Fandom: Ouran High School Host Club
Characters/Pairing: onesided Kyouya/Anne-Sophie
Rating: G
Word Count: 377
Kyouya frequently finds himself struck dumb in her presence, reduced to silently and slowly stirring the cup of tea set before him – always too sweet, because he can never find the voice to tell her he prefers no sugar.
Voicing anything to her is a struggle unlike any he has ever experienced. The questions rise half-formed in his mind, and the words start tumbling over his tongue before he has the chance to sort them out into something comprehensible. He is rambling, stilted and flustered, but he cannot stop the stream of incoherency.
It is always her laugh, soft and clear, that closes the floodgates. He blinks and snaps his jaw shut in an instant when Anne-Sophie speaks. Somehow, she picks out the meaning from his stuttering embarrassment, and she responds with all of the levelheaded calm that has abandoned him. Then she smiles, a pretty upward curve of the lips, and he looks down and sips his tea and is far too preoccupied even to wince at the saccharine taste. It is cold now and still nearly full, drowned sugar crystals clustered together at the bottom.
He has become a child, one who clings to a lady’s skirt for attention and blushes when he gets it.
Ridiculous.
He wants to become a man, one who can properly love someone like her.
Stupid.
He wonders where Kyouya has gone.
Sometimes he thinks of what her reaction would be if he made all this known to her, managed to force a teenager’s lovesick confession out of his traitorous mouth. Surely it would be something unbearably, painfully, genuinely kind. An understanding smile and a gentle, subtle, firm rejection. Perhaps she would reach up and pat him on the head, just to remind him that for all his height and maturity he is still a boy.
Unwise, he decides. It would half kill him – the childish, fanciful, idiotic half – and she can almost certainly see it without needing his words to clarify. Anne-Sophie is wise beneath her lovely veneer.
Still, he considers trying it anyway – perhaps the inevitable result would break this miserable trance – but he cannot yet bring himself to sentence an innocent to death.
For now, he continues to take his tea with two sugars and no complaints.
