Disclaimer: xxxHOLiC © CLAMP
Warnings: post-series speculation (because right now, any future fic is speculation), slash hints
Summary: Five years wasn't a long time in the grand scheme of things, but just long enough to notice...

Toujours Jeunes

It had been five years since Watanuki disappeared when Doumeki realized that he wasn't aging.

At first, he hadn't even noticed it, simply because he'd spent several months trying to find out just where the other man had vanished to. One day he was there, nineteen years old and still working for Yuuko even though his true wish had been granted long ago, having a long overdue talk with Doumeki; the next he was gone, nothing left in his apartment save for one abandoned ofuda and no forwarding address.

High school acquaintances could tell him nothing, as they hadn't really had contact with Watanuki since graduation. Himawari couldn't really tell him much as she had paid the price for them to do what was needed, and she still hadn't mastered sign language. That, plus she hadn't been in touch with either of them since that day so that her bad luck wouldn't have an effect on their mission. Yuuko's fortune teller acquaintance would only say that if Doumeki was meant to find the seer he would, and not even Kohane had spoken with him since the two young men had ventured off to another world to help fight a war that wasn't even theirs.

His final recourse was to go to Yuuko and find out from her just where the hell Watanuki was, but when he had gone to the shop all he found was the vacant lot that he'd initially seen in that spot. No amount of waiting or watching made it reappear, not even when he walked into it experimentally. It was almost as if his earlier wish had no precedence any longer, and he was therefore no longer one of the witch's customers.

That had marked the end of year one. By the time year two was coming to a close, people seemed to start forgetting that the seer had ever existed.

It started with those same high school acquaintances; when he mentioned to them off-handedly that he couldn't find anyone who knew where Watanuki had gone, they looked at him with confused expressions and asked, who? People who had been Yuuko's customers, the ones he had seen himself, remembered visiting a shop and purchasing something, but none of them could recall a young man who may or may not have worn glasses and who may or may not have had heterochromic eyes. Teachers at his high school could find records for Watanuki Kimihiro, but none of them could actually recall the boy ever being in any of their classes, not even the home economics instructor who had once raved about Watanuki's cooking skills.

By the third year, Doumeki stopped asking around for his friend, choosing instead to converse with those few who could remember him. The list was very short: the fortune teller, Kohane, and Himawari. Granted, he didn't get to visit any of them frequently with his university classes and his duties at the temple, but he did see them whenever time permitted; he exchanged letters with his former classmate frequently as it was easiest for her to write these days.

For a little while, Doumeki could almost pretend that there was nothing missing, that the last time he had seen one of his best friends wasn't just before he left for his first year of university. He could pretend that the last time he had spoken to Watanuki he hadn't confessed his feelings, and received neither a rejection nor acceptance, and that Watanuki hadn't told him he needed a little time. He could pretend, sometimes, that they'd had that conversation only days or weeks or even hours ago.

Which was why it took him till his twenty-fourth birthday to look in the mirror and realize that it was wrong for the face staring back to be that of a nineteen year old.

The minute he finally, finally noticed, he felt shocked for a moment then confusion, followed by realization and overwhelming relief. Shock because it was wrong for someone to not age in a full five years, confused for the exact same reason, and relief due to his sudden realization that if he wasn't aging then it stood to reason that neither was Watanuki. That wherever Watanuki was, he had to be alive because that connection of the eye and the blood would have long been broken. That wherever Watanuki was, he wasn't aging any more than Doumeki was.

Watanuki was probably why Doumeki wasn't aging.

And Doumeki was going to find him. No matter how long it might take.

Just a little title note: I am a strange creature. The title is simply "forever young" as translated by iGoogle's language tool. Yeah, cliché, but I don't care.

Also, I had hesitated on whether to leave this as a one-shot or add another chapter or two. As it looks now – judging by the nine reviews I got for it via LJ last night – this will wind up being either a trilogy or tetralogy (i.e. quadrilogy; I like tetra better though). I'm tentatively calling the series Éternal.