Chapter Text
“-and this building here is the oldest dorm on campus. It was originally created to be a fort but was instead used to house injured and dead soldiers during the civil war. It was later damaged by mob activity and turned into a speakeasy in the 1920s. During the reconstruction by the mob, they added the many gargoyles and art-deco inspired flourishes to both the outside and inside of the building. Many students say that this building-“
The tour guide pauses to yawn and sway, looking more dead on his feet than Johnny did.
Guess I’ll blend in better than I thought.
He’d shown up ten minutes late with a minor limp and a coffee that Johnny could smell from six feet away. He introduced himself as “‘im ‘rake” which his name tag corrected to “Tim Drake”.
Tim had finished the coffee in the first five minutes. It didn’t seem to help. The limp forced them to take a slow, shuffled pace. While his eyes appeared focused and alert, Johnny could see the way his eyes kept drifting off. Despite all that, Tim had managed to shuffle his way all around campus while explaining the rich and bloody history of all the buildings they passed.
Johnny waited for him to continue the obviously well-worn speech.
And waited… and waited… and waited.
People can’t die standing up right? He’s breathing but not moving- oh right, sleeping. Forgot about that.
Taking a chance, Johnny glanced down at Shadow, who was playing the part of a regular shadow wonderfully. They shrugged and mimed poking at Tim before settling back into shape.
Reaching out, his wrist was seized in an iron tight grip. Tim’s eyes flew open.
“Easy man, chill. Just checking you hadn’t died on me. Or something. Uh, you were saying the students call this building…?” Johnny prompts awkwardly as he waits for his wrist to be released.
“Right,” Tim continues, dragging Johnny behind him with a surprisingly strong grip, “it’s supposed to be the most haunted building on campus. Especially the dorm rooms in the multiple spires around the outside of the building. This isn’t the only building with spires on campus. In fact, there are a total of seventy spires that have dorm rooms. Dorm rooms in the spires all start with the number six, so if your room number starts with six, congratulations on getting the coolest or spookiest room type on campus. Depending on who you ask.”
Tim paused in the common room of the building, still holding Johnny’s arm in a death grip while his eyes were yo-yoing between alert and glazed over.
“… you good dude?”
“Fine,” Tim said, in a tone so awake and confident, it almost made up for the bags under his eyes, “we’re at the end of our tour. Do you need any help for anything else?”
“… I think you need some help getting back to your room before you pass out on me man.”
“My leg is fine. It’s my ankle that got minorly punctured from fighting-“
Tim stops and stares right at Johnny like he’s trying to look into his soul. It’s calculating and clear. It’s the most awake and alive he’s looked all day and it makes something in Johnny want to start running. Somewhere between being observed like a bug pinned to a board and being sized up by another ghost.
People don’t fight as a greeting. Living people don’t fight as a greeting. Do not fight the tour guide!
The look passes after a few moments as Tim settles back into the haze of exhaustion.
“No. I misspoke. I sprained it while wrestling with my brother, Damian. We wrestle a lot so if you see another injury, that’s probably where it’s from. I’ll make it to my dorm room just fine. You go get settled into your own. Have a nice day.”
Tim’s eyes gloss over fully. Almost mechanically, he turns and walks off in full stride. Not the dead exhausted shuffle but a full stride that has his head snapping back up every time his left leg bares any weight.
“Alright,” Johnny says once Tim disappears, “I guess I’m finding my room by myself.”
Shadow huffs quietly.
“What? Can’t have people seeing me without you. Oh, stop glaring like that. Fine. We are going to find my room. Happy?”
They purr, sounding more like an engine revving than a cat. They stretch contently to cover the entire floor and settle back into shape.
It takes two wrong flights of stairs and half an hour of wondering around before Johnny gives up on walking. He finds a hidden corner to turn invisible and starts flying around. He’d nearly forgotten how exhausting walking was. Finally, after going through every other spire in the building, he finds his room.
On the south side of the building, with a lovely view of the nearby graveyard, his room sits at the top of the spire. It’s a double with two beds, two desks, and a window that clearly lets in a draft. According to the sign down the hall, it’s also the spire with the most ghost stories told about it. Figures.
“I guess the building really is haunted now,” Johnny says as he floats onto the bed.
He dumps the duffle bag of ‘living stuff’ he’d been given by team phantom onto the floor.
Shadow wastes no time in launching off the ground and growing into his regular form. Every inch of the room is explored as they dart around: the window, the beds, behind the desks, and even the waste bins.
“Hey Shadow,” Johnny calls over the shade before the bad luck kicks in, “why don’t you go explore around campus? Maybe you’ll find a few of my classes.”
Shadow perks up and thinks for a moment. They shift to look like the shadow of another student, which quickly becomes recognizable once they start miming yawning and drinking coffee.
“Yah, if you see Tim, maybe keep an eye on him and make sure he actually makes it to his dorm instead of passing out on the sidewalk.”
They snicker and phase up through the ceiling. And the ceiling light, which flickers once before dying in a small shower of glass.
Ah, there goes Sam’s security deposit.
He didn’t expect for the room to stay in one piece for the first week, but he’d been hoping to at least meet his roommate before anything broke. He phased all the glass he could find into the floor before starting to unpack.
He phased his hand through the duffle bag and pulled out the first thing he grabbed. His bag of ectoplasm. Danny had given it to him, explaining that while Gotham had a higher ambient level of ectoplasm than most cities, it was nowhere near as high or as consistent as Amity Park’s. He’d need to bring and regularly consume some ectoplasm. How much ectoplasm? Well, they weren’t really sure about that, so they just packed him a coin purse filled with vials of ectoplasm and hoped for the best.
Reaching blindly into his bag once again, he pulls out the binder Sam and Tucker had provided with information on Gotham. From the major landmarks to the various villains to the flock of birds and bats that defended the city. Gotham was apparently a place that was attacked as frequently as Amity was, but the attackers were more often living than dead.
At least, Johnny assumed some of the attackers were some kind of dead. Batman was definitely some kind of shadow ghost, no matter what Sam and Tucker said. Nobody alive is really that good at blending into shadows and sneaking up on people.
Speak of the devil. Shadow returns through the wall and curls up around Johnny’s feet.
“Hey Shadow, how’s campus? Did you find our guide on the ground or-“
Shadow perks at the question and launches into a shadow puppet show, minus the puppets.
Stories and shapes flow over the wall. A stray cat startled by Shadow’s sudden appearance. Another student encountered a bit of bad luck with a spilled drink. What looks like a professor losing a stack of papers to a sudden gust of wind. Finally, a familiar slumping, shambling shape shows up on the wall. Instead of heading into any of the dorms, Tim climbs into the back of a car.
“Well,” he says as the shadow show ends, “at least he didn’t pass out on the sidewalk.”
He turns back to his bag. “Help me finish unpacking before my roommate shows up.”
As the two continue to unpack, Johnny starts to wonder what his roommate will be like.
Maybe his roommate will be a local and know some stories about Batman and the rest of his crew? They’d probably have more reliable information than the tabloids and newspapers that Tucker and Sam searched through.
His luck doesn’t tend to be that good though. Maybe an out of towner? It seems unlikely considering the – everything that Johnny’s learned about Gotham so far. Then again, Sam had demanded photos of Gotham’s buildings and gargoyles so goths might flock to the town.
If his roommate is a goth, maybe they’ll be cool with him being a ghost? Or they’ll try and get him to move on or attempt an exorcism. It wouldn’t work, but it would probably make things awkward.
Shadow brings him out of his thoughts with a concerned growl.
“I’m fine buddy,” he sooths as they sink back down to the floor, “just thinkin’ about my roommate and everything.”
“Like, they probably won’t catch on too quickly. I tricked the Fenton’s for a while so I can definitely fake it. Just, haven’t had to do it long term. We can make it through the semester, right? Maybe not. Would it be worse if they found out near the end of the semester? Freak out that they’ve been livin’ with the dead for so long.”
“I don’t- It doesn’t matter what they think. I don’t care. It would just make it easier. If they were cool with the whole ghost thing. Maybe that should be my icebreaker? Ask them if they believe in ghosts?”
“Doesn’t matter. It’ll be fine. I’ll just not tell them I’m a ghost. As long as I remember not to do anything too ghostly in front of them, I’ll be fine. We’ve got this.”
"Uh,” a new voice cut in, “did you haunt me all the way from Amity? Or are you new?"
Shit. Johnny could have sworn the door was locked. He couldn’t have left it unlocked; he’d phased through the door. Only roommates were supposed to have keys!
Turning around, he saw a familiar looking face standing in the doorway. Some football kid, if he was getting it right. Of course, there would be a kid from Amity here, easily identified by the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick held loosely in his grip. It was just Johnny's rotten luck.
"Long story, but I'm not here to haunt anyone-" He quickly but gently pulls the guy inside- "and please don't blow my cover. It's a favor for Phantom."
The guy was still tense but relaxes a little at the mention of the town’s little savior and suspiciously asks, "What kind of favor?"
Johnny sighs. If this guy really wants to play twenty questions, it’ll have to wait until after he meets his roommate.
With a quick flick of the wrist Shadow wraps around the guy and lifts him off the ground. Even with the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick, he doesn’t have the strength or blast power to take on Shadow.
"Look," Johnny hisses as politely as he can, "Phantom is a bit too busy keeping Amity in Amity to investigate this place and this place is pretty important. I'm not telling you why exactly I'm here though so if you don't mind leaving before my new roommate gets here, I'd like to at least last a week before they find out I'm a ghost. Now split."
Shadow pushes the guy out the door and is already sliding the lock into place before he can say a word. Problem solved.
Johnny collapses onto the bed and calls up Shadow for a quick check up. Fenton weaponry wasn't always harmful to the touch for ghosts (as Phantom demonstrated daily) but nobody ever knows when that might change. His attention snaps back to the door only seconds later as it opens once again.
The same guy shyly sticks his head in while holding up his key. "Um, hey," he mumbles as Johnny realizes what's written on the key tag, "room number 666, right? I'm Dash if you didn't know. Lucky us, I guess?"
Lucky. Yah, this was just Johnny's type of luck.