Erm, how to put this...if you need to look up a certain word, use a dictionary, not the internet.
Reeeaaally
by Sonorous
Kyoya Ootori had built a palace of reputation around himself since the day he began at Ouran High School. He was blameless, without shadow, without stain; respected by students and teachers alike. Nothing could get past his castle of respectability; nothing could harm this projection of himself.
Then, he got one damn word wrong and the whole thing came crashing down on his head. A slip of the tongue. Anyone could have done it! And yet the consequences…oh, the consequences…
Really, he didn't know how the noun had slipped out. It was the last thing on his mind when discussing deviant cell-multiplication that led to malignant tumors. But somehow, when explaining to the class how the tumor could spread through the life-form if the malignant cells entered the bloodstream, the attentive eyes had gone shocked, the understanding nods replaced by dropped jaws, the teacher's happy smile by a look of abhorrence.
Kyoya had frozen, understanding dawning in half a moment.
"-I mean, organism," he corrected quickly, cheeks going the color of reeeaaally ripe tomatoes; but, it was far too late. Three girls fainted, half a dozen boys promptly choked on held-back laughter, and one teacher frowned so disapprovingly that Kyoya could practically feel his class grade dropping.
He'd done the unthinkable, committed the biology taboo.
…how, how, how had he accidentally replaced "organism" with "orgasm"?
…or rather, who knew that two totally different words could sound so similar.
Kyoya shuddered again as the memory ripped through him. He, Kyoya Ootori, the cool, the calm, the unfaltering, had fumbled in his speech. Had embarrassed himself in front of an entire class. Had compromised his reputation, his standing, his entire life-
"Hey, Kyoya-sempai…"
Damn.
"Hey. Kyoya-sempai…"
"Hikaru. Don't you have a client to be attending?" Kyoya lifted the hand holding his stylus to push his glasses further up on his nose as he glared sideways at the twins.
"Kyoya-sempai, your cheeks look like roses-"
"-reeeaaally red ones," Kaoru finished, bending down to peer around the black hair that hung around Kyoya's face in an attempt to conceal more than usual. It wasn't often that Kyoya blushed, and that was because the blood stained his cheeks for hours afterwards.
"It's not often you see such a heartless person blush," Hikaru continued, hands on his hips, head cocked to one side, as he stared up at the older boy. "Are you ill, Kyoya-sempai?"
"No," Kyoya said shortly.
"We heard that you got sick during biology class," Kaoru informed him, a sly smile sliding into place on his face.
"Reeeaaally sick," Hikaru added, eyebrows raised.
"Get back to work," Kyoya said coldly, refusing to respond to their taunting.
"But Kyoya-sempai!"
"We just want to make sure you're alright!"
"After all, you were reeeaaally sick. And we don't want you around Haruhi if you're sick, you know."
"After all, if your mind is on that so much that you even talk about it during biology…well, really, Kyoya-sempai-"
"-we can't have that around Haruhi, you know-"
"-so if you stay here while you're so sick-"
"-we might have to warn her to stay away-"
Neither twin knew what had hit them when they found themselves pinned against the pink wall, a stylus pressed against the air-pipe of one, clip-board smashed against the face of the other. Their words had cut the string, broken the dam, released the lion.
Kyoya was fed up. Humiliated to the point of snapping. Enraged to the point of murder.
"If either of you say a word about this to Haruhi, I will be reeeaaally disappointed," he deadpanned, usually calm face morphed into a mask so blank and empty that the stare-down champion of the world would have flinched in terror. "So disappointed that we might have to consider your permanent removal from the Host Club and Ouran High School. Not to mention raising Haruhi's debt by a few hundred million. Understood?"
A moment of silence followed his words. The throat underneath the stylus shifted slightly as Hikaru swallowed once, and the clipboard slid down an inch for so, pulling Kaoru's fair hair with it.
"Am…I…understood," Kyoya repeated, enunciating each syllable with deadly intent.
"…Hai, Kyoya-sempai."
"Good." Cheerful Kyoya reemerged in less time than it took to place the tip of the pen against the clipboard, now held against his chest, and continue writing. "You two really shouldn't leave your customers alone for so long," he said with a cold smile in their direction.
"Right, Kyoya-sempai-"
"-of course not." Kaoru, the less-injured of the two, slid his fingers around Hikaru's wrist and dragged the other, who was rubbing his pained throat with white fingers, back towards the young females awaiting them on a sofa. "Sorry, Kyoya-sempai," Kaoru called over his shoulder, eyes wide, his left cheek tinted red from the pressure of the clip-board.
Still, neither twin hid their face quickly enough to disguise the grins that conquered all mere moments after landing on the couch.
"You're not forgiven," Kyoya growled under his breath as he widened his own blood-freezing smile.
How, how, how had he given the twins such a hole in his defenses? Really, Kyoya thought angrily, it wasn't as if that was on his mind all the time. In fact, he was so busy with the Host Club and his studies that that never even entered his conscience. It was a ridiculous fluke, a one-in-a-million chance. It could have happened to anyone.
Yes. To anyone, Kyoya repeated to himself, firmly slamming his pen down against the clip-board. In fact, it was probably more perverted of people to notice than it was for him to have said- accidentally- said it.
And his embarrassment had nothing to do with his fear of Haruhi finding out. No, he was more worried about his father hearing it from Suoh's father who heard it from Suoh, the dunderhead. Mr. Ootori would judge the slip to be a sign of Kyoya's inability to orate, in which case the third son might have to spend weeks giving extra long speeches in his father's presence to convince him otherwise. No, Kyoya could really care less if Haruhi found out that such a word was in his vocabulary.
Not that she would be surprised. Haruhi was sensible, he knew, and would most likely expect it of him; to be truthful, of all seventeen-year-old boys. (Except, perhaps, Suoh, the oblivious idiot.) In fact, she probably wouldn't even see the slip-of-the-tongue as odd or sick.
Kyoya nodded firmly to himself, then looked down at his clip-board to see the paper dotted with ink-blots of various sizes. Unknowingly, Kyoya had been slamming his pen decisively into the paper for the past half a minute. He stared at the page, and his ruined work, in calm horror. Was it an oxymoron? Yes. Could he help it? No.
Damn the twins, he thought, shooting a particularly vicious stare in their direction as he tore the top page off the pile and crumpled it up inside his fist. And to think that they were over there giggling, grinning at each other and their customers as if the world was all flower gardens and sunshine.
Forget his failing oratory. At this rate, Kyoya had more pressing troubles to worry about: namely, the fact the two such as them would require constant supervision to make sure they kept his secret.
It was only four o'clock, and yet Kyoya felt a migraine coming on. The way he felt now, it was impossible to remember why he'd even cared enough to explain the physics of cancer to his classmates in the first place.
Reeeaaally, Kyoya thought with a deep sigh. Sometimes, he was just too kind for his own good.
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