Title: Dreams the Things
Rating: T
Characters:
Kaoru and Hikaru
Warnings: Kaoru angsting; slightly
twincest-y
Disclaimer: Characters not mine.
Summary: Kaoru waits for Hikaru to come home.
In your sleeping clothes, see to it that he comes home safe at night. Switch off all the lights. Sit by the window and press your forehead against the glass. Wait for the headlights.
Around you and outside is a stretch of darkness. Wonder if this is how it feels to be alone and decide that you don't don't like it. Set a goal and a deadline: find someone before June 25. Convince yourself that this will make you happy, this will make your brother jealous.
Wonder if the nearest convenience store is open. You want noodles, the instant kind. Think that you want instant coffee as well to guarantee you a stomach ache. Look at the clock. It is 1 in the morning.
Go back ten years. You are on all fours as kids in a garden wedding. You are the one in blue following your brother through a maze of legs and designer shoes. He pokes a jutting knee with a stick and you mimic the action. Somewhere above you is a high-pitched scream and you both come out from under the table and run as fast as you can. At dinner, your mother scolds you and confuses your names. Both of you are sent to your room, but neither of you mind. You know that no one can harm you since you always have the other an arm's breadth away.
Acknowledge the fact that you truly are hungry but don't bother to move. Let your stomach protest. Try to remember your last meal: a TV dinner you microwaved yourself. You will probably die before 30; death by MSG. (Forget what the acronym stands for.) Laugh silently at this prospect and head count your own funeral. Your brother will be there shaking with grief. He will want to throw himself into your grave but somebody with a heart like Tamaki's will stop him. Two years later, your brother will get married. Wonder if he will still keep a photograph of you on his table in the room that he will share with his wife.
Think of how it began. Blame the mock weddings you staged in your own makeshift altar when you were young. Blame your mother's line of wedding gowns. Your brother had kissed you one night when you were both old enough to know what it should feel like. (Blame your brother.)
1:10 but feel like it's already 3. Start drawing shapes on the dusty sides of the window pane. Write 'Hikaru' and 'Kaoru' and a heart in-between. Contemplate your neat writing. Compare it with your brother's indecipherable one. Feel childish all of a sudden and turn the heart into a polygon with sticks sticking out. 'Hikaruspaceships Kaoru.' Ten years ago you would've done this without shame but this is now and your brother is away.
Notice the headlights approaching the house. Pad barefoot through the room and darkness to your bed. Pretend you are asleep. Control your breathing when you hear the door creak. Feel the mattress sag at his weight when he lies down. Think that he smells like cigarettes and musk, like something expensive from a store. Stay as close as you can without being uncomfortable. This reminds you of the time that he kissed you long and hard and true. Stay awake until the first sign of light. Watch him sleep. Watch him breathe. He is yours like this tonight.