Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Sorry I’m late.” Louis says, sliding into the corner booth beside his boyfriend, Harry. His friends Niall, Liam, and Zayn fill up the other seats, already surrounded by trays of food. The five of them live together in a house not far from campus, but with their busy class schedules and various extracurriculars, they never have much time to all hang out together. Tonight is the first time this school year that they’ve had a chance to grab dinner together.

Harry greets him with a quick peck on the lips. He pushes a tray in front of Louis. “I ordered your usual.”

“Thanks, love.” Louis digs in.

“Good to see you, Tommo.” Niall says from across the table.

“Hey, Louis,” Liam says.

Zayn asks, “How’d your interview go?”

Louis swallows a bite of his chicken and says, “I thought it had gone alright, but it must not have. I didn’t get the research assistant position with Professor Marston.”

“No! What?” Zayn exclaims.

Harry rubs Louis’ back consolingly. He’d been the first person Louis texted after he got the news that he wouldn’t be working in Marston’s lab this year. Louis was a junior at Casper University and he’d had his sights set on a year-long job working in Professor Samantha Marston’s lab. The position was highly competitive. She is one of the top astrophysicists in the country, and her previous research assistants have gone on to prestigious graduate programs or to work for the space agency.

“They’re crazy not to pick you.” Liam shakes his head.

“Well, they did offer me a position…in Fenton’s lab.”

A collective gasp punctuates the statement. Louis had felt a similar shock when he received the email from the physics department offering him a position as the research assistant to Professor Fenton. Unfortunately, he was the last professor Louis wanted to be associated with.

Dr. Jackson Fenton was the oldest professor in the department, and also the weirdest by a long shot. He had been a leading quantum physicist in the eighties, performing cutting-edge experiments and publishing groundbreaking papers. The school gained a lot of attention, and many new students, because of his research. No one knows for sure what happened, but rumor has it, a failed experiment triggered a mental breakdown that sent Dr. Fenton on a different path. Ever since the early nineties, the focus of his research shifted to the afterlife, ghosts, phantoms, and ectoplasm. He toiled away in his lab inventing machines for detecting ghosts and hypothesizing about a Realm where ghosts lived. The physics community quickly lost all respect for a man that once held great promise. He became a laughingstock of the field almost overnight. Because of tenure, pity, and perhaps a misplaced loyalty to someone that once brought the school a good amount of fame, the university kept him on.

And now, Louis was supposed to work under him. “I haven’t decided if I should accept the position. I was really hoping I could get my name on at least one astrophysics paper before the end of the year.”

“At least it’s a job. Maybe you can work on homework during your shifts since he probably isn’t working on anything important.” Niall points out.

“That’s true, it would be an easy pay check.”

Louis arrives at the laboratory for his first shift of his new job the following Monday afternoon. The door is closed but there’s a faint sound of old rock music from the other side. Through the little window he can see Dr. Fenton hunched over a desk holding a soldering iron and some wires. Louis knocks on the door. Fenton jumps in his seat.

He sets down the soldering iron, takes off his black gloves, and turns his music down. When he stands, it takes Louis by surprise. In the three years Louis has been attending Casper University, he’s only ever caught glimpses of Professor Fenton, down the hall or from across the courtyard. He’s a large man, both tall and broad. His orange boiler suit brings more attention to his large frame. Shiny gel slicks back his salt and pepper hair.

After a bit of shuffling objects around and pushing boxes aside, Dr. Fenton makes his way to the door. He pulls it open and stares down at Louis. “Can I help you?”

“Hi, I’m Louis, your new research assistant for the year.”

A smile brightens up his face. “Oh, what a surprise! I’ve never had a research assistant actually show up on the first day. Come in! Let me show you around.” He looks genuinely excited to show off his modest lab space, cramped and disorganized as it is.

Louis is hit with a dash of guilt. He had almost been another no-show. He’d tried his hardest to get reassigned to any other laboratory. But Dr. Lancer, the physics department chair, had been clear, he could either work with Dr. Fenton or give up the assistant position altogether.

Louis decided to try it out. He could always quit if the professor really was crazy.

Now, he’s here.

Fenton shows him around the small laboratory. His desk is in the corner. An assortment of textbooks, notebooks, and stacks of loose paper line the shelves built into the wall. Boxes of nuts and bolts, spools of wire and a variety of tools litter every available flat surface. There are more boxes of notebooks stacked on the floor. Half-built and deconstructed machines are piled up everywhere else. Fenton points out his works-in-progress as they walk around. “That’s the Fenton Thermos. It’s supposed to trap ghosts that escape the Ghost Zone. This is an Ecto-Shield, which should be able to block attacks from ghosts. This is the ​​Fenton Finder. It has been in the works for a few years, just needs some more programming and then it will be able to detect the presence of ghosts through measuring interference of gamma waves.”

“And what’s that?” Louis asks, pointing to the huge unidentifiable object taking up a good portion of the lab. It’s like a door frame, if doors were round and made of metal. It’s flush with the back wall and extends a meter into the lab. Wires and fuses stick out the sides where a metal panel has been removed. There’s two more stacks of boxes in front of the object. Cobwebs hang from the frame and a thick layer of dust coats the top of the control panel.

“That’s the Fenton Portal. It doesn’t work.” Fenton deflates, his voice losing all enthusiasm. He doesn’t elaborate on the object’s function. Instead, Fenton claps his hands together and says, “That’s the end of the tour. I guess I should put you to work then. Let's see…” Dr. Fenton rubs his fingers against his chin as he thinks. “Ah, yes.”

“I need you to sort through my old notebooks. I’m missing some from 1987-1990 and they must be in one of these boxes. You can clear off that shelf over there”—he points to one of the shelves bulging with stacks of loose papers and heavy textbooks—“to sort all of the notebooks by date. And if you see any that mention quasiparticles, set it aside. I’ll be over at my desk if you have any questions.”

Louis goes to the emptiest lab bench and clears a space to work. Dr. Fenton settles back at his desk and his music starts up again. Louis hums along as he grabs the first heavy box. He drops it onto the table with a groan. Taking the dusty lid off, he gets to work.

So much for that easy paycheck.

The first week of his new position drags on. So far he’s cleaned off two shelves, sifted through five stacks of papers, and sorted two boxes of the professor’s notebooks. The lab is looking cleaner, but Louis can’t help but be disappointed by the lack of research he’s doing as a research assistant.

It’s his third day in the lab, and the professor remains at his desk tinkering with some machine while Louis picks out yet another box to sort through for the day. At this rate he will spend the entire semester cleaning the lab.

This box seems much newer than the ones he emptied earlier in the week. He pages through the red notebook at the top of the box to search for a date. The first entry dates the book to only three years ago. Some drawings on the page catch Louis’ attention so he skims over the page. There are striking similarities between the professor’s notes and the studies Louis has read about gravitational fields. Louis rolls his eyes at the mention of the Ghost Zone, but some of the other notes intrigue him. If he substituted the Ghost Zone for a black hole, the professor's logic and application of mathematics seem solid.

He reads the notebook cover-to-cover and an idea begins to form. Just because the professor isn’t an astrophysicist doesn’t mean he can’t support Louis’ research. All he needs to do is write up a proposal and ask the professor for support. It’s worth a shot if it gets him out of cleaning the laboratory.

Louis barely gets through half the box before the end of his shift, as he keeps stopping to read through Fenton’s observations.

Louis is actually looking forward to going back to the lab the following afternoon so he can pick up where he left off. He wants to skim more of Fenton’s recent notebooks to see if there’s anything he can cite in the research proposal he’s started to draft. He plans to bring a finished proposal to Fenton on Monday.

“Hey Dr. Fenton,” Louis says over the guitar solo blasting in the lab. He tosses his backpack onto a free chair and heads over to his spot. It’s weird to think he has a spot in Fenton’s lab now, but he’s gotten used to spending time here. Fenton has good taste in music, He even finds chatting with Dr. Fenton about the inventions he’s tinkering with to be interesting, even if he doesn’t believe they will ever work.

“Afternoon, Louis. How’s it going?”

“Good, good. How’s the ecto-radiation detector?”

“It’s coming along. I’ve got to run to a department meeting this afternoon. Do you mind locking up the lab when you leave?” He packs up a leather briefcase and pulls on a black coat.

Louis had received a copy of the lab’s key when they hired him as a research assistant. Research projects can take many long hours, so having access to the lab at odd hours is a nice perk for the students. Louis hadn’t had to use his key yet, as cleaning out boxes wasn’t particularly demanding on his time. “No problem. See you later, Fenton.”

Fenton heads out, and Louis returns to the half-empty box he’d been sorting through. The rest of the box is less interesting than the first few notebooks had been, and Louis finishes clearing it out quickly. He heads toward the stacks of boxes in front of the portal.

The portal looms over the back of the lab, a large metal shadow. Fenton never mentions it and has brushed off Louis’ questioning the few times he’s tried to ask about it. He’d been so cagey about the portal.

Louis grabs the top box. It’s much heavier than Louis anticipates and he staggers back, knocking into another stack of boxes. A Fenton Thermos falls from the stack and rolls on the floor behind Louis. He trips over it, and he fumbles the heavy box right into the side of the portal. He reaches out trying to stop his own fall, his hand bumping a lever on the control panel. He lands on the floor.

“Shit, that hurt.” Louis says.

The portal door shutters and creaks, opening a crack.

“Oh, fuck!”

Louis stands, looking all around the lab. He’s still alone thankfully. The professor hadn’t suddenly returned to witness his embarrassing tumble. He glances back at the portal. It’s still dark and ominous, moreso now that there’s a crack about the width of his hand between the two door panels. Louis approaches it cautiously. Peering through the crack, it’s pitch black inside. He shines his phone’s light inside. It doesn’t illuminate much, but he can see sloping walls that form a giant metal tube.

Louis needs to close the door before the professor gets back. Louis backs up, taking a look at the frame where he’d tried to stop his fall. There’s a single lever flipped partially down, next to two indicator lights, labeled open and closed, that are currently not lit up.

He tries to push the lever back into the closed position but it won’t budge. Louis forces all of his strength to pull the lever up. It still won’t budge. Maybe it’s like a breaker switch, needing to be fully opened before it can be closed again. He leans his full weight into pressing the lever down. With a bit of resistance it finally flips. The doors part with a hydraulic whoosh.

Louis looks up at the hulking portal. It’s right there, he could take a look inside before he closes it. The laboratory’s lights illuminate the interior more than his phone’s light had. It extends far back that he can’t see the end. It must be connected to a supply closet or something because it didn’t look that quite that big from the outside.

A rusty wrench lies on the floor. It’s covered in a layer of dust. It must have been left in the portal years ago. He might as well return that wrench to the tool bench. He bends to pick it up. A white mouse scampers between his legs. Louis screeches and jumps up, arms flailing. The wrench hits the side of the portal with a metal clang. Suddenly, blinding white lights flicker on and the doors begin to close. Louis panics and rushes toward the exit, but he’s not quick enough. He’s trapped inside the Fenton Portal. The air crackles with electrostatic energy. The portal begins to whir like a loud computer fan. The noise shifts to a chaotic, unpleasant white noise, like the interference of radio static between two channels. It becomes louder and higher-pitched with every second. Louis drops the rusty wrench with a clatter. He covers his ears against the harsh sound.

The lights flash bright white then turn neon green in the blink of an eye. The pressure in the portal drops. Louis bends into a squatting position against the sudden pain. He cries out as it feels like every atom of his body is expanding. In the blink of an eye, he is sucked into the portal. The bright green light envelops him as he’s pulled farther and farther into the never-ending tunnel. He blacks out.

Louis comes to on the floor outside the portal. His head pounds and his ears ring. Louis sits up with a groan. The portal looks exactly the same as before. There’s no light or sound, and the door is sealed shut. Maybe he’d hit his head when he fell. He probably knocked himself into a weird dream about going into the portal.

The analog clock above the professor’s desk shows it is two hours later than he was supposed to leave. He scrambles off the floor. Checking his phone, he finds several texts and two missed phone calls. Shit. He was supposed to have a movie night with Harry tonight. As he rushes to pack up his bag, he spots a little white mouse on the lab bench next to him. It’s chewing at the corner of one of Dr. Fenton’s notebooks. Louis frowns, unhappy with the idea that there are mice in the laboratory he’s been spending so much time in. That’s unhygienic, and he should find out if the university facilities team can trap them before they chew through any important notebooks.

The mouse flashes neon green. Louis gasps. The mouse’s ears twitch and it runs off, right through a solid wood cabinet door.

Louis must have hit his head harder than he thought. He shakes it off, picks up his bag, and locks up the lab. He spends his entire walk to Harry’s thinking up a reasonable excuse that doesn’t involve ghost portals and glowing mice for why he’s late for their date night.

Weird, unexplainable things start to happen after the accident inside the portal. Louis notices the first anomalies the next morning. Standing at the bathroom mirror fixing his hair, his arm becomes invisible. He shrieks and shakes his arm, the limb becoming solid again. He leans forward on the sink, breathing deep to steady himself. His hand falls right through the porcelain basin. He thinks about the mouse in the lab that seemed to pass right through the cabinet door.

He shakes his head and splashes cool water on his face to wake himself up. He needs to stop imagining things. Maybe he should go to the doctor, he could have a concussion from the fall.

It doesn’t get any better when he steps into the shower. His hand keeps disappearing when he tries to pick up any of the bottles, and as he’s toweling dry, he’s shocked when both of his legs become invisible. He can still feel them and move, but he looks like a floating torso.

He is late to his morning lecture. He slides into his seat beside Niall as class has already started. After their class wraps up, Niall asks why he was late. Louis brushes off his concern and says he forgot to turn on his alarm.

Louis heads straight home to spend the rest of his afternoon trying to figure out how and why various appendages keep vanishing. He experiments with this weird ability for a while, turning body parts invisible and sticking them through a textbook, his mattress, and the wall. It’s very hard to control.

After ten minutes of trying, and failing, to make his legs disappear like they had after his morning shower, Louis stomps his foot like a frustrated child. He groans loudly. “Why isn’t it working?”

A flash of spectral energy zips through his body, prickling his head to his feet. Louis begins to glow green.

“What the fuck?”

Louis slams open his door and runs into the bathroom. The mirror confirms it, he’s glowing green, just like the mouse in the lab. He’s so shocked by this green aura that he almost misses the other unexpected changes. His irises are no longer blue, but the same vibrant neon green. And his usually brown hair has lost all color. It’s whiter than his sister Lottie’s bleach blonde hair.

“What the fuck?” Louis repeats to the specter in the mirror.

His entire body vanishes. The mirror only reflects the wall behind him. Louis raises his arms in front of him, but there’s nothing there. He spins around, looking at the ground where his feet and legs should be. There’s nothing but air. He’s an actual ghost.

“Louis, you home?” Zayn calls out.

He reappears as fast as he’d disappeared. But he’s still glowing unnaturally green. Louis’ pulse races. His voice shakes as he shouts back through the bathroom door. “Yeah, just a second!”

He takes a few deep breaths, closes his eyes, and tries to push down the tingly feeling. With a bit of effort, the sensation fades first from his fingers and toes, then his arms and legs, concentrating at his middle, and then it’s gone. He opens his eyes and sees himself in the mirror, with brown hair, blue eyes, and normal not-green skin. Louis has never been so happy to see himself.

A few days later, he returns to the lab. He spent the weekend practicing and has a better grasp on how to control his new abilities, though he still hasn’t told anyone about them. And he definitely hasn’t told Fenton.

The lab is looking much better than it did a week ago. He lifts the lid off another box, ready to get to work for the day.

With his efforts to learn how to control these weird abilities, Louis didn’t have time to finish his research proposal. But sorting through the professor’s notebooks could be more useful now that Louis needs to learn about the Fenton Portal. He hasn’t come across the professor’s notebooks from the years when he was building the portal, but he’s hopeful they will be in one of the remaining boxes. He needs to learn anything he can about what might have triggered his ghostly abilities.

He’s stacking all of the 1983 notebooks on a shelf he’s just cleared off when he shivers as if the lab’s temperature dropped. A wisp of blue mist comes out of his mouth.

The little green mouse runs across the shelf and hops onto the professor’s desk. It sits down and the glowing subsides, returning to its solid white state. The mouse squeaks softly. It looks just like the mice that Harry works with in the biology lab.

Louis watches it eat a crumb left over from the professor’s lunch. Louis shifts and the movement startles the mouse. As if its opacity has been turned down, the mouse blends into the background. Louis has to focus hard to make out the shape of the nearly-invisible rodent.

This mouse can become invisible, glow green, and pass through solid objects just the same way that Louis can since the he fell into the portal. Though they’re so different, they share all of the same powers. Louis is intrigued by the mouse.

“Hey, Lil Squeaks.” Louis reaches out a hand and tries to coax the ghost-mouse closer, but it runs away.

Louis gets back to work, grabbing the last box that was stacked on the floor in front of the ortal.

This box seems promising. The first few notebooks are from 1994 the year immediately following the portal’s invention. Louis takes his time skimming through the pages, looking for any mention of the portal, but nothing comes up.

Louis keeps going, grabbing another old notebook from the box. Now that he’s personally invested in the professor’s ghost research, each experiment is more interesting. More than once Louis has to pull himself away from the notebooks so that he can finish emptying the box before his shift ends.

There’s a composition notebook with a tattered black and white cover at the bottom of the box. It sticks out from the other notebooks, most of which have hard red or blue covers. It’s also titled in big block letters FENTON PORTAL. He takes a seat and pages through the notebook, carefully turning the thin pages filled with blue ink. Louis has hit the jackpot.

Louis checks over his shoulder but of course the professor left over an hour ago, and he’s alone in the lab. Dr. Fenton has been so quiet about the portal that reading through this notebook feels a bit like reading through the professor’s diary. Louis’ curiosity beats out his conscience. He opens the notebook.

Louis can sense Fenton’s enthusiasm through his extensive notes. Fenton had meticulously drawn diagrams of the portal both inside and out. He’d detailed the inner workings down to the placement of every bolt and wire. He’d written paragraphs about how and why the portal would connect the human realm with the Ghost Zone. The portal seemed very promising. Toward the end of the notebook, Fenton’s optimism becomes palpable. Louis follows the narrative as if this is a sci-fi novel instead of the failed experiment of an out-of-touch professor.

He turns the page with anticipation, and is hit with the reality that caught up to Dr. Fenton. Instead of reports of success and documented measurements from within the realm, Dr. Fenton scratched out seven capital letters covering half the page, FAILURE. A period is scribbled in, bold and final.

The notebook ends there, with no additional troubleshooting or experiments, as if Dr. Fenton had abruptly given up on his magnum opus.

This lab is a testament to all of the projects the professor hasn’t given up on. Each piece of non-functioning equipment, the various piles of scrap metal, and heaps of wires, however long untouched, are proof that Fenton does not give up on his inventions.

So why had he given up on this? Louis needed to find out why.

Louis spends way too long at the lab with his head in a stack of notebooks. He’s pulled out his own and is frantically taking notes. It’s not until Harry pops his head into the lab that Louis notices his scheduled shift has long since ended.

“Hey Lou, thought I might find you here.”

“A biologist in the physics department, what sacrilege.” Louis places a hand over his heart. “What brings you the dark side?”

Harry doesn’t laugh at his dramatics. “You weren’t responding to your texts again.”

“Oh.” Sure enough his phone screen is filled with a string of texts from Harry over the past few hours.

Harry sits down across from Louis. He’s frowning, a deep crease formed between his brows. He sighs. “Is everything okay? With us? Or are you avoiding me on purpose?”

“What? Of course we’re okay. What makes you think we’re not?”

“You’ve been late a few times, you’re not answering my texts, and you seriously think I’m going to believe you’re choosing to spend extra time in Fenton’s lab rather than join me for our movie night?”

Louis worries his bottom lip between his fingers, trying to figure out what to say. “I’m sorry. I promise it’s not what it seems. Something happened last week. I don’t know how to explain it, you won’t believe it anyway.”

“I’ll believe you, Lou. Just tell me. Please.”

“The ghost portal is real, and it works.”

“Oh, that’s awesome!”

“No. I was inside when it turned on.”

Harry gasps. “Are you okay?”

“Mostly. Except, sometimes my body disappears. I glow green when I’m stressed out. And I can walk through walls now. ”

“What?” Harry jaw drops, stunned to silence.

“Here, watch.” Louis stands up and concentrates hard. He draws forward the now-familiar tingling sensation from his core. In a flash, he transforms into the glowing green specter of himself. Then, he makes his legs invisible. His floating torso hovers above the chair.

“Woah. That’s so weird!” Harry covers his mouth in shock.

“I don’t know how to fix this, or if it’s permanent. But,I found his notebook about the portal today. That’s why I wasn’t watching the time. I’m trying to figure it out.”

“I’m so sorry I stormed in here when you’ve been going through all that.” Harry surges out of his seat toward Louis, wrapping him into a tight hug. Or tries to. Louis’ body passes right through him. Harry shivers.

Louis groans, and drops his head into his hands. “It’s so hard to control.”

Harry reaches out a tentative hand. Thankfully this time, his hand rests solidly on Louis’ arm. Louis turns into Harry, tucking his face into his neck and breathing in the smell of his boyfriend. He centers himself with a few deep breaths and returns back to his completely solid human form.

“Whatever this is, we’ll figure it out.”

“Thank you.” Feeling calmer, Louis steps out of the hug and begins to pack up his bag.

“Is that a mouse?” Harry asks, pointing across the lab.

Louis looks up. Sure enough the mouse from the portal is sitting on one of the shelves, nibbling at the edge of a piece of paper. “Shit!”

“Wait, is he green?”

“Yeah, he was in the portal with me when the accident happened.”

Of all the unexpected outcomes of ending up in a malfunctioning ghost portal, turning a mouse into a half-ghost being was near the top of the list, right under turning himself into a half-ghost being. Louis adjusts his fringe nervously and starts pacing. “This is bad. Really, bad. What if Fenton sees the mouse? He’d know I opened the portal.”

“Can we catch it? Are there any ghost-traps around here?” Harry says looking over at a table overflowing with inventions.

“That’s it! Can you hand me that Thermos?” Louis asks.

“A Thermos? Are we going to bait the mouse with soup?”

“No, of course not. The Fenton Thermos traps ghosts, or it’s supposed to. I saw a diagram in one of the notebooks that showed how to activate it. It should be fairly straightforward, if it works.”

He unscrews the top, aims the opening toward the mouse, and presses the discreet button on the side. It emits a high-pitched hum and shoots out a beam of blue light out of the top. Louis lets go of the button and the light shrinks back into the canister. He quickly caps the Thermos.

“I can’t believe it worked!” Harry says.

Louis says, “I’m beginning to think the professor is nowhere near as crazy as people say he is. He’s clearly created some next-level, world-changing, technology. I’m just not sure why he’s hiding it from everyone.”

Harry nods in agreement.“A portal to the Ghost Zone would surely win him a Nobel prize, at least.”

Louis looks at the Thermos in his hand. “Now what do we do with him?

Harry looks over at the portal. “Does it still work? Can he go back in the portal?”

Louis thinks it over. It would be the easiest way to hide the evidence. But he pictures opening the canister and sending Lil Squeaks into the Ghost Zone. Louis’ heart aches at the thought of a lonely half-ghost rodent lost inside an unfamiliar world. Before he can second guess it, Louis asks, “Can we keep him?”

“How did I know you were going to ask that?” Harry laughs fondly. You’re like a Disney princess with her animal sidekick!”

Louis pushes him playfully. “Excuse me, if anyone is a Disney princess it’s you.” Then, Louis looks down at the Thermos again and admits, “He doesn’t belong in the Ghost Zone, it doesn’t feel right to leave him there if he’s only part ghost, like me.”

“We can keep him. We can swing by my lab so we can grab some mouse food and go to the pet store tomorrow after our classes. Do you think Lil Squeaks will be able to stay in a glass terrarium?”

Louis walks over to the window and pushes his arm through the glass with ease. “Probably not.”

“Then, you’re explaining to the boys why there’s a glowing mouse in our house when he phases through his enclosure.”

“Deal.” Louis may not know why or how he got ghostly abilities from the Fenton Portal. But with his boyfriend and new pet mouse by his side, it doesn’t seem so terrible. Louis locks up the laboratory, and the three of them head home.