I LIIIIIIIVE!
Title: Just to Feel You (8/?)
Rating: This one? Definitely UST. XD
Author’s note (read - sorry excuses): Well. I’m alive. Ha. Sorry for the unexpected invisibility. I could go into a long, detailed fangasm over Doctor Who and Torchwood and how they’re worth an entire summer of utter mindless devotion, and all of that’s true, but I’ll just say that I’ve really missed our boys and you guys, too, and so, without further adieu, the latest chapter of Just to Feel You. (Ahaha, I rhymed like four or five times internally in that sentence. Unintentionally. Honest.)
Previous chapters (because oh my God, even I forgot what was going on in this story) can be found here: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
* * *
I’m trying not to be so antisocial. Truth be told, I’m not entirely hopeful-I’ve woken up on one too many floors, but my favorite was yours.
-“There is a Boy Who Never Goes Out,” The Lucksmiths
* * *
“Yuuko-san,” moaned Watanuki, the words muffled by the table, against which he was slumped face-down. “I think you really hate me.”
“Of course I don’t.”
“No, you do,” he insisted dully. “I know you do. You have to.”
“What nonsense,” tutted Yuuko, her smirk hidden behind her elaborate lavender-colored silk fan. “Watanuki, you’re being melodramatic.”
“You’re being-being manipulative,” Watanuki said into the polished wood surface. “And evil. And vindictive. And crazy.”
“Surely not all at once.” Yuuko fluttered the fan, eyes twinkling. “That would require too much effort, and you are fond of accusing me of avoiding extra effort at all costs.”
“For this, you would exhaust yourself,” said Watanuki against the table. “Simply for the purpose of tormenting me, you would probably drain every last drop of energy you have.” He turned his head to glower at her. “Or at least hire some very energetic minions to do it for you.”
Yuuko sighed exaggeratedly. “You have no faith in me, Watanuki,” she lamented. “It is for the sake of your safety that I arranged tonight’s affair.”
“Manipulated,” corrected Watanuki, sitting up and pointing a stern finger at her. “You manipulated everything until it was just the way you wanted it. And the fact that it’s ‘for my sake’ is not comforting at all. And please God, don’t ever call it an ‘affair’ again.” He shuddered.
She beamed at him. “That,” she pointed out smugly, “is why you must trust my judgment. If what I want is for you to be protected from evil spirits and attacks, you really should take comfort that everything is arranged just the way I want it.”
Watanuki leapt up from his chair so fast he almost knocked it over. “What part,” he hissed, “of ‘Watanuki, you are going to spend the night at Doumeki’s temple, and I don’t want to hear another word about it’ sounds comforting to you?”
“Oh, do stop being so childish,” Yuuko advised him with a negligent wave of the hand holding the fan. “Besides this shop, Doumeki’s temple is the only place that’s safe for you right now.”
“Well, then, why can’t I stay here the way I’ve been doing for the past three weeks?” demanded Watanuki shrilly, hands on his hips.
Something shifted in Yuuko’s eyes; like a shadow darting across the surface of a smooth, clear lake, it reflected there for him to see, just for a brief moment, and then slipped away again.
“Because,” she said, and her tone had the slightest edge of iron in it, “I said so.”
Silence fell for a moment. Then Watanuki snorted in disgust.
“I cannot believe,” he said, “you just said that.”
Yuuko lifted an eyebrow elegantly.
“That’s what parents tell their kids,” Watanuki went on, his blue eyes narrow behind his glasses, “when they don’t want to answer difficult questions. Everyone knows that it means you don’t have a good reason and you just don’t want to admit it.”
“I assure you,” Yuuko said haughtily, “that I have an excellent reason for sending you to Doumeki-kun tonight.”
Watanuki really, really hated the way she phrased that-as if he were a recalcitrant child being punished for some minor transgression, or simply being placed out of the way of more important business. Either one irritated him, and put heat in his voice when he replied.
“If it’s such a good reason,” he snapped, “why don’t I get to hear it?”
She studied him with a terribly calm, knowing expression. He hated that too. On some subconscious level, Watanuki realized that he was acting like a spoiled child being forced to do something that he knows is probably good for him, but would rather not do anyway. But he’d been stressed out for the last three weeks, tiptoeing around on the watch for Erebus and trying to ignore the way Doumeki was hovering like a perpetual cloud of impending doom over his shoulder whenever he went anywhere. His frazzled nerves were directing some of that stress to the nearest available target-not the wisest course of action when that target was his omnipotent employer.
Yuuko seemed to consider his petulant demand for a minute. She waved her fan idly.
“Because,” she declared finally, with an air of supreme triumph, “I said so.”
Watanuki scowled at her. She smiled up at him benevolently.
“Now do as I say and go get some things together for your sleepover with Doumeki,” she instructed him with the overly-patient attitude of a mother who has won a battle of authority.
“It’s not a sleepover!” Watanuki denied hotly, his face flushing (with temper! Temper!) as he glared at Yuuko. “It’s a prison sentence.”
Yuuko smirked at him. “Why, Watanuki,” she said. “If you’d prefer to be chained up, I’m sure Doumeki-kun will be most willing to accommodate you.”
Watanuki wasn’t sure what he yelled at her, since all the expendable blood cells in his body made a crazed stampede to the vicinity of his face, and the volume of his own shouting drowned out most coherent thought.
* * *
Watanuki marched down the path to the gate, where Doumeki was waiting. When he reached the archer, he immediately came to a stop three feet away, crossed his arms, and scowled blackly at him. From the disinterested look on Doumeki’s face, this was not entirely unexpected, and was probably even anticipated.
“This was not my idea, and it better not have been yours,” he threatened.
“Why would it have been mine?” Doumeki said.
“Because!” Watanuki retorted. “I don’t see any reason for Yuuko-san to just suddenly decide that I need to stay at your house, and it’s not like I would voluntarily choose to spend the night with you-” He stopped, belatedly realizing how ill-phrased the last part of that sentence was, and his cheeks colored slightly.
Doumeki looked at him. “And so I asked her to make you stay at my house?” he finished, faint skepticism evident in the words.
“Well,” said Watanuki, still dull red. “Well.”
He and Doumeki had done a damn fine job of not mentioning The Incident Which Was Never To Be Mentioned for the past three weeks, but that didn’t mean it didn’t remain firmly and noticeably wedged between them, an elephant in the room. Watanuki refused to even think about that ki-about That Incident, and anytime he found his thoughts wandering to the taste of the air after a rainstorm or the gentle grazing of calloused fingertips against his jaw, he very quickly busied his mind with the preparation of that night’s dinner or homework.
Doumeki, for his part, hadn’t kis-hadn’t repeated The Incident again, and hadn’t spoken of it either. But he flanked Watanuki like a wolf coursing a buck, and only left his side when they were at school and had different classes or when he had archery practice. A few times, he had skipped practice or arrived very late after escorting Watanuki back to Yuuko’s; he’d earned a sound scolding from his team manager over it, but it hadn’t deterred him from walking Watanuki to the shop, his eyes watchful and wary.
To be fair, Doumeki also exhibited this protective behavior toward Himawari. On days when he forewent archery practice, he and Himawari walked Watanuki to the shop, and then he would continue to Himawari’s house with her, waiting until she was inside before returning to practice. By this time, though, he had usually missed a good portion, and with customary Doumeki equanimity took to simply not going back to school afterwards.
When Watanuki found out about this, he spent half a lunch period yelling at Doumeki, telling the stoic boy that he’d get kicked out of the club and let down all the members and be a general idiot and bastard for doing so. Doumeki’s only response had been that the archery club was not a necessity, and therefore not a priority.
This, of course, had implied that Watanuki, as Doumeki’s current priority, was a necessity, and Watanuki’s brain had nearly asphyxiated at the inference. He’d been left unable to argue effectively, since the whole point he was belaboring skirted far too close to the line between relative normality and That Incident, which he had decided must never be crossed, and so he’d let the subject drop. Doumeki hadn’t clarified further either, and they’d returned to the tense spiral they’d taken up around each other.
“Let’s go,” he heard Doumeki say through the haze of his thoughts. “It’s getting dark.”
Watanuki also hadn’t quite gotten used to hearing his name used so often, since both Himawari and Doumeki called him by it now. It gave him a thrill when Himawari said it, and it gave him an entirely different jolt when Doumeki did. The first few days, he’d flinched every time Doumeki said his name, until Doumeki had asked why he was acting even spazzier than normal. The resulting diatribe had seemed to release the tension Watanuki felt over hearing his name coming from Doumeki, since he had stopped flinching. It still felt odd, though, like he’d missed a step coming down a flight of stairs, his stomach panicking at the pull of gravity.
For his part, he never called Doumeki by his given name. He knew the archer expected him to: it was in Doumeki’s eyes whenever he said Watanuki’s name, a quiet intensity that made something inside Watanuki flutter. But if hearing Doumeki say his name made him feel like he’d tripped down a flight of stairs, then the idea of saying Doumeki’s name in turn made him feel like he was standing at the top of a cliff, poised to jump over the edge. He couldn’t bring himself to take the leap.
“Kimihiro.”
Gah. There it was again-the missed-a-step feeling. Watanuki was yanked from his reverie, and both the fluttering sensation in his stomach and the embarrassment of being caught daydreaming had him narrowing his eyes at Doumeki.
“Don’t act so familiar with me,” he replied irritably, and stormed past the archer. His progress was halted by Doumeki snagging the strap of the bag on his shoulder, thus yanking him back a good two feet.
“Hey! You also don’t grab me, you ass!” He jerked out of Doumeki’s reach and glowered at him.
“I’ll walk in front,” was all Doumeki said, and leaving Watanuki blinking in stupefaction, did just that.
“You-hey!” Watanuki dashed after him, ready to deliver a tongue-lashing of the highest order, but he stopped himself when he caught a glimpse of the tense, set look to Doumeki’s jaw, and the way his gaze swept the surroundings constantly. He looked like a professional bodyguard, untrusting of the environment and deadly serious about his job.
I suppose that makes me his job, Watanuki thought, and felt a twist in his stomach that he attributed to sheer annoyance at being considered anyone’s job. Still, he supposed it was stupid to distract Doumeki from watching out for danger just so he could vent his spleen. Settling instead for grumbling under his breath, he followed close on Doumeki’s heels all the way back to the temple.
* * *
“Yuuko,” said Mokona quietly as they watched the two boys disappear beyond the gate and down the street. “They’ll be all right, won’t they?”
Yuuko, whose eyes, like Doumeki’s, were narrow with concentration, murmured, “This night, they will encounter no harm from Erebus.”
Mokona looked troubled. “You’re sure?” it asked in a small voice, as though embarrassed to be second-guessing Yuuko’s opinion. “Erebus hasn’t appeared since he attacked Kunogi. I don’t like this silence.”
“Nor I,” said Yuuko, turning her gaze to the sky. “But as I told our Kimihiro, Erebus would be a fool to take on Doumeki Shizuka directly. Especially now that the connection between Kimihiro and Shizuka has deepened.”
On her shoulder, Mokona let out a half-laugh. “Not by much,” it said ruefully. “Kimihiro is a stubborn boy.”
“Ah, but so is Shizuka,” Yuuko reminded it. “Don’t fear, little one. Those two are stronger together than anything Erebus can subject them to, and Shizuka is not about to lose Kimihiro to the darkness.”
Mokona sighed. “But Shizuka is only human, Yuuko,” it said urgently. “And Erebus is very powerful.”
Yuuko shook her head slowly, a small smile flitting across her lips. “My dear one,” she said gently. “If there is anything I have learned to count on in life, it is the astonishing regularity with which ‘only humans’ overcome the most powerful of obstacles.”
“Even fate?” said Mokona shrewdly, and Yuuko was quiet for a long while before replying.
“No,” she whispered. “Not fate. No one is able to overcome that particular obstacle.”
“Yuuko…” Mokona pressed itself against her cheek in an attempt to comfort her. “I’m sure everything will be all right.”
She laughed. “A truth that transcends time and space.” She watched a cloud pass over the moon. “Let us hope that it reaches here as well.”
* * *
“You have,” said Watanuki for the third time in abject shock, “no food.”
“It’s there,” said Doumeki, peering over his shoulder. Watanuki, frozen in shock, didn’t even make a move to put distance between them. He didn’t see Doumeki give him a quick glance out of the corner of his eye.
“No it’s not.”
“You’re looking at it.” Doumeki leaned slightly closer and bent down until his head was level with Watanuki’s. They both stared at the contents of the refrigerator.
“This is it,” Watanuki clarified woodenly. “A tub of margarine, a bottle of ketchup, a jar of pickles, some cold cuts, a block of cheese, a head of lettuce which is turning brown, a quart of milk, and a jug of orange juice is it?”
“Only a little brown,” Doumeki returned, eyeing the lettuce. “And there are some leftover takeout containers in here.”
“Leftover takeout does not constitute food,” Watanuki retorted, his eyes still riveted on the miserable pittance that was the Doumeki family refrigerator. “Not even freshly delivered takeout counts as food. And any amount of brown on lettuce is too much brown. And oh, my God, that milk expired yesterday, my eyes, my brain, it hurts, oh God.”
Doumeki tilted his head to the side-specifically, toward Watanuki’s-to squint at the label on the milk container. “It’s probably not sour yet. It’s only been one day.”
“You have got to be-” At the same time he spoke, Watanuki turned to stare at Doumeki with something akin to complete horror. He swallowed the rest of his sentence when he realized exactly how close Doumeki’s face was to his. Golden eyes burned into his own and, when Watanuki’s widened, flashed with the same intensity that crackled in them whenever Doumeki said Watanuki’s name.
“Nnngaaah!” He shot backward to put space between them, and ending up crashing against the open fridge door, causing the ketchup and pickles to rattle alarmingly on the shelves. “YOU. WHY THE HELL DO YOU KEEP DOING THAT!”
Doumeki only stared at him impassively. “What are you babbling about?”
Watanuki, whose heart was still racing from the suddenness of motion, glared at him. How did he and that bastard keep ending up inches away from each other? It was crazy and annoying and damned if Doumeki didn’t look supremely unconcerned with the whole situation, as if he didn’t realize the uncanny regularity with which the distance between them seemed to evaporate each time they were alone together, and Watanuki would not, would not entertain any stupid ideas about hitsuzen and kis-Incidents and oh my God, what the hell was he thinking about all this for anyway?
Straightening up from his defensive huddle against the fridge door, he demanded, “How can you eat anything that comes from this refrigerator? I thought you were supposed to have super-sensitive taste or whatever, which is obviously a lie if you can even think about consuming-”
“I don’t.”
The simple, matter-of-fact words cut through Watanuki’s outrage like a knife through butter. He frowned at Doumeki. “What do you mean, you don’t? Your grandfather and even Yuuko-san said that you-”
“I don’t eat anything in this refrigerator. Ever.”
Now Watanuki was blatantly staring. “What?”
Doumeki wasn’t meeting his eyes. He was, actually, looking into the refrigerator with a peculiar scowl on his face. He didn’t answer.
Watanuki put his hands on his hips. “How can you not eat anything that’s in here ever? I mean, I assume that it doesn’t always look this-” Desperate. Pathetic. Nightmare-inducing. “Empty. You must eat some stuff. It’s your refrigerator!”
“It’s my parents’.” Doumeki was very intently studying the day-old milk, looking as though he was revising his opinion of whether or not it was worth drinking. “They haven’t gone shopping in a few days. No reason to fill the fridge with food if it won’t get eaten.”
“Won’t get eaten?” Puzzled, Watanuki cocked his head to one side.
Doumeki shut the fridge door and turned to Watanuki. “I don’t eat here,” he repeated. “And my parents don’t cook much. There’s no point to buying a lot of food for just two people under those circumstances.”
Watanuki’s lips formed a petulant moue. “You mean you only eat at school? That’s-that’s ridiculous!”
Except it wasn’t really. It certainly explained why Doumeki had such a ravenous appetite when it came to the lunches Watanuki made for him, and why he was so demanding whenever he came to Yuuko’s shop and wound up having meals there as well. In Watanuki’s stunned mind, months and months of outrageous food requests and astonishing appetite suddenly fit together with an almost audible click, and made sense in a way that had his stomach doing another one of those odd missing-stair flutters.
“Doumeki,” he said, with as much calm as he could muster. “Do you mean to tell me that you-you only eat my cooking?”
After a pause, Doumeki nodded once.
“Just mine? Always? No-no takeout? No snacks?”
A shake of the head.
“Nothing else?” No debatably sour milk? No slightly brown lettuce? Nothing at all?
Another headshake.
“Oh,” said Watanuki quietly. He looked away.
It burned on the tip of his tongue to ask why, why does everything I do matter so much to you, but he couldn’t take the leap.
But there was one step he could take.
“Shi…Shizuka,” he said quietly, his eyes on the floor.
He could feel the heat of Doume-of Shizuka’s gaze on him like he was standing under the sun, being warmed and illuminated at the same time. Almost a full minute passed before Shizuka replied gruffly, “What?” The word was carefully devoid of inflection, in a way that was far more telling than if it had been choked with emotion, and failed completely to hide from Watanuki exactly how Shizuka felt about Watanuki using his name.
Damn it, he could feel the redness in his cheeks. “Stop standing there like an idiot and get out of the kitchen,” Watanuki snapped, eyes still fixed on the floor. “If I’m going to cook dinner, I’m not going to work around your annoying self.” He skirted around Shizuka’s still form and reached for a pantry cupboard. “Your…your parents’ refrigerator isn’t going to help much, but I’m sure I can fix something edible.” He made considering noises at the contents of the cupboard-not completely hopeless-turned, and nearly ran into Shizuka’s chest.
“Oh, my G-will you quit it with the looming,” he demanded, backing into the counter hard enough to be sure he’d have a bruise tomorrow. “I just said I’m not going to work around y-” He stopped, very suddenly, because Shizuka quite deliberately did not quit with the looming. Shizuka instead put an arm on the cabinet next to Watanuki’s head, effectively trapping Watanuki between the counter and his body, and leaned into him, so close that Watanuki could probably count his eyelashes if he really gave it his attention. Unfortunately, his attention was rather ensnared by how those gold eyes had darkened and how, ah, how close Shizuka was again, was he really not going to stop doing that, because it was kind of, kind of distracting and-
“D-Doumeki,” he choked out. “You-”
“No,” Shizuka said, and the word was a breath of air against Watanuki’s lips. “What’s said is said. You can’t take it back.” Was he coming closer, was that even possible, oh God, he couldn’t move, he wasn’t even trying, what was wrong with him? Hadn’t he spent the last three weeks fully focused on making sure this didn’t happen again? But right now his mind was a pleasant blank except for the part that was filled with Shizuka, and he couldn’t really remember why he was so opposed to this whole idea in the first place.
Watanuki’s mouth parted, and those eyes flicked down at the motion, and locked there. It took every bit of effort not lick his lips.
“Shi…” His voice was inaudible. He swallowed-watched those eyes focus on that motion too, and then return to his mouth-and tried again. “Shizu-”
“Shizuka?”
Watanuki froze, his eyes growing round with horror.
Shizuka froze too, and his eyes closed briefly as if in prayer.
“Mother,” he said without turning around, without, damn him, moving away from Watanuki even the smallest inch. “Welcome home.”
***
A/N: Weeell. That was. Um. To be truthful, I’m not sure what that was. I only hope it didn’t disappoint. And oh my lord, Doumeki, you smooth operator. He has a Jareth Moment; what can I say? Everyone loves a Jareth Moment. At the end there, he’s totally like i’m in ur kitchen seducin ur chef. And then--unexpected cockblock Doumeki-mama! XDDD Can has parent-sensing skills sometimes? Please to be paying attention to surroundings?