They're all drunk on shitty wine when Iggy brings up his haunted apartment. The apartment they're in right then.
"Seriously," Iggy slurs, "s'like, fuckin', there's all sorts of banging and clattering and shit. S'really fuckin' annoying."
"Probably shouldn't call the ghost an annoyance, Ig," Max says, reaching for the bottle, glass be damned, she can drink it straight from the bottle and fuck anyone else who says otherwise.
"S'okay, it likes me," Iggy says, and yells, "Don't you like me, you goofy-lookin' dumbass?!"
There's an ominous rattling and a vase falls off the shelf, shattering perilously close to Gazzy's head.
"What the fuck," Max breathes out, staring at the shards of glass. The shards rattle ominously.
"I'm fucking filming this," Nudge says, fumbling with her phone.
"I think it gets pissed whenever you insult it," Max provides, and Angel nods along.
"So, what?" Iggy says. "How do I stop it haunting me?"
Max blinks, and Angel says, "They always use Ouija boards in movies—"
"People get fuckin' wrecked whenever they use Ouija boards, we aren't branching out into that," Fang snarls out.
"So what do you suggest, then?" Max says, flopping back onto his lap. "What, do we wanna hold a fuckin' seance or some shit?"
They held a fuckin' seance or some shit.
Or, well, they basically just grabbed all the scented candles Iggy had a penchant for, set them in a circle, and sat together.
"Should we hold hands?" Fang says, Nudge still filming, conjuring a tripod from somewhere. "They always hold hands in movies."
Max sighs, but reaches over, grabbing his hand in hers, and blinks at him. "Your hand's real warm."
"Thanks."
A book flies off the coffee table, and Max grumbles something about grouchy-ass ghosts.
Gazzy lights the candles, because fire was kind of his thing, and they all look expectantly at Max.
"Why am I the one talking to the ghost?" She demands.
"Because you're the, like, the leader," Angel says, squinting at her.
Max heaves a sigh, but looks out at the apartment.
"Uh, restless, dumbass spirit," Max begins. "Um, we reach out to you because your new renter's real concerned about ghosts and his ability to get action, which we all know he doesn't anyway—"
"Fuck you, Max," Iggy says, and there was a loud thump from far off.
"Fine, whatever," Max says. "God, you're such a drama queen, ghost. D'you have a name?"
The book starts flopping around.
"Jesus fuck, fine, from now on you're drama queen," Max growls. Max is a bit of a grouchy drunk. "Ghost, kindly fuck off, go be an asshole somewhere else. This isn't even that nice of an apartment—"
"—oh, thanks—"
"—and the new owner's gonna have us over all the time, and we're just gonna get drunk and shit talk you. Mkay?"
Another three books flew off the shelves.
Max, abruptly, let go of their hands, and began to stomp her feet. She grabbed an armload of books and threw them, ignoring Iggy's "watch it!" and she shouted "I CAN THROW BOOKS TOO! AND BE LOUD! I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU, DRAMA QUEEN! BE BITCHY AT SOMEONE ELSE'S GODDAMN APARTMENT! FUCK!"
Fang looks directly into the camera for a little while, while Max continued stomping, jumping up and down, and throwing books. The ghost seems to not like that very much.
All of their candles swooshed out, and Iggy winces.
"If we're murdered in our sleep," he says, "the ghost is the one to blame."
"Bitchass fuckin' ghost," Max mutters. "Isn't gonna fuckin' kill me. I'll kill it back."
"It's already dead," Fang says.
"Fuck that, I'll kill it again," Max snarls. "I'll kill anything. Fight me, Drama Queen—"
"—maybe we should start cutting you off," Gazzy mutters.
"—and you'll fuckin' lose, you're not even fuckin' alive anymore. Goddamn."
"We could make a ghost busting machine," Angel muses. "Or, well, Gaz, Ig, and Nudge could. Isn't salt supposed to repel ghosts?"
"Are we seriously spending tonight ghost busting?" Nudge asks. "This kind of feels like a new social low."
"Yeah, but what a cool story," Iggy says. "Like, what'd you do last Friday? Oh, not much, we just drank some wine, kicked ghost ass."
The bookshelves rumble.
Angel pauses, and says, "D'you wanna order, like, some pizza or something? For brain food?"
Thirty minutes later, they're gorging themselves on pizza and browsing through their phones on ghost-ass-kicking techniques. Nudge picks up filming with shaky, tipsy hands.
"Hey, okay, Iggy, where's your laptop?" Max asks, with what would be a casual tone, except all her composure vanished a bottle and a half of wine ago.
She can drink all of them under the table. It's infuriating.
"Uh, why?"
"Just. Just gimme your laptop." Max says.
Iggy goes, and Max settles in a corner, clicking on, and munches her way through half a pizza and a ton of mozzarella sticks before she grins.
"Gotcha, ya fuckin' drama queen," Max triumphs, holding up the laptop over her head like a prize fighter. "Guess who just got fuckin' ordained?!"
"Ordained?" Fang asks, and she says, "Ghosts can't be on holy ground. I'm about to bless the fuck outta this apartment—well, more than it's already blessed by my presence—no ghost can stay on holy ground, bitch!"
She triumphantly stumbles to her feet, and fills up a wine glass with water. Her brow furrows in concentration as she uses her hand to make a cross over it, reads a blessing off her phone, and dips her fingers into it, flicking it into the air.
"The power of Christ compels you!" She shouts.
Everything in the apartment that isn't bolted down starts rumbling ominously.
Max doesn't seem to care, and instead fumbles with her phone, squinting at the screen, and then holds out her hand, rambling off a drunken blessing.
Or, she starts to, because the books start flying at Max's head.
"Max!" Fang shouts, and tackles her to the ground, shielding her with his body. "Finish it!"
Max screams out "AMEN!" and the rumbling suddenly stops.
"Holy shit," Nudge breathes out. "Did we just—?"
"I think we did," Fang says, not moving up from where he'd landed on top of Max.
"Fuck yeah!" Iggy shouts. "Take that, Drama Queen!"
The whole story fades from their minds; sure, they tell it in bars and to their other friends ("what other friends?" Max would mutter, and they can't really deny the truth of that) but a month later it just kind of faded.
Then Max's phone started ringing off the hook on a Tuesday, and she picks it up, blinking at the sheer amount of messages and twitter mentions.
"Um," she says, and then looks at the top one and doesn't have to get any further than ghost drama queen to immediately pick up her phone and call Nudge.
"Nudge," she begins dangerously.
"Hi, Max!" she squeaks out. "I, uh. I might have uploaded that video of us ghost-hunting onto youtube, and we might be getting a tv show?"
Max pauses, and says "What" in the flattest, most no-nonsense voice possible.
"BYE WE'RE ALL MEETING FOR PIZZA LATER SEE YOU AT HAWK'S AT SEVEN—!"
"Nudge!" She hisses into her phone, but only meets dial tone.
She furiously scrolls her way through twitter (they're trending, for fuck's sake) and a lot of the tweets ask if she and Fang are dating.
Max actually lets out a surprised scoff, and looks around as if to say can you believe this? to one of them, except she's alone, in her own, unhaunted apartment. A lot of people are asking if it's fake, too, but most of them agree that even if it's fake, it's still funny.
Which, when she watches Nudge's cut version, yeah. It actually is. It's nice to know that Nudge's film major came in handy. It's cringe-y to see her drunk off her ass, but Fang tends to just look directly into the camera a lot, and Iggy's deadpan comments are gold, and there's a bit of Gazzy practically cuddling a lighter that she'd missed when she was cursing out the ghost, and she preens a little. They are hilarious.
She's still kinda pissed, though.
When they're all in Hawk's, Nudge immediately lays out six contracts and says "So we got a TV deal."
Max really doesn't think it was that easy, at all, and she says, "For a ghost-hunter's show?"
"A drunk one, yeah. A parody of the ones that take it super serious, you know? Just you, threatening to fight ghosts, and with little confessionals—"
"Confessionals?" Iggy asks.
"Like, the bits in TV shows where people are on their own, you know?" Nudge says. "I think it'd be pretty great. None of us are really attached to our jobs, anyway. If we don't like it, we've still got each other, and it's a funny thing to put on a resume, right? Plus we're getting paid to get drunk."
Fang makes a humming noise.
Angel worries her lip between her teeth. "Can we think on it?"
"Yeah, sure," Nudge says.
They all think on it, and end up all meeting a producer to sign their contracts, get a fucking Mystery Van, and a camera crew, with Nudge in charge of cuts and the like. It had all been really technical, but Max's role is "get drunk, threaten to fight ghosts, be funny" which she can handle. She has to suffer through makeup, like everyone else.
They go to an old house that's apparently haunted by a prohibitionist ghost that goes completely batshit when Max starts chugging a beer, and Max ends up drinking more and more to fuck with it, which provides them with more material, and Fang ends up having to support her by the waist as she slurs out "—and you're probably a sexist, too! Fuck off, you weren't even that far off from slavery! Fuck straight off, old-ass ghost!"
There's a Vine put up of that that gets over a million loops.
The show's a pretty big success.
It's really, really fucking weird, especially since people stop Max in the grocery store to ask if she's the "drunk ghost girl" and immediately asking if she's dating Fang when she hesitantly confirms it.
They're handling their seventh haunting and are both locked into a tiny closet, affixed camera beeping a light from the corner, when Max brings it up (they're drunk on vodka, this time) and slurs out "Ya think this ghost wants us to date, too?"
Fang snorts, resting his head in the crook of her neck, and asks, "Fuckin', ghostly seven minutes in heaven?!"
Max barks out a laugh, too. "But, seriously. Do you get stopped to get asked if we're dating, too?"
"All the time," he confirms.
"Yeah," Max says, and Fang takes in a bit of a deep breath before he continues, "I've totally had a crush on you since sophomore year of high school, though, so, I mean."
Max blinks at him, then pulls her face from her neck. She manages to cup it in her hands.
"I totally beat you," she says, seriously. "That beach trip. Freshman year. You kissed that one girl." Lissa, she knows, but she's trying to play it super cool.
He grins. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
He lunges forwards, and they kiss, teeth clacking, messy and bright and happy, and then, suddenly, the door flies open and they fall out onto the ground.
"Fuck off!" She screams at the ghost.
That seems to set it off, and Max ends up having to be carried away over Fang's shoulder when the ghost starts hurling bits of broken mirror at them.
(They talk it over when they're sober, too. And then sends out a tweet that says yeah, i guess we're dating that becomes the most retweeted tweet on her profile.)
For now, though, the ghost seems to leave abruptly after leaving a message embedded in shards in the wall.
D-U-M-B-A-S-S-E-S.
Yeah. They kinda are.
But they're dumbasses who hunt ghosts and love each other, so, beat that, ghost.
Title of the chapter is from the 2016 Ghostbusters movie. This was first published on my AO3 account as part of my halloween fics series. If someone knows if "drunk ghost hunting" is an actual show that actually exists, please point me to it at batterytriplicate on tumblr. I want to marathon it.