Author: Mercurial Phoenix
Title: Let Me Count the Ways
Pairing: Well, it's actually a threesome…my new OT3, HaruHitachiin.
A/N: So on a whim, I inspected youtube's collection of Ouran High School Host Club videos. Trés satisfactory. I am now convinced that redheaded, prank-happy twins will one day rule the world. (Weasley + Hitachiin World Domination) And Haruhi is my new favorite anime heroine. Remember, kids—Haruhi: MY Anti-Tohru.
Warning: This fic presupposes a relationship in which the twins and Haruhi are already a well-established threesome. So well-established, in fact, that things like hot, heavy makeout sessions in an empty Third Music Room are not entirely without probability. :
Summary: To everything there is a season, a time to every purpose, and a place for every power nap. Ouran High School's Third Music Room is not that place.
Haruhi was aware, just after she regained conscious but not before she opened her eyes, of many different, coinciding, plainly odd sensations.
The most immediately noticeable of these was that her face seemed to be rendered immobile in several spots. Chasing this realization was the knowledge that she was lying in someone's lap.
When she registered the voices laughing and whispering softly over her head, she felt the beginnings of comprehension set in. Not someone's lap, singular, but laps, plural.
Her lashes fluttered uncertainly on her cheekbones as she fought the urge to open her eyes, knowing that when she did she'd see—
"Naa? Haruhiii, you're awake, you little minx! Were you pretending to be asleep just so that you could savor the experience of being held on our laps?"
"Naa, Haruhiii, how naughty of you! If you had just let us know you were awake, you could have stayed there and had some fun while you were at it!"
—Satan's favorite mortal incarnations grinning down at her like the unholy terrors they were.
There was a sudden jerk of movement, and she heard two soft thumps of something hitting the floor behind the couch.
With a sigh, Haruhi succumbed to the pressure of wakefulness and…well, Hitachiin-ness…and peeked up at the two mischievous redheads.
"Why," she deadpanned, completely ignoring their earlier statements, "am I lying here, in your laps, when I know for an absolute fact that I fell asleep on the couch?"
"You're still on the couch," Kaoru told her, the smile growing at her obvious irritation. "We saw how cute you looked when you lay down for your nap, and couldn't resist joining you."
"Be grateful that was the only temptation we gave in to," Hikaru added with a wink. "There were lots of other ways we'd liked to have joined you, but we resisted valiantly."
"No way in hell are either of you two classified as 'valiant,'" Haruhi objected, but she felt a slight thrill at the insinuation he made. She tried to sit up, but they easily defeated her efforts by trapping her arms under theirs. She dimly noted that her upper torso and head were pillowed by Hikaru's lap, while most of her lower torso and her legs lay atop Kaoru's. She also vaguely acknowledged that she was extremely comfortable being so sprawled across the two of them.
It eventually came to her attention that she was comfortably sprawled across the two of them on on the couch in the Third Music Room, regardless of the fact that anyone from the club (read: Tamaki-senpai) could enter at any time and witness the slightly unorthodox position the three of them occupied (read: spaz, freak out, and generally go psycho with "My precious daughter!" and "You vile doppelgangers!" accusations at the top of his lungs).
With this image firmly in mind, she glared up at them—and felt the odd sensation of immobility on her face once again. She blinked, and felt it again. She frowned in consternation, and once again felt the strangeness occupying several spots on her skin.
"What," she pronounced slowly, "did you do to me while I was asleep?"
"Not as much as we wanted to," they quipped in unison immediately, as though they had been waiting for just such a question—which, she reflected, they probably had. "Although—"
"You'll forgive us, dear Haruhi, if we couldn't help—"
"—but treat ourselves to a lingering caress or two. Nothing invasive—"
"—just appreciating the beauty of your innocence and gentleness in slumber—"
"I don't believe it," groaned Haruhi, her eyes closing again in horror. "You were feeling me up in my sleep, and I didn't even notice."
"We were very gentle," Kaoru assured her.
"Gave a whole new meaning to the term 'gentlemen,'" Hikaru added, waggling his eyebrows.
She opened her eyes to pin them with a trademark Haruhi Glare of Unamused I-Will-Kill-You ©. "You dogs."
"Woof, woof," grinned Kaoru. Hikaru leaned over so that she was looking at his head upside down in her line of vision.
"Does that make your our little bitch, Haruhiii?" he murmured, suddenly intense and not at all joking. She flushed.
"C-certainly not! Let me up, you overgrown hormones!"
"Don't wanna," they chorused, and smirked down at her.
She frowned at them for a few more moments before her original query resurfaced. "What did you do to my face? It feels funny."
"It should—it looks funny," Hikaru teased. At her unamused look, he shook his head. "Come on, you set yourself up for that one."
Privately agreeing with him—she had walked into it—she ignored him and made an effort to sit up again. This time they let her do so, but they kept a light grip on her hands. Her brows lowered, once again causing the strange feeling on her skin. "What were you doing?" she repeated.
They glanced at one another before giving her their best Hitachiin Smile of Angelic Who-Me? © "We were having a contest," they said simply. She eyed them suspiciously. They merely grinned back.
"A contest?"
"Yeah."
She stared at them a while longer before pulling her hands free and standing up. Still throwing them Seriously-You-Will-Die Beams, she made her way across the room to a full-length mirror Tamaki had insisted upon installing a few weeks ago. Stopping before the mirror, she stared at her reflection.
She bent closer and blinked.
There were little pieces of sticky notepad paper placed at random intervals on her face. Some bore blue scribbles, some pink. She squinted to read the backwards lettering in the mirror.
Written in alternating colors on each sticky note was either "Hikaru loves Haruhi" or "Kaoru loves Haruhi." Many of the notes were decorated with flowing cursive, block letters, bubbles letters, hearts, faces, and nonsensical side comments. A few of them actually seemed to resemble conversation, reading, if you could establish the order from their random placement, "Well, Hikaru loves her MORE," "No way, Kaoru loves her more," "Kaoru doesn't love her nearly as much as Hikaru does," "Hikaru is delusional if he thinks he loves her as much as Kaoru does," "Hikaru thinks he loves Kaoru and Haruhi about the same anyway," and "Kaoru thinks he feels the same about Hikaru and Haruhi." One confident declaration read, "I'm winning because I love Haruhi more," but it was indistinguishable as to whom it belonged.
Haruhi's mouth dropped open in surprise. The papers on her cheeks and chin fluttered from the motion.
She lifted an eyebrow. The papers on her brow shifted with the movement.
She lowered her brow. The papers shifted.
She felt her lips start to curve into a smile and fought it. The papers trembled.
Finally she stood up and stared at her reflection contemplatively. A fluttery, warm feeling spread in her stomach. She turned to the twins, who were watching her with identical grins on their faces.
"A contest?" she repeated dryly.
"He started it," they said, pointing at one another.
"You guys," she paused for effect, "are utter idiots."
They only laughed. "Who won?" Hikaru pressed.
She laughed too, oddly warmed by the entire affair. "Like I'm going to count." She held out her arms to the two of them as she walked to the couch. "And for your information, I love both of you more, simply because I have to put up with more crap from you than you do from me."
"Two against one—mathematically speaking, we love you more," Hikaru refuted.
"So there," Kaoru added childishly. Haruhi giggled.
They each took a hand and drew her down between them. "We weren't finished with the contest," Kaoru informed her, and she lifted a brow. "We were going to cover more of you with sticky notes, but you woke up, so we tossed them over the back of the couch."
Haruhi remembered the sound of something hitting the floor before she'd opened her eyes.
"You covered every inch of my face with sticky paper and you weren't done yet?" she said, mock shuddering.
"Not every inch," declared Hikaru, leaning in and stealing a kiss from her paper-free lips. She laughed again at Kaoru's indignant, "Hey, no fair!" before he, too, kissed her.
"Well, how are we going to decide the winner, if you didn't bother to count?" Hikaru continued.
"I have an idea," Kaoru chimed in. "We'll take the papers off one at a time and count them—"
"And for every paper that belongs to either one of us, that one gets to kiss the spot where he left it," Hikaru added, his devilish smirk in place.
Haruhi rolled her eyes, and then let out a surprised exclamation when they tipped her back onto the couch. "Hey! Hey—stop it—aah!" She collapsed into giggles as they proceeded to pull the sticky notes off her face and plant little kisses in their places. "You guuuuuys—"
And when all the papers were gone, she gasped, and let out a shaky breath as they began to kiss other places. "H-hey, I'm pretty s-sure you didn't put paper on my ears or my n-neck…"
"Naaa, Haruhii…" Hikaru's soft breath in her ear made her shiver, as did Kaoru's gentle nipping at her throat. "It's our contest. We decide the rules, right?"
"And we also decide what—or who—the winner gets for his prize," Kaoru murmured into the hollow in her collarbone.
"And it just so happens," they chimed together in low, sultry harmony that sent a ball of heat into her gut, "that today's prize is you, lovely little Haruhi."
"W-which one of you is the winner?" she stammered—talking was not an advisable activity when Hikaru was nuzzling the skin behind her ear.
They paused and sent her twin looks of blazing, triumphant maleness.
"We both are," they declared, and set about claiming their prize.
An hour later, Haruhi murmured dazedly into Kaoru's chest, "If that's the prize for an unfinished contest, I'm glad I woke up. No telling how far you'd have gone if I hadn't."
From his agreeably comfortable position on Haruhi's back, Hikaru sent a superior smirk to his brother. "Haruhi, even with your genius, you couldn't have counted that high."
A/N: Oh my God, HaruHitachiin FOREVER, man. TOTALLY. 3 Um, naaa is sort of the equivalent of Heeeey or Hmmm. Before you ask, they stuck the pens they used to write the notes with between the cushions of the couch. So they'd be prepared for next time. Because you KNOW with the twins there'll be a next time.
Oh, yeah, is it just me or does:
Honey Momiji from Fruits Basket (same seiyuu, even! X3)
Mori Hatori FB
Tamaki Ayame FB (XD XD Flamboyance, thy name is bishounen.)
Kyouya Inui from Prince of Tennis (damn notebook… 'ii data,' my ass… )
I already said that Haruhi is the mirror opposite of Tohru FB and that the twins are anime-style Weasleys… Wow, it's like all the characters are total rip-offs…except better than the originals…