God, it's been forever, hasn't it? I'm sososososo sorry!
The good news is I have the next two chapters finished, and the next chapter is already typed up, so you'll get another updated fairly soon.
This is not BETA-ed, and I apologize. I sent my BETA an email a couple of weeks ago, but something must have gone wrong because she never replied. I'm working on that...
Anyways, sorry again, and enjoy!
Chapter Eleven
"Well then…" Julie said to break the awkward silence that had fallen, "This should be, ah, interesting, to say the least."
Kaoru could only nod dumbly and stare in horrified shock at the page before him. How in the world did William come up with things like this?
His stupor was broken by Julie walking over to the desk/dresser and picking up a highlighter and a red pen.
"The grammar in this is terrible…. And my character is remarkably one-sided. I'm going to make some alterations." She sat down in the corner, seated on the spare blanket, and busied herself with writing. Her poise was still defensive and Kaoru realised that it would probably just take time to heal this particular wound.
Looking back to the script, he shuddered. This was so wrong! Yeah, he may have pretended to be gay for his twin brother on a regular basis, but at least he and Hikaru knew one another, and could laugh about the whole thing behind closed doors! He had barely met Julie a month ago and now he was expected to—
Gah! He couldn't even think it, let alone say it out loud. This was not okay, not okay in the slightest. Especially since there was a part of him that was actually looking forward to doing… those things… to her.
She would probably break his arm if she knew he had thought something like that….
Kaoru risked a glance in her direction and smiled at the sight before him.
Julie was hunched over her script, knees drawn up near her chest, red pen scribbling quickly across the page. Her tongue was poking out slightly from between her lips, so intense was her concentration. She kept making various faces as she read different parts of the writing, most of the ranging from somewhere between slightly disturbed to outright mortified.
Kaoru knew that there were problems in their relationship—mistrust and far too amny secrets, to start—but he was willing to go to almost any length to make things right between them. For her, he would do just about anything.
She clicked her pen decisively and looked up at him. Kaoru felt those inexplicable feelings welling u in his chest again. But at her, "Do you want to do a run-through? Dialogue only for now, I think," he pushed them aside
He would have time to figure them out later. For now, she was more important.
~o0O0o~
The time until the day of their presentation passed quickly. William came to visit them the night before to see what they had come up with, and to give advice (read: orders) during certain parts.
"Remember to stick to the script. Don't think about it too much and you should be fine," were Julie's words to Kaoru before they ran the skit (if it could be called such) for William, and the Japanese boy tried to take her advice to heart.
It was very difficult.
There were several reasons for this. First off, he was still as embarrassed as hell to even be doing these things to her in the first place, and the fact that William was watching them just made things that much more awkward.
The second reason had to do with just how intently William was watching them. He was staring, gaze fiery and dark, doing things that Kaoru really didn't want to think about, let alone see, but that were now burned into his retinas forevermore.
And, every time he kissed Julie during their presentation, touched her, held her in his arms, those strange feelings welled up inside his chest again, stronger every time, until he got to the point where the area around his heart was practically aching, and it got harder and harder to push the emotions away until he got the chance to think about them logically.
~o0O0o~
Kaoru was jolted awake rather roughly to see one of their guards, the one he had dubbed Machine Gun, looming above him. Kaoru was about to let out a startled yelp at the sight, but somebody beat him to it.
Both he and Machine Gun whirled around to a very interesting sight; their other guard, Muscles, pinned to the ground by none other than Julie.
She had wrenched the man's arm behind his back, and her knee was digging into the area between his shoulder blades. Eyes wild, hair a mess, mouth set in a grim line, she looked positively terrifying.
"Julie!" Kaoru exclaimed in utter shock. This seemed to snap the girl out of whatever daze or trance she had previously been in, and she released the man below her, rolling smoothly to her feet.
"I'm very sorry sir. But a word of advice; never wake me up in such a fashion again, unless of course, you enjoy having my knee driven into your spinal cord."
The two men stared at her in shock. Kaoru fought off the urge to grin like a maniac.
Machine Gun shook himself out of his stupor and managed to say, "Mr. Peterson would like us to escort you to your make up session. If you would come with us, please."
Although it sounded quite a bit like a polite request, Kaoru was under the impression that it was really just an order in disguise, so he and Julie both followed the two men without any fuss.
~o0O0o~
They were led through a maze of hallways until they arrived in front of a set of doors. Machine Gun jerked his head in a gesture of "go in."
Opening the door, Kaoru was faced with two identical make-up/changing stations separated by an opaque curtain. Before him, on either side of the curtain, stood two people, one boy, one girl, poised with make-up brushes and hair dryers at the ready.
They reminded him of Mori and Hunny-sempai in that they were total opposites. The girl, small and blonde, seemed quite subdued and serious. It seemed that her job was all that mattered to her, and she would do it well, without making any personal connections while accomplishing the task at hand.
The boy though… Tall, dark and handsome, he was practically bouncing in place, as if he had too much energy for it to be contained within his body. He was grinning (in a slightly manic fashion) and looked as if he would be able to make friends with a brick wall if he tried hard enough.
"Ooh!" the boy exclaimed. "Oh, William was right. She is very pretty. And the things I could do with that hair…" He reached up to touch the cropped off brown strands. Julie caught his wrist a foot from her head.
"I would appreciate it," she said, enunciating every word, "if you did not touch me unless necessary." She let go of his arm and walked over to one of the chairs, taking a seat as she ground out, "Let's just get this over with."
Kaoru moved to sit down in the other chair. Julie gave him a tight-lipped smile.
"Hello," the girl said to him as she closed the curtain between the two chairs, "My name is Clara, and I'll be helping you get ready for your meeting with Mr. Peterson today."
Kaoru nodded.
"Let's get started then," Clara said.
And there were no more words exchanged between them for a long while.
Kaoru amused himself by listening to the boy (Raymond, Kaoru heard in passing) ramble and chatter at Julie, with the girl responding in one of two syllables, if she even answered him at all.
A long while later, Clara said, "You're done."
Kaoru snapped out of his product-induced haze and looked at himself in the mirror sitting before him.
…
…He really didn't look all that different.
Sure, his hair was styled a little bit differently, and Clara had applied powder foundation so that his skin looked smoother, but that was it, really.
"Finished," came Raymond's satisfied voice from the other side of the curtain, which was then jerked open to reveal…
Julie.
She didn't look that much different either, the logical side of Kaoru's brain provided, but the rest of his mind quickly silenced it, because there was something different, and she looked so very beautiful, even if there was really no reason for it.
The door swung open again and Machine Gun and Muscles walked back into the small room.
"Come," Machine Gun barked out, and the pair of them once again followed along without protest.
Meandering through the labyrinth of tunnels, Kaoru tried to stop his mind from reeling. He had met with royalty and never been impressed yet one rag-tag military dog was able to unravel him so entirely?! It was weird, really weird, and Kaoru did not want to think about the implications of these emotions.
They stopped outside of yet another plain door. Machine Gun punched in a code and ushered them through the door, Muscles looming imposingly behind them.
The room was black, with a two-way mirror and many screens showing many different video feeds; the experiment room (or "torture chamber"), various other rooms, video feeds of many different people…
Julie had positioned herself near the computer technicians, far enough away that it wasn't suspicious, but close enough that she could, Kaoru presumed, anyways, hear every word that the technicians were saying. Kaoru walked over to join her.
"What can you hear?" he asked her.
"Shh!" was her reply. "I'm trying to listen."
She closed her eyes and her brow furrowed slightly in concentration. Kaoru mimicked her, to the best of his ability.
"…with surveillance on the Hitachiin boy, the security on the mansion is so heavy. The fact that Dulcimyer doesn't speak a word of Japanese really isn't helping things either."
"Yeah, there's been trouble on a couple of other fronts as well. The Bradley's live in a really secluded part of Montana, so it's hard to set up surveillance, and Grealing's been complaining about, and I quote, "how goddamn cold" it is in Northern Russia."
"Phfft… Grealing'd find something to complain about even if we had him stationed in Hawaii… What the hell?!
"What's wrong?"
"It's that Rutherford-Hopkins boy, Joshua."
"Ah. What did he do this time?"
"He spotted the guy who was trailing him… again. That's the fourth officer he's hospitalised so far! I don't know how Dr. Peterson intends to keep him under surveillance; there are stories circling around and the men are starting to get scared."
A hand on his wrist startled Kaoru away from the conversation and back to his body.
Julie stood slightly in front of him, to the left, hand in a vice grip around Kaoru's arm, nails digging slightly into the skin, talking to one of the other white-clad technicians who had been milling about the room.
"He's very nervous, I think that he was probably just trying to steady his nerves, that's all," she was saying to the man looking entirely serious, no hint of a lie showing on her face.
"Be more careful!" she snapped once the man had turned back to his work, "You could have blown my cover!"
Kaoru spluttered, uncertain how, exactly, to respond to this situation.
"But—How—I didn't—Shouldn't you be a little more… I dunno… happy?"
"Why?"
"Well because…. Your brother is alright! He isn't stuck in this hellhole like us. Shouldn't that make you happy? Shouldn't you feel relieved?"
"Well, this does provide an unexpected tactical advantage, which is good…" her voice lowered, as if she was talking to herself, "so that means I can cut out that entire section out of the plan… upping the chances of success to… 42 percent."
"The plan? What plan?"
"Our escape strategy, of course. It's really quite a good thing that our siblings aren't here; we have a much higher chance of success now."
"You actually thought that they were here?"
"I didn't know anything for certain until now. But when creating a strategy like the one I'm working on now, you should always prepare for the worst possible scenario so that if it occurs, you aren't left reeling for a way out."
"I see…. Still, aren't you at least a little bit relieved to know that your brother is safe?"
"I cannot allow my emotions to affect my work. It makes for flawed plans and sloppy execution."
But Kaoru could see the excitement and relief, however repressed, shining in her bright blue eyes.
He decided to let it slide; he was quite surprised that she could even retain that much composure. He was struggling to keep himself in check and not dance around the room laughing like an idiot.
Therefore Kaoru was relieved when William walked in, his "Follow me!" overly cheerful, because it gave him something other than 'Hikaru is safe' to focus on.
The room William led them to was nothing like any of the other rooms they had seen in the facility so far. Those rooms had a cold, clinical feel to them; they were very impersonal.
The room they were in now was obviously a set, considering that there was a crew of people rearranging things, but the feel of it reminded Kaoru of his and Hikaru's bedroom back home. There were "personal effects" scattered about, the walls were painted a medium blue, and the bed covers were slightly rumpled; it actually looked lived in!
While Kaoru gaped about in moderate shock, Julie made her way straight to the bed and assumed her starting position—laying on her side in a sort of "I'm-trying-to-look-sexy-but-still-make-it-seem-completely-accidental" sort of a pose.
"Kaoru, come on!" she said, snapping from his daze yet again. He proceeded over to the bed and sprawled out next to her upon it, lying on his back with his hands behind his head.
As William fiddled with the camera, Julie leaned over Kaoru and whispered softly, "Are you ready for this?"
"As ready as I'll ever be," he replied, shooting her a strained smile. She returned it.
"Ready?" William's overly excited voice called.
"Let's do this," Julie breathed.
And then they began.
~o0O0o~
They moved through the motions flawlessly, the sort of smooth flow that can only be achieved by endless practicing permeating their every action, even if their minds were elsewhere. Kaoru knew that his mind certainly was.
He was trying so hard to concentrate on remembering his lines, because he couldn't mess this up, not in front of all of these people, not to mention that he couldn't bear to see the disappointed look in Julie's eyes if he did.
But still…. He couldn't help but wish that she actually meant it when she said that she loved him. He had almost caught himself replying with an "I love you, too" several times, and was constantly reminding himself that it was just a play and that he needed to stay in character.
~o0O0o~
Finally, an eternity later, they were done. Julie rolled up and off of Kaoru almost as soon as William had yelled out, "Cut!"
Kaoru missed the warmth of her body atop of his almost immediately.
'What the hell is happening to me?' he thought as he walked out the door, following after the brown-haired beauty.
Yet no matter how hard he thought about it, no matter how hard he pondered, the solution to this dilemma did not present itself to him.
And so, Kaoru was left to grapple with the confusing jumble of emotions all on his own.
This was the first time in a fairly long while that he truly, completely and desperately wished that Hikaru was there with him. His twin had always been good at helping him muddle through his feelings on the rare occasions he needed help figuring them out.
But Hikaru wasn't there, and Kaoru wasn't sure how much longer he could deal with this crushing jumble of feelings before he cracked.
Did you like it? Drop me a line saying what you liked best, or disliked, or whatever. And once again, I'm sorrryyyyyy! ;P
~Julie~