To Vintage Parasol, From Shadow Piper ♥
Title: Something Unexpected
Author: shadow_piper
Recipient: vintageparasol
Series: xxxHolic
Characters/Pairing: DouWata
Rating: PG13 for swearing and some blood.
Author Notes/Warnings: Spoiler (ish) for recent chapters. Sorry this is coming in so late. And sorry to the recipient. I tried very hard to write a DoumekixWantanuki worthy of the challenge. I’m afraid its not my best, and I’m not really clued in concerning the xxxHolic fandom (I tend to linger a little towards the Tsubasa). Despite this I am up to date with the latest chapters, and I hope you enjoy it. It’s my first ever xxxHolic fan fiction.
The funny thing about Watanuki Kimihiro was that he was never quite what he seemed. For a boy his age, he was impeccably well kept, hair combed to near neatness. Yuuko had heard rumors that a particularly vengeful clan of lint spirits on dust-bunny mounts had planned an invasion of his school uniform (naturally she decided against telling him this, as grime apparently builds character). A pair of owlish glasses sat on the end of his nose, but any assumptions made about Wantanuki’s grade-point-average would earn a sheepish smile from him and a rare smirk from Doumeki. And judging by his less-than-assuming appearance and presence, one might have come to the conclusion that this high school student lead a relatively normal life, not that he wiped the dust off of a witch’s collectables.
Or ate udon with fox spirits.
Or even saw spirits for that matter.
The funny thing about Doumeki was that for the most part, he was exactly what he seemed to be. He was a high school student in the archery club with a mammoth-like appetite. If there was something to say, he said it, usually bluntly or in a way that would make Wantanuki’s temper flare up like Mount Vesuvius. He was simple, and that is how he preferred it. Sure he may have had some spiritual powers, but like hell he understood them, so it was better to just go with the flow.
And this set-up worked for a while. Wantanuki would go gallivanting off on some wild adventure that he knew close to nothing about, fighting tooth and nail to save his own skin, and wailing like a banshee about how life sucks, while Yuuko drank too much, and somehow he got stuck working with Doumeki again. Truth be told, Doumeki wasn’t to found of those situations either, but he didn’t hate them. He wouldn’t go as far as to admit he was fruity enough to believe in concepts like “destiny”, but it did seem prearranged. It wasn’t like he was blind enough not see that the witch never missed a chance to stick them together, and when she could not, made sure to hint heavily on where her ward might be found and how because of his dip-shit nature, he certainly would find himself in mortal peril.
This hinting was not without cause, of course. The smaller boy drew danger to him like a cheesecake might draw weight-watchers. At first, it was merely exasperating. As much as he looked like a stoic jerk, Doumeki was not morally bereft, and therefore felt compelled to hoist Wantanuki out of the holes he frequently dug for himself. Still, obligation wasn’t too bad. It was simple, exactly what it seemed.
What Doumeki did mind was when the exchanges started getting complicated. From what he knew of the process, which was admittedly not a lot (due to a certain witch’s desire to let him know little more than was really necessary), wish granting should be simple. A person gets what they want in exchange for something with equal value. Presto-chango! Poof, bang, sparkle, etcetera and so forth. It was like going to the supermarket without the 90’s pop music in the background.
“No actually, it’s never quite black and white.” They were playing baseball in the park, and Yuuko was waving her bat around (appropriately named “The Executioner’s Blade”), waiting for Wantanuki to decide how difficult one pitches a ball to their employer. Doumeki took the umpire’s position, which coincidentally is an excellent place to be should you want to have a conversation with the batter. “Humans make wishes. The granting bit is easy, you are correct, but the consequences are generally out of my control. Sometimes people are unsatisfied with what they got for their sacrifice, and often what they ask for is hindered by shame, or in more cases, an unwillingness to disappoint those who care about them.”
Doumeki took a moment of silence to consider this information. “That’s dumb,” he concluded. The dimension witch smiled vaguely.
“Maybe.”
She swung and sent the ball out of the park and into a neighbor’s window. Apparently she was very good at the games she played.
In many ways, its started with the spider’s curse. To be sure, being blind in one eye sucked. He took the spider’s home. In return the spider took his eye. He supposed it was all fair game, until the curse was mysteriously gone and Wantanuki was unusually distant.
“What the hell did you do?” He was shouting. It usually wasn’t worth the breath to yell, but he couldn’t recall ever feeling so angry in his entire life. Why would he step in? Why would he interfere? Now his eyes were marred, something lost forever, and for some reason this was far more a tragedy for him than when he himself had been half blind.
Shoved roughly up against a wall, Wantanuki looked very much as if he hadn’t expected this particular reaction, but his expression of wide-eyed incredulity faded into something so sneeringly apathetic that it was insulting. “Why do you even care?”
He was one word away from punching this kid in the face. Who the fuck did he think he was? He had no right-
He did… He had every right to make the exchange, every right to disregard his feelings, no matter how badly it hurt, how badly Doumeki wished that he wouldn’t do these things. And it was obvious that he would continue to act this way, as if his life belonged to him and only him. Now there were only two things left for Doumeki to do, the first of these to remain angry at his friend in hopes that he might act more like a person who valued his own life and less like a kamikaze pilot. The second was to accept that the only thing that was predictable about Wantanuki is that he would do something totally unpredictable.
“Idiot.”
Luckily, this method seemed to have some effect in the way that Wantanuki handled himself. As he shared Doumeki’s sight and Himawari bore his scars to keep him in this world, Yuuko’s words started to make sense. Every meeting, no matter how small, forms a bond that no force in the universe can reverse or break.
Even if it may not even be real.
Blood: coppery, wet, and way too warm. It was everywhere, smeared across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, covering the surface of his unsteady hands. The worst was that he wasn’t even sure who it belonged to.
Another incident, another insane mission. Whatever had possessed the building was gone now, but hadn’t gone down without a fight. Several support pillars had been knocked awry, letting half of the upper floor collapse. Every window had exploded, glass shrapnel imbedded in carpet, walls, and flesh.
Wantanuki , as usual, had taken the worst of it. His skin was a horrid marble color, and the purple of his lips nearly matched the deep plum of his eyes, clear and uncovered as his glasses lay on the rubble-strewn concrete. He shivered, not only because of the lack of blood. As of late, everything he knew to be real had been slowly drained from him as well. “It’s only a dream.”
The words that left his mouth didn’t make sense. Doumeki felt the pain, the way the skin on his back must have been torn into ribbons from using it as a shield when once again, he had nothing but himself to give to his friend. The smell of blood and sweat stung like truck fumes in the bottom of lungs. There might have even been tears if he had been a fool enough to devote himself to something that was so damn complicated. A dream? It was as real as he would ever know it.
“You’re an idi-”
“No, will you just listen to me for a minute, jughead?” the smaller teenager still knew how to be scrappy, even on the brink of death, but the once-insult had evolved into something of an endearment for the companion he valued very much. “No matter what happens now, it doesn’t matter. It’s just a dream. It explains certain things. I can’t remember my parents’ faces, holes in my general memory. It even explains why you’re so-”
“Predictable?” the other offered.
In his usual health and humor, Wantanuki would have either smirked or turned a brilliant scarlet around the ears, depending on the day. At that moment, his eyes only shifted over to the side a little as he replied, “Yeah. That.”
Oddly enough, Doumeki felt a bit insulted.
If there was ever a good time to step out of character and do something completely compulsive, it was then. It was his turn.
No matter what happens now, it doesn’t matter. “Funny, I though that’s the only thing that does matter.” Fingers very deliberately traced the side of his face, the delicate structure of his cheek bones, and over lips that were trembling to hard to bumble its usual idiocies. Doumeki leaned down, and met no resistance as his lips met softer ones. The kiss was gentle and although it was something unexpected, it had felt more real than anything had in a long time.
Maybe they would die here. Maybe they would wake up and remember how much they hated each other, or that the other was merely a figment of their imagination. Maybe the deity that created them in her dreams would wake, and they cease to exist all together.
But like hell that was going to stop them from enjoying the only reality they knew.
After all, nothing turned out quite as expected.
Author: shadow_piper
Recipient: vintageparasol
Series: xxxHolic
Characters/Pairing: DouWata
Rating: PG13 for swearing and some blood.
Author Notes/Warnings: Spoiler (ish) for recent chapters. Sorry this is coming in so late. And sorry to the recipient. I tried very hard to write a DoumekixWantanuki worthy of the challenge. I’m afraid its not my best, and I’m not really clued in concerning the xxxHolic fandom (I tend to linger a little towards the Tsubasa). Despite this I am up to date with the latest chapters, and I hope you enjoy it. It’s my first ever xxxHolic fan fiction.
The funny thing about Watanuki Kimihiro was that he was never quite what he seemed. For a boy his age, he was impeccably well kept, hair combed to near neatness. Yuuko had heard rumors that a particularly vengeful clan of lint spirits on dust-bunny mounts had planned an invasion of his school uniform (naturally she decided against telling him this, as grime apparently builds character). A pair of owlish glasses sat on the end of his nose, but any assumptions made about Wantanuki’s grade-point-average would earn a sheepish smile from him and a rare smirk from Doumeki. And judging by his less-than-assuming appearance and presence, one might have come to the conclusion that this high school student lead a relatively normal life, not that he wiped the dust off of a witch’s collectables.
Or ate udon with fox spirits.
Or even saw spirits for that matter.
The funny thing about Doumeki was that for the most part, he was exactly what he seemed to be. He was a high school student in the archery club with a mammoth-like appetite. If there was something to say, he said it, usually bluntly or in a way that would make Wantanuki’s temper flare up like Mount Vesuvius. He was simple, and that is how he preferred it. Sure he may have had some spiritual powers, but like hell he understood them, so it was better to just go with the flow.
And this set-up worked for a while. Wantanuki would go gallivanting off on some wild adventure that he knew close to nothing about, fighting tooth and nail to save his own skin, and wailing like a banshee about how life sucks, while Yuuko drank too much, and somehow he got stuck working with Doumeki again. Truth be told, Doumeki wasn’t to found of those situations either, but he didn’t hate them. He wouldn’t go as far as to admit he was fruity enough to believe in concepts like “destiny”, but it did seem prearranged. It wasn’t like he was blind enough not see that the witch never missed a chance to stick them together, and when she could not, made sure to hint heavily on where her ward might be found and how because of his dip-shit nature, he certainly would find himself in mortal peril.
This hinting was not without cause, of course. The smaller boy drew danger to him like a cheesecake might draw weight-watchers. At first, it was merely exasperating. As much as he looked like a stoic jerk, Doumeki was not morally bereft, and therefore felt compelled to hoist Wantanuki out of the holes he frequently dug for himself. Still, obligation wasn’t too bad. It was simple, exactly what it seemed.
What Doumeki did mind was when the exchanges started getting complicated. From what he knew of the process, which was admittedly not a lot (due to a certain witch’s desire to let him know little more than was really necessary), wish granting should be simple. A person gets what they want in exchange for something with equal value. Presto-chango! Poof, bang, sparkle, etcetera and so forth. It was like going to the supermarket without the 90’s pop music in the background.
“No actually, it’s never quite black and white.” They were playing baseball in the park, and Yuuko was waving her bat around (appropriately named “The Executioner’s Blade”), waiting for Wantanuki to decide how difficult one pitches a ball to their employer. Doumeki took the umpire’s position, which coincidentally is an excellent place to be should you want to have a conversation with the batter. “Humans make wishes. The granting bit is easy, you are correct, but the consequences are generally out of my control. Sometimes people are unsatisfied with what they got for their sacrifice, and often what they ask for is hindered by shame, or in more cases, an unwillingness to disappoint those who care about them.”
Doumeki took a moment of silence to consider this information. “That’s dumb,” he concluded. The dimension witch smiled vaguely.
“Maybe.”
She swung and sent the ball out of the park and into a neighbor’s window. Apparently she was very good at the games she played.
In many ways, its started with the spider’s curse. To be sure, being blind in one eye sucked. He took the spider’s home. In return the spider took his eye. He supposed it was all fair game, until the curse was mysteriously gone and Wantanuki was unusually distant.
“What the hell did you do?” He was shouting. It usually wasn’t worth the breath to yell, but he couldn’t recall ever feeling so angry in his entire life. Why would he step in? Why would he interfere? Now his eyes were marred, something lost forever, and for some reason this was far more a tragedy for him than when he himself had been half blind.
Shoved roughly up against a wall, Wantanuki looked very much as if he hadn’t expected this particular reaction, but his expression of wide-eyed incredulity faded into something so sneeringly apathetic that it was insulting. “Why do you even care?”
He was one word away from punching this kid in the face. Who the fuck did he think he was? He had no right-
He did… He had every right to make the exchange, every right to disregard his feelings, no matter how badly it hurt, how badly Doumeki wished that he wouldn’t do these things. And it was obvious that he would continue to act this way, as if his life belonged to him and only him. Now there were only two things left for Doumeki to do, the first of these to remain angry at his friend in hopes that he might act more like a person who valued his own life and less like a kamikaze pilot. The second was to accept that the only thing that was predictable about Wantanuki is that he would do something totally unpredictable.
“Idiot.”
Luckily, this method seemed to have some effect in the way that Wantanuki handled himself. As he shared Doumeki’s sight and Himawari bore his scars to keep him in this world, Yuuko’s words started to make sense. Every meeting, no matter how small, forms a bond that no force in the universe can reverse or break.
Even if it may not even be real.
Blood: coppery, wet, and way too warm. It was everywhere, smeared across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, covering the surface of his unsteady hands. The worst was that he wasn’t even sure who it belonged to.
Another incident, another insane mission. Whatever had possessed the building was gone now, but hadn’t gone down without a fight. Several support pillars had been knocked awry, letting half of the upper floor collapse. Every window had exploded, glass shrapnel imbedded in carpet, walls, and flesh.
Wantanuki , as usual, had taken the worst of it. His skin was a horrid marble color, and the purple of his lips nearly matched the deep plum of his eyes, clear and uncovered as his glasses lay on the rubble-strewn concrete. He shivered, not only because of the lack of blood. As of late, everything he knew to be real had been slowly drained from him as well. “It’s only a dream.”
The words that left his mouth didn’t make sense. Doumeki felt the pain, the way the skin on his back must have been torn into ribbons from using it as a shield when once again, he had nothing but himself to give to his friend. The smell of blood and sweat stung like truck fumes in the bottom of lungs. There might have even been tears if he had been a fool enough to devote himself to something that was so damn complicated. A dream? It was as real as he would ever know it.
“You’re an idi-”
“No, will you just listen to me for a minute, jughead?” the smaller teenager still knew how to be scrappy, even on the brink of death, but the once-insult had evolved into something of an endearment for the companion he valued very much. “No matter what happens now, it doesn’t matter. It’s just a dream. It explains certain things. I can’t remember my parents’ faces, holes in my general memory. It even explains why you’re so-”
“Predictable?” the other offered.
In his usual health and humor, Wantanuki would have either smirked or turned a brilliant scarlet around the ears, depending on the day. At that moment, his eyes only shifted over to the side a little as he replied, “Yeah. That.”
Oddly enough, Doumeki felt a bit insulted.
If there was ever a good time to step out of character and do something completely compulsive, it was then. It was his turn.
No matter what happens now, it doesn’t matter. “Funny, I though that’s the only thing that does matter.” Fingers very deliberately traced the side of his face, the delicate structure of his cheek bones, and over lips that were trembling to hard to bumble its usual idiocies. Doumeki leaned down, and met no resistance as his lips met softer ones. The kiss was gentle and although it was something unexpected, it had felt more real than anything had in a long time.
Maybe they would die here. Maybe they would wake up and remember how much they hated each other, or that the other was merely a figment of their imagination. Maybe the deity that created them in her dreams would wake, and they cease to exist all together.
But like hell that was going to stop them from enjoying the only reality they knew.
After all, nothing turned out quite as expected.