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gilascaveTitle: Once in a Blue Moon
Author: James
Fandom: Real Ghostbusters
Pairing: Peter/Egon
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2500
Summary: Egon is blue. Er, no, really. Blue.
Notes: So I began this in 2005 and it's been sitting on my harddrive, completely forgotten. Until now. I slapped an ending on it, and now here it is for your amusement.
Peter Venkman walked into the room and grinned.
"You know," he said easily, "it says something about our lives that this sort of thing doesn't even surprise me. Does it surprise you?" He looked over at Winston, who returned his grin.
"Nah, man. Nothing surprises me anymore. But this...really doesn't surprise me." He inclined his head to the other side of the room. They were on the first floor of an office building's construction site. The bottom five floors had been completed and the rest was waiting for a de-ghosting so the work could continue.
The Ghostbusters had been called in and had spent an hour chasing level fours around the first floor; Peter had agreed it was odd the spooks hadn't tried going farther up, but he'd been too grateful to think too hard about it.
"Guys! You shouldn't laugh." Ray gave them both a stern frown.
"But Ray, he's blue." Peter turned to Egon, who was standing by the far wall of the room; Peter could tell he was trying to pretend that he wasn't bright blue.
"I'm not saying it isn't funny," Ray agreed. "But we shouldn't--" He glanced at Egon, and a grin started breaking out. "Laugh," he finished. Then he laughed.
Egon folded his arms and looked at them all with his best unamused expression. The dour look was hampered by the nearly neon tone of Egon's blue skin. Even his hair had gone bright blue, though his clothes and equipment were unchanged. Peter wandered over -- not too close, in case it was contagious.
"What happened?"
"One of the ghosts yelled something right before we trapped it," Ray said, walking over to stand beside Peter, both of them staring at Egon.
"It was a curse," Egon said.
"Did you recognise it?" Peter asked. "Or is that just a...guess?" He smirked, not even trying to hide the fact he was ten seconds away from chortling. He knew Egon knew it, too, from the way Egon's dour look grew even more dour. "We should rent you out as an extra on Braveheart," Peter added.
"Actually, Peter, the Picts were more likely to have been tattooed, not painted blue." As Egon took a breath to continue the lecture, Peter turned to Ray.
"So, a curse? Damn you for trapping me? What kind of ghost turns a guy blue as a curse?"
Ray shrugged. "We'll have to get check the PKE readings and cross-reference with Tobin's Guide as well as Markum's Index, but I think--"
"Ray, it was a rhetorical question."
"Oh." Ray blinked at him. "Okay."
"So what do we do?" Winston asked, injecting a bit of back-on-track pragmatism which made Egon shoot him a look of gratitude.
"Obviously, we need to figure out a way to reverse the curse," Egon said.
Peter tilted his head to one side, giving Egon a once-over which Egon, surprisingly, bore in silence. Then Peter frowned, which made Egon raise an eyebrow at him. Then Peter snapped his fingers. "I got it."
"You do?" the other three exclaimed.
Nodding, Peter said, "I know how to add this to our bill."
~~~
Peter spent the rest of the day emptying traps and cleaning their gear before stowing it away, while Ray and Egon studied the curse in the lab upstairs. Peter could have argued his way out of it, but had accepted his "punishment" with a minimum of complaint. Minimum for him, at any rate; there was always the chance that someone else would decide it was easier to take the job away from him than listen to his complaining.
But his buddies had abandoned him to it with good cheer, and Peter had spent the next two hours in the basement.
He didn't really mind. He didn't have anything useful to offer by way of breaking Egon's curse. His areas of expertise lay elsewhere, so all he'd have been able to do was hang around the lab making jokes and distracting everyone.
Even Peter could admit that sometimes that wasn't really helpful. Of course, sometimes distracting Egon was exactly the point. If he'd shown any signs of being upset about being blue, Peter would have been upstairs in a heartbeat.
But as far as any of them could tell, there was no damage done and no danger. Egon had seemed as unperturbed as every other time he'd been changed into something. Ray had been his usual enthusiastic self, without any sign of the unhappy little frown he got when he was trying to act like he wasn't scared.
So Peter had left them to it, and now, with the equipment all stowed and re-charged and ready for the next call, he wandered upstairs to amuse himself by hanging out in the lab and making blue jokes.
When he walked into the lab, he found Egon sitting at the microscope, peering intently at the slide. Ray was hunched over an open book, lips moving as he sounded out what Peter sincerely hoped wasn't another curse.
"Where's Winston?"
Ray looked up and grinned. "Running errands. I needed a new copy of Witch's Voice, and we're out of potassium henbane, and Egon thinks that Dr. Patterson at NYU has a piece of equipment we can hook up to the PKE and use to study the cellular structure of Egon's skin."
"So, no luck, then?" Peter kept his face impassive. "Still blue?"
Ray's grin stretched wider as Egon replied, without looking up, "I am still blue, Peter. As you may have noticed by making a simple observation."
"Well, don't worry," Peter said, strolling over to lean against the table Egon was sitting at. He was careful not to jostle the table and the microscope on it. "I'm here to cheer you up."
He had to wait five seconds before Egon lifted his head and stared at him. "Very amusing, Peter. I take it this means I shall now have to endure another round of blue jokes?"
"Another round?" Peter gave him a wounded look, then glanced at Ray, who was looking positively smug. "Ray, you didn't wait for me?"
"Gosh, no, Peter. You took so long with the traps that I had to start without you."
"Can we please focus?" Egon asked. "I do not wish to spend the rest of my life turquoise."
"That's not turquoise, Egon. If anything, I'd call it 'cobalt." Peter shook his head. "But it's more of a neon blue than a cyan."
The look Egon was giving him would have been enough to curdle milk -- if Peter hadn't got used to him the first year they'd known each other, and if Egon's expression hadn't been on a face that was bright blue.
Peter gave him a grin. "So! Blue boy, what do we have so far?"
"Oh! Thomas Gainsborough," Ray put in. "Good, Peter; I'd forgotten that one."
"We have determined," Egon said, obviously hoping to override them both, "That the blue extends only as far as my skin. We--"
"You didn't cut yourself open?" Peter exclaimed, giving Ray the glare of death. Surely Ray wouldn't have allowed that?
"No, Peter. Well, we did do a pinprick to check his blood. It's still red. And his tongue is still red, his eyeballs and teeth are still white. His saliva is still clear as well. So we extrapolated from there."
"Oh, thank god. For a minute...I think I should hide all the sharp instruments anyhow, for the time being."
Egon glared, then continued. "I did verify that all my skin is blue and if you make a comment about blue balls I will kill you."
Peter closed his mouth.
"We are attempting to determine if the skin cells are being kept blue by some external influence, or if the cellular structure has been completely altered."
"Or maybe we're just all under a spell to think you're blue," Peter put in. "Have you asked around? Does anyone but us think you're blue?"
Egon blinked. "An excellent point. With Janine gone for the day, we will have to query random persons on the street. Ray, would you--"
Stanz was already grabbing a notebook, and leaping up. "On it, Egon. If this is a spell that's affecting us all, then we should be able to just find someone to break it. That'll be a lot easier than trying to reverse the light-particle reflecting properties of skin cells."
"I've always said that," Peter said. "Hey, if you two are going to wander the streets, how about walking down to Mariano's and getting me a meatball sandwich? In the interest of science, of course."
"We shouldn't have to go that far to find someone," Ray said. "And if we do, I'm not buying you a sandwich because you still haven't paid me back for the last one I picked up for you."
"Paid you back? Ray, that's what petty cash is for!"
Ray nodded. "Which is empty, because someone used it all last week and hasn't replenished it."
Peter opened his mouth to argue, then stopped. The last time this had come up, Ray had offered to take over the bookkeeping duties. Normally Peter would be all for someone taking work off his hands, and Ray was as good at adding and subtracting as Peter was. But half the fun of bookkeeping came from harassing Janine about the weekly invoices, which he wouldn't be able to do if Ray took over.
Of course the main reason was that whenever Ray knew how much money they had, he and Egon started buying new toys for the lab, forgetting all about little details like the following week's bills that had to be paid.
"How about a pizza, then?" Peter asked.
"A pizza costs more," Ray began.
"Yeah, but they'll put it on our tab." Peter grinned. "And get extra mushrooms!"
~~~
That evening, Peter was sitting at his desk doing the paperwork he'd promised Janine he'd have finished last week. He looked up as he heard someone coming down the stairs; a minute later Winston walked around the corner, and into Peter's office.
"Hey. He still blue?" Peter asked.
"Still blue." Winston sat down and propped his feet on Peter's desk.
"They got any new ideas?"
Winston shook his head. "They did get the feathers cleaned up, though. Have to admit, I thought the voodoo would have worked."
"Remind me to send Roger a token of our appreciation anyway."
"Oh, he already got one. Ray gave him the rest of the pizza." Winston grinned.
"So what's their next plan of attack?"
"No clue. They were saying things that I swear they stole from a Star Trek movie. I think they make that stuff up just to confuse everyone else."
"Particle beam accelerators?"
"I think that was one of them, yeah."
"Egon made one of those in college. He turned his clothes inside-out."
Winston blinked at him slowly, then shook his head. "I thought I saw weird shit when I got stoned back in high school," he said.
"Winston! I'm shocked."
Winston rolled his eyes. "Like you've never smoked a joint in your life."
"I never inhaled," Peter said primly. "Except for a few certain occasions which were genuine psychological experiments. I can show you the article we published."
"Maybe this 'being blue' thing is all his his head," Winston offered, sniggering.
"Hey! We could tell him that!" Peter rubbed his hands together. "We can go upstairs and act like he isn't blue any longer and he'll think he's imagining it!"
"Peter, that's not very nice," came a scolding tone from Ray, who stepped into Peter's office.
"But it would be funny," Peter pointed out. After a moment, Ray nodded, then grinned.
"It would be. If we don't make any progress tomorrow, maybe we can--" He stopped as Egon himself walked in.
"We can what?" Egon asked, his tone clearly hopeful. Peter deduced that meant they'd made no actual progress and wondered how, in that case, Egon and Ray had even managed to extricate themselves from the lab. He'd been expecting to find them there in the morning, having pulled an all-nighter.
"We can try calling a few more contacts," Peter said quickly. "You know - a few of Ray's magician friends, see if we're dealing with an elaborate illusion." He nodded; that would lay the groundwork for messing with Egon's mind and pretending his skin had gone back to normal.
He ignored the dirty look he got from Winston, and gave Egon a bright smile. "So, are you two calling it a night then?" He didn't think for an instant they were; it seemed so weird to see Egon standing in his office, bright blue, as if nothing were wrong.
Maybe he was the only one who could still see it. Peter narrowed his eyes. It wouldn't be the first time Egon roped Ray into helping him play a joke.
Egon cleared his throat nervously and looked around -- at everything and everyone, except Peter.
"Oh, Egon, just tell him," Ray finally said.
"I don't really think this is necessary," Egon snapped.
"Er, what's going on?" Peter looked from Egon to Ray, and back. Egon was staring at the wall behind Peter's head, now, and Ray was looking like he was about to laugh.
When Egon didn't speak, Ray said, "We might have translated the curse," he began.
"That's great!" Winston exclaimed. "Isn't it?"
"It could very well be in error," Egon put in. "I don't believe--"
"Then why aren't you upstairs, working on the problem?" Peter asked. "Instead of down here where there aren't any books or test tubes or gizmos you can blow your head off with? I mean, on accident?"
Egon clamped his mouth closed even more tightly, and Ray nudged him. "Go on," he said. Then he glanced at Peter. "Egon has to.. say it, for it to work. If I explain--"
"Thank you, Ray," Egon interrupted. "I will...." Then he sighed. "I suppose if it does not work, I will still be blue. It isn't like things could get worse." He sighed again, and seemed to be drawing up the courage to speak. Feeling a little sorry for his friend, Peter kept his mouth shut against the myriad of jokes he could have made.
Finally Egon opened his mouth.
Roses are red, I am blue
Peter Venkman, I love you."
Peter blinked. Egon was still refusing to look at him and, for a second, Peter just waited for the punchline. Or the second verse.
Then suddenly, Egon was no longer blue. The colour drained from his skin as if -- well, by magic, Peter scoffed at himself in the tiny part of his brain that wasn't still fascinated by the sight of Egon reciting a nursery rhyme. Ray exclaimed loudly, and grabbed Egon's hand, turning it over to check the color of his skin.
"You're back to normal!" Ray shouted.
Egon cleared his throat. "Yes, well-- I should go upstairs and make sure it...returned to normal. Everywhere." He hurried out of the office; Peter jolted to his feet and ran after him.
"Hey, Spengs!" Egon didn't slow down, but Peter caught up with him at the foot of the stairs. He grabbed Egon by the arm but didn't try to stop him, just slow him down a bit. Egon didn't so much as glance at him. Peter just grinned. "Want me to check all the hard to reach places?"
Author: James
Fandom: Real Ghostbusters
Pairing: Peter/Egon
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2500
Summary: Egon is blue. Er, no, really. Blue.
Notes: So I began this in 2005 and it's been sitting on my harddrive, completely forgotten. Until now. I slapped an ending on it, and now here it is for your amusement.
Peter Venkman walked into the room and grinned.
"You know," he said easily, "it says something about our lives that this sort of thing doesn't even surprise me. Does it surprise you?" He looked over at Winston, who returned his grin.
"Nah, man. Nothing surprises me anymore. But this...really doesn't surprise me." He inclined his head to the other side of the room. They were on the first floor of an office building's construction site. The bottom five floors had been completed and the rest was waiting for a de-ghosting so the work could continue.
The Ghostbusters had been called in and had spent an hour chasing level fours around the first floor; Peter had agreed it was odd the spooks hadn't tried going farther up, but he'd been too grateful to think too hard about it.
"Guys! You shouldn't laugh." Ray gave them both a stern frown.
"But Ray, he's blue." Peter turned to Egon, who was standing by the far wall of the room; Peter could tell he was trying to pretend that he wasn't bright blue.
"I'm not saying it isn't funny," Ray agreed. "But we shouldn't--" He glanced at Egon, and a grin started breaking out. "Laugh," he finished. Then he laughed.
Egon folded his arms and looked at them all with his best unamused expression. The dour look was hampered by the nearly neon tone of Egon's blue skin. Even his hair had gone bright blue, though his clothes and equipment were unchanged. Peter wandered over -- not too close, in case it was contagious.
"What happened?"
"One of the ghosts yelled something right before we trapped it," Ray said, walking over to stand beside Peter, both of them staring at Egon.
"It was a curse," Egon said.
"Did you recognise it?" Peter asked. "Or is that just a...guess?" He smirked, not even trying to hide the fact he was ten seconds away from chortling. He knew Egon knew it, too, from the way Egon's dour look grew even more dour. "We should rent you out as an extra on Braveheart," Peter added.
"Actually, Peter, the Picts were more likely to have been tattooed, not painted blue." As Egon took a breath to continue the lecture, Peter turned to Ray.
"So, a curse? Damn you for trapping me? What kind of ghost turns a guy blue as a curse?"
Ray shrugged. "We'll have to get check the PKE readings and cross-reference with Tobin's Guide as well as Markum's Index, but I think--"
"Ray, it was a rhetorical question."
"Oh." Ray blinked at him. "Okay."
"So what do we do?" Winston asked, injecting a bit of back-on-track pragmatism which made Egon shoot him a look of gratitude.
"Obviously, we need to figure out a way to reverse the curse," Egon said.
Peter tilted his head to one side, giving Egon a once-over which Egon, surprisingly, bore in silence. Then Peter frowned, which made Egon raise an eyebrow at him. Then Peter snapped his fingers. "I got it."
"You do?" the other three exclaimed.
Nodding, Peter said, "I know how to add this to our bill."
~~~
Peter spent the rest of the day emptying traps and cleaning their gear before stowing it away, while Ray and Egon studied the curse in the lab upstairs. Peter could have argued his way out of it, but had accepted his "punishment" with a minimum of complaint. Minimum for him, at any rate; there was always the chance that someone else would decide it was easier to take the job away from him than listen to his complaining.
But his buddies had abandoned him to it with good cheer, and Peter had spent the next two hours in the basement.
He didn't really mind. He didn't have anything useful to offer by way of breaking Egon's curse. His areas of expertise lay elsewhere, so all he'd have been able to do was hang around the lab making jokes and distracting everyone.
Even Peter could admit that sometimes that wasn't really helpful. Of course, sometimes distracting Egon was exactly the point. If he'd shown any signs of being upset about being blue, Peter would have been upstairs in a heartbeat.
But as far as any of them could tell, there was no damage done and no danger. Egon had seemed as unperturbed as every other time he'd been changed into something. Ray had been his usual enthusiastic self, without any sign of the unhappy little frown he got when he was trying to act like he wasn't scared.
So Peter had left them to it, and now, with the equipment all stowed and re-charged and ready for the next call, he wandered upstairs to amuse himself by hanging out in the lab and making blue jokes.
When he walked into the lab, he found Egon sitting at the microscope, peering intently at the slide. Ray was hunched over an open book, lips moving as he sounded out what Peter sincerely hoped wasn't another curse.
"Where's Winston?"
Ray looked up and grinned. "Running errands. I needed a new copy of Witch's Voice, and we're out of potassium henbane, and Egon thinks that Dr. Patterson at NYU has a piece of equipment we can hook up to the PKE and use to study the cellular structure of Egon's skin."
"So, no luck, then?" Peter kept his face impassive. "Still blue?"
Ray's grin stretched wider as Egon replied, without looking up, "I am still blue, Peter. As you may have noticed by making a simple observation."
"Well, don't worry," Peter said, strolling over to lean against the table Egon was sitting at. He was careful not to jostle the table and the microscope on it. "I'm here to cheer you up."
He had to wait five seconds before Egon lifted his head and stared at him. "Very amusing, Peter. I take it this means I shall now have to endure another round of blue jokes?"
"Another round?" Peter gave him a wounded look, then glanced at Ray, who was looking positively smug. "Ray, you didn't wait for me?"
"Gosh, no, Peter. You took so long with the traps that I had to start without you."
"Can we please focus?" Egon asked. "I do not wish to spend the rest of my life turquoise."
"That's not turquoise, Egon. If anything, I'd call it 'cobalt." Peter shook his head. "But it's more of a neon blue than a cyan."
The look Egon was giving him would have been enough to curdle milk -- if Peter hadn't got used to him the first year they'd known each other, and if Egon's expression hadn't been on a face that was bright blue.
Peter gave him a grin. "So! Blue boy, what do we have so far?"
"Oh! Thomas Gainsborough," Ray put in. "Good, Peter; I'd forgotten that one."
"We have determined," Egon said, obviously hoping to override them both, "That the blue extends only as far as my skin. We--"
"You didn't cut yourself open?" Peter exclaimed, giving Ray the glare of death. Surely Ray wouldn't have allowed that?
"No, Peter. Well, we did do a pinprick to check his blood. It's still red. And his tongue is still red, his eyeballs and teeth are still white. His saliva is still clear as well. So we extrapolated from there."
"Oh, thank god. For a minute...I think I should hide all the sharp instruments anyhow, for the time being."
Egon glared, then continued. "I did verify that all my skin is blue and if you make a comment about blue balls I will kill you."
Peter closed his mouth.
"We are attempting to determine if the skin cells are being kept blue by some external influence, or if the cellular structure has been completely altered."
"Or maybe we're just all under a spell to think you're blue," Peter put in. "Have you asked around? Does anyone but us think you're blue?"
Egon blinked. "An excellent point. With Janine gone for the day, we will have to query random persons on the street. Ray, would you--"
Stanz was already grabbing a notebook, and leaping up. "On it, Egon. If this is a spell that's affecting us all, then we should be able to just find someone to break it. That'll be a lot easier than trying to reverse the light-particle reflecting properties of skin cells."
"I've always said that," Peter said. "Hey, if you two are going to wander the streets, how about walking down to Mariano's and getting me a meatball sandwich? In the interest of science, of course."
"We shouldn't have to go that far to find someone," Ray said. "And if we do, I'm not buying you a sandwich because you still haven't paid me back for the last one I picked up for you."
"Paid you back? Ray, that's what petty cash is for!"
Ray nodded. "Which is empty, because someone used it all last week and hasn't replenished it."
Peter opened his mouth to argue, then stopped. The last time this had come up, Ray had offered to take over the bookkeeping duties. Normally Peter would be all for someone taking work off his hands, and Ray was as good at adding and subtracting as Peter was. But half the fun of bookkeeping came from harassing Janine about the weekly invoices, which he wouldn't be able to do if Ray took over.
Of course the main reason was that whenever Ray knew how much money they had, he and Egon started buying new toys for the lab, forgetting all about little details like the following week's bills that had to be paid.
"How about a pizza, then?" Peter asked.
"A pizza costs more," Ray began.
"Yeah, but they'll put it on our tab." Peter grinned. "And get extra mushrooms!"
~~~
That evening, Peter was sitting at his desk doing the paperwork he'd promised Janine he'd have finished last week. He looked up as he heard someone coming down the stairs; a minute later Winston walked around the corner, and into Peter's office.
"Hey. He still blue?" Peter asked.
"Still blue." Winston sat down and propped his feet on Peter's desk.
"They got any new ideas?"
Winston shook his head. "They did get the feathers cleaned up, though. Have to admit, I thought the voodoo would have worked."
"Remind me to send Roger a token of our appreciation anyway."
"Oh, he already got one. Ray gave him the rest of the pizza." Winston grinned.
"So what's their next plan of attack?"
"No clue. They were saying things that I swear they stole from a Star Trek movie. I think they make that stuff up just to confuse everyone else."
"Particle beam accelerators?"
"I think that was one of them, yeah."
"Egon made one of those in college. He turned his clothes inside-out."
Winston blinked at him slowly, then shook his head. "I thought I saw weird shit when I got stoned back in high school," he said.
"Winston! I'm shocked."
Winston rolled his eyes. "Like you've never smoked a joint in your life."
"I never inhaled," Peter said primly. "Except for a few certain occasions which were genuine psychological experiments. I can show you the article we published."
"Maybe this 'being blue' thing is all his his head," Winston offered, sniggering.
"Hey! We could tell him that!" Peter rubbed his hands together. "We can go upstairs and act like he isn't blue any longer and he'll think he's imagining it!"
"Peter, that's not very nice," came a scolding tone from Ray, who stepped into Peter's office.
"But it would be funny," Peter pointed out. After a moment, Ray nodded, then grinned.
"It would be. If we don't make any progress tomorrow, maybe we can--" He stopped as Egon himself walked in.
"We can what?" Egon asked, his tone clearly hopeful. Peter deduced that meant they'd made no actual progress and wondered how, in that case, Egon and Ray had even managed to extricate themselves from the lab. He'd been expecting to find them there in the morning, having pulled an all-nighter.
"We can try calling a few more contacts," Peter said quickly. "You know - a few of Ray's magician friends, see if we're dealing with an elaborate illusion." He nodded; that would lay the groundwork for messing with Egon's mind and pretending his skin had gone back to normal.
He ignored the dirty look he got from Winston, and gave Egon a bright smile. "So, are you two calling it a night then?" He didn't think for an instant they were; it seemed so weird to see Egon standing in his office, bright blue, as if nothing were wrong.
Maybe he was the only one who could still see it. Peter narrowed his eyes. It wouldn't be the first time Egon roped Ray into helping him play a joke.
Egon cleared his throat nervously and looked around -- at everything and everyone, except Peter.
"Oh, Egon, just tell him," Ray finally said.
"I don't really think this is necessary," Egon snapped.
"Er, what's going on?" Peter looked from Egon to Ray, and back. Egon was staring at the wall behind Peter's head, now, and Ray was looking like he was about to laugh.
When Egon didn't speak, Ray said, "We might have translated the curse," he began.
"That's great!" Winston exclaimed. "Isn't it?"
"It could very well be in error," Egon put in. "I don't believe--"
"Then why aren't you upstairs, working on the problem?" Peter asked. "Instead of down here where there aren't any books or test tubes or gizmos you can blow your head off with? I mean, on accident?"
Egon clamped his mouth closed even more tightly, and Ray nudged him. "Go on," he said. Then he glanced at Peter. "Egon has to.. say it, for it to work. If I explain--"
"Thank you, Ray," Egon interrupted. "I will...." Then he sighed. "I suppose if it does not work, I will still be blue. It isn't like things could get worse." He sighed again, and seemed to be drawing up the courage to speak. Feeling a little sorry for his friend, Peter kept his mouth shut against the myriad of jokes he could have made.
Finally Egon opened his mouth.
Roses are red, I am blue
Peter Venkman, I love you."
Peter blinked. Egon was still refusing to look at him and, for a second, Peter just waited for the punchline. Or the second verse.
Then suddenly, Egon was no longer blue. The colour drained from his skin as if -- well, by magic, Peter scoffed at himself in the tiny part of his brain that wasn't still fascinated by the sight of Egon reciting a nursery rhyme. Ray exclaimed loudly, and grabbed Egon's hand, turning it over to check the color of his skin.
"You're back to normal!" Ray shouted.
Egon cleared his throat. "Yes, well-- I should go upstairs and make sure it...returned to normal. Everywhere." He hurried out of the office; Peter jolted to his feet and ran after him.
"Hey, Spengs!" Egon didn't slow down, but Peter caught up with him at the foot of the stairs. He grabbed Egon by the arm but didn't try to stop him, just slow him down a bit. Egon didn't so much as glance at him. Peter just grinned. "Want me to check all the hard to reach places?"