Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Fun Ghoul watched, mesmerized,  as the smoke died out from his discarded cigarette butt. He had briefly quit a long time ago, but that was in the past: the nicotine had kept him company these last three years. Smoking was objectively bad but, whatever, he would only live once anyway and killjoys were known to die young. Chances were that he’d get itself dusted before lung cancer could even introduce itself.

He sighed heavily, pushing himself off of the railing it had been leaned against. The girls would get back soon and Ghoul didn’t want them to find it out smoking. Ever since they’d found out it was an old addiction that had resurfaced rather than a newfound thing, they’d been more concerned about its health or something. Ghoul himself wasn’t so worried: he’d always been prone to addiction anyway. Cigarettes were merely a replacement for something much worse he’d already walked away from.

Anyway, he didn't want the girls to worry about him too much, so he made sure not to smoke next to them too often. They were supposed to come back soon. Sure enough, he heard the silly little bell Jackie—short for Jack o’ Lantern—had put up on the door about a year ago jingle a few minutes later, announcing the three girls’ arrival.

Ghoul had run with Jackie, Sparks and Marigold for the last three years, and he would give up its entire life for them. The three of them had pretty much always been a crew. Ghoul was their newest addition. He had saved them from Dracs when back he had been going solo. It had only planned to stick with them while Marigold—who’d broken her leg in the altercation—healed, but he’d ended up joining their crew entirely.

While he absolutely loved them, he didn’t always feel like one of them. For starters, they were a whole two to three years younger and not his first crew, but it wasn’t an overwhelming feeling, either. He didn’t really think about it, most of the time. His doubts only ever got the chance to resurface when it was alone.

“Have you been smoking?” Jackie inquired, sniffing suspiciously. “Smells like smoke.”

Ghoul rolled its eyes. “Hello to you too.”

She laughed. “Hi, Ghoul.”

“Hi grandpa,” Sparkx said, because she was a little shit. And Ghoul said that with all the love in its heart.

“Fuck off. How was your day?” he asked the other two.

The three of them had gone on a ‘girl’s night out’, as they’d called it, which really meant that they’d blown shit up with the explosives Ghoul had made for them. As for Ghoul itself? He was more than happy to cheer them on from the sidelines. He’d caused enough carnage in its youth to last a lifetime anyway. Besides, it wasn’t missing out on any fun: the four of them did missions together fairly often. 

“We ran into another crew!” Marigold exclaimed.

Sparks barked out a laugh: “Oh, yeah, she found her soulmate.”

“She was so hot,” Marigold sighed dreamily. “It had to be the Phoenix Witch’s doing. I mean, what are the odds that we’d both target the same building, on the same day, at the same time? Fate, I’m telling you!”

“Sure,” Sparx laughed.

Jackie punched them. “I think it’s great! They’re going on a date next week!”

Ghoul smiled fondly. “Ah, youth. Brings me all the way back.”

Sparx snorted. “Please. I bet you’ve never even kissed a dude.”

It gasped, offended. What sort of preposterous rumor were they spreading? “I’ve dated!”

“ Sure .”

“Come on, let’s not tease Ghoul,” Marigold reprimanded. It was about to thank her when she added, “we can’t all have a passionate love life like mine.”

Huh. Never mind the thanks.

“Passion can be good,” Ghoul said to no one in particular. Well, maybe a bit more to Marigold than the others seeing as she was the only one currently dating, but anyone could learn from its past mistakes, “but don’t underestimate stability, either.”

“Sometimes I forget you’re boring, but then you start talking and, all of a sudden, I remember.”

“Shut up, Sparx.”

As corny as it sounded, they shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss his advice, Ghoul thought. Well, whatever. It wasn’t exactly Sparx’s fault either. He’d never really offered anything from his life before them. Not to her, not to anyone. The wound was still raw when he’d met his current crew, and the socially acceptable window of time to tell them all about it had closed many years ago. Bringing it up now would only be messy. Maybe one day, though Ghoul doubted it. To this day, he still tried to avoid thinking about it. That, and the wound wasn’t exactly healed. Maybe some bruises weren’t meant to heal.

Marigold’s excited voice pulled him from his musings. She was talking about the girl she’d met today, and Ghoul kind of felt bad for zoning out in what he guessed was the middle of her speech. It genuinely hadn’t noticed she’d started talking again. “Did you know that she’s met Party Poison?”

Ghoul instantly regretted zoning back in, choking on nothing and passing it off as a cough. Yep, the wound was very much still raw.

Marigold cut herself off, looking its way with concern. “Everything alright there?  You look a little pale.”

He waved it off. “I’m fine. You were saying?”

She was luckily too excited about the girl to pay too much attention to him, and dove back into the story. “Yeah, Party Poison! Happened a few months ago. They wouldn’t remember her or anything, but still! That’s one hell of a brag.”

Ghoul subtly averted its eyes while Sparx audibly groaned. “Party Poison? Please, anyone could do what they do!”

Ghoul bit the inside of its cheek, but didn’t comment. He tried not to. Not when it came to Party.

“You’re just jealous,” Jackie teased. “They’re the most famous killjoy in the Zones for a good reason and you know it.”

“Whatever,” Sparx said, crossing her arms. Not that he’d ever tell her, but Ghoul kind of agreed. Well, partly. Not everyone could do like them, but Party wasn’t the one-killjoy-show people perceived them to be. They had a whole crew behind them, but Jet and Kobra rarely got any credit. It was always Party Poison or the Fabulous Four, but never the others separately. And people didn’t really say the Fab Four anymore. It was… outdated, considering that the group was down to three. 

But Ghoul wasn’t going to think about that right now, he reminded himself. He was going to listen to Marigold’s story and pretend like it wasn’t hitching for another cigarette.

“ As I was saying ,  she even got to shake their hand. You know what I would give to have been in her position?”

Moments when his friends—Sparkx nonwithstading—geeked out over Party were always the worst because Ghoul had to stand there and nod awkwardly. It almost made him want to tell them everything . Almost.

Besides, he didn’t want to sour the mood. And it knew how much Marigold looked up to them. Being trans as well, seeing them kicking ass and taking names meant a lot to her, and Ghoul would never want to take that away. Her happiness mattered more to him than his comfort.

He sometimes wished he were a little more like them. A little less estranged Fab Four, and a little more regular killjoy. Maybe then it’d enjoy geeking out over Party Poison. But whatever: one couldn’t change their past no matter how bitter. One could only ever hope for the hurt to go away. And Ghoul? Ghoul was still hoping.

Marigold then proceeded to explain in detail the date she’d planned in the car ride back home. Right, Ghoul was supposed to listen. “Hey, Ghoul, do you think you could fuck around with my arm and see if it can shoot out flowers or something?”

Sparks barked out a laugh. “What do you mean, fucking flowers? Where are you going to find flowers in the fucking desert? Only flowers you’ll find are us pansies!”

Jackie shook her head. “Really?” She then turned to Marigold. “I can help you craft paper flowers or something like that, don’t mind Sparx.”

Ghoul smiled. “And I’ll see what I can do with the arm.”

He’d built her a prosthetic, upgrading it over the years. It now had its own ray gun built into, so Ghoul guessed a flower shooter shouldn’t be too hard to come up with.

“You’re the best!” she exclaimed, flinging her arms around him, enveloping him in a hug he couldn’t escape. He wasn’t stronger than its own creation, it seemed.

“Actually, I’ll go work on it right now,” he told her. She reluctantly let him go, and he ruffled her hair in return. “No need for the arm,” he thought to add before she took it off.

Working on flower shooter prototypes would take its mind off of the Fab Four, hopefully.

-

He’d been so terribly wrong: not having the girls there as a distraction only meant there was no one present to save it from itself. 

It kind of made sense that he couldn’t get the Fab Four out of his mind, Ghoul reasoned as a way to make itself feel better. While, yes, three years seemed like a lot of time apart, it was nothing compared to the lifetime he’d spent with the Fabulous Four. Before they’d parted ways, he’d known the siblings for ten years, and Jet for eighteen. While the former had joined them later on, he’d quite literally known Jet his entire life. It did miss all of them, from time to time—who was he kidding, more often than not—but a clean cut had been the only way he’d been able to envisage. Anything else would’ve been too painful.

Speaking of pain. A sharp sensation on his finger let him know he’d just prickled it. A rookie mistake, really. Its head really wasn’t in it. He set the tools down. Perhaps it was best to stop for the time being.

He still longed for a cigarette, but he really was trying not to smoke too much, so he instead indulged in something it hadn’t in a long time. As silently as he could, he opened the toolshed’s bottom drawer and delicately took the old photograph hidden away in the darkness. He hadn’t looked at it in years, and honestly, he wasn’t quite sure why he was holding it right now.

The image was still facing away from him, and it didn’t know if it was strong enough to turn it around. Or maybe not turning it around was the right thing to do. Ghoul was an addict at heart, and this was an addiction he absolutely should not dive back into. He wasn’t equipped to swim back up. But his brain still itched for it, so he turned the picture around before rationality could stop it.

For a picture over ten years old, it was surprisingly in a good condition. Probably because it was Ghoul’s most prized possession. He’d cherished it from the moment it had slipped out of the camera. Ghoul softly ran its fingers across the polaroid.

It wasn’t much. It was only eight year-old Ghoul doing peace signs, that fucking barrette he’d worn for years and years when he was a kid proudly holding his hair back and ten year-old Party doing those fucking jazz hands every killjoy now fawned over. Both of them were smiling like idiots, overjoyed over the camera they’d found. Ghoul remembered that camera. The two of them had had their fun with it, and then they’d grown bored of it. Jet had kept it, actually, and, the last time it had seen her, she still had it and regularly snapped pictures of the crew when she thought they weren’t looking.

Ghoul bit back a bitter chuckle. He fucking missed her. 

He looked back at the picture, sorrow creeping its way around his heart. Maybe the cigarette would’ve been a better idea. It certainly would’ve felt better. Looking at the photograph opened a can of worms. A can of worms Ghoul couldn’t walk away from, a morbid obsession freezing him in place.

Maybe it wasn’t healthy. No, it definitely wasn’t healthy. Reminiscing was dangerous, because he only longed for the good parts and forgot to remember the worst. Leaving the Fab Four three years ago had been a long time coming, back then. His breakup with Party had been a long time coming. They would hurt each other over and over again and then use kisses as flimsy excuses. Even though it had torn its heart apart, Ghoul had removed itself from the equation. He’d left a part of himself in that dingy diner, but that way his friends stayed whole. He was okay hurting as long as they could all be happy.

He spared one last glance at the picture. He moved to tuck it back into its designated drawer but, before he could change its mind, it slipped it into its jacket pocket.

He was okay hurting. After all, Ghoul was addicted to all sorts of things he shouldn’t.

Chapter Text

3 years ago

“Yo, did you hear that Party Poison’s not with their boyfriend anymore?” Marigold asked, barging into the common room.

Ghoul tinkered with his bundle of parts and wires harder. It did not need to hear this gossip. No, he was perfectly fine trying to turn the scraps into a bomb of some kind. It was therapeutic, or something.

“Is that the kid that built the explosives?” Sparx asked, and Ghoul froze, setting down its tools as quietly as possible. Not that it mattered: the girls weren’t paying him any mind, too focussed on the gossip at hand.

“Yeah,” Marigold confirmed. “I hear he’s not even in their crew anymore.” She then waggled her eyebrows. “Means I got a chance!”

Sparx guffawed. “Oh, I’m sure Party Poison is waiting for you to sweep them off their feet,” they mocked.

“Hey!”

“Must have been a pretty bad breakup for him to leave the Fabulous Four,” Jackie mused, and the other two hummed pensively.

She didn’t have a clue how right she was, Ghoul thought, but chose not to voice it. No, it was too busy fighting off the urge to lock himself in an isolated room and cry. Fucking pathethic. He really needed to get a grip. Party’s name was the most spoken in the Zones, and by far. Ghoul couldn’t break down every time he heard it, or he might just never be sane ever again.

“Maybe he got dusted.”

“Sparx!”

“What? Killjoys don’t just disappear,” they said, and Jackie shook her head disapprovingly. Seeing her friend’s expression, Sparx groaned and said, “Come on, tell her, Ghoul!”

Careful not to look at any of them, he shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.”

In all honesty, it was surprised it had taken that much time for the news to reach Marigold, the self-proclaimed expert on all things Party Poison. Ghoul would have found her obsession with its ex funny if it didn’t hurt so much. 

Ghoul had joined the three girls a few months ago, which meant that Marigold was a month and a half more than a few months ago late to hearing about the breakup. The info going public probably meant that Party had moved on. Great. Ghoul was happy for them, genuinely. Really. He wasn’t bothered by it, not at all. So what if a few months and a month and a half was a short amount of time to get over a four year relationship? It wasn’t like Ghoul cared.

No, Ghoul was doing just fine.

“Have you ever met them?” Marigold inquired, and Ghoul looked at her quizzically, not even bothering to try to hide that it had been completely out of the conversation loop. “Party Poison.”

“No,” it replied. Fast. Too fast, actually.

Sparx brought her hand to their chest. “Ah, a man after my own heart. Finally someone else who’s not fucking obsessed with Party Poison.”

Yeah. Ghoul totally absolutely wasn’t obsessed with Party Poison. Definitely not. Party who?

Ghoul bit the inside of its cheek. He wanted a fucking cigarette, but no, he’d stopped smoking years ago. He mentally cursed past Ghoul. So inconsiderate of it not to think of future—or current, whatever—Ghoul’s fucked up mental state.

“Are you okay?” Jackie asked, and Ghoul winced because he never could hide anything from her. She’d only known him for a handful of months and it seemed she’d already gotten him all figured out. It truly was a miracle that she hadn’t caught onto its past. He supposed it was a matter of yet.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m alright. I just cut myself earlier with….” He trailed off. The girls had just been talking about Party’s ex being the bomb guy: Ghoul wasn’t about to remind them that he’d been messing around with an explosive. “Anyway, my finger’s still a bit sore.”

Jackie accepted its answer, sending him a compassionate look. Even though he’d told the truth, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that he’d just lied to her. A lie of omission, Jet would have called it. Well, whatever: Jet wasn’t there, was she?

Sparx bent down to look at his finger, speaking in a slightly mocking voice Ghoul knew was a show of affection.“Aw, poor little Ghoulie, he’s—”

“Don’t call me that!” he snapped, too loudly, before he could stop himself. 

He slapped a hand over its mouth, but the damage was done. The silence was deafening as his three friends stared at him, puzzled. It cleared its throat, painfully aware of the three sets of eyes directed at him.

“Um, I mean, please don’t call me that.”

“Will do,” Sparx said, trying to keep the mood lighthearted, but even she seemed put off.Ghoul admittedly hadn’t been the most expressive since he’d joined them. No, his three moods had pretty much varied between sad, silent, and awkward. The outburst had to have shaken up the three girls. He knew it had him.

Ghoulie. Only one person had ever called him that, and from the way things were looking, it would stay that way. Or, considering that Sparx had just used the nickname, he guessed it would end at two, but no more. Not if it could avoid it.

Just like his relationship with Party, “Ghoulie” was a thing of the past.

-

Present day

Jackie was walking down the dimly lit corridor when she noticed something on the ground. A piece of paper, perhaps? She didn’t recall there being a piece of paper recently.

She rolled her eyes but couldn’t keep the smile off of her face. One of her friends had probably dropped it in their hurry. Probably not Sparx—Hell, Jackie wasn’t even sure they knew how to read—but maybe Marigold had planned her date with it, or Ghoul had been toying with new prototypes of whatever it was he prototyped. Jackie wasn’t a really good mechanic. Ghoul had tried to teach her, once, and had then proceeded to forbid her to ever step foot inside the room where it did all its experiments.

She bent down to pick up the rectangle, surprised to find its texture wasn’t that of paper as she’d previously thought. No, it felt somewhat laminated. She’d look at it later, after she’d set down the basket of fresh crops she was holding. This year hadn’t produced much vegetables, and so Destroya forbid her she drop the basket. Plants were rare enough in the desert as it was, she didn’t want her efforts to spoil for some piece of apparently not paper.

Once the basket was safe on the kitchen counter, she glanced down at the object of her curiosity, surprised to find a picture. Huh, she thought. Those were hard to come by. She wondered where it came from. She hadn’t seen a camera in years .

At first glance, she couldn’t tell who was on it. The black-haired killjoy seemed familiar, and it took her a whole fifteen seconds to recognize Ghoul. She frowned. She didn’t know the brown-haired kid on its left. Not that that was surprising; after all, she’d barely recognized her friend.

“Oh, what’s that?” Marigold asked, peeking over her shoulder. Jackie jumped: she hadn’t heard her come in.

“I’m not sure. I found it on the ground.”

“Is that…?”

“Ghoul? Yeah.” Jackie smiled fondly at her friend’s youthful face. He looked so much happier. The Ghoul she, Sparx and Mari knew was nothing like him. She once again wondered who this other kid was.

“Who’s that?” Mari asked, and any hope Jackie might have had that her friend would know thus vanished.

“No idea. Maybe someone from his old crew? They don’t look similar enough to be related.”

Mari hummed, taking a closer look. Jackie let go of the photograph, allowing Mari to take it. She doubted the other would know, either. Ghoul wasn’t exactly open about his past, ad y that Jackie meant that she had no clue as to what he’d been up to before finding the three of them.

Secretly, she’d always assumed his old crew had died. It was unlikely that he’d have survived eighteen years alone, so her best bet was that he’d had a crew before them, but on the off chance that she was right and that they’d effectively left Ghoul their lone survivor, she didn’t ask. He seemed so sad some days, even after three years… she didn’t want to cause him any more pain.

“We could ask him,” Mari suggested, but Jackie wasn’t sure. Again, what if the kid was dead? Surely, the fact that none of them had ever seen a picture so old meant that Ghoul hadn’t wanted to share that part of himself. But she did have to admit she was curious.

“I hope nothing bad happened,” Mari said, echoing Jackie’s own thoughts.

“I feel like I’m intruding,” she admitted. “I’d never seen that picture before.”

“He looks so cute,” Mari commented. “So innocent. Happy.”

-

“Who’s that in the picture?” Jackie asked, setting down a very familiar photograph, and Ghoul felt his blood freeze. How had she found it? 

“Did you go through my stuff?” She of all people shouldn’t have gotten her hands on it. Not when it kept it in the… oh no . Its fucking jacket. Ghoul impulsively brought his hands to pat his pockets and, sure enough, came up empty. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten about the stupid fucking picture.

“No!” Jackie exclaimed, and Ghoul kind of felt bad about automatically assuming she’d taken it from him when she’d probably picked it up from the floor of something. “It was in the corridor, I thought it was some piece of paper.”

She looked embarrassed, or maybe guilty? Ghoul tentatively took the photograph, praying she hadn’t looked at it too closely. Just what had she figured out? 

“Sorry,” Ghoul said. “I shouldn’t have assumed.” And then he figured, fuck it, if she’d realized that this was Party, she’d probably connected the dots as to who Ghoul was. And if she hadn’t, then, whatever: Ghoul was feeling generous. “That’s my ex.”

“You—I thought you’d never dated!”

Ghoul scowled. “I’ve told you guys I’ve dated, you’ve just never believed me.”

Her cheeks flushed. “Oh.”

Apart from being surprised about him actually having dated in the past, she didn’t look at him as if her perception of him had forever been altered, so it seemed as though she truly hadn’t recognized Party in the picture. Of course, she didn’t know them as well as Ghoul did—or had, whatever. While he’d been able to single them out of any crowd—and probably still was—he doubted she’d ever even met them. For Jackie, they were probably closer to an urban legend than an actual living, breathing person. And if she’d ever seen them, she most certainly wouldn’t recognize them as the brown-haired kid fresh out of Battery City they were on the picture.

“Were they part of your crew?” she asked. She was avoiding his eyes, as though she felt this wasn’t a question she had the right to ask. Truth be told, part of the reason why Ghoul had never told any of the girls about his past was that they’d never really asked. Sure, Ghoul often brushed off any half-hearted attempt they made, but they’d never been direct with it, either.

“Yeah, they were.” He looked at her, trying to decipher her expression. She obviously wanted to ask more, but he guessed she was too scared to make him feel trapped or something. “You can ask, you know?”

“Do you ever miss it? Your old crew?”

He looked away “Would I be an asshole to say yes?” It did feel weird to talk about his old crew with its new one, but he was glad it was with Jackie. The others could be a bit more… intense. She reminded him of Jet, sometimes.

Case in point: “Of course not!” she reassured him. “You’re allowed to miss them. A crew’s a family. It must be terribly hard to be away from them.”

“I mean, yeah, but you all have been so nice and inviting. I don’t want to come across as ungrateful. Because I truly am glad I met you guys.”

“Nonsense! Ghoul, of course we’ve been ‘inviting’, you’re part of the family too. You saved our lives; we wouldn’t even be standing without you.”

He raised doubtful eyes at her. “Really?”

Her shoulders dropped. She now sounded concerned. “ Ghoul . It’s been three years ! Have you been feeling like this all along?”

Ghoul hugged himself. It wasn’t anything against them. After all, he’d always been like this. Even after the breakup, he hadn’t hesitated to remove itself from the crew. It just made more sense than a stilted dynamic or, worse, Party leaving. Kobra would have left with them anyway. Ghoul had figured the more the gang stayed together, the better. And, hey, Party seemed to have moved on, now, so he’d been right to figure so, apparently.

Jackie was still patiently waiting for an answer, so he explained that, “It’s just that with my other crew—”

“Did something happen?  Because if they did something bad, I’ll—”

“No, no.” She still didn’t look convinced. He chuckled. “It’s the opposite, really. We grew up together. My place in the gang was never questioned. I left by choice. I was in the wrong, and I fucked up. I made a mistake. Mistakes. I didn’t want anyone to have to pay the price for that.”

“But they lost you.”

He smiled sadly. “It’s better off this way.” He forced himself to brighten up its smile. “Besides, I’ve got you guys now, haven’t I?”

-

As Ghoul walked away, Jackie couldn’t shake off the feeling that she was missing something. The picture. Ghoul’s ex . Fucking up. A mistake. Ghoul, whose skills with explosives were unmatched. Ghoul, who was adamant she stay away from them. She really, really hoped she was jumping to conclusions. 

“Are you okay?” Mari asked, walking in with Sparx. 

She worried her bottom lip. “Remember the photograph?” Both girls nodded—Sparx had accidentally walked in on Mari holding it shortly after Jackie had first discovered it. “Don’t mention it to Ghoul. Or his old crew.”

“ What old crew?”

Sparx stared at Mari. “His old crew. Come on, of course he had one before us.” Then, to Jackie: “Anyway, what about them?”

“The kid from the photograph. That’s Ghoul’s ex.”

“Ghoul’s what?” they both asked at the same time, dumbfounded.

“He was being serious?” Sparx exclaimed.

“ Apparently . But… I think they’re dead. I think they got dusted and Ghoul blames himself. It said it made a mistake. I just… it’s the way he talked about its old crew… I don’t want us to bring back any painful memories, you know?”

The other two nodded gravely. They would forget about the picture and, along with it, Ghoul’s old crew.

Chapter Text

“Dude, don’t freak out, but Party Poison is totally checking you out.”

At Marigold’s words, Ghoul momentarily tensed. However, he quickly gained back control over his own body, letting his shoulders drop. Maybe too much. It didn’t really remember how his body worked, all of a sudden. “Party’s here?”

If she thought anything of the shortened name, she didn’t call him out on it. Maybe she hadn’t realized; after all, she was pretty much starstruck.

Ghoul tried. He really tried not to whirl around, but he lost that battle. So. Fucking. Pathetic.

Three years. He’d had three whole years to get over it. Hell, their relationship had barely lasted more than that.

Oh, Destroya. They were walking towards him. Shit, fuck, shit, ass, shit, piss, shit, balls, fuck. He started to walk away, but Marigold firmly held him into place.

“Where are you going? You can’t leave me alone out here! Ghoul, they’re right there .”

Yeah, they really fucking were and Ghoul absolutely did not want to hear about their new relationship or whatver. If Party was here, maybe Jet was too. He’d be down to talk to Jet. Party? Absolutey the fuck not.

“Yeah, and I’d really rather not piss myself in front of them,” Ghoul lied. “I’ll be back, just, don’t faint or anything.”

She turned to him, eyes wide. “Oh, fuck, I need to pee too. Ghoul, this is terrible.”

“Marigold. You’re fine. I really have to go.”

She reluctantly let it go, and not a moment too soon. Ghoul hurried away, for once grateful to be small. At least he could blend into the crowd.

Once he’d successfully closed the bathroom door, he leaned against it and dropped to the ground, finally releasing the breath he’d been very awarely holding. Maybe he wasn’t as over Party as it liked to pretend it was. But that didn’t matter. Party was over it. Had been over it for years. Ghoul was just a bit slow on the uptake, as it seemed.

Once he’d regained its composure—aka splashed water on his face as he looked at himself in the mirror and told himself he needed to get a grip—it left the comfort and safety of the washroom.

He quickly surveyed the crowd, but Jet seemed nowhere in sight. This evening was such shit. He wasn’t quite sure why he’d let Marigold drag him there. The others usually went without him, but of course the one time he agreed, Party fucking Poison had to turn up as well. Of course. Of fucking course.

Shit happened. Ghoul was going to meet up with Jackie and Sparx, avoid Marigold and consequently Party, go home and wallow in self misery. Charming prospects.

As Ghoul was on his tippy toes, trying to spot either Jackie or Sparx in the crowd, a hand softly closed around its wrist. Relieved, it turned around. Destroya, it felt as though he’d been looking for one of his friends for hours .

“There you are, you—”

Oh. This wasn’t Jackie or Sparx.

“Oh. Party. Poison.”

This was so unfair. Life was so unfair. They had no business looking so good in that dress. No business talking to Ghoul. No business holding its wrist. They still hadn’t let go.

As though they’d noticed Ghoul zeroing in on their hand, they dropped Ghoul’s wrist, bringing their hand up to scratch the back of their head. They do that when they’re nervous, Ghoul’s brain helpfully supplied. Shut up , Ghoul’s brain replied. 

“So, um, how have you been?”

How have you been. Ghoul wasn’t sure what he’d expected Party’s first words to it would be after all this time, but the banality of them caught it off guard. How had Ghoul been? Because current Ghoul could not seem to remember a single thing from its past.

They’d gotten a few more scars, Ghoul noted. One was especially jarring, running all the way across their face. Ghoul’s hand wanted nothing more that to reach out, and Ghoul had to make a very conscious effort not to let it. “I should be asking you that,” he said instead. The more he looked, the more he could spot bruises that hadn’t been there three years ago. Party looked different. And it wasn’t only the scars: even their roots were showing. “Are you okay?”

“Erm.”

“Oh. Right. Not my place to ask anymore, huh?” He’d tried to say it jokingly, lightheartedly, but it fell flat. Great.

The two of them stood in silence, and all of Ghoul prayed they would break the eye contact, break the spell, because he sure couldn’t. No matter how much he wanted it to end. Luckily, Party looked down to their feet.

After eight more painful seconds of Ghoul and Party awkwardly standing in front of one another, the latter opened their mouth as if to speak, but, before they could, a killjoy accidentally knocked Ghoul off its feet. Because the Phoenix Witch hated him, it obviously sent him flying right towards Party, who didn’t have any other choice but to catch him.

Ghoul froze as soon as he felt their hands on its arms, holding it up. This was the single most mortifying moment if its existence. He chuckled awkwardly, stepping back once its balance was restored.

“Thanks,” he quickly said, because it still had to acknowledge that it would have crashed to the floor had Party not been there, and then promptly spun around and walked away, his only saving grace the red lighting hiding its horribly hot face.

“Ghoul—” Party began, but he didn’t spare a glance behind. He wouldn’t be able to walk away if he did. Not again.

-

3 years ago

Just promise me. Promise this won’t change anything.

Party had promised. Three years ago, when Kobra had made them promise that them dating Ghoul wouldn’t fuck things up, they’d assured him that things would stay the same. This was Party and Ghoul, after all! What could ever possibly happen to them?

It seemed the answer was themselves, as the years would teach them. Party and Ghoul’s biggest obstacles were none other than themselves. Party figured that wasn’t as surprising as they’d thought back when they were sixteen. After all, such was the way of the world. People found someone to love, and grew apart. Or, in Party and Ghoul’s case, tore each other apart. Never physically, of course, but Party supposed the distress they constantly brought upon themselves wasn’t much better.

It might have been easier if things were always bad. But they weren’t; of course they weren’t. This was Ghoul, after all. And no matter how bad things could get, their love for it never even came close to wavering. Perhaps that was why it hurt so much. How could two people with so much love for one another be the ones to cause themselves all that pain?

Ghoul had left this morning. “Don’t go,” Party had pleaded, but he’d still gone. And he's gone alone, too. He’d gone alone, under the pretense that he didn’t want to rip apart the Fab Four. As though his absence wouldn’t do just that. He’d left alone because he too had promised Kobra that their relationship wouldn’t fuck things up, and so he claimed he needed to face the consequences. He’d left alone, and Party had been unable to do anything but watch and let him.

“You’d promised,” Kobra had accused, tears pearling at the corners of his eyes. Jet had watched in silence, mind far away, mourning the loss of her best friend as he’d angily pointed at Party, letting his finger fall against their chest. “You’d fucking promised.”

-

Present day

Ghoul had never suffered through a worse ride home. Apparently, Marigold had witnessed its miserable debacle, and she was convinced that this was the beginning of the love story of the century. Sadly not paraphrased.

“What the fuck! It’s like fate!” she explained. “That killjoy couldn’t have come at a better time. That was so romantic. I don’t understand why you’re not more excited, Ghoul. You are quite literally living my dream.”

Sparx groaned. “Great, now not only is Mari a lesbian for Party Poison, but Ghoul’s gay for them too.”

“Oh, shut up,” Jackie said. “I think it’s cute.”

“Of course you do.”

Ghoul sighed, exhausted. “Who said anything about me being gay for them anyway? Guys, we talked for thirty seconds.”

“You can’t put a timer on love,” Marigold declared. “Besides, you should have seen their face when you went to the bathroom. I swear on Destroya, they were disappointed.”

“Maybe they wanted to use the loo,” Sparx helpfully pointed out, to which Marigold flipped them the bird.

Ghoul looked out the window. This was the last thing he needed. His friends teasing him about Party fucking Poison of all people? Someone kill it. Just put it out of its misery already.

It wasn’t like he could successfully shut it down, either. And the truth wouldn’t do any good. No, he’d never hear the end of it. Or, worse, they’d all start looking at him with looks filled with pity and Ghoul would hate it. 

“Ugh, Ghoul, we could go on double dates!” Marigold exclaimed, and Ghoul and Sparx both groaned while Jackie only chuckled. 

“No offense, but I don’t think Party Poison is going to go home tonight thinking of the black-haired mystery that literally fell into their arms,” Sparx commented, and Ghoul barked out a laugh. It was only funny because she was terribly wrong. No matter how Party felt about them, Ghoul was certain they’d both be thinking of the other tonight.

“You guys are no fun.” She pouted, and Ghoul couldn’t resist ruffling her already ruffled hair. “Jerk,” she told him, but smiled nonetheless. 

“Well, love story or not, I do think it’s pretty cool you could talk with them,” Jackie said, and Ghoul shot her a grateful look. “Most of us don’t get the chance to do so. It’s a fun bragging right.”

Ha. Ghoul had bucketloads of that already.

Sparx shook her head. “I don’t know, I just think they’re overrated. One single ‘joy can’t be all that, y’know?”

Blame it on the rollercoaster of emotions he’d gone through or fatigue, but Ghoul spoke up. “It’s not them being overrated as much as it’s the rest of the crew being underrated. ‘Cause that’s the thing, Party’s not the Fabulous Four. What people see as their accomplishments aren’t theirs only, so it’s not one single joy after all. It’s four—or, well, three these days.”

The three girls silently nodded, pensive. Ghoul saw it as encouragement to keep talking, for some reason. He’d always wanted to say it, anyway. Jet and Kobra deserved it. “Most people don’t even know the rest of the crew’s name. And I don’t hold it against anyone, but it’s still so crazy. The Fab Four aren’t—weren’t only Party, Party’s brother, Party’s boyfriend and Party’s friend, y’know?”

Marigold rolled her eyes, smiling, but she looked a bit confused. Maybe because Ghoul usually didn’t speak that much, much less about the Fab Four. “I know that, silly.”

“I know you know, but do you know ? It’s probably not even your fault if you don’t, it’s been like that for years . Take Jet. She’s the shooter, even though she’s only got one eye. She never stopped being the best.” He laughed. “I don’t know if that says more about her or the rest of the crew, though.

“Kobra thinks he’s cool, but his sarcasm and shit attitude is just his way of showing he cares. Ish. He rocks at close combat, too. He once took out three armed Dracs with nothing more than karate moves… or so I’ve heard,” he quickly added.

“And the boyfriend….”

“He was the bomb guy, right?” Marigold asked.

The corner of Ghoul’s mouth twitched up. “Yeah. He was the bomb guy.”

Sparx let it have five seconds to smile, satisfied of his little speech, before laughing louder than he’d ever heard them laugh.

“ What ?”

“It’s just… you’re even worse than Mari! Fucking nerd. I can’t believe you managed to hide that for three years.”

“Shut up,” he said, blushing. “Just forget it.”

“Oh Hell no! No take backs!” Marigold exclaimed. “Not now that you’ve revealed you’re as insane as I am! Oh boy, are we going to have fun.”

“Good luck,” mouthed Jackie, and Ghoul nodded. He would need luck indeed. In hindsight, Ghoul blamed it on Party. He’d never known how to behave when it came to them. It looked like the years hadn’t changed much on its end.

Chapter Text

It had been a week since Ghoul had last seen Party and, quite honestly, he highly doubted he’d gotten over the shock; over the feelings that still lingered after all this time.

It did its best to remember the bad times they’d had in a vain attempt to get a grip, but all it really did was bring a whole other level of heartwrenching. He’d once told Jackie it had made a mistake. He still didn’t know if the mistake was getting with Party, staying with Party all this time, or letting them go.

Perhaps it was a mix of the three. He’d been irrevocably in love with them. Even before they’d started dating. Relationship or not, breakup or not, Ghoul had been bound to get hurt from the start. Maybe it would’ve hurt less if it had cut the wilting stems of their relationship sooner. If he hadn’t pushed it off for so long. Maybe then such a clean, surgical cut wouldn’t have been necessary. 

Ghoul groaned; he’d obviously miscalculated, because he felt far from separated from the entire situation. And now that it had run into Party, any progress he might have made in the last three years had come crashing down. To make matters worse, he’d then proceeded to accidentally reveal just how obsessed he still was with the Fab Four to his new crew. His new crew who had no idea he’d been part of the Fab Four. His new crew who now thought he had this big fat crush on Party Poison.

Oh, they had no idea.

“Oi! Ghoul! We’re going to a party tonight!” came Marigold’s voice from the common area.

Sticking its head out of the doorframe to stare at her, Ghoul asked, “Again?”

Sparx laughed. “It’s been a week since last time. You really should reconsider your notion of again.”

Marigold shook her head. “No time to insult him! Ghoul, I’ve heard Party Poison is gonna be there!”

Ghoul felt the blood rush to its face, unable to do anything about it. Throwing caution to the wind, he categorically refused. He’d rather his friends suspect something than see Party again. He simply couldn’t face them. “No. Absolutely not. No way.”

“What, scared you’ll embarrass yourself in front of them? Come on,” Sparx drawled. “What’s the worst that could possibly happen anyway? No offense, but they probably don’t even remember you.”

Marigold glared at them. “Now don’t say that!”

Jackie winced. “I hate to ruin your love story, Mari, but she might be right. I’m sure Party Poison talks to a lot of killjoys. Surely they don’t remember all of them. It’s nothing against Ghoul, really.”

Ghoul chose not to comment.

Marigold mistook it for sadness of some kind, and valiantly punched Sparx’ arm in its honor. “Look, now you’ve made it sad!”

“He can cope.”

Ghoul chuckled. Ever the charismatic person.

“Anyway, we leave in five minutes.”

“Wh—Marigold, I’m not even going!”

She looked him up and down. “You’re dressed, not doing anything… what’s keeping you?”

“No one is asking you to talk to Party Poison if you don’t want to,” Jackie reasoned. “Besides, they might not even be there. But if you really don’t want to go, we'll understand.”

Ghoul pouted. Now that she’d been nice about it, it felt as though it had to agree. He couldn’t refuse such a reasonable request. Especially now that she’d made it into a choice. 

And besides, Sparx was right: what was the worst that could happen?

-

Ghoul hadn’t even made it one step into the party that it already regretted coming. More accurately, he’d regretted agreeing when he’d pulled up in the driveway to find the Trans Am parked in front of the building. His soft swear had been muffled by Marigold’s elated scream.

The sight of the car brought up mixed feelings. He remembered all the hours spent sweating under the desert sun, working on fixing up that very car. He remembered learning to drive under Party’s very careful guidance—because Destroya forbid it crashed the car—he remembered the late nights spent there with Party. He tried to stop remembering those. It was a very thing risky thing to think about with Party within a very small radius.

Before Ghoul could turn its car around, Marigold had already jumped out of it, no matter the fact that Ghoul was still driving.

“Mari!” Jackie exclaimed, slightly dumbfounded but mostly concerned. 

The other girl didn’t spare a single glance back. 

“She’s got, um, somewhat of a one track mind, huh?” Ghoul commented, biting back its laughter. He found concentrating on her was easier than thinking of Party. 

“Sure, Ghoul, because you’re much better.”

Ghoul glared at Sparx. Really? 

The three of them peacefully made their way out of the car. Ghoul took as much time as it possibly could, but there was only so much he could do to avoid the party (ha!). He begrudgingly followed its two friends into the building, praying he wouldn’t have to run into Party again. He was a grown adult, he could face his ex in a normal, sane and appropriate manner. This didn’t need to be the disaster Ghoul was making it out to be.

Sure enough, Ghoul stuck with his friends, eventually meeting up with Marigold once they found her in the crowd. Surprisingly, Ghoul found himself actually enjoying the evening. He even let Jackie drag him to the dance floor. He’d admittedly worried he was going to lose her in the crowd, but she didn’t let go of him, something for which he was grateful.

They’d soon gone to drink water. Ghoul took a sip, relieved. Turning to look at Jackie, he said, “Fuck, I was so parched, I—”

He blinked. Where the fuck had she gone? She’d been right next to him two seconds ago. This was why he fucking hated these kinds of parties.

Sighing, he forced himself into the crowd. He was going to find one of his friewnds or so the Phoenix Witch help him.

“Ghoul! Over here!”

A wave of relief washed over him. Maybe if he’d been busy listening to the voice rather than desperately seeking a familiar face, it would have realized its mistake. But no, too busy on finding his friends, he didn’t think to register just who had called him over, only realizing after he’d started heading for Party.

Yep, Ghoul definitely hated parties.

At least they weren’t wearing the dress again, Ghoul’s brain unhelpfully picked up on. It did not have the willpower to face Party again, much less Party in a dress. 

“Didn’t expect to see you there.”

“Didn’t expect to be there, ” Ghoul answered, and he internally winced. This was a fucking trainwreck.

A pregnant pause followed. Ghoul was getting kind of tired of those.

It was aware that Party was studying it, much like Ghoul was them, but he couldn’t find anything to say. Not to Party. Not like that. He didn’t even understand why they’d called him over. Actually, maybe that was a good question to ask.

“Why did you call for me?”

Party looked down, and Ghoul felt like it could breathe again. “I don’t know. Sorry.”

Ghoul wanted to tell them it was okay, but was it okay, really? There was no reason for them to call Ghoul over. There was no reason for them to talk. Ghoul had made a conscious decision to leave. Mostly for the Fab Four’;s sake, but also for his.

They hadn’t seen themselves in three years. What was there possibly to say?

“How, um, how have you been?” Party asked.

Ghoul shot them a painful look. Surely this wasn’t fun for them, either, right? No matter how things had ended between them, they’d both been in love. They’d loved each other, and it had ended horribly. Ghoul simply couldn’t fathom a situation in which this interaction was normal. It wasn’t an accident. Party had purposely called it over, and they were neither a masochist, nor cruel. So just what were they getting at? 

“I’ve been fine, Pois,” he answered softly, because he did not want to make a scene.

Party’s eyes widened, and even after all these years, Ghoul could still read them, could see the flash of panic in their warm brown eyes. Only then did he catch up to what he’d said: the nickname. He considered apologizing, but that meant acknowledging… something .

For all of their shock, Party hid it pretty well. Ghoul was willing to bet most people wouldn’t even have noticed their previous show of emotion. “Um, great. That’s great, Ghoul.”

Ghoul smiled, but Party probably knew it was more of a sad smile than anything else. After all, they knew how to read it, too.

“Why did you call me?”

-

Why did you call me?

Why had they called for it, Party wondered. They weren’t sure themself.

They’d been fine, mostly, these last three years. Well, maybe fine was an over exaggeration. Kobra had never really forgiven them, and, because Ghoul had left—not that Party blamed him for it: he’d made a choice Party had been too weak to—Party was left to bear the full weight of their brother’s reproach. Jet hid it a bit better: unlike someone , she never made snarky remarks about Ghoul’s absence or pointed out situations when having him with them would be helpful, but she did look more sad than she ever had before. Party supposed it made sense: Ghoul was like a brother to her.

They’d probably taken it the worst, though, no matter how selfish of them it was to say.

So why had they called Ghoul over?

“The guys miss you,” they said. The whole Zones praised them for their courage or whatever, but Party was a coward at heart.

Ghoul seemed to understand that. He’d always been better at reading them than Party had been at reading it. They wished they knew what he was thinking.

“I miss them too.”

Party looked around. No one was paying them any mind. At least not too closely. They weren’t stupid: they did know they had a reputation, a certain status in the Zones. People were always looking. But no one seemed to be paying attention. They’d long ago had to learn the difference.

“ I miss you.”

They raised hesitant eyes at Ghoul, gaging its reaction. He swallowed. Blinked. Looked away. Looked back.

“I miss you, too,” it admitted, regretful. Party understood, in a way: they guessed it wasn’t a god thing for either of them to miss each other.

They stared at him again. Destroya sue them: they hadn’t seen him in three years. Ghoul had changed. He now had overgrown bangs framing its face. They wondered how long he’d had them. It didn’t look bad, it just looked different from the tucked in haircut it used to wear.

There was nothing they could do to stop the flashbacks from flooding in. Their hand reached towards Ghoul against their will. “Can I…?”

Ghoul blinked again, nodding slowly. He didn’t even know what he was agreeing to, Party thought. Well, Party didn’t know what he was agreeing to either.

Their hand crept closer to Ghoul’s face before delicately tucking his bang behind its ear. They brought up their other hand to do the other side, sucking in a breath at the sight before them.

He still looked the same.

Well, not quite. Ghoul had never looked at them and seemed so scared before. Party’s brain caught up to their action, and they froze in their tracks. What the fuck were they doing? Something akin to horror was evident on Ghoul’s red face, and Party felt shame wash over them. Really, what the fuck were they doing?

Regretful, they let their hands drop to their side, taking a step back. Ghoul’s hair fell from where Party had tucked it.

They needed an escape. Again, they were a coward. They dug around their pocket, their hand closing in on an old picture of theirs. It was probably fucking stupid of them to walk around with a picture of Ghoul in their inner jacket pocket, but whatever. It could’ve been worse. It could’ve been in an outer pocket.

“This was yours,” they mumbled, offering the photograph. They were reluctant to part with it, but, as pathetic as it was, they had more. Not of this one, though. Obviously not, they only had one copy of each picture, but they really needed to leave or else they would really grow to regret this night. Parting with the picture was the best of two evils.

Ghoul wordlessly took it from them. It was a small mercy, Party guessed. He was letting them go, just as Party had him all those years ago.

Chapter Text

“What the fuck.”

Those were the exact words that left Sparx’ mouth as Sparx, Jackie and Marigold had watched, disbelieving, as Party had walked in closer to Ghoul. To tuck its fucking bangs behind its ears?

Marigold definitely agreed with her friend's statement. Maybe she was now ten dollars richer (a bet she’d masde with Sparx as a joke) but she couldn’t even think to tell ‘I told you so’ to her friend. Not when she was too busy processing what the actual fuck had just happened.

It wasn’t that she didn’t believe Ghoul was worth Party Poison’s attention. She’d seen them checking him out last week, but this was weird, right? Like, what were the fucking odds? Party Poison, of all fucking killjoys. Again, she had nothing against Ghoul, but why him? Party Poison was a walking legend. They could quite literally have anyone they wanted. What had drawn them to Ghoul, specifically? They didn’t know how awesome he was, didn’t have that to base themself off of, and yet they’d still found him in a crowd. Twice.

The obvious answer was that there had to be something she wasn’t understanding, but from her friends’ puzzled expressions, it was clear that, no, there wasn’t anything more to understand than just a crazy coincidence.

“When did we even lose him?” Sparx asked, munching on some chips. As she stole a handful from them, Marigold idly wondered where they’d found the bag.

“I don’t know, he was next to me one second and, well, not the next,” Jackie answered, eyes glued to the scene unfolding before the three friends’ eyes.

Party had just stepped back and Ghoul looked two seconds away from fainting. He was so never hearing the end of it. Ever.

Jackie gently pulled Marigold and Sprax away. “Come on, girls. Let’s give it some privacy.”

Marigold reluctantly let herself be carried away, swearing to interrogate Ghoul for the next decenny, at the very least. What the fuck?

-

True to her word, she jumped on the occasion to ask questions as soon as Ghoul killed the motor back at their house. Surely the comfort of their own home had to be enough privacy, right? No one was around to hear it.

“What the fuck, Ghoul?”

He frowned, confused. 

Sparx fervently nodded. “I think she means, what the actual fuck!?”

“You too? What do you even mean?” It sent a pleading glance Jackie’s way, silently begging for an explanation.

“Don’t look at her!” Marigold protested. “Look at me! Party Poison ?!?”

If its plan had been to deny it, any chance of succeed was thrown out the window when it turned beet red. “Oh. What about them?”

“‘What about them?’ What about them ?!” Sparx thundered. “What do you mean, what about them? Ghoul! Come on!”

Jackie winced. “They do make a good point.”

Ghoul groaned. “You too? Jackie, not you too.”

“I’m sorry! It’s just… unexpected! I lose you in the crowd and when I find you, you’re almost kissing Party Poison?”

Sparx laughed. “Can’t let you out of our eyesight, huh?”

Ghoul shook its head. “Okay, no no no. We were not about to kiss. Trust me .”

“Ghoul, baby, I would love to believe you. And hey, you seem like you believe yourself! But, honey, you’re being delusional,” Marigold informed him. How blind was he? Ghoul was easily one of the smartest person she knew, but when it came to matters of the heart, the guy was helpless. “Just… I know a moment when I see one.”

“Okay,” he admitted, “it was something , maybe, but I swear to you, Party was not going to kiss me, and I was not going to kiss them. Just, no. That’s not, no.”

Jackie grinned. “Party, huh? Didn’t know you guys were so informal already.”

“Jackie? No .”

“Ugh, you’re so boring,” Marigold lamented. “If it were me, I would literally never shut up about it.”

“Because there’s nothing to say,” Ghoul explained. “It was a fluke, it won’t happen again.”

Won’t happen again? Marigold frowned, wary. “Did Party Poison do something? Because I will turn on my idol for you.”

Ghoul’s eyes widened. “No! Nothing happened! It’s fine, really. It’s just, Marigold, what are the odds of me running into them again? It already happened twice. That’s two times more than most.”

Oh. Yeah, that did make sense, no matter how depressing it sounded. She kicked the desert sand, dejected. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think of that.”

“Really, it’s okay. It won’t alter the course of my life. I’ve lived through much, much worse.”

She opened her mouth to answer, but, when she took a look at her friend, she found him away in a faraway place. She couldn’t help but wonder where time had taken him just now. Something far bigger than two short encounters with Party Poison was haunting it. His expression seemed tortured and she realized, not for the first time, that she didn’t know much about her friend’s past.

-

Ghoul glared at The Picture. Leave it to Party fucking Poison to give it back to him. They’d stolen it years—and by years, Ghoul meant years —ago. Fuck, Ghoul had forgotten it even existed.  But of course they’d had to have given it back to him, right when he was doing its very damned best to move on from them. What were they fucking playing at?

It wasn’t anything big, really. There was no use for Ghoul to keep it, hence why he’d never really minded the loss of it. At the time, it hadn’t even noticed it being missing until he’d caught Party holding it, a fond expression on their face. Ghoul had never cared for it, seeing as it only showed its face. Jet had taken it so long ago while Party and Ghoul had been napping on the couch, and she’d handed it to Ghoul after they’d woken up. Party had taken much more of a liking to the photograph. Again, probably because Ghoul was the only recognizable one on it. Sure, Party’s body was cool, but Ghoul liked the pictures with their face on it better.

Anyway, it didn’t really see why Party would give it back, especially now of all times. It just seems odd. And why the fuck had they even had it on their person? 

Frustrated, he set it down on its bedside box. Face down.

“Whatcha looking at?” Jackie asked, poking her head through the doorframe.

Ghoul’s eyes towards her, feeling as though he’d been caught red handed. “Nothing,” it mumbled, realizing only too late how suspicious that sounded.

Jackie had the decency not to comment. “Alright. Well I was just letting you know that me and the girls were heading out for a bit, if you wanted to come with.”

He smiled. “No, thanks. Enjoy yourselves, though.”

She shot him a worried look, but smiled anyway. “Alright then. See you in a while! Try not to set the house on fire or anything.”

“Can’t make any promises,” he answered, chuckling softly.

Jackie left, and Ghoul felt a wave of loneliness wash over it. Weird, it thought. It usually didn’t feel so alone when the girls weren’t there. Whilehe did love them, he also enjoyed being on its own every once in a while. Today, though, he found himself eagerly waiting for them to come back.

Because he had no self-control, his hands reached towards that damned picture. He watched, powerless, as its fingers picked it up, turning it around. 

He looked so happy . The realization hit him like a shot to the chest. It was fucking sleeping, but it seemed so… content. Ghoul worried the inside of his cheek. Things had been so much simpler back then.

Of course, they’d quickly turned to shit, but it had been good, in the beginning. And even towards the end. That was why it had hurt so much, Ghoul reckoned. Ah, whatever. Reminiscing the past wouldn’t do any good. What was done was done. Besides, he never would’ve met the girls had it not left.

Leaving had been necessary, he reminded itself. It was what was best for Party, and Ghoul had been known to only ever want the best for them. That much hadn’t changed.

He spared another glance at the picture. This situation was such shit. Part of him could still read Party like an open book while the other part of him just couldn’t figure out why the fuck they were acting like this. Three years. Three years, and then they miraculously run into each other and they act like… that ? Running their hands through its hair like it wouldn’t affect Ghoul whatsoever? Unfair, is what this fucking mess was. 

He wished Jet was there. She always knew what to say. Surely she would have had some sort of insight. But no. Ghoul was left to its own devices, which hadn’t always been a good thing in the past. It had somewhat of a track record.

A soft knock on its door pulled it out of its thought. He whirled around, surprised to find Jackie, Sparx and Marigold inquisitively looking at him.

“Have you… stayed here all this time?” Jackie asked.

Ghoul looked outside. The sun was setting. The girls had left in the early afternoon. “Oh. I guess I have, yeah.”

He didn’t miss the way Jackie’s eyes flickered down to the photograph it was still holding. He waited to see if she would ask but she wasn’t the type to risk any type of confrontation, no matter how curious she looked. He sighed. “It won’t kill you to ask.”

She looked down, probably embarrassed that he’d caught onto her train of thought. “I just—”

Sparx rolled their eyes. “Ah, cut the crap, old man. What the fuck’s on this that’s got your panties in such a twist?”

Ghoul looked down at the photograph. What-fucking-ever. He got up, unceremoniously placed in Sparx’ hands, shut the door, and went back to bed. Sun was set, so was he.

-

Well, what the fuck were they supposed to do with this? 

Sparx glanced at her friends, but they seemed just as surprised and confused as her. Fucking great.

“Can we look at it?”Mari asked, speaking for the three of them. “I mean, I didn’t think he’d let us have it.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. He gave it to us, why the fuck not.” With those words, Sparx flipped the picture over.

“ Oh ,” Jackie breathed out, running her fingers over picture-Ghoul. “He looks so….”

“Young?” Mari asked.

“Innocent. He looks innocent.”

Sparx hummed their agreement. This wasn’t the moody guy they all knew. They’d only ever seen two pictures of a younger Ghoul—even though this one was significantly older than in the other picture—but the difference was puzzling every time. And yet this one was, all things considered, pretty fucking similar to when they’d first met. It just looked, as Jackie had mentioned, more innocent. Like life hadn’t broken him yet. She idly wondered if Jackie had been onto something when she’d suggested Ghoul’s ex was dead.

As though she’d read their thoughts, Mari asked, “Do you think that’s his ex? Because if so it’s kind of fucked up of him to give us the picture of a dead ‘joy.”

“I can fucking hear you, you know?” Ghoul said from behind the door, and the three of them jumped ten feet into the air. 

“Well, answer the question, shitface,” Sparx yelled back. She kind of did felt basd for him, but the man was being ridiculous.

“Fuck off,” Ghoul replied, but Sparx heard it oin his voice that he would, in fact, be answering the question. “It is my ex, and they’re not fucking dead, what the fuck?”

“Well damn, sorry for assuming,” Mari said. “We just thought, since you seem so fucking depressed.”

“Ha-ha.”

“What? I’m mostly being serious!”

Sparx tuned the two of them out, focusing on the picture. Just who the fuck was it, then? She wondered if Ghoul had more where that came from. This was the second picture he’d pulled from thin air. They wondered if it kept a stash of something. And why had they only started seeing them now? 

“Who is it?” Mari wondered aloud, echoing Sparx’—and most probably Jackie’s—thoughts. Ghoul unhelpfully didn’t answer. Maybe the little shit had finally fallen asleep, she told herself, even though she was more inclined to believe he’d decided to stop answering. 

It wasn’t anyone Sparx knew, she guessed, or else the figure probably would’ve felt familiar. 

“Are we sure this isn’t an elaborate prank?” Sparx asked. The picture almost felt satged: there was a fucking pillow over the ex’ face! Convenient, much?

Jackie laughed. “If it is, Ghoul certainly deserves some credit, because it is very well executed. But no, I’m fairly sure whoever this is is the same person we saw next to him in the other photograph.” She laughed again. “As for who that is, go figure.”

Mari narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know… I feel like I’ve seen them before.”

Sparx playfully elbowed her. “Of course you’d think that. Come on, I don’t think this is a mystery we’ll solve any time soon.”

Chapter Text

“I ran into Ghoul again,” Party admitted, staring down at their hands. Under Kobra and Jet’s gazes, the truth felt like a crime.

Kobra stayed silent, but his expression hardened. He was waiting, Party realized. Waiting for them to keep talking, for them to get to the point. Party belatedly realized they didn’t have one. 

They didn’t know what they’d expected. For Kobra to get angry at them running into Ghoul? Were they that desperate that they still needed Kobra’s anger? Were they looking for some sort of confirmation that they’d fucked up when they’d let Ghoul go? Whatever it was, Kobra wouldn’t give it to them.

Or maybe they were seeking Jet’s comfort. They didn’t know what they fucking wanted. They wanted to see Ghoul again. They never wanted to see its face ever again, never wanted to have to deal with the grip he still had on their sorry fucking heart.

Thankfully, Jet saved them… from themself. “What happened?” she asked, concern laced in her voice.

“I, um, panicked.”

This got Kobra talking: “What the fuck did you do to him?”

They hugged themself defensively. “I didn’t fucking do anything! I gave him a picture.”

Jet frowned. “You what?"

“I had this picture in my pocket. It’s nothing. I panicked and needed a reason to escape, so I gave it the picture and ran away. I don’t know, I—”

Kobra sighed heavily, sitting down on the beaten down sofa. “Fuck, you’re pathethic.”

“Kobes,” Jet warned.

“No, he’s right. It’s fucking pathethic. I shouldn’t even have held onto the picture for so long. I don’t even know why—well I do, but I don’t get why I can’t fucking get over him.” Party ran a hand through their hair. “It’s been three years. Three years . I don’t think I’m still supposed to love him.”

Kobra groaned, and it sounded a lot like “Oh, for the fucking Phoenix Witch’s sake.”

Jet placed a hesitant hand on their shoulder. “You’ve known it since you were ten, Party. I don’t think you’re supposed to forget him.”

They raised their eyes to look at her, surprised to find their vision blurry. “I’m just so tired. Every time I go out, I can’t help but look for it, and yet I’m terrified of seeing him. It never used to be so complicated.”

“Please,” Kobra interrupted. “You guys have never been simple. Sorry to burst your pity party, but it was that fucking complicated. You just didn’t fucking realize because you were too busy being heads over heels for it. Literallly just ask any-fucking-one who’s seen you guys together.”

Maybe three years ago they would have protested but, considering the situation at hand, they felt maybe Kobra was right. He had to be.

“It wasn’t that bad…” Jet tried, but a side glance from Kobra shut her up. Oh.

Party sat down at a reasonable distance from Kobra. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I brought it up. I miss him. I’m sorry.”

Jet and Kobra stayed silent in their musing.

~

Ghoul let his cigarette drop to the ground, watching the ashes as the wind blew them away. Back when they were still alive, his parents talked about life before the Zones. People had been worried about the Earth dying. He spared a glance at the radioactive desert he lived in and shook his head. Crazy to think that a cigarette butt littering the ground used to be a source of worry for its ancestors. Nowadays it was probably the least toxic thing for miles and miles around. Crazy.

Ghoul felt the weight of Party’s picture in its pocket. The girls had given it back to him—he hadn’t asked, wouldn’t have stooped so low as to ask, but they’d given it back regardless. He would be lying if it said he hadn’t felt relief when he’d woken up to see the picture at his bedside.  This was a part of himself he still wasn’t willing to share. It already felt as though the girls knew too much.

Especially since they were set on discovering who the fucking ‘joy was. Far be it from Ghoul to outright reveal it was none other than Party fucking Poison. It had decided he wouldn’t deny it should they guess, but he was willing to bet he still had a bit of time to brace itself for the inevitable. As far as they knew, the two of them had seen each other twice, and that was the extent of their relationship. The situation was so laughable it almost made Ghoul want to tell them, if only to see the look on their faces. Almost.

It was scary how close they came to realizing it, sometimes. Ghoul knew it was only a matter of time. For some reason, seeing Party again after all those years had felt as though an hourglass had been flipped trapping it inside, and Ghoul was looking at the sand falling at an alarming rate, unable to keep up, unable to dig himself out.

He made his way back into the hideout. Jackie eyed him, having probably caught the smell of smoke and tobacco, but she didn’t mention it. 

“Say, Ghoul, do you know what happened to that kid who used to run with the Fab Four?” Marigold asked, and Ghoul’s heart stopped beating.

He made a conscious effort not to whirl around, instead slowly spinning around to shoot her a questioning look. “Huh?”

Her expression instantly calmed him. There was no underlying accusation to her question, purely curiosity. “I thought you might know. Don’t think I’ve forgotten you’re apparently some kind of Fab Four expert.”

“Oh, haha. No.”

She groaned. “Come onnn, you mean to tell me you haven’t even wondered?”

Sparx gave her a light shove. “Really? I swear we go over this topic every other month. Man’s dead, it’s not that deep.”

Marigold vigorously shook her head. “No, but get this: what if he wasn’t?”

Jackie shrugged. “Guess we’ll never know.”

“Yeah,” Sparx agreed, snorting. “We’d have to know what the fucking kid looks like, for starters.”

Ghoul rolled his eyes. “He’s older than you.” Then:  “Or was, I guess.”

“Ghoul, not you too?”

“Ah, forget about him being dead, what do you mean he’s older?” Sparx inquired.

Ghoul stared at them, unimpressed. Anyone with a basic knowledge of the Fab Four could’ve guessed that. “Party wouldn’t have dated someone, like, five years younger than them, keep up.”

“Do you think they’d go for someone, say, my age?” Marigold asked, batting her eyelashes as she grinned.

Ghoul laughed. “Well, seeing as they’re twenty-one and you’re barely seventeen, I’m going to have to say no.”

Marigold faked heartbreak. “Oh, well. I’ll live vicariously through you.”

“Oi!”

“What? You fit their type!”

Ghoul blinked, unwilling to react to her statement further than that. “What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Guys with explosives, I guess.” Ghoul fought the urge to freeze, but she bulled on, grinning widely as she inadvertently whooshed away all of its worries: “short, black hair, scar on the mouth, tattoo on the neck, bangs, named Ghoul.”

She was fucking with him. “Ha-ha,” he deadpanned as its beating heart calmed down.

Only a matter of time.

~

“Jackie! Ghoul listens to you, doesn’t he?” Mari asked, and Jackie suddenly grew cautious.

“I’d like to think so, why?”

The other smiled sheepishly. “Uh… no reason?”

“She wants to trick Ghoul into telling us who its ex is,” Sparx translated, and Jackie couldn’t say she was surprised.

“Ah.”

Mari crossed her arms. “You’re both so boring! We have a mystery on our hands! It’s like you don’t even care!” 

“I kind of don’t,” Sparx pointed out. “What are the odds of us knowing them anyway? Ghoul has met all of our friends at least once, and this is the sort of things that would’ve been mentioned had he dated any of them.” They chuckled to herself. “I can barely even wrap my mind around Ghoul dating.”

Mari turned to intently look at Jackie, and she had to look away. “I don’t know… boundaries, you know?” She could still feel Mari’s stare on her, like she knew about Jackie’s curiosity. A curiosity she very much resented, but nonetheless fostered.

“He never said he didn’t want to tell us!”

“It didn’t tell us, either,” Sparx pointed out. “How sure are we again that he’s dated whoever that is?”

“He said so!” 

They shrugged. “People lie, Mari. It’s actually quite fun!”

Jackie winced. “I don’t think Ghoul would lie about that. He’s got no reason to.”

Only after she’d spoken did she realize her mistake. Mari’s expression brightened, and Jackie braced herself for the words to come: “Only one way to know!”

Jackie could only watch in horror as Sparx said, “Sure,” and shook on it. 

They both looked at her expectantly. She groaned: two stares were twice as hard to avoid. “I don’t think I’m comfortable asking him that. It seems… personal.”

Was she curious? Again, obviously! But this need to know she felt was something she hated. While part of her was dying to know, dying to gossip with her friends, Ghoul was her friend too and she didn’t want it to feel played or poked at. It had just opened up about its ex, and they’d known him for three years. Talking like this felt like going behind its back… because it was.

“Ugh, fine! I give up! But we’ll get to the bottom of this!” Mari exclaimed, determination evident on her face.

From then on, their peaceful little hideout became an investigation zone. If Ghoul caught onto what the girls were doing, he didn’t speak of it. 

Besides, it wasn’t like the girls were getting much information out of him: Jackie couldn’t figure out if he knew and was being evasive on purpose or if he genuinely was that dry. Her best guess was that it was a bit of both. It didn’t take a genius to realize what her friends were trying to find out:

“Say, Ghoul, what’s the longest you’ve been in a relationship?” Mari had once asked, doing her best to appear innocent.

Ghoul had narrowed its eyes. “What sort of relationship?”

She had batted her eyes. “Why, romantic, of course!”

“… Two, three years.”

“Woah! You must have been pretty young, then! Was that your only relationship?”

Its eyes had narrowed further. “You already knew that.”

She had shrugged, and Jackie had shaken her head. “I’m merely wondering about my dear friend!”

Or that time Sparx had tried her hand at getting an answer out of him…. 

“Brunettes, am I right?”

“Brunettes are definitely hot,” Mari had been quick to agree. “Don’t you think, Jackie? Ghoul?”

Jackie had only rolled her eyes while Ghoul had made a noncommittal sound.

“Oh, come on!” Sparx had exclaimed. “Wasn’t your ex a brunette? Surely you must like brown hair to some extent.”

“You do know people can date outside of what is considered their type, right?” Jackie had felt the need to point out. The two of them had been incessantly asking these sorts of questions for days.

Surprisingly, Ghoul had actually answered. He’d seemed almost embarrassed to do so, mumbling as he’d said, “I don’t really have a type? I haven’t liked enough people for it, I guess.” Then, he had cracked a playful smile. “But, hey, I’m glad you guys like brunettes that much!”

Mari laughed. “I don’t actually care about hair. I just like girls. If she has brown hair? She’s a girl and that’s good enough for me!”

Ghoul had snorted. “Gay.”

“Takes one to know one!” she’d declared with a wink.

When their more subtle line of questioning didn’t work, the girls brought out the big guns.

The four of them were sat at the table when Mari slammed both her hands on the surface. “Have we ever met your ex?”

“Destroya, Mari, you can't just ask that!” Jackie protested, mortified.

Sparx shushed her. “Too late! Question’s out! So, the answer?”

“You don’t have to answer,” Jackie started, but Ghoul waved her worries away.

“It’s okay, I had a feeling this was bound to happen,” he said with a small smile. Ah, so he had noticed. “You both aren’t very subtle. You should’ve spaced out your questions. And you should’ve asked me about other things in between.”

“Aw, fuck.”

Ghoul’s smile grew as he fondly glanced at Mari. “It’s okay, I would’ve shut you down if I really minded it. And it depends on what you mean by ‘met’, by the way. You’ve definitely seen them before, but I don’t think you’ve talked.”

At this, Jackie’s monstrous curiosity awoke against her best efforts. Before she could stop herself, the words were already out of her mouth: “We have?!”

Three pairs of eyes found themselves on her. She blushed, looking anywhere but in front of her. “Sorry, I just. I didn’t expect that answer.”

Even though she’d tried not to, she met Mari’s eyes and, at that moment, she knew there was no getting out of this, and she knew Mari knew. She was too involved. And from what Ghoul had said, he would tell them if he wanted them to drop the subject. So there was no harm in trying to find out who its ex was, right?

Someone they’d met… she wondered who that could be.

Chapter Text

Three years ago…

“You don’t have to go,” Party said, and Ghoul pretended not to see the tears threatening to spill from their eyes. He probably wasn’t much better. 

“Hey, we had a good run. This isn’t your fault, Pois. We tried. We really did.”

“Sometimes I think we spent too much time trying,” they admitted, wiping their eyes. “I think maybe we should’ve just… been.”

Ghoul double checked the content of its backpack the best it could. His vision blurred, and it closed its eyes, willing the tears away. He couldn’t cry. Not now: not in front of Party.

“I love you. I’m sorry it’s come to this. I wish I could’ve loved you right. You deserve to be loved right,” he said once he’d regained some sort of control over its own body.

They reached for Ghoul’s hand, but he was careful not to let them take it. He feared he wouldn’t be able to walk away if they did.

“You loved me just fine,” Party replied, but they both knew it was a lie. It wouldn’t have come to this if he’d had. 

Ghoul smiled, but it didn’t quite reach its eyes. 

As he turned back, Party said, “Hey, Ghoulie? I love you too, okay? That’s never changed.”

They hadn’t spoken after that: there wasn’t anything they could’ve said to make it better. Things were broken beyond repair; the pieces couldn’t be mended.

Ghoul had made its goodbyes to Kobra and Jet and, right before leaving, he’d placed a kiss on Party’s lips. “For old times’ sake. I’m sorry.”

Party hadn’t answered, and Ghoul had walked past the door, never to return.

~

Present day…

“Someone we’ve met, but not spoken to… who the fuck?” Mari groaned. Her, Jackie and Sparx had been brainstorming for the past hour and the only person they’d managed to cross out was, well, no one, because how could they know who they’d met if they hadn’t spoken to them?

“Does he say they because they’re nonbinary or because he doesn’t want us to know if it’s actually a guy?” Jackie asked.

Mari hummed. “I’m guessing they’re nonbinary, or Ghoul probably would’ve let it slip. Besides, the man is gay as fuck. What would even be the point of anonymity? If he liked girls too, sure, but I don’t really see the point in this scenario.”

“Ugh, I guess. I think I liked it better when we didn’t know he’d dated someone.”

Marigold paused to think. While she did agree with her friend on some point (read: this mystery was taking up almost every moments of her waking day) the gossip in her was thriving. 

“You guys are looking at this the wrong way,” Sparx drawled. They’d been silent for quite some time. “You’re too focused on having met the dude. Who do we know Ghoul finds hot?”

Mari rolled her eyes. “It said it didn’t have a type!”

“Again, people lie, Mari.”

“Sorry we’re not all liars, fucking Phoenix Witch.”

“ Guys ,” said Jackie’s pained voice.

“Right. Who does Ghoul find hot? Ha! Party Poison,” she laughed. As fucking if.

Sparx rolled their eyes. “You’re so fucking funny.”

“Can’t we just be civil?” Jackie begged. “Who do we know looks like Party Poison?”

“But he doesn’t have a type!”

Jackie shrugged. “It’s the closest to a lead we’ve got. Maybe he hasn’t realized. After all, three makes a pattern. Two could be just a coincidence.”

Mari hummed. She tried to think far, far back. Had Ghoul even mentioned ever finding someone attractive? He’d never even officially said it thought Party Poison was good looking—though its flushed face had spoken for itself.

“We should try social experiments,” she said after her ponderings.

Sparx sent her a withering look. “What the fuck do you mean by that?”

“Why, parties, of course! I’m willing to bet that’s where we apparently met his ex. If we drag him to enough parties, we might finally catch onto something more!”

“This is a terrible idea,” Jackie whined, but Mari knew from her tone that her plan was a go.

~

“We are going to a party!” Sparx announced for the eighth time in the last two weeks. 

Ghoul sighed. He was already sporting a headache and his eyebags were twelve days old. “Must we really? Again?”

“Come on, live a little!” Mari exclaimed, happily hip-bumping him.

“I feel I might actually live more if I get one good night of sleep.”

Jackie hummed her agreement, and Ghoul couldn’t miss the way Marigold and Sparx glared at her. Ugh, there really was no getting out of this, was there? While he really didn’t want to go, he knew he’d feel safer driving them around than waiting for them. He couldn’t be the only one tired out of its mind, and he was positive he was the best driver out of the four of them.

“Fucking fine, but I get the next three days off or so Destroya help me….”

“Deal!” 

Ugh.

“When is it?” Knowing the girls, they would probably have to leave in ten minutes or so. They liked springing it on him at the very last minute. As Sparx had oh so nicely put it, it gave him less time to chicken out. And, sure enough, they were glad to inform it they would be leaving pretty fucking soon.

He knew there had to be some reason why the girls were intent on attending literally every single party in a two zone radius, but he couldn’t quite place it. It probably had to do with its ex because of fucking course every thing still revolved around Party,but he wasn’t sure how they thought going to parties would make him tell them. He didn’t even rink at those parties because he had to chauffeur them around anyway.

As he drove, he resigned himself to asking: “Say, why the fuck are you so obsessed with my ex? And why the parties?”

Instant silence answered it, and a part of him was grateful for the peace and quiet.

“Is it that hard to believe we’d like to know more about you?” Marigold huffed.

Eyes still focused on the desert ahead, he answered, “There’s more to me than my ex.”

“We know that!”

“I think what she means is, they were your friend first, right? I’m guessing because of that picture from when you were kids. There’s a huge part of your life we don’t know, and while we absolutely don’t want to pressure you into telling us, we simply wonder about you.”

Sparx raised their hands up “I just want to judge your taste in people.”

Ghoul worried its bottom lip. “I’m sorry if it seems like I’m keeping things from you. Which, in a sense, I guess I am, but it’s nothing against you. I’m just a very different person than I was, and I’m trying to leave that person behind.”

“Oh,” answered three voices.

Ghoul winced. That tone meant nothing good. Fuck, he was really messing this up, was he? “I mean, it’s not like it was all bad! I just like to compartmentalize. You don’t have to worry about it.”

The atmosphere in the car was definitely fucked. He should’ve known better than to ask. Oh, well. The good news was that they’d reached their destination.

Sparx and Marigold ran to the building, but Jackie lingered. “I’m sorry if we’re making you uncomfortable. I shouldn’t have entertained them. You don’t deserve us harassing you over something you don’t want to talk about.”

It shook its head. “No, it’s not that. It’s not like I expected it to stay secret forever. The breakup was recent when we first met, and then mentioning it felt… y’know. ‘Hey guys, fun fact about me, but I was heartbroken when we first met’ sounds weird when it’s been three years, you know?”

She smiled. “I don’t think it’s silly at all.  Still, I’ll try to get them to drop it. You can tell us when, or if, you ever feel like it. They might be disappointed on the spot, but they’ll get over it.”

“Thank you.”

She left to get to the building. Ghoul stayed outside to smoke a cigarette. If he was going to have a headache and be at this party he absolutely did not want to attend, he could at least have this one thing.

Once he was done smoking, he crushed the butt under its sole and braced himself for the loud noise and the people. And to think he’d used to like parties.

It admittedly wasn’t as bad as he’d expected it to be. He danced with Marigold—or rather, stood awkwardly next to her while she danced—talked shit about people's outfits with Sparx, and watched the crowd with Jackie.

After what felt like decades, he excused himself and stepped out in the backyard. He lit another cigarette, sighing in relief after his first drag. 

“You’re smoking again.”

Ghoul was so startled it dropped its cigarette. Mournfully staring at it, he sighed, “Not anymore. Hi, Pois.”

Party walked closer to him, and Ghoul hated that he didn’t tense up.

“I didn’t think you’d be there.”

It motioned towards the building. “I was dragged here.” Lighting another cigarette, he asked, “What about you? What’s your excuse?”

“I thought you might be there,” they had the audacity to answer. Ghoul resisted the urge to run away. Fuck Party. Fuck them for still making him feel this way. But of course the fucker had to pretend this was a normal thing to say and continue on with the conversation as though nothing had happened. “I didn’t know you’d started smoking again.”

Ghoul snorted. “How could you have? I had to replace you with something .” Their breakup had left a Party-shaped hole in their lungs and smoke was known to fill up empty space.

“That’s not funny, Ghoul.”

It exhaled, finally looking over at them. “It wasn’t meant to be.”

He didn’t know why he’d told Party about the cigarettes. Maybe he’d slipped up, forgotten where they now stood. Maybe he wanted to hurt Party, make them feel guilty. He didn’t know. He didn’t remember how to deal with the excess of feelings that came along with them. He wasn’t sure he'd ever known.

“ Ghoul .”

“What do you want me to say?”

They kicked at pebbles on the ground. “I don’t know. I wish you’d take better care of yourself.”

“Your roots are showing.”

‘Your roots are showing,’ Ghoul said, because somehow it seemed better than saying ‘and you’re no better’. ‘Your roots are showing,’ because that meant Ghoul had noticed. That proved he could still see through them. Or maybe he was going crazy.

“And you’re smoking again. We can go in circles like this, Ghoulie, but I don’t think it’ll do any of us any good.”

Ghoul smiled at them sadly. “We make quite the pair, don’t we?”

Party hummed, and the two of them stood in silence. Ghoul took the last drag out of its cigarette. If he closed its eyes, it could almost pretend that he’d gone back in time, before things became so complicated. 

Party was the first to break the silence. Ghoul fought back a smile; they’d never much liked the silence. Especially when they were anxious.

“Can I kiss you? For old times’ sake.”

Ghoul whirled around, eyes wide. “ What ?”

Party looked just as surprised. “Shit, I’m sorry, please forget I said that. I—I just got caught up in nostalgia, I guess. Shit ”

Even though it was dark outside, Ghoul could still see a faint blush on their face. Oh .

“Pois….”

“I know.”

“We broke up.”

“Trust me, I know.”

Ghoul could barely hear past the sound of its own beating heart. “Party, what—I mean, we can’t, we can’t possibly—”

“Ghoul? It’s okay, I know. I shouldn’t have asked, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I’m really sorry.”

And Ghoul knew they meant it. Of course they did. But Ghoul hated them for it nonetheless, because he really did want to kiss them. Heart still pounding, its shaky hand reached for Party.

“Hey, Pois? I’m going to kiss you, now.”

Their wide eyes met his, and the sight was almost enough for him to stop dead in its tracks. One last time ; ‘for old times’ sake’, as Party had said.

The kiss was brief; a bare brush of the lips. As he pulled back, Ghoul whispered, “I’m sorry.” Then, because he couldn’t take it anymore, because he couldn’t think, it walked back into the sea of people still into the building, unable to shake the familiar bitterness of walking away.

Chapter Text

The drive back to their hideout was dead silent, but Ghoul was too far lost in thought to really notice. The girls could’ve been blasting MGMK for all it knew.

After parking, he slipped out of the car and mechanically walked into bed, praying it was a grave and the covers were the dirt burying him. Just what the fuck had he been thinking? Nothing good ever came out of giving in when it came to Party. He’d only managed to reopen a wound that had barely even healed.

It all came to shit when he woke up, though. Not only did he have to deal with the consequences of its own actions—he hadn’t even been drunk, so he truly had no one to blame but itself—but he also found himself face to face with three somber faces. 

“Um. Are you guys okay?” He looked behind himself, confused, but, apart from his three friends, nothing seemed out of place.

“You never talk about your old crew… yet you seem to be the expert on all things Fab Four….” Marigold began, and something bitter settled over Ghoul.

“You’re really, really good with explosives….” Jackie added, face blank.

“And you have a fucking crush on Party Poison. Not to mention, as do they on you,” finished Sparx, and Ghoul felt his face turn white. Oh. It was that kind of morning.

“I—” 

“Your ex is Party fucking Poison,” Marigold accused, and Ghoul knew there was no getting out of this one. Signhing, he pulled out a chair.

“I’m… yes.”

Marigold’s mouth dropped as though she hadn’t really expected it to admit it. “What? Really?”

He scowled. “You asked!” 

Sparx shrugged. “You know, I was half-convinced of it myself, and I most definitely did not think you were going to outright say it. Well. I’ll be damned!”

Ghoul shrugged in return, squirming in its seat. “I always figured the truth would come knocking at some point. Someone was bound to recognize me, or I would let it slip, or you guys would catch on. Shit, I was surprised three years ago when I realized you had no clue who I was.”

Marigold chuckled. “Yeah, in hindsight I’m a bit mad at myself. Guess it turns out I’m not our group’s expert on Party Poison, huh?”

Ghoul winced. “Yeah… sorry about that. But hey, I’m sure Party would like you!”

“That explains the fucking nickname,” Sparx muttered, shaking their head. “Actually, this whole situation makes so much sense. Fuck!”

“I guess I should explain myself a bit, right?”

“It would be appreciated,” Jackie agreed, “but we all know that you might not be ready and we respect that. Don’t we, girls?”

Said girls noncommittally let their varying degrees of agreement be heard.

Ghoul shook its head. What more was there to hide? The girls had figured it out. The least he could do was give them some sort of explanation. “It’s alright. Okay. Let’s start at the beginning, then.”

~

Ghoul and Jet had met at the tender age of the very day Ghoul was born. Jet being a year his older, she’d met him at one, but Ghoul was narrating, so technicalities. When Ghoul was five—and Jet six—their small colony was raided by Dracs and Crows. The vast majority had died. The surviving adults—not any of their parents, mind you—had taken the remaining children in, but as the years had gone on, their numbers had dwindled down. Eventually, Ghoul and Jet found themselves alone, and not too long after, Party and Kobra came along. The siblings were only scared kids, fresh out of Bat City, and the four of them had stuck together ever since. Eight years olds Ghoul and Kobra, nine years old Jet, and barely even ten years old Party against the world, and thus the Fab Four were born.

“Was it love at first sight?” Marigold interrupted, eyes wide and sparkly.

Ghoul snorted. “Fuck no! I was eight! I thought kissing was gross and Pois was literally helpless. They had no fucking idea how to survive in the Zones. The siblings would’ve died all over without me or Jet. Especially without Jet. Anyway—”

Ghoul fell for Party at twelve, and they got together when he was fourteen and when Party was still fifteen. Things were good at the start, because of course they were. Honeymoon phase and all that. But Ghoul was impulsive and Party was prideful and they butted heads one too many times. When Ghoul was seventeen and Party eighteen, they broke it off and Ghoul left.

“And then I met you guys, like a month after that.”

“Shit,” Sparx eloquently commented.  “Right after?”

“That’s why I didn’t tell you about it. It hurt too much.”

Jackie frowned. “Did Party Poison… did they do something, anything—”

“No! Fuck, no. No, it was a two-way breakup. They’ve never done anything bad, we just… we didn’t work out.”

“That’s not what it looked like last night,” Sparx mumbled, and Ghoul froze.

“Wait, what?”

Their eyes widened. “What?”

“I heard that! What do you mean, last night?”

Ghoul didn’t miss the way the three of them avoided meeting its eyes.

Jackie was the one to put him out of its misery. She sounded almost… apologetic? “We went looking for you and we may or may not have seen you kissing them?”

He groaned, burying its head in its hands. “Fuuuck, this is so embarrassing.”

“I thought it was cute!” Marigold exclaimed. “At least until the part when you left them hanging dry and they looked at you walk away with the saddest puppy eyes I’ve ever fucking seen!” Jackie elbowed her and her eyes widened. “Shit! I’m sorry!”

“Ughhhh,” Ghoul ingeniously replied, dragging the syllable.

Sparx crossed their arms. “So are we gonna unpack what that was? Because I was going to unpack it before it turned out to be your ex! And now it really feels like something we should unpack.”

“There’s nothing to unpack!” Ghoul tried, but he was met with three disagreeing faces. It was just his luck that he’d ended up living with the biggest three gossips to ever walk the face of the Earth.

“Sweetie, you kissed your ex at a party and left them behind without so much as a second glance,” Marigold pointed out. Ghoul glared.

“I said sorry! And they weren’t expecting anything more. It’s… whatever.”

Marigold pressed on. “But you want to do it again.” 

“Of course I want to do it again! That’s why I left! Then and now.” Ghoul looked down, sadness washing over him. “It’s always been like this. We don’t love each other right. It gets too be too much but we can’t seem to stay away from one another and so it inevitably goes to shit. I have too much love for them and nowhere to put it.”

“Oh.”

Ghoul wasn’t sure who’d said it, but he agreed all the same.

“‘One last time.’ It was closure,” he explained, only half believing it himself. This felt nothing like closure. This felt like putting them through the same cycle again, but the girls didn't have to know that. Hopefully Party wasn’t as torn up as he was, but from what Marigold had told him… yeah….

Ghoul had spent the past years thinking Party had moved on, and yet they had asked to kiss him first. They’d opened the door, and Ghoul had let them, but they’d initiated it all the same. They were the one to seek him out. Maybe they weren’t as over him as Ghoul had thought they were. Maybe Ghoul didn’t know anything, after all.

~

“Ghoul kissed me,” Party whispered as Jet ran her hands through their hair. She’d known something was wrong the second they’d come home from that party, looking eighteen and brokenhearted all over again. They’d set their head in her lap, and something was wrong-wrong, because they hadn’t objected when she’d touched their hair. Jet could count on her hand the number of times they’d let her do so without protesting.

Her hand momentarily froze, but she didn’t want to worry them, so she quickly resumed her movement. “Oh.”

“It’s my fault,” they admitted, and Jet was suddenly glad Kobra was still in his room. He wouldn’t have liked hearing that. “I asked him to.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, Party.”

They chuckled wetly. “How’d you know it didn’t end well?”

She hummed. “You’re here, aren’t you? Do you want me to talk, or listen?”

“I don’t know what I want.”

“I think you do.”

“Yeah… I think that ship has sailed. He walked away, Jet. I keep letting him walk away.”

Jet smiled, thinking back to the ‘good old days’. “I don’t think either of us could dream of stopping it when it sets its mind on something.”

Party sighed, sitting up so they could look her in the eye. “Part of me wishes he’d set his mind on us. And I know it’s unfair of me to ask, I know he tried as he could, but….”

Jet knew. She knew all too well, because she couldn’t help but selfishly wish for the same thing. She wished she hadn’t lost the one she considered her brother.

“I don’t think he wanted to kiss me,” Party admitted. Jet hummed. She hadn’t expected them to speak up: the two of them had been silent for quite some time, now.

“Ghoul doesn’t do anything he doesn't want to do. I think he didn’t want to want to kiss you. There’s a big difference.”

She smiled, because she knew Party wouldn’t be able to see. She felt thirteen, fourteen, fifteen all over again; her and Kobra playing cupid left and right because some people couldn’t figure out their feelings for the other by themselves. This was admittedly sadder, but they were both still so stupidly in love.

She shook her head. She’d never understood that whole romance thing. How could two people who loved each other so much hurt each other? And without even meaning to? She wondered if that was what love was for everyone, or if her friends were special in that respect.

“Hey, Jet?”

“Hm?”

“Thank you. And sorry. I’m so sorry.”

They looked so sad. So remorseful. Jet’s heart ached for them. “I think you’re the only one here who hasn’t forgiven yourself. I know you, Party. I know you did what you could. No one else fought for you and Ghoul harder than you did, maybe with the exception of Ghoul itself. You can’t keep beating yourself up over this. You didn’t mean for this to happen, and you've been hating yourself for it ever since. Ghoul wouldn’t have wanted that. He would be so pissed at you if it knew. But, most importantly, he would feel terribly guilty about it. It’s not your fault, and it’s not its either.”

Party hugged themself. “You guys warned us, though. I promised,  Jet. I promised Kobra nothing would change. I can’t even keep my promises, how the fuck was I supposed to ever hope to keep him?”

Jet looked out the window. Had she resented Party, at the beginning? She had to admit part of her had, yes. The irrational part of her was angry at the loss of Ghoul, and because Party had stayed, that part of her had directed her anger at the situation towards them. But that wasn’t a part she’d liked, and that misplaced bitterness was long gone. It had gone away  the moment she’d realized no one wrongfully hated Party more than they did and, just like that, her anger had vanished. She simply wished they could let go of their own hatred as well.

And Kobra. Well, she loved the guy, but he held grudges. And despite all he claimed, she knew he loved Ghoul. It leaving had hurt him, and he’d taken it out on his sibling. Of course, Party being vulnerable, they’d internalized it, but, again, Kobra was more frustrated at the situation than at Party. He simply hadn’t fully realized it.

“Party. No one blames you. I think you’re the only one who does.”

“I don’t—”

“Party. He loves you. You love him. It never was more complicated than that. And maybe it doesn’t need to be. You were fourteen and fifteen. You’re nineteen and twenty-one. I think your talk is past its due.”

Party looked away. Jet thought their conversation was done, but, a while later, “Jet? Could you help me with something?”

She cocked her head, waiting for them to go on.

“I’d like to dye my hair. Someone told me my roots were showing and we can’t have that, can we?”

She smiled. “It would be my pleasure.”

Chapter Text

“Have you ever thought about… you know… putting yourself out there?” Sparx asked one day, and Ghoul had to stop itself from spitting out its coffee. It was fucking expensive coffe and no way in Hell was he wasting it on Sparx’ crazy suggestion.

“Pardon?”

Sparx sighed. “Come on, Ghoul, a rebound. You could get Party Poison out of your system.”

“What?” Marigold shrieked from the other room, and Ghoul winced, kissing goodbye its hope of the conversation being brief. “Sparx! You can’t get in the way of true love! Besides, look at him!” she said, motioning at Ghoul. “It wouldn't be fair to the other guy!”

Ghoul waved its hand between the two of them. “Also, this guy right here isn’t interested. Both in a rebound or in  Party.”

“Boring,” Sparx and Marigold replied at the same time. Ghoul could already feel a headache forming.

“It’s not boring, I’m simply not seeking anything romantic at the moment. Is that so hard to believe?”

Sparx cocked an eyebrow, and it threw Ghoul off a bit:  Party used to do that a lot. Well, they probably still did, but he hadn’t seen much of them in the last few years. They seemed to have a specific type of raised eyebrow for every fucking scenario, and it always pissed Kobra the fuck off because he wasn’t able to do it. And not for a lack of trying.

Sparx interrupted its train of thought. “Ghoul, are you even listening to me? Oh, who am I kidding. Of course you’re not.” Ghoul glared in return. “There you are! I said, ‘you sure didn’t seem to mind romance when you kissed Party a couple of days ago.’”

“They have a point!” Marigold commented, half-apologetic and half-supportive of Sparx.

“It wasn’t anything like that!” Ghoul protested, but the blush on his cheeks betrayed him. Trying to save face, he reminded them that Party was the one who asked, but his perfectly valid argument was turned a deaf ear to.

“Someone who doesn’t want romance would’ve said no,” Marigold reasoned, and Ghoul once again found itself wishing it wasn’t having that conversation.

“Every day I regret telling you guys more and more,” he whined. “Just because I love them doesn’t mean I think getting back with them is a good idea. Because I don’t!  It would be so fucking messy.”

“Not if you’re adults about it!”

Ghoul crossed its arms. “And what do you know about being an adult about something?” 

He smiled when Marigold flipped him off.

“Ghoul has a point,” Sparx began, and was quick to continue when Marigold glowered at them. Ghoul mournfully wondered about Jackie’s whereabouts. She wouldn’t treat him this way. “ but Mari’s also right. Obviously she can’t force you to get back with your ex, and I’m not even convinced that’s a good idea but, from what I’ve seen, it looks like the two of you should probably talk. Because in my experience, kissing your ex after cutting them out cold for years is not the healthiest way to act, and you might wanna reflect on why that happened.”

Ghoul blinked. “And when the fuck did you become a fucking therapist?”

Sparx shrugged. “I know things! I just think it’s objectively funnier to fuck shit up than fix shit up. You’re my friend, though, and I have to live with you, so basically get your shit together is what I’m saying. In a friend way.”

“So thoughtful,” Ghoul chuckled, but he muled their words over nonetheless. They weren’t wrong, weirdly enough. He wasn’t used to seriously listening to Sparx.

It wasn’t like Ghoul didn’t know most people had a different relationship with their ex than Ghoul did with Party. He was aware it wasn’t a common practice to kiss your ex of three years at parties after not seeing them for those said three years.

Yeah, a talk was probably a good idea.

He wasn’t sure if he was meant to reply to Sparx already or if they expected him to be mysterious and reflective about it, but fuck it, the two girls seemed invested enough in his love life. “I guess… you’re… right….” he painfully let out. It hadn’t thought agreeing with Sparx out loud would be so hard.

“But how are you going to find them?” Marigold inquired, genuinely concerned. “They’re notoriously hard to find if they don’t want to be seen.”

Both Ghoul and Sparx stared at her. 

“Why are you looking at me like that? It’s weird.”

“Marigold.”

“Mari.”

“Wh—oh. Oh, right . You were part of the Fab Four. Destroya, I can’t believe I’ve been living with someone who knew how to find the Fabulous Four all along and I didn’t have a single fucking clue.”

Ghoul smiled sympathetically. “I was very careful not to hint at it.”

“ Still .”

Ghoul chuckled softly. While the girls did tease him for it, they didn’t seem resentful that he’d kept its past secret—something for which Ghoul was grateful. He wouldn’t have known what to do had they felt lied to.

Having a talk with Party. A real talk, open feelings, cards laid out on the table. The prospect was terrifying. 

Party would probably already know everything Ghoul had to say, but admitting to its feelings out loud… there would be no going back from it. Party would know , and it would be mortifying. Ghoul didn’t know if he wanted them to be over him or not.

On the one hand, if Party was over them, it would be over quickly. Ghoul would go back home dejected, but maybe he could move on. On the other hand, though, Party had asked to kiss him. And Ghoul would have to tell them that while he loved them, getting back together was a terrible dea, and Party would be heartbroken. And Ghoul didn’t want that, but he also didn’t want the first option. 

If Ghoul wasn’t selfish, he’d take the hit and pray he was the only one harboring feelings, but some part of him couldn’t help but hope that he wouldn’t be the only one laid out bare. Maybe it would be easier to bear if they were both hurting. But this was a terrible thing to think, so Ghoul tried not to think about it at all.

~

Ghoul spent the longest time sitting in its car. He could see the diner; could see the Trans Am, and yet he was paralyzed. This was like a morbid trip down memory lane. The graffiti wall was still intact. Well. More or less intact. Some new doodles and phrases had been added, but Ghoul could still see the neon green paint he would use back then. There weren’t that many new additions, Ghoul’s treacherous, treacherous voice pointed out.

It let its eyes wander towards the Trans Am, unable to look at the hideout any more. That old car had seen so much. Ghoul would be surprised it was still standing, but then again, he knew how much Party cherished it. They would switch out every single fucking part until it wouldn’t even be the same car before they gave up on it. Come to think of it, there probably weren’t many original parts still on the car. The paint definitely wasn’t. Ghoul smiled to itself, remembering the scalding hot days of radioactive desert summer during which Party would drag them outside to help repaint the car because it was the only time of the year they knew for sure it wouldn’t rain. It always ended up being Party and Ghoul at the end of the day, covered in paint and sweat, Jet and Kobra long gone. How he fucking missed those days.

Ghoul blinked. No. No, he wasn’t supposed to miss those days. He was there to get closure. As in no more Party thoughts. 

Alright. He could do this. What was the worst that could happen? Ghoul could think of plenty of nightmare scenarios, but surely it couldn’t be that bad. Surely .

The door handle felt oh so heavy in its hand. The sand felt like it was sucking him into the ground, slipping out from under him. And, okay, Ghoul should probably stop avoiding the inevitable. It took five seconds to brace itself, and then knocked on the door.

It felt so weird to knock . Three years ago, it would’ve just barged in, maybe gently opened the door if he feared the others might be sleeping, but never—

“ Ghoul? ”

Ghoul’s eyes widened. In all its nightmare scenarios, he’d never considered Kobra letting him in. 

“Kobes,” he replied, voice slightly shaking. How the fuck had he not thought of the fact that Party wasn’t bound to open the door. That was such a fucking stupid thing to overlook.

The other killjoy frowned, not quite stepping aside to let Ghoul in. “Wha—what are you doing here?”

Ghoul gulped. This was definitely worse than a nightmare scenario. This was a fucking bury him in the ground alive already scenario. How the fuck was he supposed to look at Kobra dead in the eyes and explain that it was there to talk to his sibling after he’d left three years ago because of the end of his relationship with that said sibling? There was no fucking way this was going to go over well. Especially not with Kobra.

“See, it’s actually funny, I, um.”

“Oh, fuck,” Kobra whispered. “You’re fucking kidding.”

Ghoul looked at him as apologetically as he possibly could. “I’m so sorry. Is Party here?”

Kobra blinked once. Twice. Maybe he was broken. Thrice. “ No .”

He then proceeded to attempt to close the door in Ghoul’s face. Had Ghoul not held the door back fast enough to stop him, he would’ve succeeded, too.

“Wait, Kobra, please. ‘No,’ they’re not here, or ‘no’….”

Kobra let go of the door, but only to furiously cross his arms. “‘No’ as in I’m not fucking doing that again. You can’t just waltz in and leave whenever you please, Ghoul. People have to deal with what you leave behind and, newsflash, you leave behind huge fucking messes. ‘No,’ as in I’m tired of picking up the broken pieces you leave behind without so much looking back.”

He moved to close the door again. “I know!” Kobra’s hand froze. “I know , okay? That’s why I’m here. So please .”

“You’re gonna break their heart again, aren’t you?” He closed his eyes, smiling as he shook his head, but his smile held no warmth. “Motherfucking hell, Ghoul.”

“It’s for the best and you know it!”

“Give me a fucking break.”

Ghoul felt the overwhelming urge to explain itself. “We’re not right for each other, Kobra. I can’t keep hurting them. It’s all I keep doing.”

Kobra glared. “And what the fuck do you think you’ll do if you go in there and tell them that? Phoenix Witch, Ghoul, do you ever think ?”

Its shoulders dropped. "What would you have me do? Because we can’t go on like this.”

“I—” Kobra stepped away, letting Ghoul in. Before he could come in, though, Kobra stopped him. “This is the only chance you get, understand me? You fuck this up, and I’m never opening this door for you again.”

Ghoul walked in and Kobra walked out. “You have an hour,” the latter said before leaving.

The walk to Party’s room had never seemed so long before.

Ghoul’s eyes darted towards the small hole in the wall he’d accidentally made he didn’t know how many years ago. The four of them had been playing tag of all things, and he’d fucking run into the wall. He’d only had a wound for a week, but the wall had never recovered. 

Everywhere he looked, he could see signs that it had once lived there. Even after all those years, some sort of proof remained. Hints of his life in the diner, with the Fab Four, were forever embedded in the place. 

Take the Power Pup stain on the couch. Jet had spent hours trying everything to get it out. When she’d given up, the sun had long been set. None of them had ever understood why the fucking dog food had left the stain. Kobra claimed that it was because the can was expired but, to this day, Ghoul was convinced it wasn’t even. No, he fucking remembered the surprise; the happiness he’d felt when he’d seen the expiration date. Non-expired food was a luxury in the Zones. (Later that night, Party had kissed him and suggested that maybe it had left a stain because it wasn’t expired. Ghoul had told them that he didn’t really care for the reason why it had stained the couch.) (They’d both vowed never to tell Kobra any of that, though.)

Take the Sharpie lines on the wall documenting the Fab Four’s growth. And to think Ghoul was once the tallest out of the four. The day he was outgrown was the day he stopped adding tallies to the wall. In hindsight, that had been a smart move: he’d quit while he was somewhat still ahead. The years hadn’t been kind to it, height-wise.

The walk to Party’s room had never seemed so long before, and yet it was already over.

Chapter Text

“When I heard Kobra say your name, I was half convinced I’d finally turned crazy,” Party admitted as Ghoul walked in. 

The small smirk that made itself known on the other’s face made Party feel faint. “You didn’t come to greet me?”

“I wasn’t sure you’d actually go through with it. I thought maybe you would’ve left.” They left the ‘again’ unsaid, but by the way Ghoul winced, he’d understood all the same.

Party motioned for Ghoul to sit next to them. Instead, Ghoul looked back and forth between Party and the bed, and ultimately decided to stay up. Right.  It probably had been foolish to suggest it to begin with. Of course Ghoul wouldn’t want to sit on the bed with them. Not after, well, everything.

“You might as well say it,” Party sighed when Ghoul remained both still and silent.

“What?”

“Whatever it is you came to say. Just… get it over with.”

Ghoul frowned. “Did you hear what I told Kobra?”

“Was I supposed to?” Ghoul didn’t answer, so Party sighed once again. “No, I didn’t. You just don’t seem at ease, so I doubt you’re here to catch up, is all.”

“I love you,” Ghoul blurted out. Party’s heart picked up. “I’m in love with you. Pretty much always have, and that hasn’t changed. I don’t know if it ever will.”

“Ghoulie, what—”

Ghoul didn’t let them finish. “I thought cutting you cold was the way to go. I thought maybe if I didn’t see you, my feelings for you wouldn’t be as intense as they are. The fact that I’m here obviously proves that I was mistaken. So I’m here to talk. We never got proper closure, and so these last three years, I’ve been trying to mend this fucking chasm with a needle.”

“What are you getting at? I mean, I love y—”

Ghoul’s eyes grew wide. He looked… alarmed? “Don’t! Don’t say it. It’ll make it easier if you don’t.”

Party frowned. “That’s not really fair.”

Ghoul looked down. “I’m sorry.”

They chuckled. “Yeah, I’m sorry, too. Or is that not something I can say?”

“Pois….”

They kept quiet.

“Fine, I’m sorry. I’m trying, okay? I’m trying to make this right for once.”

Still refusing to look at Ghoul, they muttered, “Why does making it right mean we have to lie to ourselves?”

Even though they weren’t looking at him, they could feel it in their bones when Ghoul tensed. “It’s not lying to say we’re not right for each other. We can’t even talk, Pois. That’s why I came here. To talk. I don’t have any ulterior motives, I just want to put this all behind us. Or at least far enough behind that I won’t think about you every single fucking day.”

Their eyes were wet. No, they weren’t going to cry. Not like this. Not in front of him. Not again.

“You came here to talk but you shut me down every time I open my mouth! You don’t talk to me for three years and then tell me you still love me but you won’t do anything about it? Won’t let me tell you I love you too?” They forced themself to look up at Ghoul. “I just don’t get it: we love each other, and yet you want us to put it all behind. Can’t we move forward instead? What are you even scared of?”

Ghoul took a step back. “Coming here was a mistake.”

Party shook their head as they stood up, feeling sick all over. Somehow, they knew that if Ghoul left now, he wouldn’t come back. Not ever. “No, really! What are you scared of? Our relationship has already gone to shit, Ghoul! It can’t get worse than this, so what do we have to lose?”

What do we have to lose? I already lost you.

Ghoul froze, and Party’s vision stopped swaying. Their heart picked up again when Ghoul took a step forward, and then didn’t stop. He didn’t stop walking until he was standing next to Party. Only then did he halt, only hesitating a second before it plopped down on Party’s bed. The latter could only watch, dumfounded, as Ghoul tugged on their hand, pulling them next to him on the mattress.

“I don’t want to lose you again.”

Party blinked. Oh. 

His voice was barely louder than a whisper as he elaborated. “I can’t go through this again because I love you. And I know how that sounds, which is why I’m sorry. I wish I could say something else. Losing you broke me, and as selfish as it may be, I don’t think I can go through that sort of hurt again. And it’s for your sake, too. I know you probably want to tell me that getting hurt is a risk you’re willing to take, but hurting you again is not a risk I’m willing to take.”

Party considered their next words very carefully. Ghoul was talking. He wanted to talk, and the least Party could do was listen. They admittedly hadn’t been very good at it in the past.

“So where does that leave us? If you leave now and don’t come back, it’ll hurt just as much, Ghoul.”

Phoenix Witch, Party would be absolutely destroyed. ‘Hurt’ was a euphemism.

They understood where Ghoul was coming from, though. He’d left all of them behind in the hopes that his absence would make everything better and now, three years later, it was stuck knowing nothing had changed.

But they’d tried the whole not being friends thing. They’d tried radio silence. Party couldn’t understand how this was better. How was it better to know they both still felt the same and not do anything about it?

Ghoul’s shoulders dropped. “Can’t we be friends?” he asked, and Party caught the way its voice broke. And, along with its voice, Party’s heart did, too.

“Oh.”

Ghoul looked at them, tears brimming its eyes, and Party felt their own tears, the very same they’d been fighting off, come back.

“I miss you so much,” Ghoul cried, burying its face in Party’s chest.

Their eyes widened as they felt Ghoul’s tears soak through their shirt. Again, oh. Hesitantly, they brought their arms around it in what they hoped was a comforting hug, but they were too shaken up to truly tell. “I mi—”

“I know! Destroya, I know, you fucking idiot,” he said, and Party smiled fondly. Maybe they ought to have been offended, but Ghoul held no mean intent behind the insult. No, it actually felt like they were talking to the Ghoul they’d always known, the one they’d first fallen in love with, the one he’d always been before things had turned to shit.

The two of them stayed like that, Ghoul against Party and Party holding him, so scared to even breathe because what if reality caught up to them? What if a single breath blew Ghoul away? They felt like they were dreaming, and Party knew how fleeting dreams were all too well.

“Losing you as a joyfriend was terrible, but I also lost you as a best friend,” Ghoul whispered after a while. “I want to think part of me always knew how risky dating you was, but I was so heads over heels for you that I couldn’t even begin to imagine things ever not working out. So when you swore to Kobra that it wouldn’t change anything, I believed you because every part of me wanted to cling onto that as a truth.”

Slowly, very, very slowly, Party ran a hand up and down Ghoul’s back. “Hey, I believed it so much I promised it, didn’t I?”

“The point is, yeah, I was scared of us not working out, but once we got together, it’s like I forgot that we weren’t safe forever once we were in an actual relationship, you know?”

Party hummed. Oh, they did know.

“You were my best friend before you ever were the love of my life. And maybe I can’t have you in a romantic way again, maybe we aren’t built that way, but….”

Ghoul trailed off, and Party had to force their hand to keep moving. Not moving would betray them; would place pressure on Ghoul. Were they waiting for Ghoul to finish its train of thoughts? Yes, but they’d been waiting for years. And so their hand kept softly running up and down its back.

“I think I’d like my best friend back,” Ghoul finally confessed. “I miss Jet, I miss Kobra, I miss you, and staying apart hasn’t done us any good. And I know it may be forward of me, and I’ll live with it if you refuse, but I’d forever hate myself if I didn't at least put it out in the world.”

I think I’d like my best friend back. The words sounded like a symphony to Party’s ears. Their hand froze against Ghoul’s back.

Phoenix Witch, they hadn’t been Ghoul’s best friend in years. Six years, to be exact. Well, they’d been Ghoul’s best friend in a sense, but not actively. They’d started thinking of Ghoul as their boyfriend, and then their ex. Maybe that was where things had gone wrong. Maybe if Party had just tried to be more of a friend… maybe then things would have worked out for them. Hell, Party could barely even believe Ghoul was there, asking to be their friend again. They didn’t know what they’d done to deserve Ghoul. They doubted they even did. No, they were positive they didn’t.

The way they’d been idolized by the killjoys in the Zones always been crazy to Party. They’d never quite understood what they’d done to find themself in that position? Had they enjoyed it? Did they enjoy it? Sure. Perhaps more than they should have; more than they should. But no matter their own feelings as to their fame, they’d never understood why their friends hadn’t been dragged along into the spotlight. If they were being honest, all of them were so much more worthy of it.

Their eyes settled on Ghoul. Without it, Party never would’ve made it. And they didn’t even mean it in a cheesy, romantic way. The facts were that without him, they were nothing. Ghoul and Jet had saved Party and Kobra all those years ago by welcoming them into this group that had transcended family.

But Ghoul hadn’t stopped at saving them. No, he’d wormed its way into Party’s heart and had made their life worth living. So many were the ‘joys that didn’t survive the Zones. So many were those that didn’t have a reason to live. For a long time, Kobra had been that for them. And while they still loved their brother just as much as they always had, Kobra was grown now. He wasn’t just a kid that needed protecting, and he hadn’t been for a long time. Kobra had eventually stopped needing Party like he’d once had and Ghoul had filled that void by its very presence.

Speaking of Ghoul. Party had stayed silent for too long again, engrossed in their own thoughts. “You never lost me,” they whispered, looking down at their hand still frozen against Ghoul’s back. “I’m sorry I ever made you feel like you had.”

“Fuck, Pois,” Ghoul said softly, closing its eyes as it leaned back. Party wished they knew what he was thinking. Party wished for so many things when it came to him.

As softly as they could, they brought their hand from Ghoul’s back to its chin so they could tilt it up. Ghoul opened its eyes again, meeting theirs. Party cleared their throat. “I love you. And—before you say anything—I don’t mean romantically. Well, I mean—not presently. I mean.” They groaned. “At some point in our relationship, I  stopped saying ‘I love you’ in any way other than romantic, and that was my bad. It was as though I had this misconception that romantic love was superior to everything we’d had before and that since we weren’t in a platonic relationship, all that love was translated into romance, if that makes sense. I don’t know that I deserve a second chance at truly being your best friend, but I never could say no to you.”

Ghoul scoffed. Eyes still wet and a mocking expression on its face, he had never looked so beautiful. But maybe Party was biased; Ghoul seemed to get more breathtaking everytime they looked at him. “Are you fucking stupid?” He shook its head. “Loved by so many, and yet I’ve never seen someone hate themself more.” Party laughed, and Ghoul stared at them. “The fuck are you laughing for?”

“Never mind me. It’s just so you. All those years, and yet you’re still an asshole. The bangs can’t hide that terrible attitude of yours. I do like the cut, though.”

Ghoul smiled, and Party’s poor heart just couldn’t catch a break, could it? Oh, well. They’d survived years of pining for Ghoul.

Best friends again. Two best friends, in love with each other. To be in Ghoul’s life at all… Party couldn’t even see it as a downgrade. 

Chapter Text

“What the fuck, friends ?” Marigold shrieked, and Ghoul had to cover its ears.

“Tone it the fuck down, please?”

Thankfully, Jackie was back home by the time Ghoul had gotten there, so she was quick to support him in its decision. “I think it’s great that you too had a talk! And that you’re both satisfied with the results. It’s all that matters at the end of the day, right Mari?”

The younger girl groaned. “Fine, be boring adults about it. I”m just saying that me, personally, I would’ve kissed them on the mouth, but hey, to each their own.”

Ghoul smirked. “See, the thing is that I’ve done that before. You know, when I was dating them. Which you haven’t done.”

“Bitch.”

Jackie shook her head. “I take it back. You both are children and I won’t be supporting any of your decisions from this moment on.”

Ghoul pouted. “But I haven’t even gotten to the good part yet.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you didn’t fucking kiss them.”

Ghoul flipped Marigold off. “I was actually going to tell you that we thought you guys should meet the rest of the fam.”

Marigold instantly perked up. “Wait, really?”

At the same time, Sparx started laughing. “That is going to be sooo messy. I’m in.”

Jackie narrowed her eyes. “It won’t be messy, because you guys will behave.”

As he let the girls know, obviously Ghoul would catch up with Jet and Kobra before introducing the trainwreck that was its new crew, but Party had expressed interest in meeting those who had kept Ghoul company during the three years he’d been away from the Fab Four. And Ghoul had to admit that he was secretly looking forward to Marigold’s reaction. The girl was obsessed with Ghoul’s old crew. Maybe Ghoul could’ve moved on from Party had he not lived with her, he thought as he laughed to himself. Oh, who the fuck was he kidding anyway? Of course he wouldn’t have.

Marigold had seemed surprised—or perhaps disappointed—when she’d found out how its conversation with Party had gone, but Ghoul was personally satisfied. He could think of Party without feeling guilty or sad. For the first time in three years, actually, he thought of them and felt hope.

He also couldn’t wait to finally see Jet and Kobra again. Sure, he’d seen Kobra earlier that day, but he’d been very protective of Party. Having a normal conversation with him would be pretty great. And Jet. Destroya, Ghoul could barely wrap its mind around the fact that he was finally going to see her again.

“You seem happy,” Jackie told him, gently elbowing him.

“Huh?”

Ghoul turned around to find she was the only one still in the kitchen with him. Had he really been so far gone that he hadn’t noticed Sparx and Marigold leaving? He winced slightly. Alright, maybe making up with Party hadn’t changed everything . Nope, Ghoul still had a hard time staying focused, it seemed.

“Ever since your conversation with Party Poison, you have had a lightedness to you. You look more relaxed, less troubled.”

“Oh. I guess I am.” This whole breakup mess had been hanging over it for three years. While things admittedly weren’t perfect—no matter what they did, the two of them could never truly move past everything that had undergone in the past—finally having Party—and the crew—back in his life felt like a weight had been lifted off its chest. 

Jackie smiled. “I think it’ll be fun to meet all of them. If they’re anything like you, I’m sure we’ll get along great!”

Ghoul stifled a laugh. “I wouldn’t say we’re all that alike.” A small grin found its way on its face as it thought back to all the time he’d spent with the Fab Four. “I guess we do share some similarities though.”

~

“Everybody shut the fuck up for five minutes, ” Kobra groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. And by everyone, he only really meant Party: Jet, on the other hand, was an angel and Kobra harbored for her no hard feelings. No, he just really wished for his sibling to shut the fuck up for five minutes.

Party was fretting over the state of the diner while Jet—bless her heart—was doing her best to help them clean up. Kobra stared at the scene unfolding before his eyes, cursing himself for letting Ghoul speak to Party again not too long ago. Maybe then he wouldn’t have to deal with the mess that was his sibling, he thought, although he found himself unable to keep the small smile off his face at the thought of seeing Ghoul again. He’d missed the little shit, as annoying as he could be.

Ghoul had actually dropped by a few times since talking to Party, but the two of them had arranged for Ghoul’s new crew to meet him and Jet, creating this monster of nerves that Kobra called his sibling. What a fucking loser, Kobra affectionately thought. And to think they were related.

“You know what, Kobra Kid? You could afford to lend a fucking hand. Maybe then I’d shut up.”

The full name. Yikes .

“I’m sure Ghoul’s friend won’t mind the diner, Party,” Jet tried to reason. “It hasn’t been this clean since….” Her voice trailed off, unable to recall a time the diner had been cleaner.

“What if they’re clean freaks?” Party insisted.

At that, Kobra had to snicker. Now they were just looking for reasons to worry. “They live with Ghoul, Party. They’re not clean freaks.”

“I know, but—”

“Are you sure you’re not dating?” Kobra cut, annoyed, and he only felt slightly guilty when he saw a flash of hurt in his siblings’ eyes. “Because you’re masking a way bigger deal out of this than it needs to be. Your friend who has known you for over ten years is coming over. That’s the only thing that’s happening. Who cares if this can of Power Pup in our trash can isn’t scrubbed clean?”

Party’s eyes lit up. “Speaking of! Can you take out the trash, please?”

“Phoenix Witch take me,” Kobra muttered as he pushed himself off the counter and headed for the trash can, already planning to hide from Party outside.

His luck ran out when he opened the front door to find himself face to face with some girl bearing an overeager smile. Startled, he almost dropped the bag.

“Sorry, she really wanted to knock on the door.” Kobra looked down to find Ghoul smiling apologetically.

“‘S fine,” he muttered, stepping aside to let the four killjoys in. The one who’d knocked smiled brightly at him, and Kobra couldn’t help but wonder just what Ghoul had told its new crew about the Fab Four.

Ghoul’s other friend followed suit and the last one trailed after her. Their face seemed familiar. If Kobra recalled correctly, he’d seen her on the motorcycle tracks in Zone Four. He had no knowledge of her apart from that, though.

“So, what’s the vibe?” Ghoul asked before walking him. Kobra only stared at him. The message seemed to get across, judging by the way Ghoul winced as it stepped forward. “That bad, huh?”

Kobra looked at the trash bag still in his hand before subtly tossing it outside. He’d deal with it later: there was no way he was missing Party’s first meeting with Ghoul’s crew. He’d spent the entire day suffering, this was the least he deserved.

Jet was introducing herself to the group when Kobra walked back in, and the beaming girl that Kobra had almost run into excitedly announced that she’d heard so much about her.

“Really?” Jet asked, somewhat flushed. Even though she and Kobra were also part of Party’s crew, both of them were used to the attention being on Party.

The girl vividly nodded before whirling around to face Kobra, extending a robotic arm towards him. “Marigold! Pleased to meet you!”

Kobra shook the hand. “Kobra, but I guess you know that.”

“I do! I’ve actually heard a lot about you too.”

“Stop saying that to everyone you meet,” the one from the motorcycle tracks groaned. “I’m Sparx, by the way.”

“And you can call me Jackie,” the last one added. She seemed much calmer than the rest of her crew.

“It's great to finally meet you,” Party told the three of them. “Ghoul only had nice things to say about you.” They kept awkwardly smiling at them. Kobra groaned to himself. The bastard was probably wondering if they should introduce themself.  Proving Kobra right, they added not a second later: “I’m Party, by the way.”

“I think they’d gathered,” Ghoul quietly commented.

Jet laughed softly, and Ghoul beamed at her. Everyone was now looking at them, but Kobra’s own eyes flocked to Party. Party, who was smiling oh so softly at Ghoul, completely oblivious to anything apart from the boy. Memories of an older time vividly flashed in his mind, proving that years had done nothing to change how his sibling looked at Ghoul.

~

All in all, Ghoul was… pleasantly surprised. Sparx and Marigold were on their best behavior, and Jackie was her usual angelic self. Satisfied, Ghoul even allowed himself to relax as he sank into the old beat up couch, letting familiarity wash over him.

That is, until the utmost terrifying sentence Ghoul had ever heard was spoken: “Is Ghoul a good kisser?”

Its eyes flew open as he whirled around to glare at Marigold. Jackie beat him to yelling out, “What the fuck! You can’t ask that!”

Ghoul nervously glanced at Party to find them choking on thin air, their face a brighter red than their newly-dyed hair.

“Pardon?” they stuttered out once their soul had flown back into their body.

Mortified, Jackie tried to salvage the situation: “Please don’t answer that, we are so, so sorry. What the fuck. I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, why are your panties all in a twist?” Marigold protested, and Ghoul had never wanted to strangle her more than at that very instant. “We’re all adults here.”

“ You’re seventeen ,” Ghoul muttered through gritted teeth.

At the mention of her young age, Party visibly relaxed. Ghoul shook its head. They were too forgiving for their own good. Of course they’d let it pass when they found out how young she was. Personally, Ghoul thought it was more of a matter of stupidity than age, but hey, if they were okay with defusing the situation, who was Ghoul to stop them?

“I think that’s something that only concerns him and I,” they said with a soft smile, and Ghoul had to bite the inside of its cheek. That fucking bastard. He loved them so fucking much. “Or, um, you know, anyone he gets involved with.”

Ghoul averted his eyes, feeling the gaze of everyone in the room fall on him, assessing its reaction. It did its best to keep a fairly blank face and flashed a dry smile as Sparx, Marigold and Jackie’s eyes bore holes into the back of its head. Kobra, Jet—and probably Party—could likely guess that Ghoul hadn’t been in any relationship or romantic situation of any kind since, well, Party, but the three girls knew . They knew, and at least two of them looked at him expectedly, but Ghoul wouldn’t break in. This was mortifying enough as it was.

“Anyway!” Jet exclaimed, and, in its gratitude, Ghoul wanted nothing more than to tackle-hug her with all its might. “Can we offer you guys any food?”

Jackie shared a look with her, and Ghoul saw an entire  silent conversation take place between them. “It’s getting a bit late for us. We’re a few Zones out, so we’ll probably get going. We wouldn’t want Ghoul to drive out in the night. Besides, we won’t keep you any longer, much less eat your food. Destroya knows how hard it is to find anything these days.”

“It really wouldn’t be any trouble,” Jet assured her, but Ghoul knew both Jackie and Jet good enough that he could tell both were in agreement: it was best for the two crews to separate. And Ghoul couldn’t agree more.

Ghoul stayed behind to bid Kobra, Jet and Party farewell as his three crewmates left the premises.

“You okay, kid?” Jet asked as she hugged him.

Ghoul shrugged. “Marigold has no filter. She didn’t mean any harm. It happens.” Then, he hesitantly glanced at Party. “What about you?”

They smiled. “I’m just glad you feel okay.”

“Ugh,” Kobra said, but the hint of a smile was apparent on his face as well. “Don’t leave for too long this time. Or whatever.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll miss you too.”

“Can’t get rid of you so easily,” Kobra snickered. “Stay safe out there.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Party proposed, and Ghoul nodded, waving at his friends one last time.

It and Party stepped outside. Ghoul was about to tell them goodbye one last time when a hand closed around its wrist.

“You are, by the way.”

Ghoul frowned, confusion etched on its feature. “What?”

Party’s smile could’ve outshone the sunset. “A good kisser.”

Without wasting a second, Ghoul punched them. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough for them to stumble back, laughing. 

“That didn’t have the effect I thought it would,” they said, still smiling brightly.

Ghoul rolled its eyes affectionately. “You fucking liar. You knew I was going to react like that.”

“… Yeah. Eh, I still think it’s cute.”

This time, when Ghoul’s fist came flying, Party intercepted it, closing their hand around Ghoul’s own hand. They brought the hand close to them, placing a delicate kiss on it, and Ghoul could feel butterflies violently flap their wings in his stomach.

“Good night, Ghoulie.”

Ghoul blinked twice before remembering to answer. “Y-you too.”

Party stepped back into the diner, chuckling softly. The sound of their laughter haunted Ghoul all the way back to his car.

Chapter Text

“Did you date anyone after we, you know?” Ghoul asked despite itself. He’d tried not to, he really had, but curiosity had gotten the best of him. He blamed Marigold: she’d been the one to bring up Party being a good kisser, and well, Ghoul was nothing if not weak-minded. Maybe inquiring was self-destructive: he didn’t think it really wanted to know. Or, rather, it was scared of the answer.

Party seemed surprised but, bless their soul, they humored him, albeit maybe a tad bit awkwardly. “Dated other people? Er. Not dated , no.”

Ghoul groaned. It was his bad for asking, really. As best friends turned exes turned tentative friends again, he wasn’t sure what was acceptable for it to ask, but he was getting the growing feeling that the range of socially acceptable questions didn’t involve Party’s love life.

Probably noticing the look on its face, Party droned on: “I mean, I was trying to get over you, you know? Forcing myself to move on, I guess, but it didn’t really work. I couldn’t find that sort of connection in someone else. Which makes sense, I guess, because you can’t speedrun almost ten years of knowing someone, so I kinda gave up. Not that I was really trying to date, either. Actually, it’s probably more accurate to say I was actively trying not to date. The furthest I got was hanging out with the same ‘joy twice at two different parties.”

Ghoul smiled as Ps Party continued their ramble, too focused on gesturing vividly to notice the look on the black-haired killjoy. They would get so into whatever they were doing, they became completely oblivious to everything around them. Ghoul stared, amazed at how much had changed between them and yet how little was actually different.

“Sorry, I lost track of things,” Party admitted after Destroya knows how long. Ghoul hadn’t bothered to count.

“It’s okay, I asked.”

A smile shone on their face following that statement, and Ghoul felt a part of his heart break.

It was his own fault, really. The two of them had been platonically hanging out for weeks, and a stupid part of Ghoul had forgotten the key word in that sentence: platonic. Its heart had stopped beating erratically whenever Party was in the vicinity, instead settling back into the lovesick routine it had been in when they were still dating. It was moments like these, though, moments when Party would turn shy around him, that Ghoul’s heart caught up with its brain, and the reality of their situation came crashing down, the inevitable hurt along with it.

The truth was that Ghoul had no idea what they were doing. And that, once again, was also its fault. He’d come barging in the diner the Fab Four had used to share and had professed its undying love to Party and had then proceeded to ask to be their friend instead. And maybe he’d been selfish to do so, maybe he’d been scared, maybe he’d been right. Or maybe he’d made a terrible mistake, because now it had to deal with all these feelings and bringing it up felt awkward because it had been the one to ask for them to be just friends in the first place. 

And so Ghoul had kept quiet, waiting for Party to bring it up. Which, again, bad call on its part because Party—bless their heart—had been so careful to respect Ghoul’s wish for them to be friends. Apart from that kiss on its hands a few weeks ago, they’d barely done anything to suggest they might feel more than platonic affection for Ghoul. Had Ghoul not been aware of their feelings for him, he wouldn’t have noticed them. 

Party would never, but sometimes Ghoul wished they would just throw caution in the air and kiss him properly, on the lips this time.

“What are you thinking about?” Party asked, and Ghoul felt himself turn bright red. “You went away just now.”

“Nothing,” he mumbled, avoiding their eyes. He was terrified of what they might find in them.

Party frowned. “If something’s bothering you, we should talk about it.”

Ghoul shook its head. “No, really, it’s fine.”

“I can clearly see something’s up, though. It’s okay if you don’t want to discuss it, but don’t just say it’s fine because it’s obviously not.”

“It’s… ugh. It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it, it’s just that….” Ghoul let his voice trail off. What could he say? ‘It’s just that it’s about you?’

Party kept quiet,and Ghoul made a point not to look at them. He didn’t want to see disappointment on their face. But maybe that was selfish of him, so it forced itself to say, “I’m not mad at you. It’s not something that you’re doing wrong. It’s just one of those days. I appreciate you trying, though.”

The look on Party’s face was… odd. It wasn’t one Ghoul recognized, and that threw it off. He could only describe it as amazement or confusion, perhaps? “What?”

“I don’t think we’ve ever talked like that,” they simply said. 

“Like that?” echoed Ghoul.

They shrugged. “I don’t know, normally? Like adults? Before, our conversation would’ve stopped after you’d interrupted yourself, or I would’ve pushed and it would’ve turned into a whole thing. I don’t know.” Then, “It’s nice.”

A normal conversation. Ghoul pondered the words. Him and Party admittedly weren’t known to have normal conversations. He shook its head: he’d been wrong, earlier. They both definitely had grown while they’d been apart. “Yeah,” it agreed, “it really is.”

~

When Marigold, Sparx or even Jackie asked, Ghoul tended to pretend he was more than fine with being only friends with Party. Maybe it was because he was so used to hiding things from them, as horrible as that sounded. Or maybe it was simply because he was older and wanted to preserve the illusion that his life was more put together than those of, well, anyone younger than him—though he was fairly sure that ship had sailed, if the way they sometimes looked at him said anything. 

However, when Jet asked him on a sunny afternoon, Ghoul looked at her, sighed, and said, “Let’s take a walk.”

Party was absent that day, off to the Phoenix Witch knows where—because contrary to what Marigold, Sparx and Jackie believed, he did visit the diner for reasons other than Party—and Ghoul had never been good at telling Jet ‘no’. Not when he knew everything she did was out of pure concern and goodness. That, and Jet was nowhere near close to believing he had its life together. Hell, she’d been there to witness it blowing to pieces.

“Please don’t take this as a judgment, because it really isn’t, but just what is your endgame, here? And you don’t have to know, I’m simply curious.”

Ghoul kicked a pile of yellow-orange sand and truthfully answered. “I wish I knew.”

A gust of wind blew, and Jdet readjusted her eyepatch. Once the breezed had settled, she turned around to ask, “Do you want something to happen?”

“I—”

Did he want something more? Ghoul wasn’t very good at being satisfied with what he had but what if what he had was enough? How could he complain when he already had Party back in his life? Would it be greedy to ask for more? But, more importantly, would it lose them again if he did ask for more?

“Oh, sweetie,” Jet sighed, and Ghoul was both relieved and hated that she could read him that easily. At least he wouldn’t have to explain it all to her: it seemed she already knew.

“I’m so scared,” he let out. “I know it’s still Party, but it’s uncharted territory, if you will. I don’t know how to act around them. I don’t even know what they want.”

“ Ghoul .”

Ghoul scowled.

She patted him on the back of the shoulder. “I consider myself good at reading people, but I think you can read Party even better than I can,” was all she said, but she’d said enough.

Still, Ghoul refused to openly acknowledge that she might be right, both in her reading of Party or in her reading of Ghoul’s understanding of his predicament. Instead, he asked, “How would I even go on about asking, though?”

How do you even look at the one person you’ve ever loved like that, the one person you walked away from, and ask them for more than what they’re currently giving you? For more than what you’ve already asked for?

But Ghoul didn’t voice those questions, because Jet would have something smart to say about them, and Ghoul couldn’t wallow in its misery if he was faced with a smart solution.

“It’s Party, and it’s you ; I don’t think they’d mind any way you could possibly ask.” She let her eye wander far ahead. “But again, what do I know? I’ve never had a connection quite like yours and Party’s, so I can only base myself on what I’ve observed. And for the sake of privacy, all I’ll say on the matter is that you’re putting too much pressure on yourself.”

“Sake of privacy… Party talked to you?”

Jet smiled. “Ah, guess you’ll have to ask them that.”

Ghoul gasped. “Jet!”

She laughed. “What? I can’t tell you what they might or might not have said, much like I wouldn’t tell them what you’ve just told me. This goes both ways!”

“I don’t care if you tell Party what I told you! Jet!”

She only laughed. Again. “Of course you wouldn’t mind, you want me to do all the work for you. Go talk to them. I mean it. Doesn’t have to be now, but I genuinely believe it would do you both some good.”

~

“Was that Ghoul just now?” Party asked, watching Ghoul’s car drive away, and both Jet and Kobra chuckled. “What?” they muttered, glaring at Kobra. Kobra flipped them off.

“It was,” Jet confirmed. “You just missed him.”

Kobra shot a knowing glance at Jet when Party’s expression soured. When they sulked all the way to their room, Kobra barked out a laugh, unable to contain his amusement any more.

“Fuck off!” Party yelled from their room, which only made Kobra double in laughter.

Once he was sure his sibling wasn’t listening, he turned to Jet. “Be honest, how bad is it?”

She hummed pensively. “It’s better than it was before they started dating, because at least now they’re aware of their feelings, but the fear of their shitshow of a breakup happening again is holding them back.”

“Figures. You know, had they been anyone else, I don’t think I would’ve wanted them to go back together, but Party and Ghoul? I don’t know, I just don’t see them with anyone else. And I don’t think they see themselves with anyone else, either. Which is fucking stupid, because they’re both not doing anything to change their situation. Well, except bitch and moan, in my sibling’s case.”

“Ha. Ghoul’s more on the whining side of the spectrum.” She smiled. “I do agree, though. I don’t claim to be well-versed in the affairs of the heart—”

“Ew.”

“—I don’t claim to be well-versed in the affairs of the heart, but they both so obviously want to be close to one another. I grew up with Ghoul. I know how he is with others. He goes from person to person and can hold a conversation with them easily, but he doesn’t really form meaningful relationships, you know? No, it handpicks people, and he’s latched onto Party, and Party’s latched onto him right back. I don’t know. I’m glad he has someone like that, but I wish he wouldn’t stop himself from actually having them, you know?”

“Destroya, look at us, huh? Back at gossiping about Party and Ghoul again.”

“Just like in the good old days,” Jet agreed.

The good old days was… a way to describe them…. Kobra still shuddered when he thought about it. Oh, how unpleasant those days had been. Kobra had had a constant migraine for days and days on end. There was something fascinating yet horrifying at watching your own sibling be so disgustingly obsessed with someone so disgustingly obsessed right the fuck back.

And he was living it all over again, obviously, because the Phoenix Witch hated him.

“Say, do you think they’ll ever actually get back together? Like, frankly?”

Jet smiled. “I don’t think there’s a lot of forces in the universe that can keep them away from each other. They’ve only ever been the ones standing in their own way.”

Chapter Text

“Is something the matter?” Jackie asked.

Ghoul shook its head. To be fair to her, he was a mess and was fairly sure he looked the part, but he wasn’t about to admit it.

Was something the matter ? What a funny question. Even before he’d started dating Party, he’d never been so full of nerves. After all, telling your ex you wanted to get back together after you insisted you stay strictly friends wasn't something Ghoul did every day. No, it was only something he would do today, and he really wished he didn’t have to.

“Alright, then,” Jackie said. Then, she smiled and added, “Have fun at Party Poison’s.” The little shit. He hadn’t even told her that’s where it was going.

As Ghoul drove all the way to the diner, he considered its options. It could rip the bandage right off and effectively kill his last shreds of dignity. It wasn’t particularly romantic, but Ghoul had never been one for grand proposals. He could try to build up to it, but it genuinely feared it would chicken out. Ugh, if only Party wasn’t such a nice person. Maybe then they would’ve brought up the topic themself.

It had been a week since its last discussion with Jet. She would never outright say it, but she seemed to believe Party shared Ghoul’s feelings. Fuck, who was he kidding, even Ghoul knew they did. The two of them were both very much aware of the other’s feelings. The only reason they’d remained just friends was because Ghoul was scared.

And, to be honest, he still was very much fucking frightened. He was still so scared of hurting itself again; of hurting Party again.

But was it really worth it to not do anything about it? Sure, he was eternally to have Party back in its life one way or the other, but it still felt as though something was missing. The mistake he’d made all those years ago was losing sight of the fact that Party was his best friend as well as its joyfriend.This time, though, he’d grown. They both had, that much was obvious. Maybe, just maybe, they could make it work this time around.

Without further ado—that was a fucking lie, Ghoul stood in front of the door for five minutes, palms sweating—Ghoul knocked on the diner door. Something had to be said about the fact that he’d knocked because it hadn’t knocked in weeks . Obviously, Jet seemed to agree with him for she shot it a curious look as she let him in.

“Weird of you to knock. I’d say you’re welcome to barge in, but you were aware of that the last few times you came over. What’s the matter?”

“The matter is that I owe you five fucking dollars,” Kobra grumbled. “Fuck you, Ghoul.”

“What?”

While Ghoul looked over at Kobra in utter confusion, Jet, on the other hand, knew exactly what he was talking about. “No way!” she exclaimed.While Ghoul would have loved to either agree or disagree, he truly had no idea what was going on. He only had a sense that he ought to be embarrassed: his cheeks almost instantly turned red, and the other two took it as confirmation that whatever they were talking about was true. The fuckers.

“Party’s in their room,” Kobra grumbled again and oh . The two of them had guessed the exact right thing. The fuckers, again.

Which meant that… “Wait, you guys had a fucking bet about us? Again ?”

“Maybe we wouldn’t if you’d just stop being so predictable,” Kobra mumbled.

“Ah, but not predictable enough for you to win the bet, I see.”

“Fuck you, Ghoul.”

“I’d much rather your sibling do that, sorry.”

“You fuck!”

Before Kobra’s hand could meet its cheek, Ghoul ran away under the sound of Jet’s wheezing laughter.

Despite its previous good mood, Ghoul’s stress quickly found its way back to him as he stared at Party’s door. A fucking door had never looked this fucking ominous before.

Ghoul’s hand raised up tyo knock on the door, only to be met with… flesh? Mortified, Ghoul looked up from the floor to find he’d knocked on none other than Party Poison themself. Their fucking face, to be quite fucking precise.

“What the fuck! Are you okay?”

They chuckled. “Ha! I thought I'd heard you. Hey, Ghoulie.”

Great, this was just great. “Um. By heard, you mean…?”

They shot him a confused look. “I mean you have a very distinct voice. Hey, are you alright? I know I’m the one that just got hit in the face, but you seem… anxious?”

Ghoul could do nothing to stop the awkward chuckle from leaving its mouth. “Can we walk?”

Party motioned for him to lead the way. As they walked out of the diner, Ghoul saw Kobra wordlessly hand Jet his aforementioned five dollars. He found a light comfort in the fact that Kobra hadn’t won. That would”ve been just the thing to put him in the grave, and it was barely even kidding.

~ 

Something was up with Ghoul. It had become obvious the moment Party had received its fist to the face. Granted, it had been a mistake, but since when did Ghoul knock in the first place? They turned their attention to the boy walking alongside them. He was nervously fidgeting with whatever he had found in its pocket. Case in point , Party thought.

“So… are you finally going to tell me what’s been worrying your pretty face?” they asked, and Ghoul’s pretty face shifted. Only slightly, but it betrayed enough stress that Party winced. Maybe that hadn’t been the right thing to ask him? They wouldn’t know until he told them, but still.

“It’s nothing. I mean, it is something—it’s pretty big actually—but it doesn’t have to be! I mean you don’t have to make a big deal out of it, or whatever.”

Party chuckled, hoping that Ghoul wouldn’t pick up on their own worry. It wasn’t like Ghoul to stutter like that. “Now you’re starting to sound like me .”

“Ha! Results of close proximity?”

“Eh….”

Ghoul shook its head. “Fine. Phoenix Witch this is embarrassing.”

Party flashed a tentative smile. “Surely it can’t be that bad? Hey, it’s just me.”

Ghoul muttered something that sounded an awful lot like “yeah, that’s the problem.”

Even though Ghoul had agreed to talk, they still walked in silence for a few more minutes.

“Remember when I came to see you?” he finally said. “It’s probably been months by now.”

Party frowned. “You mean, after we ran into each other at those parties? Yeah, of course.”

“Yeah, that. I—”

Party’s eyes widened. “ Oh .”

Ghoul whirled around, a fake expression of anger on its face betrayed by its wide smile. “You fuck! You didn’t even let me finish!”

Party shrugged. “At least it makes it easier for you?”

“Do I really have to?” Ghoul whined. “You know what I’m going to say.”

They grinned. “Ah, well, I wouldn’t want to misunderstand anything. Communication is key, after all.”

“Fuck you.” Then, “I love you. And I know you know that, because I told you that one time we talked. And I also told you that I didn’t want to be more than friends.”

Ghoul stopped walking to stare right at them, and Party felt their heartbeat quicken. They’d had a feeling that this was what he wanted to talk about from the moment he’d mentioned meeting up after the parties, but a part of them still couldn’t believe it was actually happening. Ghoul wouldn’t be bringing this up only to reinforce the fact that he wanted them to still be friends. Party could be oblivious sometimes—hell, most of the time—but they weren’t that much of a desperate cause.

“I was scared. I was scared, because, well, you know how it went the last time we tried being more than friends. Heh. We forgot we were friends to begin with. I don’t want that. I don’t ever want that ever again. You’re my best friends and I’d love to say I could never live without you, but that’s not true. That’s not true, because we both did, for three years. But the point is that I don’t want to. I don’t want to live without you, not ever, not again.”

Party only nodded, too awed by its words to do anything else.

“This is where it gets humbling,” Ghoul said, breaking eye contact. “I made a mistake. Well, a mistake isn’t the right way to put it. I’m glad we got the chance to be friends again. I’m glad we got to reconnect with that part of us we’d lost, but I think I’d like to reconnect with that other part. The, um, romantic part. Yeah.”

Party recognized that Ghoul taking the time to tell them about its feelings was its way of giving them a way out. Party could either reciprocate, or Ghoul would drop it and never bring it back up again. Party also recognized that them dating had gone horribly wrong in the past, but they also recognized that they weren’t fourteen anymore. And twenty-one year-old Party Poison was still as in love with Ghoul as they’d always been. Maybe even more. 

They gently brought Ghoul’s chin up so they could look in its eyes again, taking all the fear and hope in. “There’s not a day that I haven’t loved you. Even when it got bad. Losing you was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. And I know the risks of getting back together. I know you were scared. But that’s the thing: I didn’t know those risks when I was a kid. I hadn’t grasped the extent to which things could turn to shit. And, you know what? We’re fucking killjoys. We might die tomorrow. I’d much rather die happy knowing that I at least got to be with you for as long as you’ll have had me.”

Ghoul smiled brightly. “Pois? I’m going to kiss you, now.”

Party made no move to stop him, instead extending their arms to welcome it and met him halfway.

Maybe they’d both done some mistakes in the past, maybe they’d been wrong a few times, but this? This could never be anything other than right.