He glanced at the elephants as he passed them, but moved on after a moment. He wasn't in the mood to draw elephants. His eyes did spot Himawari, but she was in the middle of a gaggle of girls and somehow…they seemed like a wall between her and him. Girls tended to intimidate him when they were in huge groups like that.
"Hey, have you seen Doumeki-san?"
Watanuki blinked and turned to look over his shoulder at the two boys gossiping beside the sloth's cage. He rose his eyebrow and it occurred to him then that he really hadn't seen that stupid archer for the longest time. It was strange that the boy wasn't stuck to his side like glue.
"I don't know. Nobody's seen him for half an hour."
With a frown, Watanuki moved on and wondered if Doumeki had gotten himself into trouble, as unlikely as that seemed. And now that he knew that the boy was nowhere to be found near him, he found this perverse impulse to seek his rival out instead of avoid him like he usually did.
He found him the darkened building that housed all the birds of prey and his shoes clicked faintly on the polished floor as entered. It wasn't noisy but it wasn't quiet either and it seemed like all the eyes of the birds had focused on him at once, scrutinizing him without saying a word.
They reminded him very much of Doumeki. No wonder the stupid boy was to be found here.
"You're supposed to actually draw something," he said at last, when he found the archer sitting on the floor with the sketchbook open on his knee but nothing drawn.
"I know."
Watanuki followed Doumeki's unblinking gaze to look at which bird he was staring at. It was an eagle, being handled by one of the workers as another cleaned the cage. The way that unblinking stare focused on him and Doumeki made him shudder in a way that was usually reserved for spirits, but there was nothing supernatural about the bird.
Doumeki stood, leaving his bag and art accoutrements on the floor, and wandered nearer to the bird. Before the tamer could react, the bird had flown from the outstretched arm it perched on to the archer, who raised his arm instinctually.
The woman nearly had a heart attack and was in the process of rushing over to the youth, when both her and Watanuki realized that the eagle wasn't hurting him. In fact, even the long talons hadn't penetrated his school uniform.
That bird…I swear, it's Doumeki… he thought in stunned shock. Doumeki's face hadn't changed, but how they were just so silent and still, not twitching…it was as if they were stone or having some sort of silent conversation. The eagle's eye glanced over at Watanuki and he almost flinched, but the bird didn't move. Doumeki even reached up to run his hands over the feathers of its breast, as if it weren't a wild animal. Or as wild as a zoo animal could be.
The caretaker seemed to have recovered from her shock and was immediately taking the bird away from Doumeki, apologizing profusely, but Doumeki merely shrugged and gathered up his things, leaving the building without a word. Watanuki took one last look at the bird and sped right after the archer.
He caught up to Doumeki a few minutes later, who had decided he was going to draw a polar bear. Watanuki frowned. "What the hell was all that about in there?!"
"What was all what about?"
"That…that…bird! It just flew at you and…sat on your arm and…that was dangerous!"
"Were you worried?"
Those golden eyes met his and realized his mistake. He glared and looked away, his cheeks flushed a little. Stupid damn archer. He did respect him and maybe sometimes, very rarely liked him. But he didn't want Doumeki, of all people, to know that. "Of course I wasn't worried! The zoo could get in trouble if an incident like that were reported!"
"Ah."
There it was. The Doumeki Non-Descript "I Don't Believe You", Sound #5. It irritated Watanuki to no end; he hated that sound. It grated on every frayed nerve he had, resounding in his head, until he just wanted to scream and break things.
"You looked like that eagle. You sure it wasn't a relative or something?" he bit sarcastically as he sat down next to Doumeki without thinking about it.
"It was a Golden Eagle," the archer said, as if he had not heard the snippy comment of the bespectacled boy.
"Oh? Is that what the plaque said?" he asked in interest, despite himself.
"I didn't read the plaque."
"Then how'd you know?"
"My grandfather had a friend that owned all sorts of birds in his life and when I was little, he had a Golden Eagle. I went almost every day to visit it." He paused. "It seemed to like me."
"Come to think of it, so did that other eagle…" Watanuki muttered, his fingers automatically beginning to draw as a teacher drew nearer. When the man was gone, he turned back to Doumeki. "So do you know a lot about eagles?"
"I only really know about the Japanese Golden Eagle, since that was what he had." The archer didn't say anything for such a long time that Watanuki wondered if he would continue. Just as he was about to prompt for more information, Doumeki's quiet voice filled his ears again and he had to strain to hear him.
"Golden eagles mate for life. And in the pair, one is the hunter that drives the prey to its waiting partner for it to be killed. They're extremely strong and they rely on each other to get by. Females are always generally slightly bigger than the males."
It was one of the longest speeches Doumeki had ever given him and it wasn't until after the boy had finished speaking that Watanuki realized he had been hung on Doumeki's every word. He shook his head at himself and continued drawing, noticing that the archer hadn't even picked up his pencil when he'd been talking. "You know a lot about them."
"I admire them."
Watanuki blinked and turned to the boy sitting next to him in surprise. "You do? Why?"
"To have that sort of devotion, for life, to someone is something I admire. They fight for each other and share a life and death symbiotic relationship. The pairs need each other. I admire it. Both birds know their roles and they'll willingly do anything for each other. They don't give up."
Was it his imagination or did Doumeki sound a little envious? The rest of their time drawing was spent in silence.
"So, Watanuki, where'd you go today?" Yuuko prodded, downing her fifth cup of sake as she watched her helper dust off the bookshelves.
"The zoo," Watanuki answered, sounding distracted for some reason. It piqued Yuuko's interest and she looked at him more clearly. He even looked distracted.
"Did you learn anything there?"
"Yes."
When Watanuki didn't answer, she sat up a little straighter and prodded more. "Well? What'd you learn?"
"Doumeki is an eagle."
End
All source of information about eagles is from Wikipedia. Dedicated to unpunished on the doumekiwatanuki livejournal community for her comment about a particular picture of Doumeki with an eagle on his arm.