Title: Year of the Dragon
Universe: XXXHolic
Theme/Topic: "Year of the Dragon."
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: lightly DoumekixWatanuki, with barely-there suggestions of DoumekixOFC
Spoilers/Warnings: Let's say through the serious just to be safe, even though I didn't read the last few vols. (Also, slight xover with Petshop of Horrors.)
Word Count: 2,590
Summary: Ten years of frozen time is more than enough.
Dedication: for tokki_chan's holiday gift request! LOL You get this one by default because I was stumped on the SPN/Hetalia one and I have never written XMFC.
A/N: IDK this is weird. Maybe I was feeling Petshop of Horrors nostalgia after this year's yuletide. XD
Disclaimer:No harm or infringement intended.

Doumeki quietly enters Yuuko's shop under the light of a low-hanging full moon and sighs in relief as he closes the door behind him. He's had a long day today, having spent his entire morning in lectures and his entire afternoon grading papers in the commissary while being ogled and giggled at by pretty young undergraduates who think his being older than them makes him distinguished and handsome. He is admittedly tired and grumpy as he comes in out of the cold, and he knows that it is the kind of tired and grumpy that only serve to remind him of the years that are advancing on him steadily, one after another after another without fail.

These are the types of things that come hand in hand with a human life lived in a way that moves forward naturally, as one grows old. Perhaps in the upcoming years he will also throw out his back or take two weeks to recover from a cold. Perhaps in the future he will marry a woman who he has not met yet and have children who look like a combination of his wife and himself. Perhaps in the future he will wake up to find gray hairs on his head and age spots on his skin that hadn't been there the night before. This is the way of things for a human life lived in the way it was meant to be lived, one year after another after another as a person ages.

Today, in his remarkably human life, Doumeki feels grumpy and tired after a long day of work. All he wants to do is eat dinner and drink sake and stay inside under the kotatsu in the shop, where it is warm and comfortable and devoid of any of this generation's overly bold young undergraduates, the kind with wide eyes and pretty faces who ask him out to goukons and bring him bentos after class and flash him glimpses of their underwear whenever they wear skirts, like the sight of panties will tempt him somehow.

It never does.

And perhaps it is because he can't help but think of them as very close to Kohane-chan's age somehow. Full of youth and energy and a belief that their fates are in their own hands. When he looks at them like that, he feels simultaneously ancient and protective of them at once. They are someone's daughter or sister, after all, and perhaps one day he will have his own wife and his own daughters and what would he think then, of his precious children growing up to chase after men so much older and sadder than them?

It is also this strange kind of circular, fanciful thinking that makes Doumeki realize that his life is advancing one year after another after another without fail. He is getting older.

He shakes his head and shoulders the bag of groceries he'd bought on the way here as he takes off his shoes and sets them out of the way.

"Doumeki, Doumeki, did you bring fish and meat for the nabe?" Mokona delights as he steps into the shop. "Stupid Watanuki thinks tofu, shrimp, and mushrooms are enough!"

Doumeki huffs a sigh and nods once. "Fish, beef, cabbage, leek, and noodles too," he says dutifully, because tofu, shrimp, and mushrooms are definitely not enough.

"I like the Chinese style best!" Mokona declares, and jumps up onto Doumeki's shoulder.

"Me too," Doumeki answers, and strides further into the shop, following the smells of flowery tobacco and heady incense that he is learning to accept, even if he is sure he will never like them.

He finds Watanuki moments later, looking young and resplendent on a chaise in the next room. He is smoking Yuuko's long pipe like usual. He is also preoccupied tonight, looking thoughtfully at a large egg resting on his lap. The light seems to hit the shell of the egg in such a way that it glows faintly of gold against the white of Watanuki's skin. It almost reminds Doumeki of another egg from a long time ago, but somehow, on a much larger scale. Something in his chest gives a shiver just looking at it. It feels like treasure somehow. Perhaps it is a gift.

"Is that part of dinner?" he asks out loud, because while part of him is grumpy and tired and old, part of him is still a little bit young, filled with a little of the mischief he enjoyed annoying Watanuki with back when they had both been boys.

Watanuki looks up and frowns at him. "Of course not," he says brusquely, and sits up, cradling the egg in hand. "It was a gift, from one of Yuuko's old friends."

"Hm," Doumeki answers noncommittally, because he knows better now than to think Yuuko's gifts—or those of her friends—are always good things. He doesn't ask what it is because he is not sure he wants to know.

"A dragon egg," Mokona whispers in his ear anyway, loudly enough that it might as well have screamed the words.

Doumeki blinks. "A dragon egg." He supposes that in this lifetime, he has already experienced things much stranger and much more fantastical than that.

Watanuki nods, still studying the smooth curves of the egg's shell like he is trying to decipher some sort of meaning along its surface. "The Count came all the way from Chinatown in Tokyo to give it to me today," he begins, and holds the egg like a precious, dangerous thing. Doumeki thinks that's because it must be.

"The Count?" Doumeki asks. He does not know any foreign royalty, but he would not be surprised if Yuuko did.

Watanuki's voice fills in the spaces along the curve of Doumeki's thoughts. "Yes, though I am not sure if that is his actual title. He insisted that I take the egg as a New Year's gift. I didn't want to, but he said that I have to, because the price has already been paid from the future. He wouldn't tell me the cost."

Part of Doumeki, the part that has always had good instincts, flares in sudden panic at the words.

And another part, an indecipherable part, also flares with unexpected hope. It is a strange conflagration of contrary, inexplicable emotions in him, the kind that could leave him with terrible indigestion as he gets older.

"Maybe it's better if you don't know the cost," he suggests gently, and Watanuki looks at him then, with eyes that say that perhaps Doumeki is right. Doumeki thinks Watanuki should not look at him like that or with those eyes, especially when he still appears so young and pretty, like those lively, laughing undergraduates who stalk Doumeki around campus even though he is much too old for them.

So Doumeki looks away from those eyes and at Mokona instead. He says, quite plainly, "I'm hungry."

"Me too, me too!" Mokona cheers, always glad to oblige Doumeki when it involves filling its stomach. "Watanuki, nabe!" it demands next, jumping up and down in excitement on Doumeki's shoulder. "Doumeki brought beef and fish and cabbage and leek and noodles!"

Watanuki sighs and rises from the chaise in a long-suffering way. It hints at him perhaps being older than he appears. "Fine, fine," he drawls, setting his pipe down and shifting the egg in his palm.

The movements are all very elegant, very reminiscent of Yuuko and the ghost of her that lingers here, drifting over Watanuki's head. It is not a ghost Doumeki has been able to exorcise, though on some nights, when he is alone in his house and listening to the wind outside, he wishes he could. Watanuki keeps her memory here, and the hold he has on this ghost is too tight—even for someone as learned in the ways of exorcising spirits as Doumeki is— to break.

So he watches instead, as Watanuki glides towards the door, living a life haunted by ghosts that does not progress in the natural way.

At the doorway, as he passes Doumeki's larger, much taller, much older looking bulk, Watanuki has a moment of remembrance, of what it is to be a normal human being. It is unexpected to both of them.

He slips.

Perhaps it is over the trailing ends of his ornate kimono, or perhaps it is over Doumeki's shoe, or even still, perhaps it is over nothing at all because it is simply meant to happen. Whatever the cause, Watanuki stumbles and the dragon's egg goes flying from his hand.

Doumeki, because he is not so old yet that his reflexes are too slow to react to this kind of thing, drops to his knees and catches the egg in both hands.

It rolls to a stop at the center of his large palms, and both he and Watanuki take a quiet breath in relief as they look at each other.

It is all they can manage before the egg suddenly cracks wide open, bursting with light and wind and a roar that rattles the walls like the fiercest summer thunderstorm.

Doumeki's first instinct is to drop the egg. His second is to yank Watanuki behind him, to get between the egg and the frozen photograph that has taken the place of the person he'd given half his life for a decade ago.

And just like that, the room explodes into a blinding white flash of light and the sound of massive, flapping wings. Doumeki slams his eyes shut and shields Watanuki's smaller frame with his own.

It's a dragon, he realizes. What else would hatch from a dragon's egg?

He wonders if they are going to die now. If both their lives—both the frozen one and the one steadily clomping along in the natural way— will suddenly cease to exist.

It isn't until what seems like a very long time later—seconds, according to his watch—that Watanuki lets out a small, muffled "Mmmph," against Doumeki's chest.

Doumeki blinks his eyes open and looks around, at the pristine room, at the bag of groceries and the term papers he'd dropped when he'd thrown his arms around Watanuki's shoulders. Everything is exactly as it had been save for perhaps Mokona, who is staring at awe at the open sliding doors.

A cold breeze stirs the room, and Doumeki feels Watanuki shiver against him. There is no dragon here at all.

He lets go of Watanuki quickly and goes to close the doors before they freeze to death. Perhaps part of him moves so quickly because it's suddenly too warm right next to Watanuki as he had been, despite the draft from the open screens. Doumeki is much too old for this; for dragons and shops and bright young things shivering prettily in his arms.

"What a pretty dragon!" Mokona crows as the door closes under Doumeki's steady hand.

"Where did it go?" Doumeki asks, when he's in control of his breathing again, after he reminds himself over and over again that he is a normal human being living life in the natural way. One day he will have a wife and children and a sore back. He will have gray hair and age spots and it will take him two weeks to recover from a cold. Watanuki, very likely, will never experience any of those things. Not when he is frozen like he is, picture perfect and immortal. Watanuki will always look this way, will always stay young and pretty and impossibly bright.

"I don't know," Watanuki answers in the meantime, looking flustered with his kimono crooked and hanging off his shoulders from where Doumeki had manhandled him. "Wherever baby dragons go after they hatch, most likely."

Doumeki supposes it makes sense. He glances out the window just in case though, while Watanuki straightens his clothes again, until he is photograph perfect, as ageless and inhuman as Yuuko had been.

Watanuki joins Doumeki then, looking out the window, running his hand along the shuttered screens of the door. "I wonder…" he says, and his brow furrows thoughtfully, in a sad, worried way that reminds Doumeki too much of the past.

"Wonder?" Doumeki grunts, while Mokona curiously climbs onto Watanuki's shoulder. Watanuki pats Mokona's head with his fingertips.

"I wonder what the price was," Watanuki clarifies.

Eventually, Mokona taps its foot impatiently against Watanuki's right shoulder. "Watanuki, nabe!" it demands, and ruins the cold atmosphere of silence stifling the room.

Watanuki snaps out of it immediately. "Right," he sighs. "Dinner. Come on then, Mokona. You're helping to slice the cabbage."

"Weee Mokona helps!" Mokona agrees, only, Doumeki suspects, with the interest of stealing samples of the food before the meal properly starts.

Doumeki watches Watanuki pick up the bag of groceries from the doorway and stroll out of the room.

Briefly, before he turns to follow Watanuki and Mokona into the kitchen, Doumeki wonders what the price of a baby dragon is as well.

It is the first day of the Lunar New Year when Doumeki meets the woman he is going to marry.

He doesn't know how, but he knows it will be her the moment he sees her, when their eyes meet across a crowded plaza in early February, as children run around them with dragon-shaped confectionaries in their hands and brilliant fireworks explode in flowers of light in the sky above them.

His heart skips a beat in a way it hasn't for over ten years, as if it, like Watanuki, had been frozen in a moment somehow as well, caught hopelessly in the magical confines of Yuuko's shop. Suddenly, it feels as if it is finally coming back to life inside Doumeki's chest. In that very moment, Doumeki knows his heart is busy catching up with the years of lost time that the rest of him had been forced to live through without it.

He knows—inexplicably— that he will marry this woman one day, will have children with her and grow old with her. She will put ice on his back when he throws it out at the temple and make rice gruel for him to sip when he gets sick in the winter. She will laugh and run her fingers through his hair as it starts to become gray one strand at a time, and she will not notice the age spots or lines that will start to show on his skin because they will not matter, because she will have the same. They will both know all those things, things that are simply the consequences of a human life lived in a natural way, one year after another after another until death.

Across the crowded plaza, Doumeki makes his way towards this woman with his heart beating in time with the rest of the world against his breast. He smiles at her and she smiles back.

And for the first time in a long time, Doumeki does not return to the shop that night, leaving Watanuki alone there, puffing on Yuuko's pipe while sitting in Yuuko's chaise. He stares at the patterns of swirling smoke in the air around him as if he can see entire lifetimes unfolding before him in them. It is a lovely picture. Watanuki is a beautiful young thing locked in a moment by himself.

Tonight, for Doumeki at least, time finally marches on in the natural way that it was always meant to.

It is the price for a baby dragon that will never know either of her parents.

END