Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of this work of fiction, and no profit (monetary or other) is being made through the writing of this.
A/N: Inspired by the following prompt shared with me by Irene Claire: "Is this like an Easter Egg Hunt and Danny's the hidden egg? And Steve's the wascally wabbit? Or is he really the child looking for the eggs?" (Thank you, julieb716 for the review on Irene Claire's, "A Word of the Day Bromance," that sparked this story)
This is a gift fic for Irene Claire (though not the h/c fic she asked for for Christmas a million years ago - sorry).
This is, hopefully needless to say, an AU. It features personification, bad puns, and a happy (hoppy) ending.
Warning: This is not for children, there are some adult themes toward the end. I have lifemate as one word, because in this particular universe it is a kind of bond between two beings. It's magical. This might be considered 'crack' by some as well. Crack...eggs...hopefully I don't need to walk around on egg shells after posting this. Does that even make sense? Enjoy, and Hoppy Easter to those who celebrate.
This fairy tale begins like most begin, with an ordinary individual who is more than he seems. Or in this case, an egg who is declared, by his mother, to be 'special'. Not the most egg-citing of beginnings, but one that many of us with mothers can relate to.
Danny's mother had always told him that he was special, and that one day, he'd meet the love of his life and that life as he knew it would change forever.
"Mark my words, Danny. You'll see the one. You'll blink, and suddenly you'll be in a whole new world," she said nearly every single day since Danny had been removed from his mother's nest and placed in a special holding room called a 'hutch'.
Each egg-ling, as they were called until they'd reached maturity, had its very own place in the holding room, and one of the many bunnies that helped out the big guy - Mr. Easter himself - had explained that there was magic in the holding room that kept the eggs from going rotten (whatever that was) and from becoming chickens or roosters.
Danny had a feeling that if he'd been allowed to stay in his mother's nest, he'd have become a rooster, like his father. Or rather the rooster that Danny would like to be his father if he had a father. It was all very confusing, and not something that any of the visiting bunnies had ever explained to him, or the eggs that disappeared when they were declared to be 'ready' and 'chosen' for relocation to 'The Basket' or 'The Outside'.
To say that Danny'd been skeptical of his mother's cryptic words would have been an understatement. There was nothing special about him. He was just as ordinary and plain as the rest of the egg-lings on the Easter Bunny's farm, who were waiting for full maturity before they could be chosen and sent out into a mysterious place called, 'The Basket'.
He'd all but laughed in his mother's beaked face when she'd first told him that he was special. He knew that she meant well, but he couldn't help but think that she was setting him, and herself, up for disappointment.
Danny's mother was a prized chicken, and the father that he'd like to have was one of the top roosters on the farm. Danny had a number of brothers and sisters, and most of them had remained eggs, though some had become chickens or roosters. Whatever magic it took to make that happen had not been bestowed upon Danny, however. If anything, he was the least special of his siblings, though he couldn't tell that to his mother without getting another lecture.
"Just remember that I love you, Danny," his mother said as she pecked him, lightly, on the shell. "You're special, and one day, very soon, you'll be chosen for something much more important than 'The Basket' or 'The Outside'."
Danny's mother pecked a couple of other shells on her way out of the hutch - Danny's siblings (not all of them shared the same pallet, and some of them were much younger than he was) - and she waved a wing as she reached the door. Danny scooted around in his casing, the only way that he could physically respond to his mother's goodbye.
"Hey, special," one of Danny's fellow egg-lings needled as soon as the shadow of Danny's mother could no longer be seen in the daylight that graced the doorway of the hutch. Several other egg-lings laughed.
Embarrassed, Danny shifted in his cardboard seat and tried not to let his anger boil over. He knew that he should be used to the teasing by now. After all, it wasn't as though it was the first time that he'd been teased after his mother paid a visit to him.
"What do you want, Eggbert?" Danny asked, and he wondered, yet again, why his mother couldn't have named him something normal, like Eggy, or Eggder, or Eggmond. She'd named him, Danny, which was not at all a suitable name for an egg.
"What do you call an egg who has a higher calling?" Eggbert asked, and the other eggs tittered in anticipation of whatever witticism was about to come from Eggbert's birdbrain.
"Gee, I don't know, Eggbert, what do you call an egg with a higher calling?" Danny asked.
He'd learned that it was best to play along when the others wanted to tease him. Nothing good came of him getting hot under the shell. It was, after all, what they wanted, to take him down a shell or two after his mother had built him up.
"An eggs benediction," Eggbert chortled, and all of the eggs surrounding Danny cracked up.
Danny rolled around in his cardboard until he was facing Eggbert - he was stationed three rows behind Danny.
"Ha, ha, Eggbert," Danny said. "Good one. Yolk it up everyone."
"Yeah, well, not all of us can be as special as you, Danny," Eggbert said. "None of our mommies has to come visit us every day just to tell us that we're special. If you ask me, I think that your mother has it all wrong, and you'll be lucky to end up on some human's plate as part of an eggs benedict. You'll end up in a whole new world alright, as a poached egg."
The whole carton of eggs cracked up, and Danny turned around toward the front of the carton, trying not to lose his cool. He didn't need to have one of the helper bunnies hopping into the holding room and threatening to label him 'spoiled'. If that happened, he'd be removed from the holding room and brought to another room where he'd be shipped off to 'The Outside'. He'd already gotten two warnings, and it didn't matter that he didn't start the fights, that he'd been egged on by Eggbert and his cronies.
"Oh, is special widdle Danny gonna cwy?" Eggbert teased.
Danny counted to ten, and then started to count backwards, and then forward again, trying to drown out Eggbert's continued taunts. The other egg was just spoiling for a fight. Danny's mother had said that he was just jealous. Danny hated that. It seemed like such an egg wash to claim that Eggbert only teased him because he was jealous of the attention that Danny got from his mother.
Eggbert's mother had never once stopped by for a visit, and while his mother was the only one who hadn't visited her egg after delivery and relocation, it was egg-stremely rare to have a chicken visit her offspring as much as Danny's mother had visited him. Danny almost agreed with Eggbert in that his mother's frequent visits were the only thing special about him.
Danny started to feel a little warm underneath his shell as the taunting continued. He was starting to get good and steamed. Just as he was about to go hard boiled and whisk Eggbert's yolk, one of the bunnies hopped into the hutch. All of the eggs in the hutch straightened up in their casings.
The bunny had a pleasant enough smile on its face, and it was one that Danny recognized from its frequent visits to the hutch. Danny couldn't help but shiver in anticipation, because this bunny was one of the few that visited the hutch to choose eggs for 'The Basket' and 'The Outside'.
No matter what Danny's mother said about being special, he felt that he had no greater calling than this, to be chosen by one of the choosing bunnies, and he hoped that this would be his time.
He was ready. Some days he felt as though he'd been born ready.
The bunny's nose twitched as it looked over each pallet of eggs, peering closely at several of them before making a tick mark on some, and leaving others untouched. Danny stood as tall as he could when the bunny came to his pallet, and he held himself as straight as possible.
Please, please, please, choose me, Danny prayed as hard as he could to the head bunny, imagining what Mr. Easter looked like based solely on stories that he'd heard from other eggs, and his mother.
In Danny's egg-magination, Mr. Easter was a tall, regal bunny who had one floppy ear and one ear that stood up straight. Mr. Easter, according to the tales that Danny had heard in the hutch, was a large, brown-furred rabbit who had a nose that was half pink and half brown, and eyes the color of the sun.
Danny felt a tickle of breath on his shell, and then a whisker. There was a slight hum, and the bunny's eye, a caramel in color, was so close to Danny that he almost yolked himself. The eye roamed every part of Danny's shell, and then, to Danny's egg-streme shock, Danny was lifted in one of the bunny's furry paws. It reminded Danny of his mother's nest. It was warm and comfy.
The bunny sniffed him, and Danny wriggled, though he tried to stay still.
"Hmm, interesting," the bunny said, and then he marked Danny, not with one swipe of the green marking chalk, but two, making an 'X' at the top of Danny's shell.
Danny was shell shocked when he was replaced in his cubby. He tried to pay attention, to see if any of siblings were chosen as well, but he found it difficult to concentrate. His shell felt as though it was vibrating with excitement.
The choosing bunny left the hutch, and then, shortly after, several bunnies hopped in to collect the chosen. Danny saw Eggbert and some of his pals had been chosen as well. He tried not to let the thought that they'd been chosen together bother him. All of the eggs, except for him, were placed into one of the collecting baskets, and Danny felt as though all of the yolk had been drained out of him. He was nothing but an empty shell as the collecting bunnies hopped out of the hutch, clutching full baskets in their paws.
"Oh, baby," Danny's mother consoled him a few days later, wrapping her feather wings around him in a hug.
Other egg-lings had been brought in to fill the spaces that had been left by Eggbert and the others who'd been chosen, and taken.
"It'll be alright. You'll see."
Danny felt numb, his mother's words washed over him. He still had the green marks. He could feel them down to the bottom of his shell. Not that they meant anything.
"No, it won't, ma," Danny said. "I was marked, and not taken. It's over for me."
"Sweetheart." His mother brushed over the marks on the top of his shell with her feathers. It made Danny shiver. "I told you, you're special. These marks prove it. You just have to be patient a little longer."
When Danny refused to say anything in response, his mother sighed, and, pecking him on the shell (avoiding the marks) she said goodbye and left.
Danny fell into a fitful sleep. His shell ached, and he felt overly warm. At one point, it felt like he was floating, and dancing. It was dizzying, yet Danny did not wake, though much time seemed to pass, and Danny felt as though something important was happening to him.
Hours, maybe days, later something tickled his shell, and Danny woke, itching and feeling like he'd been rubbed all over until he was shiny, like the sun that trickled into the hutch during the daylight hours. He was being held in a soft paw, and the tickling sensation continued.
"Hold still, Danny," the bunny said in a soft voice.
The bunny was older than any bunny Danny had ever seen. It had gray fur and there were tufts of white coming out of its floppy ears. It wore something on its face that made its blue eyes seem overly large.
"I'm painting you for the Great Easter Egg Hunt," the elderly bunny explained. "You're quite an extraordinary, dare I say, egg-straordinary, egg, and are one of a handful that have been chosen for this event. The Easter Bunny himself will be participating in the hunt this year. It only occurs once every ten years, and is quite a remarkable event if I do say so myself. I met my lifemate at a Great Easter Egg Hunt several hunts ago. She, much like you, was Grade AA material."
"I..." Danny held his yolk. Egg-lings were not allowed to talk to bunnies. It wasn't polite, or socially acceptable.
The bunny chuckled, and its whiskers twitched. "That's alright lad, ask your question. I don't believe in the silly notion that eggs and bunnies should not egg-change words every now and again."
Danny chuckled, and then chanced a look at the bunny, worried that he'd be tossed into the room for the spoiled eggs for his boldness in laughing at a bunny while it was painting him. "I'm sorry, sir, uh, your bunnyness?"
The bunny laughed, and its blue eyes seemed to sparkle. "You can call me, Peter."
"Peter?" Danny tried out the name, and examined the bunny holding him. The name seemed to fit. "Peter, I don't understand. What is the Great Easter Egg Hunt, and why was I chosen for that rather than 'The Basket' or 'The Outside'?"
Danny refused to think about his mother and her words about him being special, not when he wasn't sure if he'd ever see her again. The reality of his situation, far away from the hutch, and in a strange bunny's paws, being painted, hit him hard, and he tried not to panic.
"The Great Easter Hunt is a special event, like I said, that takes place every ten years. During the hunt, young bunnies search Mr. Easter's farm for a special egg, an egg that belongs only to that one bunny. And in that special egg, they find a lifemate. In all of the years that the Great Easter Hunt has taken place, Mr. Easter has never come across his lifemate. It is our hope that this year, Mr. Easter's luck will change," Peter explained.
Danny contemplated Peter's words carefully. "You don't think..."
The elder bunny smiled at him, and drew something on Danny's shell with a big sweeping motion that made Danny's shell twitch in response. It was more than just a tickle.
"I don't know if your destiny lies with Mr. Easter, or with one of the other bunnies who is still searching for his, or her, lifemate, but I do know, Danny, that your mother was right. You are special," Peter said.
"How do you know what my mother said about me?" Danny asked. He was more than a little skeptical. He'd never seen Peter before. The bunny had never darkened the hutch.
"She has never stopped clucking about it since the day you were laid, my dear little egg-ling," Peter said. "Everyone knows what Clara thinks about you, and how much your mother values you."
Danny felt his shell heating up with egg-barasment.
"There's nothing to be embarrassed about, son. As it turns out, you are special. Once I've finished painting you, you'll be hidden on the farm, and on the day of the Great Hunt, we'll find out just how special you are when you're found by your lifemate."
"What if no one finds me?" Danny asked. "How many other eggs will be out there? Is Eggbert one of them?"
"You'll be found, don't fret about that," Peter said. "There are a dozen eggs, and a dozen bunnies who'll be searching for them. Eggbert...the third or the fourth? I believe the third is being sent to 'The Basket' and the fourth is being sent to 'The Outside'. It turns out that he was a bit on the spoiled side. Told some bad 'yolks'." Peter winked at Danny.
Laughing, Danny wondered what it would have been like to have been sent to 'The Basket' or to 'The Outside', and if it was all that it was cracked up to be. He'd been dreaming about being chosen since he'd been removed from the nest and placed into the hutch, but hearing Peter talk about it, he didn't think that being chosen for either fate was a good thing.
"Just put your mind at ease," Peter said. "You've got nothing to worry about. Stay on the sunny side up side of life, and all will go well. Just one more little detail," Peter said, and Danny was pulled away from the bunny's face as the brush painted one more mark on him. He was turned this way and that as he was inspected.
The bunny nodded. "Yes, that's it. You're perfect. I did an egg-straordinary job if I do say so myself."
"What...that is...can I..." Danny wasn't sure how to ask, or even if he should dare to ask, to see what he looked like now that he'd been declared, 'perfect'.
"You'd like to see what you look like?" Peter asked.
Danny said, "Yes, please, that is, if you don't mind." Danny was quivering in his shell.
"I don't mind at all," Peter said.
Peter held something up in front of Danny, and, at first Danny was confused. He'd never seen anything like what he saw in the instrument that the bunny held in its paw. Whatever it was that he was seeing in the round object was shaped like an egg, pointed at the top, round at the bottom. That, however, was where the resemblance to an egg ended.
The egg-like thing that Danny saw did not have a white shell. Instead, it was covered in the most intricate design that Danny had ever seen in his life. It was stunning, and Danny had to agree that whatever he was looking at was indeed egg-straordinary.
From time to time the bunnies would show the egg-lings in the hutch what awaited them once they were chosen - shells in all kinds of colors, bearing all sorts of shapes. None of the pictures that Danny had seen came close to what he was seeing now.
"I...don't understand," Danny said. "What is this you are showing me?"
"Danny, you are looking in a mirror. It is a reflection of yourself. When I paint an egg, I see his or her inner beauty, and bring it out through the paint. You are seeing your true self, or, how your true self has been revealed to me," Peter explained.
"B...but," Danny protested. "I...that is, I'm not..." Danny felt like he'd been scrambled, and was at a loss of words.
"This is the real you, no doubt what your mother saw when she looked at you, and what I saw when I was selected to paint you," Peter said. "Take a good look, Danny. This is what your lifemate will see when he or she looks at you."
The mirror revealed an egg that had been painted a blue as pretty and bright as that of the sky that Danny had seen through the opening of the hutch on clear days. On the blue background there was a fluffy, white and butterscotch spotted bunny that stared back at Danny from clear blue, rather than brown, eyes.
Surrounding the bunny were flourishes of gold, green, and a darker blue. The painting was beautiful, and when Danny peered closer at it, it seemed as though the painting moved along with him, the bunny's nose twitched, and its eyes narrowed. One of its ears stood up at attention, and when Danny felt a smile come from within him, it was mirrored on the bunny.
He really was special.
"Now, it's time for you to rest so that you can be hidden. You will wake when your lifemate finds you on the day of the Great Easter Egg Hunt," Peter said, and the mirror was removed.
Danny felt a little sad to lose sight of the bunny that had been painted on his shell, even if it was supposed to be who he really was on the inside, and it was just himself that he'd been looking at.
"How will I..." Danny felt his eyes (he had eyes, painted eyes) close, and he never got to ask his question as he fell into a deep slumber.
There was a sensation of movement, of being cradled in gentle paws, a peck on the shell that Danny, even though he was too tired to open his eyes, knew was from his mother, and then Danny was lying on a soft surface, sleeping.
There were sounds. Birds chirping. Water trickling. The wind whipping through the trees. They were the soundtrack to Danny's dreams of a bunny, tall, fur a dark chocolate brown. Handsome. Eyes the color of a stormy sky. One ear that stood tall, and another that flopped mid-way down.
As Danny dreamt, a bunny searched the woods near the Easter Bunny farm. The bunny searched high, low, and in between. It searched over and under, seeking out what it knew was its lifemate. Putting its nose to the ground, the bunny searched every hill and dale with a frantic energy that vibrated through every single hair on its body.
Just as the bunny was about to give it up as a lost cause and return to the farm, it stumbled upon a lone egg that had rolled beneath a decaying log. The bunny blinked at the egg. It was intricate in design, the rabbit that had been painted on it was...cute, and sleeping peacefully. The bunny almost didn't want to disturb its sleep, but shook itself out of its stupor, and touched the egg with its nose, waking the white and butterscotch spotted bunny.
Stepping back, the bunny watched as the painted bunny on the egg yawned and stretched out each of its paws before licking its lips, and then turned sleepy blue eyes toward it. The painted bunny blinked, and then magic swirled in the air, lifting both the egg and the lifemate seeking rabbit, and enveloping them in a bright purple light.
Both the egg and the bunny felt electricity surge through their very hearts, piercing them, binding them together in a bond greater than love. It was fate. They were lifemates, chosen at some point in time before either of them had been born.
When the magic lifted, the purple light lowered them to the ground, and then vanished. When Danny blinked for the second time, and breathed in, he felt different. His mother's words returned to him, "Mark my words, Danny. You'll see the one. You'll blink, and suddenly you'll be in a whole new world."
Not only did Danny find himself in a whole new world, but he was also in a whole new body. That of the bunny that Peter had painted on his shell. The bunny that his mother, and Peter, and now his lifemate, had seen when looking at him.
"I've been waiting a lifetime to meet you," the bunny of Danny's dreams said.
"Are you..." Danny dared not think it, let alone say it. It couldn't be. He couldn't be the lifemate of the Easter Bunny, Mr. Easter himself. No way. He wasn't that special.
The bunny's nose twitched in amusement, and it stepped closer to Danny. "Yes, I'm the Easter Bunny, but you can call me, Steve."
"I'm, Danny," Danny said. He was breathless. The Easter Bunny, Steve, was his lifemate. He was Steve's lifemate. They were lifemates.
Steve stepped closer, tentatively, and Danny closed the gap between them, feeling a connection with this bunny that he'd never felt with anything or anyone else, not even his own mother and siblings, or the rooster that he'd wanted for a dad.
"Are you okay with this?" Steve asked.
Danny nodded, and bumped noses with Steve, enjoying the shiver that seemed to go through both of them at the touch. "Wow."
"Wow." Steve chuckled. "You're cute."
Danny blinked at his lifemate, and stood up to his full height. He was shorter than Steve, who had also stood to his full height. They each took in the other, noses twitching, and paws reaching out to touch a patch of fur here and there.
"I'm not cute," Danny declared with a sniff. "I am roguishly handsome."
Steve snorted, and, pressing his nose to Danny's, he reached for his lifemate's paw to lead him back to the farm. "Roguish, more like egg-stra cute with a dash of cute to top it off."
"I'll show you topping off," Danny countered, and the two returned to the Easter farm talking animatedly about what was and was not cute, and any number of other things that crossed their minds.
Peter and Clara watched from a distance. "I told you he was special, Peter."
"So you did," Peter agreed. "It's good to see both of our boys happy together."
Clara nodded, and then, with one last look at her son, and his lifemate, she returned to her coop, and Peter returned to his home.
As for Danny and Steve, well, as is the case with most fairy, er hare-y, tales, the boys lived happily, er, hoppily, ever after, and screwed, well, like bunnies.