Chapter Text
He feels more solid now that he’s been here for a while. The soles of his feet tip-tap-tipping on linoleum floors. His body makes sound here now whereas before there wasn’t a creak to be heard when he moved. He runs his hand over the back of a sturdy cobweb-covered cloth couch. The entire apartment is covered with dust; no surface is untouched. No pictures anywhere but large items left behind. There’s a clock, a couch, a lamp, a heavy dining room table with little scribbles and doodles on it. He wonders why they’ve been left behind. Some rooms are completely bare but others have remnants of the people who once lived there. Danny feels oddly about these remnants of time past, in a sad kind of way.
He becomes fixated with the table, running his hands over the chips on the edge. Using a rush of power he pushes it over to his window and settles down on top of it with the star blanket he got a while back. They both comfort him in an odd way.
He never really liked sitting down for dinner he thinks. He can’t remember the reason for that though. His mind goes blank whenever he tries to think about things from his past and he finds that he doesn’t really mind it too much. Instinctually he knows that some things are better left alone.
Looking down at people going about their day, he wonders what their dining rooms might be like. What their lives are like. When that thought takes hold of him it’s like he can’t be stopped. He needs to know what the people he saves are like.
It starts small, he saves someone and then he follows them home. He explores their living space to his heart’s content being especially careful to not let them know he’s in their house. Tonight he’s at the house of the nurse he saved a while back. He slipped in the passenger seat beside him when he noticed his car passing by.
He smiles to himself as he uses his powers to lower the temperature in the car just beyond the point of discomfort hoping to keep the guy awake. He laughs at the sheer confusion on his face when shutting the AC off did nothing. Luckily Mr. Nurse, as Danny has been calling him didn’t hear him laughing over the radio blasting.
When they arrive at Mr. Nurse’s apartment he starts stripping down to his boxers at the door and Danny pointedly looks anywhere else. He really hadn’t thought the whole invading people’s privacy thing through. Mr. Nurse gathers his clothes, tosses them into the washing machine immediately and b-lines straight to the bathroom. Danny waits to hear the water turn on before snooping through the apartment.
So far he’s seen a bathroom, a kitchen, a dining room, and two bedrooms. It’s cozy and feels lived in. Above the T.V there are Puerto Rican and Mexican flags and a bunch of knickknacks litter the table below it. Mail covers the kitchen island and there are a few small plants sitting by the window. There’s a couch and a recliner; both are covered in knitted throws and pillows.
The shower stops and Mr. Nurse exits wearing a towel. Danny has to avert his eyes again; he really didn’t think this all the way through. It should be fine, he didn’t see any bits or pieces, he chooses not to think too closely about it. They both enter his bedroom, Danny looks around while Mr. Nurse gets dressed. His room is pretty simple with blue cotton sheets, a folded comforter on the edge of the full-sized bed, a desk with a lamp and a laptop, another tall floor lamp, and a worn out braided rug. There are plants and knickknacks in here, it’s a simple and clean room Danny decided. Mr.Nurse finishes getting dressed ties his robe, and exits the room after throwing his hair in a small bun.
Danny is curious about his hair products. He smells nice, kinda fruity but he can’t place what it is before he gets distracted by the ingredients being put out on the counter. Now Danny’s curiosity is really piqued.
He watches the man’s ministrations for a while, the sound methodical sound of chopping lulls him and soon enough the apartment is filled with the cacophony of cooking. The Chopped vegetables are separated, some go into bowls, and the rest go into a blender with herbs. He thinks he recognizes the parsley, but honestly that’s about it, honestly he doesn’t really know anything about cooking so he’s pretty lost with the whole process. Still it’s equally soothing to watch as it is entertaining.
The blended ingredients get mixed into the butter that was sitting out on the counter together with a few spices. The man picks up a pair of scissors and moves on to the whole chicken. He cuts down both sides of its spine starting from the tail. He throws that into what looks like a ziplock bag with other chicken bits in it. The chicken gets flipped over on the cutting board and he presses down on its chest until it lies flat. Just as Danny thinks he’s done ransacking the chicken, he lifts the chicken skin with two fingers, detaches it and stuffs the herb butter mix under the loose skin. He covers the rest of the carcass in the leftover butter, wraps it in foil, and sticks it in the oven.
Danny has mixed feelings about what he just witnessed. On the one hand the whole process of preparing the chicken made him squirm a bit for some reason. On the other hand, he is curious about the outcome. If the scent from the oven is any indication, it must be delicious. He’s not physically hungry, but he…wants something. He wonders if he asks nicely the man will leave him a little as an offering, so far no one’s left any food for him and he understands why, but the thought of having a freshly made home cooked meal leaves him yearning.
Distracted by his own thoughts he doesn’t even realize that the nurse had put two more pots on the stove, one with Brussel sprouts and the other with mashed potatoes. The atmosphere is so warm and inviting that Danny has a hard time convincing himself to not just move in here instead of that dank old tenement he’s in at the moment.
He follows the guy over to the couch where he kicks his feet up and starts to play soft music. Danny looks at the CD case to see who the artist is and their track list and promptly realizes that he can’t read any of these words. That doesn’t make sense though, because the music is in Spanish and while he can’t speak the language he knows that he should be able to read it and sound it out. But the words on the case are just garbled nonsense. He thinks he’s having a stroke, can ghosts have strokes?
The door to the apartment opens and an absolute brick of a man walks in while Danny contemplates whether or not you can even have a CVA if you’re already dead.
Danny looks over and decides that he’s is totally gonna call this guy Mr. Brick. Look at him, definitely over six feet and as wide as the doorway, complete with a leather jacket and cropped black hair with a white tuft at the front. Mr.Brick pauses at the entrance while talking off his shoes and looks around the room like he’s searching for something but he shrugs it off and heads further into the apartment.
He takes a seat at the dining table and faces a chair towards the kitchen and watches the other man putter about the kitchen finishing up dinner.
Mr. Brick smirks, “Goddamn Benny, dinner smells awesome as usual. ‘S it a special day or what”?
“Nah, I worked a split shift at one of the homes plus tomorrow’s my day off so..”, he gestures broadly where he’s carving up the chicken. “Go shower, your plate’s gonna be ready time as you get out”.
Mr.Brick grunts and heads over to the bathroom.
Danny floats over to the kitchen right next to the nurse he now knows is called Benny, and watches him plate up dinner. Baked chicken, mashed potatoes, and Brussel sprouts all get stacked nicely on top of each other and drizzled in pan juices.
Benny moves both plates over to the table and puts them on the table mats, grabs a Coke and a Pepsi and settles at the table.
The bathroom door opens and out comes tall and muscular drying his hair.
“Benny you’re a fuckin’ angel leavin me hot water AND makin’ dinner, I could kiss ya”.
“Aye, call me Mother Teresa while you’re at it Pete, now grab a glass ‘n sit down”.
‘Pete’ does just that and they enjoy their dinner while making small talk. The music is still playing in the background and the whole thing is so domestic, Danny aches. He wants to be a part of it all.
The grief of not being able to have this almost knocks him out of the air. It coils around his throat and suffocates his still lungs. He flies out of the window all the way back to his own cold, dark residence. It’s so different from Benny and Pete’s place. He wants and wants and wants, the walls of the building shake with his emotion. And something settles inside him, as natural as flying is for him-an instinct. He’s going to haunt them. He won’t cause any trouble for them; he’ll just stick around and keep them safe. Make sure that their home stays just the way it is and maybe feed off of it. He can feel deep within himself that his core was soothed from being there and now that he’s gone there’s a hollowness he hadn’t recognized before. Danny has officially made up his mind, it’s time to move house.