Halloween

In between manufacturing version 3.0 of his death ray (now with an added button that released nerve agents into the surrounding area!) and working on all of his other tech projects, Ryan had started thinking about Halloween costumes. The end of October was fast approaching, and he wanted to do something cool this year. Technically, he did something cool every year, but this year he was trying to one-up everything he’d done previously. Not for any particular reason, it was just nice to push his limits every once in a while. And to do that, he had a feeling he would have to get his dads involved. Three crazy costumes were always better than one, after all. He was kind of stumped when it came to actual ideas for those costumes, though. While brainstorming, he’d accidentally come up with ideas for recyclable raccoon-shaped grenades, a shower curtain lab coat, and a Rube Goldberg machine that would start blasting Never Gonna Give You Up from a loudspeaker whenever someone opened the door to his room, but not one single costume idea. Actually, maybe he could use that lab coat concept. He could take one of them, paint on some patches of suspicious green sludge, and—no, that was lame! A kid could pull that off.

Ok, maybe he was looking at this wrong. His costume could wait. In the past, he’d managed to finish prototypes the night before he needed to test them out, so a costume wouldn’t be much different. Granted, he’d need to stock up on energy drinks and snacks beforehand, but it was doable. For now, he could think about his dads’ costumes. He hadn’t heard them mention any ideas yet. God, he hoped they weren’t planning on dressing up as themselves or something like that. Probably not—they were really inventive. They’d come up with something better than that. 

Oh. That did give him an idea, though. A really funny one.

Laughing to himself, he pulled out his phone and drafted a message to each of them.

——

“Dress up as Zach for Halloween, huh? Does that count as identity theft? I like it!” Daniel laughed. He’d immediately stopped working when Ryan had barged into his lair and told him about the plan, and now they were sitting across from each other. A raccoon with a tiny leather apron had taken over the project temporarily. 

“It’s probably not identity theft unless you try to open a credit card in his name or something,” Ryan shrugged. “Ooh, that would be fun. Maybe you should try—“

Daniel chuckled nervously, holding out a hand. “I don’t know, I’d rather not give him a bunch of debt and then have to resolve the whole mess. Sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it?”

Ryan made a face. They could think about the consequences a lot later. Actually making the mess was the fun part. 

“But if we don’t have to worry about that then we’ve got time for lots of other evil plans! So anyway, about this costume thing. Were you thinking of actually borrowing one of his outfits, or…?”

He shook his head. “He’ll probably realize what we’re up to if he finds one of his outfits missing. Plus it’ll be more fun to do this the old fashioned way! By altering outfits and stuff.”

“Mmm, good point.” Daniel nodded thoughtfully before getting up from his chair and grabbing his wallet. “Ok, no time like the present! How do you feel about robbing a thrift store for everything we need? Oh, and maybe a craft store too.”

“Yeah, let’s go! …You don’t need money if you’re going to rob them, though.”

“Don’t be silly!” He laughed. “I have to tip the staff on the way out.”

He had had a feeling that was what he was going to say. As usual, the tip would cover the cost of whatever he’d gotten, plus a little extra. It wasn’t very evil of him, but the staff definitely appreciated it. 

As they headed out, he mentally checked off one box in the list of stuff he had to do for his master plan. That was one costume mostly taken care of… now he would have to talk to his other dad and see if he was on board too.

——

“Oh, that’s hilarious!” Zacharie laughed. “Hm… should I just limit it to that evening, though? What if I went around like that for the whole day? I bet everyone would be super confused!”

“The whole day?! Hell yeah—wait. No.” That would have been awesome, but then Daniel would probably catch on, and the big reveal would be ruined. “Can we save that one for later? It might be better if we could pull it off when we don’t also have to worry about Halloween stuff.” 

“Aw, alright.” He sighed. “We already have at least 20 plans we’ve saved for later, though.”

“Yeah, and we’ll get to them someday. Wait, look. The next time I’m free, I’ll come over and we’ll see how many of them we can get through in a day.” Ryan grinned. He’d thought of that on the spot, but it sounded like a blast. Nobody would be able to tell what had hit them. 

“Yes!!” He jumped to his feet in excitement, almost knocking over his chair in the process. “Ok, ok, about the costume. I think I’ve got it handled, but if you’ve got any extra ideas, I’m all ears!”

“Extra ideas…?” He thought for a moment before remembering something. “How do you feel about carrying around some raccoon shaped grenades?”

——

Somewhere amidst all the chaos of getting ready for Halloween while also helping his dads with their costumes, he managed to completely forget about his own. That was how he ended up in front of his laptop the afternoon of the 31st with a bunch of snacks, scrolling through Pinterest. There were some good ones that he would have tried if he had more time, but procrastination had gotten the better of him again. Actually, was it still procrastination if he’d forgotten about the work? He wasn’t making an effort to avoid it, so it wasn’t really the same thing. 

Oh well. He probably would have put it off even if he had remembered. The rush of proudly finishing something right before it needed to be done was always awesome. 

Pinterest was simultaneously giving him too many ideas and too few ones, so he switched to a cosplay website. They unfortunately didn’t have 5 hour shipping, so he couldn’t actually order anything, but at the very least he could find some ideas. 

When he stumbled across a Onceler cosplay, he knew that it was fate. He didn’t actually have a green suit, but he probably had a black one stuffed into some corner of his closet. He couldn’t remember what he’d bought it for, but it probably still fit. He had the sunglasses, funky dress shoes, and top hat covered too (because having a bunch of random items in your wardrobe was always useful for something). The stars really had aligned! How was he supposed to explain the lack of bright green, though…? 

Eh, it could be an emo AU. 

Satisfied, he went to grab everything he needed. He was going to meet his dads at Zacharie’s apartment so they could hand out candy to people that stopped by. They always stocked up on loads of things (every sort of candy they could find, with bonus allergy-free options), which meant that Ryan could help himself to whatever he wanted. They always jokingly told him to save some for the kids, but they really didn’t mind. Besides the candy and the eventual stomach ache he would get from all of it, though, he was also looking forward to his dads getting to see each other’s costumes. He’d already seen the costumes during their top secret planning sessions, and they’d come out great.

Daniel was running a little late, so they spent the extra time putting the candy out into bowls and double checking that the grenades were working properly. These weren’t deadly because trying to blow up his dads was probably going to get him grounded for at least a year. He was working on a more dangerous variant, though, because it would be really funny if the last thing someone saw was a little raccoon flying towards them. 

Just as they’d finished arranging the candy and the last of the decorations, Daniel barged through the door, grinning. “Hi, everyone! Bun-e is here! How is—wait, what.”

Zacharie stared back at him, looking like he was still trying to process the whole thing. “But I’m Bun-e!”

“Not right now you’re not!! Why are you dressed up as me, anyway? I thought—oh.”

They turned to Ryan, who was currently trying to remember how to breathe through his hysterical laughter. His dads began laughing too, and soon he was being crushed in a hug by both of them. 

“He’s growing up so fast… soon all his schemes will be world famous!”

“Hehe, you’re right! It’s not every day that someone can totally fool both of us like that.”

“Get off!” Ryan yelled, trying to flail his way to freedom. “I’m not a kid!!”

Once again, though, he didn’t really mind. They were kind of crushing his suit, but he was glad that he got to spend Halloween with them. 

The hilarious costumes were just the cherry on top.