Title: Fairytale Prince
Universe: XXXHolic
Theme/Topic: Serious Business
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: lightly DoumekixWatanuki, Yuuko
Warnings/Spoilers: None I can imagine.
Word Count: 1,834
Summary: Fairytales have some truths to them.
Dedication: for JaB's holiday gift fic request! I had to do this one to welcome you to the fandom properly. XD
A/N: This was actually very fun to write. LOL Hopefully the five remaining fics I've got to write before Christmas gets here will be also.
Disclaimer: Not mine, though I wish constantly.
Distribution: Just lemme know.

"Clearly, this is no laughing matter," Yuuko said gravely, but did a poor enough job of hiding her smile despite the circumstances.

Watauki stared. "I don't believe this."

His employer gave up on the somber tone completely then, and laughed heartily. "Ma, but haven't we already discussed the importance of words, Watanuki-kun?" she purred, looking down at the slumbering Doumeki with a glint in her eye that eased Kimihiro's anxiety—some.

At least it meant the big sleeping idiot wasn't on the verge of dying anytime soon. Hopefully.

He sighed. "But this is completely unfair!! I have to know Japanese legends and western fairytales?! It's enough to make any sane person completely paranoid to go outside of the house! This pretty much doubles the things that want to kill me!"

Yuuko beamed. "What are fairytales and legends but truths collected in words?"

Watanuki glared at her complete—but unsurprising— lack of helpfulness. "IT'S STILL COMPLETELY IDIOTIC THAT HE ATE A POISONED APPLE FROM SOME NARCISITIC WITCH! WHY DO I HAVE TO KISS HIM?!"

Yuuko's eyes gleamed. "Well, we could always call Himawari-chan to come over and do it, I'm sure the cure isn't quite so picky as Disney-san made it out to be."

Watanuki paled at the prospect. "NO!"

Yuuko cocked her head to the side. "So then…the other option is to let him sleep until he dies, while the queen's spirit devours the beauty in his heart to give her life for another thousand years." She paused, dramatically, before hammering the last nail into Kimihiro's coffin with a delicate little laugh. "How funny that you were her original target but that Doumeki-kun accidentally got in the way."

Watanuki hunched his shoulders, a dark aura of guilt collecting over his head as he was reminded of why—exactly— Doumeki was currently unable to wake up.

On his way to school this morning he'd met a nice old lady on the street who some nasty neighborhood children were throwing rocks at and calling names. He'd chased them off and helped her to her destination—becoming late to school in the process—and as a reward for his kindness, she'd given him a nice, big fuji apple as thanks.

When he'd managed to get to school (only about an hour late) Doumeki had glared at him and told him not to do that because—given how much of an idiot he was—it would make anyone who knew him at all believe he'd gotten into some sort trouble or something and the considerate thing to do would be to phone ahead so Doumeki could walk with him to class or just stay out of trouble in the first place.

He'd protested (loudly of course) that he hadn't planned on being late and had given the human-bottomless-pit the reward apple to placate him into leaving him the hell alone until the day was over.

And now, now he was living the legend, except the princess behind the glass was decidedly less pretty than Snow White ever was.

Yuuko looked at him expectantly. "The only way to make amends would be to rescue him in return. An equal trade, so to speak."

Watanuki didn't understand how it was equal in the first place, given that he'd done nothing but help a seemingly helpless old lady in need of assistance today on his way to school.

"The queen's spirit preys on beauty," the store owner had explained, after he'd managed to drag (and roll and sometimes shove) Doumeki's heavier body into a nearby park and lay him out on a bench. Yuuko had—as per usual—magically appeared out of nowhere (her timing was amazing sometimes) to survey the situation from a comfortable distance and laughingly inform Watanuki that luckily (yeah right) the solution to the problem was as simple as most fairytale endings.

"The prince sees Snow White, falls in love with her beauty, and awakens her with a kiss!"

"THIS ISN'T THE SAME THING."

But the fact that a mysterious amount of woodland creatures and fast-growing plants and flowers were either gathering near or blooming on and around Doumeki's body only served to confirm the fact that yes, Watanuki was currently in fairytale hell. The woodland creatures looked up at him with limpid eyes, imploring him to do something to save the boy with the beautiful heart who had been so unwittingly enchanted by the evil witch's deadly spell.

Watanuki wondered helplessly, if he could expect seven dwarves sometime soon.

In the distance, a group of preschool aged children—3 girls and 4 boys—played tag around the park's jungle gym.

He sighed.

And as he did, Yuuko only sat back and watched him knowingly, letting him figure out for himself that after all they'd been through, he should remember not only the power of words, but the unerring truths hidden within even the most fantastical stories as well. The fact that the two were sometimes put together in the form of fairytales was a doubly dangerous combination that should have made for implicit warning.

"Who says I'm even the prince?!" Watanuki demanded after watching his slumbering classmate a little while longer (enough time apparently, for a rosebush to spring up behind Doumeki's prone form).

Kimihiro was obviously making a last ditch attempt to not have to give his first kiss to stupid apple-eating Doumeki Shizuka, but Yuuko knew as well as he did deep down, that there was no helping this if he wanted the other boy to live. The fact that he may have been blushing a little bit only made things much more interesting.

"I'm definitely not a prince," he added, more quietly this time.

Yuuko stretched, languorously, and stopped to smell the newly arrived flowers. "Especially sweet, from the hopes of pure hearts," she murmured casually on their scent, before turning back to him with an unnervingly knowing smile. "Well, fairytales have become the stories of humans," she started, sensibly. "And to a human who doesn't know any better, who is more worthy of a pure-hearted princess than a noble, pure-hearted prince?" Her expression grew more and more evil as Watanuki began to connect more and more dots with each word.

"I would say," she finished, plucking one of the blossoming roses and sticking it into her hair to compliment her outfit, "that since the apple was originally meant for you, and that it worked on Doumeki-kun anyway, your hearts are unerringly compatible."

"DON'T SAY IT LIKE THAT."

"In purity, of course," she twittered.

He flushed. "I hate you."

She ignored him, and some of the squirrels and chipmunks that had gathered for the show chattered and scampered up her arm. She rubbed their heads obligingly.

In the meantime, some climbing ivy began working its way up Doumeki's body, like a blanket.

Watanuki had a headache.

"Or," Yuuko continued, in-between chattering to the new friends she'd made using what Watanuki could only assume was squirrel-speak, "you could just let the witch have him if you're so inclined. He never minded stepping into the line of fire for you before, after all. I'm sure he wouldn't hold it against you. And all things considered, it's not a bad way to go. Very peaceful."

The cloud of guilt gathering above Watanuki's head gave way to torrential rain.

"Right," he sighed, and looked at the misleadingly serene expression on Doumeki's face. He felt his face go pink again at the prospect of what had to be done, felt his breath come out in shallow little shudders as he stepped forward.

Yuuko's smile only seemed to get proportionally bigger the closer he got.

No laughing matter indeed—the big liar. Watanuki's thoughts towards his employer were less than charitable as he leaned down and licked his lips nervously, hoping that when (if) Doumeki woke up, he wouldn't get clocked in the face for his efforts at saving the other boy.

Heart beating a million miles per minute in his chest, Watanuki sighed and finally kissed Doumeki.

It was really just a touch of the lips—he was trembling a little bit too hard to do anything more than that at the moment—and when he pulled back, nothing happened at first. Startled, he turned back to Yuuko, ready to shout, "I told you this wouldn't work!" but before he could, an arm snaked around the back of his head and yanked him down again, and just like that, it went from the innocent-enough-first-kiss it had been to something not unlike a full-on make out session..

The ivy stopped climbing, the roses stopped blooming, and now that the trouble was over, the squirrels and chipmunks (and groundhogs and hedgehogs and moles and birds and etc., etc., etc.,) all went home. Yuuko waved goodbye and wished them well.

When the two boys broke apart, both were flushed and panting, gasping for air.

Watanuki's face was beet red.

Doumeki blinked at him stupidly, and licked his lips, instinctively. "Buh?" Shizuka grunted—ever eloquent— and Watanuki was going to kill him if that was all he had to say on the matter. "What happened?" he muttered soon after, blearily.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN WHAT HAPPENED?! YOU JUST TRIED TO EAT MY FACE!" Watanuki shouted, accusatorily.

"I did?" Doumeki murmured, in a tone that was more, "oh," than "OH MY GOD!" like it should have been.

"YES, YOU DID!" Watanuki breathed, cheeks still flushed and his lips kiss-swollen. When it seemed like Doumeki wasn't going to get properly apologetic for the whole thing, Kimihiro promptly turned to Yuuko. "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?! THAT NEVER HAPPENS IN THE FAIRYTALES! IT'S CHASTE IN FAIRYTALES!"

Yuuko shrugged at him. "Just like they're not all lies, they're not all truth either," she said, lightly. "Besides, you should be thankful it stopped at that. If you'd waited any longer, the things you would have had to do to cut the connection between his heart and the witch's so that it could connect to yours instead would have had to be a lot more… intense."

Her eyes glinted.

Watanuki paled.

Doumeki didn't know what the hell was going on, but by the look on Yuuko's face, he probably owed her some more of his grandfather's good wine.

"I'm hungry," he offered after a moment of silence between the three of them.

"THAT'S WHAT GOT US HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE!!" Watanuki shrieked, and for the moment, forgot all about the what ifs in lieu of wanting to grab Doumeki's stupid shoulders and shake him to death.

Yuuko beamed at the newly returned Shizuka. "I'm hungry too, Doumeki-kun. Watanuki, go buy us some snacks!!"

Watanuki stared at her. "You can't be serious."

Yuuko looked perfectly, innocently serious. "Of course I'm serious. Food is no laughing matter after all, Watanuki. Very serious business. Or haven't you learned that yet?"

She smirked.

And for a moment, Watanuki wondered if Doumeki still had that apple on him, because he was suddenly very, very tired.

He thought he could use the respite.

END