AN: Old fill for disney kink (2011), archived here. For the prompt 'Pinocchio has a lot of questions about being a 'real' kid. Alice is equally curious about what it's like to be a puppet. They share through impromptu show-and-tell.'

Curious

/

"Curiouser and curiouser," Alice says as she walks around the puppet-boy, tilting her head and crouching down as though to admire him from every angle. Pinocchio looks back at her with equal amazement.

"Are you... real?" he asks.

"Why, of course I'm real! And glad of it too; the rest of this world is utter nonsense!" Alice gestures broadly to the forest around them, with its strange creatures and huge trees and mushrooms that make her grow small and tall with every bite. And she isn't surprised - rather, she is quite pleased - that Wonderland has revealed the most interesting curiousity of the day so far, in this little puppet-boy.

Pinocchio doesn't know what to say to this, so he just offers her his hand. "I'm Pinocchio," he says. Alice watches with fascination as his painted mouth, which should not have been able to move at all, stretches into a smile.

"Alice," she returns cordially, finally remembering not to stare.

They shake hands and hold on for far longer than is polite as each runs their fingers over the others'. Alice admires the smooth wood of Pinocchio's palm, and the slight wooden tapping sounds his jointed fingers make as they click against each other. He enviously caresses the soft, pink skin, admires all the little natural creases in her palm and knuckles, the blunt and slightly uneven fingernails. All the little imperfect details of a real girl.

"Are you?"

"Am I what?" Pinocchio's round eyes stare up at her.

"Real, of course!"

He hangs his head. "I want to be. I was looking for a way to become a real boy. I don't want to just be a puppet."

"Why, why ever not?" Alice gasps. "I imagine it must be terribly interesting to be a puppet. And I suppose you don't have to take lessons, or spend all of your time reading books with no pictures."

"Well, no," Pinocchio replies. "But..." He feels shy, suddenly, in the face of this peculiar little girl and her strange, affected manner of speaking, and she makes being real sound quite boring, actually. Before he can think much more on the matter, Alice is walking around him in a circle once more.

"What is it like?" she asks. "Being a puppet, I mean." She takes a very sudden step forward and is far too close, but forgets her manners again for a moment when she peers curiously into Pinocchio's face. "May I?" she asks, and reaches out to touch his cheek, those soft, thin fingers running over the painted hair poking out from beneath his hat.

"Could I...?" Pinocchio asks in return. He slowly reaches a hand towards her hair, twirling strands around his fingers, and marvels at how real people have so many different textures. Skin and fingernails and soft golden hair that smells flowery somehow... He leans in, breathing deeply, inhaling as much of Alice as he can. He's leaning so close that his own scent attacks Alice's nostrils, an altogether pleasant combination of wood and polish.

Eventually they pull back, sink down onto the springy grass beneath them with little space between them, and wonder what to ask of one another next.

Alice goes first.

"Can you take those off?" She nods at his shoes. He stares at her.

"You mean you can?"

He watches with fascination as she removes her shoes and her socks, tucking the latter neatly inside the former, and wriggles her bare toes in the ground. Pinocchio tugs at his own feet, carved permanently into wooden clogs, eyes never leaving the miraculous appendges attached to Alice.

Alice giggles slightly behind her hand as she watches Pinocchio watching her. Suddenly taken with an urge to impress her in turn, Pinocchio becomes lost in thought.

"Is something the matter?" Alice asks.

"I'd hate to be a real kid!" Pinocchio says, rather louder than he meant to, and Alice crosses her arms indignantly across her chest, startled.

"Well!" she begins to say, but Pinocchio is still talking.

"And I'd hate to have proper shoes I could take off, so I could feel the grass in-between my toes."

His nose is growing, slowly, and he crosses his eyes to stare at it critically.

"And... I-I don't think you're interesting! At all!"

A metre long; two now, and three, and Alice has to duck as Pinocchio's nose soars over her head.

"And I don't like the smell of your hair... and I don't think you're pretty... and I wish we weren't friends!"

But he stops as he sees the tears burning in Alice's eyes and remembers that he hasn't explained yet.

"Well I think you're frightfully rude!" Alice huffed, reaching for her socks and shoes and pulling them on. "And I shan't stay here a moment longer."

"Wait!" he says. "It's only part of being a puppet."

Alice looks up at him, torn between anger and curiousity, and Alice being Alice, curiousity wins.

Pinocchio grins. "My nose only grows when I lie, you see."

Alice ponders this a moment, and the tears disappear and she begins to smile as she realises now what the harsh words from before really meant. She reaches out a hand and gently taps Pinocchio's nose, small mouth pursed inquisitively as she studies it. Finally, she looks back at Pinocchio, fixing him once more with a smile.

"Now that is really, really curious," she says.

And she wonders what else there could possibly be to being a puppet, and he wonders all about what life is as a real child, and they have an entire afternoon in which to learn about things far more interesting than Wonderland and schools and books without pictures.