I'm not really a huge Host Club fan - I generally only read the manga when I've run out of titles and it was only on a whim today that I watched a couple of the anime episodes. While the series itself sadly still doesn't do much for me, this story seemed to pretty much write itself when I sat down to work on a completely different fic for a completely different fandom.
Games.
Let's place the guess who is Hikaru game!
Let's play a game you say, and everyone smiles and giggles in delight. Just a game, always a game, and as you slip to the left and I move to the right - or is that you move and I slip? – it becomes a different sort of game to the one everyone else thinks we're playing. Sometimes, when your hand is on your waist - my waist, surely it must be my waist, you never keep anything to yourself - and my hand is in your hair, they ask with a giggle or a laugh or a smile just how long we've been playing at this.
And you giggle and I laugh and we both smile as we strike a pose, because the answer is something that is you and me and not them.
It never started as a game.
You've got a 50 chance of being right, so anyone can play.
You're not entirely sure when we became interchangeable, therefore neither am I. They say, they say we shut the world out, live in our own little world where everything is identical and everything means the same regardless of whether the words are mine or yours. There is no mine or yours, they say. Anything that is not a reflection of us is not something worthy of entry into our world. What they don't know is that we never shut everything and everyone out because we became too identical in our thoughts and mind, but because everyone else did. Same smile each day from father, no matter which of us he was talking to. Same unworried 'oh, it doesn't matter' tone from the teachers when they said Hikaru instead of Kaoru and Kaoru instead of Hikaru. Same looks as we walked the corridors, same quietly spoken words behind our backs.
We've never been all that identical, not really. But everyone else is so analogous that it's scary.
You've got a 100 chance of being wrong, so guess away.
Slip, move, shoulder, waist. A dip to the right, a swirl to the left, always ending in each others arms and gazing deep into each others eyes. 'Isn't this fun?' your gaze says, but I've learnt to never trust the things you say. 'Isn't it always?' mine replies, and we smile and we twirl and we speak in questions because they're a lot easier to come up with than answers.
Let's play a game, you say.
It never started as a game.
Is that your final answer? Are you sure?
There was a girl, then there was a boy. Then, more boys and girls and girls and boys, and all with smiles and laughs and giggles. A silly game played by twins, they said. A silly game played by twins, they still say. Surely you both must know that you are one and the same, is what they have always meant. Not two peas in a pod, but one that has been sliced into identical halves.
No-one ever caught on that it wasn't a game, but a question.
Aw, maybe next time!
Sometimes I forget myself that it isn't a game at all, just like I forget if it's my hand on your waist or yours, just as I sometimes forget whether I'm slipping or merely falling.
'Isn't this fun?' your gaze says. Isn't this fun? Fun like the game we used to play as children, with the pea and the three cups? Simple game, fun game. Just as loaded as all our other games. No-one ever realised that the cup with the pea beneath it never moved. No one ever realises that we are not laughing with them, but at them. It makes us cruel, I suppose. Maybe it makes me cruel and you indifferent. Or, you are cruel and me indifferent. Does it really matter all that much, anymore?
Let's ... let's play a game, brother. The Hikaru game.
There's a 50 chance you'll get it right.
And a 100 chance we'll both lose.
