~ Nightsharks ~

Aziraphale looked up from his book as Crowley shuffled into the room, with none of the usual slithery swing to his steps, and flopped down beside him on the couch.

"What's wrong, dear?"

"I had a nightmare."

"A nightmare?"

"Yeah, you know, a bad dream. Like a horror movie - except it's in your brain, and feels real at the time."

"I'm aware of what a nightmare is." Even if he'd never had one, having never slept once in his entire existence. "What was yours about?"

"Giving birth."

"But... you're not pregnant... are you?"

"No, but I had a dream about it anyway... I gave birth and it was a baby great white shark. And I was panicking, trying to get somewhere I could put it in water, and Dagon was there telling me 'It's a demon, it doesn't need to breathe,' but I didn't listen because it was still a shark and I needed to get it into some water because it was a shark, and I finally found some water. There was like a pond, or a lake, or just a big puddle, I don't know. There were these tadpoles in the water, real big tadpoles, bigger than any real tadpoles I've ever seen. About the size of an apple. And when I dropped down on my knees and started lowering the baby shark into the water, Hastur was there screaming 'Don't put that in there with my tadpoles! God damn it, Crowley, don't you dare!' But I ignored him and put the shark in the water and it started chasing a tadpole immediately, and Hastur was screaming... and then I woke up. And I realized that I'd been having a nightmare. I've never met a demon who was a shark before, but it made sense in the dream, or at least I didn't realize there was anything wrong with that while I was in the dream."

Aziraphale wasn't quite sure how to respond to this, and settled for rubbing Crowley's back soothingly, not saying anything.

"Oh fuck," Crowley added belatedly. "I just realized that tadpoles were Hastur's babies, no wonder he was upset about my shark trying to eat them..."

"None of that was real, dear."

~end~