Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Four glorious weeks. Four weeks since Danny had started dating Timothy Drake-Wayne. And he had been loving nearly every moment of it. Sure, both of them were often busy. Tim had responsibilities as CEO of Wayne Enterprises, and the vigilante lifestyle he was still trying to keep secret from Danny. And Danny was constantly juggling pre-engineering classes at Gotham University, and his duties as King of the Infinite Realms he still hadn’t told Tim about. It didn’t leave a whole lot of down time, so Danny practically haunted Tim’s apartment from the beginning so they could both sneak as much time together as possible. Which was why Danny was currently on his boyfriend’s couch fiddling with a gadget he planned to present as a first month anniversary present: A compact and fine-tuned Specter Deflector that Danny had been developing. It had the benefit of excluding certain ecto-signatures so Danny would be able to cuddle his boyfriend even while Tim was wearing it. Danny figured it would be a great way to break the ice – pun intended – of his not-so-alive half. Just three more days.

Danny grimaced as he twisted a particularly stubborn screw into place. He had no idea how Tim would take the “being dead” thing. Sure, Tim was a vigilante and chaos gremlin given human form, but everyone had their limits. And all of Danny’s former exes were from Amity Park, so they were used to his Phantom side. Gotham was weird, but it wasn’t dead weird like Amity.

And Danny was also nervous because he didn’t want Tim to feel pressured to reveal his night hobby of Red Robin. Not that the secret had been difficult to figure out for the King of Ghosts. All it had taken was a Gotham ghost catching sight of Danny and Tim on their first date to squeal over seeing Red Robin again and insist Danny had made an excellent choice in potential partner. Apparently, the vigilante had tried saving her before she died, and she had remembered him staying by her side, reassuring her in her final moments. But Danny didn’t bring it up because one, he wanted to let Tim tell him in his own time. And two, that would mean bringing up being dead. Not exactly a great topic for a second date.

So, yes, Danny was nervous about the looming anniversary. But he also didn’t want to keep this a secret for too long. His relationship with his parents was still strained after waiting years to tell them about Phantom. Besides, far better to break out the smaller secrets early in increments, so the big ones – like the fact he was ghost royalty and an Ancient in the making – could come up later.

“Replacement! Where the fuck are my casefiles?!” Someone shouted as they slammed open Tim’s apartment door, and startling Danny so badly, he went intangible and invisible out of habit. The Specter deflector and tools he had been holding fell, rolling off the couch and onto the floor. Danny winced as part of the machine broke on impact. That piece would take an hour to recalibrate and attach.

Danny – remaining invisible and intangible – floated out of the couch and peered over the headrest to see who was intruding in Tim’s space. He assumed it was family, but it could have been one of the friends Tim mentioned with a certain degree of hesitation. For a paranoid freak, Tim certainly trusted a lot of people with his living space. Good thing Danny had set up wards their first week of dating to alert him of anyone with ill intentions entering Tim’s apartment.

Despite the intruder’s vim, the wards did not flare. Danny eased a fraction. But looking at the man, all his tension returned threefold.

On the outside, the man appeared normal. A young adult male endowed with the physical physique of Jack Fenton, donned in a leather jacket and combat boots. His eyes practically glowed somewhere on the spectrum between blue and green. His black hair was accentuated with a white stripe in the front which Danny might have mistaken for a bizarre but somehow attractive fashion choice if it weren’t for the death energy surrounding it. In fact, the man’s entire being radiated death energy. It was poisonous and cloying. Like the man’s ectoplasm that had been left to stagnate in the living realm too long. Danny wanted to throw up just looking at the man.

“Replacement! I know you’re here because I didn’t have to disable the full array of your freakish alarm system! Where are my goddamn files?” The man stormed across the room to the kitchen of all things and yanked on the fridge door. He immediately began looking through Tim’s drawers and carefully labeled containers, over a third of them labeled with bright yellow stickers warning anyone off that its contaminants were not safe for human consumption. Most prominently they read “DO NOT EAT” under which Tim had printed up to code warnings of hazardous materials. Danny will never forget the night a week ago he went looking for a late-night snack and nearly ate a human heart. He didn’t want to know, therefore didn’t ask.

On the upside, Tim’s system meant Danny could keep ectoplasm in the fridge with the label, and Tim wouldn’t consume it accidentally. Or at least, he hadn’t yet…

“Something reeks in here! Clean out your fridge!” Danny narrowed the speaker’s voice to either Dick or Jason, one of Tim’s older brothers, who Tim had always said were much too loud for their line of work. Obviously, as vigilantes. There was no reason a gymnastics instructor or a non-profit coordinator would need to be quiet all the time.

“It’s so bad, it’s stirring up the Pits,” Jason-or-Dick continued.

Danny forced his ghost-sense to focus beyond the aura of rotten ectoplasm permeating Tim’s brother. Past it, he could see the beginnings of a core – practically a fetus – underneath it all. A ghost core, and yet, this man was very much alive. Danny wanted to throw up again because the ghost core looked sickly and malnourished. The rotten ectoplasm around Jason-or-Dick was suffocating it, cutting off its contact with natural ectoplasm. If Tim’s brother died this moment, he would manifest as nothing more than a malevolent shade. Danny was all for putting aside kingly duties while in the Living Realm, but this was a case his protection obsession would not allow him to ignore.

Danny let himself regain his visibility, retaining his intangibility in case Jason-or-Dick was a “throw knives first, ask questions later” type; a feature he’d noticed all too frequently around vigilantes.

“You’re smelling the ectoplasm.”

Danny’s hunch proved right because a mustard bottle went flying through his abdomen as Tim’s brother spun around.

“Also, I don’t think you’re going to find any files in the fridge.”

“What the FUCK?!” Jason-or-Dick screeched.

The rotten ectoplasm was roiling around Jason-or-Dick, eager to incite the fear into a fight response. Likely because it now sensed Danny’s muted royal presence. Danny nearly had to roll his eyes at the rotten ecto’s audacity. He rumbled a warning of ghost speak from his chest, like the sound of TV static in the other room.

Jason-or-Dick’s eyes flashed momentarily a rotten lime green before dimming into a beautiful ocean blue that was probably far more reflective of his true eye color. “Did you – did you just speak to the Pits?”

“Is that what you’re calling the rotten death aura surrounding you?” Danny quirked his head.

“W-what?” Jason-or-Dick shook his head. The green was returning. Clearly it had been feeding whatever stubborn emotions Jason had that allowed him to remain sane and fight the pits. Usually the corrupted stuff backed down in the face of a larger threat. He snarled. “Who the hell are you?! And where’s Tim?”

Danny hopped off the couch over the head rest. If this turned into a ghostly spar, he wanted to be ready to take Tim’s brother down swiftly without anything in his boyfriend’s apartment ending up as collateral damage.

“I’m Danny Fenton, Tim’s boyfriend.” Danny stuck out a hand. “Are you Jason or Dick?”

“Excuse me?! When did the Replacement get a new boyfriend?”

Danny wrinkled his nose. Is that really what his brothers called Tim? Concerning. He doubted his boyfriend appreciated the nickname.

“A month. Well, almost a month. In a few days. So, Jason or Dick? If you don’t answer, I’m just going to call you Dick out of spite.”

“It’s Jason, I ain’t about to be mistaken for Dickhead. And how the hell do you know who I am? Where’s Tim?”

Danny rolled his eyes for real this time. Jason’s Pits were insistent and short of being commanded in actual ghost speak they didn’t seem keen to back down without a fight. “Again, we’re boyfriends. He’s told me about his family, just as I’ve told him about mine. As for where he is, he has a Board Meeting at WE, and Tam said she would personally castrate him if he missed this one.”

“That tracks. So…he just left you here?” Jason looked nervous and suspicious, perhaps trying to gauge how much Danny knew about their nightlife.

“Yep.” Danny decided not to get into how Tim tried getting rid of Danny had been an exercise in futility for all of three days before Tim gave up, grumbling about boyfriends being just as bad as best friends. Danny had yet to meet the best friends Tim occasionally mentioned, but he couldn’t wait. Bart, Connor, and Cassie sounded like fun.

“Alright. Are you from his team then?”

“His team?”

“Yeah, you know…” Jason waved his hand in a gesture. Danny wanted to cringe at Jason’s less than subtle attempts to dig for how much Danny knew.

Danny sighed internally. “You couldn’t have waited four more days to show up?” He grumbled. Revealing how much he knew about the vigilante-life to Jason before Tim was not in Danny’s plans. But he also wasn’t about to let Jason walk around with a dying baby ghost core and unstable rotten ectoplasm influencing his behavior. He could kill someone like that.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“No, I am not part of Tim’s hero team.”

“So he told you? Mr. I-Will-Follow-Batman’s-Stupid Rules-Until-I-Die?”

“No. A ghost told me,” Danny dead-panned. Also, Tim? Rule following? That didn’t seem to mesh with the Tim Danny had come to know. The only rule following he could see his boyfriend doing would be malicious compliance. He loved him so much.

Jason barked out a laugh. “I already knew you had to be crazy to date Timmers, but making a dead joke in front of the undead crime lord is a whole other level.”

Danny let a little bit of his ghost king form bleed through as he smirked with too many teeth and let his eyes flash green. “As another dead guy, I think I’ve earned it.”

Jason’s eyes widened with surprise before he let out a string of violent curses in no less than four different languages. Unfortunately, as King of the Infinite Realms, Danny understood all of them. Or at least the intention of them.

Once the cursing tapered off, Jason resumed his questions. “So…what? Some immortal egomaniac throw you in a Lazarus Pit too?”

Danny wrinkled his nose. “Is that what happened to you? Gross. And what’s a Lazarus Pit?”

Jason stared. “You don’t know? Then why do you feel like the Pits?!”

“Hmm, these Lazarus Pits…do they look like pools of rotten lime green Kool-Aid?”

“So you do know them!” Jason’s eyes flashed green and he stepped towards Danny.

Danny had faced far scarier than a fetal ghost drenched in rotten ectoplasm, so he stood his ground just fine. “I’ve heard of them,” he acknowledged. “But I have never seen or been in one.”

That was true. The Observants had compiled a to-do list a mile long for Danny once he accepted the Crown of Fire and Ring of Rage. Apparently keeping the figurehead of the Infinite Realms’ government locked up for millennia had stacked up a lot of housekeeping in the Ghost Zone. One of the tasks was cleaning up the stagnant pools of ectoplasm that had been left to fester in the mortal realm. If people were being dumped in them for some sort of revivification, Danny was starting to think he might have to move this chore on his To-Do list from mild concern to urgent.

Jason began to pace. “So what, you just died and came back some other way? Magic?”

Danny’s ghost powers dropped the temperature of the room outside of his control, a surge of defensiveness rising in him. Did this guy not care that he was veering dangerously close to a taboo question? Or did he not know? In Danny’s experience, dying halfway didn’t leave one with the required knowledge to navigate the intricacies of the afterlife. He forced his ghost hackles to calm down.

“Careful, Jason. That’s getting a little close to the big ‘D’ question.”

Jason shivered. “What?”

Danny sighed, physically rolling his shoulders and loosening his stance as Jazz taught him so his powers could power down and he wouldn’t turn Tim’s apartment into a winter wonderland. Ancients, the volatility of ghost emotions drove him crazy. “It’s rude to ask a ghost how they died. You probably know that yourself from experience. Do you feel defensive and angry when other people bring up your death? Even if you were perfectly fine talking about it on your own terms?”

Jason blinked with shock. “Yes…how do you – “

“Like I said, I died too. I have the same weird feelings and urges you do. The Dead are usually just beings of ectoplasm and concentrated emotions.” Danny grinned wryly. “And when have emotions ever followed any sort of logic?”

Jason just nodded, and turned back to the open fridge, moving to close it, before deciding last minute to dazedly grab something. Danny let himself be patient. Grappling with one’s own death usually took time. But it was still a natural part of life. It was the undead part that always proved to be a little more difficult for special cases like them.

“So…Does Tim – “

“No. Not yet. It was supposed to be this weekend…” Danny trailed off, eyes widening as he watched Jason tip a thermos up to his lips marked in Danny’s “DO NOT EAT” handwriting with a little winking ghost.

“Jason, NO!” Danny shouted, reaching for the thermos. It was unlikely it would harm him like it would a normal human, but the poisoned ectoplasm swirling around Jason was leeching off any ectoplasm it can get and Jason had basically just given it a buffet’s worth of the stuff with one sip.

Sure enough, Jason’s eyes shone with sickly green light. The thermos dropped from his hand as Jason’s hand shook into clenched fists. He turned to Danny with unmistakable rage furrowing his face.

“You haven’t told my brother?!” He shouted. And Danny knew – he knew ­– this was the rotten ectoplasm and not Jason talking. But he couldn’t help feeling a twinge of guilt anyway.

He wanted to make his excuses, but he also knew none of that would work. There was only one language that would work on a properly enraged ghost.

“Going ghost,” Danny whispered to himself. And then Jason launched himself.

Danny made quick work of dodging Jason’s attack. Currently Jason was fueled more by instinct than any rational thought, but it was clear Jason was a trained vigilante. He managed to evade Danny’s attempts to subdue him. If Danny couldn’t get him to calm down quickly, Tim’s apartment was about to pay the price.

After a few moments of attacking and dodging for both opponents, Danny managed to evade a particularly impressive kick and used Jason’s momentum to fling Jason into Tim’s couch which fell over from the force. Danny winced at the crack of wood breaking. Looks like Danny would be buying his boyfriend a new couch.

Danny used the brief reprieve to dart across the room and scribble a hasty note to Tim, faltering at the end as he dithered over the urge to write “Love you.” Danny had said it to Tim aloud already. Back in their second week of dating. Because Danny’s emotions were always so close to the surface, he was much freer with expressing emotions than the average person, especially after years of coming to terms with his own mortality in addition to puberty. But Tim hadn’t said it back yet. And Danny didn’t want Tim to feel pressured anymore than he already was. Writing it down might be too much. Unfortunately, Danny’s dithering meant Jason had the opportunity to stab him where his kidneys would be if he were human.

“Dude, seriously? A knife in the back? Not cool,” Danny chastised. He settled for scribbling a heart and signing his name before turning back to his opponent.

“Now, I really wanted your consent for this, but I’m not about to let an ectoplasm-mad revenant loose on Gotham. Time to see Frostbite.”

Jason screamed as he charged. Danny darted across the room to snatch up his thermos spilling ectoplasm across the floor. He let his feet soak up what was already spilled, grimacing some at the inevitable germs he would be picking up too. Good thing his parents had little instinct towards safety and hazardous waste removal or he might be a little more concerned about eating off the floor. His core sang with the infusion of ectoplasm that Danny would usually space over a week. Definitely time to leave the mortal realm before the lingering ex-GIW stalking Gotham registered an ectoplasmic surge. They were more an annoyance than a danger these days, but it didn’t mean Danny wanted to lead them to his boyfriend’s apartment.

He dodged Jason’s latest lunge. Then used the precious moments before Jason attacked again to rip a portal open in Tim’s living room. He grimaced, surveying the mess he and Jason had created thus far. He definitely owed his boyfriend a new end table now in addition to a couch. He only hoped that the time dilation between the two realms would be in Danny’s favor this time around so Tim wouldn’t be left wondering why Danny half-trashed Tim’s living room with his older brother before vanishing off the face of the earth.

“Alright, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Danny told the ecto-mad revenant as he picked up one of Tim’s obscure forensic theory books that weighed more than a baby.

Jason charged.

“Hard way it is.” Danny turned intangible as Jason ran through him. Immediately after, using his super speed, he turned tangible and thwacked Jason across the back of his head, knocking out Tim’s older brother.

He hefted the now unconscious Jason over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and hoped he hadn’t caused any permanent damage. With a final look over his shoulder at the mess, Danny sighed and then stepped into the glowing green portal awaiting him.

Chapter Text

Jason awoke to cold. A piercing, settles-in-your heart type of cold. Even the Pit in his veins felt sluggish. And…afraid?

Jason’s eyes snapped open as he remembered what had happened before he lost consciousness. Tim’s new boyfriend – Tim’s undead ­ boyfriend – had said a lot of crap that stirred up the pits. And, well, Jason needed to distract himself. He knew Tim kept his energy drinks well stocked in the fridge. Focusing on the sensations of the cold jar, and the simple action of opening the top helped to ground him. But as soon as he had taken a sip: green. Jason’s gut sunk. He hadn’t had a reaction that bad to the Pits since he had been freshly released from the League of Assassins and out for the blood of the Bats and the Joker.

He tried to sit up and began to panic when he found himself bound to what appeared to be a table. It was just simple medical straps from the looks of them, but when Jason tried using his Pit strength to snap the bindings, they didn’t even give.

Jason took a moment to force his breathing to even and calm. He had to assess the situation and develop an escape plan. He would need a cool head to figure out wherever Tim’s freaky boyfriend had taken him. Was this kid even Tim’s boyfriend? It was uncharacteristic for mini-Bruce to allow apartment privileges to someone he hadn’t thoroughly stalked and vetted.

Jason looked at his surroundings. Ice. All ice, as far as he could see. It was tinted green, and green lamps along the walls only added to the spooky factor. High-vaulted ceilings overhead had beams of carved ice. Next to where Jason lay was a table where several unfamiliar tools were immaculately placed. Also seemingly made of ice. It was like some nightmare at the North Pole dental office. Jason huffed. Okay, tools were something he could use. Some looked like modified scalpels, sharp enough to cut through what was binding him. He just had to reach them. Somehow.

Before Jason could enact any plans of escape, a door to his left opened with the sound of scraping ice. Jason dropped his jaw in shock as a ten foot tall glowing blue beast with pure white fur, and ice-like horns. One arm seemed to have a prosthetic the same translucent ice-blue as the horns, but it encompassed typical arm and hand bones. Jason did not want to consider whether or not the bones belonged to the yeti or not.

To further the bizarre image which Jason was rapidly beginning to believe some drug-induced hallucination, the beast began to speak. “Ah, you’re awake. Excellent. The Great One has been fretting, and one can only pace so many new snow trenches before it becomes tedious to fill in later.”

“You…” Jason was not about to point out that whatever this creature in this ice hell of a room was talking. Nope. He’d been on teams with weirder, and both Alfred and Catherine raised him with manners, thank you very much. “Who are you?” He settled on instead.

The white-furred giant grinned, and nope, that was far too many teeth. “I am Frostbite, chief of the Yetis, and ruler over the Far Frozen. Though I am sure that means very little to a Halfa such as yourself.”

“A what?”

“Which part confused you?” The yeti – apparently – cocked his head.

“All of it! And why am I tied up?!”

“Ah, that was for your own safety. We were not sure if you would awaken in an ecto-mad state or not. As your infection is calmer, I shall remedy that. Don’t worry, you are not a prisoner.”

Frostbite snapped his fingers and the straps just melted. As if they weren’t made of leather or fabric at all. Jason sat up and rubbed at his wrists. He wanted to grab the longest sharpest knife on the table next to him and make his escape. But the instinct to gather intelligence was strong. One could kill a Bat and dunk them in a Lazarus Pit, but it wouldn’t get rid of the Bat-instincts. Information, then escape.

“Where am I?”

“You are currently in the Far Frozen, an island in the Infinite Realms. Mostly inhabited by yetis, such as myself. The Great One has amused me with many human myths of my people, so I assume that does not warrant further explanation?”

Jason shook his head, lying. He had a hundred questions just about that. Yetis existed?! Tim was going to freak. He must never know. Jason had experienced conspiracy theory Tim a few times and that was already far too many times. Didn’t help that Tim was always at least partly right. “Halfa. Explain that.”

“Ah. Well, is the term at least familiar?”

Jason shook his head.

“It is rare. And you are not quite a Halfa yet, but well on your way. Particularly once we remove the infection from your system and your core will be allowed to develop properly. It is a person who is more acquainted with death than a standard Liminal. It is a being who straddles the line between them, half alive and half dead so to speak. Halfa.”

“I don’t know what most of that even means! Cores? And what infection? What does it mean that I am both half alive and half dead? Because I feel pretty fucking alive right now.”

Frostbite grimaced. “I see the Great One overestimated how much of his previous explanations you understood.”

“And who is this Great One you keep mentioning?!”

A cough from behind Frostbite drew both of their attention. “That would be, uh, me. But you don’t have to call me that. Just Danny is fine.”

Jason stared at the new figure as Frostbite stepped aside to grant him access into the space. It took Jason a moment because he looked so different, but this was the supposed boyfriend in Tim’s apartment. His colors were inverted so he now had snow-white hair. His clothes had also changed. He wore a cape that looked like a piece of the night sky itself wrapped around his shoulders and down to his floating feet. The rest of vestments were a chest plate over a long sleeve tunic with arm braces. He had clawed hands now, one of the fingers had a longer claw than any of the others and adorned with a glowing red ring. His pants were simple black and folded into white boots that rose halfway up his shin. But the freakiest part of all was his face. He had two fangs peeking out from under his upper lip, and pointed ears poking out of the snow-white hair. His hair floated in a non-existent breeze, and two, spiraling blue horns - much like the ones on Frostbite – framed a floating green crown that looked like frozen fire. And worst of all, his eyes. Formerly blue eyes now glowed Lazarus Green with black sclera.

 Jason shrunk back, heartbeat rabbiting in his chest as disjointed memories tinged with green of attempting to kill the being in front of him in Tim’s living room.

“Tim – “

“Is fine. He wasn’t around,” Danny assured him. “His couch will need to be replaced. But frankly it was starting to smell anyway. We probably did him a favor destroying it.”

Jason recalled his rage at Danny earlier, and though the Pits still churned underneath his skin to pulverize Danny, Jason felt too appalled at his earlier lapse of control.

“Oh God. Did I – “

“Nope, I’m fine. None of your apologies either. Not your fault, apart from drinking my ectoplasm. But I doubt you knew it was going to do that. ”

“Ectoplasm?” Jason held his head in his hands. “What happened? Why am I here?”

“Well, you accidentally drank one of my ectoplasm shakes. Thankfully you already died so it won’t have any lingering adverse effects. It did turn whatever infection is inside you up to eleven, so it lashed out. Thankfully, I have a bit of experience with unruly ectoplasm. Had to knock you out though, so apologies for the headache you’re probably sporting. Brought you to Frostbite so he could look you over. Make sure there won’t be any further side effects and to get that infection of yours looked at.”

“Are yetis typically good at understanding zombie biology or something?” Jason asked.

Danny and Frostbite exchanged a look.

“No?” Danny asked, clearly looking to Frostbite for confirmation.

The yeti huffed with amusement and unmistakable fondness at the snow-haired teen. “No we are not. But as an Ancient and experienced ghost well-versed in healing arts – particularly for ecto-entities – Danny brought you to me for my expertise.”

“You’re dead?!” Jason exclaimed. 

Both Danny and Frostbite flinched.

Frostbite’s teeth peeked through his lips as he grimaced, the fur on his shoulders raising. Thankfully, he directed his frustration to Danny. “Great One, I thought you told him.”

“I thought it was obvious! Even when I knew nothing, I could at least sense when someone was a ghost just fine! And I already told him!”

“No, you told me that you died. I thought you came back. Like me. Ghosts don’t exist,” Jason insisted. Then amended his statement. “Or not like this. I’ve heard of Deadman in the Justice League. But ghost yetis? This is a hallucination. Some new gas by a rogue?” Jason was babbling. His heart couldn’t seem to stop. And something else in his chest. Something he had felt glimpses of ever since he came back from the dead, but had never felt this strongly, like a bundle of all his most extreme emotions. Jason tried not to dwell on it.

“Dude, you’re in what is colloquially called the ‘Ghost Zone,” Danny replied, which did not help Jason calm down in the slightest.

Jason stood up off the observation table. “Take me home.”

“That is unwise,” Frostbite stepped forward. “Your infection – while somewhat stabilized – is near critical. It is continuing to leech off your core. Any further significant lapse in your control of your fight could destabilize it completely. Your infection would overtake you.”

“By infection, he means what you call the Pits,” Danny supplied. “Which I’ll need the full story on someday.”

Jason glared at the yeti and the apparent ghost boyfriend of his brother.

“You said I am free to go.”

“You are,” Frostbite acknowledged.

Danny turned on the yeti. “What?! You know as well as I do I can’t let him back in the mortal realm like this! He could kill someone!”

“Been there, done that,” Jason replied with a snort. He realized too late at Danny’s appalled expression that maybe he shouldn’t be saying these things in present company. Jason really needed to get some normal friends again to avoid slip-ups like this.

“See! Frostbite, you know I can’t let him! I’m the Anci – well, I will be – and Clockwork says –”

“Calm down, Great One. While staying in the realms will be optimal, there is fortunately another option. I am sure Clockwork and the Observants will accept a compromise of the developing Halfa’s return to the mortal realm under your surveillance. He will need continuous transfusions anyway. And he seems ill at ease in the Realms.”

Jason didn’t follow most of the conversation, except the bit about surveillance. He wouldn’t be letting any ghostly stalkers tail him, thank you very much. But he kept his mouth shut. Better to pretend compliance now so he could ditch Danny once they were back in Gotham.

“What do you mean transfusions?” Jason asked instead.

“Your poisoned ectoplasm can be supplemented with fresh. With enough highly concentrated ectoplasm, it will begin pushing out the infection and feeding your core until it can begin naturally filtering out the poison on its own. As your doctor I would prefer you remain in the Infinite Realms to use the ambient ectoplasm. But with consistent transfusions from Danny, it will have a similar effect.”

“I can do that?” Danny pondered out loud.

Frostbite huffed again. “Once again, you underestimate the extent of your strength and power.”

“Oh, and what makes Glowboy over there so special?” Jason snarked. No way he wanted whatever weird Lazarus Meta-powered blood Danny had anywhere near him.

Danny shrunk back and ducked his head while the yeti beamed with pride. “He is the Great One, of course!”

“Uh-huh. And what does that mean?”

“Frostbite, you don’t have to –”

“He is the King of the Infinite Realms.”

Jason’s jaw dropped. But he then took on the pure ridiculousness of such a statement that some smart-mouthed boyfriend of Tim’s who somehow looked like he weighed less than Mr. I-Subsist-off-of-coffee-energy drinks-and-spite himself. He threw his head back and laughed. “Right. And I’m the Queen of Themyscira.”

Neither Danny nor Frostbite laughed. In fact, Frostbite’s frown only seemed to furrow.

Danny jumped in between them. “I know I don’t look like it, but appearances are deceiving in the Infinite Realms. It is not a plane of existence bound by normal physical laws. Everything here is emotion-based. I choose to look this way, but if I so chose, I could make my ghostly form as large as a planet or smaller than the human eye can see. Particularly with my power-set. I died a human, I feel human, and so I still look mostly human. Other facets of my form, such as my horns, are features I have accumulated from strong connections with others.”

Jason glared at Danny. “So Tim is just casually dating – what – the king of the dead?”

Danny winced. “Technically no. More like that’s a facet of what I am.”

“Does Tim know?”

“Not yet. I didn’t even want you to know. But you’re sick! And I had to do something. It’s my responsibility. And part of my obsession. And I was going to break it slowly to Tim. This weekend actually. Our one-month anniversary is coming up and – “

Danny was silenced as Frostbite put a furry hand on his shoulder. “I do believe you are confusing him further.”

Jason shook his head. “No, I want to know more about how King Danny is keeping secrets from my brother.”

“It’s not like he’s not keeping secrets either, Red Hood, ” Danny sneered.

“You know who I am,” Jason said flatly.

“Of course! The Bats are beloved by Gotham. And so are all her dead. Mostly. And the phrase ‘dead men tell no tales’ is a filthy lie. No one else gossips like ghosts. One of them told me about Tim after our first date. Then it wasn’t too hard figuring out the rest of you even if I didn’t want to know.”

Jason repressed a sigh. His plans for evading Danny on their return to Gotham were dwindling. He still didn’t like the sound of these transfusions.

“Look, dude. I know you don’t trust me, and I get it. I was a vigilante myself once. Trust is hard to come by. But feel for these so-called Pits of yours and tell me you don’t already feel better just being here? You don’t have to trust or even like me. But I am going to help you whether you like it or not.”

“Why? Because it’s your kingly responsibility?”

“No, because I fear Tim. And Tim would definitely eviscerate me if I let his brother turn into a malevolent shade.” Danny grinned, and yep, he had far too many teeth to be normal.

Jason looked at Danny a while longer, but couldn’t actually sense any malevolent intention. Bizarrely, he could sense a surge of protectiveness, which was not a thing Jason was aware he could sense from someone. Maybe it was a ghost thing?

“Fine. Explain to me what these transfusions entail.”

Frostbite smiled and launched into a long explanation that Jason didn’t understand most of while Danny just rocked on his feet happily. Jason could not believe this was his life right now.

Chapter Text

Tim could not be happier to be home. The Board at Wayne Enterprises had been exhausting. And their demands meant both he and Tam had to work overtime to handle the most urgent demands. He was drained, and he had even let Bruce know that he wouldn’t be patrolling tonight unless there was an Arkham breakout-level crisis. All he wanted to do was return to his apartment, curl up in his new boyfriend’s arms, and watch Star Trek.

It seemed Danny Fenton had entered Tim’s life at the perfect time. Tim had been feeling adrift. For once everything in his life was calm. Relatively. He continued to do good work at both Wayne Enterprises and as a vigilante. No urgent crises had popped up recently so Tim was almost bored. He still didn’t spend much time at Wayne manor outside of patrol – a habit he had picked up when Bruce was lost in the time stream – but he still made time for Sunday brunches and significant events. And these days he was on at least cautiously decent terms with everyone. He met with Cass, Stephanie and Alfred when his schedule allowed. He worked with Babs on cases mostly, but they usually spent time afterwards talking about potential tech improvements and designs. He was beginning to mend fences Dick, and in the case of Damian, build some. Slowly but surely he was also picking away at Jason’s stubbornness to be considered separate from the family, so they were working on cases together. And Tim knew he would convince his brother soon to switch from part-time to full-time managing the charities affiliated with Wayne Enterprises.  

Usually, Tim would supplement his loneliness with his friends from the Titans, but Tim hadn’t seen much of them either lately. Cassie was spending time at Themyscira, and Kon was busy with college work. Bart stopped by occasionally. But he had been selected for a space mission to aid the Justice League, and Tim hadn’t seen his favorite speedster in weeks. So apart from occasionally seeing his exes (Stephanie and Bernard) still in Gotham, Tim didn’t have a social life to speak of.

Which was why Danny had come along at the perfect time. An engineering student with similar eyebags under startling blue and green eyes that sought out coffee in one of Tim’s favorite haunts. Danny had been too tired to recognize the famous co-CEO of WE, yet awake enough to flirt with a surprisingly dry wit.

Danny spoke of himself in either one of two extremes: curiously vague or with exacting details that delivered more questions than answers. In other words, he was as addictive as coffee for Tim’s detective-hardwired brain.

Within the few first dates, Tim only found himself more fascinated by Danny. It didn’t help that Amity Park where Danny was originally from was a virtual deadzone of internet presence apart from ridiculously campy claims of the “the most haunted town in America.” Which meant Danny was more intriguing as Tim had to do his customary “getting to know you” stalking the old-fashioned way: in person. Danny was just the challenge Tim’s mind needed at exactly the right time. Tim even nearly gave up digging more online, eager to pry what he could out of Danny in conversation instead.

He challenged Tim in other ways too. Danny was so emotionally open. He might be a bundle of secrets on very attractive legs, but the man was an open book on his motives and feelings. Danny’s presence was the emotional support and openness Tim hadn’t realized he’d been missing. (Particularly since he spent his time amongst the family who preferred expressing emotions via dressing up in Kevlar suits at night to punch out goons and take down rogues.) Danny always seemed to know exactly how Tim was feeling at a given time despite Tim’s excellent poker face from growing up among Gotham’s elite and then years working as a Bat. Tim had contemplated potential empathic abilities for a few days before testing a DNA sample and saw it lacked the Meta gene. 

Danny had basically moved in, and he was a constant pillar of support, whether or not Tim chose to lean on him. And if Tim asked for boundaries, Danny was more than willing to give them. Tim wondered at Danny’s ease in parsing through Tim’s fickle nature that alternated between radical independence and the desire to be fussed over. Tim found himself considering perhaps this was what a healthy relationship was supposed to look like.  

And it was the reason why Tim could not compute Danny’s hastily scrawled note and his slightly-trashed living room when he opened his apartment door. Because Danny might have a billion secrets, but Tim had trusted his intentions from the beginning. Danny just oozed feelings of protection and inherent goodness that held some kind of Midwestern optimism no true Gothamite could ever hope to cultivate in this godforsaken city. But Tim’s Bat-wired brain was screaming that an altercation had taken place, and apparently with one of Tim’s brothers. And Tim had a hunch on which one.

Now, Tim and Jason may have come a long way in their relationship, and Jason may be managing the Pit rage rather well these days, but Tim was still dealing with the trauma of the attempted murders at the other’s hand. They’d come a long way, but there was always a part of Tim that would fear Jason regressing into a homicidal Pit-rage against him. Tim had to shakily sit down against the ruined couch in his living room, grasping at the Bats’ recommended breathing techniques for a panic attack as imagination spiraled through possibilities of the damage a Pit-mad Jason could do to his civilian boyfriend.

It took longer than Tim would like, but he finally calmed enough to pull out an emergency communicator with trembling hands. “O-oracle?” He asked, hoping she was on frequency. If not, he could make do with Duke or Cass right now. He still hadn’t told anyone about Danny yet, so he’d rather not open that can of worms with Steph. She had eternal dibs to hear about Tim’s new paramours before anyone else.

“Red Robin? What’s wrong?” Thank God, Babs' voice came over the comm. She amended, “Report.” Probably she remembered that Tim did better compartmentalizing his emotions when something needed to be handled. Contacting her during the day was probably throwing her off.

“I need you to tell me Red Hood’s whereabouts. Actually, I need everyone’s.” As Tim let Red Robin take control, he knew it was best to leave no stone unturned rather than working on past bias.

“Why?”

“I…I’ll tell you later. Please?”

Silence on the line for a few moments as Oracle contemplated, and likely tried figuring out where Tim was breaking down. “If you’re in danger…”

“Not me,” Tim interrupted quickly. “But potentially someone else. Civilian.”

“Fine. But I do want a full explanation, Red.” Silence on the other line as Babs pulled up whatever secret methods she had of tracking Jason he had yet to find and disable.

“Red Robin, what is going on?” Oracle’s voice was strained. “Red Hood’s last location was your apartment three hours ago before all his trackers went offline.”

Tim furrowed his brow and breathed out a weighty, “fuck.”

An hour later, most of the Batclan was assembled in the cave. They had tried every avenue of standard operating procedure to find Jason. None of his trackers were enabled, except for the ones in his equipment that Dick had already checked and found to be locked up in Hood’s various safehouses. Steph was with Babs, as they both scanned through surveillance footage for Jason departing Tim’s apartment. But there was nothing. Tim had even checked with the front desk of his apartment building, and while Jason had been seen entering the premises, he had not left through any conventional means.

Tim had asked about Danny in the surveillance footage, trusting Babs not to disclose anything. Unfortunately, his ex-girlfriend was helping out Oracle, so he ended up earning a few passive aggressive comments from Steph. But nothing came up on that front either. Danny hadn’t shown up on cameras again since last night when he arrived. And when he did show up, it was blurry and the film was corrupted. Danny seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth with Jason. And Tim was consistently on the verge of a panic attack thinking about it. Danny was just a college student from middle of nowhere Illinois. There was no way he was equipped to deal with Jason’s brand of madness.

“Red Robin, explain,” Batman demanded with everyone gathered in the cave. And Tim did mean everyone. Nightwing, Robin, Signal, Black Bat, Alfred, and Batman himself were in the cave. Oracle and Batgirl were on video call.

Tim took a deep breath. He had hoped he had another month. First to explain to Danny about his weird family’s night hobby. And then maybe another month to work up the courage to expose him to his paranoid and obsessive family. Danny might joke about growing up with mad scientists, but as far as Tim was concerned, a couple quack scientists had nothing on a bunch of absurdly rich detectives who chose punching criminals in the face to therapy. And God, they all needed therapy.

Tim took a deep breath. “Okay, so I may or may not have a boyfriend – “

Dick squealed, which was promptly interrupted by a jab from Damian in the older vigilante’s kidney.

Cass hummed. “Happy?”

Tim let himself give his sister a small smile. “Yes. He’s…well, you’d like him a lot. He seems to know what people are feeling before they do.”

“Meet?” Cass asked.

Tim nodded. Whether or not he agreed, Cass would find a way to meet Danny, she would just feel more guilty about it if he said no.

Batman sucked in a breath as he put together the connection. “You suspect Red Hood – “

“Not necessarily,” Tim replied hastily, even though yes, he did suspect. But Bruce and Jason were still working on repairing their very delicate relationship. Tim was not about to halt the progress on that.

Tim squared his shoulders entering his presenting mode, channeling the best of Tim Drake-Wayne, CEO. “The facts are these: One, I arrived home at 18:32 this evening to evidence of a physical altercation in my living room. Two, one note in Danny’s – my boyfriend’s – handwriting.” Tim presented the note to Batman who passed it around. Oracle and Steph already had an image Tim had sent Babs earlier.

“Three, Danny arrived this morning at my apartment to study, and there is no surveillance imagery indicating his departure. Four, Jason entered the building at approximately 15:00. There is no evidence of his departure either apart from disappearance of his tracking signals at 15:22.”

“For roughly twenty minutes he was alone with Red Robin’s boyfriend, who I doubt Red Hood knew about, ” Oracle reported.

“Why are we only just now hearing of this new paramour, Drake?” Damian demanded. “What if he had designs to abscond with Todd all along?”

“Names in the Cave,” Batman growled, but no one listened. It was as much background noise as the hum of the bat computer’s fans.

“It’s still new,” Tim insisted. “I didn’t want to traumatize him with this family’s stalking tendencies until we were comfortable.”

“Bit hypocritical there, baby bird,” Dick replied with an unrepentant grin. “How many minutes after meeting him did you know Danny’s date of birth, social security number, and criminal record?”

Tim did not bother to dignify that question with a response. His family knew him too well.

“I understand you losers, but why am I just now hearing about this boyfriend?” Steph demanded. “You know I have ex-girlfriend privileges to know about any other Baes before anyone else!”

Damian scoffed. “No one uses such outdated lingo anymore, Brown.”

“Oh, like you’d know, baby bat.”

Damian’s hand went to the katana at his side. “Come say that to my blade!”

“Enough.” Batman raised his voice just enough to be heard over the squabbling. “We need to determine where and what condition Red Hood and Danny might be in, as well as any potential identity compromises. Are there any already existing compromises?”

“No!” Tim answered honestly. Even if he had been contemplating telling Danny the truth. Letting his boyfriend roam around his apartment unsupervised was just asking for a secret to be revealed awkwardly. He already knew Danny had found the heart in the fridge for a case a couple weeks ago. He was slightly concerned Danny hadn’t mentioned anything about it, even if it was a pig heart.

“Red Hood will keep Danny safe,” Cass said.

Tim held back his tongue from expressing his concern. The family had come a long way in trusting Jason after a very bumpy road. He was not going to set them all back. He wasn’t!

“Could it be the League?” Bruce asked.

“Nah, my plants in Ra’s’ Gotham Team would have alerted me,” Tim answered while everyone else shifted awkwardly. Revealing what went on during Bruce’s absence in the timestream was an ongoing, awkward process. Everyone was stubbornly avoiding acknowledgement of Tim’s allyship with the League of Assassins, and then his very explosive resignation. Not to mention his ongoing feud with Ra’s that now exceeded whatever antagonism the immortal once had with Batman.

“We don’t necessarily know the target is me either,” Tim pointed out to dissolve the tension.

“Red Hood has been pissing off Black Mask more lately,” Dick offered.

“I don’t think Black Mask has yet to uncover Jason’s identity,” Signal replied.

“And how would you know?” Damian demanded.

“What? You think all I do all day is punch petty thieves? No one expects Bat surveillance during lunchtime.” Duke’s grin was almost wicked. Truly the teen was coming into his own as a Bat.

“Someone after Danny? Dude have any enemies you dug up? Criminal Record? Villainous parents? Secret cult history? Cloning situation? ” Steph asked with a smirk Tim did not like. It wasn’t his fault he kept picking up people with weird histories.

“Nothing as bad as all that. His parents are quack scientists, he comes from a small tourist trap of a town, and he does have some friends with interesting skillsets, but nothing that stands out. He doesn’t have the Meta gene. His vitals do have some weird inconsistencies, but Danny has told me he experienced a life-threatening accident as a teenager that caused permanent damage. The biggest red flag I could find is a godfather by the name of Vlad Masters, a millionaire who came into a company and wealth rather suddenly and mysteriously.”

“Vlad Masters…” Bruce mumbled. “Affiliations with Lex Luthor?” He asked, likely recalling something from a previous case.

Tim nodded. “Several years ago. But nothing since then. For the most part, Masters has been quiet going on six years now. Danny had nothing to say about him other than he is – and I quote – ‘a fruitloop, but relatively harmless.”

The team was silent, ruminating over the speculations thus far. None of them seemed likely.

“Magic?” Cass finally suggested.

“Worth a shot,” Nightwing remarked. “Captain Marvel?” He offered, as none of the Bats had much experience with magic and they liked to keep it that way. The last thing Gotham needed on top of its usual nonsense was magic users.

“Busy,” Batman replied gruffly, meaning he had no idea why Captain Marvel was busy and it was driving him crazy not knowing. As usual. Captain Marvel was the one League member Batman knew next to nothing about his personal life.

“Zatanna?” Oracle offered.

“Offworld,” Nightwing replied.

The entire Batclan sighed. That meant only one option left.

“Alright, draw straws on who has to track down Constantine?” Signal asked, as if Duke wasn’t a cheat at that game. It irritated them, yet they were all so proud Duke was comfortable enough to be a proper menace around them.

Tim groaned internally. He was the only bat with consistent blackmail and favors owed from the supernatural conman. As the bickering began, he made his peace with the fact no matter what, he’d be the one calling on the magician. He just hoped Constantine didn’t trash his apartment in the process. Well, trash his apartment further. What exactly had Jason and Danny gotten up to?

Chapter Text

Danny could tell Jason was anxious to leave. And Danny understood – he did! – but it seemed underwhelming that it was Jason’s first time to the Infinite Realms and all he got to see was the inside of one of Frostbite’s examination rooms. Danny’s personal pride in his domain had at least wanted to show Jason the Far Frozen. Maybe even interest him in a snowball fight with some of the younger ghosts. He had strategized battle tactics with them for hours while he waited on Jason to wake up.

However, Jason was anxious to leave, and truth be told, it would be better for Danny to return sooner rather than later so he could catch Tim before his boyfriend came home to a trashed couch and a vague note. But before Danny could rip a hole in space-time to take them back to their world, a shade flew into the room bearing a sealed scroll.

Jason leapt back, eyes flashing green – albeit much more muted than before Frostbite’s operation. Danny took the scroll and thanked the shade in a trill of grateful ghostspeak. Danny unfurled the missive and groaned upon catching the eye emblem stamped at the top of the scroll.

“What was that?” Jason asked, eyes wide at where the shade had vanished.

“Shade. A weak variant of ghost. Typically found trapped in the mortal realm. Overtime, their exposure to the Realms will strengthen them into a true specter,” Frostbite explained while Danny read through the note.

Danny was not pleased. He hadn’t been in the Infinite Realms more than a few hours, but his council of Observants had already found out and tracked him down with a task. “These guys are the worst. I cannot believe I am going to have to listen to them for the rest of eternity.”

“The duties of a king never cease,” Frostbite remarked.

Danny just rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but they know I’m part-time until I die for real.”

“I am sure the Observants would not bother you unless it was urgent.”

“You’d think that wouldn’t you,” Danny sneered back.

“Okay, I have many questions. But what’s going on?”

 Danny rolled up the scroll and shoved it in his chest to take care of later. “So I’m king, right?”

Jason scoffed.

“Humor me. I’m king, and so as king I have a shitload of stuff to do. But because I’m still half-alive, I compromised with the Observants and the Ancients of the Infinite Realms that they will handle most of my responsibilities until I fully die. I’ll do some work for them, and I am contacted if there’s anything only the king can do, but otherwise I’m allowed to be a normal human.”

“Ancients and Observants?”

“Ancients are kind of like gods, but more powerful – sort of. Well, imagine gods when they die, all that power has to go somewhere. It goes to an ancient who oversees it. But there’s also Ancients for gods who aren’t dead. But also Ancients for things that don’t have gods…Nevermind. Basically think of them as the dead version of gods. And observants are just if eyeballs were assholes.”

Jason just stared at Danny as if were regretting everything that led to the two of them crossing paths. He said nothing in reply and just turned to Frostbite. “This guy is supposed to be a king?”

Frostbite sighed. “The Great One is skilled in many areas. Concise and clear explanations are not one of them.”

“Hey!” Danny protested, though he couldn’t refute it.

“Unfortunately,” Frostbite continued, “his younger sister is even worse.”

“That’s true. Dani would tell you the wrong thing on purpose for shits and giggles,” Danny nodded sagely.

“Dani? Isn’t that your name?”

“Dani with an I,” Danny clarified. Even though it didn’t clarify much.

“What kind of parents –” Jason started, only to be interrupted by Frostbite.

“It appears it is an urgent summons, Great One. I suggest expediency. Especially since your charge is anxious to return to the mortal realm.”

“Right. Come along, Jason. Looks like you’re about to get a crash course in Infinite Realms politics.”

If Jason took a moment to think about Infinite Realms politics on the journey to Phantom’s Keep – described as “a floating purple castle orbited by miniature celestial bodies” – he might have had an existential crisis over the convoluted mess of government that kept the glue of the metaphysical existence together. No wonder nothing worked right in a multiverse full of weird magic and physical impossibilities cropping up all time.

However, instead of contemplating any of that, Jason was far more overwhelmed by the Realms themselves. The entire place was a void of swirling green and black sky, interspersed with primarily purple-colored islands. Phantom greeted and was greeted by all manner of beings, many of whom looked far from human. Bizarrely, even though they all addressed him by some manner of formal title, none of them showed any of the classical deference Jason expected of royalty. In fact, it seemed every ghost they came across just wanted to throw down with Danny, who laughed them all off and basically told them, “Urgent eyeball business, raincheck?”

“Does everyone here hate you or something?” Jason asked after Danny fled a robotic ghost with a flaming mohawk clamoring about mounting the royal whelp’s pelt on his wall.

Danny laughed. “I used to think so too. But don’t worry, this is just ghosts being friendly. Though, Skulker is an exception. I think he legitimately does want my pelt. He’s a hunter, see, and I’m some rather exceptional prey.” Danny beamed as if this was something to brag about, rather than a very concerning statement that warranted at least a few therapy sessions.

“You’ve probably felt similar urges yourself, they were just corrupted into something twisted by your rank ectoplasm. Whenever someone steps in your territory – no matter if they’re friendly or not – do you have the urge to fight them?”

Jason thought about every time a family member came through one of his safehouse windows, and the prickling on the back of his neck of his haunches rising. Even if he had invited them over.

“That’s supposed to happen?!” He shouted.

Danny chuckled. “Yeah. I don’t know exactly how it felt with the corruption, but you should feel an urge to spar the same way fully alive people have an instinct to smile and wave.”

“Ugh!” Jason moaned. “I thought I was supposed to be normal once you and Dr. Yeti cured me.”

“Dude, you died. You’re never going to be that kind of normal again. As my sister, Jazz, says, you’ll just have to determine your new normal. And I’ll be there to help!”

Jason snorted. “Yeah, because Replacement is going to love that.”

Danny poked Jason, and a shot of cold ran through him, causing him to shiver. “Enough of that. That’s my boyfriend you’re talking about. And I don’t care what kind of rapport we’re building, I don’t take people talking shit about my Fraid from anyone.”

Jason didn’t want to apologize, and frankly he wanted to keep up the nickname out of spite, but he figured best not to piss off the person best able to help him get rid of the Pits. So, he redirected the conversation instead. “Fraid?”

Danny cursed. Or it sounded like a curse, but it was a weird amalgamation of buzzing and the sound of a glacier cracking. “Damn, don’t tell Tim I said that. Don’t want to scare him off.”

“That doesn’t explain shit, Casper.”

Danny stared at Jason. “We’re in the literal Ghost Zone. Did you seriously just call me after the most popular fictional ghost you know when everyone here is a ghost?”

“Nah, you’re also harmless and a child. Like Casper.”

Danny’s eyes flashed with green light, and fangs were bared as he began to grimace. But then Danny blinked and it was gone. “Ancients, you’ve got to be a fire core with impertinence like that. And I may tone myself down, but believe me when I tell you I am far from harmless.”

Jason snorted. “Right. Anyway, don’t deflect. What’s a ‘Fraid?’”

Danny sighed. “Ghosts are…different from the living. We can live indefinitely and not all ghosts are born. Most ghosts come from the dead or from complex emotions from enough people given personality. City ghosts like Lady Gotham are an example of this. So what we consider “family” isn’t like what the living have. We have Fraids, which encompass family, friends, or even particularly favored enemies. In the most basic terms, a Fraid is anyone a ghost thinks of as ‘theirs.’ Anyone with significant emotional attachment.”

Danny paused and looked down. “Ghosts – because we’re emotional – also form attachments quickly. I already love Tim, and I’ve told him as much. But he’s…”

“Distant? Type to keep his emotions locked away in a box and never open it, with the hope they won’t explode before he dies?”

Danny gave a half smile at Jason. “Yeah. I don’t want to freak him out that my Core has basically already accepted him as family. It would be more than emotionally painful for him to reject me, it will physically harm my ghost half. I can’t afford to be that vulnerable right now if he gets overwhelmed and dumps me.”

Jason wanted to ask why. What other secrets was Danny hiding? He was barely an adult, he shouldn’t look like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Though, in this case, apparently, he had the entire multiverse weighing on him. It wasn’t fair.

“You’re right, it’s not fair. But I accept my responsibility.”

“I didn’t – “

“You ghost spoke. Sort of. Kind of like ghostly toddler-speak. Your core hummed its distress at me. I could guess what you were thinking.”

Jason looked down at his chest, but it looked just as unassuming as ever.

“It’s a good sign, you know. Whatever Frostbite did has begun to bring it into awareness, and the pure ectoplasm of the Realms is only helping. Though unless you stay full time in the Realms, it will still be a while before you are a proper Halfa. So don’t worry.”

Jason changed tracks. “I won’t tell you about Timmy’s life, that’s his story. But he forms attachments quickly too. And he’s more accepting than you’d think. I tried to kill him more than once and he still manages to call me ‘brother.’ Don’t even get me started on his exes.”

Danny bit his lip. “I…thanks, Jason.”

“Yeah, whatever, your ghostliness.”

They traveled in silence for a while until they came across a truly massive island. And the meager description Danny had given did nothing to prepare Jason for the spectacle ahead. Yes, the castle was purple, but in the same way you’d call the infinite void of space ‘black.’ The castle itself seemed to be a mish-mash of shifting structures from hundreds of different cultures and times. Around the island, tiny stars and galaxies orbited in a nebulous purple, green and midnight-blue mist. Swirling pools of inky void pulled in some bodies, only to immediately drift out another inky void elsewhere around the castle. Various full-specter ghosts swarmed around, most of them taking in the sights without going in. Blob ghosts and shades were constantly going in and out the windows and doors, darting off different directions of the Realms.

“Welcome to Phantom’s Keep, my haunt!” Danny said with pride. “Inherited it from the last guy and did some major remodeling. It’s much more epic now.”

Jason gaped. “This is your home?!”

“Well, sort of. Will be, one day. Right now, it’s just my base of operations in the Realms. Helps if I keep everything centralized.”

Danny floated through his castle and Jason followed behind him. (Which was super weird, flying around as if gravity didn’t exist. Like being in actual outer space.) Danny’s voice was rapid as he made off-handed remarks about everywhere they passed.

Finally, Jason managed to cut in as Danny looked thoughtfully at the room they were currently staring at with mountains of paperwork and the ghost king couldn’t remember for the life of him what it was all for. “Am I…practice?”

“Hm?”

“For Tim. Because you’re showing off an awful lot to a guy you barely met, and our only connection in common is Tim.”

Danny’s cheeks flushed green. “Kind of? I mean, it seems like you’re managing this rather well. And if you handle it well…”

“Then you hope Timmers will be the same. I get it. But just because we’re brothers, doesn’t mean we’ll have the same reaction. And it’s different. We just met. My brother is sleeping with you and you kept half of your existence secret.”

Danny flushed deeper. “That’s not – ” He started before choking off and sighing. “I know. Do you think all of… this, ” Danny emphasized and waved his hand around, “will be too much? For Tim, I mean.”

Jason just quirked an eyebrow at that. He couldn’t imagine a scenario where finding out your boyfriend not only died, but also ruled over the dead-equivalent version of the multiverse wouldn’t be overwhelming. “Yes, but don’t discount Timmers yet. He’s had to deal with stranger than you, ghost boy.”

“You could just call him Tim. It’s shorter.”

Jason shook his head. “Nah. Big brother syndrome. Physically incapable of calling him by his real name.”

Danny rolled his eyes. He pushed open two ostentatious double doors that extended fifteen feet up to the high vaulted ceiling.

“And here’s where the boredom happens. Welcome to the council chambers.”

Jason froze in the entryway at the chambers they had just entered looking like the grandest parliamentary or congressional assembly room he’d ever seen. Complete with a domed ceiling covered in a star map. It was also much more eerie than anything Jason had seen on earth, complete with a throne on a dais at the far end. What must have been five dozen cloaked figures in the surrounding stands turned, and Jason nearly shriveled up under the scrutiny of five dozen, head-sized eyeballs staring at him.

“Prince Phantom –”

Danny raised a hand, growing a foot taller as he entered the room. “Before we get into whatever long-winded explanation you all have, please tell me why this is so important I have to be here rather than returning Jason over here to the mortal realm instead.”

Another eyeball spoke up, with a slightly larger collar, perhaps denoting greater importance on this council of eyeballs. Danny’s confusing explanations were starting to make sense. “We have been made aware of your dalliances with a living human. As regent of the Infinite Realms you have a responsibility – ”

“Aaaaand, I’m going to cut you off there,” Danny interrupted. “My ‘dalliances’ as you refer to them have no bearing on my ability to rule the realms. When and if I choose to pursue something more than a living relationship with someone, you all will be notified and appropriate paperwork filled, compiled, whatever. Capiche?”

“Your blasé attitude is immature and insubordinate!” Another eyeball protested, inciting clamors from several other members.

How are they even talking? Jason thought to himself.

Danny’s cackling rose above them all, effectively silencing them. Danny strode through the aisle to the throne at the end. Jason stayed in the shadow of the doorway, feeling a weight leave his chest as the majority of the eyeballs tracked Danny to his throne. “Insubordinate?! My dudes, you gave a teenager near infinite power! Of course I’m going to be a little shit to the guys who sent Clockwork to kill me for a second time. Honestly, you should be happy my little rebellion is a boyfriend and not whatever stunt Pariah pulled. How many ghosts did that guy obliterate again?”

Danny stood in the assembly center, but he had changed further, so the living boy underneath the ghost was almost unrecognizable. Danny  was now eight feet tall, his hands more claw-like than ever. Locks of hair were ever-moving white flames upon his head, his horns sharper and longer too. His eyes were solid green now, and his grin was wide enough to go to his ears and reveal a full mouth of fangs. His skin was tinged blue now, scaled over on his hands and face to give him a distinctly draconic look. His ears now had a distinctly fey-like point to them. Lights like stars orbited his head, and his cloak rippled around him almost as if a shred of space was fully hugging him in a way Batman only wished his own cape could mimic.

“You know well how your core can be affected by a living human. Particularly given your obsession. If you were to be vulnerable, it is not just you in danger, but the whole of the Realms,” one of the braver observants near the front chastised.

Danny threw his hands in the air. “What do you want me to do? Never let myself care for anyone ever again? Because that worked so well with Dan!”

Many of the observants flinched, and some were even whispering frantically to one another.

Danny continued. “You all are making the same mistakes as before. I cannot and will not isolate myself to reduce the risk of my own emotional vulnerability. Lest I become what you so fear. So, if you want me to stay the benevolent future regent everyone has been relatively happy with, keep your peepers out of my business! ” Danny growled.

The observants continued to whisper, but eventually one stood. “We acquiesce to your request. But should your latest bedmate – “

Danny growled.

“ – Paramour,” the observant amended, “become something akin to your consort, you will observe the proper protocols.”

Phantom’s features returned to something more like the human Danny. “I can agree to that. Are we done here?”

“While you are here –” one observant boldly started, but Jason began floating up the aisle.

He pulled at Danny’s cape. “Nope! We’re done! I am not going to spend a century in this fucking underworld while you distract Danny with a millions little things you lot are hired to take care of.”

The Observants looked like Jason had just force-fed them Lazarus Pit water. Danny just beamed at Jason.

“He’s right, my lack-of-duty calls!”

Danny jumped off the dais and met Jason in the center, before pulling him along down the aisle.

“See you at the next meeting!” Danny called after the observants as they both raced out of the room.

“So…Tim’s your bedmate?” Jason whispered harshly to Danny.

Danny punched him in the arm. Hard. “Shut up! Ghosts don’t really understand the idea of a casual relationship. Ghosts take ‘Ride or Die’ to a whole new level when it comes to romantic relationships.”

“And you don’t want – “ Jason started.

“Ancients, Jason! It’s been a month! And I’m a member of a virtually immortal species. For a ghost that is a dalliance. Tim doesn’t even know what I am yet. I am not about to subject him to the expectations of a royal consort. So yes, on paper, he is my side-piece.”

Jason huffed. “Tim doesn’t deserve – “

“I know! But Jason, you don’t understand. If I gave Tim any other label in this place, the ghosts would treat it like an eternal bond. Even ghosts in  who separate for a time, always come back together. If I can, I won’t even ask Tim for something like that until his afterlife. Neither of us deserve to bind ourselves to something like eternity when we haven’t even hit twenty.”

Jason was silent. Danny made sense, and he could feel his flare of brotherly protection lessening. He should apologize, but apologies never came easy to him. Especially not when he was feeling protective of someone else. He scowled instead. “Fine. But you better not hurt him. Immortal king of the dead or not, I’ll beat your ass to hell.”

“Oh Jason, Tim will be able to do far more damage to me than you ever could.” And wow, Jason did not like the feral emotion in Danny’s Lazarus green eyes.

“Now come on, let’s get you home.” Danny led Jason out the doors of his keep, and then ripped a portal swirling with bright green in his courtyard. “Hopefully it hasn’t been more than a few hours back home.”

Chapter Text

Two days. Two days before Constantine bothered to respond to Tim’s messages and opened up a fiery portal in the middle of the Batcave. Everyone was on edge, sleep-deprived and stressed with worry. Tim hadn’t slept a wink since Danny and Jason had vanished off the face of the earth. He had lost track of how many energy drinks and coffee pots he had consumed. Certainly, more than was healthy based on the twitching of his hands.

“Baby bird, you need sleep,” Dick’s voice was a distant buzzing by Tim’s ear.

“What if they were kidnapped? Interdimensional being who just so happened to nab my boyfriend and Jason?”

“Oh Tim, you already asked us that eight hours ago. Seriously, you need sleep.”

Tim waved a hand. “I’ve gone longer.”

Dick and Tim were currently the only ones in the cave. The rest of the Bats were either out patrolling or scouring Jason’s safehouses for any indication of something amiss in one of Jason’s cases to lead to his abduction. Alfred was somewhere in the house above, prepping the early morning snacks for when everyone returned.

A swirling orange portal emerged in the center of the cave. Tim squinted his eyes, wondering if perhaps Dick was right; his hallucinations were getting a little too vivid for his tastes. Then, John Constantine stumbled through the orange ring, trench-coat dotted with fresh blood stains too dark to be human, and a half-burned cigarette poking out of mouth.

“Alright, Red, what is so urgent you spammed my communicator in the third circle of hell?” The Brit announced himself.

“The Red Hood and a civilian are missing,” Tim announced, swiveling around in the chair to face the magician.

John Constantine pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a heavy sigh. “And why do you think magic is involved?”

“They vanished out of my apartment without any sensor around my door or windows being triggered. There is no data transmitting from Hood’s trackers. And nothing to indicate who took them or where they went,” Tim continued.

“Not entirely,” Nightwing interjected. “Danny did leave a note.”

“Are you shitting me?! They left a note and you’re still worrying?!”

“It does not explain why they vanished out of thin air. It just says something about taking Red Hood to Danny’s doctor,” Nightwing clarified. Particularly when Tim threw his carefully honed stare of death his brother’s way.

“Have you checked Danny’s doctor then? I know you bats with your stalker tendencies already have this guy’s full life story.”

“He doesn’t have one!” Tim shouted. “Nothing so much as a hospital visit since he was ten!”

Constantine whistled. “Not unheard of, though that is bizarre. What’s the kid’s deal?”

“Getting records out of his hometown has been tricky,” Nightwing explained. “They have a weird combo of insanely complex firewalls and code from nearly two decades ago. My money’s on a Truman Show setup stuck in the nineties.”

Constantine took another drag of his cigarette. B was going to have a fit when he returned to the cave. “What’s the town?”

“Amity Park,” Tim replied.

Constantine let out a ragged “fuck.” He began to pace. “Of all the goddamned – how in the hells did you get involved with a boy from that godforsaken place?!”

Dick and Tim exchanged a weighted look. It did not bode well that their resident magician recognized the place.

“What’s wrong with it?” Nightwing asked.

“What isn’t wrong with it?! Place is a literal fucking ghost town. Everyone there is either dead or on their way to it. Entirely populated with Liminals. Z went there once on a call. Apparently, the entire town had been pulled into the Infinite Realms and a dead teenage vigilante brought everyone back by the time she got past some shitty government wards that by some miracle hadn’t blasted the entire county to ash. When she did get through, no one was cooperative exactly. And a bunch of teenagers told her it had been taken care of. After hearing their story of what happened, Dark erased all records of it in the JL database.”

Red Robin pondered that. In a way he could understand Dark’s reasoning. Especially since from what few local news articles they had managed to uncover from the town, Amity Park had their own heroes. Red Huntress was more of a vigilante, but Phantom - despite fickle public opinion - did give off the distinct profile of a teen hero thrust into new powers and a responsibility way over his head. Ghost attacks had tapered off in recent years, until Phantom seemed to vanish from the town entirely. 

“Why?” Batman growled. He and Robin had arrived silently during Constatine’s explanation. 

The magician jumped when Batman spoke. “I hate when you do that,” Constantine muttered. “And I have one word in response to your one word question: overshadowing.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Tim demanded.

Constantine glared at Red Robin. “You want a Super possessed by a ghost obsessed with boxes, be my guest. And that’s a best-case scenario. But the opinion of JL Dark is anyone not brimming with anti-ghost protections needs to stay the fuck away from that place.”

“Okay, new information. Concerning information. But that means more clues.” Tim’s mind was already pinging between new theories.

“How would this relate to what happened to Red Hood?” Damian demanded.

“That’s the vigilante that died previously, right? The one that stayed dead for a while?”

Batman grimaced in affirmation.

“Red Robin’s new boyfriend probably recognized a kindred Liminal. Maybe he’s even experienced in recognizing some kind of liminal sickness. I don’t know. And frankly, I think you all should drop it until they come back. You do not want to go messing in ghost business.”

“What exactly does Liminal mean?” Dick asked.

“In this case, touched by death. Z’s contact in Amity Park said it was a nice way of saying ecto-contaminated. It’s in the air and water there, the same way Chernobyl has radiation.”

“Ecto?” Tim asked.

“See! You Bats know nothing about any of this!”

“Constantine,” Batman growled in warning.

“Fine! Ecto – short for ectoplasm – is the energy and substance of the Infinite Realms. Same way you and I are made up of carbon, ghosts are ectoplasm given emotions. It’s the excess energy all dead things give off. And eventually it all returns to the Infinite Realms to be cycled back through the multiverse.”

Nightwing whistled. “Well, baby bird, you really know how to pick them.”

Tim was strung tight with tension. Danny was supposed to be normal. He was normal. An engineering student who wanted to go to space, but couldn’t because of his health. He had two best friends, two sisters, and two parents, all still alive. Sure, he said his parents were obsessive which sometimes led to them being neglectful, but no family was perfect. And maybe Tim had been concerned about when he couldn’t find any information on Danny’s younger sister, weirdly named Danielle. And it had been weird when Danny gushed about his friend Tucker’s technological prowess, but then hadn’t found any trace of him in any of the usual forums and databases.

The more Tim thought about all the research he’d stopped when he couldn’t find anything more than a few layers deep, the more he realized what an idiot he was, swept up by the romanticism of a new mysterious boyfriend. A lack of information was always a red flag,  and he hadn’t done near enough prying of Danny past their first couple weeks. As if he were willfully ignoring all the signs pointing to Danny being something other than normal. What else had Tim just ignored about Danny?

He thought of the way his blue eyes would be tinged with green when he was excited. A characteristic Tim had just thought was genetic, but could it be similar to the Lazarus green in Jason’s? Or the pointed canines Tim loved to roll his tongue over that seemed a little too pointy. The way he could be so silent that he could even sneak up on Tim at times. Even when Tim was properly caffeinated. And…the energy shakes.

Danny had gotten in the habit of keeping some kind of protein shake in Tim’s refrigerator. Something about it being a special recipe Danny couldn’t live without. Tim had nearly tried one once, he remembered. He had been bleary with sleep deprivation and was sick of energy drinks. He had barely registered a “DO NOT EAT” label on what he had thought was one of Danny’s shakes, before putting it back and summoning the will to make a pot of coffee instead. Tim was suspecting he hadn’t been mistaken at all.

“I have to check something out from my apartment,” Red Robin whispered, darting off his chair.

“You’re not driving the Redbird in your sleep deprived state!” Nightwing chased after him

“Oi! Are you lot even listening?! I’m not going to be blamed for the decimation of Gotham’s bats when you lot go pissing off a bunch of ghosts!” Constantine shouted.

“We need to know more,” Batman grunted at the mage.

Constantine threw his cigarette butt into a trash can. “You all are worse than talking to imps. Like yelling at a brick wall.”

Tim didn’t hear more of Constantine’s rant because he was busy struggling as his older brother dragged him into the Batmobile. “Stop struggling. I’m worried about Jason too. I’m coming with you.”

“Danny’s my boyfriend though! How could I miss…whatever it is he’s hiding? All the signs were there!”

“Love is blind, baby bird. Sometimes willfully,” Dick replied. Which might have sounded sagely if he didn’t immediately follow it up with a noogie to Tim’s head before throwing him in the passenger side of the Batmobile.

Tim’s apartment was in its usual state of pristine enough for a museum in rooms for having company, and vying for the definition of scrap yard in rooms that were not. Dick wrinkled his nose when poking his head in Tim’s non-vigilante office space. But it wasn’t like Dick had a leg to stand on considering usually the entirety of his shitty Bludhaven apartment was a radioactive cesspit.

Tim made his way straight to the fridge, eyes zeroing immediately on the three thermoses marked in Danny’s scrawl as “E-shake” and slapped with one of Tim’s “DO NOT EAT” stickers.  It did not take him long to pull one out and unclasp the top. However, as soon as he saw the slightly glowing, lime green liquid sloshing inside, he slammed the cap back on.

“Well, baby bird?” Dick asked. He was currently rooting through Tim’s cabinets until he zeroed in on Danny’s stash of fruit loops. It was the only cereal Danny ate, and from Tim’s understanding it had something to do with the strained relationship with his godfather. All Tim knew was that he had watched Danny get off a phone call with said godfather one afternoon, ending with a deranged grimace on his boyfriend’s face. Danny didn’t say one word, just pulled out the box of cereal and proceeded to enthusiastically drown the sugary loops in milk with a maniacal laugh to rival Red Hood. Tim decided best to leave him to it.

“Must you consume my boyfriend’s cereal?” Tim asked.

“Your boyfriend shouldn’t have disappeared off the face of the earth with Jason. It’s karmic retribution.” Dick hopped onto Tim’s counter and sat cross legged, eating the cereal by the handful out of the box.

“Fair enough.”

“So…find what you were looking for?”

Tim stared down at the unassuming thermos of Lazarus water that had been sitting in his fridge for weeks now. He slammed it on the counter, causing Dick to squawk with surprise. “No! Yes!...I don’t know!” Tim let himself fall to the floor so he could lean against the cabinets. “He was supposed to be normal! He is normal!”

Dick reached over to slowly grab the canister. He peeked inside himself before throwing the thermos across the floor. “What the fuck?! Why does your boyfriend have Lazarus water?!”

“I don’t know!” Tim pulled at his hair. “Nothing explains it. He’s just a kid from middle of nowhere Illinois. No pit rage. No shock of white hair.”

“I mean, it’s clear from our research that Amity Park isn’t a normal town. Think they have a Lazarus Pit?”

 “Might explain the ‘most haunted town in America’ claim,” Tim theorized. “All that deathly energy… I know Nanda Parabat felt spooky during my time and it wasn’t just because of the assassins.”

Dick shook his head fondly. “Only you would call the base of the League of Assassins ‘spooky.”

“Are you kidding me? Ra’s is like the stereotypical spooky villain. Man looks like a corpse walking.”

“I mean isn’t that what he kind of is anyway?”

Tim shuddered. That comment did not help with reliving his brief time working with the League of Assassins. “Aaaaand, we’re stopping this conversation now.”

Dick was quick to back away from the topic. “Right, sorry.”

Thankfully, before the air between them could fall into the awkward silence of unresolved trauma and tension, a glowing Lazarus-green portal swirled into existence in the middle of Tim’s living room. 

Tim and Dick stepped back into the shadows of the room. Dick pulled out his escrima sticks and charged them up. Tim uncollapsed his bo staff. Both were ready to attack whatever hellish creature or potential League assassin climbed –

“Jason?!” Dick exclaimed as their brother stumbled out of the portal and just barely landed on his feet.

“Danny, you fucking asshole!” Jason cursed. “Your portals are an OSHA violation!”

“What? Why?” A voice from within the portal itself asked, but echoey and full of static as if there was a bad connection. Even so, Tim could still recognize the voice of his boyfriend.

“Because it’s two feet off the fucking floor! A warning about the step would have been nice!”

Then Jason looked up – and because he was a Bat – immediately zeroed glowing green eyes on Dick and Tim lurking in the shadows.

Tim flinched at the eyes, flashbacks towards his encounters during Jason’s pit-rage days coming to mind. He prepared himself to be on the receiving end of another fratricide attempt.

Dick, however, began to creep forward. “Jason, if it’s the Pits, you have to calm down. You’re safe.” The fool even began to lower his escrima.

Jason grimaced, and turned back to the portal. “I think it’s been more than a few hours, asshole!”

And then – because Tim’s life could always get weirder – a figure glowing green with hair as white as the stripe in Jason’s hair, with even brighter green eyes, and a cape like the night sky floating around him from some unfelt breeze floated through the portal. Unfortunately, he looked far too familiar for Tim’s tastes. Because underneath the eldritch characteristics of pointed ears and sharp horns and claws, Tim could see Danny’s strong jaw he loved to hold, and the slope of his boyfriend’s nose that he loved to press kisses onto when Danny was on one of his rants. He recognized characteristics of the blurry images they had uncovered of the hero Phantom from Amity Park and Tim was amazed he hadn’t made the connection before. A hero who had vanished a year ago, coinciding with Danny’s move to Gotham, now floated in the middle of Tim’s living room.

Tim clutched his bo staff tighter. “Phantom?” He asked. He couldn’t find it in him to confirm if the supposedly dead boy floating through the portal was his boyfriend. Not yet.

The bright green eyes – which despite being very similar to Jason’s own in the throes of pit rage – seemed almost a healthier shade. Like the green of new sprouts peeking out of winter’s last snow in Robinson Park.

The green eyes widened. And Phantom let out a very emphatic, “Shit.”

Chapter Text

Okay, Danny knew as well as anyone else how wonky time could be in the Infinite Realms. Still, showing up back in Tim’s apartment at the precise moment his boyfriend was in it seemed like intervention of the meddling time-god sort. Clockwork and I are going to be having words, Danny promised to himself.

“Phantom?” An unfamiliar voice asked. Danny spun around to see another blue-eyed, black-haired guy standing with sticks humming with electric energy. “The hero from Amity Park?”

Danny flinched back, his death echoes acting up in him. “How do you know that name?” He rasped to his boyfriend and most likely other brother.

Tim looked at him with a blank expression Danny liked to call his “fruitloop façade.” Danny wasn’t sure if he should be thankful his ghost senses allowed him to pick up the mess of confusion, fear, anger, and curiosity roiling underneath. “My boyfriend and brother vanished into thin air. We did some digging.”

Phantom was silent. What could he say to that? It did not help he was also distracted by the electric hum of the escrima in Tim’s eldest brother’s hands. Danny’s instincts honed from his death screamed against the potential threat. He warred with the two ghostly instincts to fight the threat who had Danny’s weakness in his hand, or to flee back to his kingdom where it would be safe.  

“Now what have you done to Jason?” Tim demanded.

Danny’s query from a member of his Fraid pulled him from his intense staring contest with a couple of sticks. He looked at Tim, and though his voice was cold and business-like, Danny could still see recognition and hurt in his boyfriend’s aura. Tim knew exactly who he was. This had all gone so wrong. He wasn’t supposed to reveal himself like this.

Jason of all people was the voice of mediation. “Hey! I’m fine! Danny helped me. Lower the weapons.”

“I’m sorry. You weren’t supposed to find out like this. I had a plan,” Danny replied quietly.

“Wait, Danny? As in your boyfriend who’s been missing? Does this mean you’re dating a ghost, Tim?” the stranger asked, tone lightening once Jason had spoken.

“Dickwad, not the time,” Jason growled.

Ah, so the stranger was the other older brother, Dick. Just as Danny suspected.

“Find out what? That my boyfriend is a supposedly dead superhero? After worrying about my missing boyfriend and brother for three days when they vanished off the face of the earth with a weird note? And then showing up like this?! Yeah, this was a great way to break it to me.” Tim’s voice was still cold and biting, but at least he had lowered the bo staff to stand on the floor.

Danny glared, Tim’s aggressiveness setting him on edge. Danny had never been one for controlling emotions even when he had been fully alive. Death had only aggravated his tendency for emotional outbursts. “What, like you’ve been hiding that you’re a vigilante yourself? I wondered when you were going to reveal that tidbit?”

Tim flinched. “How – “

“That’s not important.”

“What do you mean that’s not important?! What gave it away?!”

Danny took a deep breath even though it was unnecessary in this form. Tim’s escalating emotions and the tension in the room caused the crown above him to throb with the urge to strike down those who would question him. The ring of rage was spurring on his ghostly instincts to fight. Danny needed to be human before this argument got further out of hand.

Danny let the rings of white light wash over him, too riled to give the others in the room any warning. His human form dropped to the ground. He took another deep breath for good measure.

“What the fuck, Danny?! A little warning next time!” Jason shouted. He was rubbing his eyes.

Dick had drawn his escrima again, zapping with renewed electricity. And that was not helping either. Danny hissed at the sticks. His hand with the Lichtenberg scar twitched.

Tim was blinking away spots from his eyes, but otherwise he hadn’t moved. “Don’t – don’t wear whatever this disguise is. Not to try and put me at ease with whatever bullshit you’re about to tell me.”

Danny growled. “This isn’t a disguise, Tim. This is me! Contrary to whatever bullshit research you uncovered from the GIW and my parents, I am not a ghost haunting a corpse.”

“The fuck?” Jason whispered softly.

“But you don’t have the meta gene,” Tim pointed out. “So – “

“Did you seriously test my DNA?!” Danny pinched the bridge of his nose. “Forgot who I was talking to. Of course you did. I am such an idiot.”

“To be fair to Timmy, I don’t think he’s ever had a strictly normal relationship. Made him paranoid. Bat-teachings didn’t help with that.” Dick pointed out.

Danny swiveled on the eldest of the Wayne brothers. “I don’t want to hear anything more from you until you put the death sticks away.”

Dick jumped. Danny’s eyes had probably flashed green. That usually put people off.

“Death thing?” Jason asked.

Danny tensed. He knew Jason was just trying to help and he had tried to be as unobtrusive about the question as possible by making it yes or no. But it didn’t stop the visceral reaction. “Yes,” Danny hissed out.

“Put them away, Dick. Those things are like waving a crowbar in front of my face and cackling like the Joker to Danny right now.”

“Jason, we don’t know – “

“Danny helped me, asshat, before I completely trashed Tim’s apartment. Don’t go all Batman on me now,” Jason growled.

“So you did die,” Tim remarked.

Danny turned to his boyfriend. Some of his kingly growl leaked into his voice. He knew from his experiences with his friends that it was harrowing enough to lower the temperature of the room and make the hairs of the back of a living person’s neck stand on end. “Be very careful about what you’re about to say next. Asking a ghost about their death is one of the worst faux pas you can make.” Danny had to get out of here. His emotions were everywhere, and his ghostly presence was only going to get worse if things kept escalating.

Tim nodded. He had an admirable poker face because he almost looked unaffected by Danny’s tone. “Very well. I suppose you have an explanation for dragging my brother back through a Lazarus Pit.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “That was not one of those ectoplasmic trash dumps Jason told me about. That was a portal to the Infinite Realms.”

Tim and Dick exchanged a concerned look. A look Danny recognized well. Usually on living magic users who erred more on the sensible side of the magical spectrum. Unsurprising. Messing with the Infinite Realms for the uninitiated usually meant at least some sort of small death. Best case scenario was some kind of Liminal situation like the people of Amity Park. “Okay, who already warned you about the Realms?”

Dick smiled, but it was sharp. Danny could see what Tim meant about a tiger sometimes lurking behind Dick’s jovial spirit. “Sorry, Bat secret, Danny boy.”

Danny rolled his eyes again. There were worse nicknames – Little Badger came to mind – but he’d rather not be called Danny boy ever again. “Fine. I can figure it out myself. Bats are associated with the Justice League. So, that means probably Constantine, Deadman, Zatara, Raven, Doctor Fate, or Captain Marvel.” Danny put his fingers down one by one. “Doctor Fate is out of commission, so no. Raven is doing something to mess up her Dad’s plans, so also no. Captain Marvel and I have an understanding, and I know he wouldn’t betray my trust. Deadman literally can’t talk to you without another magician present to reveal him. That leaves Zatara or good old Johnny C. But I’d like to think Zatara would be polite enough to give you the basic social rules of interacting with ghosts. Whereas Constantine would definitely give you half-assed information and warning not to touch any of it. And knowing Tim, that is the sort of advice he would instantly ignore, but I don’t know about the rest of you bats.”

Jason whistled. “Damn, you’re going to fit right in.”

“How do you know the roster of magic users for the Justice League?” Dick demanded, smile dropping.

“Like I said, Marvel and I have an understanding.” They didn’t have to know that understanding was getting burgers with Billy Batson once a week as they both complained about their respective unwanted jobs being in charge of something beyond mortal understanding. Poor Billy, he was probably going to get hell for this from Batman. “And I’ve helped them unofficially on a few odd cases. But I’ve only met Marvel, Zatara, and Deadman.”

“Not important right now. For now, we need to know what you did to Jason,” Tim demanded.

“Um, I think a security leak at the Justice League is kind of important, Tim,” Dick argued.

Danny bristled in the meantime. “Like I said, I took Jason to a doctor. A special doctor. He has ectoplasmic poisoning, and Frostbite probably saved his afterlife.”

Tim swiveled on Jason. “You let them treat you?!”

“I was unconscious! Besides, it worked! I feel like I finally have some modicum of control again!” Jason argued back.

Tim turned to Dick. “We have to take him to the cave.”

“Like hell you do!” Jason argued.

“He’s right, Jason. We don’t know what they might have done. If you’re possessed or – “

“Oh come on! Possessed? Really?” Danny exclaimed.

“Is that or is that not one of the abilities ghosts have?” Tim argued.

“Okay, first of all, we call it overshadowing. And two, I wouldn’t do that!”

“I don’t know that! In fact, it seemed I don’t know you very well at all, Phantom, ” Tim hissed.

Danny flinched, the words impacting like a physical strike against his core. “Tim, I – I wanted to tell you. But Jason was in critical condition. He drank some of my ectoplasm and – “

“Oh? You mean that stuff?” Tim interrupted, pointing his bo staff across the floor to a spilled mess of green in the kitchen.

Danny gasped and leapt across the room. “You just left it there?! It’s going to eat through your floor!”

Danny hovered his hand over the mess and let his ghostly aura suck it up. He’d have quite the energy boost for the next 48-hours between this ectoplasm, what he consumed from Jason’s spill, and the visit to the Realms, but nothing a little ghost on ghost combat couldn’t fix. Unfortunately, as he absorbed the ectoplasm, his emotions were heightened as much as his energy. His frustration and fear and hurt felt magnified. He felt strung out in fifty different directions trying to hold it all inside, and one strike would make them all snap.

And Tim – wonderful Tim, who would dig and question until he knew all he could, curiosity overriding even his most base instincts – never did know when to quit. Especially when curiosity was turned up by his paranoia. “You just showed up in a swirling portal of Lazarus Water! I didn’t have time to clean it up! And speaking of, when were you going to tell me you were keeping dead juice in my fridge? For that matter, why? What reason could some kind of ghost have to infiltrate my life? A League of Assassins agent? Some kind of pet of Ra’s? Of someone else? An independent actor seeking a weak link in the Bats and Birds of Gotham?”

Danny swiveled on Tim, and he knew more of his ghostly attributes were leaking through. The pointed ears and teeth, the starlight freckles, and probably worst of all: the glowing green eyes of King Phantom. The voice was certainly all King Phantom, filled with all the static and crackling of a horror movie ghost. From the roar of glaciers breaking apart to the whisper of snowfall. It was a voice he used on the Observants and only the most unruly of his subjects. “I am not some monster seeking to demolish what little ORDER you and your brethren maintain in this Ancients-damned city. I am not the henchman of whatever PITIFUL MORTALS attempt to defy my nature. And I am certainly no one’s pet. I chose you because of my own yearnings. I hid from you because there is more than my own afterlife at risk when you know the truth. BUT I HAVE BEEN GENUINE IN ALL OTHER ASPECTS.”

A hand clapped on Danny’s shoulder, and only Danny’s thin control prevented him from divesting Jason of his arm. “Enough, Danny. They can’t hear you”

Danny looked, and sure enough, Dick and Tim were petrified. Only the fear inherent in the king’s voice prevented them from attacking. Danny must have slipped into ghost speak at some point during the speech. Most living people would be nothing more than quivering puddles in even one sentence, but these were the heroes of Gotham, it made sense their tolerance for fear would be higher than normal.Amazing they were still standing. But their petrification wouldn’t last long. Still the fear in Tim’s eyes, the unrecognition, was the most unbearable thing of all. Tim was terrified of Danny. It was as if Danny’s worst fears came true. Tim was rejecting him. Danny pulled his ghostly self inward, to be as human as possible. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Danny shrugged off Jason’s hand. And then, he ran.

Chapter Text

Jason, busied himself bringing Tim’s coffee pot to life as Dick and Tim came back to themselves. Danny was long gone, and Jason couldn’t blame him. The guy had only been trying to help, but he had come back to a classic Red Robin interrogation. He’d seen hardened criminals blubber under Tim’s tactics. But Danny didn’t cower. He met Tim’s iron with his own. And then some; at that moment Jason realized what King of the Ghosts and Infinite Realms truly meant, because Danny was absolutely terrifying.

Maybe it was because Jason had already faced death, or maybe it was because he recognized something in Danny that reminded him of the volatility of the Pit Rage, but he had managed to push through his own fear to see the wounded animal in Danny lashing out. Something Tim had said or done had hurt Danny. And Jason was only beginning to understand how ghosts could be literally harmed by words over any kind of physical force.

Dick came back to himself first, shuddering. He put away his escrima with trembling hands.

“Little Wing, w-what was that?”

“That was a ghost when they’re hurt. Danny didn’t get a chance to tell me much, but I imagine he feels like not only did Tim reject him, but he hurt Tim in turn. And for his Phantom side, that’s unconscionable.”

Dick hummed, and Jason slid a cup of coffee across to his older brother. Tim came back shortly after. Jason had another cup ready to go for him in seconds.

Tim chugged down half the cup of burning coffee gratefully. Only then, did Jason share what was on his mind. “You really fucked that one up, baby bird.”

Tim stared at Jason, searching for something in that far too big brain of his. “You’re really okay – green eyes and all.”

Jason started at that. His eyes were green? But he brushed it away with a shrug. “Danny really did help me.” It was true. Jason hadn’t had clarity like this in years. It was an odd sensation feeling like the most level-headed person in the room.

“Where did he take you? Who was Frostbite? We need to get you to the cave and – “

Jason held up a hand to cut off Tim. “Enough. We’ll go to the cave later and you can run all the tests your paranoid little heart desires. But for now, we need to talk about what just happened and what I’ve missed.”

“What you missed is you vanished for three days with an ambiguous note and a broken couch in Tim’s apartment as the only clues to your whereabouts!” Dick interjected

Jason sighed. “We were only supposed to be gone a little while. For me, it hasn’t been more than five hours. Danny took me to some fucking ghost zone, I met a yeti, he gave me a checkup. Took a detour to let Danny yell at some eyeballs in robes, and then we came back.”

Dick frowned. “Okay, I have so many more questions.”

“Yeti? Nevermind, later. What is Danny exactly?” Tim spoke over Dick.

Jason swiveled his eyes on Tim, and based off the flinch, he had a hunch his eyes turned greener. “Shouldn’t you be asking your boyfriend that?”

“I tried – “

“No, you tried to interrogate him. Tim, this is your boyfriend. Not some common goon you can beat to submission.” Both of their voices were incrementally rising. Never a good thing between the two of them.

“Because he took you!” Tim shouted. He took a shuddering breath and tried to lower his volume. He knew just as well how an argument between them could worsen. “He took you and we didn’t know where, but I knew it would be all my fault, because I trusted him and I didn’t do enough research, and I had no idea where to begin finding you.”

Jason’s tension eased. “Oh, babybird.” He walked around the counter and pulled Tim into a hug. He gently stroked his brother’s hair until he felt Tim begin to relax in his arms. “Even if Danny did have less than altruistic intentions, this wouldn’t have been your fault. You are allowed to see the good in someone and love them without becoming your usual freakish stalker self.”

Dick cooed. Both Jason and Tim tensed bracing for one of Dick’s octopus hugs. And yep, their eldest brother had himself wrapped around them both. There would be no escape until Dick was ready.

“ Dickhead, we were having a moment!” Jason hissed.

“And I just wanted to be part of it. This is so touching.”

Tim sniffed in their arms, and both Jason and Dick didn’t comment on it. Just stood there altogether.

“You know,” Jason finally offered. “He really did help me. He was surprised by the Lazarus Pits, but he said it was like some kind of poison for the death energy still remaining in me. Made my emotions all fucked up. I feel like I can think clearly for the first time since coming back.”

Tim sniffed. “Sounds like you’re mind-controlled,” he mumbled into Jason’s chest.

“Why must you always jump to the worst case scenario, you little shit?”

“But Tim does bring up a good point. We do need to go back to the cave. At least to reassure everyone you’re alright,” Dick added.

“Fine,” Jason groaned. But for once, his skin wasn’t crawling at the thought of returning back to the manor. In fact, it almost felt like a part of him was yearning to go back. As if whatever Frostbite had done had unburied a piece of Jason he thought had been left in a warehouse in Ethiopia.

Dick Grayson had been through a lot during his life. He had become accustomed to investigating all manner of horrors as a vigilante that made the average person run for a toilet bowl. But the one thing that never got easier was the stress and terror when one of his family members was missing or in danger. With Jason back with them, Dick was beginning to crash by the time he returned to the Batcave with his brothers. He was ready to take off his mask and pass out in his old room.

The issue preventing him from doing so? One very disgruntled magician was still loitering around complaining about vigilantes too curious for their own good. In other words, a headache that Dick didn’t want to fake cheeriness for.

“You really called in Constantine for this?” Jason asked as he got out of the car.

“I don’t think we can understate how little of a trace you and D- Phantom left when you vanished,” Tim replied drily.

Jason tsked. “Don’t go distancing your boyfriend into a vigilante persona until you’ve talked with him, RR.”

“Why do you care?”

“Because you’re going to give up something good if you just let him walk away.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You just came back from an alternate dimension with your mind scrambled,” Tim snapped back. Clearly the lack of sleep was starting to take its toll now that Jason and Danny had been found.

Thankfully, the rest of Dick’s family caught onto the trio entering the cave and Dick was saved from needing to mediate what was about to turn into a proper squabble.

Cass jumped down from an upper platform, the first to greet Jason with a warm hug and soft, “Little brother.”

Jason sighed. “We are the same age . But it’s good to see you too.” He returned her hug with ease. Dick smiled softly. Not even a flinch. Maybe Danny had been good for Jason.

Jason was soon surrounded by the rest of his siblings, with well wishes and plenty of questions. Batman spoke over all of them. “Jason.”

“Old man,” Jason returned with a nod.

Batman grunted, in a tired sort of way. A familiar grunt whenever someone missing returned that meant “ Medicalbay, now. ”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” Jason waved Bruce’s concern away. But miracle of miracles, Jason was listening, heading towards Alfred and giving the butler a firm hug before accompanying him into the Medical Bay.

Everyone else looked on with exchanged looks of incredulity.

Only Constantine seemed to find nothing amiss, just wrinkling his nose as Jason passed by and pulling out a cigarette. “Congrats, Bats, your boy just got back from the Realm of the Dead. Again.”

Batman growled, insistent on an explanation.

In case his meaning wasn’t clear, Tim stepped forward. “What exactly does that mean?”

“It means your pet crimelord reeks of the magic of the Infinite Realms. If I didn’t know better he almost felt like…nah, not possible.”

“What’s not possible?” Dick inquired.

“Well, there’s some very rare inhabitants of the Realms who straddle the line of life and death. Neither alive nor dead, but also both.”

“Impossible. One can only be alive or dead,” Damien insisted.

“Yeah, this ain’t Princess Bride Miracle Max bullshit,” Stephanie argued.

“Never impossible. Just improbable, brats,” Constantine replied as he tried to light his cigarette, before Cass swiped it.

“Oi!” Constatine shouted.

“No smoking in the cave,” Batman argued.

“He’s talking about Halfas,” Jason spoke up from the medical bay. “Which you would know more about if you just talked to your boyfriend like a reasonable human being, Tim!”

Constatine glared up at Jason who was leaning over the railing of the medical bay platform. “And what would you know about them?”

“Ghost doctor told me that was what I was becoming. Maybe. Why? You know anyone like that?” Jason’s grin was shit-eating.

Constatine replied by swiveling to Tim. “You said your boyfriend kidnapped Jason. What’s his name?”

“Uh…Danny?”

“Hmmm, doesn’t ring a bell.”

“You might know him by another name though.” Jason’s voice was light. Too light. Dick narrowed his eyes up at his brother whose grin had only gotten larger. That always meant Jason’s unique brand of unsettling chaos was soon to follow. “Does ‘Phantom’ ring a bell?”

Constatine blanched. He dropped his pack of cigarettes and didn’t even react as they tumbled away. “What.”

Everyone turned towards the magician. “Is that a particularly dangerous name?” Dick asked. “Someone we should be concerned about?”

Constantine ignored the question, patting frantically in his pockets for something before drawing out some kind of white dust. Before anyone could react, he blew it in Tim’s face.

Time began to cough. “What the hell?!”

“Oh, you wish hell was all we were dealing with. Fuckin’ Bats. Are you lot incapable of staying away from trouble?” the mage cursed vehemently as he paced. “Fuckin marked you…goddamn ghosts and their claims…of all the unholy…”

“What does this mean?” Batman stalked towards the mage with a growl. “Is something wrong with Tim?”

“Is something wrong with Tim? Mate, your kid has been claimed by the King of the fuckin’ Infinite Realms.”

“What?!” Everyone shouted.

Tim looked pale as…well…pale as a ghost.

Dick felt a surge of anger in his chest. No one messed with his family. While everyone else began clamoring for information, Dick felt his anger take over in a way he usually kept tightly under wraps beneath his relaxed façade and playful smiles. He wanted to find Phantom and wrangle answers out of him. But for now, the next best thing would have to do. He pulled Constantine close by the lapels of his trenchcoat and hissed at Constantine with their noses nearly touching. “Explain. Now.”

“Get off me dammit!”

“No.”

“Dick!” Batman barked. “Enough!”

“No! We have to know what happened to Tim and Jason. What kind of danger they are in. And I’m not going to let this guy portal away before we get answers.”

“Fine! Fuckin Bats. I thought you were supposed to be the nice one.”

Stephanie coughed to mask a laugh. “That was stupid of you.”

“Look. Phantom is King of the Infinite Realms. We don’t know a lot about him. Never met the guy myself, but Deadman has. I think Captain Marvel too, but he’s cagey whenever the Infinite Realms are brought up.

“Overall, Phantom has been determined to be a benign entity, but dangerous. There’s a reason we marked Amity Park a no-fly zone, and it isn’t just because of possessed Supers. We received warnings of a multiverse-ending threat once there and a teenage-shaped ghost took care of it in under a week and ended up King of the Space between worlds. It sounds to me like your bird put himself on the King’s radar somehow.”

“My boyfriend is…what…a god?”

Constantine snorted. “No, kid, Phantom isn’t a god. He’s the guy who rules over gods.”

Dick dropped Constantine with surprise. Every gaze was on Tim who looked as if his entire world was upside down.

“How could I have missed this? Danny isn’t…he can’t be…he wants to go to space!” Tim protested. “He has a family, and he complains about college, and he has as bad a caffeine addiction as I do. I watched him put a shirt on inside out and he didn’t notice all day!”

Dick’s emotions were always volatile; quick to anger, and slow to extinguish it. But he had grown a lot over the years. And now when he saw one of his family members in his distress, he knew how to push the anger aside. He walked away from Constantine, channeling his protective fury to pull Tim into a hug. They both slumped onto the cold floor of the cave and sat there as Tim freaked out.

“He was so normal,” Tim continued. “He is. And I just…”

“Look, kid. This isn’t some demon. King Phantom is reasonable from what I can tell. Or Danny…whatever his name is. As long as you don’t offend him, we should be fine. I mean, he already marked you as under his protection.”

“So, Tim’s soul…it doesn’t belong to him or anything?” Duke asked what they were all thinking.

“What? No! Ghosts are pretty much just souls surrounded by ectoplasm themselves. What use would they have for a living soul?”

“We do not meddle in the affairs of magic unless necessary. Why would we know that when we call you and your associates on all magic-related issues?” Damian sneered. “I knew we should have consulted Roth instead.”

“Wasn’t available, remember, baby bat?” Dick sighed.

“Well, then Drake should at least do his due diligence when associating with new paramours.”

“Shut it, demon brat. We’re allowed to not be vigilantes sometimes. And that includes dating,” Jason argued. “I’m proud of the Repla – Tim – for not stalking Danny to hell and back before agreeing to a date.”

Tim sniffed. “But I shouldn’t have. Or you wouldn’t have been put in danger.”

“Actually, Master Jason is in good health from initial scans.” Alfred stepped towards the railing as he removed medical gloves from his hand. “No mental tampering of any kind. In fact, it appears his previous hormonal imbalances have somewhat stabilized. But they are slowly shifting back again.”

“Yeah, Frostbite said Danny will have to give me multiple transfusions.”

“Transfusions?” Batman questioned.

“Ugh, I’ll explain everything later, B. For now we need to focus on Tim and Danny.”

“Uhhh…why?” Duke asked.

“Because Tim scared off his boyfriend with his Bat-interrogation tactics, and Danny will be sad because he thinks his boyfriend rejected a quintessential part of who he is. And I need them to make-up so I don’t become a Pit Rage-fueled monster again.”

There was a beat of silence before Constantine let out a strangled shout. “Red Robin did WHAT?!”

Chapter Text

It was forty-seven hours later before Tim saw Danny again. Not long after Jason had explained how he needed more treatments from Danny, Tim repressed his own feelings on the matter to find Danny for Jason’s sake. He shoved his confusion and fear and longing in a box and refused to open it as he searched for Danny. However, just as when Danny had first disappeared with Jason, Danny left no trace of himself anywhere. John Constantine had been no help either, commenting that “teenage vigilantes pissing off Ancients was far beyond his expertise” and portaling away. He hadn’t picked up a call from the Bats since. With the other magic users also not available, the Gotham vigilantes had to investigate things their usual way. But it seemed Danny had vanished off the face of the earth again. So Tim waited for Monday, knowing Danny had class.

Tim loitered around Gotham University all day, hoping to find Danny because there was no way he would miss Monday after already missing Thursday and Friday classes. Right?

Wrong. Danny didn’t show up at all. However, by Tuesday, Tim was waiting outside Danny’s advanced Robotics class with two large cups of Death Wish coffee and fretting over whether or not Danny would accept the offering or reject it as a tasteless joke. Then again, Danny’s smirk whenever he ordered his favorite type of coffee definitely made more sense now with Jason’s limited explanation on what a Halfa was.

That was when Danny appeared, with dark circles under his eyes, hair as limp as his posture and overall looking like…well…death.

“Hi,” Tim greeted, stepping in front of Danny’s path.

Danny looked up and Tim’s heart clenched seeing the lack of brightness in Danny’s pale blue eyes. Even worse, racoon eyes and pale skin made him look like Tim after passing the sixty hour mark with no sleep. “Hi. Awfully public place to hunt me down and imprison me.”

Tim winced. “I’m not…I wouldn’t do that.”

Danny snorted. “Experience would speak otherwise. People…people don’t react well when I tell them what I am.” His gaze pointed to the extra coffee cup in Tim’s hand. “I can assume that’s laced with whatever ghost poison you managed to scrounge up in your research. Let me guess, blood blossoms?”

“No! No…it’s…It’s a peace offering?” Time tried. “And an apology?”

“Yeah, that was really convincing,” Danny replied drily.

“Look, Danny, can we talk? In private.”

Danny brushed past Tim. “No can do. I’ve already missed three days of classes. I’m not about to miss another for whatever trap you think can contain me.”

“Dammit, Danny!” Tim followed Danny into the lab, drawing the gazes of all kinds of eager engineering students who were all probably hoping to land a Wayne Enterprises job after graduation. “I just want to talk. Really, I want to apologize. I overreacted. But it…it’s my brother…and…and can we really talk about this in private?”

Danny scanned Tim up and down. “You’re not lying. Probably.”

“I really do just want to talk.”

Danny pursed his lips, but Tim watched the infinitesimal drop of shoulders as Danny gave in. “Fine. I can’t believe I’m doing this. Sam is going to kill me,” Danny muttered. “After classes. Meet me at Gothic Roast,” he told Tim.

Tim smiled. “It’s a date.”

Danny did not return the smile. “No, it’s not.” And with that, he brushed past Tim towards his lab bench. And, well, Tim could tell when he wasn’t wanted. He slipped out, feeling all the lingering gazes on him and he desperately hoped they wouldn’t be around when he met with Danny later.

Danny talked with Tucker and Sam over their team communicators as he ambled towards Gothic Roast after classes let out. He let out a heavy sigh as Sam continued to tirade about what a stupid idea it was to get mixed up with a billionaire rumored to sponsor the Justice League in the first place. He was so glad he hadn’t told his best friends about Tim’s night hobby.

“I thought we agreed that if our Bad Reveal scenario ever occurred you were going to drop everything and run,” Tucker interrupted with the kind of confidence only being a thousand miles out of kicking range of Sam Manson’s boots would permit. “I have five separate new identities waiting for you specifically if you need them.”

“Foley, so help me, if I weren’t in a Costa Rican jungle, I’d punt your ass across state lines,” Sam threatened.

Danny interjected before a classic Foley-Manson argument could build any more momentum. “My life is here, guys. I like Gotham U. And sometimes I even like this hellscape of a city. I’m not dropping everything I’ve accomplished to get here because Tim freaked out over his brother disappearing.” That’s what Danny kept trying to tell himself anyway. He didn’t want to contemplate that Tim would reject him even when level-headed. His core hurt enough as it was. Which is why he really didn’t want to go meet Tim. He didn’t want to shatter the illusion.

“Fine. But if this in any way gets on the Bats’ radar, you’re screwed,” Sam pointed out.

Danny slumped his shoulders. Too late for that. Definitely not the smartest move for a ghost king who had only recently not-so-legally dismantled the organization hunting down him and his people. He didn’t need further beratement of his love life decisions. “I’ll be careful,” he said instead. “I’m at the coffee shop now. I’ll talk to you guys later to let you know how it goes.”

“Well, I don’t care if Tim Drake-Wayne is one of my heroes. Say the word and he’ll be dealing with tech glitches the rest of his life that no amount of money will ever be able to fix,” Tucker promised.

“Ugh. Like I needed the reminder Danny was dating a billionaire,” Sam gagged on her end of the line.

“You literally just spent like twenty minutes verbally destroying him for it,” Tucker pointed out.

“Brave words for a man out of range of my steel-toed boots,” Sam snarked back.

“I dated you didn’t I?” Danny quipped.

“Stop procrastinating, Fenton,” Sam chastised. “Go talk to Tim so we can figure out how badly we need to beat him up.”

“Copy that. Danny out.” Danny removed the earpiece from his ear and slid it into his coat pocket. No sense putting it in his pocket dimension since he’d probably be calling his friends right after.

He pushed open the door and let the bitter earth smell of fresh roasted coffee fill his nostrils. In a distant corner with a view of all the exits, Tim sat with a large coffee that he probably bribed to have more espresso shots than was strictly legal. He was frowning down at a Wayne Tech tablet. Danny smiled briefly at the wrinkle in Tim’s brow, wishing he could smooth it like he used to when he caught Tim frustrated over work.

Danny sighed and strode to the counter to focus on ordering. He would need something to do with his hands in what was probably going to be an extremely awkward conversation.

One large coffee sweetened with cream later, and he was making his way to Tim’s table. He knew his boyfriend – ex-boyfriend? Danny wasn’t sure at this point – would have already noticed him. Danny appreciated that he was waiting at the table to pounce though. Maybe he really was here to apologize.

“Hi,” Tim greeted.

“Hi.”

Tim fidgeted. “So, I think half your robotics class and their buddies are watching us. Can we…go somewhere else?”

Danny sighed. He should have expected this really as he confirmed Tim’s remark. Far too many eyes were on him than there should be at the college coffee shop. “Follow me. You like roofs, right?”

“Right,” Tim agreed cautiously.

Danny walked down the hallway to the bathrooms and once he saw the coast was clear, turned to Tim. “Don’t freak out. I’m just going to turn us invisible and intangible before flying us to the roof.”

Tim’s eyes widened. “You’re going to what?!”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Unless you’d prefer to get up there the hard way?”

Tim shook his head. “It’s fine, I just didn’t think – nevermind. Makes sense. Phantom exhibited all three of those powers in the footage.”

Danny did not want to be the one to tell Tucker his and Technus’ firewalls around Amity Park had a leak. Maybe he wouldn’t find out?

Danny grabbed Tim’s arm, and then let his powers do the rest of the work so they could float to the roof undetected before Danny released him.

Tim stumbled slightly. “Holy f – that was so weird.”

Danny rolled his eyes again. “Aren’t you on teams with actual aliens and metas? A ghost is not that much weirder.”

Tim scowled. “Despite having powers, other superheroes are still usually bound by some physical laws. You just did all that as if it were no effort at all.”

“It still took energy to drag you along with me, and I used my powers in human form, which always takes a toll, even if it is perfectly natural for my ghost self. However, I just had to drink two weeks worth of ectoplasm in two days, so I’m still a little over-energized. It’s good for me to make the ghostly muscles work.”

“So…ghost.”

“Yep,” Danny confirmed, and just like that, all the energy of the conversation sputtered to a stop.

“Jason said half ghost.”

“Also yep.”

“How does that – “

Danny held up a hand. “Stopping you right there. I’m sure Jason already told you, but I know you barely pay attention to manners when you’re in info-gathering goblin mode, but do not ask a ghost about their death. It’s rude.”

“Right. Okay.” Tim fidgeted with the sleeve of his empty cup. “I’m…Look, I didn’t come up here to interrogate you more. I really came to apologize. I reacted…harshly. I thought my brother was in danger and I shouldn’t have treated you like I did. I’m sorry.”

Danny shrugged. “Nothing I haven’t experienced before. The whole being dead thing does tend to freak people out.”

“That doesn’t change the fact I treated you like a criminal when all you were trying to do was help! I…I’m paranoid. And obsessive. And I am terrified of losing people when I’ve already lost so many. It doesn’t excuse it, but that’s why I was so freaked out when you and Jason vanished. And I felt so stupid because I started uncovering all these things about Amity Park and Phantom and you, and – “

Danny held up a hand to cut off Tim’s rambling. “Tim, I get it. You were worried for your family. And I know a thing or two about protective obsessions myself.”

Tim growled. Danny snapped his jaw shut with a click. “Would you just let me finish! I mean to say that yes, Jason is my brother, but you’re my boyfriend. I’m not good at relationships. I…I fall too easily and at the same time I keep myself at a distance. I don’t trust easily, but I was trying. I treated it like a game at first: how much could I draw out of you just by chatting rather than stalking you like usual? But then I…well, I began to really like you. So I tried to not pry into your life as much and give you space to tell me about yourself on your own terms. And then Jason went missing, and I thought the one time I didn’t follow my instincts I put my brother in danger. Which isn’t an excuse. I should have trusted you. Apart from keeping things from me, you never gave me reason not to. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, I forgive you. I actually already forgave you. But thank you for the apology,” Danny offered. Least he could offer Tim’s rambling mess.

Tim bit his lip. “Batman wants me to ask you all kinds of questions. Especially since Constantine had a major freakout over all this. Said you were some kind of king with a claim on my soul?”

Danny couldn’t help a fond smirk quirk his lips. “Don’t use Batman as an excuse. I know you’re just as anxious to pry. Probably more so.” His smile fell. “I-I’ll answer what I can. Let me reiterate, don’t ask me about my death. And also, I’d like to ask you some questions in return.”

“So you really did die?” Tim shook his head as Danny bristled, immediately sensing the error. “Sorry! Forget I asked that. I’m just nervous.”

Danny’s shoulders fell. “Tim, I’m not going to hurt you. I don’t know what Constantine said, or – “

“No! God, no. I’m not nervous because I’m scared of you. In fact, I’m more curious than anything. I’m nervous because I don’t want to screw this up and I already kind of did.” Tim took a deep breath. “I just…I like you, Danny. That hasn’t changed. And I don’t want to make you hate me anymore.”

Danny looked up, stunned. His core thrummed in his chest with hope. “You…you still like me?”

“Of course! I mean, I still do want answers. And I’m probably going to be super annoying about it. And I was emotional because my brother was missing and mad at myself because I didn’t have enough information on you to give them answers. So I lashed out. But I’m trying. And now you know my family are Bats and they’re going to be just as bad as I am about getting answers. But, Danny, you fit into my life so easily after just one month. You put up with all my weird quirks that everyone else can barely stand. And you support me in ways I could never imagine. I can’t believe I’ve gotten along without you until now. I…I love you.”

Danny’s core chirped, and it was all Danny could do to keep his feet on the ground and not fly into a flip. He stepped towards Tim and cupped his face in his hands. “May I kiss you?”

Tim bit his lip again. “Please.” His eyes begged up at Danny.

Danny pressed a soft and lingering kiss he’d been craving for days. The simple action seemed to smooth over the cracks in his core. His human brain flooded with dopamine. It felt like coming home.

As Danny broke away, both he and Tim were grinning, noses touching. “I love you too,” Danny confessed.

“You’ve always been super serious about that, right? Jason told me some of the stuff he learned following you around.”

Danny hummed. “Yes. Ghosts…we’re emotional. We get attached easily. So you’ve been mine for a while. I just don’t want to pressure you to think you had to return that same level of affection.”

Tim nodded, and grabbed one of Danny’s hands to hold as he stepped away. “Give me some time. Like I said, I have my own issues.”

“I’m a ghost, babe. I’ve got eternity.” Danny smirked. “And despite what Constantine says, I don’t own your soul. The only markings you have of mine are protective wards to warn off other ghosts.”

“Am I weird if I think that’s kind of hot actually?” Tim asked.

Danny laughed. “No idea. It’s not like I’m the ideal of a normal human male. So…questions.”

Tim nodded, smile fading for all business. “Right.”

The two of them sat on the roof for hours until the sun was low and the Gotham sky was bathed in reds and oranges so vibrant they could only come from Gotham and its concerning level of pollution. Danny explained what he could of Tim’s questions, and asked plenty of his own about Tim’s vigilante past. At some point, it was more of a game to one-up each other on childhood trauma, which led to some tears, but also a catharsis of sharing with someone who understood. Danny still left Tim with plenty of questions, but some of the confusion from before was starting to make sense. Like the fact Dani was Danny’s clone rather than an unimaginatively named sister. Or the weird temperature fluctuations in Tim’s apartment that could never be fixed no matter how many times Tim had his air conditioning system checked.

But eventually, Tim asked the question his family probably wanted answered most of all. “I can’t believe I never asked. But what did Jason do that gave us away?” Tim asked after he and Danny both exchanged stories of the downfalls of their evil alternate selves.

Danny shook his head. “He didn’t give anything away. I already knew. Right after our first date, a lovely ghost named Donna came up to me and told me how lucky I was to find a catch like you.”

Tim sputtered. “I’m sorry, you’ve known since day one?! And you agreed to a second date?!”

Danny smiled off at the sunset, clearly reminiscing. “I wasn’t going to when Donna first told me. I was hoping to stay off the radar of the Bats while in Gotham. But Donna made a very convincing case on your behalf. You apparently tried to save her during a Scarecrow attack. At great personal risk you tried to get her out of the contaminated zone, but she was too far gone. She doesn’t blame you for her death by the way. In fact she was thankful. You held her hand through all of it. And afterwards, you let her family know personally what had happened. She was quite insistent that if I didn’t go on that second date, I would be making a mistake that would ruin my afterlife.”

Tim blinked with surprise as he processed. “I think I remember her. B yelled at me for being reckless in the field.”

Danny snorted. “That sounds familiar. My Fraid can be pretty protective too.”

Tim nudged Danny’s shoulder with his own. “Quite the pair. Sounds like we’ll have to keep each other safe then.”

Danny’s smile fell some. “Are you sure? Because right now, we can both walk away a little hurt, but no worse for wear. I can’t…it will physically harm me if you give up later down the road. And it’s going to be a weird road. I’m a king, and an absolute mess of a human being. And don’t think death will get you out of whatever we decide either, because the Observants are already talking about consorts and I – “

“Danny!” Tim shouted. “Relax. That’s…a lot. But – and I can’t believe I’m saying this –  maybe we just take it a day at a time?”

Danny snorted. “You’re right, I can’t believe you’re saying that. Who are you and what have you done with Tim?”

Tim rolled his eyes. “I’ll prepare a hundred and one contingencies later. And we’ll have to discuss what the hell you mean by Observants and consorts, but let’s not forget I am a CEO, vigilante, and insomniac who many have claimed I live only due to coffee and spite. Not that I can disagree. I have my own baggage to bring to this relationship too.”

The sun was getting lower and the sky darkened gradually to shades of indigo. “Oh Tim.” Danny pulled up Tim’s hand and pressed a kiss to it. “I already love you because of all those things as much as they may infuriate me at times. I’m all in.”

“And give me some time, but I think I can wrap my head around ghostly politics.”

“You mean time to research everything you can get your hands on how the Infinite Realms works,” Danny corrected.

“Exactly. So…we can try again?” Tim asked.

“I suppose so. It’s pretty rare to find someone as stubborn and brave as you are.”

Tim blushed, hating that it would be super obvious on his pale cheeks. “And I will probably never find someone as understanding as you.”

Danny smiled and kissed him. “I love you. And I definitely want to keep trying. You’re stuck with me now.”

Tim sighed with relief and rested his head on Danny’s shoulder. “Good.”

“Should we get off the roof? Maybe find some real food?”

Tim snorted. “Are you kidding? My family will track us down like bloodhounds the moment they think we’re done up here. Let’s just enjoy a few moments before we have to dodge bats and birds.”

Danny smiled down at his boyfriend, eyes flashing green with mischief. “Sounds like a fun night to me.”

Tim raised an eyebrow. “Really? What happened to staying off ‘the Bats’ radar’?”

Danny pulled up Tim’s hand to place a kiss on it. “Simple. Now I have a bird of my own to help me evade them. Think we can out-maneuver them?”

Tim grinned back, mind already firing with possibilities of pranks and chaos now that he knew his boyfriend had ghost powers. “Oh, I can guarantee it.”

The End