Chapter Text
Danny was back to work the next day, because, you know. What else was he going to do to make money.
The dead people came in and out of his apartment on the regular for weeks afterwards, and some followed him to and from work, but oddly enough they stopped appearing on his table on after Danny's impromptu kidnapping stint.
Strange, Danny thought, actively mixing different colors of mortuary paint on with a palette knife as a corpse peered over his shoulder, But not overly so.
Stories started appearing in the newspapers—things Danny had no context of beyond Rich People Get Arrested! and such scandals, but the reports were enough that Mr. Graves and the day shift mortician could not stop talking about it between funeral preparations for the Honorable Judge Yerkins, who had passed away a few nights ago.
Weird, but alright.
Mom and Dad published a brief article on the various manifestations and known behaviors of “The Gotham Ghoul” in their state-wide paranormal magazine, despite Danny being unable to get a good picture of the dead people digging through his clean laundry basket, or microwaving his leftovers on repeat thirty second bursts until they burnt, or using up the last of his lotion when Danny wasn’t looking, or lockpicking his stuff again despite being asked not to touch the things in his bedroom.
And Danny was just fine with his life as it was, teaching the dead people how to make macaroni and cheese and how to dial Mom if they got bored and needed human company, when one of the dead guys came through the window with a whole child under its arm.
Danny gawked, spoon in hand. The corpses that had been moments ago peering into the pot quickly bolted in every direction. “What is that?! Did you steal someone’s kid?!”
The corpse whistled one long, cheery note, and held the squirming child out in front of him. “Baby!” the body rasped, which was not one of its usual vocab words.
“Let me go!!” the boy protested, which was fair.
“That’s not a baby! That’s, like, a preteen!” Danny protested, and then realized there were more important concerns to be verbalized. “Why did you steal a preteen?!”
“Baby!” the undead man protested again, and shoved the boy even closer to Danny. The boy tried to make a valiant escape, but, uh. Preteen versus the walking undead was a pretty one-sided fight.
The preteen said a very bad word. Danny gawked.
“…Alright,” Danny said, fully out of deescalation techniques and getting more exhausted by the second. “If you put him at the table, you can watch him eat macaroni. Kid, are you allergic to macaroni?”
The kid said another swearword, which Danny probably should have expected, but the dead guy also promptly sat the preteen down in a chair and loomed over the kid, which was more ominous than anything else.
Danny sighed. Danny finished the macaroni. Danny plated himself a bowl and a bowl for the teenager, who was in a really weird gymnastics unitard with a cape and mask, which. Okay. Looked kind of cold, considering the season. Danny also gave him a spoon, which seemed less encouraging of stabbing behavior than the fork he usually ate macaroni with.
The kid ate his macaroni and glared the whole time. “Are you evil?”
“…No,” said Danny. What was with people and thinking morticians were evil? He just got paid by the hour, man.
“Then why are you getting followed by a whole bunch of Talons, then?”
The dead man’s face scrunched up. Danny’s expression probably matched its, to be honest. “What’s a talon? Like a…claw?”
“No.”
“Alright…? Do you want any garlic powder with your macaroni?”
“No,” the kid said, as if horribly offended. “…Can I have some chili powder, though?”
“Yeah, whatever. It’s your dinner.” Danny went and got it for him, and after a fierce dousing, he and the kid went back to eating under the oppressive weight of the dead guy determined to hold the kid prisoner.
The kid finished his macaroni, which led to the dead man bodily lifting up this kid and dragging him over to Danny’s bedroom, which was not behavior to encourage, and now Danny was going to have to wash his sheets again.
…Or stop the dead guy from putting the kid in the blanket nest in the closet, apparently. “THE COUCH. Do not hold kids hostage in my bedroom closet! You’re not supposed to be in my bedroom closet!! You can hang out on the couch or you can put him back where you found him!”
The corpse blew a raspberry. Horrible new behavior exhibited!! Danny was 100% going to cut back on their unsupervised TV time.
Danny pointed into the living area. “Couch. Now. Or I’m deleting your spotify playlist with all the Lady Gaga on it.”
Apparently this threat was enough. The body testily swung the boy it had been previously trying to suffocate under blankets up under its arms, pointed itself towards the couch, and stalked off.
And you know what. If the dead guy and the kid proceed to wrestle their feelings out on the couch as various dead people peered in from darkened corners. Well. Danny probably should do something about it.
...The thing he decided to do was put on Love Island and call it a night. “Budge over,” he demanded.
The dead body budged. It made the boy budge. The three sat on the couch and watched reality television reruns until a Little Women adaptation came on.
“You alright with that?”
The boy shrugged. His eyes did something weird under his mask. “I’salright.”
“Cool. Tell me if you want me to change it. You are getting kidnapped in my house, after all. Least I can do is make sure the TV doesn’t suck.”
“Can you tell this guy to let me go, then?” the preteen huffed, leaned on even further by the dead guy. “He’s getting a little too comfy with me.”
Danny frowned. Flapped a hand. “Personal space,” he demanded.
The body didn’t budge.
“You’re making him uncomfortable. Move.”
The body rolled over, and rolled its thin-pupil eyes; moreover it proceeded to only trap the kid with a single leg and nothing more.
No more complaints came beyond a plaintive: “Do we have any popcorn?”
The preteen was taking this really well, honestly. Danny was kind of baffled. He’d never been this calm when Vlad kidnapped him for an Attempted Stepfather/Stepson Weekend. “...Sure, kid.”
Movie night was cool, and the living and somewhat-living people had popcorn, and the oddly-dressed preteen was very knowledgeable on what made this a horrible Little Women adaptation considering Alcott’s original intention, actually, and Danny was mostly down for just waiting out however long it took for the dead man who stole this child to get bored by the whole idea and walk off when there was a knock at the window.
…Danny looked at the window.
On the other side of the window was a man in all black armor, and—ah, dammit. It was the bat dude again.
The preteen perked up even as the undead pinning him down hissed at the intruder. Danny was mostly done with the whole situation.
So. He meandered over and cracked open the window. “Didn’t I tell you not to show up here?”
The weird white lenses in the man’s mask barely blinked. “Didn’t you die?”
“Yeah, dude, all the time. That’s not the point, though.”
“That’s my ride!!” the preteen hollered from behind him, which made a little more sense. Danny was mostly baffled.
Danny twisted around. “Your ride’s a…heavily armored dude with little earsies on his mask?” Danny asked the preteen behind him, who made more of an effort to leap up off the couch. Unfortunately, the dead guy sitting basically on top of him still had a good grip on his cape. The boy bounced back onto the couch with a snarl.
“The ears are for bettering public opinion!” the kid shouted back.
…Danny examined the earsies with more scrutiny this time. “I don’t think they’re working,” he admitted.
“Your opinion is noted,” the man said. And then pushed Danny out the way of his own window and crawled inside his apartment.
What the hell.
On the other hand, the deeply armored dude with no sense of personal boundaries seemed perfectly willing to wrangle the preteen out from underneath Danny’s most popular and outgoing corpse friend, so maybe Danny shouldn’t interfere. They seemed fine. Mostly. Everyone was holding their own. On the other, other hand, though, it was about to be Danny’s bedtime, and he had to actually make it to the grocery store tomorrow morning. He’d promised to teach all the lingering dead people how to make oobleck after his shift.
Tall, dark and brooding came back with the preteen boy in tights under one arm and the dead man (in Danny’s Chicago Aquarium tee he’d gotten as a gift when he was nine, now worn as a crop top) hauled over his other shoulder. Danny…stared.
“What are your babysitting rates?” asked the armored man, deathly serious.
“…A hundred an hour,” Danny made up on the spot. “But I work nights. No availability. Sorry.”
The man grunted. He hardly moved—his fingers twitched to stop the preteen from pickpocketing his electric yellow belt pouches, but he moved no more than that. “I will reach out to you about weekends. …As you were.”
And then the man. Just. Dove out the window. Preteen and corpse and all.
…Danny locked the window after them. It probably would never stop anyone from bothering him ever again, but at least he tried, you know?