First fic in a new fandom. ♥
I didn't realize how difficult twins/Haruhi would be to write until too late. I can't write threesomes, and the twin factor really threw me for a loop. Don't get me wrong; I adore the twins and am all for us vs the world fics, but I started this story with the intention of Kaoru/Haruhi and Hikaru/Haruhi, and I couldn't seem to flesh out their characterizations without feeling like it was OOC. That's the problem with Ouran KouKou Host Club, I think. Even though the series give us glimpses of depth and dimension to the characters, the characters are largely parodies and it's really, really hard to fic them into the type of characters I'm used to writing. Twins/Haruhi is sort of how Mori/Haruhi would go, in the "God, what do I do about Honey?" kind of way. Canon dictates that Mori's all-consuming goal in life is to serve Honey, and you can't even fit Honey/Haruhi in the way you can get away with twins/Haruhi. BUT YOU CAN'T IGNORE HARUHI, EITHER. THE WORLD IS SO CRUEL.
Which, if any of you are twins/Haruhi fans, please talk to me! I'd love to chat you up. :) And if any of you know of any good Ouran fic, please link me, too! I'm down with any pairing/combination/etc. I'd just like to see how other people handle the characters. And, finally, for booshoo: Ouran manga ch. 1-13. Volumes 1 through 6 are already out in bookstores, though, and I strongly recommend you check it out, because the official translations are quite decent.
And now. Fic.
Arcana/1+2=3
When you love a girl, you cannot approach her as a host. You must approach her as a man.
--Tamaki Suoh, Episode 6
Despite the continuous teasing and goading all throughout high school, everyone in the Host Club, with the exception of Tamaki himself, expected Haruhi to eventually realize the sincerity of his jocular antics and put a gentle and feminine stop to his painful self-humiliation.
Three (3) things occurred before that could happen:
One, in a rare and shocking show of compassion, Tamaki's grandmother agreed for Tamaki to attend university abroad. In France. She informed him of her decision after she invited herself over for tea, still refusing to invite him to the main mansion, and she left just as abruptly after the news. What resulted was a month long struggle and a bubble of dark gloom perpetually clouding his head but, in the end, Tamaki begged his mother's address off his father and, with a long, regretful look back at Ouran Academy, departed.
Two, the Host Club dissolved as elegantly and effortlessly as it was formed after the absence of its leader.
Three, both Hitachiin brothers and Haruhi enrolled in the same university, Haruhi by her high entrance marks and the twins by a convenient phone call by their mother.
All other details melted away into obscurity as the years passed.
*
Growing up, Kaoru and Hikaru never held secrets from each other, for two (2) reasons: one, they were never apart long enough for a secret to be produced, either individually or with someone else and, two, keeping secrets was never necessary. They reached the same conclusions often at supersonic speed and for the atypical situations when they didn't, one would speak up and other readily agree.
It was maybe near the induction of high school that Kaoru started to voice his opinions less and sync more to Hikaru than the other way around, but he is always quick to reassure that he essentially has only kept one secret from Hikaru, and that was when they were sixteen in the spring of their last year of high school. The three of them had a physical education class in the morning, and an artless and otherwise insignificant classmate had knocked a baseball into Hikaru's head; Kaoru rushed him to the infirmary wing, and Haruhi stopped by after class to check up on him.
The injury was only a small bump on the crown of Hikaru's head, and the nurse had shooed Kaoru and Haruhi out into the hall because they (well, Kaoru) made too much noise, and he thinks now that it must have been lunchtime because the hallways were empty and quiet. Kaoru had complained bitterly about the gym teacher and a conspiracy that involved purposely separating him and Hikaru on separate teams, before Haruhi sighed and caught Kaoru's elbow and told him, "It doesn't matter how much you rub your head. A bump isn't going to form there."
Kaoru had not even realized that he'd been frantically scratching his head, and he lowered his arm, a little sheepish, before Haruhi gave him a singular smile and continued, "The nurse said he'd be fine. Hikaru has a thick head, anyway."
The kiss was unplanned and unexpected (a first, for a host), and Kaoru whipped his head back so fast that he stumbled backward into the wall. Haruhi touched her lips with her fingertips, eyes wide and off-guard, and he felt simultaneously excited and liberated and nauseous.
He tripped over his words apologizing and asking forgiveness and telling her to forget it, he didn't know why he did that, it didn't mean anything, and Haruhi looked at him and said it was okay. They sat in silence until the lunch bell rang, and the halls crowded with elbows and knees. The nurse caught them on the way back and told them Hikaru was awake; Haruhi hesitated before bowing and saying she needed to drop a book off at the library, and Kaoru watched her go before turning toward the nurse's office.
Kaoru had known for a year then that Hikaru liked Haruhi, and so he knew there could be only one (1) valid reason why he'd kissed her.
It still did not stop him from feeling guilty, a reaction he had never had to experience before. At least not alone.
*
Hikaru and Kaoru discovered sex together when they were thirteen (they were always a bit precocious), because they hit puberty at the same time and Kaoru caught Hikaru jacking off under the covers one night, and it was as natural as when Kaoru scraped his shin as a kid and Hikaru insisted he could feel the pain, too. It was never self-conscious or embarrassing, and it isn't until that awkward moment with Haruhi outside the infirmary bay that Kaoru recognizes the idiosyncrasy of it, that he and Hikaru viewed their bodies as extensions of each other, and any discomfort possibly produced was a lack of ease with his own skin.
The two of them perceived everything and everyone else relative to themselves, so that they considered themselves the norm and judged accordingly. How they acted was not a lack of compassion but more an inability to understand others. Kaoru noticed first that they couldn't keep up the us versus them pretext much longer in high school, but habits are hard to break, especially when all the school, including the Host Club, pampered and encouraged them not to change.
And at first, the two of them with Haruhi was as natural as accepting one more into their fold, because no one else had come so close to breaking into their vision, and they secretly always did want someone to validate them, to prove that they were in fact two separate parts of the same unit. But the awkward moments started the grow the longer they spent with her, until when they entered university together, and Hikaru inevitably asks him one night, "Do you like Haruhi?"
Kaoru considers lying for a moment, but replies with, "Yes," and he hears Hikaru suck in his breath. "So did Mori-senpai, and Honey-senpai. And Tamaki, and Kyouya," he adds after a long second.
"Not like that," Hikaru insists. "I don't mean like them."
Kaoru rolls over on his bed so that he's facing Hikaru across the room. The university dorms' beds are nailed down onto the floor and no matter how much the two of them had complained and protested, the resident head told them it was impossible to push the beds together. "Then, no," he finally says.
He can see Hikaru's body relax under the covers, before Hikaru wordlessly slips out of his sheets, pads across the wood floor, and crawls into Kaoru's bed. He scoots over toward the wall to make room, and listens as Hikaru's breathing evens into sleep.
He couldn't stop himself from lying after all.
*
Because Kaoru is the one who first understands that Hikaru likes Haruhi, he is the one who has to make the sacrifice. And he does it because he knows if it had been the other way around, Hikaru would have forced the same outcome. So maybe Kaoru always held a second secret from Hikaru, too.
*
It is the spring of their first year of university, and they are just the right age to take over the world. But Haruhi sensibly points out that midterms are coming up soon, and so Hikaru reluctantly decides to postpone their domination plans until summer break, and Kaoru agrees. But he knows they won't be young for much longer, because he can feel the fortress he and Hikaru nurtured for fifteen years starting to crack, and time is chipping away on all the years they spent ignoring the world outside.
*
For Hikaru's eighteenth birthday, Kaoru gives him Haruhi.
And he does it by letting go, on more than just one person.
Which, if any of you are twins/Haruhi fans, please talk to me! I'd love to chat you up. :) And if any of you know of any good Ouran fic, please link me, too! I'm down with any pairing/combination/etc. I'd just like to see how other people handle the characters. And, finally, for booshoo: Ouran manga ch. 1-13. Volumes 1 through 6 are already out in bookstores, though, and I strongly recommend you check it out, because the official translations are quite decent.
And now. Fic.
Arcana/1+2=3
When you love a girl, you cannot approach her as a host. You must approach her as a man.
--Tamaki Suoh, Episode 6
Despite the continuous teasing and goading all throughout high school, everyone in the Host Club, with the exception of Tamaki himself, expected Haruhi to eventually realize the sincerity of his jocular antics and put a gentle and feminine stop to his painful self-humiliation.
Three (3) things occurred before that could happen:
One, in a rare and shocking show of compassion, Tamaki's grandmother agreed for Tamaki to attend university abroad. In France. She informed him of her decision after she invited herself over for tea, still refusing to invite him to the main mansion, and she left just as abruptly after the news. What resulted was a month long struggle and a bubble of dark gloom perpetually clouding his head but, in the end, Tamaki begged his mother's address off his father and, with a long, regretful look back at Ouran Academy, departed.
Two, the Host Club dissolved as elegantly and effortlessly as it was formed after the absence of its leader.
Three, both Hitachiin brothers and Haruhi enrolled in the same university, Haruhi by her high entrance marks and the twins by a convenient phone call by their mother.
All other details melted away into obscurity as the years passed.
*
Growing up, Kaoru and Hikaru never held secrets from each other, for two (2) reasons: one, they were never apart long enough for a secret to be produced, either individually or with someone else and, two, keeping secrets was never necessary. They reached the same conclusions often at supersonic speed and for the atypical situations when they didn't, one would speak up and other readily agree.
It was maybe near the induction of high school that Kaoru started to voice his opinions less and sync more to Hikaru than the other way around, but he is always quick to reassure that he essentially has only kept one secret from Hikaru, and that was when they were sixteen in the spring of their last year of high school. The three of them had a physical education class in the morning, and an artless and otherwise insignificant classmate had knocked a baseball into Hikaru's head; Kaoru rushed him to the infirmary wing, and Haruhi stopped by after class to check up on him.
The injury was only a small bump on the crown of Hikaru's head, and the nurse had shooed Kaoru and Haruhi out into the hall because they (well, Kaoru) made too much noise, and he thinks now that it must have been lunchtime because the hallways were empty and quiet. Kaoru had complained bitterly about the gym teacher and a conspiracy that involved purposely separating him and Hikaru on separate teams, before Haruhi sighed and caught Kaoru's elbow and told him, "It doesn't matter how much you rub your head. A bump isn't going to form there."
Kaoru had not even realized that he'd been frantically scratching his head, and he lowered his arm, a little sheepish, before Haruhi gave him a singular smile and continued, "The nurse said he'd be fine. Hikaru has a thick head, anyway."
The kiss was unplanned and unexpected (a first, for a host), and Kaoru whipped his head back so fast that he stumbled backward into the wall. Haruhi touched her lips with her fingertips, eyes wide and off-guard, and he felt simultaneously excited and liberated and nauseous.
He tripped over his words apologizing and asking forgiveness and telling her to forget it, he didn't know why he did that, it didn't mean anything, and Haruhi looked at him and said it was okay. They sat in silence until the lunch bell rang, and the halls crowded with elbows and knees. The nurse caught them on the way back and told them Hikaru was awake; Haruhi hesitated before bowing and saying she needed to drop a book off at the library, and Kaoru watched her go before turning toward the nurse's office.
Kaoru had known for a year then that Hikaru liked Haruhi, and so he knew there could be only one (1) valid reason why he'd kissed her.
It still did not stop him from feeling guilty, a reaction he had never had to experience before. At least not alone.
*
Hikaru and Kaoru discovered sex together when they were thirteen (they were always a bit precocious), because they hit puberty at the same time and Kaoru caught Hikaru jacking off under the covers one night, and it was as natural as when Kaoru scraped his shin as a kid and Hikaru insisted he could feel the pain, too. It was never self-conscious or embarrassing, and it isn't until that awkward moment with Haruhi outside the infirmary bay that Kaoru recognizes the idiosyncrasy of it, that he and Hikaru viewed their bodies as extensions of each other, and any discomfort possibly produced was a lack of ease with his own skin.
The two of them perceived everything and everyone else relative to themselves, so that they considered themselves the norm and judged accordingly. How they acted was not a lack of compassion but more an inability to understand others. Kaoru noticed first that they couldn't keep up the us versus them pretext much longer in high school, but habits are hard to break, especially when all the school, including the Host Club, pampered and encouraged them not to change.
And at first, the two of them with Haruhi was as natural as accepting one more into their fold, because no one else had come so close to breaking into their vision, and they secretly always did want someone to validate them, to prove that they were in fact two separate parts of the same unit. But the awkward moments started the grow the longer they spent with her, until when they entered university together, and Hikaru inevitably asks him one night, "Do you like Haruhi?"
Kaoru considers lying for a moment, but replies with, "Yes," and he hears Hikaru suck in his breath. "So did Mori-senpai, and Honey-senpai. And Tamaki, and Kyouya," he adds after a long second.
"Not like that," Hikaru insists. "I don't mean like them."
Kaoru rolls over on his bed so that he's facing Hikaru across the room. The university dorms' beds are nailed down onto the floor and no matter how much the two of them had complained and protested, the resident head told them it was impossible to push the beds together. "Then, no," he finally says.
He can see Hikaru's body relax under the covers, before Hikaru wordlessly slips out of his sheets, pads across the wood floor, and crawls into Kaoru's bed. He scoots over toward the wall to make room, and listens as Hikaru's breathing evens into sleep.
He couldn't stop himself from lying after all.
*
Because Kaoru is the one who first understands that Hikaru likes Haruhi, he is the one who has to make the sacrifice. And he does it because he knows if it had been the other way around, Hikaru would have forced the same outcome. So maybe Kaoru always held a second secret from Hikaru, too.
*
It is the spring of their first year of university, and they are just the right age to take over the world. But Haruhi sensibly points out that midterms are coming up soon, and so Hikaru reluctantly decides to postpone their domination plans until summer break, and Kaoru agrees. But he knows they won't be young for much longer, because he can feel the fortress he and Hikaru nurtured for fifteen years starting to crack, and time is chipping away on all the years they spent ignoring the world outside.
*
For Hikaru's eighteenth birthday, Kaoru gives him Haruhi.
And he does it by letting go, on more than just one person.