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“No, Error! You don’t understand!” Dream scolded his fellow skeleton, causing his bright yellow robes to sway in a panicked frenzy with the rest of his body.
Error lay lazily in his hammock, eyes closed with his arms crossed behind his head like a monster-made pillow. If Error even had ears, Dream’s words went inside one and out the other. Unbeknownst to him, however, a syrupy surprise was currently being held directly above him, and its sugary delight was ready to rouse him from his slumbers.
“I’ve already made the pancakes! They’re the perfect way to jumpstart your morning with the precise amount of energy to get you up and moving with sweet pancake-y smiles!”
“We’re in a void, Dream,” called out Error, not bothering to glance up at his companion. “There’s no morning or night here. Just us. ‘Dunno where or how you even got those pancakes in the first place.”
“That is entirely irrelevant! You are to get up this instant and join me in my day!”
“I’m good.” Error stirred, letting one of his hands fall off the side of the hammock as he grumbled, attempting to face away from Dream’s noisy demands. “‘Sides, what do you need with me? Your efficiency at throwing arrows so people fall in love or whatever isn’t hampered by me being there.”
“That’s not the point!” Dream nearly screeched. His hand holding the stack of hotcakes wobbled to and fro with his expressions. “Reality needs you to balance the cycle between destruction and creation! AND FOR THE LAST TIME, I AM NOT A CUPID ANGEL!”
“‘Ya can’t force me, smiley cheeks. That’s not very positive of you to do.”
Dream frowned down at the lazy destroyer below him who refused to look back at him or acknowledge the fluffy flapjacks. With an attitude like that, Error would never get up, and he would never do what he was actually supposed to be doing. This multiverse had no place for an irresponsible destroyer who prioritized sleep.
“Fine,” Dream contemplated. “If Error didn’t want things the easy, sweet way, then he’d have to learn things the hard, salty way.”
Small fingers gripping Error’s dome caught him off guard, and his eye sockets widened in disbelief. Dream forced Error to lock eyes and meet his sparkling gaze. Dream’s golden irises danced with that knowing mirth Error had come to know all too well. Those bright balls of energy boring into Error’s darkened ones slashed away at any void that kept him cranky and distant.
Dream hovered just inches away now. There was a pure, unadulterated joy in those bright eyes. A look of utter delight that suggested Error waking up to eat pancakes was the best thing that could ever happen in the history of the multiverse. It was blinding, hell it was nauseating, but it was also infuriatingly effective.
The scowl died on Error’s face. The static fuzzing at the edges of his vision smoothed out. The dark, corrosive boredom that usually sat heavy in his ribcage, a constant itch to break something just to feel a reaction, simply evaporated under the wattage of that smile. Sure he was most likely going to give in to Dream, but he wasn’t going to get things completely the way he wanted them.
“You’re being incredibly annoying,” Error stated, voice flat but devoid of the heavy distortion it usually carried.
YOINK
“Wha– Error!” Dream yelped as his feet left the floor.
One moment he was a free spirit championing the cause for a fluffy pancaked breakfast, the next he was horizontal, and being unwillingly dragged into the hammock beside Error. Be it luck or his training, not a single hotcake dropped to the floor, but he could feel random drops of syrup dripping haphazardly onto his robes.
He landed with a soft thump against Error’s chest. Dream huffed, his cheek effectively squished against Error’s. The blue strings didn’t let go. They adjusted, cocooning him securely to the destroyer's side.
Dream squawked, indignant and wiggling like a caught worm. "Error! You’re being impossibly difficult! You’ll squish the pancakes.”
Error groaned, a sound like static scraping against a microphone. The warmth of his hammock was fighting a losing battle against the relentless chatterbox currently trapped in his arms. Reluctantly and purely to get Dream to stop fussing, Error snatched the top layer off Dream’s leaning tower of hotcakes. He devoured the sticky morsel in one large, all-consuming bite then licked his bony fingers dramatically.
“Happy?” Error’s strings let go of Dream, but the Guardian of Positivity didn’t let go of Error.