Page 4
Ouran Fanfiction
Restricted Universe
Author's notes:
Umm... I wrote this because I had a day off school (teacher's strike) and my friend didn't. So I wrote her this. However, it's taken something like a couple of weeks to finish it. XD Ah well I still got it done.
It's a drabble... Pretty much... Quite sweet, mostly kind of strange and sad though.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Ouran.
--
Growing up, we were always everything to ourselves and each other. There was only the two of us, and that was all. We were each other's whole world, each other's whole universe, and that suited us fine. All we needed was one another, even right at the start.
Of course, we had objects in our restricted world of me-and-him and him-and-me. Objects 'essential' to living. They weren't really. The only essential things to us were each other's presence and the knowledge that we'd never ever leave the other.
There were other objects too; these were known as 'people' to others of those objects, but we always knew better. We were the people, the only real ones. At least, we were in our world.
I have vivid memories of everything, because I always remember things when Hikaru is there and he's always there, always has been. Always will be.
When we were really small- still young enough to retain babyish puppy fat- they tried to put us in separate beds, and we didn't play along. One of us would always just climb in with the other, and I'd always fall asleep with his hand- warm, comforting softness- in mine, and his breath ghosting on my face. No one minded us being that way at that age. They all thought it was only a phase, something we'd grow out of in time.
They weren't growing out of their world. Why should we grow out of our universe?
It didn't make sense then. It doesn't make sense now.
I remember first playing pranks on people-objects when we were probably three. Hikaru was always far more daring than I and was never scared to put our plans into action. I used to care, just a little. But then I remembered that it didn't matter if we upset people-objects because they weren't real people, not like we were.
Our first real prank was probably when we poured porridge into one of the maid's shoes. I remember laughing with Hikaru while we listened to her shrieks and watched from behind a potted plant, our faces glowing with delight at the success of such a simple act in causing a person-object distress.
After that, we played so many of those practical jokes that I sometimes wonder if I can really remember it all, but then I remember that I remember everything to do with Hikaru and I relax again, gripping onto the individual memories like individual grains of sand on a beach.
When we were seven and I got chicken pox, Hikaru insisted on staying with me and got them too. We spent that week in the confines of our room and plotted, occasionally carefully scratching each other's backs as a relief from the itching. Seven-year-old fingers with seven-year-old nails, scraping over seven-year-old skin, and we still slept together in one bed, despite our parent-objects' protests. Their opinions weren't of any kind of importance to us.
The people-objects in our world were never very permanent. We managed to send lots of maids away, and then every time we got rid of one, another would arrive and replace her. A kind of game for us, probably not much of a fun one for them, but we didn't care. Our boredom had bred games, and the objects and people-objects became toys for those games. Playthings for us to amuse ourselves with when we grew bored or annoyed, and easily disposable. Even our parent-objects weren't completely permanent. I don't think they ever spent more than a week at home, and very little time with us. We weren't bothered. We were content with each other and only each other.
Once, when we were ten, we got a new maid, who decided we were 'too old' to still be sleeping in one bed together, and split us up. I remember sitting up in 'my' bed, hugging my knees in the absence of my brother and holding my own hand instead of his. His would have been more familiar. I gained no comfort from this and cried, tears coursing silently down my face. I was never a loud person- that was Hikaru's trait. But right now I couldn't hear him, and this only made me cry more. I wondered if that horrible woman-object-thing who locked me in here had dragged him off away from me to another world and locked him there too. I cried more at this thought, tears streaks staining my flushed and crumpled face, quiet sobs racking my body. I heard a rustling and started, looking about me for the source of the noise. The room looked no different than usual, dark shadows, and a beam of moonlight falling across the floor from a gap in the curtains. I heard more scuffling, a metallic scraping, and then my name. Sliding from the bed, I crawled beneath it and found a small air vent grating. Hikaru's voice issued very quietly from behind the almost completely closed covering, and I pulled it open properly, catching the skin of my fingers on the metal but not caring at all. We stayed like that all night, talking quietly through the vent, and repairing our universe, sewing up the ravaged edges with our easy chat and planning hoe to get rid of the Destroyer.
Within a week, she'd gone and everything went back to right. We were free to play together and with our people-object-toys as usual.
No one understands how we work. No one can comprehend us. No one knows.
No one but us.
And this is how it is.
I remember the first time we changed the relationship we had. Deepened it. Made it stronger than any cosmic force in their 'world'.
We were fourteen and on holiday with our parents at the beach. It was midnight, and the sky was scattered with stars, tiny dots of light that reflected in our eyes as we ran down the beach in our shorts and t-shirts. We'd been unable to find our swimming trunks, laughed it off instead, and now our identical legs had flown us down here to the dark, salty sea.
Deep, silky sky, and deep, silky sea above our heads and around our legs. The horizon would have been indistinguishable, but the moonbeams dancing across the surface of the water meant I could see it as Hikaru and I jumped and splashed and laughed. The stars were caught in Hikaru's wet hair, and I half-wonderingly put out a hand to touch it, to see what it would feel like to hold the light in my fingers. Taking my hand away, I saw Hikaru gazing into my face and I think some kind of thrill jumped through my heart because the gaze was so very different to whatever I had experienced before.
Neither of us breathed a word, but both of us leaned slowly forward in unison until our lips brushed together. And then we were kissing and it all felt so beautiful and wonderful and warm and tender and so, so right that my mind blanked completely. I don't think either of us knows exactly when we realised we could never be only brothers, but I think it was probably always going to happen, sooner or later.
After this, we settled even more comfortably into our already quiet and strange universe. We never spoke to students much at school, and if we got stupid love messages from girls, we soon put out the flame of hope with our usual game. It became ritualistic, and it was always so irritating when we got another one.
I don't really know how we felt when Tamaki first showed up and asked us to join the host club. I think we were probably highly annoyed at the sheer noisiness and bright shiny-ness of him.
Eventually we joined. I guess the host club isn't so bad. We have a seemingly endless supply of people-object-toys and these are willing for us to remain together, so it suits us. They're all oblivious anyway; they don't see what's right in front of them.
They don't know that we already committed the great taboo. They only see the cuteness of the symmetry between us.
They don't know about the raging emotions that dance in my mind every time, about the unbearable love that I can feel emanating from Hikaru like heat, about the pain-pleasure feeling of push-and-pull, or about the overwhelming exhilaration that comes with release.
Then there's Haruhi. She- with her clear eyes and honest demeanour- has worked out what we've done and we don't mind. Since Tamaki got us to join the host club, we were able to make a small gap in the limits of our lonely universe, not to let others in as permanent fixtures- or at least, not as permanent as we are in it. Others may enter, they may try to comprehend us, they may be our friends. They may leave.
But they may never replace what we are to one another though, because all our physical laws dictate that this can't happen. Like things can't fall upwards, they can't do it. And I'm glad of it. Because our universe would not have limits if any of this happened.
And I love those limits, just as sure as I love him.