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"Phew," Static Man said the moment that Dan Powell had walked out their front door.
Nicholas shut the door with more force than was absolutely necessary. He was tense. He shouldn’t have been - their first research day, as Nicholas was now calling them in his head, had gone smoothly. Relatively so, at least; he hadn’t hurt him in any way, and while he was puzzled, he had been able to see a lot and he had taken a good deal of notes before tapping out and calling it.
"You good, man?" Static Man said. He was buzzing a bit, like he was excited about something. Nicholas raked a hand through his hair, clenching at the back of his own skull to feel the throb of it on his scalp.
"It's unsettling," he said, which wasn't much of an answer but was probably as close as he could get at this very moment. “Whatever was done to him shouldn’t have been possible - obviously.” Dan had described the surgery in vivid detail, seemingly unaware of how grotesque he was until the end; he had paused, frowned, and said, And then he slapped me, I guess, like he was just remembering the way in which he was brought back into consciousness for the first time, and was puzzled by the nature of that man’s decisions. Nicholas had a pretty strong stomach after everything, but he still sometimes felt that lurch of sickness and he hadn’t really wanted to discuss it any further. “He shouldn’t be alive, is what I’m getting at. He shouldn’t just be here, in New York.”
Static Man was silent, so Nicholas looked up as he relaxed his shoulders - it was deeply unlikely that Dan would come storming back, and Nicholas knew he was being unreasonable, being so nervous about his presence - but Static Man was just staring at him. Or, he was staring in the way that Static Man seemed able to stare, his body sort of unmoving, his makeshift arms bent so it looked like he had his hands on his hips.
"What?" Nicholas said, and he walked past Static Man through the foyer and past the living room and into the kitchen at the back of the brownstone.
"Dude," Static Man said, and how did he make it so obvious he was rolling his eyes with his voice, with one little word? "Do you hear yourself? Hell-ohhhh. Non-corporeal being of light and literal static that eats people."
"You're different," Nicholas said. He opened the fridge, pulled out a beer, and cracked the tab at the top before chugging it. He did not usually chug, and it was uncomfortable, but Static Man had followed him into the kitchen and was watching him.
"He really stressed you out," Static Man said.
Nicholas didn't say anything further. He wasn't really sure what the point would have been, anyway.
"He's not mentally well," Static Man said.
"That much is obvious," Nicholas said. He had seen the way Dan looked up at the sky when he realized it was raining and he didn't have an umbrella. Nicholas had considered offering him one, but now that he had spent more time with Dan, both in his head and in his body, he had decided not to - it seemed so unlikely that Dan would even accept such a thing. Too much pride. Nicholas could at least admit that he understood where that feeling came from, even if it ticked him off.
“You don’t actually think he’s gonna like, make friends with anyone off that list you gave him, do you?”
Nicholas bit his tongue. He had given Dan a list of contacts - amateur sorcerers that he had met in forums, people who he could trade blood and bile and other fluids with when it came down to it - and he knew they weren’t all the smartest or the funniest or the most interesting people, but that was just life.
“What do you want me to do? Christ. Like I’m in babysitter - what?”
Static Man was staring at him again, and then he shrugged, feigning nonchalance. Nicholas sighed heavily and sat down at the kitchen table with the beer can, tapping his fingernails against it.
“You could be his friend,” Static Man said.
“We have nothing in common.”
Static Man snorted. “You said as much about me,” he said, then laughed when Nicholas glared at him. “Whatever, I’m just saying, guy’s clearly got some eclectic taste in - you know - partners.”
“Partners,” Nicholas repeated faintly. He drummed his fingers on the table. He didn’t like gossiping, but there had been a way that Dan had spoken about the person who had modified him. Rat. What a goddamn name. Dan had been cagey about him, like he was trying to avoid actually telling anything interesting; he’d sort of shied away from anything that might give Nicholas even the simplest understanding of the person that had been so clearly strange but also important.
Static Man shrugged. “Stranger things have happened,” he said, which was stupid, and made Nicholas snort.
“Yes,” Nicholas agreed, looking at Static Man until his eyes started to feel bruised, and not minding the fact. “What do you want for dinner?”
-
The frustrating nature of Dan Powell was that the more Nicholas met him and took notes on his flesh, the less he understood of it. He had his own burning curiosity, and he tried to keep it very heavily under wraps, to meet the person who had done this. Rat. He still couldn’t get over the name; ridiculous. Dan had finally, on perhaps the third time they had met at the brownstone and Nicholas had dug too far in his flesh and Dan had had to tap out early, citing an ache that was spreading down through into his leg - which, Nicholas hadn’t even had a chance to look at his arm or leg, and he was so, so curious but there were simply no options - and Nicholas apologized, and Dan had said, “Rat - wait, did I ever tell you this? - Rat named himself, it’s a long story, but that’s not his given name. I think - I mean, it doesn’t matter. Rat never hurt me.”
“I do sincerely apologize,” Nicholas said, his teeth on edge, but then as Dan sat up and pulled his quarter-zip sweatshirt over his head - it was too big for him, and it hung loose on his thin figure, and that made Nicholas feel a little dizzy because he knew he did the same thing, always called scrawny growing up - he recognized that Dan wasn’t even trying to criticize Nicholas, or compare them. He put his hand over his stomach, and he stared at his own lap, and then he slid off the table and apologized without seeming to recognize that Nicholas had apologized first.
“Next week,” he said, but Nicholas couldn’t imagine asking him to come back so soon, so he just gave a tight nod of his head and let Dan leave quietly.
“I really don’t think that’s necessary,” Nicholas said. There had been several of these sessions, and Nicholas had written plenty of notes and figured out enough that he thought he at least had a minor grasp on the connections between the new and old flesh. In the end, a lot of it came down to the simple esoteric - this could never had been done here, in this world. It could only have been accomplished in the City, by someone from the City, with parts from the City. And it was simply a miracle that Dan Powell was alive here, and that he could speak, or he could do much of anything. It had been a ruse of sorts, anyway; Nicholas’ interest did not, even he thought, outweigh Dan’s dignity. What use was it, then, to continue?
Static Man complained when Dan left that time. “You like, never let me sit in.”
Nicholas bit his tongue. “I don’t see any purpose for it, but you’re welcome to join if he is alright with that.”
“I think he likes me,” Static Man said, and Nicholas said, “You’re being childish,” but he must have said it so lightly that Static Man didn’t take him seriously because he just laughed.
“Anyway,” Static Man said, “you’re basically calling it, right?”
“I think so,” Nicholas said, picking at a small scab on his thumb that he’d been diligently ignoring for some time. “I’m not sure that there’s anything else I can do for him, really.”
It was annoying, how guilty he felt about that.
-
Nicholas was somewhat relieved when Dan texted him again, nervous at the same time. If something was wrong with Dan Powell’s body, it was unlikely that Nicholas could be resolving it for the foreseeable future, and he made a mental note to tell Dan that, even if he was going to let him down as gently as possible. But he did understand, and he cleared his schedule for the evening and texted Dan back to tell him to come to the brownstone at his convenience.
“Would you like to sit in?” Nicholas said, raising an eyebrow at Static Man. He’d been hovering like he was just waiting for the second shoe to drop, or like he was kind of curious but didn’t want to make himself known.
“Hell yeah,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. Nicholas didn’t mind the company - when Dan finally did show up, he was tense and not very chatty, which made sense. He didn’t seem bother by Static Man’s presence though, which Nicholas found comforting; Dan just flicked his gaze to him once before he stripped off his clothes and got onto the plastic sheet, explaining what had happened. Something loose. Can’t get it, can’t get inside it myself and obviously - it’s not just gonna fall out.
Nicholas was slow in his movements, which he knew was excruciating for Dan, but he couldn’t think of an alternative. Static Man floated in the corner, mostly silent, but quipping where he saw it appropriate - Jesus, this is gnarly from the corner, and Nicholas heard the tension and anxiety in his voice and tried not to think on it reflecting on how he touched Dan.
“I do apologize,” Nicholas said. He knew he said it a lot, especially when he saw Dan’s face crumple - there was something about the pain that was very obviously not like other kinds of pain, and Nicholas could only imagine being scooped out of like that. He rested the tape deck, wires smoothed out carefully, on Dan’s legs, and began to work towards actually taking it apart.
“This would be easier if I knew what it was supposed to look like, inside,” he said, glancing up at Dan in time to see him cringe as Nicholas turned the deck in his hand. “I might take some pictures on my phone, actually - this could be helpful for my notes.” He had never seen everything up close like this, and now that he did, he was understanding the mechanisms just a little better; he couldn’t help but admire the way that things had been connected, even as the implicit gore of Dan Powell’s cartilage fused with the ends of certain wires made his stomach turn.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Dan said, as Nicholas nudged as the pinch rollers, trying to get a good feel for the deck’s function. He breathed out through his nose, and shut his eyes to roll them. Dan’s demeanor always made him unreasonably impatient, but his back was sore and he wished he had kept the cane downstairs because his leg was starting to throb from standing at this angle.
“Well, then you can consider that my price for this session,” he said, looking back at Dan and fixing their gazes on each other. Dan frowned - he never scowled, never looked angry, but often looked unhappy, as if Nicholas was responsible for putting this upon him.
“That’s assuming you fix it,” he said, grimacing again before he let out a long breath.
“Mm. I did some research, you know, this morning - I wanted to know how the inside of a tape deck typically appears, the names and functions of each of the parts… It was helpful, certainly, I recognize some of the components here, but many are totally alien to me. This, for example.” He prodded at the part, the almost button-like mechanism he had been eyeing silently for a few minutes, trying to understand what function it could serve. Dan flinched hard, like he had been sucker punched, and gripped the table.
“Sorry,” Nicholas said. He couldn’t know what would or wouldn’t cause pain, though the reaction hadn’t seemed to be primarily hurt, though he couldn’t tell exactly from the shocked look on Dan’s face as he recovered.
He took a few more pictures of the deck. He fixed the problem. He wanted Dan to leave.
“You know, you should give the kid a break,” Static Man said. He was munching on crackers, which was unlike him; Nicholas picked the box off the counter and took a couple out himself, but they were too salty and he pushed them away.
“He’s not a kid. He’s perfectly capable of working through the world on his own, he just never learned.”
“Hah,” Static Man said, without any real laughter in his voice. “So, like you - do you want to just deeply traumatize him in a new way, then?”
“Static Man,” Nicholas said thickly.
“Gotcha,” Static Man said, “I gotcha, you’re so full of shit, you know that?”
Nicholas looked at Static Man and thought that he had no room to argue, so he just shrugged. They were silent for a moment, before Static Man again encroached on Nicholas’ space. “What are you afraid of, exactly?” he said, and tilted his head-shape, which was especially human and made something warm and terrifying linger in Nicholas’ gut.
“I don’t know,” he said.
-
It had happened gradually. Nicholas didn’t know, exactly, when they slipped into something other than casual intimacy. If it was related to the fact that he didn’t really get along with a single person besides Static Man, he couldn’t have said. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. It just sort of - happened.
It was Christmas. Brooklyn had always been annoying around Christmas, and with nothing but his research to keep him company, Nicholas had been relatively tense about the whole thing. He wanted to get Chris a gift, but she wasn’t there to shop for. His mom was dead. He hadn’t been on a date in months, and that wasn’t going to change anytime soon anyway. He’d only made a dent in the tomes in his father’s library, and hadn’t yet found anything promising about moving a non-human entity into a human body. He didn’t even know where to start - but he had to keep that under wraps, too. He didn’t want Static Man to doubt him.
“Merry Christmas Eve Eve, or whatever,” Static Man said, and Nicholas startled where he was sitting on the couch drinking a coffee.
“Christ.”
“How are you still surprised that I live here, dude?” Static Man said, though he didn’t seem annoyed about Nicholas’ fidgetiness. He looked pleased, if anything, though Nicholas wasn’t sure how he knew that.
“Not surprised. You just snuck up on me, is all,” Nicholas said, gingerly setting his mug down. “What’s up?”
“I dunno. Should we get something fancy for dinner?”
Nicholas wrinkled his nose. “No, thank you,” he said. “Do you even enjoy eating, Static Man?”
“You’ve asked me that before,” Static Man said, brightly, and then he sat in the armchair, leaning on his elbow. “Sort of. Maybe. Sometimes. Obviously there’s stuff I like. There’s also stuff I don’t like. It’s complicated.”
“Is it,” Nicholas said. He lifted his mug back to his lips, but his coffee was starting to get cold, and it was getting late in the afternoon anyway and he probably shouldn’t have been drinking it.
“Christmas is weird,” Static Man said, instead of continuing on to discuss food. “Isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Nicholas agreed.
“Hey,” Static Man said, and then he moved, and Nicholas wasn’t sure when or how but he took in a sharp breath as Static Man’s form settled on the floor, at Nicholas’ knees. Nicholas felt his heart kickstart, without his permission. He pushed his glasses up his nose, as if having just a little more coverage might make looking at Static Man easier. t did, somehow.
“Yes?” Nicholas said.
“All this shit about fealty,” Static Man said, and his voice was tense, like he thought that whatever he was about to say was a mistake - and maybe it was - and then he tipped his head to the side and said, “you know you’re all I’ve got, right?”
Nicholas swallowed. It hadn’t been what he’d been expecting to hear, but he also wasn’t sure what exactly he had been expecting in the first place. He nodded, his neck stiff. “And you,” he said, after a pause that felt deliberately empty.
“Not exactly,” Static Man said very quietly. “It’s just weird.”
“What’s weird?” Nicholas said, and he heard how thick his voice was but he couldn’t seem to keep it under control.
“You’re trying to keep me safe, anyway,” he said, and Nicholas pulled back. “Don’t act all shocked, I can tell from the way you…you keep everyone else at arm’s length. It’s not good for your mental health, dude.”
“My mental health,” Nicholas repeated.
“You and Dan should be buddies, is all,” Static Man said, and Nicholas barked a laugh. “Whatever, if it’s funny to you, or whatever, it doesn’t matter. I’m just saying, I think you’re afraid of things, and you won’t let on because you think if you tell me then I’m gonna - what? Like, judge you, or whatever, for being a person? Dude. We’ve been there. We’ve been to hell and back, and ritualistic murder, and all of that shit, and I don’t really care anymore. He’s just a guy. He’s not gonna hurt me.”
Nicholas felt his teeth click together - another stupid, involuntary reaction.
“Yeah, dude, I get it,” Static Man said, and he shifted again, and touched Nicholas’ knee with the shape of his hand. Nicholas went utterly still. “You won’t do anything without getting something in return. It’s okay. It’s fine that you want him to be like, indebted to you or whatever, I just think you’re going about it weirdly.”
Nicholas clicked his tongue - t’ch - and tried not to feel the strange, radiating heat that pulsed through his knee and up into his thigh. They very rarely touched, and when they did it was always strange and uncomfortable and weirdly intense in a way that made Nicholas want to duck away. His eyes hurt, but he still couldn’t look away from Static Man in front of him.
“You aren’t my therapist,” he finally said, and it made Static Man laugh, which hadn’t been the intent. “Why are you touching me?”
Static Man just laughed again and stood up. “Dude, you are so fucking stupid,” he said, but he didn’t elaborate. “Still down for Popeyes?”
Nicholas pressed his lips together as Static Man drifted out of sight into the kitchen. He didn’t make any noise when he moved, unless he wanted to - clicks and fuzzy bzz bzz bzzs to let Nicholas know he was nearby, like he was warning him with footsteps. If he had weight to him, Nicholas couldn’t say. The hand on his leg had felt like weight, but it also hadn’t; had felt like gas, fire, something sizzling hot on and underneath his skin.
“Yeah,” Nicholas finally said, realizing he hadn’t replied to Static Man’s question.
He swallowed hard.
-
The ritual was a complicated one, but it made more sense to Nicholas than a lot of things he had attempted over the last several months. Asha was an unfortunate loss; he had been on some more niche forums looking for a replacements, but all the witchcraft virgin girls lived in the most random suburbs that weren’t very helpful, and to be fair, it wasn’t as if Nicholas needed her blood. He wondered vaguely what the police had thought of her body, as Dan described it; the gore and the vials of blood in the fridge. When he asked Dan if he’d left any fingerprints at the scene, Dan had looked at him, disbelieving and pissed off and said, “If someone finds my DNA there, to be it,” because he seemed over the entire thing. Nicholas kind of couldn’t blame him, even if he wasn’t really interested in apologizing to him about the matter.
“Dude,” Static Man said, “I mean, it is kind of your fault.”
Nicholas rolled his eyes. He’d been poring over one of his father’s books to double-check the text, uncertain about every component and concerned - rightfully so, he said, when Dan expressed his impatience over text a few weeks into the discussion of the ritual itself - because they really needed to get every last detail right.
“I’m helping him, aren’t I?” he said. Static Man snorted. He’d been nosier, and louder, and more involved; the last time Dan had been by, which had been after they met to discuss Asha but before Nicholas had made much progress on the ritual, he had chatted him up so thoroughly that Nicholas had felt a sore hole in his stomach and yet hadn’t been able to tear them apart. Dan looked at Static Man with a fascination that was impressive considering all that he had seen - and he didn’t seem to get used to Static Man’s presence, no matter how long they talked or how many times he saw him. Nicholas had hoped to keep Static Man’s presence more on the down-low than they had, but Static Man clearly had his own thoughts and feelings about it, and didn’t seem to mind that Dan was clearly getting the picture - that Static Man lived in the brownstone, and with Nicholas.
Thankfully, he at least didn’t seem to much care. It was just a curiosity, something he was aware of and found interesting, than something he wanted to use.
“I wanna come,” Static Man said, on the day of.
“Absolutely not. Honestly, whatever it is with - this person - I don’t exactly trust him.”
“If Dan likes him he’s probably a decent guy,” Static Man said, and Nicholas levelled a look at him and found he had no way of telling if Static Man was being intentionally obtuse to piss him off. Static Man laughed. “You’re so gullible, dude.”
“Shut up,” Nicholas said, without much heat.
“You make it sound like it’ll be dangerous. So I really should tag along.”
“Absolutely not,” Nicholas said. ‘Absolutely not,” he repeated, when Static Man groaned and fuzzed around him.
“You think they were in love?”
Nicholas shrugged. “What’s it matter?” he said, which was avoidant, and he knew it, and he knew that Static Man would call him on it. “Or, rather, why does my opinion on Daniel Powell’s personal life matter? We aren’t friends. He isn’t family.”
“You’re so funny, I just thought you’d want to gossip.”
“Of course,” Nicholas said, because he still couldn’t read the wistfulness in Static Man’s voice, and it was jarring enough, and he was already anxious about the nature of the ritual and the possible outcome and while it only made sense to do it at Dan’s apartment instead of in the brownstone, he was nervous about the travel and he was nervous about being in a new space and he really needed not to be. “I’ll be sure to give you all of the juicy details on my return. It will probably be very obvious very quickly.”
“Thanks,” Static Man said. “Text me if he explodes for real this time.”
“Oh,” Nicholas said, rolling his eyes but smiling anyway, “I’ll be sure to tell you first.”
-
When the man appeared on Dan Powell’s dingy apartment floor, he was not exactly like or unlike anything that Nicholas had expected. He was thin - thinner than Dan, which was impressive - and had abnormally long fingers and thin, long fingers.
He heard himself breathe out - Oh - a sort of shock at the occurrence. He had had faith that the ritual would not kill Daniel Powell, but he had been pretty uncertain whether or not it would actually appear the person who straightened out in front of them. He cringed - Rat had a long, terrible scar that bisected his chest and stomach and was an angry pink and flared all the way up to the base of his throat.
Neither Dan nor Rat moved. There was nothing but silence for at least five seconds, Rat staring, unblinking, at his own hands. “I’ll let you take it from here,” Nicholas said, which was graceless - but he was grateful to get out of the room, to get away from the intensity he felt blooming out of Dan. He could see the sweat on his brow, the pink of his mouth, the exhilaration of his success even as he tried to hide it.
He couldn’t lock the door as he slid out of the apartment, but Dan didn’t say anything as he left, his eyes only drifting up to watch him leave the room. There was silence after that.
-
“So?”
“It worked.”
“That’s all?”
Nicholas took a sharp breath. “I didn’t exactly linger,” he said. “His apartment smells like…” He trailed off, not able to conjure the exact word. “It’s stale,” he said.
“Oh, sure, that’s why,” Static Man said, sounding annoyed. “Did they fuck?”
“Jesus Christ, Arthur.”
Static Man snorted. “I’m fucking kidding, you’re such a prude, obviously you wouldn’t know that but like! I wanna know! What the vibe was.”
“The vibe was rancid,” Nicholas said. “I don’t know. Whatever it is, I can’t picture there being any long term success. It’s doomed to fail. He’s dragged this person out of the depths of his own psyche, and he must have impossible imaginations of how much they might even care about each other. Building someone up in their head…it is complicated, and dangerous.”
“Yeah, I can agree with that,” Static Man said. “Hey, hey man, you think you’ll ever see him again?”
Nicholas pressed his lips together. He felt guilty saying it, but he also couldn’t lie to Static Man. “I can only hope that I don’t,” he said, and that, at least, made Static Man laugh.
-
Nicholas didn’t think about Dan Powell again for several months. It was actually an email he received.
Nicholas,
Thanks for your help. I don’t really have much to say about it beyond that, but I did want to thank you. A letter or a card in the mail felt too serious, so I’m writing an email. Stupid, I guess, but whatever.
Tell Static Man ‘thanks’ as well. Does he have an email? I’d like to talk to him more. Rat was interested and I felt a bit guilty because I hadn’t really gotten to know him very well, but he was always nice to talk to.
Would you be willing to share the notes you wrote about my new flesh? I think Rat would get a kick out of reading them. Sorry, he doesn’t think very highly of you - I didn’t tell you much about him, and I won’t now, but he was a sorcerer too, that’s how he sort of ended up in the City, more or less. It’s a long story, and I don’t really know it as well as I would like to anyway. But he’s skilled, he knows what he’s doing. So, that’s been a relief.
I don’t think you ever understood what I needed, and I can’t really blame you for that. Maybe if we’d known each other better it would have made sense. I don’t know if you’ve ever been so alone it’s felt like a hollow in your chest. Maybe you have, and that’s why you held shit at arm’s length. But you had Static Man. I see that now, more clearly than I did then, when I felt like you thought I was just garbage to deal with and get out the front door. Were you protecting him, or yourself?
Sorry, this is a pretty fucking stupid email to write, because it’s an email, and even if you reply, I can’t imagine you’ll really want to answer my questions in detail.
But the notes would be cool. And Static Man’s email address. That’s all.
See you around,
Dan P.
“Would you like me to sign you up for a Google account?” Nicholas said dryly, while Static Man read the email on his phone.
“Aw, that’s cute. Tell him I’ll just use yours.”
“I don’t want to read your private conversations,” Nicholas said with a put upon sigh.
“Well, I actually can’t type, if you’d believe it, so I kind of need your help anyway.”
Nicholas wrinkled his nose. “You can’t?” he said. “Well, I guess that makes some kind of sense…” He trailed off. “You know,” he said after a minute, pocketing his phone. He’d email Dan back later; he didn’t want it to be too obvious he had opened the email the moment his phone had buzzed with the notification for it. “I definitely think they’re fucking.”
Static Man was gleeful. “Of course they are,” he said. “God, I love freaks. Hey, Nicholas.”
“What?” Nicholas said.
Static Man was giddy, which made Nicholas giddy in turn, and he almost didn’t recognize what was happening until it was too late - Static Man had broached his space and pushed him up against the kitchen counter, Nicholas’ hips pressed hard against the quartz countertops and Static Man’s heat and static like a buzzing layer around him.
“I think if they can figure it out, so can I,” Static Man finally said, and he cupped Nicholas’ face in his static hands, which tingled and kind of hurt, and Nicholas opened his mouth to argue but then fell silent.
“Oh,” he said.
“Yeah,” Static Man said. “It’s stupid, but honestly, what the fuck isn’t.”
“That’s a fair point,” Nicholas said. “And yes. I was protecting you. At least, that was part of it. But I’ve never gotten along with men like that.”
“And you’ve never gotten along with guys like me, either, but here we are,” Static Man said, and he drew his static fingers along the crest of Nicholas’ bottom lip and Nicholas tried to ignore the jolt that the sensation sent through him, but it was hard and sharp and painful and exquisite at the same time, and he closed his eyes.
“This is stupid,” he said, because it was, and it wouldn’t fix anything. It wouldn’t make it better to admit it was stupid, and it wouldn’t make it worse to do it, either. “Are you even capable of physical…intimacy?”
Static Man laughed. “Let’s find out,” he said, and Nicholas kept his eyes shut, but he could feel lights springing out of Static Man and he wasn’t even mad about it.