Current music:	Holiday//The Birthday Massacre
Entry tags:	alternate universe, fanfiction, timepiece, xxxholic

xxxHoLic AU
(It's getting late.
It all just wanes and pales and fades away.
If we just want it too much and what a shame if all there is.
Is all that’s gone away.
There's nothing left here for us.
Deadlight, holiday, killing time to make us stay.
Hollow as the promises of yesterday.
On and on the music plays, memories in paraphrase.
Falling past my window like the morning rain.
It's all the same so many words remaining.
Always too late.
It never seems worth taking and all the days and all the nights lost sleeping.
And in the end the secret's not worth keeping

--The Birthday Massacre, Holiday)

Title: Timepiece
Author: smokexscribbles
Rating: PG, will probably go up to PG-15 at the most.
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: I am not CLAMP.
Summary: I was trying to capture the creepiness that is Holic. I hopefully succeeded, and it will, in fact, get both creepier and slashier in later chapters. This is an AU mystery which takes place in a ballroom. It isn't songfic, but I got the idea from "Holiday" by The Birthday Massacre, which you can DL HERE.



Tick Step Tock Turn Tick Sweep Tock Step Tick One-two-three Tock Hand on waist Tick Twirl Tock New partner…

Imagine all this looking down from the ceiling - Picture fifty, seventy, one hundred couples, a ballroom that extends as far as it is possible to see on all sides, floating, flickering candles. Picture ballroom dresses that dot the floor with color, puffing out as they tick twirl tock. Picture black coattails and white shirts and red silk bows around every neck.

Picture a waltz to the tick and tock of the giant clock in the center of the room. This clock reaches up into the darkest heights of the ceiling. Every second is like a heartbeat, loud, essential, mechanical. The dancers (You would notice, if you cared to watch for long enough) lack fluidity. They are moving, in fact, like clockwork, in precise, judged, perfect steps.

They have been dancing for one hundred years.

They will go on dancing until someone stops them.

ooo

For the first time in a hundred years, Watanuki Kimihiro is conscious of what he is doing. He wakes up, metaphorically, but he wasn’t quite sleeping before. He was. . . less than aware. He was hypnotized, or, if you want to be totally precise, he was in a trance state.

It happens slowly – he is dancing, and he misses a mechanical step. He blinks. He sees, for the first time, that he is dancing with a stranger. He gasps and stumbles back, falling over in a mess of coattails and black silk. His glasses fall off his nose, and so there is a second before he can see the rest of the room. He fumbles for the silvery little spectacles, finds them, looks up and gapes.

He can’t say anything. He’s too shocked – By the enormity of the place, by the strangeness of it all, above all by the massive clock in the center of the room. It really is impressive, this clock. It has four faces, one on each side, and is so wide at the base a grown man would not be able to wrap his arms around it.

His partner goes on dancing, her arms wrapped around an imaginary man where he should have been.

Watanuki stands up and picks his way through the dancers. After a while, he picks up the pattern, and it gets easier to walk without bumping into anyone.

He realizes, after walking for half an hour and not getting much of anywhere, that this room either has something drastically wrong with it or goes on forever.

ooo

Doumeki Shizuka does not wake up in the same way Watanuki did. He wakes up, actually, because an inconsiderate person walking through the rows of dancers bumps into him and falls down. The person then runs away. Doumeki takes his situation in stride fairly well. He gently lets go of his partner’s hands, leaving her dancing with air. He then stalks off through the rows of people, following the one other conscious person in the room.

He doesn’t know the person’s name yet, but we do.

ooo

Tick Step Tock Turn Tick Sweep Tock Step Tick One-two-three Tock Hand on waist Tick Twirl Tock New partner…

Imagine all this looking down from the ceiling - Picture fifty, seventy, one hunderd couples, a ballroom that extends as far as it is possible to see on all sides, floating, flickering candles. Picture ballroom dresses that dot the floor with color, puffing out as they tick twirl tock. Picture black coattails and white shirts and red silk bows around every neck.

Picture a waltz to the tick and tock of the giant clock in the center of the room. This clock reaches up into the darkest heights of the ceiling. Every second is like a heartbeat, loud, essential, mechanical. The dancers (You would notice, if you cared to watch for long enough) lack fluidity. They are moving, in fact, like clockwork, in precise, judged, perfect steps.

They have been dancing for one hundred years.

Two of them have stopped.