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Danny ducked his head back through the wall again. Surely this was just some pipes in the walls, looking strange due to the eerie lighting his ghostly night vision gave him.
But there was no mistake.
There was… a bone. In the wall.
Danny turned the wall invisible. He corrected himself.
There were lots of bones, actually. Only one skull, though. Desiccated flesh clung to it, and there were scraps of fabric intermingled with the ribs and femurs and vertebra. The whole thing seemed articulated, more or less.
Danny dropped the wall’s invisibility, feeling queasy. The bones were articulated, bent into an unnerving shape to fit inside the hollow of the thick stone wall.
What the hell?
“Vlad…” Danny hesitated, perching himself on the arm of Vlad’s plush chair. How did he approach this? ‘I think someone got bricked into the wall when they built this place?’
“Yes, dearest?” Vlad says, leaning against him, one arm automatically going to rest around Danny’s waist. “What’s wrong? You sound troubled.”
“Why are there bones in the basement?” Danny says, even though the question makes no sense. “I mean- did you know there’s a skeleton? In the basement?”
Vlad leafs through his newspaper, the sound of the page crinkling layering pleasantly over his breathy sigh.
“Don’t worry yourself, dear, I’m well aware of their presence. It’s nothing to concern yourself over.”
The clock on the mantlepiece of their sitting room ticked, measuring out that unquantifiable moment of quiet into metric, real time.
“You know it’s there?” Danny finally says. He’d expected Vlad to freak out, or at least take morbid interest, not brush past the potential murder victim bricked into the foundations of his estate.
Vlad folded his paper, placing it delicately on the coffee table with the elaborate carved lion’s feet.
“Of course I know it’s there, Daniel,” Vlad says with a scoff, “I put it there.”
Danny’s spine locks up. “You-”
“Oh, don’t make that face. It’s not what you think.”
Danny laughs, his back relaxing into its usual slouch. “Oh, so you didn’t kill someone?”
Vlad purses his lips, fingers steepling.
Danny’s laugh turns nervous.
“You didn’t kill anyone, right Vlad? Please tell me you didn’t kill someone-”
“You really think I haven’t killed before?” Vlad’s eyebrow is cocked, the corner of his lips twitching, the same way it does when he knows something about ghosts that Danny doesn’t, something he considers obvious.
Danny’s not laughing anymore.
“You’re not being serious,” he says, despite the dreadful certainty coiling in his stomach.
Vlad simply raises a brow, propping his elbow up on the arm of the chair, looking expectantly at Danny.
“You’re joking,” Danny recoils, stumbling off his perch to his feet. “Vlad, you didn’t.”
“I suppose your belief that I could make it to where I am without killing is rather…. Flattering, if naïve,” Vlad says lightly, looking away and adjusting his tie.
Tick, tick, tick, goes the clock on the mantelpiece.
Danny almost can’t get himself to ask. He’s tempted to drop the subject and never bring it up again. He knew Vlad had dealt in shady business when he was younger, but…
“Why did you…” He trails off.
Vlad looks back at the newspaper on the coffee table, running his hand over the clean, black letters in their neat little rows.
“Convenience, mostly. Necessity was also a frequent factor.” Vlad paused. “Are you quite certain you’d like to know?”
Danny was sure he didn’t. “I thought you just… you know. Overshadowed some people. Did a few bank heists.”
“I did,” Vlad agrees easily, his expression nostalgic. “That’s how I got my first millions. But…. Robbing banks really isn’t that efficient, you know. Turns out bank notes have unique IDs, and laundering cash is such a pain…”
Danny sits on the fainting couch across from his partner. The name feels rather appropriate, at the moment.
“White collar crime is where you make the real money, Daniel. As much as embezzlement and wage theft and the like have a reputation of being non-violent… well. Things can spiral.” He leans forwards, hands in his lap. “As you are well aware, I am a man with many secrets to keep. And I am… very willing to do what is necessary to ensure that they remain secrets.”
Danny feels sick to his stomach.
“Right.”
They don’t talk about it after that.
Well, at least not for the rest of the day. That night, when they lie together side by side in the dark, legs tangled under lovely plush feather covers, basking in each other's warmth, the thought simply can’t leave Danny’s mind.
“Why did you kill them?” He says into the dark, safe space between their bodies. “The one…the one in the basement.”
Vlad’s eyes flash, glowing magenta-red in the dark before fading again.
“I electrocuted them,” Vlad answers, voice steady and achingly familiar. “I shocked them with my powers, and their heart stopped.”
Danny’s stomach does a flip, and his arm feels numb for a moment. He remembers the smell of burning flesh so vividly, even all these years later. “That’s not what I asked.”
“I know,” Vlad replies. “It’s what you would have asked next. I thought it would be prudent to get it out of the way.” He shifts, though Danny barely feels it, on their exorbitantly expensive mattress. “The reasons I killed are so much less interesting than the act.”
Danny doesn’t like the way he shapes the words. It reminds him of how Vlad used to speak of his mother. He pulls the covers tighter around himself.
“It doesn’t bother you, does it? That I have blood on my hands?”
“No,” Danny replies automatically. “It didn’t,” he elaborates, quieter, because he hadn’t, not before finding the bones in the foundations of their home. The skeleton in the metaphorical closet.
“Does it bother you now?” Vlad asks, and he sounds so very vulnerable. Danny’s heart aches, and he fumbles unthinkingly in the dark for his hand. It fits around his own like it belongs, warm against Danny’s chilled skin.
“I don’t know,” Danny says, “Yes. No. It’s complicated.” He pauses, Vlad squeezing his hand reassuringly, prompting him to go on. “You’ve tried to do worse, before. You haven’t changed. I mean- you have changed, since I first met you, but…”
Danny sighs. This is so hard to articulate.
“The man that made me breakfast in bed this morning hasn’t changed from who he was yesterday just because I found... I knew you’d…” He trails off.
“I understand,” Vlad says, despite Danny feeling like he’d done a pretty shitty job explaining.
They sit quietly in the dark, only the sound of their breaths filling the silence.
Danny can’t help himself asking more, even though he knows the answers will hurt.
“Who were they? Who were they, to you, I mean?”
The silence stretches.
“A paramour, of sorts.” Vlad sighs. “They… knew too much.”
Danny waits. His anticipation is nearly tangible. The dread, equally so.
Vlad sighs again, this time more dramatically. “I have a hard time controlling Plasmius when things get intense, you know this.”
“You killed them because what? They saw your eyes glow? Your fangs popped out?” Danny doesn’t want to sound accusatory, but it’s difficult not to.
“Precisely. Rather unavoidable, in those earlier days when I had less control of my powers….A shame, really. They were rather sweet.”
Danny doesn’t know what to say. What are you meant to say?
“That’s it? That’s why you killed them?” His voice was strained.
“Yes? I obviously couldn’t have anyone knowing about Plasmius. There’s a reason no record remains of my stay in hospice care.”
“Did you kill them too? Your nurses - the doctors?”
“Evidently. Don’t think them innocent, Daniel, my ‘treatment’ wasn’t exactly voluntary. You know this.”
Danny sits up. Vlad props himself up on his elbows, eyes gleaming dimly in the light in the way that tells Danny he’s tapping into his night vision.
“This is the unpleasant reality of having to keep my transformation secret, Daniel. I didn’t have the benefit of being able to erase memories, or go back in time, like you. I didn’t have anyone. Or anything. It was… a necessary precaution. An inevitability of living my life as I am.”
A paramour, Vlad had said. Buried in the bones of the house. This house. Their house.
Had they slept in this room, with Vlad? In this bed?
“I need to go get some air.”
“Daniel-”
He throws on the silk robe draped over the chair by the desk, just to ward off the chill, and leaves the room. He does not slam the door.
Vlad remains, half sitting, in bed, looking at that closed door.
Digging a grave is a lot fucking harder then Danny thought it would be. His back aches, the palms of his hands sting, there’s dirt under his nails and smeared on the silk bathrobe he wears. He should have probably put on more appropriate clothes.
The moon is nearly full, so at least Danny’s vision is pretty decent.
The sweat makes the dust and mud stick to his bare skin. He doesn’t care. Let it stick to him. Let him walk back into that house tracking dirt onto Vlad’s rugs. Let the man see how filthy he is, the blister forming on the webbing of his thumb burst and bleeding sluggishly.
Danny’s never been very fit. That’s improved with age, but not by much. By the time the edge of the grave is at eye level when he stands at the bottom, gray dusts the horizon and the birds are singing. It doesn’t really feel appropriate to the situation.
Danny drags himself out of the hole in Vlad’s gardens, situated right at the edge of the woods on his property, where the daffodils bloom in spring. He lies on the dirt, panting, watching as the world goes from shades of gray to pastel, dusky colours.
He could have done this as Phantom. But it didn’t feel right. Only the living should be digging graves. Danny laughs, feeling delirious. Only the living get to bury the dead. And yet here he is.
He struggles to his feet, swaying, leaning on his shovel.
Vlad is standing in the doorway of their house, barefoot, in his robe. He’s holding a cup of tea.
Danny wipes the sweat off his face, accidentally smearing dirt on his forehead. He makes his way over.
“Someone’s going to notice,” Vlad says calmly, sipping his tea. “There’s a reason I hid the body in the foundations.”
“Fuck it,” Danny says, collapsing against the wall of the house, sitting by Vlad’s feet. All his muscles ache. “Let them notice. We’ll say we found the bones in the walls - which we did - and no one will suspect anything, because this place’s foundations were made, what? Decades before either of us were born?”
Vlad leans against the doorframe. “I suppose. We’ll have to crack open the wall.”
“Can we do that?” Danny asks. “Will the house collapse?”
Vlad shrugs. “You’re the one determined to inter bones that are doing perfectly fine inside a foundation.”
“They’re not doing fine,” Danny growls, folding his arms. He needs a shower. “You shoved them in a wall.”
“I did,” Vlad says, shrugging. “I would have simply phased them underground, but things tend to explode when you do that. You need empty space for the matter to occupy.”
Danny squints at him. “Have you tried that?”
“I wouldn’t advise it,” Vlad says, dodging the question. “What would you like for breakfast?”
Danny shrugs, tossing his shovel down by the path. “Whatever you want to cook.”
Vlad holds out his hand, and Danny takes it. He hauls him to his feet with ease. Danny can’t help but shiver as he finds his footing, arm going numb for a moment again as Vlad rubs his lightning shaped scar with his thumb, as he always does.
Danny goes inside, Vlad shutting the door behind him. Danny can’t help but wonder if the body in their walls shared a mark similar to his scar. They’d both died to electric shock, after all.
Danny takes a shower.
Vlad cooks.
They eat together, and retrieve the bones from the wall before lunch. They don’t bother breaking it open. Danny simply phases his hand through and grabs them, as gross and undignified as that is. Vlad doesn’t help, other than to hold the bag open for him.
Danny lies one of Vlad’s fancier sheets, one they hadn’t used since Danny moved in since he hates the feeling of them, over the bones like a shroud. The bare bones stretch the fabric in a way that almost makes the body appear whole, rather than a jigsaw puzzle of pieces haphazardly put back together.
“Are you going to do this for all the remains in our house?” Vlad grouses, standing to the side in his suit as Danny uses the shovel to push the dirt back in the grave. There had been no eulogy.
Danny drops the shovel, before lunging to stop it from falling into the grave. He whirls around, wielding it like a weapon as he points it at his partner.
“There’s more?”
Vlad rolls his eyes. “I was a sexually active man, Danny, of course there’s more.”
Danny wants to scream. He runs his hands through his still-wet hair, getting dirt in it all over again. “How many?”
Vlad shrugs. “At least a half-dozen.”
Danny squints at him, the tip of the shovel lowering. The wind blows gently through the trees, making the dappled shade falling over them both dance.
“Are you the Wisconsin Wraith??” Danny splutters, finally remembering the name from the old stack of newspapers he’d found in Vlad’s office, all those months ago. He’d wondered why Vlad had kept newspapers - ones that didn’t report on Packers games, at least - at all. He suspects he knows why, now.
Vlad lifts his mug, now with coffee instead of tea, to his mouth. He glances away, eyes just peeking over the rim. “I never liked that moniker. I am not a serial killer.”
Danny stares at him. “I think you are, man.”
“I had my reasons! It was justified! I never planned to kill them,” Vlad defends, gesturing so wildly he nearly loses the contents of his cup. “My hand was forced.”
“You could have just stopped dating!” Danny yells, throwing his arms up. The shovel topples to the ground. Danny momentarily feels bad that they’re fighting at what’s meant to be a funeral. “How many times did this happen? Why didn’t you stop after the first time?!”
Vlad half-folds his arms, looking mildly guilty. He doesn’t reply.
“I literally cannot believe you,” Danny says, pinching his brow. “What if one of them had stuck around as a ghost? What were you gonna do then?”
“You can dissipate ghosts permanently, if you hurt them enough,” Vlad mutters.
Danny sighs, head in his hands. “Of course you’ve considered that.”
“I am who I am,” Vlad replied, neutrally. “Can we finish this-” he gestures to the half-filled grave, “- quickly? I have a meeting to attend this afternoon.”
“You really don’t regret it at all, do you,” Danny grumbles, obediently going back to shovelling dirt into the hole.
Vlad does a so-so gesture. “I wish it hadn’t been necessary. There was a reason I was willing to sleep with them in the first place. I don’t regret doing what I had to to survive.”
Danny pointedly glances back towards their house. “If you owned this place, I think you were past ‘surviving’ and well into ‘up-and-coming billionaire’.”
Vlad frowns, finishing his drink. “You know what I mean.”
Danny doesn’t dignify that with a reply.
At long last, Danny scoops the last shovelful of dirt onto the grave, before gently patting it down. “We should plant flowers here. Ones that come back every year, like the daffodils.”
“As you wish,” Vlad answers, kissing Danny’s temple.
Danny plants his palm on Vlad’s chest and gently pushes him away, leaving a muddy handprint on his fancy suit.
“Ah,” Vlad says, ineffectively trying to dust himself off before he turns himself and his clothes intangible for a moment, letting the would-be stain drop harmlessly to the turf at his feet. “I see.”
“Don’t be like that,” Danny says, patting himself down before planting the shovel in the dirt.
They stand there a moment, looking down at the grave. Vlad in his immaculate suit, and Danny in his stained jeans. There’s a metaphor here somewhere, Danny muses.
“Well!” Vlad says, clapping his hands together, empty mug dangling from a finger. “Shall we go in?” He starts back towards the house.
Danny stares at the grave a little longer. At his blistered hands.
“Are you coming?” Vlad calls over his shoulder.
Danny picks up the shovel, sighing.
“Yeah, Vlad. I’m coming.”
They enter the house full of skeletons, and Vlad closes the door behind them.