Disclaimer: I do not own xxxHOLiC, and intend no profit from this fanfiction. Shits and giggles only.

Author's note: PWP, pretty much. Self-pleasure is one of my biggest kinks. While dreams are one of the main themes of xxxHOLiC, perhaps they have been overused as plot devices in fanfiction. On the other hand, I'd say the reason dreams are so widespread in fanfiction in the first place is because they offer so many possibilities. So I've succumbed to the lure of using a dream here. These things granted, I have done my best. Please enjoy.


We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.

Andre Berthiaume


It was very cold. Doumeki Shizuka shivered and shoved his hands under his armpits, his breath fogging in the frigid air. He observed his surroundings, his face impassive. It was obvious he was in a dream.

He stood in an open white space. In the distance were faint grey dreamshapes that bounded his vision and provided a horizon. Without them he probably would have been able to see into the distance forever. He stood on ground that he could not see, but which was stable under his feet, which were quickly turning numb. He flexed his toes and began to walk.

After a few moments he heard a soft shuffling sound behind him. Turning his head, he saw nothing. He resumed his walk. When he heard the sound again, he turned and saw a dark butterfly hovering and drifting across the ground, leaving a wispy trail of faint grey smoke in its wake. It fluttered away from him, stopped momentarily as though hovering above a flower, and continued into the distance.

He watched it go.

"Shizuka."

He turned.

Watanuki stood in front of him, his face more relaxed than Shizuka had ever seen it in his presence. When he sighed, for a moment the fog which curled in the air looked almost like the trail of the butterfly. He held his hand out, watching him with those bright blue eyes.

This was definitely a dream. He knew that Watanuki's right eye should have been a different colour. Which was his fault, really.

Watanuki's outstretched hand was trembling slightly. Perhaps this dream-Watanuki was also feeling the cold.

So he took his hand.

Watching him still, the dream-Watanuki raised his hand, his skin a dark shock against his own, to his face. He breathed on it, the warm, humid air providing less than a moment's respite against the cold. Shizuka felt the beginnings of a shudder crawling up his spine and crushed it before it could go any further. Dream-Watanuki's eyelids fluttered and closed gently.

Before Shizuka could take his hand away, his dream grasped it with his other hand, squeezed it gently, and slipped it inside his robe.

Shizuka couldn't restrain a quiet gasp at the warmth of Watanuki's skin, and stepped closer, unknowingly, wonderingly. Watanuki would never have let him do this, let alone have initiated it. He had to remember that this was only a dream. Even if the dream was wearing Watanuki's face.

It was a dream. It wasn't real.

He could do whatever he wanted.

He stepped closer again, deliberately this time, and slipped his other hand inside Watanuki's clothes. His breath felt tight in his lungs.

The dream-Watanuki exhaled sharply at the feel of Shizuka's surely freezing hands.

Thus encouraged, Shizuka murmured a single word, released in a sigh.

"Watanuki."

Soft gusts of warm air began tugging at their clothes. Shizuka ran his hands up and across Watanuki's chest, over his shoulders, pushing away his robe. When it fell, Shizuka saw that the fine hairs on Watanuki's body were raised, and his nipples were tight with the cold.

Shizuka kneeled, pulling Watanuki down slowly with him.

If you wanted to worship, you had to kneel.

He leaned close, his mouth hovering over one of Watanuki's nipples. He could feel his own breath coming back at him in soft warm puffs. Slowly, carefully, he closed his mouth over Watanuki's nipple.

"Ah."

His eyes flicked up to Watanuki's face. His head was tilted back, exposing his neck. Shizuka's eyes traced white collarbones, could see Watanuki's breaths curling in the air.

He continued, his fingertips gently grazing Watanuki's ribs, hands coming to rest just above where the robe still hung on his hips. He allowed his tongue to press against Watanuki's nipple.

"H-hah. Hot," Watanuki gasped.

That was when Shizuka felt the searing jolt down his spine that galvanized him. Stiffening, he fisted his hands into Watanuki's robe and dragged it down off his hips. He pressed Watanuki down into the ground, pulled him closer, kneaded the flesh of Watanuki's lower back like a cat and devoured him, wanting more, wanting reciprocation.

Watanuki's mouth was hot, his tongue like velvet and silk, at turns rough and slippery. When Shizuka ground his hips into Watanuki, one hand came up and gripped his shoulder, the other fisting tightly in his hair. The pull on his scalp sent hot, prickly feelings down Shizuka's spine and he shuddered, gasping.

"How do you do this…to me."


Doumeki awoke gasping, hands clenched tight in the sheets, arousal coiled tight in his gut. Mindlessly, his hand drifted beneath the covers and found his erection.

He'd let himself do this, just this once. A little make-believe.

He imagined Watanuki's weight across his hips, felt his hands around his hot cock, rolled his hips and felt the friction. Too dry. He licked his palm and did it again. Much better.

He felt the words seeping up through his chest like thick smoke. He licked his lips, hesitated.

Moaned.

"Ahhh…Watanuki. Please…"

The words were more difficult to make than the slick, desperate movements of his hands. It took effort to say them, like there was a band constricting his lungs, squeezing them uncomfortably in his chest, and yet whenever he managed to release them it was cathartic, and oh so liberating and frightening and whenever he thought about Watanuki hearing his words, not real-life Watanuki but the Watanuki of his fantasies (separating the two was the only way he had managed to stay sane), he imagined the way they would make him even more aroused, would make his eyelids flutter in ecstasy and his hands grip tighter and his movements more frantic. And the idea of turning on Watanuki turned him on. He muttered, moaned, groaned and sighed his words to arouse Watanuki to arouse himself.

Heat, tight and fierce like a clenched fist, spread through his body and made him arch his back. He felt like a bow pulled tight. Gasping, he begged, used his words in a desperate bid for release.

"Kimihiro, please, please, I need more, I need…" he ground out in a strangled whisper.

Suddenly it was all too much.

"Ah!" he cried, a sound that could easily be taken for pain as much as pleasure, threw his head back against the pillow and gasped and shuddered through his orgasm.

When he came back down, there was only the sound of his own harsh breathing and the soft breeze coming though his window. His hand was sticky and his pyjama shorts had adhered to his skin.

Sighing, he left the warmth of his bedsheets and padded to the laundry. Leaving his shorts to soak, he returned to his room and cleaned himself up with a tissue. Returning to his bed, he sighed, exhausted, and contemplated his dream.

They had only got so far as kissing (even if Watanuki had gotten undressed), and yet this dream had been one of the most intense he had ever experienced. He thought it might have been because Watanuki had initiated the first touch. In all of his other dreams, Doumeki himself had begun all of the encounters. In his dreams, he had always been the first to encourage, to push, to gently stroke or roughly claim for his own, to turn a hard unwilling mouth into one that gasped and whispered in longing against his own.

Doumeki had done far more than merely kiss Watanuki in his dreams.

And yet…this one could undo him.