Instant Fic, just add sugar water

[vulgarweed]

tea_and_snark is BRAVE. She's thrown her LJ open to the Gaimanites for the Neil Gaiman Fanfiction Open. Started out as an exercise to get herself writing, but she's thrown it open to all participants. Leave a story request, write a story for someone else's request, or just read. Pan-Gaiman.

I'm hoping someone will write my request, a moment of some sort between Dream and Adam Young. Not necessarily slash, aiieee!! (Words: anticipation, pilgrimage, tradewinds. Object: bicycle) To bolster my karma, I wrote a wee tale for bohemianrose's request (Death and Dream; Crowley/Aziraphale. Words: night, soft, wit. Object: a rose). Mind you, those two canons are harder to reconcile than you might think. I keep tripping over boundary skirmishes between Death and DEATH. I just ignored that issue completely for this, though.

I'm sticking it here too so I don't lose track of it but please, do go see and join the fun over there.

No title.
Sandman and Good Omens
All four requested characters are there being cute. The cute Antichrist demanded a cute cameo as well.
PG, I suppose. Cute slash.
Cosmically fluffy.




***


He was worried.

“Sister, I stand in my gallery holding your sigil.”

She slumped down on the chaise lounge in her brother’s house that night, one black-laced wrist tossed across her white forehead. She was paler than usual, and trembling.

The Dream King had seen his sister like this before only rarely – when an asteroid rocked the earth to its core and began the process of veiling the Sun, when the heads of two massive high-tech empires faced each other down over nuclear buttons, paranoid and sleep-deprived….

It took a lot to rattle her, certainly.

Death kept on with her story, though of course Dream already knew it, it felt better to tell it, committing it to history. “And then he put everything back! As if it never happened! And hardly anyone remembers what almost – or what did…Ai, I have a headache!”

Morpheus had never been warm, particularly, but she thought his starry eyes might have turned a little…soft, even. “Well,” he ventured cautiously, “I think perhaps…now mind you, I know your responsibilities…but it may be…some rest would do you good.”

“You know what,” she sighed, a little defiantly, as if there were anyone to defy. “That sounds absolutely lovely. Not a long sleep of course, but…a break. For me. And for everyone. Just a few hours. Do you think that would be all right?”

“I do,” said Dream, smiling almost kindly, “I do indeed. Please let me do something nice for you for a change.” Gently he touched his sister’s closing eyelids, and Death dreamed.

She dreamed of immortals, for she found them comforting. She dreamed of creatures so tiny they never had to die. She dreamed of creatures so great that their bodies contained galaxies and their life spans were too huge even for her to reach across. She dreamed of lying on a white beach under a black parasol, reading poetry, her toes in the surf tickled by little bright immortal fish, a time and place where she was free to be both more and less than just her job.

When she tried to dream of Heaven and Hell reconciling, embracing, feeling mutual love for Earth their child and their teacher, even that was humble and homey; she dreamed of two man-shaped beings bantering back and forth in a flat, houseplants taking sides in their dispute. The fair-haired, older-looking one gestured with a rose for emphasis and was trying to look vehement, but only came across as vehemently nelly. The dark-haired, leaner one whipped off his sunglasses for emphasis and flashed his snake eyes, but looked more comical than sinister. Each in his own way fancied himself quite the wit, but when it came down to it, they were simply glad to be alive, and there was a lot of life in this dance, this mock fight on some obscure and thrice-footnoted theological principle that immediately ceased to matter when the fair one gathered the dark one’s cheek in his hand, turning his face carefully, claiming a kiss. The kiss was neither light nor short, and they didn’t stop there, either.

There’d been something about angels shielding themselves modestly with their wings, wasn’t there? Dreaming Death could see their wings clearly, manifested or no. She wasn’t much for illusions, after all (especially the hiding-something-that-was-really-there kind). Nor actually for voyeurism. She didn’t need to watch, it was just enough to know there was such a thing happening somewhere. She dreamed of unicorns also, and a joyous Sasquatch family reunion complete with traditional folk-dances of their people, and a young boy, scruffy dog by his side, talking with the Tibetans he’d only read about before, learning to meditate and to sing in that weird multi-voiced way. She dreamed of the perfect apple and the perfect pie it was baked in.

~fin~