Bright and early Monday morning the sounds of breakfast cooking filtered from the kitchen and down the halls of the temple. The sun was barely an hour old and already a lunch and several snack boxes were packed and wrapped up in cloth, ready for transportation. Rice, freshly removed from the cooker, steamed merrily in several bowls while eggs and vegetables and spices were artfully arranged on top.

This was how Doumeki found Watanuki that morning before school, cooking enough food for ten and juggling several bowls at once. "Oi."

Watanuki's characteristic Doumeki is an idiot scowl crossed his face as he moved around the table and set down his burdens. "How many times have we been over this? My name isn't Oi! You should be thanking me for slaving away this morning so that you can fill up your gluttonous stomach! I even made snacks for the rest of the archery team, since you have practice today. I know they will at least appreciate my cooking!"

Doumeki moved around the table and up to his partner. Watanuki couldn't help but take immediate notice of the intense look in those piercing golden eyes and backed up into the counter without realizing it.

Doumeki's hands framed Watanuki's face, his fingers sliding up into soft and fly-away black hair. He was getting really fond of doing that, it seemed. "We didn't have sex this morning."

Watanuki squirmed in Doumeki's hold. "Obviously! I had a lot of cooking to do this morning. Why do you have be so blunt about such sensitive stuff, anyway? Don't you have any decency?!"

The taller teenager remained firmly where he was, his gaze unwavering. His partner's blue and yellow eyes glared up at him. Doumeki felt a rather absurd sense of male pride at seeing his eye looking back at him from Watanuki's face. Something about it seemed to silently shout 'This is mine!' to anyone that looked at it. It somehow felt a bit like marking his territory. Maybe he was a bit of a caveman after all.

Nah. Just old fashioned.

"It's my first day back at school today."

Although he was often a dumbass, Watanuki could also admit that Doumeki wasn't a person that was prone to stating the obvious. He didn't fail to realize the significance of today, either. It would be the first whole day since Doumeki first followed him home that they'd be apart, as Watanuki was taking one more week at home. The sixteen hour limit on their intimacy ward was long since worn off.

"I'm not going anywhere today," Watanuki said softly.

"Don't leave the temple." If he didn't know better, Watanuki could have almost ignored the solemnly stated, desperate plea that was.

"I won't."

"Not one foot off the grounds."

"I know!" He stressed. That intense look was boring into his very core and driving him crazy. "I'm not suicidal, you know! You are way too overbearing."

"Hn." Doumeki kissed him then, long and leisurely. When he broke away Watanuki suddenly realized the sneaky bastard had reached behind him and picked up a plate from the counter that held a recently cut piece of chocolate cake.

"Hey!"

"Make sure there are octopus shaped sausages in my lunch."

"Why you-!"

"Oh, good morning!" Akane's voice entered the kitchen just then. "Wow, Kimihiro-kun, you've outdone yourself this morning! Look at all there is to eat!"

"Is that chocolate cake?" Haruka entered the kitchen behind his daughter, noticing the plate his grandson was currently munching from. "I hope there's a slice for me."

"B-but, Haruka-san! You can't have cake for breakfast!" He glared over at Doumeki. "Neither should he!"

"I'm not, I'm having cake and tamagoyaki. It's all going the same place, anyway. So I'll have my cake first."

Watanuki despaired over his perfectly packed snack boxes. There was no hope for this family when it came to food.

A few minutes after Doumeki left for school Watanuki started on the dishes that needed to be cleaned. Preparing all that food had created a rather large mess. Akane had already left the kitchen to start on the temple work for the day. Haruka was looking through the paper.

"Kimihiro-kun."

Watanuki paused in the middle of scrubbing a cooking pan in the sink when Haruka said his name. He looked over his shoulder, arms still buried in sudsy dishwater, at Doumeki's grandfather. "Haruka-san?"

The priest walked up to him and studied his face, one hand lifting the boy's chin up slightly for a better look. At least he knew where Doumeki picked up the habit. Watanuki couldn't help but blush under the scrutiny.

"You completed the spell, then."

His blush deepened a bit and he averted his eyes, a faint scowl marring his face. "Shizuka insisted and wouldn't listen to any of my protests. He's way too stubborn."

"He's used to getting his way," Haruka replied and dropped his hand. "It is a striking look you have now."

The teenager nervously scrubbed harder at the newly cleaned pan. "Striking? I can't imagine anything about me being striking. It's just weird. Weird because Shizuka is weird and makes me weirder being around him, not that I wasn't weird before, but now it's kind of worse…" he babbled.

Haruka chuckled and poured himself a cup of tea. "Don't work too hard today. You're expected to rest until the end of the week."

"I understand," Watanuki answered, his shoulders visibly more relaxed with the topic of his new eye over.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Haruka opened the doors to the library and stepped out into the midday sunlight. He and his daughter had spent the better part of the morning cleaning and re-cataloguing the library's vast contents of books, scrolls, and esoteric materials. He hadn't kept proper logs of everything he owned for years and it was time to catch up.

He intended to go to the main house and find if Watanuki had anything prepared for lunch, so he was a bit surprised to find the boy in question kneeling on the ground not far from the temple, deep in concentration over the dirt. He was loudly and clearly cursing whatever it was he was working on.

Haruka walked up to the teenager and smiled, lighting a cigarette as he did so. "Having trouble?"

"Oh, Haruka-san!" Watanuki looked up at him, his heterochromatic eyes wide. "This book is so stupid!" He flailed his arms around him, gesturing to the markings he'd started to make in the dirt. "Meditate in the magic circle, it says! Imagine the forces of evil slide away from you and around your circle, it says! It sounds like children's fairy-tale nonsense!"

He studied the designs drawn on the ground and tried to make some sense of it. It was very complicated, and probably would have been lovely if Watanuki had been able to draw a proper circle and not an oval shape instead. He could clearly see a sun and moon symbol etched out, along with what appeared to be time markers across the outermost ring, but he did not recognize the symbols drawn in each space, if indeed it was a time marker at all. "Well, have you tried it yet?"

"Of course not! It took me a while to draw this silly circle." He added a few final touches, then seated himself in the very center, careful to not disturb the lines he had previously drawn. "Knowing me, I'm just going to fall asleep trying to meditate."

"Slow steps, Kimihiro-kun. Everyone always has to start at the beginning."

Watanuki crossed his legs and sighed, then closed his eyes.

"Try to keep your back straight, rest your hands on your knees with your palms up. Try to not focus on anything you hear around you. Just focus on yourself, your breath, and the rhythm in your body." As a priest, Haruka had a great deal of experience with meditating. He remembered teaching his grandson how to do it when he was much younger.

The teenager wiggled a little in place as he tried to settle himself, then made a visible effort to relax his body. Watanuki wasn't the type of person to meditate ever – normally he was far too energetic to stay in one place for long. It was kind of cute to see him make this effort.

Minutes passed. Nothing visibly changed as far as Haruka could see. Only Watanuki's always-bright spirit was shining with the glow of the other-worldly, but that was normal for the priest to pick up. He pulled from his rolled cigarette and exhaled. The smoke rushed away with his breath and out, toward the circle drawn in the dirt and the teenager that sat in the middle of it.

Still, nothing was visibly different, but the gray cigarette smoke bounced off an invisible wall and billowed around Watanuki completely, no trace of the substance making its way over the magic circle. Time even seemed to slow marginally around it, the large plumes moving slower and sharp in detail. It was quite mesmerizing.

"Argh, this is pointless!" Watanuki despaired. The moment his concentration broke the rest of the cigarette smoke returned to normal and diffused in the air over and around the circle. "I don't feel any change." He leaned over his lap and let his arms flop to the side. "I'm not making any progress yet, am I, Haruka-san?"

Haruka could only grin widely, amazed at what he already saw. "Of course you are, Kimihiro-kun. You're doing splendid. Keep practicing."

"I'm ready to practice by taking a nap," he bemoaned.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A short chapter this time, so I do apologize for that. I did want to get up what I currently have, however, and let all of you know that I haven't given up on this story or my other xxxHolic story, though the second one will take some more time before it sees an update. I've been very sick for a while and it took a long time to recover. I apologize for making everyone wait.

Please be aware that I have done some editing and a tiny be of rewriting for this story, so I will post the updated chapters when I post the next update. Just a hint – you'll want to reread the reveal to Doumeki's mom Akane in the beginning. I feel I didn't do the shock of their situation justice for a traditional, simple woman like Akane. I will put the notice with the next chapter update when that's been made available on this story.