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Fandom: xxxHolic
Pairing: Watanuki x Doumeki
Rating: PG-13
Notes: I do not claim these characters, they belong to CLAMP! This chapter takes place during Volume 8. I noticed one of the biggest things I didn't like about the past chapters have been that I was trying to write 'Behind the Scenes' but not actually doing it. That was the idea, but instead you just heard what he was thinking during a lot of major points of the manga, and a few little details outside. So this chapter is almost completely behind the scenes. There is one conversation with Yuuko, and a sliver with Doumeki that appears in the manga. The rest is pure fiction. So here it is! Enjoy!

Chapter 7
Chapter 6
Chapter 5
Chapter 4
Chapter 3
Chapter 2
Chapter 1
Prologue

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It was hot, not an unbearable heat, but a relaxing heat as water poured down from the overhead faucet. Steam swirled around him, comforting him, hiding him. He was sitting, his knees pulled up against his chest in his tiny shower. Watanuki wasn't sure how late it was, and really, it didn't matter. Who cared if he was later to his first class anyway? No one would be walking him to school today.

Tears were mixed with shower water, and no one would ever notice he was crying if they were watching him. But that would be really odd if someone were to be watching him in the shower. Who would do something like that? He shook his head, Doumeki would. No, Doumeki wouldn't watch, Doumeki would join him, cramped space as it was.

But Doumeki was still mad at him right now. He hadn't been over to Watanuki's little apartment in days. Even the bento he had given Doumeki the other night hadn't seemed to help. He guessed it was because he had told Doumeki it had been leftovers, which had been a lie of course. He was lucky Himawari wasn't mad at him for the destroyed book.

Why did high school have to be so complicated? Why did lov- relationships come with so much drama, angst?

His hand reached up to cover his missing right eye. The neko-musume had said he was the talk of the spirit world, that everyone wanted his eye. It was special, something powerful. The eye of a human that could see them. And Yuuko had told him at work last night that if he didn't hurry, he would never get his eye back. But what was he supposed to do to get his eye back? He had done this for Doumeki, so that Doumeki would be able to see from his right eye again. Why would Doumeki be mad at him for that? It was stupid, the man was an idiot.

“A stubborn idiot,” he said, throwing a wet washcloth into the glass wall of his shower. But who was he to call another person stubborn?

He didn't know when the water had started getting cold, and soon he was shivering and swearing as he turned off the running water, jumping out of the shower and grabbing a towel. Lucky he hadn't broken the glass sliding door. But was it really luck?

Still shivering, he ran into the other room, drying off as quickly as he could, then throwing the towel off and pulling on his school uniform. Must have been done in record time, he though, as he buttoned the jacket part of the uniform.

Only moments later his keys jingled as he locked the door behind him and placed the keychain in his pocket, now starting his walk toward Cross Private School.

The school day dragged on, seemingly never-ending. It was still morning, he had made it there just in time for the bell to ring. His luck. Or not, he thought. He lightly nudged the stack of bento boxes he had brought to school that morning with his foot. Made last night, as usual. He always planned things ahead, even if he hadn't wanted to go to school at all today. It was always the same. Lecture, lunch, more lecture. Sometimes there were tests, but there was always a lot of homework. He still didn't know how he pulled that one off. He usually had lunch with Himawari, and sometimes Doumeki when he wasn't busy with archery. But Doumeki had been busying himself with other things the past week. Not just archery club activities. He pretended not to care, Watanuki was indifferent. At least, that is what he wanted other people to believe.

You're in denial, came a voice in the back of his head.

No I am not!, he yelled back angrily at that voice, I'm am perfectly aware of my feelings.

For Doumeki?

Of course, who else?

You are in love with him.

“Am I?” he found himself saying aloud. The student sitting in front of him turned around, giving Watanuki a weird look. The students at the school already thought he was weird, and talking to himself now was only adding to it.

“Watanuki, since you are so eager to talk, perhaps you can explain to the class how this problem is solved,” his teacher said, pointing to an equation she had written up on the board.

“H-hai, s-sensai,” Watanuki stuttered as students laughed and the bell rang. School was out.

“Alright students, make sure you do all the problems on page 312, in your textbooks tonight. There will be a quiz on Thursday,” his teacher said while students were packing up and shuffling out of the classroom.

“Watanuki, please stay behind,” she said, addressing him again. He slowly nodded and waited for the last of the students to leave the classroom.

When everyone was gone, his teacher closed the door and walked over to the table he sat at. She sat on the table in front of his, looking at him.

“Watanuki, is something going on at home?”

“No, I live alone, sensai.”

“Oh, right. Well is something else bothering you? Your grades are slipping, and you are disrupting class.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Watanuki, you're a smart kid, I know you can do better than that.”

“I'll do better.”

“Whatever problems you are having, I hope you can fix them soon. I miss that smile,” she said, and Watanuki blushed.

And a few minutes later, she was ushering him out of class with a broom, punishment for disrupting class. The hallways were brightly lit, but it felt so dark, and he could see spots of smoke swirly around in many places. Students were talking at there lockers, taking out items and some leaving. They were all ready to go. An unpleasant smell reached his nostrils as he heard mumbling all about hims. Bits and pieces of conversation, and he knew they were talking about him.

“What a freak,” someone whispered.

“He is weird.”

“I heard he lost his eye.”

“I heard he went crazy and cut out his own eye.”

Someone gasped, “Who would do that?”

“He's a freak.”

“He says he sees spirits.”

“I don't see anything.”

“I saw him running like a lunatic from nothing the other day.”

“He's so weird.”

“I'm surprised he's not in a mental institution.”

He was at the door, and now walking into the sunshine. The air was much clearer now, and he could breath much more easily. He hadn't heard everything that was said, and he was glad that he hadn't.

He then got to work, sweeping where his teacher had told him earlier. Work... That was something he was going to be late for. Yuuko would not be pleased.

After a while, he found himself staring at his reflection in one of the windows. He stared where the patch was over his missing eye, thinking back to what Yuuko had said.

“Never get it back, huh?”

“Get what back?” came a voice behind him.

he didn't know how far he jumped, and he could now see Doumeki's reflection in the glass before him too.

“Don't just show up out of nowhere!”

“I've been behind you for a while, before you started making funny faces.”

“Jerk.”

- - -

Many hours later, after being attacked by the karasu tengu, and told to save the zashiki-warashi, he was sitting on the porch at Yuuko's shop, drinking tea. The pipe fox was sleeping, he had worked very hard. And Watanuki... His eye was gone, gone forever. He had felt his eye disappear from this world, and he knew that he would never be able to see from his right eye again.

It had been eaten. Eaten by a spider. He took a long sip of his tea, feeling the heat of the liquid sliding down his throat, the steam reaching his nose.

“My eye is gone, but there is something I learned from it,” he said to Yuuko, who was sitting next to him.

Then she was holding something out to him.

“What is that?”

“Half of Doumeki-kun's right eye. He told me to give it to you if you knew you would never get your eye back.”

Watanuki nodded, speechless. His eyes wide. He slowly accepted it. Doumeki really cared about him. He could remember the day when Doumeki had finally told him that he loved him. He wanted to say the same thing, but still didn't know how to say it, still didn't know if it was true. Could it be?

“Swallow it.”

He looked at the item he held in his hand for a moment, then obeyed. He took the eye to his lips, and then swallowed it whole. An odd feeling came over him as he closed his eyes, feeling it in his throat. Something was happening, his entire body tingling, but the area around his right eye the most.

Then they opened, he could see out of the right side again, but now his eyes were mismatched. Instead of two sapphire spheres; his right eye was amber, like Doumeki's eyes. Then he passed out.

- - -

A few days later, Watanuki was staring at the ceiling of his tiny apartments main room. He had collapsed on the couch, tired and sore after a long day at work. Yuuko seemed to be making him work harder than ever.

Besides his new eye, and bumping into walls every once in while, things were pretty much back to normal. Doumeki was over almost every night again, sometimes sleeping over. The archer had a key to his apartment, and he was a little surprise that Doumeki had not been there when he arrived home that night. He could really use a back massage right now.

He sat up slightly, looking for his phone, but he didn't see it, and it obviously wasn't in reach, so he let himself slid back onto the couch.

His television stared at him blankly from its spot in the corner of the room. The remote was on the floor next to the couch. Picking up the remote, he turned the television on. A news report was doing it's weather forecast. Rain, it was supposed to rain. Then the rain was supposed to freeze and there would be hail. Sounded nice.

Then he heard noise at his door. There was a light knock, and he was about to get up until he heard the lock click open. Doumeki.

He smiled, pulling himself up until he was sitting as the stoic teen walked into the main room, closing the door behind him.

“I thought you would call me when you got home from work,” he said, his way of greeting Watanuki supposed.

“I just got home.”

Doumeki nodded, taking off his shoes and walking over toward the couch where he sat down next to Watanuki.

He thought back to lunch that day, remembering Doumeki had told him that he had seen the fireworks in the rain, through his left eye. So Doumeki could see things that Watanuki saw through the eye that they shared. While it seemed rather odd, and downright creepy when he thought about his privacy being violated; he knew that if he needed Doumeki, Doumeki would know. So their connection was deepening. He wonder if he was ready to tell Doumeki, then shook his head. Not yet.