With

I

Life with Watanuki teaches Doumeki many things.

Watanuki doesn't like people touching his nose.

He hates carrots and black beans and mint ice cream. He cannot stand people leaving the lights on when they leave the house, or the cupboard doors open.

He draws circles and stick figures (and on one occasion, there were two stick figures doing something naughty, with 'HA HA HA, WHERE DID THAT COME FROM written next to the picture) on the shopping lists he leaves on the fridge door.

He likes games and quizzes and gets ridiculously excited, as well as extremely competitive, being the kind who will loudly yell, even to comparative strangers sometimes: "Ha ha, in your face! You suck, I kicked your butt!"

In his sleep, he sometimes mumbles unintelligible, round words, and sometimes he smacks his mouth just like Doumeki's uncle's dog used to do when it wanted to go out hunting in the fall. Once, Watanuki laughed, an adorable little hushed laugh and a giggle, and Doumeki dearly hoped it was him Watanuki was dreaming of. Another time, in the middle of the night, Watanuki sat up and said, in a very loud and clear voice: "You get that thing out of your mouth this instant, young man!" Doumeki had sat up with a sleepy "whuh?", but Watanuki had only promptly lain back down and slept peacefully once more.

In his sleep, Watanuki's mouth goes slack and some frown you never really see when he's awake, straightens out.

It's not that Doumeki watches Watanuki sleeping.

The noise Watanuki makes the first time Doumeki ever makes him come is one of odd surprise, as if he never really expected to be the kind to make noise; as if he never really understood that sex was actually supposed to be fun. Doumeki himself was, earlier in the evening, forced to spill wine on himself to get an excuse to go to the toilet and jerk off. The entire evening was excruciating, Watanuki having accidentally slipped out that the particular night was going to be 'well, different, you know DON'T STARE AT ME LIKE THAT YOU WEIRDO", and he was afraid he would be completely out of control the minute he'd manage to pry Watanuki's pants off.

He is able to hold off for a good while, in a very manly fashion, and only comes against Watanuki's slim abdomen when he hears the amazed "AahHUH?" breathed into his ear.

II

They rarely fight. Watanuki is as violent and passionate with his words as he ever was, and Doumeki pokes him back every now and then, but they grow softer and sometimes find themselves going through entire evenings without anything even remotely snippy in the air. Despite their superficial differences, they compliment each other nicely: both are well raised and polite and actually quite fond of each other.

But of course it's not all smooth sailing.

One afternoon, Doumeki sits down to see Watanuki brushing Mugetsu with a tiny brush. The fox is laid flat on Watanuki's lap, completely immobile, whether from fear or enjoyment, Doumeki really can't tell.

"Are you supposed to be doing that?" he asks.

Watanuki snaps his head up. "He likes it!"

"What, you're going to tie pink bows into his fur next," Doumeki smirks and Watanuki rushes up, the Pipe Fox (the damn thing) quickly grabbing on and sliding into his sleeve to hide. Watanuki fumes, breathes through his nose loudly and stomps away, banging their bedroom door closed.

Apparently it was insulting.

Watanuki rants around in the bedroom and bangs the furniture about. He's most likely cleaning, though, for Watanuki would never mess up any space he himself has to live in, probably not any other space voluntarily either. Just as Doumeki reaches for the handle, the stampede from inside shouts at him: "All your clothes and books and stuff are in here, so you better stay out of this room if you don't want to have them back in about a million pieces!"

Doumeki let's go of the handle, but does not retreat.

"I am not a girl!" the door vibrates at him.

"Well, yeah, I've seen you without your pants on."

"Don't talk to me about… about my pants!"

Doumeki leans his forehead on the door. He's horrible with apologies.

"Look", he finally begins, and knows Watanuki must hear the remorse in his voice because the bedroom grows quiet and the air still. "I'll let you put pink bows into my hair."

Something drops with a loud clink and Watanuki pulls the door open with force.

"What?"

Doumeki looks away and struggles to keep his arm from rising to scratch at his neck.

"I'll. Let you. Put pink bows into my hair." His face stays calm, but Watanuki knows better by now.

Watanuki leans slowly against the door frame, with a smile of a cat that has been eating your prize-winning canaries all day long and has no intention of stopping anytime soon.

"Say please," he smirks.

Doumeki looks at him in the eye and knows he is forgiven. "Please."

So they sit down, and Watanuki cheerfully ties two glaring yellow ribbons – he couldn't find pink ones anywhere - into his short hair with care and love. Doumeki lets them stay where they are until it's time for him to leave for his study group. He's only a few feet into the night when he hears Watanuki's footsteps following him.

"Oh for crying out loud," Watanuki huffs at him. "You can take them off now, you hairy bastard of a monkey." He reaches to extract the bows from his hair.

"I thought they suited me." Doumeki says.

"You're such a girl."

III

During hot summer months, Watanuki barely lets Doumeki touch him. He's grumpy and irritated, but then again he always is, during summer his irritation is only more restless, more absent. Sometimes, after a long day, Watanuki will sit down in the only chair that is in the shade in their tiny, poorly ventilated apartment, and he will allow Doumeki to fan him with a newspaper, if Doumeki just waits long enough for him to settle down, close his eyes, and sigh a few times.

Doumeki does not fan just because he is a good and loving boyfriend, but also because Watanuki does sigh, loudly and rather obscenely sometimes, and because he wears a big t-shirt with a wide v-shaped collar. He pulls on the collar, lets it slip, and it reveals hidden treasures; the collarbone, the shoulder, and sometimes a hint or a shadow of a nipple, and Doumeki forgets to fan.

"I hate this", Watanuki will say, his words stretching just like his body as he shifts his legs and lifts his hands over his head, giving a glimpse of a pale, flat stomach. "Why is it so hot?"

"Because it's summer, " Doumeki says, and Watanuki sighs, exasperated, too tired to be in on the joke.

Watanuki may be willing to cuddle for a while, especially under the cool sheets during evening, but as soon as one of them, or both, gets even a bit sweaty, he pulls away. This usually happens while one of them has just managed to wriggle out of their boxers and is happily enjoying a hand job. Doumeki wants to inform Watanuki that if would be rather problematic to have sex without breaking a sweat, but he knows Watanuki won't care. He will pull his hand away sometimes only a second before Doumeki can climax and yell: "It's too hot, gaah; your sweat is all over! I don't want to do laundry again in the morning!"

One Sunday, when Doumeki is feeling particularly desperate, he figures sex in the shower might be a good idea, but is soon cured of this misconception when he tries to sneak into the bathroom after Watanuki and Watanuki screams bloody murder for ten minutes straight. It may have something to do with how Doumeki thought it would be amusing to approach him with a surprise ice cube in the neck.

(The neighbours, for many many years forward, talk about the odd boys living in 3B who are into black magic and voodoo and gut and torture cats. "In the dead of the night", they say. "You can sometimes still hear the cats shriek as their bones are torn from their bodies.")

IV

They both received an impressive pummelling the previous night, from whatever spirit-creature it was this time, something more akin to a demon or a God. It was so powerful even Doumeki could see it as clear as day: the black scales and the wild red mane burning in the dying sunlight. He, obviously, took most of the physical beating while trying to keep Watanuki out of harm's way and now sports a black eye, a sprain on his wrist and a lot of smaller bruises. Regardless, it was still Watanuki's part to face the fight, as it always tends to be. Yuuko shows up just a second too early to let Watanuki die; she swishes to the scene to do her magic; to throw a twig, or to a summon sharp-toothed, iridescent creature from the pond to crunch the monster between its teeth. But still, it is Watanuki who sucks up the magic, who sucks up the poison the spirits emit into the human world.

Doumeki can do nothing, in the end, even if he would anything in his power.

He sits in the breakfast table, ladling his soup into his mouth, too exhausted to care even if it burns his tongue and there's too much salt. He doesn't know what to do, or how he can survive and it's moments like these that almost do in him: moments where he looks up and sees Watanuki's white skin splotched red when a thin red line of blood drips from his nose to his plate, and Watanuki is too exhausted to even realize.

It is a sinking feeling and his hands shake too much when he reaches across the table. What if he cannot protect this boy, what if there is not enough life between the two of them to sustain even one person. He has given his eye, his blood, two of his fingers and more magic he ever thought he possessed; what if he runs out of body parts to give, runs out of bargaining chips to buy time with?

Doumeki has been taught to be strong, and he is, but it has never meant that he would not feel, that he would be unbreakable. He has been taught not to deny fear; to give it just enough space to keep him careful but not too much to make him paranoid or overly cautious. But there have been times; like the hours painted with glass shards and Himawari's broken smile, when he thought, for the first time in his life, that he could not keep the fear at bay and it would eat him up and make him undeserving. No matter what his grandfather tried to teach him, he was still not really prepared.

Those moments are in the past now, and one should never dwell on the past, but the touch of them never really fades. He was forced to put his faith in Yuuko, forced to turn Watanuki over into somebody else's hands and it never leaves him. He knows it is human to be afraid and he is human, after all, only human. But he wants to be strong enough. He grits his teeth and fights to control the doubt and the trepidation in his gut.

V

At first Watanuki seems to be afraid of touch, though not afraid of Doumeki, which is a relief to discover. No, Watanuki is afraid of another person breathing, existing so close and taking up his own precious space, so he squirms and fidgets and talks about useless things endlessly, and if Doumeki even dares to imply he would be nervous, there's going to be hell to pay.

Doumeki doesn't think Watanuki is being mean on purpose when he pulls away from Doumeki's touches, or when he frowns and slaps him when he's trying to put his hand down Watanuki's pants in the breakfast table. Watanuki tends to be busy – Yuuko still makes sure of that – and there's always something he has to do now, something he's trying to figure out, or somewhere he's going to have to be in a moment.

"And it's not nice if I'm all sleepy and red, and I always am, then, if we… do something," he says irritably. Doumeki has been around Watanuki long enough to know that red means flustered and sleepy means relaxed and takes this as a compliment. Watanuki may be ridiculously easy to put into a blushing fit (especially from rage), but relaxing him is a task that Doumeki suspects nobody but him manages in.

It's only that Watanuki has not yet fully understood that somebody's satisfaction and happiness could depend on him. Doumeki knows Watanuki and forgives this, and after all it is him, of all the men and women in the world, who ever has access to any part of body, any patch of skin, or any tuft of hair belonging to Watanuki.

It takes him a while to understand the way Watanuki shows affection, or the way he attempts to initiate any sort of contact. Watanuki pinches his neck sometimes, or pulls absently at his hair when he passes Doumeki in the hall, smiling a little. When Doumeki sits on the sofa picking pieces of tissue off freshly-laundered clothes ("We are not that poor that we would need to wash our tissues, you domestic horror!" Watanuki tells him, every time, but he still tends to forget to check all his pockets), Watanuki will suddenly pull Doumeki's socks off and start tickling him. A few times he has woken up, very early in the morning, to Watanuki stroking his hair and blushing furiously when he realizes Doumeki's eyes are open

"There was a knot in your hair!" Watanuki defends noisily. Doumeki closes his eyes and tries not to smile. Watanuki's fingers linger.

At first, Watanuki's touches on his body are unsure and shivery, scared and careful in the darkness of their bedroom. Watanuki's fingers barely stray beyond his navel and Doumeki carefully – very carefully – takes his hand and settles it around himself. Watanuki buries his face in Doumeki's neck, the heat revealing his blush. But his hands are eager, even if inexperienced.

They aren't the kind to speak words of love, neither of them, really. Doumeki has, a few times, attempted to call Watanuki honey or darling or some such other endearment, but it usually comes out from his mouth sounding so ridiculous that Watanuki will threaten him with a frying pan.

But he still smiles, secretly.

Lazing around in an afterglow, Watanuki traces his finger down Doumeki's back, caressing the base of his spine, the slope of his back.

"I like this part of you," Watanuki whispers into his chest.

VI

Looking at Watanuki's frail body, big round eyes and bony shoulders, Doumeki tries to make himself distinguish what's in there, what is it that the other world and its creatures see that he cannot. Watanuki is a riddle to him, a puzzle or a code he can't even see to try and solve. Maybe Watanuki doesn't belong in this place, maybe there's a hidden depth in him Doumeki can never reach and one day they will be torn apart and Watanuki will return to the universe he was always meant to be in. He wants to see a future where they are fat old men; a future where they argue over the possession of the remote control and compare their digestive problems, but he cannot see it, for he has not the gift of precognition. He can only hope, hope with every fibre of his being. But some days, he feels his hope is a small thing against an entire world.

Some days, when he hasn't seen Watanuki in a while, he starts to fear that it will all suddenly disappear; that he will no longer be able to return to the apartment of which he pays half of the rent and Watanuki the other half; that if he were to run into Watanuki on the street, they would no longer recognize each other.

He fears he will blink and find himself still hunched up on the cold floor of Yuuko's shop, staring at the curled, odd black figures adorning the floor tiles, the black tendrils stretching to a future without Watanuki. He remembers his body growing stiff, and his clothes sticking to his skin, he remembers the weight in his arms and the cold fingers sinking into his skin, the laboured way Watanuki fought for his breath and probably tried to apologize.

He remembers straining his ears to hear through the door, remembers how he tried to trick himself into believing he could keep Watanuki alive just by breathing himself, just by pulling Watanuki along, tying them together tighter and tighter.

But Watanuki will risk himself, again and again, for stupid reasons, and sometimes for good reasons as well, even if Doumeki can never rate any reason good enough. He grows angry, furious and then disgusted by his own rage. He will clutch Watanuki to him tightly on those nights when he has again escaped something only barely. Doumeki is never rough but knows he can be forceful and does not bother to rein it in.

Watanuki asks him if something is wrong, but he stays quiet, absolutely and completely quiet, now too close to even berate Watanuki, too close to make it into a joke.

At first, Watanuki does not know what to do, so he tries to understand, but when he can't his innocent questions and apologies will only worsen things. When Doumeki is silent for too long and avoids eye contact for almost a week, Watanuki turns into a frightened cat, creeping around listlessly, every movement making him jump. The look in Watanuki's eyes is hunted and must be the exact same he wore years and years ago when he was still so very young.

He asks: "Are you leaving?"

Doumeki can't really say anything, 'of course not' would seem stupid, ineffective and even insulting; a simple 'no' would sound insincere. Eventually he only shakes his head, ready to grab on if it begins to look like Watanuki is ready to walk out. But Watanuki yells: "Why don't you say anything, what is wrong with you? You open your mouth and you talk, that's what it's there for, you, you brainless oaf!"

It's a relief to hear Watanuki shouting at him, but he still does not know what to say. He opens his mouth, tries for words but nothing comes.

"Come on, just say it! What is it? I have heard you talk before; I know you can do it!" Watanuki demands.

Doumeki buries his face in his hands, knuckles digging into his forehead.

"What is there that I can do to keep you alive?"

Later on, he lays his head on Watanuki's lap and Watanuki pets his hair.

"I'm not with you as a reward, you know," Watanuki says, his tone gentle. "I'm not a prize you get for a job done well. You don't have to deserve me to get me."

Doumeki holds on tightly to the fabric of Watanuki's pants (he doesn't cling, for he's a grown man and grown men don't do that).

"I don't need you to keep me alive."

Doumeki feels like choking, his body trying to clench in on itself and curl up into a space that's just too small for his frame. He's never been much for crying, but it's still a bit surprising that he can't immediately recognize the want to cry.

"I'm not here because I need you to save me. I'm here, because, well – " and here Watanuki clears his throat. "Because I, for some reason I'm sure no deity in the world can decipher, like you."

Doumeki is quiet for a long, long time, and Watanuki waits.

"I can't stand you dying."

"I won't die. You have to trust me."

"But you…" Doumeki slips off, swallows his breath and his voice, but he knows the words are there anyway, existing between them, out of his reach to erase. For other people, you will go to any lengths. Watanuki bows down his head, his hair reaching Doumeki's ear and tickling his cheek.

"I…" Watanuki says.

They stay still, for a long while, the apartment bathed in the blood-red tones of sunset and the two of them eventually embraced in the merciful blues of twilight. Watanuki continues to pet Doumeki's hair and will soon come to realize that his lessons, even if perhaps already learnt, still need some repeating and absorbing. He no longer lives for himself only. Doumeki, in turn will eventually understand that he can't always be strong; he has to be weak and imperfect and human, because that is exactly what he is. He needs to better appreciate the difference between a duty, a human in a distress and a person he shares his everyday life with.

It is not an easy thing to trust oneself into somebody else's hands, but sometimes there is no other way to survive.

They don't speak in unison, because they are two different people after all, but they think the same thing and it comes out in the same way.

"I will try harder for you."

VII

A few months after their eighth anniversary, on a chilly December night, they meet at the train station to go home together and Doumeki opens his coat to let Watanuki burrow inside. The difference in their height is just big enough that he could zip his coat up and Watanuki would be wholly swallowed up in the warm darkness of their shared space, almost inside Doumeki.

He is careful to leave enough room to breathe.

Watanuki's lips are red and swollen from the cold, the tip of his nose freezing as he presses it against Doumeki's neck.

"Why aren't you wearing anything on your head, you idiot," Doumeki tells him.

"Oh but I was, it's just that I ran into this adorable little girl and she looked like she was so cold, so I gave her my hat," Watanuki says. "But then the girl said she didn't need the hat for herself, but for her small rabbit, she had this rabbit, you see, in her pocket, and so I took the rabbit and put it in my cap and suddenly the rabbit turned into this marvellous, huge phoenix and told me that that girl was a princess from a magical country and she had been put under a horrible spell, but now when somebody from the magical community had shown her kindness and she had shown it to him, he, the Mighty Phoenix of All the Little Bunny Rabbit Wizards, could now carry her back to her country and help her save the world! And I was really very horribly cold, but since I had helped to save a world, I thought it would all be okay." Watanuki's words melt into a smirk.

Doumeki bumps his chin against Watanuki's forehead and smiles into his black hair. "Smarty-pants."

"Smarty-pants? Didn't the big kids teach any better insults?" Watanuki says and bites into the sensitive skin of Doumeki's neck, worrying the skin gently with his teeth like a puppy trying out his first fang.

In retribution, Doumeki digs his cold fingers under Watanuki's sweater, just inches above his waistline, making him yelp.

"Bony."

"Fatty."