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Bruce, predictably, is saying nothing. It’s a very productive nothing, that is saying quite a lot, quite loudly.
“Go make that face somewhere else,” Dick tells him. “It’s not helpful.”
“I’m not making a face,” Bruce says, lying baldly. He’s got the faintly ill look of a man so tired he’s struggling with the urge to vomit. Dick should be looking similar, if Jason’s guesstimations on his hours of sleep in the last four days are correct, but he’s in one of his weird moods. The energy pouring off of him is a little noxious in a way that makes Jason resolve to poke him with something sharp, just to see if any bees or snakes will come out.
“You are making a face,” Jason tells Bruce, cheerful and not at all tired, because it’s not every day that one gets to witness Nightwing or the big bad Bat flail wildly towards any kind of solution, and these are times to be celebrated.
“It’s not my fault there’s a ghost,” Dick says, arms crossed over his chest like he wants to pout but knows he’s too old for it.
“I know,” Bruce tells Dick.
“So stop making a face at me about the ghost!”
“I’m right here,” the ghost says.
“I’m not making a face at you,” Bruce says, aggrieved and making a face.
“You are right here,” Dick tells the ghost, visibly giving up on Bruce with an upwards fling of his hands. “What can we do to get you not to be right here?”
The ghost makes a movement that, if one were very imaginative, could be described as looking down at themself. “I work here,” they say.
Jason snorts. “Not anymore,” he says. “They're boarding up shop. Whole goddamn mall is closing down next Tuesday.”
The ghost reacts by doing what they must’ve been doing to people all week, which is to say they immediately attempt to gruesomely murder him. Tiles warp nonsensically beneath Jason’s feet, and he has to scramble to get his gun out of his hand and into his holster, because his trigger discipline is great and all but it can be tricky to maintain when the world is throwing you into every wall and ceiling like a pinball machine.
Everything stabilizes after a minute, Dick calming the ghost back down as Bruce attempts to help him stand back up. Jason swats him away irritably, his ribs twinging. The guy looks constipated enough just having to share a room with Jason, he doesn’t want to see how bad it’ll get should he actually touch him.
“What the hel- heck was that, Red Hood?” Dick asks incredulously, with a glance at the ghost. Are they not swearing now? That’s going to be interesting for them all. “Why would you do that?”
“To find out what the trigger was?” Jason replies, just as incredulous. “We’re in here talking to them like they’re a regular dude, we needed to find out what was making them go all Poltergeist on people. I had you two as spotters, I took the shot.”
Bruce nods at him, approving, or at least finding that to be a logical move. Dick goggles at the both of them.
“Or you could ask,” he says. “Out loud, directly, like big boys.” he turns to the ghost, who seems to be vibrating in barely suppressed rage, a static-y flicker just over Dick’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about them,” he says conspiratorially. “They are completely incapable of communicating like adults and get hit in the head for fun, just ignore them. You seem to be very mad about something, we’ve been running into a couple of folks who got hurt. Will you tell us what’s going on?”
“You literally spend all day every day getting hit in the head,” Jason fires back. “You have a PhD in eating sh- dirt.” Bruce’s hand makes an aborted move towards his face, like he was about to pinch the bridge of his nose before remembering Batman doesn’t have emotions like annoyance or exhaustion.
“I have been trapped here,” The ghost says tightly. “For forty years.” Dick leans back, nodding slowly as if the secrets of the universe are all revealing themselves to him. “And the whole time I have been helping customers, because there is nothing else to do. And now,” their voice is rising, crackling like bad radio, “Now they are announcing that my shop is shutting down, because the mall is closing down. And I’m supposed to sit in here by myself? For the rest of eternity? Looking at shoeboxes? No! If I'm trapped here, so are you!” And then it goes to fly at Jason, who ducks, but for whatever reason Dick going and standing in front of an incorporeal being that can pass through walls makes it stop as though it might run into him.
“Okay, okay,” Dick says soothingly, hands out as if to placate. “I can see how that would be a problem.” He shoots them a glance over his shoulder. “Self defense, see?”
Jason and Bruce both stare at him. Jason is blinking rapidly, as though it might clear the hallucination. He can’t tell what Bruce is doing with his eyes under the cowl.
“This bi- this dude is trying to kill people who come into their workplace, who are doing nothing to them,” Jason says, utterly baffled. “Where do you see self defense?”
“I forgot you’re both nepo babies,” Dick says, being an asshole on purpose to rile them both up. “Never worked a day in your lazy lives.” Dick puts Jason in a stranglehold when Jason takes a not-quite-joking swing at him, not struggling nearly as much as Jason thinks he should be as he tells the ghost: “I get it. I got you. I’m- uhf- on your side. Retail does that to people. We can get this sorted.”
“I have a job, Nightwing,” Bruce says.
“You have an office,” Dick corrects, and lets Jason go when he finally chokes and taps. “With crystal whiskey tumblers. You don’t get what retail does to you. We gotta get them out of here.”
“Since when did you work retail?” Jason growls, restraining himself from rubbing at his neck.
Dick gives him a look. “I have worked retail on and off my whole life. I worked at a Hallmark store in a mall for five months.” Jason chokes again, this time from laughter. Dick sighs. “That was when you were about yay high,” he says, holding a hand up to his navel. “So I guess I can’t blame you for not remembering.”
“I wasn’t that short,” Jason says, disgusted.
“You are definitely missing some memories then, man,” Dick says, and Bruce looks devastated about the mouth. “Because you were roughly the size of a football and exactly as puntable.”
“The Hallmark employees never break down their boxes,” the ghost says judgmentally.
“Sorry,” Dick says, sounding guilty.
Bruce is clearly done with this, sighing with his whole chest and reaching up to touch his comms. “Oracle, call Zatanna.”
“I’ll call John. Constantine,” Dick says, and the micropause between the first and the last name is just enough to make Jason’s head snap up. Dick’s digging a phone out of some mysterious pocket in his suit- Jason seriously doesn’t know how he manages to hide stuff in there. It has all the coverage of a g-string and nipple tassels.
“Why do you have Constantines number?” Bruce asks in a very special tone.
Dick, who has his back to Bruce, contorts his whole face in apparent emotional agony. “Magic problems,” Dick says without pause or any quiver in his voice to betray that he looks like he just bit a rotten lemon. “My apartment was haunted. Zatanna was busy. It was a whole thing.”
Bruce seemingly accepts Dick’s answer, nodding once before turning away like he always does when he’s on the phone. Jason and Dick make eye contact. “Constantine?” Jason mouths, and although Dick can’t possibly see it, he starts mouthing back shut up shut up shut up, waving a hand in front of his throat in a universal cut it out gesture.
“Haunted, ah? Was your bed shaking in the night?” Jason mutters, sotto voce. Dick’s hand spasms around his phone as he jabs at his contacts, not appreciating how funny Jason is.
Bruce and Dick both go to voicemail twice before they give up.
“I hate magic,” Bruce says, very plainly.
“This isn’t even magic,” Dick says. “It’s ghosts.”
“It’s outside the realm of the natural. It’s magic.”
“You just hate anything you’re not good at,” Jason tells Bruce.
“Red Hood, why are you here.” Bruce does not manage to it frame as an ask.
“Three different people call me to tell me their runners have folks in the hospital, claiming hallucinations and delirium. You think I’m not gonna check out the Scarecrow copycat?”
“It’s out of your territory.”
“Three different people called me, Batman, do you think I’m going to ignore three different people asking for my help? This is my city,” Jason snaps. “Do you think I can’t go wherever I damn well please?”
“Possession,” Dick cuts in as Jason and Bruce are both winding up for a good shout. “They can possess one of us and we can leave and take them somewhere else that isn’t going to come down on their head. I’m sure you have a house somewhere they can spend their time, B.”
“Do ghosts work like that?” Jason asks.
Dick shrugs. “Ghosts work however you think they work. They’re ghosts. Do you have a house we could drop them off in?”
While Bruce mulls the pros and cons of that idea over, Jason switches his external mics off and to a private line to Dick and Dick alone. “You should really stop saying Constantine quotes if you don’t want Bruce to know you two hooked up.”
Jason would bet anything that the minute forehead twitch that just happened was Dick aborting his knee jerk reaction to attempt to beat the living shit out of Jason. Dick looks frantically between him and Bruce before realizing that it’s a private line, and starts giving Jason what must be some really good crazy eyes. He wishes Dick wasn’t wearing a mask. It’s a top ten favorite expression of Jason’s to inspire in other people. “Seriously,” Jason whispers, because mics or no, it’s not like his helmet is fully soundproofed, “Bruce’ll castrate the guy. You are so not subtle.”
Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, Dick mouths emphatically. Fuck you so much.
“What? I can’t hear you,” Jason replies. A vein throbs in Dick’s forehead.
“I do have a suitable property,” Bruce decides, ignoring the war going on between his children. “How does this work.” This is directed at Dick, who leaves off of giving Jason the hairy eyeball to shrug.
“Do I look like a ghost?” he asks.
“If you are going to suggest a course of action you should at least attempt to have the course to go with the action prior to speaking up.”
Dick makes some subtle noises of mockery, then turns away from Bruce entirely. “Do you know how to possess people?” he asks the ghost. “Maybe just try flying at him,” he gestures to Bruce, “with an open mind.”
“I possessed Mary Spalding in 1989 and confessed to stealing from the till so that she would be fired,” the ghost says, and then, unnecessarily: “She was stealing from the till.”
“Wow, we should leave you here,” Jason tells them. Everyone ignores him. Bruce steps away from their group, and the ghost awkwardly floats up to him- Jason is beginning to get the feeling that they were not particularly sociable even before they got stuck doing customer service after failing to enter their afterlife- and then, with an odd shivering, slips inside.
The ghost goes flying back out of Bruce as Jason’s internal count hits the three second mark, ejected with such force it smacks into the back wall of the room with a non-sound that threatens to give Jason a headache.
“No,” the ghost says, pointing what could roughly be called a finger at him. “No!” The finger could equally roughly be described as shaking.
“No what?!” Jason snaps.
“Something is wrong with you,” the ghost says urgently. It sounds like they’re breathing hard. “That- it’s not supposed to be like that. In your mind.”
“Are you crying?” Dick asks, high pitched.
“That’s bad!” says the ghost. “That’s really, really bad! I didn’t like that at all!”
They both stare at Bruce. “I’m fine,” Bruce says. Jason points at the ghost, who is still plastered against the wall like they need to be as far away from him as possible. “I don’t know what they’re upset about.”
“I have a guess,” Jason says.
“Don’t share it,” Dick tells him, then, to the ghost: “Sorry about that! Why don’t you try me instead?”
It takes several minutes of coaxing and cajoling (on Dick’s part) and only a little outright bullying (on Jason’s) to convince the ghost into round two. Dick stands before the ghost, a miserly little lump of fog, attempting to look noble and martyred and succeeding in looking like he might be a little constipated, and proclaims: “I welcome you,” as though that might help. The ghost floats to him, shivering, and Dick’s mask wrinkles as he squeezes his eyes shut.
“Um,” the ghost says. Dick opens one eye. “I. Um.” They poke him in the chest- there’s a noise that isn’t a noise at all. “I don’t think I can.”
“Why are you so fu- why are you so complicated,” Jason growls. “This isn’t that hard. Do you want to live or not? Because you need to suck it up.”
The ghost pokes Dick again with the same weird non-sound that makes Jason’s teeth ache. “I’m not being complicated,” they complain. “This has never happened before.”
“Stop poking me.”
“I’m not poking you,” the ghost says. “It’s- this is so weird. What’s going on? Why can’t I go in?”
“I’m very normal,” Dick pleads, possibly of the world at large. “You must be doing it wrong.”
“There’s nothing to do wrong!” the ghost squawks. they poke him again, and Dick smacks what could very generously be called their hand away. “I just go into you-,”
“You’re doing it wrong,” Dick grits out.
“I think something is wrong with you,” the ghost says, endearing themself to nobody but Jason. “You’re not letting me in, or something. I can do it, it’s not that hard, I just-,” and then it flies at Jason, who has just enough time to think, oh shit.
Quiet, suddenly. Like a head pushed underwater, a still lake. Jason’s putting keys in a purse with small hands. Pain in his back like a knife, lightheaded, a squeeze in his chest. Someone is saying something from far away, panicked, and his face is on a gleaming tiled floor. It’s cold. He’s not done yet. This can’t be how it goes. He’s not ready to be done. Jason thinks, barely: this isn’t how I died. Dick and Bruce are looking at him, but that world is very far from him now. The anxiety of not being ready beats in his fists like a drum, but that’s not him. He feels very small, and very calm, and then it all rushes back away from him like a tide, loud, louder-
The ghost leaves Jason, they both stumble back and away from each other. The ghost gets it’s wits back together first.
“The screams of the damned are in his head!” the ghost shouts, and everyone looks at Jason in abject horror.
“What?” Jason says, mentally inspecting his own brain for a moment. “First of all, who told you you could do that to me? Never do that shit again or I will beat your ass. Second of all, I- good God, I was just listening to Zheani, is that your fucking problem? Listen to some good music -,”
“That does not qualify as music!” the ghost huffs.
“You have headphones in?” Bruce asks, disapproving.
“No!” Jason yelps, disgusted by the thought that anyone would think so little of him. He’s not suicidal, that’s up there with chewing gum in the field in terms of stupidity. “It’s just stuck in my head, sorry that not every night can be a Tchaikovsky moment!” They’re still looking at him like they don’t quite believe him and he might be somehow secretly be having a psychotic break. “God, the nerve of you lot,” Jason growls. “You take one swim in the pit and everyone acts like you’re a few fruit loops shy of a cereal bowl! The nepo Robin’s been in the pit, I don’t see you handling him like he’s about to axe murder a daycare-,”
“I do treat Robin very carefully,” Bruce says.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Jason snarls, because if he had been, he would have brought up Cassandra. Dick looks enormously guilty.
“I know you won’t axe murder a daycare,” Dick says. “You would be sad.” His tone is joking but his face says he doesn’t fully believe what he’s saying.
“Something is wrong with you,” Jason says, disgusted. “Somebody please hit up the Batgirls before I actually lose my mother-effing mind.”
“Language,” the ghost snaps at him, and it’s only the knowledge that it would be a really stupid way to lose a knife that keeps Jason from whipping one out and trying to put it through their incorporeal skull.
“Connecting the Batgirls,” Babs says in their ears, and she’s got her voice modulator on but Jason swears on his grave that she sounds deeply amused.
“Yo yo yo!” Steph chirps breezily into the comms as they connect. Cassandra is silent, as per usual. “How goes the mall? Get any soft pretzels? I want a cinnamon sugar one.”
“How far are you two from our location?” Bruce asks.
“ETA can be… ten minutes. Is it that bad?”
“It’s a ghost,” Jason says, because he can’t help himself. “A ghost that’s been trying to kill people.”
“Like a ghost ghost? Like Poltergeist? Like Ghostbusters?” Steph sounds overjoyed. “B-man, if you have a proton pack in the Batcave I promise I’ll forgive you for not telling me about it if you let me use it.”
“More like Casper meets the Yellow Wallpaper,” Jason says. “Turns out being forced to spend decades of your afterlife in a JcPenney's does bad things to your psyche.”
“Spending ten minutes in a JcPenney’s does bad things to my psyche,” Steph observes. “What'd you want me to do about it?”
“We’re trying to get it to possess people so we can cart it away from here but it hates all of our brains,” Jason says. “It’s the Princess and the Pea up in here.”
“And the pea is mental illness?” Steph asks. Cassandra exhales sharply, amusement crackling in their ears.
“We’re experiencing some difficulty with the possession continuing beyond a couple of seconds,” Bruce says diplomatically. “Personality conflicts.”
“It just bounced off of me,” Dick grumbles. “We get along fine.”
“You are a Hallmark employee,” the ghost says to him.
“Was! Was! I got a new job, I’m a changed man, I swear-,”
“And you think my brain is up to the task?” Steph asks as Dick’s argument continues, her joy growing. “My God, I’m getting that on a T-shirt. Possessable brain. Be over in a jiffy!”
“Wait!” Dick says, cutting off his impassioned self defense. “Batgirl. Do you have any music stuck in your head?”
“Always, Wingman,” Steph says. “It’s not my aux week and someone wants to listen to nothing but Stravinsky, my brain jukebox is the only thing keeping me going.”
“What song?” Bruce asks.
“Um, Rat?” Steph says. “By Sizzy Rocket.” Jason and Bruce both look at Dick, who puts his head in his hands.
“That’s a good song, Batgirl,” Dick says, and Steph makes an agreeing noise. “Return to your regular route.”
“What!” Steph gasps. “But what about my ghost time!”
“I think she should come,” Jason says instantly. “So you major as- I mean you major b-holes can see that I’m not having a psychotic break and the ghost just has no taste.”
“Go back to your route, Batgirl,” Bruce says, who has given up on the Batman stoicism and is now just outright pinching the bridge of his nose.
“We’re learning the Rite of Spring in ballet,” Cassandra tells them, amusement seeping into her voice. “There soon.”
“I mean, you probably can’t blame them for not liking Zheani,” Dick says pensively, then turns to the ghost- now picking over a near empty rack of women’s clothing all marked with 75% off stickers, apparently organizing them. “I doubt they had anything like that back when- hey, what music were you a fan of before you died? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Stop making small talk with the dead,” Jason hisses. Dick gives him a deeply unimpressed look.
“I’m being nice,” he says. “Red Hood, this is why you don't have any friends. When you’re in a nursing home all alone wondering why nobody comes and visits you, don’t come calling me crying about it-,”
“With what, an ouija board?” Jason asks, because it’s pointless to start listing all of his friends. Dick will insist they don’t exist just because Jason hasn’t had them round for dinner a million times, even though the possibility of Dick enjoying spending time with his gym buddies is in the negatives and they don’t even have dinner together. “You don’t wear a helmet, birdbrain, your CTE is gonna kill you at 40.”
Dick cuffs him on the back of the head. It doesn’t hurt, because Jason wears a helmet. “You would think the dead guy would be nicer to other dead guys-,”
“You died?” the ghost asks with sudden interest.
“Um,” Jason and Dick say at the same time. Bruce presses his wrist over his eyes like he has a migraine.
“But you’re-,” they wiggle, slightly. Jason thinks they’re gesturing at him.
“I got better,” he says.
“Do you think-,”
“No,” all three of them say at once.
“Special circumstance,” Jason says, because if they were going to crawl out of their own grave it would have happened by now.
“Legal technicality,” Bruce says.
“He’s got a heartbeat and everything,” Dick covers further.
“Oh,” the ghost says.
“Go sort your clothes,” Jason says.
Ten awkward minutes of mostly silence later, Cassandra announces herself via the soft tap of shoes on tile. Jason is very nearly glad to see her.
“Hey!” Dick says, his chipper tone tripping on itself and falling down a manhole into the sewage of desperation. The ghost turns around from their seemingly random shuffle of clothing, makes what could be very loosely defined as eye contact, and screams.
All of them stand in silence for a moment.
“What,” Bruce says, “is wrong now.”
“They have no face!” The ghost wails. Cassandra’s very real face under her cowl twists. “There’s a demon!”
Dick presses his hands together in front of his mouth like he’s praying. “Question. Did you need glasses when you were alive?”
“Was Halloween not a thing?” Jason asks. “Have you never seen a mask?”
“You’re trying to send me to my death! I’m not done yet!”
“Your definition of not done has been snitching on folks and organizing clothing?” Jason asks.
“You’re scared?” Cassandra asks at the same time, incredulous. “You are dead. What can you be scared of?”
“I am not dead!” the ghost cries. “I am not ready to be dead!”
“What do you want me to do,” Cassandra asks Bruce and Dick. Dick throws his hands in the air. Bruce does nothing- Jason’s fairly sure he’s shut his eyes under the cowl.
“Good luck,” Cassandra says with mild disgust, already turning back towards the doors. “Batgirl,” Jason hears her, getting quieter as she walks away. “Need a pickup.”
“Is it gone?” the ghost asks, with the vague aura of someone covering their eyes.
“Oracle,” Bruce decides, like a man grabbing desperately at a tow rope. “Would you-,”
Babs starts laughing in their earpieces. It’s not a nice laugh. “You don’t pay me enough,” she says. “You don’t pay me at all.” Their line to Oracle shuts off with a click.
Dick turns to Bruce. “Reinforcements,” he says. “Not Signal, he’s a minor.” He doesn’t bother to mention Tim or Damian. Jason is going to tell that to Tim later. “Who do we know who’s normal?”
“We’ll try something else,” Bruce tells him.
Both Jason and Dick stare at him, Dick mortally offended with a hand pressed to his chest, Jason incredulous. “What?” Jason snaps.
“Why?” Dick yelps.
“This clearly isn’t working,” Bruce says.
“My God,” Jason says. “We’ve tried three people so far. This works, the ghost is just a little bi-,” Dick slaps him upside the head before he can complete the insult. Jason tries to smack him back, but Dick dodges. Probably a good thing- the gloves are lined with lead shot and Jason did not pull that hit. “Stop hitting me! What are you, five?”
“Do you think we don’t know normal people?” Dick asks, ignoring Jason. “We know normal people. Call -,”
“Nightwing. We are not putting a ghost of uncertain intentions in an alien juggernaut who could rip the planet apart but is too polite to do so,” Bruce says in a severe voice.
“Fair,” Dick concedes. Jason hates their mind-meld bullshit. “We can call a speedster? They go to therapy.”
“We are not putting a ghost in a meta.”
“They are literally the only normal people we know,” Dick says, exasperated. “Just fu-freaking call Barry. We know the ghosts’ intentions, it’s literally fine-,”
“Absolutely not,” Bruce snaps back. “We can’t hope to contain the situation if things go sideways with a Flash-,”
“You just don’t want Hal to hear about this,” Jason says. From Bruce’s sudden silence, it might even be true.
“B,” Dick says. “You need to get over that. Hood, stop starting things.
“There is nothing to get over. I have serious concerns about your acuity if you genuinely believe that we could prevent any potentially deadly accidents with a metahuman-,”
“Don’t change the subject, this is about your complex about Hal,” Jason says mercilessly.
“I don’t have a complex,” Bruce says in the same voice he used to deny making a face earlier. “Having reservations is not -,”
“Oh my God!” Dick says, having visibly reached his breaking point with both Bruce and Jason. “Will you get over it already? Why do you care about Hal so much? It’s literally Hal! Nobody cares about Hal other than you! Put your weird feelings aside and-,”
“I have no feelings whatsoever about Green Lantern,” Bruce says stiffly. “We are coworkers and associates. This is about Barry being a metahuman-,”
“You have been to space jail together,” Jason says flatly. “‘Associates’?”
“Just fucking call Barry already if you don’t care about Hal,” Dick says. The ghost flings a shoe at him when he swears, which nails him in the shoulder with a thwack. Dick ignores it. “He could be here in three seconds-,”
“No!” Bruce snaps, and they’re starting to use the sort of voices that Jason hasn’t heard since he was fourteen years old and make him want to find a blast shelter. “We are not calling a meta. And if we were, you would call Wally, who would be here in one second. He is faster-,”
“If you want to use Wally to get around Hal you are shit out of luck,” Jason drawls, then has to catch another flung shoe aimed at his head. He flings it back into the darkness from where it came. “What Wally knows Barry knows.”
“Jason!” Dick hisses, which is a failed grade on the no names in the field thing, but he guesses there’s no point in concealing their identities in front of something that’s been in their skulls. “Be helpful!”
“Motherfucker, I am,” Jason growls. The glass of one of the makeup counter stalls shatters, spraying shards over all of them. “I know like three capes. One is an alien princess, one is the deranged daughter of Deathstroke, and the other is Roy Harper. Do you want me to call Roy Harper and ask him to come try possession on for size? Do you think Mr. Goldilocks over here is gonna like his mind?”
“I don’t want you to call Roy Harper,” Dick says, pained. An idea pops into his brain so visibly that Jason is surprised a lightbulb doesn’t appear over his head. “Oliver Queen,” Dick says, triumphant.
“No,” Bruce says immediately, with great alarm.
“It’s Oliver or the Flashes,” Dick says, voice trembling with the effort he’s exerting to not shout. “Do you have anybody fucking else, B?” The ghost picks up and throws a mirror at his head, which Dick ducks without looking. “Is there anybody else who you think we could call who Casper the picky ghost won’t run crying from? Because I am all ears.”
“You know this says something about you lot, right?” Oliver says, freshly deposited in this horrible dingy mall by Barry Allen, who had been grinning like a loon. Bruce’s face had gone, if at all possible, even more sour. Oliver, for his part, looks at peace with his place in reality and extremely judgemental of theirs. “That a ghost won’t possess you or any of your spawn to save their not-life. Just want to make sure you know that it says something.”
“It’s not that he wouldn’t, for me!” Dick lawyers immediately. “He just- couldn’t, he bounced off-,”
Oliver gives him a look. “That just makes you even weirder!” he says grandly. Dick shrinks, ever so slightly. “Where’s my new pal?”
“I’m sure if we start shit-talking the Hallmark employees they’ll show up,” Jason grunts. Something snaps above him, and Jason manages to throw himself out of the way a heartbeat before a fluorescent light fixture drops onto his skull. “Oi!”
Oliver looks down at the light, then back to Jason, loudly chewing a piece of gum. He puts more judgment into that action than seems humanly possible.
“They have terrible customer service,” the ghost says from directly behind Jason, making him jump. “And their displays are boring and lack charm.”
“No they aren’t,” Dick says immediately. Jason is beginning to think that he may just be hardwired to defend everything he’s ever had a hand in, instead of limited to Bruce and his crusade.
The ghost and Oliver look each other up and down. There’s a long pause of two people not quite sure where to go from here.
“Well, alright then,” Oliver says, spreading his palms. The hard flat line of Bruce’s mouth becomes harder and flatter. “C’mon, we can go to your new place. You can have some good wine, some food, get a real good last hurrah in-,”
“There won’t be any of that,” Bruce interrupts.
“Yes there will be,” Oliver says. “You’re a billionaire. Make it happen.”
“You are a billionaire.”
“In Star City, sure.”
“I wasn’t aware that wealth doesn’t extend across state lines.”
“Does it look like I’m carrying a wallet?” Oliver pinches at the fabric of his pants, his shirt- there’s not much to grab. “I couldn’t hide a cocktail napkin in this outfit.”
“It’s a nice color on you,” The ghost says, somewhat squeakily. “Well tailored.”
“All the better to see the goods,” Oliver says, tossing them a rakish wink. The ghost goes nearly invisible, which is probably the spectral equivalent of turning scarlet. “Positively roomy in here, you can just come on in and get comfortable-,”
“Did you forget that you are not single,” Bruce asks, though it’s more of a judgemental statement.
“She’ll think it’s funny,” Oliver replies, unconcerned.
“I just think you’re making it seem like they might not want to leave your body.”
“Who would?” Oliver asks of the world at large.
“I will not be the one to help you if you need an exorcism.”
“Don’t you worry,” Oliver tells Bruce. “This isn’t my first time.”
Dick puts both hands over his mouth in a way that implies he is trying not to scream, and then shoves the ghost towards Oliver. “Sorry,” he says once Oliver’s blank stare becomes several hard blinks. “That wasn’t nice. I just can’t be here doing this anymore. B, can we please for the love of God-,”
They both trail after Bruce and the ghost piloting Oliver’s meatsuit out the door, Bruce’s hand gripping their upper arm and steering them like they might make a break for it. They seem uninterested in anything other than staring with an expression of amazement at their fingers, bending and flexing in front of their face. Bruce, with a severely martyred expression, puts a hand on top of their head and pushes them into the front seat like a cop trying to corral an extremely stoned teenager. He crosses to the drivers side, gives them both a nod, then gets in and drives off.
Dick puts his head in his hands the second the Batmobile rounds the corner. They stand silently for a moment.
“Now why in God’s name,” Jason starts, “would you fuck John Constantine?”
“You know, he’s pretty fun,” Dick says, pressing his face further into his palms as he talks. “In a disaster kind of way, I mean. It’s like watching a clown car crash into a wall with a tunnel painted on it.”
“Dick,” Jason says. “He’s a fucking dog, man. And a wizard, which is even worse. You can do so much better than a wizard.”
“A magician,” Dick corrects. “He doesn’t like it when you call him a wizard.”
“Tough titties,” Jason says. “God, nobody wants to be a goddamn wizard these days, it’s all oh, I’m a sorcerer, I’m a mage, I’m a fucking enchantress-,”
“Wizard is gauche now.” Dick introjects. “Nobody with class wants to be associated with J. K. Rowling.”
“Wizards is wizards,” Jason continues, ignoring him. “She didn’t invent the goddamn concept, if he doesn’t wanna be a wizard he’s gotta stop doing wizard magicks. He doesn’t have a fruity little magician costume, he can’t be a magician.”
“He doesn’t have a blue and silver starred wizard robe either,” Dick points out, straightening up.
Jason examines this logic and finds it sound. “Point,” he says. “But he needs a black and white wand and a fruity costume if he wants to be a magician. Zatanna is a magician.”
“Zatanna is a sorceress.”
“Zatanna has a fruity costume, she’s a goddamn magician. If she wants to be a sorceress she can get a pointy hat and a staff with an orb.”
“Do the clothes make the magic user?” Dick sounds like he’s desperately trying not to laugh.
“No, mages have elemental control,” Jason says. “And enchantresses use enchanted objects.”
“You have fascinating opinions on magic morphology,” Dick tells him. “We should hack B’s batputer warlock wikipedia and edit it to match your views. I’ll be sure to tell Constantine your critiques on his fashion next time I see him.”
“In between rounds of making him sit on your strap, I’m sure,” Jason says with affable disgust, and Dick smacks him on the back of the head.
“Don’t say that! I don’t want to talk about that with you!” he complains, and Jason doesn’t either, but somebody has to verbally flog him for his bad choices, and sometimes Jason doesn’t know if Dick has anyone left in his life to do so. No matter. Jason is always willing to step up to the plate, no matter how uncomfortable the job.
“Was it weird that Constantine has fucked both you and Bruce?” Jason asks.
Dick screams an operatic high C with his mouth shut for a solid five seconds. Jason cackles, then says, “Oh shit!” and has to start ducking and running, because Dick’s whipped out one of his escrima sticks and is coming at him like a bullet train, and Jason has never quite figured out how to keep Dick from beating his ass.