for dreams are just like wine, and i am drunk with mine.
we are getting to the end. THERE'S A PLOT HAPPENING AND EVERYTHING. If this isn't the penultimate, it is the penultimate to the penultimate LOOK ITS REALLY GOING TO END ASAP. In the coolest summer of my life, we're bringing this warm, miserable story to a close.
-
Kyouya works straight from Eclair's side- their reflection after dinner- to his friend's room, his demands in mind.
He eases the door shut behind him, squinting through the darkened suite's foyer. For a moment he wonders if the doctor stationed a guard to prevent the still recovering Tamaki from visitors. He wonders if he has enough cash on him to buy the man off. Tentatively Kyouya slips through the room, spotting no lookout.
Tamaki instead looks up from a newspaper in his lap, pressed out like wrapping paper over the blankets, his elevated leg. He grins, slapping a particular article with his palm.
"Oh good, you're here," he cries. "They gave me the German paper for some reason." He waves for Kyouya to come closer. "I want you to read this to me. Look, see the dog in the photo? She looks just like my Antoinette." He pauses thoughtfully as his friend lurches towards the bed like a death march. "You don't suppose it is my Antoinette, do you? This does look like Tokyo, especially that building- oh." Tamaki has faltered from his happy chatter, somehow noticing the gray pallor of Kyouya’s face, the shaking of his shoulders. Normally Kyouya would recoil from that concerned gaze, but he's run out of energy.
Tamaki murmurs his name and more than anything he wants to ask to go home at just that moment. It’s become a chore, really, Éclair and her would-be victories, Tamaki and his bruised ribs, the way the word 'Tokyo' reverberates through him.
Kyouya kneels at the side of the bed, like he’s praying like a child again, as if he's wishing his father would notice him, that his brothers would take him with them when they went away to school, that Fuyumi would stop treating him like a baby- all the things a spoilt child could plead for. He wants that plane ride home as badly and hopelessly as a child wants.
Tamaki calls his name again, like the snap of a frozen branch in winter. Kyouya sighs and stands.
"You haven't eaten yet, have you?" he asks, looking over his shoulder as he reaches for the phone. "I'll have them send you something from the kitchen." Tamaki cheerfully asks for croquettes, but his smile doesn't reach his eyes. He stays like that for hours, through tiny bites of a light dinner, through Kyouya's slow translations. The entire time he feels the club president's eyes boring in his shoulders, his collarbone, shoving him deep down in the bed. It's strong enough Kyouya is sure he's already hallucinating the other boy's hands on him (unfortunately- fortunately? He isn't sure anymore.)
Kyouya leaves when the other boy wears himself out with something- not worrying, because Tamaki is too confidant for such a character damning pastime.
He meets the Tonnerre's in the sitting room, mid conversation. He nods accordingly, yes Éclair retired early. Yes, he had been with Tamaki. His leg is bothering him still. Éclair’s nameless mother cuckolds in an unfamiliar tongue.
"But really- Hurt again?" Mrs Tonnerre's voice clicks like a tightly wound clock. "What a boy. No wonder they sent him abroad." Kyouya switches suddenly from weary appeasement to a white hot sear of emotion. He's blind with fury, sure he misheard or wrongly translated. Tamaki was a constant nuisance, but only Kyouya had earned the right to say such things by paying his dues.
"You must be awfully disappointed," Mr Tonnerre grins like a shark, so perfectly predatory Kyouya is afraid his outrage must've been visible. He continues, "For having to return to the summer home tomorrow." Relief floods through Kyouya's battle torn body like an avalanche. He has to remind himself that simply leaving these mountains doesn't guarantee him any less misery and resentment than he has experienced atop them. If anything the situation seems as though it would only get unavoidably worse upon their return to the French countryside.
"No," he lies. "I have found myself missing France." He's not sure when he's told a bigger lie, not even to his father, not even on the opening day of the Host Club, not when he conceded that a trip to see Éclair would not be bad at all.
-
They board the plane separate from her parents. Éclair hugs her father and lets his mother kiss her once, twice, three times, holding one another's hands. Kyouya watches disinterested from the jet's window. They had a wedding to attend in Paris, Éclair has explained, eyes flickering wildly throughout the cabin. Kyouya wonders if that sort of overt familiar affection can scramble even the steel nerves of his opponent.
He pulls the curtain across the window. Yes. Éclair is his opponent in a way. Since she had brought up the topic of their rivalry, he found he couldn’t banish it from his thoughts all the previous evening. It nags and lingers in the corner of his mind, catching the way Éclair takes a seat close to Tamaki rather than one on her own. Perhaps she had sat in such a seat on the flight to Switzerland, but Kyouya blames his and Éclair’s previous confrontation over dinner that led him to notice the competition between them now. Although, putting that thought into being is ludicrous in itself when he considers what is being fought over.
"I'm writing a letter to Haruhi," Tamaki announces mid flight, over their first round of drinks. "I don't think she's ever been skiing before!" he nods in agreement with himself, bending over the paper again. "I need to let her know to bring the skis’ together to stop, just in case she's in a situation like I was."
"I doubt Haruhi is skiing in June, Tamaki," Kyouya interjects politely. From the corner of his eye he watches Éclair unfolding a blanket, checking her for a reaction to that girl's name. Sure he saw an imperceptive twitch of delicate fingers, he feels emboldened. "You can tell her yourself when we return to Japan." He watches Tamaki now too. For a hundred years he stays to that spot, looking over the curve of Tamaki's back, his face drawn in recalling kanji. For lifetimes Kyouya waits for a reply, stomach churning.
"You're right," Tamaki glances back to him, hardly hesitating despite how it may have appeared to Kyouya. He flips the postcard over, marveling at cheesy shot of the Alps. "But I'm sure she'd love a card!"
-
To put it simply, they had declared war.
When Tamaki greets the summer house in Japanese, Kyouya doesn't hide a smirk from Éclair. But when he notices how Tamaki mixed up the kanji for snow with rain on Haruhi's postcard, he can feel Éclair’s eyes on his, the coiling of his nerves. This competition is what will break me, Kyouya knows. He can tell, but he can't stop.
Even while they unpack, he can tell this rivalry has become palpable even to the object between them. Éclair and Kyouya have shouldered in together to assist Tamaki in placing his clothing aside. This is a job for servants, Kyouya finds himself thinking in a jet lagged haze. Tamaki explains it away without Kyouya needing to vocalize it ("Well, I forgot what I packed, and I want to remember the clothing I wore for my first trip skiing!") However trivial the chore, they are both there, edging into conversations with the blond in-between sifting through his snow things, his cashmere sweaters. Kyouya finds himself somewhat more engaged with the process, mostly because Éclair would rather lounge at the window. After all, he seethes, she probably still considers herself the victor.
At one point, Tamaki eagerly shoves a linen forward ("Does this need to be washed?") and after a scuffle Kyouya manages to hold it at a more comfortable distance from his face. There's some vanilla, but it's too much of the sharp aroma of the dinner napkins at the resort. It reeks of the night where Éclair lingered on his arm, danced beside him, lorded a victory he was certain now she knew she had won. It doesn't match Tamaki's eager eyes. Kyouya shoves the shirt back into Tamaki, smarting as the other boy slides hands over his own, a questioning look.
Living at this proximity, at this heightened anxiety of competing with Éclair, all these things have been changing him. There's nothing new with that, because Tamaki exists to change people for the better. But this place, this girl- Kyouya thinks it might not be that good sort of change that’s happening to him.
"Tamaki, don't lean on him so," Éclair calls, waving the boys apart. Its a simple twist of her wrist, but to Kyouya it's a firm as a slap to a misbehaving child. "That's enough of this game. I believe our friend is still a little air sick, you should go rest."
"'Air sick'?" Kyouya replies, not because the excuse is a poor cover-up for his grimace, but because this is a phrase he did not know in French. Tamaki brings a finger to his chin, thinking. He turns his head, as if expecting the translation to wander into one his ears. Neither of them come up with the word. Kyouya's able to excuse himself under the guise of fetching a dictionary. When Kyouya leaves he feels a curl of failure angling in his stomach, his chest, twisting throughout his throat that by the time he collapses into his room for a respite, his whole body aches with it.
Kyouya doesn't rest. He lies atop the blankets (it's much too hot to bear even lifting a sheet), and falls back into the train of thought Tamaki had rudely interrupted by falling on the slopes. The topic of living a life without him. Several months ago Kyouya would not have imagined he would lie awake in the heat of the day, entertaining such personal projections while his laptop battery went uncharged and months of business go to waste. Surely he had not come to France like this from the start. It wasn't always like this, Kyouya's teeth gnash together in frustration. He had been in control when the summer began, hadn't he? There must have been a turning point, he insists, twisting onto one side.
The fever- Perhaps meningitis set in and boiled my brain, therefore making me much more susceptible to- Kyouya closes his eyes. No. There was no clinical observation to assuage him. He wasn't sick with any illness, there was a rational explanation for the way his nerves had wound themselves around Tamaki's every move. He had simply misconstrued that strong desire as a desire for something else-
Who would want him? his affected mind snarled. Why was it his job to be discreetly and forever involved in reuniting Tamaki and his mother? What did it matter to him if the boy fell off a horse or skis around the terror of a woman his grandmother had chosen for him? After all, this was a woman Tamaki had nearly abandoned them all for- and didn't decide to stay in Tokyo by any effort of Kyouya's. Yes, he fumed, slipping to his feet and farther down the hall. Yes, there was no point in trying to struggle over Tamaki's whims and favors. He gave them willingly to every person in the room, Kyouya had no reason to feel slighted by any events that had transpired. It was sickening, really, the idea that he would look deeply into their interactions, their closeness- for what? Kyouya was working hard to turn the deep taste of failure into a shallow bite of indifference.
After all, a war would be decided from the outcome of great battles, not the small skirmishes in a darkened sitting room. These struggles for Tamaki, a childish desire to keep the other boy a central figure in his life alone- it was just his good business sense, unwilling to compromise to an arrangement that didn't favor him. If they were hopeless or simply not profitable, he should shed them with dignity.
Somehow, it felt as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
Éclair beams over her glass of wine when Kyouya enters. His footsteps lag just from passing the girl, as if Tamaki's presence over the piano has forced him back. His mouth curls into a wry, furious smile. Isn't that what you wish your music could do, Kyouya thinks. You want to bring us together through this song. He’s terribly glad this no longer bothers him.
"Oh good. The color is back in your face." Éclair slips an arm around Kyouya's, though he makes no effort to meet her gesture. He lets his arm hang cold at his side, as though Éclair’s grip is merely the final cut for an amputee.
"Do you know this song?" she asks, twisting his face, her mouth to catch in Kyouya's expression. Of course he knows it.
"He played it for my family." Kyouya, for some reason, says this with absolutely no self-interest. Éclair, who is as easy to read as the dark pools in the rocky crag of the beach, replies with the same emptiness-
"He played it for me too," she nods. Somehow, as if sensing her own egalitarian admission, Éclair smoothly includes some additional trivia, "The day we were engaged." Kyouya marvels how this serpentine woman knows just what was on one's mind moments before you reenter a room. He decides not to let it bother him and nods appraisingly to Tamaki's shoulders. So what if he had, he wants to say- or rather, the old competitor wished to say. They have never spoken of the engagement fiasco in all their time here in France, he thinks discussing it now would be in further poor taste.
Kyouya is so silent, Éclair fills the gaps in the conversation herself. “I wonder why he is playing it again now?”
"Making amends, I suppose," he shrugs. Not even Tamaki could be so clueless to not notice the fight that circled between them, and in the blond's selfish style he surely had assumed it was about him.
"Really," Éclair slides through the conversation, eyebrows raised. "I was wondering if you came along to achieve something similar." While Kyouya's mind spun with what he could possibly want to be forgiven for, the notes falter.
"Tamaki?" Éclair raises her eyes from her glass and Kyouya stands. One of Tamaki's hands still rests over the key, caught resounding mid trill as Tamaki's other hand lingers on his side. His fingers scrape along the material of his shirt, face pulled in momentary pain. Kyouya swears under his breath, crossing the room in three swift motions.
"Your ribs?" he asks in clipped tones, holding out a hand to help the other boy stand. "You shouldn't push yourself. They are bruised, you remember." Tamaki comes to his feet, so unsteady Éclair sets her drink on the table.
"Yes. Made weak from excessive hugging," Tamaki laughs, hearty enough that he nearly doubles over from the pressure, squeaking and squirming underneath Kyouya's arm. Having only been a late arrival to both of Tamaki's injuries on this trip, Kyouya's mind reels when the other boy's grimace goes through him like an electric shock. He was wrong to assume he could live without meeting every twist of Tamaki's face, a grin or a grimace. He wouldn’t be able to cast off that need to succeed over Éclair, simply because this girl was responsible for these injuries, these injustices. Tamaki had called Kyouya along to protect him, the idiot.
They abandon the room without a word to the lady of the home. Tamaki ducked his head down (shame?), before shooting Kyouya a smile made entirely of teeth. Kyouya wanted to punch every molar out at that second, that repulsive tendency to pretend nothing was the matter to appease others. If Kyouya had to live his life that way, he could at least take solace in the fact that Tamaki did not.
"You're not all right," he rebukes the expression, half dragging the groaning Tamaki into the nearest room. "Here, you can lie down." Tamaki breaks in his whimpers when he comes crashing down over the blankets, piping up in an aghast tone,
"This is Éclair’s bed!"
Briefly Kyouya weighs the chances of dragging Tamaki into another room- anywhere- his own. The idea of Tamaki sprawled over his sheets with his mouth open in delicate discomfort, all heavy breaths and fingers roving against the pillows-- Kyouya tears his mind as far from that notion as possible, feeling the color rising to his cheeks. No, Tamaki would probably be safer here, he chastises that part of his mind.
Resolute, he sweeps Éclair’s quilt over Tamaki.
"She won't mind, " Kyouya replies numbly, tucking the blankets around him like the nursemaid he swore he'd never be. "Just lie here and try not to move," he commands. "I'm going to see Bernard about sending for a doctor again. You probably re-injured yourself today."
"I didn't, Kyouya," he protests weakly, voice lost under the blankets and throw pillows like a small, sick child in his parents' bed. "You know that."
"I can't watch you all the time," he echoes Éclair’s triumphant statement from Switzerland. It seems obvious now back in Provence. Kyouya always awoke too late in the day, always losing a couple hours to Éclair in the drawing room with Tamaki, out in the veranda, in- His eyes snap back to Tamaki with stunning, sweltering dread. Tamaki had known instantly this was Éclair’s room, didn't he? Yes, he is well acquainted with this room.
In the span of a few hours Kyouya feels he has lost track of the points to Éclair’s side, the causalities on his own. I never should have begun to keep score, Kyouya fumes, shutting the bedroom door behind him. If I had done so from the beginning I would have lost track of her underhanded victories by now. If I hadn’t agreed to come to this place I would’ve left this rivalry to a singular fight over the culture festival; One, Host Club and zero, Éclair.
She meets him when Kyouya finds Bernard in the western hall.
"Please send for a doctor," Kyouya orders and marvels at his grasp of the French in that sentence, having heard it plenty throughout this nightmare excursion. "Tamaki is in Miss Tonnerre's room."
"I don't think that's necessary," she cut in fluidly, nodding a dismissal to the manservant. "Tamaki simply had a long day and now it is his turn to rest. Please bring him an ice pack." As Bernard left, her eyes flickered back to Kyouya. "He is in- my bedroom, you said?" He ignores the sting of her sentence.
"He could have cracked his skull," Kyouya points out. It was probable, he rationalized. After all, he hadn't seen the boy fall, and considering how large Tamaki's head can get in a good mood, it wouldn't be that unlikely he could have fallen skull first. "You should have taken him for a CT scan." Éclair laughs, pointing out Tamaki slept on the plane and therefore couldn't possibly be concussed.
"Honestly, Kyouya," she drawls. He hates the sound of his first name on her lips, as though there is anything of familiarity between them, anything but a cold dislike. "I don't understand these theatrics. Please don't assume you are the only person here concerned for Tamaki's welfare. I have taken the necessary precautions-" He cuts her off with a low drawl of his own.
"Well, forgive me if I find them less than satisfactory." Having not intended for that to be anything more than the truth, rather than a dig, Kyouya is pleasantly surprised when Éclair’s face twists in the tiniest corner of her expression, as though she's being slowly upended by the intrusion into her own lonely summers. In the most unsightly way, Kyouya can feel his heart swell with this victory.
"I'm sorry you feel that way," Éclair manages at last, busying herself with a crease in her dress. "If you think his condition is worsening to warrant another examination, then we'll allow it-" Kyouya doesn't bite back a scoff at the word 'allow'. Reddening in frustration, she gives no other sign she heard the man's laugh at all. "However if you feel Tamaki's in such supreme pain I don't think it's wise to move him." She looks past Kyouya's shoulder, after the door to her room. Her expression changes to a slim look of success.
"Tell me- do my accommodations also fail to live up to your expectations? Our Tamaki has not complained." The slide of her gaze to meet with his own is warm and slow in its hurt, like a blade slipping from a deep wound. Kyouya is sure it would ache more had his intention been to argue with her.
"I have to ask you to take this seriously," he counters, feeling his patience thin with the toil of translation. Somehow the conversation has switched from French to Japanese, largely because Kyouya was not sure he could be clear in a foreign tongue. Éclair seems to have the same difficulty, countering Kyouya's civil tongue with her own native one.
"I would if I thought this had anything to do with Tamaki," is her tart reply, clicking with French consonants. Kyouya spent too many years feeding lines to women and goading along healthy interdepartmental rivalries to know a bait when he hears one. But recognizing the remark and ignoring it seem to be entirely differently things.
When he turns on his heel, Éclair steps after him.
"I think, Mister Ootori," she continues, "This has much to do with what we were talking before. You are not here to make amends at all." That engagement again. He resists the urge to roll his eyes.
Éclair stops entirely too close to him, wringing her fingers in her hands. Kyouya's eyes chance on them only briefly- it seems like such an ill-fitting gesture for the composed tone of voice she was working with. However, it wouldn't be the first time Éclair’s movements deceived her.
She sighs, hardly a genuine expression. "If I did not know you, I'd think you'd come along to punish me." Kyouya sincerely has to resist gaping at her.
"Why would I hold a grudge for something that has already been resolved?" he remarks, instinctively pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. If Éclair had ever been to the Host Club, she would know this was the closest action to a victory celebration within Kyouya's muted movements. "I'm sorry if you misunderstand, but you are no threat to anyone." He catches himself before saying 'to me', which could have been deeply misconstrued. Regardless, Éclair’s eyes flash at his laughter, finally perhaps having sensed her loss of power, how the game had turned to Kyouya's advantage.
"'Threat'?" Her echoing voice cracks. Éclair raises her shaking hand and for a moment Kyouya thinks she's going to strike him. But her arm stays stiff, and slowly the ring comes into focus. She hadn't been wringing her fingers. She had been twisting a ring around to reveal the crisp, clear gem.
"You are a good friend," she concedes, though Kyouya's suddenly deaf to anything but the ringing in his ears. "But that is all you will ever be." Because the engagement is still on, Kyouya finishes in his head, in his tightened chest, in this hollow space inside him. Éclair’s heels snap over the floors as she slips out of sight.
-
Kyouya works straight from Eclair's side- their reflection after dinner- to his friend's room, his demands in mind.
He eases the door shut behind him, squinting through the darkened suite's foyer. For a moment he wonders if the doctor stationed a guard to prevent the still recovering Tamaki from visitors. He wonders if he has enough cash on him to buy the man off. Tentatively Kyouya slips through the room, spotting no lookout.
Tamaki instead looks up from a newspaper in his lap, pressed out like wrapping paper over the blankets, his elevated leg. He grins, slapping a particular article with his palm.
"Oh good, you're here," he cries. "They gave me the German paper for some reason." He waves for Kyouya to come closer. "I want you to read this to me. Look, see the dog in the photo? She looks just like my Antoinette." He pauses thoughtfully as his friend lurches towards the bed like a death march. "You don't suppose it is my Antoinette, do you? This does look like Tokyo, especially that building- oh." Tamaki has faltered from his happy chatter, somehow noticing the gray pallor of Kyouya’s face, the shaking of his shoulders. Normally Kyouya would recoil from that concerned gaze, but he's run out of energy.
Tamaki murmurs his name and more than anything he wants to ask to go home at just that moment. It’s become a chore, really, Éclair and her would-be victories, Tamaki and his bruised ribs, the way the word 'Tokyo' reverberates through him.
Kyouya kneels at the side of the bed, like he’s praying like a child again, as if he's wishing his father would notice him, that his brothers would take him with them when they went away to school, that Fuyumi would stop treating him like a baby- all the things a spoilt child could plead for. He wants that plane ride home as badly and hopelessly as a child wants.
Tamaki calls his name again, like the snap of a frozen branch in winter. Kyouya sighs and stands.
"You haven't eaten yet, have you?" he asks, looking over his shoulder as he reaches for the phone. "I'll have them send you something from the kitchen." Tamaki cheerfully asks for croquettes, but his smile doesn't reach his eyes. He stays like that for hours, through tiny bites of a light dinner, through Kyouya's slow translations. The entire time he feels the club president's eyes boring in his shoulders, his collarbone, shoving him deep down in the bed. It's strong enough Kyouya is sure he's already hallucinating the other boy's hands on him (unfortunately- fortunately? He isn't sure anymore.)
Kyouya leaves when the other boy wears himself out with something- not worrying, because Tamaki is too confidant for such a character damning pastime.
He meets the Tonnerre's in the sitting room, mid conversation. He nods accordingly, yes Éclair retired early. Yes, he had been with Tamaki. His leg is bothering him still. Éclair’s nameless mother cuckolds in an unfamiliar tongue.
"But really- Hurt again?" Mrs Tonnerre's voice clicks like a tightly wound clock. "What a boy. No wonder they sent him abroad." Kyouya switches suddenly from weary appeasement to a white hot sear of emotion. He's blind with fury, sure he misheard or wrongly translated. Tamaki was a constant nuisance, but only Kyouya had earned the right to say such things by paying his dues.
"You must be awfully disappointed," Mr Tonnerre grins like a shark, so perfectly predatory Kyouya is afraid his outrage must've been visible. He continues, "For having to return to the summer home tomorrow." Relief floods through Kyouya's battle torn body like an avalanche. He has to remind himself that simply leaving these mountains doesn't guarantee him any less misery and resentment than he has experienced atop them. If anything the situation seems as though it would only get unavoidably worse upon their return to the French countryside.
"No," he lies. "I have found myself missing France." He's not sure when he's told a bigger lie, not even to his father, not even on the opening day of the Host Club, not when he conceded that a trip to see Éclair would not be bad at all.
-
They board the plane separate from her parents. Éclair hugs her father and lets his mother kiss her once, twice, three times, holding one another's hands. Kyouya watches disinterested from the jet's window. They had a wedding to attend in Paris, Éclair has explained, eyes flickering wildly throughout the cabin. Kyouya wonders if that sort of overt familiar affection can scramble even the steel nerves of his opponent.
He pulls the curtain across the window. Yes. Éclair is his opponent in a way. Since she had brought up the topic of their rivalry, he found he couldn’t banish it from his thoughts all the previous evening. It nags and lingers in the corner of his mind, catching the way Éclair takes a seat close to Tamaki rather than one on her own. Perhaps she had sat in such a seat on the flight to Switzerland, but Kyouya blames his and Éclair’s previous confrontation over dinner that led him to notice the competition between them now. Although, putting that thought into being is ludicrous in itself when he considers what is being fought over.
"I'm writing a letter to Haruhi," Tamaki announces mid flight, over their first round of drinks. "I don't think she's ever been skiing before!" he nods in agreement with himself, bending over the paper again. "I need to let her know to bring the skis’ together to stop, just in case she's in a situation like I was."
"I doubt Haruhi is skiing in June, Tamaki," Kyouya interjects politely. From the corner of his eye he watches Éclair unfolding a blanket, checking her for a reaction to that girl's name. Sure he saw an imperceptive twitch of delicate fingers, he feels emboldened. "You can tell her yourself when we return to Japan." He watches Tamaki now too. For a hundred years he stays to that spot, looking over the curve of Tamaki's back, his face drawn in recalling kanji. For lifetimes Kyouya waits for a reply, stomach churning.
"You're right," Tamaki glances back to him, hardly hesitating despite how it may have appeared to Kyouya. He flips the postcard over, marveling at cheesy shot of the Alps. "But I'm sure she'd love a card!"
-
To put it simply, they had declared war.
When Tamaki greets the summer house in Japanese, Kyouya doesn't hide a smirk from Éclair. But when he notices how Tamaki mixed up the kanji for snow with rain on Haruhi's postcard, he can feel Éclair’s eyes on his, the coiling of his nerves. This competition is what will break me, Kyouya knows. He can tell, but he can't stop.
Even while they unpack, he can tell this rivalry has become palpable even to the object between them. Éclair and Kyouya have shouldered in together to assist Tamaki in placing his clothing aside. This is a job for servants, Kyouya finds himself thinking in a jet lagged haze. Tamaki explains it away without Kyouya needing to vocalize it ("Well, I forgot what I packed, and I want to remember the clothing I wore for my first trip skiing!") However trivial the chore, they are both there, edging into conversations with the blond in-between sifting through his snow things, his cashmere sweaters. Kyouya finds himself somewhat more engaged with the process, mostly because Éclair would rather lounge at the window. After all, he seethes, she probably still considers herself the victor.
At one point, Tamaki eagerly shoves a linen forward ("Does this need to be washed?") and after a scuffle Kyouya manages to hold it at a more comfortable distance from his face. There's some vanilla, but it's too much of the sharp aroma of the dinner napkins at the resort. It reeks of the night where Éclair lingered on his arm, danced beside him, lorded a victory he was certain now she knew she had won. It doesn't match Tamaki's eager eyes. Kyouya shoves the shirt back into Tamaki, smarting as the other boy slides hands over his own, a questioning look.
Living at this proximity, at this heightened anxiety of competing with Éclair, all these things have been changing him. There's nothing new with that, because Tamaki exists to change people for the better. But this place, this girl- Kyouya thinks it might not be that good sort of change that’s happening to him.
"Tamaki, don't lean on him so," Éclair calls, waving the boys apart. Its a simple twist of her wrist, but to Kyouya it's a firm as a slap to a misbehaving child. "That's enough of this game. I believe our friend is still a little air sick, you should go rest."
"'Air sick'?" Kyouya replies, not because the excuse is a poor cover-up for his grimace, but because this is a phrase he did not know in French. Tamaki brings a finger to his chin, thinking. He turns his head, as if expecting the translation to wander into one his ears. Neither of them come up with the word. Kyouya's able to excuse himself under the guise of fetching a dictionary. When Kyouya leaves he feels a curl of failure angling in his stomach, his chest, twisting throughout his throat that by the time he collapses into his room for a respite, his whole body aches with it.
Kyouya doesn't rest. He lies atop the blankets (it's much too hot to bear even lifting a sheet), and falls back into the train of thought Tamaki had rudely interrupted by falling on the slopes. The topic of living a life without him. Several months ago Kyouya would not have imagined he would lie awake in the heat of the day, entertaining such personal projections while his laptop battery went uncharged and months of business go to waste. Surely he had not come to France like this from the start. It wasn't always like this, Kyouya's teeth gnash together in frustration. He had been in control when the summer began, hadn't he? There must have been a turning point, he insists, twisting onto one side.
The fever- Perhaps meningitis set in and boiled my brain, therefore making me much more susceptible to- Kyouya closes his eyes. No. There was no clinical observation to assuage him. He wasn't sick with any illness, there was a rational explanation for the way his nerves had wound themselves around Tamaki's every move. He had simply misconstrued that strong desire as a desire for something else-
Who would want him? his affected mind snarled. Why was it his job to be discreetly and forever involved in reuniting Tamaki and his mother? What did it matter to him if the boy fell off a horse or skis around the terror of a woman his grandmother had chosen for him? After all, this was a woman Tamaki had nearly abandoned them all for- and didn't decide to stay in Tokyo by any effort of Kyouya's. Yes, he fumed, slipping to his feet and farther down the hall. Yes, there was no point in trying to struggle over Tamaki's whims and favors. He gave them willingly to every person in the room, Kyouya had no reason to feel slighted by any events that had transpired. It was sickening, really, the idea that he would look deeply into their interactions, their closeness- for what? Kyouya was working hard to turn the deep taste of failure into a shallow bite of indifference.
After all, a war would be decided from the outcome of great battles, not the small skirmishes in a darkened sitting room. These struggles for Tamaki, a childish desire to keep the other boy a central figure in his life alone- it was just his good business sense, unwilling to compromise to an arrangement that didn't favor him. If they were hopeless or simply not profitable, he should shed them with dignity.
Somehow, it felt as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
Éclair beams over her glass of wine when Kyouya enters. His footsteps lag just from passing the girl, as if Tamaki's presence over the piano has forced him back. His mouth curls into a wry, furious smile. Isn't that what you wish your music could do, Kyouya thinks. You want to bring us together through this song. He’s terribly glad this no longer bothers him.
"Oh good. The color is back in your face." Éclair slips an arm around Kyouya's, though he makes no effort to meet her gesture. He lets his arm hang cold at his side, as though Éclair’s grip is merely the final cut for an amputee.
"Do you know this song?" she asks, twisting his face, her mouth to catch in Kyouya's expression. Of course he knows it.
"He played it for my family." Kyouya, for some reason, says this with absolutely no self-interest. Éclair, who is as easy to read as the dark pools in the rocky crag of the beach, replies with the same emptiness-
"He played it for me too," she nods. Somehow, as if sensing her own egalitarian admission, Éclair smoothly includes some additional trivia, "The day we were engaged." Kyouya marvels how this serpentine woman knows just what was on one's mind moments before you reenter a room. He decides not to let it bother him and nods appraisingly to Tamaki's shoulders. So what if he had, he wants to say- or rather, the old competitor wished to say. They have never spoken of the engagement fiasco in all their time here in France, he thinks discussing it now would be in further poor taste.
Kyouya is so silent, Éclair fills the gaps in the conversation herself. “I wonder why he is playing it again now?”
"Making amends, I suppose," he shrugs. Not even Tamaki could be so clueless to not notice the fight that circled between them, and in the blond's selfish style he surely had assumed it was about him.
"Really," Éclair slides through the conversation, eyebrows raised. "I was wondering if you came along to achieve something similar." While Kyouya's mind spun with what he could possibly want to be forgiven for, the notes falter.
"Tamaki?" Éclair raises her eyes from her glass and Kyouya stands. One of Tamaki's hands still rests over the key, caught resounding mid trill as Tamaki's other hand lingers on his side. His fingers scrape along the material of his shirt, face pulled in momentary pain. Kyouya swears under his breath, crossing the room in three swift motions.
"Your ribs?" he asks in clipped tones, holding out a hand to help the other boy stand. "You shouldn't push yourself. They are bruised, you remember." Tamaki comes to his feet, so unsteady Éclair sets her drink on the table.
"Yes. Made weak from excessive hugging," Tamaki laughs, hearty enough that he nearly doubles over from the pressure, squeaking and squirming underneath Kyouya's arm. Having only been a late arrival to both of Tamaki's injuries on this trip, Kyouya's mind reels when the other boy's grimace goes through him like an electric shock. He was wrong to assume he could live without meeting every twist of Tamaki's face, a grin or a grimace. He wouldn’t be able to cast off that need to succeed over Éclair, simply because this girl was responsible for these injuries, these injustices. Tamaki had called Kyouya along to protect him, the idiot.
They abandon the room without a word to the lady of the home. Tamaki ducked his head down (shame?), before shooting Kyouya a smile made entirely of teeth. Kyouya wanted to punch every molar out at that second, that repulsive tendency to pretend nothing was the matter to appease others. If Kyouya had to live his life that way, he could at least take solace in the fact that Tamaki did not.
"You're not all right," he rebukes the expression, half dragging the groaning Tamaki into the nearest room. "Here, you can lie down." Tamaki breaks in his whimpers when he comes crashing down over the blankets, piping up in an aghast tone,
"This is Éclair’s bed!"
Briefly Kyouya weighs the chances of dragging Tamaki into another room- anywhere- his own. The idea of Tamaki sprawled over his sheets with his mouth open in delicate discomfort, all heavy breaths and fingers roving against the pillows-- Kyouya tears his mind as far from that notion as possible, feeling the color rising to his cheeks. No, Tamaki would probably be safer here, he chastises that part of his mind.
Resolute, he sweeps Éclair’s quilt over Tamaki.
"She won't mind, " Kyouya replies numbly, tucking the blankets around him like the nursemaid he swore he'd never be. "Just lie here and try not to move," he commands. "I'm going to see Bernard about sending for a doctor again. You probably re-injured yourself today."
"I didn't, Kyouya," he protests weakly, voice lost under the blankets and throw pillows like a small, sick child in his parents' bed. "You know that."
"I can't watch you all the time," he echoes Éclair’s triumphant statement from Switzerland. It seems obvious now back in Provence. Kyouya always awoke too late in the day, always losing a couple hours to Éclair in the drawing room with Tamaki, out in the veranda, in- His eyes snap back to Tamaki with stunning, sweltering dread. Tamaki had known instantly this was Éclair’s room, didn't he? Yes, he is well acquainted with this room.
In the span of a few hours Kyouya feels he has lost track of the points to Éclair’s side, the causalities on his own. I never should have begun to keep score, Kyouya fumes, shutting the bedroom door behind him. If I had done so from the beginning I would have lost track of her underhanded victories by now. If I hadn’t agreed to come to this place I would’ve left this rivalry to a singular fight over the culture festival; One, Host Club and zero, Éclair.
She meets him when Kyouya finds Bernard in the western hall.
"Please send for a doctor," Kyouya orders and marvels at his grasp of the French in that sentence, having heard it plenty throughout this nightmare excursion. "Tamaki is in Miss Tonnerre's room."
"I don't think that's necessary," she cut in fluidly, nodding a dismissal to the manservant. "Tamaki simply had a long day and now it is his turn to rest. Please bring him an ice pack." As Bernard left, her eyes flickered back to Kyouya. "He is in- my bedroom, you said?" He ignores the sting of her sentence.
"He could have cracked his skull," Kyouya points out. It was probable, he rationalized. After all, he hadn't seen the boy fall, and considering how large Tamaki's head can get in a good mood, it wouldn't be that unlikely he could have fallen skull first. "You should have taken him for a CT scan." Éclair laughs, pointing out Tamaki slept on the plane and therefore couldn't possibly be concussed.
"Honestly, Kyouya," she drawls. He hates the sound of his first name on her lips, as though there is anything of familiarity between them, anything but a cold dislike. "I don't understand these theatrics. Please don't assume you are the only person here concerned for Tamaki's welfare. I have taken the necessary precautions-" He cuts her off with a low drawl of his own.
"Well, forgive me if I find them less than satisfactory." Having not intended for that to be anything more than the truth, rather than a dig, Kyouya is pleasantly surprised when Éclair’s face twists in the tiniest corner of her expression, as though she's being slowly upended by the intrusion into her own lonely summers. In the most unsightly way, Kyouya can feel his heart swell with this victory.
"I'm sorry you feel that way," Éclair manages at last, busying herself with a crease in her dress. "If you think his condition is worsening to warrant another examination, then we'll allow it-" Kyouya doesn't bite back a scoff at the word 'allow'. Reddening in frustration, she gives no other sign she heard the man's laugh at all. "However if you feel Tamaki's in such supreme pain I don't think it's wise to move him." She looks past Kyouya's shoulder, after the door to her room. Her expression changes to a slim look of success.
"Tell me- do my accommodations also fail to live up to your expectations? Our Tamaki has not complained." The slide of her gaze to meet with his own is warm and slow in its hurt, like a blade slipping from a deep wound. Kyouya is sure it would ache more had his intention been to argue with her.
"I have to ask you to take this seriously," he counters, feeling his patience thin with the toil of translation. Somehow the conversation has switched from French to Japanese, largely because Kyouya was not sure he could be clear in a foreign tongue. Éclair seems to have the same difficulty, countering Kyouya's civil tongue with her own native one.
"I would if I thought this had anything to do with Tamaki," is her tart reply, clicking with French consonants. Kyouya spent too many years feeding lines to women and goading along healthy interdepartmental rivalries to know a bait when he hears one. But recognizing the remark and ignoring it seem to be entirely differently things.
When he turns on his heel, Éclair steps after him.
"I think, Mister Ootori," she continues, "This has much to do with what we were talking before. You are not here to make amends at all." That engagement again. He resists the urge to roll his eyes.
Éclair stops entirely too close to him, wringing her fingers in her hands. Kyouya's eyes chance on them only briefly- it seems like such an ill-fitting gesture for the composed tone of voice she was working with. However, it wouldn't be the first time Éclair’s movements deceived her.
She sighs, hardly a genuine expression. "If I did not know you, I'd think you'd come along to punish me." Kyouya sincerely has to resist gaping at her.
"Why would I hold a grudge for something that has already been resolved?" he remarks, instinctively pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. If Éclair had ever been to the Host Club, she would know this was the closest action to a victory celebration within Kyouya's muted movements. "I'm sorry if you misunderstand, but you are no threat to anyone." He catches himself before saying 'to me', which could have been deeply misconstrued. Regardless, Éclair’s eyes flash at his laughter, finally perhaps having sensed her loss of power, how the game had turned to Kyouya's advantage.
"'Threat'?" Her echoing voice cracks. Éclair raises her shaking hand and for a moment Kyouya thinks she's going to strike him. But her arm stays stiff, and slowly the ring comes into focus. She hadn't been wringing her fingers. She had been twisting a ring around to reveal the crisp, clear gem.
"You are a good friend," she concedes, though Kyouya's suddenly deaf to anything but the ringing in his ears. "But that is all you will ever be." Because the engagement is still on, Kyouya finishes in his head, in his tightened chest, in this hollow space inside him. Éclair’s heels snap over the floors as she slips out of sight.