Fandom: xxxHolic
Characters: Doumeki Shizuka, Watanuki Kimihiro
Warnings/Ratings: None.
In A Nutshell: The end.
Disclaimer: I don't own xxHolic.
Doumeki Shizuka, age thirty, fully suspected that his life had crumbled to his very feet without his knowing. The company had been long overshadowed by newer and better, but he'd managed to sell it at just the right time, leaving him with not only a vast sum of money but also with nothing to do and no purpose to all those years he's spent in preparation for being the head. His marriage, having no true foundation to begin with, had been cold and unyielding until the day of its inevitable collapse, when he'd found the note on the counter and the house empty as a tomb.
The shrine, though, in its entire small, underrated splendor, was still a sanctuary to him, but in the time when he desperately needed the most amnesty, he couldn't bring himself to go.
The tiny blip of pain in the void of his emotions had a name: Watanuki. He began to hope that if he could do one, single thing right, it would be to finally, finally tell him how he felt.
"I heard about the divorce," Watanuki said solemnly. He had always worn white, hadn't he? Maybe?
"Hn?" Doumeki stood under the tree, staring upward at the sky through the leaves, at the sapphires dotted with coal that made up the eyes of the only person that had ever been anything to him.
"I'm sorry." Watanuki probably thought it hurt. It didn't anymore. He extended a cool, pale hand to help Doumeki up.
"You don't have to be." It was my fault, he wanted to say. I should be apologizing, but he just continued, "I signed the papers, too."
"That might be the most you've ever said to me all at once," Watanuki marveled, looking squarely at Doumeki's eyes.
"Hn."
"But you'll be alright?" He asked, blue eyes glistening. Doumeki did not respond. "You'll be alright," Watanuki declared. The golden-eyed man didn't feel like correcting him.
Doumeki was tempted to lay his head on that should and feel that cool embrace once more, but he noted that the time for this was too long gone, buried in an unmarked grave within his heart. Himawari had said he didn't feel anything, but the problem was that he had felt too much, just not for her.
"I'm surprised you haven't asked," he deadpanned.
"Asked?" Watanuki knew he was treading on eggshells.
"Asked why." Doumeki could smirk, knowing that this would pique Watanuki's interest to the point where he would have to ask, but he was too tired for that now.
"I didn't think you'd tell me."
There was a pregnant pause, and Doumeki thought fleetingly of hot, summer days and a rainy, indoor wedding.
"Why?" Watanuki questioned finally. Though he had provoked it, the divorced man suddenly found himself without any legitimate answers.
"… I couldn't," he finally responded, the words resounding like doomsday trumpets in the empty air. Somehow, everything faded away when he was with Watanuki, he realized, and he wondered what else he'd failed to notice all this time.
"Couldn't what?" He always had to prove, to be nosy and loud and find every weakness and problem, and, Doumeki though, that might have been his own problem all along, never asking about anything and never wondering. The train of time was stopping and he was panicking about the wasted ride.
"Be married to her."
"Is that supposed to be an acceptable answer?" Watanuki should have sounded livid, instead he sounded weary, worn, and Doumeki thought childishly that with all of the repainting and fixing they did around the shrine, maybe they should have repainted and fixed the loudmouth; he always looked so drained, washed-out, all but for those deep, blue eyes.
"She knew it, too. She's better off without me."
"I don't know that anybody could be."
Doumeki wanted to know Watanuki's given name now, so far along. He wanted to know a thousand, no, a million minutiae of facts and couldn't imagine where he'd get the time to ask about any of it at all.
"I couldn't love her." Those eyes, each seeming to hold a separate universe, swiveled to his own. "Because I love you."
Watanuki nearly fell off of the tree. Doumeki caught him, pulling him close to his chest.
"No, no, no." Pale hands beat against the chest with each dry sob, percussion in the funeral procession. "You can't."
Doumeki Shizuka, thirty years old and so, so tired of running in circles, decided to come to a standstill. "Watch me,"
And finally, finally, he did what he should have done too far long ago, on a hot, summer afternoon or a messy funeral day or perhaps even before that, when everything became so blurry in his head.
He kissed him.
It was the best, worst feeling in the world, the wind rustling the tree's lively leaves with a great crescendo before the end.
"You can't," Watanuki said, and this made no sense because their lips were still meshed together but Doumeki was so tired of idiosyncrasy that he let it go.
"Why not?" What he'd always wanted had dangled before him nearly his entire life, he'd finally gotten a taste, and it was worse than before.
"Because I'm dead, Shizuka. I'm dead. And now," the sezura came, a hitch in his voice, "now I have to go." The wind kicked up so much dirt into Doumeki's eyes that he had to close them, and when it had died down, he opened his eyes to find himself clenching a tree branch with so much strength that his knuckles went moon-white.
"Hn. Bastard." Doumeki let his head against the trunk, brushing mud from his cheeks.
…
Doumeki was still visiting the shrine.
Still praying.
Still loving.
He would often lie under the trees he had planted to the side of the shrine, glancing through their vibrant, loving leaves towards the blue sky peeking through like so many too-light eyes.
It was April First. He didn't have a gift. Sometimes he wanted to look up a Watanuki, find out any and all information about him, to see if any of it was real, until he decided that none of it was very real at all and it didn't matter.
"I should have guessed," he addressed the biggest of the trees, "you get to be a tree now." He had a lot of regret, but some part of him knew that if he had confessed earlier, he would have had that much less of the dead man's presence. He wasn't sure if that was good or bad. "Maybe one of these. Or one in a far-off place. Doesn't matter. Someday I'll be your earth. Wherever." He lay down under its shadow, taking off his shirt for a pillow. The breeze caressed him gently as he fell asleep.
He dreamed of the wind; of a hot, summer afternoon; of a funeral on a bright, messy birthday.
It was a strange time.