Chapter Text
Tamaki understands the importance of having a complete collection. After all, anything that is incomplete diminishes in value and cannot hope to be as well thought of as something whole. Not only that but something whole, something so perfectly fit together and complete is a wonder to behold. Some commoners, he has recently learned, collect stamps and coins the way he collects people. He wants to know every kind of person and see them and know them. Before Haruhi, which in a way was when he lived an entirely different kind of life altogether so he thought of that time like most other people thought of the time before Christ, it meant something but he didn’t think about it all that much. But before Haruhi he thought he knew all the types of people that made up the world, and now he knows that his world had been very, very small.
His collection is much the same. Like a beginning stamp collector who had filled a small portfolio with ready at had stamps, he thought his collection impressive and off to a very good start only to find that he had a very long to way to go. At first he was daunted by the idea of having to collect more people, to expand that far and do so much. Then he calmed down, after his fretting and worrying, and realized that he need not collect everyone. That was surely too much for one person, even a person as wealthy and well connected as himself, to do. No, what he must do is find the rarest kind of people and come to know them.
Haruhi is a good start. He does not think anyone after her could be as unique or interesting. Or cute. She says she does not care about her appearance, but whenever he sees her outside of school she always wears something adorable. (Though Kyouya pointed out her father could have something to do with that, in buying her clothes, but Tamaki does not think all of it can be the accident of blindly reaching for clothes in the morning. The sometimes worn hair pins attest to that. They always match.) She professes to find most of the Host Club annoying, him especially, but she tolerates them with good nature more often than not. She has an indifference to romance, but it is she who helps couples in trouble, or sees to the heart of any matter. She helps her fellow hosts when she can, pushing them over moments of monumental stupidity and back down the other side. From there she laughs a little, if only to herself, but he thinks they deserve to be laughed at now and again. Besides, she has a pretty laugh.
And now so many possibilities and people are before him.
They have to wait.
There is a problem with collecting rare and unique people. They often cannot be easily understood and put away. They demand, their very nature demands close study and prolonged exposure. He wants to know why Haruhi feels she has to do everything on her own, when they’ve tried to show her time and time again that they’ll help her if she asks. Or why she felt the need to go to Ouran in the first place, without even consulting her own father. Or why she feels the need to help people, not because she is a host, which has nothing to do with her going out of her way for others; she just does it. There is so much he doesn’t know, so much he wants to know, but it will take time.
Tamaki, however, is impatient. He has always had trouble with waiting for anything that he wants, but he knows that if he doesn’t wait and take his time it could spell disaster for his collection. The rarest kind of person would go away, and he can’t have that.
So he will be patient. He will talk to her, listen to her, try to understand who and what she is. And maybe one day, she will have paid as much attention to him as he has to her to know that he is not as dumb as she thinks he is. That there is a worthwhile person underneath that dramatic exterior.
On that day he will have found a new horizon, one he didn’t even know was there until a realization will hit him so hard it stuns him for a moment. But that day is a long ways off, and it is there even if he does not know it.
Until then he will work on the first and what he knows will be the best part of his collection.