Yeah, and I didn't really *get* FF till I saw it in a bunch together.

That was the most awesome Jayne voice. And pairing him with Delirium is genius.

One thing I love is how the expected Endless matchups for Jayne and River were reversed. Reversed, but so very, very fitting, and far more satisfying than the other way 'round would have been.

Thank you! Glad it worked! It's funny - hardly anyone reads the Sandman crossover fics, and there are precious few comms (although I there really REALLY should be an archive called Matthew's Library, or The Library of Dream or something, where all the various Sandman Crossover Fics could be posted. If I were an archive-making sort, I'd so do that) - but, honestly, this is one of my very favourite kinds of fic. Sandman crossovers for the win! Such a fun way of having two great tastes that taste great together - it's the Little Black Dress of fandoms.

(I kind of wish I'd paired up Desire and Zoe, now, which was my first thought, because I'm sad there isn't a Zoe one. BUT it has been pointed out to me that there are other people in the Endless 'verse with whom one could pair up characters, so now I do have a Cunning Plan for Zoe, and a Cunning Plan for Simon too.)

Aaaand now for something completely different. I'm doing the Cliche_Bingo Challenge on LJ, and I'm counting the Sandman/Firefly sequence as one square ("Fusion with another fandom"). This is my entry for "Kidfic":

ROLE MODEL

cliché bingo #2: Kidfic

“Damn it, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a nanny!”

Jim's smile is ingratiating, and he's wrapped McCoy around his little finger enough times before now – but apparently the good doctor is still kind of pissy about that business with Nurse Chapel in the transporter room last week, because his glower doesn't let up one jot, even when Jim breaks out the dimples and the puppydog eyes.

“Aw, c'mon, Bones,” he says, keeping his voice low and glancing over at the slumbering little lump on the bed behind them. “What do I know about kids?”

McCoy looks completely unsympathetic. “Then you shouldn't have offered. Don't look at me like that – this job is all yours, Captain. You made the offer, you get to do the deed.”

Jim's shoulders slump. “But – it's shore leave,” he says, miserably, not quite believing that this is how his evening is going to pan out. They're in orbit around a pleasure planet, for crying out loud. Clubs and bars and pickup joints and race courses and casinos and underwater hovercoasters and all kinds of theme parks – and museums and galleries and concerts and libraries and swanky restaurants and blah blah blah boring things, and did he mention the clubs and bars and pickup joints? And the jacuzzis and steam rooms and masseuses with four sets of hands? Nubile lovelies of every conceivable species and gender are flexing their muscles and thrusting their hips down there on glittering dance floors and in luxuriously appointed suites right now, and Jim had pretty much assumed that he was going to get to do some flexing and thrusting of his own, damn it.

McCoy's brow arches up towards his hairline. “Precisely,” he hisses, when Jim doesn't seem capable of joining the dots. “It's my shore leave too, a shore leave I have well and truly earned, might I add, but you're still expecting me to sacrifice it just so you can go off and get some tail?” He snorts so loudly that Jim glances back into the darkened room, breathing a sigh of relief when the sleeper shows no sign of stirring. “I don't think so, Jim.”

“But it's a good deed!”

“Yeah.” McCoy grins, and pats Jim on the shoulder. “You can feel real good about yourself. I'll raise a glass to you while I'm winning at Betazoid poker. Bye now.” And with that, Jim finds himself looking at McCoy's back, and then at the doors hissing softly shut.

“Aaaw, nuts,” he mutters, and looks around to find Amanda sitting up in bed and looking at him with Uhura's eyes, her expression far too penetrating for a five-year-old. He blinks, feeling for all the world like his momma has just caught him about to steal his stepfather's second best car. “Um,” he says. “Sorry, kiddo. Didn't mean to wake you up, there.”

“I take it that you do not welcome this duty, Captain?” she says, her grave little voice echoing Spock's intonations almost perfectly. Jim swallows. Crap. Busted. He hits her with his most disarming smile, the one that no female aged two to two hundred can resist. She just looks back at him, solemn and wide-eyed and unimpressed.

Jim swallows. “No, honey, you've got that all wrong. It's just that I'm not sure I'm the most, ah, experienced crewmember for this particular mission, you know?”

“Father said that you offered to stay here while he took Mama out for dinner. It is their wedding anniversary, Captain Kirk; I believe that you were in attendance at the ceremony, in the capacity of best man, so you must be familiar with the date. He always takes her out to mark the occasion, and it is my grandfather's custom to watch over me in their absence. Grandfather is not aboard The Enterprise, but Father trusts you implicitly in his place.” She sounds like she isn't too sure about Spock's judgment on that one, but is too polite to say anything disrespectful about her father.

Jim stares at (continued...)

( continues...) her. “Amanda, do they feed you computer chips and pages of dictionaries for breakfast?”

She doesn't crack a smile. “This is an example of your levity, isn't it?” Amanda nods, and squeezes her teddybear. “Mama says you lack the gravitas appropriate to your station.”

“She says I – she – well, isn't that nice?” Jim takes a deep breath. “So, you going to go back to sleep, kiddo? You want some, ah, some hot milk, or something?”

“I do not require a beverage, Captain. But thank you for offering. It was most thoughtful.” Her voice cracks very slightly, and it's only that tiny hitch of breath that makes Jim's shoulders loosen up and lets him see that, poise and vocabulary notwithstanding, this is still a very small person who is not actually quite as cool about being left alone on a big, cold, unfamiliar spaceship with some big, cold, unfamiliar starship captain as she might be trying to appear. She's definitely not the kind of girl he'd been hoping to spend his evening with, but, unexpectedly, he still finds himself feeling a little spark of warmth towards her.

“This your first time off of New Vulcan?” he asks, perching at the foot of the bed. He knows it is. She nods, and pulls the bear a little closer. “But I bet you've seen lots of vids, and heard loads of stories about the adventures your mom and pop had before they settled down and got all domesticated, right?”

She bites her lip, and looks down at her bear and then up at Jim's face. “Mama and Father prefer to concentrate upon the present and the future. They rarely discuss their time in Starfleet,” she says. But what she means - and Jim's starting to learn Uhura's daughter's language now – is “Tell me tell me tell me tell me please!”

He grins. “Let me tell you about the time we were stuck in the middle of a jungle on Antillax 3 and Spock saved me from being devoured by maneating plants,” he says, and watches her eyes grow wide as saucers.

* * *

“Oh, for the love of – we've been searching for you all over, Captain! Spock's been worried sick!”

Jim halts guiltily on the threshold of the room, and looks around at the ring of disapproving faces. Amanda leans down from her lofty position on his shoulders, her little fingers tightening in his hair, and whispers: “Nuts.” He gives her ankles a reassuring squeeze, but, privately, she thinks she's hit the nail on the head. Excellent vocabulary, this kid has.

“Doctor McCoy is exaggerating, of course. I had perfect confidence in you as a guardian,” says Spock, calmly, rising to his feet. He's holding Amanda's discarded teddy bear. “I was merely curious as to the whereabouts of my only child.”

“Yes,” says Uhura, icily. Her arms are crossed in front of her chest and the air is positively bristling with her unspoken words. “We were both extremely curious, Captain. Would you care to explain where, exactly, Amanda has been all this time?”

Jim's charming smile hasn't done him a bit of good against McCoy or Amanda, but he digs it out and tries it on Uhura anyway, even though he knows better. “Just showing our youngest guest around the ship,” he says cheerfully.

“She was asleep,” says Uhura, after a long pause in which Jim rather suspects she has considered a whole range of more colourful responses. “She was fast asleep when we left.”

“I woke up, Mama,” says Amanda quickly. “I had bad dreams, and they frightened me. When I woke up, I wanted you and Father, but you weren't here.” Jim's mouth does not fall open at this calm little sequence of lies, but his admiration for his goddaughter increases by the moment. “Captain Kirk offered me hot milk and told me traditional children's folk tales of his people, but I was still sad. And I wanted to be sure that this vessel was completely safe, so the Captain agreed to show me around, to put my mind at ease.”

There is a thoughtful pause, while Jim tries to look like a virtuous man whose honour has been impuned, and not a reprobate godfather who has just taught a sweet, five-year-old genius (who is arguably the most (continued...)

( continues...) famous member of the Vulcan aristocracy) to swear and play poker. And, apparently, lie like a champion.

“I see,” says Uhura, looking narrowly at her daughter. “Is that so?”

“Yes, Mama,” Amanda says sweetly. Jim wants to hug her.

“Perhaps you can explain to us, then, why it was that we could not find any trace of your coms signal aboard the Enterprise?” asks Spock, in a deceptively level voice, his gaze fixed upon the Captain.

Jim's smile broadens. “See, Amanda wanted to see what the ship looked like from the outside too. So we just took a quick little scoot out in one of the shuttlecrafts. The Archimedes – it's new. State of the art. Goes at...um. Goes pretty fast. Not that we did, obviously. Because we were just taking a quiet look at the ship from the outside.” He beams at Spock with all the innocence he can muster. He doesn't quite dare look at Uhura. “I guess you were only searching for my signal on board the ship?”

“That is so,” agrees Spock, looking up at his daughter with an unreadable expression.

“I see,” says Uhura, and it's amazing how much threat she can pack into two short syllables. Jim really hopes she doesn't figure out that he let Amanda drive. It was only for a couple of minutes, after all – and he hadn't had the heart to refuse her, seeing how her little eyes lit up when they went full throttle.

“Right,” says Jim, and he reaches up and lifts Amanda up over his head and pretends to toss her into the air before pulling her into a hug that makes her shriek with glee, and then setting her down on the ground. He hunkers down to talk to her face to face. “Well, thanks for keeping me company, squirt," he says, and ruffles her curls. "Remember – when you join Starfleet, your first posting is with me, deal?”

“Okay, Uncle Jim,” says Amanda, still giggling. “Deal.”

McCoy's mouth falls open just a little, and Jim feels suddenly self-conscious. “You got something you want to say, Doctor?” he asks, with dignity.

“Nope,” says McCoy, but Jim has a suspicion that he's biting his cheek. “Not a thing, Jim. Not a thing.”

Can you see my grin from there?

dying of laughter

I feel like it's my birthday and that was written just for me!! Hee.

Amanda leans down from her lofty position on his shoulders, her little fingers tightening in his hair, and whispers: “Nuts."

I LOLed.