Disclaimer: the lovely Bisco Hatori owns Ouran. Sadly, I make no profit from writing about her adorable characters.
This was written for AcerbusEquinomin56, who gave me the most in-depth and eloquent review I have received to date. I felt like I didn't deserve those kind words, and I felt the least I could do was write a story in return for them. So here it is, words for words; a heartfelt expression of my gratitude :)
It's possible that I may add more chapters onto this, and make it into a collection of vignettes about the twins. But who knows? This is different from anything I've ever written before in tiny, subtle ways, and it makes me happy. Then again, every story is like a child to me, so who knows if it's anything special X3 but yes, I might add on.
The colors of your eyes match mine
When we kiss they're perfectly aligned.
Like the moon and the starlight
And the midsummer's night
Despite our identical appearance, the things that make us so alike are not visible to the eye. It would be unfair to compare us by appearance when the nature of our relationship goes so much deeper than that. I don't know if you can feel it or if you feel the things I feel, but I do know that to me, there is something behind that playful display of brotherly love that we routinely show our customers. It's something I can sense when we lay in bed, silent, our fingers laced beneath the covers, our breathing harmonious.
"Hikaru?" I ask, and your fingers twitch in mine. Hearing the soft reply of 'Mm?' filtering across the space between us makes me smile, and I scoot closer, the slick sound of flesh sliding against cotton melding with the cicadas that drone pleasantly beyond the enormous picture window. "This is forever, right?"
"Eh?" weariness colors your voice, but nevertheless your golden eyes, hazed with nearby dreams, lock with mine. "Forever? What are you going on about, Kaoru?" you are fully awake now, and as you shift away from dreamland your nose brushes mine.
"We're forever, right?" I ask, though simple words can't really voice the feeling, the true question, and the things behind it. Words are nothing next to you, next to the things that I want to say to you. I want to capture my desire to make us something more than what-if's and could-be's if the future you want with Haruhi really ever does happen. If you really ever are able to build a future with someone else that doesn't involve me meshed in, I want to know now. This synchronized breathing and blinking may not be enough to glue you to me for decades to come. I pretend to be okay with expanding our World, but the truth is that you are my world, and I want to be your I don't want to always be the only one clinging to this notion. Somehow, that is not okay anymore. "You and me?"
"What?" you don't seem to understand, but I know you do. I can sense it in the golden amber of your eyes and in the thought patterns your fluttering eyelids suggest. Because that is the thing that makes us alike; the thought. The way you and I think is identical, though the ideas and opinions those thoughts entail are usually completely different. I can see you turning the thoughts over in your head. I can see you waiting to learn if I'll give you any further words to work with so you will know how to respond, and I oblige, as always.
"This thing with Haruhi. I know you care about her, Hikaru, but... if things work out with her, we'll still have our 'world', won't we?" I shouldn't be so candid, but I can't hide anything from you anyway. You would find out somehow, as though you can see through my eyes like they were windows and into the quivering core of emotion behind. There are a million words that I could never hope to say, a million words that human language doesn't have the capacity to express and invent, that you would still understand if I was somehow implying them. Our bond goes that deep, and for that reason, the notion of permanence is one that is far more important now than ever.
For a moment, you pause and shift your weight onto your elbow. Your hair moves, flaming auburn sliding past rich gold and concealing from me part of those windows to your soul, your thoughts and feelings. I don't need to see both eyes to know that you are left speechless, though I have no idea whether you are trying to avoid wounding me or if you genuinely are unsure of what to say. I find that always being the one who breaks the silence is irritating, but I do it anyway.
"Answer me, Hikaru. I know you know the answer," I am tired of waiting for the issue to be brought up, and now that I've raised it, I can't let it drop, like a spoiled dog with a master's shoe. My fingers close around your arm, and your skin and muscle are warm and pliable beneath my fingers, almost as though I am actually touching the warmly pulsing blood and tissue that I can feel just beneath the surface. Time stops, and I am left with you in my fists and the cicadas chirruping from what seems like miles away now.
"But you know the answer too, Kaoru," your hand is suddenly under my chin, and the warmth of your fingers is life to the rapidly wilting garden of my consciousness. Your eyes lock with mine. I can see my own eyes reflected in yours, and it's hard to tell where your eyes ends and the mirrored image of my own begins. For a moment, the enigma captivates me completely.
"Hikaru..." it's a childish whisper that I've uttered so many times in front of our customers, but it seems infinitely different now with nothing but you and I and the strangely warm company of the cold moonlight that lies in sheathes across your skin and hair. You tilt my chin up as you have countless times for show, but this time the joking is gone from the depth of our reality. You've never kissed me before, and the reality of this happening sends shivers up my spine and tingles all over my body, even to places that should lie dormant in the face of a kiss from my broter. We're brothers, and something about this fact makes me forget to pull away. Eve was tempted by the sweetness of the one fruit she was forbidden to taste, and I have been tempted by a single melding of lips with the exact same implication lying behind it. I'm not supposed to know the taste of my brother's lips, to feel the soft lull of your heartbeat through the tender, thin skin there. "Hikaru," I say again, shivering as the smooth planes of my lips brush yours in motion. "You didn't really answer my question."
"Yes, then. Haruhi or no Haruhi, we're still brothers, no matter what happens with her," your lips stay against mine and press, now more insistent. I find it more than a little strange that in light of your feelings for Haruhi, I'm the one that you're giving what I know better than anyone is your first kiss. My heart flutters, and as though you can feel it, you press more surely, looking for a reaction. As I twine my fingers though your hair, breathless, I can sense a lapse in reality. All of the things I have assumed about the limitations and boundaries of my feelings toward you have been shattered, and in their place lying the brightly glimmering shards of them that make up our actions now. So what happens now?
The unspoken question is answered by the light brush of your tongue against my lip, and as you pull away and kiss my cheek, trailing your lips across the dips and valleys of my skin and back to my mouth, my breath is shallow, my world fragile. These moments could, in all reality, be the ones that change everything if we allow them to. What if somehow, fate allows us to make love? What would happen then? Would all life cease to exist? I shouldn't allow thoughts like this to even cross my mind, but they do, and they make me blush. "Hi-ka-ru...."
Your persona from school is gone, all joking and devilishness evaporated, and I can see deeper without it clouding my vision. Your eyes are bottomless, and they probe mine as you kiss me. This is overwhelming, but telling myself that I want it to stop would be a lie, and a sinful one at that. I have occasionally toyed with the idea of kissing you, but I had never imagined it could be anything like this, or that I could feel such confusing, heavy emotion at the reality of it. The raw, real Hikaru I am currently presented with is alluring; not unlike the decadence of the kiss itself, and I allow it to consume me. There is nothing in this room but the two of us, and the more you kiss me, the more I'm sure that the feeling isn't going to stop.
"Stop worrying so much, ne?" your voice is a rough purr, the rumble of thunder with the richness of chocolate. "Kaoru, we decided when we were kids that we were in this together, right? A promise stands, no matter what."
"No matter what..." my words and eyes mirror yours. Your hands find mine and our fingers lace together once more. Joined together by our gazes, lips, and hands, we move in unison. You are more possessive now, and I don't mind. You have always been the one who knew exactly what both of us wanted, and you hold my mouth in this shockingly needed kiss as though you know I have never wanted anything this much, as though you know how unwilling (unable?) I am to let you go.
The cicadas' endless hum blurs into the soft murmurs we release as we kiss, and I feel for a moment like we're trapped in a movie, one with a seemingly endless dream sequence. I pray that reality won't be shattered, that I won't wake up. "I love you, I love you, I love you. Let me live this dream." Furiously and hungrily I embrace you, as though the fear of letting go is all that fills my mind. In your lap, my apprehension falls away, and what is left in its wake is the glimmering darts of emotion that tear like tiny, bittersweet barbs at my heart. How in the world did we manage to wait so long?
You kiss me deeper, steal my breath, and I throw myself over that last hurdle and into the chasm that makes up these strange and lovely actions. We kiss, we touch, and surprisingly clothing seems to fall away. Both of us are so desperate in this sudden whirlwind of incest that I can't comprehend whether it's your hands or mine own that peel back the shirt and boxers you are wearing so that my hands can roam across your bare chest that I have touched so many times before, but never like this. It's as though somehow, everything we do is different, colored by this sudden need for each other. Of course, "sudden" is an inappropriate word for what was actually a stroke of destiny sixteen years in the making. "Epiphany" is what I would choose to call it. Nameless hands strip us bare, and as we stray farther away from the old boundaries and our hands slip lower than they ever should, the things that brought this moment to pass don't even matter anymore. What matters is the sticky contact between our bodies and the tiny, strangled moans that our mutual touches coax up out of our throats.
"Kaoru..." the single word means so much spoken in such husky, breathless tones, and my hands move faster, fueled by the hotness of your breath against the curve of my shoulder. Yours follow suit, and through the blindness of my own pleasure I am barely able to stay afloat enough to take you those last final steps into the almost magical climax that, as almost everything else, we reach simultaneously.
Back against the cool sheets, our breathing slows. As bodies cool and the sheens of sweat fall away from pale skin, once again our hands entwine without a word. I laugh for a moment, and you join me. I laugh out of relief for the fact that tonight's actions show me the true depth of the word we exist in together. I know how unhealthy a world based solely on two people can be, but to me, this world is far too beautiful to change. I clutch your hand tightly in mine and ride out the final hours until sunrise with a smile on my face. I'm sure that the sun will bloom with clarity and the future will come in slow, steady gallops. And I'm sure now.
Until then, we'll be in this together.