HOLY SHIT! An update!?!? REALLY!!! Well, I finally got around to writing this chapter in the middle of school while watching a rather depressing video on various ways that the Aztecs and Incans were killed and religion and, of course, I got bored...and wrote this instead~! 8D ENJOY!

Chapter Twelve

Mama's Little Crossdresser

Clocks should not be allowed to tick as loudly as this one, Kaoru thought as he concluded his story with an, "-and we've never had sex."

Haruhi, in turn, was completely silent. Once again, they were in the living room and sitting on couches opposite each other just as before, but this time there was no air of female companionship. Haruhi was in her bathrobe again and Kaoru - shivering from both the cold and the brunette's slightly evil glare - was wrapped in a towel and blanket, wet hair dripping onto the woolly fleece. After she had demanded an explanation from the red head, Haruhi had remained silent as he explained - first the Ootori thread against his family company, then the whole wedding and everything that had happened since. And now, when it was her turn to respond, the woman simply leaned on the arm rest of the couch, cupped her chin in the palm of her hand and downright glared at him.

Kaoru had never thought of Haruhi as an angry person, but now...Now it made sense how she could keep Rene/Tamaki in check, but not how she could love him.

Kaoru shivered, withering into the embracing blankets around him while he waited, counting the seconds by the over-loud tickings of the clock.

And then she shifted. "Are you going to hurt him?"

And Kaoru, perplexed, questioned, "Who?"

"Kyouya," chocolate eyes glinted dangerously. "Are you going to hurt him?"

Now he was just confused. "...How could I do that?"

Rolling her eyes, Haruhi sighed angrily, "Never mind, then...I'm not sure whether to be mad at you or not right now, you know."

"You...you're not?" It seemed a bit like a hands down guess that anyone who found out about being lied to would be pissed off.

"I mean, generally, you're doing this for a valiant reason - your family. But the fact that you're lying to another, very respectable one in order to save your own is a shame, and as much as I could care less about the Ootori's and their power hungry money system, Kyouya-senpai is still my best friend, and it's not right to lie to him -"

"-You're not going to tell on me, are you!" Kaoru's heart dropped into his stomach as he gushed worriedly, eyes large and pleading. "Haruhi, please don't -"

"Oh, shut up. I won't tell," she snapped angrily, upper lip pulling into a sneer. "But you should - he might not be that mad if you fessed up instead of him finding out on his own."

It was Kaoru's turn to roll his eyes. "Puh-lease. If Kyouya is as smart and perceptive as you say he is, he would have already put two and two together and figured it out. I don't think he spends even remotely enough time with me to notice, and even when we ARE together, he ignores me - flat out ignores me."

"....Oh...I get it" Haruhi proclaimed, lifting herself off her hand and looking at Kaoru as if she were seeing him in a whole new light. A light that, in turn, made Kaoru squirm uncomfortably and fight the urge to look away. (It was this look that was the reason people were allowed to close their eyes while being x-rayed.) "...Kaoru-chan - er, I mean Kaoru-kun....Are you gay?"

"Beg pardon?" he deadpanned in turn.

"It would make more sense that way as to why you're jealous of how much he works..."

"-I'm not jealous!" he spluttered.

"Are you sure?" Haruhi prodded. "Because it definitely sounds that way."

"I - I, no! o, I'm not gay! And, in no way, shape or form do I like him enough to be jealous of the time he spends away from me."

"'Away from me'? That's pretty personal sounding..."

"S-shut up!" Unbidden, Kaoru felt his face heat up and a look of mortification fell onto his features as Haruhi smiled knowingly in his direction. "No - I do NOT!"

"Be gentle with him." And here, Haruhi even had the gall to wink at him. "He's not a very emotionally conscious person." Without offering a 'good-bye' or a 'good night', Haruhi stood and, already distended pregnant abdomen leading the way, exited the living room before Kaoru could even formulate the words it would take to object.

This left the red head in total solitude, still shivering from his late night splat and mind still reeling from the conversation that had just been undergone. He'd been outed as a boy, 'outed' as 'gay', and proved wrong about two traits he thought applied to Haruhi: that she couldn't get angry, and couldn't make shameless fun of someone before winking and leaving them to gape openly at her retreating back.

They didn't end up tanning the next day. Or anything else remotely fun; instead, both Kaoru and Haruhi stayed in their rooms until sometime around noon when, bored, Kaoru strayed from his quarters in boyish pants (extensions firmly in place once again) and a big tee-shirt and encountered a hungry Haruhi making a large and...odd looking sandwich. The two of them stood in an awkward silence for a long time and then...

"Do you want one?"

"Um..." He noted the pickles, potato chips, peanut butter and dried seaweed one would usually wrap sushi in. "...No thank you."

"Suit yourself." She shrugged, slapping the top piece of bread on the melted chocolate that had been drizzled atop the pickles. Picking up the plate and brushing past the red head caused an oddly guilty shiver to run down the boy's spine and, in turn, he looked over his shoulder at her.

"Um...I'm sor -"

"You should cut your hair," was her slightly flippant response.

"...What?"

The brunette turned to face him. "If you 'cut' your 'hair', you wouldn't have to wear that wig."

"It's extensions."

"Whatever. We're leaving in two hours, and now I'm just going to call you Kaoru, because I don't really want to call you '-chan' or '-kun', alright?"

"Al...Alright..."

Haruhi left and, deep in thought (more in confusion than actual thought) Kaoru made his way to the nearest bathroom and closed the door...and after a moment, he locked it, too. Repeating what he had done the night before, the red head pulled his fingers through his hair, tugging the extensions from his head and shoving them into the plastic-lined garbage can. By the time he was done, there were handfuls of ginger being thrown away, and the remaining, real hair hung loosely at the base of his neck.

This looked much better, girly still with his fringe (usually so perfectly parted to his right and his brother's left) flopped into dusty eyes and his mouth parted in a slight part.

Thinking back, he had had this exact face in one of the photo shoots his mother had organized; but Hikaru had been there that time, and the heavily v-necked gothic lolita style corsets and thigh-high fishnet stocking. shin covering plastic, laced-up army style boots and very white and neon-bright ripped mini-skort had been worn instead of a set of "lazy cloths", jelly sex bracelets instead of a wedding band.

Sure, this was more 'normal'. But not as fun...

Sometime on the ride back, Kaoru realized that - at least - he hadn't lost his balls.

Sure, it wasn't just figurative. He'd read studies about reasons that people often felt they had lost their masculinity after some testical-wraking disease such as cancer, etc. There was no longer that ever-present sign of being male, and so were they even men anymore?

But he had his balls. Even if, now, he also had mounds that many women cried over if they were lost.

But...honestly....What was so special about breasts?

"Oh, wow!"

"What did you do?"

"...You make it sound like it's a bad thing, Yuki."

"Well, it sort of is."

"Hey!"

"Oh, it's just her hair. Plus, it looks...foreign this way. Kaoru-chan, how did you and your twin get such red hair, anyway...?"

"Well, on our mother's side -"

"I still can't get over the change! Kaoru-chan, you looked so pretty with your long hair; graceful, too - like a real dignified housewife."

"I am not a housewife!"

Kaoru fumed quietly as his sisters-in-laws tittered to each other. He was generally pleased with the overall reception his 'hair cut' had garnered from the women. Thus far, Haruhi had liked it, Tamaki had commented ("...you look more like your brother, now!") on it, and some of the maids had done so as well - and now even the Frankenstein Ootori Brides seemed to approve, all that remained was to see how his husband reacted. Of course, it wasn't like he cared what Kyouya thought, though; Kaoru could care less if the brunette noticed, let alone cared. But...

No, no...There were no 'but's. None at all.

While Kaoru attempted to deny that he - was gay, like Haruhi had suggested - did NOT need some sort of attention or affection or approval from the brunette man, Matsuki, Yuki and Fuyumi smiled, chatted, laughed and sipped tea calmly; they went from four to five-thirty before departing to their own quarters, or in Fuyumi's case, home.

The red head, for his part, dragged his feet through the hallways, procrastinating in returning to his rooms or becoming so bored that he would not need to go to that boring library again. So, he wandered through the empty halls, finding the walls and pictures more familiar than he would have liked to admit, and eventually finding himself in that inevitable and unavoidable hallway leading toward his and Kyouya's bedroom. Kaoru passed he painting of a wax bowl of fruit that hung on the wall, the darkly painted stand that held a powder blue vase of out-of-season yellowish pink flowers, the portrait of the fair skinned, brown haired woman...

Kaoru stopped. Back tracked. And realized, even after a bit over a month in this house, he had absolutely not idea who the picture hanging outside his room was of.

She was pretty, with pale skin that was tinted with a light blush that suited her and perfectly accentuated cheekbones. Thick brown curls reminded him of Fuyumi's style, but the way this lady's hairstyle accentuated her overly fine, petite facial features was....Well, all Kaoru could find himself thinking of was that this woman would make a lovely model. But then he remembered that this was an oil painting (which was old and which no one painted anymore) and there was a very unlikely chance that she had been real, let alone this pretty -

"What are you staring at?" a voice behind him sounded, and startled, Kaoru spun around and found a tired and worn looking Kyouya standing by his bedroom door, appearing to have come up the opposite set of stairs.

"Oh....um, this painting." Unabashedly, Kaoru pointed at it.

"Ah," Kyouya nodded, passing the bedroom door and coming to stand a good five feet from his bride, looking at the painting as well. "My mother."

His...mother!?!? Kaoru had never seen the woman before, but he wondered a bit why neither Akito, Fuyumi, Rei or Kyouya looked a thing like her. "Um...your....? What - what happened to her?"

Kyouya's shoulders tensed up a slight bit. "She died. Back when I was seven."

Kaoru blinked, slightly shocked at the straightforward answer. The only thing he could quite get out of his mouth was an "...unnnnnnn..." but it didn't even seem as if Kyouya was done talking about it just yet.

"She was sick, you see. Had been for a long time, so it was pretty much expected that she would..."

"That - that must have been pretty hard on you..."

"Oh, it wasn't very hard on me at all, as I barely knew her. Fuyumi and Rei took it a great deal harder than myself or Akito, as we rarely spent time with our mother."

"What about your father?"

"We didn't spend much time with him, either."

"No, I meant...."

Kyouya arched an eyebrow sharply. "What about him, then?"

"How did he take it?"

There was a long, loooooong pause. "He....saw it as a complication."

Kaoru blanched. It seemed what Kyouya had cryptically communicated as that his father and mother had been in a rather loveless and dispassionate marriage - 'grin and merit' - and that her death sum fifteen years ago had been more of a public task than it had been a trying, horrible experience for the eldest Ootori. The realization that that was most likely true left Kaoru's mouth open in slight dismay for the late Ootori woman, and the only sound he communicated was, "Oh..."

"Yes. But that isn't really anything out of the ordinary for arranged marriages, is it?" Kyouya was not smiling, and the placid, spacey look in his eyes caused a shiver to run down Kaoru's spine. "Most of the men couldn't care less what the wives do, and if they ever do eventually take an interest, things are usually too botched for any sort of fixings as it already is; for instance, my brother doesn't mind that Matsuki is having another man's baby - he especially doesn't mind since it's going to be a girl - and my other brother is only spending time with Yuki because her baby is a boy and, in turn, the two of them will most likely ignore each other, and the baby, until there is an eventual death. And if by some insanely lucky chance on is as lucky as Fuyumi - or even Haruhi, who married for love in the first place - and somehow manage to become infatuated initially with their spouse, things can always go bad in the long run..."

Silence. That had been the most words that the two of them had ever spoken to one another, and it had proved to be...insanely awkward.

"Do...do you...Are you expecting the same for us, then?" Kaoru queried, trying to hide the slight twinge of pain he felt at first being traded like a how and second, having his 'new owner'/'husband' have little to no faith in their marriage...

Kyouya paid him no attention. At least not directly. "You can do whatever you want with whoever you want, Kaoru. And I will be not unlike my brothers and, in the end, we will probably not see each other for days on end and that will be a happy marriage."

That stung. But speaking of brothers...

Kyouya turned away, seemingly finished with this conversation, and Kaoru found himself blurting out, "Doyouwantablowjob!?"

"...What?"

"I said..." Damn, this was harder to say the second time around. "Dp you want...a blow job?" And he looked away pointedly, refusing to look Kyouya in the eyes, especially when he heard the brunette laughing - more like an officious titter, actually - at him.

"Thank you for the offer, I suppose," was the humor-laced response. "But why would you want to do that, though? You don't really seem to be that kind of woman."

"I...I..." he paused. "I don't think I am."

"Well, then, you should think more about that before going around offering sexual favors, alright?:

"...O...kay..."

His head hurt.

Anyone else love Haruhi's pregnancy sandwich? I love it. I love it lots. Not too crazy about the boobs vs. balls reference, but it's my little sociological insight into the attatchment that women have with their breasts and men with their testies cause...ya know. Once they're chopped off, people question if they really ARE a boy/girl anymore...It's interesting stuff.

But, side from that! The next chapter preview is: In which Fuyumi becomes a mommy of two, Kaoru plays hide-and-seek at a baby shower, Hikaru and Tamaki have similar tastes in baby gifts, and Kaoru must take a shower. ENJOY AND STAY TUNED!