Work Text:
The basement was full of junk, some of it throwing off bright yellow sparks, but that wasn't unusual, at least around the two mad scientists. When the fledgeling business soon to be known as the Ghostbusters had purchased the place two weeks ago, this cramped little space had been crammed with old office furniture, most of it broken. With much puffing, they'd hauled the whole pile up to the first floor, where Ray had promptly fixed most of it and carted it to its new homes around the firehouse. Peter had been expecting to throw most of it out, honestly, but he had to agree the big oak desk looked better in his office than anything they could currently afford, even with the scuff marks and the drawer that wouldn't open unless you kicked it.
The sewing machine, on the other hand, was new. New to the firehouse, he corrected himself; guessing from its looks, it was secondhand. Ray and Egon were seated on opposite sides of the workbench; Ray was threading the machine while Egon pressed a greyish-beige jumpsuit under a hot iron.
"Careful with those; if they're polyester, they'll melt," Peter cautioned his taller partner. Egon gave him a disdainful glare, as if to inform Peter that he knew how to use an iron far better than he, but he lessened his pressure on the hot appliance. At least neither the iron nor the sewing machine was sparking. Peter glanced around; the red box that served as the access port for the power-sucking monstrosity that his partners assured him would hold a ghost indefinitely took up most of the room. "What are you guys working on now?"
Ray picked up one of the garments, already pressed. "Our uniforms. The equipment we'll be using might throw off traces of residual plasma, and we need something that won't show stains from the ectoplasmic residue. These are fire-resistant, stain-resistant, and water-resistant. Got 'em at the military surplus store." He tossed it at Peter. "That one's going to be yours. Go ahead and try it on - we had your measurements, but pilots tend to be shorter than average. Finding one for Egon was a real pain."
Peter looked at the flight suit in his hands. A patch with their no-ghost logo had been sewn to the left arm, and his name had been embroidered over the right breast. He shrugged, and peeled off his sweater vest. "How much clothing are they designed to go over?"
"You should be fine with what you're wearing." Egon finished ironing the last jumpsuit. He slid a small wooden plank into the leg and deftly sliced out a small circle with a craft knife.
Peter looked at the leg he was stepping into and noticed a black rubber plug attached at the same spot. Glancing back at the physicist, he pointed and asked "What's that for?"
"Access port for the plasma field correction," Egon answered absently, applying a similar plug to the hole and a washer of the same material to the inside. He reached for the clothes iron again; Ray quickly substituted a soldering iron. Egon looked up in surprise. "Oh. Thank you, Ray."
"No problem." Ray started the sewing machine up, causing a terrible racket.
Peter shrugged the sleeves on and zipped the jumpsuit from crotch to throat. He tugged at the waist and decided that zipping it all the way up was a mistake; he backed it down a couple of inches. "Access for the whosiwhatsis?"
"The packs give off a positively charged ionic field," Ray explained, examining his stitching with a frown. "The shielding is pretty good, but it's not perfect. Until we find a way to contain the field without building up magnetic resonances, we'll need to protect ourselves from the effects. There's a yellow tube that connects the packs to that plug; it charges the air inside the suit with positive ions that repel the plasma field from the pack."
"And it won't shock us when we touch things like doorknobs?" Peter adjusted the cuffs at his wrists; they were a little snug.
"It shouldn't; the charge should be confined to the suit itself and the air inside, neither of which are good conductors." Egon glanced at Peter, and then hastily back at the suit in his hands. "And even if it does, it's preferable to being vulnerable to the plasma field."
"Yeah, safety first," Peter grumbled.
"How's the fit?" Ray asked. Guessing from the length of the legs on the suit he was working on, he'd just sewed on his own patch.
Peter stretched, then did a couple of deep knee bends. "Not too bad. The legs are a little short."
"You'll tuck the ends into your boots, anyway. No one will notice." Egon almost sounded snappish.
Peter shook his head and tried to sound soothing. "I wasn't criticizing your stitchery, Spengs. Just saying when we get the next set custom-made instead of off-the-rack, I'd like an extra inch in the inseam." He gestured at the suit Egon had just finished the plug on. "I can't imagine yours couldn't use the same."
"Possibly," Egon admitted, looking past Peter more than at him. The physicist rose to his feet. "Ray, perhaps it's time we broke for lunch?"
Peter frowned slightly. Usually it was Ray who reminded Egon about meals, or, more commonly, he reminded both of the mad scientists.
Ray glanced at his watch. "Sure, we could eat. Peter, leave that down here - I need to make sure the belt hooks for the packs are in the right place on all three of these."
"Sure." Peter unzipped the flight suit. Behind him, Egon's feet pattered rapidly up the stairs.
---
Egon sat as far forward on Ecto-1's bench seat as he could without removing his seatbelt. Ray's driving didn't permit him to take it off, much as he might want to at the moment. Peter, unconcerned, lolled across the back seat, complaining about the job they were headed towards.
Peter's knee jostled the back of the seat as Ray careened around another turn. Egon fidgeted. Ray glanced across at Egon, eyes curiously neutral. "Peter, quit kicking the seat, huh?" the engineer called back, without looking in the rear-view mirror. "The traffic is distracting enough."
"Sorry," yawned Peter, putting both his feet on the floor without actually sitting up. "I just need a nap. We've been at this for three days straight, and I don't think any of us has gotten more than three hours of sleep in one sitting since Tuesday."
"I know," Ray replied with a wry smile, somehow both laughing and groaning at the same time. "I don't think I've gotten out of this uniform in forty-six hours."
"Hardly hygienic of you, Ray," Egon pointed out. He edged forward on the seat again, the belt tight at his waist.
Unfortunately, the thought only made him more uncomfortable. Looking at Ray in the jumpsuit was hard enough - no, poor choice of words - sufficiently difficult. Watching Peter in it was excruciating. Even just thinking about Peter, sprawled across the back bench, the just-slightly-too-short flight suit framing his groin - no, stop it. He tried to think about the periodic table instead.
That Peter was handsome, he had known since meeting him as an undergraduate. But somehow, before now that had always been an abstract sort of thing. He could admire his colleague aesthetically without there being an irritating physical component to the whole thing. Now, he was living with Peter, in close quarters no less. He was working with him daily. He depended on him to keep him out of the hospital - some of these malign spirits were both vicious and well-armed.
And they were both wearing these quasi-military, pseudo-blue-collar jumpsuits, which tickled something in his subconscious he hadn't ever guessed was there.
Class degradation, he thought to himself. He was at home in professorial suits, in gabardine slacks and suspenders, in lab coats and protective goggles. His native costume was the default garb of academia. Peter adopted the same costume as protective camouflage when they were at Columbia, and he usually wore the jeans and sweatshirts of his misspent youth when out of the public eye. These uniforms, by contrast, spoke of active life, of running and shooting and needing protection against - something. Of a life of hazard and adventure, different both from his curious enterprises in the lab and Peter's athletic audacity. This was simply not something people from their backgrounds did, and Egon had to admit, he was finding it curiously freeing. It was rather like learning to play Spanish guitar, in a way.
Except that music only rarely turned him on like this. Wearing his own flight suit seemed to warm something down his spinal cord, to prime him to notice small touches, fleeting glimpses. Their secretary seemed to think he looked good in it, at least, although she had a similar reaction to him in the lab coat.
And watching Peter in his jumpsuit, especially when he was moving - running, climbing stairs, bracing himself against the kick from the proton thrower - was starting to produce actual physiological reactions of a most embarrassing sort, especially given that his and Peter's uniforms really could both use an extra inch of inseam.
Ray pulled into a parking place and heaved an exaggerated sigh, startling Egon out of his introspection. "Whew. We made it, guys. Let's get our gear on - and remember, we only have five empty traps with us, so if we're outnumbered we're going to have to be careful."
Egon cocked an eyebrow. Ray advising caution? He must be more tired than he was letting on.
Peter was already clambering out of the back. "You don't have to tell me twice, Tex. I'd just as soon postpone this job until we and the packs have had a twelve-hour recharge, if we could." The jumpsuit tightened around his buttocks as he stooped to get out of the car, then caressed his back as he stretched. Egon shoved his glasses back onto his nose and hurried around to the back hatch to prep the packs.
---
Ray pushed the safety goggles back onto his forehead and wiped a bandanna across the bridge of his nose. "Okay, that's got it, I think. Is the detector array on?"
His colleague had shrugged his lab coat on over his uniform. Egon checked two gauges on the hand-held display, and then glanced at his PKE meter. "On and operational. Go ahead with the test. I'll take readings from here."
"Sounds good." Ray tightened the last couple of screws an extra half-turn, set the screwdriver on the bench behind him, and propped the new prototype pack up in his desk chair. Making sure he'd stowed all the loose metal objects - screws, washers, bolts, bits of wire - he carefully flipped the power switch on the thrower. He was unaccountably pleased, even by his own standards, to note that the thrum the accelerator made as it powered up was only slightly dampened by the new shielding.
Peter appeared in the door, also still in his jumpsuit, the zipper all the way undone. "What are we testing today, boys?"
"The new version of the pack shielding," Ray explained. "If it works, it'll mean that we won't need to ionize the air in the suits anymore. It should also make the packs more compact."
"Will it make them lighter? 'Cause I'd appreciate that a lot," commented their new employee from somewhere behind Peter. Ray grinned again; Winston was fitting right into their group like he'd always belonged there, but he was still a little skittish about coming into the lab after the two mad scientists had accidentally overloaded the new prototype trap the first time.
"Unfortunately, no," Egon answered for both of them. "The total weight will be approximately the same. But hopefully the packs will be less bulky and therefore easier on our backs despite the weight." He adjusted a dial on the testing board. "So far I'm detecting no significant proton or positron leakage. The field strength is above background but not at even half the harmful range."
"So it won't fry us, even without the yellow tube?" Peter sounded hopeful. He leaned against the doorframe, the open zipper framing his groin. Egon's eyes flicked back to the readout dials and stayed there, as his back went straighter and his face pinked just slightly.
"Nope," Ray called back cheerfully. "Although they won't go away completely; we'll use the ionic channel to boost the thrower energy." He watched as Peter meandered over to the overstuffed chair they'd parked in a corner of the lab and perched on the arm. Egon shuffled half a step away.
Ray was about to ask Egon a question he already knew the answer to, just to set him at ease, when Janine appeared in the doorway next to Winston. "Hey, guys. I think I found your seamstress. Turns out Dad knows a couple of people in the garment industry; go figure." She shrugged and rolled her eyes. "Anyway, they can get the same flame-and-water-resistant industrial fabric your flight suits are made of, and you'd have your choice of colors. I brought their catalog so you could see what's available." She handed the pamphlet in her hand to Winston.
"I'm fine with the regular color, thanks. Or maybe a little warmer. Closer to beige than grey." Ray turned his attention back to the pack test. Clothing generally didn't interest him, as long as it was comfortable.
He smiled as he followed the conversation out of the corner of his ear. Egon had picked teal and salmon; Peter, brown and green. Flattering their eye and hair colors, probably without consciously thinking about it. Boy, was that going to drive them up the wall when they each figured it out.
Ray finally powered the pack down. "Successful test, Egon?" He watched Peter recognize the words and grin at the memory.
"With distinction." Egon permitted himself a small, smug smile, oblivious of the four eyes drawn instinctively to it. "We'll start building four new packs as soon as we can get the parts in, and then a backup set after that. Until the second set is done, we'll use the old packs as alternates."
"Does that mean the new uniforms don't need the stupid plug?" Peter gestured at the ion port.
"They shouldn't. And that means we should be able to wash them on the regular cycle." Ray was genuinely relieved about that; he was the one who forgot most of the time, and he'd had to repair the rubber plugs more than once.
"Excellent." Egon looked like he was in a good mood, which was phenomenal, considering how busy they'd been, even with a fourth pair of hands. Well, a successful experiment would do that. Ray glanced at Peter, who was practically draping himself over the arm of the chair.
The physicist picked up the new pack. "I'll set it to recharge, and we can try some live firing tests in the morning." Egon headed down towards the basement. Ray sort of wished that he'd just recharge it up here; once he hit the basement stairs, Egon would start thinking about the containment overcrowding issue again, and then he'd go back to worrying. Ray liked seeing his friends in more buoyant moods.
The engineer brushed past Peter as he followed their taller colleague. "You're going to actually have to say something, you know," he murmured.
"Huh?" Peter's head shot up. Ray winked and eased out the door.
---
One didn't have to be a psychologist to see that Peter's nerves were frazzled. He was pacing up and down the bunkroom when Egon stumbled in, and didn't notice he wasn't alone for a moment. Egon didn't hear what his colleague was mumbling, but the start Peter gave when he saw him suggested it hadn't been meant for mortal ears at all.
"Jeez, Spengs, don't sneak up on people like that. I'm glad I didn't have a thrower," Peter protested. He was still suited up; an orange windbreaker hung on the end of his bunk.
"I am, also, given that we've determined bringing them into the bedroom is generally ill-advised." Egon was torn between admiring how good Peter's posture was, even dead tired, and merely wanting to collapse on his own bunk. "Did you track down Dana?"
"Yeah, I did. Made a work-date with her for Thursday." Peter grinned, but there was something false about it; it hinted at his interview smile. "Can't wait." His eyes raked Egon from head to foot, and the older man realized he was still wearing his lab coat and work boots over his usual Oxford shirt and trousers.
Suddenly Peter's bluster was gone. "Hey, Spengs, you okay? You're not mad at me, are you?"
"For getting in touch with Dana?" Egon was puzzled. "No, of course not. She's a client. Why?"
"Not about her, necessarily. Just in general." Peter licked his lips quickly and looked out the grimy window into a late New York afternoon. "We've been talking through Ray again."
Egon was about to deny it, but he replayed the events of the last two days through his mind, and Peter was right. They'd both given Ray messages for the other one, and gotten them the same way, without speaking directly to each other more than once or twice. "I owe both of you an apology, then. That was not my intent." He plucked off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and replaced them. "It - somehow, it just seems . . . easier. But - "
"But it's disrespectful to both of you for me to do it," Peter added quietly. "I'm sorry, Big Guy. And yeah, we both owe Ray for that. And Winston and Janine, a couple of times. Mostly me on that one." He swallowed. "I guess - all the changes in our lives these last couple of months - and I keep feeling that you're right, that something huge is on the horizon." He finished his last walk of the bunkroom's isle and leaned on the windowsill. "Not that you can see a horizon from here."
"Your world has never had many horizons, has it?" Egon asked, idly.
Peter shook his head. "Nah. The boundaries have always been much closer than that."
The bitterness in Peter's tone surprised Egon. "You're not talking about the view."
"Nope." The windowsill creaked as Peter turned and perched one hip against it. "It's weird. Being a city kid, I thought all my life that my world was so much bigger than the rubes and the hicks and the people from, you know, pretend-cities. Places that couldn't measure up." He ran one hand through his hair, brushing his forelock back into place. "But now - I dunno. Everything that's happened makes my old world look - small."
"You never believed, the way Ray and I always have." Egon reached down to unlace his boots; it gave him an excuse not to meet Peter's eyes, although Peter seemed to be looking mostly at the floor now.
"I'm still not sure I do. Half the time when I wake up, I expect to be back in my old apartment, with my alarm getting me up for my eleven o'clock office hours." Peter finally looked up, and Egon didn't manage to look away in time. "And the other half of the time, I know this is more real than anything else in my life - than Dad's scams, than football and beer and girls, than students and offices with no view." Peter's eyes were wide and dark and beckoning. "The only things from that old life that were real were Ray, and you."
"Peter," Egon started, but he realized he didn't know what to say. He finished tugging his second boot off without looking at it.
Peter chuckled. "That lab coat, how long have you had that? You in the suit jackets, that's not real the same way. That's not the way your life was ever supposed to go, lecturing in a tweed jacket to kids who never understood what you were saying." He pushed himself up from the windowsill and took two steps towards Egon's bunk, slightly unsteady on his feet, although whether from fatigue or something else Egon wasn't sure. "It was the research, the paranormal research specifically, that kept you going all those years, wasn't it? I never had that. I was going through motions." Was Peter drunk? He didn't smell like alcohol, and Egon had seen him smashed enough times to recognize it, he thought. This seemed different. Could fatigue lower someone's mental defenses the same way? "Now, I - Egon, I thought it was about the fame and the chicks and the money, but it's not. Not really. It's about - " Peter flailed his arms, as if the word he wanted was buzzing around him somewhere, like a fly. "I feel alive now, and I'm scared, Spengs, I'm scared it's all about to end when I just realized what I'm supposed to be doing with my life."
Egon tried to remember any point in the entire time he'd known Peter when Venkman had admitted being frightened. The library, when they'd seen their first ghost, or technically just afterwards. That was it.
"Peter," he repeated, and stood up. He immediately regretted it; his body was reacting to Peter's unusual intensity. "I assure you, Ray and I are doing everything we can to diagnose the increase in paranormal phenomena."
"I know, Spengs." Peter's eyes were green sparks in the room's long shadows. "I trust you." His arms were out from his sides, almost as if he were asking for something.
"Do you?" Egon took two steps towards his friend. "You told me once you didn't trust anyone."
"I thought I didn't." Peter shrugged. The jumpsuit shifted around him, briefly outlining his hips. "I guess I lied."
"I see." Egon crossed the remaining space between them and caught at one of Peter's wrists, drawing him closer. "How much do you trust me, Peter?"
"With my life," Peter said simply. His face flushed red.
"Would you -" Egon started and then interrupted himself. This was unutterably foolish; it was a betrayal of Peter's trust; it was unthinkable -
Peter's hand closed on Egon's other arm just below the elbow. "Would I what, Egon?"
Egon cleared his throat. "Would you trust me with your body?"
"Dear god, I thought you'd never ask," sighed Peter in relief, in more relief than Egon thought he'd ever seen. Suddenly the foot of space in between them vanished, without either of them moving, as far as Egon could tell.
Butterflies suddenly swarmed in Egon's midsection. His hands fluttered to Peter's shoulders. "Have I been . . . obvious?" He swallowed, adam's apple dancing.
"What? No," Peter answered, tilting his head up to look Egon in the eyes again. "You - I can never tell with you, Spengs, you know that? I'm not even sure whether you're flirting with Janine or not. I kept thinking I saw you looking, but then you'd look disgusted, and -" Peter flinched slightly.
"With myself, Peter. Not you." Egon looked upwards, in thought. "Well, except for the time you were using your worst lines on the high school girls' swim team we rescued. That was disgusting." His gaze drifted back down, and he offered Peter a small, slightly sardonic grin. "The rest of the time, it was my own libido I was revolted by."
Peter's eyebrows slid upwards. "Egon, I keep telling you, having a sex drive is nothing to be ashamed of. For someone who didn't grow up Catholic - "
"My family has a long history of repressions of many sorts, not just sexual. Just because it's not religious doesn't mean it's not Puritanical." Egon lowered his forehead to Peter's, leaning into his shorter partner slightly. "I was - I appear to have discovered a fetish I didn't know I had." He grimaced. "It's rather embarrassing."
Peter snorted, an amused grin spreading across his features. "I figured there was some kinky stuff going on in that big brain of yours somewhere. What is it, ectoplasm? You've taken enough samples of the stuff -"
Egon sniffed audibly. "No. Ugh. I find it scientifically fascinating, but not personally."
Peter's fingers curled in the lapels of Egon's lab coat. "So what, then?"
Egon didn't answer out loud. The long fingers of one hand played along the edge of Peter's no-ghost patch, across the seam along his shoulder, and then slowly down the zipper. By the time they finished their journey, there was a noticeable bulge beneath them.
Peter waggled his eyebrows at Egon. "The flight suits? Really?"
"They're -" Egon shrugged. "There's a different persona, I suppose, in them. Our professional selves, as Ghostbusters, as opposed to the academics we used to be."
Peter rolled his bottom lip under his teeth. Egon's hand kept brushing at the lower third of his zipper. The psychologist looked back up at his friend. "The real us. What I was talking about earlier. This is - who we were supposed to be, what we were supposed to be doing all along." He breathed deeply, still clutching at Egon's lab coat. "Same for me and this thing. This is the real you, in this, and in the jumpsuit, too. This is the you I want." He tugged, pulling Egon's face closer to his. "Ray knew, didn't he?"
"He usually does." Egon stopped resisting and kissed Peter gently. Peter whimpered and slid both hands under Egon's coat, tracing his ribs through the cloth of the shirt.
Egon reached for the pull tab on Peter's zipper. "What time was Ray and Winston's appointment for the Class Two?"
Peter glanced across at the clock on the bedside table. "We've got at least an hour before they could possibly get back, and that's assuming traffic at the bridge isn't bad."
"We'll just have to be careful." Egon slowly tugged the zipper down, listening to the purr of the parting teeth; the sound ran down his spine like warm water. Peter shrugged his shoulders back, tugging the jumpsuit open down the front. By the time Egon had the zipper fully open, the pressure in his own trousers was almost unbearable.
Peter noticed; his hands found Egon's waistband and unbuttoned his fly. "Been a while?"
"You could say that," Egon murmured noncommittally, his nose brushing the soft, pale skin beneath Peter's ear. Peter smelled like secondhand cigarette smoke and cheap beer, and the gentle musk of hard physical labor in the cold, with a trace of ozone clinging to the uniform from the ionized air.
Peter's fingers undid the trousers' zipper; a faint echo of the earlier purr sent a second shiver through Egon. "Seriously, have you ever done this before with a guy?"
"No." Egon hissed through his teeth as Peter's hand slipped between his pants and his boxers, delicious pressure and friction making all his sinews taut. Peter was wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants under the uniform; he roughly shoved the one up and the other one down, along with Peter's boxers.
"With a girl?" Peter let go of Egon with one hand and started to tug the uniform back from one shoulder.
Egon stopped him. "Leave it on, please. I'm - it frames you." He gestured at Peter's erection, freed from layers of cloth, the dark brown curls surrounding it blooming over the edge of the uniform zipper. "And no, Peter, if you must know, I've never done this before."
"Good." Peter grinned. "I won't have to un-teach you any bad habits, then." He rose onto his toes and pressed his lips to Egon's again, his tongue lightly requesting entry. Egon moaned lightly and devoured his mouth, tasting the coffee and a faint hint of doughnut sugar from their last real meal.
Their hands closed on each other's genitals, fingers tracing, stroking, clutching. Peter slipped one hand down to play with Egon's testicles, cupping them lightly and rubbing with just the pads of his fingers. Egon's knees buckled; he curled one hand around Peter's waist without letting go with the other one, and levered them down onto his bunk. Peter rolled onto his back and scooped Egon's legs up in one of his, urging him on top of him.
Egon leaned down and kissed Peter again, hungrily, before grinding his hips against him, their erections pressed against each other. Peter closed his eyes and dug his heels into the bed, arching upwards into Egon and moaning as if the pressure was already too much. A bead of sweat rolled off of Egon's long face, down his jaw and onto Peter's chest.
"Oh, god," Egon groaned, as white lightning, hot and wild as a proton stream, curled through his groin and up his spine. Peter babbled something incoherent in response, reached up, and snarled one hand in Egon's hair, clinging to him as if he were afraid the current would pull him away.
Egon's legs trembled in involuntary convulsions as the pressure that had built up for so long was loosed; he clenched his teeth against the howl that bubbled up from somewhere near his solar plexus and was lost in the flare of heat and light. Wet warmth blossomed between them in eight pulses, each one feeling like something clamped onto his soul had been momentarily loosed. He collapsed onto Peter in a heap of gratitude.
"So soon? Hang on," whispered Peter, his hips redoubling their speed. His fingers tightened on Egon's shoulders, his toes curled in the thin blanket, and his breathing grew ragged. Egon's mouth found the crook of Peter's neck and latched on, biting just enough to leave a mark, and Peter stiffened and growled underneath him. "Egon, please," he gasped, and then he was throbbing against him, a second spurt of wetness between them as his whole body shook.
"Yes, Peter," Egon whispered back, holding Peter's gasping body as tightly as he could. It felt as if his own heart was beating in time to Peter's contractions; time itself expanded around them, making seven beats last forever.
There was a long silence, punctured only by the sound of their breath. Then Peter stirred, emerald eyes flickering open to meet sapphire ones. He cleared his throat. "Well, that was worth waiting for."
"Indeed." Egon realized he had no idea what came next, although obviously there would have to be a shower at some point.
"I'd rather not wait for the next one, though." Peter's grin flashed from thanks through glee to outright wickedness, and he grabbed at Egon's shirt and pulled, popping buttons off in all directions.
The labcoat landed on the floor, the flight suit joining it in a heap, as the bunk creaked merrily.