Title: Belong
Summary: It may seem that Kaoru is losing himself to HikaruandKaoru, but you can't lose something you never had.
Words: 1000
Hikaru and Kaoru were together every minute of every day their entire lives. They were as close as two people could be. Every motion, every joke, was anticipated and shared. They lived completely in sync. Even married couples got sick of each other after too many years breathing the same air, but Hikaru and Kaoru, as far as they could remember, had never been in a single real fight. There were no conflicts because they were past the point of simply completing each other, like some human yin and yang. They had completely merged. They were one. Sometimes Kaoru forgot that they weren't actually conjoined twins; his brother was constantly in the corner of his eye.
There had never been a Kaoru and Hikaru. It was always HikaruandKaoru. Everyone referred to them as a pair. Their classmates, their servants, their mother. Even they themselves chose the word "we" over "I" the overwhelming majority of the time. Who was Kaoru without his Hikaru?
Who was Kaoru?
Was there even such a thing as just-Kaoru? Was that concept even possible? Hikaru could barely function without his twin. While Kaoru could tolerate being alone, he didn't prefer it. While sometimes he felt suffocated by his human shadow, he didn't feel secure without him. Alone, he felt out of place everywhere in the world. But with Hikaru, there was never any question to whether he belonged.
Kaoru leaned into the mirror over their grandiose double sink. His reflection felt alien. Even in his own skin, he was out of place. It was funny, he knew every inch of his brother, but he hardly recognized his own body even though it was supposedly identical.
He stared for a while, twisting his neck this way and that, tilting his head around to examine where the shadows fell. Is one of my ears bigger? he thought to himself, looking back and forth in the mirror. No, one is pointier. My left ear is slightly rounder than my right. I never noticed…
"Hey, gorgeous," Hikaru teased as he entered. "I know you're a piece of art, but you can't stare at yourself forever."
Kaoru laughed nervously and pried himself away from the counter, only to tug gently at his ears, mesmerized. If he could see the difference between his own two ears, why couldn't anyone see the difference between two people? Was it really that hard?
"And no, you can't stare off into space forever, either." Hikaru rolled his eyes. "Geez, is that all you ever do? It's not healthy, you know." Hikaru walked into the corner of the oversized bathroom, next to their open-ended luxury shower with three waterfall showerheads. He kicked his boxers aside carelessly and pressed the dial pad to set the temperature. The water ran.
Fog enveloped his brother, but Kaoru still recognized his brother's back perfectly. Even from a distance, he knew exactly where the thin scar was Hikaru got when he fell on a rock several years ago. It was as if he had a coordinate system for Hikaru's entire skin. Without thinking, Kaoru reached his arm around and rubbed his own lower back. No scar. Kaoru's eyes came back into focus and he shook his head. What am I doing? he thought and exited the room.
Kaoru prided himself in being the perfect brother, and Hikaru prided himself in the same. Onlookers agreed that it was amazing how well they got along, how well they understood each other. But lately, Kaoru was having doubts. Did he really know anything about Hikaru, anything important at all? If they had always been HikaruandKaoru, then that was all they knew. And if Kaoru didn't even know who Kaoru was outside of that, then surely Hikaru didn't either.
His whole body felt cold and tight.
The only time Kaoru was truly alone was in his thoughts. The only time Hikaru was truly alone was in his emotions. Sure, thoughts and emotions often overlapped between the two, but Kaoru was one to lock himself away deep in his own mind, the same way Hikaru lost himself in his temper. And they let themselves, they indulged in it because that eccentric behavior was the only way they could feel real.
Like everything else in their world, their days blurred together. Kaoru expected his life to continue in this double-monochrome pattern forever. Sometimes he wondered if loneliness would be better than this confusion. When he was seven, he once wished upon a star to be an only child. When he woke up and Hikaru wasn't beside him, he panicked. His head spun and he couldn't breathe. It took him a good twenty minutes to scour a single floor of the huge mansion. When Hikaru found his brother, Kaoru was tearing their father's study apart, sobbing hysterically. Hikaru, still a bit damp and cold from going out to witness the first snow of the season, shook his twin until Kaoru stopped crying long enough to vomit all over him. Kaoru never told Hikaru about the wish he made, and that night, he made a new wish; he asked to have never been born, for Hikaru to be free of him.
Kaoru had more love for Hikaru than he knew what to do with. Even after hearing countless "true love" fairy tales, he couldn't imagine he could ever love anyone, in any way, more than he loved his brother. That love filled him to the brim, threatened to ooze out of every pore. He lived for Hikaru. He cherished HikaruandKaoru, but he knew that just-Hikaru would be an amazing person if given the chance, and he wanted to see if just-Kaoru would be too.
Over the years, Kaoru learned to stop making wishes upon stars, because not even magic could decode the meaning behind his twisted and tangled contradictions.
Kaoru was out of place yet again, even in his own heart.
A/N: I'll edit this later for flow. I know these short stories are pretty unexciting since it's mostly just introspection, but I still try and make them interesting to read! Comment if you have suggestions! I want to hear what you guys think of my writing, even if you dislike it!
