Chapter Text
It started with the ghost rats.
"No," Damian finally said as one ghost rat split into two, then four, then eight in a bizarre replication of the amoebic life cycle. More poured out from the Walgreens ceiling, multiplying with nauseating snaps and squelches. "I refuse. Call your useless boyfriend, I'm done."
"You can’t just leave in the middle of an operation," Tim hastily raised his bo staff, fending off three sets of yellowed gnashing teeth, "Robin? Do you copy?"
Radio silence.
What the fuck, Damian. Tim fumbled for his watch.
The call rang once, twice. "Hello, this is Danny-"
-"Danny," Tim hissed at his wrist, ducking behind a pile of squishmallows as beady red eyes glimmered from the FIFTY PERCENT OFF ALL KIDS BASEBALL BATS sign, "I need your-"
-"I’m not here right now. Please leave a message, do they still do that, do they still leave voicemail-”
Something cold and wet fell on his head the same time he hit redial. He wiped his forehead and his fingers came back oozing green. Tim looked up.
A ghost rat drooling ectoplasm stared at him from the destroyed ceiling and Tim could have sworn it smiled.
"Wow, you’re home late," Danny remarked, then did a double take. "Did I forget the Fenton Foamer downstairs?"
"No," He waddled and squelched towards the kitchen sink, dunking his entire head under the faucet. "You didn't pick up your phone."
Danny scrambled to grab his brick of an outdated cellphone. “Oh yeah. Huh. Must have missed it, sorry about that.”
Tim spat out another mouthful of water. Why did ectoplasm taste like mint toothpaste and the smell of battery acid? "Next time, just pick up. The ghost rats-"
"Ghost rats?"
"There were ghost rats infesting Walgreens at Murphy and Fourth," he explained, "I called because of your expertise in ghost phenomena."
"But…that's not possible, I would have sensed them."
What, like a sixth ghost sense? Tim detangled a particularly nasty clump of congealed ectoplasm, watching it separate like DIY glitter slime. Now he had to add 'why is ghost residue semi-permeable' to his thirty-page, indexed, document of questions he was slowly easing Danny into reading. "I'm not too sure what you want me to say, they were glowing, phased through ceilings and walls, and dissolved into ectoplasm upon contact."
"I believe you, it's more like," Danny struggled for words, frowning, "Can you let me know if it happens again?"
"Yes," he said patiently, "That’s why I called you."
"Can you leave a text instead? I read those faster-”
-“Danny, I need a way to get a hold of you immediately. In an immediate emergency.”
“Okay fair. Um, how about this," His boyfriend hesitated, looking down at his mismatched socks, "If you need me there instantly, like instantly instantly, you can always try to- to summon me.”
“Summon.”
“So uh, technically, most ghosts can be summoned with a unique sigil.”
Tim suddenly got the mental image of Ouija boards and that one scene from The Conjuring 2. “Like a possession?”
Danny looked back up. “What? No, that’s something totally different, a summoning sigil is kind of like a ghost phone call. It’s like saying ‘hey I need you to make a visit to the mortal plane, here is my address BTW’.”
There were so many contradicting questions. “...Anything else I should know?”
“Uh, the circle should be big enough for a ghost to fit through? Kinda like a one way portal.” A pause. "I mean if its too much trouble-"
-"Just give me your sigil.” Tim sighed and turned off the faucet, wringing neon green out of his hair.
Danny's hesitation shifted into a smile a little too predatory and sharp and all of Tim’s orange warning signs blared red. “No Tim, you gotta design me a summoning sigil.”
“There.” He wiped his brow, back cracking as he stood and examined revision thirty-five messily scribbled in chalk on the balcony. Tim had optimistically thought they would finalize a design on revision three. Which turned to ten. Revision fifteen Danny suggested ‘interactive visual elements to spice up the design’, and by revision twenty Tim was getting a sinking feeling as to why Danny didn’t have an (alleged) ghost summoning even as the (alleged) Ghost King.
"I dunno, it's just not a very cool summoning sigil. Can you make my logo bigger?" The alleged Ghost King circled the design three more times.
Tim resisted the urge to snap the chalk piece in half. "This is a summoning in case we need you in an emergency, not for aesthetics."
"I know," Danny half-agreed, "But what if a cult kidnaps you, and you start drawing the sigils, and they’re like ‘wow that looks so lame!’?"
"...If a cult kidnapped me, how would I be able to get my hands on ten gummy worms?" And chalk.
"I’m just throwing it out there,” his boyfriend suggested with all the art critique skills of someone who had never picked up a pencil or piece of chalk ever, “It feels like something is missing.”
“Something is missing,” Tim repeated, tone flat and sarcastic, “Like you want another complicated drawing in your circle that already has five complicated drawings.”
"Wait, that’s actually genius. I think you’re onto something.”
Three grueling hours later, Tim wiped the sweat accumulated from his brows, bangs, and forehead, and admired his masterpiece. A perfect circle wrapping about Danny’s stylized D symbol, Tim’s birthday for some reason, the Pleiades star cluster, a tuxedo cat, the ARTEMIS II logo, and now, ‘The Cool S’.
“Hmm,” Danny said, circling revision eighty-five a few more times with scrutiny. “It’s perfect!”
He felt all tension escape from his body. “It’s… perfect?”
“Man, I cannot wait to show this to Sam and Tucker.”
“For- for emergencies right?” Tim stammered, overwhelmed with the fear that if everyone could summon Danny, how would he know which one was an emergency?
“For emergencies,” Danny agreed. “Wow, I can’t believe you designed it so fast, we should have done this earlier. This is going to be so fun!”
Tim would have a talk later about the difference between ‘fun’ and ‘emergency’. Later. What he was going to do now was wipe his hands clean of chalk dust and go to bed.
He had already solved Phase 1: The Summoning Problem. Phase 2: make Danny remove elements of the design, would have to wait until tomorrow. Followed by Phase 3: insist more elements removed, then Phase 4: finally test the summoning in a safe, controlled, environment. There was no way, not a special snowflake’s chance to in hell, he would use this design as is.
It was a murky Friday afternoon when Tim heard a click, then the cold muzzle of a gun pressing against the back of his head. He resisted the urge to sigh.
“Tim Drake of Wayne Enterprises,” said a distinctly gruff and masculine voice, “You’re coming with us.”
They bound his arms with off-brand duct tape, bagged his head with see-through burlap, then shoved him into the back seat of a bright blue mini–Cooper, bedazzled license plate reading CAT4EV. Tim felt his comms buzz, twice. He cancelled the ‘distress’ call, really not wanting ‘The Signal rescues Nepo-Billionaire Tim Drake!’ as a headline for the third time this month.
Twenty arduous minutes later, the car gently backed into a duplex, all white-thatched tiles and cat-themed gnome decorations. His three captors marched him to the front door, taking off their shoes on a worn LIVE LOVE LAUGH mat. The lights were still on, the living room cleared out with the exception of several named houseplants lining the patio door.
“Not now, Mr. Buttercup,” Purple Hoodie picked up a large ginger cat currently purring and wrapping their tail around Tim. “Later, okay. Later.”
“Sorry about that.” Orange Sunglasses pulled off Tim’s burlap sack and put the stapler down with a click-clack. “We actually wanted to book an appointment with you, but your secretary said no.”
“So you’re not here for a ransom?” Not that he thought they were very good kidnappers.
“Oh no,” Orange Sunglasses said, “We’re part of the Order of Infinite Spirits, but not part of the Order of Spirits, those guys are assholes and kill pet goldfish for fun. Real Psycho movie material. Anyways, you want any water or snacks?”
Tim could easily walk right out the door, but he couldn’t shake the feeling there was a connection between this and the incidents happening. “No, no water. I’m just curious. What does the Order of Infinite Spirits do, exactly?”
Purple Hoodie slid the backyard screen door closed. “My bad, I forgot to explain that part. We commune with spirits from the Other Realms during the full moon.”
Were they mixing up ghosts with werewolves? No, more important- “What does that have to do with me?”
“You don’t have to play dumb with us, we know. You’re the Ghost King’s consort.”
Danny, what the fuck. “What?”
“Ghosts are such gossips,” Purple Hoodie said, rolling her eyes, “Nora - that’s the ghost of my great-great-great-grandmother in our attic - told me that if we ask you to call upon the High King of Ghosts, the King could take care of the ghost chinchilla-”
“Ghost chinchilla,” Tim accidentally interrupted in further disbelief.
Purple Hoodie pointed to the lone tree in the yard, where Mr. Buttercup was hissing at a bright green three-foot chinchilla nestled around a purple iPhone.
Tim sighed in defeat, freeing his hands, the duct tape giving a weak snap. He was really regretting casual work clothes Friday. “Fine. I’ll handle this. Just do me a favour - if I get a hold of this alleged ghost king, you won’t say a single word about this to anyone.”
Purple hoodie beamed. “Deal.”
It took another thirty minutes for Orange Sunglasses (Dylan) to drive to a local Walmart to pick up a kids assorted set of chalk and a bucket of gummy worms. With Purple Hoodie (Susie’s) permission, Tim got on his hands and knees and carefully drew, white scratches against stained-cherrywood floorboards, the Pleiades star cluster, the Artemis II logo, the Cool S, then -
"What's the date for?" Nirvana t-shirt guy, Aaron, squinted, "Is that Doomsday?"
Tim stopped, chalk pausing with a loud click against the wood grain. "...It's my birthday."
"Oh damn," Dylan piped up, "Your birthday is next month? Happy birthday."
"Let me concentrate, please."
And for the final flourish, as Danny very specifically said it had to be a circle wrapping all the visual elements together. And not a square. Or anything shaped like toast for some reason.
Done. Tim stretched his aching back, blaming it on his lack of spleen as he usually did, then stood up to admire his work. “Ah.”
“Everything okay?” Susie checked the design again, worried.
The more he looked at the summoning sigil, the more it was bothering him. “Yeah no, I have to redo this. The circle isn’t perfectly round.”
Dylan peered over the counter, "Looks round to me."
"No, it's an oval. Look at the proportions."
"Just saying I'd consider it a circle, no offense.”
"Listen," Tim finally snapped, "Do you want me to summon the wrong guy?"
"...No."
Five painstaking minutes later, arms shaking from surgical precision levels of motor control, he had completed the perfect circle. Almost. Carefully, palms soaked in chalk-dust and sweat, Tim moved the chalk to touch both ends of the circle-
The chalk snagged on a piece of uneven floorboard and jolted upwards, creating a giant vertical spike. "F-"
[ 8:23 pm ] Tim: Come pick me up
[ 8:23 pm ] Tim: A ghost chinchilla took Suzie’s iPhone.
[ 8:55 pm ] Danny: ???? why didn't you summon me???
[ 8:57 pm ] Danny: …. what’s a chinchilla
“I got your message B,” Tim jostled and jangled down the elevator, trying to keep the duffle bag steady. “Let me get a hold of Danny and we can get started.”
Perched on every stalactite of the Batcave were bright green ghost bats, glaring ominously at Tim and Bruce-as-Batman with beady red eyes. He tried not to disturb the sanctity, quietly pulling out a four-foot long (drawing) compass specifically designed to create perfect, clean circles, attaching a fresh piece of chalk to the end.
“Tim,” Bruce began, “What are you”-
“Not now- busy,” Tim assessed the circumference, mentally checking off each requirement as he drew the inner design elements first, prioritizing speed and efficiency. The Pleiades, Artemis II logo, Danny's Phantom symbol, the Cool S, his birthday, what was missing? Oh right, a cat, Tim had gotten really good at drawing cats if he didn’t say so himself. He placed five gummy worms leftover from Suzie’s house, then leaned back to examine his work. “There, done.”
"Oh, you forgot to shade the cool S,” Danny offered from behind.
"No I put it there." Wait. "Danny. What are you doing here?"
“Batman texted me to come look at the ghost bats?”
Tim accidentally pulled off his best angry Bruce grunt ever.
Danny, still in jeans and a faded VOYAGER II t-shirt, blinked twice, peeling away from staring down the congregation of neon bats like an apex predator. "Did I do something wrong?"
"No. You're here so," he snapped the two points of the compass closed a little too aggressively. "It's fine."
The ghost bats chittered in a green ripple as Danny flinched. “I did check all your messages. And I stayed home all day just in case there were more ghost godzillas.”
“Chinchillas.”
“Figure out the ghost bats first,” Bruce-as-Batman interrupted.
“Oh, they’re chill. I think they’re migratory ghost bats actually, so I’ll get a portal running to get them home-” Danny hesitated, "Uh, Tim, is your hand bleeding?"
A paper-thin line where one compass point had pierced skin dripped onto the summoning sigil. "It's just a papercut."
Danny looked ready to elaborate, then shook his head.
"What is it," Tim grunted, doing his second best impression of Bruce today.
"It's probably nothing."
“What do you mean by probably-”
-“Danny,” Bruce interrupted, tilting his head and posturing in an unnecessary power play, “We need to schedule an official meeting with the Justice League about these incidents.”
His still-boyfriend did a double-take at Bruce, though it was difficult to say if it was about the impromptu meeting, or the fact that the Batman had said the longest sentence Danny had ever heard. He immediately glanced at Tim, then back at the abandoned summoning sigil. "Can I say no?"
"Batman just means he wants your help,” Tim made direct eye contact with Bruce, challenging, “Consulting a few key members on what to do during ghost-related emergencies."
Danny perked up. "Batman and Hal need my help?"
"With ghosts," Tim corrected, "But more than just those two."
“You mean,” Danny whispered in reverence, "Even Wonder Woman?"
"... I’m going to ignore why you said it like that."
"No, no! It's more like, I know someone who knows someone who knows Wonder Woman so it’s really cool she’s in the Justice League."
Sometimes, Tim couldn't tell what was serious and what was a joke. "Sure."
“Be there at the scheduled time.” Bruce intercepted, steering the conversation back, “Be presentable.”
Danny looked down at his indoor-acts-as-outdoor clothing.
“What B means is try to make a good impression,” Tim felt like he had lost Danny somewhere in the conversation, and while Danny definitely had made an impression on Bruce, it wasn’t necessarily good. "Your title is Ghost King right? Channel your diplomatic skills as a king."
His boyfriend knit his eyebrows in either concentration or confusion. "Are you sure about the king-ly part?"
Why was Danny double-checking with Tim if he was the Ghost King? "Yes?"
"Okay, if you’re really, really sure. It’s more I don’t know how well my, uh- alright. I'll- I'll try."
Was his reference point too specific? "Just-" don't overdo it, pull a warehouse incident- “be yourself. And don’t forget the good impression part."
Tim ignored Bruce staring him down as if this was somehow all Tim’s personal responsibility. Danny was a grown ass adult, he could handle it.
“And this,” Tim explained to the Hall of Justice ‘How to Handle Ghost-related Emergencies - SUNDAY’, “Is Danny’s summoning sigil in case you need to directly get a hold of him.”
The silence was interrupted by two buzz-bzzts as his smart watch lit up. Tim took a deep, patient breath, putting the call on speaker. "What is it?"
"Ummmm I have a problem," Danny began, more static and incoherent garble than usual, "You see, your summoning circle is great, I’m sure it’s perfectly made, but-"
"Just spit it out."
"I uh, I can't fit. Into the circle, I mean. I mean I tried but-"
"The circle is," Tim did a mental estimate, "Six feet wide."
"I know," Danny whined in a fizzle reminiscent of vintage CRTs stuck on channel 384, "But you told me to look cool."
"... I said for you to make a good impression, not to-" He suppressed a deep sigh, "Nevermind, I'll make it bigger, how much wider?"
"Uh, as big as you can?"
Was Danny doing this on purpose? “You told me over five feet was a perfectly good size for-”
-“Am I,” the Green Lantern crossed his arms, clearly more tolerant of Danny’s nonsense after the warehouse incident, "Interrupting something private here?”
“Is that Hal?” Danny’s voice crackled sharply through the watch, nearly unintelligible, “Hi Hal!”
“Don’t hi me your majesty, get your ghost ass here so we can figure out what to do with Superman’s green cows.”
“They’re not my cows,” Superman defended, “They showed up yesterday on the Kent farm, which I um, happen to know for no reason at all.”
A pause on the other side of the call, Danny clearly pivoting. Oddly enough, his voice now had less crackle. “How about this? Location text me where these ghost cows are and I’ll portal there instead. We can save the meeting for next weekend and I’ll have plenty of time to prepare.”
Tim’s panic spiked, “Wait-”
Dialtone.
Hal shook his head in consolation, even as Batman debriefed Superman on what Tim was filing under ‘Danny’s bullshit’. The Green Lantern had a smug ‘its your problem not mine’ expression, clearly reaping whatever turbulence Danny was sewing. “See you next Sunday, buddy.”
"And you’re sure you saw a ghost plant on the fifth floor," Tim repeated at his normal Monday work job in his normal Monday business formal.
His secretary shrugged, tapping her pencil impatiently. "I don't know what else it could be, it was glowing green and then disappeared."
“Aren’t most regular plants gree-" Tim’s center of gravity suddenly lurched forwards.
Tam looked up. "Are you okay Mr. Drake?"
"It’s nothing," He steadied himself against the reception counter, vision whiting out in intermittent starburst clusters, a sharp tinny ringing growing louder and louder, "You- you were saying about the green-"
The polished linoleum tiles split into a circular maw, Tim's stomach sank what felt like fifty feet in pure vertigo and his vision turned dark.
Grey, followed by blurry halogen whites. Tim moved sluggishly, Ferragamo designer shoes scrubbing against what felt like musky carpet. Muffled voices, sharper now as the butterflies lodged in his stomach began to clear.
"Wait," said a voice that sounded a lot like Sam said, "Is that... Tim Drake?"
Tim had meant to say something like ‘Why am I here?’ or ‘Did Danny put you up for this?’ or even ‘It’s nice to finally put faces to the names,’ but ended up settling for an eloquent - “What.”
“No, that’s definitely Tim. What the hell Sam, you summoned a whole ass human! Wait, you are human right?” That voice had to be Tucker.
“Last I checked,” he coughed three times, before looking around, “You got any water?”
As Tucker went to find a clean glass in the male living space-dominated bachelors, Sam scrolled through her phone again. “No, I’m pretty sure I did this right, or at least the sigil Danny sent me. Humans can’t even be summoned, you’d have to be both exposed to a tonne of ectoplasm and add a personal binding agent to the summoning circle.”
“Ah.” Tim had a bad feeling about the thing Danny said was ‘probably nothing’. “Can the binding agent be, by any chance, your own blood from a papercut?”
“Oddly specific and old-fashioned, but yes that would work. Wait, did you-”
“Here’s the water!” Tucker shoved a murky lukewarm glass of water at Tim, “Not that I'm not happy to see you but seriously, how come you get a cool summoning and I don't yet?"
Sam slapped Tucker’s shoulder. "Dumbass, that’s Danny's summoning sigil. Tim bound himself to Danny."
Tim suddenly felt very self conscious and judged as Tucker and Sam scrutinized him. Both of Danny’s friends glanced at each other in eerie silent communication before breaking into wide smiles.
Tucker closed the gap in an instant, wrapping an arm over Tim’s shoulders. “We got you fam,” he said, as if Tim was somehow in the loop, “We got your back and won't say a single word.”
“And this,” Tim explained to the Hall of Justice ‘How to Handle Ghost-related Emergencies SUNDAY FOLLOWUP - IMPORTANT’ meeting on the subsequent Sunday, “Is Danny’s summoning sigil in case you need to directly get a hold of him.”
Nothing happened.
Tim had been trained to weather all sorts of physical and mental barrage, that came with the line of duty after all. He could endure this, he would endure the silence and judgement, he was a professional.
Fuck it, he reached for his phone-
- The lights flickered, shadows rippling up and down the mock ionic columns and titanium ceiling. Despite the air conditioning, the temperature plummeted further, cold enough for Tim to take exactly one breath of sharp air before the lights exploded in loud pops.
Through the half-dark he could make out shadows. What looked like Batman and Superman, assessing damage. Hal, swearing up a storm. Wonder Woman, drawing her lasso-
- And in the center a massive shape, or void of a shape pulling itself out of the room-wide summoning circle, serpentine head easily reaching the ceiling connected to a long sinuous spine, stretching longer and longer.
Several eyes opened down its back reflected in ectoplasmic green, creating a cascading ripple like scales reflecting off light. Nauseating outlines of limbs, multiple, shimmered in and out of existence as more void filled the walls.
The thing made a noise. It sounded a lot like a completely garbled ‘Hi Tim!’ but shoved through a hundred Dolby Atmos speakers all tuned slightly-off and he could feel and somehow taste the words as the floor began to tilt, then spin. Oh his nose was bleeding, that was odd.
Tim passed out.