Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Fuck. This was—well, bad was an extreme understatement. Harry and Marcone were meeting to discuss something of vital importance—Bob hadn’t really been paying attention to the specifics—and, as a show of faith, they had agreed to leave their weapons (and Hendricks) in their respective vehicles.

Bob had been brought along because, apparently, after the Incident a few weeks ago, Harry had decided that he wasn’t allowed to be left alone when there was a chance Harry’s landlady might drop by. Bob thought that was bullshit, personally, but he also wasn’t going to say no to an outing, even if he was still stuck in the skull and half-hidden inside a beaten-up old tote bag that proclaimed, I SURVIVED THE 1983 SUMMER READING PROGRAM.

Harry had taken steps to prepare for an ambush, of course; his self-preservation instincts may have needed serious work, but he knew better than to go to a high-stakes meeting without any contingency plans. Unfortunately, a significant number of said plans had gone down the drain when Mouse wandered off to go escort a lost kid home, Bob's protests falling on deaf ears. However, even with Mouse on standby, none of Harry's plans (well, Bob's plans, really) came close to capable of handling a threat like the fucking Leanansidhe. Bob watched through the Beetle’s side mirror as her hounds crept closer to Harry and Marcone, Lea herself watching from a distance.

The Handmaiden of Winter was a force to be reckoned with on a bad day. If Lea was actively picking fights with her aura blazing with power, then, at best, they were all fucked, and not in the fun way. At worst… Bob shuddered. Best not to think about it. Instead, he focused on figuring out how to get them all out of this mess, no matter how dubious their options may have been or how low their odds of survival were.

He had to do something. If the Leanansidhe abducted Harry and made good on her threat to turn him into one of her hounds… Bob didn’t know what he’d do, but he knew it wouldn’t be pretty. If Lea abducted Harry while Bob just sat by and watched, he. Well. He’d never forgive himself, to be perfectly honest, which was more than a little concerning, considering that, for millennia, Bob had maintained that free will, and the concept of forgiveness along with it, were utter bullshit; it was all just a web of lies invented by mortals to try to assuage the ridiculous amount of guilt they seemed to carry around—But he digressed.

Bob quickly narrowed down his plans to just two options. One option was to sit idly by, do nothing, and hope that Harry could manage to pull yet another victory out of his ass. The other… It was stupid. More than stupid, it was flat-out suicidal, but, hell, it just might work.

Fuck it. Even if Harry never let Bob leave his skull again or decided to—to lock him in a safe after this, so be it. Bob had had a good run of things, all things considered. If that was the price for making sure that both he and Harry (and, he supposed, the sexy mob boss as well) stayed in the frying pan and out of that particular fire (phenomenal rack or not, Bob knew better than to even contemplate sticking his metaphysical dick in the kind of crazy that Lea positively oozed, unlike some people), then, well. Better the devil Bob somewhat knew, at least. Being locked in a safe was nothing new to him, though the memories of his time spent in a lead-lined casket in France were still unpleasant at best.

The one snag in the plan was that, in order to execute it, Bob would have to leave his skull. Not knowing what would happen if his ridiculous idea actually worked wasn’t enough to stop him—it never had been—but risking the safety of his skull, the guarantee of somewhere safe to hide from the sun, that was another matter entirely. Leaving his skull without permission was not only theoretically impossible, but grounds for breaking the contract that made Bob’s skull the safe haven that it was.

Though, Harry had only told him to stay in the car. He hadn’t said anything about Bob staying inside his skull. Sure, ‘stay inside the skull unless given permission to do otherwise’ was a standing order, but if Bob could poke a hole in the magic keeping him in the skull or find the right weakness in the fabric of it, there was a chance he could wriggle out enough to at least turn the key and push the gas pedal.

“Come on, come on,” he hissed, carefully prodding at the borders between the metaphysical fabric of the wards that trapped him inside a gilded cage and the physical glyphs inscribed into his skull that turned it into a safe haven. There was a hole in the proverbial fence, Bob was sure of it, but it was hiding from him, and Bob was running out of time, damn it. He let a bit of his attention flick back to the outside world and shit, fuck, fils a puitan, Lea’s hound was harassing Harry and Marcone, and Lea herself had gotten within a half-dozen yards of them. No time for delicacy, time to act. He gathered up his reserves of power and rammed against the wards. 
Nothing. The wards didn’t so much as twitch. Bob was stuck.

That was when Bob started to really panic. Not worry, not fret, but flat-out panic.

Panicking about anything other than his own potentially imminent demise was wholly new to Bob. Panic over the safety of others, in particular, was something he’d never experienced before, and Bob really wished it would fuck off right back from whence it came. How mortals lived like this was genuinely a mystery to him, because this? This was the worst. It had never popped up at any point during the millennia he’d lived before then, so why now? Why Harry in particular?

Bob had never cared about what happened to any of his masters before. It just wasn’t the way he was wired, not really. Hell, some of his masters he’d been glad to see go, but that was because they were egotistical assholes on a power trip who never let him out of the skull, not because of any pesky moral foibles.

Then Harry fucking Dresden just had to pull him out of the smoking wreckage of DuMorne’s house—not that Bob wasn’t grateful he hadn’t been left to smolder, but really, there ought to be some sort of hazard pay for ‘proximity to Dresden.’ Harry had been spectacularly weird about Bob since the day he’d taken ownership of Bob’s skull. Who looked at a spirit of intellect bound to them and treated it like a friend? Harry ‘Pain in the Ass’ Dresden, apparently. Some days, Bob swore he’d rather go back to being called ‘it’ and ‘spirit’ just so things wouldn’t be so ambiguous.

Harry was a mess of contradictory rules that confused Bob to no end, and that was before taking the specific peculiarities of his magical heritage (on both sides) into account. If Bob’s suspicions were anywhere close to accurate, Harry was a powder keg of epic proportions. Whether Harry knew it or not, he wasn’t just giving beings like Ivy and Bob nicknames. No, Harry was giving out new Names like they were condoms at Pride. He was such a force of—of whatever the hell Harry was that, just by sheer proximity, the fundamental definition and nature of Bob’s being, his Name, had changed enough that he was no longer the standard spirit of intellect he had once been. No, now ‘Bob’ was part of his Name, and it had a hell of a lot more power to it than Bob would like. To add insult to injury, the wizard’s moral compass was proving contagious.

(Bob, though he would never admit it to anyone, least of all himself, had much the same feelings about his new Name (and Harry, really) as a feral cat who’s being pet and firmly denying any enjoyment of said petting, hissing and carrying on about the situation despite purring like a motor the whole time.)

Though, unbeknownst to Bob, his new Name was about to make things very interesting; as in, "may you live in interesting times" interesting. The change to Bob’s name severely compromised the integrity of many of the heavier-duty wards keeping him in place (ha, can’t use a heptagonal array to contain a spirit with an eight syllable Name, suckers). Combined with the mass quantities of energy thrashing around as Bob drew on reserves that he didn’t even know he had out of sheer panic, the entire system was stretched to the breaking point. The next time Bob rammed up against the wards, instead of holding firm, they shredded like wet tissue paper.

Much to his surprise, Bob found himself not only out of his skull, but technically back inside an entirely different one, this one of his own making. Somehow, Bob had gathered enough excess energy to spontaneously manifest a body. On top of that, he was only about ninety-five percent certain it was a construct.

Bob would swear this day couldn’t get any weirder, but, knowing Harry, it very much could.

With that in mind, maybe it was time to embrace the chaos. Normally, Bob would have taken a little bit of time to figure out what in the fresh hell was going on, but there was no time for that. Lea was advancing on Harry, and fast.

Instead, Bob slid into the driver’s seat of the Blue Beetle without further ado. Harry had left the key in the ignition, thankfully, and the Beetle started with minimal protest on the first try. Bob buckled his seatbelt, then let out a hysterical little laugh at the inanity of it all. He was about to hit the Handmaiden of Winter with a car, and he’d buckled his seatbelt. If his plan succeeded, the Leanansidhe, Handmaiden of Winter, second in power only to Mab, was going to hunt him for sport. If his plan failed, she was still going to hunt him for sport, and it would probably end with her siccing The Hound Formerly Known as Harry on him.

Either way, Bob probably wasn’t going to survive this particular bout of temporary insanity.

“I am going to die,” Bob said, then let out another hysterical giggle, put the Beetle into first gear, and revved the engine. “But what a hell of a way to go!”

Chapter Text

The Beetle was facing away from the steadily devolving chaos. Bob could fix that by just turning it around, or… A passage from the Smokin’ Hot Rods series—notorious for its ridiculously detailed street racing scenes—popped into his head.

The Blue Beetle was a rear wheel drive, engine in the back; hell’s bells, he might actually be able to pull this off. He could feel his heart beginning to pound as adrenaline coursed through his system.

Bob had never driven a car before, but, hey, he’d never brewed a potion himself before, and he was great at that by proxy. He’d been there when Harry was learning to drive; he knew the theory. How hard could it be?

Without further ado, Bob put his hands on the wheel and got ready for chaos.

Bob's left foot pushed the clutch pedal as his right hand disengaged the handbrake. He kept the clutch pedal down and eased on the gas enough to rev up the engine again. Once the tachometer's needle was steadily brushing the red, it was showtime. Bob eased his right foot off the gas for a split second then slid off the clutch, slammed on the gas, and prayed to an uncaring pantheon of long-dead gods that the driveshaft, clutch, and transmission held.

The Beetle’s rear tires chirped as the transmission abruptly engaged and the driveshaft and rear wheels went from zero to spinning at approximately Mach Jesus. 

Time for part two of the horrible life decisions du jour.

“Hard to port!” Bob crowed, grinning like a maniac. He spun the steering wheel ninety degrees to the left, pushed the clutch to the floor, and engaged the hand brake. The Beetle’s rear tires squealed again at the continued abuse as they began to skid. Handbrake and clutch off, accelerator to the floor, and the Beetle’s rear end whipped around in a somewhat perfectly executed donut.

Bob cackled. Hell. Yes.

After a donut and a half, Bob straightened out the Beetle and aimed it at Lea.

Normally, the Beetle took forever and a day to get up to speed, but with that much of a windup and a driver who thought that air resistance was for bitches and quitters, the Blue Beetle flung itself towards Lea far, far faster than it had any right to go.

Oddly, Lea didn’t so much as twitch at the sound of squealing tires, which was either really good or really bad. Either way, it was too late for Bob to change his mind now. Besides, Bob figured that Lea was expecting anything that Marcone or Harry were known to dish out: gouts of flame, machine gun fire, a swarm of Wyldfae wielding box cutters, maybe even grenade launchers if Marcone had been feeling particularly paranoid that day.

However, to slightly mangle the words of Cardinal Ximénez, nobody expects the Blue Beetle. Though, to be fair, Bob doubted most people expected to be kneecapped from behind by almost a ton of automotive steel going faster than it had any right to be going.

The bumper (which happened to be mostly exposed iron) slammed into the back of Lea’s knees, taking her legs out from under her with enough force to—well. It was a good thing she was death-resistant, that was all Bob would say. The inertia shoved her up the hood and her back slammed into the windshield, shattering it. Whoops. At least it was laminated safety glass.

Before Lea could register what had happened or see who had had the audacity to hit her with a car, Bob slammed on the brakes, engaging the handbrake for good measure. Inertia (and maybe a little magical help) sent her tumbling forward off of the hood with enough force to send her tumbling a good thirty feet in front of the Beetle.

Conveniently, Bob's sudden brakefest also brought the Beetle to a halt within just a few feet of Harry and Marcone, the former of whom was staring at Bob like he’d grown a second head. Though, to be fair, he kind of had. Did it count as a second head if the first one wasn’t Bob's own creation? Questions to think about later.

Bob eyed Lea warily, making sure she wasn’t going to get up and rip his brand-new spine out through his ass or something equally sadistic.

She stayed down.

Bob exhaled shakily, offering up silent thanks to Chuck Tingle, patron saint of smut. What? He might be mostly incompatible with religion, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know a miracle when he saw one. There was no way that should have worked—not as well as it had, at least. Real-life accuracy in romance novels was hit and miss at best, and laughably bad on average. Statistically, Bob should’ve failed, and yet, here he was.

Bob parked the Beetle (though he left the engine running) and rolled the window down.

“Did somebody order donuts?” he quipped.

“Buddy, if you think there are any cops to feed here, you crashed the wrong meeting," Harry replied.

“Aw, Boss, you don’t recognize me? I’m hurt,” Bob said, clutching a hand over his heart dramatically. He picked up his skull from the passenger seat and tossed it to Harry. “Here, catch.” Harry caught it, thankfully. Bob would have been somewhat shit out of luck if he hadn't.

Harry looked down at the obviously empty skull, then up at Bob. 

“What—Bob?” Harry said—well, squawked, really—and yeah, no shit. Sometimes Bob wondered how Harry had managed to survive this long, he really did.

“Got it in one, Boss," Bob said drily.

“I told you to stay put!”

“No, you told me to stay in the car,” Bob corrected. “I stayed in the car.”

“What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that you weren’t! ‘Stay in the car,’ you said! ‘It’ll be fine,’ you said! Are you trying to win a Darwin Award, Harry? Because this is how you earn a Darwin Award!” Bob shot back, gesturing more animatedly than he would have normally to hide how his hands were still shaking from fear and adrenaline.

“How was I supposed to know that Lea was going to show up?” Harry demanded, throwing his hands in the air.

“Because every time you do anything even remotely important, it’s like putting up the Harry Dresden Batsignal for every enemy you’ve ever made!”

“What else do you want from me? I can’t just stay home and do nothing, Bob.”

“You could, but you won’t,” Bob corrected. "You and your martyr complex make sure of that."

“Care to introduce us, Dresden?” Marcone asked, arching an eyebrow. Bob had to give the man kudos, he hid his utter bafflement well.

“No. Absolutely not. You two do not need to get to know each other.”

“Come on, Harry, don’t be rude,” Bob chided.

“Your associate is right, Mister Dresden. It would be impolite not to introduce the two of us, especially if he’s someone who you trust enough to bring to this meeting as backup.”

Harry groaned. “There’s no way I can convince either of you to drop this, is there?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Not a chance,” Bob said, smug.

Harry sighed. “Fine. Marcone, this is Bob, my research assistant. Bob, this is Marcone, mob boss and all-around pain in my ass.” Oh, that was no fun at all.

“Let's try that again. Gentleman Johnny Marcone, I’m Bob, Harry’s research assistant and resident sexpert—”

“Sexpert?” Harry repeated, disbelieving.

Bob ignored him. “—and, if I may, you look absolutely stunning in that suit.”

Harry snorted, rolling his eyes. “Keep it in your pants, Bob.”

Bob grinned. He’d been hoping Harry would say that.

“What pants?” he asked innocently.

Only then did Harry seem to register what Bob had been vaguely aware of the whole time: Bob wasn’t wearing anything more than a pair of tight black boxer briefs and a smile.

“Bob, what the hell? Why are you naked?”

“Why aren’t you?” Bob countered. “Besides, I’m only mostly naked.”

“Still close enough for a public indecency charge.”

“I was a little preoccupied, Harry. Your godmother showed up looking like twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag, and you think clothes were anywhere on my list of priorities? You’re lucky that I remembered underwear!”

“Hell’s bells, at least summon a pair of pants or something.”

“Why? Do you find me distracting, Harry?”

Harry muttered something entirely uncalled for under his breath. “Look, just put some pants on before you get out of the car so you don’t get arrested for indecent exposure. There should be a pair of sweatpants under the backseat. I’m fine with you wearing them as long as you don’t get any ectoplasm on them.”

“Ectoplasm? Do I look like an amateur to you?” Bob huffed, unbuckling his seatbelt and reaching back to pull the sweatpants out from under the bench seat. If he tied the drawstring a little loosely so that they’d slip down to ride lower on his hips than some (Harry) considered to be decent, then that was his business, and his business alone.

Harry’s vicarious modesty preserved, Bob got out of the car, stretching. He’d missed having a body, and it felt great to finally be able to move freely. The sweatpants slipping down to reveal the skin an inch or two above his groin that may or may not have definitely not been visible with his boxers on was just a bonus.

What? If he was wearing pants, then there was no reason not to freeball it.

“There. Better?” Bob asked.

“Marginally,” Harry sighed, like they weren’t all fully aware Harry had been checking Bob out more than a little bit.

“Prude.”

“Not wanting to deal with you getting thrown in the drunk tank doesn't make me a prude,” and oh, those were fighting words.

"Last time I checked, Harry, I wasn’t the one who regularly spent hours ranting about how I ‘totally don’t want to bang the mob boss like a screen door in a hurricane, no, really!’ I swear, with how many times you’ve gone on about worn-dollar-bill-green eyes and tigers and stainless steel refrigerators, I’m tempted to kiss him myself just to see what the fuss is about!”

Marcone arched an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

Bob turned back to Marcone. “Only if you're willing, of course. Consent is sexy and I like not being riddled with bullets.”

“I see.” There was something calculating and smugly pleased in Marcone’s eyes, and Bob got the impression that he was being allowed to see it, was being willingly given a little insight. Marcone’s eyes flicked to Harry, raking up and down his form like he wanted to eat the wizard alive.

“Do you have anything to say about your associate’s claims, Mister Dresden? I must say, I was unaware that you harbored such thoughts about me, but the news isn’t unwelcome,” he purred, a tinge of smugness to his voice that Bob just knew would piss Harry off to no end, and, sure enough, Harry bristled like a damn porcupine.

“Really, Marcone? My godmother was KOed by the Blue Beetle after attacking us out of nowhere, and you’re hitting on my research assistant?”

“He’s not the only one I’m trying to flirt with, though your obliviousness would make me worry about your abilities as a private investigator if I hadn’t seen your skills firsthand.”

Harry’s fists were clenched and his pupils were blown, and Bob had read more than enough romance novels (and the occasional manual on body language) to know what that meant: Harry couldn’t decide whether he wanted to deck Marcone in the face or kiss him.
Though, the tension between the two put almost every single novel Bob had read to shame. If all of the interactions Harry and Marcone had were like this, then, hell, Bob would have to get Harry to let him tag along more often. If Bob played his cards right, he might even be able to get in on the action, get himself a slice of hot mobster pie… Or cake, as it were. Whatever Marcone paid his tailor, it couldn’t possibly have been enough, because the way the fabric clung…Fuck. Bob had seen porn stars with asses that Marcone’s put to shame. He kind of wished that he had a roll of quarters so that he could see if they’d bounce. Gentleman Johnny had an ass that could stop traffic.

Bob took a moment to really, thoroughly appreciate Marcone’s assets—making no secret of it and even leaning back a bit to get a better view—before he replied.

“You’ll probably have to be more direct. Boss isn’t good at realizing this sort of thing,” Bob confided.

Marcone hummed. “Perhaps next time. Best not to push too far.”

“You can push me any day, handsome,” Bob purred. 

“Bob! Stop hitting on the mob boss!”

“Oh, please, Harry, like you weren’t thinking the same thing. You’re a man of many talents, Boss, but subtlety isn’t one of them, especially when your downstairs brain gets involved.”

“You sure you’re not confusing me with yourself, there?”

“And whose personality did I pick up on, again?”

"Hey, I was a teenager, I've matured since then!"

Bob snorted. "Sure you have, and I'm a Queen of Faerie."

“Getting back on topic, I think we can agree that it would be best to reschedule the meeting.”

“Yeah. Much as I hate spending more time around you than is absolutely necessary, the potential threat of—Uh." Harry cut himself off, glancing at Lea's still-unconscious form. "Of that thing you told me about warrants it.”

“I’ll call you later this evening to work out the details, then.” Marcone smiled wryly. “I think we can forgo the more stringent clauses of the non-aggression pact in future.”

Harry snorted. “No, really? I thought we’d pelt anyone who showed up with loose pebbles. They’ll never know what hit them.”

Bob glanced over at where Lea had landed to make sure she wasn’t awake and felt his heart fall out of his ass. Lea was not only awake, she looked pissed.

“Uh, Boss?”

“Yeah?”

“Much as I love watching the homoerotic tension you two have got going on, we need to get the hell out of Dodge.”

Bob made direct eye contact with Lea, and saw her elegant features twisted in rage, blood-red lips curling around the word ‘you.’ Thankfully, she didn’t have time to do anything else before the business end of Harry's staff hit her square in the head with a dull thunk. 

“Huh. Probably a good thing she can't get concussions,” Harry remarked offhandedly, standing over his once again unconscious godmother's body.

Marcone laughed, sharp and short. “Indeed.”

“While I’d love to discuss how fucking hot that was, I think we can agree that the dirty talk can wait until we’re behind your wards and safely away from your irate godmother.”

“She's out for the count, Bob.”

“Yes, for now, but when she wakes up? She is going to skin me. She is going to hunt me for sport. She will make the Wild Hunt look like Elmer Fudd. Do I make my point clear?”

“Fine, fine.” Harry got in the car, and Bob followed, circling around to the passenger seat. Harry handed Bob his skull and Bob cradled it carefully. It might be empty now, but it had still been his home for a very long time.

Bob leaned out of the window and made a ‘call me’ gesture at Marcone. Harry rolled his eyes.

“Stop being a horndog and get in the car, Bob.”

“Is that an order?” Bob asked, somewhat mulishly. So sue him, he’d just saved Harry’s skin from becoming a pelt, and he thought that a little gratitude from Harry wouldn’t be amiss.

“Does it need to be?”

Bob opened his mouth to respond, but stopped when he noticed movement out of the corner of his eye. Lea might have left, but one of her hounds had stuck around and was coming toward the Beetle. “No, no it does not, and we should really, really go now, Harry,” Bob said, understandably panicked. Lea's hounds were pieces of work, to say the absolute least.

“What’s—” Harry glanced in the rear-view mirror. “Oh, Empty Night. Yeah, time to go.” Bob scrambled for his seatbelt, hissing as the sun-hot leather made contact with his bare back. 

There was a woof roughly the volume of an air raid siren from the backseat, and Bob damn near jumped out of his skin. He whipped around, hoping against hope that there wasn’t another of Lea’s hounds in the car, and came face to face with Mouse.

He slumped in relief. “Don’t scare me like that.”

Mouse snuffled inquisitively at Bob’s hand, then wagged his tail lazily.

“Told you things would go wrong if you left.”

“Where'd you disappear off to, Mouse?” Harry asked. Bob spotted another of Lea's hounds and grabbed the oh-shit handle.

“Later! Drive, Harry!”

Harry put the Beetle into gear (though nowhere near as dramatically as Bob had), the Beetle’s wheels protesting as they peeled out of the parking lot.

Bob took a moment to appreciate Marcone’s planning in having the meeting take place long after rush hour—it had been scheduled for dusk in early June, which, now that Bob thought about it, explained part of why Lea had been so easily incapacitated… Though, not all of it.

It also meant that there was little traffic to hinder their escape, so Bob was willing to avoid looking that particular gift horse in the mouth… For now.