Pt2 to this post
'Is something wrong?' Nancy asks, not long after the two of them have taken their familiar spots on the hood of Steve's car. They're basking in what might be the last warm sunlight of the year, looking out over the quarry, at a safe distance from the edge.
It's become a tradition the two of them share, ever since they reconnected back in March. It calms them both, to just sit here and take in the view, no one around but each other. Nancy is one of the few people Steve can share a comfortable silence with: sometimes they sit here quietly for what feels like hours, side by side, listening to music or to nothing but the birds singing around them. But they also have their best conversations here: it's the place where Nancy entrusted him she wanted to break up with Jonathan; it's the place where they talked about their shared past and decided they would always love each other as friends; it's the place where they finally talked about Barbara in a way they couldn't when they were younger. It's where Nancy talked about the ghosts still haunting her and Steve talked about how lonely he sometimes felt.
Steve huffs. 'How did you guess?'
'When you frown, you always do it with your whole face,' Nancy notes. 'So it's hard to miss, really.'
Steve glances at her side profile. There's a serenity to her features that's still relatively new. It means she's healing, slowly learning how to be happy again. It means she stopped waiting for the end of the world and started believing in a real future again. It makes Steve proud of how far they both have come.
'I had a fight with Eddie,' he confesses. 'And with Dustin, I guess.'
'What happened?'
He sighs. 'It's complicated.'
'Wanna tell me about it?'
The look in her eyes is kind and inviting. Steve hesitates. He wants to, but he doesn't know if he can. It's a risk. It's scary.
But he can't imagine Nancy Wheeler ever being careless with his secrets. He can't imagine her judging him, can't imagine her being as small-minded as most people in this town.
He was planning on telling her anyway, because things had been going so well with Eddie lately and – no, he shouldn't think about that right now. But maybe it would actually be nice to talk about it with Nancy.
'So, um...' His throat feels tight and his hands are sweaty. 'I recently discovered some things about myself. I-' The words get stuck somewhere on the way to his mouth, and he clears his throat.
Nancy doesn't push, but only gives him an encouraging nod, waiting for him to find his voice again.
'I found out I like boys,' he finally manages to confess. 'And I need you to know that – that that doesn't mean that what I felt for you wasn't real. It was. I loved you, and now I fell in love with a boy. And-'
'Steve.' Nancy's hand suddenly covers his, causing him to finally jerk his head away from the view over the quarry, to focus on her face again instead.
Her eyes are wide, and she squeezes his hand.
'You don't have to explain yourself to me,' she tells him. 'We're good. But thank you for telling me. For trusting me with this.'
Steve heaves out a relieved sigh, and Nancy smiles; it's that genuine kind of smile which reveals all kinds of dimples and soft lines across her face.
'We might be more similar than you thought,' she tells him, a faint blush spreading over her cheeks.
'Really?' Her words make his breath catch in his throat. He squints at her, trying to see her in this new light. 'Are you saying what I think you're saying?'
She shrugs. 'I don't know. I'm not sure yet,' she admits. 'Still figuring things out.'
'Take your time, there's no rush,' he tells her. 'But...' He bumps his shoulder against hers. 'When you're done figuring it out, talk to me, okay?'
She nods. 'Okay.'
For a while, it's quiet between the two of them. Some kind of raptor circles high above them in the sky. They both follow it with their eyes until it disappears among the tree tops west of the quarry.
'Is it Eddie?'
Steve blinks dumbly a couple of times.
'Wha- what?'
'The guy you were talking about. The one you fell in love with. It's Eddie, isn't it?'
'Jesus, Wheeler, what kind of sorceress are you?' Steve exclaims.
Nancy laughs again. 'You're not being as subtle as you think,' she tells him. 'The two of you have been hooking up for a while now, haven't you?'
Steve huffs dramatically. 'This is unfair. You know everything; I can't even tell you my own secrets anymore!'
'So what happened?' Nancy asks. 'You said you had a fight with him?'
'It's fucking stupid,' he sighs. 'Dustin was getting way too excited about the fact that I was gonna be hanging out with you, so I told him I was seeing someone. Next thing I knew, he was telling Eddie all about how I was seeing a girl.' He waves his hands around to make annoyed air quotations. 'I wanted to tell Eddie it was a misunderstanding, but Dustin was there, so I couldn't out us just like that, and he looked so betrayed and heartbroken... He didn't wanna listen to me.'
Steve sighs; he still can't manage to forget that look in Eddie's eyes when Dustin delivered the big news. 'I wish I would've talked about what I felt for him earlier. I should've been honest when I had the chance, y'know. But I was afraid he wouldn't wanna label what we had, that he wouldn't feel the same way – and now we're in this whole mess. God, he must hate me right now, Nance.'
To his surprise, Nancy gives him an unexpected slap against his arm.
'Ouch, what the hell was that for?!'
'What are you even doing here with me, Steve? You should've gone after him, tell him how you feel!'
'I tried, obviously, but he didn't wanna listen to me!'
'So make him listen! You're in love with him, he obviously feels the same way about you, and you let him leave to wallow in a broken heart he doesn't even need to have!' She rolls her eyes and slides off the car, adding something under her breath that sounds suspiciously like an exasperated 'Boys!' before she pulls Steve off the car as well. 'C'mon, time to get your ass over to the trailer park. Right. Now,' she says through gritted teeth. And, well, Steve knows better than to argue with a determined - and truthfully quite terrifying - Nancy Wheeler.
Read the last part here
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more cfau miscellaneous things because Childhood Friends Danny and Jason have my head and heart always and I need to finish rewriting chapter two dammit (and redo the half-finished chapter 4 because its just Not The Vibes). i'm almost through I need to get through the graveyard scene. (i just stubbornly refuse to have it be shorter than the original chapter and thats the little death. that is the mind killer.)
Danny and jason’s ghost forms both smell faintly like burnt flesh and cigarettes. However, Jason has a more smokey smell while Danny’s smells almost,,, electrical? In a sense? Like he just straight up smells like burnt flesh and sulphur while Jason smells like someone put him in a smoker first.
It’s very much an unpleasant smell but Danny finds an odd comfort in it just as much as he finds a comfort in the smell of nicotine.
(Jason post-revival smells burnt flesh once and is immediately offput by the fact that it brings him an instinctive comfort. He doesn’t realize its because it reminds him of Danny, and is uncomfortable by it.)
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In an au of an au, Danny’s altercation with Rath ends with Rath regaining enough of his sanity to snap out of the grieving state and ends with him breaking down. Instead of being souped and imprisoned, Rath, who is permanently 14, decides to Move On into the unknown. He’s exhausted, heartbroken, and tired.
(Is this influenced heavily by the ParaNorman scene where he talks to Agatha and helps her move on? Yes. But it doesn’t fit with the Original Storyline so im shoving it into an Au of an Au.)
Rath tells Danny that Jason lied to them (which he genuinely believes), and that he’s tired of waiting/looking for him/grieving. Jason is gone. He isn’t coming back, he abandoned them. And he wants his mom and dad, and his sister, and his friends. And he’s ready to join them.
He leads Danny out to Gotham, which other than Amity Park might’ve been the only city left untouched due to Rath’s own mental block on the place. They go out to the park he and Jason used to frequent or up to one of crime alley’s rooftops, and there Rath lies down and goes to sleep. Only to never wake up again, materializing into nothing as his soul moves on.
Before Rath leaves, he forces Danny to promise him that he’ll only wait for Jason for ten years. After that if he doesn’t find him, or if Jason doesn’t show, then Danny has to move on. Whether that be like how Rath does, or if its inly mentally/emotionally, doesn’t matter. He has to move on. Don’t wait for him. Don’t waste his time any more.
(“Oh, and if you find him, kick his ass for me.”)
Danny reluctantly agrees, and Rath lies down. Danny sings to him as he falls asleep.
(Angsty points if the vigilantes including Red Hood caught wind of their presence and were silently watching from the shadows. Rath might know they’re there, but Danny’s too focused on Rath to notice.)
(If only so that Red Hood realizes that this is what happened to Danny, and that Danny is gone before he can make things right. The tragedy, folks. The angst. The initial realization that Danny was Rath, and then also that Danny was dead and has been dead for years, and that before he moved on, he moved on believing that Jason abandoned him.)
(like i said it doesn't fit in the original timeline/storyline hence why its an au of an au and isn't nearly a fleshed out, but i was largely just focusing on the tragedy of Rath moving on and Jason being alive to see it and realize just who Rath is.)
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Just like how the Lazarus pits shot Jason's twiggy 4'6-5'4 (depending on what you find) feet tall and 86lb ass up like a tree an essentially fixed his malnutrition, the portal did the same thing for Danny.
(granted i forgot about malnutrition and danny's likely stunted growth at first -- his family lived in crime alley and despite both his parents working, I don't think they had enough food all the time. He probably wasn't as badly malnourished as Jason was, but he wasn't healthy either.)
Granted his ghost in its "natural" state (14) is short, and his growth spurts were slow at first, it did result in him reaching his dad's height. There were points where it just happened overnight, like a baby. He went to bed one night 5’6 and woke up the next day 5’10.
Jazz is shorter than him. Although I have't decided if she's even liminal at all (and if she is, it didn't cure everything because she would have also suffered childhood malnutrition, and since in au canon their parents didn't get their hands on physical ectoplasm until after they got to Amity Park. So the exposure is less.)
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Danny's voice absolutely sounds like canon Dan's. It kinda just dropped one day when he was 16-17 and never went back up. Sam and Tucker sometimes ask him to just talk about anything because they find his voice soothing.
I'm not sure yet how Danny would feel about it at first considering Rath, but I imagine that Rath, when he did speak, would have had a quieter and scratchier/weaker voice considering he's spent the last decade shrieking and crying.
(and i suppose technically that shouldn't have any effect on his throat considering he's a ghost and idk if that would actually affect him, but i like the idea so im keeping it)
In the beginning you could hear him from a mile away by the sound of his loud, echoing wails, but ten years later you can only really hear him by the soft, shuddering sobs he makes. Like he's gasping for air that isn't there. The future is full of very quiet survivors.
And it's much easier to speak when you pitch your voice upwards (especially when whispering/speaking quietly) so he might've spoken in a higher, airy pitch in order to be heard. So Danny might actually find a comfort in having a lower voice.
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