#foleyfest2017

He sighed and dropped his pencil on the table. 

“Can you two fuck off please?” he asked, looking up at them.

The two ghosts, one gray-eyed and the other red-eyed, looked at each other briefly, contemplating whether or not they should before turning back towards him. They didn’t say a thing. Or leave.

“Well, fuck you, too,” Tuck muttered. Shaking his head one last time for good measure, he looked down again.

And promptly screamed.

On the opposite side of the table, Danny jumped back, eyes wide.

“Shit!” he swore. “Did I scare you?”

Tucker glared at him.

“Yeah, stupid question. Sorry.”

With a roll of his eyes, Tucker sat down again and picked up the pencil. Great, not only had he failed to get the other two to go away, now he had an extra ghost to deal with.

“Whatcha doing?” Danny asked, standing on his tip toes in an attempt to get a clear view of the paper in the dimly lit room.

“Homework.”

“What kinda homework?”

“Math.”

Danny stuck his tongue out in disgust. “Ew... I hate math.”

“That makes two of us,” Tucker said with a small chuckle.  

Danny must have taken the laugh as a cue to let him get closer. The ghost leaned in, resting his elbows on the table, head over the paper. His eyes scanned the page, looking for something he recognized, oblivious to the teen sitting right across from him.

Tucker, meanwhile, just stared. Truthfully, he had never been this close to Danny. Or, well, he had but he hadn’t taken the time to actually look at him. In all honesty, he was surprised at how alive he looked. The slight green tint to his already pale skin and a very, very faint glow, only obvious if you were looking for it, was all that gave away his current condition. He was also... not too bad looking. His skin was clear and tiny faint freckles dotted it like constellations. His right eye was the prettiest blue Tucker had ever seen and he could see every little shade and tint and shadow in it. His dark hair hung lazily over the other, masquerading it from view.

Ignoring his appearance, Tucker snapped back to reality and suddenly became unnerved at how Danny was close enough that he should have felt breath on his skin and, yet, there was nothing. After all, Danny hadn’t breathed in years.

He, on the other hand, seemed to have felt Tucker’s breathing and looked up with a smile.

Tucker nearly died for real as he noticed how cute that little lopsided smile was, with the tiny gap in between his front teeth.

“Sorry,” Danny apologized. “I can’t help you with this.”

“That’s f...fine,” Tucker stuttered. He hoped to hell and back that Danny didn’t notice it.

Of course, the damn ghost did.

His smile faded and turned to one of concern. “Are you alr--”

“I have to go to the bathroom!” Tucker yelled, abruptly standing up.

He attempted to step back but managed to forget that the chair was there, tripping backwards over it. Danny saw him falling and phased through the table to catch him. However, he managed to accidentally turn tangible and trip over the chair as well, with one arm around Tucker’s waist. The duo collapsed on the ground, the ghost landing on the teen.

There was nothing but blinking at each other in shock for a second as both of them tried to figure out what the hell had just happened. And they did what two guys who had just collapsed onto each other would do: they blushed.

As per usual, the ghosts interrupted the moment. Their snickering could be heard all across the pizzeria. With a glare from Tucker, they retreated, still giggling, into the shadows completely. Those jerks.

He looked back down at Danny and his heart skipped a beat. The ghost was observing him with those pretty blue eyes and seemed to be thinking. Finally, he smiled again. That same cute smile that made Tucker want to melt.

“Wanna kiss?”

Tucker froze. He felt his cheeks heating up. “Wha--What?”

Danny opened his hand. Inside sat a Hershey’s Kiss, neatly wrapped in its silver foil. 

“Oh--oh, uh. Yes, please. Thank you.” He took it quickly, his fingers brushing against Danny’s cold hands. His heart skipped another beat.

“Great!” Danny practically yelled, stumbling to get up. A green blush had spread across his face. “Enjoy!”

With that the ghost sprinted to the other side of the room, running smack into the door to the Backstage area. He wasted no time in getting up and continuing on his path to get in.

Tucker giggled, unwrapping the piece of chocolate from its wrapper. Who knew the creepy glowing undead could be such dorks?

“You idiot! What the fuck??” Ember’s voice erupted from Backstage.

“I PANICKED, OKAY?” Danny yelled back.

“Ugh why can’t you be cool like Skulker’s parents, they let him fly around in a war suit with wi-fi and bluetooth.”

“And look where that’s gotten him, Daniel, he’s tiny and green!”

After a dramatic silence, the two couldn’t hold it in anymore and burst out laughing, their familiar routine emptying out into the hallway where Sam was approaching. Flopping down on the bed beside danny, she surveyed the situation and decided to just roll with it, having long since gotten used to walking in on absurd situations between the two. “So what’d I miss this time?”

“Danny’s grounded,” Tucker said, pulling out a heat gun and going to town on the disassembled mess that was once an iPhone, “texting and flying.”

Shaking her head, Sam placed a consoling hand on his shoulder. “Oh Danny. Danny, Danny, Danny. I’m not mad, I’m just… disappointed.”

“I hate this family,” Danny protested, burying his face in a pillow, “I’m going to live with my real parents.”

Tapping the pieces back together, Tucker waited a few seconds and powered on the newly rejuvenated smartphone, a self satisfied look on his face as the apple logo filled the screen. “While you’re there,” he said, running through the systems to make sure everything was functional again before placing the back on, “consider making better life choices, like an android, for starters.”

“17 or 18?” Sam asked, not even looking up from the magazine she’d pulled out.

“First of all: Ha.ha. Secondly: What, no love for 16? How dare you, Sam, how dare you. And third, I’m serious dude. Cool as they are,” Tucker said, holding up Danny’s phone before tossing it over to him, “those things are designed to break. What’s more, they’re designed with the specific purpose of becoming obsolete, it doesn’t “just” happen, they’re made so that once something goes wrong you’re straight up fucked unless you’ve got a guy. It’s not a high stress phone for a high stress life like yours, dude.”

Danny tried to think of a rebuttal, but his only defense was’ “…But it’s so cool though. Besides you’re my guy, dude.”

“I know, man,”  Tucker said, rolling his chair across the room to place a hand on Danny’s shoulder, “I know, but Apple’s got you by the grapes and when you suffer, we all suffer.”

“I’m suffering right now,” Sam said, adjusting herself so she that was now between the boys, “but if you two are done with your bromantic adventures in phone repair, I’d like to not spend my Saturday stuck indoors.”

Giving her a look of doubt, Tucker pushed back to his workstation and began cleaning up so they could go. “Oh don’t think you’re off the hook either, little miss flip-phone.”

“Smartphones are capitalism’s answer to society begging for a crutch to avoid thinking about the problems with the world as much as possible,” she responded, pulling out a dark purple razor and flipping it open for dramatic effect as she walked to the door, “give me something to make a call and send a text and I can do the rest myself.”

“Great speech there, 2008,” Tucker said, grabbing his bag before following them out the door, “but if it wasn’t such an iconic aesthetic then I’d never even let you heathens set foot in this holy temple of technology.”

“Why do I get the feeling he’d burn both our phones at the stake if he had the chance?” Danny whispered to Sam’s delight.