Author: Kiki (Hey-Diddle-Diddle)

Genre: Romance/Tragedy

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Hana can't have Kyoko, so she'll take Kyoko's brother. Ryouhei/Hana, unrequitted!Hana-Kyoko. She ties him to the kitchen chair, she breaks his throne and she cuts his hair.

to break his throne

She marries her best friend's brother.

She thinks it's pretty screwed up. She knows it's pretty screwed up. But she can't have Kyoko, so she'll take Ryouhei, and that way, she'll always have a little bit of Kyoko, and she'll always be close to Kyoko.

Ryouhei, all of twenty-three, is still stuck on his baby sister. He's happy to talk about Kyoko whenever Hana wants to, and he doesn't think anything about it when Hana suggests, hesitantly the first time, and more boldly each time, to invite Kyoko to the house, or go out to eat with Kyoko, or just stop by Kyoko's apartment to leave something for dinner.

Ryouhei's stuck enough on Kyoko that he doesn't notice that Hana's just as stuck. And if he does notice, he doesn't think anything about it.

Hana can't fuck her best friend, so she fucks her best friend's brother.

She doesn't really love him. She likes him, deep down, like she likes her friends, the people she goes to class with, the people she works with. Sometimes, when he's sleeping in their bed, she thinks she's fond of him. She kisses the scar that runs through his eyebrow, and sometimes, if he's half-awake, he'll laugh and try to grab her, drag her close and kiss her.

She doesn't love him, though, because she loves Kyoko too much to love anyone else.

But she likes Ryouhei. She wants him to be happy, too, because sometimes, when she's cooking dinner and he's standing just on the edge of the kitchen tile, halfway on the carpet, he looks at her like he knows, and those nights, he sleeps on the far side of the bed, and doesn't kiss her goodnight. And she wants him to be happy, because he, with all his blusterous words, deserves some kind of happiness.

So he sits on a stool in the kitchen, and she cuts his hair with her scissors, her fingers shaking when she combs through his hair, evens it out. She kisses his forehead when she's done, his hair sprinkled on the floor, and he grabs her waist when she tries to go for the broom. He kisses her, open-mouthed and gentle, and when she finally pulls away, flushed and feeling guilty and just wanting something more, she asks if they can go to dinner with Kyoko.

And when they walk down the street, Kyoko on Hana's left, and Ryouhei on Hana's right, Hana lets Ryouhei hold her hand.