105A/N: Posting this chapter means that I updated this story a whopping total of FOUR TIMES in the year 2015. Guys, that is sad. So terribly, terribly sad.
Anywho, this update is not at all anything I have promised or hinted at. This is a purely fluff piece. And it is heavy on three things (aside from the fluff):
1) OCs
2) a CanonxOC pairing (Tai and OC Hana, specifically)
3) French
You've been warned.
Now, with that said, happy reading!
xXx
- Lost in Translation -
Part I
xXx
Hana was ready. She had felt ready for quite some while. Every time an opportunity arose, her heart would buck in her chest, thrust a shove up her throat. The words would rocket from brain to tongue tip, and at the last second, every time, her front teeth would clamp down, bite the flesh, and she'd swallow, lamenting the lost moment as the toadish lump slugged back into her gut.
Naturally, it was easier to speak her mind to their friends than to him.
"Please, please, please," she begged over the phone. She could imagine Matt rolling his eyes, considering his living room wall while her neck tendons grew rigid. "I can't wait any longer, but I'm not just going to pop it out to him, you know? Can you and Izzy just... just listen to my plan and let me know if it'll work?"
She listened to the soft crackle of phone static, carried alongside Matt's sigh.
"Hana, whatever you want to say is probably what he'd like to say himself. Don't think too much about it."
"It's a little late for that now, Yamato," she grumbled. "And besides, that's boring. I like to keep Tai on his toes."
It was Matt's turn to groan.
"Did you run this by Sora?" he asked. Hana's eyes narrowed. Her mouth puckered. If Matt thought himself clever for replacing his opinion with his girlfriend's, he was mistaken. He continued: "I'm sure Sora would have thoughts on this."
Hana blew air through her lips, exasperated.
"Of course I've thought about that," she snapped. She ran knuckles against her mouth, drying up any spit. "But she's a girl. I need a guy's opinion on this. Because I'll be confessing to a guy."
"You really think our brains are wired that differently?"
"Sometimes, yes. And in this case, yes. This is big, Matt. Please."
She waited a silent ten seconds. A fingernail antsily scratched the back of her mobile.
"Okay, fine," he said, and he didn't sound nearly as grumpy as Hana thought he would. If anything, he seemed sympathetic, and if not that, resigned. "Izzy's stopping by anyway to check some new sound editing software with me. You can join us."
"Bon!" she squealed, hopping in victory. "Merci!"
"I really think you're overthinking this, Hana."
The leg that kicked back in glee halted mid-air. Calmly, she set it back down.
"I have a flair for the dramatic," she parried, ceasing her flouncing. "Know your audience, Yamato. You can't say this isn't surprising."
He chuckled lightly. Hana smiled. For all the grief she caused him, at least she could get a laugh out too.
"Well, I'll give you that much. It's not."
xXx
The plan was half orchestrated. Hana had a video chat coming up with her relatives in France (namely, her aunt and her grandmother) and thought improving Tai's primordial French would impress them both. Her aunt's opinion she didn't worry about. Tante ZsaZsa was the type of doting female relative who would simply be happy knowing she was getting laid (which Hana was not, not yet).
Her grandmother, however, was her mother's mother. A former dancer for the Paris Opera herself, she carried half of Hana's legacy in her spindly, blue-veined hands. They were hands that looked graceful doing anything: washing dishes, holding a broom, picking up dog shit. Hana remembered her grandmother coaching her on the oxymoron of balletic carriage: controlled but free, loose but poised, practiced but natural.
"You must be cognizant of what every silken fiber of your body is doing," she was told. "But you mustn't think too much about it."
In hindsight, Hana could have benefited by not thinking too much about a lot of things.
Her grandmother's instruction was a mindboggling recipe for the sans pareil, but she was proof of the formula's success. Her grandmother had perfected an untouchably regal image, something Hana liked to dub, "le regard"—the look. It consisted of a queenly, disinterested stare—eyes half-hooded, chin pointed slightly, teeth fixed but apart. Often it was paired with a strut her elderly frame shouldn't have been able to do, but ballet training had its uses.
"You honestly think this'll impress her?" Tai asked on their first lesson.
Hana dropped three different volumes on the French language atop her dining table. The descent pushed air up Tai's face, made his hair blow, like smog pumped from the undercity metro.
"No," she said, "but you didn't exactly leave a good impression when you met her in person in France. This is your chance to make amends."
"But I didn't do anything wrong in France."
Tai looked at her somewhat helplessly, as if the memory itself were painful enough to disarm him. Hana held his face in her hands.
"I... know you didn't," she replied, hesitantly. "She just kind of... ignored you. But she only speaks French, Tai. Trust me on this."
The plan, thusly, was for Hana to slip the phrase during her lessons. For the past few weeks she had schooled Tai in various subjects: greetings, the verbs "to be" and "to have," colors, food, clothing. Their next lesson would be on family and the home, which was benign enough, and it worked well with Hana's chosen methods of tutelage: repetition and indirect translation.
"Père," she would say, and Tai would parrot her.
"Père."
"Father," she'd translate. And he'd echo her again.
"Father."
Gradually, she'd introduce the endearments, which, still, thematically belonged to same group of material. Who else would call anyone "dear" or "darling" but family and friends? Boyfriends and girlfriends?
"Mon cher," she'd say. "My dear."
Then, finally, she'd transition to the ne plus ultra of describing affinity and connection:
Aimer.
To love.
As soon as she introduced the verb, Matt raised a hand, keeping her from uttering the phrase. Both he and Izzy sat in chairs pulled from his dining table, placed side-by-side. Hana paced the space in front of them like a lecturing professor, or, perhaps, like the criminal genius educating his cronies on a heist.
She disliked the interruption but stopped and allowed it. She crossed her arms.
"You think he's going to catch that?" he questioned.
Hana grit her teeth, feeling the hairs on her arms stand up.
"Why would he not?" she challenged. "He's going to hear the words coming out of his own mouth when he repeats what I say." She motioned the path of the words from lips to open air, as if she were playing the trombone.
"Indeed, he will," agreed Izzy, "but he'll likely be on auto-pilot by then. You would have conditioned him into this pattern of imitation."
"Monkey see, monkey do," said Matt.
"And while he may say the words," resumed Izzy, "their import may fail to follow."
She gave them each a cruel and dubious stare, disappointed in their sudden lack of support.
"So you're saying it won't work."
"No." Izzy straightened in his seat. It squeaked under the adjustment of his slight weight. "I'm saying it might not work. Might."
In contrast, Matt slumped forward, planting elbows on his knees, glimpsing her from beneath his blond fringe. He didn't look very impressed with her contrivances.
"Seriously, Hana. Why don't you just tell him this outright? Why do you have to be sneaky about it?"
Her forehead furrowed, eyebrows slanted in crude stitches. She understood Matt's dislike for pretense, but this was not deception. It was a confession, an unveiling, paving a way for the truth.
"Because I want to?" She set a hand on her chest. "It means a lot to me that Tai even agreed to learn French so that he can impress my grandmother. He deserves more than me just popping it out over a meal or a movie."
Matt continued to look at her, his shortage of blinks making her quaver. It was a glare irritating in its perceptive callousness, in its sheer, limpid ability to sow doubt in her brain for acting on what her heart wanted her to do. She had to have imagined stomping up to him and giving him a swat on the face at least five times in the minute that passed. Stop looking at me like that!
To distract herself, she glimpsed at Izzy, and he stood alert in his seat, face pleasantly empty of judgment. He smiled stiffly when she caught his eye.
"All right." Matt sighed and drew back, pushing hands through his hair before folding arms behind his head. "So let's say when you do say it, Hana, you pause and you look him in the eyes. Maybe you reach for his hand. All I suggest is making an effort to set that moment apart from the others."
"Okay, okay." Hana nodded vigorously, her pacing picking back up again. "I like that. I like that. Izzy, what have you got?"
The redhead craned his neck, lengthening it, like a savannah grazer startled into checking for danger.
"What? You mean that doesn't suffice?"
"You know Tai, too, don't you?"
"As do you."
"Don't be difficult."
He grumbled.
"Perhaps..." He snapped fingers, the sound summoning ideas and the words to convey them. "Perhaps... repeat the phrase if he still doesn't understand, though I'm sure he will. He's not that dense, and he's getting less dense when it comes to you."
"Mon Dieu," Hana murmured, more to herself than anyone else. "I hope so. But what if he gets it and is... I don't know... awkward because he doesn't feel the same way?"
Matt laughed. Blatantly cackled.
"You're joking, right? Hana, you are teaching the guy French! And he's getting good at it! Do you know how hard it is to teach Tai something that doesn't have to do with soccer?"
Izzy nodded.
"You've propagated a phenomenon."
"Then why hasn't he said it?"
Despite their stout assurances, Hana kept her shreds of doubt. She couldn't say the words if her partner wasn't ready to hear them. She couldn't risk them being lost in translation.
Matt shrugged, though the beginnings of a grin tugged at the corners of his lips.
"I don't know," he said. "Maybe he's waiting for the right moment? Like you? Maybe he's talking with Sora and Mimi and Kari right now asking the same questions?"
"I find that rather unlikely," Izzy murmured, to which the blond sent him a jab in the side with his elbow.
"Work with me, Koushiro," he hissed.
"But that's the thing, Matt," said Hana. "Tai doesn't hold back."
"To refrain doesn't necessarily suggest uncertainty, Hana," posed Izzy, "which is what I suspect you fear. We know Tai expresses in extremes, and what you want to tell him is in and of itself an extreme. What would shock you more? That he says it mid conversation? Or that he serenades it to you at two o'clock in the morning?"
She laughed.
Matt raised an eyebrow at Izzy.
"That was... fanciful."
The redhead grimaced, color bleeding into his cheeks.
"Mimi finds it necessary to educate me on the great romances of film. I've been a bit... deluded."
Matt patted him on the back, sympathy offered between snickers.
"So you think I'll be okay?" asked Hana. "We'll be okay, I mean?"
"Think about why you've called us together in the first place, Hana," said Matt. He rose from his seat and turned the chair around, scooting it back into the table. "I think you'll rediscover your answer."
xXx
Her apartment was too hot. She understood her anemic father's inclination for the warm and sweltering, but presently she wanted to kick a hole into their heating system. She hustled, scuttled to and fro, brought textbooks out only to reconsider and bring a different assortment in. Various edibles were prepared and plated on the dining table only to be frowned upon and removed, destined to be replaced with other snacks indefinitely. She tidied her living room twenty times.
"Ma chérie," her father called, making way to their front door. Hana sensed he wanted to escape, feeling trapped and vulnerable in the throes of her obsessive neatening. He kept pivoting about in the foyer, looking for a shoe that was likely right in front of him.
"Oui?" she answered. She sat on the floor and looked up from the satin ribbon in her hand, just one of many she painstakingly lay in approximate one inch increments on her mobile barre.
"If you touch and adjust that couch pillow one more time, I will make your confession to Taichi myself." He stopped, picked something off the floor, and turned to her, a loafer in hand. "Try to relax."
Hana was unmoved.
"Do I look like a sweaty, nervous wreck?"
"You know your mother would scold you for not controlling yourself better."
She hmphed, busying herself again with her ribbons. The best way to avoid giving an opinion was to provide someone else's.
"Well, how did it come up for you and Maman?" she wondered, changing the subject.
"Rather unexpectedly." He paused after the admission and blinked at the ceiling, face soft, fond with memories. He took off the one shoe he had on and set the other half of the pair on the mat by the door. "I was about to head out on a hiking trip," he continued, making way to her. Hana scooted, surrendering space for him on the floor beside her. He knelt as if he were in front of their chabudai, and she smiled sheepishly at her legs, crossed in the lotus position.
"Your mother and I shared a flat then," he reminisced. "She was asleep when I was preparing to leave, but as I stepped out the door, I heard her steps behind me. She hugged the frame, looked at me. We exchanged pleasantries:
"'You're leaving?'
"I nodded.
"'Be careful.'
"'I will, ma chère.'
"And then she said it."
"So she said it first?" Hana questioned.
"It's not a race, Hana. The time felt right. These sorts of things self-manifest. I said it back."
"And then you left for your trip."
Her father smiled somewhat, his stare averting behind his glasses.
"Well... not immediately," he confessed.
Hana chortled.
"What would you have done if you said it and Maman didn't?"
Her father studied her, a blend of curiosity and concern furrowing his brow, narrowing his gaze.
"I suspect you want me to tell you how to prepare for rejection?"
"No." She was quick to retaliate. Her shoulders tensed and the ribbon in her hands wrinkled in her fists. "I just..." She sighed, and the strip of satin slipped through her fingers, landing on her lap. "Je ne sais pas," she muttered.
Her father opened his embrace to her and she fell in, green eyes fixed on the floor, at the ribbon she left in a pile. She thought of her mother standing in an open doorway, her father turning back to look at her, the words that traveled between them; and she thought of Ryo and the words she had murmured into his chest one night long ago when they had been together and alone; how he had just stroked her hair afterwards, her ear over his heart, listening to the beat, but waiting for more to be said. His reply had been brief: "I know." Nothing else.
"Hana," her father said. He rubbed her shoulder, giving her a small shake, waking her from daydream, but she felt sluggish, burdened, head heavy with guessing, theorizing. She wondered where Tai stood emotionally in respect to her. Was he far head? Far behind? Miraculously beside? Why did she feel like she couldn't tell?
In the back of her head she could hear Ryo's voice, half teasing, half admonishing her: "Always making yourself the center of everything, Hana?"
She frowned.
"You never answered my question, Papa," she said.
Her father chuckled.
"And I won't. No point in exploring that thought. You lose yourself in the 'what-if's.' All I can tell you is that love is one of those words that lacks precision. It's a placeholder. An approximation for something that exists but that cannot be caught and condensed solidly in a hand." He thought a moment. "Like a... like a mathematical limit." He swung his arm, joyously, like a drunk with a full and foaming tankard in hand. Hana stifled a giggle. Her father: the nerd.
"You may be in different places on that trajectory," he went on, "but have no doubt that you are on the same path. You will end up where you need to be. Both of you."
Hana pulled herself away slowly and stood, her father following suit. She said nothing, and he returned to the foyer, resuming preparations for his departure. He was aware of her plan. She had told him Tai would be stopping in for his final French lesson before the video chat with her aunt and grandmother. He would give her her space.
"How can you be so sure?" she asked, stopping him as he unlocked the front door.
Her father turned and smiled, perhaps pityingly, sorry for her lack of faith. His last words of advice were given before he exited the apartment. For a time, Hana stared at the blank white space of her apartment door, listening to her father's reply repeatedly in her head.
"My dear daughter," he had said. "How can you not?"
xXx
Tai came by the apartment not long after her father had left. He carried his bookbag over a shoulder and smelled of damp grass, smiling in a fashion that seemed to suggest dopey was the default. Hana touched his shoulder as she leaned in for her greeting. The fabric of his jersey was cool beneath her hot fingertips, chilled from the autumn air. She eased off her tip toes and rested back on her barefooted heels. A grand breath filled her lungs. Tai blinked at her.
"You... okay?" he asked.
Hana wrung her hands, stretching a shaky smile over her lips.
"Yes," she lied. "Why would you think otherwise?"
His eyes narrowed a pinch in what she assumed was suspicion, though it could have very well been due to his smirking.
"I don't know," he said. He leaned back, tipping head left then right as he eyed her. "You just seem a little..."
Hana glared.
"… stiff," he finished. He grinned and hooked his thumb under the strap of his backpack, securing it in place as he stepped closer. His free hand grazed her waist, fingertips trailing the curve. She kept her eyes on him. Tai was known to carry mischief in his pockets. She was right to be wary, especially at her current level of stress. She peeked south at his hand. Still on her waist. Warmer than she had anticipated.
He nudged her into him.
"Anything I can help with?" he whispered. His voice was in her ear, so close she could feel a ghost of movement, his lips shaping words.
Hana released a shallow breath, pulse beating on her brain.
"No," she nearly stammered. She put a hand on his chest. His heartbeat thumped steadily beneath her palm, soothing her with its unhurried tempo. Andante. Andante. Andante. Her touch drifted, soaking warmth. Fingers once opened closed on fabric, and she tugged, drew breath from him as their lips met, like the inhale of divers about to take a plunge, each one deeper than the last.
Tai shrugged off the backpack and it dropped to the floor, loud enough to break Hana from her trance. She tilted her head, felt cheek chafe jaw, the thin skin of her lips sticking as she pressed her mouth shut. Her forehead sank, pinned itself to his chest. Absently she stared at their feet. A weight fell on her head. Tai's chin dug into her hair, resting at the crown.
"We should focus," she murmured. She swayed slightly, involuntarily, easily shifted by the arms Tai closed around her. For some reason she imagined him smiling, tickled at her strictly business approach, though she didn't know why. She couldn't see his face. She couldn't assume.
"What's the lesson for today, Kurosawa?"
She smushed her nose into his sternum, hugging him tighter, thankful for his sturdiness. Green eyes peeked up at him.
"Family," she said.
They settled into their routine quickly. The books were opened, paper and pens laid out on the tabletop, a distinctly academic scent permeating the air. They reviewed what was learned at the last lesson, and then Hana wasted no time flipping to her notes on the family, notes she had written and re-written, sneaking in memos to herself about her true motives.
She started with the impersonal, the inanimate: house, place, neighborhood, community.
"You are here," she said pointing at her chest. She regretted the action afterwards. Her heart beat so frantically it ached. "At my place."
Tai nodded, pen scritching on paper as he translated in print. Meanwhile, his lips worked noiselessly, prematurely, sculpting language that came to him in pieces. Eventually, the right words followed.
"Je suis ici," he said. "Chez toi."
Hana caught herself staring at his mouth as he spoke, unable to shake the pleasant shock of hearing her mother tongue realized on his lips. Matt's words from earlier rang in her ears. She was teaching Tai French, and he was getting good at it.
At a break, Hana brought out a picture she had been saving for precisely that lesson, one of Tai and his family. The photo was taken from her hands and looked at quizzically before he shed the same bemusement on her.
Hana failed to explain to him. She was on a mission, and she couldn't afford distraction.
"Ta famille," she said, getting back into the lesson. She pointed at the face of the senior Kamiya. "Répète après moi. Père."
He waited a second and then answered.
"Mon père," he clarified.
Hana smiled.
"C'est vrai. Ton père. But your pronunciation is off."
"Quoi?"
"Comme ça, bel homme."
Hana repeated the word, stressing the guttural "r," almost to the point of gargling it. Tai reattempted his imitation and was again corrected.
"Père, Taichi," Hana said, feeling her mouth crack into a smile.
"Is that not what I'm saying?" He laughed.
She shook her head, giggling, solely reminded of a green, oblong fruit that paired well with brie. She reached over and stroked a finger against his throat, as if to coax the muscle into cooperation.
"Père," she repeated, softly.
"Bon," he said, relaxing. He cleared his throat and took the hand she had on his neck, pulling gently but firmly enough to invite her out of her seat, into him. "Père," he said correctly, as Hana leaned in. She pitted her knee against the edge of Tai's seat, keeping her from straddling his lap—which wouldn't have been unpleasant.
She had to focus.
"Good," she said. She backed up and plunked her rear back in her chair, sensitive to Tai's lost cause.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, she mused. Reconsidering, she touched his elbow. He didn't flinch, but he stopped mid-translation to glance at her, long enough to make her want to take it back. To combat doubt, she dared further contact and looped arms with him, resting her head on the lean muscles, a deltoid rolling under her cheek. They ran through the rest of the vocabulary.
"I'm feeling pretty good about tomorrow, Han," he said, amid transcribing a list of rooms in the home: bathroom, living room, kitchen, terrace.
Hana looked up from her notes, neck snapping up. Tai peeked at her over his shoulder.
"You sure everything's okay?" he asked.
Hana cursed her transparency. She had been fixed on the next feature in their lesson, the word she had been building up to since the start. Aimer. Her eyes had stared at it with such furious intensity her vision blurred. When she returned Tai's stare, she had to blink rapidly to rid the water from her eyes.
"Fine," she said, offering a limp shrug. Tai remained unconvinced. His grin leveled and he dropped his pen, brushing a knuckle against the shoulder she had raised. Hana looked down, certain Tai had noticed what she couldn't conceal.
"I'm just, you know," she said, now compelled to elaborate, "I'm nervous about tomorrow. That's all. My grandma is a hardass. I want her to like you."
"Je sais," said Tai, a touch of smugness in his tone. "I know it means a lot to you. I'll do my best." He smirked. "No pressure or anything."
Hana laughed, nudging him with a fist only to reel him back, thumb and forefinger pinching his chin, drawing him near.
"You perform well under pressure. I have no doubt about you," she said. "I'm worried about my grandmother. She loved Ryo. She adored him. And you are not Ryo."
Tai sighed, stretching as he reclined in his chair, tipping it on its back legs.
"D'accord. Thank God for that."
She poked him in the armpit.
He recoiled, yelping. The chair legs slammed down onto the floor with his weight. Hana snickered.
"Focus, Taichi," she said. She mimicked Izzy, snapping her fingers at him to draw attention. Her notes were retrieved, and her green eyes zoned back on the next word to translate. Instantly, her good humor dwindled, lanced from her like air hissing out of a damaged life raft. Soon, she'd start sinking.
"We still have..." Her nerve fractured, and she swallowed, breath catching in her throat like a netted butterfly. Her tongue was glued to the top of her mouth, refusing to bend, refusing speech. She scanned the top of the table, hungry for water. "...a lot to do," she choked.
"Okay." His blitheness bothered her. She wanted to twitch. "Hit me."
Hana licked her lips, her nervousness causing every hair on her body to quiver. She looked at her forearms. They were riddled with goosebumps. Ironically, she was sweating.
"Hana?"
"Uh..." She stalled, neurons short circuiting as she grasped for language. It was like trying to catch snow or wind—visible, sensed, but when in her clutch, dissipated, phantasmic. But the term was all she could think about. It buzzed in every oxygen atom, emitting energy, a dizzying radiance.
"A..." she started. She wiped at her temple, catching beads of sweat. "A... Aimer."
The word felt like vomit boiling up her esophagus—sour and unwanted, giving her the unseemly desire to yield a burp, though she blamed that on the beginning signs of indigestion.
Tai's eyes widened a few millimeters.
"Répète..." She thumped a hand against her chest, breaking up resistance in her vocal chords. "Répète après moi," she mustered. "Aimer. To l—"
Tai bolted from his seat. Hana jerked, so startled she jumped in her own seat and landed off balance, almost knocking herself backwards. Luckily, her legs spread. The pads of her feet caught purchase on the floor.
"I'm sorry, Hana," he said, and he began to pack his things, face glowing, blistering red.
She stared at him, feeling herself flatten under the sudden thickness of the air. For a second she thought it was the heating system again, but this was a different oppressiveness. It wasn't just steeped in heat and humidity, dense in energized air molecules. It was the pressure of a planet, falling right over her head.
"W-What?" she gaped.
He didn't look at her. He picked up whatever he could lay his hands on, dumping loose and crumby cookies straight into the black hole of his backpack. If Hana stared at him any harder, her eyeballs would pop out, plop straight onto the plates he was emptying like bonbons.
"I just remembered I promised I'd attend a thing for Kari."
"What?" she repeated.
He gave her no further explanation. His backpack was zipped and shouldered, and he looked at her as he backheeled towards the door. Hana stood, following him.
"What thing?" she demanded.
His excuse repeated.
"I'm sorry," he said. He backed into her front door, somehow managing to locate the knob blindly. He twisted. Hana stepped forward, spine curving in, elbows bending to her core.
"Taichi," she called.
"I'm sorry."
The lock was freed and he swung the door open, stumbling out. Hana met him at the door frame, but he was already on the retreat, pace picking up, figure shrinking as he gained distance down the hallway. Hana gripped the doorjamb with hands curled like claws, fingernails moon-white from the force she inflicted. Given the strength, she'd have splintered wood.
"Taichi!" she yelled.
The elevator pinged. She could hear his footsteps clamber into the car, the click of buttons pressed in a hurry. A part of her wanted to chase after him, but the other half had already surrendered, dumping her against the door. He was gone, and she sensed the elevator drop, a plummet in the heart, cutting straight through her.
xXx
A/N: So... I know the French was annoying. It'll get more annoying next chapter, when they finally talk to Hana's grandmother. Just so you know. Also, excuse any errors. I took just one semester of French and my knowledge of it is elementary.
Anywho...
Thanks for reading and reviewing! I'll leave you something to ponder:
TAI. WHY ARE YOU HIGHTAILING IT?!