A/N: Jump right into the story. Only one POV for this chapter. My notes are at the end. : )


Good Things Come (to those who wait)


Hikaru's POV


I suck in a ragged breath when nothing happens except for a faint click in the barrel.

"Pow," Kaoru says, a smile playing on his lips. For the moment, he has no idea of the trauma he's caused me.

"Kao-kun..." Kimichi frowns, unperturbed. "Did the gun misfire?"

"Only because I took the bullet out," he answers lightly. I snort.

"Why would you do that?" She still doesn't get it. Some people are just thick. And ugly. She has the misfortune to be both.

"Because I despise you, Kimichi," he says passionately, "and now I can tell you to your face." I actually pump my first in the air. It's what I've wanted him to say from day one since she took my seat at the outdoor picnic. "And, Hikaru--" He turns to me. "You better not have believed that crock of shit."

"Not me," I say with a straight face. Fake hurt still hurts though; like a nightmare, it's difficult to shake off. I'll save worrying about its effects for later.

An injured look forms on Kimichi's face. "You tricked me."

"Duh," we counter in sync and grin conspiratorially.

"I trusted you," she says to Kaoru, stepping toward him. "I trusted you and look what you did!" Her voice soars into an octave five steps above where she normally is. And if you ask me, her normal tone's grating enough. "I was going to save you... I'm still going to save you." She reaches into her blouse as if to pull something out.

"Hey-" Kaoru blurts out, clearly afraid she has another gun on her. So am I. Doesn't she know our country's made the damn things illegal?

I don't give her a chance to do anything.

My fist connects with her face, a solid hit to her perfect, apple-round cheeks, and the bones make a satisfying crunch as they collapse inward. Blood floods her mouth, cutting short her screech as she chokes on it. She falls to the floor, both hands going limp. The pain's made her pass out.

"Hikaru!" Kaoru objects in shock.

"I have been waiting to do that for two months, you conceited bitch," I say triumphantly, rubbing my knuckles. They're aching already. It was so worth it.

Kaoru tsks, then leans forward, not very upset despite his admonition. Heh heh. "What'd she drop?"

A piece of paper. I pick it up, turn it over.

It's a small snapshot of her sitting on a picnic blanket in a beautiful dress, light blue sky behind her and the sun shining. I've never seen that expression on her; it's too carefree, too innocent, too relaxed. It dawns on me that it must be Natsuki.

"Even now, claiming to hate her and that she wants to keep you from the same fate... she still carried this picture by her heart," my twin says sadly. It's cliche, but it's true. The thought pops into the back of my mind that maybe I should do the same. Maybe it would make me a better person. Kaoru drops the gun onto the sofa.

Suddenly the plane shakes, and we clutch each other to keep from falling over. I look out the window. Lights of the cities below seem brighter, and they're coming closer. "We're descending?"

A thwok-thwok-thwok sound makes me crane my neck out the porthole view to see what's going on. I spy a helicopter, no, three helicopters, all black. They must have been flying sans spotlights before, because I would have seen them coming a mile away and get blinded. There's plenty of light for me to see the familiar symbol and one word boldly spray-painted in red on the side: Ootori.

"Hm," I say, pulling out my phone from where it's been crammed in my suit pocket.

Eight missed calls, it reads. Three new voicemails. Caller: Kyouya (8)

"Uh-oh," Kaoru comments.

"Hey, without us, what excitement would he have in his life?" I point out. "It'd be all 'Oh Daddy, yes, I control the company with an iron fist, am I good enough for you yet?'"

Kaoru giggles, a sign he's more nervous than amused, and I step forward to put my hands on his shoulders.

"Hey." My eyes sternly draw his up to meet mine. "It's over. It's finished."

Kimichi groans on the floor, and I respond by nudging her none-too-gently with my foot. She doesn't say anything else after that.

"It's over," my twin muses. "Is it?"


Later that night, after the yelling/lecturing/cursing-out by Kyouya, the hugging by Tamaki, Hunny, and Haruhi, after the lack of reaction from Mori besides two raised eyebrows, after Kaoru's head is examined to be sure Kimichi didn't do any damage when she knocked him out in the restroom, we close the door to our room and breathe a sigh of relief.

Everyone has agreed that we should get some rest.

My heart, still hammering from adrenaline, promises not to let that happen. I'm exhausted but not even remotely sleepy.

"Neh, Hikaru?"

I pause from undoing my tie. "Yeah?" Light seeps from the hallway under our door, illuminating what would otherwise be darkness. We haven't bothered to turn on the lamp in here.

"When I took the gun from Kimichi... when I pointed it at you and said all that-" His voice hitches. "You didn't think I was serious, did you?" I glance over at him from where he sits on the bed, tie loosened, top half of his shirt unbuttoned, and take in his dejected look.

I rub my cheek self-consciously. "You are a very good actor."

"Hikaru..." He comes over to me and holds out his hand. I take it automatically, and he lifts it to his lips. "If I haven't emphasized it enough, I will love you forever." He drops a kiss on my palm. "Long past the day I die, more into the forever of forevers, a day past Armageddon. All right?"

"All right," I say, trying to pass it off as a cool thing, like 'sure, we'll love each other forever, duh, cool, I knew that...' and he laughs.

"You little devil," he teases. "I'll show you."

"Please do," I say, no longer flippant, and my serious tone makes him drop the act.

"I will," he promises. "You too?"

"Like I could do anything else. Also, could you not get kidnapped ever again?" I demand. "I think I'll need therapy from watching that first plane fly off, thinking you were in it, that I couldn't get to you in time, and that I would never get to-" The words stick in my throat, as they always do at this point. It's so hard to say anything beyond 'I love you'. It's so hard to communicate what he means to me, that if I lost him I would lose my everything. Luckily-

"I know." Kaoru says simply.

- he knows.

Suddenly I feel as though he isn't close enough to me. I pull him forward using the hand he clasps between his own, and, not expecting it, he stumbles into me with an 'oof'. Perfect. I lock my arms around him and sigh. Mine. We stay like that, motionless, for a long time. Then he pulls away a little to lift his chin and look at me. Everything he's already said is in his eyes, which reflect my own in a never-ending cycle of identical pupils. His lips part slightly, tongue darting out to lick his lips like he's thinking to say something.

The hallway light is turned off, plunging us into darkness only broken by the faint moonlight that bleeds in through the window.

I can't resist.

I dip my head and kiss him, taking comfort in the softness of his lips, in the moans of gratitude I get for using a little tongue. Okay, a lot of tongue.

Without letting him go, I drag him backward until his legs hit the bed so that he falls back and I fall on top, still together. I love you, I love you, I love you-

He wriggles playfully underneath me, and we roll around on the bed, laughing breathlessly, snatching a few more quick kisses, laughing more. I pin him at both wrists, and he bucks his hips. We both make helpless noises. That's what we are for each other, in the end: helpless.

I let go of his wrists to fumble with the buttons on his shirt, and he does the same to me. We make it a race, where I finish one button ahead of time by cheating and just ripping it off. I help him out of his shirt, and he helps an impatient me out of mine- shirts have never been such a hindrance as they are right now.

Shirtless, he has lost his tie. Mine still remains, and he takes advantage of this fact by using it to yank me down toward him. Lost in his mouth as I am, I barely notice that with his other hand, he has unbuckled my belt, that the button on my dress pants has come undone, and that the zipper has slid silently down.

I do notice when a warm hand slides inside my boxers, hesitantly, yet boldly, and grasps me firmly. I whimper. I've been doing a lot of out-of-character whimpering today, but I don't mind this. You shouldn't either. There are some things that deserve a good whimper or five. Kaoru releases my mouth to search my eyes. "Hikaru?" he says softly.

"Please," I whisper, my breathing harsh, and that's all he needs to hear.

I can feel my pulse in my groin, which only increases when he pushes the dress pants down to my knees and I kick them off. Every movement makes me more and more aware of the placement of his hand, the silky feeling as he caresses the skin there and I groan. My erection throbs painfully in a way that hurts so good . I don't recall ever being this hard in my life, and that includes the time I watched Kaoru strip-tease in the changing room. Which was pretty fucking hot, by the way.

My twin pushes me over (all my limbs have gone to jelly) and attacks my neck, licking and sucking. I'm thinking that my neck by this point must be the definition of an erogenous zone because oh my god I might come right now.

The feeling swells and passes over, though if it's just a crest, I'd like to get to acquainted with the whole of the wave. Kaoru releases me for a moment to move his mouth from my neck down to my chest, pausing to take teeth to my nipple. He laughs at my ensuing yelp. Hey, who's supposed to be the dominant one here?

I twist him over, but the truth is that he lets me, and the eager noise he makes when I shove his pants down his thighs to his ankles is proof positive. I lick along his inner thigh, admiring its pale smoothness. Neither him nor I get to see the sun much... but I like it. It means that no one sees this part of him; only I get to do that.

"Hikaru-uuu" he groans, straining toward me.

"Is this a little too torturous for you?" I ask, breathing gently on the tent in his boxers.

"You bastard," he pants, lunging toward me, and I shove him back lazily.

"Patience is a virtue, you know."

He whines in the back of his throat, the need in his voice turning me on further, if that's possible. I can feel my neck and ears burning bright red in the darkness, but it's a good feeling. The flush moves through my body, with it a hunger for him. I urge his hips into the air (a little nudge, and he moves like a Mexican jumping bean) so that I can slide his boxers off.

I drop them onto the floor.

I feel like this moment should be weird. Is it wrong that my twin brother and I are aroused by each other? That we want to pleasure each other so badly? That when I move my hand to grasp the firm length of him at the base, it feels instead that I should have done this ages ago?

Kaoru gasps, and for once he gets a little color in his cheeks. I watch his face intently, moving my hand in whatever way triggers the best moan, sigh, and shudder.

"Oh god... oh god..." he murmurs again and again.

"No, I'm definitely the one doing this," I say. He's incapable of a retort. I'm not even sure he hears my wise-ass remark.

Seeing as it's not feasible we'll be holding a conversation, I decide to put my mouth to better use. I lick my lips. Then I lick his cock, just a nice, long stroke up the shaft.

His hips buck spasmodically. "Do that again."

"That good?"

"Mmergh."

I close my mouth over the tip, completely unsure of what I'm doing, but Kaoru doesn't seem to mind. Any movement I make with my tongue appears to be perfect. At least, this is the impression I'm getting based on the noises he makes. I take more of him in my mouth and start moving in rhythmic strokes. Up and down, up and down. He tastes salty, but not in a peanut way. I use my hand and am surprised at how difficult it is to coordinate tongue and hand together.

Still, clearly what I'm doing is unskilled, not wrong.

Kaoru's moans become louder, a little less controlled. I move a little faster.

"Hikaru," he bites out. "I'm-I'm going to- I mean, I think-"

I respond by sucking harder, and his words dissolve into gibberish, then a cry of release. He arches his back and digs the nails of on hand into my arm, the other into the bed. An instant later, he jerks in my mouth and semen floods my tongue. I swallow some reflexively, and taste the rest out of curiosity. It's bitter- how anyone could lick it up in porn like it's sugar water is beyond me. It's certainly not sweet but... it is Kaoru. And it's what I made happen. I mentally preen at that thought.

I look up from between his thighs, which now glisten with perspiration.

Kaoru lifts his head with an apparent huge effort. "You..." he starts helplessly, body twitching in an aftershock, then lets his head drop back again. "Holy shit."

"Yeah?" I ask, mock-innocently.

"Yeah," he confirms. "Fuck. Wow. Auuuugh." He shudders again.

I wriggle up the bed to be at eye level with him, and he immediately turns on his side toward me. "Thank you." His thrilled, low tone prompts the fine hair on my arms to rise like zombies from their graves. "Thank you."

I can't hold back the remark any longer. "It was my... pleasure."

We both snicker, a little hysterically, and he kisses me, lightly at first. It gradually turns into something deeper that sets my nerve endings on fire. "So," he says, more than a little huskily. "I think it's your turn." His tongue begins a trail down past my navel.

Thank you, I say inside my head, but it's not to him (yet)- just to whatever powers made this reality be.


"-and that's when Hikaru punched her in the face," Kaoru says dryly.

"It was self-defense," I protest, and our surrounding crowd of admirers giggle and tsk in equal amounts. We're sitting at our usual table in the host club, basking in the late-afternoon sunlight that falls in from the beautiful spring day. Designations for some twin-on-twin love are up again. Although crowded, our table seats twelve. Fourteen guests, however, are willing to squish in a bit in order to hear about our escape. And also because Kyouya made us seat that many.

"What else could I do? She was reaching for something that could have been another gun. She'd already pointed one at Kaoru once..." My gaze drifts to my twin, who ducks his head bashfully. "I couldn't let it happen again."

A collective 'awwww' rises from the crowd.

"Then Kyouya made the crew get a filming of us in helicopters," I say cheerfully. "Now 'Hitachiin Brothers: The Great Escape' can be completed!" Several squeals nearly drown me out when I add, "Scheduled for release in May!" Over at the next table, I see Kyouya nod his head thoughtfully.

"Hika-kun..." One of them raises a hand timidly. "Might I ask a question...?"

"But of course," I say with a broad smile. One of my hands props up my chin, and the other holds one of Kaoru's in a warm grip. His thumb strokes my knuckle.

"Are you and Kaoru really, um... are you two really together?" She dares to say what the entire school has been wondering.

The other guests lean forward, holding their breath together as I look at Kaoru and Kaoru looks at me.

I grin, barely keeping it from becoming a smirk. "Yes. Oh, yes. We are."

We kiss, the sounds of the fangirls squealing the perfect backdrop. Despite their hopes, they still think they know it's staged, that it's all designed to reel them in, that they allow themselves to believe it-

Kaoru's tongue touches mine between our perfectly welded lips. It's the epitome of keeping something hidden in plain sight.

And it's all mine.


the end.


Epilogue



"Hello. This is the voice mailbox of Hitachiin Hikaru. You have eight unheard messages. Press one to listen, press-"

Voicemail (#1)

"It's Kyouya. Do you realize no one's hung up on me since the Kamachi deal, where afterward I bought his company and drove it in the ground, and him to suicide? Call me."

Voicemail (#2)

"Where are you? You better not be trying to follow the Korogawa family's limo. Mori, Hunny, and I are bringing in back-up. Please don't attempt anything on your own. Call me."

Voicemail (#3)

"I knew you would go after him. You damaged eleven vehicles on your way out of the banquet lot. Four Mercedes, one Bentley, two Roll's Royces, three limousines, and a Ferrari! This is coming out of your earnings as a host, and I am considering upping your designations. I know you said you can't handle more than twelve at a time, but tough shit. You brought this upon yourself. Call me."

Voicemail (#4)

"Just wanted to alert you to the fact that the Korogawa's have two planes. No doubt Korogawa will fly out both to use one as a decoy. I repeat, they have two planes, and it's likely that the decoy will take off first. Even so, please don't leave your limo. Wait for us to arrive. Call me."

Voicemail (#5)

"What the fuck is wrong with you? We've surrounded the Korogawa estate, took over the grounds, arrested the maid we found hiding in one of the bathrooms, and set up a center of command. In the process, some of my agents discovered your abandoned limousine. Both headlights are shot, one side is entirely scraped up from annihilating those eleven other cars, and the front is crushed. Were you driving it like you would a bumper car? I'm beginning to get angry. Call me. Or else."

Voicemail (#6)

"You got on one of those planes, you piece of shit. I can't believe it. After what I called and told you to do, you go and fuck it up. I've had a tracker in Kaoru's body-- and yours, actually-- since you joined the club. You didn't need to follow him. We could have located you both easily. But noooo, I get to view the plane hangar footage and watch you 'ooooh' like a moron as the stairs drop down. You just wait til you fucking land, you'll be hosting until this enormous debt is paid. I don't give a shit if you have to come back to the club after you graduate Ouran. Call me."

Voicemail (#7)

"We're on our way in helicopters to intercept your plane. We shot down the other one. Don't make another stupid move, you jackass. Call me."

Voicemail (#8)

"Currently flying undercover with no lights on, and I just watched you punch Korogawa in the face through the plane window. Nice job, asshole. Do you think I fucking enjoy covering for your shit? Everyone here saw, and some douchebag already took a picture. I confiscated it, but everyone has cell phones. This is bound to leak. From now on, you're not only my public relations bitch, but also my press whore. You'll be attending black tie events at every charity from now til your senior year. Possibly longer. Don't call me, I'll call you when I come upon the most demeaning event I can muster. Fuck you both."

"End of new messages."


A/N: Wow. I feel so good when I finish what I start. : )

And who knew what I thought was just a one-shot present for my roommate would end up to be the beginning of such a great story. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! I'll be showing the finished version to my twin, and I know exactly what she'll say- that I stole most of the details from us. That Kiss Was is less a work of fiction and more one of fact with a few of my favorite twins involved.

In the meantime, I plan to show up as an Ouran Host Club guest (yellow dress and all) at this upcoming year's AnimeNext in NJ. Maybe I'll see some of you there?

Additionally, for those of you who are doing NaNoWriMo, would anyone like to get together in AIM or on LiveJournal and race with word count? I need some serious motivation. I've never won NaNoWriMo before and I'm nervous as hell. D :

Last, but hardly least, I have the thread of an idea for a sequel. The more reviews I get on this final chapter, the more likely that will be to happen. Your reviews are food for my muse, as always, and I read them over and over again. I can't even bring myself to delete them from my email inbox until I publish a new chapter. So please take pity and feed the muse! Maybe he'll crank out the first chapter of a sequel before Christmas. Thanks again for all your kind words, your (helpful) criticisms, and even the reviews that say 'UPDATE SOON PLZ.'

See you in the next story!


"To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides." - David Viscott