All the Other Ghosts (Boyxboy Superhero AU Fanfic (Klaine))

Chapter 1

Rating: For now, R. We might end up at NC-17 for smuttiness, but you can take it for granted that this is *not* a children's story either way.

Reasons to move to New York city:

1) Your brother has a spare room going in his apartment.
2) It's not Ohio.
3) Great opportunities for career advancement for an almost-qualified physical therapist.
4) Exciting nightlife and social events.
5) At which you might meet a guy, the sparkling oasis in the endless desert of your love life.
6) You have a crush on New York's resident superhero.
7) The bagels taste incredible.

*

They call him 'the Ghost'. He goes with it. It's not like it doesn't fit.

The steps leading up to the grand entrance of the American Museum of Natural History are ringed in cop cars, flaring the night a patriotic blue and red. The Ghost walks through them, invisible, listens to them curse and call for back-up in their radios, and he crouches to peer into the upended cop car right outside the entrance; shattered glass but no bodies. There's one plus for the evening so far.

There's an alarm blaring in there, like that's going to help. The Ghost walks up the steps, cloak bellying out behind him, a darker grey than the pale skintight suit. He walks through the wall rather than the cracked open doors, ghosts right through and into the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall, where one of the doors is laying broken on the floor and that alarm is really seriously annoying. He can't hear anything over it and he's still invisible, so the girl with a sapphire the size of a golf ball in her hand walks through his shoulder from behind and he gives a little squeak - it's not that he can't feel things going through him when he's ghosting, it feels alright, and when it's unexpected it feels horrible.

She feels it too, and spins to face him, her blonde bunches bouncing. "Who's there? Santana said there weren't any ghosts. She promised there weren't any ghosts!"

"Just one," he says, fading into view for her. He doesn't stop ghosting, though, because he knows this girl, every damn week it's one thing or another, and he knows not to be off his guard when he's close to her. "Brittany, that really doesn't belong to you."

"What?"

"It doesn't belong to you! You should put it back!"

"I can't hear you!" she yells at him, then looks around, spots what looks like a fuse box on the wall and walks to it. The Ghost says, "Wai-" but she's already pulled back the fist not holding the sapphire and punched it hard into the box, putting it right through the wall. Wires snap and spark, the emergency lights die and the sound wears down an octave then wavers right out, and the silence of the museum at night makes his knees feel weak after all that noise. "That was loud," she says, and turns to him again. "Hi!" She waves.

"Hi," he says weakly. "Brittany, that doesn't belong to you, you have to put it back."

She's dressed like a cheerleader in white and pink, with a little domino mask over her eyes. Every damn week they have this, and he has work in the morning after this nonsense, god. "Santana wants it."

"I know she does but Brittany, it belongs to the museum."

"Santana said you'd say that."

He sighs. "Did she."

"She said I shouldn't listen to you because you get me in trouble."

"I get you in trouble? She just sent you to steal a - that's the Star of India." He stares at it for a moment, because it is so very very pretty, milk-blue and gleaming in the dancing light of the cop cars through the doors. "She sent you to steal the - why did she want it? There's a million jewellers in this city -"