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#Reveal Fic
madametamma · 1 year
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Danny accidentally changes from ghost to human form in front of his parents eyes.  They say nothing but share a pained, shocked look before Danny flies off, never to be seen or heard from by Jack or Maddie again,
until ten years later.
A mysterious person shows up at Jack and Maddie’s door.  They claim to be Danny’s fiance and wanted to personally track down the parents to meet them and invite them to the wedding. Danny never told them why he hasn’t seen his parents in years.  He rarely speaks about them, but one evening Danny confessed that he wished they could be there for the wedding. So out of love they track down Fentons with plans of bringing them to the wedding to surprise Danny.
Jack and Maddie are floored by this news but accept the invitation, believing that this might be their only chance to reconnect with their long lost son.  They’ve waited for this moment and thought about what they wanted to tell their boy for so long.  They can’t blow this.
However they are a bit taken aback by Danny’s fiance and their family who are not as human as they initially appeared.  Turns out after Danny left, he had no where to go but to lean into the ghostly community for support.
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lena-in-a-red-dress · 10 months
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Many many ideas ago, I had an idea I started writing but never posted, and now I have no idea where I was planning to take it, but BASICALLY.
Before Kara's confession of her identity, but after Lex tells Lena the truth, Lena is still in the processing period where she's trying to work out how she feels about it, besides the overwhelming hurt.
When she's abducted for several days, Lena's not totally concerned. Now knowing who Kara is, Lena knows she's going to be Supergirl. It's only a matter of when.
Even so, several days being bound to a chair would wear down anyone. She's been treated relatively well, all things considered, but that doesn't mean she isn't exhausted, and generally just done by the time Supergirl shows up and frees her.
Kara, of course, is beside herself with worry, and frets over Lena. Are you harmed, did they hurt you, do you need medical attention...
"I'm fine," Lena says curtly.
But Kara doesn't let up, and Lena just snaps.
"Please, Kara, just take me home."
Supergirl finally relents, and it kills Lena when her arms open to bring her close, as though flying her home were the most natural thing in the world.
Then it clicks.
Supergirl's freezes for the faintest of heartbeats, before her eyes go wide with horror. But as she opens her mouth to speak, Lena just can't.
"Please. I'm tired. I just want to go home."
Lena can see the conflict in Kara's eyes, mingling with the same heartbreak that Lena's been struggling with for months.
Because that's the true cruelty of Lex's reveal, isn't it, Lena muses.
It's not just that he revealed Kara for a fraud-- it's that he stole Kara's chance to confess it herself.
Something that could have been so precious, so intimate, gone with a snap of his fingers.
In the end, Kara silently gathers Lena up and delivers her to the balcony of Lena's apartment. Only then, once Lena is safely out of her arms and standing on her own two feet does Kara try again to speak.
"Lena, I--"
The snick of Lena's balcony door sliding shut behind her mutes whatever Kara is about to say. Lena moves towards the bathroom, ready for a long shower.
She shuts the living room lights off behind her, and doesn't give the balcony so much as a second glance.
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raaorqtpbpdy · 24 days
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Respect or Privacy (2)
Tucker is excited for everything about college, even having a roommate for the first time. At least, he is until his roommate Danny turns out to be standoffish and a little bit of a dick. Whatever. It's a disappointment, but he'll survive. The same might not be said of Danny.
My first fic for Phic Phight '24 (part 2)! Prompts used were:
College AU where the characters don't meet until college and Danny has to hide his halfa status from his dorm roommate (your choice which character that is) [from @shadowfaerieammy], and Tucker fucked up. Hard. But it’s like, how the hell was he supposed to know that hacking the federal government was a bad idea? [from @lexosaurus]
You can also read it on AO3
Chapter 2: Find Out (Chapter 1)
[No warnings apply (I think)]
Tucker applied to switch roommates right away, but apparently that whole process took a lot longer than he would have hoped. Or else his request had gotten lost. He brought it up to the dorm supervisor a couple of times, only to get vague, unhelpful answers and bid for him to be patient and wait his turn. In the meanwhile, the two of them largely ignored each other. Tucker, a little bitterly, and Danny a little guiltily.
By the end of the semester, the roommate switch still hadn't gone through, and Danny and Tucker still had hardly said a full sentence to each other since that fight. They both thought about it every time they saw each other, but it felt far too awkward to bring it up again now.
While Tucker was Packing up to go home for winter vacation, he noticed that Danny wasn't doing the same, but he didn't bother to ask why. When he returned from winter break for the new semester—still rooming with Danny, despite sending numerous emails over the break to ensure his roommate change application was actually being processed—it didn't look like Danny had ever left.
Whatever. That wasn't Tucker's problem. He had more important things to worry about than his lame roommate's pathetic social life.
The end of winter break meant the start of the spring semester, and Tucker was signed up for a cyber-security class that he was really looking forward to. Normally, freshman didn't have the prerequisites to take it, but he'd filled his first semester with all the necessary credits so that he could sign up.
On the first day of class, Tucker walked in to see a list written on the whiteboard. Curious, he took out his laptop and looked up some of the items on it. It looked like a list of databases. Some of them, Tucker had heard of, and some he hadn't. He wasn't sure what they all had in common, or why the professor had written them up on the board, but he assumed that question would be answered once the class actually started, and he assumed correctly.
After the Professor had gone over the syllabus for half an hour, asking that they hold all questions until he was done with his explanation, he pointed to the list on the board.
"Some of you may have noticed this list of databases on the whiteboard, and you're probably wondering why it's there," the professor said. "These are all high-security databases, some of them are privately owned, some are federally owned, or state-owned, or various combinations of all three. All of them are so confident in their security that they offer substantial monetary compensation to anyone able to hack into them and point out the holes in their security.
"As an optional extra-credit assignment, you may choose a database to attempt to hack into," he continued. "If you succeed, in addition to being able to pay for your entire college career, you will automatically pass this class. Your actual letter grade will be determined by the quality and quantity of work you turn in, but you will be guaranteed at least a C as long as you succeed before the end of the semester.
"Again, this is optional. You don't have to do it. There will be no academic consequences for failure, but depending on which database you choose, there may be legal consequences, so choose wisely and don't bite off more than you can chew."
Oh, yeah. Not only would Tucker be taking this extra-credit opportunity, but he would be going big. He was gonna find out which of these databases offered the biggest reward and he was going to tear it to shreds. This was gonna be fun.
"I'll tell you now," the professor warned, "that in my entire twenty-year career teaching this course, only three students have ever managed to cash in on this offer, so don't feel too bad if you... can't hack it."
A round of groans and laughter circulated the classroom. Tucker was among those laughing, though he could understand the groans, as well. He enjoyed a good bad pun, but it was still pretty bad.
After his classes were over, Tucker looked up every database on the list, putting in the time, and doing to research, to figure out how to get the most bang for his buck, and it turned out the one that offered the biggest payout for a successful hack was a privately-run federal government database for an organization called the G.I.W., which was so secretive that Tucker didn't even know what G.I.W. stood for. But he was gonna find out—just like he was gonna find a way right through their digital security system.
Hacking was what Tucker was good at. It was why he'd been so intent on taking this cyber-security class in the first place. However tough the G.I.W.'s security was, FryerTuck was tougher.
A pleasant side-effect of Tucker's extra-credit project, since he worked on it in basically every spare moment between classes and homework, he pretty much always had an excuse to ignore Danny. Danny would take one look at all the code and computer jargon on Tucker's screen and not even say hello. He didn't ask what it was, or what Tucker was trying to do, just left him alone, probably grateful that Tucker was leaving him alone, too.
The G.I.W. security was strong, but Tucker wasn't the type to give up, not on something like this. He just kept hacking away at it. He stayed up late, woke up early, skipped lunch, or ate one-handed. He worked on it for over a month, then two months, until finally, at 3am on a Saturday, in a Mountain Dew-fueled haze, with red-rimmed eyes and aching fingers, he finally found it—the flaw in the armor.
Once he had that, it was only a matter of time before he full broke through, and two days later, he was in.
G.I.W. stood for Ghost Investigation Ward, and the first thing that popped up when Tucker was through the final firewall was the organization's most wanted list. A list of ghosts. Number one was a ghost called Danny Phantom who looked strangely familiar in a way Tucker couldn't quite place and ultimately shook off. After Phantom was a ghost called Vortex, then The Wisconsin Ghost, which was a stupid name. Tucker didn't bother to read the whole list. He didn't actually care about ghosts, he just wanted his reward money.
He used the information on the database to find the contact information for the head of the organization, someone code-named 'Operative Alpha', another stupid name, and sent him an email which explained who he was, detailed exactly how he'd broken into their secure database, and explained why he'd done it. That done, he finally went to bed, expecting a response from Operative Alpha when he awoke.
What he did not expect was to be woken up at seven in the morning after such a late night by a pounding on the door of his room.
"Danny, can you get that?" he moaned, covering his head with a pillow.
He heard Danny grumble something unintelligible and roll over in bed. He could hardly blame the guy. There was a reason Tucker didn't sign up for any classes earlier than 10am. He'd made that mistake last semester and had no plans to repeat it.
Whoever was knocking banged on the door again. "Mr. Foley!"
"Ha!" Danny barked, as triumphantly as he could do so when he was still half-asleep.
Tucker groaned again, but dragged himself out of bed to open the door.
Standing there was a pair of large, burly men in white suits and dark sunglasses. Tucker felt very under dressed in his cheeto-dusted pajama pants and cheesy slogan t-shirt, but that feeling quickly passed, since he was really way too tired to care.
"Mr. Foley?"
"Yup."
"I am Operative L, and this is my partner, Operative U," said the man on the left. "We're with the G.I.W., and we're here to ask a few questions and verify some things you communicated to our superior, Operative Alpha. May we enter?"
"Uh... may you come back at a more reasonable hour?" Tucker asked, trying and failing to blink away the sleep in his eyes. "Maybe in the afternoon? Sorry, but I'm way too tired to answer questions or verify shit right now. I'm not gonna be any good to you until I put in a few more hours between the sheets—sleeping, I mean. I'm not blowing you guys off to fuck."
The two guys looked at each other for a moment before nodding.
"Very well, your terms are acceptable," Operative U stated, very formally. "We will return at exactly 1300 hours."
"That's 1pm," Operative L clarified. "If you're not here at that time, we will hunt you down and show no mercy."
"Uh... understood?"
"Good."
With that, the two operatives turned and left, leaving Tucker standing confused in the doorway behind them. He yawned and shrugged and closed the door.
The instant the latch closed, Danny shot up out of bed, standing in a defensive position in the center of the room and glaring furiously at Tucker.
"Woah, what—"
"What's your association to the Guys in White?" he demanded.
"What, those guys?" Tucker asked.
"Are you working for them?" Danny kept going, sounding halfway desperate and halfway furious. "What do you know?"
"What are you talking about? 'Am I working with them?' Why would I be working with them? What for?"
"Why is the Ghost Investigation Ward knocking on our door asking for you then?"
"Because I hack their database, and now they owe me reward money?"
"What?"
"That's the extra-credit I've been working on the last couple months," Tucker explained. "The professor put a list of databases that offered reward money to anyone who could hack them and show them the flaws in their security. If we manage to collect on any of 'em, he said we'd automatically pass his class. I hacked the G.I.W., so they came to verify shit before they pay me off."
"That's all?"
"Yeah, that's it," Tucker affirmed. No matter how tired he was, though, something still struck him as distinctly odd about this conversation. "Hey, Danny... how do you know about the Ghost Investigation Ward?"
Danny froze like a deer caught in headlights. Tucker could almost see the hundreds of panicked thoughts and potential excuses racing through his head, but what finally came out was:
"I... don't?"
"Oh, you can't play dumb anymore," Tucker denied. "I couldn't even figure out what G.I.W. stood for until I was already into their secure database, and you just casual name-dropped them during your random accusation. Spill."
Again, Danny froze. He looked like he was seriously considering whether he could run. He even glanced to the window like they weren't on the fourth floor with no fire escape on their window. In the end, he swallowed anxiously, squirmed under Tucker's scrutinizing gaze, and bullshitted.
"They uh... they came to Amity Park a lot," he said. "You know, to hunt ghosts. So it's not the first time I've run into them."
But Tucker wasn't interested in a half-truth. He was done with Danny's bullshit and he was going to get to the bottom of this, right now.
"Uh-huh. And why are you so scared of 'em, then?" he asked. "I saw all the ghost hunting shit you keep in that drawer" — Danny started to protest, but Tucker just raised his volume and kept talking over him — "I know you told me to butt out, but fuck that. You hunt ghosts too, or you did, so why are you so freaked about other ghost hunters."
"They're... really bad at it?"
"They're dedicated enough that it took me—me, over two months to break through their security," Tucker said. "Somehow I doubt that a group that serious about what they do is 'really bad' at their main objective. Quit trying to bluff me. Quit beating around the bush. Enough is enough, man. Just tell me the truth."
"I... I can't."
"Oh, then I can just call those guys back and have them tell me—"
"NO!"
Tucker was taken aback by the intensity of Danny's shout.
"So fess up, then," he insisted.
"Fine!"
Danny squeezed his eyes shut, gritted his teeth, and took a deep breath.
"Fine," he repeated, softer. "The truth is, I'm... I'm...."
"Yeah?" Tucker encouraged.
"I'm a ghost," he finished finally, his voice softer than Tucker had ever heard it, but still audible.
"You're...." Tucker frowned, not really sure what to say. "Okay, you seem super serious about this, so I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I've been living with you for like, six months now, and I think I would have noticed if you were a ghost, so what's goin' on here?"
Danny sighed, went to the window to look out and then make sure the curtain was closed all the way. Then, he looked Tucker dead in the eye... and changed.
Thin, white rings traveled up and down his body, wrapping around his limbs and torso like threads of pure light, and when they disappeared, the person standing there wasn't Tucker's lame, human roommate, Danny Fenton. It was the Ghost Investigation's number one most Wanted, Danny Phantom.
"The reason I know the Guys in White is because they've been trying to destroy me since I was fourteen," Danny said, his voice steady and surprisingly cool. "They refuse to acknowledge that ghost are sapient beings, and unique individuals, and not all of us are evil, so they've been trying to wipe me off the face of the earth. All I want is to just exist... peacefully. But if they find me here, it's game over—and you just brought them right to our door.
Ohhh shit. Tucker had fucked up. Hard. But how the hell was he supposed to know that hacking the federal government was a bad idea? It had seemed like a perfectly good idea when he learned he could get four million dollars out of it. Now, learning that they might kill (re-kill?) his roommate, not so much.
But how on Earth was he supposed to know it would turn out like this? Danny never talked to him, or told Tucker anything about himself. He never mentioned ghosts, or his opinion of them. He never even bothered to ask what Tucker was hacking the last two months.
"Well, fuck," Tucker said.
"Well, fuck indeed," Danny agreed.
"You know, if you'd just been up-front with me about this shit from the beginning this never would have happened," Tucker insisted. "I gave you every chance, but no! You didn't want to be friends. You'd rather the two of us live together in silence for the whole year. All you had to do was ask me about what I was working on and you could have told me not to mess with it. You had two whole months of opportunities, Danny."
"I thought it was more dangerous for me to tell you!" Danny argued. "The day we met you brought up 'evil ghosts', and I thought there was no way I could ever trust you if that's what you thought! How was I supposed to know you'd back me up, huh? How would I know that?"
"I was joking!" Tucker all but screamed.
"Hey! Shut the fuck up!" shouted someone from the dorm next door. "It's Saturday! Why are you even up this early!?"
"Sorry!" Tucker called back. Then he lowered his volume and hissed, "I was joking! I'm from fucking Elmerton! You think I actually give a single shit about ghosts? No!"
"And I was supposed to know that, how?" Danny hissed right back. "I've been hearing about how all ghosts are evil and cruel my whole life from my fucking ghost hunter parents. When I hear people say ghosts are evil I'm always gonna assume they mean it rather than take a chance and get shot. I have enough bullet wounds."
Tucker couldn't respond to that. He had no idea what to say. He pursed his lips and nodded. Took a deep, shuddering breath.
"Alright, fine," he said at length. "So maybe we both beefed it a little. Enough about how we fucked up, let's try to fix it."
"And how do you plan on doing that?" Danny asked, crossing his arms.
"Well, they don't know yet that my roommate is their most wanted," Tucker pointed out. "And after they talk with me, they'll have no reason to come back here. As long as you're out of the dorm at one o'clock, and stay out until they leave, you're in the clear."
"How will I know when they're gone?"
"You've got a phone, don't you?" Tucker pointed out, rolling his eyes. "Gimme your number and I'll text you."
Danny hesitated, his eyes darting to his desk, where his phone was still charging on the surface.
"Oh, come on man, you can't seriously still be wound up about not wanting friends, can you? I already know your secret, and I'm trying to help you. Just give me your number."
"What if you give it to the Guys in White?"
"Dude, I'm not gonna do that," Tucker said, as seriously as he could manage. "If you'd accepted any of my invitations when we first moved into the dorms, you'd know me well enough to know that I'd never betray a friend."
"We're not friends," Danny mumbled.
"We are now."
Danny's head snapped up to look Tucker in the eye, and Tucker could tell he knew it was the truth.
"Alright," Danny said.
He gave Tucker his phone number, and they both went back to bed and crashed hard for another few hours. Danny made himself scarce at around twelve-thirty, Tucker talked with the G.I.W. and accepted a check for a cool four million that would cover tuition and then some. And when they were gone, he sent Danny a text to let him know.
The plan went off without a hitch, and for the rest of the school year, Tucker had a best friend to hang out with—even if that friend was still pretty standoffish to other people. He found himself thankful that the school never did finish processing his request to switch roommates, and when they left for summer break, both he and Danny requested that they be roommates again for sophomore year. They could only hope that that request would actually be processed sometime in the next two months.
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if i can be the corpse then you can be the killer
In retrospect, Valerie should've put the pieces together way before he decided to tell her. She was intelligent. Perceptive, resolved, focused.
But when he finally told her, she was more shocked to learn Phantom was a half-ghost than she had been to learn of the existence of halfas in the first place. Maybe from all the emotions it caused her to go through when she was let in on the secret.
It had been a slow day with only one ghost attack during school and two in the time she'd been patrolling for the night. Surprisingly, while he had dealt with the one at Casper High, Phantom was nowhere to be seen until the daylight had faded into a cold autumn night. And when he finally did, it was with a clear and cautious approach. An easy shot, but she admittedly hadn't fired directly at Phantom in months. Ever since she found out he was telling the truth about Masters and Plasmius... he had been right, after all, and she realized she didn't have all the answers.
Read the rest here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45578356 
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merlinficprompts · 8 months
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Prompt #59
It doesn't really seem obvious to pretty much anyone that Merlin is physically strong. Arthur doesn't understand until Merlin taunts him into trying to lift something that he was carrying, and Arthur struggles to lift it, much less carry it any distance. Gwen has the realization whenever she sees how much of Arthur's stuff Merlin carries around with ease. The knights realize how strong Merlin is when they get baited by Merlin to attempt to carry the 3 heavy sets of practice equipment that Merlin had previous been carrying and they were teasing him about not carrying more.
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Phic Phight - The Green Ribbon Is Staples
@astatia-ghast @q-gorgeous @mr-lancers-english-class @tourettesdog
Danny gets a lot of injuries but every so often he gets one he’s never gotten before, normally that’s just a pain since none of the trio usually know what exactly to do about it but they eventually manage; unfortunately this time it’s a little too revealing.
Chap. 1:
Decapitation Station
Okay. So. Danny’s got a problem. Or twenty. Twenty problems sounds more accurate. Why? Well um, lets rewind a little. 
See he was heading home, from detention due to missing homework, like usual, when his ghost sense did what his ghost sense does. So, you know, he had a fight to fight, ghostly ass to kick. It was good ol’ Boxy because of course it was, he should have figured honestly. But the surprising part? The real cut throat turn of events? Yeah apparently Boxy got his hands on multiple boxes -read: more than two- of barbed wire, ecto-barbed wire because apparently Jeb was trying to protect his chickens -he has chicken in his houses tiny back yard for some fucking inane reason, like seriously why? Ugh- from a ghost kitsune. 
So Boxy threw the boxes at Danny like he normally does. 
Danny let the boxes phase through him like he normally does, because come on? regular boxes are a shit weapon. 
But surprise! That turned out to be the dumbest decision he’s made in a long fucking time. Why? Well because the ecto-barbed wire inside the boxes, that he obviously could not see because the boxes were fucking closed, did not go through him like he expect. 
They did go through him though. Just... not the way he wanted them to. 
Meaning they went through him by cutting through him very literally. He’d realised his fuck up quick enough to minimise the damage but that was because the first box was aimed at his goddamn head. The Box Ghost got to be cut throat for the first time in his entire existence, at the cost of Danny’s head getting fucking whole ass flung into a grocery store wall. 
At least this is how Danny got to find out he could still move his body without its head. It’s also how he found out that decapitation is terrifying to ol’ Boxy. 
“I! AM SORRY! THAT IS NOT OKAY! I mean you are less circular now!”.
Danny takes the time to have his headless body kick The Box Ghost in the shin as his hearing cuts out before using his thermos, it’s hard as fuck to aim without being able to tell what he’s looking at. Since, apparently, he could use his body without a head but couldn’t use his head without it being still connected to his core, fucking great luck there. 
It’s still pathetically easy to catch Boxy, even effectively blind. Using the feel of ecto-energy and ghostly pressure, no matter how weak, to figure out his own location and Boxy’s, aim and fire and he gets the ghost on his third try. No quippy wit of course, since he was down a fucking head holy shit. 
At least he manages to find his head, it, unfortunately, does not auto reattach. 
... And he can’t see to stitch it on himself. Meaning he needs Sam or Tuck, preferably Sam. But she’s not a ghost, meaning he can’t just locate her ecto-signature. He also can’t just float around Amity cradling his head and hoping she fucking sees him. He also can’t call, because no mouth obviously. So that’s either three or four of his twenty some issues. The fifth is just the pure fact that Boxy of all ghosts is the one to put him in this situation in the first place, talk about embarrassing. Ugh. 
Danny settles for calling Tuck, who can absolutely trance the call with ease, and just scrapping the phone speaker on the floor and making thumping noises with his feet. He’d look up morse code if he could see. Zone if he didn’t have Tuck on speed dial he’d be fucked... on second thought he might not have even managed to call Tuck. 
Should he try again? 
Well it can’t make things worse. 
He calls about twenty times and maybe some go through maybe some don’t. He can’t hear if there’s a voicemail. Fuck how is he even gonna know if Tuck does show up? If he had at least one of his heads senses he’d be cool, Tuck always smelled like meat and metal, his voice was an obvious easy identifier or whatever, he did in fact know what the guy’s skin tasted like, and sight was easy. 
But touch was all he’s got right now and unless he’s touching a ghost, aka something with an ecto-field, he can barely tell the difference between people. Maybe whoever will clue in and write their name on his arm or something? He can only hope to be that lucky. 
He is not that lucky. 
In multiple ways.
Who ever he’s called is definitely not lean or skinny. Meaning they’re not any of the people he was cool with calling. It’s not Sam’s lean muscled arms with sharp pointed nails. It’s not Tuck’s skinny arms and calloused fingers. It’s not Jazz’s skinny arms and would have been shaking hands. Zone it’s not even Val’s lean toned arms and firm grip. 
Whoever it is has thick muscled arms and rough large hands. If the hands where bigger he’d think he really fucked up and called his dad, but they’re not. Plus, his dads hands would probably not be shaking. His dad wouldn’t be freaked out by an injured ghost. His dad would not be handling an injured ghost with gentle care. His dad would not be seemingly attempting to help. His dad would either ‘study’ him or hurt him or capture him. 
This person is doing none of those three things. This persons hands are shaking, they are freaked out, and they are helping. Meaning he should be okay enough at least. Problem is he doesn’t know if this person can do stitches well enough to align and reconnect stuff, or if this person is actually anyone he called and not some random person who just happened to be around. 
Danny’s got his head cradled in one arm and pressed against his stomach, the person is holding onto that arm, so Danny uses his free hand to point at his head then at his neck, making vague stitching motions and hoping the message is getting across. 
He can feel heavy breathes brush against his jumpsuit so he’s guessing that who ever took some restorative breaths, good? Hopefully otherwise he might be very fucked until someone else shows up. Either way Danny moves his head so that he can kinda feel the mangled detached end of it brushing against the mangled detached end of his neck, he thinks he got his head on the right angle but whoever hopefully can line up his spine for him. 
Wait shit, if this isn’t Sam, Tuck, or Jazz, which it obviously isn’t, then they won’t know he has a fucking spine since ghosts don’t normally have that shit. 
Quickly lifting his head up making the person definitely jerk, to flip it enough for whoever to see the spine end. Gesturing vaguely where he thinks the spine end is, then leaning his body/neck forward and physically grabbing his spine and tapping on it. Hopefully they get it, he gives whoever a thumbs up for moral support before going back to aligning his neck ends and holding his head steady with both hands. 
The person goes around his back, their knees pressing up against his lower back and ass, whoever was tall damn. Not his dad tall but definitely at least six foot. Even their knees are shaking though so that’s not great; hopefully they have a decent therapist. Great now he sounds like Jazz, ugh. 
The person does tentatively touch his spine bit and Danny’s pretty sure he can feel his heads bit of spine pressing into it. He keeps holding his head when the other person feels to get up.
... 
They didn’t just leave did they? The fuck??? Even if he is a ghost that’s still pretty fucked up to just leave him, especially when whoever poked at him and maybe tried to see if they could help. 
... Did they maybe go to grab some shit perhaps? Right yeah most people didn’t just walk around everywhere with medi kits and shit.
...
It is taking whoever a while if that’s what they’re- oh wait nevermind, based on the vibrations on the ground he’s going to guess the person is back and it seems like they’re running. Cool. Okay. Definitely had gone to get stuff. 
The person damn near knees him in the back when they get back down on the floor with him. Jerk. Danny would scoff or scowl if his head was freaking attached. 
They’re grabbing at his spine again so it’s definitely one hundred percent the same person. Good. Cool. He wasn’t totally abandoned headless by a random grocery store. 
Then he feels some seriously jarring vibrations travel down from the bit of spine attached to his skull, officially very confused. What the actually crap did whoever run off to get??? Then he feels cold metal on his bodies exposed section of spine, it feels kind of like a flat bar? Oh! OH! Okay he is absolutely getting a metal bracket drilled into his spine to hold it together, that was actually pretty fucked up. Effective hopefully but wow, oof. This was gonna suck so much later.
And now he can’t tell if the person is shaking because of being freaked out or because of the goddamn drill they’re taking to his spine. 
He thinks whoever drills on three brackets or metal rods, before the drilling fully and finally stops. He’s starting to get some feeling back in the rest of his spine and the bottom bit of his skull but his actual skin and hair and senses are still a lost cause. Whoever taps he’s shoulder very cautiously and draws a question mark over his jumpsuit, so Danny moves to hold his head up by the hair and takes the other hand off of his head to try and pinch the jagged detached edges of neck skin together, then making the stitching gestures again. He needs his skin at least somewhat securely connected for things to heal at a remotely functional degree, annoying but whatever. 
The person writes ‘ok’ on his skin, at least the person was calm enough to try communicating with him now. Neat but Danny’s not going to push shit, instead going back to using both hands to hold his head steady. Unfortunately he had expected this person to, you know, use a sewing needle or something and some fucking thread to stitch his skin up. What he hadn’t expected was the sudden feeling of being shot with two extremely shallow and thin bullets straight in the neck. Ancients fuck what the hell?!? He absolutely jerks from that. 
Okay so, this fucker is using a goddamn staple gun he thinks? Did whoever run off to a fucking hardware store? The next staple is a lot shakier and Danny makes a point not to jump, which gets him rewarded with the next staple being less shaky. Danny’s just going along with this because it should? maybe? actually work? Hard to say since he’s never reached for goddamn staples when he’s needed a bit of patching up. This person was probably hoping that securing his spine would be good enough. Well tough shit, his luck ain’t that fuckin’ good. 
...
.......
It takes a goddamn while, and he thinks the person is taking fortifying breathers every so often. Which is fair. Stapling a persons neck back on had to be super upsetting and freaky. But! He can actually hear -yes, hear!- the staple gun noises now. It’s alarming a little, way too much like the sound of some of his folks guns but he can take it. But eventually whoever does stop. 
“Holy shit this is, so fucked”. 
Wait... holy shit, Dash???? Why him of all people???? The fuck? Well... okay guess Danny can’t be complaining too much. The guy had a ton of hero worship going on, so he wasn’t going to dick his goddamn idol over. 
Danny tentatively lets go of his head and, when it doesn’t flop over or anything, he gives Dash a double thumbs up. 
“Oh, oh thank zone his heads not loling over. Holy shit”. 
Danny taps on his ears and gives another thumbs up. 
“Are... are you trying to say you can hear again? Fuck this is so screwed up”; it kinda sounded like he ran his hands through his hair roughly. 
Danny gives another, but far more eager, thumbs up. 
“That’s? That’s good right?”.
Another thumbs up from Danny.
“Okay good. Good. This is so not how I ever wanted to run into my hero. In to you. What the zone even happened?”.
Danny doesn’t know how Dash expects him to answer him. So he makes an ‘x’ with his fingers over his mouth or where it feels like his mouth is anyways. 
“Still can’t speak huh?”, he actually snorts even if it sounds shaky as Hell, “that must suck for you”.
Oh hundred percent yes. Danny’s a talkative bastard. Danny flips him off. Apparently that’s really funny because Dash just starts wheeze laughing, it sounds like he flopped down on the ground which is honestly probably really gross, fuck knows what’s on it. 
“Zone I just stapled Phantom’s neck together and he flipped me off, what the fuck is today oh ugh”.
Hey if anyone’s having a shit day here it’s him. Sure having to fix him would be pretty fucked but at last Dash wasn’t the one dealing with being fucking decapitated and oh hey his visions coming back some. Blurry as hell but he can, in fact, see. He glances around, there’s a lot of glowing green stuff, probably his ecto, he should probably clean that up; also, he now knows why he usually fixes himself up with thread and not staples, shit is tense and makes his skin pull. 
Eyeing Dash, who’s staring at him Danny thinks, Dash jerking and sitting up, “hey the blank stares gone, you got vision back?”.
Danny wiggles his hand back and forth in the air and makes a weird squeaking sound, shrugging. Dash shakes his head disbelievingly, “I can’t believe you can survive losing your freaking head. Man that’s cool. Super freaky and I’m going to have so many nightmares now”. 
“Air pee”. 
Dash looks at him deeply concerned, opening and closing his mouth a few times before shaking his head and getting up. “You good? I can leave? Wait shit, sign my arm!”. 
Danny rolls his eyes but does as he’s asked because he is not nearly enough of an asshole to refuse after the guy stapled and drilled his freaking head back on. Danny also gives him a pretty solid back pat, “you ‘ight”. 
“Thanks but no? I’m raiding my dads liquor cabinet immediately”.
Danny can’t even give him shit for that, even if even he knows that ain’t the best way to deal with fucked up shit. Shrugging and stretching out, a lot of things cracking and popping, nice he’s seeing actual proper details now and his spine feels more proper spine like. Shit was gonna take so long to heal though. “Jus’ don’ mae rum ceral an’ don’ wine up inna ‘rigerater”. 
Dash sounds horrifically disgusted, “ew and... I won’t?”, the jock somewhat cautiously walks away. Fair enough, Danny just put him through some whack ass shit and then basically admitted to having had rum cereal and crawling into a refrigerator.... 
Him and his stupid fucking mouth. 
...
Okay so what now, if he changes back right now he’s going to start bleeding red everywhere. Fuck right, he’s gotta clean up his ectoplasm. At least that’s a simple thing, floating back down towards the ground and setting it all on fire. Watching the blue flames for a bit and realising that he absolutely can not hide Dash’s patch job for shit.
Well.
Fuck him entirely.
And by ‘him’ he means himself, not Dash. Dash did the best he could and Danny could not expect anyone to do a stellar job of reattaching people’s heads. In fact, someone being remotely skilled at that should be deeply concerning. Even a ghost having that skill would be concerning.
Alright so first things first, find something reflective and check Dash’s work out. Hmmmm. Okay so a chunk of shiny metal will have to do. Him lifting the piece up and around his neck to check it out, flames still burning away, as Sam arrives.
“Danny why did I get a soundless thumping call and why is this entire area on fire?”.
So Dash did a pretty okay-ish job, like yes all the staples are almost all uneven and less than straight, some aren’t in properly and one looks like it got bent to fuck. But his skin is knitting itself back together.
Danny turning around to wave at Sam gets him an instant gasp of horror. “Oh fucking zone, what happened!”.
Danny holds up a finger, “so I can survive decapitation and Dash know’s how to use power tools”, and floats himself around her enough for her to look at his neck, even she’s being leery about touching it or moving his head around. At least his vocal cords have put themselves back together, even if it sounds like he’s eaten an entire box of nails.
“Damn your voice sounds like shit”, she winces, poking one of the staples which Danny absolutely twitches in a bit of discomfort from. Okay so this shit was gonna hurt like a bitch when he changes back, ugh. Her frowning and digging in her pocket, “okay sit down, I’m at least attempting to straighten this shit out. I’m not taking out the staples, it’s healed some so it’ll do less damage to just let your body dissolve the metal”.
“Yeah he also drilled fucking hardware brackets into my spine”.
“Why would let him use that!”.
“I couldn’t see or hear or speak! Sam! I couldn’t tell who it even was that was trying to give me a patch up!”.
Sam rubs her temples sighing, pointing at the ground which fine Danny floats back down towards. At least the flames are dying out, yay for not leaving a crime scene level of ectoplasmic mess that could be traced back to him! Her getting to work immediately, “geez he pulled your skin too tight in some spots and not tight enough in others. Some spots aren’t even lined up well!”.
“Sam give the guy a break, he was terrified! And remotely normal people do not know how to put skin back together unless they’re literally doctors”.
“Yeah well this is going to heal really nasty, it’s already healed nasty”, she points at his face with a slightly ectoplasm stained finger, “and you aren’t missing any jumpsuit meaning unless you feel like adding a choker to your costume you can’t cover this up”.
He was unfortunately aware of that. As Phantom it wasn’t… too big of a deal. It would just raise questions about ghosts being able to get scars and how he got it and if he had more. Zone his folks might even rework some of their research over this. But… it would make people worry and he didn’t want that. “Considering the choker wouldn’t even be part of my actual form, I’d just wind up wrecking it. But-”.
She huffs, unclipping her own choker and holding it in front of his face, “you better have been about to say ‘but I should at least cover it up while it’s healing’ Danny. I have a million of these things, go ahead and destroy a few”; she drops it on his lap and continues moving his floating ass around to stitch between the staples.
Danny sighs to himself, careful not to swallow or move his Adam’s apple too much, “fine, but I’m just going to wear turtlenecks as Fenton, a chokers a little too attention drawing when I don’t normally wear that shit”.
She just scoffs as she continues her work.
Would a turtle neck hide this shit? Not if anyone remotely looked at him with any degree of attention even slightly. Like a child wouldn’t notice purely by being a lot smaller than him but that’s it. Unfortunately a choker or handkerchief will just make people more likely to look at his neck, and bandages would be even worse. Aka he doesn’t really have any options here.
Sam nodding and leaning back, “okay, you’re good. This is a seriously messed up injury though, you caught the ghost who did this? It was a ghost right?”.
Danny blushes immediately, “it was a ghost yeah, and ugh, I’m never living this down”, sighing into a hand and trying to ignore the way the staples pull, “it was fucking Boxy”. She laughs scandalised at him. Danny groaning more, “yeah yeah laugh it up. He actually scared himself”. She laughs even more and fine he joins in a little too. Fuck today so much.
After a bit she pokes his floating ass, “you should change back, so you get over the pain before we get you home and in bed. Your parents are still doing late night hunts right?”.
Danny sighs, putting his feet on the ground and nodding, “unfortunately, yeah”, moving to rub his neck before remembering that would be a fucking dumb idea and scratching his hair instead, his head felt unpleasantly fresh, “sure it means I don’t have to deal with their questioning but ugh”. They would somehow manage to get themselves involved in one of his late night ghost fights and shoot at him, it was annoying and every time it happened whatever ghost he was fighting legit debated throwing hands with his parents for real. Some purely because the Fenton’s shot first, others because they were interrupting their chosen ‘Phantom fist-a-cuffs’ time, others because they knew Phantom wouldn’t do it himself.
Anyway.
Human time.
Ha. This was gonna suck. Sure not as much as that time Tuck had to haphazardly shove his organs back inside him and Danny had to change back before said organs could reorganise themselves, but still. He cringes his whole face up in anticipation as he lets the change flow over him. “ANCIENTS FUCK!”, bending over, one hand on a now shaking knee, and the other tenderly over the front of his neck.
Ow.
Holy shit.
Fucking Hell he is never getting decapitated again. Oh Ancients.
He can taste metal inside his throat and he can’t tell if that’s blood or actual literal metal. The spine bolts are awful actually, he should not have let Dash do that. Oh he is regretting everything so much. “FUCK! OW! WHY DID I LET HIM DO THAT!”.
Sam pats his back as he drops his hand from his neck, touching would only make it worse, both hands on his knees and wheezing now. His neck was on fire and extremely cold all at once and it was fucking stupid and he hated it. He can feel his ecto attacking the metal, it burned more than he’d like. Swallowing, “oh that was such a bad idea”, he is not eating anything for a while. Pushing himself to stand up and blinking tears out of his eyes, “I, ow, am phasing all my food directly into my stomach for a while. Oh zone, this sucks”.
San pats his back again, “figured. Definitely no swallowing utensils for you for a bit”.
“Sam, if a fork prong got caught on or nicked the stupid bolts, which some are definitely partly inside my throat and bolted back to my spine, I will scream immediately”. Zone he would have screamed from changing back if he hadn’t been prepared for it to hurt like a son of a bitch.
She nods, “and I wouldn’t blame you”, scowling, “I still can’t believe you let Dash drill fucking Home Depot bolts into your neck. You know how dirty those things probably were? Ugh. Now stand still, you’re leaking”.
Danny has to clench his fists something fierce, fingernails digging into the palms of his hands, to keep from flinching as she wipes a cloth around his neck. Rolling his eyes at her whipping the side of his mouth too with a stupid smirk. “How bad does it look?”; he does not feel like going through the effort and pain of trying to use that bit of metal to look it over again.
“Bad. Danny. Gnarly and jagged. The staples stick out really harshly”, frowning and crossing her eyes as they cautiously and carefully make their way out from behind/around the grocery store which was thankfully closed. “When I stitch you up I always try to make it blend smoothly with your skin as much as possible, Dash was definitely not thinking about that, which fine I can’t blame him for, but still”, grimacing, “you better be really careful about what turtlenecks you wear, otherwise the staples are going to catch on the fabric”.
Danny full body winces, oh zone that would suck. He might maybe be able to resist screaming at that but he’ll definitely at least suck in a really ragged breath and curl in on himself. He was used to pain but still; he doesn’t even want to move his head or neck around. And of course his voice still sounded like hot garbage but considering the bolt attaching the inside of his throat to his spine that made sense. He really wishes Dash had positioned that one bracket and set of bolts differently. He can absolutely feel the metal bar being squished between his throat and spine. Ugh.
Shaking his head as they finally make their way back to FentonWorks. Sam giving him another pat, “you good to see yourself to bed or am I helping the injured baby”. 
Danny snorts, “oh shove it”, chuckling, “I can handle my self but I am absolutely taking the fuzzy blanket off of my bed because I do not want to get woken up by my bed ripping out a staple”. 
“Smart choice”.
She heads off with a simple wave and chuckle at Danny sticking out his tongue, at least he had motor control of said tongue again. Okay, now get lunch and go to bed before his parents possibly show up. 
He grabs out the left over chilli, that is thankfully not sentient or moldy, and phases it into his stomach. Was it going to take a bit to digest? Yes, obviously. But he was absolutely not chewing this shit and swallowing it. He’s had enough unintentional pain for one day that he absolutely does not feel up to adding in any intentional pain. 
The fluffy blanket that was super comfortable especially when his muscles were all achey, gets torn off and left on the floor in a heap. His floor isn’t exactly ‘clean’ but that doesn’t really matter to his sorry ass; he is going the fuck to sleep. 
“Nocturne bless this fucking bed”. 
Chap. 2:
The Un-hide-able Kind Of Damage
Did Danny sleep the whole night away? Obviously not. That never fucking happens. But no one serious showed up and every single one that showed up took one look at his neck and noped out. Apparently there was a bit of a code to not mess with Phantom if he was rocking some injury that was really fucked up. It’s didn’t help that it looked gnarly regardless of form... the choker barely helped and he forgot it almost every time. 
But he managed to make it to morning without further neck or throat damage. He also did not see any online photos or videos of the damage, so far so good. 
He absolutely meticulously inspects his turtleneck options for loose thread or snaggy material. He’s left with a total of three wearable sweaters, not great but not, you know, bad either. The one he goes with is a dark red, in case he bleeds a little, and has a burning Christmas’s tree on it, because anytime is the right time to say fuck you to Christmas. Dumbass holiday, that one. He phases the thing on because he is not dealing with trying to get his head and thusly neck through the long turtleneck part, shit’s painful enough as it is. Him fiddling with the collar in the mirror, the wound is still jagged enough that the fabric brushing against the edges sends twinges of pain up and down his neck. It’s not great. Not at all. Plus, it covers the wound about as well as he expected it to; if anyone one stares or specifically looks at his neck then he’s screwed. 
He’s seriously tempted to just... not go to school. Zone spending the day laying in the park would be better. But the lasts thing he needs is the school calling his parents and them wanting to have a talk with him. Or everything forbid he runs into them while he’s supposed to be in class. Even if he was still getting along with them, which he’s not going to be anytime soon, he wouldn’t want them around him to possibly notice he’s injured. 
Meaning school pretty much has to happen. Sighing to himself and moving down the stairs gingerly enough to not make his sweater move, heading out to go suffer through wildly unnecessary schooling. 
He waves at Sam and Tuck, they’re huddled by his locker, man does he ever love them. Tuck looks so worried at him, “show me immediately. What the hell, man”. 
Danny smirking and gingerly pulling out and down his sweater, wincing a little from the pressure against the back of his neck, “Sam told you?”.
Tuck’s entire face cringes up, “damn that’s hardcore, did you actually thank Dash for doing that to your poor neck”. 
Danny letting go of his sweater and bopping the techno geek on the head, “he literally reattached my head, of course I did”, shrugging, “sure the way he did it is a little shit and a pain in the ass but at least I have a head again”. 
Both of them roll their eyes at him but they’re smiling so it’s pretty clear it’s all in good fun and jest. Tuck poking him, “oh and we’ve already agreed that we’re taking your notes because you absolutely shouldn’t be lifting and lowering you head constantly for hours. You should be attempting to heal”.
“Pfft, since when do I go out of my way specifically for healing but I’m lazy and you guys know that, meaning you know I’m not gonna say no”. 
All three chuckling as him and Tuck head to their first class, Sam going her own way after a bit. 
Danny makes it though exactly twenty three minutes of class before his ghost sense goes off. At least the ice going up his throat felt faintly soothing, as he shoots his arm up, “bathroom”, and leaves without being given the go ahead. No one ever tried to stop him anymore, all he would get was annoyed glares or sad ones in Lancer’s case.
Pulling into the bathroom and changing, relishing the lack of pain for a bit before zipping up invisibly through the ceiling; he’s got a ghost to track down. 
He has absolutely no issue finding the ghost. Why? 
Because he immediately head butted a motorcycle the second his head exited the fucking roof top.
His poor neck. Zone. Why him? 
Danny floating backwards, rubbing his head and grumbling, “Johnny? What the hell, man?”. 
“Oh damn you really did get decapitated, huh?”. 
“The fuck you think? Duh”, sighing and crossing his arms at the ghost, “did you just show up to see for yourself?”. He’s going to be a little pissed if that’s the case. He can do without the ghosts doing ‘wellness checks’ on him anymore than certain ones already did. 
Johnny snorts, “surprised it didn’t wind up mounted on a wall”. 
To be fair, that’s kinda what Danny himself thought would be what happened if he ever did lose his damn head, but that was mostly because of Skulker being the only one that usually tried to ‘relive’ him of his head. Scoffing, “as if I’d ever let Skulker’s sorry ass take my freaking head. Now are you gonna leave peacefully or are you gonna start doing donuts on the rooftop?”. 
“That second one sounds pretty solid but I don’t feel like dealing with your head falling back off because that looks like a damn hack job”.
“Hey! You try fixing anything while blind, deaf, and unable to taste or smell!”.
“Damn”. 
Danny chuckling, “I know, right? Now you leaving or?”, and making shooing motions. 
Johnny smirks, revving his engine. Danny sighing mentally because he knows that translates to ‘let’s play tag, mother fucker’. Johnny shoots off with a, “depends if you can catch me, Phantom”. Typical.
“Damn it, Johnny!”. And now Danny’s off chasing Johnny and his stupid motorcycle. He rarely actually tries to shoot the guy because it feels like a dick move when all the guy generally does is street race and drive on roofs. Hell some of the twenty-something’s actually adored the biker and would race him; which fine Danny let slide because he thought it was a nice human/ghost bonding experience even if it was technically a crime. But hey, Danny’s existence was technically a crime too so why should he care anyways? 
Plus, if he’s being honest, chase racing him was kinda fun, felt a little more like being his actual age again. It’s was practically play for him, which was slightly sad, but they only make it a few streets down and destroy one streetlight before Danny’s got Johnny souped. Danny flipping the thermos in the air a little sillily.
“Oh zone! are you okay!”.
Danny jerks in the air and looks somewhat down at the person that looked to be having tea on their balcony. “Yes, worry not citizen”.
Fuck Danny’s luck, the guy points at his own neck, “uh, you sure about that?”.
Crap. What should he say? “Worry not, it’s not fresh and is healing perfectly fine”. Danny salutes and basically flees the conversation. Especially since he heard the guy whisper about how ‘holy shit ghosts can get actual long term injuries???’. Not good.
He basically speed walks to his home ec class with Sam. Poking her a little hard and trying to ignore the stupid pain in his throat and the fact that he’s pretty sure headbutting a motorcycle bent on of the brackets Dash drilled to goddamn his neck, “a civilian noticed”.
“Well shit. Not surprised but still”, Sam shrugs, “well Tucker’s got any mentions of you set up to ping him so we’ll see if this person keeps things to themselves or not”.
After all, there really wasn’t much else any of them could do.
Does he get a ping from Tuck? Absolutely. It takes all of eight minutes. Danny groaning to himself, he’d thump his head on the table but that would probably hurt something fierce.
Treft26fu: @ whoever DECAPITAED Phantom, you suck and he is weirdly okay with it
Treft26fu: or maybe whoever just wrapped a cord around his neck and TRIED to decapitate him
Treft26fu: anyway this just in ghosts can get proper people like injuries
The guy goes on a tangent for a while actually. Tuck’s managed to actually block the comments from being visible to anyone, thank fuck. Tuck throwing a proper text his way.
Geek: what do you want me to do if he notices no one’s responding to his comments?
Danny humming to himself, the vibrations down his throat aren’t great but aren’t bad either. Well most people would be annoyed if they found out Phantom was silencing them or someone else.
Ghost: pretend to be the G.I.W. silencing people from releasing ghosts are sentient feeling beings
Geek: *snort* nice. So that’s ’I’ll take anti-G.I.W. propaganda for $100’.
Ghost: I’ll take subtle beginning of an uprising for $200
Geek: creating deepfakes in 3… 2.. 1.
Danny just rolls his eyes at the guy not responding after that. Mrs. Canecher snapping, “eyes up here, Fenton”, startling him a little and making him jerk; more than a few people laugh at him. Jerks.
At least he makes it through the rest of his class, goddamn.
Of course that’s exactly when shit goes south. In the form of one Dash Baxter… again kinda. Dash bodily shouldering him into the wall as soon as Danny makes it out of the classroom. And of course Danny winces from that, because getting bashed into a wall is kind of jarring to the fucking bolts and staples in his fucking neck, thank you very much Dash.
Dash’s sneer is practically a growl, even if his eyes don’t really look to be in it, “aw look at little pathetic Fen-tiny flinching from a wall. How ‘bout I give you a real reason to flinch from me”.
Dash grabbing his sweater collar and yanking him up off the ground at the same time as both Danny and Sam snap, “don’t!”.
Dash of course scoffs at their attempt to stop him, sneering down at Danny and ramming him into the wall. Danny closing an eye, wincing, and hissing in pain and frustration. Why did Dash have to be such a fucking jerk all the time? And oh great it feels like that bent bit of metal bracket is being pressed into a fucking vein or something since a quarter of his neck is going numb and fuzzy. Fucking ow. He can feel some portions of nails getting pushed deeper into his skin and blood welling up around them. Wheezing, “put me, down, Dash”; wow his voice sounded extra shit. Like he’d gone and rubbed sand paper on all the nail cuts.
Then Sam, his boss ass him-damned friend, has her boot off and wielded in record time, fully prepared to beat Dash with it regardless of Danny making it very clear he doesn’t want his friends doing that shit to Dash or any other bullies for his sake. He’d rather himself be bullied than anyone weaker/more fragile. Hopefully the fact that she’s doing that when she normally doesn’t is enough to make Dash realise that she’s serious and he needs to fuck off.
Course Dash doesn’t even seem to notice, instead glaring down at a glaring Danny. Which at first makes Danny think this is some ‘dominance’ crap where Dash is just trying to get him ‘scared’ and get him to ‘back down’ and act meek. But a second or two going by and Dash’s glare looking progressively more horrified, gets Danny to actually slap Dash’s wrist off of him.
Shit.
Okay.
Flee?
Flee.
The second Danny’s feet are back on the ground he grabs Sam’s wrist and books it; Dash too stunned to do anything till Danny’s got them around a corner. Danny turning the two of them invisible immediately so he can tenderly put a few fingers up to his throat and wheezing in pain.
Sam whispering, “you good”. Danny shaking his head, blinking away a bit of tearing, and whispering back, “honestly no. He’s, he’s, probably, the worst, person to, notice, this”.
“Considering it’s his handy work?”.
Danny winces a little, nodding slightly and being mildly pissed at the way that pulls on the staples.
Both stilling and staring when Dash, still looking a little horrified, appears around the corner and looks around, him frowning in confusion, “what? Where?”. When he seems sold on currently being alone he stares at the ground, then at his slightly shaking hands, and mutters, “am I just hallucinating now?”, and actually curls in on himself a little as he walks off quickly.
Great. Now Danny feels bad. He’s not trying to make Dash question his own sanity! Ugh. And then Danny feels something hard and definitely metal drop in his throat, instantly sending him into a coughing fit, and practically collapsing to the floor in pain; he absolutely drops the invisibility without really paying any attention to having done so. Sam following him down to ground, worried.
Of course all this results in Dash basically rushing back to see Danny kneeling on the ground, one hand on his throat and another on the ground, while Sam is rubbing his back and glaring bloody murder at the returning jock.
Danny coughs up the end of one of the fucking bolts, it clinking on the ground is extremely loud and it fucking rolls away because of course it does, rolls away right into Dash’s shoe. The clink of it falling over feels like a thunderclap while Danny’s still wheezing and screwing his face up in pain.
At least no one’s in the hallway now, having moved quickly off to their classes the second Sam started actually threatening Dash with her boot; her wrath was well-feared, good. She’d be proud, if Danny wasn’t currently groaning into the floor.
Danny lifting up his head enough to eye Dash staring down at the bolt end touching his foot, Danny deciding fuck it and flopping onto his back on the ground with a wet cough and wince. Sam glancing down at him, “you going to just lay there?”, then going back to staring at Dash.
Danny groans again, absolutely crying a little, “I, am ’ever, lettin’, ‘one bolt, my fuckin’, ’eck, agin”.
Dash fucking squeaks of all things and shuffles over to stare down at Danny, cautiously avoiding the glaring goth. Danny glares at Dash without much feeling, “what? Go’, any ‘ore insuls, to ‘row, my ‘ay?”, coughing wetly and wiping at his mouth with a sleeve, careful not to jostle his head, “or ‘eel, like tossin’, e ‘round, ‘ore?”.
Dash blinks harshly and speaks again, “Phantom? You… coughed up a bolt end”, the guy is fiddling with the damn corroded off bolt end, the green burning on it is very stark. Why the fuck was the guy fiddling with that thing? Ugh.
Sam jerking out a hand, glaring at the jock, “give it and go away”.
“What? I- no! Screw off Manson!”. Ah Dash sounds slightly more normal now. Still freaked but not weirdly flat anymore.
Danny snickers, wincing from his throats bullshit, “I ‘ean, ur the one, eno ‘rewed my, ‘roat”.
Sam groans immediately at him, “goddamn it, Danny”.
Even Dash winces down at him, “Zone fuck, holy shit, you’re… Phantom?”, the guy drops the bolt and runs his hands through his hair, “oh zone I reattached Fenton’s head, zone”. Sam running after the rolling bolt, “damn you too, Dash”. Danny has faith she’ll get it before it causes any issues. Dash is busy pacing in circles currently so…
Yeah. Not helpful.
Fuck his neck felt kinda totally raw in spots and based on the wetness on the back of his neck and head he’s gonna guess he’s making a bit of a puddle of blood. Fun. Ow. Wheezing, “this, this is, ‘finitly the ‘econd, wors’ ‘jury, I’ve had”. He can feel one of the holes in his throat sliding back and forth across the length of the bolt when he talks or swallows. This is hell a little bit.
Dash stops and crouches down on his ankles near Danny’s head staring at him but only kinda seeing him, “second? Worst?”, sputtering, “decapitation? Is second place? What? And I’m? Staring down at Phantom?”, blinking harshly, “Fenton’s-your Phantom?”.
Sam comes back and smacks Dash over the head, “you better keep that to yourself, jackass, now help me move Danny to a bathroom or else”, and grabs one of Danny’s arm, Danny just smacking her with the other as a way to give it over. At least Dash jerks up harshly and does grab his ankles, because yeah Danny’s not standing up right now, not a chance. Dash muttering, “never met your heroes, you might have to put their head back on and find out they’ve been letting you beat them up”.
Danny, with his head resting on one arm so he doesn’t have to strain his -very injured and still stitching itself back together- neck muscles to hold his head up, “gla’ ta see yur handlin’ tis well”. As it is, all this being moved crap is making him feel like one of the staples has popped out partly and is just swinging around tugging on bits of still attached skin.
“Danny, shut up before you jack your throat up even more”. Danny huffing an extremely cold breath at her for that. Her glaring down at him, “jerk”, he can tell her hearts not really in the insult though which was absolutely because he was being an ass purely because his throat felt like it was trying to rekill him and AND now someone has basically figured his shit out. Ugh.
At least they make it into the bathroom, without anyone noticing. Of course the door swings back open the second it closes though, it’s Tuck thank everything; meanwhile Sam vaguely gently puts Danny’s arms, and thus head and neck and upper back, down. Sam and Tuck rounding on Dash who’s still holding Danny’s ankles up for some dumb reason, they point aggressively at the jock, growling, “you”.
Danny wheezing from his less than comfortable position only halfway laying on the floor, “‘ash, if ya ‘on’t, put me ‘own, Imma, ‘ick ya”. Dash doesn’t even react to Sam’s and Tuck’s fingers pointing in his face so Danny absolutely intangibly frees an ankle from the guys hand and kicks him one in the chin; Dash sputtering and dropping Danny’s other ankle immediately.
At least he’s now back entirely on the ground, the nice cold sweet ground. The faint metallic plink on the ground absolutely means he definitely lost a staple though, way too quiet to have been a whole ass bolt; plus he’s pretty sure there’d have to be a big gapping hole for one of those to actually fall through a hole in his skin then onto the floor. The plink also getting Tuck’s attention, him lifting Danny’s head up gingerly and pocketing the kinda eroded staple, Danny doesn’t even look at him, “today is ‘hit”.
Tuck ruffles his hair quickly, “and you sound like shit”, before standing back up and crossing his arms at Dash.
“Ya rye ahvin’ a suck in’ ‘roat wound”.
Sam sighs, explaining to Tuck for Danny, “he coughed up a bolt end and even though I told him to stop talking he won’t shut up”, glaring at Dash more aggressively, “so?”. While Tuck gives Danny a chastising, “dude”. Danny just shrugging his shoulders, wincing at the neck movement, and going back to staring emptily at the bathroom ceiling.
He really shouldn’t have come to school. Like at all. Absolutely terrible decision. Stupid him. Stupid stupid him. Ugh.
Dash’s swallow is loud and makes Danny internally cringe at how much swallowing that aggressively would hurt right now. “So the thing I gave myself a massive hangover over has come back to haunt me on Fenton’s neck, what the fuck”.
Danny blinks, wheezing instead of chuckling, “ah. Ya ‘ctually raid-ed, folk’ lior’ cabnet?”.
Sam and Tuck giving him judgemental looks, while Dash throws his hands out baffled, “I spent an hour shaking and stapling my heroes neck what of course I did-what-oh-my-zone-this-is-a-nightmare”, and starts pacing in circles again.
Tuck chuckles though, eyeing the jock, “are you saying that because Phantom’s Fenton or because of having to deal with a horrific injury”.
“Both!”, Dash stops and gestures aggressively at the geek, “both”, sticking both arms down at Danny, “how even? Zone fuck did your parents experiment on you or something?”, screwing up his face and seemingly speaking more so to himself, “can I get away with beating the Fenton’s up?”.
Danny snorts, wincing, “ow fuck. Naw, my ‘ad, will ‘reak you, ‘ike a ‘ooth-ick, ‘ash”.
“That doesn’t mean he will!”, shaking his arms at Danny, “you didn’t”,
Sam scowls down at Danny, “Danny, shut. Up”, then walking closer to Dash and pointing a finger right in Dash’s face, “one, Danny will be mad if you try to fight his dad. Two, he’ll stop you and fuck his throat up more anyways. Three, it was an accident that you have no damn right to know anything about you asshat. Four-”, signing and dropping her hand, “-my opinion of you just, unfortunately, went up a notch”.
Danny blinking and turning his head, ow, enough to look at her, “oily ‘hit”,
“Shut. Up”.
Danny huffs at her, pushing himself to sit upright with some effort, pointing at Dash then shrugging and dropping his hand.
Dash blinks, “how are you so calm if you’re not dead”.
Tuck groaning, “oh he is dead, just not entirely”.
“That makes zero sense, loser”.
Danny is having none of that, he lifts a hand up again and ecto-blasts the bathroom stall next to Dash’s head. Dash jumps, squeaks, and slowly looks to stare at Danny wide-eyed. Danny quirking an eyebrow, “bad”.
“I- um- okay?”, Dash still sounds squeaky, looking at Sam and Tuck, “holy shit you’re sidekicks”.
For once both Sam and Tuck facepalm for a reason other than Danny being a dumbass. Tuck laughing while Sam sighs, “yes, Dash, obviously”, gesturing at Danny who grins dumbly, “you really think we’d let this dumbass do shit on his own? He’d do something stupider than he usually does”, grimacing at Danny, “Danny, you’re leaking again”.
This time it’s Tuck sighing and grabbing some paper towel to clean Danny’s throat and mouth off. Danny’s almost tempted to wheeze really hard to maybe get blood splattered around but that would be really dumb and really painful for no good fucking reason. He just really hates today and his stupid body right now. Grinning instead, “‘ink ya can un’end a bracke’? Kinda ‘ill ’on’t have feelin’ in ‘art of mi ‘eck”.
Tuck glares at him, “what”, sighing disbelievingly, “you shoulda mentioned that immediately, man. Why do you do this shit to us and yourself”.
Dash flinching, “did I mess up?”, while Tuck moves around to where Danny’s tapping his neck. Danny shrugging, “I ‘ean, num’ ‘eans naw pain, sew”, and shrugs. And sure, part of his mouth was also numb which wasn’t great but hey at least the pain is mostly only radiating from other sections of his neck, giving him one little area of relief.
Sam gestures at Danny though still staring at Dash, “see what I mean. A Dumbass”.
Dash actually nods agreeingly, jerk, before backing up a step or two when Tuck pulls out his personal media kit and one of those sharp art knives from inside, tweezers too but that was probably less startling to the jock. “Going to have to rip a few out, man. And probably cut some stuff”. Him yanking out a staple actually takes so much effort Tuck falls on his back.
Danny cringing, ow, “my ‘ody sure ha’ attichme’ isdues, huh?”. Tuck pushing himself up and clamping down on another staple, “you suck. Sam you wanna help instead of glaring Dash out of existence?”.
The goth huffs, points aggressively at Dash, “you. Stay”, before moving over and grabbing the wannabe scalpel; Danny gripping his knees at the almost feeling of sharp metal on skin.
Oh great it kinda looks like Dash is shaking a bit again. Lovely. But the guy shakes himself off somewhat and actually comes over to help, sorta help at least, too. Grabbing Danny’s shoulders to, Danny guesses, keep him steady.
Danny absolutely feels the second Sam, or Tuck he’s not looking, gets the metal unbent. Him jerking forward, a hand to his neck and headbutting Dash’s chest, “ow! Fuck! Shit! Agh!”. Okay note to self, no pain for a while thanks to numbness equals sudden intense pain when numbness goes goodbye bye. Ow. Why is he so stupid? And Dash is so startled he doesn’t even move or do anything more than huff like he just got the wind knocked out of him which he probably did; Dash falling on his ass seconds later, “shit Fenton! Ow!”.
Sam moving quickly to stitch up the hole she had to cut in him to get good enough access to fix his shit, “stay still, your lucky you didn’t rebend the thing”, grumbling to herself, “at least that jerk bought solid brackets”.
Dash wheezing a little and rubbing his chest, “I wasn’t going to patch freaking Phantom up with cheap shit he’d break in a fight”.
Tuck getting up to clean things, and himself, off in the sink, “that’s actually smart, congrats”, eyeing Sam and Danny, “how’d it get bent anyways”.
Sam growling without looking away from the work she’s almost done, “Dash here slammed him into a wall”.
Danny, kinda staring at Dash as something to do and trying to ignore the pain and pulsing, “actulie I head’utted Jon’s ‘ike”,
“Why would you do that!”.
“Acci’en’! Gosh!”.
Sam huffing, “well the wall didn’t help”, then looking at Dash as she cleans her own hands, “like I said, he’s a dumbass”.
Dash nods slowly, “yeah”, looking down at Danny, who’s just sitting on the ground slightly curled in on himself, “is, are you gonna be good? And why did this hurt but not me drilling your spine?”.
Tuck actually gives Dash a supportive backhanded swat on the arm, grinning, “don’t worry about it, he heals like a beast. Also, he doesn’t feel pain as Phantom”.
Danny straightening out some and stretching, wincing at the throat hole moving over the exposed bolt again, “a ‘essing and curs’”, and promptly coughing again, spitting up metal bits, at least he caught all the shreds and corroded bits in his hand this time. Grimacing at the mess of spit, blood, and metal; getting up with a stagger to wash his hand off, “ew”.
Dash gestures aggressively at Danny as Danny turns around to eye him, “I wouldn’t call that ‘healing’ at all!”.
“Dude, ya re-atta-ed mi ‘ead! Imma ‘ay Imma doin’ a damn ‘ood job”. Oh hey, it’s slightly easier to talk now, cool. It feels like that one hole is closing up now, that musta been where the metal he was just coughing up came from.
Dash opens and closes his mouth, humming and shrugging after a beat, “yeah I guess that would kill most people, huh”. Danny wheeze laughing as Sam and Tuck shout, “YES!”, at that.
No one says anything for a bit until Danny clears his throat, which was dumb to do, and winces. At least one throat hole is gone now, he is so not going to class until he apparently coughs up the other bolt end. “Okay. So. We ‘ood?”.
Tuck grinning at Danny, “well you sound slightly better”.
Danny shrugging, “bye bye ‘aping throat wound”. Tuck gives him a thumbs up like a real friend. Then, of course, he feels the other bolt end inside his throat fall, fuck. That of course causes another coughing fit that sends him to the ground again, Tuck and Sam rushing over to pat his back hard till the damn bolt gets coughed up. Danny just groaning and rolling to lay on his back again, “mevar ‘ind”.
Dash wheezes, “I- um, we’re good. Yeah we’re good. But if I ever run up on an injured Phantom I’m calling your idiot friends since I clearly suck at it”,
Tuck waving Dash off, “Dash, none of us would have known what to do with a decapitation. That was a first for Danny-dude”.
“Yay ‘or mi”, Danny shaking away a few tears, man his body was an asshole. Sitting up enough to look at Dash more properly, “ya ‘id ‘ood”.
Sam snapping, “no he did not!”.
Danny pointing aggressively at her,“tis ’raight an’ ha-n’t fallen oof”.
“That doesn’t mean much”.
“Be ‘orse it I ‘ried to mi ‘elf!”.
“Your head would be backwards and upside down somehow if you did it yourself, moron”,
Danny flips her off. Dash actually chuckles though, “this is the weirdest conversation I’ve ever been in, wow”, then collapsing against a bathroom stall, which causes the doors to open, which results in Dash falling backward with a yelp and fucking knocking himself out with the toilet.
You.. you gotta be kidding? Seriously? Danny blinks, “‘eri-yous-lie?”. Sam actually bursts out laughing while Tuck runs over to help get Dash out of the stall, him snapping, “don’t you even try to think about helping, Danny”.
“Eh I ‘ink I ‘elped enou’ bi ‘ockin’ ‘im out”.
“No”.
“Yes”.
Sam and Tuck glare at each other before laughing, all three of them winding up on the floor laughing, or wheezing in Danny’s case. Dash groaning from the floor a few seconds later, “did I just get knocked out by a toilet?”.
Sam snorts, smirk showing in her voice, “yup”.
“That’s really hilarious actually”, Dash shakes his head, “if I wasn’t probably high on Advil my head would kill me”.
“Hey, at ‘east ‘vil actu-eel ‘orks on ya”.
Dash snorts, “that’s rough man”.
“Eel mi ‘out it”.
“I have no idea what you just said”.
“Piss oof”.
Danny and Tuck pushing themselves to sit up, meaning that now everyone’s basically just sitting in a sorta circle in a men’s bathroom. Cool. Man his throat is killing him though. The fresh stitches on the back left side of his neck stand out in the swath of pain pretty noticeably, why? Because they hurt less. A staple gun was never, ever, getting added to the medi kits; Ancients.
Tuck eyeing Dash, “so, are you actually going to keep your mouth shut about this? About finding out your idols secret identity?”.
Dash puts up his hands, “I’m not Wes, I’m not that stupid”, flushing a little, “but I definitely did tell Kwan about, uh”, gesturing awkwardly at Danny, “patching you? up? Yeah”.
Danny shrugs, trying not to move his neck with the motion, it kinda works, “eh, figs”.
Tuck chuckling and shaking his head, “he means ‘figures’, which yeah even Sam can’t blame you for venting to your best friend, that would be a dick move. Right Sam”.
Sam scowls, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms, before sighing, “fine. It really would be”. Danny giving her and the jock thumbs up, because yeah, talking was not helping his healing ass like at all.
Dash chuckles awkwardly, “yeah, Kwan’s the best”.
Sam sighing, “Kwan will also realise Danny’s Phantom if he sees”, rubbing her temples, “meaning we still have a jock to keep an eye out for”.
Absently, Danny knows it would be a massive dick move to force Dash to keep this from his best friend. Granted Sam and Tuck might also beat him if he gives the jock the go ahead to tell Kwan. But unfortunately Dash continues, “and he did tell Star, who told Paulina, who, uh, told all the cheerleaders, who probably told everyone”.
Sam glares murderously at Dash then Danny, “I’m going to kill him”.
Danny pouting, “‘am, it is ‘ery rude ta ‘reaten ta kill some-on in ‘ront of a ‘hos’”; and then spits up some metal and just rubs it on his pants, he’ll wash them later maybe. All three grimace at him. Whatever.
“Um, let me point out that they did tell everyone and I did not expect to witness hardcore medical drama and hear mind breaking info when I decided to take a smoke break inside for a change. Hi”.
All four jerk and slowly look at the guy peaking out from a slightly open bathroom stall door. Well. Damn it. Screw his existence entirely. Dash and Sam getting up instantly and both looking ready to beat this guy into silence for Danny’s sake. Aw, they’re bonding over murderous intent, how utterly evil and adorable. Meanwhile, Danny decided fuck it and grabs out his phone. Moving to the Amity Teens chat:
thealivedanny: those whose eyes see have mouths that don’t move
Haleykaley: that’s ominous hot shit
Bailnwail: has Fentons phone been possessed again?
Tuck’s phone pings, “Danny… why did my phone just ping the sound it does when you message a public chat?”.
“Eye do ya hav’ a ‘iose spec-fy for mi?”.
“I’ve had one ever since someone accidentally messaged the very public gaming chat a death threat meant for Vlad and a picture of your broken arm with exposed bone”, Tuck glancing at his phone, “ah you’re just terrorising the masses, I see”.
The guy comes out of the bathroom stall entirely, hands up at the goth and jock, “hey I ain’t my fault you guys didn’t do a sweep of the place before starting your soap opera medical drama”.
Danny holding up a finger, “echly it’s a super-atura drame”.
“Debatable”, the guy clears his throat, “look it doesn’t really look like there’s any point in silence here but I ain’t no fucking punk ass snitch”, dropping his hands and shrugging, “just ignore me stealing baby formula for my kid brother and we good”.
Danny pushing himself to stand up, his throat felt less hole filled now, “man, I’a eel tha’ shit fer ya”. Then glancing at his phone when it pings, it’s freaking Dash in the teen chat room.
Football king: those whose eyes see have mouths that don’t move
Danny looking at the jock with a quirked eyebrow, said jock gives him a slightly too wide-eyed thumbs up, “you, uh, seem to have this covered so I’m going to go drown myself-”.
“Didn’ ta toile do tha’ ger ya already?”.
“In Advil, Fen-taco or Danny, whatever”.
Danny snorts, wincing a little, “eh don’ ‘ange. An’ ‘on’t haveta craw to hospit”.
“Screw you, oh this is stupid”, Dash scowling, “and like the guy who crawled into a refrigerator should have any say”.
Tuck eyeing Danny, “oh you told him your stupid rum cereal story?”.
“He ‘ad plans ta get ‘runk, it wah apple-cable!”:
The dude wheeze laughs, “fucking ‘apple cable’, nice”. Danny absolutely flips him off, but the guy smiles, “nice to know our little hero is a dumbass”.
Sam eyes him and decides he passes whatever mental test she was giving him, “yeah. Yeah he is”.
Danny rolling his eyes and looking at his phone, at least nine more people have posted the same ‘those whose eyes see have mouths that don’t move’ message. Well shit. Okay. Well… at least Danny’s got a clue for how many people have seen and just fucking put two and two together to get four. Wes also threw in a ‘those whose eyes see have mouths that do move’, because he’s an ass. Fucking Wes, goddamn. No chill. At least a ton of people respond back either insulting or threatening Wes. Good. And Dash also leaving shaking his head is probably good too.
The guy eyes them before jabbing a thumb towards the bathroom stall he came out of, “am I cool to finish my cigarette? Since I put that shit out as soon as you guys hauled ass in here?”.
Sam sighing, her, Tuck, and Danny all exchanging shrugs before Sam gives the guy a go ahead, “sure fine, whatever. But yeah, that snitches get stitches and wind up in ditches thing can absolutely be very literal”.
“Tell that to the whole school then”.
“I will”. Sam basically grabs Tuck and Danny and drags them out of the bathroom. Her grumbling at Tuck as she continues dragging them, likely to their next class, “how bad is it”.
Tuck speaking while scrolling through his phone, “bad, there’s really no way to keep a cap on this”.
Danny hums, which doesn’t hurt nearly as much now that the bolts aren’t inside his throat. Pulling out his phone and dropping a link to one of the many videos of his folks ranting about ‘evil ghosts’ in the chat. Which gets the chat bombarded with ‘THOSE WHOSE EYES SEE HAVE MOUTHS THAT DON’T MOVE’ and he’s pretty pleased with himself over that.
Tuck snorting as Sam pulls them to their seats, “smooth dude, now everyone who didn’t already know, knows it had to do with ghosts, GrEaT iDeA”. Oh the sarcasm was thick there.
Sam pulling out her own phone and scrolling, smacking Danny on the arm, it would have been a head slap if his neck wasn’t still fucked, “idiot! But ugh, at least it seems like it’ll keep people quiet. At least from the Fenton’s and maybe adults in general”.
Tuck shaking his head, “yeah, I still don’t get why all the adults have such a hard time seeing that, at the very least, Phantom’s good”.
Sam growling right back, “because they’re stupid and think that just because they’re adults and we’re kids that there’s no way they could be wrong and us right. And that if kids all agree on or do something then it must be dumb, wrong, or immature”.
Lily turning to face them, “a lot of us also do stupid shit, case and point”, pointing at Danny, “you coming to school with a barely attached head that looks awful holy shit”.
Ah crap, Danny mildly panicky readjusts up his turtleneck, fuck him so much. Tuck and Sam just sigh tiredly at this point, and another ‘those whose eyes see have mouths that don’t move’ gets added to the chat. But the girl grins at him, “you could totally get an awesome tat to cover that though”, leaning over, “I know a guy”.
What?
Sam is interested immediately, “oh do tell, I’ve been dying to get some webs on my shoulders”, grinning evilly, “especially because my parents will stop trying to stick me in strapless dresses then”.
The two girls absolutely do exchange info while one of the cheer leaders, Brittney he thinks, be-lines to his desk. Shit shit shit. But all she does is slam down a thing of lozenges, “here, we use these after practices and games since all that cheering makes for a wicked sore throat”. Danny is confused, “thanks?”. She cringes, “wow you do need them”, smirking, “at least you sound like a gruff musician now”; and walks off to her seat.
Apparently everyone takes that as a sign to give Danny stuff, because goddamn everyone brings him something and by the time the teacher shows up Danny has a little mound of random trinkets and things on his desk. Sam and Tuck are wheeze laughing at him. The teacher quirks an eyebrow at him, “Mr. Fenton?”.
“I’m a ‘agon apparently and tis my horde”.
“Are you sick?”.
“No physicals but in da head prob”.
The teacher rolls her eyes at him before starting the lesson. He spends the entire class getting bombarded by direct messages.
‘Get lots of sleep’
‘There’s some stupid powerful muscle relaxers in my locker’
‘West side bathrooms water is green again so don’t use that to wash up’
‘Do you have enough food’
‘I’m giving Dash first aid lessons against his will for you’
‘You want some apple pie’
‘Whoever did that is going down in my notes as ‘head stealing asshole’ forever more’
‘I cleaned your blood up, no worries’
‘You want more losengezes’
‘I’m making everyone sign a get well soon card bye the bye, it’s glittery and cute’
‘There’s balloons in your locker now, open when most chaotic for maximum chaos’
‘I will cry on your shoulder to feed you emotions if that’s a real thing ghosts do’
‘I’ve got a great emotion support ferret if you want something to pet’
‘I shall supply you with an alarming amount of soothing teas’
And on and on it went, he had to put his phone on silent for fucks sake! It was kinda cute and nice though. Even if it seemed like the entire school had now decided to baby him. And as soon as class ends he gets jumped by one of the drama kids, who throws gauze around his neck.
Danny sputtering and taking a ‘no limbs are allowed to touch’ stance, the gauze hanging like a scarf, “why!?”.
“To wrap it so it doesn’t get infected, obviously”. The kid just walks away.
Tuck, looking at his phone, chuckles, “dude, you’ve been given the ‘is baby’ role”. Danny just pouts and pulls the gauze off from the back of his neck. This wasn’t useful for him, he’d dissolve it, but hey the sentiment was nice.
Jasper chuckling as he comes out of the classroom behind them, “yeah because you’re not taking care of yourself apparently”.
Someone actually gives him a whole ass pie in the hallway before the trio manages to get to their next class, he’s pretty sure they all actually missed lunch somewhere in the time they were dealing with Dash. So hey, free food! Definitely appreciated. Even if he hunches over it to make the fact that he’s just phasing pieces into his stomach not super obvious, and it’s not as good as Skulker’s but the teacher doesn’t give him shit for eating in class beyond glaring… which half the class glares right back at the teacher for.
Then, of course, his ghost sense goes off. Fuck him entirely. Hand shooting up, “bathroom”, and him fucking off. This time he’s careful about potential headbuttable objects when he phases his head through the school roof.
By the time he finds the ghost, it’s Technus annoyingly, there’s not much for him to do. Why? Because at least twelve teens and goddman twenty little kids are kicking and throwing things at the ghost and shouting about leaving Phantom alone. Technus is actually curled up crying, “I CAME TO CHECK ON HIM! PLEASE STOP SMALL CHILDREN!”.
Danny is so fucking confused.
Him floating down slowly, “uh? Whatcha doin’?”.
One of the teens stops, huffing, “well you need to heal, dontcha? Literally no one’s actually seen you with an injury that lasts more than a few seconds”, shrugging, “so no fighting for you”.
Is… is this how he’s going to have to tell the town that he actually likes getting into fights? Oh man, awkward. “I enjoy it though”.
“You are injured. No fighting. In fact-”, the girl digs in her pocket and holds out some tickets to him, “-you shouldn’t even be in school. Go have fun at that little petting zoo in Elmerton”.
Danny takes them because it would be rude not to, right. Blinking at the whimpering ghost, “I’m… still gonna soup him”.
“That’s what you call it? That’s adorable”.
Danny blushes and quickly captures the beaten miserable ghost, immediately leaving. Making it back to class at the same time that Sam and Tuck get bodily pushed out of it. Danny blinking at them, “uh?”.
Sam shakes her head fondly, “apparently we’re supposed to go to a petting zoo?”. Tuck chuckling, “we’ve also been given firm instructions to swaddle you, but I am not caring you around in a teenager sized fabric baby swaddle”; he actually holds up a bunch of fabric.
Danny blinks harshly, “what”, shaking his head and holding up the tickets, “some kids were curb stomping Technus mosh pit style. I’m legit a little touched”. Sam gives an impressed whistle before snagging the tickets, shrugging, and dragging both boys off. Guess they are indeed going to a petting zoo.
“Hey good morning guys, welcome to the Elmerton petting zoo. We’ve got brushes and some treats to the side, or you can just give them pet downs and love with your hands and hearts; everyone here is super friendly, though Flapjacks the black goat is a headbutter”.
Sam snorts eyeing Danny, “you’re a goat, Danny”.
“Goated, you mean”.
She absolutely smacks him for that.
The lady continues, “most places won’t let you hand feed but we gave up on that because you Amity kids are a nightmare and never follow rules”.
Tuck snorting, “how’d you know we’re Amity Parkers”.
“You’re skipping school boldly and look dead inside, obvious tell”. Danny absolutely doubles over wheeze laughing at that, a rabbit sniffs him cautiously.
“And just like goats, you guys are always finding new and interesting ways to nearly kill yourselves. Muffintail got stuck upside down in a random bucket last night and screamed bloody murder till one of the dogs got him out”, pointing to some signs, “we have more neat info about goats over there besides their desire to die”.
Danny snickers, smirking at Sam and Tuck, “Muffintail huh? ‘It’s muffin time, who wants a muffin, please I just wanna die. Please somebody kill me, please it’s muffin time’”.
Tuck wheezes, “fuck that’s so old Danny, zone damn it”. The petting zoo lady laughs to herself too.
Sam wandering off to grab some carrots and poking the roasters with them, at least the roosters actually eat said carrots. A peacock jumps on her head though, Danny and Tuck both absolutely taking a photo of that shit. The zoo lady smiling at that before speaking up again, “before you start wandering around too much, Amity Parker’s aren’t allowed in the horse or deer area since all that ghost smell freaks them out. Please don’t scare our horses and deers. And since there’s blood on your sweater, please leave the wolves alone as they will bite you”.
Tuck laughs while Danny’s face heats up something fierce, he absolutely didn’t bring a spare sweater though so… Danny muttering, “I forgot about that”. Tuck patting his back before he does actually wonder off to bother the other rabbits.
Of course the second Danny’s left up to his own devices he immediately gets rammed in the back by a black goat, which proceeds to walk on his back when he falls over. The petting zone lady scolding it, “Flapjacks no”, when the goat physically jumps up and down on him. Sam absolutely got a video and sent it to the teen chat along with a ‘can’t go anywhere with this dumbass’. There’s mass responses of ‘bad goat!’ and one person commenting that ‘oh I know that one, he’s called flapjacks because he’s a jackass’. The lady does get Flapjacks off him long enough for him to get swarmed by curious bunnies, Tuck following after and laughing at the bunny pile that Danny’s become. That also goes into the chat and gets far more ‘cute’ responses.
The amount of time Danny gets followed around by bunnies is adorable and weird, Danny blinking at his bunny herd, “I think bunnies like me”. Tuck pouting, “I want the bunny love”; Danny gives the guy a bunny, it kicks him immediately. Poor Tuck, Danny snickers at him.
Sam walking over with an owl in her arms, the petting zoo lady looking confused in the distance. “You would think bunnies would hate you, since you’re basically a predator”.
“I don’t eat ghosts, Sam”.
Tuck snickering, “You should, get that ecto”.
“Ew! Tucker!”, Sam smacks the geek, “they are sentient beings!”.
“And sentient beings are delicious, my point stands”.
“Blood mouth”.
Danny laughing at the mild argument, laughing until one of the bunnies decides to bite him right in the fucking throat, “augh! ow what the fuck!”, the bunny runs of with a staple in its mouth. “No no no no no no no no, give that back!”. Danny winces and chases after the bunny even with bits of pain shooting up the side of his neck now; it was doing a pretty good job of healing. Was.
It takes ten minutes of him, Sam, and Tuck chasing the bunny for Sam to catch it and get the semi-dissolved severely ecto-contaminated staple out of the bunnies teeth. The bunny is very mad about loosing its prize and immediately starts biting Danny’s shoes. Danny huffing, holding a bit of fabric to his neck to stem the renewed bleeding, asking the petting zoo lady, “what’s that one’s name?”.
“I Eat My Cereal Dry”.
“Well I Eat My Cereal Dry is a dick”.
She laughs at that at least, while the trio continues wandering around the area.
Lindsey thinks that outside of the bitey rabbit and back-butting goat the whole trip turns out pretty good for the three kids. Sure after school let’s out the place basically gets swarmed by Casperhigh students to the point where the place hits max capacity. She’s frankly flabbergasted and vaguely overwhelmed, especially when most of the students are more interested in the kid with the extremely disturbing neck injury that keeps getting harassed by bunnies.
Like… they’re damn near hand feeding the kid more than the animals, giving him head pats and arm pats and back pats; Millie the goat gets jealous and starts trying to get them to stay away from the boy. Adorable but strange.
At least none of them go near the horses or deers.
Thankfully Danny’s able to go home without running into his parents or any ghosts, seemingly Techus or Johnny or Boxy told everyone to fuck off; Technus getting ganged up on was probably a pretty solid warning to most since everyone really only wanted to fight Phantom specifically or cause random chaos, not get assaulted by children with severely brutalised senses of danger.
Zone, he even makes it through the night uninterrupted for a change!
And checking his throat out in the mirror in the morning, moving it around and prodding at the stitching, and scars from all the staples that have since dissolved. It still ached a bit but there’s no actual pain. The steel brackets are definitely still there because Dash went and grabbed thick ass fuckers but all the bolts are gone for sure, so swallowing and physically eating still made a bunch of pressure on his throat; meaning he’s still sticking to phasing food into his stomach instead of chewing shit.
Jazz bangs on the door a little aggressively, Danny sighing as it just pops open, her staring at his neck, “seriously? Are you okay?”.
Danny sighing again for good measure and rolling his eyes at her, “I am now, yes I know the scarring is gnarly, that’s because of a not super great patch job and not because of how bad the injury was”.
Jazz sighs shaking her head, “I saw the chat by the way”, her leaning on the doorframe, “so, everyone knows now, huh?”.
Danny groans exaggeratedly, he’d tilt his head back dramatically if he wasn’t still slightly injured, “just the teens thankfully”, eyeing her, “they're a lot better about ghosts than the towns adults”.
“You mean the Fenton’s”.
“I mean all of the adults, Jazz. Mom and dad… are just the worst of them”.
She hums at him, which he ignores, “are you even bothering to cover it up now?”.
He knows exactly why she’s asking that, he’s in just his standard simple long sleeve that he always wears nowadays meaning that everyone and anyone will be able to see the scars and bits that are still healing. But he grabs up a handkerchief from the counter, “I’m still covering it, just not really caring about whether I draw attention to it or not”. After all, adults generally won’t ask, teenagers definitely would have… if they didn’t all already know what was up.
“I still don’t like it”.
Danny huffing, “it’s not really your scar to like or show off or not, Jazz”. Zone, with this there was almost no point in bothering to hide any of his scaring anymore, but going bare arms might be pushing it right now, considering how severe some of the scaring was. Eh maybe someday, but not today. “It’s not like mom and dad will really notice”. She cringes but he doesn’t really care if she doesn’t like the honesty.
Jazz nods a little, “well I’m off, try to stay in school?”.
Danny waving her off as he’s grabbing up the handkerchief, “yeah yeah yeah, the ghosts have backed off to let me heal a little so I might be able to actually do that”, chuckling, “apparently decapitation is freaky to them. Who knew”. That does get a laugh out of her at least, before she fully leaves.
Danny not too far behind.
Sam and Tuck eye the handkerchief and chuckle to themselves. Sam smirking, “nice neck piece, bored of sweaters already?”.
“Pfft, you know how I like to keep things interesting”.
Kwan shouting, “Fenton! How’s your headless doll situation!”.
What? Danny looks to the jock, confused, “what are you even talking about, Kwan?”.
“You know, like that thing where a ladies head is held by a ribbon? Except you’ve got bolts and staples and thread?”.
Danny rolls his eyes, “that green ribbon story? That has nothing to do with dolls man, but it does have to do with dead people and a decapitation, I guess”, and shrugs, pointing to the handkerchief, “ain’t perfect but my heads almost fully reattached, nothing is actively holding anything on anymore”. At Kwan pointing at his own neck and tilting his head, Danny just assumes he’s asking further about his fashion choices, “it’s still healing, man, it looks gnarly”.
Kwan waves that answer off, “pssh, who cares. Scars make men of boys!”.
Danny, vaguely insulted, grabs the bottom of his shirt and yanks it up aggressively, gesturing at his torso and the aggressive amount of scaring there. Including the nasty, repeatedly reopened, and rarely stitched back together right, Y incision. “You sure about that one?”.
Kwan gapes a little, “dude, you are ripped”.
Of course that’s what he cares about, Danny facepalms immediately. Dropping his shirt and sighing, “I’m still not walking around with a fucking barely healed decapitation scar, Kwan”. The guy has the audacity to pout at him.
Then someone yells, “nice neck! You goof!”.
Danny chuckles to himself, everyone in this goddamn town was so fucking weird and he loved them for it.
He really only keeps up with wearing the handkerchief while shits healing and when he knows his folks are gonna be around, every single teen just seemed to think it was cool. He got lots of lanyards with pins to ‘decorate’ the scar, some weird handkerchiefs, Emilie even knitted him an infinity scarf. The one that made him laugh the most, and realise that things definitely were going to be just fine, was him getting mobbed by the art kids sticking temporary tattoos all around and over the scarring; it looked so damn silly seeing one of his gnarliest scars just covered in unicorns and seagulls and stars and an angry goat. Somehow everyone having fun with it and him not being bothered by it kept the adults from ever even trying to ask about it.
End.
PRompts: Tooth-rotting fluff occurs at Casper High after Danny's secret identity is revealed. Identity reveal. Dash finds out Danny is Phantom. What happens? Could be swagger bishie or not, either or is okay. Danny, Sam, and Tucker go to a petting zoo. Danny receives an injury or scar that he can't easily hide in one form, let alone two.
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ao3feed-ladynoir · 13 days
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batfamficprompts · 8 months
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Prompt #19
Bruce gets injured on a Justice League mission. The rest of the bats invade the Watch Tower to go see him, and have a laugh at the expense of Bruce and the rest of the JL when they find out how many people Bruce actually works with in Gotham.
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bubblegumbeech · 1 year
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Don’t Try Again
Happy Truce @greatbigolhampuckjustforme
Here’s your fic, I hope you like it! AO3
“Give me your hand.”
She reached towards him. At the same time—no, faster than the others but only by just a moment.
It was long enough. 
Once he took her hand he was pulled, firmly, securely, into her arms. It felt comforting, safe.
She had been his enemy, she had been his friend. She had almost been more.
Now, in this moment, she was his protector.
It had started fine. A normal day. Red Huntress was chasing him down after he dealt with Cujo’s weekly ‘walk’. (The one where he destroyed half the town because he had the zoomies.) 
He hadn’t expected to fly face first into a ghost shield. 
Then again, he had never been particularly observant. 
The shield had been different from what he was used to—sticky and malleable as opposed to solid with a slight buzzy feeling. It also burned, not anything excessive, or that he couldn’t handle, but uncomfortable and corrosive nonetheless. 
He couldn’t get it off. Like a mosquito trapped in amber, the more he struggled the more it started to incase him. Even Red Huntress had stopped, watching in dark fascination as Phantom became trapped. 
His parents had jumped out from around a corner, claiming victory and monologing about their new invention. 
His parents were still celebrating when the GIW found them, and started writing tickets and trying to claim government jurisdiction over his capture. 
Danny didn’t bother rolling his eyes, but he did groan as he felt the substance start to turn hard and sharp around him. It made every move to escape both more difficult and more painful, the still soft and moldable parts eating away at his ectoplasm with the jagged bits digging into fresh wounds and making themselves at home.
He really wasn’t claustrophobic, especially not with the amount of times he got trapped in the thermos. Something about being completely unable to move without his physical form being dismissed though…Every movement punished…
It was shrinking. 
The trap-burning goo-stuff that hurt. 
It was getting smaller and burning through him. His ectoplasm. Was this how Dani felt? When she started fizzling away? 
There was a moment were he just froze, the realization taking hold. He knew, of course, that his parents as hunters weren’t particularly worried about how safe their weapons and traps were to use on ghosts. They had no qualms about… well, anything, in the name of their research and vendetta. 
He just kind of hoped that, like most of their inventions had been so far, their future inventions would turn out to be mostly useless. 
His eyes met Red Huntress. She, unlike the other hunters, was not celebrating. She was watching though. Her nails tapped in an erratic rhythm against the weapon clipped to her belt and she looked on edge. Like she was half a second away from doing… something. 
Danny didn’t know what that something might be.
Wasn’t really sure he wanted to either. His faith in humanity was starting to be at risk. At least Skulker’s traps were only ever uncomfortable or shorted out his powers. He’d never had one slowly start to dissolve him. 
But he knew what he had to do. It wasn’t worth Ending over. And he could always do something to fix it if it went badly. As long as he survived. As long as whatever this was didn’t reach his core. 
He transformed.
It hurt. 
The crystallized goo splintered apart, cutting and tearing even deeper into Danny’s skin. But it didn’t burn anymore. At least whatever this was wouldn’t work on both forms. No worries about it being a modern Blood Blossom. 
His parents’ eyes went wide behind their goggles, there was a gasp from Red Huntress and the GIW moved for their weapons. 
Maddie was the fastest.
She hit him—hard. 
The Fenton Anti-Creep Stick cracked against the side of his head and Danny staggered back down to his knees, crashing them into some of the thin splinters of the sharpened goo. 
What? Why did she….?
He shook his head but that sent the whole world spinning and didn’t help him decipher any of the things being screamed over him. 
The only thing he saw as the edges of his sight went blurry was Red Huntress reaching out, and the only thing he could do was take her hand before he collapsed entirely. 
Danny woke up in a familiar room. It wasn’t his though, and he couldn’t remember—
“Owww,” he groaned, hand lifting to his head. Everything was still spinning, despite his accelerated healing. Luckily the rest of the wounds, cuts and general abrasions had disappeared during his impromptu nap. Only his knees were really still chewed up and someone had cleaned them up at least.
Right now he kind of wished his brain had disappeared too. 
Two warm hands pressed gently at his shoulders. “Lie back down lover boy,” a warm voice said from beside him. “You’re hurt.”
“Val?” he asked, his vision still blurry. “What did you…?”
“I took you home to get you bandaged. You transformed in front of damn near every ghost hunter in town.”
He let himself fall back into the plush pillow, biting at his lip to try and ground the pain. “So you knew.”
There was a snort, and Danny closed his eyes. Figured. He was bad at lying.
“I didn’t know,” she said, to Danny’s surprise. “But I know your… cousin. So when you transformed I put two and two together. Unlike other, less talented hunters, I know you are who you say you are.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Her grip on his shoulders tightened, just a bit, before letting go and smoothing the wrinkles out of his shirt. 
“Your parents are on a man hunt. They think the worst. You remember that Amorpho guy?”
“Couldn’t forget him if I tried.” A useful ally, but a horrible enemy to have. Especially if you didn’t know his tells. 
“Yeah, well, they think you're something like a cross between him and Spectra.” She looked uncomfortable. “They think you… stole your own body.” 
Danny sighed. “Of course they do. I need to talk to them, set this right.”
But Val was still holding him down.
“You’re not going anywhere to get yourself killed until you’re fully healed. Understand?”
Danny nodded slowly, careful not to move too much and set off the spinning again. 
“Good.” She smiled, brushed a bit of hair from his forehead , then leaned down and kissed him gently on the corner of his eye. “Go back to sleep. I’ll run interference.”
He was fairly certain that sleeping after a concussion was probably a big no, but he was already half dead and a little brain damage was nothing compared to some of the other stuff he’d dealt with. So Danny let himself fall asleep, two warm and delicate hands carding through his hair and carefully avoiding the bandage there. 
When he woke up it was to the smell of food. Real food, without that zesty sting of ectoplasm he’d grown used to. It smelled delicious, even if Danny’s head was still spinning as bad as it was last night he still probably wouldn’t have been able to resist seeking it out. 
He was pretty much healed by now though, even with the sting of whatever it was that had gotten him trapped in the first place. 
Walking slowly into the kitchen, he saw Val at the table, two plates and two cups of coffee still just barely steaming.
“You’re lucky,” she said. “The food was going to get cold if you took any longer waking up.”
“Thanks.” He sat down across from her and took a bite out of the toast before diving after the coffee.
Valerie was looking at him. It was the same gaze she’d always reserved for Danny Fenton ever since their almost-not-relationship. Warm, bemused, soft. 
For some reason he had expected it to change when she found out. To turn sour, or dark, or bitter, or betrayed—
“Stop thinking so much,” she said, tossing a piece of toast at him.
He caught it and immediately licked the jam off in a small petty act of retribution. 
Her laugh was still the same. And despite every warning Sam and Tucker had ever given, it still turned his core to goo just hearing it.
“You’re not mad?” He set the toast down, fiddling with his hands and avoiding eye contact. He knew what the answer likely was. Even so, he still really needed to hear it out loud. Something. A certainty worth holding onto even if it was likely to break his heart. 
“Should I be?” she said softly, dropping her chin onto the back of her hand. “I mean, I tried to End you quite a bit before we started getting along better. And you knew who I was. That I was the one hunting you. 
“Honestly if you had told me I would have thought you were trying to trick me or something but…”
“But?”
She caught his gaze for a bit, searching. Eventually she gave up, pushed back from the table and sighed. “I saw your expression when your mom hit you.”
What expression did he have? Scared? Desperate? Was it too human to not believe?
Val gathered the empty dishes and walked them to the sink. Danny rushed to follow, offering to dry as she cleaned them. 
“… You looked like you were expecting it.”
Ah.
She turned to him, her hand resting warm and still a bit wet over his own on the counter. 
“Will you be okay Danny?”
That was the question wasn’t it? 
“I don’t think that’s really up to me anymore,” he chuckled, rubbing at the back of his neck with his free hand. 
Val frowned. Her grip tightened. 
“Val?”
She stepped even closer, not letting him pull back, crowding him against the counter and wow.
Danny knew she was strong– all sturdy muscles and a solid frame so vastly unlike his own lanky moldable-even-when-he-was-human form, but it was different entirely to have the full force of that muscle pressed against him.
He fought a blush. They’d decided, the two of them, that their fight was more important. Danny needed to protect Amity Park. So did Val. 
They’d tried protecting it from each other. Then with each other. Then adjacent to each other. 
It was better not to get too involved with all those… secrets.
“Danny,” she said, catching his eyes. “No more secret identities right?”
He nodded. 
She nodded too and lifted a hand slowly to his cheek, as if asking for permission. He didn’t stop her.
Even as she leaned in. Even as she kissed him. 
He tried to stop her when she pulled away though. 
They stayed like that for some time. Touch, taste, warmth, the only things Danny bothered to think about. Living (for once) in the moment. 
But there was only so long a single moment could last, and eventually they pulled apart. 
“If you need help—“
Danny chuckled. “I already come to you when I need help, Val.”
She blushed, her skin just a touch darker around her ears and cheeks. “Shut up,” she said. “This time I won’t try and run you off, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Let’s get to school.” She walked back to her room to grab her bag, and Danny remembered he was still wearing the same gross clothes from yesterday. They were torn in very unflattering ways with splatters of unknown goo, ectoplasm, and blood. 
They also smelled bad. 
“Uh… lemme call Jazz first.”
Jazz was able to bring his clothes so he could shower in the locker room. Other than that, school was pretty normal. He warned Sam and Tucker that his secret was probably out so they should be prepared in case anyone went after them.
The trouble was, he didn’t really know what to do now. Should he go home? Ask to stay at someone’s place? Hide out in the Zone for a bit? What would help get his parents to trust him? What would keep him safe?
Was there even a good answer to that?
Why was he so scared? There were plenty of times they found out and accepted him… before he reset time or reality or their memories—
He could always do that again. Ask Clockwork for a favor, rewind time a day. Just one. He was usually pretty accommodating with those kinds of requests. 
But the memory of a warm kiss after breakfast stopped him. 
Would they have that if he didn’t let this go?
Was one of these things worth the cost of the other?
Why was he so scared? Still? 
Val found him after the last class ended. There weren’t any ghost attacks all day. Danny didn’t know if it was because the day itself was just a bit boring, or if his parents' new traps had done more damage than he’d like to think about, but he still couldn’t concentrate in class.
Because of course not. His day off was for worry and confusion and over thinking. Relaxation? That was for the — well clearly not for the dead, huh? 
“You’re sure you feel alright?” she asked. 
“Right as rain!” Danny forced an easy going grin. “Real rain, not the ecto-mix we get here in Amity Park.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re half ghost. I think the Ecto-mix is actually a better metaphor.”
Exaggerating a pout, Danny trailed a fake tear down the side of his cheek. “You wound me.”
“I’ll try to avoid that in the future.” She ruffled his hair, gently, and then she was gone. With the speed she left, she probably had work right after school. 
He watched her go, lost in thoughts once more. What were they now? What could they be if he just let this go? Let whatever was happening, happen. 
What would happen if he didn’t?
“Danny?” Jazz tapped him on the shoulder. Startling him. 
It took a second of Danny holding a hand over his heart and glaring at his sister before he calmed back down to his usual– probably unhealthy– levels of anxiety.
He shook his head and started walking. “Sorry, thinking about homework. What were you saying?”
She didn’t look convinced. She shouldn’t, he was a bad liar. But he was trying. “Are you sure you want to come home tonight? Val told me—“
“Yeah,” he shrugged, forcing his smile to look more relaxed than he felt. “The longer I put it off the worse it’ll be, you know?”
Jazz shook her head. “It’s your choice little brother.”
No, not really. If he had a choice…
Would he tell them anything at all? Would he have told anyone?
Wouldn’t he have kept it from Jazz too?
“Mom?” Danny knocked on the door of the lab, Jazz next to him just in case. “Dad? Can I talk to you for a second?”
It was silent. Danny called out again. 
This… wasn’t a good sign. 
He stepped back.
A voice, sickly sweet. “Where are you going, sweety?”
“I… uh…”
His mom and dad stepped up from the bottom of the basement, the shadows hiding most of their expressions. 
“I needed to explain—“
He heard it before he saw it. But it didn’t matter either way. Jazz was pushing him aside and shouting. 
“Get out of here for now!”
So he did.
He disappeared and watched his sister argue with his parents about how human he was and—
“We won’t hurt him! We just want to make sure—“
Was the last thing he heard before he made it outside. 
To make sure.
Of what? How? What was that thing they shot at him? A new invention? Already? 
His stamina had never been very good so the short sprint from home was very short and soon Danny was just walking in the opposite direction of his house. Aimless. 
It wasn’t like he had to worry about curfew right then, not with the much bigger threat looming over him. 
He was just outside the Nasty burger and about a third of the way to Tucker’s place when he heard it. 
“Get run out?” 
“Taking a walk,” Danny smiled up at Red Huntress as she hovered above him. “Walking’s for nerds. Come take a flight with me instead.”
So he did that too. 
Easier to go with the flow than to try and think on his own. 
He transformed, not bothering to look if anyone saw him. The ones that mattered knew now anyways. 
“Can you even keep up on that thing?” He nodded towards Val’s hoverboard even as she revved it.  “Or should I go easy on you?”
“Hah!” She shifted her weight back, zooming forward past Danny. “If anything, I should be the one with a handicap.”
He smirked, watching her silhouette as it got smaller, then flew after her. It was more fun to catch up than to stay ahead. 
They ran across Skulker. Because of course they did. Turned out the reason today was so quiet was because he’d been planning some kind of ambush and scaring other ghosts away. 
Too bad for him.
“Ah,” he said, looking up from the trap he was setting as Danny and Val both slowed to a stop above him. “You’re here a bit… early.”
“Sorry about that,” Danny said, “I’d have taken another lap around town before stopping but I didn’t want to embarrass anyone.”
“Ha,” Red Huntress rested her large ecto-weapon on her shoulder. “You’re lucky I was going easy on you then. Otherwise the one embarrassed would be Phantom.”
“You’re just saying that cause I won~”
“In your dreams.”
“That’s weird, the last dream I had you were definitely—“
She coughed, loudly. “J-just help me catch this creep!”
Success. Danny would love to see if she was blushing under her helmet, but for now just getting her flustered was reward enough. 
Skulker had tried to run off while the two of them were distracted, so Danny threw a wall of ice in front of him, forcing him to turn around. He shot a net out in retaliation, and Danny (in his usual fashion) couldn’t decide whether to phase through it or dodge and got tangled up in it.
“Shit—“
“Ha! I see your dodging hasn’t improved.” Red Huntress zoomed past, aiming her ectoweapon and firing three shots successively. Each one missed as Skulker dodged and burned a hole through Danny’s ice shield. 
“I see your aim hasn’t improved,” he sneered, finally cutting away the last of the net with a sharpened piece of Ecto-ice. 
An ecto-blast whistled right past his ear and Danny glanced up, affronted. 
“Whoops~,” Red Huntress sang before following after it. “Try to keep up this time, would ya?”
Danny let himself smile as he kicked away the last of the net. Maybe he should let her win this one.
They had defeated Skulker and Danny let Red Huntress trap him in her cube to send him back to the Ghost Zone. He didn’t really know when he’d be able to use his parents’ portal again after all. 
She released her suit, and he undid his transformation, and the two of them walked, hand in hand for a bit, before deciding to get some food at the Nasty Burger.
He hadn’t even taken a bite of the fries before everything started to weigh on him again. 
“I just… don’t get it,” he mumbled, unable to even taste the salty mush now in his mouth. “You handled it so well.”
Val sat back. “I told you, I met your cousin. I already knew about—“
“Everyone always handles it so well… why can’t they?”
He didn’t mean to interrupt. Didn’t really mean to say any of it out loud either. But she leaned in before he could apologize. 
“What do you mean Danny?” Her hand reached for his. 
“Everytime…” he thought back to the different times and different situations where his secret got out. Desiree, Freakshow, some of the others… “Dash and Paulina and Lancer always handle it well when they find out even though they hate me—“
“I don’t think Mr. Lancer hates you.”
“And Jazz handled it so well too! Why isn’t there one—one timeline where they handled it with grace?”
“Danny,” her hand grabbed his shoulder. “Timeline?”
He didn’t answer.
She let go reluctantly and it showed on her face. In the pinch of her brow and the confusion of her eyes. 
“Danny, can you do something for me?”
Her voice was light and Danny found himself nodding without even thinking. Of course he would. He would do anything he could to help her.
It took a moment. Them gazing into each others eyes, trying to read what the other was thinking, before she smiled and pat his hand. 
“Good. Promise me you won’t reset this timeline. You won’t try to change their reactions—“
“But—“
She held a hand to his mouth. “No. Give them a chance to grow, to get used to it. And don’t take this,” she squeezed his shoulder, gesturing to the two of them, “away from me.”
“Okay,” he said, “okay.”
They shared another small kiss, short and sweet, before she punched him on the shoulder and told him to man up.
“I’ll go with you,” she said. “Let’s set this straight.”
And maybe this time they would. 
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thatonebirdwrites · 6 months
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Inspired by this tumblr post: https://www.tumblr.com/behbuh/635680820397555712/was-anyone-elses-heart-beatin-like-crazy-when
What if Kara had returned and confessed? Dropped it in AO3 in case that's easier to read.
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aalissy · 1 year
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Kwagatama
Oof, sorry this chapter is late D:. I’ve been superrr busy lately!! Anywho, I hope you enjoy this lil reveal fic. It does contain spoilers for Reunion so if you haven’t seen that ep plz do before reading. Ooh and if you’re planning on staying up for the new ep like I am later today feel free to rant with me about it haha!
AO3
Marinette wanted to choke. At present, she was struggling to breathe. Inhaling and exhaling in short bouts of panic. Because, right now, around Adrien’s neck that he was proudly showing off to Nino during their lunch break was a kwagatama.
Something that she knew without a doubt was a kwagatama. Something that she had only just used to contact Joan of Arc about her feelings for Chat Noir. Something that was currently tucked away in her backpack right now.
Unlike her red one though, Adrien’s was black.  
Marinette was struggling to shove the realization of what that meant into the back of her mind. 
Because it couldn’t be... it just couldn’t.
She couldn’t have fallen in love with Adrien only to fall straight back into love with him without realizing it. Could she have?
Marinette quickly needed to get her thoughts under control though because Adrien was currently approaching her with a shy, sweet smile on his lips. Her eyes darted around, looking for an excuse to bolt but came up short. 
She leaned her elbow on the table, scrambling when it collided directly with her tray. Cursing herself, Marinette quickly put it back on the table with what she hoped was a casual smile. In reality, though, it probably looked more like a grimace.
“Hi, Marinette,” he said before quickly sliding into the seat next to her.
“O-oh, hello Adrien. W-what are you doing here?” Her palm itched to slap her face. How was she still so tongue-tied around him?
Because you love him. Both in and out of the mask, Marinette’s thoughts supplied unhelpfully. 
Okay, the panic was coming back with a vengeance now.
Adrien chuckled and gestured to his own tray of food. “Just finishing up my lunch. Like you.”
“R-right.” She nodded her head rapidly, probably looking like an animated bobblehead.
Her eyes darted down to the black kwagatama that was still sitting so proudly on his neck. It couldn’t have come from any other kwami besides Plagg. Monarch had the rest and Alix had gotten her blue one from Fluff already. 
The only other kwami that wasn’t in Monarch’s clutches was Chat Noir’s. And, didn’t it just make sense for Plagg to give Adrien a kwagatama after Marinette had used it to talk to some of the previous holders?
Gulping down a harsh breath of air, Marinette shoved her panic down. “What, um... what were you showing Nino earlier?”
“Oh, this?” Adrien looked down at his necklace with a bright smile. He pulled it up, showing it to her proudly. “A friend made it for me. Isn’t it great!”
A friend. With the panic gone a wave of amusement hit her. She could practically picture Adrien’s face as Plagg threw up on him. She wondered if it was anything like hers when Tikki gave her that birthday gift.
Marinette leaned closer, delicately running her finger over the kwagatama. It was the real deal alright. It perfectly matched hers. It was both the same size and shape and also had that round hole in the top. 
There was officially no doubt left in her mind. Adrien was her Chaton. And that meant that she had truly fallen for the same person twice.
“It’s pretty,” she murmured, peering up at Adrien. His eyes widened as he looked down at her, his cheeks flushed a pretty pink.
Her own face flamed as Marinette quickly threw herself back into her seat. She cleared her throat before gesturing to the necklace. “I-I mean that it, uh... it goes well with the color of your eyes.”
“Thank you,” he practically squeaked.
A giddy sense of satisfaction shot through her. She had made Adrien... Chat Noir... flustered. 
But if she had fallen for the same person twice then maybe, just maybe, Adrien had done the same.
Nibbling on her lower lip, Marinette gathered her courage and glanced around conspiratorially before leaning back in. Adrien seemed to unconsciously lean forward to, causing her palms to sweat as he stared directly into her eyes.
“What um... what if I told you I had something pretty similar on me right now?” she whispered, crossing her fingers that he would understand.
Adrien simply hummed, “Mhm.” Nodding his head, he moved ever so slightly closer to her.
Marinette’s eyes darted down to his lips once before she ripped herself away from the temptation. She practically dove for her backpack, pulling out the kwagatama that Tikki had given her. 
Cupping it in her hand, she carefully showed it to him. He glanced down at it once, rather quickly before his gaze met hers once again. Her heart began to pound in her chest as Adrien continued staring at her until eventually, a frown marred his brow. 
This time he looked down for much longer. He placed his hands under hers, running his fingers over the kwagatama in her palms. 
Adrien’s lips had parted before a bright smile lit up his face as he looked back up at her. “Marinette! T-this is...!”
“Shh! Yes! I know. Just like yours is also...,” she trailed off, nodding down at his necklace. 
He nodded his head eagerly before searching her gaze. He must have found what he was looking for because the next thing Marinette knew, Adrien was throwing his head back in a laugh that had butterflies fluttering in her stomach.
“It was you! Oh, of course, it was you! How did it take me so long to realize?!”
Marinette couldn't help the smile that spread across her face in response to his infectious laughter. She had waited for this moment for so long, and now that it was finally here, she was filled with indescribable happiness. It was like the world had aligned just perfectly and everything was falling into place.
Adrien's face was still lit up with a wide grin as he leaned in closer to her. "Marinette... m’lady," he said, his tone low and intimate. "I've been meaning to tell you something for a little while now. E-even if you don’t feel the same."
Marinette's breath caught in her throat as she met his gaze. There was something about the way he was looking at her, with such intensity and sincerity, that it made her heart race with anticipation. 
This was it. There was no more running. No more hiding her feelings for both Adrien and Chat Noir. So, this time, she was going to stay and listen to what he had to say. 
Adrien reached out, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Heat rose to her cheeks and she ducked her head down, suddenly feeling shy. 
"I've been wanting to tell you that... I think I’ve been falling in love with you.” 
Marinette’s head popped up, her lower lip wobbling as emotion hit her. These were the words that she had been desperate to hear for so long and now they were finally here. Adrien loved her!
“And I know... I know that I’ve already told you this more times than I can count.” He paused, chuckling. “But I just needed you to know. Needed you to know that I’ve fallen for you twice now. I also understand that you’re in love with someone else, though.”
“You’re wrong,” Marinette sniffled, shaking her head. “Adrien, the person I’ve been in love with all this time was you. It always has been. Even when I thought I moved on and realized that I was also falling in love with my Chaton.”
She ran the back of her hand down his cheek, experiencing true joy as Adrien’s eyes fluttered closed and he nuzzled into her touch. A shiver jolted down her spine when his eyes opened and connected with hers.
“You love me?” he whispered.
“Always have,” she murmured back.
The next thing Marinette knew, she was wrapped up in Adrien’s arms, their lips engaged in a soft, wondrous kiss. She threw her arms around his neck, kissing him back as a feeling of euphoria rose within her.
Eventually, she pulled back with a giggle. “I’m so glad Plagg gave you that.”
“Me too,” Adrien said before pulling her back in for another kiss.
Everything was right in the world. She got to love both her Chat Noir and her Adrien. Now, Marinette no longer needed to feel guilty for having feelings for two of the most important people in her life. Now, her stress and anxiety slowly faded away as his lips pressed against hers over and over again.
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mlwritersguild · 6 months
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raaorqtpbpdy · 21 days
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Father-Son Bonding (2)
With Maddie and Jazz off attending a women in STEM conference over the weekend, Jack decides to take Danny out for the best father-son bonding activity there is—ghost hunting! They're going to catch that elusive Danny Phantom or die trying! Metaphorically, of course. Jack would never let his son die hunting ghosts, or at least... that's what he thinks.
Written for the prompts:
Jack and Danny spend quality time together hunting that damn ghost boy! Danny is being such a help! Bonus points for if they're both enjoying the endeavor. [from @pricklenettle], Jack Fenton finds out. [from @underforeversgrace], and Jack is excited to hunt ghosts alongside his ghost-powered son, and Danny is enjoying the time with his dad way more than he thought he would. Maddie, however, is deeply troubled by all the ways her son could get hurt, and her overprotectiveness causes a heaviness to fall over the Fenton family home. [from @astatia-ghast]
Read on AO3
Chapter 2: Jack Fenton Doesn't Know What's Waiting (Ch.1; Ch.3)
[Warning for minor violence]
In ghost form, Danny dove into the green-tinged water. Just as he'd expected, the Fenton Foam made it sting like hell against his skin, and especially in his eyes, but he couldn't afford to close them. He swam right to the bottom, where Mariner was holding his father under, and pried them apart, inadvertently kicking his dad in the stomach in order to get the leverage he needed.
"You think you can beat me in my own territory?" Mariner roared, their voice not the slightest bit muffled, despite the terrain. "The water strengthens me!"
"Not this water!" Danny refuted, although his voice did not carry like Mariner's did, so it sounded more like, "Glug glib globob!"
The one-liner didn't really matter though as Danny whipped out his Fenton thermos and sucked Mariner into it. Despite Mariner's claims, Danny had been right about the water weakening them. Fenton Foam was really no joke, and it made Danny wonder why his parents didn't use it more often. He didn't have time to wonder now, though.
He clipped the thermos to his belt and grabbed his father's limp body, hauling him out of the deep-end with all his ghostly strength.
Dad didn't move one he was out of the pool.
Danny didn't know what to do. He didn't know CPR or anything, so what could he do? Come on! He had ghost powers! If they couldn't even save his dad, what good were they?
Water!
If Danny could use intangibility to get the water out of Dad's lungs, maybe he'd be okay. He put his hands against his dad's chest and prayed to any god or ghost who might be out there that the foam in the water wouldn't resist intangibility. Someone must have been listening.
An instantly later, Dad's eyes snapped open, and he was coughing and spluttering and shouting, "Ghost!"
"Ghost! Ghost boy!" Jack shouted.
He barely registered being flat on his back on wet concrete when he jumped up and wrestled the ghost boy into submission, grappling him on the ground. The ghost boy didn't fight back. Perhaps he knew it would be futile. After all, Jack Fenton was not a ghost hunter to sneeze at; just ask his wife.
"Danny!" he called out, excited. "Danny I caught the ghost boy! I caught Danny Phantom!"
His head swiveled around, looking for his son's black hair and white jumpsuit, but he was nowhere to be seen. He called out again, looked harder, but there was no answer, and Danny was gone.
"What have you done to my son, spook!" Jack snarled. "You have one chance to tell me what you did before it tear you apart molecule by molecule, scientific progress be damned. If you hurt my son in any way, I'll pay it back to you a hundred times over."
"Dad... it's me," said the ghost boy, and in a flash of white light, the figure in Jack's arms transformed. "I'm your son."
And there was Danny, soaked to the bone, with ecto-foamer stains on the brand new jumpsuit his father had lovingly sewn for him, and Jack had never been happier or more confused to see him. He released the grapple and let his son stand up and take off his gloves to wring the water out.
"Danny?" Jack asked. "You're... you're the ghost boy? You're Danny Phantom? but how?"
Danny looked around nervously, but Jack already knew that all the water park patrons had gone, and the employees were hiding and cowering.
"The portal," he said. "I'm not contaminated with ectoplasm, it... changed me." He swallowed visibly and looked up at Jack with fear in his eyes. "Are you mad?"
Jack stepped forward and his breath hitched when he saw the way his son flinched back at the movement.
"No, Danny," he said, and he strode forward again and wrapped his boy up in a big bear hug. "How could I be mat at you for something like that? That's not your fault! If anything it's... it's mine."
He realized as he said it how true it was. It was his carelessness that caused the portal to activate when Danny went inside it. He should have disconnected the power. He should have put caution tape over the opening, or closed the doors. He shouldn't have been letting his son down into the lab when there was an experiment that big in progress at all. All the guilt that had plagued him since the accident first happened was suddenly coming back tenfold. He felt like he was drowning for the second time today.
"Oh Danny, it's all my fault," Jack insisted. "If I were less careless, if I were a better engineer, this wouldn't have happened to you.
"No, it's not your fault. I should have known better than to mess around with your experiments. It was just an accident. And in the end, it gave me the power to save you from being drowned by that ghost today, so I don't regret anything."
"Are you okay? That ghost didn't hurt you, did it?"
"Dad, I'm fine," Danny said. "The foam in the water stung a little, but I'm really okay."
"The foam... but you're still covered in it!"
"It's okay, Dad, really! It kinda just feels like licking a D battery, but all over my body."
"That's not—Danny, no," Jack said, shaking his head. "This place has showers, go take one and wash that gunk off. There are spare jumpsuits in the car; I'll bring you one."
Danny nodded, and turned to go to the locker room.
"Oh, and one more thing," Jack said, causing him to pause. "I'm sorry for... grappling you, and threatening you.... If I had known it was you, I never would have done that."
"It's okay, Dad." Danny smiled at him. "It was actually kinda nice hearing the lengths you'd go to protect me. Although... it would have been nicer if you didn't say those things to Phantom all the time."
"Well, I'm sorry for that, too," Jack added.
"I forgive you," Danny said firmly, like he was trying to end this conversation. The way he shifted uncomfortably seemed to corroborate that theory. "I'm gonna go take that shower now, 'cause this stuff is starting to itch."
"Right! You go do that."
After washing off the slowly crusting foamy water, Danny changed into a regular, non-Fenton-Fabric jumpsuit, and he and Jack walked back to the GAV. The ghost proximity alarm in the vehicle blared when Danny got within three feet.
"Sorry!" Jack shouted over it, hitting the button on the key fob that turned it off. "Sorry, I forgot about that."
Danny just snorted a laugh and climbed into the passenger seat. They were both silent as they buckled up, and Jack turned the key in the ignition so they could leave.
Finally, Jack cleared his throat. "I guess the ghost hunt today is a bust."
He glanced over to see Danny's lips quirk up in a small smile. "I don't know about that. Maybe we didn't hunt down Danny Phantom like we planned, but you are technically taking him home with you. Plus," — he waved his Fenton Thermos between them — "We did manage to bag that Mariner spook, and they were pretty powerful, so all-in-all, I'd actually say we can call today's ghost hunt a success."
"You know what? You're absolutely right!" Jack agreed. "I wasn't thinking about it that way, but this was a complete success! We are the greatest ghost hunters in the world!" he bellowed. "Now you say it, nice and loud."
"We are the greatest ghost hunters in the world!" Danny shouted, laughter coloring his every word.
Yeah... today was definitely a success.
Jack didn't let the fact that it would probably be the last sour the experience for him. He didn't even bring it up until they were home, putting their gear away.
"Too bad this is the last time we'll go ghost hunting together," Jack said sadly, while he field-stripped the ecto-guns to clean them.
Danny stopped cleaning the water out of his wrist ray, cotton swap frozen an inch away from it. "What? Why?"
"Well... I just thought that you wouldn't want to anymore, since you're kind of a ghost yourself," Jack said. "Obviously we don't know as much about ghosts as we thought we did, if you can be one and still be... you are still human, aren't you?"
"Yeah, but... that doesn't mean we have to stop hunting ghosts all together," Danny said, sounding a little downtrodden at the prospect. In fact, he sounded like he felt quite the same as Jack did about the two of them not hunting ghosts together anymore. "I mean, I hunt ghosts all the time when I go out as Danny Phantom, that's like, the main thing I use my powers for, actually."
"Really? Why?"
"Well I can't just let them go around town causing chaos, can I?" Danny pointed out. "They may not be like, evil, but they can't die, and they don't tend to think about the consequences of their actions, so they cause trouble, sometimes even when they're not trying to, and someone's gotta stop them."
"So... you just go out and hunt ghosts on your own? What do you do with them?"
"I guess... catch and release?" Danny said. "I catch them in the Fenton Thermos and then release them into the Ghost Zone where they can't hurt anyone. They'll come back sometimes, but I just catch 'em again."
For a long moment, Jack just stared at his son, watched as the boy's shoulders slowly shrunk down with anxiety as he waited for Jack to say something.
Then he started to laugh, a deep, powerful laugh, that echoed against all the steel and concrete in the lab.
"My son's a ghost hunter!" he crowed and he got up and lifted his son in another bear hug, swinging him around like a rag doll in joy. "Oh, Danny-boy, I'm so proud of you! Tomorrow we're gonna go ghost hunting again, and we're gonna catch tons of ghosts and send 'em back to the Ghost Zone! The Fenton boys won't stop that easy!"
Danny laughed with him, much higher pitched, but just as giddy. "We're the greatest ghost hunters in the world!" he cheered, and Jack repeated the declaration at the top of his lungs.
They did, eventually, get back to cleaning and putting away all their equipment. Jack washed Danny's new jumpsuit so he could wear it again tomorrow, they went out to get celebratory hamburgers for dinner this time, a happy change from their usual self-pity hamburgers they got after ghost hunting trips. It was the same hamburger, but it tasted like victory!
Then they both went to bed, and Jack could barely sleep a wink in his excitement for tomorrow.
That morning, both father and son were up bright and early, dressed in their Fenton Works Jumpsuits, and once again loading up the GAV with weapons and ghost hunting equipment. Soon enough, they were rocketing out of the garage in a screech of tires and a cloud of dust, chowing down on beef jerky and fudge for breakfast.
"Are you ready to hunt some ghosts?" Jack asked his son.
Danny grinned and transformed in a flash of light. "You bet I am!"
Thank goodness he'd reminded his father not to turn of the ghost proximity alarm or the internal automatic defense systems in the GAV, otherwise that little maneuver wouldn't have gone over as well.
They weren't hunting any ghost in particular, unlike yesterday, but there were always miscellaneous ghosts around Amity Park just waiting to be captured and sent home.
"Spectral Sub-sonar is picking up ghost activity downtown... looks like the mall," Danny said, and he gripped the safety handle tightly as the vehicle banked left to head downtown.
"I don't see any running and screaming," Jack observed when they got there. Through the glass doors at the front of the mall everything looked calm. "Do you think they're overshadowed?"
"Maybe," Danny said. "Or maybe the ghost isn't inside the mall."
Jack looked down at the sub-sonar screen in the dashboard. "Looks like the ghost is around back."
"I'll fly ahead and see what I can see inside," Danny suggested. "You drive a lap around the mall?"
"Good thinking," Jack said. "Don't forget to put on your Fenton-phones."
Danny nodded and did so, "Check," before phasing through the roof of the GAV to look for ghostly activity in the mall, turning invisible before he went inside.
"See anything?" Jack asked through the Fenton-phones.
"Not yet," Danny replied. "I'm pretty sure these people aren't overshadowed, though. I can't sense any ghosts in here, and they're acting way too naturally for it to be ghosts pretending to be shoppers. I'm heading to the far end now."
"Copy that, Dann-o. I'm on the far side now and so far—wait..." there was something going on just ahead, and Jack pulled the GAV to a hard stop. He could see that eerie glow that always accompanied ghosts wherever they went, and floating boxes. "I see the bogey! East loading dock!"
"On my way!"
Jack grabbed the Jack-o-Nine-Tails to subdue the ghost and got out of the GAV. He walked toward the loading dock with purpose, and by the time he arrived there, Danny flew through the wall to fight with him. They were close enough to see the ghost now, a familiar one at that.
"Beware!" The ghost shouted. "I am the Box Ghost! I am the master of all things cardboard and square! You do not stand a chance against my corrugated destruction! Nor the various stock and wares of..." he looked at the packing labels on the boxes he was floating around. "The GAP!"
Jack made to whip the ghost with his Jack-o-Nine-Tails, but the ghost just threw a slew of cardboard boxes, blocking each of the tendrils. It made for a good distraction, though, and Danny was able to hit the spook with one of his... what at he called it? One of his ghost rays, stunning the ghost.
"Dad, Fenton Thermos!" Danny called out, and shot a continuous beam at the Box Ghost.
Jack fumbled a bit getting the thermos into his hands, but Danny held on plenty long enough for his father to take aim and capture the ghost inside it.
"Got him!" Jack announced, capping the thermos proudly.
The two of them returned to the GAV where they high-fived each other for a job well done and tore out of the mall parking lot before anyone could blame them for the damage the Box Ghost had done.
"You know, Danny-boy, we make a pretty fantastic team," Jack observed, "whether you're a human or a ghost. A spectacular father-son duo!"
Danny chuckled. "Yeah... you know, actually, I was terrified about what would happen when I told you I was Phantom. Even though I knew you would love me no matter what, I was still scared that you would treat me differently afterwards. But, actually, I'm enjoying this way more than I thought I would."
"Oh, Danny," was Jack's sympathetic reply. "Well, you know what? I'm enjoying working with the ghost boy a lot more than I thought I would, too. So let's just enjoy this together!"
"Yeah!"
"After all, we're the greatest ghost hunters in the world!"
Danny laughed heartily and repeated the phrase.
"We're the greatest ghost hunters in the world!"
After that, the two of them kept on driving around, searching for ghosts. Luckily, there wasn't a lot of traffic for some reason, so Jack had plenty of room on the roads. Most of the day was pretty quiet, but they did manage to catch a pair of ectopusses before they decided to call it for the day and head home.
Danny changed back into his human form so they could drive thru at Nasty Burger on their way back, and the two boys were in excellent spirits as they turned onto their street.
At least, they were until they saw who was standing there, on their front porch, glaring furiously.
It seemed Jazz and Maddie had come home early. And Maddie did not seem too pleased to find her husband and sun driving home in a fully armed and activated Ghost Assault Vehicle.
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scarletsaphire · 1 year
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Ill Prepared (Dannymay Day 3: Blizzard)
Jack and Maddie drag Danny on a ghost hunting trip in the Rocky Mountains. They are very prepared to hunt this ghost. They are not at all prepared for the blizzard they get caught in.
“Oh, Dann-o!” Jack Fenton’s voice echoed through Fentonworks, loud and booming. It woke Danny with a start, tumbling off of his bed and onto the floor in a pile of blankets. He groaned and pulled the blanket over his head. He should have expected something like this; it was, after all, December 21st, and life (or half-life, in his case) was going well. The winter truce had started a few days ago, and winter break started just the day prior. Of course something had to go wrong. It wouldn’t be a Fenton Christmas without some disaster.
His dad showed up in his doorway, large frame blocking all of the light from the hallway. “Are you ready for an adventure, Danny boy?” Danny looked at the alarm clock on his bed side table and groaned. 6:07 AM.
“Couldn’t it wait until the sun comes up?” he groaned, pulling himself up from the floor.
Jack threw a bulky pile of fabric at Danny. “Nope! We’ve got the get the GAV moving if we want to get to the mountains by tomorrow! Your mother’s already got most of your stuff packed, just make sure that your coat fits and we’ll be good to go! Otherwise we’ll need to bring some anti-ecto fabric so we can get you one at the supply station.”
Danny held up the pile of fabric. It was a coat. A very heavy winter coat. Danny scowled at it. He didn’t particularly like coats, though he would wear lighter ones during winter if only to keep up appearances. He was, after all, and ice core ghost. Nothing was colder than his soul. (He would have to remember that one, Sam would like it.) “Where are we even going? It isn’t anywhere cold enough to warrant this.” He held the coat away from him with disdain.
“I told you at breakfast on Monday, we’re going to find a yeti! In the Rocky Mountains!” Jack beamed at Danny. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten, son! This’ll be a wonderful Christmas trip!”
Danny had not eaten breakfast on Monday. He had been sleeping over Tucker’s house, partially to play the new expansion of Doom, mostly because his parents had been working on a new anti-ghost something or other, and Danny had not wanted to be anywhere near when they got it working. “I was at Tucker’s on Monday, this is the first I’m hearing of it.”
Jack looked confused, before shrugging and grinning widely at Danny. “Oh well, then surprise! We’re going to the Rocky Mountains to hunt the yeti! Now try on your new coat so we can get this show on the road!”
“Can’t I stay here?” Danny complained. “It’s not like it would be the first time.”
“We aren’t going to leave you here all alone!”
“I won’t be all alone, I’ll have-” Danny paused. He was going to say that he’d be with Jazz, but she had taken the opportunity to spend winter break at a two week long psych program at a college a few hours away. She had apologized for her absence, but it was a great opportunity. Still, it meant that Danny was out of an excuse. Grumbling, Danny pulled on the coat the rest of the way. God it was warm.
“Come now Danno, it’ll be fun! A parent son bonding experience!” Jack slapped Danny on the back, hard. “The coat fits great! Get your shoes and get into the car. We’ve got a ghost to catch!” — The drive was thrilling. Not because it was exciting, but because Maddie had let Jack drive as soon as they were out of Amity Park. If Danny hadn’t already been half dead, he was fairly certain he would’ve died from a heart attack. Luckily (or unluckily, he supposed) he was, so his father’s driving couldn’t kill him. How it didn’t kill anyone else on the 12 hour drive was a miracle in and of itself.
Whenever Danny wasn’t gripping onto the seat for his half-life or blocking out all sound with headphones, he listened to his mother and father talk about their hopes for this trip. They had heard of a yeti in the Rocky Mountains recently, and were certain that it was a ghost, biding its time to attack and drag unsuspecting tourists or climbers up to its peak to…his parents never really got to why they yeti would choose to do something like that. They rarely made it to that point when it came to ghosts, simply assuming that the ghost would because it was a ghost, and that it didn’t need another reason. Even if the yeti was a ghost, and not just some ambitious bear or faulty reports, Danny knew it wouldn’t attack without being provoked. He had met many yetis; they were friendly, if a bit scary to look at. He couldn’t exactly tell his parents that, so he settled in for the long haul.
At least he was being dragged away during the Winter Truce. The only ghosts that would break the truce would be non sapient ghosts, and possibly Vlad, but with both Danny and Maddie in another state across the country, it wasn’t likely that Vlad would try much of anything. (He had texted Sam and Tucker that, if either of them suspected that Vlad was up to no good, to leave a collection of dirty socks and gym shorts on Vlad’s Amity Park property. They would have done that anyway, but it felt nice to be part of the planning at least a little bit.)
When the GAV finally arrived at the place they would be staying, Danny was green in the face and his stomach churned. He thought he had gotten used to his dad’s driving over the years, but it wasn’t often that they went on long road trips with him driving. Even Danny’s stomach couldn’t put up with it for that long.
Unfortunately for Danny, the place they were staying was not a hotel, or a house, or even a cabin where he could empty his stomach in the privacy of a bathroom. It was a camp site, little more than a place with tree roots numbering in the single digits and a circle of ashes in the center that was designated as a fire pit. They were just on the base of the Rocky Mountains, which towered high just to the west of them. It was a pleasant view, and the cold air felt good on his skin after being trapped in the GAV for so long.
His mother started setting up the tent, a flimsy looking thing barely big enough to fit all three of them, and his dad started setting up the ghost detecting perimeter. Danny grumbled under his breath as he started to drag their luggage out of the trunk. The stuff his mother had packed was, he noted, not very suitable for a “camping” environment, let alone one this late into the year. It seemed like she had focused almost entirely on the ghost hunting part of the trip, and completely neglected the other aspects of survival that were much more likely to come into play. He had expected that; he hadn’t spent his lifetime and half-lifetime around them to expect them to be practical, especially where ghosts were involved. This did mean that Danny couldn’t actually unload most of the trunk without getting zapped, cut, detected, or setting off some kind of alarm or another.
Danny grabbed what he could out of the trunk, receiving a slight zap from a pile of metal he didn’t quite recognized, and dragged it over to where his mother was hammering a spike into the ground with far more force than was strictly necessary. “I got what I could carry, but I don’t want to grab any of the ghost hunting stuff that’s in there. You know how it acts around me,” Danny laughed nervously. He knew his parents assumed that their devices malfunctioned because of ecton contamination, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t super nervous whenever he had to bring it up. Everytime he did it, he worried that this would be the time that they would figure out that that was probably a very dumb excuse.
This was not that time. “Oh thank you sweetie, just set it all down right there, and your father will grab the ghost hunting gear once he’s done setting up the defenses. Would you mind helping me with that other spike?” His mother did not look up from her continuous whaling on the poor metal spike. The ground was hard because of the cold, but Danny was fairly certain that she didn’t need to hit it that hard. Was it bending?
Danny did as he was told, setting the pile of bags and his fathers suitcase. A single day trip of clothes for him almost always required a suitcase if he decided to actually bring clothes. Most of the time he stuck with his hazmat suit, but it was too cold for it out here. Both his parents were wearing heavy jackets lined with anti-ghost material. Over their jumpsuits of course; it would take more than the cold to pry those things off of them.
Danny grabbed a spike and started to hit it into his ground. He didn’t use as much force as Maddie did; he didn’t need to. The ground, even more frozen beneath his feet, molded easily to his will, allow him to delicately hammer the spike into place and locking it with some not-quite natural ice. He glanced up; his display of powers wasn’t flashy by any means, but that didn’t mean that any ghost detecting gear his father had already set up wouldn’t catch him. His father was tangled in a mess of wires, strung up like a Christmas tree. Whatever he was setting up was giving him a lot more trouble than it was giving Danny, at least right now.
“Well done sweetie!” Maddie said, looking at him with a beaming smile. Her spike had successfully gotten into the ground, though it looked like it might end up a ghost itself with how beat up it was. “But aren’t you cold? You should go put on your jacket, its freezing out here.” Danny looked down in surprise at his uncovered arms. He had thrown on a t-shirt and jeans in his rush to get ready that morning, and hadn’t even realized that he had forgotten his jacket in the car. The air around him didn’t feel cold at all. If anything, it was comfortable. Crisp.
“Oops.” Danny gave her a lopsided smile and ran to the GAV, throwing open the backdoor and grabbing the jacket. He didn’t want to put it on. It was nice out, even if he could see his breath puffing in front of him every couple of seconds, and the jacket was suffocating and constraining. He didn’t have much of a choice though, so he shrugged it on, leaving the zipper only done up halfway.
Maddie came up behind him. “See, isn’t that better?” A series of ghost related curses echoed across the campsite. “I’m going to go help untangle your father. Would you be willing to set up the rest of the tent?” Danny nodded, and his mother went off.
— Outside of a close call where one of the weapons in the GAV started to chase Danny around the campsite (his mother had intercepted it with one solid hit from the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick. “I hate to destroy something so useful, but its not much use if its chasing after our junior ghost hunter!” she had said.) It was, overall, almost a nice time. He had had significantly worse days in December before. He would prefer to be hanging out at Tucker’s, or with Sam if her parents allowed him to join in on the Hanukkah celebrations, but he didn’t mind camping one bit.
And then his parents started prepping for the evening's ghost hunting activities, and any part of the trip he had been enjoying got zapped away. Just like he was getting zapped by the copious amount of tech they were placing on him. It wasn’t that it hurt per se, but it did make his skin tingle like static electricity, and he couldn’t say that it was pleasant. After his mom finished outfitting him with more ghost hunting gear than was necessary (and helping his dad strap a few more onto his back) they set off following a trail further into the mountains. It has been dark for about an hour, and the air was only getting colder, but that didn’t stop them from traipsing through the woods.
They were only traipsing around for an hour before it started to snow. It was a soft snowfall, barely coating the ground in white, but it was enough to have Maddie start to shiver under her coat. Jack, who had already yelled “Ghost!” at the top of his lungs and fired into various non-ghost locations, only got jumpier. “Dear,” Maddie said, saddling up to Jack. “I think we should make our way back to camp now. We can scout the area more in the morning, and set up a trap for the spook during the day.”
“That’s a brilliant idea Mads!” Jack said. “You’re always so smart!” They led the way back to camp, moving quickly over the path, flashlight leading the way. Danny trailed behind. He didn’t need to breathe, but he took deep breaths anyway. The cold was sharp in his nose, biting in his lungs, but it was nice. Soothing. He had realized, after visiting the Far Frozen the first couple times, that Amity Park was almost always warm, sometimes to the point of unbearably hot. He had gotten used to it, stuck through it, forced it to become just another nagging discomfort in the back of his mind. It wasn’t hard to do, when you were healing from broken bones and gaping wounds every other day. It didn’t mean that the delicious, frigid, clean air of the mountains didn’t make his very core hum in satisfaction. It almost made the trip worth it.
When they arrived back at the camp, Jack fell asleep almost instantly in his sleeping bag. Maddie, who was curled up next to him, took longer to fall asleep, but she drifted off in a couple of minutes. Danny took the opportunity to slip out of his sleeping bag, out of his coat, and out of the tent. He zipped the flap closed behind him, and sat on the ground amidst a shallow bank of snow. (It didn’t melt where he sat, he noticed absently. Why would it? It was almost a part of him, and he, a part of it.) The snow had begun to fall heavier by this point, the wind picking up, and ice started to form on the tips of Danny’s eyelashes. It felt wonderful. He couldn’t say how long he sat there, breathing in the bitter cold air, freezing his human lungs and his ghostly core. Long enough for his lips to turn blue and his hands to go numb.
Danny couldn’t say when, exactly, the winds picked up enough to make the branches of the trees whip into a frenzy. He couldn’t say when the snow began to turn to hail, pelting the ground with a force as if they were cannonballs, yet always bouncing off of him harmlessly. He couldn’t say when the snowstorm turned from beautiful to something deadly, from a natural occurrence to a force of nature. He could say when the spikes driven into the ground started to fail, and the flaps of the tent began to whip angrily, and he heard his mothers concerned yelling from inside the tent. (He shouldn’t have been able to hear it over the wind. He shouldn’t have been able to sit out here unharmed. He shouldn’t be a lot of things. It had never stopped him before.)
Danny ducked back into the tent to find his mother arguing with his father, both of them shivering in their sleeping bags, lips blue. She was yelling, saying that the ghost must have taken him, that he might be lost or worse in the woods. His dad was agreeing, but was stopping her from searching in the storm. “It’s too dangerous!” he said, yelling louder than he normally did over the sound of the wind, of the hail. “If you go out there you could die!”
When they noticed him, they ran over and hugged him, dragging him into the sleeping bag with them. “Oh sweetie pie you’re freezing! What were you doing out there? This storm is dangerous, and that’s without the ghost around!”
“I just had to take a leak,” Danny said numbly. It was dawning on him that the inside of this tent was not all that warmer than the world outside, even if the wind chill was taken away. The sleeping bag the three of them shared was warmer than the tent, yes, but he didn’t miss how his dad’s lips were tinged blue, how his mother shivered, how each of their breaths crystalized in the air around them. “Did you bring anything to warm the tent? Or to help us weather the storm?”
Jack and Maddie shared a look. “We didn’t expect a blizzard,” Maddie said. “But I’m sure it’ll pass, and we’ll all be just fine. We just have to stay here, where its warm.” Danny wasn’t surprised. His parents were only ever prepared when it came to ghosts, and this blizzard was far too natural. But all Danny could do is nod.
The minutes passed by slowly, and the storm didn’t show any signs of getting better. If anything, it only got worse. Danny noticed how his mothers speech started to slur, how she drew into herself and shook violently. How his father, even sitting in the tent like he was, seemed more disoriented than normal, both in mind and body. The reality of the situation dawned on him with his growing horror. If something didn’t change soon, his parents would not make it through the night. He could help. He knew how, knew that the ice and snow would listen to him, if only in a small area. He could save him. (It would cost him everything. He didn’t care; he had already thrown what remained of his life away when he started fighting ghosts. He wasn’t going to let this stop him now.)
“Do you have the controls for the ghost defenses you set up?” he asked, crawling over to his mother. She nodded. “I need you to turn it off, and I need you to trust me.”
“I cann’ do tha,” Maddie slurred, teeth chattering. “We’d be weloming a ghost in.”
“Please, mom,” Danny begged. “I just need you to turn it off, and stay still. Please.” He looked deep into his mom’s eyes, holding his breath. Time seemed to slow even further as she studied him, trying to figure out what he was planning. Finally she nodded. Her hands were too clumsy, too uncoordinated, to pull the remote out of her jacket pocket, but she managed to show Danny where it was. He fiddled with it for a moment, before shutting it off. Then, he walked into the storm and transformed.
His first order of business was a shelter. A proper shelter, one that would block the pelting hail and whipping winds. He made an igloo, small and compact to save as much heat as he could, but sturdy, surrounding the flimsy tent. It was made of ghost ice, and wouldn’t melt. Not easily, anyway.
His next order of business was much harder, as any loose branches that would burn proper, and not just smoke, were buried under ever growing mounds of snow. If he hadn’t been able to go intangible, he probably would never have found any. But he could, so he returned to the igloo with his arms full of tinder.
His parents were huddled next to each other, Jack openly sobbing into Maddie’s shoulder, blubbering something about Danny, though most of it was unintelligible. They both started when they saw him, reaching for ectoblasters strapped to their waists, but their hands were numb and shaky, their reaction time slowed from hypothermia. Danny transformed back to his human form before they could aim. “Listen,” he said quickly, dumping the pile of sticks just out the door of the tent. “You can be mad at me later. Scream, kick me out, try and kill me, dissect me, whatever. I know you want to. But if you don’t let me help you, just until this storm dies down, you’ll end up dead too, and I won’t let this happen. So please. Just don’t shoot me yet.” Danny watched as his parents stared at him, horror clear on their faces. He left the tent before they could say a word.
Back in ghost form, he lit most of the tinder he had gathered on fire; not ghostly fire, just regular good old fashioned fire. It’s light and warmth filled the area around the tent, filling the igloo. Danny got to work, pulling out the spikes they had pounded into the ground. They came out easily under his touch. The tent wouldn’t do them much good now; better to burn it for warmth. His parents emerged from the tent after he started to take it down. It wasn’t like they had much of a choice.
They huddled near the fire, color slowly starting to return to their skin, shaking starting to abide. They did not look at him. He did not look at them. He focused on keeping the fire burning, on keeping the ice and wind outside away, on not thinking about what they might do to him now or after they were safe, about the threats they had made and injuries they had given him time and time again, about how sleeping was already hard enough for him, and where would he stay now that they knew? They wouldn’t let a ghost stay in their home willingly; how much harder would it be to sleep when he was on the streets? Would they hunt down Sam and Tucker, if he tried to stay with them? Would they-
“Danny?” His mothers voice cut through his thoughts. “Are…are you really my Danny?”
“Yes.” He couldn’t stop the quiver in his voice.
“What happened?” This time, he couldn’t stop the tears.
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j-a-n-e--d-o-e · 11 months
Text
BNHA WIP Idea
Idk if I'll ever write this but:
After Almights retirement an online hacktervist group out Endeavor as a child abuser because they believe in transparency and that Japan deserves a true hero as no.1 (in this I'm assuming the Commission were aware and buried reports from neighbours and calls from mandated reporters so there's a partial trail of overlooked concerns +Rei's hospitalisation, ++the lack of hospitalisation for Shoto despite the obvious scar, +++Touya's'death').
Hawks suddenly went from no.3 to no.2 to being the defacto no.1 of Japan and is seriously overwhelmed. If he makes it till the rankings he'll be the youngest ever at 22 but he literally hates everything about the role as he suddenly has to do alot more modelling and interviews on top of an increased patrol schedule thanks to Endeavor facing an enquiry, Almight being 'retired' and a massive increase in general crime. Not to mention the league of Villains (this all happened before he's assigned the infiltration mission and with Endeavors fall from grace causing greater instability the Commission aren't willing to compromise Hawks image in the event that the hackers strike again so he's never ordered to approach Dabi or go undercover).
Despite not wanting to be no.1 Hawks does everything for Japan and it's citizens and recognises that they can't afford him stepping down or trying to make someone else no.1 at this point so does everything to keep it together so that people have someone they can have faith in and depend on.
The group go silent for a time given that The Commission buried everything about Hawks but eventually they hack the commission servers themselves and find out the truth, not just about his heritage but what exactly the commission did to make heroes like him and Lady Nagant. The Hacktervists don't care that his dad is a Villain so long as Hawks shows no signs of following in his footsteps. They do care that the commission bought and abused children using the 'greater good' as an excuse.
They broadcast the whole thing, every dirty detail for the world to see, then dump the files online for everyone to access.
Potential conversation post reveal:
"They abused you!"
"So?!"
"Keigo..."
"Don't! That's not my name! That's not- Why does it even matter?"
"You can't seriously be asking us that?!"
"Well I am. What does it matter how they made me if it means I get to save people?"
Scene where Aizawa makes a comparison in his mind to the scene/dialogue above with AlMights suicidal Ideation and self sacrificial mindset in canon. It's somehow worse because hawks is so young. Questioned if this will be his class once they graduate. Asks himself what kind of world they live in that can justify this.
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