Ghostbusters In Love

3. Ghostbusters Origins: Ray and Egon Meet Venkman

*NOTE: this work is a 13 chapter novella, best read from the beginning. Rated Mature for explicit sexual content, horror elements, adult themes, smoking, alcohol use, and gay ghostbusting shenanigans. Thanks for reading, Stantz x Spengler fans!*

CHAPTER CONTENT WARNING: ghosts, horror elements, references to America's tragic history of enslavement, violence, fatal self harm, suicide, blood, character death (ghosts are dead people, obviously), drug use, drunkeness, vomit, urine, unwanted pregnancy, white male privilege. Please proceed with caution. This chapter is going to be a dark one, not a sexy one. Skip ahead if too triggering. But I warn you, the next one is going to be intense, too. These are their bonding years and the things they learn about each other in their early days are what drive them to give up promising academic careers for Ghostbusters.

* University, Spring 1981*

They'd heard rumblings from the psychology department that a doctoral candidate was studying psychic powers of all things, and clearly wasting huge amounts of University money building a lab to measure the unmeasurable.

Curious, Egon and Ray went to find this Peter Venkman.

After they tracked him down in a basement office, Venkman had immediately been flirtatious with Ray, which made Egon hate him instantly. Egon thought he was feeling protective of his buddy (it was jealousy) because he didn't want Ray teased or mocked by this guy. But his initial rage flare ebbed away as Egon came to realize a) Ray was oblivious to the flirtation and b) it was just Venkman's way of being disarmingly friendly. Egon realized Peter would probably flirt with a fire hydrant or mail box if there was no one else around. He even flirted with Egon, who'd ignored it, pointedly, for a while, and then started dropping innuendos right back, to Peter's playful delight.

Venkman loved wordplay and could happily talk to himself when Egon's social battery ran out and he lost his words. Venkman did not require a dialog, which was a relief. He turned out to be actually quite good company. And he was very, very good at wrangling money and equipment out of the University.

It took Ray and Egon a while to see past Venkman's unserious exterior, to see the remarkable intelligence underneath the quips. Venkman was dyslexic, had unintelligible handwriting, never studied, made assistants read aloud to him, was known to improvise whole courses he'd signed on to teach, and performed dubious experiments on the student body.

Against all reason, Egon liked Peter very much and they became friends. Ray liked him, too, but Ray liked everyone so that didn't count for much. The duo became a trio.

Peter's dedication to psychic phenomenon, to telekinesis and lucid dreaming, as well as his ability to charm his way past gatekeepers and manipulate authority figures into funding his projects, made Venkman an excellent addition to their team.

Academia did not appreciate their partnership. The three Scientists worked together like two once stable chemical compounds, now spun into explosive reaction by the addition of a volatile catalyst.
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*New England, Summer 1981*

"Gentlemen of Science," Venkman intoned dramatically, "are you ready to see a ghost?"

He was doing drumrolls and acting like an over-the-top gameshow host telling them to "Come on down!"

Venkman always fell into a character when overexcited and he was in an extremely impish mood that night. He'd gotten his two geek buddies to stay up all night in an old Puritan graveyard with him, because he'd heard it was haunted. He'd never admit to being a little scared, so he was covering it up with bits and voices. Maybe they'd get to see the ghost, but definitely they'd get to hang out, play with Egon's new gear and some of the niftier gadgets Venkman had liberated from the psychology department. Either way, he hoped it would be fun.