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Kyoya’s watched Tamaki, the little things he does, the way he touches people. His touches never linger too long and he doesn’t touch anyone too sensitively, but there are certain spots his hands return to every time. When he hugs the twins, his hands go up into their hair, cradling a little spot on the back of their necks. On the rare occasion Mori seems in the mood to be touched, Tamaki’s hands linger on his arms, and a certain place between his shoulder and neck. Haruhi and Honey get enveloped in hugs too, a swallowing of limbs. He likes to card his fingers through Honey’s hair. He likes to rub circles in Haruhi’s back. He likes to hold hands.
And Kyoya… well. When Tamaki touches Kyoya, he does all of those things. After the first few weeks of Haruhi-excitement, he finally backs off from her clear discomfort. Then Kyoya is back to being the person he touches most.
Tamaki gives shoulder massages, hand massages, hugs, cuddles, random pats and rubs and brushes of his fingers and Kyoya for all this time has not understood. He has been too busy wondering if all families are like this, wondering why it feels so pleasant but so strange to be touched, wondering if he might just be broken.
In the aftermath of the Ouran Fair, however, he thinks he understands the tiniest bit better.
Tamaki is a master of language. French flowers from his tongue. Pianos sing beneath his hands. And people always, always yield to his eyes.
These are not languages Kyoya had ever thought to learn––but then he had. Over time, he’d begun to recognize French endearments and exasperations, classical themes and countermelodies, and each exact shade of violet and movement of lash and lid that Tamaki used to express what he did not say.
Touch, too, is a language. And Kyoya is far from fluent––but. He’s learned, as always, from Tamaki.
Tamaki emerges from the river carrying Haruhi. He’s swarmed with hugs, despite being wet, despite Hikaru’s broken arm, and he’s the last one to let go. As the hosts watch the fireworks together, Tamaki is holding hands with Haruhi. His face is open with light, and he leans back against them all.
When the fireworks end and it comes time to go home, Kyoya makes the first move. “Stay with me tonight.”
Tamaki looks back and nods mutely.
As the car pulls away from the school, Tamaki stares out the window. He seems far away. Melancholy.
The thought comes to him: We can start now.
Kyoya is nervous. But. Tamaki.
He holds out his hand between them.
Tamaki’s head turns. He looks at the hand, then up at Kyoya. His face is uncertain, confused, and so Kyoya pours everything into his answering gaze.
Eyes wide, Tamaki takes his hand. When Kyoya just simply lets him, tension rushes out of his body, like a sigh he hadn’t known he’d been holding. He brings Kyoya’s hand up to his face, eyes closed, and breathes out quietly down Kyoya’s wrist.
Kyouya matches his fingers to the curve of Tamaki’s cheek and says, “You can have more than this.”
Tamaki opens his eyes and they’re guarded. He doesn’t understand, or he doesn’t believe. That’s okay. That’s okay. They have time. He’s bought that time for them. He’s not fluent yet, but Kyoya will learn to make promises in this new language, and Tamaki will believe, and it will be okay.
They talk of things both light and heavy. They speak, in glancing blows of truth, of what’s happened over the past few days, hours.
The club was furious for you. The girls were worried, but they were okay. Those parents you charmed even asked after you.
Eclair wanted… She was actually in love with me. Or the idea of me. But she was so angry with me, whenever I spoke of Japan or talked of you. I wanted to answer your calls, but she threw my phone into the fishtank.
That truth hits Tamaki a little too hard. He tries to laugh it off, and Kyoya shakes his head at him. He scoots across the seat and puts his arm around his best friend, who sits up stiffly like he doesn’t know what to do. Kyoya guides his head down to rest on his shoulder, and starts carding his fingers through Tamaki’s hair.
“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” says Tamaki, trembling. It could be the rumbling of the car on the road. It isn’t. “I don’t want this if you’re doing it out of… I don’t know. Guilt, or pity, or something.”
Kyoya shakes his head again. He can’t explain it. He can’t. But his hands squeeze at his shoulder, his arm, and Tamaki sighs and snuggles closer.
They eat dinner in Kyoya’s room, and leave the plates outside his door. It’s November, so he turns up the heating. Tamaki watches the whole while from the couch, perched on his knees.
“Let’s get changed,” says Kyoya. So they do.
For once Kyoya does not put on his pretentious matching pajamas. He gets them both the softest tshirts he can find and a set of bottoms each. Kyoya’s smaller than him, just a bit, so the shirt stretches tight across Tamaki’s shoulders. The pants don’t go down to his ankles, either. Maybe Kyoya should keep a set of larger pajamas on hand, from now on. He says this aloud, absentminded.
Tamaki is looking at him strangely, kind of wonderingly.
“Come with me.”
They go upstairs to the bed. Tamaki’s slept here before. Their second sleepover ever, he’d had an awful nightmare and bugged Kyoya into letting him. But this is different.
“I don’t understand what you want,” says Tamaki. His voice is small.
Kyoya’s not good at saying these kinds of things. He knows it’s important to tell him, at least this one thing, out loud. His breath catches anyway.
But. Tamaki.
“I want to touch you. Nothing more. Nothing less. Is that okay?”
A sharp soft little intake of breath. Then, “Okay.”
“Lie down.”
Tamaki smiles, then, and lies down. With his best friend spread eagled on his bed, watching, he starts to feel a little hesitant. But then Tamaki rolls onto his front, face turned away from Kyoya and he remembers. He is Tamaki: he is forgiving when it comes to learning languages. He is understanding. He can start small.
He settles in behind Tamaki, and lays his hand on the center of his back. He drags his hand across, pressing, then lets his fingers trail gently between his shoulder blades. Tamaki shivers. Kyoya repeats the motion times two, times three, four. He can see Tamaki sinking into the bed, feel his spine trembling and heart thrumming. On five, Tamaki’s body stills with a content sigh.
This is something Tamaki has missed. This is something Tamaki wants.
It’s something Kyoya wants, too. He tells him in delicate kanji traced across Tamaki’s back. Tamaki hums like he understands. He hopes so. But they have time yet.
He rakes (gently, very gently, more like combing, more like stroking) a hand from the crown of his head to the small of his back. Tamaki almost ripples in his shudder, and Kyoya finds himself smiling. He finds, actually, that he wants to pull up the soft too-small t-shirt and lay a kiss at the base of Tamaki’s spine, and doesn’t know why. The answer is something along the line of just because. He doesn’t. Not yet. But he transfers the impulse into something mischievous, and takes both hands dancing up Tamaki’s sides in a quick swipe.
Tamaki spasms a laugh. “Hey!” But it’s all in good humor.
Kyoya rubs circles into the lower part of his back, massaging a little. Then he eases up, and his fingers drift aimlessly toward Tamaki’s side, maybe heading upward again. Then Tamaki shifts. He turns over onto his side, back still to Kyoya.
The tiniest sliver of his hip is exposed, and Kyoya wonders. But he lays his hand on fabric first, feels his ribcage through that shirt. Tamaki is not quite trembling, but… Kyoya slides his hand down his side, palm pressing warm into him. He urges security and calm into Tamaki with flat-handed heavy caresses, then he lets his fingers work more lightly, wandering along his side. He steers clear of skin, watching Tamaki’s stomach jump at spots that tickle.
Then Tamaki’s elbow starts moving back, and his own hand covers Kyoya’s. For a breath, it’s Tamaki’s hand over Kyoya’s hand over Kyoya’s shirt over Tamaki’s skin. Tamaki tugs his hand down slowly, til it’s cradling that little sliver of hip, and Kyoya understands. He slides his hand under the hem, and strokes Tamaki’s bare skin carefully, tenderly.
They sit in silence, for a while, Kyoya’s hands reading Tamaki’s shifts and sighs and hums for where they go next. It’s innocent, artless bliss.
After a while, his hand stills. Tamaki is holding his breath, he can feel, though his hand still pulls on Kyoya’s to keep moving. But Kyoya wants more than Tamaki holding his breath, turned away. Reckless, gentle, he tugs Tamaki by the shoulder, turns him so that Tamaki’s tearstained face is visible. He opens his arms.
A choked off cry. Tamaki dives into the crease of his neck. Kyoya holds and holds and holds, and Tamaki shakes and there are tears dripping onto his skin. His nose is cold at that juncture of shoulder and neck, his breath on Kyoya’s collarbone. He rubs Tamaki’s back in those careful circles. He slides his fingers up into Tamaki’s hair. He gets it, suddenly, how natural it is. On their own, his fingers seek out that place across the back of his neck, and stay there, stroking gently. It’s simply where they belong.
I was going to see my mother. They said they had forgiven her, Tamaki weeps.
I know. I know. Kyoya holds and holds and holds.
Slowly, quietly, the tears trickle to a stop. Tamaki isn’t asleep yet, but he breathes different, now. He breathes like he’s trying to inhale Kyoya, like he’s trying to capture this moment in his lungs, like he wants to keep it in his ribcage, nestled up against his heart. Kyoya knows the feeling. This is what it has been like, all these years, having this loving, generous, irrepressibly cuddly octopus around. He hasn’t known what to do, hasn’t understood or trusted it, but he has wanted wanted wanted.
“You can have more,” says Kyoya again, cradling that spot at his neck. It’s an apology of sorts. He hadn’t realized. All the signs were in front of him, but he hadn’t known just how touch starved Tamaki was. For all Tamaki liked to touch others, he’d wanted to be touched too.
Tamaki murmurs something into his skin. It’s hushed, not out of timidity but intimacy. As he speaks, his lips brush Kyoya’s throat like a melody of kisses.
“Yes,” Kyoya promises, lifting his head some so he can press his own kiss into Tamaki’s shoulder. Tonight, this is the closest he can get to a confession. “You can have that too.”