Day 9, XXXHOLiC, Yuuko, Watanuki, (G)

[ciircee]

Originally I picked this idea up from Meg. Ages ago. In fact, it was while I was working on the research for it that I wrote something for Becky that ran along the same ideas (and was some of the only het I wrote last year!). And though that story came from this one, this story is almost (but not quite) its continuation. What I'm trying to say is, if you like this story, you should thank Meg! Before I kill her for this! Because I…I'm now addicted to 'Dancing with the Stars' on Youtube. She needs to die.



Memories and Dancing

Watanuki heard the music just as he was about to leave work for the night. He hadn't really seen Yuuko at all that day, which had suited him just fine. But the music…he followed the distinctive sound of trumpets and drums to the treasure room. His boss was standing next to an old fashioned phonograph, humming along as the cylinder spun.

"Is—" he swallowed the first question that came to mind. "Is that 'In the Mood'?" he asked instead.

Yuuko looked surprised when she turned to face him. "Yes," she said, one brow arching slightly. "You know it?"

He nodded. "I have the record, somewhere." It was somewhere in the closet with the rest of his parents things that he couldn't bear to part with.

"That's marvelous," Yuuko said, giving him a very genuine looking smile. "I learned the quickstep to this song," she said as the music ended with a flourish. She changed cylinders.

"Steppin' out with my baby," Watanuki identified automatically as the horns blared out, bold and brassy.

Yuuko gave him a very considering look.

"No way," Watanuki said. "No matter what it is, I'm not doing it."

"Some men would pay for the honor of dancing with me," Yuuko said lightly.

"Too right they would," Watanuki muttered.

She patted his cheek. "I'll make you a deal, my dear Watanuki," she said.

"Oh, this can't be good."

"Three hours of dancing," she said, "and I'll reduce your debt accordingly."

Watanuki gave the old phonograph a suspicious look as Moro switched the cylinders again. He switched the look to Yuuko, who smiled innocently the opening bars of the Apasionata swept from the morning-glory horn. "All right," he told her as the violins wept plaintively. "You've got a deal."

Yuuko clapped her hands delightedly. "Now, then, " she said, motioning to Maru, "how do you look in a tailsuit?"

---

The answer was 'not too shabby', he thought straightening the bow tie in the mirror before heading back to the treasure room. As far as he could tell by looking at it, nothing about the room had changed at all. The same shelves, crammed full of anything and everything, were still in their same places. But there was suddenly an abundance of room—what seemed like miles of hardwood floor gleamed up at him. "Yuuko?" he called, a little thrown.

"My, my," Yuuko said in his ear, "don't you look dashing!"

He jumped, spinning around to face her. "Don't do that," he admonished and then noticed her dress. "Uh," he said.

Yuuko laughed. "This old thing?" she said, fluttering her eyelashes and then laughing at him again. "Your virtue is safe with me, Wa-ta-nu-ki," she teased. "I'm only after the dancing. It's been an age and my last partner seems to have vanished off the face of the earth."

"Smart man," Watanuki muttered, looking at Yuuko's death-defyingly high heeled shoes.

"Smart mouth," Yuuko countered, tapping him lightly in the back of the head and ushering him into the room. "A starting preference?" she enquired.

Watanuki winced. "I don't actually know how to dance," he confessed.

Yuuko gave him a surprised look and then waved it off. "Three hours is more than enough time to learn the waltz, at least," she said. "Music?" she offered, gesturing to the wax rolls.

"No way," Watanuki said, pointing at them. "I'm not getting penalized for the wrong music choice."

"How quickly they learn," Yuuko lamented. "Very well, we'll start with the Musetta." She fitted a cylinder and approached him as the lightly-tripping notes of a piano filled the room. "Now, the form for the waltz," she began.

Watanuki stepped forward and slid an arm somewhat gingerly around her waist, holding his other arm out to the side, his hand palm up and waiting for hers. "What?" he grumbled in embarrassment as she gave him a look.

"Nothing," she said, putting her hand in his. "You have good form. The waltz," she continued, "is very simple. It's a series of turns done in three-quarters rhythm. The good, old one-two-three, one-two-three."

Watanuki looked at her. "Right."

She laughed as strings joined the piano. "It is very simple. The stress is on the first beat and you just step in measured time. Three steps is one 'move'. Follow me. Left foot first." And she stepped back.

He followed her with the same muted sort of fear he felt in following her anywhere. However, nothing exploded as he brought his right foot forward, and nothing caught fire as he followed her shift to the side. He didn't dare glance down at his feet as he stepped forward with his left foot again. Instead he focused on the room over his boss's shoulder and counted in his head. One, two, three. One, two, three.

Yuuko dipped to the side, humming along with the music. "Watanuki, you little fraud! You've done this before!" she patted his shoulder. "Now, since you've got the steps, try to get the spirit. Soft, round movements, swing and flow—come up," she rose slightly on her toes, "on steps one and two and down," she lowered, swinging to the side again, "on three."

"I haven't done this before," Watanuki said, nudging his glasses up with his shoulder as he rose, dipped, and swayed to the count. "It's my first time."

"Then you're a natural," Yuuko enthused. "Lovely! I might actually get my money's worth out of you tonight."

Watanuki relaxed, swaying to the right then swaying into the left-step. "Don't think I won't remind you of that," he muttered. Then, feeling stupid, "So, it's all right?"

"Embarrassingly so," Yuuko confirmed, "considering it took me three hours to get the basics."

That got him to look at her. "Three hours?"

"To be fair," Yuuko hummed, swaying back as she came down on the third step and then swirling away under his arm and back, "I did get my instruction after being woken from a sound sleep in the middle of the night."

He thought about that. He was very tempted to ask if she'd killed the guy and was that how he'd disappeared, but didn't. Instead, he nodded, spinning her out and back again. "It's been three minutes," he tried to keep the gloating to a minimum.

Yuuko smiled. "Moving right along then. Moro? The Marino, if you will please." Clarinets, backed by a faster-paced bass than before, filtered out of the phonograph. "This is a Viennese waltz," she said, "a slightly faster version of what we've just been doing."

Watanuki listened, and then moved. He didn't bother with the sway on the first step, instead dipping Yuuko to his right, then his left as a flute and violins joined the clarinets. "There isn't time for the swaying," he said defensively when Yuuko nearly stumbled over his feet.

"No, there isn't. What's more," Yuuko said, regaining her balance and holding the upward motion for a beat longer, so that the resulting down beat was more dramatic, the step back longer, "there isn't supposed to be a sway on the first beat. I might just be getting the better end of this bargain," she laughed.

"Typical," Watanuki sighed.

Yuuko patted his shoulder again, dipping left, then right, and then left again. "Let's try a reverse turn, shall we?"

"A what?" Watanuki asked, instinctively putting his weight back as Yuuko stepped forward into him, taking his next two steps behind him before swinging his employer to the right and pushing forward again.

"That," Yuuko said in satisfaction.

The music changed without warning, something slow and sultry. "Now what?" he asked.

"Honey on the vine," Yuuko smiled. "Excellent choice, Maru!" she called over her shoulder. "Also, the foxtrot. Well, a slow one," she amended. "Four beat time, quick-quick, slow, slow. A bit more challenging."

Watanuki squinted at Moro as she swished past him, dancing with Maru. "When do we rise?"

"Every other first beat, a continuation on the second with another rise or a fall on every other third, depending on if you're at quick or slow."

"I'm not backing down," Watanuki warned. He lengthened his stride as he held the rise.

"I expect nothing less," Yuuko said.

---

They worked on the foxtrot through another slow song full of piano and longing, which Yuuko said was called the 'Era Gia Tutto Previsto' and to which she sang along in something that might have been Italian. He was actually enjoying himself and was about to tell his boss so (at great peril to himself, he was sure) and then the music changed, sweet piano and the gentle sweep of violins and he switched into the waltz before he even thought about it.

Yuuko startled and then began to hum along absently as a woman began to sing in Chinese. Though they were dancing together Watanuki had the curious sense that they were not dancing with each other at all. There was a strange silence to their movements, to the room, to the world until Yuuko spoke. "You've lost the fluidity," she observed at length as he led her through a wide turn.

Watanuki looked over her shoulder and blinked hard. "My parents used to dance to this song all the time. It was my mother's favorite," he said softly, hating the strain he heard in his voice.

"Ahh," Yuuko said quietly. "They were dancers?"

"Just at home," he answered her, no longer seeing the treasure room so much as an apartment he hadn't been in for over ten years. "Every night, it seemed to me. They'd go whirling around the apartment, the kitchen to the living room, through the bedroom and back. They were," he swallowed hard. "Good at it. They were good at it. They always said that one day, I'd dance too." He spun Yuuko out and drew her back in, spinning her under his arm as he moved into a turn. "I haven't heard this song…since that day."

He blinked as Yuuko slipped out of his arms. "Thank you for the dance," she said, touching the wax cylinder and stopping its revolution as the song closed. She removed it and set it aside. "Clow Reed," she said quietly without looking at him, "was probably the dumbest man I've ever met." She turned and smiled at him with blind eyes. "You'd have liked him a great deal, Watanuki-kun. Good night," she said, walking out of the room.

"Good night, Yuuko-san," he said meaninglessly to the empty room that was nothing more than the crowded, dusty treasure room. He left the tailsuit on a shelf outside of it when he left.