Shipping Anthropomorphic Personifications
Title: Smokescreen (Part 1/2)
Fandom: Good Omens
Pairing: Pollution/Famine
Genre: Fluff
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Neil and Terry own everything. Possibly including my soul.
A/N: For the occasion of
kerilyn’s birthday, on account of her putting up with me, introducing me to All Things Awesome, and being an all around amazing person. :D
Summary: Over the years, Pollution and Famine develop something of a bad habit...
It began, as most things did, with an idea.
In this case, it was a rather complicated, experimental idea - one that involved a London laboratory, a dish of mold, and a suspicious-sounding word ending in coccus. Alexander was on the verge of a scientific breakthrough. He had been working on the project for months, holed up in St. Mary’s Hospital with a notepad and a curious assortment of multi-coloured fluids, prodding around bits of bacteria as they inched across their Petri dishes. It was all terribly important work, he reminded himself constantly, no matter what his friends said. [1]
It wasn’t until one particular evening, faced with a long night of intensive research, that he was reminded of exactly the sort of distraction he was trying to avoid. Right on cue, the lackadaisical breeze knocked at the windowpane, bringing with it the drunken shouts of the young men enjoying a drink just down the street. They seemed to be having a good time, he thought, and when was the last time he had been out, anyway?
He really should’ve been beyond all this temptation. At this particular stage in his work, he could not afford any discrepancies, any slightest error. It was all about precision, and with any luck it would only take him another four or five hours to finish cataloguing all the possible reactions one might come across when mixing twenty-syllable words together and…
“Oh, sod it,” said Alexander, who threw off his goggles and went for a pint instead.
The next morning, the scientist stumbled bleary-eyed into the lab, stretched his arms out with a guilty yawn and realized with a start that he had forgotten to cover last night’s dish of bacteria. He sank into his chair, shaking. Surely his work would be ruined now - after all, there was a big patch of mold growing in the center of the dish, and it had driven away all the bacterial growth…
He looked up suddenly, eyes widening in realization. Jumping up with more energy than he’d had weeks, he reached out for the phone.
“Yes, Dr. Fleming?” came the leaden voice on the other end.
Alexander grinned into the mouthpiece. “Get over here, quick,” he said. “You’re not going to believe this.”
A few years later, penicillin was one of the most widely used antibiotic agents. Effective and efficient, it successfully managed to eliminate harmful bacteria, viruses, and all sorts of ugly germs. It also put Pestilence out of a job.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” said War, raising a crimson eyebrow in skeptic disbelief.
“No joke,” hacked Pestilence with a dry cough, swatting at the flies buzzing around his ear. “This is for real.”
Famine shook his head, sharp, black eyes hardened into a frown. “You can’t simply resign. There are bigger things at stake.” He reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and withdrew a packet of cigarettes and a slim, silver lighter. “You know this,” he added calmly, exhaling a thin breath of smoke into the stale, London air.
Pestilence shrugged his pockmarked shoulders, and looked out grimly across the Thames. “Funny ‘ow it gets to you, innit? A coupla decades ago, I would’ve said things were lookin’ up for sure. It’s just ain’t the same, what wit all dese new vaccines and such.” He coughed again.
“Putting me outta business. What happened to the good ole’ days, eh? What I would give for a decent locust plague about now.” He sighed, a disease so old and sickly that the grass shriveled up beneath his feet.
And then a tall, robed figure stood behind them, as if he had been there all along. “YOU CANNOT ABANDON YOUR PURPOSE.”
Pestilence scratched at his neck, rashes blooming at the point of contact, then raised his arms up in defeat. “It’s abandoned me, mate. It’s abandoned me.”
War rubbed at her eyes, exasperated, and turned to watch as a couple of pigeons on the boardwalk fought to the death over the remainders of a marmite-covered crouton. [2]
“IT IS UNPRECEDENTED,” said Death.
“You’ve got no idea how bad it gets!” rasped Pestilence desperately.
“What will He think, I wonder?” mused Famine.
“Perhaps they’ll send a replacement,” smirked War.
“Whatever they do, I’ve had it,” muttered Pestilence, voice like tires turning on a gravel road. “I’m outta here.”
The Three turned to face Death, waiting for his reaction.
Death pursed his non-existent lips. “UNPRECEDENTED,” he repeated.
And Pestilence was gone.
“Happy retirement,” grumbled War, waving a lazy salute into the shadows. She turned to the others. “I never thought it would be so simple. What now?”
“Perhaps there is some truth in what he said. It is, after all, entirely plausible that there may one day be an end to Pestilence.”
“Scary thought, to outlive your purpose. I almost feel sorry for him. But I can’t imagine he’ll get off scot-free, just like that,” War reasoned, snapping her long, manicured fingers for emphasis.
“THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES.”
“Wait and see, I suppose,” said Famine, tossing his cigarette butt over his shoulder, sending a circle of brown ripples gurgling across the dirty water.
The Three turned around, returning to their jobs with a sobering sense of anti-climax. Bitterness pulled at their eyes and lips, a strange sense of disappointment creasing itself across their foreheads as War irritably pulled off one knee-high leather boot to shake out a particularly pervasive pebble. Ineffability was all good and well, but she was nothing if not dramatic, and really, who could blame her for expecting something more?
“Not even a measly clap of thunder,” she thought to herself, straightening up. Over his shoulder, Famine was staring at her, no, staring through her, black eyes glinting curiously as he took a step forward.
“AH,” said Death, and he grinned.
Suddenly, there was a shift in the air, a tangible creasing of dimensions that shimmered through the heat in pulses of life-existence-eternity, and the Thames began to bubble.
The pedestrians walked by, oblivious. They might’ve seen it if they had been looking, just as they might’ve heard the black liquid bursts erupting in the river like punctured balloons, if only they had the proper capacity to hear it. As it were, however, they heard and saw nothing. They had no role in what was about to happen. Not yet.
The Three approached the edge of the dock, eager in their anticipation. A slow mist settled on the water, engulfing the oily pools of colour. Slick, slimy rainbows of reflected light spread with each passing ripple, and the air grew thick with the smell of deadly fumes. A moment more before the world shifted again, more subtly this time, and yellow smoke parted to reveal a figure; pale, naked, and dripping with the greasy turmoil of humanity. War let out a low whistle, and the Horsemen of the Apocalypse watched, fascinated, as their newest member glided over to the shore.
He appeared to be walking on water, bare feet moving his lithe body gracefully over greasy patches of filth as it floated on the surface. He looked young, almost too young, with faded grey eyes and long hair that might’ve once been blonde but was now a bleached shade of non-descript colour all together. He was dripping in dark sludge, a messy sort of griminess that seemed to make him glow from the inside, oil clinging to his body like a second skin. He was appallingly filthy and couldn’t have looked more pleased about it - he was Pollution.
Pollution stepped easily onto the boardwalk, staring blankly at his small audience. They stared back.
“Hey,” ventured War after a few seconds had gone by. “Welcome aboard.” She extended a hand, looking at the young man expectantly.
“Um, hi,” said Pollution absently, staring straight into nothing. He then walked straight up to Famine instead and dropped something into his unsuspecting hand. “Thanks,” Pollution added, releasing his grip and leaving a questionable-looking smear on the sleeve of Famine’s new suit in the process. He smiled placidly at them all, yawned, then without any notice, slipped into the nearest gutter and out of sight.
War looked on disbelievingly. “Bit odd, isn’t he?”
“HMM,” mused Death.
“Give him time,” said Famine reasonably, cautiously opening his hand.
There, cradled in the sticky lines of his palm, lay the soggy remains of a freshly smoked cigarette.
***
Dr. Raven Sable had black hair, a trim black beard, and was currently on a cruise to Hawaii.
In all honesty, it wasn’t so much a cruise as it was a job placement, albeit one that had gotten a bit off tract. Originally, he had planned for a trip to Nigeria - he’d heard it was lovely this time of year [3] - but there was something unsettling about the way Hawaiians were constantly being depicted as plump and happy caricatures in grass skirts, and it was about time he started to do something about it.
Wandering out to the buffet tables spread out on the deck, he plucked a finger-sandwich from a tray and examined it appraisingly. Two tiny, crisply cut rectangles of white bread on either side of a thin slice of pre-packaged ham, all held together by a single toothpick. Not bad, he thought to himself. Not bad at all. He popped the sandwich in his mouth, poured himself a glass of Perrier and leaned against the railing in thought.
At the moment, the world was a delicate place, still shattered by the repercussions of the Second World War. People were nervous and on edge. Alliances had been forged, torn apart and reconstructed. They were still finding new bodies every day. Sable had never particularly cared for his associate’s style of going about things, but there was no doubt that she had made his job a lot easier over the past few years. And then there were the bombs. Too flashy for his tastes, personally, but he had to admit there was something clean about radiation. To each his or her own, anyway. They all had a job to do.
“And how about you, young man?”
Sable looked up from his thoughts and saw a slightly pudgy, middle-aged man talking animatedly to a boy a few meters down the deck. He was wearing the most hideous Hawaiian shirt Sable had ever seen, and he was brandishing a necklace of brightly coloured flowers under the boy’s nose.
“Would you like a lei?” The man looked the pale boy over thoughtfully. “You look like you could use a lei,” he added.
“What?” said the boy, distracted. “Oh, no, no. I don’t want one.”
Sable smirked, sipped his water, and approached Pollution with a sardonic smile as the golden-haired man wandered off. “Not in the mood for festivities, I see,” he said.
Pollution tilted his head, looking at Famine with an odd expression on his face, as if he hadn’t realized he was being spoken to. “I’m allergic to flowers,” he shrugged, brushing back his bleached-blond hair as it fell over his eyes.
“What did you ask him, angel?” came a somewhat threatening voice from the lower level of the boat.
“L-E-I, dear boy. L-E-I,” came the patronizing reply.
Amusement flickered briefly in Sable’s dark eyes. “They have them in plastic, sometimes.”
Pollution sighed. “Too bad they’re all so hung up on being authentic.”
“Indeed.” A pause. “How are you finding your placement?”
Pollution raised his eyebrows. “Placement? Is that what they call it?” He fiddled with the edge of his frayed shirtsleeve. “Doesn’t seem like the right word, somehow. Aren’t we stuck here forever?”
“Not forever,” Sable murmured. “Just until the end of the world.”
Pollution laughed at that, running a hand absently through his long hair. “Oh, man. Right.”
“So,” said Sable. “Hawaii?”
“It isn’t so much the place as it is the getting there.” Pollution answered vaguely, with a small smile tugging at his lips. He elbowed Famine in the ribs, and pointed over the edge of the railing. Behind the boat, there was a thick line of shining oil trailing off into the distance, the bright afternoon sunlight catching the prism of colour within each drop, looking something to the effect of a drowned, drugged-up rainbow.
“Oil leak,” whispered Pollution with something like reverence in his voice. “It’ll be another couple of hours until they realize it.”
“It’s very… artistic,” Sable said after a moment. And it was - great, twisting and turning rivulets of colour, meshing and branching out in intricate patterns across the blank canvas of the ocean.
Pollution lit up at this, his eyes bright. “Exactly! That’s exactly it! It’s art, man. Fucking art.”
Famine looked at him thoughtfully.
“I don’t think people understand it for what it is, really,” the boy added, running his fingers across his mouth. “It’s not a job, this stuff. It’s not always about dumping toxins or spraying weed-killer… it’s about creating.” He looked up at the man, eyes swimming in and out of focus, and added wistfully. “Creating something beautiful.”
“You consider yourself an artist, then.” He looked the part for it, too; long hair, faded jeans and a stifling passion for his craft that gave him a certain air of recklessness and impulsive creativity. He was barely noticeable to the human eye and nothing more than background noise to everyone else, but there was something about him that fascinated Famine. Even after a couple millennia, he had never really given much thought to his fellow Horsepersons, engaging in nothing more than the required interaction from time to time, the occasional coincidental meet-up. They were professionals, and they did their jobs efficiently. There was no need to get tangled up into other people’s affairs. But there was something different about this boy -
“And you aren’t?” Pollution fired back. “C’mon Sable, you must get something out of seeing all those skinny people, those starving humans with their skin stretched out across their bones, all sunken eyes and protruding ribs. You created them.”
Sable considered this. “I suppose so. I prefer to think that they did it to themselves, sometimes. It’s more satisfying in a way, to know that all I had to do was exert a little influence, that they already had the potential for it. Restores my faith in humanity,” he said with a wry grin.
Pollution made a face. “Humanity doesn’t understand the scope of my genius.”
Sable chuckled, pulling out a couple of cigarettes from somewhere in his shirt pocket. “Smoke?” he asked politely, offering one to Pollution, and placing the other to his mouth.
Pollution looked up at him in wonderment. “Are those the things you threw into the river, back when -”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.” Sable cut him off. “Frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t encountered them before. You’d like them.” He pulled out his lighter and lit his cigarette with one smooth click, before tossing the device to Pollution. “They cause countless cancers, for one. Filled with over four thousand chemicals and at least a hundred identified poisons, including class 1 insecticides and toilet cleaners. Thousands of people die every year without even touching the things because of the exposure to the smoke, but trillions of cigarettes butts are littered worldwide regardless. Even the filters take decades to degrade, and even then they’re filled with toxic residue.”
The young man’s mouth went slack. It was just too much. And all from such a slim little stick… “I…I didn’t…” He took a minute to gather his composure before continuing. “Well, I mean, I’ve seen them around, of course, but I didn’t realize - ”
“Want one?”
“Fuck, yeah,” he breathed.
Sable watched lazily as Pollution reached out with shaking hands and wrapped his lips around the proffered cigarette, long eyelashes brushing against the arch of his cheeks as his eyes flickered shut. He inhaled deeply, sighing to the sound of a seagull crowing aimlessly overhead, the feel of the salty ocean breeze as it crashed up against the hull and whipped at his face. Sable took a drag on his own cigarette, and waited for Pollution to speak.
Pollution opened his eyes hesitantly, as if reluctant to awake from a good dream. “Wow,” he said, watching in awe as his words came out sheathed in wisps of smoke. “That’s…” He shook his head, drugged on his own euphoria.
“The humans invented this?” he asked, incredulous.
“They’re addicted,” Sable whispered, leaning in confidentially.
“Mm,” said Pollution, hands shaking once again as he slipped the lighter back into Sable’s pocket, and then turned away abruptly.
“I didn’t know what to expect when I started all of this, you know,” he mused. “I guess you could say I was a bit intimidated by it all. Red - she’s sort of scary sometimes, isn’t she? I ran into her in Germany a little while back. Hard not to run into her, really.”
“She does tend to get around,” Sable agreed.
“She’ll step into a country and just command it. Take over completely. Leave bloody footprints wherever she goes. Millions of men have died for her lips, her hair, her legs. And when she looks at you, it’s like…it’s like you can see her burning.” He sighed.
“And him, he’s just, well he’s Death, you know? What do you say to that? He scares the shit out of me. He just pops up out of nowhere and yells at you. I mean, who does that?”
“He’s like that. Unexpected. Intrusive. No sense of personal boundaries. You’ll get used it. ”
“But you, “ Pollution went on, and Famine stood very still. “You’re all right, you know that?”
He then turned the corner and disappeared from view, but not before blowing a particularly toxic cloud of smoke straight into Dr. Raven Sable’s face.
* * *
The next time they met was in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.
Just earlier that day, there had been a terrible accident. An accident that left the public panicked and officials running about like headless chickens as they tried to clear the mess up. An accident that resulted in the partial core meltdown in Unit 2 of the nuclear power plant of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station.
Pollution was very, very pleased with himself.
He had booked a helicopter ride, special, just so he could properly view the effects of his handiwork. It would lead to serious economic consequences; it confirmed people’s worst fears about nuclear technology and would take ages to clean up. It was very likely the worst “civilian” nuclear accident the world had ever seen. Pollution felt like he was floating. Like he was floating on air and blowtorching the ozone.
He stepped out the helicopter with a blissful sigh, the kind that goes with the ultimate sense of satisfaction and the knowledge of a job well done. It was a beautiful day, and Pollution felt he deserved a reward. With this thought in mind, he slipped through the hordes of confused pedestrians consulting with each other on the street, found himself in a familiar alleyway and paid a man some money for a brown paper bag.
Smiling to himself, he nearly skipped down the road to the abandoned school lot where he settled down beneath a splintering tree, crisp packets and candy wrappers dancing about his feet. He was innocently throwing stones at the old, cracked windows, when a voice spoke from behind him.
“You broke up my meeting.”
Pollution didn’t bother to turn his head. Instead, he threw the next stone particularly hard, and delighted in the sound it made when hundreds of tiny shards of glass rained down on the grass. “That you, Sable?”
“It was a very important meeting,” persisted the voice, low and something close to dangerous.
“Aw, Sable, don’t be like that. Think about what I’ve done!”
“You’ve disrupted one of my biggest sales pitches of the year, is what you’ve done, White. The CEO in question rambled something about a “nuclear crisis” and said we should reschedule until things were cleared up.” He drew his lips into a thin, white line. “I don’t reschedule.”
Pollution craned his head around and looked at Famine for the first time. He was surprised to find that his companion actually did look a little worse for wear, normally neatly combed black hair sticking up in awkward bouts of frustration, a particular hardness in his eyes and a rather forced smile gracing his features. Must’ve been some meeting, thought Pollution absentmindedly.
“You could’ve used your influence, and forced them to stay,” he suggested, chewing loudly on a piece of gum.
“I’m a professional, White,” said Famine coldly. “Besides, there was talk of evacuating the whole city."
“I know,” Pollution glowed. “Isn’t it wonderful?"
Famine rubbed at his eyes and sighed, sitting down next to the young man slouched gracefully against the tree. He cleared a few of the more disgusting pop cans out of the way and looked on disapprovingly at the way Pollution spit his gum out onto the ground before him.
“You’re insufferable.”
“Yeah?”
“And you’re wearing bellbottoms.” Famine raised a condescending eyebrow. “You do realize you’re about a decade behind the times, right?”
Pollution glanced down at his muddy white trousers and threw Famine a lopsided grin. “They make me look bohemian. I like bohemian.”
“Do you? I wouldn’t have thought the sixties would’ve been your thing, what with all the environmental protests.”
“Nah, it was alright. Sort of funny, in a way, because all the hippies saw me as one of them, making it just that much easier to tear things down from the inside. I’d sign up for a tree planting fundraiser or some other shit, and then spill some sort of biochemical hazard before it was due to start. Just little things, really.” He paused, running his long fingers over a piece of scrap metal that had fallen with the shattered window. “But this - this they’ll be talking about for ages.”
“Sort of hard to miss,” Famine muttered. It would be front page news for sure, and when was the last time starving kids in Africa had been groundbreaking information to anyone? Humans could be so annoyingly apathetic.
Pollution ignored him. “I mean, now that I think about it, there were some difficulties I probably could’ve done without. In the sixties, I mean.” He fumbled for the paper bag at his side. “Well, at least they got one thing right,” he added, incongruously rolling a joint as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Marijuana.” Sable stated, unimpressed.
“Yep. Not LSD by a long shot, but it’s not bad for a casual high.” He snapped his fingers, producing a single flame at the end of his pointer. “Want some?”
“I -”
“- don’t do drugs?” Pollution finished for him, laughing. “Well now, that’s a bit ridiculous, Sable, considering how many of your precious models have been caught doing coke. Surely you endorse them.”
“Yes, well, that’s not really -”
“- the point? Everything’s the point, Sable. We live in a very pointy world, my friend,” he exhaled, eyes looking more bloodshot by the second
“I cannot believe how quickly you’ve become intoxicated.”
Another breathy laugh. “I am intoxication. And besides, weed makes people hungry. I’m already starved, actually.”
Famine paused at this. “Fine,” he snapped. “If it’ll stop you from interrupting me. I detest people who interrupt me.”
“Awesome,” Pollution giggled, plucking a suspiciously pre-rolled joint from his bag. “Here,” he said, handing it over. He watched curiously as Famine fished around in his pocket. “No, no, let me,” he insisted, leaning over and pressing his lit end to the tip of Famine’s smoke, looking at him with glazed, unfocused eyes.
Suddenly, he found himself alarmingly close to Famine, their faces centimeters apart. He could see the creases around Famine’s eyes with startlingly clarity, sense the stiff fabric of his suit brush against his t-shirt, feel Famine’s breath on his own lips as he inhaled. Pollution watched Famine swallow as he drew closer, his breathing somewhat shallower than usual. He watched as Famine let the smoke go straight to his brain and allowed his head fall back in unexpected pleasure, exposing the milky line of his neck. Pollution blinked and slumped against Famine’s shoulder, head resting heavily on his chest.
“And then there’s tie-dyed t-shirts,” he mumbled conspiratorially.
“Huh?” said Famine, looking down at him with a strange expression on his face.
“They had swirly colours. They weren’t half bad.”
“Oh,” said Famine slowly. “You’re still going on about the sixties.”
“Swirly, swirly,” replied Pollution, with an errant wave of his hand. He could hear Famine’s heartbeat through his clothes. He had never really thought about whether or not the Horsepersons had hearts - it just didn’t seem to add anything that might aid them in fulfilling their respective purposes, but he knew now. Ba-thump, Ba-thump, went Famine’s heart, pulse increasing gradually by the minute. Pollution was surprised at how human it sounded.
He wasn’t entirely sure how long they sat there - it might’ve been half an hour, it might’ve been four - but it was strangely comforting in its familiarity, and neither of them made any move to leave. At one point, Pollution thought he felt fingers running lightly through his hair, but then again, that might’ve just been wishful thinking. [4]
“I’m sorry about your meeting,” Pollution slurred into Famine’s ear after an indeterminate period of time.
“No, you’re not,” Famine answered in a daze, sounding equally, if not more stoned than the young man sprawled out between his legs.
Pollution smiled, his head swaying a bit as he hummed to himself. “You’re right, I’m not.” He moved his arms into a more comfortable position. “Not at all,” he mumbled, and passed out in Famine’s lap.
***
Continue to Part 2...
____________________________________________________________________________
[1] Actually, his friends had barely spoken to him for the last few months. Erlenmeyer, Pipette and Bunsen had said something about his unhealthy attraction to unflattering nicknames, and had told him he needed to get out more.
[2] In the 1930’s, Crowley went through a phase of discreetly coating perfectly edible food in marmite. Although he would never admit it, Famine had been rather impressed at his ingenuity.
[3] If by “lovely” you meant impoverished and subject to drought, political instability, mismanagement of natural resources and filled with millions of starving children. And he did.
[4] That, or the THC.