#Also also kinda implied TimxDanny? I guess??

[miscmonstro]

To be fair, Tim hadn’t meant to get so distracted.

It just happened on occasion. Something would grab his attention with both hands and wouldn’t let go, and he had never been one to deny his curiosity.

It started with Justice League Dark. Batman didn’t do well with magic and most of the bats and birds disliked it on principle- it made everything more complicated. They decided that it was best left alone.

Tim decided it was best put under a microscope. 

He began his search online, looking through forums and videos and online books for anything and everything about magic and demons and gods and found nothing that translated to his (admittedly scant) experiences with the items in question. There was too much dissent to discern what was real and what wasn’t, especially once religion and history got involved. If Hades was real, who was to say which stories were true? Which historical accounts could give him insight and which one would lead his quest for knowledge astray? 

He did, however, find one surprising consistency. 

Death. 

It was ghost stories to be more specific. Ghosts all around the world seemed to have similar abilities in any folklore; disappearing, possession, floating, telekinesis. The behaviors of so called ghosts tended to be the same as well. Despite death being ‘the great unknown’ it was surprisingly easy to find patterns once he knew what to look for. 

And so he dove deeper into ghosts. There was a decent amount of information about ghosts, all from similar sources. Culture preservation efforts and historical documents detailing funeral practices and tourist guides. And amongst the sea of the typical, there was something very atypical.

My Heart Beats for You, the title read. A PhantomxReader fanfic.

It was a behemoth with a word count clocking in around 153,432 at 58 chapters long and it was still ongoing. The view-count, 459,674, was up there too. Out of morbid curiosity he saved the web address on his phone to read later and returned to scouring the internet for information about ghosts as the first step to understanding demons and other such magic related things. 

That later happened sooner than he hoped when Tim was unceremoniously kicked off the Batcomputer by Barbra, who wanted to cross check information for a case and then update the firewalls.

He had an half an hour before he needed to suit up for patrol and Alfred had said he needed a break anyway. With that in mind, and feeling strange about it, Tim pulled up the story again. He hadn’t read anything like this since he was 13.

My Heart Beats for You by CheeringforPhantom

A PhantomxReader fanfic. After nearly dying under a collapsed building in a ghost attack, Y/N is saved from being crushed by none other than the city’s local hero, the elusive ghost boy Phantom. This sparks an acquaintanceship that slowly begins to turn into something more, but with the differences between humans and ghosts, how far can they go?

This is a SLOWBURN. Good things take time and if you don’t like it then leave!

“One of those authors,” he thought wryly. Still, it had to be decent if the audience count was so high. With a tap an a two stroke scroll with his index finger, he began on chapter 1.

Dust filled the air. Y/N coughed, the crushed particles of concrete uncomfortably coating the inside of their mouth. The building shook again and Y/N stumbled, cursing that they forgot their ghost-spray today of all days…

🤍🖤🤍💚🤍🖤🤍

He forgot about the fanfic after that. Life was busy and in the end, he’d not gotten very far on his self imposed task to understand the supernatural before other things grabbed at his attention. There was paperwork and meetings to field for the company, there were gadgets to tweak and analyses to do for his cases. It wasn’t until nearly seven months later, after a particularly bad fight in a snowstorm that left him battered, that the opportunity and motivation to read it cropped up again. He’d been benched after the mission, and would be for the foreseeable future as his arm and legs healed. Bruce and Alfred even teamed up to squirrel away his paperwork so he could ‘rest’ and thus, he’d been left with nothing to work on.

He scrolled through his bookmarks, bored out of his mind, when he saw the shortcut and thought, “Why not?”

Not remembering much, he reread chapter one.

… whispy tendrils of ghostly pale hair dancing around his face. His eyes were intense and bright ectoplasm green. They cast eerie, but comforting, light in the darkness.  

“Are you alright?” he asked. His voice echoed with an otherworldly quality.

Y/N swallowed dryly, heart beating frantically. “I-I am,” they replied, trying to keep the tremor out of their voice.

The unstable building groaned above them and his arms tightened around Y/N protectively. 

And then he started on chapter two.

“Ghosts never photograph well,” Phantom said bemusedly.

“I know,” Y/N sighed. “Even if it doesn’t come out good, that’s fine. I just want to have the memory of doing it, you know? It’s not everyday the hero of Amity saves your life.”

“Just every other day,” Phantom grinned. 

Y/N huffed out a laugh.

“True. Thank you Phantom. Really, this city wouldn’t be standing without everything you do.”

By chapter eight Tim was curious enough to search up what series Phantom was from. The story mentioned a lot of subtle world building, alluding to past events like a cursing ban that people obeyed for some reason. There were also a few off handed scenes and phrases that didn’t make sense like that part in chapter three where a woman scolded two kids for making a game of jumping over people’s shadows on the sidewalk because it was dangerous if they landed on the shadow, or that snippet from chapter six where the mailman accidentally delivered an empty box and the reader insert waved it off, saying the box would surely be needed later as a decoy. They were obviously references, but to what? 

His foray onto the web did not help. Nothing he looked up brought back any results, which shouldn’t have been the case. Over 450,000 people had read this. That was a mere 50,000 away from half a million- there was no way there wasn’t a fandom somewhere online. 

He gave up after an hour. Searching ‘Phantom’ merely brought up a dictionary definition and miscellaneous websites related to ghosts and anything else he could think of only yielded similar results. Scowling, he flipped back to the story. He wasn’t going to frustrate himself over a fanfiction. He did not sulk as he resorted to scrolling through the comments of the first few chapters to see if anyone was as confused as he was. 

Ectoplasmenigma

Ok but fr Phantom’s voice is 💚💚💚

> 131 replies (show)

Ineedcoffeeandsanity

Technus foreshadowing??? 

> 3 replies (show)

TheClownsInWhite 

The Fenton Watch LMAO! My favorite news segment XD

Love the fic :)

| 4 replies (hide)

> Pishposhyournastysauce reply to TheClownsInWhite

it keeps us alive haha

> Therapyisanevilghost reply to Pishposhyournastysauce

100% agree!

> SusonPlasmius23 reply to Pishposhyournastysauce

My cousin lived on the same block, they needed a new mailbox at least once a month.

> TheActualRealDannyPhantom reply to SusonPlasmius23

Sounds like them ����

Greenskieshauntmynightmares

Omg those kids reminded me of a few years ago my sister and I were walking to school and she stepped on someones shadow and it was a ghost. We didnt make it to school that day lol those were the days

> 12 replies (show)

CasperHighisHaunted

I hate when box ghost steals my packages, so relatable 

> 1245 replies (show)

Apparently not, though the amount of role-players in the comments was kinda weird. Then again, he didn’t regularly read fanfiction so what did he know. Shrugging, Tim figured he’d just have to pick up more background details in future chapters and moved on.

Chapter 26

The Axion ghosts snarled and barked, only barely resembling the dogs they once were. Y/N looked around quickly, trying to find a way to distract them so Phantom would have enough time to deal with the Wisconsin Ghost…

… “- had it handled! You need to stay out of the way,” Phantom said sternly.

“I couldn’t leave you to be cornered like that,” Y/N declared defiantly. 

Phantom’s eyes flashed. “It would’ve been fine. If I get hit it’ll heal quick. The same can’t be said for you.”

“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt you!”

Over the next few chapters the insert and Phantom grew closer and eventually, the insert began to struggle with the feelings that were growing for their friend. There was a lot of repetitive emotional waffling, unfortunately, but at this point Tim was too far in to back out. He’d committed to reading it.

Phantom smirked from where he was drifting lazily back and forth, tail swaying absently. “Miss me?”

“You…” Y/N gasped. They could feel tears building up in their eyes and they stubbornly refused to cry at the relief they felt. “You’re alright.”

“Did you really think the Goons In White could keep me down?” he scoffed, looping around himself.

“Phantom… it’s been days. I was worried.”

“I- oh.“ A conflicted frown creased his face. “I’m sorry,” he said carefully. “I forget how humans are with time…”

Soon he was halfway through the fic. Somehow. He did another, half assed search and predictably found nothing.

Chapter 34

… and comforting. Y/N leaned into the touch, startling Phantom.

“It’s fine. I know I’m cold,” he said, eyes skittering to the side.

Y/N hugged him tighter, ignoring the goosebumps that had broken out on their arms and relishing the feeling of that moment. They squeezed him slightly.

“Don’t apologize for how you are,” Y/N murmured into his shoulder.

Phantom didn’t need to breathe but he did it anyway, inhaling deeply and then pressing his face into the crook of Y/N’s neck. “Thank you.”

Tim read through chapter 46, then 52, and before he knew it he’d finished all the way up to chapter 64, the most recent chapter. Even worse, he wanted to know what happened next. Who was the Red Huntress? Had the Axion ghosts been taken by the GIW or had the Fentons run them out of town? Would Y/N make up with their friend with the unfortunate nickname Rats? It might’ve been a slowburn romance but the plot was good too.

And, well, the romance wasn’t that bad either.

Damn it, he was invested now.

And without the fic to occupy him he went back to searching for what it was based on. Obviously he’d been using the wrong keywords and now that he’d read significantly more he had other words and phrases to try.

The Red Huntress was only mentioned twice on a list of under appreciated superheroes so Tim assumed that the name was a coincidence and then tried Axion. After finding a lot about particles he oddly found a match in government files. Axion Labs, annual tax report, business licenses, copyrighted name. He assumed it was a coincidence too, at first, before he found a section while idly exploring their website about their specially trained Axion Dogs.

The Axion ghosts snarled and barked, only barely resembling the dogs they once were…

What a weird thing to include in a fanfiction. Things only got weirder when he began investigating the company. Vladimir Masters, the owner of the company, had a degree in ectobiology. The study of ghosts.

… but with the differences between humans and ghosts…

Why would a billionaire who had studied ghosts own a lab with special attack dogs? Dogs that had apparently become ghosts themselves if the fanfic and comments were to be believed. Tim was onto something, he could feel it niggling at his mind.

Suspicious, he went back to the Red Huntress. On both lists she was on the author, as they were the same person, had uploaded them from an address in Illinois, from a city named Amity Park.

It’s not everyday the hero of Amity saves your life.

There was no way.

But Amity Park was a very real place in Illinois with a population just shy of a million people. Axion Labs was based there.

Perhaps the final nail in the coffin was a buzzfeed style article from a neighboring city that stated, “50 Weird Things You Must Do In Amity” and was more of a culture-and-superstitions-you-should-heed list rather than a list of places a tourist or neighboring visitor would like to explore.

12. Never step on someone’s shadow!

In Amity it is considered extremely rude to step on someone’s shadow, especially outside near roads. 

Omg those kids reminded me of a few years ago my sister and I were walking to school and she stepped on someones shadow and it was a ghost.

47. Keep up to date with the Fenton Watch!

The Fenton Watch LMAO! My favorite news segment XD

This had blown way past coincidence. It turned out he had some digging to do because Tim’s gut was telling him that he had found something big. This wasn’t some obscure conspiracy, this was a million people living a Twilight Zone episode.

If all that was real, what about the GIW? All the ghost attacks people kept talking about? A chill crept down Tim’s spine. What did that mean for Phantom? 

… this city wouldn’t be standing without everything you do.

Surely it had to be exaggerated for the purposes of fiction. 

Right?

DC/DP Crossover Idea #45

Where Amity Parks insanity gets exposed to the Justice League not through rumors, teenagers being teens in social media, or even ghost shenanigans getting leaked out. No the Justice League discovered Amity Park because of a 100k slowburn strangers to lovers fanfiction written by a Paulina Sanchez with the pairing being Phantom/Reader, this being read by Red Robin who got curious on who this character ‘Phantom’ was and began doing research which eventually led him down a rabbit hole and discovering the fuckery of Amity Park.

Let it be known that RR didn’t actually tell anyone how he discovered Phantom or Amity Park, if he did then he would never had been able to live it down by his siblings or literally anyone who knew him.