Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Today is a great day for T. F. TooFine Tucker Foley.

It’s turning out to be another beautiful afternoon of being hip deep in beautiful, beautiful wires, sweet servos, and code so elegantly put together you could rub it into your pores. Well, he could. Or Technus. Technus probably would if he ever got in, which is part of Tucker's job: keeping Technus, or anyone unauthorized, out. Or at least it will be once he gets promoted. Right now he's basically IT for the WatchTower. 

That's right, ladies and gents. The premier superhero hub of the world, floating above the planet, is his to access with impunity. Well, not impunity, but that's okay. Anything they wouldn't want him to do, he wouldn't want to inflict on such a gorgeous processing system if he even dared. The CPU alone is a marvel of the age and Tucker is so glad he left home to see it. Danny and Sam never left. They -and pretty much everyone he knew, really- never left town. But not Tucker, no ma'am. Amity was a 'Nice Place To Live' and all but they didn't have Apple stores and Microsoft jobs, or Linux or good Wifi or anything, really.

So, please, Ladies, Gentlemen, Beauties of all shapes and sizes, imagine: Tucker Foley, now thirty five immaculate years of age, walking back from the break room of the WatchTower to the scene of the horrible crime where someone had an accident with a laser sword or something, and hurt the sweet, innocent security system console... when he is interrupted. 

One of the many metallic doors on the space station opens. It's a life of teenage vigilantism that has him reflexively jumping out of the way of whichever superhero almost flattened him into a handsome pancake. It turns out to be Batman, which is pretty cool but a huge jerk move. Tucker pauses long enough to roll his eyes before he continues forward only to be sent into a standstill by the sound of a familiar voice.

"Is that Tucker?"

No. No way. "Danny?"

Ahead of him, Mr. Batman comes to a halt in a swirl of cape that wouldn't be out of place on Plasmius. Tucker doesn't pay him any attention. Instead he backs up, like a fool, and sticks his head back into the doorway. 

At first he's looking at a mass of energy with ice shards and crackling traces of electricity dancing between extended tendrils in arcs of light. Then the green eyes -of which there are many- widen in delight and the spectacle dissolves with the held, chilled breath of winter’s day into a person shape.

It is Danny. He's floating in what looks like a summoning circle, complete with candles and everything. The white on black jumpsuit Tucker knows he has on is hidden under the swirling star cape that he and Sam endlessly tease Danny for owning. The Crown of Ice sits pretty in the space above Danny's messy white hair and his goofy smile. The superheroes around him all seem to deflate a little.

"Tuck!" 

"Hey, Babe."

"SAM!" Danny appears to yell 'off screen,' as if he's in the middle of a Zoom call. Half the room flinches at the booming voice.

"What?" comes a shout in response, distinctly feminine but foreboding and clearly annoyed with the interruption.

"IT'S TUCKER!"

"TUCKER!" The second voice is more enthused, menacing undertone all gone. "Hold up, let me in!" Then there are two ghostly people hovering in the confines of the WatchTower's carefully constructed summoning circle. Where the man was cold and spooky, the woman looks comparatively normal and human. Said normality is undercut by floating three feet off the ground in a summoning circle, but eh, what can you do? "Hey, Tucker! Dude, are you just going to stand in the doorway? Get in here, maybe?" 

"Uh, am I interrupting anything?" He is, but he still doesn't know how to get in the room without making things awkward or losing his job. Batman is standing next to him, now, having closed the gap between them to hover really well for someone who isn't a ghost.

"Please, come in. If the Ghost King is okay with it?" Superman hedges, glancing to where what appears to be a completely normal dude in a ratty coat is hanging out against the far wall. Tucker is kind of surprised he missed him at first. The guy feels like he had a bad run in with an old ecto-filtrator and barely broke even. How the guy is walking around is anybody's guess. The man works his jaw around the unlit cigarette he's chewing on -which, gross- before jerking his head into a nod. Wonder Woman and the Flash don't argue. Black Canary waves a hand beckoning him in. Alright, maybe it's awkward permission but that's still a yes. Tucker has worked with less.

"Yeah, Tuck, get your butt in here," Danny calls out around his slightly fanged smile.  Tucker makes a mental memo to come back to the poor, poor security system console later. It's not likely to go anywhere and his Sam-and-Danny time is usually very limited. He edges into the room, very aware of the Bat Dude on his heels, following him inside. Guess whatever he needed wasn't that important? 

Now properly inside, Tucker gets a little closer to the center, away from the dude in a mask breathing down his neck like the Cairo sun. Trust this guy to be creepier than the actual ghosts in the room. Tucker almost wishes he still had his 'Foley' cologne; maybe that would have scared him off. 

"Hey, Honey." Tucker waves at Sam, standing just outside of easy grabbing range. He has played this game before. He knows better.

"Tucker, what are you doing... uh, where are we, Danny?" Sam stops to examine the room full of heroes observing their reunion. She doesn't appear impressed.

"You're on the Justice League WatchTower," Tucker gloats a little. Is he smug about working in the most technologically advanced place humans can possibly be? Yes. Does he deserve it? Also yes. He earned this and he's proud of it.

"Are these the people you work with? Tucker, you said you work for a 'suspicious organization'," Sam finger quotes. Out of the corner of his eye he notices Wonder Woman raise an eyebrow. So much for his holiday bonus.

"Yeah, they were super shady when I looked into them and found so much information under wraps." He pauses, aware he just admitted to digging into the Justice League. So much for that raise, too. Damn it. He was looking forward to using that money to try out a Tesla. So much for CyberTruck Tuck. He's never lost this much money since that one week he tried e-gambling.

"Hey, so, uh... Superman, new plan!" Danny pipes up, clapping his glove clad hands together and rubbing them like some sort of used car salesman on the hunt for a sucker. "I can totally help you with your problem, iiiiiiif you give me Tuckerrrrr?" The mostly relaxed atmosphere goes freezing cold, only emotionally this time and not physically. Danny already covered the physical freeze.

"King Phantom, we don't deal in hum-"

"Or!" Tucker cuts in to diffuse the tension, "I can give you a tour of the WatchTower, which is the coolest space station actively used by an Earth majority."

"Wait, we're in space? Wait, really? A tour!" Danny's growing grin is supplanted by a petulant frown when Sam slams her hands over his ears. He shakes her off gently but the frown lingers. Sam crosses her arms like she does when she wants to make a point of some sort and knows she has a captive audience.

"Don't you try to distract him with Space. We want you to come home, Tucker. "

"Whats in it for me?" Tucker wheedles, performatively tapping his chin with a manicured finger. He's between visits right now. The last time he’d stopped home, he'd brought his Mom and Dad a new computer, and got their WiFi fixed for the fifth time, before he dropped in with an update on the mapping of the Vega System for Danny. He also brought an update from Dani, whom he’d crossed paths with while on a dirt-side sabbatical from the super-secret space station to grab whatever WayneTech was putting out for the average consumer. Technically he’s not due back for a while, and certainly not the forever she’s asking for.

"Well, Valerie could use an upgrade on her gear, for one."

"Oh, really?" Tucker fishes out his PDA. Veronica is a decades old thing and is still kicking, playing big sis to his much newer WayneTech Phone and AppleWatch and mobile hotspot. He flicks to Valerie's contact information and pops open the extended menu. It takes two seconds to send his latest update to Valerie. The PDA chimes in with 'File Sent' and Sam's smug expression falls. "What else you got? Because I might be able to get permission for you to take a sample of some Old Tamaranian fungus, if you help out." Tucker extends his PDA to Sam, now showing a sample of said fungus on the screen. "It's puuuurple."

"Oh, an alien fung-hey!" Her sentence dries up when Danny claps his white gloved hand over her eyes.

"No Plants, either! We want you to come home, Tuck." Danny pulls his hands back out of Sam's biting range. Sam glares at him and then at Tucker.

"Unless you're going to move the Keep to whichever living city is the most technologically happening every decade or take care of my backed up scrollwork, you're just going to have to wait for me to die or catch me, guys."

"Ugh, fine." The High King and Queen of the Infinite Realms pout and scowl respectively, like little kids. Danny brightens a little."But we're still on for my birthday, right?"

"Heck yeah, I've got all the coolest stuff lined up, babe. "

"Score!" Danny glows brighter in the artificial light of the enclosed room. 

"I know. I'm the greatest." Tucker buffs his nails against his shirt. "But I've gotta get back to work. See you two in two months."

"Wait," Sam commands. The air goes still with the power of the word. "Can I at least get a kiss goodbye?"

"Me, too! Me, too!"

"Uh... " Tucker looks over at the assorted Heroes. Flash is actively laughing at him. Dude's the fastest man on the planet but Tucker still saw that. Well, fuck it. "Sure, if you help them with whatever they were asking for...?" Tucker looks around at the assemblage in tights and capes.

"There is a 'Box' 'Ghost' stealing voices with some sort of artifact. He claims to be 'boxing them up' and none of us can touch him," Superman spells out for the latecomers, gesturing at Black Canary. She scowls but tellingly doesn't open her mouth, just nods.

Tucker and Sam become a duo of annoyed groans as Danny nods knowingly. "Boxy, again?"

"What in Hamunaptra is he doing?!"

"Sounds like he got a hold of someone's packing supplies. I'll head out as soon as I get-" 

Tucker doesn't let Danny finish, reaching up to pull him in range for a peck on the cheek. Danny's skin is ice cold in this form, radiating ectoplasm in a way that tingles something in Tucker's body, behind his lungs, but like... in a minty way. Danny grins, goofy with teenage infatuation on an adult face and stars in his eyes. 

"And one for you, veggie burger," Tucker stretches up, lips puckered. Sam rolls her eyes and bends down to kiss him with a wet smack. Tucker quickly wipes his lips off on his sweater.

"Really, Tucker?"

"Hey, I remember the poison lipstick incident. Can't blame you for trying and you can't blame me for dodging."

"One time..." Sam grumbles as she dissipates from the summoning circle.

"You good to go, Danny?"

"Yeah, I'll go wrangle the Box Ghost and whatever he managed to get a hold of." Danny's aura slowly pulls back in to the summoning circle. The room warms slightly as he prepares to leave. "Let me know when I'm good to come back for that tour." Tucker gives him a thumbs up.

"Got you covered, babe." And with a crackle like the last gasp of a dying winter day, Danny vanishes.

Leaving Tucker alone on the WatchTower. Surrounded by heroes. With Questions. 

Ah, maybe he made a mistake.

“So, uh...”

Tucker's no stranger to being surrounded by people way more powerful than himself. It happens all the time. He's strong but not the strongest. Tucker's smart but not the smartest. He can't fly or shoot energy from his hands. He likes to think he's accustomed to being the hilariously under-powered side of any interaction with people who can do those things. It's a whole other ball game when he's surrounded by the Justice League, who are staring down at him like a puzzle and a meal and a target wrapped up in one glorious, glasses bedecked package.

"Mr. Foley," begins the actual real life Superman. "Do you need help?" 

"What?" The nerves chewing at him are thoroughly derailed by confusion.

"If you need assistance escaping from a bad domestic environment, you can tell us." 

"Domes- You mean Sam and Danny? No. No, it's fine. They just want me to come home."

"Home being the afterlife?" Batman joins the conversation verbally after staring a hole into his temple the whole time. At least it's words and not just breathing on him.

"Yes and no. More no than yes. They want me to come back to our hometown, but it's kind of passively Time Locked so I decided to leave home for a bit and see a little more of the world."

"Time Locked?" Flash balks. "And you just skipped town!?"

"Yeah well, it's not like we're trapped. It's just.... Almost no one moves in or out and people are still using landlines and floppy disks. It's perpetually the 2000s over there. I mean, kids are growing up and people are getting older but not always or not linearly. It's all old news out there, but there's no shield or anything keeping people from leaving if they want. I know the Mansons go on vacations to Florida or France every other year."

"They spoke of you affectionately and allowed you to leave, but they're willing to buy your freedom through the Justice League, Mr Foley," Wonder Woman notes with an air of concern.

"Yeah, it's kind of a game. They'll show up and argue their case or try to trick me into coming home outside of pre-agreed visits. If they win I go home and stay there. If I win, I get to keep on living it up out here. Danny tried to drop me through a portal once by hiding a rug over it and putting a copy of the new Doomed game on the other side. He doesn't know about digital pre-orders, because he's so swamped with paperwork." No one else appears to find this as amusing as he does.

His relationship with his spouses is a carefully negotiated one. Sam and Danny come to visit or he comes to visit them on birthdays, and the anniversary of the Accident, or when one or both of them need his super tech genius help; it keeps the loneliness from getting so powerful that they’d kidnap him, game be damned. 

"'Danny,' the High King of the Infinite Realms, tried to use a Looney Tunes trap to dump you directly into the afterlife." The Flash's mask doesn't allow a visibly raised eyebrow but he can hear it. "And you're fine with that?"

"It's fine, they won't do anything to actually hurt me." 

"Poison lipstick?" Flash counters.

"That was one time! And it was kind of an accident. When plants can't hurt you, it's really easy to forget what's poisonous to everyone else. Probably. See? Not actually trying to hurt me." 

"Taking you to the afterlife isn't hurting you?" He's never heard Wonder Woman in person before, but especially not in the 'soothe the victim' voice he recognizes from the Fentons. Maybe his soothing, rational explanations aren't helping as much as he thought. He answers a little more seriously if only so he doesn't have to be talked at like that again; it weirds him out.

"The only thing that'll really be hurt is my writing hand once I get there. Maybe my pride." Definitely his pride. Danny and Sam have made it a competition now. No matter which of them catches him, the other will have plenty to say about it, and he’s never going to hear the end of it for making them lose. He can already hear it now. An eternity of ‘how could you fall for that’. It'll have to be an accident or old age. He won't accept anything else.

"You did mention scrollwork. I take it you have some sort of paperwork to do once you..." Batman doesn't say 'die', opting instead for "arrive." 

"I have centuries of scrollwork backed up from the Pharaonic Era. Plus all the new paperwork from our marriage certificates that need to be reestablished once I become a hashtag. That's not even accounting for trying to get cellphone service and WiFi hooked up to the Keep, my Pyramid and the Far Frozen. And then it will be a while before any new technology comes through. Do you know how long it took Tecnhus to stop dressing like Frankenstein's monster and start integrating circuitry?" Yeah, okay this may have gotten away from him a little. He's rambling. His inner monologue has become external, the ghostly inclination to exposit manifesting itself. He'd like to see the person who could be stared at by half the Justice League and some blonde guy in a coat without breaking down a teensy bit. Speaking of-"Excuse me, but who are you?" 

"I'm the fool who helped these gobs contact the Ghost King against his better judgment. The better question is who are you? How did you get the High King of the Infinite Realms to trade ridding Las Vegas of a voice stealing spirit for a walk about and a peck?"

“Being married helps, man. I don’t know what to tell you.” The man stands there, forgotten, as Tucker’s attention is brought back to the people in spandex and kevlar. 

“Mr. Foley, you said your scrollwork goes back to the Pharaonic Era?”

“Yeah. It turns out reincarnation to go pursue technological advancements and enjoy living outside of the palace walls means a huge back up of paperwork. Who knew?” He does now. He would do it again, too. He got a great lifetime with two parents who spent time with him, Sam and Danny, and got to experience the rise of the digital age hands on. Hatshepsut and Namur wish they were him. “So yeah, skipping out of that one until I give up the ghost… literally. Besides, I could probably get one of them to get a head start on it for me if I play my cards right. Way easier to work through living realm paperwork, probably.”

“Your Majesty,” Batman cuts in. “in light of this information, you understand we’re going to have to reevaluate your security clearance.” 

“No ‘Your Majesty’, please. It’s nice the first time but it gets old fast.” Then his gut drops through his shoes as the rest of the statement registers. “Wait, am I being fired? I’m not being fired am I? You legally have to tell me if I’m being fired. Is it because I promised the Ghost King a tour without asking first?” It figures that he finally gets to make it to basically the coolest piece of technology ever and gets to get his hands into the wires only to have it ripped from him. He’s already composing a mournful tweet in his head, bemoaning how he got fired because his husband and wife are afterlife VIPs.

“No, Mr. Foley, we are not firing you.” Never mind, tweet canceled. “But given that you’re associated with a third party with political power, there might be a conflict of interests. Your access to certain aspects of the WatchTower will be limited until we can come to a consensus on how to proceed.”

“Thank you so much. I love working here, and am a dedicated employee who is always on time, and brings snacks to the lunch room. Yeah, those Krispy Kreme donuts? That’s me.” Black Canary rolls her eyes and Batman says nothing but Flash and Superman smile which is a pretty good sign. Wonder Woman continues to look at him with concern. Mr. Trench Coat joins Batman in trying to stare straight through him. At least this time he has his personal space.

“Donuts aside, you’re doing good work, I’m sure.”

“Thank you, Superman. Yes, I am. I do such good work, let me prove it by going back to work on that broken security console?” Tucker smiles winningly, very aware of the very strong and very scary people (and one guy who still hasn’t introduced himself) who are holding his job, and more importantly, access to the most fascinating technology available to mankind, in the palms of their very beefy hands. “Okay? Okay! I’ll just be fixing that console and then giving Danny a tour once you’ve had the time to very reasonably limit my access to the important stuff, which I never had access to anyway.”

Yeah, he’s rambling again. Sue him, he’s a ghostly Pharaoh. He’s got a lot of power in the afterlife but that doesn’t translate to anything outside of the 'Zone. He moves towards the door, with double finger guns and a well faked air of confidence. Superman gives a small shooing gesture with a smile and no one moves to contradict him. Tucker makes a very manly retreat that is not running away, at all. 

If he hears a voice that sounds like the Flash saying "...didn't know we hired Gomez Addams" then that's none of his business. (That's a lie. It is his business and he will be telling Sam about this later, when he is not silently freaking out.)

Now, Tucker Foley could go sweat it out over almost losing his job for an hour or two. He could stress eat a Mighty Meaty Nasty Burger with extra sauce. (Danny and Sam would probably thank him if he went ghost early due to a heart attack from the Nasty Sauce, honestly.) He's pretty sure that if he looked at his PDA right now it would read 'mood: stressed' like an automatic MySpace status. But he has a job to do and he's not foolish enough to hang around waiting for people to notice that he had a picture on his PDA of a highly monitored alien plant from an equally restricted space station's botany lab that he hadn't actually taken with said PDA. Ghostly technomancy was all fun and games until someone called you out for taking pictures with your eyeballs to share with your ghost wife. Tucker will just have to settle for the gentle gratitude of repairing a security console's panel to soothe his handsome, bespectacled heart.

Hyper aware of being watched, Tucker power walks, head down, back to the horrifically damaged console. Cracking his knuckles he settles in to right the wrongs of injudicious laser swords. The air over his shoulder turns deathly chilled. Tucker doesn't have a ghost sense, alive as he is, but by now he's sensitive enough that he would be considered a Medium, especially in low ecto environments like a space station. Even if he wasn't sensitive, he knows Danny and Sam well enough to know that they're probably checking in on him. Considering Danny's out there boxing Boxy, and earning his tour of the WatchTower, it's most likely Sam. 

True to form his PDA vibrates in his pocket, rattling against his heavily modified iPhone 15 work contact phone, his jailbroken WaynePhone Ultra (for phone games), and his PalmTop for wireless, if restricted, access to Justice League databases. Yes, it is a lot of phones. No, it is not enough. Thankfully, for the sake of his job preservation tactics, he doesn’t actually need to grab the device to access it.

'Everything good?' Sam texts. Her words scroll across his mind in purple font, slightly obscuring the panel he’s working on.

'👍👌♥' he shoots back, soundlessly.

'Emoji-glyphics are still banned'  

Tucker smiles. He doesn’t need her to be visible to know exactly what expression she's making. He steadily doesn't shiver at the electric zap across his skin he gets from Sam smacking him on the shoulder incorporeally.

'still less than five sam its legal' Look at Danny coming in with the save as usual.

'👍< 5 = 👍' he texts her just to be annoying. 'GTG back to work. ♥♥♥♥'

They both text hearts at him and the cold spot over his shoulder vanishes. Now it is time to focus on getting this neglected, pained console panel the help she needs to go back to functioning like a beaut.

Yep, just going to focus on the panel and not on the blond, nameless coat guy who is standing behind him at the other end of the room, reeking of smoke and bad choices. Tucker has the feeling this dude will be here for a while. Might as well get used to him. After all, he's going to be working here for a long time. And a weird coworker is better than a backstabbing High Priest or infighting for the throne.

Chapter Text

Tucker's been stared at a lot. Like, a lot a lot.

First, as an heir to the throne of Egypt and then as a Pharaoh, then as a total loser at the bottom of the pecking order. He has been stared at as the low class friend of a rich girl, a suspected ecto-conspirator when the GIW are in town, or as a possible pawn by Vlad. Then comes being a human in the Ghost Zone, and being stared at as a pharaoh-to-be again, but this time with the added bonus of being arm candy to two very cool people who are powerful in their own right.

Still, though, this right here? This is annoying.

"Hello, WatchTower door. Hello, WatchTower security cameras. Hello, WatchTower creep."

It has been a solid week and a half of this dude following him around at work. He hasn't been watching him in his own house like he's sure someone with a cape has been doing, but this is honestly probably worse than the off-hours invasions of privacy from anybody else so far. The blonde guy with the, uh... generous waft of old cigarettes is lurking behind him like a centurion on duty. Or maybe a guard dog. Tucker clinks his class ring pointedly against its golden compatriot in the silence, underscoring the lack of response from his most blatant stalker.

"This is where you say 'Why, hello, Mr Foley. Nice to see you. Again. Still doing your job as both a cool and valuable employee. And might I say how handsome you are?'"

The blonde man seems to shrink back a little at being directly addressed. His hand hand drifts to the inside of his coat. Tucker slowly raises his hands.

Last week, Silent Stalker had brought out a pointy chunk of amethyst the size of a softball and pressed it against his head in the middle of the hallway. Aside from feeling like the one time he got thrown through the Ghost Catcher, all it did was smear his fresh layer of lotion across the rock. Stalker hadn't even stuck around to argue when Tucker had declared it his. He’d basically licked it, after all. It’s his now.

The day before yesterday, the dude had set up some sort of circle of runes across the entrance of the server room. Walking through it felt like forgetting your sandals during a hot day on the beach and whatever this guy did to Tucker’s keyboard had him vaguely itchy on his palms by the end of the day. Needless to say, Tucker is not looking forward to whatever Stalker was planning to whip out this time.

"Don't make this a hostile work environment, man. I just want to do my job."

"Is that really all you want?" Well, hot damn, he speaks!

"Well yeah, Stalker. I mean- I'd like to know your name and all, but I", Tucker emphasizes by pressing his manicured hands to his chest, "am here," he waves at the walls, golden bracelet banging against his Smart Watch, "to fix computers." He aims a finger at his desk and the laptop docking station atop it. "The gift of my presence is just a bonus for everyone that I am providing free of charge. No strings attached."

"Am I supposed to believe that?"

"Uh, rude, man." Stalker doesn't seem to hear him, still going on.

"You're aligned with the Ghost King, being chased from incarnation to incarnation, and you’ve somehow survived being hunted by two incredibly powerful spirits. Am I supposed to take you at your word that you're fine faffing about, helping mortals who can't remember their own passwords for your whole life?"

"I mean, the passwords and the glitchy software updates are annoying but I'm mostly in it for the computers. Gotta work my way up the ladder until I level up to specialist." Blonde guy stands there, jaw ajar. Tucker sighs. "Look, you have questions, I get it. Everybody wants to get to know me," he bluffs shamelessly. "But this is weird and invasive and not doing it for me. So let's try this again."

"Hi," Tucker greets, channeling every scrap of diplomacy he can conjure. He extends a hand and the offer of a ceasefire in this two man cold war. "I'm Tucker Foley, a doubly married guy with a spoken for afterlife and a love for the coolest technology. And you are?"

Stalker freezes, hand still hovering inside his coat. His fingers are trembling. Tucker takes a step forward, ignoring every social cue that said he was approaching a terrified, cornered man the same way he ignored every cue that girls in high school weren't interested. This time, like all those other times, ‘fake it till you make it’ fails to work.

Instead of a name finally, all Tucker gets for his poorly executed attempt at an armistice is a handful of white powder thrown in his face, settling on his shoulders and hair. Probably staining his beret, too. He can already feel whatever this is clogging his pores and turning his glasses into a field of white.

It turns out diplomacy sucks.

"Dude, seriously? Get out." A second handful splats against his face. "Now is good."

***

Stalker's name, he finds out from coworkers annoyed with him skulking through the server room like he's the ghost in this equation, is John Constantine.

Apparently Mr. Constantine does in fact work for the Justice League on a slightly more permanent basis than one-off summonings and harassing people. What he actually does is slightly less clear, except that he has to deal with a lot of spirits, ghosts, and the like. Unlike the Fentons or Amity Park, he doesn't seem to have a good relationship with either side of the life and death equation. Considering what Amity's historical relationship with ghosts is, that's really saying something. Dude's probably seen some nasty stuff out there, working the beat without a Danny of his own. It would figure that he'd wig out when he heard about Tucker, Sam, and Danny.

Tucker's still pissed, though. Whatever John threw scratched the hell out of his glasses. He's had to switch to the old pair, the ones with the last gen cameras built into the frames. He’d discarded this pair when he discovered he could take better pictures with his eyes if his prescription was up to date. (That had been an interesting month: where he found out that his past life as a Pharaoh and constant exposure to ectoplasm was giving him some mild ghost abilities.) John's mystery powder also did stain his beret and it made his scalp itchy as all get out. That, in addition to all the standing around, and the staring, and the booby-trapping his keyboard, was seriously uncool.

Tucker submits the HR complaint from the safety of his home which is not booby-trapped by anyone other than him. And occasionally his husband and wife.

The response he receives is serious and prompt, which is more than he expected, actually. He has a past and future of being a Pharaoh but he's still more accustomed to his complaints lining the bottom of a bird cage, or being delivered directly into a trash can. Duul Aman had all sorts of power and expectations. Tucker Foley might be a handsome button pusher with a cool house, but he's still just a button pusher techno geek. As such, the quick reaction throws him for something of a loop.

Mr. Foley,

We have reviewed your claim that your coworker, John Constantine, has been invading your privacy and creating a hostile work environment. The Justice League takes these claims very seriously and I am investigating your complaint according to the policies and procedures outlined in your employee handbook. You will receive the results of our investigation within 20 working days.

R. Fiala

WatchTower H.R.

Twenty working days? That's basically a month! It has only been a week of this and he's already tired. At least when he was Duul Aman people loved him and listened when he told them to go away. Now he's getting stalked without any of the respect or adoration.

At least his coworkers don’t know and aren’t bothering him.

***

"So you're a pharaoh or something?" Jesse, a perpetually tanned Florida woman with an equally perpetual smile and some very clean coding skills, slides into the seat next to him in the cafeteria.

"Right, now, what I am is on lunch." Tucker takes a bite of his meal. It’s last night’s leftover roasted lamb in pitas with a side of hummus that definitely wasn’t made with Duul Aman’s best chef’s 28 ingredient recipe. He only gets to live once, so sue him.

Well, twice, but shut up.

"So you're one of them." Jesse peels off the lid from her own lunch, a big Tupperware bowl of fruit salad, as always.

"You take that back, I am not one of them!" He raises a hand to his chest in dramatized affront. Jesse aims a doubtful look his way. Her raised eyebrow is a visual scoff.

"Extra special secret history, dramatic sense of style, weird ass behavior,” she lists off on her fingers, stopping to pull out a hot pink fork and spearing a piece of fruit. “You look like one of the Extra Special Club from where I'm sitting."

"Nu-uh," Tucker protests, briefly devolving back into a preschooler. "I'm just a normal, regular guy with a job lined up for me after I kick the bucket. And I do not have a dramatic sense of style. I have a cool aesthetic taken to reasonable lengths and no further."

"Foley, the only reason you aren't the office kook is because you got hired the same time as Fariha. Everyone just assumed you never got over your Egypt phase, like her and horses."

"I am not nearly as 'themed' as Fariha. You take that back." Fariha has a saddle blanket draped over her chair, photos of her horses in barn door shaped frames, and a herd of at least twenty little plastic horse figurines on her desk. Her sticky notes are horseshoe shaped for crying out loud.

"Yeah, you're worse." Jesse smirks around the chunk of cantaloupe distending her cheek. "The name tag on your laptop bag is one of those kar-douche things."

"It's called a cartouche," Tucker corrects, hurting his own cause.

"Cartouche, yeah. And the Egyptian cat phone charger?"

"That was a gift."

"Yeah, it was gifted because they knew you'd like it."

"I like anything that charges my phones."

"Mhmm, and the jewelry? You have so many ankhs that Tanya was worried you were going to be an 'Ankh Brother.' I still don't know what that is, by the way." Jesse impales a peeled grape on her fork and points it at him. "So, yeah. Plus that fancy eye-thing with the swoop in your fade. We all thought you were just a normal man who was super into Ancient Egypt."

"I am a normal, if unusually attractive man-"

"Oh please, you're an eight at best."

"Unusually attractive and cool man," he continues. "And I know that because I convinced the two best people ever to marry me. I've got a slightly less than normal history, but all it does is attract crazies and Indiana Jones types. It's usually more trouble than its worth to bring up so, I'm not trying to advertise it or anything."

"Your cufflinks at the New Years party were scarabs. Let's be transparent here, you weren't hiding anything."

"How do you even remember that?"

"Blue Beetle was pissed he didn't think of it first."

"Any one ever tell you you've got a mind like a steel trap, lady?"

“Only when they’re on the wrong end of it.”

***

It was rude as hell to follow him everywhere but it was especially rude to corner a guy in the bathroom. Did magicians have no sense of privacy? Of honor? Of the sanctity of the bathroom?! And he knows that Mr. Johnny Creeper isn't just here to pee because he's monitored this bathroom hallway. He knows no one goes down here but him and the engineers since its so far out of the way. But now Blonde John is here. Which is great, really. Just great.

"You know that I know that you don't use this bathroom, right?"

"It's a water closet. It's public."

“Can't an IT guy take a leak and wash his hands in peace?”

Silence.

"Can it at least wait until I'm in the hall, man?" Tucker makes eye contact through the mirror with the dude hanging out by the urinals despite everything about this situation. John nods slowly before skulking back out the door he came in.

With common goodness and order restored in the bathroom, Tucker takes a minute to stash his clean beret in his pocket and swap out his backup glasses for his backup-backup glasses. He's not about to go replacing two pairs. As close to ready as he's likely to get, he exits into the metal hallway where Creepy McCreep is leaning creepily against the wall.

"Duul Aman," Johnny Stalker Constantine intones. The sound of it skitters across Tucker's brain distantly. He feels both lighter and heavier for hearing it said this way, by this man. The part of him that is pleased by the recognition is buried by the practical part that says that this can only bring ghostly trouble.

"Tucker Foley now, actually. I know we've been over this. And I’m pretty sure HR has been, too."

John rubs his face with an aggrieved sigh and a muffled "Yep, tha's just great." He straightens himself out of his perpetual slump. He seems, not larger, but sturdier somehow as he seems to unfold. "You're married to the Ghost King?"

"And Queen," Tucker points out. John makes intense eye contact that frankly feels a little uncomfortable in the silence of the engineering hallway.

"Willingly? You're tied to the throne of your own free will?"

"Uh, yeah. Did you think I got kidnapped and Stockholm syndromed or something?"

John doesn't back down, still staring intently.

"Wait, do you seriously think that?" Tucker balks.

The man shrugs noncommittally. "There are plenty of ways to be tied to another, and I don't need to tell you that not all of them are pretty and nice."

Well, fuck. Tucker was pissed about the glasses and the stains and the booby trapping. He still is really. But he's done some weird stuff in the name of ghost hunting. If John thought he was being overshadowed or bride-napped, then what he's been up to is almost tolerable. Almost.

Darn it, he's going to have to try diplomacy again. Tucker slides a hand under his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose, warding away the stress headache before it starts.

"Danny is not the type to kidnap-marry someone. And even if he was, Sam wouldn't let him. I'm married to both of them because they're both good people. Sam cares so much about the environment, and Danny just wants to help everyone, even when it's a stupid idea that makes more work for us. There is no problem here."

"You're running from them, Foley. They want you dead."

"Look, dude. I've gotta die some time. The traps and tricks are not actual threats. They're just being pouty because I don't spend as much time at home as I used to. If I seriously said to stop, they'd leave me alone, but I don't want that and neither do they. We all know where I'm going after I die. We are all cool with it. It's a non-issue."

"But you're running." John utters, wary and confused.

"If I could still make day trips out without causing a mass panic in the Apple store or get a spot in line for an OST signing around my upcoming workload, I'd already be home, getting better cell towers in the 'Zone. I don't know how to make this more clear to you, man. Marriage is funny like that. Full of compromises. Have you considered getting married? Might do wonders.”

Tucker walks away when no response comes.

***

Tucker receives the email just as he's sitting down to work.

Either the Justice League's computers are responsive to the users' work habits or someone's heavily violating his privacy. He has a strong feeling it's the latter, but he makes enough money here that he's comfortable with them chipping away at his privacy a little. The public is just dying to know about him, it only figures the private sector would be too. And he has a feeling he knows what the subject of the email is, considering it's coming to his work account.

Tucker can't interface with his work laptop and electronics the way he can with his personal stuff. They're very solidly Not His and they're not ecto-boosted beside. He has to go the slightly more manual route of fingerprint unlocking his computer and telling it to bring up his email while he double checks that there aren't anymore spiritual booby-traps hanging around. It's thankfully clear, and he plants himself in his chair to confirm his suspicions. He has a request for a meeting with HR in an hour.

There's two things this could be about; John or Danny. Then again, life has a way of reminding him there are always third and fourth options, plus All of the Above. Tucker likes to keep his mind open, given that his life has a way of punishing him if he doesn't, so he tries not to go into the meeting with too many expectations.

HR is further in towards the center of the WatchTower's labyrinthine layout than his office is. It takes him almost half an hour to find the darn place. The door is ajar, beckoning him in when he arrives. The man behind the desk is typing rapidly. His space bar punctuates the lighter taps of letters on his keyboard arrhythmically. His nameplate reads Ronald Fiala.

"Excuse me, Mr. Fiala, I was asked to come in for a meeting." Mr. Fiala, a blonde man with brown eyes and a thin face, finally looks up from his work and waves Tucker in. "I hope you don't mind that I'm early, or anything."

"Mr. Foley," He gestures at the two chairs in front of his desk. "Please, have a seat. I need to finish with this. It will only be a moment."

"No rush, Mr. Fiala. Take your time." Tucker eases into the chair on the left, hands fiddling with the edge of his wedding band. Like every professional office there is, there's one of those ‘Hang In There' posters on the wall, except this one features Pantha clawing her way back onto a branch. He hopes she got paid handsomely for that.

"Alright, Mr. Foley," Mr. Fiala chirps. The man rolls back from his desk, wheelchair shining in the office light as he moves to the printer in the corner where he retrieves a handful of papers. "Thank you for your patience. "

"It's no problem, I did come early after all."

Mr Fiala rolls back to his desk, sticking the papers on a clipboard and rummaging through his pen cup."Your punctuality serves you well, but we still have to wait for our third party."

Okay, so it is about John or Danny. The question now is which one is it?

The arrival of Batman in full cape and everything doesn't serve to clear things up right away. He closes the door behind him with a click. The superhero drags the chair to the side of the desk, facing both the other people in the room. Just having him in the room feels like being back in Principal Ishiyama's office.

"Thank you for coming, Batman."

"Of course, Mr. Fiala. Now, Mr. Foley, in light of recent discoveries, the Justice League would like to ask you a few questions and possibly renegotiate your employment contract, if you're still willing to work with us." Okay, so it's the Danny thing.

"Sure thing, Mr. Batman, let's get this squared away."

After an overview of what power he holds in the politics of the Infinite Realms (not as much as Danny, but still a lot), if he has any mortal enemies (HotepRa and a couple backstabbing advisors, aside, most of the enemies belong to Danny), and how he expects it to interact with his job (not at all outside of a small possibility of Technus showing up for parole reasons), Mr. Fiala and Batman slide over the papers printed earlier on a clipboard.

It's a list of updated access permissions, which are higher than he expected, expanded job responsibilities, and a very welcome sizable raise. CyberTruck Tuck is back on the menu! As for his responsibilities, there's the normal IT stuff he was already dealing with, alongside some rights to negotiate with afterlife entities on behalf of the Justice League, and assist in passing otherworldly messages, which is basically IT work with ghosts.

There is a slight problem, though.

"There may be one itty bitty huge problem with this," Tucker says pointing at the printed clause. "Will I be required to talk to, or for, John Constantine?" Tucker looks pointedly at Mr. Fiala who doesn't give anything away in his returned gaze.

"We are aware of Mr Constantine's previous actions and we can assure you that we have spoken with him regarding his behavior."

"Yeah, so have I. Multiple times. I'm still not touching anything to do with that dude's postmortem experience with a barque pole."

"And that includes working with him?" Batman interjects.

"Look. When you speak for someone, you claim them as someone in your corner, so to speak, as allies or vassals or friends. I feel I have experienced enough as an employee and heard enough about him to officially decide that I do not Claim that man, or anything to do with him, in any sense of the word." Tucker waves his hand to the side, as if brushing an imaginary John away. Mr. Fiala's eyes track the movement before coming back up to Tucker's face. “I get that he’s trying to help, but it’s just not happening. He can get into a fight with another ecto-filtrator on his own time as long as he keeps me out of it.”

Mr. Fiala's gaze flits between Tucker and Batman.

“Understood.” The caped crusader grunts. “I’ll see what we can do.”

***

"This is so cool."

"I know, right?"

"I can't believe this." At the sound of Sam’s hiss, two pairs of eyes, one naturally green, the other ecto-green, both look over at the third person in their group. The trio are covered head to toe in white Hazmat suits. Danny and Sam's ghostly glows are dimmed through the tinted helmet windows, barely noticeable under the stark lighting.

"Sam?" the King of Ghosts asks his equally deceased wife.

"These mosses aren't carbon based and they're thinking of introducing them to privately owned earth gardens without even testing how it would interact with animals?" She's bent over a tablet, scowling. The lab technician behind her is nodding emphatically.

"Sam, I got us permission to look at the plants," Tucker emphasizes. "Not the grants." His gaze hops between Sam and Danny, who are now both looking over said tablet, and Wonder Woman who is their WatchTower chaperon.

"Oh, sorry, right." Sam hands the tablet back to the lab tech with a muttered "You're so right, Wanda. No way that's getting funding." Wanda smiles viciously and takes it, walking away from them and into the decontamination chamber. "Please, go on."

"You have quite the passion for plants, I see, Mrs. Manson. We are honored to have your opinions on our forthcoming experiments, but perhaps in a more official capacity. My colleagues do get nervous." Wonder Woman gently corrals all three of them away from the xeno-botany labs and into the decontamination chamber Wanda left through earlier.

"Yeah, Sam. Let's not get Tuck fired." Danny's head swivels on a dime, examining the decontamination chamber's solid steel doors with curiosity. "Are these the same kind of doors on my parent's stuff?" He stares straight into the mister as it sprays them all down.

Tucker shrugs. "Far as I can tell, yeah. Your parents are a couple generations behind of course."

With a ding, the door on the far side opens, and everyone leaves to shed their suits. Sam and Danny both go intangible, phasing through them before hanging them on the suit rack. Tucker steps out of his the long way, unzipping and struggling not to trip on the fabric. His glasses take a minute to defog from the helmet.

"So, now that we've seen the botany labs, the xeno-botany labs, the lounge, the view port, and the gravity generator. That's pretty much everything I think we can get you two into, unless you want to check out the cafeteria or something."

"Actually Tuck, we were kind of curious about your office."

"Uh..." Tucker would normally love to show off his office. Everyone should see what excellent organization and technological advancement should look like when applied to such humble settings as a work desk. However… "Maybe another time? Or I can show you a pictu-"

Sam continues her long streak of not letting him get away with things by not letting him weasel out of the situation.

"Is that stalker still there?"

"Maybe."

"Stalker?” Wonder Woman comes closer, having hung up her own suit. “Are you speaking of Mr. Constantine?” Sam turns toward the Amazonian, ghostly glow more apparent outside of her suit and even more visible with her annoyance. There is a flash of canine when she talks.

“Oh, I don’t know. Blonde hair, five foot nine, tried to banish Tucker from his own office? That the guy?”

Tucker’s face pales as Danny’s eyes threaten to bug out of his head.

“He did what?” Danny runs his hands down Tucker’s sides, swooping under his jaw to his pulse with his left and his heart with the right. “Are you okay?” Danny’s hand rests over his chest before phasing into it, brushing up against his consciousness way too intimately to be happening in front of Wonder Woman or anyone he has to work with.

“I’m still at work, Danny! Stop!”

“Uh I… Sorry.” Danny floats backwards with a blue tinged blush, keeping his limbs to himself. “I was worried.”

“I know you are, dude. Just, not in front of my coworkers.” Danny’s blush intensifies and he folds his hands behind his back, whistling quietly. Tucker ignores the blood rushing to his own face to frown at Sam. “What happened to letting me handle it, Sam?”

“It’s been a month, Tuck. Do you think I’m just going to let this dude creep on you when a person capable of getting him to stop is right there?” Sam raises both hands to gesture at Wonder Woman. “You don’t have to take after Mrs. Fenton and have a Vlad of your own.”

“Dude! No! John’s less Vlad and more a cross between Klemper and Wes. He thinks he’s helping but really doesn’t ‘get’ it. He’s not trying to creep on me or anything. I’d have Fenton Lipstick’d him.”

“Plasma Peach?”

“Because I’m worth it!” Sam smiles a bit at Tucker’s reflexive boast. It falters when he continues. “But no, seriously, Sam. I wanted to take care of this on my own. I know you have my back when I need you but I wanted to do this my way, you know?”

“I’m sorry, Tuck. I know you wanted to take care of it yourself but I hate seeing you upset. You deserve to have a full, peaceful lifetime doing what you love, and you can’t have that with someone breathing down your neck. “

“You didn’t want me upset, but now I’m still upset about him and that you tried to take the reigns.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll do better respecting your choices, even if it’s less than great.”

“It’s okay, Sam. I forgive you.”

“Man,” Danny cuts in. “It’s still so weird hearing you two have adult conversations. I still kind of expect to have to be Switzerland.” Tucker’s hand in his face cuts off any more smugness.

“Shut up, Danny, and let’s go get something to eat. I’ll go de-booby-trap my office later.”

***

Tucker’s first sense of the incoming ghostly presence is the faint hint of static build-up in the cheap, gray carpet of the IT offices.

The tingles prick through the insulating leather of his shoes and socks to sting lightly at his feet. Then comes the pleasant, slightly irritated recording of his loving wife saying “Ghost Alert, Dummy” from his Apple Watch. Fariha leans to look over the desk divider at him, her horseshoe earring clanking against her headset. Then slowly, the headset lifts off of her head, rising into the air. Followed by her phone with its Appaloosa sticker, Yates’ tablet, and every lightweight piece of technology not nailed down.

A humanoid form rises from the floor, thin with a shock of white hair, hollow cheeked, cackling.

Yates jolts from her chair, already running for the door. Marlowe, conversely, has thrown himself over his desktop where his code has been compiling for the past five hours, clutching the monitor and tower to his chest like his firstborn children. Understandable. Most everyone else has frozen, hands hovering over emergency buttons that fly away, yanked from reach towards the cackling ghoul.

“I, TECHNUS! MASTER OF ALL-”

“Master of nothing, you pixel stained techno-peasant, I’m in the middle of work!” The specter looks down at the very annoyed human tapping his foot imperiously from the cheap plastic glory of his ergonomic desk chair. “Drop the stuff, man.”

The whirlwind of assorted electronics comes to a stand still before dropping down onto Tucker who catches them on reflex. Twelve laptops, fifteen phones, two smartwatches, four tablets and five headsets make a thunderous clang on top of Tucker. He falls to the floor, pancaked under their weight.

“AH, ER… Sorry, Parole Officer Tucker!” Even if he’s not screaming to the ceiling anymore, Technus is still plenty loud. The entire office is now staring in a really not great way. “I have arrived to show you… this!”

Tucker takes a moment to allow the room to spin around him before he starts slowly shuffling the electronics off of his torso. The arm of his glasses presses into the side of his face as he rolls to his hands and knees. He hardly has time to recuperate before green and chrome and white flood his field of vision. It takes a moment to focus on what Technus is actually holding.

“Is that the IB15?” The IB15 is their literal pet project that both have been formulating on the side, despite the terms of Technus’ parole. After all, it’s not like Tucker currently has to enforce anything he doesn’t want to and the project is pretty rad.

Technological pets with functions and animal accurate behaviors was great enrichment for Technus while stretching Tucker’s own coding muscles in new and interesting ways. After a successful Roomba-Beetle, a wearable Mace Spitting-Cobra, and an Automated Lifeguard Crocodile (that only attacked the drowning victims a meager 15% of the time), the IB15 is the latest, made in the shape of an Ibis, naturally. It was designed to perform surveillance in marshy territories without shorting out.

“It is, Pha-role Officer Tucker! And I have mastered a new skill. The IB15 is now capable of patrolling not only the land and sea, but the sky as well! It can also now collect small creatures for Her Highness, the Queen, in its new stomach containment unit!” Technus lifts it into the air. The IB15 lets out a mechanized squawk before taking flight, circling Technus like a vulture. And pecking at his face.

“Ow! You see, this will- OW!- be the first in a new line of Security for the palace. The palace-” the ghost grins, ignoring the crowd of IT specialists hovering nervously behind him,“-and NOT the world!”

“Nice! I’ll try to have an updated behavioral code for you to work with by next week. Good job on the attainable goals, by the way. Securing the palace is a great idea. With great ideas like that, you might consider becoming a tutor in the future.” Tucker’s approving grin falters somewhat when Technus responds.

“Don’t patronize me.”

The ghost and ghost-to-be stand there in painful momentary awkwardness.

“So, anyway,” Technus says, grin returning without delay, “see you next month?”

“Sure, Technus, but I’ll come to you,” Tucker shoots him a finger gun and a smile that morphs into a stern look, and a sterner point. “Really, I’ll come to you. Don’t come here again.”

“Of course, Core-Conspirator!” Technus cackles.

“Don’t call me that. Goodbye.”

“GOOD BYE!” Technus howls, diving through the floor before popping his head up like a green gopher. “BY THE WAY, YOUR COMPILING IS DONE!”

And he’s gone again. Leaving Tucker here next to a pile of electronics, being stared at by his coworkers.

Sigh.

Chapter Text

Not everyday can be spectacular.

Some days are boring days. For Tucker it has been a boring week. Nothing but minor inconveniences to be smoothed over and routine software updates that always have some easily exploitable hole. An exploitable hole (grow up, Danny) means more time spent patching said hole enough to function until the next update. 

Normally this sort of thing is something Tucker can find entertaining or at least kind of amusing, but after last week’s visit to Amity for Sam’s Shuffling Off The Coil Anniversary Shindig, the glitz and gleam of the WatchTower is slightly duller in comparison. The day and a half spent hanging out with the two people that meant the most to him felt like being back in the best days of highschool summer, when the ghosts were defeated in less than an hour and they could lay around listening to rock bands and eating over priced fast food. Going back to a job where even the floor was part of a computer was good and all but it would have been better if he had Sam around to ask how environmentally friendly to build it all.

To not put too fine a point on it, Tucker Foley is a little in his own head.  Even Stalkin’ John’s invasive behavior fails to completely engage him. The Spirit Bottle trap near the door when he returns from the bathroom doesn’t inspire more than an eye roll. He turns on his heel to go get some jerky from the cafeteria vending machines. He’ll tattle on John to HR on the way back.

The hallways leading to the cafeteria are either deserted or congested. A few people hang around corners in muttering groups that peer down halls like human security cameras. Anyone solo or not involved in a conversation hustles past him and each other, keeping a wide berth. Those already talking go quiet when he draws near. It's strangely out of character for the normally unflappable staff of a satellite full of superheroes. Eh. Honestly the whole thing feels like being back in high school. He'll worry about it later when the ennui wears off.

He pulls out his phone, running an eye over his bitcoin before switching to Candy Crush for a few minutes of soothing pattern matching. With the people clinging to the edges of the hallway, he’s free to look at his phone without paying too much attention to his surroundings. He makes it to the elevator no problem. It’s when the floor number on the elevator ticks over that his phone stops his game, proclaiming “Ghost Detected.”

When the doors open on the main floor there’s a redheaded woman there, pacing in circles. The ghost -because that’s what she is- shrinks back from the opening doors as if afraid before registering who it is. She meets his eyes. She’s at least ten years older than him with a soft and round face. Also, she’s tiny. It’s a stretch to say she’s an inch over five feet tall. Her ghostly form is translucent, like she’s been set to fifty percent opacity with a very dim glow except for her eyes. He thinks he’s seen her before. He only remembers to get out when the doors to the elevator try to close and he has to throw himself out, into the hall way. Right next to the ghost.

They stand there. He looks at her. She looks at him. “Umm, Hi?”

In response, the ghost opens her mouth and releases a flood of hushed whispers layered over each other fused with the crackle of splintering wood. Tucker winces, taking a half step back. Oh, that’s Ghost. She’s speaking Ghost, still. She must be FRESH fresh. Ghosts that spend any time out of the ‘Zone usually spend time around humans and relearn to speak living languages pretty quickly. If she’s out here, giving Tucker a headache at ten in the morning, she’s definitely new.

“Okay, ow. I’m going to assume you just asked if I can see and hear you and the answer is yes, unfortunately. Because you’re speaking Ghost. You should be able to speak English again in a couple days, but for now, please try to keep it on the DL.” She doesn’t need to speak for her face to scream frustration. Understandable, really.

“Wait a second, haven’t I seen you before?” The ghost nods slowly. Tucker snaps his fingers as the realization hits.“Yeah, In the cafeteria line! It was pork chop day. I skipped bringing lunch just so I could have 'em. They had them seasoned juuust right." He sighs in remembered satisfaction, hand on his stomach. That had been a good day. "So I guess you’re not here because you love spa-Woah, hold on!”

The dead woman grabs hold of Tucker’s phone holding arm, and begins frog-marching him down the nearest the stairwell and through the corridors of the next floor down. One cluster of people lingering around corners back up and scatter at his stumbling approach. The rest don’t seem to notice him being basically pulled by his ear to where a custodian is wheeling a trash cart away from the bathrooms. She lets go of his hand to point angrily at the janitor, wrap her hands around her own neck and shake before pointing right back at -according to the name tag-  Adair.

Tucker is, of course, a genius but he doesn’t have to be to put two and two together.

He steps aside at the bathroom doors, letting Adair the Presumptive Murderer move past him. He’s not about to confront a murderer. Nu uh. No way. He’s going to stand right here until he’s no longer in grabbing distance. New Ghost on the Block shouts something that lances through his head like Dash’s double decker knuckle sandwich.

“I’m already heading to HR, woman! Don’t scream at me!” he hisses, inadvertently scattering another passing group of coworkers. Two fingers slip beneath the bridge of his glasses, trying to push back the headache. He’s totally going to need an ice-pack later. “Look, we can walk there together. Alright?” Red Head the Angry ghost nods, eyes glued to Adair’s back. “Cool, let’s go.”

Tucker leaves HR with an assurance that Adair Cromwell will be detained and investigated immediately and yet another filed complaint against Long John Stalker. He also leaves with a ghost soon-to-be cut loose from a budding obsession.

Most ghosts that hung around were those that had accidents or were NeverBorn. Tucker hadn’t seen a murder victim until he was twenty seven, if you didn’t count Vlad which no one did. They always focused in on their murderer to the extent of rarely interacting with other ghosts and when the murder died or was caught they vanished, no longer having anything to exist for. Chances are he wouldn’t ever see this lady again after this week.

Sure enough, her already faint body is starting to loose what little opacity she had before, becoming calmer. There’s still enough of her left to float up and give him a brief hug. He doesn’t have to be a genius to get this, either. 

“No worries, always glad to help a fellow pork chop fan.” She laughs - silently, thank goodness. Between one blink and the next, she’s gone, sinking into the floor to follow the investigation in progress. His phone drops the ghost alert, bringing him back to his game of Candy Crush. With no further reason for him to hang around outside of HR, Tucker goes back to being hydrated and staying in his own lane. He’s two minutes from the cafeteria and the teriyaki turkey jerky in the machine.

Maybe there will be something less boring to do when he gets back to his desk.

***

Tucker is back to having the time of his life.

No matter what Danny and Sam say, all the struggle with unreliable software, unexpected ghost encounters, and the ever un-deterrable John the Creep is totally worth it for this moment. Tucker Foley is standing in the actual Bat Cave. In front of him sits the Bat Computer. More powerful than any fifty computers on the market combined, with probably enough memory to write the last thousand years of human history and then some on its RAM. He couldn’t care less that Batman’s behind him, probably recording every single thing he does; he’s going to get to work on the Bat Computer and he’s getting paid for it!

“You will have access to the mainframe, but memory is currently offline.” Batman says, turning on the beautiful, fabulous piece of technology. The computer is completely silent as it wakes up. Not a single shift in the air pressure occurs from a fan. Her heat-sinks must be massive. Maybe they’re built into the walls. He can’t wait to find out. Batman types in a password. “You’ll be able to ghost-proof the entire computer system?”

“Yeah, I can ghost-proof it for the most part. I can’t get it as ghost-proof as my own stuff,” Tucker says, eyes already pouring over the keys. “It’s not mine. But we can get you a decent firewall.” Tucker doesn’t notice Batman mentally filing that comment away, too enraptured with the legendary machine in front of him. 

“But with tech like this, this beauty can handle herself once you get things moving. So, easiest way to do things here is to install shielding around the memory banks and have the computer itself shut down automatically when a ghost is detected.” Tucker pauses, looking back at the cowl wearing man. “Not to be rude or anything, but do you know if you’re haunted? Because this place is amazing and all,” he waves a freshly manicured hand at the cave at large, “But if any place is haunted, a big spooky cave would probably be it.”

“No known ghosts, Mr. Foley.”

“Okay, then. Auto shutdown it is.” Batman moves to the side, allowing Tucker unobstructed access to the keyboard. He slides into the chair, eagerly. “Let me just install the Shield GDM and add the executable. Is there a USB port? Thanks.” Tucker pops the USB in at Batman’s direction and begins typing away.

“Shield GDM?” Batman is lurking behind him again, but this time it’s not down his neck, so he’ll take it.

“Ghost Detector Mini- a simplified version of the Ghost detection modules formerly available in Amity. They don’t sell them anymore, but the basic detection module is easy to make if you know how and have the right supplies. This one’s part of a shield generator.” Tucker pulls the shield generator out of his pocket. Roughly the size and thickness of three PDAs melted together, it fills Batman’s huge, beefy hand when he takes it from the programmer. “This shield isn’t very large and probably won’t cover your entire cave, but it should cover the computer and most of the area around it.”

“Will it require any particular power source?”

“Nope! Just hook it up and it should draw power from the computer as long as the computer itself has power. It used to require a whole generator. We really streamlined the accessibility for the mini versions, even if we did have to make some power level concessions.” With a totally earned flourish, Tucker finishes and hits enter, launching the Specter Spotting Simple program. The logo of a frowning, grey ghost and the words “Input Disrupted” appear on screen. The USB is pocketed next. 

Batman steps to the side as Tucker rolls the chair back. “It’s not as strong as the old versions, I take it.” 

Tucker scoots out of the chair and drops to the floor at Batman’s feet. Flat on his back, he wiggles under the console. Tucker takes a moment to readjust his glasses.

“Yeah, no. The full versions are capable of handling ghosts up to ecto-level fifteen. Minis only handle ten and below. Do you have lights down here?” Circular indents on the floor light up, brightening the area. “Thanks. Shielding?” He reaches a hand out from under the console. Batman obliges him by setting the hunk of circuitry in his waiting palm. “Most ghosts don’t get above level six. You should call Danny if you get anyone higher than that. Ghosts that powerful don’t usually just drop in for a casual brawl.”

“Noted. Will this interfere with our ability to contact the Ghost King, if needed?”

“It’ll still shut down your computer if you don’t disconnect the GDM beforehand, but he’ll still be able to get through the shield if you need him. Aaaand done!” 

Tucker removes himself from the floor as quickly as possible, eager to hit the button and see his hard work come to fruition on the Bat Computer. The two men watch the ghost icon turn green. The little ghost frown is now a smile. Tucker smiles back. So what if it’s a little undignified to grin like a loon watching a program boot up? He earned it. He could die happy right now, if it didn’t mean he’d never get the chance to do an upgrade on this later down the line.

‘Specter Spotter Simple Online’ the program proclaims on the LCD the size of his living room wall. It’s glorious. His work - well, mostly the Fentons’, but still- on the main stage of the BatComputer? It’s a struggle to compress his huge grin down into something more appropriate on a thirty five year old man. Keep it cool, Foley. He takes a moment, returning to the keyboard and track pad to close the window.

“There! It’s now a background process that will automatically trigger if a ghost is detected. The GDM unit will flash and an audio visual alert will say ‘Ghost Detected’ on your screen and through your speakers. You’re as non-possessed and ghost proof as possible for a living, non-magic superhero to be. I’ll be available during work hours if there’s any questions.” He buffs his nails on his sweater. “Feel free to have questions anytime.” He smiles winningly at the brick wall that is Batman’s unmoving face. “Anything else you need while I’m here?”

“That will be all, Mr. Foley.”

“Thank you for your patronage, Mr. Batman. Now, which way is the tourism center?” 

“Tourism center?”

“Gotham has the highest ratio of bat themed merchandise and goth is literally in the name. I’m gonna stock up on chiropteran bribes, gifts, and Just-Because presents. Because a happy wife is a  happy life. And a happy husband, ” Tucker pauses, considering. “… doesn’t rhyme with anything. That’s kind of sad. So, yeah. Tourist traps?”

“I’ll drop you off.”

Gotham is huge. It wears its history on the sleeve of its old buildings nestled alongside billion dollar towers and the tiny alleyways that would never pass inspection if they were built today. It also wears its day to day with the same amount of bold grace as its history. It’s all distinctly different than Amity’s casual air or the, admittedly, pretentious attitude that surrounds his California apartment.

Thanks to the beauty of GPS tracking, he never gets truly lost as he hits every shop selling bat shaped things that aren’t just Batman logos. He wanders up and down the winding and slightly haunted streets and by twelve thirty, Tucker is carting a satchel full of bat knickknacks and starving. There’s still an hour and a half before the time Batman said he’d be back to pick Tucker up at the corner he was dropped off at. He lets the flow of the crowd carry him down the line of restaurant fronts.

“Oh look, it’s the Loser Patrol.”

Tuck has gone through a lot of surprises by this point in his life, but this is one he very much was not expecting to crop up for… ever, actually. He never expected to hear Paulina ever again, but here she is. Sitting at a bistro table outside some fancy restaurant Tucker doesn’t dare to try pronouncing, is Paulina Sanchez ...and the acting CEO of Wayne Enterprises?

“Paulina?” He knows who she is. He saw her every day in school for years, but the sheer bafflement of her presence has him double checking. “What are you doing here?”

“Ugh, I’m eating lunch with my boyfriend, obviously.”

That’s... not what Tucker meant. The last anyone had heard from Paulina she was going to NorthRidge Central Mall to grab some eyeshadow palette. That was five years ago. It was a thirty minute trip both ways. No one had heard a word from her since. Her MySpace was totally abandoned and by the time the popular crew had the idea of simply calling her, her number was out of service. Star had even resorted to talking to Tucker in person, where others could see, asking he knew where she was. They would have thought she died if it weren’t for the lack of a make over obsessed ghost haunting the whole of Illinois.

“Now, if you don’t mind, some of us are trying to enjoy a Thai Salad without loser stinking up the air.”

“Oh, come on!" Tucker swiftly exchanges befuddlement for offense. "We’re in the same industry, basically… kinda, I mean. Sorry Mr. Drake Wayne.”

The man in question, Mr. Timothy Drake Wayne, stops his mildly confused observation of their verbal ping-pong match to answer- only to be cut off by his date.

“Oh please. You’re someone with only two friends who couldn’t get a girlfriend for so long you replaced your lack of a social life with a PDA. Tim is a CEO in charge of a massive company who has good ideas that don’t involve trying to dress in his goth friend’s clothes to get into the girls bathroom.” Said CEO silently returns to watching this go down, fork in hand, eyes darting between them like he's trying to calculate something.

“Hey, I was covering first period for Sam so her parents didn’t get mad at her for skipping.” Tucker stands there, feeling Paulina’s gaze searing him alive when movement catches his eye. The leaves of Paulina’s salad are shifting on her plate without being touched. The stirring of the vegetables increases without the aid of wind or fork. Tucker takes a large step back that Paulina’s too busy berating him to notice. Mr. Drake Wayne does notice, cocking his head curiously, still chewing his mouthful of pasta, eyes narrowed.

“Whatever, weirdo. Go hang out with your little smartphone girlfriend or whatev-!” A gigantic hand made of leaves emerges from her salad, swiping at the spot Tucker was standing two seconds before. Paulina gasps and clamps her mouth shut in surprise, turquoise eyes bulging from her head. Across the table, Mr. Drake Wayne has jumped to his feet, body tense and fork held like a weapon.

Tucker is not surprised, like, at all.

“Nice try Sam, you know I don’t eat salads.” The hand pauses in its flailing and clawing before retracting its reach and snapping its fingers almost sheepishly. Tucker can almost hear her ‘aw darnit!’ The arm dissolves back into its constituent leaves on Paulina’s plate. Paulina, of course, chooses this moment to continue making her opinions known.

“Great! You’ve contaminated my salad! This is why no one likes you, in addition to all the other things no one likes about you!” The thirty year old woman huffs like the fifteen year old girl she must still be internally. She pushes back from the table and snatches up her purse, Mr Drake-Wayne’s laptop bag, his jacket and then his arm before stomping off with a “Let’s go, Timmy-Poo. This place is infested with freaks!” Watching her stalk away like it’s another day in the Casper High cafeteria reminds him.

“Hey! Wait!” He shouts down the busy Gotham sidewalk. “You need to call Star! Or your dad! Somebody!” But it’s too late. Her head of perfectly coiffed hair and the literal CEO of the local technological powerhouse have disappeared into the moving throng of people. Leaving him here to face the waiter with the bill. He resigns himself to being on the hook for it, because this is just what happens to him.

“What? Fifty dollars for a salad?!” What a world.

Chapter Text

“That’s just how those restaurants are. It’s more about the ‘experience’ than the actual food.”

“It was fifty bucks for a salad.” Tucker takes a surly bite out of his lunch, glancing across the space station table. It's been three days since his fieldtrip to Gotham and he's still angry about the unexpected bite out of his already weakened wallet. “It didn’t even have meat in it. It probably took all of ten minutes to make. What a waste of money.”

“You probably spend just as much money on fancy chefs, Mr. Super Special Pharaoh Foley,” Jesse smirks around her musk melon chunk. “No way you cook all this yourself.”

Jesse and her beloved fruit salad are sitting one seat over from him. Marlowe is sitting across from the both of them, the perfect range to observe Jesse in her natural habitat without putting himself in the line of fire like Tucker seems to have done. Yates (derogatory), who already didn’t like eating with them, had taken one look at him at the lunch table post-Technus and fled to presumably go eat lunch in a janitor’s closet instead. Fariha usually rounds out the IT table for the 9-3 EST shift, but her horse had a kid and she’s taking maternity leave or something. Quite frankly he didn’t want to know and was just happy no longer being the object of mockery for ten minutes. Looks like his ten minutes are up.

Today’s ‘All This’, as Jesse puts it, is roast gazelle (confiscated from Skulker) with rice and a dessert of tigernut cake.

“I do, actually. Or it’s takeout leftovers, but that costs money that could be going to upgrades, so that’s weekends only. I cook most of it myself.” 

“Didn’t you brag your hummus has 28 ingredients or something?” Marlowe comments around his mouthful of cafeteria spaghetti. Tucker can smell the unusually high liver content in the meat sauce; they usually don’t cut the ground beef with organ meats. The League probably switched providers.

“Yeah, but it only takes twenty minutes to make. Buy the stuff in bulk once and it lasts for months.”

“And don’t the chickpeas take, like, eight hours to soak? Then you have to mash them.”

“Soaking time doesn’t count. Soaking time isn’t really part of cooking time. You just put it in a pot and go to sleep.” Tucker waves the question away easily. “And if you’re mashing by hand, you really need to upgrade your kitchen. My food processor has a hummus setting and does half the work for me.”

“Then the processor is making it, not you.”

“Puh-lease. That’s like saying the oven bakes the cookies for you. I’m using it, I’m making the hummus.” He scoops up the conical tigernut cake and points it at Marlowe, ending his sentence with a large bite off the top.

“It also doesn’t-" Jesse pauses to swallow, continuing- "doesn't count if you have someone else pushing the button to make your hummus,” She doubles down. Tucker shoves the rest of the cake in his face.

“Hey! I totally made all this and I can prove it, too!” Tucker slaps his fork down on the table. “You, me, dinner. Next Saturday night at six. I’ll show you how good of a cook I am. You’re both invited to the Best Dinner Party in town.”

“Oh, a dinner party?” Tucker turns. Captain Marvel is behind him, stuffing the triangular corner of a grilled cheese into his mouth. "That sounds pretty cool."

“Yeah,” Jesse says smugly. “His King Pharaoh Foley here is going to make us a royal meal next Saturday. You should come with.” Captain Marvel shifts slightly, frowning.

“I don’t think you can just invite random people to someone else’s-“

“No, you’re invited too!” Tucker crosses his arms over his chest petulantly, throwing a glare back at Jesse next to him. “And then even Cap'n Marvel can see that I’m a good cook. And you’ll-“ Tucker almost says ‘You’ll be sorry you made fun of me,’ but he does not want to be fired and/or on another watch list at work. “Well, you’ll all see I can cook.” He shoves his stuff into his Fenton Spacial Lunchbox ( "It crams in more food per food!" ) and leaves the cafeteria for the safer climes of the IT offices.

Okay, that's not the most stylish end to this argument, but he can’t focus on that right now. He has a dinner party to plan. The menu’s going to be spectacular... once he decides what to make. He walks on auto-pilot, already fishing for his phone so he can look up something that has fruit in it. He suspects Jesse will rag on anything he serves if there’s not a little fruit in it. Gotta appeal to your audience.

Sadly, Bad Luck Tuck is more than a name, it’s a curse.

“I hear you’re having a dinner party, Duul Aman.”

“I hear you’re in shouting distance, Johnny No-Soul. And no, you’re not invited.” Tucker refuses to stop or even look at him. It will just encourage him. Sadly this does not stop the menace.

“No need to get your knickers twisted, mate. I just need a little assistance.”

“What you need is to go away before I decide to hit The Button.”

The Harassment Button is a beautiful thing that absolutely would have been used against a younger him, back in high school. The moment he hits it any hero nearby comes to quickly remove John from Tucker’s vicinity. Once it had been Zatanna, which was cool and awkward as hell at the same time. Usually it’s the Flash since he’s too fast for John to react to. Is it sad that this is the best they can do with someone they can’t afford to fire or ban from the premises? Yeah, kinda. But Tucker lives in hope that one day he’ll find someone who makes John more uncomfortable than his ex-girlfriend. 

“Why so hasty,” John sleazes, laying a companionable arm across Tucker’s shoulders that is... difficult to wiggle out of, actually. Is the guy bench pressing cars? He looks like a wet cat. Is he hiding it all under the coat? Tucker considers the logistics of letting himself drop to the floor like a sack of sand. It’s the safety of his glasses and his phones that keeps him upright. “Oh Great Pharaoh, Duul Aman, I come to you for a favor. Doesn’t that sound nice? Me owing you a favor?” Tucker doesn’t even have to quash the little swell of appreciation that normally comes with being Titled, it just turns sour and shrivels on its own. At least he doesn't reek of BloodBlossom smoke today.

Tucker is not a patient man. He wants his tech, his food, and his affection when he wants them and no later than that. His long term endurance test of John in the name of WatchTower access is an aberration that is swiftly coming to an end. And with the additional agitation of talking himself into a corner, he has something else to deal with and no fucks left to spend on this dick magician with worse luck than Johnny 13.

He digs his heels into the sterile steel of the hallway floors and turns his face toward the blonde guy manhandling him, uncaring of how far into ‘personal space’ they’re getting. Tuck cranes his neck back an inch so he’s not frenching the guy when he talks. It's still too close for comfort.

“First of all, you already owe me for stalking me. Actually, you owe me twice for not letting Sam at you like she wanted. Secondly I wouldn’t want you to owe me anything, because I know for a fact that you never pay up or make it not worth anyone’s while to actually get paid back. Third, I said to call me by my name. Tucker. Foley.” Tucker reaches up, jabbing the walking miasma in the chest. Said chest feels semi-buff while being weirdly hollow in a very strange way that’s probably ghost related. “And if you don’t mind, I don’t particularly care what you need. Whatever it is, you can get it yourself.”

“See, that’s the thing. I can’t do that… Get it, that is. Well, I could get it, but that would be difficult. And you can make it easier. I can save so many lives with that time. So, Great Pharaoh, I need you to give me permission to pass through the Duat.” Oh, did he just try to guilt trip T.F. Too Fine Tucker Foley? Tuck was never the bleeding heart of Team Phantom. That was all Danny, though Sam would say otherwise. This tactic doesn't work on him, but it would tie Danny right around this conman's little finger.

Oh, heck no. He's not letting this man anywhere near his neck of the afterlife. Not when he could try to emotionally blackmail Danny about it.

“No means no, dude.” And with a vicious scowl the John Harassment Button is activated.

It takes about four seconds for Captain Marvel to fly down the hall, scoop blondie up like used kitty litter and swoop away with a “See you next Saturday!” Ah sweet relief. Marvel’s getting two desserts.

Shit. He has to think of something for dessert.

***

The first dinner guest arrives unfashionably early to his California apartment.

It’s Jesse, who declares that she is here to see the servants he’s hiding. But first she has an incorrect opinion to voice.

“What are you wearing?”

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing? I think I look pretty fly.” He’s dressed down, but still decent enough to be seen in; an airy linen shirt with short sleeves, a nice pair of jeans and some regular shoes. He didn’t even go for much jewelry today, just some stud earrings and his wedding rings. Okay, okay, maybe an ankh or two. And a cool golden cuff for a nice dinner party. And a light dusting of cologne. He's casual, yes, but you've gotta keep it stylish.

"No one says 'fly' anymore,  Foley."

"Well, I'm bringing it back."

“Okay, Foley. Sure." Jesse rolls her eyes. "Which way is the kitchen?” She claps him on the shoulder, very reminiscent of Mr. Fenton. “Let’s see those servants.”

“Sure, here’s my loyal servant,” Tucker says shaking desert sand that wasn’t there a moment ago out of his two inches of sleeve. In scuttles Jewel.

“Is that a giant bug?” Jesse takes a large step back the way she came, perpetual smile wavering.

“It’s way better than a bug! It’s a beetle and a roomba!” Jewel trundles up to the small pile of sand on stainless steel legs and begins vacuuming with a quiet ‘beep boop’.  Tucker responds with a “Thanks, Jewel. You’re a gem.” He turns back to his guest with a grin and a flourish. “Jesse, meet Jewel Mark Five, fully automated floor cleaning scarab-bot. Jewel patrols the floor at regular intervals, vacuuming and self emptying into the trash can. It rolls anything larger than cell phone into a ball and deposits it into the box surrounding its docking station. You just gotta be careful not to step on her if you get up late at night.” Jewel finishes vacuuming, wandering off to go fight the good fight against sand.

“Huh. Why can’t you program anything useful like that for the office?”

“And leave my precious babies with the evening shift barbarians?” 

“Tanya is not a barbarian because she uses a flip phone, Foley.”

Tucker graciously decides to ignore the lie. Some people just refuse to accept the truth. “Anyway, come on in.”  Jesse bends down to take off her eye searingly pink shoes before he stops her with a “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“Wouldn’t do what?” she questions, fingers hovering over her laces.

“Yeah, you saw that sand? That’s not cause I went to the beach. It just happens. Turns out mummy’s curses also happen to the former mummies. Who knew? So, yeah. Jewel is doing her best, but it’s kind of everywhere. This is firmly a shoes-on house.”

Jesse looks over at Tucker’s Doc Martins and their fine dusting of grit along the bottoms. She pulls her hands back to her sides. “I’m not Extra Special,” She mutters under her breath. “I’m just a normal guy. Yeah, right.”

Tucker chooses, once again, not to hear her.

The rest of his dinner guests arrive on time, with far less derision of his sweet duds. Everyone settles into their chairs with good humor and empty stomachs. The roast duck with figs goes over well. He’s got plenty of spices from bulk making hummus and enough of said hummus to go with the bread for those looking to make their dinner slightly more hand held. Captain Marvel’s chowing down, having declared it the best thing he has eaten all week and asking for a doggy bag. Marlowe compliments the stuffing. Even Jesse has bent the knee to the idea of the well cooked food being his own handiwork after a quick look in the kitchen. The conversation is just as good as the grub.

“So, where’s the wife and hubby I’ve heard so much about?” Jesse shovels another forkful of fat coated figs into her face.

“Sam’s establishing an Infinite Realms nature preserve right now and working on reunifying some scattered wild lands. Danny’s... well, he's probably drowning in paperwork right now. They don’t really have too much free time to come and visit me outside of special occasions.”

“That sounds pretty lonely,” Marvel comments, gaze soft.

“I do miss them a lot, but we keep in touch. We call and text pretty much every day. I’m not totally alone.” Tucker takes a sip of his drink. Refreshing and tasty, a perfect compliment to the dinner. Give the gold to Foley. He’s done it again! “They come by to try to convince me to come live with them permanently, sometimes. It’s nice to know I’m wanted and all, but I feel bad turning them down.” Marlowe looks at him curiously.

“Why can’t you just part-time it? You’re married to ghosts, right? Can’t you just.... commute?” Marvel doesn’t say anything, mouth now full of rice, but he does nod in agreement with the suggestion.

“It's easy to get sucked into ghostly affairs when you're in the Infinite Realms. It’s always, ‘hey, can you come to this formal event with me? I just need a little advice’ and Boom! Next thing you know you’re neck deep in paperwork and by the time you look up, you’ve died and can’t go on vacation because you’ve got to file paperwork for dying.”

“You’re avoiding your husband and wife because they’ll ask you to do their paperwork?” Marlowe’s tone is definitely judgmental. If it wasn’t, then the raised eyebrow is.“I’d never do that to my wife.” No one comments on Marlowe's wedding ring-less fingers.

“They’re both fine with it. Mostly. They’d skip out on the paperwork part too, if they could. Right now they’re both competing to try and trick me into coming home early, giving up my Escaping Privileges. That or puppy dog eyes sad enough to put Cujo to shame.” Tucker clasps his hands together under his chin, pouting and doing his best impression of Danny and Sam’s hangdog looks. Everyone snorts a little.

“Whatever works for you, man, ” Marlowe laughs. Tucker basks in the glow of a successfully landed joke. Mmmm, social validation. It's opening his pores!

Everything’s coming up Foley. So of course things go sideways for him when he gets up to get dessert.

Tucker.exe encounters a problem as he looks into his kitchen. His skin raises up into goosebumps like he’s standing naked in a freezer. ‘Ghost Alert Dummy’ his phone proclaims, a bit redundantly. He maybe shuts his door a little too hard in response, because Marlowe asks if everything's okay when he comes back to the table empty handed, glasses only just starting to defog.

“Yeah, but I can’t get the dessert out of the kitchen.” He serves himself up another slice of meat and one of the few figs and dates that Jesse hadn’t monopolized.

“Is it too far back in the oven? I can get it,” Marvel offers, setting down the cup of orange juice he took instead of the wine everyone else is having. Hero types, always trying to help. Danny’s the same way when they’re all hanging out.

“Probably not a good idea, but thanks though.” He did not need a Capital I Incident the one time he has guests over.

“What’s wrong?” Jesse presses, still smiling. “Did it burn?” Now, Tucker could try to keep this quiet, or he could take the opportunity he’s been handed on a silver platter. After all, it would take a better man than Tucker to ignore it, so he doesn’t.

“No, my kitchen’s currently a no fly zone on account of the Aurora Borealis.”

Jesse rears back slightly, mouth curled into a confused smirk. Captain Marvel and Marlowe, however, both break into huge smiles. Hook, line and sinker.

“Aurora Borealis,” Marlowe drawls. “At this time of the year, in this part of the country, localized entirely in your kitchen?”

“Yeah.”

“Can we see it?” Marvel jokes, beaming.

“Sure guys, knock yourselves out.” That is not part of the script and they know it. Both of their smiles wilt until everyone’s face is a moue of confusion and disbelief.

“Wait,” Marlowe says, leaning over his plate, getting sauce on his shirt, ”for real? An actual Aurora Borealis?” Tucker nods, grin lighting up his handsome face.

“The weather phenomena?” Jesse deadpans.

“Yep” he chirps. “Kitchen’s right there.” He sits, working on a third serving of meat while his guests stand up and crowd around his kitchen door. Tucker takes the moment of inattention to be graceless, wedging a chunk of duck breast into his mouth and chewing quickly before joining them.

He can’t see over Captain Marvel’s size 37 shoulders or through Jesse and Marlowe’s bodies but he already knows that a cold weather lightshow is pouring out of the freezer he didn’t leave open earlier in the evening. Bands of blue and green wave across the walls of the kitchen, casting fantastic colors on the air fryer and Ninja blender. He stands behind them, feigning smooth disaffectedness when they turn back to stare.

“Is that normal” Marvel asks, “like, for you?” That’s better than Marlowe and Jesse, who can't seem to decide whether to gawp at Tucker or the kitchen.

“Nah. That’s Danny. He’s haunting my freezer and RAISING MY ELECTRICITY BILL!” Tucker shouts the last part into the kitchen. The flickering lights still and dim. Marlowe and Jesse take a few huge steps back, out of the doorway, barely not tripping on each other. This leaves a clear line of sight to the haunting site.

“Oh, C’mon, Tuck.” Danny’s exasperated voice filters in from the frozen peas and ice cubes. “It’s not like this is going to make a huge difference with all the things you’ve got running in here. I hope you’re not planning on turning the Lair into this.”

“For your information, Danny. I got half my stuff hooked up to the solar charger set ups on the balcony. The fridge is not and so that’s actually costing me money. And what’s wrong with my kitchen?” Tuck crosses his arms, both in offense and to defend himself from the pervasive chill creeping through the doorway.

The paused light show condenses, solidifying into a human form. With a crackle of splitting ice, Danny takes shape, hanging out of his freezer like a spooky television ghost with bad aim and a jumpsuit. He rests a cheek in one gloved hand, the other lightly muscled arm casually dangling over the fridge handle. He’s a lot bulkier than his fourteen year old self, though no where near his dad’s level of meatiness, and what would have been an easy-ish fit once now only works due to being intangible around the waist. And also being able to chose to not have legs at the moment, but he did that when he was fourteen, too.

“Tucker, your not-a-bachelor pad kitchen looks like my parents’ lab. I mean, a bread machine, a processor, a rice cooker, and I don’t even know what that one is. There’s barely any room to store the food, much less the dishes and silverware.” Danny puts the kibosh on his teasing to wave at the assemblage of curious onlookers. “Oh, hey, guys. How’s dinner?”

“Great, Mr. Ghost King” Marvel replies weakly.

“Yeah, Tucker’s a good cook when he’s, ya know, trying. It’s easier when the food isn’t trying to fight back, huh?” Danny drops the smile and throws a hand over his head, the other clutching at his bulky chest in a middle school level pantomime of anguish. “I’d love to have someone make me food just as good all the time, in my own home. But my husband is still in the land of the living. Woe is me!” He pauses, looking at Tucker who is unmoved.

“Really? That’s your best, Danny? Yawn.” The King of Ghosts drops the act and his arms, hanging limply from the fridge. He aims the puppy dog eyes Tucker’s way. They are, in fact, more effective than Tucker's earlier pantomime.

“Give me a break Tucker. I’m hanging out of a freezer, here. And I just got out of another lecture from the Observants. I’m running on empty.”

“Get out of the freezer and you can have a honey roll, babe.”

Danny braces both hands against the edges of the freezer and, vastly underestimating his strength once again, pushes. He goes flying into the wall with a startled yelp and falls to the floor. He blinks, looking down at the ground in front of him. “Jewel missed a spot.”

Tucker rolls his eyes.“That’s my boyfriend, ladies and gentlemen.”

“I’m your husband, Tucker.” Tucker edges past his guests to run into the kitchen while Danny’s recovering from his face plant. He swipes the tray of honey covered rolls from the counter with a quiet ‘yoink.’. Despite Danny’s frosty haunting, they’re still room temperature. Nice! Danny raises his hand, from his puddle on the floor. “Can I get a hand?”

“I know better than that, dude.” Tucker drops a roll into his palm instead, hustling out of the kitchen. “And you were my husband. You’re demoted for interrupting my dinner party.” Tucker hands the tray off to Marvel and closes the door on his downgraded spouse. “Better hurry back before Frostbite hears you were playing hooky and gives you the sad eyes” Tucker laughs through the door while Danny groans in frustration and teleports, taking the cold with him.

With no ghostly presence and the temperature of the apartment returned to normal, Tucker sets the retrieved plate down on the dining room table. He seats himself much more casually than his coworkers who awkwardly amble back to their places.

“So,“ he says, bulldozing the atmosphere, “Who wants dessert?”

🍰🎂👻📱

Okay, so.

Tucker’s plan for the day was to go to work, go home, and play some Doomed Online with Danny and Sam, or maybe see what Mikey and Nathan were up to. You know, all the usual things to make sure people don't forget about you when they're Christmas shopping. But the access to the WatchTower's personnel files’ backup server in Metropolis had been down for two and a half days. Tucker figured he could get a favor for later out of Marlowe if he went to do the satellite checks for him. So his plan became: Go to Metropolis for work, go home, catch up with people. Life hates plans, or at least his plans because, for no reason he can discern, a green spotlight that’s either ectoplasm or kryptonite contaminated is chasing Superman across the sky while he chases someone else.

So, that’s great. It’s also very much not his problem.

Or it wasn’t until ghostly wires deposited (harshly dropped) him on the roof of LexCorp headquarters. Where the Ecto-Krypto searchlight is still spinning around, trying to stare down Superman.

“Hello, my Pharaoh.”

Tucker looks away from the green lights, towards the source of the voice. The hull of the LexCorp AC unit falls away, revealing a thick cable protruding from a very familiar sarcophagus and an equally familiar ghost. His watch helpfully informs him that there is a "Ghost detected, Tuck." 

“HotepRa!” Tucker has a lot of things going for him. He’s a handsome, smart, and charismatic guy. He’s also a human who can’t shoot ecto-blasts from his hands or control endangered plants, animals, or the ghosts of their extinct cousins. HotepRa has him isolated on a rooftop while Superman is busy.

New plan: He has to turn off that search light and help Superman, so that Superman can help him. That, or he needs to call Danny.

Either way, he has to do it on an open rooftop, with no other distractions, quickly. He has a feeling HotepRa’s not going to let him have one free call. He mentally texts an SOS to Danny and Sam and doesn’t get a reply. They must be busy. Darn the non-immediate nature of texts coming back to haunt him! He’ll have to keep HotepRa busy and help Superman on his own until they get here. That should be easy, ghosts love to talk.

“What are you doing here?” Tucker demands, aiming an angry finger at the ghostly figure. Out here in Metropolis, so far from the portal, the spectral mummy is less solid and more transparent in sunlight. “Last time I saw you, you were being used as a cat toy.”

“You incompetent, weak willed fool,” the sandy throwback growls. “As you had gained allyship of the ghost child, I have gained allyship of the living.” He swings an arm back towards his sarcophagus and its embedded wires.“And with this technology I may destroy the strongest of the living realm and rule this city with my living allies. And then the world, both of the living and the dead! I will have the power of more than the sphinx. I will have an army of them and with them, my vengeance. You will kneel before me, powerless!” In the midst of all the maniacal laughter Tucker stands, unimpressed.

“Dude, how are you going to rule anything when that’s the best you’ve got?” The cable is plugged in atop the casket's mirror. He can see the USB port on the cable-to-coffin adapter, which looks more like a poorly applied suction cup than anything LexCorp cooked up. And yeah, it mildly disappoints Tucker that another billionaire is trying to use ghost powers to get ahead and be evil, but it tracks. He swishes a hand around in his pocket, fishing out a charging cord.

“Try all you like, ‘My King’, but I control the building a- Wait. What are you doing?”

Tucker, who has taken HotepRa up on his gloating offer, simply walks up to the cable, and plugs in his phone into one of the adapter's unused ports. With three quick taps, and an answering beep from his hacking program, the cable unlatches and flops to the ground like a broken slinky. The evil, green, Eye of Sauron searchlight stops searching and lighting, powering down with an exhausted whir.

“No!” The mummy whips his head between the dim glow of the kryptonite in the giant light and the smirking man shoving his phone back into his pocket.

“I’m almost impressed you managed to even connect to the security systems. You’re more than out dated; you’re obsolete.” Tucker buffs his nails against his shirt. “Almost being the operative word. You really have no idea what you’re doing with technology, do you, man?”

“No matter, I do not need this modern frivolity to have my revenge.” HotepRa vanishes into sand, blowing away.

“Wow, that was easy. Too easy, actually.“  He regrets not bringing a Specter Deflector right about now. In his defense the two ghosts he sees the most are ones he wants to touch him, generally. Still, it would be reassuring. If he can’t guarantee that he can’t be touched, then the next best thing is to not be here. Also, it's December. He's freezing his favorite button clicking fingers off. (It's all of them. He needs them all.)

Tucker considers how he’s going to get down from the building of Fruit Loop 2 when the dude apparently knows enough about ghosts to hook one up to his Anti-Superman Lamp, but little enough about ghosts for that ghost to be HotepRa. It’s likely not going to be fun trying to explain why he’s up there if he goes down the stairs and runs into someone. Then again it’s not like he can fly over to the building he started this whole debacle on. Against his better judgment he approaches the edge of the roof, looking down over the chest high parapet. That’s like forty stories or something. Heck no.

Stairs it is, then.

Actually, it’s not stairs either because here comes the sound of running boots clanging up the stairwell and on to the roof. It’s a security guard. It’s a security guard with glowing eyes. His watch chirps “Ghost detected, Dummy” as the overshadowed security guard raises his gun and fires.

Tucker Foley, formerly known as the Pharaoh Duul Aman, IT guy for a space station run by and for superheroes, kneels on the snow covered rooftop despondent, disbelieving, and confused. He reaches out to touch the body in front of him. A very familiar face looks back, made strange by the act of seeing it dead on, not from a mirror.

His glasses are broken from where his body hit the ground. At the time it had been him that hit the ground. He and his body were the same thing fifteen minutes ago. His pupils are wide, probably from everything going dark on account of the blood loss. There’s still the flush of recent life in his face, but noticeably less.

It feels unreal.

He had the same powers as Danny once, due to Desiree: flight, intangibility, the works. Experiencing the world without it experiencing him is not completely alien, but it is distinctly different. The flow of the wind over his skin is gone. The lingering chill of the earlier snow is fading, evaporating into forgotten afterthought. Now, without the vitality of a living body to connect to, that minty feeling that used to bloom behind his lungs when Danny kissed him is less intense but diffused across the whole of him. Something about it feels dry like the desert sand, or the inside of his sarcophagus. Or like an exsanguinated IT guy who was shot through the heart by a past life’s traitorous advisor overshadowing a LexCorp security guard. ‘Cause that’s what happened ten minutes ago.  For a guy dead for over two thousand years, his aim was impeccable and after seven minutes of bleeding out and being dead, Tucker Foley stood up, leaving his body on the LexCorp building roof where it still lays.

This… really isn’t how he thought he’d go.

He'd hoped for old age, in his bed, surrounded by riches, with his social media feeds full of adoring fans and mourners. More realistically, he expected to die of a heart attack from his diet or from one of Sam and Danny’s traps. Heck, he had even considered assassination or being eaten by a dragon or abducted by aliens. Being shot by an overshadowed and underpaid security guard hadn't even made the top ten of his 'Kick the Bucket' list. He really should have figured ghosts would have a role in his demise. Well, ghosts other than Danny and Sam; they don’t count. Kind of a huge oversight, really.

Tucker slowly pulls his attention from his cooling corpse and the puddle of blood to the murderous ghost in a hi-jacked body. Has that jerk seriously been monologuing this whole time? Rude.

“And now, I, HotepRa shall have command-” Command? He killed him so he could get revenge and take over? Well, revenge accomplished, probably.  As for taking over the world?

“You’re not getting control of anything. You do understand that I’m also a ghost, right?” Also Danny totally exists, but still, he's standing right here!

“Fool, you are weak! Freshly risen and feeble. A ghost you may be, but you hold no power that I cannot overcome. No control exists that I cannot wrest from you! I shall show you the meaning of power and all shall- “

Tucker lifts two spectral fingers to his mouth and whistles like his mom (oh no, someone needs to tell her he died) taught him when he was six. It isn’t louder than the wind buffeting the top of the skyscraper, but it doesn’t need to be. The intended recipient hears it just fine. If the whistle didn’t stop HotepRa’s blathering, then the first distant thump would have done it. Tucker watches the mummified jerk freeze like a cornered granary rat. Three more thumps and looming over him is his sphinx, wearing his fourteen year old face. It opens its gigantic stone maw, dropping the Scarab scepter at its master’s feet.

“No control you can’t wrest, huh?” He spots Superman coming to a stop in midair, half a block away. Tucker scoops up the scepter and points it imperiously at the spectral thorn in his side. “Get ‘im, boy.”

He can’t see the sharp toothed snarl above him, but he can see HotepRa’s eyes bug out in the borrowed body he quickly abandons. The bandaged ghost jumps off the roof of the building, narrowly avoiding the snapping jaws of an attacking Sphinx. It chases him down the streets, roaring menacingly and pouncing through buildings to swat at him. The freed security guard comes to with a river of blood encroaching on his feet. He blinks, drops his gun, and scrambles back down into the building. The man's frantic calls into his walkie-talkie echo up from the stairwell before the roof access door snaps shut.

This leaves Tucker alone with himself.  With no kyrptonite spotlight and no ghostly protections, whatever has been hi-jacked by HotepRa is swiftly dealt with. At least he can only assume so, because Superman sweeps away somewhere. It’s just Tucker and the body formerly known as Tucker.

It’s a good body. He’s spent a long thirty five years in it. He was kind of looking forward to his birthday. Every year older than Sam was another year he could hold over her head for jokes, but now… He didn’t expect to feel sad. It makes sense. He’s dead but he sort of thought it would be like having to change apartments or throw out a favorite shirt, suddenly. It isn’t and he isn’t ready.

He wasn't ready to die.

Tucker’s hand can’t feel the wind or temperature, but it feels empty without his phone, all the same. He refuses to think about the fact that he’s fishing the electronics out of a corpse’s pocket, choosing to instead focus on the fact that the blood soaking through his body’s jeans hasn’t ruined anything. It takes him a moment of concentration for his hand to actually connect with  his PDA. Ugh, being a fresh ghost stinks. Luckily he has had some experience with this due to Desiree, but the learning curve is still annoyingly steep.

The PDA is retrieved first, of course. (Veronica is always number one.) His work phone is next. The back of said phone is a mess of congealing blood, naturally, with a crack running through the bottom right corner. His WayneTech phone’s golden case is a smear of shiny, sticky red but it’s functioning perfectly, not even a scratch on her otherwise. It settles him back into his metaphorical skin, what with the literal skin still being on the ground. The PalmTop that belongs to the Justice League, he leaves on his body. It might cause a problem if they want it back and he’s not going to return it if he picks it up. He’s reaching for his AppleWatch when an electric chill runs through him. It’s much stronger now than the faint hints he caught while alive. “Ghost Alert, Stupid,” the watch on his body declares. Kind of late there, buddy.

“Tucker.” Danny's voice calls softly from behind him, and suddenly Tucker can feel cold again. It's nothing like being alive; the sharp bite of brisk air on exposed skin or pins and needles of frostbitten extremities. Now it's more like the cool side of a pillow, but pressed against every inch of his back, increasing in intensity as the Ghost King approaches. "Hey. Tuck."

A familiar arm winds around Tucker's shoulders, pulling him into a hug. He lets himself be turned around and pulled away from his rapidly cooling remains. Instead he focuses on Danny. Danny feels more solid than he ever has before, his silly star cape ends up half wrapped around the two of them like a security blanket that Tucker would never admit he needed. He presses his face into Danny shoulder and tries to remember what breathing was like. He tries not to worry that he's already forgetting.

“I’m so sorry, Tucker. I was in a stupid meeting while you needed me. I didn’t even see your texts until it was too late.” Danny runs his hand down Tucker's ephemeral shoulders, and he can already feel his tension dissipating.

Tucker hovers in midair, holding on to Danny’s wrist, absorbing the comfort of someone who loves him. Even if he’s dead, that still hasn’t changed. “It’s not your fault. We should probably tell Sam" Tucker sniffs out, quickly brushing away budding tears. “She’ll want to know she can stop haunting salads I don’t eat.”

“Heh. Yeah," Danny snorts. "We'd better tell her soon or she'll stuff us in the thermos till the next Ice Age.”

“Speak for yourself. I’m the victim here; I’m not getting in trouble. I’m bereaved.” His smile wobbles slightly, but it’s there and growing larger. “You’re the one headed to the time out tube..." He pauses, smile turning sharper. "Especially if I tell her first.”

“Hey!” Danny yelps, alarmed. “Are you trying to get me double killed? I’m bereaved, too. My husband just died!” Even after all these years, he wears the same expression of surprise on his face. Tucker can’t help it, he laughs. It resonates out from his core in a swell of anguish, and of condolences both sorely needed and gratefully received. Tucker’s laugh is trailing off when his phone rings. The hard rock ringtone of his work phone blasts the atmosphere into itty bitty pieces.

It’s an unlisted number calling, meaning it's from the Justice League or a spam calling telemarketer. Given the timing and the living guy floating half a block out, over the street, staring straight at him, he’ll say Justice League. He answers it on autopilot.

“Foley speaking.”

“Mr. Foley,” Superman replies through speakerphone. “I hesitate to ask anything of you, right now, but the kryptonite…”

“On it.” Danny finally pulls away from his newly dead husband to phase an arm through the metal casing of the spotlight. He sticks the same arm into his chest a moment later, making his safety jumpsuit do what it was initially designed for after all these years: contain radiation. Superman lands shortly afterwards, phone nowhere in sight, casting a mournful eye at Tucker’s empty human body.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Foley. If there’s anything I can do... ?”

What is there to do, really? He can't un-kill someone unless there's something he doesn't know about Superman. He can't rewind time or dissociate the cause of a bullet from the effect of a wound. The knowledge of what was lost still stings. Like Danny and Sam do, he soothes it with a joke.

“Actually, yeah. I think this counts for workman’s compensation, given that this happened on the clock.”

Superman stands there, brows furrowed for a long moment. Tough crowd. You think he'd at least laugh a little, pit for the dead guy and all. “Mr. Foley,” he begins cautiously. “I’m afraid I can’t understand you.”

“What do you mean you can’t understand me? It was fine two minutes ago!” Tucker whines. But only a little.

“Tucker, you’re speaking Ghost.” Tucker turns to Danny, slightly bewildered before it snaps into place.

“Darn, I forgot about that. Wait a minute, if he understood me a minute ago, then how…” He trails off and he and Danny both look down at the phone in his hand. Tucker grins. “Oh sweet technology, I knew you’d never let me down!” Tucker raises his phone back to his ear. He calls Superman back, staring him dead in the eye. Superman reaches behind his back, pulling out his silenced phone. Where the heck was he hiding that thing, in his cape? He waits for the hero to pick up before he continues.

“Are we good?”

“A little static, but I can hear you.”

“It’s a Ghost thing. It’s hard to communicate with the living when you’re still fresh.” Tucker feels a little bad, seeing Superman himself look so damn guilty. “I think we can skip the wrongful death suit and just deposit some gold coins in my tomb or my parents’ bank account. I do need to be mummified, by the way.” Tucker pauses, tapping a finger against his chin. Well, he doesn't but the courtiers and other ghostly busy-bodies would really prefer a traditional ancient Egyptian burial no matter how much he wanted his big, beautiful brain to stay in his body. All those years of moisturizing, undone with a metric ton of salt? Even the thought sucks. Plus it would require him getting his heart weighed and going through the Duat. And honestly, a regular American funeral sounds better.

Tucker pins his phone between his face and his shoulder with the practice of many years. “You know what? Scratch that. Mom and Dad get my body. I don’t trust the Justice League with it. Especially John. Mostly John, actually.” He bends down to arrange his body's arms across its chest, yanking his AppleWatch off and shoving it into his pocket quickly.  He grabs himself by the shoulders and Danny wordlessly picks up on the energy he’s putting out, grabbing his feet gently. Together they lift his body gently and carry his corpse away. Tucker leaves a bewildered Superman with a pile of blood drenched snow and a shouted “I heard about what he did to Santa! He’s not snorting my bones!”

"Tucker, turn off your phone and help me carry your body," the Ghost King says as he and his husband fade out of existence.

If Tucker realizes later that he took the Palmtop with him, then he's not telling, nor is he giving it back.

👻👻👻👻📱📱📱📱

Billy Batson, currently in the shape of Captain Marvel, waits off to the side of the conference room.

In the middle of the room, Wonder Woman and Blue Beetle are wrapping up with the Ghost King, accompanied by a mostly quiet Zatanna, at whom the Ghost King occasionally throws wary glances. Wonder Woman is thanking him for helping out with last month’s week long northern Colorado zombie outbreak. Someone had used the Book of the Dead to wreak undead chaos in the fly-over states. Billy wasn’t able to help, being on the other side of the country at the time. He feels a little annoyed, both because it sounds like they'd really needed the help and because he kind of wanted to see the zombies. From the sounds of things, the creatures had retained enough brain power, heh, to be able to drive. One was in a monster truck, which sounds pretty dang cool to see.

He also had a third reason to want to be there, where the Ghost King was.

“Excuse me, King Phantom,” he interjects when it looks like they’re wrapping up. “I was actually wondering, how is Mr. Foley doing?”

Zatanna and Wonder Woman both frown slightly. No one likes to be reminded that they let a civilian, much less an employee and the spouse of a trusted ally, die on the equivalent of a milk run. Like a bad fart, it hung around the area, inspiring unpleasant moments. Billy was uncertain if it was welcome, but he did want to check in on guy. He’d want someone to check on him if he died, probably.

“Oh, hey, don’t I recognize you from dinner?”

“Ah, er. Yes, King Phantom. Mr. Foley invited me to his dinner party. You were, um,  haunting his freezer.”

“Haha, yeah! We really wanted Tucker home, even if we didn’t expect it to happen like it did. I hope you’re enjoying the recipes Tucker left you. I don’t know where you’re going to get half a gazelle ever, though.”

“I am, your Highness.” He is not going to ever use that recipe for gazelle, but it works just as well for beef.

“Great, I’ll let him know. He’s fine by the way. He took dying kind of hard, honestly." The Ghost King pauses to rub at his neck. It's a strangely human gesture, and Billy can't help but feel relaxed seeing it. "Neither me or Sam were intentionally killed by other people, so our experiences were more than a little different. He’s bouncing back though. He’s already managed to streamline his paperwork backlog, imprisoned HotepRa for treason and slaying the living, and finally got WiFi in the Lair. Last night I saw him trying to get Doomed running on a cursed gem." The Ghost King chuckles from the inside of the summoning circle. “It works, if you’re wondering. But, yeah, he's doing alright. I think he should be free now if you want to talk to him.” The white haired ghost doesn’t wait for an answer, immediately yelling.

“TUCKER! IT’S YOUR COWORKERS!” He pauses for a moment seemingly listening. "ITS NOT JOHN!” He pauses again, staring somewhere to his left. “It’s going to be cramped.”

The glow of the circle increases briefly and then there are two people in the circle.

“Whoa! Oh, hey, Marvel. How’s it going?” the former WatchTower employee stands in the circle, beside his hovering husband. The glasses of his living day are there, as is the pair of wedding rings, but most everything else is changed. The ghostly man is bloodless, his skin is nearly ashen. The kohl daubed eyes are a much more vibrant, unnatural turquoise than they were previously, but still friendly above the false beard. Replacing the ubiquitous staff uniform, there was now a fancy crown, a cape, a linen skirt, and sandals, all lined with gold circuitry patterns where they aren’t purple and black. He’s also covered in jewelry. Considering how much he was wearing for a dinner party with four total people, he’s probably happier like that. He has a fancy golden staff in one hand with a phone in the other, so he can’t be too badly off.

“I’m good. I’m using that recipe book you left me. And the spices. The hummus is really good. So is the rice.” Billy answers, and Tucker smiles. The stark white of his ghostly teeth are beacons in the cavern of his mouth as he speaks.

“Glad you’re liking the cook book. Thanks for hard-binding the other copy for me. This version is much easier for the chefs to use. They still haven’t gotten used to the tablets I gave them yet. They keep yelling about how 'cuneiform is for scribes.' We don't even use cuneiform!” Mr. Foley pauses to shake his head. "So, yeah, thanks."

“Awesome. I’m always glad to help. Oh, and, uh, Jesse and Marlowe say, 'hi'?" Billy just manages not to wince at the white lie.

Neither of Tucker's closest IT friends knew he'd be meeting their deceased coworker again, much less today. Billy had taken to hanging out with them whenever he had the time at lunch. Jesse seems to half-believe 'Mr. Special' was bound to rise from the dead and return to work like nothing happened. She'd apparently all but chased off every poor new hire with talk of their desk being haunted before HR told her to stop. Marlowe had looked awful the first time Billy had seen him at lunch after... everything. Tucker had been covering for him, after all. Surprisingly, it had been the act of bringing the man one of Billy's attempts at his late coworker's honey roll recipe that finally dragged him out of his slump... even if it was just to tease the hero for using maple syrup instead of honey. They were still delicious in Billy's opinion.

"Oh, that's great, dude!" Tucker's brilliant smile softens, hearing their names. "Tell 'em 'hi' for me, too. And, uh, sorry to Marlowe for not getting to the server. Must have sucked having to go down there and deal with it after... all of that." He waves an arm dismissively, as if 'all of that' was just minor hiccup and not, you know, his death.

"Yeah, of course!" Billy's mind whirs. Change of topic. Change of topic. "H-how’s the paperwork treating you?” Nailed it.

Tucker rolls his eyes, dramatically, putting his spectral weight on the gold staff. “Ugh, it’s taking forever. I managed to get through the last year with BC in it, so only two thousand years left to go.” Billy catches Zatanna doing that smile she does when she's trying not to laugh at someone. 

Wonder Woman nods her head, understandingly. "It never ceases to amaze even myself the amount of maintenance work that simple existence needs."

Billy can relate. He’s got homework and the League paperwork to do, too. The stuff never ends, and he only has to deal with things that happened since he was born!

“Luckily,” King Danny interjects,“he has us here to help negotiate some breaks. And plenty of encouragement from his kingdom.” Danny and Tucker’s expressions both brighten. Literally, they glow a little more sharply in the space station conference room.

“Yeah, Hatshepsut thinks the bread machines robs the bread of its value, you know, because no one is making it, but the nobility love the idea of it. I’m also in the process of getting a widespread electric grid up and running for the public to actually, y'know, use the bread machines with. And I can’t wait to get WiFi in the Dragon Kingdom, so Danny can keep up with Dora without having to make the trip out there-," the ghostly pharaoh seems to glow even brighter as he rambles, pseudo electric arcs sparkling between his fingers as he gestures. His husband grabs one flailing arm with the ease of practice and a fond, gentle smile.

“Maybe you should start with a landline, Tuck. Let them get used to the idea before you improve on it. And, I wouldn’t have to make the trip if you or Sam would bring her a message for me.” The floating ghost pokes a finger out at Mr. Foley’s phone. 

“I keep telling you, you’ve got to get some servants that aren't the Fright Night, dude.” The ground bound ghost bats his husband’s hand away, chuckling. “Maybe then you could get some stuff done. Speaking of getting some stuff done, I’ve gotta review the proposals for the central residential area restructuring before eleven, so I can make it home for my date with Sam.”

“You’re going to try to tell Dora’s cooks about bread machines, aren’t you?”

“Nope, food processors. Their mashed potatoes could be done so much better if they had a couple. Also if they had Bacon Bits.” Tucker Foley, a former IT guy for the coolest piece of technology available to human kind turns to look at his former coworkers one last time, a confident smirk on his face. “If you guys ever come by, let me know. We’ll hang out."

Billy smiles back. Months of unease lifting from his shoulders as he waves.

Tucker Foley shoots double finger guns at the assemblage of living super heroes. Then, as suddenly as he came, he’s gone.

And then he’s back.

He stumbles into the circle as if he ran back and had trouble stopping. Danny shifts to the side, barely not getting headbutted in the gut by the decorative snake on Tucker's head. “By the way, can someone please tell John to stop sacrificing electronics to me. It’s nice and all but I’m not doing him a single favor. Sam still wants to turn him into saber-toothed tiger food for the stalking and I'm totally not going to stop her.”

“We will have Batman speak to him about the sacrifices,” Wonder Woman says. A hint of a smile lurks menacingly at the edge of her lip. Tucker presses a hand to his chest like it warms his nerd heart to see it.

“Cool, you da Woman! Bye for real this time.” He leaves again. This time, as he says, for real. With the Pharaoh out of the picture, the King refocuses on the living.

“I think that’s my cue. I should be getting back to my own paperwork or I’ll never hear the end of it if Tucker finishes his first.” The jovial smile gains an awkward edge. His white gloved hand scratches again at the back of his neck. “I really hope you’re serious about doing something about John. Tucker… really wasn’t joking about Sam. Or the tiger. I think she's considering switching it out for a hippo, maybe a slow loris. Seriously, she's got a whole list.”

"A slow what?"

The King of Ghosts, Sovereign of the Infinite Realms shrugs at Zatanna's question. "It's a monkey thing? I think? I dunno but it's in the 'venomous' section on that list. Gotta be capable enough for Frootloop John. Her words, not mine." He waves a hand, rapidly loosing opacity. "See you all around."

And just like that only the living are left in the WatchTower once more.