i have been unmedicated for the entirety of spring break and thus have had little interest in writing this down, but i have been thinking about this for the entire week (as well as a dpdc clone danny au that resulted in it becoming its entirely separate batman au that includes a teenage vigilante bruce wayne, an ocarina, and me entirely incapable of making a batman au without making bruce dirt poor but we're not talking about that) and so i've finally went 'fuck it' and forcibly grabbed my laptop. I will get this done in one sitting even if it kills me.
BUT. This is about neither clone^2 danny nor about who i am calling Ocarina Batman. This is about my Danyal Al Ghul Au and more SPECIFICALLY it's me thinking about his relationship with Sam and Tucker specifically.
Tucker and Sam? Adore this asshole (affectionate) with every fiber of their being. And it is very much a reciprocated feeling, but Danny's thoughts will not be delved into much other than he would kill for them.
Tucker? The only person currently capable of getting a deep, loud, belly laugh out of Danny. Sam can get him to smile and to laugh, but it's the kind that's a chuckle-under-the-breath. The quiet, looks-down-while-huffing laughter. Snorts once with laughter and then grins stupidly.
But Tucker? Tucker can crack a slew of stupid jokes and Danny will be incapacitated for the next five minutes because he's laughing so hard that he can't breath. He lands one well-timed pun or quip and Danny will be close to tears. His laughter is their favorite sound in the whole world.
Sam is lowkey jealous of this ability, and she's gotten a belly laugh out of Danny a few times. But alas, it is Tucker who wields this power and has gotten it the most times out of the two of them.
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They're also both physically affectionate with Danny as much as possible. It started roughly around when they were 12-ish, a year since they befriended Danny, and they noticed that he sought after touch but never seemed to initiate (and was in some ways repulsed by it). They started slowly being more touchy with him. Hooking a finger around his to lead him somewhere, tapping his wrist, looping arms. Little touches, grabs, etc, to get him used to it, and once he started doing it back they started increasing it.
It's gotten to a point where he will now just. Lay on them. Like a lizard sunbathing on a rock. Leaning on their backs when they're sitting in class before the bell rings, his chin on their heads. He'll talk about anything with his arms looped around their shoulders.
If they're sitting on a couch at either of their houses, he'll lay his legs on theirs. Him and Tucker will press their feet against the other's and try and push against them (newsflash: Danny always wins, Tucker claims its the ghost strength but Danny's been winning since before his accident)
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Naturally, both Sam and Tucker know where Danny keeps his weapons on his person, and are allowed to grab them off of him if they need it. His only requirement is that they don't lose his weapons if they take it and forget to return it immediately.
They both understand how big of a thing this is from Danny, and so they do their best to treat his weapons with a lot of respect and care because they know its his way of saying he trusts them.
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Sam and Tucker are so fond of Danny it's insane. Like fr. That's their goddamn best friend, and they are so protective of him. Emotionally, physically, you name it. They will tear the head off a grown man if they need to, Danny's had scars since he arrived in Amity Park and Sam and Tucker both are going to find the person who put them there and make them pay for it.
One time, Tucker overheard a bunch of upperclass girls speaking nastily about Danny and about the rumors surrounding him, calling him names like 'freak', 'monster', etc. Danny was with him and heard it, and seemingly appeared unbothered by it, even telling Tucker that he was used to such rumors.
Tucker was so furious that hacked into the school system later that night and tanked those girls grades. They were kicked out of their clubs and had to go to mandatory tutoring for the rest of the year. He made sure to leave some way of letting them know it was him who did it.
And Sam doesn't like using her money for things, doesn't like abusing that wealth. So instead, whenever her parents talk bad about Danny, she causes a media incident that has her parents scrambling to deal with. She does something wild, outrageous by her parents' standards.
She heard some boys on the basketball team making fun of Danny once, similar to those girls had. She kicks up a fuss about something eco-unfriendly at school and forcibly holds a protest on the same day of the big home basketball game, forcing them to cancel the event and reschedule to a visiting school.
She anonymously donates money so that there's new uniforms for the team but oops! Looks like she "forgot" to donate enough money for them to get uniforms for all the team members, and strangely enough those boys in particular didn't get them! Looks like they'll have to wait until more money gets donated for the basketball team to get their new, nice uniforms. The old ones look so ratty in comparison, right?
And since the football team gets most of the sport money, that might just take awhile. And if (and when) they kick up a fuss? oops! Off the basketball team you go, :) such unsportsman-like behavior is unfit for the team.
(The only good thing about how corrupt the school system is is that she can use it to her advantage too.)
The both of them know that Danny suspects them for the sudden misfortune falling on these people, but he doesn't call them out on it. He's kinder than he used to be, but not kind enough to vouch for people who speak badly of him. Sometimes, he might just congratulate them on not getting caught.
Because Danny is their wonderful, hurt friend with a "slightly" Blue and Orange Moral code, and enough scars that people have been calling him a criminal (and worse) since he arrived in Amity Park when he was ten. And they'll be damned if he gets hurt anymore.
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if it wasn’t for bad luck i wouldn’t have luck at all
part one | rated t | 1270 words | cw: parental death
all my thanks and love to my beloved @fragilecapric0rnn for beta-reading 💜 you're a rockstar and your feedback was so so helpful
Eddie was born under a bad sign. That’s what his momma always used to say. Friday the 13th, and in October? He never really stood a chance and neither did anyone else he got close to. He was like a black cat walking across their path.
[ keep reading below, or read on ao3 ]
His momma was first, of course. Cursed by the fate of Eddie’s birth from the very beginning. And if he hadn’t dawdled on the way home from school that day, if he had gone straight home just like he’d promised, if he hadn’t stopped to pick a bouquet of ditch weed wildflowers for her and got distracted by caterpillars and rollie-pollies— Well, maybe he would’ve been able to tell the 911 operator she was still breathing when he found her.
His daddy was next, not much long after. Eddie worshiped him like a hero in one of his fantasy stories, the charming, devil-may-care, down on his luck protagonist who stole from the rich and gave to the needy. But the first time Floyd brought him out on a real job, just the two of them, when all Eddie had to do was hot wire the getaway car after he heard the signal (three hoots like a barn owl), Eddie panicked. Did he say barn owl or barred owl? Was that two hoots or three? Why did the wires all look the same in the dark?
When the police cars painted him in their flashing red and blue lights, he dropped the wire cutters and ran. Floyd went down in a hail of bullets behind the car Eddie had been trying to steal, and Wayne got his own life sentence when the State dropped Eddie on his doorstep.
Uncle Wayne got the worst of it, obviously. Working himself to the bone, nights and weekends, to put Eddie through school. Not to mention senior year for a second and third goddamn time.
It was too late by the time young Eddie figured it out. By the time he decided to keep everyone at arm’s length.
It’s safer that way, for everyone.
Chrissy was just the latest in a long line. And he’d only lowered his guard an inch, a millimeter, when he saw someone just as lonely and desperate for a friend. He’d only barely started to let himself have an inkling of what an actual friendship with her might be like when—
This is exactly why Eddie doesn’t have friends. He has minions. He has little lost sheepies, he has twerps and shrimps. And that’s it. That’s enough. It has to be enough.
But all that changes the day he dies.
Or maybe it’s the day he finally wakes up. His new birthday, welcomed to the world once again in a cold, bright, sterile hospital room.
And really, the way he sees it, it’s all Henderson’s fault.
The little shit wanders in every day at visiting hours and makes himself right at home. He props his cast up on Eddie’s bed, and steals the remote to change the channel on the ancient, minuscule tv over to cartoons, and then he just… camps out! All day!
The kid will not leave him alone, no matter how cold a shoulder Eddie tries to give him. He even broke down and explained everything to him. How he’s bad luck, he’s bad news. And people who get too close to him end up dead.
But maybe the painkillers they’ve got him on scrambled his brain as bad as the bats scrambled his guts, because Dustin steamrolls right over him.
“If curses were real, which they aren’t,” he posits in his professor voice, “Your dumb curse can’t try to kill me again. It already took a shot and it missed, and the worst I got was a busted ankle.”
Eddie opens his mouth to tell Dustin that’s not how curses work but—
“And what was its goal anyway? To get you alone and friendless, dead in a ditch? Well then, mission accomplished!”
Which is… weirdly comforting when he puts it like that.
Dustin brings with him a rotating cast of the rest of the fellowship. Eddie finally gets to meet Baby Byers and finds out he’s already been recruited to Hellfire before Eddie can even say hello.
More often than not, Steve tags along too since he’s already ferrying them all between the hospital and home. Usually after he’s spent some time with Red and the other kids in her room, he’ll drop by. To check on Dustin of course.
It’s not because he likes Eddie. Don’t be ridiculous. He doesn’t even know him.
All that… before… it was just some harmless flirting to keep himself from completely losing it while he was on the run from homicidal bible-thumpers. And Steve was just humoring him.
So he hides behind stupid flirtatious remarks, easy to brush off when it’s always undercut with sly winks and salacious expressions. Enough to keep everything surface level. Keep him at arms length.
It doesn’t matter that his eyes still seem to linger on Eddie, even when he hasn’t said anything for a while. Or that he brings Eddie extra pudding cups from the cafeteria. It doesn’t mean anything when he stands in the doorway trying to finish one last story or joke, until the kids almost literally have to drag him out when visiting hours are over.
Because it turns out Steve is an incorrigible gossip. And Eddie’s not about to be the one to corrige him. Not when he brings an extra dr. pepper for Eddie every time he stops by the vending machine for a coke and gleefully tells Eddie which of the doctors, nurses, and shady government agents are sleeping together.
A can of coke he taps on the lid with a peculiar rhythm before he cracks it, every time.
“What’s up with that?” Eddie finally has to ask one day, when it’s just the two of them and the Price is Right.
Steve hums this confused little sound at him, tilting his head with furrowed brows as he takes the first sip.
Eddie repeats the pattern, tapping it out on his own can.
Steve blinks a few times, first at Eddie, then at the can in his hand.
“I didn’t even realize I did that,” he huffs out a laugh. “It’s uh… something my grandpa taught me when I was a kid. Y’know just for luck.”
The blood in Eddie’s veins freezes and he’s stuck like that for a painfully long moment. Propped up against the lumpy hospital pillows with his mouth half open, staring at Steve.
“For luck.” he says flatly.
“Yeah, so the fizz doesn’t explode when you open it.”
“And has that ever happened to you?” Aiming for flirty, aiming for scathing, aiming for anything that’s not desperation.
“Well no,” Steve says with an easy shrug and a conspiratorial smile, “that’s why it’s lucky. It’s like picking up a coin that’s face-down on the sidewalk.”
“Uh, I’m pretty sure it’s face-up, darlin,” Eddie says coyly, like every alarm bell in his head isn’t ringing a deafening cacophony.
“Nah see, you gotta leave those ones for someone who really needs the luck.”
“But then you get the bad luck.”
“Nah, doesn’t work that way,” Steve says, and fucking winks at him.
Eddie wants to shake him. What is wrong with him? He’s got it all backwards and it’s dangerous. How is he walking around like this?
Whatever, it’s not his problem. Steve can do whatever Steve wants. Eddie doesn’t need to protect him from himself. It’s not like they’re friends. And really, that’s the best way to protect him.
[ part two ]
[ also on ao3 ]
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