Title: You Must Feel The Burn
Fandom: All-New Ghost Rider, Ghost Rider (1990)
Rating: T
Length: 3k
Content notes: Heavily implied violence. They make plans to hunt skinheads after dinner
Summary: After defeating the Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse, most recently Famine, Robbie Reyes (Los Angeles' Robot Racer), Noble Kale (Brooklyn's Spirit of Vengeance), and Black Rose (nee Roxanne Simpson) stop for chicken wings. Noble Kale, being the ghost of an original WASP, has never heard of habañero sauce. Eli wants honey-mustard and ultraviolence, and he gets one of two. Robbie and Noble talk about possession, while repeatedly forgetting about Black Rose.

Author notes: For the fan_flashworks challenge wings and the bingo square spicy. Continues a drabble series created for 15minutefics on Pillowfort, but this fic should stand on its own.

“I can’t believe how easy that was,” Robbie remarked as he chewed the cartilage off the ends of a chicken bone. His plate was piled with stripped wings, and he’d eaten all the good parts inside five minutes. “The last Horseman of the Apocalypse. After everything we’ve done—dice with Death, stealing antibiotics and sailing across Lake Eerie, killing zombies—you just punch Famine in the head and that’s it?”

Noble stared down at his own wings. He’d gotten his with honey-barbecue sauce and a glass of root beer. “I truly hope that this is the last Apocalypse I will be entangled with,” he said. Noble was a bit of a downer.

There was a third place at the table, just a glass of cola and an open bottle of Tabasco sauce. “Cheese'n'Rice,” snapped Black Rose, staring at Robbie.

Robbie startled at the demoness sharing the table with them. Somehow he kept forgetting she was there. Which was odd, because she was naked the way tigers were naked, her eyes glowed, her hair was a snarl of clawed tentacles, and her face was an expressionless black mask that sucked in the shifting light from the bar's television screens. Also, she'd paid for their food. No one else at the restaurant seemed to notice her.

“Stop gnawing on those, you're breaking my heart,” Black Rose said. “I'll get you more wings. Habañero good?”

Honey mustard.

That's disgusting.

“Honey mus—ahem, sounds great,” Robbie managed.

“You sure?” Black Rose demanded, her horns tilting.

Robbie felt like he was being x-rayed. He nodded.

“Good, 'cause that's what you're getting,” she said, and she stood, all glossy maroon skin and swaying thorned tendrils, intercepted a waiter, and snagged a plate off his tray. The tray of food flipped over, plates and cheese curds flying everywhere. All heads turned to the clatter and splat of fallen side-dishes and the horrified waiter trying to clean everything up. No one noticed the demon. Rose plunked the stolen wings down in front of Robbie.

“Thanks,” Robbie said, suddenly wondering where her money had come from.

Habañero isn't a flavor, Eli bitched as Robbie shoved an entire chicken wing in his mouth. His eyes and nose watered and a hot tingle ran down his spine—searing heat from his throat to his scalp, followed by sweat and a rush of blood, instead of fire and numbness and engine fumes. “Mnn,” he grunted, and gripped the edge of the table. His sinuses sang with pain and he felt real and present and alive. He scraped the bones clean and chewed, eyes shut, blotting his nose on his napkin. This is making me uncomfortable.

You shouldna hung out with Russians so much, you lost your tolerance, Robbie countered. He swallowed, coughed, had a sip of Coke, and bit into another wing, slower this time. Eli retreated deeper under his skin, and Robbie smirked.

“Is that good?” Noble asked, pointing at Robbie's plate. He frowned. “When did you get those?”

“Didn't you—she just—” Suddenly Robbie couldn't remember where he'd got the wings, either. He shrugged. “Yeah, they're good. It's habañero sauce, so they're a little hot.”

Noble stared at Robbie's plate, curious. Robbie figured that with eleven wings in his stomach, he couldn't possibly be hungry tonight, so, generously, he said, “You can try one.”

Noble reached over and picked a chicken wing from the edge of Robbie's plate, took a good bite. He sucked in a sharp breath, chewed hurriedly. His eyes screwed shut and his face reddened. “Ah,” he grunted.

“You okay?” Robbie asked, raising one eyebrow. He took a sip of Coke and the carbonation stung the sensitized lining of his mouth.

Noble waved a hand and swallowed, set the half-eaten wing down and stared down at it with streaming eyes. Then he reached for his own soda, took a gulp, then another. “Augh,” he said, gripping the bridge of his nose.

“Don't—don't touch your eyes!” Robbie exclaimed, but it was too late, and Noble was already catching fire.

When Noble Kale ghosted up, it was a swift hot blaze, flesh vanishing into flame, and just a faint clean smell of burnt bone. He jolted away from the table, a blazing spectral menace of leather and spikes.

Fifty people screamed. Black Rose jumped up from her seat and grabbed him by the elbow, and abruptly the restaurant patrons stopped screaming, staring around in confusion. “Cheezits, Ghost Rider,” she snarled at his expressionless skull. “Pull yourself together and sit down.”

Noble sat. He snuffed out, flesh returning in an eyeblink. His eyes were dry and his cheeks were pale. Black Rose gave him a last shove, returned to her seat, and picked up her bottle of Tabasco. Noble pulled out a napkin, picked up the habañero wing with it, and carefully transferred it to his bone pile. “How do you eat that?” Noble demanded.

Robbie shrugged. “I told you it was hot.”

“But it had time to cool—”

“I meant spicy!” Robbie exclaimed. “You said you and Danny used to live in New York. Didn't you ever have spicy food?”

“I never ate,” Noble said, taking a cautious sip of his soda. “I'd not eaten for three hundred years until I regained a body of my own.”

Robbie felt his stomach turn, the way it always did when he thought about the fact that Noble Kale had once possessed someone like him. He took another bite of habañero wing to distract himself. “Yeah, but Danny ate. Didn't you—”

“I was in the void when Danny had control,” Noble replied. “I didn't have a human body.”

Robbie squinted at him. “You weren't aware?”

“No.” Noble ate one of his own honey-barbecue wings. “I existed for the mission and I was only present when there was a mission to pursue. I hardly had human thoughts. When I did have thoughts, I could never act on them, because there was always the mission. And when I completed it, I returned to the void.”

That sounded terrible. For the first time, Robbie actually felt sorry for Noble.

Wouldn't you like that.

Only because it's you.

Robbie turned over his half-eaten wing, and to spite Eli, he grabbed for the bottle of Tabasco sauce next to him. It was empty. He squinted at it. He was sure he'd used the sauce on his first plate of wings and it had been half-full. He turned it upside down and slapped the base.

“Is that to 'cool' it down?” Noble asked.

Robbie stared at him. “This is pepper sauce.”

A blank stare.

“This makes it hotter.”

Noble's eyes widened and he leaned back in his seat. “Why?”

Black Rose stood and Robbie jumped. He'd forgotten she was sitting at the table, again. “Hate to leave this fascinating conversation but I'm going to get some more credit cards so you idiots can get home. Or wherever you decide you want home to be, Ghost. Try not to cause another scene.” And she stood and headed for the restrooms. No one turned to look at her as she passed by.

Robbie managed to shake out a few drops of Tabasco for his wing and shoved it in his mouth. He'd forgotten what they were talking about.

Oh, right. Noble didn't know what peppers were. “So you weren't aware at all when Danny was in control?”

“We dreamed together, sometimes,” Noble said, swirling the ice in his soda. “I knew what he wanted me to know. We got...impressions of what the other had done. Memories.” He looked up. “Sometimes I would look at the people he knew, his mother, his...girlfriend, and I would feel what he felt. It was almost like being alive.”

“Creepy,” Robbie muttered.

“It was confusing. Once, I called his mother 'Mom.'”

“What'd she think of that?”

“I think she didn't hear me. Thankfully. She feared me, and I...I had no memories of my own, but I did know that I wasn't Danny.”

Now you're wondering what I'd be like with my memories wiped. You'd love that, wouldn't you. Keep me in your back pocket, feed me whatever lies you feel like that day, make me your mindless attack dog. You act like you're so righteous—

Robbie ate another chicken wing, breathed hard through the burning.

It's not that I can't take the pain, you freak, it's like I said, habañero isn't a flavor! I want to taste our food!

“What was he like?” Robbie asked with his mouth full. “Danny. I mean—what is he like?”

“Brave,” Noble said immediately. “Once, he tried to confront a vampire. Him, Danny Ketch. I was weakened at the time; he thought he was alone, he would have died. And he was kind. Righteous. He believed in the mission, even when I didn't understand why I did what I did, and that gave me courage to believe in myself.”

“You two got along okay?”

“No.”

“No? You were just singing his praises!”

“Every time I manifested, I stole hours of his life,” Noble said. “He believed in the mission, yes, but as he became a man, he found his own ways of carrying it out. Less...forceful ways. He wanted to study, and practice a trade, and perhaps marry. He wanted to be a...a social worker. I think it was something like a Deacon. A person one comes to with questions or problems. And he could hardly be relied on for counsel when I might steal him away at any moment to exact vengeance for the innocent. In the end, we were truly working at cross-purposes.”

See? You, me, this is normal. But I have the courtesy to wait for you to finish your little drudge tasks. I actually care! You're family, I want what's best for you and Gabbie!

Robbie ground his teeth.

“He tried to stop me from manifesting,” Noble said. “He tried to have me exorcised. I resented him, because—the mission, always the mission, and also I wanted to live, and do my work, and see the sun and feel the wind, and Danny stood in the way of that, selfishly, but if he was selfish then so was I. Once—he was near death, and I walked the earth for two months before he returned—”

Robbie's head tilted in interest. “How'd you manage that?”

“Wiser men saved him. Honestly I did very little.”

“Excuse me.” Robbie stood abruptly.

“Are you ill? Is it the pepper sauce?”

“Fine. I've just gotta—bathroom.” He stalked into the restroom, his skin hot and dry and his vision blurred with steam. His mouth tasted like burning oil.

As he swung open the door, he saw Black Rose pinning a tall white man against the wall with one hand on his throat; his face was turning blue and his legs kicked. “Whoa!” he shouted, and she spun to face him, her mask-face inscrutable. “What—”

What was he doing?

Oh, yes, the mirror. He looked up from his shoes, stalked past the urinals, and planted his hands on the sink. His face looked cold, hollow-eyed, sharp shadows. His right eye shone yellow in its socket, the silvery marks on his head gleamed under the fluorescent lights. Those, he could not control. His roots were showing where he'd bleached a streak in his hair, he hadn't shaved in three days, he'd lost the plug out of his right earlobe somewhere on the road; he was a mess, but he could fix those things. The expression on his face, the raw hatred that he couldn't say whether it belonged to himself or to Eli—that was a tougher nut.

Don't be nervous. I'd never do anything...really bad to you.

“You tried to take Gabe,” Robbie spat. “You changed me. I hurt people for you. You want me to trust you again? Are you fucking with me?”

Temper, temper, Robbie. I'm just saying. You get the body 99% of the time. Maybe I'd be more pleasant if I had some breathing room.

Robbie hissed, steam and engine fumes. Soot condensed on the mirror. I would mind-wipe you in a heartbeat and sleep like a baby, you motherfucker.

A hand tapped him on the shoulder and he swung a wild haymaker, snarling. Black Rose ducked. “Thought I ought to interrupt before you burn down the damn restaurant,” she said. Robbie uncurled his fist and she rubbed his arm up and down. “You need a minute?”

“How much did you hear?” Robbie asked, hoarse.

“Just got here. Looking for pockets to pick. Why?”

“Never mind.” Robbie rinsed his mouth out with some water, spat black oil into the sink. He rubbed his eyes with a wet paper towel until fresh tears started and the dryness went away. “I'm sorry I swung at you.”

“You seem a little stressed,” she said. “Try looking before you punch, that way you might hit something.”

She's messing with your head.

She's being nice.

I mean literally. Turn around, there's something funny about that wall—

Robbie turned to look at the bathroom wall between the stalls and the sink. There was nothing there.

Huh. Never mind.

“How about you go finish your dinner,” Rose said.

Robbie nodded. As he left the bathroom, he heard disturbing grunts and thumps. What kind of sick freaks make out in the men's room of a Buffalo Wild Wings, he wondered. That was just rude.

At the table, Noble had picked up his habañero wing again, using a napkin to protect his fingers, and taken a nibble along one edge, lips drawn back from his teeth. He chewed rapidly, his face screwed up, breathing hard.

“Success?” Robbie asked.

Noble swallowed, followed the wing with a celery stick. “Yes.”

“You should look Danny up, let him know you've got your own body now,” Robbie suggested.

Noble stared at him. “I made his life very difficult, for years. I expect he has put those years behind him.”

“You're a good guy, Noble,” Robbie said. “All things considered, he'd be lucky to have you as a friend.”

Noble ducked his head, fidgeted with the ice in the bottom of his cup.

“Look him up,” Robbie pressed.

“I will.”

“And—it's not much, but you're welcome to crash at my place if you have to. Until you get, uh, some kind of ID and a job and stuff like that.”

You hypocritical asswipe! After all your whinging about me “stealing your body”—

He's got the Penance Stare. Call it insurance against you.

“Thank-you,” Noble said. “You, also, are a good man.”

Robbie looked away and ate another habañero wing. The burning sauce mixed with the engine fumes in his throat, and his stomach turned. “Just doing what anyone would do.”

“Ghost, Reyes,” Black Rose interrupted. She was sitting next to them at the table, with a fresh hot-sauce bottle and three wallets. “This restaurant's got wife-beaters.” Robbie's jaw clenched and Noble leaned forward. “I left 'em in the bathroom for you, Ghost. No, don't leave yet.”

“How do you know?” Robbie demanded. “Were you just—disappearing people all night?”

“There's a vibe. Odds are in my favor. Ghost can sort 'em out.”

I like her.

“But what if you're wrong?”

“Wrong about what?” Black Rose asked.

Robbie looked down at his wings. Only one left. “Huh?”

“I thought you asked me something.”

“No I didn't,” Robbie said.

They stared at each-other. The glow of her eyes cast streaks in Robbie's vision. “As I was saying. Restaurant's got wife-beaters. There's a pile in the men's room. Ghost, don't get up yet, let me finish. The city, now, the city's got skin-heads.”

“I don't know those demons,” Noble said.

“White supremacists,” Robbie explained. “Racists. Uh, neonazis.”

Noble's hair started to smoke. “I have fought nazis. The indifference,” he snarled, eyes blazing and then charring into black pits. “The perversion. They press out the blood of the innocent with machines. How did I not know they were here?”

“For the most part it's more ambition than actual bloodshed,” Black Rose said. “But everyone starts somewhere. We'll find enough sin to feed to your demon, Reyes.”

She knows?

I'm okay with that.

“What demon?” Noble asked, burning away the last of his human appearance.

Him? Not okay.

“What?” Rose asked Noble.

“What?”

“What?”

“There's a pile of wife-beaters in the men's room, they need a lesson in empathy,” Black Rose said.

Noble rose from the seat. As he left the table, people in the restaurant started to stare at him and scream. “They will feel all the pain they have inflicted upon the innocent,” he growled, as he stalked off. A busboy dropped an entire tub of dishes as he dove out of Noble's way.

“So how about it, Reyes,” Black Rose demanded, swirling the dregs of the second bottle of Tabasco. “Come char the sins out of some skinheads with us.”

“I—I gotta get home to Gabe,” Robbie said. His hands were hot and dry against the table; he wanted, deeply and irrationally, to follow Noble into the men's room, even though he could do nothing to help. Around them, people began to pull out their phones, leave their tables, staring down the hall where Noble had disappeared.

“What time is it?” Rose asked, looking at her wrist. “Oh, look, it's ten PM. What time's he go to bed, eight? He's in bed. What's one more night.”

Yeah, Robbie, what's one more night.

“You're sure?” Robbie demanded, searching her expressionless face. Eli, he knew what made him tick, but Black Rose was an unknown quantity.

“I grew up in a town like this,” Black Rose replied. “I know what to look for. I know what they do and what they want to do, and I could never stop them before. Now I'm a demon and I want to raise hell. You with me?”

It's already ten PM, you can port home in the morning.

“Yeah,” Robbie said. “Yeah, I'm with you. Except I can't 'char sins,' I just, you know, char literally.”

“Even better,” Black Rose said. “They can serve as a warning to others.”

Noble Kale returned from the men's room in a cloud of smoke and a haze of fire. “Show me these new nazis,” he demanded.

“I do not like these new nazis,” Robbie said, shoving his last chicken wing in his mouth.

“I should hope not.”

“Ith a joke. Therezis comedian—”

“This is no joking matter.”

I can see why Danny wanted him gone.

“You're right,” Robbie said, finishing off his Coke. “Not a joke. I'm ready.”

“Roll out, boys,” Black Rose said, and she left enough cash to cover the bill with a generous tip. “Got a city to search and Reyes needs to be home by sunup.”

They marched out of the restaurant as people screamed and scattered. It was kind of nice, for once, not to be the scariest person in the room.

Also nice to get free hot wings.