Disclaimer: Ouran is not mine.

Summary: He digs a grave and it's his own. (slight Haruhi/Kyouya)

Author's note: So what, I lied when I said something silly was next. It's not even going to be next next.

Trinity

When Kyouya was seven, he died.

"Don't touch it," his father had told him and left young Kyouya alone in his office, along with a heavily ornate, antique sword. (A gift (bribery) from a would-be business partner.)

And Kyouya hadn't touched it, not really.

But like all good seven year olds, he had experimented with pretending he hadn't heard what the grown-ups had told him, only to turn around and do the opposite.

He hadn't touched it, though.

He had merely let his fingers brush the surface, only once.

It had been spectacularly unspectacular, very cold and absolutely uneventful.

Except for the sting that had followed.

With a frown Kyouya had stared at his right hand turning red until he had grasped that this was blood and worse, it was his.

At that realization, Kyouya had blinked and stared some more.

Yoshio Ohtori had come back into the room to find his son ruining his valuable Persian rug by daring to bleed a large puddle of red on it.

His eyes had wandered from the rug, to the sword and only then to Kyouya.

"That," Yoshio had told his son, "was a stupid thing to do."

Kyouya had stared up at him with a pale face, red drip drip dripping.

"Tell me," Yoshio had continued, "are you a stupid boy?"

The boy had taken a look at the puddle, at his hand and only then at his father.

"No," Kyouya had told the man before him, "I am not a stupid boy. I am an Ootori."

Yoshio had given him one of his rare smiles, the lift of the corners of his mouth exactly measured.

"Good. Now you understand," he had said to his son and sat down at his writing desk to continue on his paperwork.

Kyouya had swayed in his place.

After the signing of another three documents, Yoshio had taken notice.

"Go, tell my secretary to find someone to treat your wound," he had remarked without looking up from his work.

All the boy had been able to do in response was nod, sway yet again and leave the room to do as he was ordered to.

Later, as dressing material was being wrapped around skin in a few professional touches, Kyouya had smelt antiseptics, remembered a puddle of red and buried a stupid boy alive.

All the while, beside Kyouya, observing, taking note and smiling an exactly measured smile, there stood the Ootori.

And even though a boy had died that day, he had never stopped screaming.

So, Kyouya had never stopped digging, the Ootori had never stopped observing and by the time Kyouya had long since turned seventeen, they never agreed on anything.

He just had to look at the Suou Heir.

'Business,' the Ootori stated and it sounded strangely reminiscent of Yoshio's tone of voice.

'Friend,' a boy from within a grave claimed and it sounded like a scream.

"Tamaki," Kyouya said and it sounded mildly irritated, "I strongly recommend you reconsider this."

Tamaki gaped at Kyouya.

Far off in the distance of room, the twins snickered, while they prepared the costumes for this day of cosplay at the Host Club, which had yet to open and was still missing three members. (Namely, Mori, Hunny and Haruhi.)

"But!" Tamaki wailed and swung an apple and an expensive looking knife around the air. "All the commoners peel them on their own! Why shouldn't I?"

Kyouya adjusted his glasses.

The Ootori estimated that an injury would occur with a likeliness of about 92,4 percent.

"For one, you are holding the wrong end," Kyouya observed.

98 percent, the Ootori corrected himself.

"Er…" Tamaki looked, and indeed he held not the handle but the blade between the delicate flesh of his right hand.

Tamaki squeaked and threw both, apple and knife, away from him.

This time, there was no touching, not really, just ripping and tearing.

Red was drip drip dripping to the floor.

Kyouya looked at his hand, the boy stared and the Ootori assessed that this injury would delay the daily timetable for approximately two and a half hours.

Tamaki squeaked again and waved his hands around the air frantically, but absolutely unhelpfully. "I killed you! I am sorry! Really, I am sorry for killing you!"

(The twins didn't notice the turmoil; they had gone into an adjacent room to add the finishing touches to the costumes.)

Motion came back into Kyouya with a tilt of his head.

"Halt the memorial session. I am not dying. The blade barely scratched my hand."

Tamaki snivelled.

As long as there would be a dressing covering his hand, the Ootori pointed out, the Suou heir would be suitably more gullible to manipulation.

"I am going to let a school nurse dress my wound," Kyouya informed the nearly hysterical Tamaki, "You will remain here and await the others."

Tamaki nodded weakly and Kyouya cut another about to start tirade off with a single hand gesture and a drip drip drip.

Something started to glisten in Tamaki's eyes that might or might not have been tears.

'He never had to bury anyone," the boy realized and stared some more.

The Ootori raised a single eyebrow and left the Host Club clubroom with purposefully calculated steps, precisely as many as needed to etch the image of red into the Suou heir's mind and teach him a lesson about the importance of graveyards and buried alive boys.

With an unspoken sigh Kyouya closed the door behind him and encountered an about to enter Haruhi.

'Soft skin', the boy remembered and it almost didn't sound like a scream.

'Completely self-reliant,' the Ootori remarked and let the intonation sound like an insult.

"Haruhi," Kyouya said and made it sound like a greeting.

"Sempai," she acknowledged and looked at his hand.

Haruhi didn't panic.

At that, the Ootori felt something akin to a smudge of appreciation and the boy felt mildly insulted.

Kyouya just felt the need to adjust his glasses.

Very calmly, Haruhi asked: "What happened?"

'I died,' the boy wanted to tell her and the Ootori took notice.

"Tamaki seems quite intent on experiencing the commoner's way of living," Kyouya stated.

The boy dripped red on the floor.

The Ootori watched as the scholarship student started to search her pockets.

"Well, to me, your hand just looks as if it had experienced something sharp," the girl told him and found what she had searched for.

Red turned a greyish green, complemented by blue lines.

Haruhi wrapped a handkerchief around Kyouya's hand.

"Don't worry," she told him, "It's unused."

"That's…" Kyouya began.

'Nice,' the boy filled in, no longer drip drip dripping.

'Unhygienic,' the Ootori stated, frowning.

"…unnecessary," Kyouya finished, "I was just on my way to a school nurse."

Haruhi tied a knot in the handkerchief, only a bit too tight. "Yes, but you don't have to bleed all over the floors on your way there, do you?"

Her fingertips remained a moment longer on his hand.

The touch was warm, completely unprofessional and quite blunt.

The girl didn't smell like disinfectants at all, the boy noticed and Kyouya said to Haruhi: "I can see how that would be… inconvenient."

The warmth withdrew.

Haruhi twisted her head towards the door. "And I guess I will have to see for myself what other things were… experienced."

Kyouya looked at the nape of her neck.

The boy played with a slightly dirty suggestion.

The Ootori considered the merits of an accretion to her debt (for being two minutes, 47 seconds too late to the Host Club).

Haruhi turned her attention back to him.

Kyouya didn't notice at first.

The Ootori was too busy looking for a prize tag on the scholarship student.

When he did, he found a smile on her face, not measured at all.

"Take care, sempai," she said.

The boy saw big brown eyes and recalled unprofessional touches.

Kyouya briefly entertained the idea of falling in love.

The Ootori dismissed it as economically unprofitable.

He gave her his answer in an inclination of the head.

And as Kyouya watched while Haruhi vanished behind the door, the smell of not antiseptics lingered.

'Don't touch,' the Ootori ordered in the same tone of voice other people use to say 'stupid'.

His wound smarted from a make-shift dressing drawn too taut and a warmth too far away.

Kyouya really wanted to do something stupid.

Inside a grave, a boy stopped his screaming long enough to rejoice.

Then, Kyouya turned around and added new layers of a memory of red and don't touch and cutting and ripping to an old grave.

All the while the Ootori scrutinized and lifted the corners of his mouth into an almost not measured smirk, and the screaming started anew.

Later, as Kyouya was surrounded by professional, not quite cold touches and the smell of antiseptics, he let the fingers of his uninjured hand glide along the folds of something nice, unhygienic and unnecessary.

In his ears mingled words spoken in an office a death ago with the polite small talk of the nurse now.

No, he wasn't, he knew he wasn't, he couldn't be, he had worked too hard not to be, dug too deep, gotten dirt and a single-minded determination all over his clothes and skin.

Yet, Kyouya feared.

He feared the underneath of layers upon layers of wrapping material and red and screams.

He feared the depths dug beside exactly measured smiles and calculated debts and hidden merits.

Above all else, though, he still feared one thing.

Amid stark white dressings and businesslike attentions, Kyouya remembered a burial and the fear, that, no matter how deep he would dig, he would always remain just a stupid boy.

This time, only silence answered Kyouya, as, for once, they all agreed on something.