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

Chapter 21

It's so good, having Phalanx back on his feet.

Someone at his side in the dark, someone at his back, someone who will do the talking when he needs to disappear. Someone who puts his arms around him and puts his head on his shoulder while listening to him talk, the ease of affection, he wants to close his eyes and stop and just be like this when he's mid-sentence on where they should probably patrol the city next. Someone -

Not someone. It's not about 'someone'.

Him, with the rain caught in his hair and his grin alight with elation at his own shields, a dart-fast vicious-joyous green blur; him, sitting with a happy sigh next to him on the rooftop, taking his coffee and smiling his thanks; him, catching his arm to point something out to him, like the world is full of these small magical things to share. Him.

Him catching Kurt's arm, hand running up to his hand in bed, shuffling forward on his knees to rock Kurt's body back with him, placing Kurt's fingers around the back of his own thigh, where the press of the wound's scar stood out against his palm. He'd said, dark serious eyes and Kurt could see the mid-sex pulse fluttering fast in his throat, "Does it make me ugly?"

"- no. No, what -"

"No," he'd said, running a hand around Kurt's side, around that scarring, marring line circling his body, "it doesn't, does it?"

Then he bowed his body down for him, cupped his head up to kiss him, while Kurt settled his thighs against him and let him rewrite the laws of the universe, again.

*

First encounter of the evening, he's swallowing his first post-coffee mint on the way there, clinging to Phalanx while New York flies by below. Sudden scent of hot pretzels and a voice raised in laughter amidst the chaos of noise outside a bar, cars honking through the black smell of their fumes, the evening's spring sky low and full with cloud against the city's waking lights and god, even on his way to a bank robbery, even when storeys and storeys off street level and letting go would mean messy splattered death, god, he does love his city.

He murmurs into Phalanx's ear as they swing around in front of the grand entrance to the bank ringed in flashing cop cars, "I'll ghost us through, just aim right at it." and Phalanx nods, and, invisible, they turn and flash right through the wall, out of the cold night and into the bank.

There were no customers at this time of night; security guards are knelt near the entrance with their hands on their heads and guns aimed at the back of their necks, and they only have a second, the Ghost and Phalanx, still overhead, to take the scene in. Heavy bags are being dumped in a pile in the centre of the marble floor by a bunch of guys in black, there's some enormous guy in a football helmet - it can't just be padding, he has to be a super, he's the size of a bear - and that blond super is standing by with his hands in his pockets, swinging a little back and forth on heel and toe. Someone in this city is making people into supers who work for criminals, and this time, there's more than one to deal with . . .

"You take the blond kid."

"You okay with that massive halfback?"

"Hostages first," the Ghost says, as Phalanx aims the slide at the blond kid, and the Ghost skids down with him until he can hop off. Phalanx is instantly visible and there are shouts of shock too late, the blond kid looks up almost too late, just zips back before being hit by a superhero on a slide of shields. Phalanx skims across the marble floor of the bank, not a great deal less slippery than his own slide, little shields rippling alongside him as he goes so bullets from the rest of the crooks' fired guns spark off them. Flung shields knock a couple of them off their feet instantly, as the two guys holding the security guards - find their guns are suddenly intangible, starting back stunned as the Ghost appears in front of them, holding a gun in either hand, poised to spring.

Elbow to the head of one, using his shoulder as he drops to spin up and knee the head of the other. "Cops outside," he says to the security guards, crouching to ghost the guns into the floor and out of the game. "Please take yourselves out of danger, we've got this."

Phalanx is having trouble with the last armed crooks and the blond kid at the same time - he can either shield himself or throw shields at them, he can't do both. The blond kid is a blur and bags from that pile keep simply disappearing - he's getting their loot out, damn him. But as the Ghost turns to stop him -

In his way is the ape in the football helmet, eyes hidden in its shadow. He lowers his own head in the hood. The guy's bigger even than Puckzilla, though he doesn't have his tail or that frill making him look taller, just the padding on his uniform; it's his breadth that's worrying, he's the size of a silverback gorilla. Is there more to him than size and strength? If he's nothing but muscle then the Ghost can just walk through him like he isn't there, he doesn't even need to acknowledge his presence, but if he's got another trick to call on . . .

The guy in the football helmet grabs up one of those heavy bags of cash by its neck and swings it around, letting it fly at him. The Ghost just lets it sail through his intangible body and runs at him in response. He hears the bag boom off the wall behind him - the guy's strength might mean nothing against a ghost but god Phalanx needs to be shielded if he's around, he could crack bones like dried spaghetti - and he runs right through the guy, who tries to grab him in a bear-hug; the Ghost just leaps through him, throws a smoke bomb at the pile of loot, grabs the gun and kicks under the chin one of the last 'normal' crooks. Hard to see through the smoke, but he can hear the blond kid yelping as he skids on spilt money and flies arms-flailing across the bank's slick floor, hears Phalanx take down another armed crook with a shield to the stomach -

Hears someone huge pounding up behind him, spins himself immediately out of the way, a fist whisking past his face so close his hood fills and flutters with air. There's nothing to do but haunt him, he can't take down a guy six times his size, but he hates haunting people unless there's no other option, he knows what it's like, he hates it. The guy's wrists are too big for his cuffs; he has cables . . .

He ghosts right through him, and behind his back he grabs for the right compartment on the utility belt. By the time the guy's turned - he's slower than him but not that much slower, his agility's increased to match his size - the Ghost is ready to lasso his wrist, jerking the cable tight, letting loose some slack so he can run through him again, flicking the line around him, the guy turns after him twisting himself in the cable, jeez his brain hasn't increased in agility any . . . two more dashes through him and his clumsy spins and the Ghost's got a bound-up gorilla parcel, he can easily slip close enough to knot it off.

The guy's shoulders flex under the padding and the cable snaps like tacking cotton.

Okay. One option down. He can hear Phalanx cursing, dealing with the unpredictable zipping of that blond kid as the smoke's clearing and it's only the supers left standing, but Phalanx has shielded the cash off and they're clearly not going anywhere without it. The blond kid could cut and run whenever he wanted, they'd never be able to stop him, but he's not going anywhere without his money. The Ghost keeps one ear on Phalanx, listening for trouble, but he faces the gorilla, backing off just a little, watching his body for how he'll move.

The gorilla lowers his head, draws his breath slowly in as he crouches, hands on the floor, ready to run at him. The Ghost stands and watches, alert but not afraid, because strength alone doesn't mean very much to him. The guy's muscles bunch and he throws himself up with the force and shocking speed of a landslide, and the Ghost narrows his eyes at him, what does he think he's going to achieve -

He's not running at him, he's aiming past him. He's running at Phalanx's shields.

The Ghost doesn't know how hard a hit Phalanx's shields can take, but this guy could probably pick up a tank and bash a building in with it, and it's not something he's going to risk Phalanx's neck in experimenting with. Not like this.

The Ghost's flash-bang hits him in the side of the helmet barely seconds before the Ghost hits his back. "Leave him out of it, you're fighting me." he growls against his helmet, balanced on his shoulders to snap the handcuffs through its shielding face-bars, riding his back as he staggers and bangs so heavily to the floor, shoulder-first, that the Ghost doesn't know if it's the jolt of falling on top of him, it feels like the building shakes. He just ghosts the other end of the cuffs into the floor, trapping the guy face-down while he vaults off his back again, getting some space between them. The guy in the football helmet scrabbles his hands at the slippery floor, can't get up, knocks his helmet off the floor in his frustrated panic, and the Ghost takes his chance to check on Phalanx, who's just given a sharp crow of triumph; he's got the blond kid in a ball of shields.

It picks up, quick in the Ghost's heart, the excitement of it, the jolt of the hope of it, they've got him trapped, he knows who's making supers and how and where, he knows and if they can get him to tell them -

Behind him, the ape has finally managed to wrest his helmet off, staggering upright again. The Ghost spins to face him, no choices left, just haunt him and they can deal with the blond kid, he can't risk -

The gorilla has his back to him, still one hand on his helmet as he rips it out of the floor, bright metal of the snapped cuffs hanging from its faceguard. He lurches and turns with the momentum of coming upright to clock the Ghost with his own helmet, and as the Ghost gets the first sight of his face uncovered but for stripes of black paint under each eye -

Everything stops.

The blond kid's yelling stops.

The sound of sirens outside stops.

His own dumb heartbeat stops.

His life, the part of him that actually lived for the last seven years, stops.

He says, barely whispers, no strength in his whole stupid body to do anything but stare, cut off from everything solid in the world except for his face and what it's always done to him, "Karofsky."

- and for a fraction of a second, too late to stop his own body's furious momentum, he sees the recognition in his eyes.