Title: 10 Things I Hate about You
Genre: Romance / Humor
Rating: K
Pairing: Tamaki x Haruhi
Spoilers: N/A
Summary: How do I loathe thee, let me count the ways…
Word Count: 1,136
Warnings: or "5 Things Haruhi Hates About Tamaki, and One Thing She Doesn't Hate At All"

Disclaimer: Ouran High School Host Club belongs to Bisco Hatori. Title is a movie. An amazing movie.

A/N: Haruhi is shippable with everyone, FYI.

1.

"Commoner tea! We must all try some!"

Haruhi doesn't even try to hold in the sigh these artfully dramatized word yields. It doesn't matter how many times she's told him that the word 'commoner' is offense, he insisted on using it. Everything from 'commoner coffee' to 'commoner sprinkles' to 'commoner chocolate.' She almost throttled him the day he asked if she slept on 'commoner sheets.'

She was honestly really looking forward to the day someone with actual royal blood come to Ouran for some reason or another so she could serve them tea and say things like, "I'm so sorry, your majesty, for this commoner's beverage we have here for you." She could just imagine the look on these pretentious Host Club members after she said it. It would be fantastic.

"Oh, Haruhi! How do you survive on such limp leaf water?!" Tamaki continued his soliloquy about the kind of tea she was forced to drink and how tragic it was for her and her father and all the commoners everywhere throughout the world.

"If you don't like it, don't drink it." She calmly stood, snatched his teacup, and dumped the water out into a nearby potted plant in one smooth motion. Without a change in her monotone expression or voice, she turned and left. "And don't waste any more of that tea, it doesn't go on sale again for another two weeks."

2.

If there was one thing that Haruhi could say that she liked about pretending to be a boy, it was the fact that it vastly limited people's opinions on what she should wear. She wore the boy school uniform. She wore suits to the elegant balls the Host Club through at various holidays. She didn't have to worry about dresses and lace and flowers and matching colors and makeup. It was easy.

Which is why it irritated her to no end every time Tamaki and the twins tried to force her into tiny ruffled bikinis and big billowing ball gowns and lacy flowered sundresses. She knows it was a surprise to them to learn she was female, but the ruse was now set. She was a boy for all intents and purposes.

If she (and Kyoya and Mori) could live with that for the time being, she didn't understand why the others couldn't, too.

All she knew was that if she walked into a room of mannequins, half scantily clad and the other half outrageously feminine, with the twins staring at her in faux innocence and Tamaki staring at her with hearts in his eyes and stars in his hair, she was going to smash something.

3.

"Listen to your father now!"

Haruhi thought to herself, sometimes, that if she had wanted to be a medical doctor instead of a lawyer, that if she spent her free time studying medical texts instead of law, she might have a few more thoughts about Tamaki's continued episodes of calling himself her father.

Oedipus complex? Maybe. Delusions of sexual urges? Possible. Sheer idiocy? Likely.

"Daddy doesn't like it when you dress like that, Haruhi."

It was really very strange and off-putting.

4.

She hated mushrooms. Even looking at them now reminded her of Tamaki and his over dramatic, self-indulgent angst-fests. Even the most mundane problem could send him spiraling into a pit of despair. It was near nauseating for someone who frequently had to use coupons to purchase enough food to live, to watch someone with the amount of wealth Tamaki had, cry over the fact that she had said no to attending a sleepover at his mansion.

5.

"My sweet princess, there is no one in this world whose eyes shine brighter than yours."

It is an effort to hold in the snort at the cheesy line, but Haruhi knows she is on stage here at the Host Club, and she can't afford to let any of her designated female students see how distasteful she found every single one of Tamaki's softly uttered phrases.

"You are the moon of my life, fleeting and out of reach, but beautiful and luminescent."

They are meant to encouraging and endearing to the girls that they're uttered to, Haruhi finds them demeaning and superficial. There's no real feeling behind them. For Tamaki, the Host Club is a stage, an act. The goal is to make women happy and he knows that candy-coated words and whispered compliments are the easiest way to do that. Most woman want to feel special, loved, and any words that seem to make that true are gobbled up like sweets, whether they are good for them or not.

"Fair maiden, I long for the days of old, when I could be your knight in shining armor, and rescue you from your cursed sleep and steal a kiss from your slumbering lips."

It was really ridiculous.

+1.

There is something tender in the way that Tamaki holds her through a thunderstorm that is so at odds with him at every other waking moment that it takes Haruhi a long time to put a name to it. It's… gentle.

Tamaki at any given moment is full of some exuberant emotion: angst, laughter, remorse, suave, all coming together one after another after another after another. Almost too fast to keep up with, too fast to keep pace with. He was exhausting.

But here, in the dark, with the thunder booming overhead and the rain pelting at the windows, his hands are gentle, his eyes are soft. He's murmuring nonsense into her hair, things that don't make any sense, clearly just whatever pops into his head, and it's more real and heartfelt than anything she has every heard him say to a girl in the Host Club by half.

She can drown out the sound of the thunder, the rain, the lightning, and focus just on his voice, soft and low and just for her. She knows that, just as no one has ever seen her this vulnerable, no one has seen this side of Tamaki. He is hesitant and unsure. His hands stroke soothing lines from her hair to her back. Comforting, calming, steady. Easy.

This is the real Tamaki, she thinks to herself, wonderingly. This man who is soft and gentle and treating her like she is precious and important.

That is the moment she starts to fall in love with him.