Doumeki tore his eyes away from the incorporeal mist that hovered near the edges of the room to look intently at Watanuki's face as his features twisted with pain. The misty-foggy movement was about all that Doumeki could see of the Hell Hound as the deamon stalked the edges of the space, wanting to advance further but only able to choke Watanuki and not yet consume him fully.

"Dou...dou... me..." Watanuki gasped. His eyes were wide, his mouth open, but very little air could enter his lungs.

Doumeki felt helpless, and consequently quite frustrated at his helplessness. He had not yet learned the advanced arts of exorcism. He had no means to destroy this spirit and nothing on hand, other than the presence of his own spirit, to ward the malevolent creature away.

Having nothing left other than physical touch, Doumeki moved his hands to Watanuki's red and bruised neck.

Immediately the choking subsided and Watanuki's back and chest trembled with the effort of expanding with air. The boy pushed himself upright in Doumeki's embrace. He held tightly to the arms that led up to his neck but did not push them away. "The wards... I've..." He coughed again. "I just replaced them last week. I haven't had any burn up for a few years now."

"How are you still alive?" Doumeki asked.

The boy winced at the question. "It didn't used to be so bad. It's gotten a lot worse the past few weeks. I can't go anywhere now without getting harassed." His eyes flicked to the corner of the small room. "It's still here. Can you see it?"

Doumeki followed the gaze to the smoky substance floating a few inches above the floor. Every few blinks he would get a glimpse of the full creature, blood filled mouth with jaws so large the teeth pierced the creature's lips. Black tar coated fur and claws as long as railroad nails dug into the mats. "A little. It's mostly fog to me."

Watanuki's face was very pale. "It can't touch you. It's angry about that."

"How do I kill it?" Doumeki asked.

Watanuki shook his head. The skin of his neck moved smoothly under his peer's rough but gentle hands. "It wouldn't matter. There's more outside the windows. With the wards down the rest will spill in. The deamon is keeping the others at bay, wanting me all for itself."

More? Doumeki cursed in his head. He was frustrated as well that he could not see these supposed other spirits outside of the apartment's windows. He looked at Watanuki pointedly. "What now?" He raised an eyebrow, very clearly indicating that they couldn't sit that way forever.

"What are you asking me for, Mr. Exorcist! Don't you think if I knew I'd have done it already? Who'd want to touch you, anyway!"

Doumeki sighed. "Moron."

"Don't call me a moron! I -" Watanuki paused mid rant, his mouth open in surprise. He started blinking rapidly, his eyes watering with tears that spilled down his cheeks. "Ow, ow..!" The boy's hands rushed to his eyes and covered them, his lids closed tight. "Oh, God!" He screamed. "Oh, God!"

Panic did strange things to the body. Doumeki's heart pounded loudly in his chest. His muscles sang with adrenaline and he felt he needed to act so quickly that he was afraid his brain wouldn't tell his body to move fast enough. He removed one of his hands from around Watanuki's neck and pushed the boy's hands away to cover those closed blue eyes himself. The misty fog that had started to surround them dissipated with a hiss when Doumeki's hand touched it.

Watanuki screamed again. His shoulder jerked forward as though punched from behind. Blood spat forth from a new wound and covered Doumeki's school jacket.

He's going to die, Doumeki thought. He's going to die and there's nothing I can do. He was panicking. He managed to realize that he'd never panicked before in his life. It was surreal. In his frightened haste, Doumeki pushed Watanuki to the floor, covered the shorter male's body with his own, and pressed his lips against Watanuki's.

For the first few seconds it was awful. There was the taste of tears and blood, salt and tense lips and the sounds of Watanuki quietly sobbing beneath him. The next few seconds were calmer as Watanuki stilled and the pain the spirit had inflicted on him lessened. Doumeki slid a hand under the other male's head and lifted it up a little. He deepened the kiss and pressed his tongue lightly through Watanuki's lips.

Watanuki sighed into the kiss. The pain in his neck was vanishing quickly, as well as the feeling of someone pushing his eyes into the back of his skull.

Nearly a minute later Doumeki pulled away a little. Watanuki panted with exertion, his face flushed with heat and his hair mussed from the hand that had been buried in it. "What... how... the hell?"

"I'm sorry," Doumeki apologized. "It was the only thing I could think of."

"And how the hell did you even know that would work?" He shrieked.

"When I was in the fifth grade my grandmother became very ill. My grandfather would kiss her often and tell her that she needed the affection. When I asked him why he said these things, he said to me that an exorcist's kiss is a powerful thing. He said it would lessen grandmother's pain and protect her from the spirits that might try to cling to her illness. Without stronger wards and a truckload of purified salt, it was the only thing I could to do ward you."

Watanuki gaped at him.

Doumeki averted his eyes from the imploring blue ones and looked at the shorter boy's neck. It was still bruised black, blue and red. Streaks of blood dotted his skin and uniform like splatter paint. Doumeki pulled the boy's collar down and away from the marred flesh.

"Hey, what- Oh!"

Doumeki's tongue slid across the injured skin and sealed the wetness with kisses. In the wake of his work the bruises faded quickly, nearly as though they'd never been. The body beneath him arched up in the makings of bliss. He sighed and moaned and his hands clung to Doumeki's jacket as if he'd fall away without it. How could the pain diminish so quickly? It was like slipping into a warm bath after a cold rainfall.

After the licks and touches moved to the other side of the neck and up Watanuki's angular jawline they found themselves kissing again. It was much better this time. There was no crying or screaming or pain. The shorter male moaned loudly this time and Doumeki's hands found the wound on the afflicted shoulder and touched every piece of skin they could come in contact with.

"Doumeki..."

Said male lifted himself up and looked around the room. He did not see any remainder of the Hell Hound. "Is it gone now?"

The blue-eyed student blinked himself back to awareness and looked around. "They're... all gone," he said in disbelief.

Doumeki sighed with relief. Considering the boundaries he'd already pushed he felt he should probably get up and allow Watanuki some space. He did so and was surprised that his body suddenly missed the contact.

"Well," Watanuki said dazedly.

"Yeah," Doumeki agreed.

Watanuki sat upright and leaned on his table. Already he looked infinitely better than he had all day at school that day, even if his clothing was now ruined with blood. "Look, this has gotten awkward enough. Go home, I'll go buy some more wards. I'll be fine."

"You're an idiot," Doumeki pointed out.

Watanuki scowled angrily. "I've lived on my own since I was six! I can manage just fine!"

"It's gotten worse," was his deadpan reply.

"I'll be fine!" Watanuki insisted again.

"I'm staying the night," the other declared.

"What?" He squeaked. Huh, that was a funny response. "You... you can't! You have school work, and you don't have any clothes here! I can't feed you!"

"I'm staying anyway," Doumeki confirmed. Even if he had to go hungry, go to school in dirty clothes and miss his homework, he was staying.

"Why?"

"Because," Doumeki said. "If I leave tonight, you will disappear. I don't want you to."

"You... you're a freak," was the weak response.

"No more a freak than you are."

"Tch!" Watanuki got up and stomped into his kitchen where he immediately grabbed a rag and started to clean the spilled tea on his table and floor.

Other than the spilled beverage and spots of blood on the floor there was no other visible damage from the deamon. The wards that had been on the walls of the apartment were gone with barely a ghosting of dark burn marks.

Watanuki flitted about the kitchen quickly while he prepared dinner. He muttered curses to himself quietly as he worked. Doumeki contented himself with removing his ruined coat and pulling the one English assignment he had with him out to work on.

Dinner was yakisoba with fried vegetable tempura and pickled vegetables. The food tasted even better than the onigiri Watanuki had served up as a snack when they'd first sat down. Doumeki cleaned his plate and immediately asked for seconds. Watanuki, as expected, was not pleased. "Do you have a black hole for a stomach? That was a ton of food!"

"I'm still hungry," was the bland reply.

"You're impossible!" Watanuki groused, but he took the plate and refilled it anyway. For all of the complaining he did Doumeki was pleased with how quickly Watanuki did what was asked of him.

Just as he was polishing off his last piece of tempura Watanuki asked him a question he didn't know he could answer. With a sigh the blue-eyed teenager ran a hand through his tousled hair and stared at the table. "How long will the... warding... last?"

Doumeki put his chopsticks down on his plate. "I don't know."

"Not at all?" Watanuki pressed. "Weeks? Days? Hours?"

"Paper wards are supposed to last for years, decades even. Yours burned up with an exorcist inyourhouse after a couple of weeks. It could fade just before going to bed for all I can guess."

The delicate face looked crushed. "Fine," he bit out, clearly upset with the answer. He grabbed their dishes and started to vigorously wash them in his sink.

"How are you still alive?" Doumeki asked bluntly. "Why have things become worse?"

Watanuki glared at him for nearly a minute before he sat back down at the table. His eyes glanced over Doumeki's homework with disdain before his face fell into a look of sadness. "When I was young, just entering middle school, I met another boy on the way home from buying groceries one day. The creaking white hands had started to follow me like they usually did, but this time they ended up cornering me by the river. Just as I was surrounded a voice from above told me to climb the tree next to me. I did. The boy that had climbed up before me told me to throw some of the salt I had just bought on the hands, so when I did it caused them to vanish."

"White hands," Doumeki asked.

"Bone white," Watanuki confirmed. "When they move it sounds like stone breaking." He shook his head. "Anyway, we became great friends after that. He saw spirits like I did, and he knew more about them. He taught me a lot about defending myself from them. As for the bigger ones, we always managed to run fast enough to get away." He looked off to the side then. His eyes appeared to be wet. "On my birthday he told me to meet him by the river where we met and he would give me a birthday present. I had been very excited. He was my only friend and I hadn't received a birthday present since my parents died." He sucked in a shaky breath. Doumeki was worried about what he'd be told.

Watanuki dug for something in his pocket and extended his clasped hands out on the table. "My friend gave me this." His hands parted and a small, shapeless piece of a hard white substance clattered onto the table. Doumeki stared at it. He almost didn't want to know. "It was a piece of his bone," Watanuki clarified. "He'd been dead for months already. The white hands had sucked him underground where he suffocated. His piece of bone has been protecting me all this time. A couple of weeks ago, it stopped working. The attacks have gotten progressively worse."

Doumeki exhaled slowly. "And then I found you."

Watanuki glowered a little at the reminder of Doumeki's presence, but eventually just deflated. "Yeah," he agreed.

Doumeki did not say anything else. The mood was heavy and neither had the energy to change it.

Getting ready for bed was an odd affair. Doumeki was firm and unwilling to change his mind when he insisted they would both sleep on the one futon in the apartment. Watanuki didn't want to sleep in the same room as him, much less the same bed!

Not that Watanuki had any spare blankets or sleeping surfaces in the first place...

The shorter teen huffed like a scolded child and curled in on himself on his side as he settled under the covers. Doumeki, the jerk, was laying on his back and taking up a good portion of the futon. In order to not touch him Watanuki was forced to lay on his side. "Jerk," he muttered as they drifted off to sleep.

"Hn," was Doumeki's only response.

. . . . . . . . . .

Doumeki jerked up, wide awake, at the sound of coughing. They couldn't have been asleep for more than an hour and already something was attacking his peer again. Watanuki was shaking violently. His face was flushed and red, his lips blue and eyes wide. Doumeki was swift to push the boy onto his back fully and climb on top. As it had been the only thing to work so definitively before he once again kissed the boy beneath him.

Once he could breathe again Watanuki was quick to respond. He kissed back, hard and hungry and his fingers dug demandingly into Doumeki's short black hair. Doumeki wasted no time removing their sleeping clothes and spreading kisses to every inch of skin he could reach. Watanuki's body beneath him felt good, really good even. The shorter teen moaned and arched up into him. Their erections rubbed against each other and the friction was so hot Watanuki thought he might collapse.

When his hand gripped Watanuki's suddenly throbbing member the boy cried out "Doumeki!"

"Shizuka," he gasped in correction.

"What?" Watanuki asked in a daze.

"My given name is Shizuka," he elaborated. "Call me by my name."

"But-!"

"Kimihiro," he interrupted.

"Don't be so intimate!"

"Kimihiro," Doumeki stressed again. "Look at what we are doing."

Watanuki did, shocked to realize his hands were gripping Doumeki tightly and his legs were spread, the larger male snugly pressed against him. He didn't remember losing his clothes. "I..."

"Kimihiro, I need you to trust me."

Watanuki swallowed and thought about how he hadn't been able to actually swallow anything, food or otherwise, without pain for at least a week. He felt not even the slightest bit of physical discomfort at the moment. Slowly, he jerked his head in agreement. "Okay."

Doumeki kissed him again, and this time he did not stop.