[Fic] Dreams and Realities, chapter four
TITLE: Dreams and Realities, chapter four (of four)
GENRE: Humour / Romance
RATING: PG15 / T
DISCLAIMER: xXxholic belongs the four wonderful Osakan women that go by the collective name of "CLAMP", and some other companies and organizations that claim ownership of their babies. Watanuki and Doumeki are not mine, never will be, and I promise to give them back when I'm done playing with them.
STATUS: Complete
NOTES: that's right, people! this is the last chapter! Once again, many thanks to my wonderful betas Beboots and Product of a Sick Society for their invaluable help.
SUMMARY: Watanuki was used to dreaming about strange things. He was even used to dreaming about strange people. What he was not used to, was dreaming about him in that way... and pulling that dream into reality.
Watanuki looked around for the first time since the ayakashi attacked, and he was surprised to find that they were indeed back in what he thought of as reality.
There they were, just a few yards from the entrance to Yuuko’s shop, him sitting on the dirty pavement, Doumeki standing next to him, looming over him like a golden-eyed lamppost.
It was dark out, darker than it had been when he left work, and Watanuki wondered absently how long it had been since then. Somehow he wasn’t surprised that time had seemed to run at different speeds inside and outside his nightmare: that seemed to often be the case with these things. He was much more concerned trying to drive out of his mind the recollections of said nightmare, which was proving to be a wasted effort, as everything seemed to remind him of what had happened during it and its possible consequences on real life.
It being an early summer night, the air should have felt pleasantly warm, but instead it felt uncomfortably hot against his clammy skin. He was still shivering slightly from residual fear and panic as well as the ayakashi’s cold, and it felt like it would be a while before his stomach stopped trying to crawl out of his belly button. At least now he had some control on his breathing back and he was no longer gasping for air in between sobs.
Silently he took the hand Doumeki had extended to help him to his feet, and noticed on contact how cold his own hand was. It reminded him forcibly that the events that had transpired in his nightmare would have shown their consequences on real life. And such terrible consequences they would be... Watanuki shook his head slightly in an attempt to disengage those thoughts from his mind.
The touch of Doumeki’s hand in his felt very pleasantly warm, for the few seconds it lasted. If he had been in any condition to think rationally, it probably would have freaked him out that he found it so pleasant to have his hand in Doumeki’s, but he was still trying to come to terms with everything that had happened that evening, so he let it slide. Resolved not to dwell in the sensation even if his hand felt strangely empty once Doumeki let it go, he asked the only obvious thing that came to mind.
“How long have we been back?” he said quietly.
He avoided looking at Doumeki when he asked, instead taking particular care of brushing his clothes clean of dust, noticing with distaste that the front of his shirt was wet with tears and snot. This was precisely why he didn’t like to cry. He very desperately tried not to think that Doumeki had been watching through it all.
“Since you started crying.”
No such luck.
Watanuki winced at those words, his instinct to lash at Doumeki only barely suppressed by the fact that he didn’t seem to be saying them to make fun of him, but rather was stating a fact, as if there was nothing wrong in seeing the person that had almost got you killed start wailing like a baby, mumbling nonsense about not wanting you to disappear.
It was eerily quiet all around them, and Watanuki found himself wishing the cicadas would hurry up and start with their yearly summer racket, even though he knew he would be cursing that same racket a couple of months from then. At that moment he would have gladly put up with their chirping, if only it served the purpose of breaking the tension and distracting him from his guilt. He started looking around for their things, just to give himself something to do rather than because he really cared at that moment, but he could only find the thermos flask, now empty of tea, in Doumeki’s hands.
Doumeki, noticing where his eyes had strayed, offered as means of explanation, “We left the other things in the dream. I was only holding onto this when we came back.”
Despite his confusion, Watanuki growled under his breath, feeling some of his energy return in the familiar form of irritation, not directed at Doumeki, for once.
“Wonderful. The dish that held the fish was Yuuko’s,” he mourned, grouchily, “knowing her, it was obscenely expensive and she’ll add the cost of it to my debt.”
Without a word, he retrieved the thermos flask from Doumeki and took it into the shop before it could come to any harm, mentally grateful that Doumeki didn’t follow.
He was half-expecting to find Yuuko leering at him from the entrance, waiting for him and ready to mentally harass him for the recent events. He was surprised to find he was disappointed that she wasn’t. In fact, the shop was perfectly quiet, which was somewhat understandable, considering that it had been several hours since he left the shop, even if to him it had felt like half an hour, at most. A quick search of the place found Yuuko right where he had left her, a tangle of limbs and sheets that would probably take her a while to disentangle from in the morning. Mokona was asleep at her pillow, drooling all over the place, and he couldn’t help but find the scene cute, even if she was snoring rather unattractively and the place stank of the drunkards. He half-suspected Yuuko only lit incense to cover the smell of alcohol.
Watanuki carefully closed the sliding door of her bedroom with a sigh. It pained him to admit that he would have liked to have had her awake, tonight. Embarrassing as it would be, there were some things he wanted to ask her, things he needed to know.
There was only one other person who could provide him with answers to his questions, and he wasn’t looking forward to asking him for them.
He turned to walk away from her bedroom and stopped mid-motion, a thought suddenly springing to life in his mind. Could it be that Yuuko had done this on purpose? She rarely, if ever, drank enough to pass out -it took way too many bottles- and he couldn’t remember a time when she had failed to be there for him -drunk or not- after he had been in danger. She always seemed to have other reasons to show up, but the fact remained that she had always been there to answer his questions, or at least to tease him with half-answers that he wouldn’t understand until much later. Could she actually be doing this to force him to talk to Doumeki?
He wouldn’t put it past her. Yuuko knew him well enough to know that he would try to avoid talking to the guy about something as important as what had happened tonight, even if the alternative meant increasing his debt and the time he would have to work for her.
He considered busying himself with chores or even staying the night, but discarded the idea almost as soon as it had appeared. He would have bet his life that Doumeki was waiting for him outside, and that he would still be there when he came out, no matter how many hours later that was. He had done it once, under different circumstances, and Watanuki didn’t doubt he’d do it again. Why he was so sure he would do it tonight, of all nights, he didn’t know. He was beginning to scare himself. Was he starting to understand the guy?
Pausing only to wash his face and comb his hair in an attempt to regain whatever was left of his dignity, he took off.
He found Doumeki as soon as he crossed the gates, waiting for him, looking as calm and composed as ever.
Without a word, Watanuki started walking towards his apartment, and he wasn’t surprised in the least when he heard the footsteps that indicated the golden-eyed teenager was planning to walk him home.
He didn’t say anything for most of the way, and Doumeki didn’t seem to feel the need to press him to do so. Watanuki kept his distance, walking a few paces ahead of Doumeki, and he knew it was obvious he was avoiding the guy, but he also knew he wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long. He was so highly strung that every little shadow made him jump, even though he knew that there wasn’t anything to fear as long as Doumeki kept near him. With a pang, he couldn’t help but wonder why the obtuse guy would still stay with him, when the night’s events had proved that it was Doumeki who had something to fear as long as they were together.
They were already less than two blocks away from his apartment when he decided to ask the most prominent of the questions that were crowding his mind at the moment. He did so in his best haughty tone of voice, trying to convince himself that he wasn’t really interested in the answer.
“What was so special about that salt?”
Doumeki didn’t seem surprised by the abrupt question, and answered without missing a beat, almost as if he had been waiting for that question to arise.
“It was purified sea salt.”
“That can’t be it,” he snapped, without waiting to see if Doumeki would add more. “I’ve tried using those temple salts before! They never worked as well as yours did.”
“It wasn’t mine.”
Watanuki felt irritated that Doumeki would concentrate on the least important part of what he had said, but the need to know was bigger than the need to scream, so he just kept the conversation going.
“Was it Haruka-san’s? His stuff always seems to work better than normal.”
“No. It was yours.”
The blue-and-golden eyed teenager stared blankly ahead as he tried to process this information. The answer was so strange that Watanuki stopped walking and rounded rather ferociously on Doumeki.
“What do you mean, it was mine? I’d never even seen that horrendous bag you were carrying it with!”
“It was yours from the moment you touched it.”
Watanuki groaned, burying his face in his hands. This was exactly why he didn’t want to get his answers from Doumeki.
“Would you care to explain so I can understand, instead of just spewing random bits of information vaguely related to what I’m asking?”
Doumeki seemed to consider this for a moment, and then began to talk again.
“I’ve been studying, since.” He pointed towards his own right eye at this. “In my grandfather’s library. A couple of weeks ago, I found out how to purify salt so that it would only work if it was used by a specific person.”
Watanuki was puzzled.
“Why would anybody want to do that? Isn’t it better if you protect as many people as you can?”
“The more restricted the conditions, the more effective the magic when those conditions are met. It took me a while to figure out how to do it, but I managed to make it so that it would have your signature. You only had to touch the salt for it to start working.”
Watanuki considered this, frowning.
“Then why were you carrying it around?”
Doumeki didn’t give any notion that he found this question, or the answer, redundant. He simply looked back towards Watanuki and answered, his low voice perfectly audible even though they were standing nearly six feet apart from each other.
“To give it to you. Only, I never got the chance.”
And now the entire contents of the bag were lying forgotten inside a nightmare he had no intentions of visiting again.
It was this that struck a nerve within Watanuki. Only a small amount of the salt was necessary to protect him from ayakashi, yet the big moron had prepared enough to keep him protected from the entire population of the demon world.
It was just one of those simple, unasked for gestures the stupid idiot kept having towards him. Watanuki didn’t know what the process of making that salt had involved, but he was sure it would have been long, boring and exhausting, as purifying anything took quite a lot out of the guy. He knew because even when he didn’t say anything about it, Doumeki always looked tired and ate more after he had protected him from a particularly powerful spirit. Making that insanely huge amount of purified salt must have drained him of quite a bit of his powers. Was that why he had been unable to protect himself when the ayakashi had attacked?
Watanuki felt as if a hand had gripped his insides and was squeezing them as hard as it could when he thought about it. It wasn’t just guilt that caused this, but he was not prepared to consider those other, uncharted territories his emotions were visiting.
However, even if he didn’t want to pay attention to them, they were still strong enough to drive out of his mouth the most important question he had bouncing around in his already severely abused mind. It also happened to be the one question he hadn’t been willing to ask in the first place.
“Why would you go to such trouble for my sake?” he whispered.
He wasn’t talking about just the salt.
Watanuki lowered his eyes to his hands, which he was slowly opening and closing into fists in a nervous gesture he hadn’t even realized he was doing. Stopping the motion with considerable force of will, he risked glancing back at Doumeki, trying to make something out of his expressionless face.
Doumeki simply looked back at him, his face as blank as always, but he seemed to understand.
Doumeki wasn’t very good with words.
He was, simply, the type of person who expressed himself through actions rather than words. He thought that while it was very easy to get confused and tangled with words, actions had very little margin of being misunderstood, as long as you were determined enough to get the message across.
It was very rare when he actively looked for answers, and even in those cases he only asked what he needed to know, rather than what he wanted to. There was a vast difference between fulfilling a want, and fulfilling a need. More often than not, fulfilling a want only brings despair, while fulfilling a need will never harm. The key was discovering which was which.
He didn’t need to communicate the reasons for his actions, even if sometimes he wanted to. So far, he had followed his grandfather’s advice and kept his reasons to himself, waiting for a time when he actually needed to communicate them.
He understood enough of the boy in front of him to know that Watanuki wasn’t like him. He had watched Watanuki pursue things he wanted -but definitely not needed- for long enough. That was probably what made him consider answering that question, even when he knew the guy probably wouldn’t like his answer. Watanuki may not want to know the truth, but he sure needed to.
He considered telling Watanuki about all the things that he had thought about, all the things that he had decided, the determination he had taken when he found out the truth about the dream they had shared, all things that were but a mere consequence of the long chain of events that started with their meeting, as explosive, and unmemorable as it was, almost two years before.
He considered explaining how much he cared for the weird boy, how he had come to make all those decisions in the past that Watanuki hadn’t understood, had complained about and had blamed him for taking. He considered explaining why it was that he went out of his way to protect him when he never did it for anyone or anything else. He considered explaining why he couldn’t blame him for words uttered in shame and confusion, even when those words had almost brought tragic consequences upon himself. He considered explaining to Watanuki that he didn’t place much value in words, that they were his last resort when all other forms of communication had failed, and that was why he often made a mess of things when he opened his mouth to speak.
He considered for a moment telling Watanuki all this. He considered explaining himself, so that the weird boy would have no more reason to accuse him of not caring.
He wasn’t surprised when he couldn’t come up with the right words to express all that in a way that Watanuki would understand, not tonight, not after what happened. He was better at expressing himself with actions, after all.
That was why, instead of answering Watanuki’s question with words, Doumeki simply chose to get closer to the other boy and kiss him.
He was rather surprised, though, when he felt Watanuki start kissing him back.
Romantic movies and novels tell you a lot about kisses. They tell you that they are sweet, that you can feel yourself melting in the other person’s arms, that your knees go weak, that romantic music plays in the background all the while, that time stops just for the two of you, and that your stomach feels like a hundred butterflies were doing some sort of crazy dance there.
One thing you should always keep in mind is that romantic movies and novels are trying to sell themselves.
Real kisses aren’t like that, as Watanuki found out that night. Ok, yes, he did feel like a myriad butterflies had invaded the sanctity of his stomach, and he did feel like his knees had somehow turned to jelly, but he was discovering that there was more to kisses than what he had been told.
For instance, there was the matter of the height difference, which while being only slight, still forced him to crane his neck uncomfortably to give the other boy better access. There was also some shifting of positions to accommodate noses. There were two full sets of teeth which insisted on clacking together at the least convenient moments. There was an uncomfortable amount of saliva. There was the whole matter of the tongues, which didn’t really seem to Watanuki to be all that good an idea. And there wasn’t anything sweet about Doumeki’s mouth. Rather, he thought he could taste something like roasted fish and green tea in there, which shouldn’t have come as a surprise, considering the guy had eaten precisely that not long before. As for the romantic music, there was none. Instead, there was this annoying j-pop music playing from the open window of one of the houses closest to them.
But, he thought, there were also some things that movies and novels hadn’t told him, and he began to wonder why, as, in his opinion, they would make an interesting selling point. They hadn’t told him, for instance, that while he was kissing him, Doumeki’s eyelashes would flutter like mad against his cheek, which tickled slightly but he thought was sort of cute -although he wouldn’t have admitted it under pain of torture- that despite Doumeki being so calm and composed his eyelashes would be such fluttery and nervous things. They hadn’t told him that a hand that had thick calluses from archery could be soft against his shoulder. They hadn’t told him that that very same hand would travel slowly to his back, grab hold of the back of his shirt and start some sort of kneading, clenching and unclenching his fingers, kind of what a kitten would do. They hadn’t told him that the other hand would be placed against the back of his head and would play slowly with his hair, making him relax and get kind of sleepy.
They hadn’t told him, either, that it would feel so nice to sneak his arms around Doumeki’s waist and find that they could meet at the back with room to spare. They hadn’t told him that it would be so interesting to slip a hand underneath the other boy’s shirt and start travelling upwards, feeling the well-defined muscles of the back. They hadn’t told him that Doumeki’s body would be so warm that he found himself inching closer, wanting to chase away the last remains of the cold that had tortured him only a very short while before. They hadn’t told him that his body would fit so well against the other boy’s that he would wonder briefly whether it hadn’t been made just to be in that position in the first place. They hadn’t told him that Doumeki’s lips would be so, so very soft, and move so, so very tenderly against his, and that they would grow softer and more tender the longer the kiss extended.
They hadn’t told him that his first kiss was bound to be awkward, and clumsy, and strange, but that if he persevered and tried different things, it would slowly get better and better, until he started to see why romantic movies and novels made such a fuss about kisses.
When Doumeki finally pulled away from the kiss, Watanuki didn’t open his eyes. Instead, he tightened his hold on the other boy, closing whatever distance remained between them, so that he could rest his head in the other teen’s shoulder. He didn’t want to know which expression Doumeki was wearing. He wasn’t sure what would have scared him more: seeing that the irritating guy had been able to keep a straight face after kissing him like that, or if some other, unknown emotion had managed to worm its way into those golden eyes.
He wasn’t even sure why he had allowed the other teen to kiss him. But at the moment it had seemed natural, and now that the moment was over, he couldn’t quite make himself pull away.
Besides, Doumeki’s body was so warm. Being so close to another person made it obvious that he had been alone for too long... way too long. It felt nice to be there, relishing in the warmth of another human being, simply listening to the other person breathe, feeling strangely safe to have those arms around him. He didn’t want to contemplate the fact that he wouldn’t have been able to feel so nice in just anybody’s arms, that there was a special reason he didn’t want to leave the safety of those arms.
Watanuki wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, embracing in silence. However, he did know it had been too long when Doumeki’s hand started travelling lower down his back to his waist... and lower still.
His primal anti-Doumeki instincts reacted before he could process properly what was happening, and before he knew it, he had pushed the other boy away and put at least five feet distance between them.
“What the hell do you think you are touching?”
Doumeki opened his mouth to answer but Watanuki cut him off.
“You don’t need to answer! I know what you were touching!”
Despite not making any noticeable change in his facial expression, Doumeki managed to look slightly sheepish.
“You weren’t pulling away, so I thought...”
“I don’t need to know what you thought! I don’t need to know what goes on in that perverted mind of yours, thank you very much!”
Doumeki crossed his arms, looking... well, cross.
“Funny you should call me a pervert. It wasn’t me who got a little carried away last night.”
To clarify his point, he pulled down the collar of his shirt again, exposing the still very visible hickey there.
Watanuki spluttered incoherently for some seconds, blushing furiously.
“That’s not the point!”
“So what is the point?”
When Watanuki didn’t answer, Doumeki sighed and looked away, looking tired.
“I’m sorry if I surprised you, but don’t you think it’s too late to be surprised now? After what happened between us tonight? After what happened between us last night?”
“Nothing happened last night!”
Doumeki snapped his head back to glare at Watanuki.
“I disagree. Do you need to see the hickey again? Should I describe how difficult it was to get the stains out of my sheets this morning? I could probably even show them to you; I’m pretty sure I did a lousy job. After all, I was too busy wondering what the hell had happened to make my backside so frigging sore.”
He hadn’t raised his voice, but there was no mistaking the fact that Doumeki was getting angry, and there was something that didn’t sit quite right with Watanuki about this whole scenario.
The way Doumeki was talking about it didn’t seem to Watanuki like the guy had a shedding of a doubt that the dream they had shared had been real... and he simply couldn’t understand why he would be so insistent in making Watanuki admit it, too.
He had to ask about it before he lost his nerve and fled from this entire conversation altogether.
“Tonight, during the nightmare...” Watanuki hesitated, trying to push out of his mind the still very fresh image of Doumeki’s face contorted with pain before he continued. “What were you trying to confirm with all your questions? I know you don’t ask about things unless you already have suspicions about what the answers will be.”
Doumeki didn’t answer for so long that Watanuki was beginning to think that he wouldn’t answer at all, so he was surprised when he heard the low, rumbling voice break the stillness of the summer night’s air.
“At first I wanted to confirm it had really happened, and that it hadn’t been just an overly realistic dream on my part. Then I was making sure that it hadn’t been an accident. That you could control what you, and only you, were doing... and that everything happened out of our own free will.”
Doumeki didn’t say anymore, but the words that should have been said after those hung in the air between them, quite as clearly as if he had voiced them.
And your answers confirmed all that.
There was defiance in Doumeki’s profile, as if he was daring the other boy to try to deny his words, voiced and unvoiced alike.
It made Watanuki petrified to realize he had been cornered. There was no running away from this argument, no way to pretend nothing had happened, because Doumeki’s words made way too much sense to be ignored. And if he allowed himself to admit Doumeki was right, it would lead him to start admitting things he had desperately been trying to deny ever since he had awoken last night.
It would lead him to admit that he had been fully aware that the dream had been real when it began and that he had been in control of the situation the entire time... but hadn’t done anything to stop it, because he had been enjoying himself much more than he would have if it had been somebody, anybody else there with him. That no matter how much he complained to himself about it, he hadn’t been able to catalogue last night’s dream as a nightmare even once, although he had been trying to do just that all day. It would lead him to admit that the reason he had been replaying last night’s dream in his mind for the entire day was that he didn’t want to forget it.
And he couldn’t do that, because admitting that to himself would mean admitting it to the other person involved, and he couldn’t do that.
Doumeki seemed to sense his apprehension, because he chose to break the silence once more.
“There is one question that I didn’t get the chance to ask.”
Watanuki had to try hard not to simply run away before the guy had the chance to ask it. He felt he’d had enough of questions to last him a lifetime, but gave a ‘go on’ sign with his head nevertheless. Doumeki could easily outrun him, anyway. Damn guy and his slightly longer legs.
“Do you regret it?”
Watanuki didn’t feel that he could answer that question truthfully, not when he was still trying desperately to deny to himself that the whole thing had happened at all. Instead, he chose to throw Doumeki his own question back.
“Do you?”
He wasn’t sure which answer he wanted to hear, or if he wanted to hear an answer at all. He kept his eyes firmly on his feet, and so was understandably surprised when he saw a second pair of shoes line up with his. He slowly raised his eyes until he locked his gaze with those eternally calm golden eyes, barely inches from his own.
There was nothing even remotely similar to regret reflecting in those eyes, only the same unrelenting determination that Doumeki had shown time and time again when it came to him.
Watanuki had to turn away. He didn’t think he could handle looking at those infuriatingly calm eyes any second longer. He was too ashamed. He didn’t want to admit that everything Doumeki had told him was true, not to himself, not to the other boy either. And he didn’t want to consider the implication of his words. Those words implied that the guy wasn’t angry at being abducted into somebody else’s wet dream, but rather at the other person involved trying to deny it had happened at all, and he could find no logic behind that.
This was Doumeki, after all.
Doumeki, who could piss him off just by looking at him. Who had the gall to demand food of him and never thank him after practically licking the plates -or bento boxes- clean. Who recklessly risked his life time after time to ensure that he didn’t disappear, even when he had no obligation to. Doumeki, who he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind for the entire day. Doumeki, who he didn’t want to disappear from his life. Doumeki, who he had kissed, long and slow, and had enjoyed every moment of it.
He hadn’t realized he had resumed walking until he suddenly found himself facing the door to his apartment. He didn’t have to turn to know that Doumeki was standing right behind him.
What more did the guy want from him? He had already turned his world upside down, emotion-wise. He had forced him to acknowledge things about himself and about the other boy he had never suspected were there. He had made him upgrade the way he felt about the other guy from enmity to companionship to friendship to something else, all in the space of a few hours.
And he had been selfish about something other than food for the first time since they met, refusing to let him forget about the dream they had shared. Not the one where he had almost been killed because of Watanuki’s fault, but the one where they had shared a level of intimacy that would otherwise seem impossible between them.
It was this, much more than anything else, that made him turn and face the other boy, who was looking as unruffled and composed as if he hadn’t nearly been choked to death by an ayakashi in a real nightmare and then been involved in a full make-out session with somebody who had spent every day since they met telling anybody that would listen that he hated his guts.
...Could he really want to do that? With me?
The idea was too bizarre to take seriously. But then again, he had kissed him, right?
Doumeki didn’t say anything, but he didn’t move from where he was standing, either.
It was as if Doumeki was waiting for him to do something, to say something. Like he had already said everything he needed to say, done everything he needed to do, and was just waiting for the outcome, whatever that may be.
Watanuki thought he wouldn’t be able to stand the tension much longer. He had to say something, had to try and make sense of all this madness.
He had to make sure that this wasn’t all just a big, cruel joke that had been taken too far.
He opened his mouth to speak, closed it, and opened it again.
“D... Do you really want to... to...”-he couldn’t even say it, damn it!-“...spend the night here?”
Doumeki just nodded, as calm as ever.
Watanuki couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Why?”
The word came out of Watanuki’s mouth as barely more than a whisper. He wasn’t even aware he had said it aloud, as it was simply the one word that was filling his entire mind, squashing all other questions, all other objections.
“You know why.” It was Doumeki’s turn to whisper.
After hearing those words, Watanuki did nothing but stay rooted to the spot, gaping at the ever so expressionless guy, repeating those words in his mind once and again, trying to see if they made more sense that way.
It was almost a full minute before he had managed to gather his wits about him enough to ask a strangled “Are you serious?”
In way of an answer, Doumeki just grabbed Watanuki’s hand and gently guided it to press against... not his heart, exactly.
Watanuki blinked.
Oh. Well, it’s not as if I was expecting the blunt idiot to be romantic or anything...
Doumeki was still looking at him straight in the eye, his face blank, expressionless. But now he had no excuse to question whether the jerk was being serious. The hard evidence was currently pressed against his hand.
How the hell does he manage to keep a straight face in this situation?
Watanuki swallowed heavily, feeling his face go red all the way to his ears and thinking that maybe it was about time to pull his hand away, but somehow not being able to will it to happen. Stupid hand had a mind of its own. Not to mention some other parts of his body that were currently expressing their appreciation for the developments.
And what is he looking at me like that for? What is he waiting for? Because if he is waiting for me to say anything about... that... he has another thing coming.
A few seconds of uncomfortable silence went by.
Oh, what the hell.
Watanuki suddenly reached the conclusion that there was only one way to get out of this situation without his having to say anything.
He pulled his hand out of Doumeki’s grasp, only to grab the material of his shirt and yank the jerk forward into another kiss.
As it turns out, this wasn’t a very smart move, for two reasons.
The first was that when Watanuki yanked Doumeki into the kiss, he had forgotten that he had his back to the door, and when Doumeki pressed obligingly forward, Watanuki was suddenly very aware of his position as his back made painful acquaintance with the doorknob.
The second was that something inside of Watanuki rebelled wildly and furiously at the thought of being pinned against a door by Doumeki, of all people: it was a nagging voice at the back of his mind that had been born almost two years before when they had met and had commanded most of his Doumeki-oriented hostility since then. It was slowly being drowned by the birth of other, much more enthusiastic let’s-make-peace-already voices, but the veteran anti-Doumeki voice was still well-practiced enough to overcome their youthful energy to land a few well-aimed blows to Watanuki’s manly pride and self-confidence.
Both of these facts combined were enough to make Watanuki grab Doumeki by the shoulders and reverse their positions with a slightly-more-forceful-than-necessary push.
Though this movement didn’t fully appease the nagging voice at the back of his mind, it served the purpose of making it consider that now Watanuki sort of had the upper hand on Doumeki for the first time since they met -even though it felt it was cheating, since Doumeki had clearly let Watanuki reverse their positions- and the power rush that flowed through the teenager at this thought killed all other protests the voice was trying to make... something about gender, and sexual preferences, and the fact that they were the wrong side of the door to be doing that kind of thing, and that’s still Doumeki’s mouth you have your tongue in, you know.
Of this diatribe, one thing managed to penetrate Watanuki’s steadily hazier state of mind, so he made a fool of himself by trying to locate his keys and unlock the door while not breaking contact with Doumeki’s mouth... he was starting to get the hang of this whole kissing business and it was making his blood pool considerably lower than his brain needed it...
Eventually, though, Watanuki was forced to admit that he wouldn’t get much done without breaking the kiss, since Doumeki’s backside was kind of blocking the way to the lock.
As soon as contact was severed and Doumeki’s backside shoved out of the way, the door was unlocked, a shirt was grabbed and a certain golden-eyed Kyuudo practitioner was pulled inside a very neat apartment without showing any sign of surprise or resistance.
Once on the right side of the door, things soon took a turn their teenage bodies happily advocated.
Now, it would sound very romantic to say that they started kissing like there was no tomorrow, losing themselves in the throes of passion and letting their bodies dance together to the music of their heartbeats. Sadly, very little of this could be said about what happened next without lying through the teeth.
As it was, both of them were almost completely new at this whole kissing-and-beyond trip they were embarking on, and they had nothing to go by except some wild notions taken from overhead conversations in the locker rooms and bits and pieces of what they remembered doing in a dream-that-was-more-than-that... which didn’t really count, since it had been sort of hurried, and clumsy, and desperate, and had been over way too soon to be properly educational. So instead of losing themselves in the moment, they were both uncomfortably aware of their limbs and where they put them, clothes and subsequent lack of, and the ever-present risk of being overhead due to the very thin quality of the walls of Watanuki’s apartment. Nerves and self-consciousness were also doing a number on at least one of the two involved, and made for definitely jumpy moments. Plus, the fact remained that Watanuki was quite drained, mentally, physically and emotionally and he couldn’t forget that it was well past midnight. They would have to get up early the following morning since it was a school day and neither of the teenagers had their school things with them: Watanuki had left them at Yuuko’s shop and Doumeki’s were at his home. Time was not kind enough to stop for the two of them.
It should also be noted, though, that it takes a bit more than this to make teenage hormones settle down, so things went beyond a simple kiss quickly and easily enough.
And while their knowledge of how these things were supposed to be was close to nil, and they were every bit as clumsy and awkward as first-or-second timers were supposed to be, they made up for it with proper enthusiasm, making them good students of the ever popular learn-by-doing school.
So even though they didn’t really know what they were doing, things progressed from there and soon it was lips, and hands, and skin, and heat, and gasps, and moans like before, but this was different. This was slow, this was careful, this was tender, this was desired, this was deliberate, this was real.
No matter what Doumeki said, only now could Watanuki admit to himself this had happened and that he had wanted it to. That there was another reason besides guilt that had led him to react the way he had when he had sincerely feared for the other guy’s life.
And when it was over and Watanuki had cleaned both of them up -the lazy jerk had insisted he couldn’t get up, saying he was sore, or something- and they were lying there alone together in the dark of his apartment, nestled against each other, feeling each other’s warmth, listening to each other’s heartbeats, Watanuki thought he knew what that reason was.
He still couldn’t put it to words, and it probably would be a long time before he could, but it was a start. As he slowly drifted to sleep, he couldn’t help but remember the kind words of an old lady, and smiled drowsily at how true they had turned out to be.
You will have a male friend with whom you will always fight, but your relationship will run deeper.
How deep, only time could tell. But he had made his choice when he had admitted to himself that Doumeki was too dear to him to allow him to disappear from his life, and as Yuuko would say it, a choice was all it took for your reality to begin to change.
The end
Yes, people, this is the last chapter. I never meant to make this a very long story, and it actually ended up being one chapter longer than I had originally planned.
There are no sequels planned, but there probably will be one or two in the future, in the shape of one-shots (I’m not planning to write many multi-chapters).
If you made it this far, why not leave me a comment? I'd love to hear what you thought of it, particularly what you liked and didn't like. :3
In case you missed them, here is chapter one, chapter two and chapter three.
Glossary and cultural notes:
Kyuudo: Japanese longbow archery. A discipline that requires lots of concentration, practice and, it is said, a lifetime to perfect. For some, it’s considered more a way of life than a sport.
Update: This story has been nominated for a UFO award! If you wish to vote for it, just click on the image, and it will take you to the voting page. :)
GENRE: Humour / Romance
RATING: PG15 / T
DISCLAIMER: xXxholic belongs the four wonderful Osakan women that go by the collective name of "CLAMP", and some other companies and organizations that claim ownership of their babies. Watanuki and Doumeki are not mine, never will be, and I promise to give them back when I'm done playing with them.
STATUS: Complete
NOTES: that's right, people! this is the last chapter! Once again, many thanks to my wonderful betas Beboots and Product of a Sick Society for their invaluable help.
SUMMARY: Watanuki was used to dreaming about strange things. He was even used to dreaming about strange people. What he was not used to, was dreaming about him in that way... and pulling that dream into reality.
Watanuki looked around for the first time since the ayakashi attacked, and he was surprised to find that they were indeed back in what he thought of as reality.
There they were, just a few yards from the entrance to Yuuko’s shop, him sitting on the dirty pavement, Doumeki standing next to him, looming over him like a golden-eyed lamppost.
It was dark out, darker than it had been when he left work, and Watanuki wondered absently how long it had been since then. Somehow he wasn’t surprised that time had seemed to run at different speeds inside and outside his nightmare: that seemed to often be the case with these things. He was much more concerned trying to drive out of his mind the recollections of said nightmare, which was proving to be a wasted effort, as everything seemed to remind him of what had happened during it and its possible consequences on real life.
It being an early summer night, the air should have felt pleasantly warm, but instead it felt uncomfortably hot against his clammy skin. He was still shivering slightly from residual fear and panic as well as the ayakashi’s cold, and it felt like it would be a while before his stomach stopped trying to crawl out of his belly button. At least now he had some control on his breathing back and he was no longer gasping for air in between sobs.
Silently he took the hand Doumeki had extended to help him to his feet, and noticed on contact how cold his own hand was. It reminded him forcibly that the events that had transpired in his nightmare would have shown their consequences on real life. And such terrible consequences they would be... Watanuki shook his head slightly in an attempt to disengage those thoughts from his mind.
The touch of Doumeki’s hand in his felt very pleasantly warm, for the few seconds it lasted. If he had been in any condition to think rationally, it probably would have freaked him out that he found it so pleasant to have his hand in Doumeki’s, but he was still trying to come to terms with everything that had happened that evening, so he let it slide. Resolved not to dwell in the sensation even if his hand felt strangely empty once Doumeki let it go, he asked the only obvious thing that came to mind.
“How long have we been back?” he said quietly.
He avoided looking at Doumeki when he asked, instead taking particular care of brushing his clothes clean of dust, noticing with distaste that the front of his shirt was wet with tears and snot. This was precisely why he didn’t like to cry. He very desperately tried not to think that Doumeki had been watching through it all.
“Since you started crying.”
No such luck.
Watanuki winced at those words, his instinct to lash at Doumeki only barely suppressed by the fact that he didn’t seem to be saying them to make fun of him, but rather was stating a fact, as if there was nothing wrong in seeing the person that had almost got you killed start wailing like a baby, mumbling nonsense about not wanting you to disappear.
It was eerily quiet all around them, and Watanuki found himself wishing the cicadas would hurry up and start with their yearly summer racket, even though he knew he would be cursing that same racket a couple of months from then. At that moment he would have gladly put up with their chirping, if only it served the purpose of breaking the tension and distracting him from his guilt. He started looking around for their things, just to give himself something to do rather than because he really cared at that moment, but he could only find the thermos flask, now empty of tea, in Doumeki’s hands.
Doumeki, noticing where his eyes had strayed, offered as means of explanation, “We left the other things in the dream. I was only holding onto this when we came back.”
Despite his confusion, Watanuki growled under his breath, feeling some of his energy return in the familiar form of irritation, not directed at Doumeki, for once.
“Wonderful. The dish that held the fish was Yuuko’s,” he mourned, grouchily, “knowing her, it was obscenely expensive and she’ll add the cost of it to my debt.”
Without a word, he retrieved the thermos flask from Doumeki and took it into the shop before it could come to any harm, mentally grateful that Doumeki didn’t follow.
He was half-expecting to find Yuuko leering at him from the entrance, waiting for him and ready to mentally harass him for the recent events. He was surprised to find he was disappointed that she wasn’t. In fact, the shop was perfectly quiet, which was somewhat understandable, considering that it had been several hours since he left the shop, even if to him it had felt like half an hour, at most. A quick search of the place found Yuuko right where he had left her, a tangle of limbs and sheets that would probably take her a while to disentangle from in the morning. Mokona was asleep at her pillow, drooling all over the place, and he couldn’t help but find the scene cute, even if she was snoring rather unattractively and the place stank of the drunkards. He half-suspected Yuuko only lit incense to cover the smell of alcohol.
Watanuki carefully closed the sliding door of her bedroom with a sigh. It pained him to admit that he would have liked to have had her awake, tonight. Embarrassing as it would be, there were some things he wanted to ask her, things he needed to know.
There was only one other person who could provide him with answers to his questions, and he wasn’t looking forward to asking him for them.
He turned to walk away from her bedroom and stopped mid-motion, a thought suddenly springing to life in his mind. Could it be that Yuuko had done this on purpose? She rarely, if ever, drank enough to pass out -it took way too many bottles- and he couldn’t remember a time when she had failed to be there for him -drunk or not- after he had been in danger. She always seemed to have other reasons to show up, but the fact remained that she had always been there to answer his questions, or at least to tease him with half-answers that he wouldn’t understand until much later. Could she actually be doing this to force him to talk to Doumeki?
He wouldn’t put it past her. Yuuko knew him well enough to know that he would try to avoid talking to the guy about something as important as what had happened tonight, even if the alternative meant increasing his debt and the time he would have to work for her.
He considered busying himself with chores or even staying the night, but discarded the idea almost as soon as it had appeared. He would have bet his life that Doumeki was waiting for him outside, and that he would still be there when he came out, no matter how many hours later that was. He had done it once, under different circumstances, and Watanuki didn’t doubt he’d do it again. Why he was so sure he would do it tonight, of all nights, he didn’t know. He was beginning to scare himself. Was he starting to understand the guy?
Pausing only to wash his face and comb his hair in an attempt to regain whatever was left of his dignity, he took off.
He found Doumeki as soon as he crossed the gates, waiting for him, looking as calm and composed as ever.
Without a word, Watanuki started walking towards his apartment, and he wasn’t surprised in the least when he heard the footsteps that indicated the golden-eyed teenager was planning to walk him home.
He didn’t say anything for most of the way, and Doumeki didn’t seem to feel the need to press him to do so. Watanuki kept his distance, walking a few paces ahead of Doumeki, and he knew it was obvious he was avoiding the guy, but he also knew he wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long. He was so highly strung that every little shadow made him jump, even though he knew that there wasn’t anything to fear as long as Doumeki kept near him. With a pang, he couldn’t help but wonder why the obtuse guy would still stay with him, when the night’s events had proved that it was Doumeki who had something to fear as long as they were together.
They were already less than two blocks away from his apartment when he decided to ask the most prominent of the questions that were crowding his mind at the moment. He did so in his best haughty tone of voice, trying to convince himself that he wasn’t really interested in the answer.
“What was so special about that salt?”
Doumeki didn’t seem surprised by the abrupt question, and answered without missing a beat, almost as if he had been waiting for that question to arise.
“It was purified sea salt.”
“That can’t be it,” he snapped, without waiting to see if Doumeki would add more. “I’ve tried using those temple salts before! They never worked as well as yours did.”
“It wasn’t mine.”
Watanuki felt irritated that Doumeki would concentrate on the least important part of what he had said, but the need to know was bigger than the need to scream, so he just kept the conversation going.
“Was it Haruka-san’s? His stuff always seems to work better than normal.”
“No. It was yours.”
The blue-and-golden eyed teenager stared blankly ahead as he tried to process this information. The answer was so strange that Watanuki stopped walking and rounded rather ferociously on Doumeki.
“What do you mean, it was mine? I’d never even seen that horrendous bag you were carrying it with!”
“It was yours from the moment you touched it.”
Watanuki groaned, burying his face in his hands. This was exactly why he didn’t want to get his answers from Doumeki.
“Would you care to explain so I can understand, instead of just spewing random bits of information vaguely related to what I’m asking?”
Doumeki seemed to consider this for a moment, and then began to talk again.
“I’ve been studying, since.” He pointed towards his own right eye at this. “In my grandfather’s library. A couple of weeks ago, I found out how to purify salt so that it would only work if it was used by a specific person.”
Watanuki was puzzled.
“Why would anybody want to do that? Isn’t it better if you protect as many people as you can?”
“The more restricted the conditions, the more effective the magic when those conditions are met. It took me a while to figure out how to do it, but I managed to make it so that it would have your signature. You only had to touch the salt for it to start working.”
Watanuki considered this, frowning.
“Then why were you carrying it around?”
Doumeki didn’t give any notion that he found this question, or the answer, redundant. He simply looked back towards Watanuki and answered, his low voice perfectly audible even though they were standing nearly six feet apart from each other.
“To give it to you. Only, I never got the chance.”
And now the entire contents of the bag were lying forgotten inside a nightmare he had no intentions of visiting again.
It was this that struck a nerve within Watanuki. Only a small amount of the salt was necessary to protect him from ayakashi, yet the big moron had prepared enough to keep him protected from the entire population of the demon world.
It was just one of those simple, unasked for gestures the stupid idiot kept having towards him. Watanuki didn’t know what the process of making that salt had involved, but he was sure it would have been long, boring and exhausting, as purifying anything took quite a lot out of the guy. He knew because even when he didn’t say anything about it, Doumeki always looked tired and ate more after he had protected him from a particularly powerful spirit. Making that insanely huge amount of purified salt must have drained him of quite a bit of his powers. Was that why he had been unable to protect himself when the ayakashi had attacked?
Watanuki felt as if a hand had gripped his insides and was squeezing them as hard as it could when he thought about it. It wasn’t just guilt that caused this, but he was not prepared to consider those other, uncharted territories his emotions were visiting.
However, even if he didn’t want to pay attention to them, they were still strong enough to drive out of his mouth the most important question he had bouncing around in his already severely abused mind. It also happened to be the one question he hadn’t been willing to ask in the first place.
“Why would you go to such trouble for my sake?” he whispered.
He wasn’t talking about just the salt.
Watanuki lowered his eyes to his hands, which he was slowly opening and closing into fists in a nervous gesture he hadn’t even realized he was doing. Stopping the motion with considerable force of will, he risked glancing back at Doumeki, trying to make something out of his expressionless face.
Doumeki simply looked back at him, his face as blank as always, but he seemed to understand.
Doumeki wasn’t very good with words.
He was, simply, the type of person who expressed himself through actions rather than words. He thought that while it was very easy to get confused and tangled with words, actions had very little margin of being misunderstood, as long as you were determined enough to get the message across.
It was very rare when he actively looked for answers, and even in those cases he only asked what he needed to know, rather than what he wanted to. There was a vast difference between fulfilling a want, and fulfilling a need. More often than not, fulfilling a want only brings despair, while fulfilling a need will never harm. The key was discovering which was which.
He didn’t need to communicate the reasons for his actions, even if sometimes he wanted to. So far, he had followed his grandfather’s advice and kept his reasons to himself, waiting for a time when he actually needed to communicate them.
He understood enough of the boy in front of him to know that Watanuki wasn’t like him. He had watched Watanuki pursue things he wanted -but definitely not needed- for long enough. That was probably what made him consider answering that question, even when he knew the guy probably wouldn’t like his answer. Watanuki may not want to know the truth, but he sure needed to.
He considered telling Watanuki about all the things that he had thought about, all the things that he had decided, the determination he had taken when he found out the truth about the dream they had shared, all things that were but a mere consequence of the long chain of events that started with their meeting, as explosive, and unmemorable as it was, almost two years before.
He considered explaining how much he cared for the weird boy, how he had come to make all those decisions in the past that Watanuki hadn’t understood, had complained about and had blamed him for taking. He considered explaining why it was that he went out of his way to protect him when he never did it for anyone or anything else. He considered explaining why he couldn’t blame him for words uttered in shame and confusion, even when those words had almost brought tragic consequences upon himself. He considered explaining to Watanuki that he didn’t place much value in words, that they were his last resort when all other forms of communication had failed, and that was why he often made a mess of things when he opened his mouth to speak.
He considered for a moment telling Watanuki all this. He considered explaining himself, so that the weird boy would have no more reason to accuse him of not caring.
He wasn’t surprised when he couldn’t come up with the right words to express all that in a way that Watanuki would understand, not tonight, not after what happened. He was better at expressing himself with actions, after all.
That was why, instead of answering Watanuki’s question with words, Doumeki simply chose to get closer to the other boy and kiss him.
He was rather surprised, though, when he felt Watanuki start kissing him back.
Romantic movies and novels tell you a lot about kisses. They tell you that they are sweet, that you can feel yourself melting in the other person’s arms, that your knees go weak, that romantic music plays in the background all the while, that time stops just for the two of you, and that your stomach feels like a hundred butterflies were doing some sort of crazy dance there.
One thing you should always keep in mind is that romantic movies and novels are trying to sell themselves.
Real kisses aren’t like that, as Watanuki found out that night. Ok, yes, he did feel like a myriad butterflies had invaded the sanctity of his stomach, and he did feel like his knees had somehow turned to jelly, but he was discovering that there was more to kisses than what he had been told.
For instance, there was the matter of the height difference, which while being only slight, still forced him to crane his neck uncomfortably to give the other boy better access. There was also some shifting of positions to accommodate noses. There were two full sets of teeth which insisted on clacking together at the least convenient moments. There was an uncomfortable amount of saliva. There was the whole matter of the tongues, which didn’t really seem to Watanuki to be all that good an idea. And there wasn’t anything sweet about Doumeki’s mouth. Rather, he thought he could taste something like roasted fish and green tea in there, which shouldn’t have come as a surprise, considering the guy had eaten precisely that not long before. As for the romantic music, there was none. Instead, there was this annoying j-pop music playing from the open window of one of the houses closest to them.
But, he thought, there were also some things that movies and novels hadn’t told him, and he began to wonder why, as, in his opinion, they would make an interesting selling point. They hadn’t told him, for instance, that while he was kissing him, Doumeki’s eyelashes would flutter like mad against his cheek, which tickled slightly but he thought was sort of cute -although he wouldn’t have admitted it under pain of torture- that despite Doumeki being so calm and composed his eyelashes would be such fluttery and nervous things. They hadn’t told him that a hand that had thick calluses from archery could be soft against his shoulder. They hadn’t told him that that very same hand would travel slowly to his back, grab hold of the back of his shirt and start some sort of kneading, clenching and unclenching his fingers, kind of what a kitten would do. They hadn’t told him that the other hand would be placed against the back of his head and would play slowly with his hair, making him relax and get kind of sleepy.
They hadn’t told him, either, that it would feel so nice to sneak his arms around Doumeki’s waist and find that they could meet at the back with room to spare. They hadn’t told him that it would be so interesting to slip a hand underneath the other boy’s shirt and start travelling upwards, feeling the well-defined muscles of the back. They hadn’t told him that Doumeki’s body would be so warm that he found himself inching closer, wanting to chase away the last remains of the cold that had tortured him only a very short while before. They hadn’t told him that his body would fit so well against the other boy’s that he would wonder briefly whether it hadn’t been made just to be in that position in the first place. They hadn’t told him that Doumeki’s lips would be so, so very soft, and move so, so very tenderly against his, and that they would grow softer and more tender the longer the kiss extended.
They hadn’t told him that his first kiss was bound to be awkward, and clumsy, and strange, but that if he persevered and tried different things, it would slowly get better and better, until he started to see why romantic movies and novels made such a fuss about kisses.
When Doumeki finally pulled away from the kiss, Watanuki didn’t open his eyes. Instead, he tightened his hold on the other boy, closing whatever distance remained between them, so that he could rest his head in the other teen’s shoulder. He didn’t want to know which expression Doumeki was wearing. He wasn’t sure what would have scared him more: seeing that the irritating guy had been able to keep a straight face after kissing him like that, or if some other, unknown emotion had managed to worm its way into those golden eyes.
He wasn’t even sure why he had allowed the other teen to kiss him. But at the moment it had seemed natural, and now that the moment was over, he couldn’t quite make himself pull away.
Besides, Doumeki’s body was so warm. Being so close to another person made it obvious that he had been alone for too long... way too long. It felt nice to be there, relishing in the warmth of another human being, simply listening to the other person breathe, feeling strangely safe to have those arms around him. He didn’t want to contemplate the fact that he wouldn’t have been able to feel so nice in just anybody’s arms, that there was a special reason he didn’t want to leave the safety of those arms.
Watanuki wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, embracing in silence. However, he did know it had been too long when Doumeki’s hand started travelling lower down his back to his waist... and lower still.
His primal anti-Doumeki instincts reacted before he could process properly what was happening, and before he knew it, he had pushed the other boy away and put at least five feet distance between them.
“What the hell do you think you are touching?”
Doumeki opened his mouth to answer but Watanuki cut him off.
“You don’t need to answer! I know what you were touching!”
Despite not making any noticeable change in his facial expression, Doumeki managed to look slightly sheepish.
“You weren’t pulling away, so I thought...”
“I don’t need to know what you thought! I don’t need to know what goes on in that perverted mind of yours, thank you very much!”
Doumeki crossed his arms, looking... well, cross.
“Funny you should call me a pervert. It wasn’t me who got a little carried away last night.”
To clarify his point, he pulled down the collar of his shirt again, exposing the still very visible hickey there.
Watanuki spluttered incoherently for some seconds, blushing furiously.
“That’s not the point!”
“So what is the point?”
When Watanuki didn’t answer, Doumeki sighed and looked away, looking tired.
“I’m sorry if I surprised you, but don’t you think it’s too late to be surprised now? After what happened between us tonight? After what happened between us last night?”
“Nothing happened last night!”
Doumeki snapped his head back to glare at Watanuki.
“I disagree. Do you need to see the hickey again? Should I describe how difficult it was to get the stains out of my sheets this morning? I could probably even show them to you; I’m pretty sure I did a lousy job. After all, I was too busy wondering what the hell had happened to make my backside so frigging sore.”
He hadn’t raised his voice, but there was no mistaking the fact that Doumeki was getting angry, and there was something that didn’t sit quite right with Watanuki about this whole scenario.
The way Doumeki was talking about it didn’t seem to Watanuki like the guy had a shedding of a doubt that the dream they had shared had been real... and he simply couldn’t understand why he would be so insistent in making Watanuki admit it, too.
He had to ask about it before he lost his nerve and fled from this entire conversation altogether.
“Tonight, during the nightmare...” Watanuki hesitated, trying to push out of his mind the still very fresh image of Doumeki’s face contorted with pain before he continued. “What were you trying to confirm with all your questions? I know you don’t ask about things unless you already have suspicions about what the answers will be.”
Doumeki didn’t answer for so long that Watanuki was beginning to think that he wouldn’t answer at all, so he was surprised when he heard the low, rumbling voice break the stillness of the summer night’s air.
“At first I wanted to confirm it had really happened, and that it hadn’t been just an overly realistic dream on my part. Then I was making sure that it hadn’t been an accident. That you could control what you, and only you, were doing... and that everything happened out of our own free will.”
Doumeki didn’t say anymore, but the words that should have been said after those hung in the air between them, quite as clearly as if he had voiced them.
And your answers confirmed all that.
There was defiance in Doumeki’s profile, as if he was daring the other boy to try to deny his words, voiced and unvoiced alike.
It made Watanuki petrified to realize he had been cornered. There was no running away from this argument, no way to pretend nothing had happened, because Doumeki’s words made way too much sense to be ignored. And if he allowed himself to admit Doumeki was right, it would lead him to start admitting things he had desperately been trying to deny ever since he had awoken last night.
It would lead him to admit that he had been fully aware that the dream had been real when it began and that he had been in control of the situation the entire time... but hadn’t done anything to stop it, because he had been enjoying himself much more than he would have if it had been somebody, anybody else there with him. That no matter how much he complained to himself about it, he hadn’t been able to catalogue last night’s dream as a nightmare even once, although he had been trying to do just that all day. It would lead him to admit that the reason he had been replaying last night’s dream in his mind for the entire day was that he didn’t want to forget it.
And he couldn’t do that, because admitting that to himself would mean admitting it to the other person involved, and he couldn’t do that.
Doumeki seemed to sense his apprehension, because he chose to break the silence once more.
“There is one question that I didn’t get the chance to ask.”
Watanuki had to try hard not to simply run away before the guy had the chance to ask it. He felt he’d had enough of questions to last him a lifetime, but gave a ‘go on’ sign with his head nevertheless. Doumeki could easily outrun him, anyway. Damn guy and his slightly longer legs.
“Do you regret it?”
Watanuki didn’t feel that he could answer that question truthfully, not when he was still trying desperately to deny to himself that the whole thing had happened at all. Instead, he chose to throw Doumeki his own question back.
“Do you?”
He wasn’t sure which answer he wanted to hear, or if he wanted to hear an answer at all. He kept his eyes firmly on his feet, and so was understandably surprised when he saw a second pair of shoes line up with his. He slowly raised his eyes until he locked his gaze with those eternally calm golden eyes, barely inches from his own.
There was nothing even remotely similar to regret reflecting in those eyes, only the same unrelenting determination that Doumeki had shown time and time again when it came to him.
Watanuki had to turn away. He didn’t think he could handle looking at those infuriatingly calm eyes any second longer. He was too ashamed. He didn’t want to admit that everything Doumeki had told him was true, not to himself, not to the other boy either. And he didn’t want to consider the implication of his words. Those words implied that the guy wasn’t angry at being abducted into somebody else’s wet dream, but rather at the other person involved trying to deny it had happened at all, and he could find no logic behind that.
This was Doumeki, after all.
Doumeki, who could piss him off just by looking at him. Who had the gall to demand food of him and never thank him after practically licking the plates -or bento boxes- clean. Who recklessly risked his life time after time to ensure that he didn’t disappear, even when he had no obligation to. Doumeki, who he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind for the entire day. Doumeki, who he didn’t want to disappear from his life. Doumeki, who he had kissed, long and slow, and had enjoyed every moment of it.
He hadn’t realized he had resumed walking until he suddenly found himself facing the door to his apartment. He didn’t have to turn to know that Doumeki was standing right behind him.
What more did the guy want from him? He had already turned his world upside down, emotion-wise. He had forced him to acknowledge things about himself and about the other boy he had never suspected were there. He had made him upgrade the way he felt about the other guy from enmity to companionship to friendship to something else, all in the space of a few hours.
And he had been selfish about something other than food for the first time since they met, refusing to let him forget about the dream they had shared. Not the one where he had almost been killed because of Watanuki’s fault, but the one where they had shared a level of intimacy that would otherwise seem impossible between them.
It was this, much more than anything else, that made him turn and face the other boy, who was looking as unruffled and composed as if he hadn’t nearly been choked to death by an ayakashi in a real nightmare and then been involved in a full make-out session with somebody who had spent every day since they met telling anybody that would listen that he hated his guts.
...Could he really want to do that? With me?
The idea was too bizarre to take seriously. But then again, he had kissed him, right?
Doumeki didn’t say anything, but he didn’t move from where he was standing, either.
It was as if Doumeki was waiting for him to do something, to say something. Like he had already said everything he needed to say, done everything he needed to do, and was just waiting for the outcome, whatever that may be.
Watanuki thought he wouldn’t be able to stand the tension much longer. He had to say something, had to try and make sense of all this madness.
He had to make sure that this wasn’t all just a big, cruel joke that had been taken too far.
He opened his mouth to speak, closed it, and opened it again.
“D... Do you really want to... to...”-he couldn’t even say it, damn it!-“...spend the night here?”
Doumeki just nodded, as calm as ever.
Watanuki couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Why?”
The word came out of Watanuki’s mouth as barely more than a whisper. He wasn’t even aware he had said it aloud, as it was simply the one word that was filling his entire mind, squashing all other questions, all other objections.
“You know why.” It was Doumeki’s turn to whisper.
After hearing those words, Watanuki did nothing but stay rooted to the spot, gaping at the ever so expressionless guy, repeating those words in his mind once and again, trying to see if they made more sense that way.
It was almost a full minute before he had managed to gather his wits about him enough to ask a strangled “Are you serious?”
In way of an answer, Doumeki just grabbed Watanuki’s hand and gently guided it to press against... not his heart, exactly.
Watanuki blinked.
Oh. Well, it’s not as if I was expecting the blunt idiot to be romantic or anything...
Doumeki was still looking at him straight in the eye, his face blank, expressionless. But now he had no excuse to question whether the jerk was being serious. The hard evidence was currently pressed against his hand.
How the hell does he manage to keep a straight face in this situation?
Watanuki swallowed heavily, feeling his face go red all the way to his ears and thinking that maybe it was about time to pull his hand away, but somehow not being able to will it to happen. Stupid hand had a mind of its own. Not to mention some other parts of his body that were currently expressing their appreciation for the developments.
And what is he looking at me like that for? What is he waiting for? Because if he is waiting for me to say anything about... that... he has another thing coming.
A few seconds of uncomfortable silence went by.
Oh, what the hell.
Watanuki suddenly reached the conclusion that there was only one way to get out of this situation without his having to say anything.
He pulled his hand out of Doumeki’s grasp, only to grab the material of his shirt and yank the jerk forward into another kiss.
As it turns out, this wasn’t a very smart move, for two reasons.
The first was that when Watanuki yanked Doumeki into the kiss, he had forgotten that he had his back to the door, and when Doumeki pressed obligingly forward, Watanuki was suddenly very aware of his position as his back made painful acquaintance with the doorknob.
The second was that something inside of Watanuki rebelled wildly and furiously at the thought of being pinned against a door by Doumeki, of all people: it was a nagging voice at the back of his mind that had been born almost two years before when they had met and had commanded most of his Doumeki-oriented hostility since then. It was slowly being drowned by the birth of other, much more enthusiastic let’s-make-peace-already voices, but the veteran anti-Doumeki voice was still well-practiced enough to overcome their youthful energy to land a few well-aimed blows to Watanuki’s manly pride and self-confidence.
Both of these facts combined were enough to make Watanuki grab Doumeki by the shoulders and reverse their positions with a slightly-more-forceful-than-necessary push.
Though this movement didn’t fully appease the nagging voice at the back of his mind, it served the purpose of making it consider that now Watanuki sort of had the upper hand on Doumeki for the first time since they met -even though it felt it was cheating, since Doumeki had clearly let Watanuki reverse their positions- and the power rush that flowed through the teenager at this thought killed all other protests the voice was trying to make... something about gender, and sexual preferences, and the fact that they were the wrong side of the door to be doing that kind of thing, and that’s still Doumeki’s mouth you have your tongue in, you know.
Of this diatribe, one thing managed to penetrate Watanuki’s steadily hazier state of mind, so he made a fool of himself by trying to locate his keys and unlock the door while not breaking contact with Doumeki’s mouth... he was starting to get the hang of this whole kissing business and it was making his blood pool considerably lower than his brain needed it...
Eventually, though, Watanuki was forced to admit that he wouldn’t get much done without breaking the kiss, since Doumeki’s backside was kind of blocking the way to the lock.
As soon as contact was severed and Doumeki’s backside shoved out of the way, the door was unlocked, a shirt was grabbed and a certain golden-eyed Kyuudo practitioner was pulled inside a very neat apartment without showing any sign of surprise or resistance.
Once on the right side of the door, things soon took a turn their teenage bodies happily advocated.
Now, it would sound very romantic to say that they started kissing like there was no tomorrow, losing themselves in the throes of passion and letting their bodies dance together to the music of their heartbeats. Sadly, very little of this could be said about what happened next without lying through the teeth.
As it was, both of them were almost completely new at this whole kissing-and-beyond trip they were embarking on, and they had nothing to go by except some wild notions taken from overhead conversations in the locker rooms and bits and pieces of what they remembered doing in a dream-that-was-more-than-that... which didn’t really count, since it had been sort of hurried, and clumsy, and desperate, and had been over way too soon to be properly educational. So instead of losing themselves in the moment, they were both uncomfortably aware of their limbs and where they put them, clothes and subsequent lack of, and the ever-present risk of being overhead due to the very thin quality of the walls of Watanuki’s apartment. Nerves and self-consciousness were also doing a number on at least one of the two involved, and made for definitely jumpy moments. Plus, the fact remained that Watanuki was quite drained, mentally, physically and emotionally and he couldn’t forget that it was well past midnight. They would have to get up early the following morning since it was a school day and neither of the teenagers had their school things with them: Watanuki had left them at Yuuko’s shop and Doumeki’s were at his home. Time was not kind enough to stop for the two of them.
It should also be noted, though, that it takes a bit more than this to make teenage hormones settle down, so things went beyond a simple kiss quickly and easily enough.
And while their knowledge of how these things were supposed to be was close to nil, and they were every bit as clumsy and awkward as first-or-second timers were supposed to be, they made up for it with proper enthusiasm, making them good students of the ever popular learn-by-doing school.
So even though they didn’t really know what they were doing, things progressed from there and soon it was lips, and hands, and skin, and heat, and gasps, and moans like before, but this was different. This was slow, this was careful, this was tender, this was desired, this was deliberate, this was real.
No matter what Doumeki said, only now could Watanuki admit to himself this had happened and that he had wanted it to. That there was another reason besides guilt that had led him to react the way he had when he had sincerely feared for the other guy’s life.
And when it was over and Watanuki had cleaned both of them up -the lazy jerk had insisted he couldn’t get up, saying he was sore, or something- and they were lying there alone together in the dark of his apartment, nestled against each other, feeling each other’s warmth, listening to each other’s heartbeats, Watanuki thought he knew what that reason was.
He still couldn’t put it to words, and it probably would be a long time before he could, but it was a start. As he slowly drifted to sleep, he couldn’t help but remember the kind words of an old lady, and smiled drowsily at how true they had turned out to be.
You will have a male friend with whom you will always fight, but your relationship will run deeper.
How deep, only time could tell. But he had made his choice when he had admitted to himself that Doumeki was too dear to him to allow him to disappear from his life, and as Yuuko would say it, a choice was all it took for your reality to begin to change.
The end
Yes, people, this is the last chapter. I never meant to make this a very long story, and it actually ended up being one chapter longer than I had originally planned.
There are no sequels planned, but there probably will be one or two in the future, in the shape of one-shots (I’m not planning to write many multi-chapters).
If you made it this far, why not leave me a comment? I'd love to hear what you thought of it, particularly what you liked and didn't like. :3
In case you missed them, here is chapter one, chapter two and chapter three.
Glossary and cultural notes:
Kyuudo: Japanese longbow archery. A discipline that requires lots of concentration, practice and, it is said, a lifetime to perfect. For some, it’s considered more a way of life than a sport.
Update: This story has been nominated for a UFO award! If you wish to vote for it, just click on the image, and it will take you to the voting page. :)