Chapter Text
Most people would describe Danny's current trajectory in life as a classic case of a downward spiral.
It is, unfortunately, not an unfair assessment; Danny even agrees, but a strictly mortal coil isn't exactly something he still has, so what's the harm in just not… caring? Sure, there must be jagged rocks and a fractured foundation waiting for the abrupt stop at the end, but, well. Not that anyone knows, but it's pretty hard to hit rock bottom when you can fly. The fall wouldn't kill him — all of him — anyway.
Probably.
"Heyyy, Big D, how's it?" a voice calls, and wrinkling his nose, Danny glances down at his co-worker; it's not that he's all that tall, she's just so short. "God you look awful as always. Go on another bender last night?"
Yes. "No," he lies, and looks over the hospital floor assignments tacked up on the wall. He's got his usuals, as usual. "S'just my face, y'know? Could give a guy a complex sayin' he looks bad all the time."
Lindsay snorts, reaching beside him for the little box of hairnets. "Sure," she says, fitting the net over her head and green tipped ponytail. Behind them, more people trickle in and past, the production line corralling in clean trucks. "What're you doing today?"
"Delivery," he replies, and skims around for her name. Ah, there. "They've got you taking orders."
"Good, I hate it when they make me deliver."
Lindsay wanders toward the manager's office at that, leaving Danny to shuffle the tablet in his hands, glance boredly at the time. The noise and heat of the kitchen are a balm and irritant wrapped in one; here, he's just another pair of hands, but already he can feel sweat gathering under his arms. He surveys the controlled chaos, and decides to think quietly about nothing much at all. S'easier that way, to carefully not think too hard.
It feels like he's only just blinked by the time the first of his floor of orders are ready. He waves briefly at Lindsay as he tugs his two trucks of food into the elevator, gives a quick call of, "Forty-three-hundred," to the supervisor stationed between the doors who doesn't look up from her map of departures besides a sharp nod. Danny taps the orders out as he ascends, and begins his short journey out of the service well into the public-facing halls.
He badges into his floor moments later to a cheery, "Morning Danny! How's it hanging?" from the nurses' station. Shantel wheels her chair around as he stops his carts just behind her in the narrow pathways of the unit. "You coming to the bar crawl this weekend?"
"Yeah," he agrees, even though his wallet would rather he not. It's unflatteringly not that hard to weasel drinks out of flirty drunks, thankfully. "Diamond District this time?"
"Yep," she says, popping the P as Danny picks up his tablet to set the delivery status. "Wear something less ratty this time, huh? We know it works for your bad boy, just rolled out of bed look, but c'mon, dress nice for once. Show off them guns, man."
"Haha," he deadpans, and dumps the tablet back onto the rubber top of the first truck. With a crusty grind, he gently shoves its door open, and crouches to pull out the first order of food. The heat from the plate is uncomfortable even though the temperature control container and tray itself. "We'll see."
Shantel makes a noise, flapping a hand, but that's the end of that. Slowly, Danny makes his way around, squeezing between wayward computer stations, cluttered patients' rooms and guests alike. Some regulars are leaving, some are gone save for the lingering taste of a waning presence. Some are asleep, a couple refuse the trays, and Danny dutifully notes those and the disposable ones down. A handful are new; one even gets food he clearly can't eat.
Danny takes that order because why not, and the man and his husband are surprised but grateful. All sorts of folks work in a hospital — assholes are not uncommon, but shortcuts are taken all the time even by the nicest of them. Danny doesn't want to make anything harder than it has to be though; no one's here because they want to be. A little kindness in the cesspool that makes up Gotham can't hurt, right?
It's the most he can bear to give of himself these days.
Danny's on the last tray of food from the first truck when a trickle of not quite unease but something close to it runs its fingers up his spine. It's weird, but he's felt it before — just before the sirens go off during a fear toxin event, just before an Arkham prison break. Unlike his near perma-muted ghost sense, it heralds nothing good. Ever, so far.
Balancing the tray, he frowns. The meal ticket notes nursing assistance to eat, which isn't unusual, but. Hm.
Rapping shortly on the door to no answer, he pushes it open. "Good morning, food services," he calls, softening at the gloom. "I've got breakfast here."
The room is fairly dim, and the new patient on the bed barely stirs, the brief shine through heavily lidded blue eyes the only clue that they're awake. Food on one arm, Danny sidles inside, a faint… something clicking for attention at the very depths of his mind. He glances at the meal ticket again, and then firms his smile even though it's all but invisible behind his mask.
"Can I check your bracelet?" he says, glancing at the partially visible wrist. Again, the patient doesn't answer, actually closes their eyes. Leaning over just enough, Danny spots the same alias name printed across the band. "Okay, I'll just place the food over here. Hope you enjoy."
The encounter lasts for all of maybe a minute, but it sticks with Danny for the rest of the day. Nothing special happens when he returns for the barely eaten tray or twice later for lunch. He doesn't want to dwell on it; it's just a vague gut feeling. Well, not really, but it's something and that's what really bothers him.
And that's saying something for the amount of times he's felt something about patients in the year and some change he's been in Gotham. Danny's pretty sure he's met The Riddler nursing some busted ribs, definitely a lot of small time goons cuffed to their beds, and maybe even the Penguin once. While usually memorable, it's never quite been like this. Being half dead in a hospital setting probably isn't the best of both worlds, though.
He clocks out for his shift that day with a weird itch in his teeth, stubbornly hopeful it'll go away.
It doesn't, and if anything, gets worse as the days go by. That patient isn't usually active when he comes by, but passively eavesdropping on the nurses answers most of his questions: a coma patient that escaped his specialist hospital only to end up here after being tagged by the cops in the Bowery. There's a lot of whispers about the scars and fading stitches on someone so young. HIPPA, eat your heart out.
It's an interesting story, but it does lead him to the most likely conclusion:
John Doe died a violent death.
That's what's tickling his senses, the barely there awareness of what could've been, may actually still be, a subject of his court. Danny scrutinizes him a few times, wondering if just maybe the guy's possessing his own body, but. No. Kid's alive… mostly, soul melded back to flesh, but not all of the lights have turned back on upstairs, so to speak. Whatever brought him almost all the way back to life doesn't make him like Danny, thankfully, but it does make him a vague oddity in this hateful, weird world — in this very hateful, weird, cursed city.
Regardless, Danny would prefer to forget all about it because the him he no longer is feels the pull to do something — to help, help, help, and three moscow mules have yet to shut it up five days later.
With a cheer, Shantel loops an arm over his shoulder, the threaded straps of her halter top glittering under the club's strobing lights. Danny weathers the wet kiss she smears on his cheek, and shoos her off to the dance floor with the others she's corralled for the evening. He watches them for a moment before grinding the little straw of his drink between his teeth, lazily surveying the shifting collegiate crowd.
The body heat is near visible to his eyes, and he wearily settles back against the curved booth, thankful for the cropped tank he'd opt'd for despite protest. Truthfully, Danny doesn't even like the bar scene, doesn't even like alcohol. The social interaction keeps him going for what it's worth, keeps him somewhat preoccupied. Keeps him from too quiet evenings in what amounts to a crackerbox that still leaves too much room for not so great things, not so great thoughts that only quiet with not so great actions. Jazz definitely wouldn't—
"Nope," he says aloud, and eyes the table full of half drank drinks.
Danny snatches up one that's almost inhumanly blue, and knocks it back with an internal hiss. His nerves are completely blunted at the edges with that, the unhappy memories submerging to the burgeoning drunk tide. He can't help but down two more partially empty glasses before he's near enough to the ghost of euphoria. This sort of warmth is always pleasant, a numb cotton feeling where nothing matters but having a good time. It's what lets him be dragged up to his feet and dumped among the jiving bodies.
He most definitely doesn't know how to dance, but this late no one cares and he can't find the will to stress about it. It's easy to let the rest of the night pass that way, to sink beneath the flashing colors and music loud enough to rattle his lungs, to ignore the creeping sensation of eyes burning along his neck. A knee presses up against the back of his thighs, hands roams across his shoulders. People scream and laugh. Danny has fun like he'll never have fun again… again.
He wakes up slumped against the door to his apartment, drooling against the cracked wood. Which, well, isn't terribly unusual; at least he made it inside the building this time.
"Ugh," he groans, and slowly gets his feet from under him. Danny tugs out the key jammed into his left shoe, and it takes like four tries before he gets it in the lock. "Goddamn—"
He falls through the doorway, and seriously considers sleeping there, door wide open to his horrifically empty closet of an apartment. All it takes is a faint sniffing of his hair to change his mind, to allow him enough strength to crawl back up to get the key and then squirm just out of the way to kick the door shut. Then slump back over to oblivion.
Milton has other plans, obviously, and starts licking his hair. The long strands get caught on his tongue, but it doesn't deter the raggedy sack of bones; Danny appreciates the thought. He's doing a pretty bad job at this adulting gig, in all honesty.
"I, I will do better tomorrow," he promises the cold floor, a soothing touch to his pounding headache. "F-For reals this time."
He says that every time, and yet…
Hrgh. Whatever.
Danny passes out again, and wakes up to a too hot spot curled up on his side, a faint vibration matched by his too close core. His hands find coarse fur, the pitch rising. Milton gives a rusty croak, and Danny slowly sits up, cuddling the cat close. Bright orange eyes blink up at him from a near formless face of long black fur. With a sigh, he curls up and noses the old thing, lets the cat run his gums across his cheek.
"Is it time to feed the cat?" he asks, and Milton immediately jerks, wiggling free with a long and whiny meow. "Okay, okay, give me a sec…"
Everything feels gross, but Danny dutifully tops off the old cat's bowl before leaving him to it, staggering his way to the bathroom. Water's splashed on the face that stares back at him from the smudged and cracked mirror, wet fingers ran through the rat's nest of his hair. He squints at his eyes, sure that if he were anymore alive they'd be bloodshot; it does nothing for the dark rings, the way his freckles stand out on his too pale skin, though.
One good thing about Gotham as it is, that while it isn't, well, home, the air's charged with enough contaminated ecto-like energy that Danny's managed to not kick the whole bucket yet. It's most likely the only thing that's keeping his liver from turning straight to sludge at this point. Letting him waste more money on playing at life on fast-forward than actual food or anything a more mentally healthy person might care about.
Danny smirks at the him in the mirror. It does not return the quirk of lips, remains instead solemn and green eyed as the tips of Its hair curl in an unseen wind.
"Party pooper," he tells it, and draws away to pull his shirt up and over his head, shuck the jeans. Fresh clothes and only a half dirty towel and washcloth mock him from the toilet, past him coming to the rescue for once. He doesn't even remember doing it. "Couldn't you be more like him?"
With one last glance at his reflection, Danny huffs, rolling his eyes — the movement is perfectly mirrored.
The shower makes him feel truly alive for all of thirty minutes. Somewhere between chewing through the last bowl of cereal and Milton making biscuits in his lap, Danny falls asleep propped up on his patchy couch to the sounds of police sirens and heavy stomps from the apartment above him.
Today is yet another day. It might even be a better one than yesterday.
Fingers crossed, and all that.