Title: A Series of Small Coincidences
Universe: XXXHolic/Ouran
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG-13
Character/Pairing/s: Doumeki, Watanuki, Yuuko, Maru, Moru, the host club, Renge, Nekozawa
Warnings/Spoilers: None that I can imagine, probably just lots of OOC at the worst. XD
Word Count: 2,296
Time: 2 hours about?
Summary: (XXXHolic and Ouran crossover, with cameos by the Antique Bakery guys and the Legal Drug guys and mention of the good old Petshop of Horrors) All the universe is connected. There's no such thing as coincidence. Maybe.
Dedication: chrnocrusader and lissiel because I'M SORRY I CAN'T WRITE OURAN.
A/N: Mostly an exercise to try and rebuild my dilapidated Ouran writing skillz, bolstered by the aid of Holic. XD;; This is also me trying to not be nervous for my interview with FX TV later tonight. WITNESS MY NOT NERVOUSNESS!! Also, no clue if Mori's ever done archery but seems like something he'd do. Also don't know if the Drug Store in GD ever had food and stuff, but whatever.
Disclaimer: Not mine, though I wish constantly.
Distribution: Just lemme know.

He remembered Doumeki Shizuka because they hadn't said a word to one another and spoken volumes all the same.

All in the space of a moment.

He recalled how they had paused when they'd seen each other in the midst of competition, looking at one another for just the beat of one breath before each moving to take his place in front of the target, ready to do battle.

Mori had appreciated the skill and the deliberation Doumeki had shot with because each motion had told him a thousand more things than the two of them speaking aloud to one another ever could, told him everything he needed to know from just the play of muscle under skin taut with anticipation, the fluid motions of Doumeki's arms. It all came together to write a story for Mori to read, one that's beginning was since the other boy could walk, that's middle meant national championship somewhere in the not-so-distant past, and that's ending was yet to be written but not so difficult to foresee all the same.

With just a glance, Mori knew that Doumeki shot an arrow better than he did.

This knowledge didn't bother Takashi in the slightest-- archery was his hobby and kendo was his heart. Simple as that.

Doumeki knew it too, watching the other boy for a moment in return and watching the story etched in Mori's body as it spoke in motions. He discovered that it read different from his own but was no less fascinating.

They'd found understanding in the space of a breath.

Mori remembered watching Doumeki shoot.

He thought it had felt like a breath of fresh air.

2.

He liked Himawari-chan lots because her hair looked like chocolate swirls or beautifully pulled taffy or the icing pattern on a pretty, pretty cake.

He remembered that she'd laughed at him when he pressed his face to the display of the shiny new bakery that he'd found on the street near the dojo Honey's father had sent him to teach at that week. She'd said, "The Gateau Chocolate is very good," and ruffled his hair like they were already old friends.

"I'll take one of each!" Honey had said to the storekeeper next. "But two of the Gateau Chocolate!"

"Oi, Ono… bring out the big boxes!" the store clerk had said, and told Honey to please get his face off the display.

Honey gave her the second Gateau Chocolate and they sat in the shop and ate it together with the yummy coffee and tea a tall man in sunglasses brought them "on the house."

"How old are you, little boy?" Himawari-chan asked as they'd ate, and stirred her tea smiling.

"Seventeen!" Honey said brightly, and asked his Usa-chan if it wanted some cake too.

"Oh!" Himawari-chan said next, and her smile never faltered. "Do you like sweets?"

"I love sweets!"

Honey remembered her especially because she'd said, "I love sweets too!"

Reaching an understanding was never hard when you had common ground after all.

Sometimes they met on Saturday afternoons to drink tea and coffee and eat cake and make the grumpy store clerk mutter to himself when they stayed all the way until closing time.

"Shall we have the fondant this week?" she asked on one of those meetings, after Honey had bought his customary one of everything and was waiting for her suggestion as to what to buy two of.

Honey beamed. "It's like you read my mind, Hima-chan!"

3.

"DOUMEKI! WHY DO YOU KEEP POPPING UP OUT OF NOWHERE?!" Watanuki shrieked, and flailed even when it was the steadiness of Doumeki's hand keeping the spasming idiot from slamming his face against the pavement.

Doumeki yanked him right-side up again and took a deep, tired breath. But just as he was about to reply, the earth began to shake.

The cry of "OHOHOHOHOHO!!!" split the air and both boys momentarily forgot about each another when a mysterious girl on a high powered motor rose seemingly from within the pavement before them.

"The fated lovers in denial!! I could eat six bowls of rice like that!" she declared, pointing smugly at them both from under her parasol before disappearing underground again, this time without so much as a tremor.

Doumeki thought it was a rather strange little inconsistency.

"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!" Watanuki demanded after a moment of stunned silence, like Doumeki ought to know.

The other boy simply blinked. "Popping out of nowhere," he theorized, sensibly.

Watanuki sighed. "I hate you."

4.

"Excuse me?"

"A customer!" Maru and Moru sing-songed.

Yuuko tilted her head to the side. "An interesting customer," she declared, and rose out of her lounge chaise.

A young man in a black robe met her not in her doorway, but his own, grown out of the wall and oozing gentle darkness and lovely midnight roses.

"Beezelnef," she greeted, not to the young man but to the cat puppet perched on his hand. "What can I do for you?"

"My," the cat puppet said, and rubbed its head sheepishly, "Yuuko-san, what a surprise. I was actually looking for D's."

Yuuko laughed. "You opened a door too early then, yes?"

"A moment," Beezelnef admitted.

"That time again?"

"Contracts must be renewed."

"He's nice," Yuuko commented, nodding towards the young man in the robe. New, from what she could see.

"He's young," Beezelnef said. "But he'll do."

The dimension sorceress beamed. "Goodbye."

"Goodbye."

The door faded out of the wall, returning it to its original shape and hue as if nothing had ever been disturbed.

Yuuko strolled back into her room, draped herself lazily over the furniture and waited for Watanuki to come for the day.

"Customer? No customer?" Maru and Moru asked, and sounded disappointed.

"Just a little coincidence," Yuuko responded with a private giggle, and smiled.

5.

"HAAARUHIIII I'll hold your basket!!" Tamaki declared, and could be heard from across the store.

"Hold my basket," Watanuki ordered, and thrust it into Doumeki's arms.

"Sure," Haruhi said.

"Hold it yourself," Doumeki said.

"What can I do for you?" the clerk behind the counter asked—his nametag read Kazahaya-- looking tired but forcing some semblance of cheer because it was good customer service. A larger teen lurked around the shadows stocking shelves at his leisure and didn't move to help the cashier despite his being hounded by two customers at once.

Watanuki pulled out his shopping list and attempted to make sense of Yuuko's post-drunken stupor scrawl.

Haruhi pulled out her shopping list and attempted to make sense of the haphazard writing of six other people who had all wanted things but didn't know what they were called in common commoner terms.

They both wrinkled their brows.

"Haruhi, what's this?" Tamaki asked, and bound up to her holding a bottle of bubbles with a smiling bubble man on the top.

"Bubbles," Haruhi said.

"LOVELY!" Tamaki cried, and tossed them into the basket.

"Chocolate," Doumeki said as he stood behind Watanuki, and tossed a couple of bars into the basket the shorter boy was holding.

"DON'T JUST MAKE PURCHASES ON SOMEONE ELSE'S RECEIPT," Watanuki scowled, but didn't take the candy out.

"Um," Haruhi started, after finally deciphering Hikaru's cryptic "that funny commoner drink that says its flavor is a color and not an actual real flavor" as "Gatorade." She frowned. Drug stores didn't just sell drinks, did they? "Do you have Gatorade?"

"In the fridge in the back," Kazahaya supplied. "Behind the big hulking mass of useless overstocking the shelves."

"I'VE GOT IT, HARUHI!!!" Tamaki shouted with a thumbs up, and wheeled around with his hand basket towards the fridge in the back.

She sighed.

Watanuki blinked and finally figured out what the squiggle on the left with the death skull illustration meant. "Heat pads?"

"Aisle four," Kazahaya responded. "Left of the giant silent statue not helping anyone. Next to the candy aisle."

"I'll get it," Doumeki offered at that.

"NO MORE CANDY," Watanuki shouted after him.

"Teeth cleaning gum," Haruhi said next, "a sweet flavor." Mori-senpai was a little bit clearer than Hikaru at least, with his "Whitening gum. Pink."

"Aisle five, between where the tall guy with the unpleasant face is standing and the back."

"GOT IT!" Tamaki declared, and looked to be having great fun.

"Unpleasant face?" Doumeki and Rikuo said, in deadpan tandem.

"YES!" Watanuki and Kazahaya responded in like.

"Anything else?" Kazahaya asked, after Doumeki and Rikuo shrugged at each other and went back to what they'd been doing previously.

"HARUHI DOES HE WANT GUM FLAVOR OR CHOCOMINT?!" Tamaki megaphoned, and sounded at an absolute loss because both flavors seemed wonderful.

"The chocomint's good," Doumeki offered, helpfully.

Haruhi and Watanuki sighed and turned back to Kazahaya. "Aspirin," they said.

Kazahaya grinned. "Aisle three."

6.

"Senpai," Haruhi started thoughtfully after they'd paid for their purchases and were walking back to campus.

"Yes, Haruhi?" Tamaki responded, in an overly attentive manner.

Haruhi blinked. "Did you see a furry snake in that boy's shirt?"

"Are you sick?" he asked, and sounded worried.

She ducked the hand reaching out to touch her forehead. "Nevermind."

7.

"Oi," Watanuki started thoughtfully after they'd exited the drug store with all of the necessary purchases.

"Hmm?" Doumeki grunted, and sounded to be only half listening again.

Watanuki fidgeted a bit. "Was that a guy or a girl?"

"Are you stupid?" Doumeki asked, and sounded amused.

Doumeki ducked under the bag when Watanuki swung it at his head. "Nevermind!"

8.

"What is your wish?" Yuuko asked, and looked at the new arrival in her shop with expectant knowing.

"Wish? I'm afraid you're mistaken."

"No wish? No wish! No!" Maru and Moro decried. "How glum!"

"Everyone has a wish," Yuuko purred.

"Not everyone is willing to pay the prices you charge. Especially when they already know how to get everything they could ever want for free or very close to," Kyouya responded flatly, and adjusted his glasses.

Yuuko laughed. "No one wanders into my shop purely by coincidence, you know."

"Of course," Kyouya told her, and pulled out his portfolio. "I'm actually here on an errand. You see, my father…"

"Oh, I see. So you're Ootori-san's son, mm?"

Kyouya's glasses gleamed. "Yes."

"I understand now."

"Wonderful," Kyouya said amiably, and sipped the tea she'd offered him.

"We just have to discuss a price," Yuuko added, though it went without saying.

"A price, a price!" Maru and Moro exclaimed with cheerful abandon.

Kyouya eyed them both for just a moment before smiling back. "I think that can be arranged."

"Perfect."

9.

"This is the address," Hikaru announced, and peered into the fence experimentally. "How drab."

"Mmm," Kaoru agreed, and held the address Kyouya had given to them earlier with a weird sense of trepidation.

"Go here, please," the vice-president had requested that afternoon, and had deigned to say nothing else.

Suspicious.

After a moment of thoughtful boredom though, the twins simply shrugged at each other and stepped through the gate.

"WAI!!!" two voices shouted ecstatically all of a sudden, and the twins felt two sets of hands come forward to clutch the sleeves of two sets of expensive uniforms.

"Woah!" Hikaru and Kaoru said in surprise, and were dragged fully into the yard.

"Welcome!" a woman greeted from the porch—had she been there just now?-- and two girls with the same voice ran around in circles murmuring in excited whispers to one another.

"Just the same!" one said.

"Exactly the same!" the other said.

"The same as what?" Hikaru and Kaoru asked at the same time. "Why are we here?"

Yuuko smiled enigmatically, and she looked so much like Kyouya for a moment that neither twin could say anything more due to the slight shiver running down their spines.

"Fascinating," she said, and puffed elegantly on her pipe.

"Fascinating!" the two girls with the same face agreed in tandem.

The twins stared.

"Oh, excuse me," Yuuko said suddenly, and broke the spell when she moved to look at them instead of through them. "It's just a small issue of debt that Kyouya-kun owes me."

The twins didn't like the sound of that.

"There's a very interesting issue," the woman continued, and stepped forward off the porch, "of your souls." She smiled then, pleasantly. "I want to look at them."

"Souls!" the little girls repeated again, and sounded more and more ecstatic with each spoken word.

Hikaru and Kaoru looked at each other.

After a moment of bored thoughtfulness, they came to a silent consensus. "Our souls don't really worry us," they said at once. "Will there be tea cakes?"

"Plenty," Yuuko promised.

All in all, the five of them spent a very pleasant afternoon together.

10.

"Coincidences have to exist, don't they?" Watanuki fumed, and stalked down the street scowling about Yuuko's parting words to him that day. "Not everything is connected to weird supernatural crazy stuff! Or fate! Normal people exist in this world!"

"Mm," Doumeki responded noncommittally, listening to the other boy's ranting with only half an ear.

They turned the corner together then, and when the they saw the twins from yesterday, Doumeki's last archery opponent, the guy and the girl from the drug store, and the little boy Doumeki remembered cheering Morinozuka on at the archery meet a week ago all walking out of a bakery that looked like an antique shop with Himawari-chan in tow (the pipsqueak was holding her hand), Watanuki promptly (finally) shut up.

Doumeki supposed that the stupid look on Watanuki's face was due to the fact that right about now, Yuuko-san's last words to him today were replaying through the idiot's head over and over again, complete with echo effect and appropriately mocking laughter.

But then again, it might just have been because Himawari was holding onto some other guy's hand.

END