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Given how much more Watanuki saw than anybody else, there was an awful lot he didn't notice. Sometimes Doumeki thought that it was some kind of equal value exchange he'd had to make at birth: supernatural sight, in exchange for social blindness.
Watanuki paid a lot of attention to Kunogi, but he never noticed the way her hand crept to the back of her neck, under her hair, when she talked to him.
"Kohane-chan looked so unhappy on the television!" she was saying now, her knees folded neatly on the grass. "I'm glad she doesn't have to do that any more."
"Yeah," Watanuki said, smiling at his hands – that sweet smile he only used on children and young fox spirits. "I am too. But it was pretty horrible for her, the way it happened."
Kunogi smiled, bright enough to dazzle, and said, "But she's lucky to have you for a friend, Watanuki-kun."
Watanuki was too busy gasping and falling onto his back in happiness to notice Kunogi's hand touching the back of her neck.
Doumeki didn't think that it was self-consciousness, or that she was checking that her hair was still covering the scars. He thought she was reassuring herself that they were there: that she'd paid a price that gave her the right to sit here and crinkle her eyes in a smile.
She wasn't ever going to give Watanuki what he wanted, Doumeki knew. Under the sunny smile, she was so desperately unhappy that Doumeki didn't think she could untangle herself far enough to love anything.
With Tanpopo she made careful, fumbling attempts. They worked because Tanpopo had been made for her.
Doumeki reached over and took one of Watanuki's rice balls to wake him back up out of his sparkly faint.
Kunogi giggled beneath her hand as Watanuki flailed at him.
"Too loud," Doumeki said, plugging his ear with his finger.
*
Watanuki never noticed the looks the three of them got at school, or seemed to think about what an odd grouping they made. Kunogi had never had her lunch with anybody, before she started eating from the bento boxes Watanuki brought. She was liked – plenty of people thought she was cute – but she'd never made friends. Doumeki knew that she'd only let Watanuki start eating with her because Doumeki was there too, to protect him.
Sometimes Doumeki was terrified – cold and shaking – that she might have too much faith in him, she and Yuuko both.
People stared even more to see Doumeki with the other two. He was popular, not because he tried to be, or because he'd ever wanted to be charming, but because he was athletic and looked good with a bow (he was pretty sure) and never seemed especially impressed by anything.
"Doumeki-kun, won't you hang with us sometime?" Takahashi from the archery club was trying hard to sound cool about the offer. "We could discuss technique, you know. I've been thinking I might be twisting my wrist too much in tournaments – do you think?"
The other two boys behind him nodded, eagerly. "You should come hang out, Doumeki-kun! Heh, you don't need to sit with those two, you know."
Doumeki shrugged, pushing his hands into his pockets. "Maybe some other time," he said.
He could feel their disappointed gazes following him as he turned away.
Watanuki was waiting on the path. He was glowering and shifting from foot to foot.
"Here!" he said, shoving a bento box into Doumeki's hands. "You're too slow! When I, Watanuki-sama, have bestowed my art on your lunch, the least you could do is not make me wait!"
Doumeki looked inside the bento box. Watanuki had made sushi rolls with pickled ginger, the way Doumeki liked them.
Watanuki must have known what Doumeki was looking at. He flushed and looked away. "I made them for Himawari-chan. There were just a few left over."
Watanuki didn't notice the boys giving him enviously resentful looks, or the couple of girls watching and giggling.
It wasn't that Doumeki wanted him to notice – but it might have been nice if he sometimes recognised that there were people who actually liked Doumeki's company.
Still.
Doumeki ate one of the sushi rolls.
"At least wait until you're sitting down!" Watanuki flailed. "You don't eat standing up!"
They were delicious.
*
Watanuki never noticed the way that Yuuko sometimes watched him, either. Doumeki saw the darkness in her gaze, more and more often, and shivered. He wanted to ask what she saw, what was coming – but she'd demand a price for the answer. And whatever it was that Yuuko saw in Watanuki's future, Doumeki suspected that he'd need anything he could pay, just to meet it.
*
Doumeki wasn't sure how he felt about the Zashiki-Warashi giving Watanuki Valentines chocolates again. He was glad that she hadn't chosen to take his soul this time, but looking at her hopeful, flushed face, and the eyes that she couldn't bring herself to raise to Watanuki's face, Doumeki wasn't sure that this was better.
"They're delicious," Watanuki told her. The gentle smile he gave the little fox spirit and Kohane-chan was apparently allowed for shy house spirits too.
The Zashiki-Warashi raised her face and smiled at him, her eyes shining. "The fox spirit and Ame-Warashi both helped," she said quietly.
Doumeki heard a snort and glanced over to where the Ame-Warashi stood. She was tapping her booted foot against the flat stones of the path through the park. She twitched her parasol in her hands, her eyes narrowed as she stared at Watanuki and the Zashiki-Warashi.
Watanuki looked up and blinked, registering her glare. Doumeki could see him wondering why she disliked him so much.
Seeing the vulnerable line of her mouth when she looked at the Zashiki-Warashi, Doumeki thought that it was painfully obvious why.
Watanuki wasn't going to see it, though.
The Zashiki-Warashi bowed again, with a "Thank you for accepting my gift!" in a quiet, breathless voice, and turned to look at the Ame-Warashi.
"Are you finished?" the Child of Rain asked, her voice awkwardly abrupt.
"Yes, Ame-Warashi." A sweet smile and an arm offered to the other girl. "We can go."
The four of them were standing just under the tree that Watanuki had said the dead lady's spirit had been in – the one he and Kohane-chan had brought to Doumeki's temple. Watanuki glanced up at it now, his attention caught by some motion. Doumeki put a hand up to his right eye as he saw a brief, confusing flash of little men in dark glasses, riding surfboards through the air. It was so random that he almost thought he must have imagined it. But Watanuki was looking wary in a fed up sort of way now, so they were probably real.
The Ame-Warashi looked around as she took the Zashiki-Warashi's arm. The Zashiki-Warashi gave her a hopeful look, and the Ame-Warashi sighed, looking put upon.
"Oh, fine," she said. "They can have crop showers too."
She flicked her parasol in a pointed motion, vaguely towards the sky. Then she determinedly turned both herself and the Zashiki-Warashi, folding them out of sight.
Watanuki frowned. "What was –"
He was cut off by a shocking, drowning sheet of water: rain so sudden and so hard that Doumeki felt as though he'd fallen into the rush of a river somehow. The rain was hard enough to be painful, the cold and the stinging pressure stealing the breath from Doumeki's lungs.
He reached out, grabbing Watanuki – almost invisible in the rain – and pulled him into a stumbling run.
Watanuki kept up with him, his gasps loud in Doumeki's ears. Then they were slipping down a slope. Watanuki fell to his knees; when Doumeki reached down to pull him up, he discovered that they'd fallen into the little creek that bubbled through the park. The water swirling past their shins was almost lost in the confusion of drumming water all around.
There was a vague dark shape ahead. Doumeki tugged Watanuki towards it, creek pebbles turning over under his shoes. His hand touched cold stone, then they were undercover. The rush of water quieted like a volume dial being turned.
Watanuki pushed his hands against his knees, gasping.
They were, Doumeki realised after a moment, under the little ornamental footbridge he'd walked over a few times. It was a close, shadowy space underneath, dry and cobwebby. They were still standing in the creek, but there was space to sit, up on the bank under the curve of the bridge, if you were willing to scramble and didn't mind huddling a bit.
Doumeki pushed Watanuki up into the small space, ignoring his sputters, and climbed up beside him.
There was room for both of them, although their knees and shoulders were touching.
Watanuki slid a look across at him. "Huh," he said, edging his knees to the side.
The air was already becoming warm and humid with their breathing in the confined space. On either side, the edges of the bridge were arcs of water in green-white sheets. It looked even denser when you were looking into it than it had from the midst of it. Even muted by the shelter of the bridge, the sound was a steady rush in their ears.
They were both close to soaked from even their brief dash. Doumeki's clothes were dragging against his skin. The pebbled bank was uncomfortable under him. He ignored it.
Watanuki was staring at the rain, his eyes narrowed. "She did that on purpose," he said with decision.
Doumeki shrugged.
Watanuki shot him an annoyed look. "You're supposed to answer comments politely, not shrug!" He stretched back, not waiting for a reply, and made a pained face as he knocked his head against the underside of the bridge.
"You're taller than me," Watanuki said, sounding as ever as though being taller was something Doumeki had arranged purely to torment Watanuki. "Why don't you knock your head?"
"I don't flail around without looking at what I'm doing," Doumeki said. "Idiot."
Watanuki scowled at him, rubbing his head.
Watanuki's hair was clinging to his forehead in wet, spiky tendrils, and his cheeks were damp, and pink with cold. He'd stretched his legs down the slope, his boots just stopping short of dipping into the stream. His jeans were as damp as the rest of him. He looked ...
Actually Doumeki wasn't going to think about how he looked. He stole one of Watanuki's chocolates instead, from the damp and bedraggled bag still clutched in Watanuki's hand.
"Those aren't yours!" Watanuki objected.
Doumeki was already tasting the chocolate. It was ... interesting, in a somebody-forgot-to-add-the-sugar sort of way. He put the rest of it carefully onto the ground beside him. Watanuki had put the bag down between them, in a bad-tempered, tacit permission for him to eat the rest of them, but he thought that he wouldn't.
"It's so annoying that I'm stuck here with you!" Watanuki burst out. He gazed dreamily into the rain. "If I was here with Himawari-chan it would be so romantic. She would be shivering, and I'd give her my coat to keep her warm, and put my arm around her shoulders ..."
"Your coat's wet," Doumeki observed.
"If Himawari-chan were here her warm smile would make it seem okay," Watanuki said, glaring.
Watanuki shifted, his leg rubbing against Doumeki's. "Instead I'm here with you." Watanuki sighed. "There's no justice."
Only hitsuzen, Doumeki thought, because Yuuko wasn't there to say it, and because apparently she'd indoctrinated him sufficiently that he'd internalised her voice now.
"Did you just smile?" Watanuki asked, his voice curious.
Doumeki shrugged.
Watanuki subsided. The rain was still a thick curtain – maybe not so supernaturally dense now, but still enough to soak you the instant you left shelter.
When Doumeki chanced a look at Watanuki, he was watching the rain, a pensive expression in his eyes.
Doumeki leaned back a little further, careful of his head against the bridge. Watanuki shifted automatically to make room for him. Doumeki could feel Watanuki's shoulder just touching his own. Under the rhythmic drumming of the rain he could hear the in-out of Watanuki's breathing – hitching when he sniffed and rubbed his damp scarf over his mouth.
Their feet were close together against the stony ground, trickles of water snaking over the pebbles from the dunking their shoes had got. Doumeki had to bend his knees a bit to keep his feet out of the flow of the stream. It brought his knee closer to Watanuki's.
They were quiet – Watanuki seemed to have forgotten to do anything but watch the rain – and Doumeki's clothes didn't feel so uncomfortable any more. There was only the green-white rain and their breaths in the shadowed space, and Watanuki next to him, a warm presence.
It was a little bit fantastic.
Watanuki leaned his chin on his hand. Doumeki still wasn't quite used to how his face looked without glasses. The line of his cheek looked softer, the lashes on his eye – his right eye, Doumeki's eye – looked inkier. His fringe tickled his lashes, without the glass in the way.
His mouth had fallen into that soft, accepting shape that he'd worn so often recently. It was the one that made Doumeki want to catch hold of him somehow, terrified that he was slipping away in some way that Doumeki didn't understand. Or to trace the line of Watanuki's mouth with his thumb, smoothing away the expression and waking the sparks in his eyes again.
Or maybe he just wanted to trace his fingers over Watanuki's mouth to see what it felt like – if it was as soft as it looked. He wanted to smooth back the hair at Watanuki's ears, too, where it was drying in feathery tufts. He wanted to touch his fingers to the skin between Watanuki's thumb and forefinger, and to the little strip of wrist that was showing under his shirt sleeve – there, where he was propping his chin in his hand.
Usually Doumeki didn't let himself think about these things. They were dumb and pointless and didn't go anywhere. Watanuki would freak out if Doumeki ever did any of them. Which would be fun, but then Watanuki would avoid him, and probably get killed by some spirit because he had the survival instincts of a drunk kitten. And that really wouldn't be worth the fun involved.
The shape of Watanuki's mouth still did uncomfortable churning things to Doumeki's stomach, though. And the line of his jaw, under the hand he was supporting with an elbow on his knee, looked sharp and soft at once.
Watanuki sighed, softly, and turned his head. His eyes were still, quiet, and Doumeki felt caught. He was usually careful, but now he had the wrong expression on his face, and he wasn't sure what it was, but Watanuki ... Watanuki had noticed.
This he noticed. Of all the things, with everything he missed, he noticed this. Doumeki opened his mouth, trying in a panic to think of something to say for damage control.
Watanuki's eyes had widened: their expression was suspended, a sort of dawning understanding. He stared at Doumeki, open and intent, as if watching the rain for so long had put him in a kind of trance.
Doumeki still couldn't say anything.
Watanuki put out a hand, his eyes direct and searching, as though he was discovering something. He rested his fingers against Doumeki's mouth.
Doumeki sucked in a breath, the sound pained.
Watanuki blinked, waking up to himself. The colour rushed into his cheeks and he snatched his hand away.
Doumeki opened his mouth again, but Watanuki was desperately looking around. "The rain's stopped!" he said. He was already scrambling down the slope, soaking his shoes in the creek again.
It wasn't quite true – there was still a light, steady rain falling – but it was nothing you couldn't walk through.
Doumeki gathered his scattered thoughts with an effort, and climbed down after him. Watanuki, waiting next to the creek with his jeans wet halfway up his shins, gave him a very quick glance and then turned away, striding off.
Doumeki caught up easily. "You –" he said, sliding a look at Watanuki.
"Shut up!" Watanuki said.
"I didn't –" Doumeki tried.
"Shut up shut up shut up." Watanuki wheeled on him. "Don't say a word! Ever!" His finger flapped wildly in Doumeki's face. Doumeki looked at it. Watanuki spun around again, making incoherent sounds.
"Huh," Doumeki said.
"Shut up."
Doumeki's shoes were squelching from their second dunking in the creek, and his clothes were still uncomfortably damp. But the steady scatter of rain on his cheeks was cool and welcome after the warm, humid space under the bridge. The park looked lovely in its curtain of rain: bedraggled and soft-edged and very green.
Doumeki touched his hand to his mouth, feeling the light pressure of Watanuki's fingers there.
Watanuki noticed, and flushed again, looking away.