"…"
"…"
"I hate your hair."
Doumeki blinked and looked up into the annoyed sapphire gaze of one spirit-detector extraordinaire. "Excuse me?"
Watanuki frowned and crossed his arms. Himawari hadn't joined them at lunch and he'd been ranting for almost the entire break about all the bad things he could find in Doumeki, but the damn archer hadn't even been paying attention. It was then that he realized Doumeki's hair was getting very long and falling over his eyebrows. Instead of appearing as roguish as it usually did though, it was just looking ratty now.
"I hate your hair," he repeated as if the archer was a very slow child. "It's all…stringy and…bad."
His rival blinked slowly at his admittedly not all that eloquent statement and reached up to finger his hair. "Seems fine to me." He tossed his hair in an unconscious twitch to get it from his eyes and went back to cleaning up the lunch box that Watanuki had laboriously made for him.
"Well, I hate it and if I have to be stuck seeing you, I don't want to see it. Go get it cut," he demanded and went back to eating as if that was the end of the discussion.
After a moment's pause. "No."
Watanuki almost choked on his food and whirled to glare at Doumeki, who wasn't fazed in the slightly. "And why not?!"
"I hate hair salons."
"Then who cuts your damn hair every year?!"
"My grandmother. I don't trust hair salons."
"Gah!" His hands clutched his own hair, his head feeling ready to explode. Doumeki was really pressing his admittedly short patience today. "Then get your grandmother to cut your hair again!"
"She can't."
"Why not?!"
"She's out of town on a hospital trip. Her hands have been shaking so badly that she can't hold a lot of stuff without dropping it."
Suddenly Watanuki felt horrible. Doumeki's expression hadn't changed, as if he weren't worried, but who wouldn't be when their only close family member was in the hospital? His indignant sapphire eyes suddenly softened and darkened with sadness and self-reproach. "Why an out of town hospital?"
"There's a specialist that my grandfather helped that she knows. She thinks its Parkinson's disease."
Admittedly, Watanuki didn't know much about the various sorts of diseases one could get in one's lifetime, but he had heard about Parkinson's. It was a degenerative disease that made the signals of the brain send wrong to the muscles. Moreover, as far as he knew, there was no cure for it and the treatment was rather costly.
Doumeki didn't say anything for the rest of the lunch about his grandmother and Watanuki felt so guilty about bringing it that he couldn't find his voice until the bell rang, signaling time to return to classes. It was when the archer was walking away that his resolve firmed.
"Hey, wait."
The boy turned around and looked at him expectantly, even if his expression didn't change. His hand shook a little when those golden eyes touched his and he covered it by picking up the lunch boxes and gathering his stuff. "Come by my apartment after work."
"Why?"
"Just do it!" he hissed, but there was no anger in his voice. Doumeki merely shrugged and nodded, like he had figured he would, and he watched that strong, wide back retreat from him.
Watanuki chewed his lip a little and slid the shoji paper door open to where Yuuko was currently idling away her hours drinking sake. She didn't even look up at him as she and the black porkbun toasted for some inane reason and downed their cups. Where the two girls were, he didn't know.
"Ready to go home, Watanuki?"
"Oh…yes, but…"
"Did you need something?" she asked, seeming almost distracted and then for the first time, he noticed there was a chess board between the two of them. Mokona's knight had just captured a white bishop.
"I just…I was wondering if I could borrow some scissors. All the ones I have at home…they're dull."
Her burgundy eyes finally looked up at him and he wished she hadn't, since they were sparking with amusement and he just knew he was going to be teased. He braced himself, clutching his school bag in one hand tightly.
"Oh…? What do you need scissors for?"
"T-to cut something, what else?!" he stuttered, going for the standard, over the top voice to hide his embarrassment.
For a long moment, he thought she was going to tease him some more, but she merely shrugged with that mysterious smile he so hated. "Okay, just bring them back tomorrow."
His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "This little borrowing…it's going to come out of my pay, isn't it?"
She tapped her chin and shared a secret glance with the black porkbun. "Not necessarily, if you want to give me something in return, something small. A…favor, perhaps."
Watanuki was already jittery enough as it was, so her deviation from her normal behavior only excited him further and he bounced the balls of his feet in nervousness. "What sort of thing?"
"How about this, Watanuki-kun: if you trade me the recipe that your father used to make your mother their wedding cake, I won't deduct your pay and you can keep the scissors, since all the ones you have are dull. How about that?"
This didn't seem like a fair trade at all, since all of his father's recipes meant so much, much more than just a pair of scissors, even if he got to keep them. It didn't matter that he knew the recipe by heart; it was the principle of the thing. His father had handled and made the recipe himself…one of the few things he had a link to in the past.
"But Yuuko-san!"
"Trust me, Watanuki," she told him with a smile. "These scissors are a little more than normal scissors that are equal in price to such a recipe."
He frowned and was almost tempted to tell her no before he remembered that lunch period he'd had with Doumeki and what he planned to do. His shoulders slumped and he nodded. "Okay, deal."
"Maru, bring me the scissors!"
Somewhere down the hall there came a call of agreement and feet were suddenly running up to him, holding out a pair of silver sheers. It did not appear like normal scissors, quite elegant in fact, and he wondered just what they could do. But he dared not ask Yuuko, in case she demanded even more. Even information you had to pay for with her.
"I'll bring the recipe tomorrow," he said, somewhat dejectedly and turned to leave the room. When his footsteps could be no longer heard, Yuuko turned with a knowing smile to Mokona.
"I said I wanted the recipe; I never said he couldn't have a copy of it, did I?" They both smiled wider. "Besides, it's time for Watanuki to move away from the past a little, don't you agree?"
"Yes! And checkmate!"
"No fair!"
Doumeki was waiting for him when he left the gates of Yuuko's shop, the scissors in his school bag. The boy straightened and since he was still carrying his bow in its case, it was obvious that he had just finished club practice.
"Oi. What's this all about?"
"Don't call me 'oi'!" He paused and growled, "Just follow me."
The silence, at least from his end, was tense when they reached his building and he led the archer up the stairs. Doumeki hadn't been in his apartment yet, and he wasn't keen on having the boy he hated rummage around in his stuff, but…what else was he supposed to do?
Watanuki closed the door behind him as they both pulled off their shoes and he pulled Doumeki to the kitchen. He didn't miss those golden eyes studying the rooms and the apartment in general with a thoroughness he envied, even if it was just a glance. Doumeki didn't miss anything, did he?
"Sit down and wait here."
Without waiting to see if Doumeki did what he said, Watanuki dropped his bag on the table and diverted into the bathroom to grab a towel. When he came back, the archer had indeed sat down and was waiting. Damn that boy, did no expression ever cross his face? When Watanuki pulled out the scissors, he could see that the archer was finally getting the intention.
"I don't need a haircut."
"Yes you do, so just sit still and let me do it."
Doumeki eyed him skeptically as Watanuki wrapped the towel around the taller boy's shoulders and stood behind him, measuring as carefully as he could before he cut the strands each time.
"Have you done this before?"
Watanuki didn't answer immediately. "I've done my own, once or twice, when I couldn't go to a salon. It's harder, since the back is awkward, but it can be done. And if I can do my own and look good, I can do yours."
Silence surrounded them, broken only by the snip-snip of the scissors. For some reason, there was a calmness settling around him and none of the usually tense atmosphere seeped into him as it usually did when he was around Doumeki. In fact, it was almost nice to have another human being in his house and doing something as mundane as cutting someone else's hair.
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why are you doing this?"
"Because your hair was looking ratty," he muttered, flushing a little as he moved so he could get Doumeki's bangs and those golden eyes studied him quietly for another long few moments. Black strands fell onto the linoleum floor and into Doumeki's lap, but even after he was finished, which didn't take long, he made sure the archer didn't move.
"Stay. If you move, you'll make more of a mess."
He put the scissors away in a drawer, missing how as soon as he turned and his hand was off it, it glowed ever so faintly. The bespectacled boy went to a small closet and pulled out a broom and dustpan, first getting the hair off the floor. But he didn't put the broom away just yet. Instead, with cheeks flushing brighter red, he brushed off Doumeki's clothes and lap and swept those up as well.
When he was satisfied that he'd gotten all the hair and had the towel washing, he allowed his rival to stand up. "There. You're done."
"Thank you."
He turned away, not liking or understanding why his cheeks were just so red or why he was feeling awkward now with just Doumeki in his apartment. "It's no big deal. It just annoyed me, and I didn't want to have to stare at it, is all." He hadn't cut it all that short and now Doumeki really did look his usual, roguish and handsome self.
Stop thinking that, Watanuki! It's just Doumeki! I mean, sure, he is handsome, but it's Doumeki!
"Um…you want some tea before you go?"
For a moment, Doumeki didn't say anything and he turned around. Those eyes were soft and unreadable and he smiled ever so faintly. "Sure."
Maybe his father's recipe wasn't a bad price to pay…he was feeling so very relaxed and safe, something he hadn't felt in a long time, even if Doumeki was around.
"That'd be nice."
Watanuki smiled hesitantly in return and he turned to make the tea. Back in her shop, Yuuko smiled as she stared into scrying water. That went very well…hitsuzen was all well and good, but sometimes it was slow. It never hurt to speed things along, did it?
She chuckled and went back to her chess game.
End