Chapter Text
The skylights were dim by the time Jason came downstairs. His hair was damp, and there was an energy in his step that hadn't been there that morning. The ceiling lights in the living room were off, but, despite dusk, the room itself was bright. Danny was floating above the couch cushions, legs crossed, facing away, and glowing like a lightbulb. The flaming crown on his head was the biggest culprit, shining a greenish glow that cast stark, shivering shadows across the living room. Danny himself looked like he was meditating, but when Jason tiptoed around the couch, he opened one eye. The crown vanished. The room dimmed considerably. Jason wished he'd gotten a better look at the flaming menace.
With a stretch, Danny unfolded himself and touched down on the carpet. “You feeling any better?”
Jason shoved his hands in his sweatpants pockets. Automatically, he said, “Yeah,” which surprised him. He paused to give it some real thought. “A lot better, actually.”
Danny smiled. “That's good.”
“Did Valerie go home?”
“Yeah, a while ago.” Danny arched his back and cracked his knuckles. “You know, I think talking about your death was important for your core healing.”
Jason inhaled sharply at ‘your death’. It was an instinctual response, bracing for the rush of emotion that always hit him like a sack of bricks — but the blow didn't come. Jason was okay. He wasn't sure how, but he was okay.
He even managed to crack a smile. “Imagine. All I needed was talk therapy.”
Danny laughed. “Don't tell my sister.”
Then his smile softened. He stepped up to Jason with some unplaceable look in his eye, and came at him with a hug. Jason reflexively hugged back, a little confused, but nonetheless pleased. It wasn't brusque like Jason would expect from another man. Thorough was the best he could describe it, with a pleasant tingling as Danny's aura enveloped him. Jason wasn't sure why they were hugging until Danny pulled back and looked up a couple inches into Jason's face, searching.
That was when Jason realized he wasn't crying. He should have been. He would have been a few hours ago, but there wasn't even a sniffle. He really did feel okay. Balanced.
Danny clapped him on the shoulder in a much more human-man sort of way, and moseyed into the kitchen. He stuck his head in the refrigerator, tapping on the door as he perused.
Jason wandered in behind him and leaned against the wall. “What's the story with that flaming crown?” he asked. “I figure it's part of your royal garb, or whatever, but I've never seen you with it.”
Danny popped the cap on a classic coke bottle filled with something glowing suspiciously ecto-green. “When did you see my crown? I always keep it hidden.” He glanced up, as if double checking that he was regality-free.
Jason blinked at him. “Just now? When you were meditating on the couch.”
“But I didn't…” With a deepening frown, Danny grabbed his phone from the kitchen counter and began tapping away with the cadence of a text message. Jason waited patiently until Danny set it down, looking like his dog had just pissed on the carpet.
“Did you… not know?”
Danny took a long swig of his soda and muttered something about clocks and laughing under his breath.
“So?” Jason prodded. He was getting a little tired of being left in the dark.
Danny sighed. “I was doing a Dive. Ghost King duties.”
Jason was in the market for non-cryptic answers, please and thank you. He raised an eyebrow.
“Okay, okay!” Danny relented. “Basically, I meld my consciousness with the Infinite Realms to… keep watch over my domain. Or whatever.” He shrugged.
“Or whatever.”
Danny pointed with his bottle. “You get it.”
Jason categorically did not get it. What he was beginning to understand was that Danny didn’t just forget to mention important things, he was physically allergic to sharing when it came to himself in particular. First the half-human thing — not that he had any real obligation to divulge, of course, but the Ghost King business was a little more significant.
Unlucky for Danny, Jason happened to be a world-class interrogator and he felt like prying. “Can I see the crown again? It looked pretty badass.”
It turned out that Jason didn’t need any advanced technique, because Danny easily obliged, despite his grimace. He turned away, and with no outward prompt, the crown ignited into existence amid Danny’s flickering white hair, casting his bluish skin with an added green tint. Jason stepped closer. Danny pointedly looked elsewhere while he sucked on his soda.
The crown radiated a piercing cold that leeched the warmth from Jason’s cheeks. Jagged, malformed, green-gold crests created a menacing silhouette, studded irregularly with black, shimmering stones that reflected the dancing flames in their many facets. Jason imagined that it had been symmetrical at one time, but it had clearly gone through the wringer to turn it into the grotesque sculpture it was now. The aura was just as imposing, layered and twisting into Danny’s own with a slow, primal sinuosity.
As Jason looked on, a strange feeling began to stir in his core — something akin to loyalty, a desire to kneel. He took a step back, but found himself unable to look away. He could understand why Danny didn’t like to show it off. It was looking back at him, pressing down on his shoulders — Jason shoved those feelings in a little box. He stood up straight. Danny was his friend, he wasn't about to get weird.
Aiming for casual approval, he said, “That thing looks like it could kill somebody.”
Danny glanced up; the crown vanished. “It could. In about fifteen different ways.”
Jason shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Fuck yeah.”
Danny relaxed visibly. “You want a soda?”
Jason squinted at Danny’s. “Looks radioactive.”
“Here, try it.”
Jason sniffed the offered bottle. Electric, fresh, citrusy, and something Jason couldn’t place. He took a cautious sip and coughed as an energized heat trickled down his esophagus. “Tastes kinda like… weird lemons.”
Danny burst out laughing.
“What?!”
“N-nothing!”
“Don’t you dare.” Jason was done with this shit. He grabbed Danny in a headlock before he could squirm away, and went at him with a noogie.
“Fine, fine!” Danny wheezed, “Its just — when I first met you — I didn’t know your name, right?”
Jason narrowed his eyes. “Yeah?”
“So, that whole time, in my head I was calling you —” he snorted, “— Mr. Lemons!” and descended into laughter again.
Jason stared at him. He burst out, “Why?!”
“Cuz you — you smelled like — angry lemons!” Danny leaned heavily against Jason, slapped his chest a few times, then looked up into his face with a sloppy grin. “Don’t worry though, you’re a lot better now, I promise. It was just your rancid ‘plasm.”
Jason scowled and finally released him. “That’s so much worse than mine.”
“Yeah?”
“I called you ‘Lazarus Guy’. You — your aura — felt like the Pit, and I had no idea what you were, so.”
“You’re right,” Danny chuckled, beaming, “mine was way worse.”
“Ugh.” Jason shoved him away. Danny gracefully drifted backward. He folded his arms behind his head to float on his back. Then Jason’s stomach growled. He glanced at the clock. “Dinner time.”
It was Danny’s turn to scowl. “I was just doing work. I wanna watch Hell’s Kitchen.”
Jason rolled his eyes. “Jesus, you are such a child. I said dinner.”
“But I want trash TV!” Danny whined.
Jason narrowed his eyes. He grabbed Danny by one pointed ear and dragged him into the living room like a particularly whiny balloon. “One episode,” he said, “and then we’re going out for dinner at the nicest restaurant you got in this po-dunk town. I deserve a treat.”
Danny tugged on his collar like he'd never worn a button-down in his life. “I can't believe you made me put on a dress shirt.”
“Gotta dress for the occasion,” Jason said. He didn’t need to look up from his menu to feel Danny's glare.
“What occasion?”
“I died,” Jason said, aiming for sarcasm.
Instead of laughing, Danny's frown shifted to something curiously concerned. He put his menu down. “When is your Death Day?”
Jason stiffened.
“Sorry!” Danny went bright red. “That was… ignore me.” He buried his head in his menu with a vengeance.
Once again, Jason found he wasn't aching like he'd expected. Danny was so casual about the question, like asking about inclement weather rather than a literally life-destroying — okay, maybe Jason was aching a little more than he thought. Did that make him a good ghost or a bad one? Did ghosts casually chat about this sort of thing? Jason wasn't excited to share, but this was Danny. Danny was safe.
“April twenty-seventh.”
Equally quiet, Danny replied, “August first.”
Their auras pulsed together with something unnameable and inhuman. Jason shivered.
April twenty-seventh was not marked on his calendar. He didn’t need any paper reminders to tell him when it was coming. He always knew, weeks in advance, with a sense deeper than his bones — a sense he had only learned the name for a few days ago.
Suddenly Jason needed to know. “How do you…” but he couldn’t articulate.
Danny seemed to understand anyway, although the answer was as nebulous as the question. He wet his lips. “My family — Sam, Tucker, Jazz… these days Val, too. They don’t let me spend it alone. I used to feel bad, making them deal with… but I’m glad they’re pushy.”
Jason nodded, even as his chest clenched up with sudden sadness as deep as the ocean. He was glad his emotions had evened out, otherwise he probably would have been howling right in the middle of this respectable Italian establishment. Danny must have felt his shift anyway, because without looking up, he reached a hand across the table. Jason took it. He squeezed tight enough to bruise.
“Ahem.”
Both looked up with a jolt — the intense energy dissipated like a cloud of smoke.
“Are you ready to order?” asked the waiter, neatly dressed all in black.
“Um, sure.” Jason fumbled with his menu. He picked the first thing to catch his eye. Danny, on the other hand, made a concerted effort, taking a long moment to study his menu with his tongue between his teeth. Jason’s head felt fuzzy until the waiter nodded and walked primly away.
Jason met Danny’s eyes. The tension began to build again, so he sliced through it like a hot knife. “Do you get the nightmares?”
It was Danny’s turn to stiffen, then gradually relax, although the cut of his mouth stayed tense. He nodded. “It gets bad, leading up. It’s almost a relief.”
Jason looked down. He was sorry he’d asked.
Danny’s leg began to bounce. “Have you ever…” He screwed up his face. “…had someone… with you?”
“I —” Jason’s mouth clamped shut.
“I get it.”
He shook his head. He was tired of being afraid, no matter how many knots his stomach was tying itself in. Low and urgent, “I thought — I thought I was going crazy the first year. I was supposed to be over it by then. I had shit to do, I — I —”
“Hey,” Danny said sharply.
Jason blinked at him. A tear spilled down his face; he scrubbed it away.
“April twenty-seventh,” Danny declared. “I’ll be there. Okay?”
Jason nodded wordlessly.
“This year will be different.” Danny held eye contact for a powerful moment. Then his shoulders drooped and his gaze skittered away as all that commanding energy leaked out of him. For a second, he had started to look like the king he was — but he was just Danny after all. He laughed nervously and ran a hand through his hair. “Geez, sorry. We’re supposed to be —”
Jason reached over and smacked his arm away. “You’re messing up all the hard work I put into your hair.”
Danny laughed, a real one this time. Then he narrowed his eyes with a sly smile, doubtless about to say something incredibly stupid.
Jason slapped a palm flat on the table. “Two ghosts, covered in bruises, walk into a bar.”
Danny’s mouth went round with surprise.
Instant regret burned hot in Jason’s cheeks, but he couldn’t back down now. As serious as a mission debrief, he forged on. “The bartender says, ‘You guys look like you’ve been beat to hell and back.’”
Danny leaned in, enraptured.
“The first ghost replies, ‘The trip down was fine, but then I met this guy.’ Then the second ghost blushes and says —” Jason clenched his jaw, “— ‘It was love at first fight.’”
A beat. Another — and then Danny’s open-mouthed shock split into gut-busting laughter. Jason wanted to curl up and die as Danny nearly fell out of his chair. The restaurant around them went quiet, but Danny didn’t seem to notice. Clutching his stomach and red faced, he wheezed, “Did you — is that us?”
Jason wanted to cry. He’d been saving that stupid joke for weeks, and he couldn’t imagine why he’d thought now was the perfect time to —
“It is!” Danny guffawed. “You wrote a —” Then he stood up.
Jason’s stomach dropped.
In the middle of the crowded restaurant, Danny darted around the table and grabbed Jason by the noggin, ruffling his hair with a vengeful fist. “You wrote a joke about us!”
“Fuck, Danny — we’re in a restaurant!” Jason hissed.
Jason thought he was going to have to carry his fight buddy out the front door like a misbehaving child, but Danny finally relented, snorting and chuckling all the way back around the table to slouch bonelessly into his seat. Two truths simultaneously existed, then: Jason wanted to die of embarrassment. The giant, sloppy smile on Danny’s face was the best thing Jason had ever had a part in concocting.
Danny snickered to himself, “Love at first fight,” and started giggling again.
Jason sighed and rubbed his forehead.
Then Danny leaned forward and caught his eye. “Jason,” he said, “you can stay with me any time you want.”
Despite everything, Jason’s core sparked with feeling so soft that he rushed to cover it up, lest he cut himself on the restaurant cutlery. But Danny had seen. Jason knew, and he didn’t even mind. Danny smiled like the sun, and Jason couldn’t help grinning back.
Love at first fight, indeed.