Chapter Text
Fred Spooker was not a smart man by any means. That was just a fact of life for him. Growing up, it had been a constant source of bullying. An insecurity that had been picked at long after it had started to scar over. It sometimes seemed as though it was something unchangeable about the world itself; the sky was blue, clouds are white, and he wasn’t smart.
That was something he was fine living with now, he had tried his best to learn when he was still in school. His teachers always told his mom he was the sweetest boy in class in a way that was clear they didn’t know what other compliments to give. He couldn’t blame them, he got solid D’s and E’s on his report cards but never got held back because they didn’t want to separate him from his friends. And if he was being honest friends was a generous word for what he had, he had people who he’d talk to. But no matter how 'kind' he was, the other kids thought he was weird and didn’t want to be around someone who was labeled as 'stupid.'
He did know things, though, lots of things, it was just that the second he was asked about his knowledge, it was all seemingly forgotten. The words always seemed to catch somewhere between his brain and his mouth, unfortunately for him. Unless it was a question about something he really liked, like the supernatural, he could talk for hours and hours about ghosts and ghouls. Tell anyone who was willing to lend an ear a thousand or so facts off the top of his head. That was not the type of knowledge that schools cared about, though, so it only made him seem “weird” to other kids his age and got him labeled “special” by his teachers.
He was very sure of the fact he was not smart by the time he reached high school. It was a hard thing to grapple with at the time. But things were made easier when he had to drop out during his junior year. His mother had gotten sick, so he had to start working to support them both. His father had died two years or so before he was born, so it had always been just the two of them anyway. And that was fine with him, he was fine supporting her. It also helped that he didn’t have to be smart to work most minimum wage jobs, so he actually thrived for the first time in his life.
And then his mother died. It wasn’t sudden, it was instead a slow deterioration of her until all that remained was a shell of who she’d been. The coroner had told him that it was a peaceful death, but he knew better than that. He’d seen the pain in her face every day before it’d come. He had barely enough money for the funeral and barely enough time to grieve before she was buried with whatever was left of his savings at the time.
Spooker never went back to school. He had figured at the time he wasn’t smart enough to finish anyway, plus he was already working, so there was really no need to further his education. He also didn’t really have the time or money for that, working paycheck to paycheck to keep himself afloat for as long as he could.
When things got particularly dodgy financially, he’d go look for short gigs on Craigslist. That’s where he’d found an interning opportunity from P.I.E. Now, it wasn’t like he’d never heard of them before that, he was, in fact, quite a big fan of one of the owners of the company, Johnny Ghost. He'd seen all of his and his partner's ghost hunting videos while doing research into the paranormal years back. So when he saw the ad, he felt it would have been stupid not to apply.
Two years of interning later, he still wasn’t sure if it was a smart decision. On one hand, he’d meet some of his favorite people ever, on the other hand, he wasn’t too convinced that any of them even liked him. It had started with Ghost, as he was the one who’d hired Spooker, and from his very first meeting he’d learned that Ghost was a bully. It was obvious from the way Ghost picked at him through their first case, hoping to find a weak spot to dig into. He seemed to find some sort of pleasure in lashing out at everyone until people left him to his own self-imposed isolation.
On the worst days Spooker felt pity for the fact Ghost seemed to have this need to push everyone away. On the best days he found it amusing, it was like being yelled at by a particularly angry chihuahua. Though it was hard to ignore how one particularly subject came up in Ghost’s consistent picking more often than not, he thought Spooker was stupid. He’d
said so many times over in many different ways, sometimes it was honestly just impressive how Ghost would craft such specific and unique insults about his intelligence level.
Toast thought Spooker was incompetent, he was just better at hiding his thoughts than Ghost was most of the time. But the annoyance was obvious on his face when Spooker asked one too many questions that he definitely should have known the answer to. Or the disappointment in his voice when Spooker messed up on a case for the umpteenth time. It hurt worse than Ghosts bullying because it wasn’t out of a dislike for Spooker, it was the opposite, really. Toast thought he could do better and was disappointed every time Spooker managed to prove him wrong.
Chris was… Chris was different, he didn’t look down at Spooker, didn’t pick at his intelligence, or set expectations for him to inevitably disappoint in. He seemed to just appreciate Spooker for at least trying. And maybe that was the best he could hope for, someone who understood he wasn’t smart and just continued on. But they weren’t really friends, just coworkers who had a mutual understanding of what each other could do.
All and all, Fred Spooker worked with people who knew just as well as him that he wasn’t a very smart man. Even though they worked hunting the supernatural, the one thing that Spooker actually excelled at learning about. He still never seemed to excel in the field like everyone else around him. Mainly because he was a coward, the man had genuinely gotten scared of his own shadow more than once on missions. No book knowledge could help that fact.
He wanted to prove otherwise though, more than anything Spooker wanted to prove them wrong about him. Maybe more than just them, he wanted to prove it to himself. Show that he could learn, be brave, and confident. But that never seemed like that would happen.
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Spooker was sat at his desk, staring blankly at the screen of information in front of him. He’d given up trying to process anything about an hour ago, distracted by the building throb of a headache right behind his eyes. That day had consisted of about 5 hours of nonstop paperwork and filing.
The team as a whole was frightfully behind on paperwork at the best of times, but there had been an uptick in cases recently, which meant an uptick in paperwork. And Spooker was benched for at least another day after he’d messed up yet another case. So paperwork was all he had to look forward to, even as the words slowly turned to jumbled blurs of letters.
“Spooks!”
He jolted in his seat hearing his nickname shouted from behind him. He glanced back, tensing when he realized it had been Ghost calling for him, seeing the slightly shorter, hooded brunette storming through the office as though the room had personally offended him by its existence. He seemed to be actively approaching Spookers' desk. So he put on a kind smile despite the apprehension he felt from Ghost’s presence. “Hey boss, what’s going on?”
Ghost got over to Spooker's desk and leaned up against it, knocking over a few of Spooker's personal items with his carelessness. He looked down at Spooker with a clear annoyance as though the ginger was somehow interrupting his day. “I need you to come with me to a case," he huffed out the words quickly, as if even speaking them took an immeasurable effort.
Spooker’s face lit up at the opportunity, he was dying to go out in the field again. And it was Ghost who was inviting him to go before his benched time was over. So that meant it would at the very least be an interesting case. “Oh, uh, y-yeah, sure," he stuttered, standing up far too quickly considering he’d been sitting down most of the day, but his excitement was greater than the spots in his vision that threatened to send him right back into his chair.
Ghost didn’t react to his enthusiasm, it was clear he knew that Spooker would happily agree, but he didn’t seem too pleased about that fact. "Cool, go get the van loaded then."
Spooker nodded and quickly turned to walk off.
“Wait.” Ghost hissed before he even got the chance to take more than a step away. He turned back to Ghost confused, the other man motioned to his still-open desktop with a small huff. "Shut down your computer properly, I don’t need you losing any of the casework you’ve been doing.“
“O-oh, uh, right." Spooker went right back to his desk, this time properly closing down and saving everything while Ghost watched him, tapping his fingers on his desk, already bored with the amount of waiting he was having to do. Which was about all of 5 minutes at the most. "Sorry, boss.”
Ghost clicked his tongue against his teeth with a clear disapproval. “I don’t care, Spooks, just don’t do it again.”
Spooker nodded, once more heading to get the equipment, this time without being stopped. It took him walking all the way to the equipment room before he realized he didn’t know what equipment Ghost wanted him to get. There was a lot of different gear for various types of entities and even more for the different levels of entities. Without knowing what they were going to be going after, he decided to just get some basic gear for ghosts, hoping that if Ghost wanted anything more specific, he would have asked.
He came back to Ghost with a bag on his shoulder. The shorter man raised an eyebrow at him and the single bag of items. “What equipment did you even grab?”
“I, uh, got the basic equipment bag?” Spooker said, looking at the bag and then back at Ghost
The man glared, the annoyance in his expression turning to anger. "Why would you grab that? I didn’t ask for the basic equipment."
He nervously fidgeted with the bag strap in his hands. “You didn’t really specify..."
“If it was a simple case, I wouldn’t need any backup now, would I?” Ghost snapped at him.
Spooker flinched back at the tone of Ghosts voice, he was almost sure he was about to get yelled at no matter what he did next. "Sorry?" Wh-what did you want me to get?”
"Ugh, just typical!” Ghost shouted, pushing himself up off Spookers' desk. "How is it possible that someone can be so stupid??!”
Stupid
That word seemed to haunt Spooker wherever he went. He could never do anything right because he was too stupid to see what seemed to be obvious to everyone else. This had to be another case of that, even if he couldn’t figure out what he’d done wrong exactly, it had to be his fault.
Still, he couldn’t let the way it hurt show on his face, because if he did, he knew Ghost would only continue to dig in on that fact until Spooker actually broke down. So he just breathed and focused on keeping his face neutral.
“You are by far the most incompetent person I have ever had the displeasure of working with!” Ghost continued, moving his hands around erratically to emphasize his point. He paced back and forth unable to stay still for even a moment.
Spooker took another deep breath as Ghost continued, chewing on the inside of his lip to distract himself from the fact that he wanted to be anywhere other than here at the moment.
“How-how is it possible for you to be so bad at every single aspect of-of-of li-existence?!? You have to be fucking with me because I refuse to believe that anyone can actually be as useless as you are!” Ghost was winding down, his stuttering a clear indicator that he had nothing more to say on the matter and was just saying things to hear himself talk.
"Do you want me to grab something else..?” Spooker asked after Ghost was finally done shouting at him, he could almost hear the man’s eye twitch.
“Do I wAnT yOu To gRab SoMEthInG ElSe??” He mocked in an overly energetic, exaggerated voice, "What do you think?”
Spooker took a breath, reminding himself to be patient for the hundredth time over. "...Yes?"
Ghost scoffed, “No shit, Sherlock. That was a rhetorical question. I’ll just go get the stuff, you can wait in the van.” He spoke with an air of finality, storming past Spooker towards the equipment room.
The ginger took another deep breath to collect himself before heading out to the car, packing away the extra equipment just in case they did end up needing it. He got in the driver’s seat feeling the sting of building tears in his eyes as he tried to keep himself from breaking down right then and there. It was maybe just a bit pathetic how much he let Ghost's words affect him considering how often he’d snap like this at Spooker. He wished he could just be seen as anything other than a failure by the man he idolized so much.
He got a few minutes of time to reflect before he heard the sound of Ghost slamming the needed equipment into the trunk of the car. Spooker quickly put on a smile, looking over to the passenger seat as Ghosts hopped in, giving him an unamused look. “Well?” Ghost stared at him expectantly.
“Uh, I don’t actually know where we’re going, boss?” Spooker reminded him, and the man just grunted in acknowledgment and pulled up Google Maps on his phone with the address. Spooker was secretly glad he didn’t get yelled at again as he started up the car, driving as the mechanic voice from Ghosts' phone instructed him on where to go.