Chapter Text
A soft beep came from the bat computer, one of Tim’s various monitoring programs alerting him to something. He tiredly wheeled his chair over to it, exhausted from two days of trying to find some way to get Jason and Danny back. He took a sip from his 50th cup of coffee and brought up the alert, then spit the coffee all over the screen.
“Guys! Guys, look!”
The satellite camera over one of the Lazarus pits showed it filling up. The green liquid oozed up from the hole at the bottom, two feet deep, then three, then ten. Tim hurriedly switched to the other cameras as everyone rushed over to see. Every one of them was refilling.
“They did it! Haha, they did it!”
An enormous crackle thundered across the batcave, and everyone turned around to watch a green, swirling portal rip itself open in the middle of the air. Not where the old portal was, but directly next to where Sam was standing. She backed away, wide-eyed, as did everyone else, giving it a wide berth incase it decided to grow further.
It stopped once it was about four feet across and eight feet high. It stood there, hovering, glowing with brilliant and terrifying power.
This time, it was stable. It wasn’t at all like the other one which Ra’s broken body had been thrown through. Jazz and Tucker came to their senses and immediately started scanning it.
“Wow. It’s incredibly stable,” Tucker said. “The temporal and spectral variances are within .002 percent. It’s even more stable than the one your parents built, Jazz.”
Jazz walked around it slowly, wide-eyed.
“Without any technology to sustain it at all?”
“Nope. It appears totally natural, but…also permanent. And it appeared right next to Sam.”
All three of them looked at each other with hopeful expressions on their faces.
“Danny,” they all said in unison.
Everyone stared at the portal then, waiting. Waiting for them to come out. But there was nothing.
“Maybe they’re still busy fighting,” Tucker said, trying not to worry. “Let’s just give them some time.”
They waited an hour, then two, then several. Tucker got impatient and started running deeper scans on the portal, determining that it connected to a part of the Ghost Zone very near to Danny’s Lair, which was comforting, but still worried them that they weren’t coming back through.
“Should we go in after them?” Jazz asked.
“Maybe not yet,” Tucker said. “We don’t know what’s going on in there. They could still be fighting a bunch of Ra’s Assassins. We don’t want to get caught up in that.”
Jazz clasped her hands tightly in front of her chest and gazed at the portal with worried eyes.
Sam walked up to the portal with half a mind to go in, but what Tucker had just said stopped her right at the threshold.
“Danny?” she called into the green swirling mist. “Are you there?”
There was no reply. Jazz stood right beside her, and reached out to clasp her hand.
“He’ll find his way back,” Jazz said. “He already defeated Ra’s, already created a portal. Anything else he has to do will be a cakewalk compared to that.”
* * *
They both lay in a deep coma on the concrete on an empty street in replica Gotham. Their bodies still clung to each other, arms wrapped around so tightly there was barely any air between them. Their cores were utterly exhausted, unable to do anything but lay unconscious and recover. While they rested, their cores slowly separated from each other, each starting to return to its original self. But the process was slow, and they’d already used up all their energy moving the universe.
Even in dreams they were aware of each other; reaching for each other, making sure they were close. Separating back into Danny and Jason was exhausting in and of itself, and they had to go slowly or else it would be too painful. There was no conscious thought, no conversation; only feelings and sleep.
Eventually, the coma lessened and became regular sleep. They still could not wake from that, a depth of tiredness that wouldn’t shake, and there was no one who could wake them. Some of Danny’s friends tried, but no one could get past the protection shield around his Lair. So they slept, and slept, and slept.
Danny? Are you there?
Sam’s voice echoed through the portal and easily passed through Danny’s shield. His whole Lair sighed with happiness when it heard her. His core sprang to life.
Danny groggily forced his eyes open. Something had woken him. He looked down at Jason in his arms and his core reached for him. He prodded him gently.
Jason stirred.
He opened his eyes and saw beautiful icy blue staring back at him. Jason smiled sweetly up at him, his core glowing with joy. Danny smiled just as brightly. He reached up and brushed his fingers through Jason’s hair, twirling them around his white streaks.
“Hey, beautiful,” Danny said.
“Speak for yourself,” Jason replied. “My view is better.”
Danny gave a soft laugh and gently pressed his lips to Jason’s. He leaned into it, inhaling deeply, breathing him in.
“Mmmm,” Jason moaned. “Could lay here forever.”
“Yeah,” Danny said sweetly, his eyes half-lidded. “Never felt anything like that before.”
“I don’t think anyone has,” Jason said, his eyes teasing. “Not too many people I know can alter a universe.”
Danny blushed heavily and buried his face in Jason’s chest. He saw the scratches there and licked his tongue over them, making Jason moan.
“You like that, you should see my back,” Jason said. Instead, Danny’s fingers went up to his face and traced along the scratches there. Jason met his eyes and they gazed at each other wordlessly, their cores separate now but still very, very close.
Danny crushed a heavy kiss to his lips, over and over. He rolled until he was laying on Jason’s chest, his white t-shirt getting red splotches on it from Jason’s scratches.
Danny, are you there?
Danny’s eyes went wide and he lifted his head.
“Sam,” he said, his heart beating faster, his core starting to ache.
“We can get to her now,” Jason said. He had memories of creating the portal; seeing it open in his mind’s eye as if he’d been right there when they created it. He realized he knew exactly where it was; just outside the ghost shield around Danny’s Lair. In fact, he knew exactly where everything was. He had memories of the entire Ghost Zone, backwards and forwards, as if he’d been to every corner of it himself.
He also intimately knew a little town called Amity Park. He sat up and pressed a hand to his forehead.
“Wow, that’s a mindfuck,” he said. “Do I have every thought you’ve ever had?”
“I don’t know,” Danny said. “Never shared my core with anyone before. But I built this, just from your memories,” he said, throwing his arms wide to show Gotham.
Danny? Are you okay?
Jason’s eyes flashed green. His Danny loved Sam. Needed her. He felt the ache in his core grow deeper. He forced himself to stand up, his entire body aching. Everything hurt. He wanted to sleep for another hundred years.
Instead he forced himself to get dressed. Danny was cheating, as usual, by never having gotten naked in human form, so was by default, dressed.
Jason looked up in the direction of their roof. It was miles away from where they were. He groaned.
“I don’t think I can’t fly,” Jason said. “I don’t have the strength to create…”
Danny went ghost and put his arm around his waist, making him intangible and totally weightless. He flew them up into the false Gotham sky towards the roof where they’d first met, towards the door.
“Love where you put the door,” Jason said. “Very romantic.”
Danny snorted. “Yes, you tried to shoot me in the head to make yourself stop fucking me, and it didn’t work. Romance.”
Jason turned his head and nipped at Danny’s ear.
“Ghost romance,” he said, and had the satisfaction of seeing a green blush spread across Danny’s cheeks.
“I was romantic too. Made the combination to the safe the date we met.”
Danny frowned.
“What safe?”
Jason gave a flirtatious grin, peppering more kisses to Danny’s cheeks as they flew. “The one where I hid the Crown.”
Danny frowned, and closed his eyes. He searched within his own Lair, going over every inch of it, trying to pick out what didn’t belong, what wasn’t part of him.
He felt, inside the replica batcave, a big block of Jason.
“You built something in my Lair,” Danny said, amazed. “You…altered me.”
Jason grinned and planted kisses up Danny’s neck.
“And I’ll alter you some more,” he whispered.
Danny blushed, but he didn’t turn and give him more kisses. His mind was on Sam, and Jason stopped teasing him. It was important that they get back to her.
They flew out of Danny’s Lair, finding a whole host of ghosts gathered around the outside of Danny’s shield. They cheered when they emerged, Dani the loudest of them.
“There they are! They did it! They repaired the portals!”
“And made a new one! Right outside Danny’s door!”
“We can leave again! New ghosts can form again!”
“Let’s hear it for Danny and Jason!”
Jason tried to hide his blush, but Danny was grinning from ear to ear. He was drinking it up, and he nudged Jason with his elbow.
“Come on, this is the good part,” Danny said. “Enjoy it with me.”
So, with absolute reckless abandon, Jason let himself smile. In front of a whole crowd of people. Dead people, but still. It felt kind of incredible.
* * *
The portal crackled with the sound of something about to pass through. Everyone in the batcave dropped what they were doing to look. Sam ran towards it to stand right in front.
Her face lit up when she saw Danny and Jason stumble through, their arms around each other’s waists. They looked like absolute hell. They were holding each other up, barely able to stand. Danny’s white hair was a disaster and he had bruises all over him, his jumpsuit torn in places. Jason had scratches on his face and extremely nasty bite mark on his neck, which was still oozing. They both looked like they hadn’t slept in a decade.
Then they saw her. All three of their faces lit up with absolute joy.
“Sam!” Danny cried.
“Danny!” She ran to him, throwing her arms tightly around his neck. Two arms came to envelope her; one Danny’s, one Jason’s. She threw her arms around Danny’s neck and plastered him with kisses, tears streaming from her eyes. He kissed her back just as desperately, his fingers moving up to pull her head close, while Jason’s arm pushed her hard against Danny’s body. He would hold them together for all of eternity, if he could feel the happiness that it brought Danny for just one minute.
They kissed and kissed and kissed, neither wanting to stop, neither caring about words right now. Everyone else in the batcave moved closer but stayed quiet, letting them have their moment. It was sweet and perfect.
Eventually, Sam pulled her tear-stained face back just a little to look into his green eyes.
“Sam, I love you, I love you, oh God, how much I love you,” he said, burying his face in her neck and breathing her in. His arm pulled her even tighter to him. His other arm pulled Jason in tighter, too.
“Danny, are you okay? Is everything okay? Our friends, are they alright?” Sam asked.
He nodded, unable to lift his face from being buried in her neck.
“Fine. Everyone’s fine. Dani was in the Ghost Zone the whole time, she’s alright.”
He pulled back to look into her eyes, finally allowing tears to slip out and fall down his cheeks.
“We did it. We fixed everything. The natural portals are open again.”
“We saw,” Jazz said, tears of pride and relief in her own voice. “The Lazarus pits are full again, too. You did it, little brother.”
Danny and Jason looked up at the rest of the people in the cave then. Jazz and Tucker ran to hug Danny too, and Jason let go of him so he could give them his full attention. Jason looked over to his own family, and saw so much emotion on their faces it made his heart lurch. Relief, happiness, joy, pride. Even Batman didn’t hide how happy he was to see Jason again. Jason swallowed the lump in his throat.
"Told you we’d make it back,” he said.
Damian stepped forward gingerly, his face even more grim than usual.
“Did you see Mother?” he asked.
“No,” Jason said, which was the truth. “I can’t promise she wasn’t in there. But I never saw her.”
He gave a curt nod, and Jason wished he had better news for him. He didn’t mention that if she had been in there, she was gone. Danny destroyed them all.
Tim came over and gave him a punch in the shoulder.
“Never doubted you.”
Jason gave him a loving punch back.
“Proud of you,” Dick said, roughing up his hair, which normally made Jason want to punch him, because you’re not that much older than me. Instead he gave him a nod, and maybe even a little smile. It was good to be home.
Cass stood behind everyone else so they couldn’t see, and mimed scratching her nails down her face while waggling her eyebrows.
“Not a word out of you,” Jason said, unable to contain a laugh. She stuck her tongue out at him.
He looked over at Batman, and saw the man actually. Fucking. Smile.
And goddammit, he found himself smiling back. Danny’s goddamn smiling disease was rubbing off on him.
“Job well done, Jason,” he said. Not in his Batman voice. In his Bruce voice.
His heart cracked a little. Or maybe it hadn’t fully locked up again after last night. Maybe he was doomed to feel things now. He felt Danny’s joy, heard him laughing behind him as he joked about Clockwork telling Frostbite to back off. Maybe feelings weren’t so bad. Ghosts were made of them, after all.
“Thanks, Bruce,” he said quietly. Goddammit why was his voice cracking?
He swore he saw a tear in Bruce’s eye.
Then he saw Alfred poke his head out from behind Tim, and Jason swooped him up into a tight bear hug.
“Ooof,” he said. “It’s good to see you too, Master Jason.”
“So what happened?” Jazz asked, her voice excited and curious. “How did you fix it? Did you find Ra’s machine and get it to work? Also, what was that portal that he came flying through?”
Danny gave a shy grin, and turned his eyes down to Sam.
“I think maybe we’ll wait on all of that, Jazz. We are still really, really tired.”
“Of course! Of course, both of you go rest. Heal up. Eat, shower, all of that. We have all the time in the world.”
Danny’s green eyes locked onto Sam’s and she gazed right back up at them. He gave her another kiss, this one much softer and slower.
“Come to bed with us,” he said softly. “I promised you no secrets. So I have a lot to tell you.”
She nodded, glancing over at the bite mark on Jason’s neck with a smirk. He gave her a sly grin in return, and she gave a wry laugh.
“You two are impossible.”
“You have no idea,” Danny said, his eyes shining.
He reached down and took her hand, then took Jason’s in his other one. Together the three of them walked to the elevator.
When they got to the room, it took every fiber of Jason’s willpower not to collapse directly into the bed. But he was no longer in the Ghost Zone. His body wasn’t going to heal any faster than normally. He looked down at the hand he’d broken and was relieved to see it was functional, though his bones still ached a bit. But the rest of him was a mess.
“We’ve got to bandage you up, babe,” Danny said, floating up to press a kiss to Jason’s temple. “Do you care if Sam sees you naked?”
Jason shrugged.
“Gonna happen anyway,” he said. She blushed hard and looked away, and he couldn’t read her core. He didn’t know if she was upset-blushed or turned-on-blushed or what. God, that was frustrating. He could understand why Danny had been so lonely all this time; no other cores to talk to.
…except. That wasn’t true. He tilted his head to the side for a moment, and listened. Now that he’d experienced being among ghosts, and knew his own core fairly well, he was able to tell when things were not his core. When it was…others.
“Oh my God, Wayne Manor is haunted,” he said, furrowing his eyebrows. “There are a bunch of people here.”
Danny laughed and closed his eyes, a bright smile coming to his lips.
“Ha! There are! There are ghosts again! Oh my God, Sam, there are ghosts again!” he said, picking her up and twirling her in a circle, planting a thousand kisses to her face. “I’d forgotten what it feels like! It feels so good!”
He flew in a circle up by the ceiling, doing a loop and forgetting to respect walls. Half of him vanished into the floor several times before he gathered himself and hovered in front of her. She laughed, delight on her face at seeing him so happy.
“God, Danny. It’s been so long since you’ve been happy. It’s beautiful.”
He grinned at her.
Jason tried to give them their moment, but as soon as he unfastened his chest armor, blood started oozing down his back again, dripping onto the floor.
“Oh my God,” Sam said, running over to help him. She gasped when she saw how deep the gashes on his back where. “What the hell, Danny?”
“It was the heat of the moment,” Danny said shyly.
“I liked it,” Jason said, raising the corner of his lips up in a flirtatious grin.
Oh fuck, he felt Danny’s core say, a rush of heat blooming up to Danny’s cheeks.
“Hey, you promised Sam no core-talk when she’s around. You say that out loud.”
“Am not!” Danny protested. Sam laughed.
“It’s fine, Jason. It’s all over your faces anyway. Now get in the bathroom, Alfred’s going to have a conniption when he sees this carpet.”
“He’s used to it,” Jason said. “He’s probably the leading expert on ‘how to remove blood stains’ on Pinterest.”
Sam’s laughter was real. She wasn’t as boisterous or loud as Danny was, but she was genuine. He felt Danny’s core shine when she laughed. It was perfect.
They both got him into the bathroom, and thankfully Sam let Danny help him get his pants off. She was polite and didn’t stare at him below the waist, except where Danny had apparently scratched him across his ass.
“Danny, go get a bunch of gauze and tape and disinfectant,” she said. “A shower will be excruciating, I’ll start the tub.”
Danny vanished through the floor, which left Jason naked and alone with Sam while she adjusted the tap water and searched the cabinets for a washcloth.
“I can do it,” Jason tried.
“Don’t be stupid, you can’t see your own back, I don’t care how flexible you are.”
He grunted.
“Stand in the tub, face the wall.”
There was no reason not to do what she said. The warm water felt good on his feet as it pooled around his ankles. She wet the rag in the running water, then stood on his left side and gently pressed it to the wound on his neck.
“He had his fangs out,” she said matter-of-factly. Jason blushed crimson.
“Don’t think I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve seen every part of Danny. Just…the circumstances were different. He tries to hide his more ghostly traits around me, because of what we went through with Dan.”
The warm washcloth stung, but Sam knew exactly how to clean a wound. It was clear she’d done this thousands of times. Just like his own family.
“I don’t think he was hiding those traits from you,” Jason said, as she rinsed the cloth out and began gently patting it over the gashes on his back. “I think he was hiding them from himself.”
He saw her shadow on the wall nod as she gently rubbed around one of the gashes on his back, removing the dried blood. The water in the bottom of the tub was already turning pink.
“He’s afraid of his own power,” she said. “He’s a lot stronger than he lets on, even to himself.”
“Oh, I know. I saw,” Jason said. “We didn’t use Ra’s frequency altering machine. We destroyed it, actually, to make sure he couldn’t use it.”
“Then how did you realign…”
“Danny did it.”
She stopped moving for a good five seconds. He wondered if he should shut up now, and let Danny explain the rest to her. She returned with the washcloth and the sting of the hot water was as good enough a distraction from his thoughts as any.
“Danny…created a portal? On his own?”
Jason grunted.
“No, not on my own. Jason helped me,” Danny said quietly, sticking his head up through the floor, his arms full of bandages. He set them down on the counter and turned to Sam. “Jason, apparently, um…uh. Well, according to Clockwork, he…”
Sam stared at him and crossed her arms.
“Do you want to leave and let Jason finish telling me? Because he’s much better at this.”
Jason laughed a snort. Him. The better communicator. That was funny.
But then he felt Danny’s turmoil. Felt his Obsession rearing it’s head. He was struggling because of how painful it was for him to do anything that even might hurt her.
Jason reached out his hand towards Danny, and he reached back. He clasped it tightly.
“She can take it,” Jason said. “She’s a fucking badass.”
He saw the gratefulness on Sam’s face in the mirror. She stopped cleaning Jason’s wounds for a moment and turned to face Danny.
“Just tell me,” she said softly, reaching out to hold his other hand. Danny looked into her eyes and took a deep breath.
“Clockwork called him a lens. He…lets my power through him so completely it’s like he’s glass. It focuses through his core and makes me impossibly powerful. I Wailed, Jason was in the path of it, and then…it just ripped reality right open. But the place it ripped to,” Danny said, letting go of Jason’s hand to put his palm on her cheek, “Was to you.”
He said it so softly, so reverently, a hush fell over the room for a moment.
“Both times,” he finished. “Both times. Twice, I ripped the universe apart to get back to you, Sam.”
Tears sprang in her eyes and she threw her arms around his neck, pulling him in close for a sweet kiss.
“What every girl wants to hear,” she said sweetly, pulling back with a loving smile. They pressed their foreheads together. “Now that you told me the most important part, which is how much you love me, which I totally get, what are you leaving out?”
Danny winced.
Tell her.
Danny glared at him.
“You’re both ganging up on me again.”
“Price you pay for having two lovers. We outnumber you,” Sam said. Jason couldn’t stop the laugh that escaped him.
“Maybe we should get Jason cleaned up first…”
“Oh no, I’m not being your excuse,” Jason said, blood dripping down the backs of his naked legs into the tub.
Danny took a deep, heavy breath. He stopped floating and planted his white boots firmly on the floor. He took Sam’s hands and really steeled himself.
“We shared our cores,” Danny finally said. “For a while, we were the same person.”
“And then?” Jason said.
“And then?” Danny questioned, confused.
“God, you suck at this,” Jason said. “And then we fell asleep and couldn’t wake up,” Jason said. “Until you called for Danny, Sam.”
Danny turned to Sam with soft green eyes and pain on his face. “Yeah. We couldn’t wake up. Until I heard you,” he said softly, lifting his fingers up to caress her cheek. She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch for a long moment, letting the tenderness hang in the air.
She turned her face to kiss his palm, and then went back to cleaning Jason’s wounds.
“So let me summarize,” she said, gently soaking the cracked blood off of Jason’s side. “Jason refocused your Wail to make you more powerful, and the thing you did with that extra energy was open a portal right next to me and kick Ra’s al Ghul through it.”
“That was me, I kicked him through. Danny was busy passing out.”
“Universe-altering levels of power! I deserved a five minute nap.”
“Then,” Sam continued, “after that, the portal was closed, so you had to do it again, except this time, you shared cores, which made you even more powerful, to the point that you reverted the Ghost Zone back to it’s correct frequency, then created a second portal, also right next to my head, because, checks notes, I’m your heart and soul and you can’t live without me?”
Danny nodded, his face still strained.
“And somewhere in there was mind-blowing sex,” she said, gesturing at Jason’s back. He couldn’t help it, he gave another laugh.
“Yes, but…” Danny started.
Sam held her finger up in a ‘shh’ gesture, and Danny stopped talking.
“And then you fell into a Sleeping Beauty type of situation, and my voice brought you back?” she said, though her tone was much softer. He nodded, squeezing his eyes closed.
“Danny, that’s incredible. You moved a universe. To get back to me,” she said softly, and Jason knew that was really affecting her, even without her having a core to feel.
He opened his green eyes and gazed into her loving face.
“But you’re not hurt that I shared my soul with Jason?”
“Don’t you also share your soul with me?”
He grabbed her blood-covered hands tightly and desperately looked into her eyes.
“Yes, so much yes, I can’t exist without you, you are my soul…”
She kissed him sweetly, slowly, several times, until he actually groaned into her lips. She pulled gently away and brushed his white hair out of his eyes.
“Sounds to me like loving us both is the only reason you’re here. You needed Jason to create the portal, then needed me to find your way back.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. There really was no argument against that.
“Now help me finish cleaning Jason, poor thing’s probably getting cold.”
With both of them working on cleaning his back it went a lot quicker. Sam stepped away when they got down to his ass, busying herself preparing the bandages, and he was grateful for that. They didn’t know each other that well yet. Danny actually kept his head about it, cleaning as quickly but gently as he could. Jason could see his eyes drooping with sleep. He was having a hard time keeping his own open.
He stepped out of the tub and they patted him dry with several fluffy towels, then started to bandage him. It felt…really good, to have help getting patched up. He felt cared about. It felt like…family. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had someone else help him with his wounds. He wouldn’t let anyone.
“Maybe we should all sleep in the Ghost Zone tonight?” Danny said, pressing a bandage over a wound. “Heal you faster?”
“No,” Jason said quickly.
“But…”
“I want it to scar.”
He had the satisfaction of watching Danny blush, along with a low desire brush through his core. Danny swallowed thickly, but didn’t reply.
“I never,” Jason said as he looked over his shoulder, “want to forget yesterday.”
Danny’s core reached out to caress his, and he could feel his heart glowing.
“Glad we agree,” he said, and then winced as Sam put some ointment on a particularly deep wound.
They finished bandaging him, and Danny helped him into a t-shirt and boxers, since moving too much would undo everything they’d just worked for. Alfred had laid out pajamas for everyone, and Jason let Sam use the bathroom to get changed. Danny didn’t bother. He went human and just stood in the tub, then phased all the dirt and sweat and grime out of himself and his clothes, letting it fall off of him.
“You ever change your clothes?” Jason asked as they all crawled into the bed together. Sam snorted and rolled her eyes.
“Oh, don’t get me started on trying to get him to do that. He thinks phasing dirt away is good enough.”
“It is good enough!”
“Danny, the bottoms of your jeans are torn, one of the knees is getting a hole, your t-shirt is faded beyond recognition…you look like you live on the street.”
He huffed and crossed his arms.
“Don’t worry,” Jason said to Sam. “We’ll get him in new clothes.”
“Finally! Vindication!” Sam said, with a smile.
“No fair, outnumbered again,” Danny said, laying his head on a pillow. Sam crawled in beside him, pressing her back to his chest and pulling his hand around her waist. Jason slid under the covers behind him, nestling his knees behind Danny’s knees, curling his hand over his hip.
“Still unfair?” Jason teased, pressing a kiss to his ear. Sam brought Danny’s hand up to her lips and kissed his knuckles.
“Mmmm,” he said. “If I wasn’t so tired…”
He lasted thirty seconds before he was out. Jason lasted maybe fifteen more than that. They really hadn’t finished sleeping when Sam had called to them. The light was still on. Nobody moved to get it.
* * *
Alfred had again left three changes of clothes. Sam liked Cass’s outfit (it was all black), Danny conceded to wearing Tim’s CEO jeans but he would not put on a polo shirt so he put is regular tee back on, and Jason glared at Dick’s slacks like they were a viper.
“You really need to get dressed, babe,” Danny said. “Your bandages need protection.”
He grunted.
“Why don’t you wear the thing you had on yesterday? It was sexy.”
“You mean the outfit I wore in the Ghost Zone? From replica Gotham? Because the real one is halfway across town. Do you expect me to go there in my boxers?”
Danny snorted. “Oh my God, I can get it and be back in like, five minutes.”
Before Jason could protest Danny phased through the floor and was gone.
“I…didn’t think of that,”
“It takes awhile,” Sam said, scrolling through her phone. “Do you know how long it took him to figure out he can phase through things? He used to get hit in the face by trucks, planes, brick walls. He would just…forget that he doesn’t actually have to touch anything.”
“He doesn’t forget now,” Jason said. “The night we met, I tried to shoot him in the head. Imagine my shock when he didn’t die.”
Sam let out a snort.
“He would say he did die, you were just too late.”
Jason laughed.
“That’s exactly what he said.”
Sam shook her head with a grin.
“Same old Danny he’s ever been. Except,” she said, lowering her phone to look at Jason, “He is much, much happier. By leaps and bounds. I can’t even begin to describe it.”
Jason’s heart felt warm. There was no way for him to know that, other than Sam telling him, because was impossible for him to know Danny before he met him.
“Thank you,” he said.
She nodded, but now her face looked…concerned. She furrowed her brows and went back to her phone.
Danny popped his head up through the bed, his arms full of clothes. He went tangible, plopped them in Jason’s lap, and said “Ta-da!”
“God, you’re such a dork,” Jason said, his core playful.
“Now as my reward, I get to help you change,” Danny said.
“Damn, I wanted Alfred to do it,” he said. Danny laughed, but Sam remained frowning. Jason looked over to her with concern, and then Danny’s face grew worried.
“Sam?”
She turned to Danny with a frown.
“So…what happens now?” she asked.
“I mean, we get dressed, we go down for breakfast, and we get debriefed by Jazz and Tucker. You know. Like usual, when we finish a mission.”
“I mean after that, Danny,” she said. “Where…where do we sleep tonight? Even if it’s here, how about the next night? Do I just…go to class on Monday? Do you just… go back to work?”
He sat quietly on the corner of the bed. Jason could feel several ugly emotions well up in him, each seemingly worse than the last.
“I don’t...want…to be apart,” he finally managed to spit out.
“Well then, either Jason is moving to Amity Park, or we’re moving to Gotham,” Sam said.
Danny turned around and looked at both of them with pleading eyes.
“I’ll go wherever you need me to go,” Jason said immediately. Danny’s core was pained, and he winced.
“You can’t. Your Obsession is Gotham, your haunt is Gotham. Leaving will hurt you. Every day it will hurt you.”
“Didn’t you tell me I can override it? Being more alive than dead?”
“Yes, temporarily! But you can’t change it. It will hurt you.”
“Your haunt is Amity Park, leaving that would hurt you,” Jason said.
“Yeah but you can change your haunt! It’s hard. It’s a rough adjustment period, but you can. You can’t change your Obsession, it’s what your core formed around, it’s what you exist for…”
“I didn’t know Jason’s Obsession was Gotham,” Sam said quietly. Danny looked at her with even more pain on his face, and nodded. “Actually it’s ‘protect Gotham’,” he said. Sam’s eyes darted right and left several times as she let that sink in.
“Oh. Oh,” Sam said, her face understanding. “And your Obsession is ‘Protect Sam’. You’re both so similar,” she said. “Two partial ghosts who formed around the need to protect? No wonder you’re helpless to each other.”
Danny tried to force a smile, but his face was pained.
“Danny, we can move to Gotham,” Sam said.
He shook his head, his eyebrows furrowed in worry.
“I couldn’t possibly ask you to…”
“Don’t they have a really good university here?”
“I…have no idea.”
“Yes,” Jason said. “And don’t worry about getting in. Batma…my dad… is a huge donor. He’ll get you in, mid-semester with all your credits, if that’s what you want. Full scholarship.”
“I. Wow,” Sam said. “Thank you, Jason.”
He could still feel Danny struggling. He looked up at Sam with pleading eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Danny said, his core aching. “You’re uprooting your entire life for me, without any warning…”
She leaned forward and cupped his face in her hands.
“You had your life taken away without any warning. Nobody asked you if you wanted to die. And you didn’t let that bring you down. You didn’t let it stop you. No, you went and turned it into something good. Became a superhero. And I decided to keep loving you. Because my other choice is to lose you. And I can’t, Danny. When you died…when I saw you dead on the floor, I couldn’t…I couldn’t…”
She stopped, squeezed her eyes shut, and gathered herself. “…and then you were fine. It was a miracle. You’re here. I’ll take it. I’ll take you however you are. If someone told that fourteen-year-old Sam, ‘Danny is dead. But you can make him alive again, all you have to do is move to Gotham so he can be with his boyfriend?’ She would jump at the chance.”
Jason watched Danny’s core open for Sam, reaching for her, craving her.
“I don’t have an Obsession. But if I did, it would be you, Danny,” she said. “I know that you can’t actually feel my heart. But the love in it for you is very, very real.”
He kissed her sweetly, tears spilling from his eyes, his core sobbing with release. He slid his arms tenderly around her neck, kissing her over and over, as she rubbed her hands soothingly over his back.
He pulled away, wiping the tears from his face, and said “God, I’m such a mess.”
She leaned forward and kissed his forehead.
“You’re our mess,” she said, looking up at Jason. He walked over and sat on Danny’s other side until they were both holding him. Jason felt his core immediately sigh with relief. His sobs started to slow.
“I don’t deserve you, Sam,” he said softly.
“Tough, because you have me,” she replied. They all just sat in silence for a moment, Sam and Jason rubbing Danny’s back while he took several deep breaths. Eventually he leaned back against the headboard and they went with him, the three of them curled up together in each other’s arms.
“So…how does this…work?” Danny asked. “Did you want to keep living in a dorm, Sam? Should we get an apartment? Technically I still live with my parents right now. Jason has like, ten apartments.”
“Eight,” he corrected. “Also several businesses with crash pads in the back room. I don’t usually sleep in the same place twice. Also, my schedule isn’t regular. Three nights without sleep, then sleep for fifteen hours, etcetera.”
Sam raised an eyebrow.
“Oh. He’s a crime boss,” Danny said.
Sam’s face was even more confused.
“I thought the Bats fight against crime?”
“I have my own methods,” he said, crossing his arms. He did not have to explain himself. Sam looked absolutely baffled.
“I think…it’s probably best if I live on campus,” she said. “Then you two can figure out…whatever you’re doing.”
“You should have your own space,” Jason said to Danny. “I’ll give you one of my safehouses as an apartment.”
Danny gave a playful smile. “You mean you’ll be my sugar daddy?”
Jason blushed crimson. Danny laughed and crawled on top of his lap with a mischievous grin. “Afraid you can’t afford me?”
“God you’re such a little shit,” Jason said. Sam laughed, hard.
“Oh my God, someone else gets to see what I go through,” she said. Danny’s smile only grew more impish.
“Do you want me to charge you rent? Because that can be arranged,” Jason said, only half annoyed.
“No,” he said, leaning down to press a quick kiss to Jason’s nose. “I’m happy to be your kept boy,” Fuck, why was everything he said so hot? “Besides, I won’t have any time for a job, if I’m gonna be busy keeping the ghosts in Gotham in check. There’s a new portal here now. Gonna be plenty for me to do.”
Oh yeah. That…was a thing now.
“Come on, I’m starving. And you guys are helping me tell Jazz. She’s going to lose it.”
* * *
The next few days were extremely busy. Everyone was helping Jazz and Tucker pack up most of their equipment, though they left the Bats with a few anti-ghost weapons and plenty of schematics to build more. The new portal in the batcave was going to be a new type of nuisance, and so Tucker helped them install monitoring alarms that would go off with any unapproved ghost activity (they set it so that Danny wouldn’t set it off; he deserved privacy to be able to come and go as he pleased).
Danny called his parents and told them Sam had won a scholarship to Gotham University, and he was moving to Gotham to be near her. They were overjoyed and told him they were proud of him an annoying number of times. When he went to pick up his stuff, they forced him to bring boxes and boxes of ghost-fighting equipment, no matter how many times he told them he didn’t need it.
“What do they know about you, exactly?” Jason asked him as he helped him move boxes into his new apartment.
“They know I’m half ghost,” Danny said. “And that’s all. They have no idea what that even means. They know I can fly, and fight ghosts, but that’s it. They still think of me as a human boy. Just…one that needs ectoplasm to survive, I guess. They don’t know that I hang out in the Ghost Zone. They don’t know I have more dead friends than alive. They definitely don’t know about that damned Crown business. And I want it that way.”
“Good. That means I don’t have to deal with meeting them,” Jason said. Danny laughed, his core giddy when he did so.
“You’re perfect,” he said, flying up to plant a kiss on Jason’s lips.
* * *
A week later, Jason was finally able to get back to his crime empire. Of course things had fallen into disaster levels of disrepair while he was gone. Two drug shipments intended for safe consumption sites were missing (Poison Ivy) and a shipment of guns (Mr. Freeze). He tried not to yell at his lieutenants; they really had tried to follow protocol, but there was a leak somewhere in his organization and now he had to go through the trouble of finding out who.
There was also a slumlord he had to deal with who was cramming dozens of people into one-bedroom apartments, a spike in car thefts, and two missing kids. He was exhausted just from those daytime activities, and then he had to patrol at night.
He was crouched in the shadows behind an emergency exit on the roof of a higher apartment building, trying to keep his eyes open and sort of failing at it. He could feel Danny in his apartment, several blocks over, his core content with whatever it was doing (probably streaming with Tucker). He focused on how soothing it was to feel him, just to know that he was near, and safe, and happy.
His eyes drooped closed again. When he opened them, he felt Danny’s core right behind him, playful and impish. He glanced over his shoulder at exactly where he knew he was, but he saw nothing.
“You need a pick-me-up. I keep feeling you fall asleep,” Danny said. His invisible hands reached through his armor to touch his gloved palms on his bare shoulder. He felt Danny push a warm wave of ectoplasm into him, and he immediately felt invigorated. He breathed in deep, the cobwebs clearing from his head, his eyes opening brightly. Danny pulled his hands away.
“Thanks, babe,” he said.
“I mean, the faster you get your life back to normal, the sooner I get you in bed with me.”
“Is that your only motivation in life? Getting to spend more time with my cock in you?”
Danny laughed and leaned over until his lips were next to Jason’s ear, not bothering to acknowledge his helmet’s existence at all.
“Or getting to spend more time with my cock in you,” he said, tracing his invisible fingers across the scabs on Jason’s face. They were going to scar nicely. A shudder ran down his spine.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” Jason said.
“Too late,” Danny replied, licking his invisible tongue up Jason’s autopsy scar. Goosebumps bloomed across Jason’s skin and he found it hard to concentrate.
God, this was his life now. Being haunted by the sexiest, most attractive, most powerful ghost in the universe, while he fulfilled his Obsession to protect Gotham all day and all night, with his fathers’ (begrudging) approval. There actually wasn’t anything at all he would change. He had everything he could ever want, or dream of, or need. Danny floated in front of him and shimmered into his vision, his green eyes gazing at him with absolute love, and there was nothing more he could ever ask for.
Hours later, when he finally decided he’d patrolled enough and it was time to sleep, he skipped over his safehouse and went straight to Danny’s unlocked window. He knew Sam was with him, but it felt like Danny was nearly asleep, so he didn’t think he’d be interrupting anything. He asked Danny’s core if he could come, and the answer was something akin to of course, always. He climbed in silently and stripped down to his boxers, pushing open the door to Danny’s bedroom where he found them curled up together, barely awake.
He climbed in behind Danny and nestled his chest up against his back. The moment he touched him, he felt Danny’s core give a contented, joyful sigh. Sam gave him a sleepy smile and closed her eyes. Jason buried his face in the back of Danny’s black hair and breathed him in, letting all the stress of the last few days flow out of him in a rush. This was his life now, and there was nothing at all he would change. Everything was good. Everything was right. Everything was, in fact, perfect.