(A/N: 'Ello there! It's my grand reintroduction to two years later! Well... okay... not so much, but I am glad to be posting again. This is my first venture into the love that is xxxHOLiC, a one-shot done for a friend's birthday, and I'm sort of proud of how it turned out. Reviews make my world go round. Thanks for reading!

Also, I'm not into Doumeki/Watanuki. Oh no, not at all. Whatever gives you that notion? hides doujinshi and yaoi fanfic, smiling innocently)

Repeat As Necessary

If this were a perfect world, Watanuki's life would be very different. He would never have been orphaned, for one. He wouldn't have to see any spirits, and even if he did, it wouldn't be Yuuko he had to depend on to make them go away, and it would be Himawari who would continually get thrown into these situations with him. And he certainly wouldn't be on his way to a house that had supposedly devoured its owners whole, and with the last person in the world he wanted to see right now.

"What are you even doing here?" Watanuki snapped as Doumeki offered yet another one of his blank stares. "I don't remember inviting you."

"Yuuko-san called," Doumeki replied with a nonchalance that made Watanuki twitch. "Did you bring any food?"

"Why would I?" Watanuki growled. "This isn't a picnic."

"I missed dinner." Doumeki shrugged.

"That's not my fault!"

"Well, I left early to catch up with you—"

"I didn't ask for an explanation!" Watanuki gritted his teeth and began to walk faster. "What am I doing spending the night with you, anyway? I could be spending time alone with my adorable Himawari-chan…"

"You'd bring Kunogi to a house that eats people?" Doumeki raised an eyebrow.

"Did you listen to a thing I said?" Watanuki tugged at his hair. "I meant go out somewhere, enjoy ourselves! My life isn't just my work, you know."

"Your work?" A small smile crossed Doumeki's features. "I work. You're the bait."

"Ehhhh? You have no idea what it's like, being at Yuuko-san's beck and call," Watanuki moaned. "I'll bet you wouldn't last a day."

"If that's what you want to think, have fun." Doumeki shrugged, sauntering up onto the porch of the disturbingly normal-looking house and taking the brass door-knocker in one fist.

"H-Hey, what're you doing?"

"Knocking," Doumeki replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Before Watanuki could stammer out a retort, he knocked twice, and the door swung open almost immediately.

"Well, that was smart!" Watanuki hissed. "Now it knows we're here."

Doumeki made an expression that could almost pass for a grin from him. "You scared?"

"No!" Watanuki shot back a bit too quickly. "I'm just being sensible about—"

"Don't worry." Doumeki stared straight ahead. "I won't let anything happen to you."

"Let me guess. If I die, you'll never get your free lunch again?"

"What kind of person do you think I am?" Doumeki's glare was so intense that for a moment, Watanuki forgot his sarcasm. He'd barely opened his mouth to apologize when the taller boy continued. "I wouldn't get to laugh at your idiotic antics every day."

"You wanna say that again?" Watanuki screeched. But Doumeki didn't seem to hear his outburst at all; he simply continued through the door.

No matter what Watanuki said, or tried to force himself to think, he knew exactly how it'd play out. He'd end up protected by Doumeki, yet again, and unable to swallow his pride long enough to force gratitude from his lips, he'd make whatever Doumeki wanted for lunch the next day and call it even. And it would happen exactly like that the next time, and the next, and the next. Just like Yuuko, and that fortune teller, and everyone else around him was saying: it was fate. It was inevitable. It was "Hitsuzen."

In a perfect world, there would be so such thing as "Hitsuzen." There would only be coincidence, circumstance, happenstance, and everything would come down to chance. Maybe things wouldn't be all that different. But at least Watanuki could go through the day without the sinking feeling that someone, somewhere was laughing at him.

But as life was constantly, repeatedly proving, Watanuki did not live in a perfect world.