i have been unmedicated for the entirety of spring break and thus have had little interest in writing this down, but i have been thinking about this for the entire week (as well as a dpdc clone danny au that resulted in it becoming its entirely separate batman au that includes a teenage vigilante bruce wayne, an ocarina, and me entirely incapable of making a batman au without making bruce dirt poor but we're not talking about that) and so i've finally went 'fuck it' and forcibly grabbed my laptop. I will get this done in one sitting even if it kills me.
BUT. This is about neither clone^2 danny nor about who i am calling Ocarina Batman. This is about my Danyal Al Ghul Au and more SPECIFICALLY it's me thinking about his relationship with Sam and Tucker specifically.
Tucker and Sam? Adore this asshole (affectionate) with every fiber of their being. And it is very much a reciprocated feeling, but Danny's thoughts will not be delved into much other than he would kill for them.
Tucker? The only person currently capable of getting a deep, loud, belly laugh out of Danny. Sam can get him to smile and to laugh, but it's the kind that's a chuckle-under-the-breath. The quiet, looks-down-while-huffing laughter. Snorts once with laughter and then grins stupidly.
But Tucker? Tucker can crack a slew of stupid jokes and Danny will be incapacitated for the next five minutes because he's laughing so hard that he can't breath. He lands one well-timed pun or quip and Danny will be close to tears. His laughter is their favorite sound in the whole world.
Sam is lowkey jealous of this ability, and she's gotten a belly laugh out of Danny a few times. But alas, it is Tucker who wields this power and has gotten it the most times out of the two of them.
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They're also both physically affectionate with Danny as much as possible. It started roughly around when they were 12-ish, a year since they befriended Danny, and they noticed that he sought after touch but never seemed to initiate (and was in some ways repulsed by it). They started slowly being more touchy with him. Hooking a finger around his to lead him somewhere, tapping his wrist, looping arms. Little touches, grabs, etc, to get him used to it, and once he started doing it back they started increasing it.
It's gotten to a point where he will now just. Lay on them. Like a lizard sunbathing on a rock. Leaning on their backs when they're sitting in class before the bell rings, his chin on their heads. He'll talk about anything with his arms looped around their shoulders.
If they're sitting on a couch at either of their houses, he'll lay his legs on theirs. Him and Tucker will press their feet against the other's and try and push against them (newsflash: Danny always wins, Tucker claims its the ghost strength but Danny's been winning since before his accident)
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Naturally, both Sam and Tucker know where Danny keeps his weapons on his person, and are allowed to grab them off of him if they need it. His only requirement is that they don't lose his weapons if they take it and forget to return it immediately.
They both understand how big of a thing this is from Danny, and so they do their best to treat his weapons with a lot of respect and care because they know its his way of saying he trusts them.
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Sam and Tucker are so fond of Danny it's insane. Like fr. That's their goddamn best friend, and they are so protective of him. Emotionally, physically, you name it. They will tear the head off a grown man if they need to, Danny's had scars since he arrived in Amity Park and Sam and Tucker both are going to find the person who put them there and make them pay for it.
One time, Tucker overheard a bunch of upperclass girls speaking nastily about Danny and about the rumors surrounding him, calling him names like 'freak', 'monster', etc. Danny was with him and heard it, and seemingly appeared unbothered by it, even telling Tucker that he was used to such rumors.
Tucker was so furious that hacked into the school system later that night and tanked those girls grades. They were kicked out of their clubs and had to go to mandatory tutoring for the rest of the year. He made sure to leave some way of letting them know it was him who did it.
And Sam doesn't like using her money for things, doesn't like abusing that wealth. So instead, whenever her parents talk bad about Danny, she causes a media incident that has her parents scrambling to deal with. She does something wild, outrageous by her parents' standards.
She heard some boys on the basketball team making fun of Danny once, similar to those girls had. She kicks up a fuss about something eco-unfriendly at school and forcibly holds a protest on the same day of the big home basketball game, forcing them to cancel the event and reschedule to a visiting school.
She anonymously donates money so that there's new uniforms for the team but oops! Looks like she "forgot" to donate enough money for them to get uniforms for all the team members, and strangely enough those boys in particular didn't get them! Looks like they'll have to wait until more money gets donated for the basketball team to get their new, nice uniforms. The old ones look so ratty in comparison, right?
And since the football team gets most of the sport money, that might just take awhile. And if (and when) they kick up a fuss? oops! Off the basketball team you go, :) such unsportsman-like behavior is unfit for the team.
(The only good thing about how corrupt the school system is is that she can use it to her advantage too.)
The both of them know that Danny suspects them for the sudden misfortune falling on these people, but he doesn't call them out on it. He's kinder than he used to be, but not kind enough to vouch for people who speak badly of him. Sometimes, he might just congratulate them on not getting caught.
Because Danny is their wonderful, hurt friend with a "slightly" Blue and Orange Moral code, and enough scars that people have been calling him a criminal (and worse) since he arrived in Amity Park when he was ten. And they'll be damned if he gets hurt anymore.
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(10/5) prompt: eerie — 1,436 words (literal haunted house date night; 0/10, james does not recommend - cw: talk of death/murder, ghosts, general creepy weirdness) @jegulus-microfic
James is a weak, weak man, he’s decided.
Because, here’s the thing: ghost stories? He can usually laugh them off; he’s got no real life experience with the concept of the supernatural or the dead sticking around with the living. He’s watched movies, seen some stories told online, but there’s a degree of separation from them, you know? A screen. A promise that it’s not actually happening to him.
But now? Now there’s no screen, no separation; he’s walking right through one. Checking out an old abandoned house that’s supposedly haunted by the family that died there isn’t at all James’ idea of a romantic evening, but there he is. All because Regulus batted his pretty eyelashes at him with his lip caught between his teeth. All because Regulus hit him at just the right moment with a sweetly murmured ‘please, baby, I want to check it out.”
Ergo, James is a fucking weak man, because he’d been powerless to say no to his boyfriend in the moment.
The old floor of the 19th century mansion creaks beneath their every step. It’s clear that very few other people have been brave enough to enter the blocked off old home —there’s a thin layer of dust coloring everything a muted grey beneath the blue-white glow of the moon slanting through partially-boarded windows. There’s still furniture covered in moth-eaten sheets in each room they pass, too.
It’s eerie, how there’s still a whole life left behind there, despite the fact that it’s been ages since anyone called the place home. James swallows through a tight throat as he follows at Regulus’ side, each of them with their phone in hand, flashlights on. Regulus is too excited, even as he tries to disguise it —an unstoppable enthusiasm in his continued curiosity about all things spooky and strange when he peers through every doorway to see what’s there.
“How are you not freaking out right now?” James asks, whispering on instinct.
“It’s just a house,” Regulus replies at a normal volume, shrugging.
He points his flashlight up at a family portrait hanging over the fireplace in the musty-smelling library that they’ve entered. A man and woman stand stiff-backed behind two identical twin daughters in the painting, five years old at most. The mother has distant eyes and a forced smile on her face while the father looks too serious, obviously tense. The two little girls both smile, one with teeth, one tight-lipped; the only thing that seems to notably set them apart.
James swears that when he takes a small step to the left that all four pairs of eyes follow him. Oh, he’s going to throw up.
“What happened here, again?” He asks. Hates himself for doing so, but his own curiosity can’t seem to be helped.
“Winifred Manning went mad after having her daughters. She’d been told by a doctor she wouldn’t survive having one child, much less two. She ended up convincing herself not long after their birth that they were sent as an omen from the devil,” Regulus explains calmly, head tilting as he looks up at the painted family. “She tried to kill them.”
James gulps. “Tried to?”
“Well, suppose she was successful eventually, considering,” Regulus says. “She tried to poison them for a little while, but the nanny caught on, told her husband, Nicholas.”
James stares at the tense-looking man in question, wondering if he wasn’t looking so uneasy in the pose for the family portrait because he knew. Knew what his wife thought, knew she was trying to get rid of their children.
“So how did they actually die then?” Again, James hates that he’s asking, but he’s clearly blocked out the couple other times Regulus has told him bits of this story before coming here.
“Well, ultimately she drowned them in the bath.” Regulus delivers the news so casually, ignoring the way James winces. “Just left them in the water afterward and returned to playing the piano in the sitting room, that’s where Nicholas found her when he came home. Then he heard the water left running upstairs, found the girls there. And in a madness of his own, having his daughters taken from him and knowing his wife was insane, he stabbed Winifred to death.”
“Jesus,” James wheezes.
“Not a lot of that here, I’m afraid,” Regulus snorts.
It might be a good joke if James weren’t feeling chilled down to the bone at present.
“What happened to Nicholas after all that?” Evidently he’s just going to keep digging himself deeper.
“He hung himself in the attic,” Regulus answers simply. He turns from the fireplace and shines the beam of his phone’s flashlight over the covered furniture leading toward the attached sitting room. “Now people think this place is cursed. That because of the nature of their deaths and the madness they all stemmed from that their spirits just… stayed here. That’s why no one’s touched it in a couple decades.”
“And you wanted to come here?” James lets out a nervous sounding laugh.
Regulus glances at him over his shoulder, lips curled in a smirk. “You’re terrified right now, aren’t you?”
“The fact that you’re not is also of concern to me, but we’ll address that at a later time.” James can’t help the way his lips twitch when Regulus laughs at that.
Turning to face him, Regulus tucks his lit up phone in his back pocket and steps closer. He smooths both hands up and down James’ chest, head tilted back slightly to be able to look up at him.
“I never did thank you properly for coming with me,” Regulus murmurs.
James gives a tilted nod of his head. “True.”
“Should I do that, you think?”
“Here? Now?” James chuckles, nerves still present in the sound. “Bit disrespectful, don’t you think?”
“I think if the ghosts were actually still around, they’d have let us know by now.”
“Okay, hate that you just put that thought in my head.”
“Let me distract you, then.”
Regulus lifts one hand to rest at James’ jaw, easing up on his toes to bring their lips together. And honestly, James does have to give it to him —it fucking works, it’s an excellent distraction. Hard to be afraid of ghosts when his free hand is curling around Regulus’ hip. Hard to be worried about much of anything when Regulus is trailing his tongue over his lower lip before licking right into his mouth.
His hand moves from Regulus’ hip to slide along the small of his back, encouraging him to arch his back the smallest bit. Regulus hums into James’ mouth the moment their bodies press firmly together, his arms both looping securely around the back of James’ neck. A cool breeze passes outside, cutting through shoddily boarded windows and making James shiver just as much as the feel of Regulus sinking his fingers into his hair.
But then, distantly, there’s the tinkling sound of a piano. A slowly building sound that travels along the high and low keys in a melody somehow both pretty and eerie at the same time. It’s Regulus tensing in the curl of his one arm that tells James it’s not just his looming anxiety making him think he hears it. It’s real. Regulus clearly hears the piano, too.
They ease back from kissing, wide hazel eyes on Regulus’ face as his dark brow furrows for a long, anxious moment. The piano continues to play. Sounds like it’s in the next room over; the sitting room attached to the library.
“If this is a joke, it’s not funny,” James whispers shakily, some small part of his brain hoping that it is that simple. That his boyfriend thought it would be hilarious to play a prank on him, hide a speaker in the other room before they came —James might even be proud of him for it after the initial terror wears off.
“James, that’s not me…” Regulus whispers back, grey eyes staring past him, over James’ shoulder toward the open doorway into the room the piano seems to be playing from.
There’s a sudden loud creak followed by a thud upstairs, a door thrown open maybe, that makes them both jump. The piano continues, undisturbed, in the other room. Past the rush of his heart in his ears, James thinks he can hear running water now, the pitter patter of dripping on the hardwood floor above them.
Regulus fists a hand in the front of James’ sweatshirt, yanking as he hurries out of the library the way they came in. “Alright, time to go.”
“Yeah. Yep. Yes, absolutely.”
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