BLOOM [OHSHC]

Chapter 10 - Eyes Like Horns

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"Miss Kimura."

I lifted my head, startled straight out of sleep by none other than Kyoya Ootori, who towered over me with an impenetrable mask of boredom, handsome as ever in his lavender uniform. "Mm?" I managed, wiping drool from my face with my sleeve and digging the sleep boogers from the corners of my eyes.

"Class is over," he said, tilting his head toward the door. "Coming to the Club today?"

Yawning, I nodded, gathering up my unused notebook and pens and shoving them in my backpack haphazardly, following him out of the room and down the hall. He didn't say anything, and I didn't mind. Honestly, I was still pretty out of it, so the silence let me wake up a bit before I had to interact with other humans.

Kyoya didn't count. We've established that he's a cyborg. Android?

Whatever.

"Are you left-handed, Miss Kimura?" Kyoya finally said just as we rounded a corner, the music room in our sights.

Of all the things to ask, why that? My face crumpled in sleepy confusion, and I squinted up at him through my stinging contacts. "Sure am. Such an observant mommy. Would've thought your little gossip-mag-dossier on me would've told you that a long time ago." My tone was a little harsh and sarcastic and grumbly from sleep, but I didn't super care. I pushed ahead of him, letting myself into the club without looking back, only stopping to hold the door for him briefly.

From there, I stashed my bag in the back room and made my way to the bathroom to check my makeup and stuff. Luckily, it seemed like I hadn't napped too hard, so my face looked fine. I mean, a little sleepy, sure, but fine enough to interact with other humans, I guess.

Haruhi waited for me outside of the bathroom when I finished, surprising the shit out of me. She laughed, and I took a second to compose myself as she said, "Any chance you want to study together, Kimura? Sounds like both of us have slower days today. And I know that a big test is coming up in both Japanese Lit and pre-calc."

"Oh my god, that sounds great," I moaned, "Let me grab my textbook, and I'll come meet you. Find a comfy couch for us!"

"Already on it!"

Within half an hour, we had an audience.

Turned out that apparently Haruhi and I were hilarious.

I mean, I could have told you that. But now I had proof.

A gaggle of host customers abandoned their hosts to come watch Haruhi and I study together, clapping when she or I got a flashcard correct for Japanese Lit, and cheering us on when we struggled to remember terminology or the proper equation for precalculus. They particularly loved the weird hints we gave each other when doing flash cards, trying to help each other toward the answer.

"Okay, uh, here," Haruhi said, holding up the next card for me. It read: Durian Sukegawa.

I needed to give her the name of their most famous work, a quote from it, and a theme from their work that the professor might ask for an essay about... but my brain was not working. Sputtering, I blew a raspberry to kill time and chewed my lip. "Hnggg," I groaned, grasping at straws in the darkest recesses of my mind, "Something food related, right?"

"Yup," Haruhi nodded, "Hikaru hates this but Kaoru loves it?"

Immediately the answer jumped into my brain. That hint was tooo easy. "SWEET BEAN PASTE!" I yelled, throwing my arms in the air, my brain flooding with information on the novel we'd read early in the semester. "My favorite quote is 'I began to understand that we were born in order to see and listen to the world. And that's all this world wants of us. It doesn't matter that I was never a teacher or a member of the workforce, my life had meaning'."

Haruhi grinned at me from behind her flashcard, nodding. "And a theme?"

"Change!" I cried, my smile wide as I stood up, climbing onto the couch cushions, throwing my arms wide to add, "Friendship! Redemption!"

The girls laughed as I propped one leg up on the couch arm, breathing heavily with my arms still open, waiting for Haruhi to answer. She smirked and shook her head before flinging the flashcard into the air, chuckling, "You are correct."

Our audience burst into cheers, and I let out a "woop!" of excitement as I let myself collapse onto the couch, all of the happiness washing through me as I reveled in my hard work. But Haruhi didn't let me rest. "Next up, Banana Yoshimoto," she said, holding up the flashcard.

"Kitchen," I said automatically, earning another round of applause and launching into another bit of witty repartee with Haruhi.

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Beyond the study-session-turned-social-event, at the edge of the host club, Kyoya crossed his arms over his chest and frowned at the noisy flock of customers surrounding Haruhi and Michiyo. His planner protected his heart, held tight between his arms and his chest. Some kind of emotion brewed under the surface of his skin, but whatever it was...

Kyoya Ootori did not like it.

"Something wrong, Kyoya?" Tamaki sidled up to his best friend, hands carefully folded behind his back, smirk hardly restrained. He could see Kyoya's distress from a mile away, screaming for Tamaki to save him and intervene ASAP. Or at least, that's how Tamaki perceived it.

Kyoya's steel-silver eyes flicked from the giggling girls to Tamaki and back, and he sighed, frown deflating as the tension leached from his shoulders. "No. It's nothing," he grumbled, massaging his temples out of frustration both with himself (for the feelings) and with Tamaki (for being irritating).

Tamaki scooted closer, poking Kyoya's cheekbone repeatedly as he said with a teasing, singsong voice, "I don't believe youuu~"

Swatting Tamaki's hand away with a sneer, Kyoya scoffed and spun out of reach. "Don't believe me then, that's none of my concern."

But despite Kyoya's best efforts to lose Tamaki in the club, Tamaki tailed him clear across the room until they found themselves seated at Kyoya's favorite table - the one perfect for eavesdropping. They maintained eye contact throughout the tea pouring - Kyoya with venom-laced indifference and Tamaki with his delighted smirk - until finally Tamaki broke the tension with a chuckle. "You're jealous of Haruhi."

Kyoya had never heard such bullshit in his life. "Why on earth would I be jealous of Haruhi? I've never been jealous of anyone, and I'm not starting now."

Leaning back in his chair, Tamaki steeped in his single moment of social clarity. For once in his life, he wasn't oblivious. He saw, plain as day, the emotions flickering in Kyoya's expression: false disdain, confusion, forced neutrality, a tinge of irritation, longing, and most of all... jealousy. "Refute me all you want, Kyoya, but I know what I see. You may have never been jealous of anyone before, but right here, right now? You're jealous of Haruhi."

The two of them sat in silence, locking eyes like horns, neither one backing down or apologizing for what they believed to be the truth. Every so often one of them would sip their tea, but otherwise, they simply stared and stood their ground.

Tamaki watched as the confusion took over Kyoya's countenance, the barest of furrows creasing his brow as his gaze unfocused, seemingly still meeting Tamaki's confident stare. As his best friend, Tamaki wanted to stay as long as it took for Kyoya to figure out whatever troubling thoughts swirled in his mind. He wouldn't- couldn't just abandon him in a time of turmoil.

But Kyoya didn't know what to name the twisting, warping feeling in his stomach at the sound of Michiyo's laugh, the fluttering of his heartbeat when she teased him, or the heat in his ears when she smiled his way. He'd read enough books to fill a library, but in this instance...

Words failed him spectacularly. 

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A/N: thank you for your patience, darlings. ;w; I finished my masters program, took a few weeks off to rest my tired noggin, and I promise I'm back and working on updates!