Tadase Hotori has made it here, in front of Amu Hinamori's house. He's been standing on the porch for ONLY about ten minutes, tilting back and forth, pacing, avoiding letting himself be convinced (by himself) to go home and forget the whole thing. Notably, this time, he's left Kiseki at his own home. It's just Tadase here, in a white dress shirt with a red tie and slacks. It's just Tadase here, in front of her house, stomach churning, heart pounding so loud it can be felt in his ears, shaking a bit.
And he finally, finally, rings the doorbell after taking the largest breath of his life.
The door opens almost instantly when Tadase finally gets up the nerve to ring the doorbell. He doesn't even have time to take his finger off the button before Amu is standing in front of him, arms crossed, dressed in a knee-length Da-iCE teeshirt. Her hair is pulled up into a side-pony with her customary x-clip in place.
Amu says nothing, just stands there staring at Tadase, as if expecting him to say something first. Her expression is unreadable; cool, calm, maybe a little judgemental. It's the same expression she wore for so many months before her Charas hatched: that Cool and Spicy look that won the hearts of most of Seiyou.
Tadase had a lot of things he was going to say. He had plans. He'd practiced them. In front of a mirror and everything! And they're all dead now. Gone completly, because Amu's there and she's looking at him again and she's like that and there's no Kiseki for him to lean on and
"...can I come in, please? I need to talk to you. I need to apologize." he says. He's not sure where he found those words, but they seem right, and in any case, they're out of his mouth before he could catch them anyways.
Amu frowns severely at Tadase. For several heartbeats, he might be worried about being turned away--because she's actually thinking of doing just that. Thoughts about the appropriateness of him being here when her parents are at; thoughts about how she isn't dressed to receive visitors. All of these cross her mind before she, at length, turns around and steps inside.
And she still hasn't even said a word. Amu crosses into her livingroom and flops down on the couch. The television is on--some show with an old lady fortune teller or another. Amu grabs a half-melted bowl of chocolate ice cream from the table beside the couch, drags a blanket over her legs so Tadase doesn't get a view, and resumes not really watching the television.
Tadase follows her, sitting next to her on the couch, but farther away than he might otherwise - giving her space, of course. And he looks down, and he looks at the TV, and he looks at her. He can't figure out if there's any way to tell what she's paying attention to, and her cold silence is deafening.
So he begins on his own. "I'm sorry. I've already apologized to Na-chan, but I need to apologize to you, too." he says, looking down. "I would blame it all on Kiseki..." and indeed, he still blames some of it on Kiseki "...but that wouldn't be fair. He was just vocalizing how I felt. I felt abandoned and forgotten by you. And I shouldn't have. And I got jealous, but I shouldn't have. I was an idiot."
Amu lets Tadase talk through every word of it, still not demonstrating whether she's listening or not. She takes a bite of her ice cream while he's talking, and swallows it when he's through, then arches a single brow.
"Yes, you were," she agrees with his last statement firmly. "And you forgot to shut the front door. I know you're rich and all, but some of us still have to deal with things like electricity bills."
Tadase is waiting, almost pins and needles, for her to say something. What he was expecting to hear, of all of that, a comment about the door, that was not in the list. His mouth hangs open for a moment. But what is he going to do? So he gets up and shuts the door.
When he comes back, he doesn't even sit down. He looks a lot less like a king or even a prince than he does someone who's just utterly and completly out of his element, maybe in a way Amu's never ever seen.
Amu closes her eyes when Tadase passes in front of her to walk back to the door. She takes a deep breath, then opens them again when he comes back to stand near her.
Setting her ice cream aside, Amu reaches for the remote and turns the television down, but not off. Finally--finally--she turns to look at him. And the expression is still cool; still spicy.
"You were an idiot," she reiterates quietly. "And a jerk. Actually let's just call it what it is: you made a complete ass of yourself, Friday. I was having fun. I finally felt like I was in a good place. I got to dance with my mentor, my boyfriend, and my best friend all on the same day. And I got to reaffirm that he still is my best friend for the first time in months, after I nearly threw the best friendship I've ever had in the dumpster. And then you came along, accused me of being a cheating harlot, and tried to get into a fist fight with your own best friend--and mine. I am really not actually sure why I even let you come in right now, except that I still love you, even if I'm pissed at you."
Tadase looks down. He's been doing a lot of looking at his shoes today. He's going to buy new shoes after this so at least if he has to look at them again like this it'll at least be ones he has studied in such intense detail already.
"Amu, everything you said is true. I know I screwed up." he says, quietly. "I came here because I wanted to apologize for being an ass. Not because I wanted to pretend like anything I did was okay."
"I can't make what I did okay. I can't make it not hurtful, or wrong. All I can do is try to make up for it as best I can, apologize, and try to undo as much damage as I can." he continues.
"Yeah, I know," Amu says bluntly. "I heard you say it the first time. And the second time. And the third time. Now the fourth time. You risk sounding like a broken record."
"But at least you're a genuine broken record," she says, then points towards a manilla envelope on the edge of the table. It's opened, and there are pictures just peeking out of the members of the dance.
"You should have a look at those," Amu says bluntly.
Tadase leans down a bit to pick up the envelope. "Well, I don't know what else to say." he admits, and he starts to pull the pictures out and look at them. "Everyone had so much fun." he says, quietly. "We all look so happy in these."
"Look a little closer," Amu says quietly. "Find the one where I'm kissing Kukai. And t hen find the one where Nagihiko is kissing you. You might see something really important, there, if you look for it. And it won't be happiness, I assure you."
Tadase shakes his head. "I don't need to look to see what you're talking about..." though he does, anyways. "It's not the same. I know how Na-chan feels, now. He told me, last night, after you left." he says, quietly. "I haven't figured out what to do with that, though."
Amu grunts in irritation, then turns away to collect her ice cream again. "Fine," she says to him quietly. "Maybe you should figure it out. Because Nadeshiko or Nagihiko, he's still my best friend. And I still love him, too."
Amu sticks some of her ice cream in her mouth, sucks on it for a moment, then swallows and points the spoon at Tadase like it were a wand. "Look," she says, "A little ten year old told me a story the other day that I think you need to consider. You think of love like a pie. If you give a piece of it to someone else, that shows how much you love them, right?"
"I'm trying to. But I don't want to say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. There's been too much of that. Na-chan is my best friend, my oldest friend. I don't want to put him through any more pain than I already have."
Tadase then blinks, a bit confused about the pie. "Okay, I mean... I guess? I'm not sure what you mean but I'll try to follow and play along."
Amu sighs and reaches up to rub at her nose. "I suck at this," she mumbles to herself, trying to remember how Reiko explained it. "Love is like a pie. You give your heart to me, and now I've got your heart, and you can't give it to anyone else. But I've got two, so I give mine back to you and now we've both got pie. And that's how you think it should be. Except I gave some of my heart to Nagihiko, too," she says, "and so you think now you've got less of a pie than I have, and that Nagi has one of the pieces that belongs to you. Is that how it feels?"
Tadase finally sits down on the couch again - though still giving Amu space - and tries to understand what she's saying. But he tilts his head a bit and looks at her. "I guess that's a pretty close approximation, yeah." he says, after a while. "Or... something like it." he says, still unsure, hand scratching the back of his neck.
"Or, it feels like..." Tadase is trying to grasp for the words. "It feels like you're saying my 'pie' isn't enough, and that you need more to be happy."
"LOVE ISN'T A PIE!" Amu yells at Tadase angrily. That is not how she was supposed to tell the story. "It isn't a fucking pie," she reiterates, then puts her ice cream down on the coffee table. Then, she rolls forward and crawls along the couch until she's practically in his lap, pressing her lips to his fiercely and angrily. Such a conflict of emotions he must be experiencing.
At least unfortunately it doesn't last long. Amu sits back on her heels, hands on her knees, still glaring at him. "When I give you my heart, I give you all of it. But that doesn't mean I don't still have all of my heart to give to Nagihiko. And just because I give you both everything doesn't mean yours isn't good enough!
"I love you!" Amu yells at him.
"I've never told anyone those words before!" she continues. "But you know what, I love him too. I don't know if I love him the same way as you; I haven't had time to explore that idea. I went from having my best friend hook me up with my crush, to finding out my best friend was a fucking liar, to trying to figure that out, to watching everyone I love die, to a crazy dance, to watching them fight. I haven't had time to figure any of this crap out, Tadase!
"But," she says, calming just a little, "That doesn't make me love you any less! And it doesn't make me value your feelings for me any less!"
Tadase is taken back in a literal sense when she yells at him, and he shirks visibly away until suddenly OH HELLO and she's kissing him and once again for a moment everything is pretty okay even though he knows it isn't entirely.
And Tadase just nods for a moment. "You know, earlier you talked about how you felt... that you'd nearly thrown he best friendship you've ever had in the dumpster. I felt like I might've done the same thing at the dance. To my best friend and to the girl who I love." he says, looking clearly at Amu. "Because I was selfish, and because I didn't understand at all what's going on." he says, lowly.
"All I know for sure is that I love you, Amu-chan. Everything else around that I don't know about. And I'm still trying to figure it all out, too!" he says, scooting a little bit closer suddenly.
And then she hits him. It's not hard, but it's hard enough that he certainly feels it. Balled up fist straight to the chest, with a little scream of exultation and frustration. But she doesn't pull her hand away; she just opens it and presses it to the injury, then slowly falls forward towards Tadase until she's practically oozing into his lap, tears she's forced herself to hold onto for days streaming down her cheek. "I'm so mad at you," she tells him angrily as she curls up into a little ball beside him. "I can't believe the things you said. You hurt me so bad, and I thought I was doing what you wanted me to do: to forgive him. To understand him. To not throw everything away."
Tadase puts an arm around Amu when she falls towards him. When she's crying. It's automatic, unthought and just feels like the right thing. "And you should've been mad at me, Amu." he says, quietly. "It's okay to be upset with me." he urges. "Because I fucked up. And I did things I shouldn't have done. I hurt the most important people in my life - you, Nagi, even Kukai, because he had to watch."
"And I did want you to do all of those things. I want you to be happy, Amu. I want Nagi to be happy. I want to be happy. All I want to do is for people to be happy. I fight for that. As the King, as Platinum Royale. And I failed at that. But... that's not your fault. It's mine."
"I just hope all of you can forgive me some day."
Amu hugs herself tightly as she cries into Tadase's lap for a while. She doesn't say anything else as she lets those sobs control her for a while. If her parents come home right now they'd probably get such a wrong idea, given what she's wearing.
Good thing they're not expected home for hours, yet.
Eventually, Amu's tears do begin to subside, and she reaches to put one arm around his legs and the other his back. The hug Amu gives Tadase isn't tight, but it is genuine. "I do forgive you," she tells him honestly. "I already forgave you, even before you got here. But that didn't stop me still feeling hurt, or needing to hear the apology."
Tadase nods. He just lets her lay there and is in all actuality the perfect gentleman - the kind he ought to have been at the dance and wasn't. "I knew that, too... but I had to apologize. I wouldn't be much of a King if I couldn't accept my own failures and faults. But... I knew we were going to be okay when you kissed me earlier." he says with a smile.
"Actually, I knew we were going to be okay when you kissed me on the dance floor that night." he corrects, with an honest, true smile. "I just forgot it for a little bit."
Amu squeezes Tadase tightly in the hug, then falls still for a while, still recovering from her own tears and pain. After a few minutes, though, she shifts onto her hip and twists, turning to face him.
One hand on Tadase's chest, Amu leans in to press her lips to his. Like at the dance, the kiss Amu gives him is pure and passionate, deep and full as a girl with so little practice but so much heart can offer.
When the kiss parts, she whispers to him, "I love you," and then reaches for his tie to very gently start pulling it away from his neck ...