*crawls out from rock* oh my god. daylight. it burns.
When Doumeki fell asleep at night and woke in the morning, he was invariably alone.
This did not remain true while he was dreaming.
The first time he’d found himself hosting an unexpected guest in his dreams, it had been that woman Watanuki worked for. This was unnerving enough, really. It was only worsened when she’d sort of smiled at him and told him that things might seem a little awkward or uncomfortable at first, but “I promise, Doumeki-kun, you’ll get used to it! You’ll even enjoy yourself after a while!”
He’d blinked once, slowly, and mentally prepared himself for whatever sort of assault she planned to launch. However, instead of making an attempt on his life or sanity or virtue, she clapped her hands girlishly, cooed “Of course, I’ll want details once you fall into a working routine!” and faded away.
The next morning, he’d woken blinking at the ceiling and wondering what he’d have to deal with now.
That night, Watanuki appeared in his dream for the first time.
***
There was a marked difference, he thought, between dreaming about Watanuki and dreaming with Watanuki: having Watanuki wander into one of his dreams, frowning bemusedly as if he’d taken a wrong turn a few miles back. For one thing, when Doumeki dreamed of Watanuki, it involved a lot more food and…companionship. When Watanuki spontaneously barged in on his dreams that first night, it was more “WHY THE HELL AM I HERE?” and “THIS IS YOUR FAULT SOMEHOW” and “IF YOU START DREAMING OF PERVERTED THINGS I’LL KILL YOU IN YOUR SLEEP” and a distinct lack of food of any kind.
At least, that was how it was initially.
The dreams with Watanuki were at first infrequent: over a month passed between the first and second visits, and almost six weeks between the second and third. This became the pattern, wherein every month or so Doumeki began to expect a visit from a usually complaining and recalcitrant Watanuki in a dream, during which Watanuki acted pretty much exactly the same as he usually did: he complained about having to be stuck with “stupid, hulking, idiot Doumeki” and bemoaned the obvious absence of Himawari. Doumeki usually waited out the dreams in his own stoic fashion, offering little to the conversation besides food requests and occasional insults.
The sixth visit happened about two weeks after the resolution of the debacle with Kohane. Watanuki speculated aloud about the future and what it held for the girl and her mother, and Doumeki found himself offering his own opinions. They had what they later realized, after waking up, amounted to an amiable conversation; Doumeki realized even later that he had committed every word of it to memory.
The seventh time came a bit sooner than either of them expected: barely two weeks after the sixth. Watanuki seemed just as surprised as Doumeki felt, but expressed it considerably more eloquently.
The eighth dream came two days later, and Watanuki looked utterly defeated. He glared, sighed, and pouted a good deal throughout the dream (not that he would admit to the last), but seemed otherwise resigned to the situation.
Doumeki wondered if Yuuko really did know everything or if she was just experienced at guessing how her apprentice-cum-slave-laborer would adjust in a given situation. Especially situations where said apprentice mysteriously ended up in the dreams of his self-proclaimed rival on a semi-regular basis.
When Watanuki sighed in frustration during the ninth dream-visit and complained that the only thing he and Doumeki ever did during these dreams was stare at one another (and, in Watanuki’s case, detail his companion’s fault in exhaustive lists), and shouldn’t there be something more interesting to do in a dream, Doumeki figured Yuuko-san was just some level of devious that couldn’t be attained by mere mortal women.
He also figured that with a statement that openly ambiguous, Watanuki could not have any possible idea what he’d just implied, and furthermore, there was probably more wide-eyed idiocy where that came from.
The dream usually took place either beneath the tree where they ate their lunches at school, or at Doumeki’s temple. Tonight it was the temple, and both of them were dressed in light, informal yukata. Doumeki was sitting placidly with his back to the sakura tree, hands folded into his sleeves, while Watanuki, who had been lying supine nearby on the ground moments before, now flowed upward gracefully into a sitting position and glowered accusingly at Doumeki, as if the lack of entertainment was his fault.
“Well,” Doumeki said reasonably, “what do you feel like doing?”
Watanuki lifted a shoulder moodily. “I don’t know,” he said irritably. “Usually we sit here and you say stupid things like ‘Make this for lunch tomorrow’ and I have to remind you that I’m not your maid-”
Image of Watanuki in a maid’s outfit. Yup-he’d known there was more idiocy coming.
“-and then we sit here in silence until you finish thinking of the next stupid thing you want to say.” Watanuki huffed. “So at this point, anything would be better than that.”
Doumeki lifted an eyebrow. “So pick something to do.”
Watanuki threw his hands in the air. “Like I can do anything with you!” he snapped.
Image of just what sort of ‘anything’ Watanuki could do with Doumeki. Sigh. This was probably going to get worse before it got better.
“You’re right,” said Doumeki, deadpan. “Guess that leaves talking.”
Watanuki glared. “Talking wouldn’t be so bad,” he muttered, “if you would talk. Instead of just-you know. Making demands for food. Does your entire vocabulary consist of meals and weird spiritual stuff?”
“Archery,” Doumeki reminded him.
“That helps,” Watanuki said acerbically. “Now I can share all my vast knowledge on that subject with you. Don’t you do anything else with your time?”
“I write,” said Doumeki before he could stop himself.
Watanuki stared at him while Doumeki wondered what in the world had possessed him to admit that to Watanuki, of all people.
“You…write?” said Watanuki at last in a completely dumbfounded voice.
Ah, well. No use denying what he’d already blurted aloud.
“Yes,” he said shortly, looking away from Watanuki and willing himself with all the control available to him not to blush.
Watanuki blinked.
“Like…in a journal?” he said cautiously.
“Not…quite,” Doumeki hedged, silently hoping that Watanuki would just leave it be.
“Well,” huffed Watanuki, shattering Doumeki’s faint and fragile hopes, “what do you write, then?”
Doumeki was silent for a few moments, during which Watanuki frowned at him suspiciouslyThe archer thought that maybe Watanuki would grow bored after a prolonged lack of response, but the stubborn boy appeared only to grow increasingly more impatient, if the narrowing of his eyes was any indication.
Finally, Doumeki spoke into the silence, making sure that his tone was devoid of any inflection at all-especially any that would imply defeat or embarrassment.
“Poetry.”
Another pregnant pause in the conversation as Watanuki stared. Doumeki entertained a vague and fleeting desire to wake up. This was, of course, as vain as his hopes had been, which was usually the case when it came to Watanuki.
“You write…poetry.”
He heard an odd note in Watanuki’s voice-something that made the statement more clarification than question, and kept it surprisingly free of mocking.
“Yes,” he said again, careful not to meet Watanuki’s eyes.
There was a short, humming silence while Watanuki seemed to process this new and unexpected hobby of Doumeki’s. The archer did not offer any further answers, and Watanuki asked no more questions. The quiet surrounding them burned with both until the dream faded and Doumeki woke alone in his bed.
***
Two nights later, during Watanuki’s tenth dream-visit, Doumeki was startled, though not visibly so, when Watanuki, who had sat in that same contemplative, uncharacteristic silence for a few minutes after arriving, suddenly said, “My mother wrote poetry.”
Doumeki turned his head to look at him, but Watanuki was staring at the polished wood beneath his feet. It was the temple again tonight, but they were sitting on the engawa this time. Watanuki’s yukata was a dark blue that accented his pale skin and the colors of his eyes, while Doumeki’s was a deep forest green. Doumeki thought maybe hitsuzen had a little too much fun sometimes with cosmic irony.
He didn’t say anything in reply to Watanuki’s quiet admission, and after another few moments, the boy continued, “I don’t really remember anything she wrote. Just…just that she did. She said it was soothing, and that it helped her to focus her thoughts when she was worried.”
“Yeah,” Doumeki said. “It is. It does.”
Watanuki threw him a sharp glance, but didn’t otherwise reprimand him for interrupting. “Sometimes,” he went on quietly, “she used to read her poems to me at night, before I fell asleep. There was one…” His brow furrowed in frustration at the lack of clear memory. “Something about the moon and the sun. I asked her about it-she said it was a poem about her friends.” He hesitated. “And…about me.”
Doumeki said nothing, only continued to watch Watanuki with a steady gaze. Watanuki looked out over the temple grounds, an indefinable expression on his face. It was a mixture of yearning and sorrow, regret and acceptance that he could not bring back the memories he held so dear.
“Did Haruka-san teach you to write?” he said.
Having expected the question, Doumeki only nodded. When he realized that Watanuki still wasn’t looking at him, he said aloud, “Yeah. He told me-” He paused. “The same things your mother told you. That it would soothe me, and help me concentrate.”
Watanuki nodded absently.
“Haruka-san wrote poetry too?”
“Some.” Doumeki considered for a moment. “Most of it he never showed me. He said I wasn’t old enough to read things like that.”
Blinking, Watanuki turned to stare at him incredulously.
“You’re making that up,” he accused, gold-and-blue eyes snapping now that the vague and troubled expression had gone from them. “Haruka-san wouldn’t have-wouldn’t have-”
“Written dirty poems?” Doumeki supplied dryly. “Yes, he would have. And did. I’ve seen them.”
Watanuki glared at him. “You just said that he never showed them to you!”
“I found them,” said Doumeki calmly. “After he died. They were in the library.” He eyed Watanuki’s still-disbelieving countenance. “I’ll show them to you, if you want to see them.”
“I-wh-no!” Watanuki’s face was suffused with a blazing glow, and he began to flail in earnest. “Why would I want-you great big-I can’t believe you’d even ask me that!”
“Wasn’t asking anything,” Doumeki returned with a shrug. “Just offering.”
“Well, don’t bother, okay?” Muttering to himself, the red lingering on his cheeks, Watanuki folded his arms across his chest and sent Doumeki various disapproving looks. He was still muttering, still blushing, and still glaring when the dream melted away like mist in the dawn.
***
Between dreams, Watanuki and Doumeki never mentioned their nightly conferences, not even to one another. It was as if the dreams were a completely different world-a separate reality that was untainted by the horrors of Watanuki’s past, the oddities of his present, and the uncertainties of his future. Odd though it seemed, Doumeki thought that Watanuki sometimes felt more real in the dreams than he did outside them, as if he wasn’t trying so hard to deny…well, everything he usually denied with unrelenting vigor. He was quieter, for one-in the dreams he only yelled at Doumeki half as much, and half as loud, as he did when awake.
There was also the fact that, to date, he hadn’t made a single meal for Doumeki in the dreams, an act that usually dictated half of their daily interactions. Without the food to script their conversations, without the dangers of rogue spirits hanging over their shoulders, Doumeki and Watanuki actually seemed to get along well enough-at least marginally better than they did awake. For instance, Doumeki would never have admitted his poetry hobby to anyone, much less Watanuki, under the normal circumstances, while Watanuki may or may not have revealed his cloudy remembrance of his mother. He was getting better at that lately, both in and out of the dreams; as if he was slowly growing to trust Doumeki more with his innermost thoughts, instead of guarding them viciously behind exaggerated gestures and shouting.
Doumeki didn’t know whether the dreams were affecting Watanuki’s behavior when awake, or if the way he acted in the dreams was a way for him to practice showing Doumeki his softer side without an audience (human or spirit) observing their every move. If the latter were true, it wouldn’t have surprised Doumeki a bit; he had a wary and healthy respect for Yuuko, and tried not to let anything she did shake his calm.
At any rate, the dreams remained an unspoken secret between the two of them, never brought up even when terrible things happened (usually to Watanuki) and Doumeki wound up sacrificing small pieces of himself to keep the boy alive. It was the status quo.
So Doumeki was justifiably taken aback when Watanuki indirectly acknowledged the dream-visits one day as they were walking back to Yuuko’s after school.
“I want to see it,” said Watanuki, for all the world as if he hadn’t just broken the silence between them with a total non sequitur.
Doumeki, however, was nothing if not accommodating to Watanuki’s mercurial personality. “Okay,” he agreed. “But not in public.”
Watanuki whipped his head around and shot a speaking glare at him. “I,” he said menacingly, “had better never find out what you meant by that.”
We’ll see, thought Doumeki, but he had enough self-preservation to keep that to himself, and merely shrugged acquiescently.
After another few moments of petulant silence, Watanuki apparently decided to try again.
“I want to see some of your poetry,” he announced to the air, deliberately staring off ahead without bothering to observe Doumeki’s reaction.
Doumeki blinked, staring at him. The status, he thought, was no longer quo. Watanuki had just upset the balance of their everyday lives with-as per his usual-nothing more than a whim and a word.
“Okay,” he agreed slowly, still keeping his gaze trained on the boy walking just slightly in front of him. After a moment, he said, “Now?”
Watanuki snorted and sent him a disparaging glance. “Of course not now, idiot. I have to work today. I’m not about to get punished for being late because of you.” He sniffed disdainfully and added, “We’ll do it later.”
“What?” was about the only thought Doumeki was capable of expressing in a coherent fashion.
Sighing impatiently, Watanuki snapped, “I said, you later, when we’re…you know.” He made a complicated flicking gesture with his wrist to exemplify the act of sharing a dream with your dubiously titled rival. “You can show it to me then.”
One of these days, Doumeki was going to have to sit down and explain the concept of the double entendre to Watanuki. Or maybe he could just have the idiot read some of his grandfather’s poems.
“Okay,” Doumeki said again, and tried to ignore the unfamiliar feeling in his heart that anyone less secure in his own masculinity would have termed ‘performance anxiety.’
“Good.” Watanuki nodded sharply and disappeared through the decrepit wooden gateposts.
***
“Well?” Watanuki folded his arms and looked doubtful.
Doumeki was experiencing some doubt himself. He doubted, for example, that he would get through this without looking like a complete fool. He doubted that what was about to happen would escape the notice of one dimension witch. He doubted that there was no meaning in the fact that he and Watanuki were wearing their school uniforms in the dream for the first time, and were standing beneath their school lunch tree looking like a couple about to confess their love to each other.
He really doubted the innocent coincidence of the sakura petals blowing gently in the breeze.
Doumeki sometimes wished hitsuzen would act its age and not like a giddy high school girl.
He took a deep breath and focused on the paper in his hand, on which his utter doom was spelled out-in his own handwriting, no less.
It had taken him the entire afternoon to decide which poems he should show Watanuki. The process was a lot more difficult than he’d thought it would be: he had to choose whether to bring just one poem or a few, and whether he should read it (them?) aloud or let Watanuki read for himself, and then he had to work out exactly how to bring the poem(s?) along with him. He’d settled in the end for three, and for falling asleep with them under his pillow. He’d felt rather stupid about the whole thing, and wasn’t sure whether or not to be relieved when the poems appeared in his hand when the dream began.
“Are you going to stand there and stare at it,” Watanuki complained, “because I can think of better things to do with my time.”
Entendres again. One day soon, Doumeki promised himself.
Watanuki scrutinized him carefully. “You aren’t actually nervous, are you?” he said, and the surprise and amusement in his tone was enough to make Doumeki grit his teeth and force out the words.
“Under the pale moon
I drown, surrounded by you.
Your voice calls me home.”
Silence fell. Doumeki couldn’t bring himself to look up. The only sound was of their mutual, measured breathing, though Doumeki could swear the sound of his heart was fast filling the empty space between them, until he heard a quiet noise like a sigh-
“Read another one,” said Watanuki softly.
Astonished at this calm acceptance and even encouragement, Doumeki blinked and nodded mutely.
“I wandered blindly,
Following a distant dream,
And came to your door.”
Another silence, another sigh.
“Another one.” The command was quiet but undeniable. Doumeki obeyed without question.
“There is no answer
Because there is no question.
There is only-”
He stopped himself, staring down at the page with consternation. He knew he’d written all three poems down in their entirety, but the last line of this one was incomplete. The last word was gone, as if he had simply stopped the poem there, and he couldn’t remember what it was. His brows drew together as he searched his memory for the missing word.
Watanuki watched him, aware that something was not right. He hesitated before asking, “What? There is only what?”
Doumeki looked up and met his eyes.
Truth. Time. Love. Life. You. Me. Us. This.
“Fate,” he said.
Watanuki blinked. The faintest tinge of red graced the bridge of his nose under his glasses.
“Oh,” he said, and shifted his gaze to the paper. “That’s-” He swallowed. “That’s-not bad.”
The great knot in Doumeki’s chest wound tighter and loosened at the same time. It was a very uncomfortable feeling.
“Yeah,” he said, and stared at the paper too, as if by looking at it he could make it-and the dream-fade away.
“I mean,” said Watanuki hurriedly, “I’m not a-an expert or anything, but I thought they sounded-well, uh-“ He floundered. “Not bad,” he finished helplessly, and the flush grew worse.
“Yeah,” said Doumeki again, just as helpless. “Okay.”
The awkwardness between them soared to dizzying heights as they stared at the poetry in Doumeki’s hand. It was a foreign contaminant to their usually easy discord; they always disagreed at varying levels of forcefulness and parted with mutual satisfaction. They never reached a semi-agreement with absolutely no idea what to say to one another. They never stood on opposite sides of an unnamed emotion wedged between them and pretended it wasn’t there. They never read poetry to each other and suddenly realized exactly what-who-the poems were about. This was new territory, ground they hadn’t yet broken, even in the arbitrary environment of the dreams.
“So,” said Watanuki, so quietly that Doumeki wouldn’t have heard him except that the entire world seemed to have gone silent in anticipation. “What’s it about? That last one.”
Doumeki looked at the paper again for a long moment. He folded it up neatly and held it out. Startled, Watanuki took it, but gave Doumeki a narrow frown.
“I’m not your handmaid,” he pointed out. “You can’t expect me to just carry all your-your-” He stopped, obviously struggling not to say the customary ‘useless trash.’ Instead, with an irritated sigh, he drew the paper closer to himself and arched an eyebrow.
“Well?”
Doumeki slipped his hands into his pockets and shrugged.
“The sun,” he said. “And the moon.”
He met Watanuki’s wide eyes.
“And…”
The dream faded before he could finish the sentence. When he woke in his bed, alone, and reached beneath his pillow, he wasn’t at all surprised to find nothing there. Nothing at all.
***
A/N: In this fic, I lay no claim to any of CLAMP's copyrighted stuff. Also, I don't own "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," in which the status is not quo.
This did not remain true while he was dreaming.
The first time he’d found himself hosting an unexpected guest in his dreams, it had been that woman Watanuki worked for. This was unnerving enough, really. It was only worsened when she’d sort of smiled at him and told him that things might seem a little awkward or uncomfortable at first, but “I promise, Doumeki-kun, you’ll get used to it! You’ll even enjoy yourself after a while!”
He’d blinked once, slowly, and mentally prepared himself for whatever sort of assault she planned to launch. However, instead of making an attempt on his life or sanity or virtue, she clapped her hands girlishly, cooed “Of course, I’ll want details once you fall into a working routine!” and faded away.
The next morning, he’d woken blinking at the ceiling and wondering what he’d have to deal with now.
That night, Watanuki appeared in his dream for the first time.
***
There was a marked difference, he thought, between dreaming about Watanuki and dreaming with Watanuki: having Watanuki wander into one of his dreams, frowning bemusedly as if he’d taken a wrong turn a few miles back. For one thing, when Doumeki dreamed of Watanuki, it involved a lot more food and…companionship. When Watanuki spontaneously barged in on his dreams that first night, it was more “WHY THE HELL AM I HERE?” and “THIS IS YOUR FAULT SOMEHOW” and “IF YOU START DREAMING OF PERVERTED THINGS I’LL KILL YOU IN YOUR SLEEP” and a distinct lack of food of any kind.
At least, that was how it was initially.
The dreams with Watanuki were at first infrequent: over a month passed between the first and second visits, and almost six weeks between the second and third. This became the pattern, wherein every month or so Doumeki began to expect a visit from a usually complaining and recalcitrant Watanuki in a dream, during which Watanuki acted pretty much exactly the same as he usually did: he complained about having to be stuck with “stupid, hulking, idiot Doumeki” and bemoaned the obvious absence of Himawari. Doumeki usually waited out the dreams in his own stoic fashion, offering little to the conversation besides food requests and occasional insults.
The sixth visit happened about two weeks after the resolution of the debacle with Kohane. Watanuki speculated aloud about the future and what it held for the girl and her mother, and Doumeki found himself offering his own opinions. They had what they later realized, after waking up, amounted to an amiable conversation; Doumeki realized even later that he had committed every word of it to memory.
The seventh time came a bit sooner than either of them expected: barely two weeks after the sixth. Watanuki seemed just as surprised as Doumeki felt, but expressed it considerably more eloquently.
The eighth dream came two days later, and Watanuki looked utterly defeated. He glared, sighed, and pouted a good deal throughout the dream (not that he would admit to the last), but seemed otherwise resigned to the situation.
Doumeki wondered if Yuuko really did know everything or if she was just experienced at guessing how her apprentice-cum-slave-laborer would adjust in a given situation. Especially situations where said apprentice mysteriously ended up in the dreams of his self-proclaimed rival on a semi-regular basis.
When Watanuki sighed in frustration during the ninth dream-visit and complained that the only thing he and Doumeki ever did during these dreams was stare at one another (and, in Watanuki’s case, detail his companion’s fault in exhaustive lists), and shouldn’t there be something more interesting to do in a dream, Doumeki figured Yuuko-san was just some level of devious that couldn’t be attained by mere mortal women.
He also figured that with a statement that openly ambiguous, Watanuki could not have any possible idea what he’d just implied, and furthermore, there was probably more wide-eyed idiocy where that came from.
The dream usually took place either beneath the tree where they ate their lunches at school, or at Doumeki’s temple. Tonight it was the temple, and both of them were dressed in light, informal yukata. Doumeki was sitting placidly with his back to the sakura tree, hands folded into his sleeves, while Watanuki, who had been lying supine nearby on the ground moments before, now flowed upward gracefully into a sitting position and glowered accusingly at Doumeki, as if the lack of entertainment was his fault.
“Well,” Doumeki said reasonably, “what do you feel like doing?”
Watanuki lifted a shoulder moodily. “I don’t know,” he said irritably. “Usually we sit here and you say stupid things like ‘Make this for lunch tomorrow’ and I have to remind you that I’m not your maid-”
Image of Watanuki in a maid’s outfit. Yup-he’d known there was more idiocy coming.
“-and then we sit here in silence until you finish thinking of the next stupid thing you want to say.” Watanuki huffed. “So at this point, anything would be better than that.”
Doumeki lifted an eyebrow. “So pick something to do.”
Watanuki threw his hands in the air. “Like I can do anything with you!” he snapped.
Image of just what sort of ‘anything’ Watanuki could do with Doumeki. Sigh. This was probably going to get worse before it got better.
“You’re right,” said Doumeki, deadpan. “Guess that leaves talking.”
Watanuki glared. “Talking wouldn’t be so bad,” he muttered, “if you would talk. Instead of just-you know. Making demands for food. Does your entire vocabulary consist of meals and weird spiritual stuff?”
“Archery,” Doumeki reminded him.
“That helps,” Watanuki said acerbically. “Now I can share all my vast knowledge on that subject with you. Don’t you do anything else with your time?”
“I write,” said Doumeki before he could stop himself.
Watanuki stared at him while Doumeki wondered what in the world had possessed him to admit that to Watanuki, of all people.
“You…write?” said Watanuki at last in a completely dumbfounded voice.
Ah, well. No use denying what he’d already blurted aloud.
“Yes,” he said shortly, looking away from Watanuki and willing himself with all the control available to him not to blush.
Watanuki blinked.
“Like…in a journal?” he said cautiously.
“Not…quite,” Doumeki hedged, silently hoping that Watanuki would just leave it be.
“Well,” huffed Watanuki, shattering Doumeki’s faint and fragile hopes, “what do you write, then?”
Doumeki was silent for a few moments, during which Watanuki frowned at him suspiciouslyThe archer thought that maybe Watanuki would grow bored after a prolonged lack of response, but the stubborn boy appeared only to grow increasingly more impatient, if the narrowing of his eyes was any indication.
Finally, Doumeki spoke into the silence, making sure that his tone was devoid of any inflection at all-especially any that would imply defeat or embarrassment.
“Poetry.”
Another pregnant pause in the conversation as Watanuki stared. Doumeki entertained a vague and fleeting desire to wake up. This was, of course, as vain as his hopes had been, which was usually the case when it came to Watanuki.
“You write…poetry.”
He heard an odd note in Watanuki’s voice-something that made the statement more clarification than question, and kept it surprisingly free of mocking.
“Yes,” he said again, careful not to meet Watanuki’s eyes.
There was a short, humming silence while Watanuki seemed to process this new and unexpected hobby of Doumeki’s. The archer did not offer any further answers, and Watanuki asked no more questions. The quiet surrounding them burned with both until the dream faded and Doumeki woke alone in his bed.
***
Two nights later, during Watanuki’s tenth dream-visit, Doumeki was startled, though not visibly so, when Watanuki, who had sat in that same contemplative, uncharacteristic silence for a few minutes after arriving, suddenly said, “My mother wrote poetry.”
Doumeki turned his head to look at him, but Watanuki was staring at the polished wood beneath his feet. It was the temple again tonight, but they were sitting on the engawa this time. Watanuki’s yukata was a dark blue that accented his pale skin and the colors of his eyes, while Doumeki’s was a deep forest green. Doumeki thought maybe hitsuzen had a little too much fun sometimes with cosmic irony.
He didn’t say anything in reply to Watanuki’s quiet admission, and after another few moments, the boy continued, “I don’t really remember anything she wrote. Just…just that she did. She said it was soothing, and that it helped her to focus her thoughts when she was worried.”
“Yeah,” Doumeki said. “It is. It does.”
Watanuki threw him a sharp glance, but didn’t otherwise reprimand him for interrupting. “Sometimes,” he went on quietly, “she used to read her poems to me at night, before I fell asleep. There was one…” His brow furrowed in frustration at the lack of clear memory. “Something about the moon and the sun. I asked her about it-she said it was a poem about her friends.” He hesitated. “And…about me.”
Doumeki said nothing, only continued to watch Watanuki with a steady gaze. Watanuki looked out over the temple grounds, an indefinable expression on his face. It was a mixture of yearning and sorrow, regret and acceptance that he could not bring back the memories he held so dear.
“Did Haruka-san teach you to write?” he said.
Having expected the question, Doumeki only nodded. When he realized that Watanuki still wasn’t looking at him, he said aloud, “Yeah. He told me-” He paused. “The same things your mother told you. That it would soothe me, and help me concentrate.”
Watanuki nodded absently.
“Haruka-san wrote poetry too?”
“Some.” Doumeki considered for a moment. “Most of it he never showed me. He said I wasn’t old enough to read things like that.”
Blinking, Watanuki turned to stare at him incredulously.
“You’re making that up,” he accused, gold-and-blue eyes snapping now that the vague and troubled expression had gone from them. “Haruka-san wouldn’t have-wouldn’t have-”
“Written dirty poems?” Doumeki supplied dryly. “Yes, he would have. And did. I’ve seen them.”
Watanuki glared at him. “You just said that he never showed them to you!”
“I found them,” said Doumeki calmly. “After he died. They were in the library.” He eyed Watanuki’s still-disbelieving countenance. “I’ll show them to you, if you want to see them.”
“I-wh-no!” Watanuki’s face was suffused with a blazing glow, and he began to flail in earnest. “Why would I want-you great big-I can’t believe you’d even ask me that!”
“Wasn’t asking anything,” Doumeki returned with a shrug. “Just offering.”
“Well, don’t bother, okay?” Muttering to himself, the red lingering on his cheeks, Watanuki folded his arms across his chest and sent Doumeki various disapproving looks. He was still muttering, still blushing, and still glaring when the dream melted away like mist in the dawn.
***
Between dreams, Watanuki and Doumeki never mentioned their nightly conferences, not even to one another. It was as if the dreams were a completely different world-a separate reality that was untainted by the horrors of Watanuki’s past, the oddities of his present, and the uncertainties of his future. Odd though it seemed, Doumeki thought that Watanuki sometimes felt more real in the dreams than he did outside them, as if he wasn’t trying so hard to deny…well, everything he usually denied with unrelenting vigor. He was quieter, for one-in the dreams he only yelled at Doumeki half as much, and half as loud, as he did when awake.
There was also the fact that, to date, he hadn’t made a single meal for Doumeki in the dreams, an act that usually dictated half of their daily interactions. Without the food to script their conversations, without the dangers of rogue spirits hanging over their shoulders, Doumeki and Watanuki actually seemed to get along well enough-at least marginally better than they did awake. For instance, Doumeki would never have admitted his poetry hobby to anyone, much less Watanuki, under the normal circumstances, while Watanuki may or may not have revealed his cloudy remembrance of his mother. He was getting better at that lately, both in and out of the dreams; as if he was slowly growing to trust Doumeki more with his innermost thoughts, instead of guarding them viciously behind exaggerated gestures and shouting.
Doumeki didn’t know whether the dreams were affecting Watanuki’s behavior when awake, or if the way he acted in the dreams was a way for him to practice showing Doumeki his softer side without an audience (human or spirit) observing their every move. If the latter were true, it wouldn’t have surprised Doumeki a bit; he had a wary and healthy respect for Yuuko, and tried not to let anything she did shake his calm.
At any rate, the dreams remained an unspoken secret between the two of them, never brought up even when terrible things happened (usually to Watanuki) and Doumeki wound up sacrificing small pieces of himself to keep the boy alive. It was the status quo.
So Doumeki was justifiably taken aback when Watanuki indirectly acknowledged the dream-visits one day as they were walking back to Yuuko’s after school.
“I want to see it,” said Watanuki, for all the world as if he hadn’t just broken the silence between them with a total non sequitur.
Doumeki, however, was nothing if not accommodating to Watanuki’s mercurial personality. “Okay,” he agreed. “But not in public.”
Watanuki whipped his head around and shot a speaking glare at him. “I,” he said menacingly, “had better never find out what you meant by that.”
We’ll see, thought Doumeki, but he had enough self-preservation to keep that to himself, and merely shrugged acquiescently.
After another few moments of petulant silence, Watanuki apparently decided to try again.
“I want to see some of your poetry,” he announced to the air, deliberately staring off ahead without bothering to observe Doumeki’s reaction.
Doumeki blinked, staring at him. The status, he thought, was no longer quo. Watanuki had just upset the balance of their everyday lives with-as per his usual-nothing more than a whim and a word.
“Okay,” he agreed slowly, still keeping his gaze trained on the boy walking just slightly in front of him. After a moment, he said, “Now?”
Watanuki snorted and sent him a disparaging glance. “Of course not now, idiot. I have to work today. I’m not about to get punished for being late because of you.” He sniffed disdainfully and added, “We’ll do it later.”
“What?” was about the only thought Doumeki was capable of expressing in a coherent fashion.
Sighing impatiently, Watanuki snapped, “I said, you later, when we’re…you know.” He made a complicated flicking gesture with his wrist to exemplify the act of sharing a dream with your dubiously titled rival. “You can show it to me then.”
One of these days, Doumeki was going to have to sit down and explain the concept of the double entendre to Watanuki. Or maybe he could just have the idiot read some of his grandfather’s poems.
“Okay,” Doumeki said again, and tried to ignore the unfamiliar feeling in his heart that anyone less secure in his own masculinity would have termed ‘performance anxiety.’
“Good.” Watanuki nodded sharply and disappeared through the decrepit wooden gateposts.
***
“Well?” Watanuki folded his arms and looked doubtful.
Doumeki was experiencing some doubt himself. He doubted, for example, that he would get through this without looking like a complete fool. He doubted that what was about to happen would escape the notice of one dimension witch. He doubted that there was no meaning in the fact that he and Watanuki were wearing their school uniforms in the dream for the first time, and were standing beneath their school lunch tree looking like a couple about to confess their love to each other.
He really doubted the innocent coincidence of the sakura petals blowing gently in the breeze.
Doumeki sometimes wished hitsuzen would act its age and not like a giddy high school girl.
He took a deep breath and focused on the paper in his hand, on which his utter doom was spelled out-in his own handwriting, no less.
It had taken him the entire afternoon to decide which poems he should show Watanuki. The process was a lot more difficult than he’d thought it would be: he had to choose whether to bring just one poem or a few, and whether he should read it (them?) aloud or let Watanuki read for himself, and then he had to work out exactly how to bring the poem(s?) along with him. He’d settled in the end for three, and for falling asleep with them under his pillow. He’d felt rather stupid about the whole thing, and wasn’t sure whether or not to be relieved when the poems appeared in his hand when the dream began.
“Are you going to stand there and stare at it,” Watanuki complained, “because I can think of better things to do with my time.”
Entendres again. One day soon, Doumeki promised himself.
Watanuki scrutinized him carefully. “You aren’t actually nervous, are you?” he said, and the surprise and amusement in his tone was enough to make Doumeki grit his teeth and force out the words.
“Under the pale moon
I drown, surrounded by you.
Your voice calls me home.”
Silence fell. Doumeki couldn’t bring himself to look up. The only sound was of their mutual, measured breathing, though Doumeki could swear the sound of his heart was fast filling the empty space between them, until he heard a quiet noise like a sigh-
“Read another one,” said Watanuki softly.
Astonished at this calm acceptance and even encouragement, Doumeki blinked and nodded mutely.
“I wandered blindly,
Following a distant dream,
And came to your door.”
Another silence, another sigh.
“Another one.” The command was quiet but undeniable. Doumeki obeyed without question.
“There is no answer
Because there is no question.
There is only-”
He stopped himself, staring down at the page with consternation. He knew he’d written all three poems down in their entirety, but the last line of this one was incomplete. The last word was gone, as if he had simply stopped the poem there, and he couldn’t remember what it was. His brows drew together as he searched his memory for the missing word.
Watanuki watched him, aware that something was not right. He hesitated before asking, “What? There is only what?”
Doumeki looked up and met his eyes.
Truth. Time. Love. Life. You. Me. Us. This.
“Fate,” he said.
Watanuki blinked. The faintest tinge of red graced the bridge of his nose under his glasses.
“Oh,” he said, and shifted his gaze to the paper. “That’s-” He swallowed. “That’s-not bad.”
The great knot in Doumeki’s chest wound tighter and loosened at the same time. It was a very uncomfortable feeling.
“Yeah,” he said, and stared at the paper too, as if by looking at it he could make it-and the dream-fade away.
“I mean,” said Watanuki hurriedly, “I’m not a-an expert or anything, but I thought they sounded-well, uh-“ He floundered. “Not bad,” he finished helplessly, and the flush grew worse.
“Yeah,” said Doumeki again, just as helpless. “Okay.”
The awkwardness between them soared to dizzying heights as they stared at the poetry in Doumeki’s hand. It was a foreign contaminant to their usually easy discord; they always disagreed at varying levels of forcefulness and parted with mutual satisfaction. They never reached a semi-agreement with absolutely no idea what to say to one another. They never stood on opposite sides of an unnamed emotion wedged between them and pretended it wasn’t there. They never read poetry to each other and suddenly realized exactly what-who-the poems were about. This was new territory, ground they hadn’t yet broken, even in the arbitrary environment of the dreams.
“So,” said Watanuki, so quietly that Doumeki wouldn’t have heard him except that the entire world seemed to have gone silent in anticipation. “What’s it about? That last one.”
Doumeki looked at the paper again for a long moment. He folded it up neatly and held it out. Startled, Watanuki took it, but gave Doumeki a narrow frown.
“I’m not your handmaid,” he pointed out. “You can’t expect me to just carry all your-your-” He stopped, obviously struggling not to say the customary ‘useless trash.’ Instead, with an irritated sigh, he drew the paper closer to himself and arched an eyebrow.
“Well?”
Doumeki slipped his hands into his pockets and shrugged.
“The sun,” he said. “And the moon.”
He met Watanuki’s wide eyes.
“And…”
The dream faded before he could finish the sentence. When he woke in his bed, alone, and reached beneath his pillow, he wasn’t at all surprised to find nothing there. Nothing at all.
***
A/N: In this fic, I lay no claim to any of CLAMP's copyrighted stuff. Also, I don't own "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," in which the status is not quo.