Chapter Text
‘You can just see a little peep of the passage in Looking-Glass House if you leave the door of our drawing-room wide open: and it’s very like our passage as far as you can see, only you know it may be quite different on beyond.’
~~ Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass & What Alice Found There
When Hikaru dyed his hair, Kaoru felt like he had no one in the world. He got left behind in some strange country, no map, no nothing.
But no one’s known me yet, he wanted to protest, because sure, Haruhi could tell the difference between them, but the way she explained it, it was like she knew who was who because of certain qualities Hikaru possessed and Kaoru didn’t, good or bad, never mind that.
So:
“How come,” Kaoru asks Kyoya one afternoon, “Haruhi can tell and not you?”
Ouran is a school of huge windows, and sunlight lazes around in the room, coloring things, so that it looks like everything in it is already old, half-eaten with rust. Maybe, Kaoru thinks, and almost laughs, this is the future, mortally quiet and echoes everywhere. Kyoya’s glasses glint, and, stupidly, Kaoru wonders if, beneath the frames, his skin is worried red. If, were he to take them off, Kyoya would be exposed as human at last, alive and sore-skinned like the rest of them.
But of course, Kyoya hardly ever takes his glasses off.
“I could always tell,” he says, without looking up from his laptop, and Kaoru’s heart curls like a fist, misses a beat, makes up for it with two. Is this, finally-- “I just never bothered to.”
Kaoru laughs because what did he expect? “Is that so,” he says, careful not to let his voice shake. He recites his silly little refrain in his head, I’m alone, I’m alone, I’m alone, and Kyoya keeps typing because Kaoru is not worth taking a break for.
Pathetic, Kaoru scolds himself, and wishes for rain. If it rained, he could mistake the clack of the keyboard for it and pretend that Kyoya is looking at him: him, Kaoru. But, of course, outside the windows, there’s only that swollen, harvest sun.
*
“Kaoru,” Mori says, and Kaoru wants to put on a silly hat, and have him say it then, when it would mean something.
*
It’s only a show, of course, Hikaru breathing in his face and blushing like someone’s pinched him. Twincest! they said once, and laughed and laughed and laughed, holding onto each other so as to not topple to the ground. All that laughter, and Kaoru wonders if he’s sick whenever Hikaru steals the covers at night and he doesn’t mind.
It’s not romantic, it’s not sexual, but it’s something.
Hikaru is the only one who knows which of them is Kaoru. Haruhi only knows which of them is and which of them isn’t Hikaru. That’s what the game is, after all.
Which one of us is Hikaru-kun?
Kaoru scolds himself, thinks, grow up. The identity crisis has been around too long, and he’s tired of it, wants to be over it already.
*
“You never got to figure it out, huh, Tono?” he says to Tamaki one day, because he’s masochistic like that. “Before Hikaru went and had his little teenage rebellion. One would think he’d choose something better than the cheapest hair dye you can find.”
It’s Slavic theme this week – Russia!, Tamaki said a few days before with stars in his eyes, thinking of gold, and onion domes, and tsars. Petersburg! – and Kaoru is wearing a loose white shirt with red stitching. He pulls at the sleeve, and the fabric feels thin enough to tear, so he pulls harder, but the seams hold.
“It’s a humble thing to promote commoners’ products, Kaoru!”
“Oh?” Kaoru says, disinterested. He thinks of the dozens of girls wanting to see him and Hikaru, never just him, and glances at the row of matryoshkas laid out on the piano. They are all smiling and the paint is chipped -- that's how you know, Tamaki insisted, that they're true antics.
“Don’t tell Hikaru that,” Tamaki says, “but the truth is, I’m still guessing! Of course, I know who’s who quite easily, now, thanks to the hair, but don’t think I’ve given up! I watch the two of you and try to think of what each of you does that the other won’t do.”
His smiles is so dazzling that Kaoru can’t not smile back.
“I won’t try to steal Haruhi from you, for one,” he says, but it’s just that, a thing to say, because he knows Hikaru wouldn’t either.
Later, he stays behind in the empty club room and approaches the piano. He picks up one of the matryoshkas, and wonders if, upon opening it, he’d find not one smaller doll but two identical ones inside, and if the only way to tell the difference between them would be the chipped paint. He wonders, even though he promised himself that he wouldn’t, if he’d be the chipped one.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Kyoya asks somewhere behind him, and Kaoru smiles, remembering that for Kyoya things are never beautiful, but valuable.
“Costly, too, I’m sure,” he says, and imagines the conversation already stretching lazily between them, club budget, Tamaki’s extravagance, what can you do.
“Do you know how many dolls are inside?” Kyoya asks instead, and Kaoru wonders at how numbers don’t have to be about money. He considers the doll – it’s wearing pink, red and green, and her hair is the yellow of egg yolk – the good, almost orange sort that Hikaru likes to puncture with a fork after Kaoru has fried them. The matryoshka isn’t heavy, but it is considerably big, almost too awkward to hold with one hand.
“Five?” he guesses, and Kyoya laughs softly.
“Eight, actually.”
Kaoru smiles, shakes his head, and opens the doll. Inside there aren’t two smaller dolls, just one.
“People are like matryoshkas, then,” he says, and feels foolish. He’s been thinking of layers, how he’s hidden inside himself, and how no one's ever bothered to open him and look. When they first met, Hikaru tried to play the game with Kyoya, but Kyoya only pushed his glasses up his nose and ignored them.
“There are many clues,” Kyoya says now, coming up to stand next to him. He’s changed from his tsar costume, and it’s a relief to not see him in black and all that gold, which he wears too nonchalantly for it to not be that bit convincing. He takes the matryoshka from Kaoru and opens it, opens all of them, one by one, until the wooden halves are strewn on the piano like something has hatched out of each doll. The smallest one, the one that doesn’t open, he offers to Kaoru, and when Kaoru reaches for it, Kyoya grabs him by the wrist, not gently, not harshly, just matter-of-factly. “Your nails, for one.”
“I don’t bite them,” Kaoru says, embarrassed, because he used to, once, and no one noticed anyway, no one could tell them apart despite it.
“It’s your lunulae,” Kyoya explains, setting the doll on Kaoru’s palm and letting go of his wrist. Kaoru curls his fingers around the wood, and wonders what it is that he’s missing.
“Lunulae?” he repeats, irritated to be forced into admitting he doesn’t know the word. The one thing he both likes and hates about Kyoya is how, for all his arrogance, he doesn’t tend to assume people don’t know something. Or, rather, he doesn’t tend to assume Kaoru doesn’t know something. It makes Kaoru feel exposed and out-of-sorts, like something plucked naked and aching.
“Lunulae are the white half-moons at the base of one’s fingernails,” Kyoya explains. “Hikaru has them, and you don’t, which, I suspect, is due to malnutrition. Hikaru might be the more spoiled one, but it’s you who never touches the greens. If you pulled your lower eyelid down, there wouldn’t be enough red there.”
For a moment, Kaoru doesn’t know what to say. He remembers telling Haruhi that he and Hikaru always like the same things and how it wasn’t a lie, not exactly, unless he was also lying to himself.
“I eat lots of meat, though.”
“You don’t eat lots of anything, lately, do you?” Kyoya says neutrally. “Take care of yourself, would you?”
Kaoru has to remind himself, then, that Kyoya is saying that thinking of the club’s profits, always calculating.
“That’s how you can tell?” he asks, disappointed. To think it would be something as trivial as eating habits! “That’s it?”
“There’s more, naturally,” Kyoya says, and the smile he gives Kaoru is almost mischievous. “But it's best to save the good stuff for later, don't you think?”
*
Sometimes, Kyoya will watch Tamaki, and Kaoru will watch Kyoya. There will be nothing wistful about it, no longing in Kyoya’s gaze, but Kaoru imagines it there all the same -– just like those red lines he’s sure are there under the frames of Kyoya’s glasses, hidden but present all the same.
Once, Tamaki told them about how Kyoya got a kotatsu just for him and it made Kaoru think that none of them really knew Kyoya, not at all. He remembers Kyoya searching for Tamaki’s mother, how he wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t sleep, and wonders if, were Kyoya to pull his own eyelid down, there wouldn’t be enough red there, either.
Take care of yourself, would you, he reminds himself, and laughs. He feels tired all the time, that much is true, and these days, he doesn’t ever bother to wash his mug, coffee rings accumulating inside it like a palimpsest of insomnias. His leg will jump under the table sometimes, but at least he doesn’t fall asleep during tests. Sleep, when it comes to him, feels like a sort of curious detachment, and he both longs for it and dreads it.
When I sleep, he told Hikaru once, when Hikaru found him in the kitchen in the middle of the night, eating cereal with a spoon, straight from the box, I dream of the future.
What is it like, Hikaru asked, rubbing sleep out of his eyes, and Kaoru tried to remember.
White, he said, finally, though that wasn’t it, not exactly. It’s all white.
“Hawaii!” Tamaki exclaims, on the other side of the room, and Haruhi argues that no, she’s not going to wear a grass skirt.
“How about Peter Pan?” Kaoru says and imagines them as Lost Boys, imagines them never having to grow up. Kyoya raises his eyebrow at him, knowing -- disdainful? -- and aggravating, and asks who would be Captain Hook.
“Forget it,” Kaoru mumbles, and thinks of Earth and all its countries spinning too fast, imagines momentum scattering all of them all over the world against their will, and how no one would hold on to him to keep him from landing somewhere alone.
*
He and Hikaru are sharing a lunchbox, and, as he's putting a piece of omelet in his mouth, Kaoru notices Kyoya watching him with an inscrutable expression. Kaoru frowns and eats a piece of cucumber next but it tastes like nothing and he’s not hungry anyway so he folds his chopsticks and pretends that he’s eaten enough. Hikaru is too busy stealing glances at Haruhi to notice anyway, and Kaoru is almost okay with how that's how it's going to be now, always.
That evening, he picks up a copy of Anna Karenina that someone left in the music room, because, one week later, he’s still thinking of Russia. Unhappy families, huh? Sounds about right.
*
“You watch,” Kyoya tells him finally, two weeks later, and Kaoru remembers the press of the smallest matryoshka in his palm, and how he stole it later, slipped it into his pocket and thought that, surely, Kyoya had known he would. “Hikaru does, too, but not half as much.”
“I do watch,” Kaoru agrees, not quite happy, but satisfied, which is almost better, and leans towards Kyoya with a knowing smile. He doesn’t glance at Tamaki –- he doesn’t have to –- and knows, without Kyoya having to tell him, that it’s another difference between him and Hikaru, because Hikaru surely would.
“I wish you didn’t, sometimes,” Kyoya admits, and keeps himself from adjusting his glasses, even though they’ve slid down his nose. His hand twitches at his side, but he keeps it there, and Kaoru leans even closer, so that, at last, he sees the red pressed into the bridge of Kyoya’s nose. Before he can think twice about it, he pushes Kyoya’s glasses up for him with the tip of his finger, and, once it's done, is glad that he did. After all, touching is more of a Hitachiin thing to do than refraining from it ever will be.
“Tell me more, tell me more,” he requests childishly and smiles what he knows is his practiced, devilish smile. He knows, having had Hikaru for a mirror all his life.
“Greedy,” Kyoya says, and for some reason, Kaoru expects him to laugh. When he doesn’t, Kaoru feels disappointed, like a child pressing a button on the back of a broken toy, surprised at how it won’t speak.
Surprised at his own surprise, too.
“You have no idea,” he says, and goes back to his book, which he’s kept open with his finger. He stares at his hand and thinks that, for all the watching he does, he himself never pays attention to other people’s fingernails.
*
It’s early afternoon, and Kaoru is already half-asleep, trying to keep his eyes from closing as he and Hikaru entertain one of the girls who always request them, the sort that read forbidden love story manga, hiding them under their pillows and pretending to like Proust. Kaoru stares longingly at the box of instant coffee on the other side of the music room, and at his perpetually dirty, chipped mug.
“…Kaoru!” Hikaru says -- has been saying -- and Kaoru realizes that he’s been asked a question and is supposed to swoon. He remembers how at night, he sipped milk, curled up on the kitchen windowsill, and wanted to call someone, but had no one to call.
“Is it a fever?” Hikaru says, all exaggerated voice but wary eyes. “Do you feel unwell?” He puts the back of his hand to Kaoru’s forehead, and Kaoru almost tells him that he’s supposed to check with his own forehead. It would be so much better for business and Kyoya –- he steals a glance at Kyoya, who isn’t watching them at all.
“I’m just a little hot,” Kaoru says, even though he’s not, and reaches up to undo the top button of his shirt.
“No, let me,” Hikaru plays along, batting his hand away, and popping the button open for him. Kaoru imagines what it would be like if he couldn’t push it through the cotton, and smiles, wondering if someone would mind if he curled up and napped for a while. He's one half of a Cheshire cat and he's had his milk: now, he wants his sleep.
“Would the two of you care for a drink?” he says instead and gets up without waiting for a reply. He heads for the coffee table with no intention of going back and gathers the undissolved grains of his last instant coffee -- Haruhi's 'plebeian habits' rubbing off on them and all -- on his finger, too lazy to make a new one. He licks the grains off and someone giggles somewhere in the room, maybe at him, but probably not.
“You should wash it before it grows legs,” Kyoya says, materializing next to him like an apparition, and Kaoru glances at his laptop, folded closed three tables away. Distracted, he doesn’t notice Kyoya prying the mug from his fingers until he hears the squeak of a washcloth.
“Sit down, would you?” Kyoya says, not bothering to look at him. “I’ll make you a proper coffee, and you’ll go back to being quality produce.”
“We’re not paid for—”
“How many tissues that Hikaru used to wipe your tears away do you think we’ll sell if you don’t even bother to answer when he’s talking to you?”
“We only have instant coffee,” Kaoru points out.
“I’m aware,” Kyoya says, and Kaoru wonders if, at home, Kyoya makes his own coffee, even though he has staff for that. He grunts in acknowledgment and slides down obediently, his back to the wall, wondering if the rumble of the kettle will lull him to sleep.
“It snowed at night, did you know?”
“It’s October,” Kyoya tells him, and, after the splash of hot water in the mug, Kaoru can’t hear a thing. The spoon doesn’t clink when Kyoya stirs, not once.
“I swear,” Kaoru mumbles because he remembers that it was white and too slow -- to heart-breaking -- to be rain. “When it fell, it made no sound.”
“A tree in a forest.”
Kaoru smiles and closes his eyes for a second, two, three.
“Schrodinger’s cat,” he whispers, and when Kyoya hands him the coffee, it’s as close to perfect as something from a tin can get, more milk than water, hot but not hot enough to scald, and with the right amount of sugar. He hums contentedly, and slowly, slowly, feels himself wake.
“Cheshire cat,” Kyoya says, and Kaoru groans, remembering Tamaki in a hat and the clothes he and Hikaru had to wear, those awful prison-uniform stripes. He thinks, even though he doesn’t want to, of Lewis Carroll and Wonderland.
He thinks, as he's wont to do, about mirrors.
“You have clients,” Kyoya reminds him, and never fear, Kaoru remembers, how could he forget? He can see the outline of a calculator in the pocket of Kyoya's slacks.
“How much sugar did you put inside?” he asks before licking his lips clean. He takes his sweet (ha!) time doing it, too, savoring every last drop.
“Far too much.”
“Tell me,” Kaoru insists, knowing he sounds spoiled. “I want one just like this every morning.”
“Hmm,” Kyoya says, and smiles a calculating smile even though there’s nothing to calculate. “Here’s another; you have more of a sweet tooth than Hikaru does.”
Kaoru blinks up at him and feels funny, like something not quite, but almost, knocked off a shelf.
“I thought you wouldn’t bother,” he says, staring at his knees. He wants, more than anything, for this to go on (and on, and on), and so, masochistically, he can’t resist provoking Kyoya into stopping.
“Clients,” Kyoya reminds him neutrally and then turns to go, except he stops. “If I bothered, you’d know,” he adds, and Kaoru imagines him saying something both awful and wonderful.
If I bothered, you’d know, because I’d tell you things about you that you don’t even know yourself.
He takes a sip of his coffee, and it’s almost easy to believe that Kyoya actually said it, and so Kaoru lets himself pretend that he did, just for a minute, just for two.
*
When Kaoru wakes up later that night, for the first time in so long, Hikaru isn’t there. It’s cold, and Kaoru wraps a blanket around himself and pulls on his socks before investigating. The house, as he sneaks through the halls, is empty and quiet like a ship about to sink, all the rats long gone. When he was small, he used to be scared of the dark rooms and heavy brass handles, and perhaps he hasn’t quite grown out of the fear yet, in spite of all the years of mischief and hide-and-seek.
He finds Hikaru in one of the upstairs bathrooms, leaning over a sink, trying to re-dye his hair at the roots.
When they were small, one of the maids read to them, first Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and then Through the Looking Glass & What Alice Found There. Hikaru loved the latter one so much more, speaking of the world on the other side of the mirror, similar but not quite the same. “When you hold up a book, someone in the Looking Glass house does, too, but the letters are all wrong!” he told their mother later, fascinated, and Kaoru consoled himself by thinking that, were they to face each other, copies of the same book in hand, the letters wouldn’t go the wrong way. They were from the same world, the two of them, whether Hikaru liked it or not.
Only Hikaru didn’t like it, and now here they are.
“You’re hopeless,” Kaoru says, staring at the mess of dye in the sink and the puddles of water splashed all over the bathroom tiles, at Hikaru’s soaked socks, which are Kaoru's socks. Hikaru jumps and hits his head on the faucet. Kaoru tries, and fails, not to laugh.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Hikaru chants, gaining volume, and rubs the top of his hair, making everything all that messier. Kaoru imagines laughing some more and going back to sleep, but he’s tired of all those things he keeps imagining and won’t ever do.
“You could have asked for help, you know,” he says, exasperated, and in the mirror, Hikaru has the nerve to blush. Kaoru sighs, and steps forward, onto the wet tiles, sinking his fingers into Hikaru’s hair and gently pushing his head down. “Idiot.”
They don’t talk –- too risky –- and when Kaoru can’t keep a few tears from dripping down, he hopes Hikaru will think it’s the tap. Neither of them mentions it, and later, after they’ve cleaned up, and Hikaru’s hair has dried, they curl up together like two question marks. Kaoru wishes for sleep and the wish doesn't come true but he'll keep trying: there'll be other nights.
*
“Biology?” Kyoya asks conversationally, staring at the textbook Kaoru is keeping open above his face. He’s stretched on one of the sofas and his legs dangle off it. Tired, and not particularly willing to look at Kyoya and whatever mean expression he’s wearing, he drops the textbook on his face.
“Biological interactions,” he says, slowly. “Commensalism, parasitism,” he adds, wondering if the latter applies to him and Hikaru, who doesn’t seem to need Kaoru half as much as Kaoru needs him.
“Neutralism,” Kyoya adds, playing along.
“I don’t believe in that one,” Kaoru says, even though it is listed in the textbook. “I don’t believe two organisms can interact but not affect each other in any way.”
“Now,” Kyoya says, and he sounds like he’s smiling. Kaoru feels tempted to look but resolutely keeps the book over his face. “Don’t forget mutualism.”
Kaoru waves his hand lazily and doesn’t say anything. He hears footsteps and consoles himself by thinking that Kyoya wasn’t standing close enough for Kaoru to catch his sleeve and keep him from going, anyway. He slips his hand into his pocket and curls his fingers around the tiny Russian doll he keeps there, small enough to hide, big enough to comfort.
*
Yet again, Kaoru can’t sleep, and around him, the house feels like a robbed grave. His hand shakes as he flips his phone open and scrolls through his contacts. He stares at Kyoya’s number flashing in the dark and doesn’t dial. Instead, he digs out scraps of patterned fabric, and aligns them together, like puzzles, itching for a needle, wondering if there's anything to him apart from blood.
*
“Kaoru,” Haruhi says, blinking up at him with huge eyes. “You seem tired, lately.”
Kaoru smiles, and remembers how, once, he either liked Haruhi or thought he did. After a while, he figured out that he’d probably like Haruhi more if she was a boy pretending to be a girl, and not the other way around, which, of course, had nothing to do with Haruhi herself.
“It’s nothing,” he tells her, and knows it won’t fool her. Still, he smiles, and hopes it’ll be enough.
“Are you and Hikaru okay?” she asks because it’s always about him and Hikaru, isn’t it?
“I’ll be alright,” he says, instead of joking about how oh, is she worried, my, my. “I promise.”
Across the room, Kyoya adjusts his glasses and looks elsewhere, but Kaoru has caught him watching, anyway.
*
Kaoru ends up telling Kyoya about Alice, and the world on the other side of the mirror. Looking Glass, he corrects himself, and speaks of rooms quite like here, only the paintings in them talking, the clocks with faces. All wonders, he adds, laughing at himself, remembering Hikaru, ten years old, eyes huge and the future like Humpty Dumpty in their clasped hands –- as if, the moment they let go, it would break like an egg.
“In other words, you’re scared,” Kyoya says, and Kaoru wants to throw something at him. Another difference and he doesn’t want it –- wants him and Hikaru to be the same, neither of them hesitating before they make a leap, say a word, take a step.
*
“Say, Kao, has someone done something?” Hani asks him, voice deceptively sweet, but with a promise of threats tucked somewhere underneath. Kaoru smiles and pretends that no, no, everything is fine.
Everything is fine.
*
It’s October, Tamaki with autumn leaves in his hair and the pond outside full of them, too. Some branches are stark naked already, and Kaoru feels cold when he looks at them out the window, wants to wear a scarf indoors.
“Kyoya~” he whines and flings himself on the couch, where Kyoya is sitting with notes spread all around him. Paper rustles beneath him and he stretches, his head in Kyoya’s lap, blinking up at him innocently. “I’m bored, and lonely, and cold,” he says, and somewhere, Hikaru laughs.
“You’re a pest,” Kyoya sighs. “Do you want me to turn the heating up?”
Kaoru stares at him, caught off-guard.
“What about the costs?” he asks, not bothering to make it sound mischievous, sly, impish. Next to them, he knows, Hikaru must be frowning, surprised, too.
“The school pays for the heating, remember?” Kyoya says, and Kaoru feels like he’s accidentally bitten into a lemon rind. He thinks of Tamaki, and kotatsu, and the tips of his fingers feel numb. “Besides, if you’re cold, some of our clients might be as well.”
“No, no, senpai,” Hikaru says, waving his hand. “Kaoru is just a baby.”
Kyoya arches an eyebrow at Kaoru.
“Never mind, Mom,” he says, loud, spoiled, half-act, half-real, and gets off the couch, dusting off his slacks, even though there’s nothing on them to dust off. “I’ll head home, actually, if that’s alright. I don’t feel so well, to be honest.”
He walks away, and Hikaru doesn’t follow, because he must have heard the lie in Kaoru’s voice, must have realized that what Kaoru wanted was not to go home, but to be left alone.
Not quite twin telepathy, but they still have it sometimes.
*
A few days later, Kaoru wakes up to find the music room empty, the sun outside heavier than he remembers. There’s a text from Hikaru on his phone about how he had to follow Tamaki and Haruhi somewhere to keep an eye on them or some such nonsense, and to go home without him and “get some proper rest, seriously.”
Kaoru doesn’t reach for his bag, because he notices the two identical matryoshkas set on the windowsill. He wouldn’t normally -– they seem half on display, half-hidden, like a reluctant gift someone was not quite ready to offer but did anyway –- only they’re such a lovely, winter blue, a contrast to the warm interior.
Kaoru considers ignoring them, just to be contrary, but, in the end, curiosity gets the better of him. Most of the things they have delivered to Ouran for their club activities, he knows –- if Kyoya can get away with it, white lies to Tamaki and polite bargaining on the phone –- are rented, not bought, and even if bought, resold soon after. When Kyoya let him keep that smallest doll, Kaoru risked thinking that it meant something, because this was Kyoya: even such a tiny (no)thing would cost them. Now, with two matryoshkas lying about like this, he’s not so sure.
Only they’re hardly lying about, are they? There’s purpose to how they’re placed and they seem to smile at him teasingly from across the room. Kaoru walks up to them, shielding his eyes from the sun, and wonders if it’s a prank. He checks for traps and looks around, listening, but the only sounds he can hear are coming from outside, the faraway yells of students that are only now leaving for home.
Kaoru sighs and starts opening the first matryoshka, the one on the right, wondering if he’ll find a note inside, instructions to some game the other host members decided to play, a hide-and-seek he’s late for.
The dolls are all identical, and he’s careful when the swollen wood of the smaller ones doesn’t want to give. He puts the side of his palm to it, pressing gently, the way Kyoya instructed them to do and the way Hikaru didn’t do it –- another difference between them, and Kyoya never said. When Kaoru gets to the last, tiny doll, it’s the same as the biggest one, only a bit less detailed, dress white-blue, hair brown-red, not unlike his and Hikaru’s. Well, just his now. Kaoru sighs and checks the other set, which doesn’t give easily, either. When he gets to the one-but-last doll, he remembers Kyoya saying that the smallest dolls are often compared to eggshells, and carefully wedges his fingernail between the two halves, slowly prying them open.
The tiny doll inside doesn’t match the rest, and Kaoru’s breath catches. He checks his pocket –- empty –- and wonders how Kyoya managed to steal it without waking him. He stares at the small, red-green doll winking at him from inside its wooden shell, and there’s a growing pressure in his chest as he’s desperately trying not to think that it means something -- something about him, and Hikaru, and Kyoya. He makes a choked sound and wonders, distantly, if he’ll cry.
He pockets his doll, and puts the rest of the set back together, knowing that, come tomorrow afternoon, they’ll be gone.
*
The next day after classes, he leans over Kyoya’s shoulder, numbers rolling on his laptop screen with the speed of something that will never slow or stop, and thanks him with a cheeky smile.
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Kaoru,” Kyoya says, but there’s a ghost of a smile hovering at the side of his mouth, and Kaoru will take what he can get. From where he’s standing, he can see the red pressed into the skin of Kyoya’s nose and despairs because it will be difficult to forget that Kyoya is human, now that he knows better.