A/N:

I want to thank Kvalificatsia for making some art inspired by this story. To say thank you, here's another chapter.

~VC


"What do we do about him?"

Frederick motioned gently to Danny, who lay heavily unconscious in the backseat of Vlad's convertible, his pale lips parted slightly, a light trail of blood trickling from one nostril. Where he'd been struck with the barrel of Frederick's gun his hair was parted slightly, but there was no fleshy hole in the skin that served as a window to his newly rotting brain, and Vlad, who unconsciously glanced over despite the fact that he would have preferred to leave Daniel's condition to his imagination, realized that Freakshow had not been joshing when he'd said he knew how to use a gun.

Amazing, Vlad thought incredulously. He didn't even break the skin.

The thud that had sounded on impact advertised otherwise, for the noise, that flash of an old-time camera, was associated with such senseless violence, hatred-driven gang beatings of which the victim rarely crawled out with his heart still pumping. In truth, the boy's head should have had a crater the size of a baseball embedded in its surface, but it did not; in fact, aside from the bloody nose he'd received when he'd landed on the highway in such a way that it had gotten jarred, his head seemed to be the only thing that remained intact…at least to the extent that it was not torn open and twisted in such ways no limbs should twist. And while it seemed this was not possible, Vlad decided wisely that he'd be best off thanking whatever unseen force had altered the vigor of Freakshow's hand rather than agitate himself trying to decide just how this cleanness of his scalp had come to be, for he thought he'd go crazy if he did.

"In the trunk," Vlad said after a small moment, his face frighteningly monotonous, as if it were such a simple and easy command to give—though it wasn't. "I'll pull over."

"Does this bother you?" Frederick asked gently, filled with a newfound confidence that had derived from the prospect of getting their plan—one which would provide an endless amount of entertainment for the ghost—underway, the oppressiveness of his past removed from his mind for the moment with the idea that he would soon be able to put the pedal to the metal as he'd always done when he was alive, even though he'd failed his driver's test countless times and did not, of course, have a license.

"Does what bother me?" Vlad asked slowly, though he already knew.

"Putting the boy in the trunk," Frederick clarified, regarding the side of Vlad's unshaven face with a certain starkness but also the slightest hint of amusement. His dirty eyes were glistening dully beneath the light of the moon overhead.

"Well, of course it does," he said after a small moment of consideration. "It isn't so much that I'm worried Daniel might suffocate or wake up engulfed in darkness and be instilled with the idea that he's been buried alive or something like that. And I am not worried that someone might come along and notice us stuffing an unconscious teenage boy in the trunk of a car." He paused for a moment, unsure if he should disclose further information to Frederick, but somehow realizing that the kid who sat beside him already knew, and that denying it would do no good, he said stiffly, "I'm worried what he will think of me."

"You do indeed realize that after I've finished with him he won't think very highly of either of us?" Frederick replied, now smiling bemusedly at the gray-haired man before him, resting the side of his head on one hand, his elbow pressed into his knee so he could stare at Vlad Masters and slowly undress him with his eyes, for he reasoned that the human couldn't be as old underneath that suit of his as his gray hair advertised…

"I know," Vlad said with such heavy slowness, as if he were having difficulty forming the words. "And I wouldn't prefer this. But I fear I have no other option."

"You don't," Frederick replied, the smile now gone from his pale lips.

For a moment an oppressively heavy silence fell over them as Vlad searched for a sufficient place to pull his car over. The death-metal now had a rather suffocating quality to it, seeming so loud that the organelles inside Vlad's cells were unable to communicate and had simply stopped working, despite the fact that they had not turned the volume up a bit since Freakshow had gotten into the car. Vlad's face was twisted, not in anger but rather as if he was trying to keep himself from vomiting. Frederick simply looked mildly agitated at the lack of response from his new partner, and after a moment he said, his tone not at all processing any sense of humor or lightness, "It seems to me as though you don't particularly care for me."

Masters quickly shook his head like a woman facing her abusive husband, a desperate and tired but also incredibly frightened expression taking hold of the muscles in his face and shining brightly in his soft blue eyes.

"I don't know you," he said quietly, his hands grasping the leather-covered steering wheel with such force that his knuckles turned white.

Frederick noted this with brief amusement as well as that tired irritation. "You will soon," he sang in an almost sarcastic tone, one which derived from boredom.

Vlad pulled the convertible onto the side of the road without responding. He unbuckled his seatbelt and started to open the door on his side, but he was not quick enough for Frederick, who couldn't have cared less about accident prevention and did not have a human half to keep alive, and who, in truth, could not be bothered to take the few seconds to secure himself into the car. The pale-faced teenager was already hauling Danny out of the backseat swiftly but with such uncharacteristic gentleness that Vlad Masters did nothing more than watch with wide eyes, too stunned to interrupt the process.

Frederick looked down at Danny and smiled, unconsciously, a smile that had not graced his lips since he'd been in the presence of Harry, for this smile was not only incredibly genuine but it was also shot through with something else—lust. He studied Danny's face for a small moment, noting his slightly upturned nose with amusement, adoring the point which his chin came to. One of his hands held Danny's ass, and the other—the hand on which the class ring and gay-pride ring rested—held Danny's head. His fingers started to stroke the oily black hair, as with the smile, almost unconsciously, as he had done Harry's, which had been dark and messy before he'd dyed it white…just like Danny's.

For a moment Danny held Frederick's attention in an iron grip, despite the fact that he'd never been so unconscious in his life, that was, but after what had perhaps been thirty seconds of admiring the young, inexperienced body, Vlad's suddenly alarmed voice shattered the walls of his fantasyland, the place his mind had taken the Ghost Boy and undressed him and ran its hands up and down the length of his person.

"Well?" Vlad said, his usually oh-so-composed voice shaking so violently he was just barely capable of forming the words. "Are you going to put him in the trunk?"

"Yes," Frederick said, regarding Vlad with eyes that may have processed something like concern. "Of course."

He opened the trunk of the convertible and carefully laid Danny inside. Under the cover of the trunk's lid, where Vlad could not see him, he let his hand wander over Danny's right thigh and briefly over his crotch, but only for a small, not-so-intimate moment. Then, he closed the trunk and got back into the convertible. Vlad followed suit, looking so incredibly ill his previously-pale face had lightened to that of the complexion of a corpse.

They drove to the gas-station in silence and filled their car quickly, Vlad overcome with fear, Frederick, euphoria.

As Freddy watched Vlad pump gas into the car, he thought, smiling widely, I've found Harry again.