Chapter Text
The hosts spent so much time around hot tea and commoner coffee that they’d all scalded a finger once or twice—Kaoru more than the rest, as part of the Brotherly Love act, his reddened skin kissed cool by his twin—but though they’d had little spills or broken teacups or stained Usa-chan incidents, they’d managed to go two years without any real injury. In a way, Kyouya almost expected it to happen; but although he was known for intricate plans and gifted foresight, the Shadow King would never have predicted that the inevitable accident would be the turning point around which his world suddenly bent, lurching out of his control in a new direction.
It was a busy day, which was to be expected. The last day of classes before summer break was always filled with desperate guests, grasping as many moments with their favored hosts as they could before the separation. The warm weather and the relaxed feel of vacation approaching had prompted the hosts to shed their jackets in favor of short-sleeved uniform shirts and loosened ties and collars, which always set the ladies at a higher pitch.
Honey and Mori could be counted on to handle a sudden influx—it just meant spending more money on Honey-senpai’s cakes—and the twins were in fine form, feeding each other bananas in ways that made their guests squeal and swoon with more intense fervor than usual. Haruhi seemed tired, but somehow that only added to her natural charm, and anyway her designations were generally the more subdued and quietly adoring type.
Tamaki, of course, reveled in the extra attention. He had a glow of vitality about him, a brightness in his eyes and warmth in his words that ensnared his guests even more tightly than usual. Even as they neared the end of the club’s business hours, Tamaki’s voice, honeyed and sincere at once, wove around his designees and through the room at large, showing no sign of tiring.
“Would my beautiful princesses care for more tea? Or coffee, perhaps?”
“I would love some more tea, Tamaki…”
“Me too!”
“Tamaki, I’d rather have some of that coffee you love so much…”
“Anything for my kittens. Don’t move a muscle, I’ll return to your sides before you know it.”
“Oh, Tamaki….”
“He’s even more dreamy today than normal!”
And Tamaki hurried off, with uncanny grace, to fetch another teapot of water as the ladies watched him go and giggled to each other with shining eyes. Kyouya stood on the edges of the day’s activity, jotting down notes, watching every expression, counting every sigh. As Tamaki disappeared into a side room, Kyouya strolled over to the Host King’s designees with a handful of photobooks—he knew from their expressions that, like all the ladies who’d been served before them today, they needed a little bit of the Host Club to tide them over until summer break ended.
He wasn’t sure what made him look up—perhaps Tamaki was just that vibrant today, his presence announcing itself without words—and Kyouya watched the blonde approach, tray in hand. Tamaki, a consummate host, had eyes only for his designees; Kyouya, on the other hand, had always observed everything, catalogued even the tiny details he caught out of the corners of his sharp eyes. The Shadow King saw the banana peel one of the twins had tossed carelessly on the floor; he saw Tamaki moving straight toward it in a beeline for his guests. Kyouya saw, in a flash of calculation and premonition, how the clumsy King would slip, how the tray would fly, how the teapot would rain down just-boiled water in frightening quantity. Later, Kyouya would tell himself and others that he was thinking of the Host Club’s welfare; Tamaki’s angelic face was the driving force of their profits, and Kyouya could not allow it to be scarred. In the moment, though, Kyouya had no thought but Tamaki and danger, and as one King slipped and sent the teapot sailing, the other King leapt in, pushing him back by the shoulders as the scalding water splashed down between them.
Everyone froze for a moment as the teapot glanced off Kyouya’s outstretched arm and shattered on the floor; then Tamaki’s cry, startled and pained, sent the room into chaos.
Kyouya took in the scene in moments; Tamaki lay half-sprawled on the floor, his face twisted in pain, half his abdomen and his side soaked and his shirt plastered to his skin. Kyouya lunged forward, bent over him as the other hosts leapt from their chairs. With vicious speed he tore the soaked shirt open from the bottom, buttons scattering around them, and pulled it up off Tamaki’s chest; the blonde cried out again, his skin already fiercely red and blistering.
“Hikaru, cold water and wet cloths, whatever you can find! Kaoru, there should be painkillers in the storeroom. Mori, call the nurse’s office!”
“Right!”
“Haruhi, you and Honey-senpai please see to our guests.”
“Of course…”
Tamaki, his eyes slitted and face ghost-white, reached out in confusion. “It hurts, it hurts!”
“Lie still,” Kyouya hissed, catching his hands and pushing him flat. “It’s going to be all right, just keep still.”
“Kyouya,” Tamaki moaned, and the dark-haired boy shifted to kneel by his head.
“I’m here. Just breathe.” He smoothed Tamaki’s hair back out of his face and lay a hand on his shuddering chest, then looked up, fierce-eyed. “Kaoru!”
“Right here!” The younger twin held up a bottle of pills and a half-empty juice, obviously the first liquid he’d come across; his eyes, though, were drawn to Tamaki’s stomach with a frightened look.
“Three of them, Kaoru.”
“Right…right.” As the twin fumbled the bottle open and shook out three pills, Kyouya slid an arm under Tamaki’s shoulders, lifting the pale blonde head carefully into his lap.
Hikaru fell to his knees beside them a moment later with an ice bucket of water and a pile of towels. “Senpai—”
“Just keep it wet, Hikaru, and cool. Be careful.”
“O..Okay,” the older twin answered, dunking a towel in the bucket. Kaoru dropped the pills into Kyouya’s outstretched hand with his eyes still fixed on Tamaki’s blistering skin, and reached to help Hikaru lay the now-soaked towel over the burn; the blonde sobbed at the contact, pressing his face into Kyouya’s thigh.
“Here, Tamaki, swallow these.” The dark-haired boy pressed the three little pills to the blonde’s tight-clenched lips; desperately Tamaki took them, and when Kyouya held the juice to his mouth, he covered the Shadow King’s hands with his own trembling ones. “Easy…”
“The nurse is coming,” Mori reported, bending near them, and Honey clutched his cousin’s leg with a worried expression.
“And all the guests have been sent home,” Haruhi added, kneeling beside Kyouya. “Is there anything else I can—senpai, your hand!” Kyouya glanced over at her, not quite registering, but Haruhi was already reaching for a wet towel from the twins’ pile. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?” She leaned over and took the juice away, setting it aside as she draped the towel over Kyouya’s hand and forearm; it was only then, when the icy cool touched his skin, that Kyouya felt the pain.
It was Mori, a little while later, who carried Tamaki carefully down to the ground floor with the rest of the club following anxiously behind. Kyouya, after a few painkillers of his own, walked alongside talking to the injured blonde about anything and nothing. Tamaki sobbed helplessly whenever the nurse exchanged the towel over his skin as they walked, like an exhausted child, but in between he calmed a little, gripping Kyouya’s good hand. “It doesn’t look like he’ll need to go to the hospital,” the nurse said as she changed the towel again on the second floor landing. “But he should stay in bed for a day or two. His primary physician can prescribe him a stronger painkiller, if need be.”
“I called Shima,” Kaoru piped up from behind Kyouya. “She’s sending a car, and calling his doctor.”
The nurse nodded in approval. “And you should see a physician as well, Ootori-san.”
“I’ll accompany Tamaki home,” Kyouya replied, which wasn’t precisely an affirmative response, but his tone brooked no questioning, and when Mori lay Tamaki in the back seat of the waiting Rolls Royce, Kyouya slid in beside him to cushion his head.
“We’ll come by and see how you and Tama-chan are doing tomorrow, okay Kyo-chan?” Honey confirmed as the nurse rearranged the boys’ towels one last time.
Hikaru and Kaoru looped their arms through Haruhi’s, brightening. “Yeah,” they said together. “We’ll all come by, right Haruhi?”
“Sure,” she said uncertainly, “if that’s all right. And please take care of yourself too, Kyouya-senpai.”
Kyouya just nodded, meeting her eyes, and pushed his glasses absently up his nose. Tamaki, exhausted and finally feeling some of the painkillers’ effects, was half-asleep in his lap when the nurse shut the door on them. The driver pulled smoothly away, leaving the kingless hosts in a lost-looking huddle at the North Building entrance. Kyouya didn’t look back, though; as Tamaki shifted and whimpered softly, Kyouya brushed the knuckles of his good hand over the blonde’s forehead. “It’s all right. You’re all right.”
Later, after the Suoh’s private doctor had seen to both boys and left them with bandages, burn cream, stronger painkillers and strict care instructions, Shima came to Tamaki’s door. “Master Kyouya,” she murmured, a little more gentleness in her voice than usual. “Would you like me to send up dinner?”
“Thank you, Shima…he’ll probably be hungry when he wakes up.”
“I’ll send some for you as well. I’ve already called the Ootori estate to let them know you’ll be staying over.”
Kyouya looked up at her then, and gave a wry smile. “You know me very well. Thank you.”
“It is my pleasure, Master Kyouya.” Then the old woman slipped quietly out, and they were left alone.
Kyouya turned back to Tamaki; the other boy looked strangely small lying there in the middle of the bed, gauze taped carefully along his ribs and over his stomach, and down over his hip. He seemed fragile, and it made Kyouya’s chest ache peculiarly. To distract himself, he went to the closet and rummaged around for Tamaki’s pajama bottoms, and for the spare pajamas the blonde had insisted Kyouya keep here for himself. He’d never needed them before—he was far from the sleepover type—but he was suddenly grateful for Tamaki’s insistence.
It took some doing to get himself changed without aggravating his own gauze-wrapped skin, but Kyouya was nothing if not self-sufficient, and once he’d finished he turned to Tamaki. He climbed up onto the bed and carefully slid the boy’s pale arms out of his ripped-open shirt. Somehow then, with his sharp shoulders and delicate collarbone exposed, Tamaki looked even more vulnerable; Kyouya paused, studying the subtle tension in his face, the steady rise and fall of his chest. His mouth was a taut line even as he slept, and in a sudden surge of…something, a feeling Kyouya couldn’t readily identify, he wondered if kissing those clenched lips would soothe the boy a little. Then the Shadow King blinked and shook the thought away, startled. Must be the pain medication.
Bringing himself back to the task at hand, Kyouya moved down to the bottom of the bed, leaning over with aching fingers to unbuckle Tamaki’s belt and slip off his slacks. The dark-haired boy pushed down the sudden flutter of awkwardness that sprung up in his chest—after all, he saw Tamaki in his underwear every time they changed for Host Club cosplay—and tugged the pajama pants up his slender legs with as little direct contact as possible. By the time a servant arrived with covered dinner trays, Kyouya was propped up with Tamaki’s head pillowed in his lap.
“Tamaki,” he murmured when the servant had left. “It’s dinnertime.” He bent close, laying a hand along the other boy’s cheek. “Wake up now…”
Tamaki’s eyelids fluttered. “Kyou…ya?”
“Yes. You’re home now, and there’s dinner for you. You should eat.”
“How…” Tamaki opened his eyes more, looking up at Kyouya in tired confusion. “What happened?”
Kyouya sighed as though put-upon. “You spilled boiling water on yourself. The doctor’s already been by and said it should heal up quickly if you don’t move around too much. Does it hurt still?”
Tamaki seemed to consider this, then shook his head a little. “Not much. Not like before.”
“Good. Try to sit up with the pillows here, and I’ll get the tray.”
Awkwardly and with the occasional pained hiss, the blonde boy arranged himself more or less upright, looking down at his abdomen with uneasy eyes. “It’s so large…. Will it scar?”
“Not if we take good care of it.”
“We?”
“I’ll stay and help you,” Kyouya replied matter-of-factly, and shifted the dinner tray onto the bed. “You can’t reach all of it yourself without bending too much, and it’s got to be cleaned and rebandaged frequently. Here.”
The dark-haired boy handed him a bowl of soup and a spoon, and Tamaki took it absently, then did a double-take. “Oh, Kyouya! I spilled the water on your hand, too? Is it okay? Let me see it…” Tamaki set the bowl aside again and took Kyouya’s arm gingerly; his fingers were wrapped in thin layers of gauze, snaking up his arm to the elbow. Tamaki looked up at him with a pained expression. “I’m so sorry, Kyouya.”
“Skin heals,” the other boy shrugged. “Perhaps not as prettily, since I can’t help but use my hand while it’s mending, but it’ll be all right soon enough. Renge might even approve.”
“Well, you’ll let me help you with it, right? Promise me!”
“All right, I promise, now eat that soup before you spill it and burn something else!”
When they’d eaten a bit of the food and taken another round of pills, Kyouya set the tray outside the door and took the burn kit the doctor had left them from the bedside table. “I’ll try to be gentle,” he murmured, and Tamaki nodded, laying back against the pillows with a trusting expression. Kyouya tugged the bandage carefully away, relieved to find that it hadn’t stuck to the skin, then pondered for a moment how to rinse an area so large without getting the bed wet or moving him. He settled for piling towels underneath Tamaki, then wringing out a soaking towel across the burn. Tamaki just watched, showing nothing but a tightening in his eyes, and when Kyouya was satisfied he set the towels all aside and pulled one of the antiseptic gloves the doctor had left onto his good hand. He coated it thick with cream and ran it slowly along the edges of the burn, feeling Tamaki’s breath hitch under his hand, then settle again as he spread the cool cream down his stomach and over the edge of his hip. All at once the strange flutter came back to Kyouya’s chest as his slick fingers ran along Tamaki’s hip bone and up his side; Kyouya pushed it back down, scowling a little. Tamaki seemed not to notice; his eyes were closed, and he sighed slowly.
“That actually feels pretty good,” he murmured. “Soothing.”
Kyouya felt an entirely unwelcome flush creep up his neck, and pulled his hand away. “There, you’re pretty well covered.” He lay a fresh bandage down with care, taping it in place with Tamaki’s eyes on him.
“Are you sure you should be using your hand so much?”
“It’ll be all right.”
Tamaki frowned a little. “If you say so, Kyouya. Now come closer so I can help you.”
“I’m perfectly able to—”
“Don’t argue with me, okaasan. Sit here and let me take care of you a little.” Tamaki fixed him with his familiar demanding frown; the dark-haired boy sighed and gave in, holding out his bandaged hand. “That’s more like it. Tell me if I’m hurting you, all right?”
Kyouya suppressed the urge to snap. “All right, otousan,” he replied, trying to keep his voice mild. Still, he couldn’t help but suck in a hissing breath when the bandage was pulled away. The burn underneath looked uglier than he remembered, blistering up along the inside of his arm and over his fingers.
“Oh God, Kyouya…” Tamaki stared with a horrified expression.
“It doesn’t feel as bad as it looks,” the Shadow King lied smoothly, and Tamaki snapped back to himself with a little jerk.
With his jaw tensely set, Tamaki tried the same towel trick to rinse Kyouya’s hand, and tugged two gloves from the box, slathering both hands in cream. Gingerly he took the dark-haired boy’s hand in both of his own, straightening his fingers out to coat them; Kyouya’s good hand fisted in the sheet beside them, a reflex not lost on the blonde boy. Tamaki’s eyes flew up to his for a moment, gauging, before returning to Kyouya’s swelled fingers; he stroked each one with delicate care, and curled his fingers up the other boy’s arm with the featherlight touch of a musician who understands pianissimo. Somehow those slender fingers on his arm, fingers that could coax the most beautiful music from piano keys, drew Kyouya’s eyes and made him shudder with the strangeness of the sensation. “Almost done,” Tamaki reassured him, taking the shudder for pain.
Kyouya found his voice long enough to say “no, it’s all right,” and then there was that unsettling flutter again, making his skin feel too tight.
“There, I think I got it all,” Tamaki murmured, and delicately re-wrapped the angry-looking mess with fresh gauze. Then the calm concentration seemed to melt from Tamaki’s face, and he looked up with a pained expression. “I’m so sorry, Kyouya.”
“You said that already. It’s all right, an accident was bound to happen sometime. At least it’s my left hand.”
“Still…” Tamaki bit his lip, looking at Kyouya’s hand again with watery eyes.
Kyouya smiled a little, and leaned forward on impulse to smooth the other boy’s curls. “You’re exhausted…you should sleep some more.”
Tamaki closed his eyes at the touch, a few tears snaking out from under his eyelids; Kyouya caught one with his thumb, feeling suddenly tender and too tired to resist it. “Don’t cry. Just try to rest. Everything will seem better tomorrow.”
“Will you stay with me?”
Kyouya chuckled and gestured to his pajamas. “Do I look like I’m going anywhere?”
“No, I mean…will you stay right here with me?”
“…Yes.”
“Will you get some sleep too?”
Tamaki’s sudden switch from childlike request to concern made Kyouya smile, and he settled down between the boy’s uninjured side and the bedside table. “I’ll do my best.”
“All right.” Kyouya felt Tamaki’s eyes on him as he pulled the sheet up over their legs and removed his glasses, setting them on the table and clicking the lamp off. Plunged into sudden darkness, he heard more than saw Tamaki settle in; then light fingers found his own and squeezed the tips. “Thank you for taking care of me.”
“Goodnight, Tamaki.”
“Goodnight.”