five chance meetings between demyx and neil [fivethings]
Okay, so one day, 
blizzardseason decided to play at masochism, and sought out the blackened splendor of the infamous Five Things meme. And I, not even having to play at masochism by now, told her we can trade lists. So I gave her one and she gave me one back.
It figures, doesn't it, that she'd devise a Neil Gaiman/Kingdom Hearts crossover. Just to spite me.
Rated G, gen, 2,280 words and unbeta'd. I ♥ timelines.
"Four chance meetings between Demyx and Neil Gaiman, and one that ends rather better than expected."
1. (2007) He's at the third hour of a book signing -- can already see the home stretch -- just needs to reach for the next book and the next fan with a half-conscious "hi hello what is your name?" on his lips, when he hears "What the fuck, Neil?" and looks up to see Demyx staring at him in a mixture of amusement and pity.
"Oh," he says, shocked into alertness. "Demyx. Er, hallo."
"You look like hell." Demyx, on the other hand, looks wonderful, all spiky blond hair and pure mischief. He leans against Neil's table, and behind him three hundred fans stiffen in jealous fury. "If this is what being a famous rock-star-slash-writer is like, count me out."
"Yes, well." He smiles vaguely, and wonders where his brain cells have gone. Probably swept out of his cranium in the smooth, bold lines of his signature, newly blemishing a couple thousand things. He can't even say 'items' -- the stuff he's signed today, some people wouldn't touch with a taser. "What can I do for you?"
"Sexual favors aside, I'd like something signed." Demyx affects a dramatic pause, then promptly thumps down a book on the table and pushes it towards Neil.
It's a shiny, brand-new hardcover edition of Good Omens. Black-and-white title, spine three inches wide. Crowley grins at him from the cover.
Looking up, he seems the same grin reflected on Demyx's face, and cannot help but smile back.
2. (2005) They're both in Berlin at the same night, due to those bizarre coincidences which sometimes affect two people traveling around the globe at the pace of a country a day. Lying in his hotel room, he gets a call from Tori -- promoting her Original Sinsuality tour, living inbetween red satin dresses -- and says sure, he'll come to the concert. It's a shame he doesn't have Maddy with him, she loves these rendezvouses with random famous people. Nevertheless, he puts on a black leather jacket and saunters vaguely downward, hailing a cab as he goes.
The concert is terrific, of course -- Tori is everything people say about her, tripled and compounded with interest -- and he claps just as loudly as her front-row fans, which makes sense, since that's where he's sitting. Then the lights flicker back on, the audience shuffles out, and he's left to seek his way backstage.
When he finds her, Tori is in her dressing room, waging a vicious argument with the coffee maker. They hug; he kisses her hand and she kisses his cheek. Then she takes his hand, like a child, and leads him off to the lounge with her usual stream of insightful nonsense.
"--and have you seen the new band? I'm trying out a new sound, you know, exotic whatsit, you just have to meet my guitarist, he's too adorable for words," she's saying as they cross the threshold, and then he looks up, and sees Demyx, sprawled on a couch with a hand over his eyes. He's making faint moaning noises, and Neil gets the notion that the touring life doesn't exactly agree with Demyx's shanti, lifeguarding ways. Too bad -- Tori seems to be thoroughly smitten.
"Demyx." he blurts, and receives a vaguely questioning groan for his troubles. "It's Neil," he tries again, and this time Demyx props himself up, sweat-drenched and blinking tiredly in his general direction.
Tori laughs, throaty and delighted. "You know each other?"
"Yeah," he says, walking over to the couch. "You could say that."
"What's up, man?" Demyx asks, lazy and disoriented. He hasn't aged a day. Neil smiles, and shakes his hand. Demyx's fingers are more calloused than he remembers; must be all the guitar-playing.
"So this is what you do now?" he says, and a sudden wave of affection washes over him. Figures that the various people in his life would eventually congregate -- they're all a horribly inbred bunch, himself included.
"Yup." Demyx says it with relish, which is a good sign. "Playing my sitar for a living. Good times. Tori's a great boss." he adds, waggling his eyebrows at her, and she smirks back.
Neil smiles at them both, adorable and British. "She doesn't bite?"
"Only when I ask her to." Demyx rolls off the couch, landing like a cat, and gets up with a whimper. "Her concerts are hell, though. Really intense."
"It was worth it." he says, and means it. It's only 1:00 AM, which means it's 6:00 PM in Chicago, which is where his sense of time is currently hailing from. None of them look too tired, so he thinks carpe diem and goes for it -- "Um, so, are either of you up for some coffee?"
Tori shrugs impishly, and Demyx moans "yes, god, please," and that's how they end up sitting in a local bistro, puzzling over the menu and exchanging stories while the night glitters brightly overhead.
3. (2001) His son is walking up the stage, wearing what looks like a black gunny sack, but smiling and triumphant and yes, Neil is the proudest father in the world.
"I am the proudest father in the world. Several worlds, in fact." he says after the ceremony, when all the students have been dismissed to get lynched by their families. Mike grins at him, flushed and happy, his graduation diploma held tight. This is the first time, as a parent, that he experiences such an event, and now he thinks back at his own graduation day, how bewildered he was when his mother cried into his robe, and thinks he understands a little better.
"Go forth. Gloat in public!" he says, and Mike scampers off, probably fearful of being hugged by Maddy again. She's seven years old, but lord, what a death grip. Neil smiled after him, giddy and paternal, and stays that way until someone taps him on the shoulder.
"Eh? Oh, sorry, I -- Demyx?" he says, and blinks in surprise. Demyx smiles back at him, dressed in rags identical to Mike's and clutching his very own diploma. This is... unexpected, and he says as much.
Demyx laughs. "I thought it was you." he says, somewhat shyly. "I wasn't sure. But the coincidence was too good to pass up."
"Quite." The last time he'd seen Demyx was in quite different circumstances, although now that he recalls their meeting, it all makes sense. "I had no idea you meant to study here."
"It was close by." Demyx shrugs, and looks around. "Who's the happy spawn?"
Neil points at Mike, now embroiled in a heated discussion about practical algorithms, and Demyx rolls his eyes. "Programming. Figures your family would pitch in with the devil."
The tension eases somewhat after that, and they make pleasant small talk, with Demyx admitting that he majored in Music and Neil talking about his recent success with one of his writing projects. "It's called Good Omens," he says, "and now there's talk about a Hollywood feature film. Terry doesn't believe it, but I can't help but be optimistic."
"I don't know. Hollywood is like an enormous sewer, smelly and full of rats." Demyx says. "Give me a open beach and my sitar, and I'm happy, you know?"
Neil agrees, and asks what Demyx is planning on doing now. "Good question." is the ambiguous answer, but Demyx hints at trying his hand in the music world. It's a far shot, he says, but a man's gotta take some chances for happiness, eh?
Oh, but Neil knows all about taking chances. He smiles, and promises Demyx he'll help out if he can.
4. (1994) He's in America, doing one of his first out-of-country tours, and apparently he harbors acute suicidal tendencies, because he brought along the kids. Maddy is still a fetus, left behind in England on the cusp of birth, but Mike and Holly are young and curious and adamant in their refusal to let him sleep on the plane. It is somewhere in Florida, after two days of being dragged around convention grounds, that they decide they deserve a vacation.
"Take us to the beach," Mike says, and Holly nods her assent. He tries to excuse himself, to explain, to plead a seven-hundred-people signing -- but they are unrelenting pillars of determination. And also his kids. It's not as if he can refuse.
On the upside, the beaches in Florida are much nicer than in perfidious Albion. He keeps that in mind as they get off the city bus and walk the rest of the distance to the reserve, open 8:00 - 17:00 for the general public. It's one o' clock PM, and his feet are being flambéed inside his sneakers.
Mike and Holly instantly entrench themselves in the soft gold sand, later dipping in the water and then doing it over again. It was supposed to be his day to rest after the week-long BabelCon, but he figures Zen can be found in unexpected places, even if it means sunburn later on.
He's just closing his eyes, trying to remember what he said in the last Q&A session -- "How do you like America, Neil?" "Um, honestly? I don't know. No, really, don't laugh -- okay, do laugh -- what I mean is, there's so much of it, I can't seem to form an overall impression. It's immensely interesting, though, how every state seems to directly contradict all the other states, and in Wisconsin's case, itself, as well -- to conclude, I don't know what to think about America, but really, I'm very interested in finding out. Okay, now you in the back there, with the red Sith shirt, yes," -- when a shadow suddenly looms over him and blocks out the sun.
He squints upward, and is greeted with a curious, upside-down face of indefinite age. It seems strangely familiar, the slant of the eyes and the crooked smile, so he blinks behind his sunglasses and says, "Um?"
"You probably don't remember me." says the loomer, looming. He's right -- Neil doesn't. It might just be the change of scenery, though, because whoever he is, they probably didn't meet on a gorgeous beach at noon.
"I'm Demyx." the shadow prompts, and suddenly he remembers. "We met in a cafe. London, few years back?" So he sits up, rambling "yes, yes, of course," until Demyx squats on his haunches beside him, somewhat awkwardly. He's wearing black swimming shorts. Neil's mind boggles.
"What are you doing here?" he asks. "I mean, from London to here, not exactly a nip to the grocer's."
"I could ask the same of you." Demyx says. "You're not even American."
"Touring." He says, and Demyx nods.
"So I take it the writing thing is going well?"
"No complaints." Neil smiles. "You didn't answer my question."
"I work here." Demyx tilts his head to the right, presumably signaling the lifeguard's post situated further down the beach. "Part-time job. I love the ocean, so it's pretty awesome."
"Great." Neil looks out at Holly and Mike. "My kids." he says, in lieu of an explanation. The warmth in his voice is palpable. Demyx arches his eyebrows.
"Energetic little blighters." he quips, and Neil mock-groans in agreement. Then he asks where Neil is staying, and they talk about conventions, The Sandman, comics and genre and the discrepancies between Great Britain and the US. Demyx is remarkably perceptive, full of sharp retorts even when he's unfamiliar with the subject matter, and Neil soon finds himself talking about the future, about the bare idea for a book, set in America, something to reinterpret the present via the past.
They stay there until closing time, until Mike and Holly tumble back into his lap, full of sand and adventures about dead jellyfish. Demyx waves them off, haloed by the early sun in its descent, and as he looks back through the plastic bus window, Neil thinks that maybe Zen was achieved after all, sunburn notwithstanding.
5. (1989) They meet for the first time in a London café, full of dreams and presumptions and unbridled clichés. A nondescript writer named Neil Gaiman is sitting on the bar, and he shivers when the door opens, admitting cold November breezes and a newcomer.
He's dressed all in black, standing tall and confident and of indeterminate age. Flash bastard, Neil thinks, until the stranger sits himself down on the stool next to him and orders same as guy on the left. Which is him.
Linked by the mystical bond of shared beverages, they talk. Neil is in his Oscar Wilde stage of life, a proud bachelor with somewhat self-deprecating delusions of precocity. The stranger, whose name is Demyx, is nobody in particular, but fascinating nevertheless.
An indefinite span of time later, they part, and Neil is left to mull things over his beer. A long time ago, Terry sent him a manuscript, something half-formed about an angel and the end of the word. It had moldered on his hard-drive, but lately he'd been thinking of coming back to it, brushing off the dust and re-winding the clockwork.
What it needs, he thinks, is a new character. A counterpoint for the angel, someone to balance things out. A demon, a poet, clad in black leather and sarcasm. Someone who is exactly what Aziraphale is not, tantalizing and foppish and with very good cheekbones.
A flash bastard.
Yes, he thinks, as everything suddenly clicks together in his head. They'd have to change the name, and probably the hair color in order to avoid lawsuits, but oh, it could be so amazing, it could utterly work.
He phones Terry that very night, after four hours of deliriously typing up the continuation. "Hallo?" Terry says, and Neil cups his hand around the mouthpiece, grinning fiercely, "Listen, I know what happens next."
blizzardseason decided to play at masochism, and sought out the blackened splendor of the infamous Five Things meme. And I, not even having to play at masochism by now, told her we can trade lists. So I gave her one and she gave me one back.It figures, doesn't it, that she'd devise a Neil Gaiman/Kingdom Hearts crossover. Just to spite me.
Rated G, gen, 2,280 words and unbeta'd. I ♥ timelines.
"Four chance meetings between Demyx and Neil Gaiman, and one that ends rather better than expected."
1. (2007) He's at the third hour of a book signing -- can already see the home stretch -- just needs to reach for the next book and the next fan with a half-conscious "hi hello what is your name?" on his lips, when he hears "What the fuck, Neil?" and looks up to see Demyx staring at him in a mixture of amusement and pity.
"Oh," he says, shocked into alertness. "Demyx. Er, hallo."
"You look like hell." Demyx, on the other hand, looks wonderful, all spiky blond hair and pure mischief. He leans against Neil's table, and behind him three hundred fans stiffen in jealous fury. "If this is what being a famous rock-star-slash-writer is like, count me out."
"Yes, well." He smiles vaguely, and wonders where his brain cells have gone. Probably swept out of his cranium in the smooth, bold lines of his signature, newly blemishing a couple thousand things. He can't even say 'items' -- the stuff he's signed today, some people wouldn't touch with a taser. "What can I do for you?"
"Sexual favors aside, I'd like something signed." Demyx affects a dramatic pause, then promptly thumps down a book on the table and pushes it towards Neil.
It's a shiny, brand-new hardcover edition of Good Omens. Black-and-white title, spine three inches wide. Crowley grins at him from the cover.
Looking up, he seems the same grin reflected on Demyx's face, and cannot help but smile back.
2. (2005) They're both in Berlin at the same night, due to those bizarre coincidences which sometimes affect two people traveling around the globe at the pace of a country a day. Lying in his hotel room, he gets a call from Tori -- promoting her Original Sinsuality tour, living inbetween red satin dresses -- and says sure, he'll come to the concert. It's a shame he doesn't have Maddy with him, she loves these rendezvouses with random famous people. Nevertheless, he puts on a black leather jacket and saunters vaguely downward, hailing a cab as he goes.
The concert is terrific, of course -- Tori is everything people say about her, tripled and compounded with interest -- and he claps just as loudly as her front-row fans, which makes sense, since that's where he's sitting. Then the lights flicker back on, the audience shuffles out, and he's left to seek his way backstage.
When he finds her, Tori is in her dressing room, waging a vicious argument with the coffee maker. They hug; he kisses her hand and she kisses his cheek. Then she takes his hand, like a child, and leads him off to the lounge with her usual stream of insightful nonsense.
"--and have you seen the new band? I'm trying out a new sound, you know, exotic whatsit, you just have to meet my guitarist, he's too adorable for words," she's saying as they cross the threshold, and then he looks up, and sees Demyx, sprawled on a couch with a hand over his eyes. He's making faint moaning noises, and Neil gets the notion that the touring life doesn't exactly agree with Demyx's shanti, lifeguarding ways. Too bad -- Tori seems to be thoroughly smitten.
"Demyx." he blurts, and receives a vaguely questioning groan for his troubles. "It's Neil," he tries again, and this time Demyx props himself up, sweat-drenched and blinking tiredly in his general direction.
Tori laughs, throaty and delighted. "You know each other?"
"Yeah," he says, walking over to the couch. "You could say that."
"What's up, man?" Demyx asks, lazy and disoriented. He hasn't aged a day. Neil smiles, and shakes his hand. Demyx's fingers are more calloused than he remembers; must be all the guitar-playing.
"So this is what you do now?" he says, and a sudden wave of affection washes over him. Figures that the various people in his life would eventually congregate -- they're all a horribly inbred bunch, himself included.
"Yup." Demyx says it with relish, which is a good sign. "Playing my sitar for a living. Good times. Tori's a great boss." he adds, waggling his eyebrows at her, and she smirks back.
Neil smiles at them both, adorable and British. "She doesn't bite?"
"Only when I ask her to." Demyx rolls off the couch, landing like a cat, and gets up with a whimper. "Her concerts are hell, though. Really intense."
"It was worth it." he says, and means it. It's only 1:00 AM, which means it's 6:00 PM in Chicago, which is where his sense of time is currently hailing from. None of them look too tired, so he thinks carpe diem and goes for it -- "Um, so, are either of you up for some coffee?"
Tori shrugs impishly, and Demyx moans "yes, god, please," and that's how they end up sitting in a local bistro, puzzling over the menu and exchanging stories while the night glitters brightly overhead.
3. (2001) His son is walking up the stage, wearing what looks like a black gunny sack, but smiling and triumphant and yes, Neil is the proudest father in the world.
"I am the proudest father in the world. Several worlds, in fact." he says after the ceremony, when all the students have been dismissed to get lynched by their families. Mike grins at him, flushed and happy, his graduation diploma held tight. This is the first time, as a parent, that he experiences such an event, and now he thinks back at his own graduation day, how bewildered he was when his mother cried into his robe, and thinks he understands a little better.
"Go forth. Gloat in public!" he says, and Mike scampers off, probably fearful of being hugged by Maddy again. She's seven years old, but lord, what a death grip. Neil smiled after him, giddy and paternal, and stays that way until someone taps him on the shoulder.
"Eh? Oh, sorry, I -- Demyx?" he says, and blinks in surprise. Demyx smiles back at him, dressed in rags identical to Mike's and clutching his very own diploma. This is... unexpected, and he says as much.
Demyx laughs. "I thought it was you." he says, somewhat shyly. "I wasn't sure. But the coincidence was too good to pass up."
"Quite." The last time he'd seen Demyx was in quite different circumstances, although now that he recalls their meeting, it all makes sense. "I had no idea you meant to study here."
"It was close by." Demyx shrugs, and looks around. "Who's the happy spawn?"
Neil points at Mike, now embroiled in a heated discussion about practical algorithms, and Demyx rolls his eyes. "Programming. Figures your family would pitch in with the devil."
The tension eases somewhat after that, and they make pleasant small talk, with Demyx admitting that he majored in Music and Neil talking about his recent success with one of his writing projects. "It's called Good Omens," he says, "and now there's talk about a Hollywood feature film. Terry doesn't believe it, but I can't help but be optimistic."
"I don't know. Hollywood is like an enormous sewer, smelly and full of rats." Demyx says. "Give me a open beach and my sitar, and I'm happy, you know?"
Neil agrees, and asks what Demyx is planning on doing now. "Good question." is the ambiguous answer, but Demyx hints at trying his hand in the music world. It's a far shot, he says, but a man's gotta take some chances for happiness, eh?
Oh, but Neil knows all about taking chances. He smiles, and promises Demyx he'll help out if he can.
4. (1994) He's in America, doing one of his first out-of-country tours, and apparently he harbors acute suicidal tendencies, because he brought along the kids. Maddy is still a fetus, left behind in England on the cusp of birth, but Mike and Holly are young and curious and adamant in their refusal to let him sleep on the plane. It is somewhere in Florida, after two days of being dragged around convention grounds, that they decide they deserve a vacation.
"Take us to the beach," Mike says, and Holly nods her assent. He tries to excuse himself, to explain, to plead a seven-hundred-people signing -- but they are unrelenting pillars of determination. And also his kids. It's not as if he can refuse.
On the upside, the beaches in Florida are much nicer than in perfidious Albion. He keeps that in mind as they get off the city bus and walk the rest of the distance to the reserve, open 8:00 - 17:00 for the general public. It's one o' clock PM, and his feet are being flambéed inside his sneakers.
Mike and Holly instantly entrench themselves in the soft gold sand, later dipping in the water and then doing it over again. It was supposed to be his day to rest after the week-long BabelCon, but he figures Zen can be found in unexpected places, even if it means sunburn later on.
He's just closing his eyes, trying to remember what he said in the last Q&A session -- "How do you like America, Neil?" "Um, honestly? I don't know. No, really, don't laugh -- okay, do laugh -- what I mean is, there's so much of it, I can't seem to form an overall impression. It's immensely interesting, though, how every state seems to directly contradict all the other states, and in Wisconsin's case, itself, as well -- to conclude, I don't know what to think about America, but really, I'm very interested in finding out. Okay, now you in the back there, with the red Sith shirt, yes," -- when a shadow suddenly looms over him and blocks out the sun.
He squints upward, and is greeted with a curious, upside-down face of indefinite age. It seems strangely familiar, the slant of the eyes and the crooked smile, so he blinks behind his sunglasses and says, "Um?"
"You probably don't remember me." says the loomer, looming. He's right -- Neil doesn't. It might just be the change of scenery, though, because whoever he is, they probably didn't meet on a gorgeous beach at noon.
"I'm Demyx." the shadow prompts, and suddenly he remembers. "We met in a cafe. London, few years back?" So he sits up, rambling "yes, yes, of course," until Demyx squats on his haunches beside him, somewhat awkwardly. He's wearing black swimming shorts. Neil's mind boggles.
"What are you doing here?" he asks. "I mean, from London to here, not exactly a nip to the grocer's."
"I could ask the same of you." Demyx says. "You're not even American."
"Touring." He says, and Demyx nods.
"So I take it the writing thing is going well?"
"No complaints." Neil smiles. "You didn't answer my question."
"I work here." Demyx tilts his head to the right, presumably signaling the lifeguard's post situated further down the beach. "Part-time job. I love the ocean, so it's pretty awesome."
"Great." Neil looks out at Holly and Mike. "My kids." he says, in lieu of an explanation. The warmth in his voice is palpable. Demyx arches his eyebrows.
"Energetic little blighters." he quips, and Neil mock-groans in agreement. Then he asks where Neil is staying, and they talk about conventions, The Sandman, comics and genre and the discrepancies between Great Britain and the US. Demyx is remarkably perceptive, full of sharp retorts even when he's unfamiliar with the subject matter, and Neil soon finds himself talking about the future, about the bare idea for a book, set in America, something to reinterpret the present via the past.
They stay there until closing time, until Mike and Holly tumble back into his lap, full of sand and adventures about dead jellyfish. Demyx waves them off, haloed by the early sun in its descent, and as he looks back through the plastic bus window, Neil thinks that maybe Zen was achieved after all, sunburn notwithstanding.
5. (1989) They meet for the first time in a London café, full of dreams and presumptions and unbridled clichés. A nondescript writer named Neil Gaiman is sitting on the bar, and he shivers when the door opens, admitting cold November breezes and a newcomer.
He's dressed all in black, standing tall and confident and of indeterminate age. Flash bastard, Neil thinks, until the stranger sits himself down on the stool next to him and orders same as guy on the left. Which is him.
Linked by the mystical bond of shared beverages, they talk. Neil is in his Oscar Wilde stage of life, a proud bachelor with somewhat self-deprecating delusions of precocity. The stranger, whose name is Demyx, is nobody in particular, but fascinating nevertheless.
An indefinite span of time later, they part, and Neil is left to mull things over his beer. A long time ago, Terry sent him a manuscript, something half-formed about an angel and the end of the word. It had moldered on his hard-drive, but lately he'd been thinking of coming back to it, brushing off the dust and re-winding the clockwork.
What it needs, he thinks, is a new character. A counterpoint for the angel, someone to balance things out. A demon, a poet, clad in black leather and sarcasm. Someone who is exactly what Aziraphale is not, tantalizing and foppish and with very good cheekbones.
A flash bastard.
Yes, he thinks, as everything suddenly clicks together in his head. They'd have to change the name, and probably the hair color in order to avoid lawsuits, but oh, it could be so amazing, it could utterly work.
He phones Terry that very night, after four hours of deliriously typing up the continuation. "Hallo?" Terry says, and Neil cups his hand around the mouthpiece, grinning fiercely, "Listen, I know what happens next."
