XXXHolic- "Five times Watanuki Almost Admitted he Might Actually Like Doumeki"
Title: Five times Watanuki Almost Admitted he Might Actually Like Doumeki
Universe: XXXHolic
Theme/Topic: As stated in the title.
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: Yuuko and lightly DoumekixWatanuki
Warnings/Spoilers: Uh, vague spoilers through like, Vol 10 or 11 I think? I think? It’s been so long I don’t even remember what’s what anymore.
Word Count: 3,607
Summary: In entirely different circumstances, Watanuki remains invariably, the same.
Dedication: sophiap’s request on my meme like, two weeks ago? I’m sorry I am slow; I hope you’re resting up well m’dear!
A/N: Wow, out of practice and I should totally be working on a script of some sort. YET. Anyway, this is clear sign that I can no longer write holic. I FAIL HARD.
Disclaimer: Not mine, though I wish constantly.
Distribution: Just lemme know.
1.
In existence three hundred and thirty three, Watanuki is starting to feel terrified.
“Can’t we just kill it?” he asks (shouts at) Doumeki, and gives the big moron a meaningful sideways glance in case he doesn’t get it.
Doumeki blinks and indicates his (granted, invisible) bow, which had been fired just now. “Didn’t work,” he says, in case Watanuki had been asleep during the last five minutes.
Watanuki snarls at him for pointing out the obvious as the black ooze starts creeping up their pant legs, swirling and tightening once it touches and gluing them in place.
“Then what do we do?!”
Doumeki shrugs one shoulder. “I guess we ought to tell it our darkest secrets after all?”
“YOU MEAN GIVE IN?”
Doumeki blinks. “That way it will eat those instead of us for a little while, right? It should buy some time.”
Watanuki glares at him for being so pragmatic; it’d be nice if he would maybe scream and flail a little too. He sighs. “Fine. You go first.”
Doumeki doesn’t do anything. The ooze is at knee-level now.
“WELL?!” Watanuki shrieks.
Doumeki seems to be thinking; it just figures he’s the kind of guy who is useless and doesn’t keep any deep dark secrets on hand to feed to random black blobs of ooze so they won’t eat them.
After the ooze gets to their thighs, Doumeki finally says, “I can’t think of anything.”
“ARGH.”
Doumeki just looks expectantly at Watanuki. “Your turn.”
“We’re going to die,” Watanuki laments, before quickly trying to think of something since he’s not useless like stupid Doumeki.
After about fifteen precious seconds pass he does end up thinking of something, but has to pause and weigh the merits of either saying it and dying of embarrassment or not saying it and dying of well…being eaten.
After a moment’s debate he supposes that being eaten is probably the less preferable of the choices, though not by much.
He takes a deep breath. “I…” cough, wheeze. “Er, I…”
He pauses again, this time to spare a glare at Doumeki. Bad move; it just makes his face go red. In the meantime, the black tendrils are creeping up along Watanuki’s waist and Doumeki’s hips now, and when they start to tickle and burn at the same time, Watanuki finally manages to say, “OKAY FINE!! I…”
But then the monster screams and dissolves suddenly; it explodes into a poof of acrid black smoke all around them and makes Watanuki choke on the fumes.
He stares. “WHAT THE HELL?!” he coughs, and tries to get the foul smelling stuff out of his face.
Doumeki doesn’t answer; he’s too busy looking down at his pocket, where he finds a package of salt that he’d put there since he’d accidentally took too many at lunch. The corner of the paper is torn and several white crystals fall innocuously into his hand.
“Huh,” he murmurs, and rubs his fingers together a bit.
Watanuki sputters. “IS THAT SERIOUSLY ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY?”
“I’m hungry,” Doumeki adds after a beat, obligingly.
Watanuki slaps his hand against his face and walks out of the cave.
He can’t believe himself for what he’d been about to say just now.
2.
In existence eight hundred and thirty seven, Watanuki is starting to feel like a high school girl.
That is, he is starting to feel like the kind of high school girl who is ostracized by other high school girls in that subtle-like-a-terrorist way that high school girls often behave in whenever they see someone who they feel has overstepped his or her bounds in the carefully maintained social hierarchy of high school politics. Particularly when this person has overstepped their bounds in regards to possible romantic affiliation.
In short, Watanuki is starting to feel like the girl who has nasty rumors about her weight or sexual history scrawled on the bathroom walls.
Normally he would not mind such things, but lately it seems that his not-minding up until now has just encouraged one group of girls in particular (the Doumeki fanclub, actually), to step up their aggressive campaign to decipher the true nature of the relationship between him and their stupid high school idol.
“You and Doumeki-kun sure do spend a lot of time together, Watanuki-kun,” one of his classmates says out of the blue one day, when he is innocently doing his classroom cleaning duties. She smiles at him with that faux kindness that girls of her standing use whenever they see someone who might be construed as lower on the food chain (i.e. prey).
Watanuki sighs ands claps the chalkboard erasers against one another just outside of the window; a cloud of dust erupts from it and makes him sneeze. “I promise you it is not by choice,” he says to her, simply.
“But you two seem to be so close; are you sure there’s nothing you’re hiding from the rest of the class?” Her sweetness gets a little sharper around the edges with each word she says and Watanuki thinks he will never understand girls, not in a million years. He’s so glad Himawari-chan is different from the Doumeki fangirls; she’s nice and sweet and does not look like she would be able to mate with a male of the species and then proceed to eat his head for supper.
“But he’s so good looking, don’t you think?”
Watanuki sighs.
“And smart.”
Watanuki works faster.
“And athletic, and tall, and well-mannered, and his parents own a temple and he must be so gentle and nice, otherwise you wouldn’t make him lunch everyday, right?”
Watanuki feels his head begin to ache more intensely with every word she utters. “I don’t…”
“Yappari, Doumeki-kun is the perfect man!”
Watanuki quickly finishes his chores in record time and leaves; “I have to go to work now, bye-bye!” he says, and dashes out the door before she can try to catch him.
He’s never been so relieved to get to Yuuko’s before; he is 100% certain that being grilled by a potentially dangerous classmate about stupid Doumeki’s virtues is the last thing on this earth he wants, perhaps even more so than being eaten by a giant evil monster.
So of course, with his luck, being grilled by potentially dangerous classmates is exactly what he gets.
During physical education the next day when they are running laps around the track he is suddenly flanked by not one but four female classmates from the Doumeki fanclub on either side; they all eye him appraisingly. “How long are your legs?” one asks, after a few steps.
“Why are your eyes so weird lately?”
“How much do you weigh?”
“What’s your sign? When were you born?”
Watanuki screams and runs faster.
When he tries to subtly insinuate to Doumeki that he ought to oh, please call his terrifying harpies off of the hunt later that day, Doumeki just blinks back at him and says, “You sure are popular lately,” and then ignores him as he prepares for his club activities.
Watanuki bangs his head against the wall a few times and then takes a deep breath and goes to home economics with a grim face; when he gets there he thinks that today he will probably find dead bugs in his cake batter or worse, get asked more questions that will somehow, all tie back to his inevitable inferiority to stupid Doumeki.
He’s almost right-when he walks into the home ec room he is greeted by a flurry of spatulas, all pointing right at his face. “What is your relationship with Doumeki-kun!?” the one who he assumes is the acting president of the Doumeki fanclub demands.
At least this one doesn’t beat around the bush.
“There is no relationship!” Watanuki tells her.
“There has to be! Our lone prince suddenly hanging out with a weirdo like you has to have some sort of explanation! Did you woo him with your boyish, yet feminine wiles?”
“My what?!”
She indicates his slim waist, equally slim hips, thin wrists.
Watanuki sputters.
“You two clearly like each other! We want to know why! How! And ultimately, if you’re even worthy of Doumeki-kun! We, personally, feel that you are too many levels below him in terms of ability, you can’t possibly serve as a partner we will be satisfied with.”
Watanuki stares at them. “I. Do. Not. Have. That. Kind. Of. Relationship. With. Him,” he says slowly, and keeps a watchful eye on those spatulas the whole time. Just in case.
Some of the girls are aghast. “What’s wrong with him then?! Why wouldn’t you want to?”
“Don’t panic!” the president orders, “Don’t let him make you doubt Doumeki-kun’s attractiveness! It’s his fault if something is wrong!”
Somehow, the atmosphere after they think Watanuki has rejected Doumeki is far scarier than when they thought Watanuki had taken their eligible bachelor off of the market.
The spatulas gravitate closer to his face.
“Oh god,” Watanuki says, and takes a tentative step backwards towards the exit; they’re all looking at him with strange eyes now, and he is suddenly reminded of that whole spider comparison he had made just yesterday. “Look,” he begins awkwardly, “if I said I do like him but just not in that way would you please put down the spatulas so we can do the stupid shortcake assignment? Is there really no such thing as friendship between men anymore?!”
They are completely silent at his outburst, which is odd, considering the fact that they are high school girls. He belatedly thinks he should have opted to take a sports elective instead of a cooking one back at the beginning of the year; somehow this seems even more dangerous than the contact sports after all.
After a moment, Watanuki blinks tensely. “What? Why are you all looking at me like that?” he demands, and his voice only wavers a little.
Then, from behind him, a disturbingly smug-sounding, “Oi, man-friend, practice is already done. Why haven’t you made me cake?”
Ah, so they aren’t really looking at him after all.
Watanuki promptly spins around and slams the door shut right in stupid Doumeki’s stupid smirking face. “It was completely hypothetical!” he screeches at the closed portal, and then goes to his station to make the goddamned cake.
3.
In existence seventeen, Watanuki is starting to feel embarrassed.
“I…” pause, fidget, blush. “I…”
“Just get it over with. You have to say it back eventually,” Doumeki tells him pragmatically.
Trust the big idiot to ruin the mood completely with stupid logic. Watanuki, naturally, fights it. “I have to say it back? Who says that!?” Watanuki sniffs, red-faced. He whirls around and crosses his arms. “That’s stupid. I’m not saying it. Ever.”
Doumeki sighs and ambles nearer. “You got closer last time.”
“I was drugged out of my mind last time,” Watanuki reminds him. “Stop leaning on me, people will stare.”
“Then say it.”
“No!”
Naturally Doumeki’s response is to lean on him just a little bit more, until he can see the pink flush on Watanuki’s face again. He laughs to himself, low in his chest. “Okay,” he concedes, because this is good enough for now, “don’t say it then.”
Watanuki smacks him on the head. “Don’t tell me what to do!”
Doumeki just leans closer.
4.
In existence seven hundred and ten, Watanuki is starting to feel stupid.
He stares in the mirror at mismatched eyes and wonders what is wrong with him lately; it seems like it’s too much trouble to scream and yell at or hit Doumeki anymore. Sometimes he thinks he can’t even find words to say in response to the big idiot’s remarks; is this all a sign of old age? Is he losing his touch? What’s happening all of a sudden?
Stupid Doumeki and his penchant for causing all sorts of problems.
Even when he’s not around!
Watanuki makes a mental note to kick the big cretin in the shins later, for disrupting his work. At this rate he’ll never get the storage room dusted before the day is done.
“Watanuki Kimihiro, what are you gazing at?” Yuuko’s voice suddenly asks him, from right behind his left ear.
Watanuki spins around; “UNCOMFORTABLY CLOSE!” he yells.
She just smiles. “Ne, what are you gazing at?” she repeats in a terrifying sing-song.
He scowls. “It’s a mirror!” he explains. “So of course I would be looking at my reflection, wouldn’t I?!” he explains waspishly.
She laughs at him. “Did it look exactly the same as usual?” she asks casually, like his screaming at her means very little (which, Watanuki supposes, it does). After asking her ridiculous question, she peers over his shoulder to look at the reflected Watanuki.
“Of course it’s the same!” he tells her. “It’s a reflection!”
“Ah, it’s definitely different.” She points to the reflection again and he automatically turns to look at it.
It waves at him.
“Oh god,” he says, and backs away slowly. Sometimes he hates his workplace.
Yuuko, in the meantime, only cackles in unholy glee. “I see, I see; your reflection clearly does not agree with you lately, Watanuki Kimihiro-kun. Perhaps you’d best fix that, hm?”
The reflection nods solemnly.
Watanuki tells himself that he is never coming into the back closet ever again, even if there is enough dirt in here to make every single one of the OCD parts of him all squirmy at the mere thought of it.
“I’m going back to the kitchen,” Watanuki manages, after a moment of Yuuko and his reflection waving cheerfully at each other. “The kitchen. Away from here. Yes.”
Yuuko smirks over her shoulder when she sees him try to retreat. “That’s fine, I’ll just ask my new friend here what it is, exactly, that is causing this little dissociation, hmm?”
“It talks?!”
She chuckles. “How rude! Of course it does. You do, don’t you?”
Watanuki suddenly has a very bad feeling.
But Yuuko clearly chooses to ignore it, because her last words to him before turning back for a chat with the mirror are, “If you’re going to the kitchen, make snacks, ne!”
Then she’s addressing the not-real him again, and with a much more friendly voice than she ever uses with the real him at that. “So! What do you suppose is causing our dear Watanuki-kun’s self-disassociation, hm?” she asks.
The reflection nods and eagerly opens its mouth to speak.
And Watanuki quickly leaves the room.
Because while Yuuko might want to know, he’s pretty certain that he doesn’t.
5.
In existence number one, Watanuki is starting to feel sick.
“Stupid Doumeki with your stupid…”
And even though he has a particularly stinging and clever tirade for Doumeki today it turns out that he can’t finish what he wants to say because suddenly he is nauseous. He clutches the side of his head and blinks, sways on his feet just a little.
Beside him Doumeki goes from impassive to arching a brow ever so slightly-a clear sign that he is concerned. “Are you sick?” he asks.
“No. Leave me alone.” Watanuki shakes his head, straightens, and the dizzy spell passes. He doesn’t think anything more of it.
Two days later it’s back again; this time he is in the middle of a rousing oral treatise on the reasons why Doumeki is fundamentally unlikable as a human being. On number ten on his list of the top ten most annoying things about Doumeki, Watanuki stumbles and would have fallen face-first onto the pavement if not for a hand reaching out and securing the collar of his shirt; he’s left with his nose suspended two inches off the ground, hanging in the air a bit like a cat caught by the nape of its neck.
He would complain, but the edges of his vision are suddenly fuzzy, and so he ends up blinking a lot and groaning to himself instead. He can feel the spot on his temple where the vein in his head is throbbing; the pulse points in his palms surge and his hands feel sore as well, like they’re angry.
He swallows, opens his mouth to say something.
But before he can, Doumeki shakes him a little instead; he’s still holding the collar of Watanuki’s school uniform. “Are you sick?” the taller boy asks again, more intently this time.
“No,” Watanuki says stubbornly, and tries not to stumble from his lightheadedness when Doumeki sets him upright again. “I’m not sick. Let go of…”
This time when he falls, it’s against Doumeki, which is probably better for him than the ground (if not by much).
The only sign that points to Doumeki’s current level of concern is the fact that both eyebrows have darted upwards. It’s the last thing Watanuki sees before he passes out.
When Watanuki wakes up some time later he’s in a familiar sickbed, smelling the familiar scents of incense and alcohol that seem to permeate Yuuko’s shop; he blinks wearily and wonders what stupid entity-of-great-and-powerful-evil tried to kill him this time. He can’t even remember what happened last beyond lecturing Doumeki on all the reasons why he’s dumb.
From the armchair at the bedside there’s a familiar laugh; it makes him groan and wish he was still unconscious.
“Ah, Watanuki Kimihiro,” Yuuko twitters, and Watanuki supposes that given how light her voice is right now, it means he will survive whatever it is that is happening to him.
Maybe.
“Ugh,” he says, “what happened?” His mouth tastes pasty, and his hands are still sore. His head hurts the same as before, but now his chest aches dully too.
“You tried to kill yourself,” Yuuko chirps. She is entirely too cheerful about the whole thing- amused even- and Watanuki suspects that this means he did something stupid to warrant her laughter despite the grave nature of her words.
So he asks the logical thing; “Wait, what?”
When he looks at her she’s still laughing at him, but something smolders in her eyes-maybe warning. “We’ve established the power of words… don’t you think that someone whose blood has become your own should be treated more carefully?”
Watanuki blinks. “What does stupid Dou…”
He doesn’t even get to finish it; there’s a blinding, flashing pain in his abdomen suddenly. He doubles over and gurgles; it feels like half of him is on fire.
Yuuko tsks from beside him and waits for the wave to pass; Watanuki counts backwards from 100 in odd numbers until it stops. When it does he somehow feels half dead, like parts of him won’t work anymore. He realizes that can’t move his right hand.
“What,” he wheezes, “was that?”
Yuuko isn’t laughing anymore, that warning in her eyes has spread to the rest of her face as well. Watanuki supposes that this is more serious than he’d first imagined.
“Watanuki Kimihiro,” she sighs, “If half of you is made of something and half of you is made up of something else and everything works well, why would you ignite a war between the two sides?”
Watanuki stares at her.
She stares right back.
Eventually he sighs. “I see.”
“Do you?”
He can wiggle his right pinky again, so he supposes that yes, he does.
Sometimes he really hates the power of words.
~~~~~
By the next morning he can walk again; when he takes one step outside of the shop he immediately finds Doumeki sitting against the fence, waiting. Doumeki looks up at him when he hears the smaller boy approach and his eyebrows dart upwards on his face just a little bit.
“Are you sick?” he asks.
Watanuki fights back the impulse to snap, “No, leave me alone” and manages to clear his throat before saying, “I got better.”
Doumeki’s eyebrows still haven’t quite returned to their default position and Watanuki still can’t quite make a fist with his hand yet, but everything is starting to get more feeling back, slowly.
He supposes he should do this quickly then; hopefully Doumeki won’t rub it in his face when he does.
He stands up a little bit taller, adjusts his glasses with his left hand. “Um,” he says.
Doumeki looks up at him blandly. Then, before Watanuki can say anything, indicates his watch. “We’ll be late for school,” he reports. “I guess you won’t have time to make anyone lunch today after all.”
Watanuki stares at him as everything he had just been about to say instantly dies on his lips.
“What is wrong with you!?” he screeches instead, and glares at Doumeki. He tells himself that the other boy is so bad for his blood pressure, and now in more ways than one too. What a troublesome guy.
Doumeki just blinks back at him blandly as Watanuki shouts; his eyebrows return to their usual expressionless state on his big, dumb face, which probably means he is at ease again, or at the very least, enjoying all the trouble he causes for Watanuki. “Maybe you can make sandwiches or something,” he suggests next, very helpfully. “That’s quick.”
And it is at that moment that Watanuki decides-very seriously- that he only needs partial movement in his right hand anyway.
He spins on his heel and heads straight for school.
~~~~~
Back inside the shop, Yuuko laughs from the window. Doumeki is an interesting boy, she thinks; it seems that as long as he figures out exactly what it is he’s fighting, he can become invincible. Or at least indomitable. “I suppose,” she begins to a Mokona that is happily washing down Watanuki’s homemade breakfast with a good bottle of sake, “that there are some things in this world stronger than words.”
Mokona belches.
END
EDITS PLZ.
Universe: XXXHolic
Theme/Topic: As stated in the title.
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: Yuuko and lightly DoumekixWatanuki
Warnings/Spoilers: Uh, vague spoilers through like, Vol 10 or 11 I think? I think? It’s been so long I don’t even remember what’s what anymore.
Word Count: 3,607
Summary: In entirely different circumstances, Watanuki remains invariably, the same.
Dedication: sophiap’s request on my meme like, two weeks ago? I’m sorry I am slow; I hope you’re resting up well m’dear!
A/N: Wow, out of practice and I should totally be working on a script of some sort. YET. Anyway, this is clear sign that I can no longer write holic. I FAIL HARD.
Disclaimer: Not mine, though I wish constantly.
Distribution: Just lemme know.
1.
In existence three hundred and thirty three, Watanuki is starting to feel terrified.
“Can’t we just kill it?” he asks (shouts at) Doumeki, and gives the big moron a meaningful sideways glance in case he doesn’t get it.
Doumeki blinks and indicates his (granted, invisible) bow, which had been fired just now. “Didn’t work,” he says, in case Watanuki had been asleep during the last five minutes.
Watanuki snarls at him for pointing out the obvious as the black ooze starts creeping up their pant legs, swirling and tightening once it touches and gluing them in place.
“Then what do we do?!”
Doumeki shrugs one shoulder. “I guess we ought to tell it our darkest secrets after all?”
“YOU MEAN GIVE IN?”
Doumeki blinks. “That way it will eat those instead of us for a little while, right? It should buy some time.”
Watanuki glares at him for being so pragmatic; it’d be nice if he would maybe scream and flail a little too. He sighs. “Fine. You go first.”
Doumeki doesn’t do anything. The ooze is at knee-level now.
“WELL?!” Watanuki shrieks.
Doumeki seems to be thinking; it just figures he’s the kind of guy who is useless and doesn’t keep any deep dark secrets on hand to feed to random black blobs of ooze so they won’t eat them.
After the ooze gets to their thighs, Doumeki finally says, “I can’t think of anything.”
“ARGH.”
Doumeki just looks expectantly at Watanuki. “Your turn.”
“We’re going to die,” Watanuki laments, before quickly trying to think of something since he’s not useless like stupid Doumeki.
After about fifteen precious seconds pass he does end up thinking of something, but has to pause and weigh the merits of either saying it and dying of embarrassment or not saying it and dying of well…being eaten.
After a moment’s debate he supposes that being eaten is probably the less preferable of the choices, though not by much.
He takes a deep breath. “I…” cough, wheeze. “Er, I…”
He pauses again, this time to spare a glare at Doumeki. Bad move; it just makes his face go red. In the meantime, the black tendrils are creeping up along Watanuki’s waist and Doumeki’s hips now, and when they start to tickle and burn at the same time, Watanuki finally manages to say, “OKAY FINE!! I…”
But then the monster screams and dissolves suddenly; it explodes into a poof of acrid black smoke all around them and makes Watanuki choke on the fumes.
He stares. “WHAT THE HELL?!” he coughs, and tries to get the foul smelling stuff out of his face.
Doumeki doesn’t answer; he’s too busy looking down at his pocket, where he finds a package of salt that he’d put there since he’d accidentally took too many at lunch. The corner of the paper is torn and several white crystals fall innocuously into his hand.
“Huh,” he murmurs, and rubs his fingers together a bit.
Watanuki sputters. “IS THAT SERIOUSLY ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY?”
“I’m hungry,” Doumeki adds after a beat, obligingly.
Watanuki slaps his hand against his face and walks out of the cave.
He can’t believe himself for what he’d been about to say just now.
2.
In existence eight hundred and thirty seven, Watanuki is starting to feel like a high school girl.
That is, he is starting to feel like the kind of high school girl who is ostracized by other high school girls in that subtle-like-a-terrorist way that high school girls often behave in whenever they see someone who they feel has overstepped his or her bounds in the carefully maintained social hierarchy of high school politics. Particularly when this person has overstepped their bounds in regards to possible romantic affiliation.
In short, Watanuki is starting to feel like the girl who has nasty rumors about her weight or sexual history scrawled on the bathroom walls.
Normally he would not mind such things, but lately it seems that his not-minding up until now has just encouraged one group of girls in particular (the Doumeki fanclub, actually), to step up their aggressive campaign to decipher the true nature of the relationship between him and their stupid high school idol.
“You and Doumeki-kun sure do spend a lot of time together, Watanuki-kun,” one of his classmates says out of the blue one day, when he is innocently doing his classroom cleaning duties. She smiles at him with that faux kindness that girls of her standing use whenever they see someone who might be construed as lower on the food chain (i.e. prey).
Watanuki sighs ands claps the chalkboard erasers against one another just outside of the window; a cloud of dust erupts from it and makes him sneeze. “I promise you it is not by choice,” he says to her, simply.
“But you two seem to be so close; are you sure there’s nothing you’re hiding from the rest of the class?” Her sweetness gets a little sharper around the edges with each word she says and Watanuki thinks he will never understand girls, not in a million years. He’s so glad Himawari-chan is different from the Doumeki fangirls; she’s nice and sweet and does not look like she would be able to mate with a male of the species and then proceed to eat his head for supper.
“But he’s so good looking, don’t you think?”
Watanuki sighs.
“And smart.”
Watanuki works faster.
“And athletic, and tall, and well-mannered, and his parents own a temple and he must be so gentle and nice, otherwise you wouldn’t make him lunch everyday, right?”
Watanuki feels his head begin to ache more intensely with every word she utters. “I don’t…”
“Yappari, Doumeki-kun is the perfect man!”
Watanuki quickly finishes his chores in record time and leaves; “I have to go to work now, bye-bye!” he says, and dashes out the door before she can try to catch him.
He’s never been so relieved to get to Yuuko’s before; he is 100% certain that being grilled by a potentially dangerous classmate about stupid Doumeki’s virtues is the last thing on this earth he wants, perhaps even more so than being eaten by a giant evil monster.
So of course, with his luck, being grilled by potentially dangerous classmates is exactly what he gets.
During physical education the next day when they are running laps around the track he is suddenly flanked by not one but four female classmates from the Doumeki fanclub on either side; they all eye him appraisingly. “How long are your legs?” one asks, after a few steps.
“Why are your eyes so weird lately?”
“How much do you weigh?”
“What’s your sign? When were you born?”
Watanuki screams and runs faster.
When he tries to subtly insinuate to Doumeki that he ought to oh, please call his terrifying harpies off of the hunt later that day, Doumeki just blinks back at him and says, “You sure are popular lately,” and then ignores him as he prepares for his club activities.
Watanuki bangs his head against the wall a few times and then takes a deep breath and goes to home economics with a grim face; when he gets there he thinks that today he will probably find dead bugs in his cake batter or worse, get asked more questions that will somehow, all tie back to his inevitable inferiority to stupid Doumeki.
He’s almost right-when he walks into the home ec room he is greeted by a flurry of spatulas, all pointing right at his face. “What is your relationship with Doumeki-kun!?” the one who he assumes is the acting president of the Doumeki fanclub demands.
At least this one doesn’t beat around the bush.
“There is no relationship!” Watanuki tells her.
“There has to be! Our lone prince suddenly hanging out with a weirdo like you has to have some sort of explanation! Did you woo him with your boyish, yet feminine wiles?”
“My what?!”
She indicates his slim waist, equally slim hips, thin wrists.
Watanuki sputters.
“You two clearly like each other! We want to know why! How! And ultimately, if you’re even worthy of Doumeki-kun! We, personally, feel that you are too many levels below him in terms of ability, you can’t possibly serve as a partner we will be satisfied with.”
Watanuki stares at them. “I. Do. Not. Have. That. Kind. Of. Relationship. With. Him,” he says slowly, and keeps a watchful eye on those spatulas the whole time. Just in case.
Some of the girls are aghast. “What’s wrong with him then?! Why wouldn’t you want to?”
“Don’t panic!” the president orders, “Don’t let him make you doubt Doumeki-kun’s attractiveness! It’s his fault if something is wrong!”
Somehow, the atmosphere after they think Watanuki has rejected Doumeki is far scarier than when they thought Watanuki had taken their eligible bachelor off of the market.
The spatulas gravitate closer to his face.
“Oh god,” Watanuki says, and takes a tentative step backwards towards the exit; they’re all looking at him with strange eyes now, and he is suddenly reminded of that whole spider comparison he had made just yesterday. “Look,” he begins awkwardly, “if I said I do like him but just not in that way would you please put down the spatulas so we can do the stupid shortcake assignment? Is there really no such thing as friendship between men anymore?!”
They are completely silent at his outburst, which is odd, considering the fact that they are high school girls. He belatedly thinks he should have opted to take a sports elective instead of a cooking one back at the beginning of the year; somehow this seems even more dangerous than the contact sports after all.
After a moment, Watanuki blinks tensely. “What? Why are you all looking at me like that?” he demands, and his voice only wavers a little.
Then, from behind him, a disturbingly smug-sounding, “Oi, man-friend, practice is already done. Why haven’t you made me cake?”
Ah, so they aren’t really looking at him after all.
Watanuki promptly spins around and slams the door shut right in stupid Doumeki’s stupid smirking face. “It was completely hypothetical!” he screeches at the closed portal, and then goes to his station to make the goddamned cake.
3.
In existence seventeen, Watanuki is starting to feel embarrassed.
“I…” pause, fidget, blush. “I…”
“Just get it over with. You have to say it back eventually,” Doumeki tells him pragmatically.
Trust the big idiot to ruin the mood completely with stupid logic. Watanuki, naturally, fights it. “I have to say it back? Who says that!?” Watanuki sniffs, red-faced. He whirls around and crosses his arms. “That’s stupid. I’m not saying it. Ever.”
Doumeki sighs and ambles nearer. “You got closer last time.”
“I was drugged out of my mind last time,” Watanuki reminds him. “Stop leaning on me, people will stare.”
“Then say it.”
“No!”
Naturally Doumeki’s response is to lean on him just a little bit more, until he can see the pink flush on Watanuki’s face again. He laughs to himself, low in his chest. “Okay,” he concedes, because this is good enough for now, “don’t say it then.”
Watanuki smacks him on the head. “Don’t tell me what to do!”
Doumeki just leans closer.
4.
In existence seven hundred and ten, Watanuki is starting to feel stupid.
He stares in the mirror at mismatched eyes and wonders what is wrong with him lately; it seems like it’s too much trouble to scream and yell at or hit Doumeki anymore. Sometimes he thinks he can’t even find words to say in response to the big idiot’s remarks; is this all a sign of old age? Is he losing his touch? What’s happening all of a sudden?
Stupid Doumeki and his penchant for causing all sorts of problems.
Even when he’s not around!
Watanuki makes a mental note to kick the big cretin in the shins later, for disrupting his work. At this rate he’ll never get the storage room dusted before the day is done.
“Watanuki Kimihiro, what are you gazing at?” Yuuko’s voice suddenly asks him, from right behind his left ear.
Watanuki spins around; “UNCOMFORTABLY CLOSE!” he yells.
She just smiles. “Ne, what are you gazing at?” she repeats in a terrifying sing-song.
He scowls. “It’s a mirror!” he explains. “So of course I would be looking at my reflection, wouldn’t I?!” he explains waspishly.
She laughs at him. “Did it look exactly the same as usual?” she asks casually, like his screaming at her means very little (which, Watanuki supposes, it does). After asking her ridiculous question, she peers over his shoulder to look at the reflected Watanuki.
“Of course it’s the same!” he tells her. “It’s a reflection!”
“Ah, it’s definitely different.” She points to the reflection again and he automatically turns to look at it.
It waves at him.
“Oh god,” he says, and backs away slowly. Sometimes he hates his workplace.
Yuuko, in the meantime, only cackles in unholy glee. “I see, I see; your reflection clearly does not agree with you lately, Watanuki Kimihiro-kun. Perhaps you’d best fix that, hm?”
The reflection nods solemnly.
Watanuki tells himself that he is never coming into the back closet ever again, even if there is enough dirt in here to make every single one of the OCD parts of him all squirmy at the mere thought of it.
“I’m going back to the kitchen,” Watanuki manages, after a moment of Yuuko and his reflection waving cheerfully at each other. “The kitchen. Away from here. Yes.”
Yuuko smirks over her shoulder when she sees him try to retreat. “That’s fine, I’ll just ask my new friend here what it is, exactly, that is causing this little dissociation, hmm?”
“It talks?!”
She chuckles. “How rude! Of course it does. You do, don’t you?”
Watanuki suddenly has a very bad feeling.
But Yuuko clearly chooses to ignore it, because her last words to him before turning back for a chat with the mirror are, “If you’re going to the kitchen, make snacks, ne!”
Then she’s addressing the not-real him again, and with a much more friendly voice than she ever uses with the real him at that. “So! What do you suppose is causing our dear Watanuki-kun’s self-disassociation, hm?” she asks.
The reflection nods and eagerly opens its mouth to speak.
And Watanuki quickly leaves the room.
Because while Yuuko might want to know, he’s pretty certain that he doesn’t.
5.
In existence number one, Watanuki is starting to feel sick.
“Stupid Doumeki with your stupid…”
And even though he has a particularly stinging and clever tirade for Doumeki today it turns out that he can’t finish what he wants to say because suddenly he is nauseous. He clutches the side of his head and blinks, sways on his feet just a little.
Beside him Doumeki goes from impassive to arching a brow ever so slightly-a clear sign that he is concerned. “Are you sick?” he asks.
“No. Leave me alone.” Watanuki shakes his head, straightens, and the dizzy spell passes. He doesn’t think anything more of it.
Two days later it’s back again; this time he is in the middle of a rousing oral treatise on the reasons why Doumeki is fundamentally unlikable as a human being. On number ten on his list of the top ten most annoying things about Doumeki, Watanuki stumbles and would have fallen face-first onto the pavement if not for a hand reaching out and securing the collar of his shirt; he’s left with his nose suspended two inches off the ground, hanging in the air a bit like a cat caught by the nape of its neck.
He would complain, but the edges of his vision are suddenly fuzzy, and so he ends up blinking a lot and groaning to himself instead. He can feel the spot on his temple where the vein in his head is throbbing; the pulse points in his palms surge and his hands feel sore as well, like they’re angry.
He swallows, opens his mouth to say something.
But before he can, Doumeki shakes him a little instead; he’s still holding the collar of Watanuki’s school uniform. “Are you sick?” the taller boy asks again, more intently this time.
“No,” Watanuki says stubbornly, and tries not to stumble from his lightheadedness when Doumeki sets him upright again. “I’m not sick. Let go of…”
This time when he falls, it’s against Doumeki, which is probably better for him than the ground (if not by much).
The only sign that points to Doumeki’s current level of concern is the fact that both eyebrows have darted upwards. It’s the last thing Watanuki sees before he passes out.
When Watanuki wakes up some time later he’s in a familiar sickbed, smelling the familiar scents of incense and alcohol that seem to permeate Yuuko’s shop; he blinks wearily and wonders what stupid entity-of-great-and-powerful-evil tried to kill him this time. He can’t even remember what happened last beyond lecturing Doumeki on all the reasons why he’s dumb.
From the armchair at the bedside there’s a familiar laugh; it makes him groan and wish he was still unconscious.
“Ah, Watanuki Kimihiro,” Yuuko twitters, and Watanuki supposes that given how light her voice is right now, it means he will survive whatever it is that is happening to him.
Maybe.
“Ugh,” he says, “what happened?” His mouth tastes pasty, and his hands are still sore. His head hurts the same as before, but now his chest aches dully too.
“You tried to kill yourself,” Yuuko chirps. She is entirely too cheerful about the whole thing- amused even- and Watanuki suspects that this means he did something stupid to warrant her laughter despite the grave nature of her words.
So he asks the logical thing; “Wait, what?”
When he looks at her she’s still laughing at him, but something smolders in her eyes-maybe warning. “We’ve established the power of words… don’t you think that someone whose blood has become your own should be treated more carefully?”
Watanuki blinks. “What does stupid Dou…”
He doesn’t even get to finish it; there’s a blinding, flashing pain in his abdomen suddenly. He doubles over and gurgles; it feels like half of him is on fire.
Yuuko tsks from beside him and waits for the wave to pass; Watanuki counts backwards from 100 in odd numbers until it stops. When it does he somehow feels half dead, like parts of him won’t work anymore. He realizes that can’t move his right hand.
“What,” he wheezes, “was that?”
Yuuko isn’t laughing anymore, that warning in her eyes has spread to the rest of her face as well. Watanuki supposes that this is more serious than he’d first imagined.
“Watanuki Kimihiro,” she sighs, “If half of you is made of something and half of you is made up of something else and everything works well, why would you ignite a war between the two sides?”
Watanuki stares at her.
She stares right back.
Eventually he sighs. “I see.”
“Do you?”
He can wiggle his right pinky again, so he supposes that yes, he does.
Sometimes he really hates the power of words.
~~~~~
By the next morning he can walk again; when he takes one step outside of the shop he immediately finds Doumeki sitting against the fence, waiting. Doumeki looks up at him when he hears the smaller boy approach and his eyebrows dart upwards on his face just a little bit.
“Are you sick?” he asks.
Watanuki fights back the impulse to snap, “No, leave me alone” and manages to clear his throat before saying, “I got better.”
Doumeki’s eyebrows still haven’t quite returned to their default position and Watanuki still can’t quite make a fist with his hand yet, but everything is starting to get more feeling back, slowly.
He supposes he should do this quickly then; hopefully Doumeki won’t rub it in his face when he does.
He stands up a little bit taller, adjusts his glasses with his left hand. “Um,” he says.
Doumeki looks up at him blandly. Then, before Watanuki can say anything, indicates his watch. “We’ll be late for school,” he reports. “I guess you won’t have time to make anyone lunch today after all.”
Watanuki stares at him as everything he had just been about to say instantly dies on his lips.
“What is wrong with you!?” he screeches instead, and glares at Doumeki. He tells himself that the other boy is so bad for his blood pressure, and now in more ways than one too. What a troublesome guy.
Doumeki just blinks back at him blandly as Watanuki shouts; his eyebrows return to their usual expressionless state on his big, dumb face, which probably means he is at ease again, or at the very least, enjoying all the trouble he causes for Watanuki. “Maybe you can make sandwiches or something,” he suggests next, very helpfully. “That’s quick.”
And it is at that moment that Watanuki decides-very seriously- that he only needs partial movement in his right hand anyway.
He spins on his heel and heads straight for school.
~~~~~
Back inside the shop, Yuuko laughs from the window. Doumeki is an interesting boy, she thinks; it seems that as long as he figures out exactly what it is he’s fighting, he can become invincible. Or at least indomitable. “I suppose,” she begins to a Mokona that is happily washing down Watanuki’s homemade breakfast with a good bottle of sake, “that there are some things in this world stronger than words.”
Mokona belches.
END
EDITS PLZ.