the hallway, and Haruhi wondered where the rest of the guys had gotten off to.
They're probably back in the dining hall, she thought simply, her head darting from left to right to gauge where she was exactly.
The hallway was stretched long and dark in both directions, the white crown molding that wrapped around the wall at her hip was gray in this faintness. Below the molding was ivory panelling, running lines down to the floor to meet a new crown. A dark, burgundy carpet covered the length of the wooden floor down the hallway.
There was no sign of those tall, dining hall doors.
Huh. That's weird.
Haruhi stepped away from the door she came in. She wasn't sure where Mori rushed her to (she blamed her throbbing head and burning hole in her stomach for her lack of concentration) except that it was a bathroom and that, once she was outside, she was surrounded by more rooms.
On the wall in front of her, there were three, no - four doors, their silver knobs glittering in the dim flourescent light, and they were all identical to each other in appearance and sound.
The utter silence kept her thoughts unraveling in their repetition.
No big deal. She could find her way back, but she should probably look for someone first. Even the twins, as annoying and strangely evasive as they were, would probably know this mansion front to back.
Haruhi walked up to the closest door to her and twisted the knob slowly at first, gauging its status. No give. It was unlocked.
She opened the door with curious caution, her feet ahead of her mind as she crept just past the threshold.
The room was fairly large, with a huge window nearly covering the entire wall in front of her. It looked nearly like a picture, with the rolling waves crawling and splashing on to the sand down below, the craggly hills that peaked above the swelling sea and bubbled their offspring in the water directly below.
The sky above the ocean was painted an indigo, with streams of pink and orange cotton clouds crowning its breadth, streaming and puffing wherever it wanted to.
A bed laid below the window against the wall, its white covers and sheet was flayed open and wrinkly, implying that someone had just gotten out of bed.
Haruhi hoped that this was Mori and Hunny's room. Kyoya's occupation was not entirely intolerable, either.
Hell, she would even be happy if it was the twins' rooms, their sharp red hair and blistering mischief more tolerable than -
A door from within the room - to her right, which was shouldered by a blank white wall, keeping her hidden from the room's occupant - out of Haruhi's line of vision, opened without fear, the squeaky yawn that it let out was strange.
This mansion was so new and pristine, but the sound was old and worn, like the pained cries of an eldery cat.
It left her unsettled.
She heard more. The sound of a chest of drawers opening, the raw sliding of wood on wood.
A sigh escaped the occupant, their breath heavy, familiar, tired, just like the door.
Haruhi feels the urge to leave tug her throat, but now she can see it.
Uncalloused, lithe fingers shifting through undershirts and underwear within the top drawer of the dark rosewood chest - an antique that he insisted Kyoya buy for his personal rooms in the former's expansive beachfront property, and Kyoya buckling, as he always did, for he could bend anyone to himself.
Even an Ootori.
Haruhi realized she had never see him in that kind of way - in bedclothes, bare down to the necessities. The things he slept in.
In a state where he was the most untouchable, yet the most vulnerable.
"Mon Dieu," Tamaki's voice now, in rare French, almost too quiet for Haruhi to hear. He shifted through things once more, this time the clattering of jewelry of some kind. She could almost see the gold. "Sauve moi de moi-même." It was breathlike, fragile.
Haruhi stayed in the doorway, her breathing staying locked within a few inches from herself. She gripped the edge of the door with her left hand, her other on the knob. If she shut the door now, he would know and he would follow without a doubt, and running would only give her away further.
Who else wore a pink nightgown in this place? He'd know it was her just from the rustling of polyester, the scratchy skit of it across her scarred calf.
I could just leave the door open, she thought, but despite her anger, the festering and bitter thing that it was, and the fear she had for being discovered, she did not move.
Tamaki shut the drawer abruptly, the pad of his bare feet across the wooden floor growing louder announced his drawing near, but it did not prepare Haruhi for his appearance manifest.
The tall blond stood at the foot of the bed that Haruhi now knew that he had crumpled, analyzing nothing, wearing only a pair of black boxer briefs. His hair was a damp, ruffled mass, dark gold the bath water that he had stepped out from. A towel, stark hospital white, draped over his shoulders to catch the droplets weeping at the back of his head.
Haruhi could only see the left side of his face, but it was enough.
A still emotion cut over his features: first the sharp tip feeling the flank of him to decide where he was soft, then cutting him wide and letting it drain across his face.
It was hurt.
Raw, true unbridled hurt.
It felt wrong to see Tamaki, president of the Host Club, son of some rich executive that Haruhi would possibly never see or know, as distant and far off as the future when she imagined it, this way.
The resident girl charmer, incessant dreamer, the one who helped everyone and never asked for something in return. Even through puppy eyes and near performative tears when he could not get his way, Tamaki never asked.
She didn't think he would start now.
"I'm sorry," Haruhi said to the still life room.
Tamaki's head whipped around to her gaze, not even for a second before her words did he consider the doorway. The hand that toweled the strands that were slightly sopping down the back of his neck stalled, his mouth drawing open in shock like it always did.
Now, the wounded day began its lay to finally rest, all dark blue with singes of red, scraping the knee of the sky.
Tamaki, in this light, looked like a ghost haunting a body, the well worn expressions sinking deeper with the dark looming near.
"I thought this was somewhere else," Haruhi hurried the other words to her previous sentence out, her fingers sinking deeper into the edge of the door frame.
Tamaki stood there and stared, his eyes filtering his hurt into confusion, a kissing cousin to surprise.
"I'm sorry." She said again. She didn't know what else to say.
Haruhi felt her feet back up, preparing ahead of Tamaki's response. Her fingers felt as if they might crack as she pulled knob closer to her exiting body. She turned her face away from his gaze, her eyes focusing on the end of the hallway she would soon dart to.
It was then that Tamaki's confusion turned into fear.
"No, wait!" Tamaki lurched forward, his hand forgetting his drying work and now reaching towards her, the towel draped around his shoulders falling to the floor. He hurried and grabbed the door with an eagerness that Haruhi could not pretend she didn't feel, his long fingers holding at a higher point on the frame.
At least they weren't touching.
"You-" he didn't stumble to find words, he fought, "-you may stay." His words were in a tone that Haruhi rarely heard him take upon: it was solemn, threaded with wounded dignity, a voice a student might give to a teacher after a brisk scolding.
"All right." Haruhi swallowed hard thereafter, his damp hair falling down his temples and forehead, drying gold that she had the faintest wish to touch.
She didn't know why she was staying. She should really be getting on her way, trying to find the others who would then lead her to her own quarters, the others she was not necessarily always at odds with.
But she found herself unable to say no to Tamaki.
I have so many times before, she reminded herself.
Haruhi let go of the doorknob and Tamaki opened the door wide enough for her to enter.
Why is now any different?
She averted her eyes from his underdressed figure as she brushed past him into the bedroom, the brightness of its walls and furniture (or lack thereof) fading as the outside beyond the large window facing them did.
Haruhi threaded her fingers together in front of her nervously as she faced the bed and the window just above, but perhaps it was anger as it began to die.
She could have sworn that she was still angry at him the moment before she had seen him, before she had heard him, but now, she couldn't muster the viciousness that she was sure she felt.
At least, not viciousness for the same reason.
She watched a large wave land its foamy head on the shoreline, the thick birth dissipating on the sand into the fizzy bubbles of a soda a few moments after being poured over ice.
The door closed quietly from behind her. She pressed her knees and thighs into the side of the mattress, the coolness of the sheets edged on icy.
"I didn't think you'd want to see me," Tamaki said finally, a near chuckle escaping his lips; his voice was near cracking, but it didn't break.
There was something there that implied something that she didn't want to be confirmed.
She couldn't help but think, he would want to see me if I wanted to?
"I don't like playing games with people," Haruhi replied coolly, folding her arms across her chest.
She turned around to find Tamaki standing like a lost child about five feet away from her, his arms fallen to his sides dejectedly, his usual straight posture slouched.
His hurt caused something inside of her to flinch.
"Games?" Tamaki repeated. Then a brief, fleeting chuckle escaped his lips. "You not talking to me wouldn't be a game, it'd be deserved." She couldn't tell if it was truth or sarcasm, for derision, even an allusion to it, never escaped his lips.
"You're the one who played the silent treatment," Haruhi observed, there was no real anger in her voice, but she felt it climb back up her ribs.
Tamaki looked a little taken aback that Haruhi would mention that it was him, not her, who didn't want to speak after they fell off of the cliff.
Yet he continued to even after that, as small as jabs and clipped, conversations nearly one-way.
"You were mad," Tamaki said.
"I was at first, but," She paused for three heartbeats, "I'm not anymore." It felt like a lie - everything feels like a lie once you tell one. "Well, then," a nervous smile, if it could be called that, upturned his lips. He diverted his eyes towards the wall that held the door to the bathroom and where that chest of drawers Haruhi had heard was. He moved towards it, his feet barely making sound.
He ran a hand through his drying hair. Haruhi could see that he was shaking as it rose to his head.
"I guess I was the angry one, then, huh?"
Tamaki went over to the opened bathroom door and closed it, his hand lingering on the knob. Haruhi's eyes followed him.
"I just," Tamaki stopped, his head dropping down at the newly closed door, his eyes seeming to trail down its glossy white length. "I didn't want to think about those guys doing something to you."
Haruhi's mouth was already dry from her retching fit, but it somehow grew drier.
None of this was new information, but it came from his mouth, not Hunny or Kaoru and Hikaru's.
His voice went on, slow and deliberate, "I just, I, I saw the way they grabbed you, and-" Something caught in his throat, his words cutting off. He was holding back.
Tamaki turned around gingerly, tears filling up from his bottom lids like cups. They were full and sloshing, rising to the top, hoping to reach his irises, the pupils. They fell down his cheeks before they could, quietly, refusing to call attention to themselves. They seemed to run in lines that had been followed before.
This wasn't the first time he had cried today.
He chuckled and a smile was left, his arms lifting off of his sides about half a foot. There was no laughter or humor to be found.
"And I couldn't see anymore." He plopped his arms back down for emphasis.
He couldn't see right now either.
Tamaki's fingers rose to his face as he swiped the tears away, unsuccessfully at that. They rubbed a nippy red color, his burning cheeks moist with shame.
"I don't care if you could handle it," Tamaki's voice was harsher now. The side of his fist rubbed a hard knead into his eye before he ripped it away, looking at Haruhi with fresh hurt. "If I see someone I care about in danger, I'm going to step in." His purple eyes were darker in this light. Unforgiving. "There are no exceptions."
A crutch that Haruhi had been holding on to in her mind slipped at his final sentence.
"Oh, well apparently there are." Haruhi bit back, turning to her body towards him, her words sharper than she had wanted to. "It was all about how a girl like me," she spat the last three words out, "couldn't possibly hold her own. Ever. That I was an idiot for even attempting to."
If this wasn't anger, then what was it?
"I never called you an idiot!" Tamaki shot back.
"You didn't have to! You made me feel like one!" She snapped.
"When? I said that you couldn't fight them on your own - how does that make you feel like an idiot? You knew you couldn't." Tamaki's damp cheeks reflected vaguely in the fading light. "Why is it any different when I say it?"
Haruhi wanted to tell him: it's different precisely because you said it.
But she didn't. "You made me look stupid."
And feel stupid.
She felt like a fool more than anything else, but he wouldn't know that it had more to do with the feelings she couldn't quell than with those handsy men and her backwards fall off the cliff.
"You looked stupid because I saved you?" Tamaki came closer, his voice tottering upon anger, but it was more disbelieving than anything else. The nearly gone light painted the full, defined points of his face a light swell of indigo.
"You didn't save me! You threw yourself off a fucking cliff after me, and decided to call it saving." Haruhi's frustration reached a peak, and for some reason, sentences, where there should have been silences spilled out again.
She pointed an accusatory finger at the blond. "Where the hell was your savior complex when I had ten inch gash up my leg when I fell? Or when I was puking my brains out after dinner?" As she said it, she couldn't believe it.
Haruhi had wanted him to be there for all of those things.
To help her.
To dote on her.
To clean her.
To be.
To be there: bright and comforting as he always was, even though in those moments, she could have sworn that she hated him.
Haruhi was starting to believe that she never hated him at any point.
Not even in the grain of the word.
But she wasn't sure even what she felt then - perhaps it wasn't hate and anger so much as it was the shock at being saved by someone who was relentless at attempting to, and with his successful deliverance, she found that she did not like the idea of being in need of saving and being unable to do it herself.
The idea of relying on someone was terrifying because they would sooner disappear than save her once more.
It was only human nature - people grow tired of the falling, the gnashing of chattery teeth in pristine, dark waters. The girl scared of thunder, the loom of distant clouds pushing her indoors.
She could only rely on herself.
Only herself.
If she relied on somebody else, she would be let down. Abandoned.
Hurt.
Tamaki's face echoed the shock and hurt that came off of her words, his purple eyes searching Haruhi's face anxiously with something that made her heartbeat, brisk and thrumming, pound in her ears.
Want, surprising itself by existing.
Haruhi lowered the finger she aimed at Tamaki's chest slowly, stepping back once. Her words were bullets, her mouth the gun, but her finger was the lip of it. She drew a bead on where all of this would go inside of him, and it was his chest.
He held everything there, everything that ever burned, hurt or overjoyed him - it went there.
Silence gripped the air between the two of them as if its life depended on this suspense, even though Haruhi felt as if it was a heavy hand on her lungs, surpressing every breath she took in.
Haruhi felt the edge of the blanket that had been pulled back on Tamaki's bed brush the side of her knee, the coolness of the comforter bringing her back to earth, though her mind was lost on the dark edges of Tamaki's frame.
"You-" the blond began quietly, his voice nearly a crack that someone could trip over. His right fist, tightened hard enough for Haruhi to imagine it paled with clench, loosened. Haruhi swallowed.
Tamaki followed. "-you wanted me there?"
Haruhi waited a few moment. She felt the exasperation within her begin to drain like water out of an ear, fast and flowing at first, then slow enough to stall.
She counted her quick heartbeats: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
Tamaki didn't wait two heartbeats before he was only half an arm's length away from Haruhi now. She bit the inside of her lip hard. Having him in close proximity to her was nothing new, but the atmosphere that bubbled around them both led to an arching of the senses.
He was always close. He had never been closer.
He sat down on the side of the bed, the sounds of the mattress springs chiming beneath his weight diminished the newfound atmosphere that only included their restless breathing.
Tamaki looked up at her now, earnestness covering his features in an expression that left Haruhi's stomach fluttering. He was close enough that even in the dying light she could make out such niceties: a mouth drawn expectantly, eyes careful and searching, a brow furrowed in concentration.
His eyes were illuminated by the dim indigo and orange hues that converted the sky from a Monet into a Van Gogh. He reached out and took hold of her hands, their sudden warmth startling Haruhi.
It was then that she knew that the mortifying burn that she had believed she had caused Tamaki every time they touched was in fact the mortifying burn they had caused each other.
He rubbed his thumbs back and forth, syrup slow, across the top of her hands, smoothing past the veins and bone.
Haruhi sank cautiously into his touch, releasing her lip from her teeth, the moments passing and her mind slipping out of the clutch of nervousness.
Tamaki's hair was still slightly damp, separating into individual strands. Hair sloped down his forehead, like dark golden water down a pale cliff, parted down the middle like chaffed wheat.
Haruhi wordlessly consented to Tamaki as he guided her down to sit beside him, their shoulders brushing and their elbows rubbing together without incident.
He rested their hands on his right thigh, his eyes trained on their joined digits. His movements were assured, that this had been the plan all along, but his eyes betrayed them: wide and longing, surprised and bleary with emotion.
Tamaki looked up at Haruhi, his hair weighed down and long from his shower. He looked boyish and shy, his eyes peeking through the shore of thick eyelashes still stuck together by the needed tears of minutes past.
"I'm sorry." His voice quiet and timid from the closeness that had come between them.
And then, the boy who Haruhi had never once seen nor heard an apology slip from his lips, sincere or otherwise, apologized.
It was the apology that hollows you when you hear it, the rarest expression of regret where there was no need for any more words other than those two.
It's okay, Haruhi wanted to say, but she fought the reply to slide back down her throat.
No, what Tamaki did wasn't okay, and him apologizing proved that, but she felt the need to say it because of the way that he said it, the way that he looked, was picking away at her insides.
"I appreciate that, senpai." Haruhi finally decided on, her voice and words feeling strange in her throat, as if she hadn't talked in days instead of only a few minutes.
Suddenly, Tamaki let go of her hands and wrapped his bare arms around her shoulders. Haruhi found her closed mouth against the soft length of space between his collarbone and the top of his shoulder. His knees bumped into hers, the bones knocking but the perpetrators did nothing.
Haruhi's breath hitched in her throat, not knowing what to do with her limbs at first. After a moment had passed, she wrapped her arms around Tamaki's waist and pressed her palms to the middle of his back.
Time crawled with Suoh, she realized the first day she spent with the Host Club, and not in the way that she expected it to.
They stayed like that for thirty heartbeats or more just holding each other, remaining both seen and hidden due to their closeness and the darkness that was suddenly enveloping them.
All was quiet, and for those moments, calmness washed over Haruhi.
Tamaki was the first one to break their mutual vow of silence.
"Will you show me the cut?" She could feel his voice coming through his ribs with his chest on hers, his heartbeat touching the side that had none.
"Yeah," Haruhi slowly peeled away from Tamaki's embrace, the coolness of the room replacing the warmth that once surrounded her. She averted her eyes away from Tamaki's, grateful that he couldn't see the rush of blood that ran to her cheeks when she brushed past the sides of his bare waist, and turned around, stamping her hands into the mattress.
She dug her left knee into the bed and lifted the other one, her eyes focused on the sea outside of the window, the still light moments after the sun has disappeared blurring the space between waters and heaven.
She lowered herself down on to her stomach, the image of the sea in her line of sight sinking with her, her feet and half the length of her calves lay suspended off of the edge of the bed. Haruhi laid her head down, turning so that she rested her left cheek on the mattress.
Tamaki's sitted figure scooted closer to the backs of Haruhi's legs, pulling his right leg up on the bed halfway. He leaned down to get a closer look at her right one, the one with the long jag of red, raised skin from the middle of her calf down to the bottom of her heel.
"Oh my God," Tamaki murmured, his hand hovering above his upper thigh, his eyes tracing down the length of her leg, not risking the touch for anything. Haruhi swallowed hard as she imagined his warm hands holding her leg at the back of the knee and touching her cut with the other.
"Mori gave me some antibiotic ointment," Haruhi filled the silence once it became clear that Tamaki's words had trouble coming to his tongue. "But I probably need it reapplied."
Tamaki didn't say anything, so Haruhi continued.
"They didn't have bandaids big enough to cover it, so Kyoya said that he'd call for some," Haruhi went on, reality that lived outside of the door coming back to her in waves, her cheek pressing deeper into the mattress as she spoke, "I dunno if they've come yet or not."
Tamaki edged closer, the mattress springs clinking with his weight. He was close enough that Haruhi could feel his warmth drawing nearer to her. Her fingers flinched.
"I'm sorry," Tamaki said again quietly, the phrase not yet losing its meaning with overuse. His knee brushed against the fabric of her nightgown, catching on the lace fringe.
The blond was silent for a few moments, his tentative breathing leaving the atmosphere heavy and waiting.
Haruhi just looked at the back of him, the muscles in his shoulders tensed and strung, like a needle and thread through a particularly thick piece of fabric. His neck was craned downward, revealing the knobs of his spine that peeked beneath of his skin. He looked over her scar with a gentleness that ran a hand over her nerves, the live wire she felt through everything with Tamaki.
She swallowed, her cheek pushing at the mattress with the movement.
Haruhi wondered how long they could go on like this - wanting more, but being unable to articulate it with fully fledged words.
Not just 'I wanted you here,' but 'I want you here, and I think for ever.'
That's stupid, she thought coolly. That's so, so freakin' stupid. Especially when it was about someone like Tamaki Suoh.
Haruhi knew that wasn't true, but she hoped that she could tame whatever feelings that were running around inside her still.
"I wish things like this could be kissed better," Tamaki said suddenly, his voice drenched in trepidation and something that Haruhi didn't want to name - for naming meant hearing, and hearing meant listening, and listening meant understanding.
If she understood, it was real.
He let out the huff of a dry chuckle, "You know, like when we were little and we scraped our knees, cut our fingers."
Haruhi couldn't help but smile at the image of Tamaki as a little kid, with blushy plump cheeks, curious bright eyes, stubby fingers papercut from fiddling with paper, making drawings of his house and his dog and his mom and his dad and himself, knees scraped from running too fast down the sidewalk only to trip between the cracks in them.
"But," another nervous laugh escaped his lips, a coverup, "no one does that to us anymore, that would be just weird, and, and foolish, and perverted..."
"I don't think it's weird if someone you trust does it," Haruhi replied quietly, her fingers stroking the thick spot where the pulled back sheet and blanket laid. "Just because your parents or siblings can't do it without it being weird doesn't make the act itself weird."
Tamaki turned to her, his breathing a little faster, barely noticeable. Yearning and hope painted his features heavily - the curious lips, the warmth blooming on his cheeks, the pace of his pulse - but he looked beautiful when he wanted.
Haruhi could only hope that desire was becoming of her.
"Two people have to want to, it can't be one sided," Haruhi continued, knowing what ground she was walking on more with every single word she uttered.
"Do you think it helps?" Tamaki asked hurriedly. "I mean, do you think that it makes things heal faster?"
An involuntary smile curved Haruhi's lips at Tamaki's shyness. "No, I think comfort makes it heal faster."
"How, how do you tell if someone else wants to?" Tamaki asked suddenly, his tone lower than what Haruhi expected, and earnest. His sincerity began to eat away at the doubt that had decided to make a home in her.
The doubt that she relied on to never say a word about how she felt to Tamaki.
"You ask."
Thirty two loud, pounding heartbeats passed without an utterance. Haruhi wasn't sure when she started using a basic signal of life as a measurement of time, but it probably happened when she heard hers louder than anything else.
Tamaki's gaze was still trained on her, his eyes going over hers as if he could find something different in the same place he had looked a million times before.
He turned away from her and ran a tongue over his lips, glossing over them with a slowness that made Haruhi burn with anticipation.
"Haruhi," Tamaki said, her name coming over his mouth like a wish, fervent and needing, "May I-"
"Yes," Haruhi replied unflinchingly, her fingers running up and down a stripe of blanket beneath them.
She didn't want him to say what he was about to do - she already knew, and it would be too much to hear him say it aloud.
One does not always need to hear what they already know.
After all, sometimes knowing without words confirms our deepest fears.
Tamaki took in a deep breath, digging his hand into the mattress to move himself a few inches further on to the mattress.
He wrapped his hand around the spot above the back of her knee, his fingers gripping around her nightgown.
Haruhi swallowed hard and closed her eyes. Touch between them still felt electric, but she was willing to get burned if it meant getting closer.
"Is this okay?" Tamaki asked gently, his hand staying in its place.
"Yeah, it's fine." Haruhi answered, her fingers releasing their tight hold on the blanket. Calmness and anticipation sat beside each other, and began shaking hands.
They agreed that they could coexist together.
Tamaki shifted on the bed, indicating that the blond was leaning over.
Haruhi could feel his warm breath come closer and closer until all that she felt was tufts of warmth coming in and out, in and out.
He hovered over the top of her calf, where the scratch began, his thumb rubbing up and down strokes on the side of her knee. Haruhi swallowed.
Warm, moist lips met her calf, pressing into the embossed mark. Tamaki held her leg tighter, his left palm pushed deeper into the mattress.
Haruhi stifled a sigh from escaping her throat, her eyes opening to a space that was bathed in darkening blue.
She had wanted him to do it five hours ago, when the blood from her wound had been washed away, the area disinfected, and only a stripe of raised, angry skin remained.
Haruhi felt his lips move, separating a bit in the middle, the smooth inside of his bottom lip brushing across that small spot on her calf. She didn't look at Tamaki then, afraid of full confirmation of how the blond truly felt.
After all, his eyes revealed everything, and his face was merely an echo.
She didn't want the heart that had already jumped out of her chest to rise to her throat and choke her.
Haruhi was already so close to giving away everything - she wasn't sure yet if she wanted him to have just a bit more. If she did that, there would be nothing left to hide.
He'd know everything.
Tamaki slowly pulled away, his right hand pressing down harder on the back of her leg as he sat upright. His palm stayed there for a few moments, his thumb brushing against the white, lace edge of her nightgown.
There was Tamaki, holding together parts that felt as if they were being ripped apart, even if he had been the one who tore the new stitch that Haruhi fashioned.
He would be the one to seal this shut.
Tamaki turned to Haruhi, his eyes glinting in the moonless light. He didn't say anything, but Haruhi knew.
"Thank you for trusting me," His voice was so warm, she felt as if she could slip under it and sleep for a lifetime.
There was Tamaki, like a swallow of medicine on a sore throat.
It was saccharine, overexaggerated, and thick, but it coated everything on its way down.
Healing that rough, scraped rawness that she didn't even know was within of her.
Haruhi couldn't help a small smile from curving her lips, and the blond soon followed, turning his gaze away bashfully from hers.
There was Tamaki, coating everything.