A little note: for all the old readers of the first version, thank you for giving this version a chance. I hope you'll enjoy this one! And for the new readers, welcome!

Pairing: Hikaru/OC; implied Haruhi/Tamaki; a bit of one-sided Hikaru/Haruhi

Summary: Hikaru only ever wanted something exciting to happen in his boring, everyday existence. He just didn't expect (nor want) love, crossroads, confusion, or Haruhi's enigmatic golden-eyed twin to be involved.

Warnings: Language coarse enough to make a sailor cry; dark themes; and a whole lot of crack and more sap than what's necessary.

Disclaimer: I sure do wish I owned Ouran Highschool Host Club because then I can make Hikaru/Kaoru and Kyouya/Tamaki real (and maybe draw as well as that manga art holy shit), but le sigh... I don't. Bisco Hatori does, though, so maybe I can persuade her.

Chapter One - Of Cracking Skulls and Confusing Twins

Hikaru's first conversation with Aoi Fujioka happens to involve half of a curtain rod, two broken vases, and the most golden eyes Hikaru Hitachiin (or anybody, for that matter) has ever seen.

For now, however, the ill-starred Hitachiin twin is bent over a couch that's been pushed against a wall of the changing room in the Host Club room, staring at the sweat-stained pattern of roses and violets and wondering what the hell he's doing with his life.

But then of course, that ideology isn't very unique nowadays.

What's unique, however, is the sight he sees when he lifts his head (or at least, attempts to) and sees the state of the rest of the room: Kaoru's sprawled over the armrest of the couch only an arm's length away, and the rest of the hosts (both Tamaki and Kyoya are absent, though) are all thrown in a small little heap of twisted limbs and limp bodies in the very corner of the room.

The changing room itself is thrown into a twisted mass of butchery and destruction that's beyond hope of ever repairing, and there's only snippets of the utter annihilation that has happened in the main area of the Host Club room that can be seen through the slightly ajar door.

Hikaru moves to rise, only for his feet to give away beneath him. He collapses, tipping forwards until he's reeling on his hands and knees, body convulsing.

Thank all things holy for the fact that he isn't horking out his guts- at least, not quite yet.

His vision swims with stars and Honey-flowers as he presses his cheek upon the blissfully cool floor, coughing and moaning in what's supposed to be silent pain.

But with agony always comes relief, though in this situation it comes in the cruelest, strangest of ways: it's the reassurance that Haruhi can't possibly see him like this, lying face-first on the ground as he snivels and coughs with a mild hangover, three-quarters of the way to what seems to be self-destruction.

After all, Haruhi's in the same condition as him: she's currently curled up in a corner of the room in the fetal position at the feet of Honey, tucked just next to Mori. She does look considerably better than the ghoul of what he assumes to be his appearance at this particular moment in time, though he can't really guarantee that the youthful glow would stay for long after being shaken awake, like what had been done to him.

Come to speak of it; what had woken him up in the first place?

As if on cue, there's immediately a loud crash: the sound of glass splintering into irreparable pieces.

Hikaru coughs and groans, rolling over on his stomach.

No.

No more.

No fucking more.

Consenting to Tamaki's request to clean up the Music Room after the Ouran Fair had seemed rather smart at the time. Clever, even. All they needed to do was the usual routine, merely amplified by what seemed to be around two notches: clean the dirty china, sweep away the trash, straighten the curtains, and wipe down every ready surface until they could all pose as a mirror at a moment's notice and boom: Tamaki's and Kyoya's debt would be in their favor.

It was a good plan. Hell, it was an amazing plan- perfect for potential blackmail.

Except for the moment when they found a considerable number of unopened champagne bottles in a corner of the Host Club room, probably left there by some brave bastard who went through the trouble of sneaking the alcohol into school premises but ultimately ended up leaving them behind. Champagne flutes filled with the frothy golden liquid were passed around the ill-fated individuals that have decided to stay behind (consisting of Kaoru, Haruhi, Honey, Mori, and himself), the mood light and repartees bawdy.

What an amazing way to end a night, Hikaru had thought. After all, he had been terribly anxious to try a bit of alcohol ever since hearing about its wonders from the more turbulent upperclassmen, and this had seemed like the perfect chance.

The him of six hours ago is a fucking jackass.

They had all ended up getting drunk enough to make Andre the Giant bow his head and weep in shame after only cracking open three bottles. They had shrieked and cried and tripped over each other's feet (or sometimes, nothing at all) enough for each present host to kiss the sweetly destructed marble floor at least once during the duration of the night.

The hosts, it seems, all have pitifully low alcohol tolerance levels. Even Mori had passed out after only his fifth glass.

Who knew.

The crash comes again; but this time, it's louder, pissier, and more expensive sounding. Kaoru rolls over with a moan, having heard it too. He doesn't wake up.

Hikaru sniffs irritably at his twin.

He's somewhat torn between a sense of relief and overbearing terror: relief because it's now confirmed that he isn't hungover enough (or being considered borderline alcohol poisoned) to be hallucinating because Kaoru had obviously heard the noise too.

And then there's the panic, because: oh shit, what the hell made that noise?

Hikaru begins to turn over again, ready to plant his nose straight into the floor and possibly rip it in half on a stray shard of glass and forget everything to leave everything for another person to deal with, but then something stops him:

The hushed noise (almost like a secret, of sorts) of a very quietly hissed 'shit'.

Hikaru may be the fastest out of the hosts (and most people of the world, he's sure) to become inebriated, but also one of the few who recover the quickest from a hangover. Who knew that he could be a good man in a crisis?

Nobody. Because he isn't one.

His heart, a lazy thing that hardly does much work, suddenly begins to hammer against the walls of his rib cage. It feels as if his stomach has been stuffed into his throat. Hikaru begins to make little wheezing noises in the back of his throat, grabbing onto the arm of the couch to steady himself.

Right. So. Burgular. Since no one else would be demented enough (he makes sure to stare accusingly at the little pile of bodies and limbs in the very corner of the changing room) to wander the school at approximately three thirty in the morning.

He scans the darkened room, his weak and throbbing eyes trying to focus on possible weapons lying around in the dark. Broken champagne glasses? No, the very thought of shedding any blood (despite the situation) made him twitchy. If anything, he'd probably end up stabbing himself in the foot first before anything else.

His eyes settle on a broken curtain rod Honey managed to wind himself around while sleeping. Not the handiest of weapons, considering that there's only half of it left (what had Honey done with the other half- eat it?) and his despondently anarchic skills with swordplay, but it's still the best shot he can possibly receive in this situation. After all, waking Mori in this situation would be near impossible, not to mention the fact that he'd probably wake up Honey in the process, too.

Oh, the horror. Hikaru shies away, and makes a grab for the curtain rod.

Or, his brain gripes at him, you can just call the cops.

His hand freezes mid-air.

Hikaru stands there for a moment, absolutely stunned from his horrifyingly obvious revelation (how could he have not known?), flinching when he hears another bout of loud swearing and various crashes from the Host Club room. He scuttles back to the couch like a terrified crab, stuttering fingers tearing through the upholstery as he searches for his phone.

Or, his brain gripes at him, you can just call the cops with your phone that you threw out the window last night while you were fucking drunk, along with everyone else's.

Oh.

Oh.

Well, shit-

Another bout of wheezes whistles through his teeth as he keels over, sweat beading on his pale forehead.

Half of a curtain rod it is.

Hikaru carefully unwinds Honey's sleeping form from around the metal pole that serves as the hope he has left in humanity and holds it close to his torso, his hands shaking violently as he skids his way across the changing room. Cautiously, Hikaru nudges the door open, holding his breath as he peers around the corner.

He almost doesn't see the intruder; his eyes nearly pass over the darkly-dressed figure crouching over what seems to be the shattered remnants of one- no, two -vases on the floor, cursing softly as pale white fingers attempt to reconstruct what would have been half a collection of priceless German Porzellan containers. The intruder blends in so well with their surroundings that Hikaru's almost certain that they would vanish into the air with a moment's notice (maybe with a nice snap of the fingers- oh no, he genuinely hopes that that is a situation he'd never have to work with).

Hikaru counts to three. Twice. Maybe four times.

On his fifth 'two', the intruder seems to have grabbed the wrong shard of glass with the wrong amount of desired force- the howl of pain that follows confirms it.

Hikaru flinches so hard he knocks on his own head with the pole.

-which then spurs him into a rush of crazed, panic-driven adrenaline. Hikaru tears forwards with speed he never knew that he had, arms cocked back and pole aimed at- oh, Haruhi's -forehead. He barely catches a glimpse of terrified eyes before he screams a battle cry and connects the pole with the intruder's forehead with a satisfying thwack.

Falling back, he grins triumphantly as the intruder sways dangerously. Not bad for a first try; not bad at all.

Wait.

Haruhi?

Hikaru's smile sinks into a simper of nervous horror as second-Haruhi crumples to the floor, hitting their head on the floor with another sickeningly loud thumping noise.

Because: oh no, that really does look like Haruhi whom he just brained and possibly killed.

It defies all logic to even consider that Haruhi somehow passed through all the walls with lightening speed and changed out of the Ouran uniform into an all-black outfit to destruct two other vases that she'd have to pay off, but then again, his whole life defies logic (Tamaki's mere existence already hovering in a wholly other stratosphere). So who was he to question it?

He feels the blood leave his head altogether.

"Shit- Haruhi!" Hikaru wails, pelting towards where the intruder fell. Something strong and horrible swells in Hikaru's chest: a mixture of nausea, euphoria, and all-around terror. Second-Haruhi's eyes are opened, but so far from focusing on anything they might as well have been staring at the grim reaper himself and Hikaru wouldn't have known. "I'm sorry! So sorry!"

"s'okay; barely felt it," the intruder mumbles, clutching at their forehead with a barely suppressed wince. "But- not Ri. I'm not Ri."

Hikaru blanches.

Oh no.

The intruder is hallucinating.

And what the fuck is a Ri.

"Who are you?" he presses, hysterical. "You an intruder? A Haruhi? And what's a Ri? What the hell's a goddamn Ri? And- what are you doing here?"

Second-Haruhi winces. A disheartened 'ow' is muttered.

"Please," comes the warbled mumble. "I don't... I can't- hurts. Haruhi. Fujioka. Haruhi is Ri. I'm looking for Haruhi. And not an intruder. Not... not robber. No."

Hikaru blinks slowly and then sits back, completely stunned.

"Oh," he whispers.

So, a boyfriend? Did he just accidentally crack the skull of Haruhi's boyfriend who had the unfortunately caring conscious to come in the middle of the night to search for his absent significant other?

Oh no.

Oh no.

But Hikaru's rationale is working through the alcohol-and-panic soaked haze now: this person looks exactly like Haruhi (down to the gender ambiguity, too; he can't trust himself to tell if this intruder is a girl or a boy), and unless Haruhi has a fetish for people who look like her clone, he doubts that the intruder is her boyfriend. Or girlfriend, for that matter.

And that all burns down to the winning question: who is second-Haruhi? A significant other? See above. Sibling? Haruhi never mentioned one- or did she? Distant relative? Likely, but what were they doing here? Some kind of mutant-Haruhi from the future sent back to the past with a mission to tell their past self everything and what they must to to save mankind before the world collapsed into oblivion?

Yeah- yeah! That's definitely it.

The intruder stares at him with confused and stuttering golden eyes, wide and pale and almost glowing in the darkness of the room.

Hikaru stares back. Haruhi doesn't have gold eyes.

He's a bit relieved.

Second-Haruhi worries at a raw and red bottom lip; it's already marked with other shallow cuts. Obviously a bad habit.

"Who are you?" Hikaru asks again. "Why... why do you want to see Haruhi?"

"Her twin," the intruder mumbles, looking dazed. "Aoi Fujioka. Haruhi's my twin. Hi."

Hikaru swallows heavily, his brain crying a helpless litany of 'shit'.

He feels a bit dizzy.

"Oh."

He just brained Haruhi's commoner twin.

Fuck.

"Why am I only hearing about you now?"

Aoi looks up at Hikaru, who is sobering and a bit more than bitter; the pole is still clutched in his shaking hands (Aoi vaguely wonders if he's tired of gripping onto that thing; it's been at least an hour already). The Fujioka regards him with barely-concealed wariness.

"What do you mean?"

"Haruhi's been hanging around us for almost a year now, and she never mentioned a thing about a twin," he says, almost a bit sourly. "Want some tea? And take a seat; don't just stand there."

Aoi nods tersely at both statements, navigating a way around the crowded (and a bit destructed) Host Club room to the chair on the other side of where Hikaru sits.

"I guess it's more than expected that she wouldn't mention me," Aoi says before even taking a seat. Hikaru pauses.

"Why's that?" he asks without looking at Aoi, keeping his attention on the china teapot as he pours. They've already destructed enough; being careful enough to not destroy a teapot is the least he could do for now.

Aoi's mouth twitches, and he becomes quite certain that the Fujioka twin is fighting a smile. "How's your twin?"

Hikaru starts, almost spilling the tea onto the table. "What?"

"I said," Aoi's says, smile broadening, and even though Hikaru can't even catch a glimpse of his/her (dammit, he's still confused) eyes under the hood pulled low over Aoi's forehead, he's sure that the golden orbs are gleaming with enigma. "How's your twin?"

"Fine. Just fine. But how'd you kno-"

"I didn't know, I saw. Quite obvious, if I'd say so myself. Keep in mind that I have Ri, too; I could tell that you had an identical twin from a mile away. Just because you two were born with silver spoons shoved down both of your throats doesn't make you unique."

Hikaru almost misses the table when he sets the teacup in front of Aoi. He struggles to keep a decent composure. "What does this have to do with anything?"

"You know well enough that if your twin lost all contact with you and suddenly went missing with no trace at all for two years you'd feel horrible enough to stop talking about them altogether."

"...went missing?"

Aoi's quiet for a long moment.

"I was a foreign exchange student in America for a year, and was supposed to come back last year to go to Ouran with Ri." Aoi sighs crossly. "But I got caught up in a bit of an accident that kept me occupied for two years more. That's all you need to know."

"What?" Hikaru feels his stomach roll unpleasantly. Oh, God; he has a suspicion. He feels his voice rise higher with every word, until it's almost only a shrill whistle that's escaping through his lips. "Accident? WHAT ACCIDENT?"

Aoi looks incredulous, if not amused.

"You think I was put in jail or something?"

"Well, it's not extremely illogical- you did just break into the school and-"

"I never said it wasn't; in fact, it's perfectly logical." Aoi smiles; it's too sarcastic. "But no, you're not talking to a wanted fugitive. And I didn't break into the school; the gate was unlocked." Aoi's voice turns happily sardonic. "You rich people are pretty careful, huh? Leaving gates unlocked, nailing innocent strangers in the head with curtain rods-"

Hikaru's a bit annoyed, if not pissed. "Then, what happened to you? It sounds wholly important already."

Silence.

It's broken by Aoi's sigh; a pale hand reaches up and pulls the hood down in a gesture of frustration- but Hikaru has a feeling that the anger isn't directed towards him.

Aoi's face is fully visible now, and Hikaru has to remind himself to breath as he stares, wondering why he didn't consider Aoi as Haruhi's twin in the first place.

The Fujioka twins look incredibly similar: both have the same shiny-smooth chestnut hair (though Aoi's shade of brown seems to be considerably darker; closer to onyx than it is to Haruhi's hazel), porcelain skin, and small (but not tiny) stature. Not to mention the confusion between genders.

But while it may require the world and some more to distinguish the difference between Kaoru and Hikaru, it takes only a blind fool to tell between the Fujioka twins.

Haruhi's expression is always pleasant (no matter her range of moods), with just a slight inkling of wistfulness, the soft glimmer of her large, lucid eyes betraying the poet and the dreamer residing within. She's a gentle child; too caring for her own good- and it betrays on her face.

And while his parents have warned him repeatedly about the intruders and the freaks that prowled about the lows of the streets, never have they warned him about the ones with the golden eyes that are pale and luminescent enough to enthrall even Hikaru Hitachiin.

It's as if Haruhi's child-esque face has been frozen over like the surface of a winter puddle and crushed into jagged shards- Aoi's features almost seems to be robbed of the other Fujioka twin's soft warmth and virtue; cold golden eyes, dimmed by many weatherless days, stand frigid and unwavering, lined with harsh, straight strokes. They're too narrow, too raucous.

It's almost chilling to see how much each twin can be so similar and yet so contrasting at the same time.

Aoi's mouth is set in a thin line now, all mirth gone. They part, just very slightly- is the Fujioka about to speak?! Hikaru leans forwards, filled with curiosity, and then-

The doors that connect the changing room and the main area of the Host Club room opens of its own volition, wood banging against wood and hinges swinging wildly. Hikaru and Aoi both jump from their seats on the couch, the cup of untouched tea falling from Aoi's hands and spilling onto the ground below.

Haruhi stands in the doorway, stray cowlicks springing up from her upswept hair. Her normally prim uniform hangs unbuttoned and wrinkled, almost drooping from her thin frame. Her eyes are large with surprise.

Hikaru's startled; but maybe the fact that Haruhi can become incoherently drunk after only three glasses of champagne contributes to the ideology that she can fully recover from a hangover (other than the overall disheveled appearance, the girl shows no sign of intoxication) as quickly as him. But even so, it's the situation at hand that surprises him more.

"Aoi?" Haruhi's voice breaks on the name so that she has to repeat herself, "Aoi? Is that you?"

Aoi whirls around (a bit too quickly, almost overbalancing), amber eyes wide.

Haruhi runs up to them, and when she's close enough, reaches out and grabs Aoi by the arm. The doubt immediately vanishes from her eyes, and she tackles her twin.

"Oh my God," Haruhi cries out, falling to her knees and dragging Aoi down with her. "Oh God, it's you! It's really you! I thought you were gone! Are you okay? God, Aoi, I missed you so much!"

"Yeah, it's me," Aoi says. The voice that warbles from pale lips is calm enough, but even Hikaru can see the tears gleaming in Aoi's ember eyes. "It's me. I'm here, Ri. I'm here- and I'm safe."

A/N: How's the first chapter of the new Melting a Tomboy's Heart darlings? Better? Worse? Please let me know in the reviews, or shoot me a PM!

And for all the old readers who read my first version of Melting a Tomboy's Heart: THANK YOU SO MUcH for staying with me! I love you all so very much for giving this updated version a chance ;_; stay amazing darlings!

((And in case you were wondering, Andre the Giant was a pro wrestler was one of the most notorious drunkards in history))