Firecracker

—

As inevitably happens, the air conditioner in that particular wing of the high school building chose what may very well have been the muggiest day of the school year to break down. Which left the various clubs that occupied the rooms of that wing, not least among them the host club, searching desperately for any way to keep themselves and their guests cool.

Needless to say, it felt to Kaoru like a futile quest, as all the heat in the building seemed to rise to the third music room and get trapped there, making the atmosphere inside absolutely miserable and impossible to work in. It was all the worse in their shirtsleeves and uniform slacks, which stuck uncomfortably to their bodies, and the idea of preparing a more scantily-clad theme for the afternoon had apparently occurred to no one.

To make matters even more abysmal, Tamaki had insisted the nice, refreshing breeze-producing oscillating fans be kept around the perimeter of the room to cut down on noise pollution because, after all (his words), they did still have their pride!

But even in sinful abundance, pride wasn't making the air in the room any less oppressive. Ice cream turned to plain old cream in no time, and cool drinks—if they were to be effective—would have had to be served in quantities that necessitated toilet breaks every ten minutes.

So the hosts and their guests resigned themselves to their suffering, as it was not difficult to understand that when one's sweat never dried for even a moment, it was very hard to do one's duties as a host and act charming.

"There must be a special pit in Hell just for torturing hosts," Kaoru whined as he slouched in his chair and pulled at the next button of his shirt, trying to facilitate the movement of air from the tiny hand-held electric fan he had aimed down the front of it. "After all, we've got the seven deadly sins right here in this room, starting with Avarice over there in the glasses. I'm just sorry we had to drag you ladies down into it with us."

"It's we who should be apologizing," said one of the girls sitting across from him as he passed the fan to her. "It isn't fair to keep you two bottled up in here on our accounts."

That was better said than Kaoru's sense of decorum would allow him to acknowledge. It would have been best for all involved if they had just canceled club activities for the afternoon, but the old adage held: If you kept your doors open, they would come.

And now that he was stuck, Kaoru could only turn a longing look up at the ceiling and sigh. "If only our lord could have reserved one of the school's pools for this afternoon, but it's not like any of us saw the A/C situation coming. Right about now I'd even settle for just one good, cool dip in the water. Right, Hikaru?"

He waited for his twin's suggestive reply that would lead them into a brief display of brotherly innuendo, but it never came. Perhaps, Kaoru thought, he simply hadn't given Hikaru anything good enough to work with. So he tried again.

"Then again, they do say the best way to beat the heat is to watch scary movies in a dark room. I know what Hikaru would say about me and scary movies, but maybe it wouldn't be so bad to watch with so many other people. Not like when it's just the two of us, at home, huddled under the same blanket . . ."

But Hikaru didn't jump in when he was supposed to. He didn't open his mouth to tease Kaoru about protecting him from movie gore or monsters, or swear that his love would make Kaoru forget about everything that frightened him. He didn't say anything. All that came from his side of the table was the sound of plastic being wrinkled and torn.

Kaoru and the two girls turned to see Hikaru shoving a red, white and blue Popsicle Bullet into his mouth. "What are you eating?" said the second girl, while their whole table started to salivate. "It looks refreshing~"

"Firecracker," Hikaru said simply.

"And you didn't bring enough for the rest of us?" Kaoru admonished him. "Haruhi," he stopped her as she went by. "If you're going by the freezer, would you get us three more Firecrackers?"

"Can't," Hikaru said for her. "It's the last one."

"You mean there aren't any more?! Don't you know it's rude to take the last of something and eat it in front of everyone else?"

"It's all right, Kaoru," the girls said, while Hikaru just sat there enjoying it without a care.

But Kaoru would have none of that. He licked his lips and swallowed in a dry throat. "That's not fair, Hikaru. At least . . . let your brother have a taste before it's all gone."

Hikaru gave him a wary look, but he took the Popsicle out of his mouth nonetheless.

No sooner had he done so than Kaoru wrapped both his hands around Hikaru's fingers that held the stick and pulled it toward him, enveloping the red tip in his mouth. He let his eyelids flutter closed. Slowly his lips slid up and off, and he murmured lazily against the tip, "Mmm~ that's so good," before closing his mouth around it again.

The girls sitting across from them just stared, unable to speak. And as Kaoru slid the Popsicle in and out between his tongue and upper lip unhurriedly, each time taking a little more into his mouth than before, first the red tip and then more and more of the white shaft, their eyes grew wider and wider in disbelief.

Hikaru smiled as he watched his brother. "Don't hog it all," he said softly, then bent his head to where Kaoru's hands clasped his. "Here. You're going to drip."

And so saying, Hikaru ran his tongue along the blue bottom of the Popsicle, lapping up the melt that had just begun to trail down over Kaoru's knuckle.

With a small moan Kaoru pulled away and opened his eyes, and that was when he noticed out of the periphery of his vision that they had garnered more than just their table's undivided attention. Some of the girls from Honey and Mori's had turned their heads in the twins' direction, and Haruhi's customers seemed to be fanning themselves more urgently than before.

"What's going on over there?" said one at Kyouya's table. But their vice president paid no more attention than usual until her friend turned in her chair and muttered an astonished, "Oh my God. . . ."

More out of duty than curiosity at first, Kyouya adjusted his glasses and glanced in the same direction. He had thought nothing the twins pulled could get a rise out of him anymore, but as he started and stared now he found himself transfixed and unable to turn away.

They made quite an image, both with shirts barely buttoned closed, sweat sticking their darkened hair to the sides of their faces and shimmering on their temples and at the hollows of their throats—both holding the wet and glistening Popsicle possessively between them so that it almost seemed to swoon like one of their human victims, trapped between their mirrored desirous gazes.

"It's melting awfully fast in this heat," Kaoru noted, though the observer might have wondered if the weather was really to blame.

Hikaru lowered his voice further as he suggested, "Maybe it will go faster if we share it."

A collective gasp echoed through the room as two dozen girls simultaneously shuffled to the edges of their seats. The Hitachiin twins had never gone so far before. Any moment now it would turn out to all be a joke, nothing more, because there was no way, they wouldn't dare . . .

But, oh, they did.

Before their incredulous eyes, Hikaru took a long lick up his side of the Firecracker. And while he was doing so, Kaoru leaned closer, tilted his head and pressed his parted lips to the melt at its base. Their tongues narrowly avoided one another as they glided languidly up each side of the Popsicle simultaneously, and their eyelashes fluttered from the cool, refreshing pleasure of it. They took turns lapping at the drips that ran the colors into one another and gently sucking at the tip, Adam's apples bobbing as they swallowed what small, sweet tastes of its juices their victim released—gasping against the melting ridges of the Firecracker, moaning low in their throats—

"I can't take it anymore!" one of the girls sitting across from them wailed and fell back in her seat in rapture.

Her companion fanned her with the hand-held, not that the tiny motor could do much good next to the white-hot power of brotherly . . . love?

That was the precise moment when Tamaki freaked. "Hikaru, Kaoru, what are you doing?! You're supposed to be cooling our guests down, not raising their body temperature!"

It didn't seem to be the oppressive heat that had done their customer in, however, if the huge grin on her face was any indication.

Satisfied with themselves, the twins stuck their blue tongues out at one another.

"And what was that all about anyway?" Tamaki rattled on without missing a beat, dragging a stone-faced Haruhi with him for moral support. "Hm? You two care to explain what exactly the purpose was of pulling such a brazen and lewd and . . . and . . . depraved act in front of these delicate young women? This is unforgivable, morally reprehensible! This is—"

"SEXY!" the girls screamed in unison.

"The masses have spoken, milord," Kaoru said with a shrug.

Looking thoroughly sated, with an elbow over the back of his chair and the cleaned Popsicle stick hanging out of his mouth, Hikaru just nodded beside him.

"STEAMY-HOT SUMMERTIME TRIPLE-X BROTHERLY LOVE!"

"NO, NO, NO—THAT'S NOT A GOOD THING! Don't encourage them, it's unnatural!" Tamaki tried, but to no avail. None of the girls were listening. He looked over his shoulder for some assistance. "Kyouya, help me out here!"

But Kyouya just chuckled as he watched and absently scribbled a note to himself. "What do you want me to do?"

"Punish them! Draw the line! Tell them that kind of behavior is not acceptable in a respectable host club!"

Caving, Kyouya rose to do just that.

He didn't get even halfway out of his chair, however, before he decided against it and sat back down, sobered, coughed and folded one leg over the other as nonchalantly as he was able. "Do it yourself, Tamaki," he said. "It's not my problem."

"But, Kyouya~" Tamaki whined, the girls squealing in glee only adding to his troubles, "I'm dead serious this time! Don't tell me I'm the only one who thinks they've gone too far."

"There's a nice draft hitting this one spot and I'm very reluctantly to leave it," Kyouya said simply, and proceeded to make a big deal of wiping his glasses. "Besides, it's just a Popsicle."

Just a Popsicle, huh? Nice draft, was it? Understandably—after a diversion such as theirs—nobody else seemed to think twice about the vice president's particular choice of words.

But to the twins, the sound of an excuse so transparent birds would try to fly through it was music to their ears. Raising an eyebrow, Hikaru shot his brother a knowing grin around the Popsicle stick, and Kaoru returned it lopsidedly. The same thought occurred to them both: It was not every day they learned something new about Kyouya.