Chapter Text
“I don’t fucking belong here, Sam,” Danny says, dodging the fifth cocktail waitress he’s passed in this hallway. “I got this suit from rent-a-tux, I’m pretty sure one of these kid’s dad owns Armani. Not just a suit, like, the company. ”
“ You’re fine. ” Sam says, evenly. “ This is what you want, right, getting the super-selective invite to the social elite party? ”
“This isn’t a high school kickback.”
“ I’m fully aware of that. ”
Danny nods at the other wealthy teenager in the alcove he’s tucked himself into to try and get out of the flow of traffic. “I feel like a hick.” The teen wipes at his nose, a motion which means either he agreed with Danny being a hick, or could be evidence of a drug habit, or something totally incongruous, and Danny isn’t savvy enough to know which.
“ Well, ” Sam says, leadingly.
“Fuck off.” He tilts his head back to get a better look at the ballroom, which was just past the alcove of the hall he’d tucked himself away in. There were two goals for the night, the first of which was fairly easy- avoid Vlad at all costs. It was fairly easy (much easier than Danny had initially anticipated) because on arriving at the gala, after a footman took his coat, he was told that the younger attendees were welcome to socialize in the B hall. At first it felt a bit like being relegated to the kiddy table, when Danny shucked off his thrift store puffer coat to be hung up in a little room full of boiled wool and Chanel, but it became quickly clear that it was more about providing an environment where young heirs and new money twenty-somethings could get drunk and make poor financial decisions regarding the ‘investment paintings’ in the gallery.
“ It’s probably in a vault somewhere in the basement ,” Tuck puts in, having been mostly silent. Sam had been much more vocal, as she was providing emotional support rather than logistical support, and Danny was much more in need of the former.
“I hate museums,” Danny mutters, and the other teen pulls out his phone, wiping his nose again. There is a little chill from the window, because it’s old single pane glass, and the grilles look to be as old as the building. Outside, big New England snowflakes are drifting over the gardens, making the scene all idyllic and christmassy.
“ A little culture wouldn’t kill you. ” Sam replies.
“Only cause I’m already dead,” Danny steps back out into the crowd, wondering how everyone else is able to move without feeling like they’re constantly in the way of someone, or, alternatively, their view of whatever ridiculous ‘modern’ painting they were exchanging intellectual commentary about. It’s something about how assured they are, growing up with the aftertaste of silver on their tongues.
“ The archives are your best bet, can you get down there? ”
“Do you have any idea how many people are here? And they all want to know my name. The only reason I haven’t gotten pulled into the quicksand of rich people niceties is because I’m on the phone, or because they think I’m one of the staff.”
“ Crowds are great for anonymity. ”
“I wish that were true.” In the ballroom proper, there are a lot of people, that’s sure, but they’re all in clumps, spread out enough that visibility is too good to just disappear in. “I should’ve done this whole thing invisible.”
“ You’re too far from a portal to try and be invisible for that long. Plus, you were expected. ” Sam reminds. “ You’re not important enough for turning it down to be anywhere near acceptable. I didn’t get invited this year, but.. ”
“Which you are totally not bitter about. I would’ve brought you if I had a plus one.”
“ The social echelon that hosts these galas expect that your plus one would get an invitation independently. ”
“Sounds incestuous.”
“ Eh, ” Sam intones. A girl in a red silk dress shakes her empty champagne flute in front of his face, and he pulls the phone away from his ear.
“I’m not a caterer.” Her face twists up, like he smells bad.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Well then what are you doing here?”
“I’ll call you back,” Danny tells Sam and Tuck. “Danny Fenton.” He holds his hand out to shake, but both of her hands are occupied- one with the flute and the other with a clutch.
She blinks at him. He drops his hand.
“Heir to Vlad-co?”
“Oh!” She says, with enough genuine surprise that Danny believes she might’ve actually heard of him- according to Sam, it’s important that you already know everyone going into these events, that you research the guest list beforehand. “Sorry. I didn’t realize...”
“Don’t worry.” Danny says. “My prada’s at the cleaner’s.”
She smiles at him again- it doesn’t hit her eyes, and she doesn’t get the joke. “Right.”
“Right.” She’s still holding the flute half expectantly. “Maybe just put it down on one of the tables?”
She just nods and walks away, and god, Danny hates this. It’s bad enough when he’s somewhere he doesn’t belong but he knows all the rules, even while he’s breaking them, because acceptance at least feels within reach, if he’d just bought the right clothes, said the right things, changes that felt plausible. Sam tried to coach him, but obviously it wasn’t effective.
He shakes his head, just slightly, glancing down to his phone. It’s nearly dead, because he forgot to pack his charger, and didn’t think it would be that much of a problem, going straight from the airport to the gala.
“Great,” He breathes, just to himself, tucking it into his suit pocket. He nods and smiles to the photographer in the photo, because even though he doesn’t want to see Vlad at all throughout the night, he also needs to be seen in attendance, because his parents thought it was a good idea for him, and because Vlad made some very thinly veiled threats about what would happen if he didn’t show up.
At least that meant Vlad most likely didn’t know about the shard potentially being kept in this particular museum’s archives. Although Danny isn’t really sure if he would be interested in it for any reason other than making his life difficult.
He selects a little cup with some kind of chocolate mousse in it and wonders if he just walks up to a group and laughs at the first funny thing someone says if the night might get a little easier. There are a few loners hugging the walls, of course, including a kid who looks about twelve wearing a suit that could buy Danny’s whole block. All of the loners look cool and curated, though, which Danny decidedly does not.
He eats a spoonful of mousse and cringes immediately. “Oh, there’s rum in that. Right.” He sniffs it, then takes another spoonful, this time with a high ratio of whipped cream. “When in Rome, I guess. Act like you belong, Danny, just act like you belong.”
The shards (shard singular, actually, in regards to this night) are the second goal of the night. They’re the shattered pieces of a... skull? Bowl? Chalice? Something round and hollow, that belongs to one asshole of a spirit who’s tearing up the realms looking for it, despite the fact that it’s been broken and scattered across an amount of realms for the past millennia, give or take. Of course Danny was the one to wake it up, and so of course Danny was the one who had to go on a quest to get all of the shards to calm it down, because when it first got broken, it terrorized the zone for the better part of a century before it decided to take a nap, and while that might not be much to some spirits, it seriously puts a damper on Danny’s day-to-day.
They managed to track one of them down to an archeologist connected to the museum hosting the gala, and so there Danny was, eating chocolate rum mousse, in an ill-fitting rented tux.
Whatever. It was better than the Needle realm, where he’d gotten the last one (it’s worse than it sounds. Somehow.) He finishes the mousse, wondering idly about the alcohol content as he puts the cup and spoon down at one of the standing tables, trying to ignore the twelve year old, who is staring daggers at him, and moving through to the next hall, hoping desperately that it leads somewhere he can slip, invisible and intangible, to the vaults below.
***
Tim was born to attend galas. That’s not even a joke, a decent percentage of the reason his parents had him was to parade him around to the rest of high society as the perfect son, the perfect addition to their perfect family and he’s not even bitter about it, because he’s so damned good at it. He fits in authentically, in contrast to his siblings. In all fairness, Dick is the only other one who really tries , with Damian thinking it’s below him, and Jason, when he was attending them, thinking the whole process was idiotic.
And, well, Dick trying is half the problem. He’s an entertainer at heart, and the desire to be liked works against him in an atmosphere where everyone is trying to act like they care the absolute least about what everyone else thinks about them. Tim doesn’t need to try. The fake smiles and drinking enough that everyone around you thinks you’re drunk but little enough that it doesn’t disarm you at all (easy for Tim, who’s not even eighteen, and who can con the investment bankers and other executives who think it’s fun and or funny to give the minor alcohol).
But securing good deals for Wayne Enterprises isn’t the goal of the night. It’s not maintaining his image as a flawless boy genius, or a legitimate member of the Wayne boys.
“We’re sure it’s in the archives?” Tim asks.
“ Hundred percent sure, boy wonder. ” Zatanna’s voice says in his ear.
“You owe me so much for this one,” He says, with a fake smile plastered on his face. “I wasn’t even going to come to this.”
“ Well, no one else got invited, so... ”
“All the robins were.” Hell, Damian is here, somewhere. Tim lost track of him in the first flurry of people vying for his attention. Then again, Damian is only here because Bruce insisted Tim bring him as a show of unity, despite the fact the little brat maintains that he hates him and doesn’t care to act any differently.
“ Yeah, well, you won’t make a scene. If everything goes according to plan, no one will ever remember you were there. ”
“Right. I’m gonna let you go. Wouldn’t want anyone thinking I’m doing anything out of the ordinary,” Tim says, still smiling, taking a glass from a passing waitress without really looking at her.
He’s in the main hall where the Gala’s being hosted, and everything smells like balsam, classic colognes, and champagne. Tim makes a show of sniffing his glass, like he’s thinking about the bouquet. He’s not- most of the time when he’s playing a sommelier, he just says words and everyone else nods, so he’s convinced no one can actually taste the different notes. A small string ensemble is playing Handel, which is insulting to the composer, in Tim’s opinion.
“Mr. Drake-Wayne! I’m glad to see you could make it!”
“Of course, senator,” Tim says, pausing in front of one of the larger pieces. “I wouldn’t miss it.”
“Ah, you might. Your guardian appears to find it below his station.”
“Bruce is very busy around the holidays. He’d be here if he could, I just hope I’m an adequate substitute.”
Senator Ricci laughs, a little falsely, and Tim humors him with a chuckle. “Ah of course. You’re doing quite a lot of business for him now, aren’t you? Gotta start ‘em young, I always say. Speaking of, aren’t you a little young for that drink? Don’t worry, I won’t tell.”
“I appreciate it, senator.” Tim says, tipping the glass, which he hasn’t even sipped from, towards the canvas. “Great understanding of color here, wouldn’t you say? Very evocative.”
“Ah, good eye. It’s one of my favorites.”
“You haven’t put a bid on it, though?” There’s no sticker by the artist statement that indicates the painting’s been sold. The figure listed does seem to have a few more zeros than Tim expects from the quality, but from what he’s seen, the artist has several pieces similar selling for around the same. It’s easy enough to recognize people are purchasing for the name.
“Ah, you know.” The senator says dismissively. “It’s a little rich for my blood.”
“Really?” Tim fakes.
“Are you considering it?”
He shakes his head, mildly. “I’m more in the market for gallery pieces instead of... investments.” Ricci leans forward, looking at the statement again, and Tim moves on. His skills as a collector are easily as limited as his of a sommelier, which is why he strays to the more abstract pieces in settings such as this, so whatever bullshit he ends up saying can’t be easily argued by anyone with a shred more competence in the matter.
Generally the deciding factor on who’s right in these environments, though, is money. Which Tim has a lot of. Enough that it’s rarely worth it to disagree with him.
He continues wading through the crowd, with enough nods and smiles and snippets of small talk that if anyone asked (no one would ask) people would say of course he was there, I saw him talking to so and so I saw him with him, he was flirting with her, didn’t he buy that one painting? No, someone outbid him. Tonight is not the night to be memorable, and Tim likes it that way. He likes his names out of the papers, his face off the internet, and his life out of other people’s thoughts.
Once he’s made his round and had his whole flute of champagne, he places it on an empty tray, making sure he’s less careful about his posture, the sounds of his footfalls despite not being the slightest bit inebriated. It’s all a lie.
Tim is an excellent liar.
There’s actually not all that much in terms of security for museums overnight, especially regarding the stuff that’s not on display. The pieces are less valuable, and even if they aren’t, you have to be a seriously committed- or specific- thief to dredge through museum archival records to find them.
Tim’s not either, but according to Zatanna, John Constantine was concerned about the ancient scrap of pottery only now, despite it being unearthed way back in the sixties, due to come ‘concerning semi-dimensional disturbances’ in the past few weeks. That’s justice league dark for you- even when they try to sound scientific they fail miserably. They ought to just stick to their superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
Tim bypasses the electronic locks using a chip he’d put in one of his cufflinks, which he’d coded to the museum’s security system on the drive over. The lights aren’t on, but Tim’s well loved by the shadows. His fingers trace faint lines on the wall as he descends the stairs, glad to be free from the facade of drunkenness. He’s only been drunk a few times, only once in earnest, and he despises it. He needs to be in control of every action, every word, every thought. He isn’t interested in losing inhibitions.
There’s two levels of security to get into the archives proper- the fob, which he has, and a mechanical lock, which Tim picks without much of a thought.
All this, he thinks, for a plain shard of pottery. It almost feels insulting. He glances at the numbers and letters on the shelving. At least it would be quick. He won’t be back in Gotham tonight for patrol, but he could at least get some work done back in the hotel, some hours of sleep, and maybe even a meal before he and the Demon have to be at Logan International to return to Jersey. Their flight is at five, but it’s short. Environmentally speaking, they ought to take the train, but he’s equally aware of his follies as he is of his virtues, and he’s not patient enough for all of the sitting and waiting and doing nothing while scenery scrolled by. Especially not sitting across from his nominal little brother who wants to kill him.
The archive hall is as big as the main ballroom upstairs, although the ceiling is much lower. The emergency lighting, sparse as it is, is red to help preserve the ink, paint, canvas and papers. If Tim were anyone else, it might be eerie.
Based on the organizational system, the shard was in the opposite corner to the door. Not completely tucked away, but forgotten, as an obscure, unstudied piece.
“This is so stupid,” Tim breathes, “It’s probably in a cardboard box, I don’t get why they couldn’t have just written a formal requisition. Ridiculous.” His fingers pad against the metal shelves, making them chime softly.
“Oh shit.” Tim pauses, wondering if he heard that right- was that actually a voice, or just false echoes that his brain was making in the silence?
His question was answered a heartbeat later, when the silence breaks into a ringing, violent, cacophony.
“Oh shit,” Tim copies.
***
Danny returns to the confines of physicality in a low room that smells of old paper and is lit blood red. It’s bigger than he anticipated, and he’s somewhat lost in his first few breaths. But in those breaths, grows the misty tail of his ghost sense, the humming pull that he feels with haunted objects.
Hopefully the shard is the only haunted item down here (optimism is a healthy trait , okay?) and he doesn’t end up stuck in the labyrinthian archives, full of steel stock shelves, looking for the thing for so long that he misses his flight back to Illinois.
He follows the pull carefully, conscious of how loud his footfalls are on the tile. The shard is kept, of course, in a metal tackle box, locked with a rusted Master Lock. Danny rolls his eyes, fishing Pariah Dark’s ring out of his inside pocket. He doesn’t wear it casually- absolute power corrupts absolutely, and all that- but it’s useful when he definitely doesn’t want to walk out of this museum with an actual artifact from said museum on his person. He’ll just move it into a pocket dimension and retrieve it when he’s back in Amity Park.
He turns his arm intangible and sticks it in blind, feeling the dust and the old, tattered plastic. His fingers find the shard, and the sharp edges dig into the meat of his palm with a surety. He twists his wrist to open the portal and, to be fair, he probably should’ve thought that opening an interdimensional tear in the middle of an environmentally controlled archive might’ve caused a few problems. The contents of the tacklebox all rush into the portal because of the change in pressure, and luckily the box doesn’t implode into itself, because it’s not airtight, but it’s a near thing.
“Oh, shit.” Danny says, his voice barely catching, and he closes the portal and removes his arm. There’s a short second where he holds his breath, and he thinks it might not cause any problems.
Then the alarms start up.
Danny’s been dead at this point for the better part of four years. Almost four years of fights and flight and figuring himself out. He knows how his powers work, and how well, and how well they last him the further he gets from a portal. He also knows better than to let himself run through his reserves in a minor emergency (such as getting caught in the locked archives of a museum in Boston) because Murphy’s law declares that if he does, there will be a major emergency (asteroid, ancient god, aliens, interdimensional threat, ect.) and he and everyone else will be S.O.L.
So he ignores the instinct to dissolve into the aether and float back up to rejoin the party, and skids out into the main aisle. He’s ready to lie through his teeth to whatever security guard shows up.
He’s not ready for there to be another person there. A teenage boy in a fucking expensive suit. Danny always thought you couldn’t really tell a three hundred dollar suit from a three thousand dollar suit- mostly because he’d never seen the latter. It’s obvious in the silhouette alone. They stare at each other for a breath, then two, their torsos moving in tandem, Danny’s heart loud in his ears. The panic is visible in the whites of the other boy’s eyes.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Boy in expensive velvet suit says. (Velvet? Fucking velvet? )
“Neither are you,” Danny replies oh so smartly.
“Yes I-” Velvet suit cuts himself off as the doors open, and the chopped up beams from flashlights light up their shoes. “Fuck.”
“Right.” Danny hisses at him.
Patent leather shoes bites his lip, eyes darting around and down, as if he’s looking for a way out. There’s not one, so Danny takes a venture on the quality of the suit, and the fact that it appears to be a deep evergreen as opposed to black, and the ring on his pinky, the fact that his nails are painted, and says:
“Fake-out make-out?”
Collar jewelry instead of a tie looks at him, considers, rolls his eyes and says: “Fuck it, aight.”
And then he kisses Danny with a purpose.
He’s so taken off course by it that he doesn’t really understand the desperate motions of the other boy’s hands- to get Danny’s shirt untucked, his tie loosened- as what they are, which is attempts to get them looking both as disheveled as possible in as little time as they have. Once the shock wears off, Danny goes with the program, mussing his hands up in his hair, tugging at the buttons of his vest (which is silk, and feels like it has a brocade.) Danny is aware instantly that he’s outmatched, which was a funny sort of understanding, that you can be outmatched whilst kissing, but he definitely is. Old money boy knows how to use his mouth, and he’s stronger than his frame suggests, and his fingers are deft, and if Danny is being totally honest, he was getting a little bit distracted, because he finds himself annoyed in the blue L.E.D beam of the security guard’s flashlight.
“It’s just a couple of kids, Manny!” The imposing woman shouts, and her partner, presumably Manny, grumbles, moving back to the door. “Fuck are you doing here, eh?”
“Sorry, are we not meant to be here?” The other boy asks, blinking in the harsh light. His face is flush and his saliva tastes like champagne on Danny’s lips. His hand is knotted up in Danny’s necktie, keeping him anchored at his shoulder, despite the fact that Danny’s probably got a solid five inches on him. “We didn’t know.”
The security guard evaluates them. Danny offers his best, kissed-silly grin (it isn’t hard) and keeps his mouth shut, because there’s no way he can sound half as rich as this kid.
“Get the hell out of here.”
Danny is led up the stairs and out into the museum proper like a dog on a leash, the rich boy’s face set hard and determined. No one else is in the tall hallways, and it’s eerily silent, without even the distant sounds of the party going on in another room.
“Where is everyone?” Danny chances.
“Probably outside after all the alarms,” The boy says. “Gala’s effectively done, even though it was a false alarm.” He glances at Danny when he says ‘false’ as if questioning him.
“Right.” Danny says. “How’d you end up down there anyways?”
“I was looking for the bathroom,” he says through gritted teeth. “What were you doing down there?”
“Ah, right, same. Bathroom.”
“Of course. Of course,” He rolls his eyes- they’re a deep blue, a color which Danny didn’t think eyes really came in, dark blue, almost black around the edges. “Why else would you be in the basement of a fucking museum, god knows,” he’s barely breathing the words, and Danny’s not sure (on account of the fact that he’s had superpowers for again, the better part of four years) if most people would be able to hear him, but he can.
They walk out of the main entrance to flashing lights. The boy pauses, and Danny, still being led by his necktie, runs into his shoulder. The whole gala is standing out in the snow, women in sleeveless dresses huddling, the staff scrambling to organize everyone’s coats to their tickets, the media’s cameras all trained on them, the most interesting thing of the night.
The boy’s tongue clicks inside of his mouth, and then he smiles evenly, letting his vice off of Danny’s tie. He tries to placate the journalists and photographers, asking one particularly tall man in glasses for his pen. Danny drags his eyes across the crowd, until he finds Vlad, looking at him with that glare that says: If not for the fact that we are surrounded by the highest class in the United States right now, you would be a grease stain on the brickwork .
“Thanks, Clark.” Danny follows a tug on his sleeve down the stairs as gold cufflinks drags him out into the crowd. He loses sight of Vlad, which doesn’t provide much relief- he’d much rather know which direction his imminent demise is coming from. “Here.” He slides a business card into Danny’s breast pocket and drops his arm. “Damian! Where are you, little monster, let’s go!”
He turns around, suddenly, to catch the arm of the twelve year old from the ballroom.
“Tt. You just had to make a scene, didn’t you, Drake?” Manicure (Drake, evidently) plucks something metallic out of the boy’s hand, tucking it away with near supernatural speed.
“Nice try, demon, come on.”
He leaves, and Danny has just enough battery left to request an Uber.
***
Wayne Manor Regulars
Flying Phallus: Hey Timbo, thought you might need this
Attachment: So you’ve had your first sex scandal , a powerpoint by Alfred Pennyworth
Typing...
Typing...
Typing...
fuck you it’s not a scandal.
Spoilt: if it walks like a duck, and it talks like a duck
Demon Interloper: He gave him his number.
Demon Interloper: His PERSONAL cell phone number. I saw him write it.
snitch.