Ouran Fanfiction

Breathing

Chapter 2- Dreaming

Hikaru thought sleeping that night would be difficult, what with his worries for Haruhi and Kaoru. He even worried a little that Kaoru might go and sleep in the other room, but then he realised that he knew his other half better than that. Kaoru curled up as usual in the bed the twins shared, and as soon as Hikaru’s head touched the pillow, he found he was exhausted and sleep came easily.

--

Hikaru saw the light of morning through the thin skin of his eyelids.

Ugh, morning already? he thought groggily.

Opening his eyes a slit, he saw bright light and closed them again quickly.

He could feel arms wrapped around him and thought Kaoru must be hugging him from behind.

Ah well, no point in dragging it out; may as well get up now...

Reluctantly, he opened his eyes again.

And did a double take.

This was not his bedroom. Powder blue walls, darker blue carpet, coffee table and sofa. This was Haruhi’s hospital room.

He sat up. He had not noticed until now that he had been lying on his back, so who was...? Looking down, another shock went through him. A straight-jacket?!

“Hikaru.”

Hikaru jumped again. Haruhi was standing next to his (her?) bed. She had definitely not been there before.

“What the... Where am I?” he spluttered, arms now pulling at the straight-jacket, which was proving almost solid in its bonds.

“You’re in hospital,” she answered simply. There was something disturbing about her, Hikaru thought. Perhaps it was the vacant expression, the strange smile, the light voice. “You fainted at the host club, remember?”

Hikaru shook his head slowly, as though through treacle.

“N- No,” he answered quietly, hesitantly. “Y- You had a seizure-”

“A seizure? Me?” Haruhi have a strange, tinny laugh. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about...”

Hikaru frowned, closing his eyes a little. The light in here was too bright...

“Kaoru!” Haruhi had suddenly turned her head towards the door, which Kaoru presently came through.

“Yes darling?” he asked, gazing at her.

Darling? Since when had Kaoru called Haruhi darling?

“Hikaru doesn’t seem to remember what happened at the host club,” Haruhi told him, smiling absently.

“Oh...” Kaoru crossed to Haruhi’s side and they both stared strangely at Hikaru. All the while, the light in the room got slowly brighter. “Well, truth is, you fainted”- he stopped briefly to put an arm around Haruhi’s slight shoulders- “when you found out we were together.”

Hikaru felt his eyes grow wider despite the increasing intensity of light in the room. Unable to think of any other reply, he merely settled for a confused, “Huh?!”

Now, his friends’ eyes were wide, unblinking, and creepy-looking. He found himself squinting a little in the brightening light.

“If you want, we can all three of us be together...”

Hikaru was not sure which one of them had said it this time. Neither of them appeared to have moved their lips.

The last thing he knew was them leaning forward and him leaning back, away from them, arms still straining against the straightjacket, and then him screwing up his eyes tightly against the bright light, getting brighter and brighter and...

--

Hikaru opened his eyes. It was still the middle of the night, and he was in his own room. There was no bright light, and Haruhi was nowhere to be seen. His mind raced through all the details of the dream. The hospital room, Haruhi and Kaoru, the straight-jacket... Presently, Hikaru looked down his body and felt his stomach flip over when he saw pale arms wrapped around his torso. Oh. Kaoru’s arms. Hikaru sat up, disentangling himself from his twin’s limbs. It was disturbing to feel them there...

Running his hands through his strawberry-blonde hair, he heard Kaoru shifting in the bed next to him.

“Hikaru?” Kaoru’s voice was soft and tired and when he sat up too, Hikaru was relieved to see him looking normal and not creepy at all.

“What’s wrong?” asked Kaoru sleepily, barely stifling a yawn. “You don’t usually wake up in the middle of the night...”

“Oh... uh...” Hikaru was unsure what to say. “It was uh... nothing... Just a... a strange dream...”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Kaoru’s voice was not demanding, only gently questioning, curious and wanting to help Hikaru through it if it was bothering him.

Hikaru was about to say “no”, but stopped himself. Kaoru would probably tell him if the roles were reversed. So instead he let out his breath on a soft sigh.

“Okay, but... please don’t think I’m crazy...”

Hikaru told him, and was relieved when Kaoru did not laugh at him, even when he mentioned the ‘darling’ part.

“And then I woke up, and your arms were around me, and it felt weird, so...” Hikaru gestured a little and finished.

Kaoru looked at him for a long moment and then smiled very slightly. “Don’t you remember what I told you this afternoon?” he asked. “I’m not interested in Haruhi like that, and I have no intention of getting together with her. And,” he paused briefly. “I’d probably never call anyone ‘darling’ unless I was married to them... And possibly not even then.”

Hikaru smiled and hugged him, feeling the familiar body against his, and the arms, now feeling soft and warm and nothing like a straight-jacket, holding him close.

“Thank you,” Hikaru whispered, his chin resting on Kaoru’s shoulder.

--

The next day at school was very tiring for all the hosts, whether they’d had strange dreams or not. All day host club customers bombarded them with questions about Haruhi’s well-being and how soon the host would be back at school and in the host club. On instruction from Tamaki, none of the six revealed where Haruhi was staying; they did not want her to have any extra stress when she was resting, even if they didn’t know yet what was wrong with their friend. The customers were not very pleased about being kept in the dark, but some of them gave presents and sweets for Haruhi to the rest of the hosts to pass on to her.

In the third music room that afternoon, the remaining hosts were all more busy than usual, because many of Haruhi’s usual customers had all latched on to other hosts. Others had cleared off entirely, disappointed at their favourite host’s absence. This greatly annoyed Kyouya. After all the host club activities had finished and the hosts were all sitting about getting ready to go home and tidying up the areas they’d been in, Hikaru found the shadow king sitting at a table with his laptop, adding things up with both a calculator and spreadsheet.

“What’s wrong?” he asked the upperclassman when he’d sighed exasperatedly.

Kyouya eyed him for a moment before replying, “We’ve lost a lot of profit today, thanks to Haruhi’s not being here.”

“Well, it’s hardly her fault,” retorted Hikaru hotly. “You know perfectly well she’d rather be here, working off her debt, than stuck in a hospital room with nothing to do.”

“Hmm...” Kyouya sounded off-handed, typing away on the laptop again. “Meanwhile I’ll have to do something about this.”

Hikaru frowned. “Do you not care about Haruhi at all?”

Kyouya said nothing, but continued to type.

“You don’t care about her at all, do you?” Hikaru was sounding angry now. “You only care about profits and merit and-”

“I do care about Haruhi,” Kyouya interrupted him suddenly, lifting his raven head to look at Hikaru and still typing. “But someone needs to worry about these things too.”

Hikaru bit back his next retort and went to sit beside Kaoru. He did not want to start another fight.

--

Haruhi was quite cheerful when they went to visit her that evening, although they all knew that she would have preferred to have been in school and not hospital. She happily accepted the homework from the twins and told them all how she’d had to persuade her father to go to work.

“It was quite sweet really,” she explained. “He’s so worried about all this...”

“When will your test results be back?” asked Tamaki. He had been very concerned about the well-being of his ‘daughter’ and had been checking the various charts around her bed, even though he didn’t understand what half of them were, and questioning her every few minutes.

“They should be in by the end of the week. Friday I think they said,” she informed him. “But I feel fine, honestly. I’m confident that they’ll come back completely fine.”

--

The rest of the week passed much the same for the hosts still in school. Patrons from the host club came up to them to interrogate about Haruhi, and, once again, they did not reveal where she was.

However, some of the more devious girls managed to find out where Haruhi was, and they would turn up every so often at the hospital with cookies they’d baked especially for Haruhi or another card, or sweets and treats (due to Haruhi’s dislike for sweets, these were graciously received and then most were given to Hunny, who happily disposed of them). But, whether out of spite or genuine concern for Haruhi’s health, most of them did not appear to disclose their discovery to many other girls, and so Haruhi was allowed some time alone with the other hosts.

Friday afternoon stood out to all of them as the results day, and that day they were all gathered in Haruhi’s room at the hospital.

“Are you worried about them?” Mori asked her in his quiet, mature voice.

“I don’t know,” replied Haruhi thoughtfully. “I haven’t really thought about the results themselves, just that I can’t wait to get back home when they’re all good.”

“That’s assuming the results are good,” out in Kyouya darkly, earning a small, annoyed glare from Hikaru, who was sitting on the sofa with his brother. “What if they don’t come out with the result you want?”

Haruhi blinked at him. “I’m not going to worry about that until I get a bad result. There’s no point getting worked up when there’s still a chance it could be good.”

Just then, the door opened and Doctor Nakamura came through.

“Oh, doctor,” Haruhi greeted him, leaning back on her pillows slightly. “We were just discussing the test results.”

“Well, I have them here,” said the doctor, brandishing his clipboard. “But I’m afraid it’s strictly confidential; your friends will have to leave, and your father really ought to be here.”

As if on cue, Ranka came hurrying through the door. “I’m here! Please tell me I’m on time to hear the results!”

--

“Hey, Kaoru.” Hikaru lifted his head to look at his brother that evening as the pair got ready for bed.

“Hmm?” Kaoru looked up from unbuttoning his shirt.

“Do you think she’ll get a good test result or a bad one?” The older twin was already done changing, and was sitting on the bed in his pyjama bottoms.

Kaoru pulled off his shirt and frowned at it in his hands. “I don’t know,” he replied quietly.

“You don’t think it’ll be good?” Hikaru raised his eyebrows.

“Well, obviously I want it to be,” said the younger twin quickly, sitting beside Hikaru on the bed. “But... it might not be...”

“You heard what Haruhi said,” replied Hikaru. “There’s no point in worrying about it.”

“Hmm...” Kaoru got up off the bed again and started to un-buckle his belt. “She’ll have them by now though, won’t she?”

“Yeah, I wonder why she hasn’t called to let us know...”

“You know they don’t allow phones in hospitals, it messes with the equipment,” Kaoru pulled on some pyjama bottoms and sat down again.

“But... if she was at home, she could have called...” Hikaru was worried again now. “If she’s still at the hospital, then that means...” He trailed off.

Kaoru jumped into the worried silence, putting an arm around Hikaru’s shoulders.

“Haruhi will be fine,” he said firmly, hugging Hikaru tightly with his one arm. “If she’s still there, it might just be that she needs a little extra rest before she goes home.”

“You’re sure?” asked Hikaru childishly, looking at his brother with his golden, cat-like, and currently rounded, eyes.

“I’m positive,” Kaoru gave a small smile, before hugging Hikaru again, this time with both arms, and climbing into bed. “We’ll go visit her tomorrow with the others and you’ll see.”

--

The next morning, Kyouya had a dentist appointment, Hunny and Mori had training at the dojo, and all the hosts were generally so busy that none of them could get to the hospital before mid-afternoon.

“Do you think Haru-chan will mind that we haven’t come earlier in the day?” Hunny asked from Mori’s shoulders as they all entered the hospital and went to the front desk.

“Of course not,” replied Kaoru optimistically. “Haruhi’s not the sort of person to hold a grudge for that kind of reason. And besides, she’s probably already out.”

But she wasn’t. When they asked for her at the front desk they were directed to her room as usual.

As they made their way to Haruhi’s room, some of them began to look a little worried- namely, Tamaki, Hunny and Hikaru- and Kaoru repeated what he’d said to his twin the night before, though this time his voice was a little higher:

“She probably just needs some more rest before she goes home.”

Outside Haruhi’s room, the six of them met Doctor Nakamura.

“Ah, doctor,” greeted Kyouya. “Good results, I hope?”

The man immediately looked uncomfortable.

“What?” Alarm bells were clanging about in Hikaru’s head.

“I think you’d best hear it from Haruhi herself...” he pushed open the door. “Miss Fujioka, you have some visitors...”

They all got a shock when they walked in and saw a drip in Haruhi’s arm. She looked at them all with her big, brown eyes and tried a small smile.

“Hey guys,” she said, but her voice was flat and hoarse, like she’d been crying. “What’s up?”

“Haruhi...” Tamaki was open-mouthed.

“Mmh?” her eyes had now focused away from them.

Tamaki seemed unable to say anything else, so Mori asked the question they all wanted the answer to but which none of them were brave enough to ask.

“Haruhi,” he moved closer to her, standing at the foot of her bed. “What were the results of the tests?”

Haruhi dropped her gaze to her hands, which were folded in her lap, and said, in a barely audible whisper, “Bad.”

The bottoms dropped out of all their stomachs.

“How bad?” asked Kyouya quickly, as though trying to get it over with as fast as possible.

“Very,” replied Haruhi, still not looking at them. “I... I’m... It’s...”

“Haru-chan?” Hunny came and stood by her side.

“I’ll be... dead... within a month...” Her voice cracked and faded to silence.

And with that, Hikaru tore out of the room.