[Fic] A Taste of Normality
Title: A Taste of Normality
Genre: Humour / Romance
Pairing: Watanuki/Doumeki
Rating: PG13 / T
Notes: Takes place a few months after “ Dreams and Realities”, though you could probably read it as a stand-alone, too. For this particular story, I'll have to give my eternal love and praise to my lovely betas, Beboots and Product Of A Sick Society, without whom I'd never have fixed this from its initial (terrible) draft.
Summary: For some people, “normality” is something that is ever-present and meant to be avoided at all costs. For Doumeki and Watanuki, it’s a rare treat to be enjoyed whenever it comes by.
A Taste of Normality
It was a very peaceful, very boring Sunday afternoon, or at least, as peaceful and boring as Watanuki’s Sunday afternoons ever were. He wasn’t very sure how things had got to be that way, but lately he had the feeling that nothing went quite according to his expectations.
See, in his mind, what a high school boy normally did on a Sunday afternoon was rest from the week’s efforts, maybe get together with some friends and go take a walk, or heck, maybe even catch up with homework. As it was, Watanuki didn’t know how he handled his homework situation -one of the inconveniences of only having active memories of activities related to Yuuko’s shop- but it seems that he somehow managed it during the week, so the homework possibility was off the list. Since he lived alone, he never got a chance to really rest, busy trying to catch up with his own home’s chores. And as for friends... the very few he had he saw every day anyway, so by the time Sunday came, he didn’t feel particularly inclined to get together with them, especially considering that he would be expected to cook for the whole group and that only meant more work for him. What he usually did was stay at home, catch up with the laundry and clean his few possessions in peace, without Yuuko ordering him around, or Mugetsu nearly strangling him with its loving ministrations, or being driven almost insane by Mokona’s stupid pranks, or by Maru and Moro’s less-than-helpful attempts at helping him.
That is to say, those are the things he would have wanted to do, but an unexpected factor had managed to worm its way into his otherwise peaceful and boring Sunday routine.
Watanuki grumbled and muttered to himself as he fiercely ironed his clothes, not bothering to wear an apron and headscarf since he was in his own home. How had he ever allowed himself to be tricked by destiny so as to accept the current order of things? How had he ever come to terms with the fact that life had tricked him in such an underhanded, mean and foul way, that he had come to accept that as normal?
Unable to hold his indignation in any longer, Watanuki finished folding his clothes, placed the iron firmly in its holder and turned to point and yell to his heart’s content at the figure sprawled across whatever free room there was on his impeccable floor, head propped up in one hand, the other flipping lazily through the pages of an unknown manga.
“If you were going to invade the privacy of my home every single frigging Sunday, you could at least help me clean up!”
Doumeki didn’t even shift his glance from the pages before he answered.
“You seem to be doing fine without my help.”
“That’s not the point! The polite thing would be to at least offer to help!”
“I don’t see the point if I’m not expected to follow through with that offer.”
“Well at least you could do something better than hog the only available room on the floor! I can’t even move around the place with your lazy ass sprawled all over my apartment!”
Doumeki looked pointedly to his side, where there was still plenty of room to move around and even to lie down... if you were very, very flexible. Watanuki chose to ignore this.
“Besides which... what gives you the right to come over to my home uninvited whenever you feel like it?”
“Can’t a boyfriend want to spend time with his girlfriend?”
“Aaargh! For the umpteenth time, I’m not your girlfriend! And you’re not my boyfriend, either!”
“But you cook bento for me everyday.”
“Yeah, but that’s because-!”
“And I walk you to and from school.”
“Yeah, but that’s-!”
“And we kiss each other every chance we get.”
“Yeah, but-!”
“And we have sex often.”
Watanuki was getting redder and angrier by the minute.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean...! I mean... I’m not a girl, damn it!”
“I know that.”
Doumeki was looking at him as if he was stupid. As somebody who was on the receiving end of the proof of that statement quite often, he knew that fact quite well. He had even raised himself slightly from the floor to be able to direct his condescending look at him more comfortably.
“Then you know I can’t be your girlfriend! It’s a matter of semantics, not to mention gender!”
“So that means you’re my boyfriend?”
“NO!”
“My lover?”
“NEVER!”
“My husband?”
“EVEN LESS!”
“My male wife, then.”
“ARE YOU STUPID?”
“My honey? My sweetheart? My darling?”
“YOU’RE ENJOYING THIS, YOU TWISTED BASTARD!”
Doumeki seemed pleased that he had reached that conclusion so fast.
“We’ll leave it at girlfriend, then.”
That said, he plopped back to his previously sprawled position and turned another page of his temporarily forgotten manga.
Watanuki felt suddenly drained of all energy. He knew that no matter what he said the bastard was not going to change his opinion. That didn’t mean that he wouldn’t try to drill some sense into the guy’s thick head the first chance he got, though. He wasn’t about to give up on his dignity so soon, even if he had been sleeping with the jerk on a regular basis for some time now and he practically spent every minute of his free time in the company of the infuriating bastard.
They were just friends. Yeah. Friends who walked to and from school together everyday. Who ate his home-made bento together at lunch. Who sometimes went out to eat alone together at some coffee shop or other -only because the bastard had a sweet tooth and because Himawari-chan never seemed to be able to go with them. That didn’t constitute it a date, or anything. Who sometimes kissed for no apparent reason even though they were Japanese. Who protected each other when they were sent on those stupidly dangerous missions Yuuko seemed so intent on dumping on them. Friends who sometimes slept with each other. That still didn’t make them... anything, damn it!
Watanuki took some moments to mourn the loss of his privacy and his sanity. Whatever had possessed him to invite the jerk to sleep over that night? It had been like inviting a vampire in. The jerk had apparently taken that as an invitation to permanently lodge his lazy ass over his pristine tatami mats, as if he owned the place, or something.
Had taken it as permission to “sleep over” as frequently as he damn pleased, too. It didn’t help, either, that he found himself sharing dreams with Doumeki more and more often as time went by, and he’d been sure that was one area in which a guy could have some privacy...
The only small consolation that Watanuki had was that he had at least been allowed to retain a fraction of his dignity, because the bastard, perverted and shameless as Watanuki knew him to be, was perfectly happy with their current... “sleeping arrangements”. It figures. Watanuki hadn’t been the one to grow up in a girl’s kimono after all.
Still, despite his most valiant efforts, it always ended up being Doumeki who was in control. It was Doumeki who decided when Watanuki got to move, Doumeki who set the pace, and god forbid Watanuki tried to slip out before Doumeki allowed him to. The guy’s strength may have resided primarily on his upper body, but he still managed to lock his legs around Watanuki’s waist with a grip a clamp would have been proud of.
Watanuki had tried to spare his decency (Doumeki’s or his own, he wasn’t sure) by going slow, taking his time and keeping their encounters as infrequent as he could, but Doumeki would have none of that. If anything, Doumeki proved to be as greedy when it came to sex as he was about food... which meant that he always wanted more, and he wasn’t shy about demanding variety. His requests on this field were almost as outrageous as they were in the culinary department.
Watanuki couldn’t help but feel slightly cheated. He was the one on top, wasn’t that supposed to mean that he was the one to call the shots?
But still, indignant or not, he still had to admit that Doumeki’s reactions were a great stroke to his ego. The golden-eyed teenager may not be great in the facial expressions department, and it would have been too optimistic of him to expect Doumeki to be able to express himself properly in the human language, but he still managed to get across the message that he was enjoying himself... a lot.
When all else failed, it was always good to know that there was at least one thing in Watanuki’s power that managed to make the bastard lose his cool.
Watanuki allowed that thought to cheer him up slightly before turning to the other guy again, with the fierce determination of a boxer re-entering the ring after the first round.
“What is that you’re reading, anyway?”
“Manga.”
Screw boxing, Watanuki had a brief but very intense desire to throttle Doumeki at these words. It was an old habit that was hard to break from. Unfortunately, a crushed windpipe doesn’t allow for much talking, so he reined in the impulse and asked, in as calm a tone of voice as he could, “I know it’s manga. What I mean is, where did you get it? I don’t have any lying around.”
Doumeki didn’t even bother looking at him or saying anything to convey just how irrelevant he thought that question was. The impulse to strangle him flickered briefly again but was promptly squashed.
“Yuuko lent it to me.”
Watanuki narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
“Have you been meeting with her behind my back?”
Doumeki looked at him, and despite not making any noticeable change in expression, Watanuki could have sworn that those golden eyes were smirking at him. Bastard.
“Jealous?”
“As if. She would probably eat your soul if you even tried anything funny. I’m just being healthily paranoid. I know what that woman is capable of.”
Relieved to have finally finished with the day’s chores and curious as to what had captured Doumeki’s attention like that, he plopped down in the scant free room next to the other boy and tried to read over his shoulder.
What he saw made him wrinkle his nose in disgust.
“Are those two men kissing?”
“Yes.” Another one of those looks that made something primal in Watanuki scream for blood. “Can’t you tell?”
“To tell you the truth, no. The flowers and all the shiny... things... kind of distracted me.”
Doumeki grunted in what could have been agreement or a “shut up and let me read.” Watanuki was getting better at understanding Doumeki Speech (a local dialect of the more universally known Moron language), but he hadn’t been able to get all the nuances yet.
Watanuki rested his chin on Doumeki’s shoulder and tried to follow the plot. This seemed to involve no females whatsoever, a romantic hexagon, a violent assault on the smaller of the guys from which the taller one rescued him, what seemed like a kiss every three pages, very shiny tears, hypocritical pillow talk, and lots and lots of bodily fluids. Watanuki had seen shapeless blobs of miasma that had oozed less, and that was kind of their job.
Doumeki turned a page, and Watanuki squinted. Tilted his head to the left. To the right. Gave up.
“That can’t be anatomically possible... or at least attainable without the aid of ropes, pulleys and temporal suspension of the laws of gravity.”
Another grunt, which Watanuki didn’t bother trying to translate this time around. It was encouraging the efforts Doumeki seemed to be putting into communication since they started being just-friends-damnit!, but sometimes Watanuki got tired of trying to decipher what he actually meant by what he said. Learning a foreign language was always hard.
Finally getting fed up by Doumeki’s choice of reading material, Watanuki reached over and tugged the offensive material out of his hands, throwing it quite unceremoniously over in the general direction of the trash can. He didn’t have the guts to actually throw away one of Yuuko’s manga (the thought of what the woman would ask for compensation alone made him shudder), but it still felt good to do that. Empowering, even.
With a firm push, Watanuki relocated the lazy lump of Doumeki so that he was lying down fully instead of leaning on his elbow, and plopped down himself, using Doumeki’s chest as a pillow.
There was silence for all of two minutes, then something that was nagging at a corner of his mind made Watanuki break the blessed silence and peace. So he was Doumeki’s girlfriend, huh? Two could play that game...
“You know... I always thought my girlfriend would be a cute, sweet and cheerful little thing that would make my day just by looking in my direction. The girlfriend I actually got turned out to be quite the opposite of all that. Oh, and she also happened to come with male bits.”
Watanuki shifted uncomfortably, trying to find a part of Doumeki’s chest that wasn’t so muscular. Damn guy had to practice so hard for archery that his muscles were practically rocks, huh? Watanuki was partly inclined to believe Doumeki did that just to annoy him.
“Admittedly, I could probably put up with the male bits thing if it wasn’t for the fact that she is also so flat-chested. A girlfriend so lacking in curves doesn’t make much of a pillow.”
Doumeki seemed to chew those words over in his mind before replying.
“I’m quite happy with the girlfriend I got.”
Watanuki felt his curiosity spike up.
“And why would that be?”
“My grandfather always advised me to find a girl that cooked well, was always energetic, was good with housework and that I felt I could protect. And I found you.”
Watanuki snorted.
“Well, yeah, but I’m not a girl, now am I?”
“Four out of five is not so bad.”
Watanuki rolled his eyes.
“That’s not really fair. At least you are getting an exceptionally good deal out of this. As for me, I can’t forget that I wound up with the most un-cute student in the school.”
“Your girlfriend is the most popular in the entire school.”
“Yeah, the most popular guy in the entire school.”
“Minor details.”
Watanuki actually chuckled at that, and felt Doumeki begin to play absent-mindedly with his hair.
He allowed himself to enjoy it for almost a minute before talking again, in a lazy voice.
“At least I won’t ever have to worry about pregnancy scares.”
He felt Doumeki suck in a breath at that and stop playing with his hair, and it took him a couple of seconds of the silence that followed to process what he had just said.
Ever. That had been one word too many in that sentence, considering their current state of affairs. He felt his face go hot. He tensed, waiting... but then Doumeki just relaxed again and resumed playing with his hair.
“I wouldn’t be so sure.”
“And why not, pray tell? In case you didn’t notice, neither of us is equipped for such a thing.”
Doumeki didn’t answer immediately, which made a prickle of dread travel through Watanuki’s spine. Doumeki was taking too long to answer to what was obviously only a barb...
“A couple of years ago, I wasn’t even sure that ayakashi existed. Now I can see them as clearly as I see people, and I spend much of my time actively driving them away. Just a few months ago, I thought dreams were private things, and now I find myself sharing somebody else’s dreams almost every night.”
Watanuki didn’t answer, instead concentrated on listening. It was true that Doumeki was talking more than he used to, but it was still rare when he chose to talk so much. That deserved his attention, even if the topic was one that still brought Watanuki shame and a considerable amount of guilt when it reminded him how their current state of affairs had begun.
“A while back, I thought I would never be able to feel comfortable in the company of people. But now I’ve got you.”
Watanuki turned his face to look at Doumeki’s eyes at that, at a loss for words, not feeling sure what to make of the guy’s words. Was he horsing around? He couldn’t be serious... could he?
But just then, the moment was lost when Doumeki smirked and added,
“If so many things are different from what I expected not so long ago, who’s to say we won’t find a way to get you pregnant yet?”
No words were good enough to describe Watanuki’s horror and indignation at those words. It was back to business after that.
“Bastard! Why would I be the one to get pregnant? In case you haven’t noticed, it isn’t me playing the role of the girl every time we do the dirty deed!”
“Oh, but who is the one that all those weird things keep happening to? I’d say your chances of getting pregnant are higher than mine.”
“That does it, you jerk!”
A definite advantage of having moved their relationship to a physical plane was that now Watanuki was actually allowed to strangle the infuriating bastard whenever he pissed him off too much, or at least wrestle him out of his cool demeanour, which was exactly what the offended boy did immediately following those words.
Truth be told, there wasn’t much room to wrestle properly, and a few thing were knocked over in the guys’ mock fight, some of them acquiring irreparable damage in the process. But at the moment, neither of them could care less, since amusement eventually won over righteous anger, and soon they were laughing as hard as they could and intent on pinning the other to the floor for more than three seconds at a time, sometimes resorting to quite dirty tactics to achieve that.
A while later, though, their movements slowed, their laughter subsided and they stopped to regain their breath, clothes dishevelled, faces red because of the effort, stomachs hurting from laughing so hard and feeling completely at peace with the world.
Watanuki had ended straddling Doumeki’s hips, his hands on the other guy’s shoulders, feeling victorious in having finally managed to pin the other guy to the floor, even when he was perfectly aware that he had only been able to do it because the slightly-taller-but-considerably-stronger teenager had allowed him to.
He wasn’t about to complain though, and, still trying to shake off the last mirthful chuckles, he bent forward to kiss Doumeki’s slightly smiling lips. Despite both of them having spiritual powers, nothing supernatural happened when their lips met. There was no sudden rush of power save for the one Watanuki felt for being able to determine how deep and how hard the kiss went, no tingling sensation running up his spine save for the normal one any healthy teenager would feel kissing the object of his desires, no mysterious insights into the future save for some general idea of what they would end up doing on the floor if things progressed steadily from there.
But, as he took his time exploring Doumeki’s mouth, Watanuki thought that it didn’t matter, not to him, anyway. Neither of them had chosen to be born with their powers, but they had chosen to be there, together. As far as they were concerned, that was the only choice that mattered.
Whatever was waiting for them outside those four walls, whatever the future held in store for them, as long as they were there together everything would be alright. There was a reason that was the most powerful charm in the world, and it had nothing to do with actual magic.
Watanuki pulled out of the long, tender and not-yet-very-passionate kiss, and pressed his forehead against Doumeki’s, still breathing a bit hard from their previous wrestling match.
“Hey, Doumeki?”
“Mh?”
Doumeki seemed a bit distracted staring down the open collar of his shirt. As if there was anything there worth staring at, really...
“What do you think Yuuko-san was trying to tell us, giving you those manga to read?”
Doumeki seemed to consider this for a second.
“That we’re boring?”
Watanuki chuckled at this, and moved lower to nip playfully at Doumeki’s neck.
“That sounds like Yuuko-san, alright. She would expect us to do something more interesting than what we already do.”
“Boring sounds fine to me, though.”
Watanuki smiled against Doumeki’s skin, already slipping his hands under the fabric of Doumeki’s shirt, caressing, teasing, travelling slowly upwards, and he felt the other boy’s hands begin to do the same at his back.
“I’m glad that we finally agree on something. I, for one, already have enough excitement in my life to last me several lifetimes.”
Not much was said after that, but not much needed to be said, either.
It was a very peaceful, very boring Sunday afternoon, after all, and both boys felt perfectly happy to keep it that way.
The end
This one-shot was actually started months ago, when chapter four of "Dreams and Realities" was giving me problems and I set out to write something as a means to overcome writer’s block. I ended up growing fond of what came out, though it had serious problems with characterization.
More than half a year later and after at least three major rewritings, this thing’s finally good enough to face the public... or rather, I can no longer bear to modify it further, even if I'm not entirely happy with how it is now. If I have to modify it one more time, I swear I’m going to scream. That’s why I’m uploading it now instead of, say, waiting another month to see if I can come up with yet another way to improve it. ^^U
If you were wondering, the main problem with my story was Doumeki. He was completely out of character, to the point that every single one of his lines had to be rewritten.
You see, what I tried to do here is show how being in a relationship would change them... but I went too far. They’d ended up being unrecognizable. It took a lot of effort to correct that, I’ll tell you. -_-
Glossary and cultural notes:
Tatami mats: a traditional type of Japanese flooring, with the core made of rice straw, compressed wood chip boards or styrofoam and a cover of woven soft rush straw. Tatami mats come in uniform sizes, so they’re often used as a measure for how roomy an apartment or a house is.
Genre: Humour / Romance
Pairing: Watanuki/Doumeki
Rating: PG13 / T
Notes: Takes place a few months after “ Dreams and Realities”, though you could probably read it as a stand-alone, too. For this particular story, I'll have to give my eternal love and praise to my lovely betas, Beboots and Product Of A Sick Society, without whom I'd never have fixed this from its initial (terrible) draft.
Summary: For some people, “normality” is something that is ever-present and meant to be avoided at all costs. For Doumeki and Watanuki, it’s a rare treat to be enjoyed whenever it comes by.
A Taste of Normality
It was a very peaceful, very boring Sunday afternoon, or at least, as peaceful and boring as Watanuki’s Sunday afternoons ever were. He wasn’t very sure how things had got to be that way, but lately he had the feeling that nothing went quite according to his expectations.
See, in his mind, what a high school boy normally did on a Sunday afternoon was rest from the week’s efforts, maybe get together with some friends and go take a walk, or heck, maybe even catch up with homework. As it was, Watanuki didn’t know how he handled his homework situation -one of the inconveniences of only having active memories of activities related to Yuuko’s shop- but it seems that he somehow managed it during the week, so the homework possibility was off the list. Since he lived alone, he never got a chance to really rest, busy trying to catch up with his own home’s chores. And as for friends... the very few he had he saw every day anyway, so by the time Sunday came, he didn’t feel particularly inclined to get together with them, especially considering that he would be expected to cook for the whole group and that only meant more work for him. What he usually did was stay at home, catch up with the laundry and clean his few possessions in peace, without Yuuko ordering him around, or Mugetsu nearly strangling him with its loving ministrations, or being driven almost insane by Mokona’s stupid pranks, or by Maru and Moro’s less-than-helpful attempts at helping him.
That is to say, those are the things he would have wanted to do, but an unexpected factor had managed to worm its way into his otherwise peaceful and boring Sunday routine.
Watanuki grumbled and muttered to himself as he fiercely ironed his clothes, not bothering to wear an apron and headscarf since he was in his own home. How had he ever allowed himself to be tricked by destiny so as to accept the current order of things? How had he ever come to terms with the fact that life had tricked him in such an underhanded, mean and foul way, that he had come to accept that as normal?
Unable to hold his indignation in any longer, Watanuki finished folding his clothes, placed the iron firmly in its holder and turned to point and yell to his heart’s content at the figure sprawled across whatever free room there was on his impeccable floor, head propped up in one hand, the other flipping lazily through the pages of an unknown manga.
“If you were going to invade the privacy of my home every single frigging Sunday, you could at least help me clean up!”
Doumeki didn’t even shift his glance from the pages before he answered.
“You seem to be doing fine without my help.”
“That’s not the point! The polite thing would be to at least offer to help!”
“I don’t see the point if I’m not expected to follow through with that offer.”
“Well at least you could do something better than hog the only available room on the floor! I can’t even move around the place with your lazy ass sprawled all over my apartment!”
Doumeki looked pointedly to his side, where there was still plenty of room to move around and even to lie down... if you were very, very flexible. Watanuki chose to ignore this.
“Besides which... what gives you the right to come over to my home uninvited whenever you feel like it?”
“Can’t a boyfriend want to spend time with his girlfriend?”
“Aaargh! For the umpteenth time, I’m not your girlfriend! And you’re not my boyfriend, either!”
“But you cook bento for me everyday.”
“Yeah, but that’s because-!”
“And I walk you to and from school.”
“Yeah, but that’s-!”
“And we kiss each other every chance we get.”
“Yeah, but-!”
“And we have sex often.”
Watanuki was getting redder and angrier by the minute.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean...! I mean... I’m not a girl, damn it!”
“I know that.”
Doumeki was looking at him as if he was stupid. As somebody who was on the receiving end of the proof of that statement quite often, he knew that fact quite well. He had even raised himself slightly from the floor to be able to direct his condescending look at him more comfortably.
“Then you know I can’t be your girlfriend! It’s a matter of semantics, not to mention gender!”
“So that means you’re my boyfriend?”
“NO!”
“My lover?”
“NEVER!”
“My husband?”
“EVEN LESS!”
“My male wife, then.”
“ARE YOU STUPID?”
“My honey? My sweetheart? My darling?”
“YOU’RE ENJOYING THIS, YOU TWISTED BASTARD!”
Doumeki seemed pleased that he had reached that conclusion so fast.
“We’ll leave it at girlfriend, then.”
That said, he plopped back to his previously sprawled position and turned another page of his temporarily forgotten manga.
Watanuki felt suddenly drained of all energy. He knew that no matter what he said the bastard was not going to change his opinion. That didn’t mean that he wouldn’t try to drill some sense into the guy’s thick head the first chance he got, though. He wasn’t about to give up on his dignity so soon, even if he had been sleeping with the jerk on a regular basis for some time now and he practically spent every minute of his free time in the company of the infuriating bastard.
They were just friends. Yeah. Friends who walked to and from school together everyday. Who ate his home-made bento together at lunch. Who sometimes went out to eat alone together at some coffee shop or other -only because the bastard had a sweet tooth and because Himawari-chan never seemed to be able to go with them. That didn’t constitute it a date, or anything. Who sometimes kissed for no apparent reason even though they were Japanese. Who protected each other when they were sent on those stupidly dangerous missions Yuuko seemed so intent on dumping on them. Friends who sometimes slept with each other. That still didn’t make them... anything, damn it!
Watanuki took some moments to mourn the loss of his privacy and his sanity. Whatever had possessed him to invite the jerk to sleep over that night? It had been like inviting a vampire in. The jerk had apparently taken that as an invitation to permanently lodge his lazy ass over his pristine tatami mats, as if he owned the place, or something.
Had taken it as permission to “sleep over” as frequently as he damn pleased, too. It didn’t help, either, that he found himself sharing dreams with Doumeki more and more often as time went by, and he’d been sure that was one area in which a guy could have some privacy...
The only small consolation that Watanuki had was that he had at least been allowed to retain a fraction of his dignity, because the bastard, perverted and shameless as Watanuki knew him to be, was perfectly happy with their current... “sleeping arrangements”. It figures. Watanuki hadn’t been the one to grow up in a girl’s kimono after all.
Still, despite his most valiant efforts, it always ended up being Doumeki who was in control. It was Doumeki who decided when Watanuki got to move, Doumeki who set the pace, and god forbid Watanuki tried to slip out before Doumeki allowed him to. The guy’s strength may have resided primarily on his upper body, but he still managed to lock his legs around Watanuki’s waist with a grip a clamp would have been proud of.
Watanuki had tried to spare his decency (Doumeki’s or his own, he wasn’t sure) by going slow, taking his time and keeping their encounters as infrequent as he could, but Doumeki would have none of that. If anything, Doumeki proved to be as greedy when it came to sex as he was about food... which meant that he always wanted more, and he wasn’t shy about demanding variety. His requests on this field were almost as outrageous as they were in the culinary department.
Watanuki couldn’t help but feel slightly cheated. He was the one on top, wasn’t that supposed to mean that he was the one to call the shots?
But still, indignant or not, he still had to admit that Doumeki’s reactions were a great stroke to his ego. The golden-eyed teenager may not be great in the facial expressions department, and it would have been too optimistic of him to expect Doumeki to be able to express himself properly in the human language, but he still managed to get across the message that he was enjoying himself... a lot.
When all else failed, it was always good to know that there was at least one thing in Watanuki’s power that managed to make the bastard lose his cool.
Watanuki allowed that thought to cheer him up slightly before turning to the other guy again, with the fierce determination of a boxer re-entering the ring after the first round.
“What is that you’re reading, anyway?”
“Manga.”
Screw boxing, Watanuki had a brief but very intense desire to throttle Doumeki at these words. It was an old habit that was hard to break from. Unfortunately, a crushed windpipe doesn’t allow for much talking, so he reined in the impulse and asked, in as calm a tone of voice as he could, “I know it’s manga. What I mean is, where did you get it? I don’t have any lying around.”
Doumeki didn’t even bother looking at him or saying anything to convey just how irrelevant he thought that question was. The impulse to strangle him flickered briefly again but was promptly squashed.
“Yuuko lent it to me.”
Watanuki narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
“Have you been meeting with her behind my back?”
Doumeki looked at him, and despite not making any noticeable change in expression, Watanuki could have sworn that those golden eyes were smirking at him. Bastard.
“Jealous?”
“As if. She would probably eat your soul if you even tried anything funny. I’m just being healthily paranoid. I know what that woman is capable of.”
Relieved to have finally finished with the day’s chores and curious as to what had captured Doumeki’s attention like that, he plopped down in the scant free room next to the other boy and tried to read over his shoulder.
What he saw made him wrinkle his nose in disgust.
“Are those two men kissing?”
“Yes.” Another one of those looks that made something primal in Watanuki scream for blood. “Can’t you tell?”
“To tell you the truth, no. The flowers and all the shiny... things... kind of distracted me.”
Doumeki grunted in what could have been agreement or a “shut up and let me read.” Watanuki was getting better at understanding Doumeki Speech (a local dialect of the more universally known Moron language), but he hadn’t been able to get all the nuances yet.
Watanuki rested his chin on Doumeki’s shoulder and tried to follow the plot. This seemed to involve no females whatsoever, a romantic hexagon, a violent assault on the smaller of the guys from which the taller one rescued him, what seemed like a kiss every three pages, very shiny tears, hypocritical pillow talk, and lots and lots of bodily fluids. Watanuki had seen shapeless blobs of miasma that had oozed less, and that was kind of their job.
Doumeki turned a page, and Watanuki squinted. Tilted his head to the left. To the right. Gave up.
“That can’t be anatomically possible... or at least attainable without the aid of ropes, pulleys and temporal suspension of the laws of gravity.”
Another grunt, which Watanuki didn’t bother trying to translate this time around. It was encouraging the efforts Doumeki seemed to be putting into communication since they started being just-friends-damnit!, but sometimes Watanuki got tired of trying to decipher what he actually meant by what he said. Learning a foreign language was always hard.
Finally getting fed up by Doumeki’s choice of reading material, Watanuki reached over and tugged the offensive material out of his hands, throwing it quite unceremoniously over in the general direction of the trash can. He didn’t have the guts to actually throw away one of Yuuko’s manga (the thought of what the woman would ask for compensation alone made him shudder), but it still felt good to do that. Empowering, even.
With a firm push, Watanuki relocated the lazy lump of Doumeki so that he was lying down fully instead of leaning on his elbow, and plopped down himself, using Doumeki’s chest as a pillow.
There was silence for all of two minutes, then something that was nagging at a corner of his mind made Watanuki break the blessed silence and peace. So he was Doumeki’s girlfriend, huh? Two could play that game...
“You know... I always thought my girlfriend would be a cute, sweet and cheerful little thing that would make my day just by looking in my direction. The girlfriend I actually got turned out to be quite the opposite of all that. Oh, and she also happened to come with male bits.”
Watanuki shifted uncomfortably, trying to find a part of Doumeki’s chest that wasn’t so muscular. Damn guy had to practice so hard for archery that his muscles were practically rocks, huh? Watanuki was partly inclined to believe Doumeki did that just to annoy him.
“Admittedly, I could probably put up with the male bits thing if it wasn’t for the fact that she is also so flat-chested. A girlfriend so lacking in curves doesn’t make much of a pillow.”
Doumeki seemed to chew those words over in his mind before replying.
“I’m quite happy with the girlfriend I got.”
Watanuki felt his curiosity spike up.
“And why would that be?”
“My grandfather always advised me to find a girl that cooked well, was always energetic, was good with housework and that I felt I could protect. And I found you.”
Watanuki snorted.
“Well, yeah, but I’m not a girl, now am I?”
“Four out of five is not so bad.”
Watanuki rolled his eyes.
“That’s not really fair. At least you are getting an exceptionally good deal out of this. As for me, I can’t forget that I wound up with the most un-cute student in the school.”
“Your girlfriend is the most popular in the entire school.”
“Yeah, the most popular guy in the entire school.”
“Minor details.”
Watanuki actually chuckled at that, and felt Doumeki begin to play absent-mindedly with his hair.
He allowed himself to enjoy it for almost a minute before talking again, in a lazy voice.
“At least I won’t ever have to worry about pregnancy scares.”
He felt Doumeki suck in a breath at that and stop playing with his hair, and it took him a couple of seconds of the silence that followed to process what he had just said.
Ever. That had been one word too many in that sentence, considering their current state of affairs. He felt his face go hot. He tensed, waiting... but then Doumeki just relaxed again and resumed playing with his hair.
“I wouldn’t be so sure.”
“And why not, pray tell? In case you didn’t notice, neither of us is equipped for such a thing.”
Doumeki didn’t answer immediately, which made a prickle of dread travel through Watanuki’s spine. Doumeki was taking too long to answer to what was obviously only a barb...
“A couple of years ago, I wasn’t even sure that ayakashi existed. Now I can see them as clearly as I see people, and I spend much of my time actively driving them away. Just a few months ago, I thought dreams were private things, and now I find myself sharing somebody else’s dreams almost every night.”
Watanuki didn’t answer, instead concentrated on listening. It was true that Doumeki was talking more than he used to, but it was still rare when he chose to talk so much. That deserved his attention, even if the topic was one that still brought Watanuki shame and a considerable amount of guilt when it reminded him how their current state of affairs had begun.
“A while back, I thought I would never be able to feel comfortable in the company of people. But now I’ve got you.”
Watanuki turned his face to look at Doumeki’s eyes at that, at a loss for words, not feeling sure what to make of the guy’s words. Was he horsing around? He couldn’t be serious... could he?
But just then, the moment was lost when Doumeki smirked and added,
“If so many things are different from what I expected not so long ago, who’s to say we won’t find a way to get you pregnant yet?”
No words were good enough to describe Watanuki’s horror and indignation at those words. It was back to business after that.
“Bastard! Why would I be the one to get pregnant? In case you haven’t noticed, it isn’t me playing the role of the girl every time we do the dirty deed!”
“Oh, but who is the one that all those weird things keep happening to? I’d say your chances of getting pregnant are higher than mine.”
“That does it, you jerk!”
A definite advantage of having moved their relationship to a physical plane was that now Watanuki was actually allowed to strangle the infuriating bastard whenever he pissed him off too much, or at least wrestle him out of his cool demeanour, which was exactly what the offended boy did immediately following those words.
Truth be told, there wasn’t much room to wrestle properly, and a few thing were knocked over in the guys’ mock fight, some of them acquiring irreparable damage in the process. But at the moment, neither of them could care less, since amusement eventually won over righteous anger, and soon they were laughing as hard as they could and intent on pinning the other to the floor for more than three seconds at a time, sometimes resorting to quite dirty tactics to achieve that.
A while later, though, their movements slowed, their laughter subsided and they stopped to regain their breath, clothes dishevelled, faces red because of the effort, stomachs hurting from laughing so hard and feeling completely at peace with the world.
Watanuki had ended straddling Doumeki’s hips, his hands on the other guy’s shoulders, feeling victorious in having finally managed to pin the other guy to the floor, even when he was perfectly aware that he had only been able to do it because the slightly-taller-but-considerably-stronger teenager had allowed him to.
He wasn’t about to complain though, and, still trying to shake off the last mirthful chuckles, he bent forward to kiss Doumeki’s slightly smiling lips. Despite both of them having spiritual powers, nothing supernatural happened when their lips met. There was no sudden rush of power save for the one Watanuki felt for being able to determine how deep and how hard the kiss went, no tingling sensation running up his spine save for the normal one any healthy teenager would feel kissing the object of his desires, no mysterious insights into the future save for some general idea of what they would end up doing on the floor if things progressed steadily from there.
But, as he took his time exploring Doumeki’s mouth, Watanuki thought that it didn’t matter, not to him, anyway. Neither of them had chosen to be born with their powers, but they had chosen to be there, together. As far as they were concerned, that was the only choice that mattered.
Whatever was waiting for them outside those four walls, whatever the future held in store for them, as long as they were there together everything would be alright. There was a reason that was the most powerful charm in the world, and it had nothing to do with actual magic.
Watanuki pulled out of the long, tender and not-yet-very-passionate kiss, and pressed his forehead against Doumeki’s, still breathing a bit hard from their previous wrestling match.
“Hey, Doumeki?”
“Mh?”
Doumeki seemed a bit distracted staring down the open collar of his shirt. As if there was anything there worth staring at, really...
“What do you think Yuuko-san was trying to tell us, giving you those manga to read?”
Doumeki seemed to consider this for a second.
“That we’re boring?”
Watanuki chuckled at this, and moved lower to nip playfully at Doumeki’s neck.
“That sounds like Yuuko-san, alright. She would expect us to do something more interesting than what we already do.”
“Boring sounds fine to me, though.”
Watanuki smiled against Doumeki’s skin, already slipping his hands under the fabric of Doumeki’s shirt, caressing, teasing, travelling slowly upwards, and he felt the other boy’s hands begin to do the same at his back.
“I’m glad that we finally agree on something. I, for one, already have enough excitement in my life to last me several lifetimes.”
Not much was said after that, but not much needed to be said, either.
It was a very peaceful, very boring Sunday afternoon, after all, and both boys felt perfectly happy to keep it that way.
The end
This one-shot was actually started months ago, when chapter four of "Dreams and Realities" was giving me problems and I set out to write something as a means to overcome writer’s block. I ended up growing fond of what came out, though it had serious problems with characterization.
More than half a year later and after at least three major rewritings, this thing’s finally good enough to face the public... or rather, I can no longer bear to modify it further, even if I'm not entirely happy with how it is now. If I have to modify it one more time, I swear I’m going to scream. That’s why I’m uploading it now instead of, say, waiting another month to see if I can come up with yet another way to improve it. ^^U
If you were wondering, the main problem with my story was Doumeki. He was completely out of character, to the point that every single one of his lines had to be rewritten.
You see, what I tried to do here is show how being in a relationship would change them... but I went too far. They’d ended up being unrecognizable. It took a lot of effort to correct that, I’ll tell you. -_-
Glossary and cultural notes:
Tatami mats: a traditional type of Japanese flooring, with the core made of rice straw, compressed wood chip boards or styrofoam and a cover of woven soft rush straw. Tatami mats come in uniform sizes, so they’re often used as a measure for how roomy an apartment or a house is.