[Fic] Tripping The Dark Fantastic
Written for the RISE OF THE GUARDIANS Stocking Stuffer 2025 event!
Prompt: [Pitch/Kozmotis Pitchiner] Pitchiner and Pitch (Nightmare Dork University meta verse)
While the Boogeyman and the Nightmare King were often together [they did share the same Lair after all], they occasionally engaged in individual pursuits.
They could not always be fighting one another for dominance, after all.
Although, if Pitch were being honest with himself, the result of any battle between them was a foregone conclusion. Both the combat side and the carnal side of their fights inevitably ended with Pitch losing to his larger counterpart. The behemoth outweighed him, even when Pitchiner WASN’T taunting him by size-shifting.
On this occasion, however, Pitch had had enough of both fighting and fucking.
While Pitchiner was snoring, the smaller shade slipped off the slab that had served as their latest bed-turned battlefield, and made his way towards the room that housed the wardrobe.
Pitch refused to think of it as a Wardrobe With A Capital W, despite his awareness that it was sentient. It was beneath his dignity to treat a piece of furniture as somehow equal to himself, although he was harboring an ever-growing suspicion that the wardrobe might view itself as HIS intellectual superior. [It was certainly smarter than Pitchiner, he thought bitchily.]
He needed to treat it with respect today, because he intended to ask it for a favor.
Fortunately the wardrobe seemed to be in high spirits when Pitch approached it with his request.
“OOOOH!” it squealed happily. “You’re going to shed those dreary dull robes?”
“Not permanently, don’t get your hopes up.”
“Awwwww, you’re even less fun than usual.” The door handles curled downward in what was almost certainly meant to be an alluring pout.
But, after a few minutes of sighing sadly, the wardrobe supplied him with well-broken-in tap shoes, a snazzy zoot suit and a jaunty pork pie hat, as per his request.
Certain that Pitchiner would sleep for hours more, Pitch worked out the aches and pains that his bedmate had inflicted on him by performing a full dance routine by Fred Astaire.
Dear Fred. A human who lived almost every moment in constant fear that he wasn't good enough. Talented enough. Lovable enough.
A tasty treat for a spirit who lived and breathed fear.
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Keeping his form diffuse for so long was a bit of a strain on Pitchiner, but it was soooooooooo worth it to be able to maintain silence as he watched his bedmate cut capers and kick up his heels. Sheer enjoyment in every line of that long, lithe, lean and loose-limbed body that had been under his own more massive one not even an hour ago.
While he wanted to stay longer, Pitchiner didn’t wish to be caught watching by any of the other denizens of the Lair.
Proto would blink at him maddeningly and say something disconcerting.
Jack’s stammer and squeaky voice, even if he whispered, would give the game away.
Piki would sneer, scoff, and somehow find a way to "accidentally" reveal to Pitch what Pitchiner had been up to.
And Pitch himself would react with anger and shame, and would likely never dance again.
And Pitchiner would HATE for that to happen.
In smoke-form, he wafted back to where he kept his own private form of escape. Not the library, no. Although it amused him to think that would be the equivalent of hiding a needle in a stack of needles.
Pitchiner headed instead to the armory, where, buried under a tangled pile of chains, he maintained a sizable stash of reading material that Pitch would almost certainly call “tawdry and pathetic”.
He pulled out THE GAME OF THE FOG PRINCESS, the latest entry in the romantasy series by a new-to-him author named Arachne Valentina, and settled in for a comfortable spell of reading.
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Of course Pitch couldn’t stop with just one dance. It had unleashed something in him that even winning an argument with Piki couldn’t equal.
He’d found himself again and again going back to the wardrobe and asking for variations on costumes and outfits, finding himself stretching and exercising every inch of his lanky frame, pushing his limits through moves picked up from Baryshnikov and Hines, Hayworth and Flatley, Shakira and Nijinsky, Calloway and Perez.
Of course it was inevitable that he’d get caught.
He froze during his latest attempt to master some electro swing footwork when he heard the clearing of a throat behind him.
It was too good to be true, to think that Proto could ignore him for such a long stretch.
An impossibility that Piki hadn’t sought him out in an age, to deliver some unwanted rhapsody about his Jack.
And sheer fantasy to believe that Pitchiner had actually been asleep every time that Pitch slipped out from underneath his bulk.
Pitch hunched his shoulders and shut his eyes, not wanting to turn around and face the smirk he knew would be on the face of the big oaf.
Waiting for a snarky comment, probably punctuated with a guffaw.
He counted some more seconds.
Finally Pitch couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. He whirled on his heel, straightening up to his full height [as unimpressive as that was, compared to the giant’s], and snarled at Pitchiner, “Go ahead. Mock me. Ask me in that oh-so-sarcastic way of yours how this activity is going to help me destroy the Guardians…”
His words trailed off when he saw an unexpectedly… soft?… look on Pitchiner’s face.
More seconds passed. Pitch broke the painful silence. “What?”
His colossal bedmate surprised him by saying, “You look really good in that outfit, dear.”
“Good enough to slobber over and ruin it, I suppose,” Pitch found himself replying snappishly, more out of reflex than anything else, while his mind started to race over the possibility of Pitchiner actually complimenting him.
“Oh, you’re slobber-worthy all right.” The soft look changed into something closer to Pitchiner’s usual wolfish grin, but there was a fondness there that Pitchiner usually didn’t show. “It’s those moves that I’m admiring most. You’re really something, babe. May I have this dance?”
Before he could think better of it, Pitch sputtered out, “Fine. But I’m leading.”
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