Feverbright 2/3
Right. It's been -- let's just say I've had the month from hell and leave it at that, yes?
Four days later, Doumeki ran out of excuses to happen to walk past Yuuko’s shop and instead went in. After all, he reasoned, he wouldn’t be able to see the shop if he didn’t need something from it.
(The fact that he already knew his wish and had known it for a while was, he decided, irrelevant.)
He half-expected to hear the off-key singing of the black round thing as he mounted the steps and left his shoes by the door, but the shop was oddly silent. A receptacle, Watanuki had said, and the little idiot hadn’t even had the sense to ask what he was going to be a receptacle for. In an abstract sense, Doumeki trusted Yuuko to act in Watanuki’s best interests; in a much realer sense, he did not trust her to know what Watanuki’s best interests were.
A receptacle. Doumeki wondered if he had the power to exorcise a person. Then he wondered if he could bring himself to fire an arrow at Watanuki a second time.
“Doumeki? You idiot, can’t you - ”
Doumeki turned around, feeling ridiculously relieved by the venomous bite in Watanuki’s voice.
He met Watanuki’s eyes, and abruptly went to his knees.
Ohgod.
Watanuki was dressed in a deep blue silk kimono - unembroidered, and tied so high over the neck that it would probably cut off his air supply if he tried to look down - but Doumeki rarely saw Watanuki out of his school uniform, and something about the blue fabric and the blue eyes and the tiny, tiny patch of pale throat in between was… distracting. And then, when Doumeki had forced his eyes back up, he saw the dark hollows under Watanuki’s eyes. The other boy looked like a wraith, like something that would only be found in dreams and the musings of artists poisoning themselves in opium dens, like an echo from days that never happened. Like Yuuko.
A receptacle.
Doumeki stayed silent, aware that if he opened his mouth the only thing to emerge would be an embarrassing croak. Watanuki was staring at him, too, his jaw falling open in undisguised shock. He looked like he had seen - well, not a ghost, obviously, because his reaction to spirits was quite a bit milder than this. He looked like he had seen something extremely unlikely. Doumeki would wonder about that reaction - right after his brain started processing fully developed thought processes again.
Something that looked suspiciously like a blush was creeping up Watanuki’s cheeks as they stared at each other. “You really are an idiot, you know that?” he snapped finally. “When Yuuko-san said I should stay away from everyone, that included you.”
Regaining some modicum of self-control, Doumeki shrugged. “Where is she?” Why did she leave you here looking like this? What are you? he added silently.
Watanuki eyed him unhappily. “I don’t know. Look, just get out of here, okay? Something big is - god. No. Okay, fine. Just leave, you useless lump of… of uselessness!” Watanuki made an aborted gesture with his arm, as if he was going to flail around and then thought better of it. “Get out! Before - ” He stopped and bit down on his bottom lip. Hard. Doumeki watched Watanuki’s inevitable mental breakdown in morbid fascination and with a curious element of desire. He knew it had to happen sometime. “Get. Somewhere that is not here. Understand?”
“Not really. Why?” Doumeki wondered if he dared risk trying to stand up again. He looked up into Watanuki’s face, animated with frustration and anger and something that Doumeki might have allowed himself to think was concern. Okay, the floor it was for now. Oddly, he didn’t mind kneeling in front of Watanuki as long as it was of his own volition; somehow, it felt less like humiliation and more like simple demonstration of fact.
“I can’t tell you. Get that? Or I could, but the - damn. Not that, fine. I can tell you. I won’t tell you.”
Doumeki made himself at home on the floorboards. They were comfortingly sturdy.
“Move!”
He could probably sleep here for a while, as long as Watanuki didn’t let him starve, which seemed unlikely. If nothing else, letting someone go hungry would probably offend Watanuki’s culinary sensibilities. Perhaps he could find a phone to call his mother and tell her not to worry.
“You irritating thickheaded moronic imbecilic stupid inconsiderate jerk!”
Would Yuuko have a phone in her shop, though? Probably. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing she would go without. He would probably have to put in some special code to make it connect to his home, though. Watanuki could help him figure it out.
“Argh! You are so - ” Watanuki looked like he was struggling to find a word that would adequately express the depth of Doumeki’s idiocy. Finally, he gave up and shut his eyes. Picking his words very carefully, he asked, “I never made you bento after that giant thing with the purple tentacles, right?”
Doumeki didn’t know how what this had to do with anything, but replied, “No. Your arm was - ”
“SHUT UP. Right. That’ll work, I guess. Service rendered.” The other boy took a deep breath, and said very quickly, “I don’t know where Yuuko’s gone but she closed the shop and somehow gave it to me in the until she gets back and now I’m like her and have all the same stupid rules and I really don’t get how she does it and will you please just get the hell out?”
Doumeki blinked twice in quick succession. That was… a lot to take in. And also - “Didn’t she have you take over the shop once before?”
“Take care of. Not take over. It’s not the same thing.” Watanuki paused, and then burst out, “And will you stand up already, you jerk? Don’t just go… kneeling like that. It’s creepy.”
Huh. Doumeki would have thought that Watanuki would have relished the chance to see his ‘rival’ on his knees. He stood gingerly, still turning Watanuki’s explanation over in his head, trying to come to grips with the idea. It was harder than he would have expected. The Watanuki that Doumeki had fallen - that Doumeki had grown accustomed to was loud and obnoxious and kept his heart in his expression and his mouth. Doumeki’s Watanuki (though that was a dangerous way to think, really, especially when there were so many days that Doumeki thought that Watanuki might possibly belong to everyone in the world except him) was a giver, and dived in situations without regard for the consequences or the price, and wouldn’t know what subtlety was if it tried to eat him. It was unnerving to see that boy constrained by the scales that had always been Yuuko’s responsibility.
“Your face is all red,” Douemki observed eventually. “Are you sick?”
“I’m - my face - why can’t you just leave, you colossal freak?” Watanuki wailed. “Do you have some sort of hearing deficiency?” He pointed at the door and enunciated with exaggerated precision. “Get. Out. Of. Yuuko’s. Shop.”
“No. What’s for dinner?”
“I. You.” Watanuki sat down heavily on Yuuko’s favorite dramatic-lounging-pose loveseat. “You make no sense at all, you know that? Do you do anything like a normal person?”
Doumeki didn’t have the faintest clue what Watanuki was rambling about, and it was irrelevant anyway. “Make somen.”
Watanuki let out a strangled-sounding laugh. “Oh god. Look, you idiot - you know how Yuuko-san just automatically knows someone’s wish, the minute they walk into the shop? That was… part of the package.”
For one long, blissfully ignorant moment, Doumeki wondered why Watanuki was telling him this. The store was closed; obviously there wouldn’t be any customers wandering in.
Well. Except for Doumeki himself, of course.
Doumeki could feel the blood draining out of his face.
“Look, it’s not - ” he started to say, aware that there was no way he could possibly talk his way out of this mess but determined to try anyway. Some corner of his mind observed idiotically that this, then, was what Watanuki looked like when he was blushing. It didn’t look that different from when he was red with anger; it was just less noisy.
“No,” Watanuki cut him off quickly, apparently finding the situation as awkward as Doumeki did. “It’s not - I’m not saying that I mind, you jerk. I - dammit. Shut up and get out, and we’ll talk when Yuuko-san gets back, okay?”
Douemki forced himself not to start hoping about the first part of that sentence and to focus on the task at hand - namely, not giving Watanuki enough time to actually think about what was happening and spaz. “We can talk now.”
Watanuki glared at him. “You have a wish. I’m sort of Yuuko-san, wish-granting extortionist extraordinaire. No, we really can’t.”
Hm. It would probably be unfair to Watanuki, and he had a feeling that if his wish was granted merely out of obligation it wouldn’t be worth very much anyway. Doumeki shrugged and headed for the door.
“Wait.”
He dutifully stopped and turned around again. Watanuki appeared to be arguing with himself, and then did that same aborted-flail that he had made before and stomped over to lean his face in close. “Here,” he muttered, and brushed his lips over Doumeki’s cheekbone. “And we’re both going to have to pay for that, so don’t get any… ideas!”
Doumeki was rooted to the ground. Watanuki looked at his face and snorted. “Emotionless as ever, you jerk. Go on.” He pushed Doumeki out the door before the words fully registered, and Doumeki wondered for a moment if he should go back in and explain that breathing had taken up most of his concentration at that point, that he had forgotten how to talk, and he didn’t think that he could actually move anything at all (facial muscles included) for fear of everything breaking apart somehow.
But he was already over the threshold by the time this idea occurred to him, and the shop was gone when he looked back.
Four days later, Doumeki ran out of excuses to happen to walk past Yuuko’s shop and instead went in. After all, he reasoned, he wouldn’t be able to see the shop if he didn’t need something from it.
(The fact that he already knew his wish and had known it for a while was, he decided, irrelevant.)
He half-expected to hear the off-key singing of the black round thing as he mounted the steps and left his shoes by the door, but the shop was oddly silent. A receptacle, Watanuki had said, and the little idiot hadn’t even had the sense to ask what he was going to be a receptacle for. In an abstract sense, Doumeki trusted Yuuko to act in Watanuki’s best interests; in a much realer sense, he did not trust her to know what Watanuki’s best interests were.
A receptacle. Doumeki wondered if he had the power to exorcise a person. Then he wondered if he could bring himself to fire an arrow at Watanuki a second time.
“Doumeki? You idiot, can’t you - ”
Doumeki turned around, feeling ridiculously relieved by the venomous bite in Watanuki’s voice.
He met Watanuki’s eyes, and abruptly went to his knees.
Ohgod.
Watanuki was dressed in a deep blue silk kimono - unembroidered, and tied so high over the neck that it would probably cut off his air supply if he tried to look down - but Doumeki rarely saw Watanuki out of his school uniform, and something about the blue fabric and the blue eyes and the tiny, tiny patch of pale throat in between was… distracting. And then, when Doumeki had forced his eyes back up, he saw the dark hollows under Watanuki’s eyes. The other boy looked like a wraith, like something that would only be found in dreams and the musings of artists poisoning themselves in opium dens, like an echo from days that never happened. Like Yuuko.
A receptacle.
Doumeki stayed silent, aware that if he opened his mouth the only thing to emerge would be an embarrassing croak. Watanuki was staring at him, too, his jaw falling open in undisguised shock. He looked like he had seen - well, not a ghost, obviously, because his reaction to spirits was quite a bit milder than this. He looked like he had seen something extremely unlikely. Doumeki would wonder about that reaction - right after his brain started processing fully developed thought processes again.
Something that looked suspiciously like a blush was creeping up Watanuki’s cheeks as they stared at each other. “You really are an idiot, you know that?” he snapped finally. “When Yuuko-san said I should stay away from everyone, that included you.”
Regaining some modicum of self-control, Doumeki shrugged. “Where is she?” Why did she leave you here looking like this? What are you? he added silently.
Watanuki eyed him unhappily. “I don’t know. Look, just get out of here, okay? Something big is - god. No. Okay, fine. Just leave, you useless lump of… of uselessness!” Watanuki made an aborted gesture with his arm, as if he was going to flail around and then thought better of it. “Get out! Before - ” He stopped and bit down on his bottom lip. Hard. Doumeki watched Watanuki’s inevitable mental breakdown in morbid fascination and with a curious element of desire. He knew it had to happen sometime. “Get. Somewhere that is not here. Understand?”
“Not really. Why?” Doumeki wondered if he dared risk trying to stand up again. He looked up into Watanuki’s face, animated with frustration and anger and something that Doumeki might have allowed himself to think was concern. Okay, the floor it was for now. Oddly, he didn’t mind kneeling in front of Watanuki as long as it was of his own volition; somehow, it felt less like humiliation and more like simple demonstration of fact.
“I can’t tell you. Get that? Or I could, but the - damn. Not that, fine. I can tell you. I won’t tell you.”
Doumeki made himself at home on the floorboards. They were comfortingly sturdy.
“Move!”
He could probably sleep here for a while, as long as Watanuki didn’t let him starve, which seemed unlikely. If nothing else, letting someone go hungry would probably offend Watanuki’s culinary sensibilities. Perhaps he could find a phone to call his mother and tell her not to worry.
“You irritating thickheaded moronic imbecilic stupid inconsiderate jerk!”
Would Yuuko have a phone in her shop, though? Probably. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing she would go without. He would probably have to put in some special code to make it connect to his home, though. Watanuki could help him figure it out.
“Argh! You are so - ” Watanuki looked like he was struggling to find a word that would adequately express the depth of Doumeki’s idiocy. Finally, he gave up and shut his eyes. Picking his words very carefully, he asked, “I never made you bento after that giant thing with the purple tentacles, right?”
Doumeki didn’t know how what this had to do with anything, but replied, “No. Your arm was - ”
“SHUT UP. Right. That’ll work, I guess. Service rendered.” The other boy took a deep breath, and said very quickly, “I don’t know where Yuuko’s gone but she closed the shop and somehow gave it to me in the until she gets back and now I’m like her and have all the same stupid rules and I really don’t get how she does it and will you please just get the hell out?”
Doumeki blinked twice in quick succession. That was… a lot to take in. And also - “Didn’t she have you take over the shop once before?”
“Take care of. Not take over. It’s not the same thing.” Watanuki paused, and then burst out, “And will you stand up already, you jerk? Don’t just go… kneeling like that. It’s creepy.”
Huh. Doumeki would have thought that Watanuki would have relished the chance to see his ‘rival’ on his knees. He stood gingerly, still turning Watanuki’s explanation over in his head, trying to come to grips with the idea. It was harder than he would have expected. The Watanuki that Doumeki had fallen - that Doumeki had grown accustomed to was loud and obnoxious and kept his heart in his expression and his mouth. Doumeki’s Watanuki (though that was a dangerous way to think, really, especially when there were so many days that Doumeki thought that Watanuki might possibly belong to everyone in the world except him) was a giver, and dived in situations without regard for the consequences or the price, and wouldn’t know what subtlety was if it tried to eat him. It was unnerving to see that boy constrained by the scales that had always been Yuuko’s responsibility.
“Your face is all red,” Douemki observed eventually. “Are you sick?”
“I’m - my face - why can’t you just leave, you colossal freak?” Watanuki wailed. “Do you have some sort of hearing deficiency?” He pointed at the door and enunciated with exaggerated precision. “Get. Out. Of. Yuuko’s. Shop.”
“No. What’s for dinner?”
“I. You.” Watanuki sat down heavily on Yuuko’s favorite dramatic-lounging-pose loveseat. “You make no sense at all, you know that? Do you do anything like a normal person?”
Doumeki didn’t have the faintest clue what Watanuki was rambling about, and it was irrelevant anyway. “Make somen.”
Watanuki let out a strangled-sounding laugh. “Oh god. Look, you idiot - you know how Yuuko-san just automatically knows someone’s wish, the minute they walk into the shop? That was… part of the package.”
For one long, blissfully ignorant moment, Doumeki wondered why Watanuki was telling him this. The store was closed; obviously there wouldn’t be any customers wandering in.
Well. Except for Doumeki himself, of course.
Doumeki could feel the blood draining out of his face.
“Look, it’s not - ” he started to say, aware that there was no way he could possibly talk his way out of this mess but determined to try anyway. Some corner of his mind observed idiotically that this, then, was what Watanuki looked like when he was blushing. It didn’t look that different from when he was red with anger; it was just less noisy.
“No,” Watanuki cut him off quickly, apparently finding the situation as awkward as Doumeki did. “It’s not - I’m not saying that I mind, you jerk. I - dammit. Shut up and get out, and we’ll talk when Yuuko-san gets back, okay?”
Douemki forced himself not to start hoping about the first part of that sentence and to focus on the task at hand - namely, not giving Watanuki enough time to actually think about what was happening and spaz. “We can talk now.”
Watanuki glared at him. “You have a wish. I’m sort of Yuuko-san, wish-granting extortionist extraordinaire. No, we really can’t.”
Hm. It would probably be unfair to Watanuki, and he had a feeling that if his wish was granted merely out of obligation it wouldn’t be worth very much anyway. Doumeki shrugged and headed for the door.
“Wait.”
He dutifully stopped and turned around again. Watanuki appeared to be arguing with himself, and then did that same aborted-flail that he had made before and stomped over to lean his face in close. “Here,” he muttered, and brushed his lips over Doumeki’s cheekbone. “And we’re both going to have to pay for that, so don’t get any… ideas!”
Doumeki was rooted to the ground. Watanuki looked at his face and snorted. “Emotionless as ever, you jerk. Go on.” He pushed Doumeki out the door before the words fully registered, and Doumeki wondered for a moment if he should go back in and explain that breathing had taken up most of his concentration at that point, that he had forgotten how to talk, and he didn’t think that he could actually move anything at all (facial muscles included) for fear of everything breaking apart somehow.
But he was already over the threshold by the time this idea occurred to him, and the shop was gone when he looked back.