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A long, deep breath escaped Nicholas Foster as he carefully sat down on the damp earth and positioned the back of his head against a fallen tree trunk. The headache that had been digging its claws into his temples all day had finally quieted down.
Finally.
His moment of relief wouldn’t last long, though, he knew that.
Behind him, everyone at the camp was asleep. The embers of the doused campfire were the only thing causing movement, faint flashes of shadow flickering alive and then disappearing. Earlier this night, Jodie had gathered all of them to tell scary stories as a means of passing the time until the other dads returned from Meth Bay. Only Grant and Terry had stuck around to listen, while Paeden and the twins broke off to do God-knows-what.
Usually, Nicholas would have been right there with his dad, huddled around the campfire, breath caught in his throat as he heard Jodie describe abandoned highways roads and the horrifying creatures he’d encountered there.
Instead, he’d been isolated at the fringes of the campsite, dealing with his headache.
He raised his eyes. Above him, the Faerûnian night sky stretched out into infinity, containing more stars and nebulas of colors than he had ever thought possible. Front and center was the waxing moon, a thousand times larger than it could be seen from Earth. The magnitude of it was awe-inspiring.
He sat there in silent wonder, staring up, enjoying the peace. The only sounds that reached his ears were the crackling embers and Walter’s distant snores. Walter was technically on watch duty, but not even thirty minutes after they had all said goodnight and crawled into their bedrolls, Nicholas had heard the frog man’s raspy breaths even out, and he’d gone limp in his chair.
Nicholas knew he was supposed to wake him up; everyone had a job to fulfill in this little self-functioning society they had been forced to make of themselves, and it seemed that it had befallen Nicholas and his father to remind everyone of this fact. Walter should be awake, watching for danger.
But Walter deserved the rest, and Nicholas– Nicholas liked to believe that he deserved a moment to himself, without concerned or suspicious eyes on him.
So here he was; splayed out on the dirt like a toddler who didn’t yet know just how many infectious diseases lifeforms in the soil could carry. At that thought, his fingers twitched for the tiny travel bottle of disinfectant he kept in his pocket at all times, but he forced himself to not lose grip of the moment.
Just breathe, Nicky.
Just breathe.
“Hey. Nerd.”
Fudge.
Poking his head into view, blocking the stars from his sight, was a boy, his age, his size, his––everything. His body floated a few inches off the ground, like gravity was only a suggestion to him.
“Anything interesting up there?” Nick Close said, arms crossed, voice flat as though the idea of getting an answer to his question already bored him.
“Stop pestering me.” Nicholas glared at him with the last scrapes of venom he could muster. Most of it had been used during the day, after the stranger had first popped up out of nowhere, and it turned out that Nicholas was the only one who could see him. Now his voice was just laced with exhaustion.
All day, Nick had been leaning over Nicholas’ shoulder, commenting on everything he did and said. Eventually, they had reached a short, brittle truce through the sheer virtue of mutual cold-shouldering.
Seemed like Nick’s infinitesimal attention span had ruined even that.
Nick Close was a ghost. Not the sheet-thrown-over-a-guy-during-Halloween kind of ghost, or the classic Victorian specter who had unfinished business on this wretched Earth. Instead, he just looked like a kid, whom Nicholas wouldn’t have thrown a second glance at if he had casually passed him on the street. Only when Nicholas paid close attention, he could see how colors seemed muted on Nick, like someone had messed with his vibrance settings, and how his form was slightly translucent.
As Nick had explained it, in those early moments back when there was still a faint flicker of hope that the two of them would ever be able to stand the other, he wasn’t dead, exactly. One moment, he’d been happy and corporeal, explaining the rules of Tichu to his friends ( his friends, he’d stressed, the tone a mix of accusatory and self-satisfied). Next thing he felt like lightning had struck him and his soul was being ripped out from him.
Nicholas had been there for the rest. For the double heart attack they both had when they first laid eyes on the other, for Nick’s strings of panicked curses, for the roaring questions which all boiled down to ‘where is my dad?’.
Suddenly being able to see a ghostly figure no one else noticed would have given Nicholas enough cause to start doubting his sanity. And it was only made worse, because they were––similar. Physically, at least. Their eyebrows had the same curve and their cheeks had the same dimples when they smiled or grimaced. They even had the part of their raven-black hair that never fell the right way. Nicholas hadn’t been able to look into a mirror since escaping Castle Ravenloft, so looking at the other boy for too long was an upsetting experience.
Like he’s my long-lost twin, was a sentence that had come to him unbidden. He’d immediately pushed that thought out of his mind, like a grenade he wasn’t sure the pin was pulled out of or not.
And yet, for all their shared features, Nicholas and Nick Close were nothing alike.
Whereas Nicholas attentively took care of his professional physical appearance, Nick looked like he’d been raised by social anarchist wolves. His hair was long and unkempt, streaked with blue and red in a haphazard way that made Nicholas suspect he had bleached and dyed it himself. He wore his leather biker jacket like it was the source of all his unearned confidence, always pulling up the pin-studded lapels or fixing his collar. Everything about him screamed ‘punk isn’t dead’, which was ironic, what with him being not-quite-alive and all.
Nick was everything he despised – a loud, arrogant, abrasive delinquent who mocked everything that was even slightly affiliated with authorities.
And unfortunately for Nicholas, he was a part of that category.
“I’m just trying to enjoy the quiet.” He kept his voice low, fearing the others would hear him and wake up. No doubt they already thought he was losing it, with his outbursts earlier this day.
Nick snorted. “What’s fun about quiet?”
“I can hear myself think, for starters.”
“Oh, because your thoughts must be sooo interesting.”
“I think about matters of import,” he snapped. “Your substance abuse probably makes that an unfamiliar concept to you.”
“‘Matters of import’. Pssh. Sure.” Nick’s feet drifted back to the damp earth, an inch of space between the solid surface and his incorporeal form remaining. He straightened his spine and neatly folded his hands in front of his chest, any remnant of his usual slouch disappearing. It was offensively clear who he was impersonating. “Oh gosh, I better remind everyone that if they get cavities because of a lack of dental hygiene, it’ll be their own fault!” he said, over-articulating every syllable. “Also make sure they know I floss twice a day, just for good measure.”
“Must you?” he said, pushing himself up to sit straight.
“Believe me, I’d rather talk to anyone else but you.” He broke the rigid posture and leaned back as though dropping his body onto a couch. Instead he kept horizontally levitating in the air, save for his head, which was tilted to make eye contact with his torture victim. “But hey, guess what? Right now, you’re all I’ve got. Lucky us.”
“Lucky us,” Nicholas repeated bitterly.
“Just gotta deal with it until my dad comes back,” he said, a low murmur, almost like he was talking to himself more than to Nicholas.
Despite the appealing thought of someone taking this juvenile delinquent off his back, Nicholas scoffed. His breath formed a little cloud barely visible in the moonlight. “As if Glenn has ever solved anything.”
Nick’s mouth quirked with poorly-disguised irritation. “Hey. My dad’s a fucking hero. Without him, we’d all still be getting our mojo sucked away by our granddads.”
Your granddads, Nicholas didn’t say.
“If Glenn really is as competent as you say he is, then why does no one even remember him having a kid?” He brushed some dirt off his polo, shooting it at Nick. “Forgive me for thinking that someone who manages to lose his own kid isn’t exactly the heroic type.”
The ease of the provocation probably meant that it was a low blow, but Nicholas had never been great at ‘dissing’ people. He had never gotten much practice at it. When people insulted him, he either ran towards a figure of authority to report the misconduct, or he turned his nose up and pretended the words didn’t cut deep.
Using Glenn Close’s name had an effect on Nick, and that gave Nicholas power. A little bit of control in this situation that was so hopelessly outside his jurisdiction.
Nick’s jaw thrust forward in indignation, fists clenched at his sides. Nicholas could practically see the steam coming off of him. When he got angry, his form became more opaque, more solid. Illuminated by what little light the midnight sky provided, he looked almost real. He gave him a withering glare, his lips parting.
Nicholas braced himself for Nick’s retaliation,
Instead, Nick closed his eyes and folded his arms over his chest. He drifted back, putting distance between them. His cheeks were still flushed with red, but his expression smoothed out.
“Nope.”
“Nope?” Nicholas echoed.
“Nope. We’re not doing this again. You don’t get to push my buttons like this. Find new material.”
He sounded tired too.
Nicholas didn’t react. He pulled his legs closer to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, a sorry substitute for an embrace. A deep sigh he forced out of his lungs got rid of some of the tenseness in his body, and he decided he was being unfair to Nick. If the hooligan could compartmentalize his fury away, then Nicholas should be able to do the same.
“Fine. Just leave me alone, then,” he said.
“Nah-ah. If I have to suffer you, you have to suffer me.”
“I never thought I’d say this, but I need an exorcism.”
“Sounds fun. Let me know how finding a Catholic priest goes in this fucked-up fairytale land.”
“Maybe I should ask the twins. There’s a fifty percent chance that someone tried to exorcize them at one point, they probably remember some of the procedure.”
Nick raised one eyebrow. On Nicholas’ face, it would be an expression of scorn or judgment, but Nick only exuded faint amusement, which was somehow even more infuriating.
“Narcolas, was that a joke you just made?”
“No,” he said grumpily.
“And here I thought you were physically incapable of that.”
“Please shut up.”
A shit-eating grin spread on Nicholas’ face. “Let me know when you’re planning to do your standup routine. I’ll get you flowers.”
“You are insufferable.”
Nick didn’t get a chance to reflexively retort. There was a flash of light, enveloping the entire campsite. Nicholas winced, the aftershock of the flare shuttering behind his eyes.
“I’m awake!” Walter bellowed, followed by the sound of him falling off the chair he’d fallen asleep on. “...oh, hi dudes. How’d you guys get here?”
There came a soft-spoken answer from a familiar voice. Nicholas peeked over the tree trunk, and spotted multiple shadowed figures.
“They’re back!” Nick said, eyes and smile growing large.
Not all of them were back.
Nick’s dad wasn’t coming back because he was in prison.
Figured.
Nicholas couldn’t say he was surprised. The natural consequences of one’s actions tended to be more disastrous the more of a schmuck one was. Glenn Close was one of the greatest schmucks of all, and Nicholas suspected that a dingy jail cell would have been the rocker’s fated destination one way or the other.
But of course, they had to bust him out. Because they were good people, and Glenn was one of the gang.
Sometimes being a good person was really, really tiring.
But he had to be, because aside from his dad, there wasn’t all that much upstanding, law-abiding morality to be found in the other adults that had accompanied them on this disastrous journey.
Normally, he could stand the other dads. But right now, as they were huddled up and speaking in hushed tones, he looked at them warily. They’d been weird to Jodie. Weirder than usual.
Nicholas had been chewing the inside of his mouth during their tense reunion, staying quiet even though Nick was screaming at him to tell them that the ghost of Nick Close was still among them, unperceived and unheard.
Instead of giving in to his pestering, Nicholas had strategically retreated. The dads were deciding on their game plan, all huddled together, seemingly unaware of how they had instinctively kept one spot open in their circle.
He could have joined Grant and Terry, he supposed. They were sitting on their bedrolls, discussing some movie they’d both watched. Attempting to strike up a conversation with Paeden or the twins had been a lost cause from the start, but sometimes he found himself pleasantly surprised with Terry’s intelligence or Grant’s dry observational humor. Maybe they weren’t exactly ‘friends’, but he could stand to be around them.
Nick’s presence kept him from walking over to them, though. So much for working on his social skills.
The twins were swinging Walter’s meal prep knives at the sun again, and Nicholas was happy to stay far away from them. The only one missing was Paeden, who was hiding in the bushes, spying on Nicholas. Nicholas had spotted him five minutes ago, but wasn’t risking a fight by calling him out.
Paeden somehow knew something was off with him. Maybe Nicholas should care more, but he didn’t.
Nick had graced the earth with the contact of his spectral feet once more, and was pacing in the periphery of Nicholas’ sight.
“Stop that,” he muttered under his breath, trying to make his lips move as little as possible. “You’re making me nervous.”
Nick flipped him off. He did pause, however, and stared at the adults as they were starting to scribble shapeless lines in the mud.
“We should tell them,” he said, for the billionth time.
Nicholas huffed, both at the ‘we’ and the ‘should’. Nick couldn’t just order him around like he was some puppet.
“They’re busy,” he said idly. His dad had taught him the importance of not interrupting someone in the midst of a conversation.
“Do you think they know?”
“Know what?”
“That I’m here, you idiot. That I’m supposed to be here.”
Instead of you.
Like Nicholas was the wrong variable in this situation.
“I was here first,” Nicholas pointed out, snappishly arguing against the insinuation, even though Nick had not even verbalized it. But it was clear as day on his face, and it stoked a new fire of acrimony inside Nicholas’s chest.
Nick flicked his hand at the wrist, like Nicholas’ existence was something that could be waved away.
“Depends on perspective, shithead. But that stuff doesn’t matter.”
Nicholas was inclined to disagree.
“Look, dad’s stuck ‘cuz he lost the trial. When they briefed me for testimonial, they told me he faced charges of being ‘a bad dad’. So, he loses – which is bullshit, he’s a great dad, the system is obviously fucked – and as a punishment, they undad him. Magic happens, and boom, we both got stuck in a timeline where this Jodie married my mother.”
He pretended to gag, which Nicholas did not appreciate.
“I don’t think that’s what happened.”
“Why not?! It’s the only explanation!”
“Because it’s not fair. Why would they make you a ghost, just because your father was an incapable pothead?”
Nick threw his arms up in the air. “That’s ‘cuz life’s not fair, you narc! It screws you over, and that's why you gotta learn how to fend for yourself.”
Nicholas was about to tear into him, to remind him that there was a thing called ‘justice’, and that fairness could be achieved simply by working hard instead of lazily hoping everything would just come to you, but he trailed off when he noticed that the dads had finished their talk and were breaking apart.
Jodie’s eyes immediately searched for him. When their gazes met, he smiled at him, the kind of smile that had always meant ‘we’re gonna get through this’.
Nicholas’ lips pulled into a half-formed, heartless smile as he tried to return the sentiment. It seemed to be convincing enough, because Jodie didn’t come over. Nicholas wasn’t sure if he was happy with that or not.
“There. They’re done. Now you gotta tell them,” Nick said again.
Nicholas sucked on his teeth. “What if he doesn’t believe me?”
“It’s Jodie you’re worried about?” Nick said without the inflection of a question. “He’s not gonna think you’re crazy.”
“Of course he won’t,” Nicholas said. “It’s just–” He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “My dad respects me. He treats me like an adult, because he knows I can handle the responsibility! If I– If he thinks that I don’t know how to do this, he’ll bench me, like you guys get benched all the time. Okay? I can’t– I should have this under control, but all of this is not–”
Nick interrupted him with a brisk, open-palmed slap to the face. His ghostly hand didn’t connect, but went through like a rush of cold wind. His neck automatically jerked a little to the side, even though there was no actual impact.
“What the heck, Nick?!” he said, louder than he had meant to. He rubbed his cheek, more in response to shock than any actual pain.
“Stay on track, dude,” Nick said, or at least, that’s what Nicholas thought he said.
At the same time, Nicholas almost received his second heart attack of the day when a lanky figure jumped out of the bushes, accompanied by a loud “HA!”
Paeden raced up to them, pumping his fist. “I KNEW IT!” He swung a pointed finger at Nicholas like it was a weapon. “Thought you could fool us, huh? Where is he? Where are you hiding him?” He reached his hands out and stumbled around, not noticing he was walking straight through Nick at least twice.
Nick was grinning from ear to ear, looking happier than Nicholas had ever seen him before. He clapped his hands with jolly delight. “Finally some good news,” he beamed.
“Nicky-boy, are you invisible? We can use my blood if we have to track you somehow!”
Nicholas moved in front of Paeden, hands at his side. “Stop that!” he said when the boy continued to claw at the air. “Paeden, you remember Nick?”
“Uuhh, yeah dude, course I remember Nick,” he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. He jutted out his chin. “You’re the one that needs to give some answers, my man.”
Nicholas groaned. “Okay, fine,” he hissed.
He could tell Paeden. While he was at it, maybe he should tell the other kids too. Their opinions of him didn’t matter anyway. There was only one person who did.
Baby steps. He’d get there. Eventually.
The trip to Meth Bay was uneventful. Jodie was at the front of the group, engaged in a very one-sided discussion with Ron. Every other minute, he glanced over his shoulder at Nicholas, who had stated he was sticking to the back of the group because he wanted to have some time to himself.
He was going over his conversation with the other kids in his mind, over and over again. The reveal had gone… well. Not perfect, but it had helped to have Paeden there, loathe as Nicholas was to admit it. Paeden had sworn they were going to get Nick back, no matter the cost.
Right now, the plan, mostly agreed upon by Nicholas and a bit less so by Nick, was to tell the adults after they had broken Glenn out. He could back them up. In the meantime, Paeden was ‘subtly dropping hints so their minds wouldn’t get blown up all at once’, whatever that meant.
“Hey. Nicholas,” Nick prompted, floating in front of him while keeping his pace.
Nick had been quiet too, insofar that was possible with him. During their walk, he’d been flitting back and forth between Paeden and the other dads, but every time he returned to Nicholas’ side. Probably because he needed some kind of reaction to his humorous barbs.
“What?”
“Knock knock.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Aw, come on! It’s a good one, I swear!”
“Who’s there,” he said, hating himself.
“Polo.”
“You’re going to make fun of me, aren’t you?”
“...no.”
“Nope. Not doing this.”
Nick groaned. “Jesus Christ, you’re a joyless bag of dicks.”
“Pardon?”
“ ‘Pardon?’ ” Nick mimicked mockingly. “I’m saying you’re more boring than a divorced stamp collector. Is there even anything you do for fun?”
Nicholas knew it was a trick question; whatever answer he’d give, Nick would tear it to shreds. Yet the need to defend himself was stronger than his ability to close his ears and turn away.
“Soccer’s fun,” he said, knowing Nick wasn’t going to be able to argue against that. “And–I love theme parks. Rollercoasters, carnival games, that kind of stuff.”
“Disney?” Nick asked, uncharacteristically non-hostile.
“Eh,” he shrugged. “Disney’s fine. I prefer Universal, though. I like getting the behind-the-scenes experience. My father bought us a season pass on my thirteenth birthday.”
Nick was floating on his back again, face to the sky, hands under his head like he was lounging in the sun. “Huh,” he said, which Nicholas took as encouragement to continue.
“I’m probably going to go to the one in Orlando next year. Jodie’s not really that big of a theme park guy. He gets nauseous on big rides. So he’s planning to stay in the resort, while mom and I are going to explore the park.”
There wasn’t a snippy remark, no ‘I didn’t know you and your dad didn’t come in a standard set’ or ‘so you’re a mommy’s boy too’, like Nicholas had come to expect from his double. Instead, Nick had frozen in the air. The colors in his face, already dimmer than they should be, had drained.
“...your mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Yours is alive?”
“...yours isn’t?”
The words left him before the meaning of what Nick had said sunk in. Nicholas’ hands shot to cover his mouth, eyes widening.
Nick’s face had gone blank, no emotion to be discerned.
“Shoot, I meant– I was just–”
“S’okay.”
“Sorry.”
Nick dipped his head in acknowledgment of the apology, then turned away to stare off into the distance.
Nicholas coughed to fill up the silence that hung heavy between them. His footsteps stalled as he implored for an answer to a question he didn’t know how to ask.
Nick blinked rapidly. His lips tightened into a thin line. “Look, I don’t really wanna talk about that.” He did not sound forlorn or embarrassed. Just annoyed, like this was a mild inconvenience.
Nicholas looked away too, uneasy. He rubbed the back of his neck. Emotions sat in his stomach like a meal from a shady diner, dense like lead and impossible to identify.
It was the first time that he felt anything but resentment and frustration with his unwelcome partner. Frustration, he could handle. Nicholas spent much of his life in a perpetual state of annoyance, mentally sneering at the countless people he came across who just couldn’t stop being so infuriatingly selfish for one day.
Sympathy was harder. It would mean opening a little door that led to a long hallway he didn’t know the end of. If Nick was worthy of sympathy, then maybe he was worthy of other things too.
In the end, long after their conversation had finished, he settled on pity. Pity carried enough negative connotations for its compassion not to bother him.
Nick wordlessly flew off to listen in on the song Ron was softly singing to himself, not looking back. Nicholas was left behind, trying to imagine a world that did not have Morgan Freeman in it.
Playing the role of Nick’s interpreter, Nicholas had already spoken more to Paeden than he had during the entire journey they’d had behind them. The two of them shared inside jokes that made both boys roar with laughter, never clarifying anything to Nicholas. It only stung a little bit.
He mindlessly and mechanically repeated whatever Nick wanted said to his buddy, trying to emotionally distance himself from the obscenities by rationalizing that they weren’t really his words.
They were deep into a conversation that Nicholas was faintly aware of contained high-speed car chases, diamonds, and the other kids, when something got through his attention filter.
“It’s not like that,” he repeated back, monotonous. “Narcolas is the complete opposite of– hey, can you guys stop calling me that?”
“Just finish the sentence,” Paeden complained, shaking his arm.
Nicholas had already forgotten what Nick had said, not bothering to store it anywhere other than the most low-effort part of his short-term memory. “What are you even talking about?” he asked.
“Paeden was just pitching ideas for a heist we could commit after I get my body back,” Nick explained at the same time as Paeden said: “Top secret stuff!”, as if Nicholas hadn’t been mediating the whole conversation.
“Why a heist?” Nicholas said, ignoring Paeden, who huffed.
“Uh, ‘cuz we can,” Paeden said. “And ‘cuz it's cool as balls.”
“Right before Paeden went to deal with Henry’s anchorthingie, I was telling him about Ocean’s Eleven.”
“They sound like a bunch of amateurs to me,” Paeden scoffed. Nicholas suspected he hadn’t quite grasped the concept of movies yet. “I mean, who needs eleven people to rob some diamonds? Right, Nicky?” He held his fist out for a fistbump, which Nick happily gave him, although Paeden couldn’t feel it.
“Okay, but what do you want to steal?” asked Nicholas. “I haven’t seen a lot of diamond banks in Faerun.” That’s what he guessed the plot of Ocean’s 11 was about, at least. He hadn’t actually seen the movie.
“That’s not important!” Paeden rolled his eyes and shared a look with Nick, though his gaze was actually a couple feet too far to the left. “What matters is that we can totally pull it off and it’ll be epic. You can even play a role too, if you’re not gonna be a narc about it.”
Nicholas wanted to argue that it wasn’t entirely fair to call him a ‘narc’ when Paeden was literally planning a theft, but the boy was much too busy fitting Nicholas into his illusionary heist plans.
Before Nicholas could admit that he’d never seen it, Paeden continued:
“Yeah, and our heist is gonna be even cooler than that! Nobody can stop Paeden’s six! Or…” He scrunched up his nose, clearly doing the math in his head. “Seven, I guess. You can be a part of the team. But only if you’re not gonna be a narc about it, right Nicky?”
“I don’t know if he’s physically capable of that,” Nick jeered, which Nicholas did not feel the need to repeat out loud. Paeden didn’t wait for a reply; he was too busy fitting Nicholas into his illusionary heist plans.
“You can give us a great alibi for my man Nick’s whereabouts at the time of the crime. Twin swap! It’s a classic.”
“Don’t we already have a pair of real twins?” He mentally scolded himself for using ‘we’; as if he’d ever partake in a heist planned and designed by an eight-year-old. Or any heist, for that matter.
“Nah, ‘cuz they gotta be in there with us when we crack the safe.”
That made sense at least. Out of all of them, the twins definitely had the most criminal tendencies. Even counting Nick.
“Don’t think an alibi swap would work,” Nick mused. “Like anyone would mistake me for that loser.”
Nicholas was inclined to agree, although he pointedly left out Nick’s insult when interpreting, which earned him an incorporeal push from Nick. Paeden, however, seemed enamored with the idea.
“It totally would, though! It’s so obvious that no one would ever see it coming. But only when no one knows you’re brothers, so we gotta keep that under the wraps.”
“We’re not brothers,” Nicholas interjected, like that hadn’t been totally obvious.
“For so many reasons,” Nick agreed.
“Totally different wavelengths, us.”
“Yeah! He hates me, I hate him.”
“Not a great fit.”
Paeden narrowed his eyes. Before he could say anything though, Darryl turned around and yelled if the kid wanted a piggyback ride. Paeden enthusiastically agreed, seemingly already bored with their conversation. He ran off, well outside of earshot.
Nicholas still waited a long and awkward minute before he scraped his throat and lowered his voice.
“...I don’t hate you, by the way. That’s not–” He bit his lip, not even sure where he was going with this. “My father always told me ‘hate’ is too big a word for me to use. You just get on my nerves.”
Nick, who had been floating horizontally in front of him, turned around and looked at him upside down. He popped his cheeks, then said: “Feeling’s mutual.”
“The feeling that you don’t hate me, or that I get on your nerves?”
“Yeah.”
‘I don’t hate you’ wasn’t exactly something a therapist would be proud of, but it was a first step. Towards what, Nicholas had no clue, but at least they’d taken it.
Maybe the road ahead of them wasn’t going to be so terrible after all.
“That pin you’re wearing…”
Nick stopped doing pointless somersaults mid-air at the sound of Nicholas’ voice. His eyes traced down his lapels. “Slipknot, you mean?” he said, tapping a button of a red tribal ‘S’. “They’re pretty good. Didn’t think you’d heard of them.”
“I haven’t,” Nicholas confirmed. He mostly listened to classical music, but he had a strong feeling that he was only going to get made fun of if he mentioned this to Nick. “I meant the other one.”
He vaguely waved at the button with the pleasantly pastel pink, white and blue stripes, averting his eyes like it was something too personal to look at directly.
“Oh, the trans pride one. What about it?”
When Nicholas didn’t immediately answer, an almost imperceptible crease formed between Nick’s brows. His mouth parted, but he seemed unsure of how to react to Nicholas’ sudden hesitancy. Nicholas could almost see the gears in his head turning as he tried to interpret it.
“You’re… not?”
“No, no, I am,” Nicholas said quickly. “Ha, that would be wild. Ah–”
“Right,” Nick drawled. “So, why are you looking at me like I’ve just come out to you?”
Nicholas bit the inside of his cheek and rested his head against the sticky wood exterior of the Bull-E-Wugs they were waiting at. Inside, the adults were trying to gather intel on the prison. Paeden was goofing around, scouring the perimeter while still in his ‘Sly Sylvester’ persona.
So once again, it was just the two of them, and Nicholas had taken the chance to ask something that had been on his mind the second he met Nick. Now he wished he never had, immediate regret thick inside his throat, pulling at his vocal cords.
Nick was still waiting for a reply, his expression one of confusion and curiosity.
Nicholas didn’t want this to be awkward. He wished he could just have a normal conversation about this, about what that flag stood for and what it meant to him, because if anyone in the world would understand this part of him, it was Nick.
Jeez, that was scary. The idea that he and Nick could understand each other in a way no one else could.
Slippery slope.
“I was just– wondering. Why you wear the pin. Doesn’t that announce it to everyone?”
“Pretty much. Kinda the goal. Their problem if they’ve got a problem with it.”
“Isn’t that, I don’t know, a little dangerous?”
Nick gave him a long, indecipherable look. “Like I said, if they don’t like it, that’s on them. If they’re brave enough to say so to my face, that’s confrontational and I respect that, but they’ll still get a taste of my knuckles.”
The answer, powerful in its wholehearted conviction, pulled at a string deep inside Nicholas’ chest.
“Oh,” was all he managed in response. “...I don’t really talk about this a lot,” he eventually added.
Nicholas huffed, but this time without scorn. “Lemme guess. The whole ‘out and proud’ thing isn’t really your style.”
“Evidently,” he said dryly. “So… you do, then?”
“I talk about it with my dad, sure, and he thinks it’s chill. He doesn’t really get it though. This guy here,” he said, tapping the pin like it was a medal of honor, “makes it so I can find the people who do. It shows ‘em I’m safe, or one of them. Shows ‘em they can talk to me. And they often do.”
“Is that… nice?”
“It’s the best,” Nick said, flashing a toothy grin at him, which was more genuine than Nicholas had ever seen directed at him. “A whole world opens up for ya. Nothing’s just self-contained. You should give it a try. Not sayin’ you need to go the full ‘blue hair and pronouns’ route, but, no one ever got hurt by being a bit more openly proud of themselves.” He shrugged. “Or, y’know, don’t. You pass well enough. Point is, you can be whoever the fuck you want to be – even if that’s a spineless narc, I guess.”
“Wow. Thanks.”
“Welcome,” Nick grinned, tipping an imaginary hat.
Nicholas pursed his lips. “Maybe I will,” he said slowly. “I don’t think I could do the whole– ‘punch anyone who looks at me wrong’ thing. But… maybe.”
“Chill,” Nick said. “Let me know if anyone’s being a dick about that. I’ll be your personal transphobe fighting machine.” He sucked on his teeth as he mused on the possibility of that statement, then added: “Or I’ll haunt them, I guess. I’ll figure this whole ghost-thing out, start scribbling with blood on their walls. Could be fun.”
Nicholas watched him out of the corner of his eye, waiting for the other shoe to drop; for the insult to come, or for him to declare it a joke and take it all back.
It didn’t come. Nick had said something nice to him, and hadn’t immediately undermined it with ridicule.
Nicholas feared opening his mouth would ruin that, so he just nodded, the corners of his mouth tugged slightly upwards in a tiny smile.
Book Castle was not like the San Dimas public library where Nicholas spent much of his time doing his homework. It was a mind-warping maze of bookcases that had seemingly no end. The stale air here smelled of ground coffee beans and mildew, overwhelming his senses. Despite how abandoned it was, this place felt alive, and not in a good way. If there were any actual librarians, Nicholas wouldn’t want to meet them.
He and Nick were in a study room, every inch of the walls covered in bookshelves. Dad had told him to wait here for a minute, while he figured out the layout of this place and checked for any potential threats.
He’d been gone for a pretty long time now.
Nicholas was paging through books, mostly to pass the time and to avoid getting a nervous breakdown. The idea that maybe somewhere in here he could find something about ghosts and reality magic had popped up in his head. Maybe he’d be successful, if there was any kind of shelf categorization system here. Alas.
He glanced at his companion, whose face was one of utter concentration.
“What are you doing?”
“Dunno. Poltergeist shit.” He was focused on a beautiful fountain pen that lay still on a dark wooden reading table, waving his hands in a flashy way, like a conductor guiding an orchestra. To no avail. “Still trying to master this whole being dead thing.”
Nicholas watched him make crazy eyes at the pen on the table for another full minute, expression contorting like he had indigestion. Nothing happened.
“It’s going great, I see.”
Nick ignored the dripping sarcasm. “Just need practice. See, I was thinking, maybe I could help the team out, while still like this. Wouldn’t it be rad if I could, like, listen in to secret conversations, and then report them back to you? Omega Daddies ain’t got shit on this tag team!”
“That could be dangerous.”
Nick huffed through his nose. “Danger is my middle name.”
Nicolas rolled his eyes, shifting his attention to the next shelf.
Nick wasn’t about to let the conversation lull. “It actually is, F-Y-I. When I changed my name I asked dad if I could make ‘danger’ my middle name.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Ridiculously cool,” Nick winked. “What about you? Also got named after your grandma?”
“No, I never had one. A middle name, I mean. And, I guess also a grandma,” he said. “Dad can only vaguely remember his mother, I think she died or something. And Mom got kicked out by her parents when she was a teenager.”
“Really?” Nick asked. “...I didn’t know that.”
“I didn’t either, until they tried to get back in touch with her two years ago. It was this whole thing.”
Nick hummed non-committedly and stayed quiet for a minute. Nicholas had no urge to break the silence. Only when Nick broke it again did he realize he had kinda missed the sound of his voice.
“Can you humor me?”
“What is it?”
“Can you… Can you tell me a little bit about mom?”
Nicholas stole a sideways glance. Nick was pointedly not looking at him, instead seeming very interested in the frayed edges of his left sleeve.
“What do you want to know?”
“Fuck, I don’t know. Just––talk, ‘kay?” He kicked at the foot of a big reading table in the middle of the room. His foot went straight through. “Fucking hate the quiet,” he mumbled.
Nicholas wetted his lips in an attempt to stall for time before he had to open his mouth. There was so much to talk about, and he wasn’t sure where to start. So he just said the first thing that came to his mind.
“Well, she– she dances to everything. EDM, rock, jazz– it doesn’t matter to her. She always says that if something has a beat she can feel in her bones, then she can’t stop her bones from moving.” He chuckled softly. “When she does it at home, it’s kinda fun, but she does it everywhere. Every time we go to a grocery store together, I want the earth to swallow me whole.”
“Hah.”
“And, she’s cool. Like dad. Or, well, in a different way than dad,” he quickly added, knowing Nick didn’t consider Jodie cool in the slightest. “Remember how children would always compare their dads to each other? I did that a lot.”
“Oh my god, you’re definitely one of those bitchy kids that pulls the ‘my dad’s a cop’-card all the time,” Nick said, but there was no bite to it.
“I used to,” Nicholas admitted. “But it wasn’t just dad whom I threatened them with. Anyone who’s ever seen mom, knows not to mess with her. She always wears these combat boots– completely black, thick soles, and–”
“Steel-tipped noses,” Nick said. He had turned his face away, and Nicholas couldn’t see his expression. “Yeah. We, ah– we still have a pair like that. Dad never got rid of them.”
Nicholas pictured his mom’s boots, unworn for years, gathering dust on their usual spot next to the coat rack. Like a shrine.
He swallowed around the lump in his throat, and forced his voice to continue without quivering.
“She just has this–air about her. When mom says something will be okay, you have no choice but to believe her. I sometimes struggle with– panicattacks –” he said, his voice getting caught at that admission, and rapidly continued before Nick could get a word in, “and mom just has this way of calming me down.”
He didn’t have the words to describe their quiet routine to Nick, but if he closed his eyes he could imagine himself in such a moment; his back pressed against the wall he’d collapsed against, breathing into a paper bag, while his mom had one arm wrapped around his shoulders and gently stroked the top of his spine with her index finger, a featherlight touch that grounded him from the spiral that threatened to drag him down.
“I miss her,” Nicholas said, like a final breath.
Nick made a sound between a grunt and a sob.
“...Are you crying?” Nicholas asked incredulously.
“No,” Nick mumbled, tossing Nicholas a glare that was free from tears, but wasn’t especially mean-spirited either. “It’s just–unfair,” he said. His hands were balled into fists, but he didn’t get less translucent. “Why do you get to keep her? Why do I–” He choked on his own voice, and this time the strangled noise he made was very much a sob. “What did I do wrong?”
Nicholas’ arm was moving before his brain caught on to what it was doing. He reached out to pat Nick’s shoulder. He took in a sharp inhale of breath when his hand passed directly through his arm. His incorporeal form was the same temperature as ocean water.
Nick jerked his head, finally facing him again. Two tears were sliding down his cheeks, and his lips trembled dangerously as he fought to keep his expression neutral. He eyed Nicholas from the side. “What are you doing?”
“Comforting you?” he said hesitantly, pulling his hand back and flexing his cold fingers at his side. In actuality, he had no idea what he was doing.
Nick just stared at him, not saying anything, so Nicholas filled the silence.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said, aware that it was the standard response he was supposed to say, but unable to come up with anything more meaningful. “It’s like you said. Life is not fair. Bad things… bad things don’t always happen for a reason.”
He cringed at that. He might as well have said: ‘yeah dude, it sucks’. He was completely out of his depth. How sad was it, that he didn’t even know how to emotionally connect with his genetic copy.
Nick chuckled to himself. Nicholas didn’t think he would ever understand the joke. He wiped the tears away with his thumb and straightened his shoulders.
“ Whoof. That was more emoting than I usually do in a year,” he said nonchalantly, fixing his hair even though it hadn’t been any messier than it usually was.
Nicholas didn’t move away. Nick turned towards him, seemingly a little awkward about the sudden display of affection, and held out his arm.
For a strange moment, Nicholas thought that Nick was going to hug him, but then he felt Nick’s ghostly hand cover his face. His eyes blinked against the cold sensation on his skin.
“...what are you doing?” he said, fighting off the urge to pull away.
“...ever seen Face/Off?”
“No.”
“Oh. Yeah, then that doesn’t make a lot of sense.” Without further explanation, he drifted to the floor and crossed his legs. He ran his hands over the Times New Roman letters printed on the cashmere carpet. “You should totally watch it, though. Fantastic movie. As soon as we get home, I’ll give you my list of recs. You need some culture.”
Nicholas slid down the wall, sitting down criss-cross applesauce opposite of him. “There’s also a new Minions movie coming out.”
Nick blinked. “I love Minions.”
“Well, yes. Of course you do. They’re the best.”
“Look at me,” Nick said, voice suddenly gravely serious. “On a scale from one to ten, how normal are you about minions?”
Before Nicholas could open his mouth, Nick leaned forward, their faces only inches apart, and cut in again. “No need to downplay it. I am you. I’ve seen what you’ve seen. Don’t bullshit me here, Foster.”
Nicholas waited with answering until Nick had left his personal space again. He smiled sheepishly. “I love them. Unironically. I spent almost seventy dollars on a Stuart statue last summer. My one and only impulse buy, but I don’t regret it.”
Nick jerked his chin up in a satisfied way. “Good. Then I trust you enough to let you watch it with me in the theater. That’s a great compliment, b-t-dubs. I don’t even watch those movies with dad.”
“Well. I’m honored.”
“As you should.”
Nicholas looked down at his hands, mind wandering to a dark corner he’d been trying to ignore, labeled What Comes Next. “You really think we’ll both be here at the end?”
Nick was talking about the future like it included both of them, together. But the option that their timelines would be separated was just as likely, and if that was the case, they’d never see each other again.
Or, what if– what if Nicholas was the mistake. What if the universe corrected itself and he ’d be erased from everyone’s minds, like Nick was. What if his own father would not even remember him.
Nick just scoffed. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a buzzkill and a pessimist?”
The teasing – and it was teasing, not contempt – brought him back to reality, away from the cliff edge that was all the what-if s.
“Isn’t that what I’ve got you for?”
“Glad to be of service,” Nick grinned. He blew a raspberry, seeming to mull over Nicholas’ words. “Y’know what your problem is? You think too much.”
“Yeah, well,” Nicholas said with a shrug, which wasn’t a very solid defense.
“What happens next is, things are gonna fall into place, and I’m gonna get my body and my life back. Then we go home, and I get to show you the masterworks of cinema and if you’re annoying enough about it I’ll watch some of your copaganda movies.”
Nicholas studied his determined features, and remembered what he had said about his mom. When mom says something will be okay, you have no choice but to believe her.
“And Minions?”
“Well, I did say ‘masterworks of cinema’, didn’t I?”
Nicholas chuckled. “Your taste might be better than I thought.”
“See?” Nick said brightly. “Not that different, you and I.”
“You sound like a cartoon supervillain.”
“That’s what makes it fun.”
They sat in companionable silence for a bit, satisfied with the other’s presence.
Not that different, Nicholas thought.
And damn him, he knew it in his heart to be true.
Well. He had always secretly wanted a brother. Maybe Nick did too. Maybe there was a future in store for them in which he could introduce Nick to his mom, in which Nicholas would come out of his shell more to engage with communities of people like him.
Maybe.
For now, he was just happy to sit with the ghost of the boy he could have been.