DISCLAIMER: The original manga xxxHoLic is the work of CLAMP. Concept based on fanart by zelas. Characters have been adapted without authorization or approval, and I am making no profit from their use.

Please Note: This chapter has been revised from its original version to meet content guidelines.

His ear hurt. That was the first thing Watanuki was able to process as consciousness slowly filtered back into his brain. His ear hurt because his head was on something significantly less soft than a pillow, and why was it taking him so long to wake up anyway? Not to mention the fact that sleeping on something other than his pillow made no sense when last night had been his night off. He should have been at home, not curled around...

Something hard and warm.

And slightly sweaty.

That smelled like cloves.

His senses couldn't be fooled -- it was a person. He knew the feel of skin and the shape of someone's shoulder perfectly well by touch. Normally, that sort of recognition was done by hand, when he was expecting it, but the cheek contained sensory apparatuses as well, and it wasn't hard to extrapolate.

So, someone. Someone naked.

Watanuki was definitely awake now, screaming "La, la, la!" in the recesses of his mind to keep from jumping to any conclusions about who the mysterious person Person B who'd lent him a shoulder for the night might be. Opening his eyes, careful not to make sudden moves, he peered around the room.

Body. Definitely male, and not too shabby a body either. But he'd been able to feel that, as well.

Bed. Not his own. Of course, that had been obvious, since it was a bed and clearly not the futon he spread on the floor of his rooms. The walls looked the same as the room above the bar where he'd woken up last month after sleeping off that glass of rum. So, he probably hadn't been kidnapped.

Probably.

Weapon belt lying over the back of the chair by the door. Why had he left it all the way over there?! Not that it mattered. Not really. He'd be able to get to it if he needed it.

One fishnet sleeve hanging from the doorknob. Weird.

The other one seemed to be hanging on the light fixture on the ceiling.

Huh.

His pants and shirt weren't visible from his current position. Unfortunately, the stupidly gigantic boots lying in mild disarray near the nightstand were. As, if he moved his neck ever so slightly to look at the bedpost by his... by the other person's head, was a hat he knew more than too well, complete with poofy feather.

"Hey," a voice said by his ear, confirming his worst suspicions.

He'd gotten drunk and had sex with a pirate.

That pirate.

"How do you intend to explain this, Captain Doumeki!?" he demanded.

"Explain what?"

Watanuki moved decidedly over to his side of the bed and pulled the sheets securely around his person. "You may begin with the whereabouts of my pants!"

The villain shrugged -- no shame! -- and laid back on his own pillow with his hands behind his head. "I'm not the one who took them off."

It was just like a pirate to excuse himself with that kind of... of... of... excuse. And a damn shabby excuse it was, too. It was certainly no help toward the stated goal of finding his pants. Well, perhaps it hadn't been stated so much as implied, but it had been strongly implied, and Doumeki was being not helpful. Now, where were they?

Not on the floor on his side of the bed.

Not on the windowsill or the nightstand or the chair by the near wall.

Peeking as carefully as he could over Doumeki without risking touching the man (again), he could see that they weren't on the floor over there, either. His shirt was lying in a heap by the bottom of the near bedpost, but his pants were nowhere to be found.

It would seem that he would be required to think about whatever it was that he had done to cause his pants to be divorced from his person, or he might never be able to find them. Damn it.

Right. Last night.

So, after an ill-timed comment about nitrobenzene had led to him explaining to Doumeki that there was no way in hell a pirate could say dioxidomethylidene in the course of receiving a blowjob without resorting to the use of the polysyllabic 'Arrrrgh', he'd practically dragged the smirking pirate up the stairs to prove his point. God, he'd been drunk. Nothing in dioxidomethylidene even sounded liked 'Arrrrgh'!

Right. Still had his pants on then.

One thing leading to another. That had definitely happened.

And he'd been wearing his pants when he'd gotten onto the bed, if he recalled correctly.

Oh, Doumeki was totally lying about not being the one who'd taken them off, too. He'd absolutely...

No, wait. His clunky pirate fingers had been taking too long finding the three rows of perfectly logical buckle clasps hidden on the sides. Watanuki had ended up stripping them off himself, and then when Doumeki did that thing to his ear, he'd...

Kicked them off his feet. Right.

Keeping the sheets wrapped around him for modesty's sake, he crawled down to the edge of the bed and poked through the blankets for his trousers. One leg was sticking out of the space between the mattress and the foot of the bed, and the other leg seemed to have gotten wrapped somehow around a pole in an annoying and hard-to-detatch fashion. It was looped around itself and secured in a way that might have been ingenious if it had been done on purpose, but as it was currently preventing him from proper access to his clothes, he rated it a damn pain.

Also, his posterior was starting to get cold.

Watanuki flopped back down on the pillow, drawing the blanket over his chest and rubbing his eyes.

"I can't believe I had sex with a pirate."

"I can. Pirates are good in bed." He turned his head to face the man on the pillow next to him. Doumeki continued, poker face unbroken, to say, "It's in the code."

"What!?"

"Article Twelve."

Doumeki rolled onto his side and adjusted the blankets, covering himself, which had the side effect of pushing their bodies back together. Technically, Watanuki, supposed, with the pirate's arm across him that way, this was what one might call "an embrace". It was warm, though, and he wasn't complaining on a morning this cold. He looked up instead, with one eye open, and gave his interlocutor a half-hearted, "I hate you."

"I'm sorry you feel that way," said a soft, unapologetic voice by his ear.

That was when it hit him. Like a bucket of ice getting dumped down his back.

"Oh, shit!" Watanuki yelled, sitting bolt upright. He turned to the other man, who had managed to dodge to the side. "I had sex with a pirate! The union is going to have my hide!"

"The popcorn vendors' union?" Doumeki asked with that goddamn smirk.

"Yes, that's right!" he shot back, then shivered at the thought of the summons he was sure to receive from Mistress Yuuko when word of this got back to her -- and it would definitely get back to her. She always knew. "I'll... I'll have my rank stripped, I'm sure of it. My tools confiscated, my clearances revoked, my life over!"

"Are you serious?" he heard the man ask. When Watanuki turned and saw that the smirk was gone -- well, it was hard to tell for sure, seeing as the pirate's stupid face didn't show an extraordinary emotional range, but something told him there was no more smirking -- and it was possible he felt the tiniest twinge of guilt.

A slew of hyperboles froze on his tongue. The guy didn't really care, did he? Watanuki bit his lip and answered, "I may have been exaggerating slightly."

Doumeki's arm reached out from under the covers and pulled him hard back down to the mattress. "That's good," the pirate said, trapping him in yet another embarrassingly comfortable embrace. "You know, the pirates' guild actually gives you extra points for scoring a popcorn vendor."

"You had sex with me for points!?"

The pirate barely flinched. "No," he replied in a complete deadpan. "You're special."

"Oh, blow me," Watanuki said. His best evil glare was met by an amused raise of an eyebrow. Glares worked so much better when you had pants on. With a sniff, he looked up and away, anywhere but at that stupid--

Watanuki tensed and grabbed the covers. Something around him had moved in an unexpected fashion.

Make that someone.

He looked over at where the pirate's head had been a moment ago, and at the mass moving under the sheets. That couldn't be good.

Well, actually, if both his intuition and his memory were working properly, it could be very, very good, but not in a good way!

Well, kind of not. And kind of not not. He was of half a mind to pull up the sheets and demand of the pirate to know what he was doing, but the question was a bit redundant.

"That's not what I meant!" Watanuki yelled instead. Not that Doumeki would listen.

~// ... Some time passes ... //~

After a moment lying still, his head resting in the crook where Doumeki's neck met his shoulder, he recovered enough to sound a petulant moan deep in his throat.

"Hmm?" Doumeki questioned him with a grunt of his own.

With some struggle, Watanuki pushed himself up to arm's length and waited for Doumeki to open his eyes. He let out a sigh, and shook his head at his completely inexplicable life.

"I can't believe I had sex with a pirate twice," he explained at last.

One side of Doumeki's lip raised in a quiet laugh. He turned and reached his arm up, just barely managing to pull his hat from the bedpost and drop it unceremoniously on Watanuki's head, feather and all.

"Pirate captain," he answered, and rested his arms behind his head -- looking entirely too satisfied for his own good.

[The End]