Chapter Text
Vivi was, of course, the one who noticed something was wrong first. She was the one who had been with Arthur the whole time during the last year or so, after all. It was an exceptionally hot day, and the tentative team was on the road home after an investigation at a haunted mall. Everyone could honestly think of nothing better than getting back to their apartment, having cold drinks, and showering away the bits of drywall that still dusted their hair.
They just had to get through the southwestern heatwave first, in an ancient van with an AC that was spotty on a good day.
Out of the four of them, the only one not actively suffering was Lewis, but since that was because he was dead, it barely counted. He knew he had to be making it worse; his aura was fire-based, and it wasn’t like he could just turn off the temperature of his ectoplasm. Despite the research he and Vivi had been doing, he was still unsure of the specifics of how he… Worked. (What was powering him, now that his drive for revenge was fulfilled? Lewis had yet to learn.)
“Hey Arthur, you doing okay bud?” Vivi asked from her position riding shotgun. Arthur was driving, and, from what Lewis could see from behind, looked fine. No, wait. He was tense, shoulders up near his ears. That was… Was that normal? Lewis couldn’t remember; details were still surfacing from the ever-fading haze of anger and betrayal.
“I think…” There was a lengthy pause. “Maybe, we should swap out who’s driving. I… I think.”
Mystery, in his guise of a small dog, peered over the seats from where he was balanced on his hind legs next to Lewis. “Arthur isn’t telling the full truth. He’s in pain.”
“Mystery,” the man all but whined as he pulled over onto the side of the desert road.
“Don’t bother denying it,” replied the kitsune with an eyeroll. “The nose never lies.”
“Fine,” he hissed, but not in the vindictive way that had haunted Lewis’s approximation of sleep for over a year; now, he sounded like he was doing his best to ignore whatever was going on with him.
The van rolled to a stop, and once it was parked, Arthur left the keys in the ignition so the AC would continue its stuttery job. Then he slumped into his seat but didn’t offer up anything else. Despite the memory issues, Lewis knew that this was, sadly, normal.
“Okay so what’s up?” Vivi asked, unbuckling her seatbelt to more fully turn towards Arthur, able to sit crosslegged. “Is it your arm again?”
“... Y-yeah,” he said, voice still strained. “The heat… You know how it is, and all that…”
“Not really but you’ve told me.” Vivi’s voice had the same sort of sympathetic, kind tone that Lewis remembered. And that he had missed. “Come on, you’re going to get burned if you just keep ignoring it.”
“You try driving one-handed,” he replied as he fiddled with the latches beneath his shirtsleeve.
“You should’ve asked to swap with one of us,” said Lewis, finally speaking up, and the reverb in his voice made Arthur flinch. The thud of the smaller man’s prosthetic falling into his lap and the suddenness in which he no longer had an arm also made Lewis flinch, so they were even.
“Didn’t want to inconvenience anyone.”
Vivi reached over and picked up the robot arm, yelping when she touched the metal. “Arthur! This is ridiculous! It’s, like, almost too hot to hold, are you trying to get hurt again?”
The anxious man was starting to look like a cornered jackrabbit, and Lewis half expected him to wrench open the door behind him and disappear into the desert. But that didn’t happen whether due to Arthur’s tiredness, probable-heat-exhaustion, or both. He just sort of drooped. “No, I’m not trying to get myself hurt. Especially… Not that shoulder.”
“Get over here,” Vivi said, opening her arms invitingly with a smile. Lewis watched curiously, arms crossed as he leaned them on the seats. Arthur moved hesitantly to lay down on the cushions in the cab, allowing his head and shoulders to rest on Vivi’s lap. Despite having the appearance of a feral cat receiving love for the first time, it looked like he’d done this before. Closing his eyes, he let himself go pretty much limp as Vivi rolled up his empty left sleeve, exposing the metal port still present on his shoulder.
The Mystery Skulls have not been back together and… Okay around each other for long enough that Lewis would feel comfortable asking about the arm. He was curious, always curious, which is what had led him to the paranormal in the first place, but… It was, undoubtedly, a sensitive subject, and Lewis was doing his best to try and make amends for his… Murderous ghostly first impression.
He’d hurt his friend badly, at least in the emotional sense, so what right did he have to pry into his trauma? Arthur had not, after all, asked him any insensitive questions; that would be extra awful coming from the mouth of the body instrumental in Lewis’s death, and Arthur seemingly knew that. It would be fine. One day, when they both were doing better, they could perhaps voice what they’d been wondering, but they had a long journey to go to get there.
For now, Lewis just watched as Vivi winced, poking at some… Central connecting point, clicking a hidden switch that led to most of the overheating metal shoulder cap to fall away as well. All that was left was a sort of peg with various connecting ports and even a few little indicator LEDs jutting out of Arthur’s scarred skin; it was most likely bolted directly to his bones.
Vivi obviously noticed him staring, setting the extra metal aside. “He made it come apart in multiple stages,” she explained, voice quiet to not disturb Arthur. He’d gone basically boneless at her touch. She gestured at the shoulder segment that she’d placed on the dash. “Normally, he doesn’t take this part off; having solely the anchor point left attached is uncomfortable, since more is exposed and it can catch on things. But, with the heat… It’s best it all comes off. The anchor doesn’t, so. Gotta leave it.”
Arthur said nothing, just hummed in agreement, and Lewis noticed Vivi was running her fingers through his hair.
“Normally, when he’s dealing with shoulder pains, massaging the scarred parts helps a lot. But, since there’s some minor burns involved, I’m just gonna put some of his scar cream on it for him. Gently. Burns suck.”
Indeed, some of the already-discolored skin looked an angry red color, and somewhere in the back of Lewis’s mind, his consciousness reminded him that at one point he’d been close to burning Arthur alive.
He shuddered.
Despite the burns, Arthur leaned into her touch when Vivi spread the cream on the area. He was well and truly asleep at that point, nights spent awake catching up with him like they always did when he allowed himself a single moment of comfort.
“... It looks like you’ve done this for him before,” said Lewis somewhat awkwardly, making sure his spooky voice was not at all accusing.
“Well, yeah,” she said like it was the most obvious thing in the world, brushing sweaty strands off the sleeping man’s forehead. “He was a wreck after he got out of the hospital. I don’t wanna really get into it, but… Yeah. He needed a lot of help, and I kinda just… Got good at helping him. It’s the least I could do.”
“You’re a wonderful friend, Vivi,” Lewis said, and he meant it. Of course, he still wanted to be more than friends, but as things stood, no one was dating anyone until everything sort of settled down.
“You’re damn right I am!” she said with one hundred percent enthusiasm at fifty percent volume. Vivi very much enjoyed talking, with the topic mattering less than simply getting her thoughts out. Rambling about how to take care of Arthur, and how he’d designed his arm, was really nothing new, aside from the topic, but it was sweet. She was not the sort of person to understand one whit of mechanical engineering, but she had learned a little just to understand and assist him.
“... He helped me too, y’know? Aside from being a familiar comfort when my amnesia scared me and caring for me through the migraines, he actually patched me up a few weeks back, after the whole, uh… Botched-reunion-plant-lady-fight-Murder-Mystery incident. You know how it is.”
With her free hand she pet Mystery as a sort of reassurance he was still there, then touched the criss-crossed scar on her own left cheek. “You were still recuperating in the locket after that whole showdown. I didn’t get too beat up, thank god, but I still needed bandages and all that. Arthur ran around getting me what I needed from the shop first aid kit, the whole nine yards. Like, yeah I know part of it was him trying to distract himself from his own panic and uh. The concussion he had, but I know he cares so much, even if he doesn’t say it. And he’s good at caring, too.”
Likewise, there was so much Lewis wanted to say, and he cast around trying to add something poignant, but instead he landed on “do your scars hurt? Like his do?” Nice going. Absolutely fantastic job.
“Eh, the one on my side does sometimes, but not too often. The ones on my face are too small for that, they looked worse than they were.”
“Well,” Lewis offered. “Next time your aches and pains bother you, come find me, okay? I’ll help you, like you helped him. And I can heat up my hands, so, perks of being a ghost.” It did not matter that he was dead; he would remain a caring friend, especially after being given not one but two second chances. First, he had become a ghost, and second, somehow he was still here and in the process of being forgiven, even after almost making the biggest mistake of his afterlife.
There was no way he was going to squander that chance.
“Forget just helping with scars and shit,” Vivi said, eyes sparkling. “We gotta get you into a massage class.”
Lewis laughed. “Maybe eventually, sure. There’s also YouTube.”
“Hey yeah that works too! I know I would love a heated shoulder massage, and I don’t think Arthur would say no either.”
There was a sort of uncomfortable beat. “I don’t really think he even would appreciate me touching him at all right now.”
“Baby steps, then,” Vivi said with a shrug, and Lewis wished he had an ounce of her confidence. When they’d been together, before, they’d rounded each other out. Vivi had the fearlessness and Lewis had the pizzazz and social skills. One time, she’d said he had the ‘soul of a theater kid’ and he hadn’t exactly known what to do with that. Mystery had wisdom and foresight, which, now looking back, probably hadn’t been the best thing to entrust to a talking dog OR a yokai species known for trickery. And Arthur was the brains and technical skills, as well as the voice of reason. Even if they ignored his panicked warnings half the time.
(Remembering that had sucked. Lewis had felt extra guilty.)
“Yeah. Baby steps,” he repeated, looking down at his dozing friend. He wanted to offer to drive, he was certainly capable of it, but for one, after literally driving his friends off the road, he still felt guilty. And for two, that would require moving Arthur. At least, they’d have to drape the man’s legs on Lewis’s lap, and while before that wouldn’t have been an issue, now…
“We’ll just hang out here until… Uhhh half past three,” Vivi said, checking her watch. “We wanna get home at a reasonable time but Artie needs sleep. Do you wanna drive after we wake him up, or should I?”
“If you could,” Lewis said, and sort of bobbed his head in a nod. It was a bit hard to convey assent when you didn’t have a neck, or even a lower jaw. “I… Still feel sort of weird about the whole ‘truck chase’ thing. Promise I’ll be up to driving soon, though. About how far out are we?”
“Mmm thirty miles?”
“Almost home.” Vivi smiled at his words; ‘home’ was something that meant a lot to them both, as a place and as other people. Lewis had lost his for over a year after an early childhood of homelessness, and Vivi had forgotten one of the people who made hers complete. The ghost wondered if Arthur felt the same; that felt like something he should know, but had forgotten. Arthur was also an orphan, and had been raised by his uncle from the age of ten; surely that would lead to similar feelings?
Of course, with the broken trust that had only just scabbed over, the apartment might feel more like a trap than a home for the man, but with how easily he’d relinquished his arm and fallen asleep in Lewis’s presence, maybe not. Of the two of them, Lewis had always been the more resilient; while what had occurred in the cave still quite literally haunted him, he was far more capable of doing the work of moving on and extending an olive branch.
… Heh, he’d also always been sentimental and a romantic at heart. Of course he was mentally waxing poetic about the concept of home to fill the comfortable silence. He hadn’t changed that much, even though at some moments it felt like it.
“Hey Lewis?” Vivi’s voice cut through his thoughts. “I know, like… You’re a ghost now, and all, and you look fine. You can project your body and change your appearance to some degree. But also… Is there anything that bothers you? Arthur and I have our scars, and Mystery is a lucky duck who heals perfectly because he’s old and magical, but how about you?”
Mystery chuckled from where he’d curled up against Lewis’s leg.
“I can feel whatever I come in contact with, you know that,” Lewis said. “But I don’t usually feel the wound that caused my death. My form is weaker there, like, if I lack the strength to be visible or corporeal that’s the spot that fades first, but nah, I can’t feel it normally.”
Vivi sighed, smiling up at him with concerned blue eyes. “That’s a relief, I don’t think any of the meds we know and have on hand work for ghosts.”
He could tell there was that same impulse to help within her. Whereas Arthur was only difficult to help because of his lack of consideration for himself and propensity for hiding things, Lewis was a whole different ball game. Vivi would have to well and truly learn magic if he started experiencing random aches and pains.
Though, if being dead didn’t stop you from hurting, Lewis didn’t know what would.
“Do you think that, if we get back together, Arthur would want to date us too?”
And that brought Lewis’s thoughts screeching to a halt. The “if” did sting a little, but it was understandable. “Well… He and I have a long way to go in terms of being comfortable with one another, and all… I’m not opposed to the notion, but… What happened is hard to shake, y’know?”
“Yeah…” she sighed. “I wanted to date him, back when I couldn’t remember who you were, but he refused. He always refused, even though… Looking back, I can tell he loved us both. Kinda hurts, but this whole messy thing does. It’s getting better though!” That determined sparkle he loved so much crept back into her eyes. “I believe that it’ll keep going in that direction. Literally not even demons or death has stopped the Mystery Skulls, so why should something like this?”
Lewis wished he had her enthusiasm, but he did have faith and trust in her. Thus, he was sure that what she said would come true. After all, improvement in this situation wasn’t really a terribly tall order.
“What made you think of that?” Lewis asked aloud.
“What, the potential for a polycule?”
“Yeah.”
“As a whole? Mystery pried the truth outta me when he could tell I was stressed a few days ago. In this moment? I guess just the sort of peace we have going on right now. I like it, after all that’s happened. Wish Arthur was awake for it, though.”
“There will be more times like this in the future, Viviene, I am sure of it.” Mystery’s voice floated up from his spot in the back. “But for what it’s worth, I enjoy it too. All is not right in the world, not quite yet, but it is a vast improvement.”
“I’m just glad we have a chance to improve. It seems like, uh, a lot of things wanted to get in the way of that.” Lewis didn’t add that he had been one of those things for a little bit; they all knew.
“Me too.”
After a few more minutes, Vivi gently nudged Arthur awake, and though he only really woke up halfway, it was enough to prop him up against the door so Vivi could crawl into the driver’s seat and hit the road again. Soon, they’d be home and comfortable and able to really rest. They all needed it.