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sanchoyo · 3 years

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danny phantom 14-20 thoughts!! I finished up s1 :D these last few eps were actually really really good!!!

-did. did tucker really just say esperanto was a dead language only spoken as a secret code between geeks. google says around 100,000 people actively speak it. oh my god...it being an auxiliary language doesn't mean its 'just for geeks to speak in code' ...it helps bridge gaps between people who don't have a language in common...

-danny really isn't pulling punches when it comes to fighting the ghost-cop possessed people huh. like he SLAMMED KWAN INTO THE CONCRETE SO HARD. HE THREW PAULINA INTO A BILLBOARD. will that...I mean it WOULD carry over to their bodies non-possessed, right? like if the ghost piloting their bodies gets hurt?? itd be so upsetting to be possessed, lose time, then wake up covered in bruises (and possibly, broken bones??) real horror movie stuff im sure wont be addressed in any way

-tuckers parents seem nice! I like them :)

-WULF IS CUTE AND I FEEL BAD. im so glad the gang realized he was only causing trouble bc of the shock collar walker put on him and helped. also, him wearing that big hoodie with the hood on, and thinking its subtle. we can tell youre still a giant wolfie :) THEN GETTING SUCKED INTO THE PORTAL AAAAH :( anxiously waiting to see Him Again....

-DANNY BLASTING HIS PARENTS THINKING THEY WERE OVERSHADOWED LMFAO GET THEIR ASSES. maddie marking how many ghosts she gets with lipstick tallies on the side of her portal gun? kindaaa iconic tho. (ALSO, SHE WAS LIKE, 2 FT AWAY FROM HIM RIGHT AFTER SHE TRIED TO SHOOT HIM. HOW DO YOU NOT RECONINZE YOUR OWN SON??? like sure, he might have diff hair/eye colors. but like, if one of my family members dyed their hair, and was wearing contacts, its not like id be like 'wHO IS THIS STRANGER!!!' ...he still has all his facial features!! same everything!!! I hate it here)

-paulina being #1 girl realizing danny's a friendly ghost immediately. smart queen. lancer and kwan ran away right after he made this sweet baby face at them:

which is hilarious.

-ok. im not saying his bullying is JUSTIFIED, but. dash looked so pleased with the (cute!) poster he just painted, and danny comes thru the wall and spills paint on his nice letterman jacket. his anger is justified maybe 65% of the time so far...(not the way he handles it, but STILL.) at least lancer is stepping in!! and them making a silly little bet was...cute?? until dash pulled out his GROSS UNDERWEAR AND SAID DANNY WOULD HAVE TO EAT THEM???? WHAT THE FUCK MAN. TUCKER WAS SO RIGHT ITS FUCKING WEIRD TO CARRY THOSE AROUND EWWW. THIS KID IS UNWELL. lancer was right, his animatronic setup was SUPER IMPRESSIVE?? hes actually pretty creative. danny meanwhile is stealing the fright knight's design...I hope dash is taking art classes or smth with his sports

-fright knight is the most bestest ghost so far i LOVE THAT DESIGN. I am biased towards knights, and characters with swords, but he fucks so severely. and should sue danny for copyright infringement for stealing his design for his haunted house. if some 14 yr old broke into MY house and stole MY sword, id also be pissed. his evil winged unicorn rules too with its FANGS. and he just CAN SHOVE THE PORTAL OPEN WITH HIS HANDS??? is he the strongest ghost weve seen so far? idk but hes my fav. SOUL SHREDDER IS SUCH A COOL SWORD NAME TOO. ANY NAMED SWORD ALSO FUCKS. 'flaming bedsheets of DEATH' funny king. ALSO he was polite to dash and tucker when just asking for directions and telling tucker 'oh maybe, just a suggestion, maybe be nicer to me and be more respectful :)' I LOOOVE HIM.

-I noticed this in the Ember ep, but jazz has an electric guitar in her room!! talent musical queen!! its cool to see hobbies just in the bg.

-fright knight's murder castle reminds me of the booby trapped murder castle in zexal!! another supposedly 'for kids' show with murder/trap castles! we love that. if you are a dp fan reading this, give yugioh zexal a try. its also got 13-14 year old protags and involves (alien) ghosts. the cardgame is just a vessel for the plot, which is really good. (I just want more people to watch my fav yugioh, man)

-danny. with a SWORD.

-danny doesnt NEED TO WIN this contest, dash didnt STEAL HIS DESIGNS AND STEAL A SWORD. he also got excited to hear lancer got sent to a dimension with his worst fears too just so he could win the contest? DANNY WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!!! BRO MAYBE YOURE 14 AND HAVENT FULLY DEVOLPED YOUR WHOLE BRAIN YET, BUT...THATS FUCKED. this kid casually says the most deranged things, I do worry for my spooky son. once again, therapy needed. that judo toss was great tho. I wonder if he actually did pick up some martial arts stuff from his mom?

-danny can fly 112 mph!!! thats so fast! I love the lil montage of him and his friends testing his abilities and stuff, very cute and a good way to showcase what he can do by now and how much more proficient he's gotten from ep 1!!! I'm sure he's going to get more abilities :)

-im glad...maddie's at least TRYING this ep. I do feel for her because her husband is a man baby. but the fact it took 16 episodes to get a kinda semblance of any kind of real concern or attempts at bonding. hmm. jack's 'BACK OFF SHES A MINOR' @ the ghost trying to attack jazz. also was very funny. and him wanting to make an action figure of her? are the parents redeeming themselves to me? slightly. they gotta Work Harder

-THE GHOST. IS FLYING. THE PLANE.

-fenton machete. but she doesnt carry a PHONE??? ???

-I mean I expected vlad when you namedrop him earlier in the ep, and also the title card picture, and dalv corp being fucking vlad backwards. but seeing him just pull up on a golf cart made me bust out laughing. WITH the gift baskets prepared. why wouldnt you at least be suspicious. also, if he wants danny to be his lil sonboy, why is he so fucking malicious?? dude you are going about this in such a bad way. stop it. get some help.

-maddie not even hesitating to drag danny out. fucking good. danny is so right, go on the internet to date. get a cat. how do you spend...how many years?? has it been since college?? at least 20, right, since the parents/vlad are in their 40s? hung up on ONE girl. my god, man. incel drama queen. her kung fu IS impressive, but dude. 'we both know hes a creep' SO right. it sucks but they do need a phone and shit being in the middle of NOWHERE. also, just stealing his helicopter was great. <3

-'you must be exhausted carrying the weight of that mistake you made years ago' 'well we all make mistakes. maybe I'll make one now!' WHY DID THIS EXHCHANGE SEND ME. AND VLAD WITH THE BREATH SPRAY EWWW BITCH. 'OLD BAIT BREATH' SOO RIGHT. both danny and his mom playing him HAHAH hes so dumb. or rather, I think he thinks with his emotions too too much and is...actually pretty gullible? lmao he believed danny was ready to give in SO fast. (which is sad hes that hopeful, like you have SO MUCH MONEY YOU COULD EASILY GET ANOTHER GIRL WHO HAS A KID. AND WOULD WANT TO BE WITH YOU AND BE SUPPORTED. GET OVER THIS (1) WOMAN ALREADY IM GETTING SECONDHAND EMBARRASSMENT AAAAH)

-GHOST BEAR GHOST BEAR GHOST BEAR. it was also in the title card, but I still got very excited. we love bears here

-SAM'S BAT SWIMSUIT COVERUP!!! her outfits are simply iconic.

-'i'd tell you to go to the mens room, but I don't think you qualify' top paulina transphobic moments. :( and him wearing a tanktop to the swim park? hmmm! (actually I think she was overshadowed by then, so, KITTY top 10 transphobic moments??)

-kitty just piloting paulina around makes me feel SO bad tho, paulina's gonna wake up and be like 'wtf do you mean I was dating this rando' like youre leading danny on to make johnny jealous, and also just POSSESSING POOR PAULINA. dude take your relationship problems ELSEWHERE. last time we saw them, they seemed like such a cute couple!! wtf johnny!! I mean, she sucks for trying to make him jealous, he sucks for looking at other girls...maybe they need a break, but Not Like This. or, you know, just. better communication...

-and the A-listers having a full packet and a stamp system. who organizes this. kwan fucking owning being the new danny though, this is hysterical. THE TUCKER/KWAN FLOWER FIELD TWIRL. UNIRONICALLY ADORABLE. and him giving it his all for the poetry slam. bless his HEARTTTT.

-Star owns. actually, all of the extra characters are shining this ep and I love it.

-INVISO-BILL??? NOOOO THEY DID HIM SOO DIRTY. DANNY SWEETIE IM SO SORRY.

-johnny and danny bein friends and staging a fake fight (which danny takes too seriously, once again this child has aggression he NEEDS TO WORK OUT) I hope these three stay friends, I said it before but danny needs more friendly ghosts to hang with.

-at this point, Danny's ghost enemies are a lot like, I dunno, batman's rouge gallery is the first thing that comes to mind. they all have their own gimmick and unique designs, but most of them are easy to beat after learning the Moral Lesson. I still get excited when any of them show up again, though. 18 is another valerie episode!!!! :D skulker really said you two will get along if I have to handcuff you together <3 and the gym teacher really said, youre married now, have a flour baby! ngl, I'm not really watching this show for the shipping stuff (which I am very scared to look at the fandom for after I finish this watch through- I feel like there's probably discourse/arguing about ships...) but. I'm gonna put my opinion out there. valerie/danny > sam/danny. maybe I just really love the enemies to lovers trope. And the secret identity stuff adds Extra Flavor.

-SKULKER JUST HAVING THE BOX GHOST AND DANGLING HIM BY A STRING. HILARIOUS. and him watching them with binoculars and making his silly little commentary. AND MAKING THE SACK BABY CRY. LMAO. THIS DUDE IS A BABY KIDNAPPER. skulker is super fun

-danny, you just...collapsed the water tower. and then attacked the nasty burger machine...mascot thingy...out of anger..I KEEP SAYING HE'S GOT ANGER ISSUES BUT. HE REALLY NEEDS A LESSON IN MANAGING COLLATERAL DAMAGE!!! So does valerie!! They're both pretty focused on each other. I mean it's good of Danny to say he's trying to make sure PEOPLE don't get hurt, but... (I mean I guess it's not something 14 year olds WOULD worry about, but as an adult im like, who's going to fix that? how much money will that take??)

-TUCKER MAKING BANK. and sam and tucker being super emotionally attached to their flour baby and being pretty good parents. that's cute...also him just straight kissing her and being like. WAIT. O_O JDSKAFHD. his mom baking them into cookies was the funniest possible result. tbh I dont feel like this is on tucker, if anything the other kid's shouldve been more responsible! He was just taking an opportunity to get that $$ which I respect

-Danny being more understanding of Valerie's situation in the end (helping her at her job, too, and trying to keep that a secret for her!!!) And seeing them work together this ep, and also her letting phantom get her out of the ghost zone...was very sweet. LOVE that. more valerie eps pls

-me when I realize vlad's big stupid house exploded because of his own carelessness with changing the ghost portal ectofiltrator or whatever: *pointing and laughing*

-me when I realize it means he's gonna go make danny's life hell for it somehow: >:(

-SCOOBY PARODY!!! I feel like there's gotta be some scooby doo/danny phantom crossover stuff, right? also, 'guys in white' men in black wishes

-'oh, that's right! dad married the love of your life! you're bitter and alone!' DANNNNNYY GET HIS ASS ONCE AGAIN WE ARE POINTING AND LAUGHING AT VLAD

-'jack, you captured the ghost boy!!' UMM. he did nothing <3 'we have a weapon's vault??' YOU HAVE A WEAPONS VAULT??? and jack didnt put a handle on the inside. of fucking course he didnt! why would you leave that to your son!! or expect him to clean YOUR LAB when its where you work with probably dangerous chemicals and weapons and hes 14!! give him normal chores, like, I dunno, vacuuming, laundry, dishes...CMON. I hate it here. But I'm glad Jack is more chill about danny while he's a ghost, and willing to work with him for this ep. AND. I DID ENJOY JACK PUNCHING VLAD IN THE FACE. AND GENERALLY JUST OWNING HIM. the ghost punchy fists are actually amazing. like yeah, just punch a ghost in the face. that rules.

-ep 20 opens with the coolest fucking ghost lady design. her tattoos can come off and fight. MA'AM. I like ur nose ring and your cape maam hello 👉👈😳

-sam's grandma is hilarious and the most valid member of her family and I love her. thats my grandma now. and tucker covering for sam by dressing as her. thats true friendship <3 also skipping school to go to a goth circus. just bestie things! sam's parents are haters but for all the wrong reasons.

-'my family has controlled ghosts with this for generations!' WAIT. WAIT FREAKSHOW /ISNT/ A GHOST? I didn't expect that...he's just a fucked up guy controlling ghosts? anyway watching danny shoot at police cars and rob banks while mind controlled. its like, the most stereotypical 'bad' things lmao. (tbh an evil ghost circus troupe is a sick concept)

this gives off big deviantart emo edit vibes

(I'm going to assume evil circus reaper danny has a lot of fan content. people love an edgy au, except this one is canon (even tho its via mind control...having the protag go evil otherwise might be hard, I guess?) but au where he stays with the troupe...that has to exist, right?)

ANYWAY. excited to start s2!! lowkey surprised by how many notes some of these posts have gotten. I've gone back and tagged them all with 'dp thoughts' so they're easier to find on my blog! ^^ and I will probably possibly do (more) fanart on my art blog after I finish the watch of the whole show, so like. @sanchoyodraws follow my art blog :)

#sanchoyorambles #danny phantom #dp thoughts

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kinglazrus · 3 years

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Not Your Danny – Ch 3. Familiar

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Word count: 3814

The city had looked unremarkable that day. It shouldn’t have surprised Dani, considering Amity Park rarely looked remarkable, but it upset her anyway. After nearly three days straight of flying, coming all the way from Australia, she collapsed on the outskirts of the city, gasping for breath. Every inch of her body ached.

Flying wasn't like running or jumping; it didn't use muscles the same way. Being in the air for too long could make your head dizzy and your vision blurry. It gave her headaches and watery eyes and filled her with exhaustion so heavy she wanted to sleep for days on end. But, if Dani was desperate enough, she could push through that. This is exactly what she did when she found out Danny Phantom had died.

It was a long flight from Australia to Amity Park, over vast, empty expanses of ocean. She rested when she could, stealing a few minutes of shuteye whenever she came across land, but never more than that. She pushed herself in a way she never had before, until the headaches turned to full body aches, and every muscle in her body was tense and cramped, and she could barely stay upright when finally, finally, she saw the cheerful welcome sign of Amity Park.

On her knees in the dirt, Dani held herself up with trembling arms.

A Nice Place to Live!

The soft green letters loomed over her with their deceptive message. Nice for who?

She might have fallen asleep there, collapsed in the ditch, because the next thing she knew, she was face down in the soggy grass, her clothes damp from the drizzling rain. When she had arrived, the sun was nearing its peak. Now, it barely breached the horizon, warming her face even as the sunshower soaked her through.

It took her a moment to realize the sun was rising, not setting, and she had been out for a full day. Exhaustion still pulled at her, but her headache was gone, at least, and she had enough strength to take to the air once more. She flew around the city, not sure exactly what she was looking for.

(A lie. She knew exactly what she wanted to find, was so afraid of not finding.)

Below, the city looked the same as ever. Despite the early hour, people were already out, cars filling the road, a few stray souls strolling along the sidewalk. They didn't even look bothered by the rain, which was more of a mist, really. Dani tugged on her sopping gloves, grimacing at the squelch of water between her fingers. That's just what happens when you lie prone in a ditch for hours in the drizzling rain.

As she flew, she found no signs of spectral activity. No ghost attacks, no ghosts. No halfas. Her heart plummeted.

Fearing the worst—fearing the truth she didn't want to believe—she finally turned toward Fenton Works.

—

At the sight of the ecto-gun, Dani pales. She scrambles to her feet, shoving Danny's old t-shirts aside, and throws herself to the farthest corner of the room.

"I didn't mean it!" she shouts.

Jack blinks, confusion marring his smile until his gaze drops to the gun in his hands and his eyes widen with realization. He quickly hides the weapon behind his back. "Sorry! Didn't mean to startle you."

Dani doesn't step away from the wall. Her back tingles, itching to go intangible and let her disappear into the alley just outside, away from this potential danger. But Jack's apology feels genuine. He smiles at her, though he doesn't step any further into the room. That gets Dani to relax after a few tense seconds. The tingle fades, her desire to flee going with it.

"What's the gun for?" Dani asks. It is the first thing she has said to Jack since moving into Fenton Works, she realizes. This is the most they have seen each other in four days, and she does not know what to think about that. She assumed he had been avoiding her.

"Some of our weapons used to go off around Danny," Jack says. He pulls the ecto-gun out from behind his back, this time with the barrel pointed down, and fiddles with something along the barrel. "Never really thought about why. So, I've been trying to make them safe for you to be around. I can only do so much without an ectoplasmic sample, though."

Finally, Dani steps forward, skirting around Danny's bed. Still, Jack does not make a move closer, letting her come to him. Dani stops with a few feet left between them. "Is that what you wanted to talk about?"

Jack shrugs. "Partly. I also never said hello."

"Hi, I guess."

Jack smiles. "Hi, Dani. Nice to officially meet you."

Dani can only meet his gaze for a few seconds. He looks a lot like Danny, with kind eyes, but that is not what bothers her. Something about the way he looks at her is different. Over the past few days, she has gotten used to Maddie and Jazz, how they look at her like she is a ghost—like she is Danny.

She casts the thought out as quickly as it comes.

"So, about that sample?" Jack presses.

Dani rubs her arms, feeling phantom prickles along the inside of her elbow. If she were to roll back her sleeves, she could easily find the pinprick scars left by Vlad's needles. In fact, she does not even need to look. Skimming the sleeve, her fingers stop, instinctively, over each scar.

"What do you need it for?" she asks.

"Your ecto-signature, mostly. But we've found that a ghost's ectoplasm has its own form of DNA beyond the ecto-signature. If we can isolate yours, we might be able to make ammunition that won't harm you," he says.

Dani squeezes her arms tighter, memories of Vlad's lab flashing through her mind. No matter how rough the nomadic lifestyle got, nothing ever compared to those first few weeks of life when she spent every second being poked and prodded, not understand how wrong that was. It makes her shiver.

"Do we have to go downstairs for it?"

Jack looks about the room, taking in the mess of Danny's clothes, and the general clutter Dani hasn't bothered to clean up during her stay. "I don't see why not. I can bring the equipment up here."

"Please."

Jack nods and leaves, returning not even a minute later with a case. He must have had it ready to go. The case looks small compared to his large hands, but when he sets it down on Danny's bed, it is nearly half as wide as the mattress. Dani floats to the top of the bed, setting herself down on the pillows while Jack gets set up. Inside, the case holds a few packaged syringes, some sample tubes, swabs, and medical plasters. Hardly enough to fill it. Most space is taken up by the foam padding that holds the delicate glass tubes in place.

"I'll need to take two or three samples if that's alright. It's easier to work with more ectoplasm. And a blood sample." Jack grabs a syringe. "If you're comfortable with that."

"I guess that's okay."

He talks throughout the entire process, describing what he is doing. While he does, Dani fixes her gaze on the shirts laid out across the bed.

"This is called a phlebotomy," Jack says as he rolls up her sleeve. "It actually refers to drawing blood from a vein, but I think ectoplasm is close enough. I need to swab the area first; it might be cold."

What little tension remained in Dani's shoulders bleeds out as Jack talks.

"First needle. I'll use this one to get your ecto-signature. We have some devices that can focus on a ghost's signature without taking a sample first, like the booo-merang, but power use and exhaustion can actually alter those results. A stable sample taken in a relaxed environment works better. We can also use it to measure how a ghost's signature changes over time. Second needle."

Dani's eyes widen. Pulling her hand back from one of the shirts, she turns and finds Jack inserting a second syringe into her arm, the first already back in the case, filled with glowing ectoplasm. She hadn't even felt it. The second needle stings, although she blames that on her watching it go in, and she quickly focuses on the shirts again.

They're plain overall, basic colours with simple graphics, and a little on the baggy side. The one she likes the most is a button-up, one of the few Danny had, with short sleeves and covered in large stars. She pulls it closer with her free hand, tracing the stars as Jack finishes with the third syringe. It does not seem like the kind of shirt Danny would wear. Too gaudy for him. Dani likes it, though.

A tap at her shoulder distracts her.

"Can you change to your human form?" Jack asks.

"Why?"

"Can't exactly draw blood from this form."

"Oh. Right." Dani chews her lip, contemplating. Except for when she's asleep, she hasn't been in human form at all the past few days. Even then, the only reason she changes is that it is easier to sleep as a human. Jazz has not asked her about it since that first day, and neither has Maddie.

In the relative safety of Fenton Works, there is no reason for her to choose one form over the other. When travelling, it is easier passing along as a ghost. Fewer people bother her then—if they don't run away screaming—and her powers come easier. Making up her mind, she closes her eyes and lets the transformation take over.

It passes in a flash, her jumpsuit disappearing, replaced by the comfortable weight of her hoodie. Unable to help herself, Dani touches the star shirt again.

Jack doesn't go for the next syringe right away. His gaze lingers on Dani's face. The weight of his stare bears down on her, but she refuses to look up.

"Is something wrong?" she asks.

The mattress shifts as Jack moves, neither closer nor farther away. A nervous jump and nothing more. "No. Everything's fine."

He only needs a few seconds to take the last sample. He presses a cotton swab against her arm, blotting the fresh needle marks to wipe away the blood, then covers it with a plaster. That last part is unnecessary since all Jack did was prick her, but Dani does not say anything. It is too funny that the Fentons even have their own plasters, covered in little fiery Fs. They really know how to lean into a brand.

"What are obsessions like?" Jack asks.

The question takes her by surprise. "I don't know."

"Really? Don't all ghosts have obsessions?"

Dani shrugs. "Probably." She isn't a ghost, though. Not a proper one. "Nothing's ever compelled me the way an obsession is supposed to. There's stuff that I like, but none of it draws me in."

"Is that how it works?"

Dani frowns. "Aren't you supposed to be a ghost scientist?"

Jack chuckles. "True, but we don't know everything about ghosts. You can only find out so much through watching them." And experimenting on them, but he doesn't mention that part. Dani doesn't need him to. "Asking one about their experiences can tell us a lot more. I can only imagine what we might have known if... if we had known."

"I guess I can tell you about them," Dani says. A good part of her education under Vlad's "care" was about different aspects of being a ghost, prepping her for the rest of her existence. A good portion of those lessons were not as necessary as Vlad thought they would be.

Jack scoots closer, nodding enthusiastically. Suddenly, he looks less like a trained scientist and more like an enthused child. The thought makes Dani giggle.

"Okay, so. I was told that an obsession can be anything. Like, food, a specific colour, an object, a person. There are no limits. Most ghosts have more than one that helps sustain them. They don't need an obsession, or they don't need to fulfill it, but it helps keep them grounded. Really old ghosts have a lot of obsessions. Young ones might only have a few."

Jack grins as Dani speaks. Even though he doesn't write anything down, she knows he won't forget a single thing. He hangs off every word, taking in Dani's lesson as easy as air.

"They can also change over time. A ghost can go from having a lot of obsessions to only a few, or the other way around. It depends. If they lean into one obsession too much, it can completely alter their personality. Having only one can be dangerous, though, because it makes them unstable. If something happens and they lose that obsession, it can really unbalance them. I can't tell you what having an obsession actually feels like, though."

"Are you sure?" Jack asks.

"Pretty sure. I think I would know if I had an obsession. And if I did but I never did anything about it? I probably wouldn't be here right now." It comes out grimmer than Dani meant it to. A ghost doesn't die without an obsession, but the way Vlad explained it, existence became painful, confusing. Hard to cope with.

Jack leans back, nodding slowly. The room falls silent for the next minute as he absorbs everything Dani said. "Did Danny ever tell you about his obsessions?"

"No. It never came up."

The answer obviously does not please Jack. His hopeful smile slips away, and he falls silent. He packs away the sample case, locking it shut, and rises from the edge of Danny's bed. As he walks away, Dani can't help but think she did something wrong.

—

After Jack leaves, Dani stays in her human form.

When Jazz comes into the room an hour later asking for some TV time, a smile breaks out across her face. "You're human."

Dani shrugs, having no better response than that.

"About time," Jazz teases. Reaching out, she ruffles Dani's hair and gives her a playful shove. Dani doesn't find it as comforting as she should.

—

"Are you sure you don't have an obsession?"

Dani nearly jumps at how close Jack's voice is. She heard him coming, since his pounding feet were hard to ignore, but hadn't realized how close he got before speaking. The plate in her hand becomes tangible again as her focus slips. The water that had been passing through sprays outward, soaking the front of her hoodie. She ignores Jazz's snicker.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure."

Jack makes a disappointed hum. "Not even a little one?"

"Not even a little one."

He sighs but doesn't press her further. From the counter, he grabs one of the dinner plates set out, loaded with a stir-try that Jazz and Dani spent the last hour making. To Dani's surprise, he sits at the table rather than heading downstairs.

"Mads had a call, but she'll be right up," Jack says.

Dani nearly asks, "Why?" Ever since she arrived, everyone seems to have done their own thing, including during mealtimes. Having no long-term household experience, Dani was starting to think this was the norm. She looks to Jazz for an explanation but finds none.

Jazz already has her plate in hand and quickly takes the seat next to Jack. She waves Dani over. "Come on. Can't be family dinner if the whole family doesn't sit down." There is a twinge of sadness in her voice, one Dani completely understands. It's not the whole family, never will be. Jazz and Jack must be thinking the same thing, but none of them say it out loud.

Dani grabs her plate and sits down on Jack's other side.

"You don't want to sit here?" Jazz asks, patting the chair next to her.

"I'm fine here," Dani says. Her chair places her back at the wall, giving her a good view of the room. And, more importantly, the entrance. She doesn't expect a threat to come barrelling through, but it is instinct by now to keep an eye on things like doorways and windows. She can see both from here.

This is the only seat at the table she has sat at since arriving.

Jazz presses her lips together. "Are you sure? It was Danny's spot."

"Great. This is my spot."

"Jazz," Jack says. "It's just a chair."

Jazz has the mind to look embarrassed at being scolded. Dani thinks she is going to drop it there, but Jazz opens her mouth again, about to say one last remark.

A sharp intake of breath cuts her off.

Maddie, standing in the doorway, stares at Dani.

Jack and Jazz must see something Dani doesn't, because they both jump to their feet.

"Mads," Jack starts, but Maddie turns and flees before he can say anymore.

Jazz pushes her chair back. "Dad, I'll—"

"No, it's fine. You two eat." Jack goes after Maddie, leaving Jazz and a very confused Dani alone.

"What was that?" Dani asks.

Jazz sits back down. "She hasn't seen your human form before."

It hardly sates Dani's curiosity, but it's the only answer she gets.

—

Maddie's cellphone rings just as she's about to follow Jack upstairs. A glance at the caller ID shows it is an unknown number.

"I'll be up in a minute," she says.

She gets no answer from Jack, but that's expected. Ever since he came back down with Dani's ectoplasmic samples, he's been muttering about obsessions. When he gets like this, he rarely acknowledges the people around him, although over the years Maddie has learned that he still hears them. Answering them just is not high on his priority list.

She turns away from the stares and answers the phone. "Hello, this is Dr. Madeline Fenton. How can I help you?"

"That's an awfully formal way to greet a friend," Vlad says.

"What the hell are you doing, Vlad? I blocked your number."

"And I got a new one. Just hear me out, Maddie."

There's an edge of desperation in his voice. Maddie can't decide whether to roll her eyes, cuss Vlad out, or hang up immediately. Maybe all three. If he honestly tries to play that pathetic act again, she will be livid.

"You have two minutes," Maddie says. Better to hear him out now than hang up and have him leaving message after message again.

"I wanted to apologize for how I acted the other day. It was incredibly inappropriate."

"Yes, it was. And if you're looking for forgiveness, you won't get it." She shouldn't even give him the time of day.

"I understand. And I know we've grown apart these past couple years—"

"You mean when you finally wised up, stopped hitting on me, and left us alone?"

"Yes. But I wasn't lying before, Maddie. I need you!" His tone actually makes her pause. It reminds her, briefly, of the young man she used to know. One who had to beg his family not to cut him off when they discovered his chosen career. His voice now makes her think of the day she caught him on the phone, pleading with his mother.

They had only been college freshmen, then. Vlad was hardly more than seventeen at the time, having graduated high school early. Maddie had never heard him so distraught before, or ever since. But now, his voice cracks with distress. It almost makes her feel sorry for him.

"This has been hard for me, too, for reasons you can't begin to fathom. I wasn't lying when I told you about my friendship with Daniel."

Maddie's pity for Vlad evaporates in an instant. "Stop. Don't call me again, Vlad."

"Maddie, you don't understand—!"

She hangs up before he can finish. Disgusting. She can't believe she actually felt for him for a moment. She had half a mind to call him back and tell him the truth, tell him that she knew everything. But that would mean telling him Dani was here, and Maddie was not comfortable with that. Who knows what Vlad would try if he found out the clone he created was so nearby?

She takes a moment to compose herself before heading upstairs.

When she reaches the main floor, the smell of garlic, ginger, and spice greets her. It has been a while since they had stir-fry, and even longer since they sat down at a full table. Something like this is exactly what she needs after that brief call.

Maddie steps into the kitchen and sees Danny at the table. Her breath catches in her throat. The dark hair, the baggy hoodie, the sharp edge of his nose in profile. But then he turns and it's not Danny, it's Dani. In the form Maddie had yet to see, with a face so familiar that seeing it feels like a stab to the chest.

Jack stands, calls out, but Maddie doesn't stay to listen. She bolts. Her feet carry her to the back of the house, past the weapon's lab, and out the door into their cramped backyard. She crouches on the poor, one hand cupped over her mouth.

She knew, when they took Dani in, that she looked like him. Her face wasn't so different from Phantom's. A little softer, a little less worn, but with a wary edge. Maddie knew. But she hadn't known how bad it would be when she finally saw that face in human form. Not Phantom's face, who still felt so separate from her son, but Danny's.

Maddie's willing to bet that, when Dani was first created, she looked exactly like Danny in his middle school days, before he came out and started presenting as male. If Danny hadn't started taking hormones, would he have looked like Dani does now? On the shorter side, with rounder features. It's not the same as having Danny back, not even close. No clone can ever replace her baby.

But it still hurts so much.

Maddie squeezes her eyes shut, fighting against the burn of her tears. She can't stop them, though. No matter how much she tries, rubbing her eyes, pressing the heel of her palms against them. The tears keep coming, and a sob follows soon after.

Jack's arm wraps around her shoulder, pulling her into a tight embrace. Maddie falls apart completely, then, clinging to her husband and crying into his shoulder. It isn't fair. There was so much about Danny they never got to see, never got to know. All that time they wasted trying to hunt him down.

He died too soon, too young. But worst of all, he died believing his parents hated a part of him, and Maddie can never change that.

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#phic phight #phic phight 2021 #notyourdanny #phanfic #phicc #dp fanfiction #danny phantom #dani phantom #danielle phantom #danny phantom fanfiction #nyd chapter three #trans danny #trans danny fenton

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 3 years

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Eccentricity [Chapter 9: Now I Love Your Shadow And I Love Your Curls]

Series Summary: Joe Mazzello is a nice guy with a weird family. A VERY weird family. They have a secret, and you have a choice to make. Potentially a better love story than Twilight.

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: “Til I Die” by Parsonsfield.

Chapter Warnings: Language, references to sex, violence, and drug use.

Word Count: 7.6k.

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii @bramblesforbreakfast @maggieroseevans @culturefiendtrashqueen @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @escabell @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhyee @deacyblues @tensecondvacation @brianssixpence @some-major-ishues @haileymorelikestupid @youngpastafanmug @simonedk

Field Trip

“You want to go to Chicago with me?”

I coughed, having almost inhaled a chunk of pineapple off my slice of GrubHubbed pizza. We were sitting on the grass outside Forks And Spoons under the shade of the maple trees, which were turning from jade to ruby to amber to fool’s gold, rejoining the earth they once rose from one fallen leaf at a time. It hadn’t rained in almost four days—was that some kind of record?!—and the leaves littering the ground crunched when I stepped on them, which I did purposefully and often. The breeze was soft and whispery and temperate. I could get used to this whole having actual seasons thing. “What, in like a hypothetical, at some point in my life kind of way?”

Joe smiled. His U Chicago hoodie of the day was black. “No, as in this weekend.”

“Really?”

“The Cubs have a game on Saturday, and it’s supposed to be rainy and overcast the whole time, and I just thought...” He shrugged, toying with a piece of pizza crust before tossing it to the squirrels. He’s nervous, I realized. How the hell do I have the ability to make the sexy undead Italian man nervous? “It might be nice for us to be able to get away for a few days. Away from my family. Away from Charlie. Not that I don’t appreciate the ambient noise of his snoring from the living room couch, it’s super endearing, I seriously consider dating him instead of you at least twice a week.”

“Go for it. Charlie could use a rich husband. His pension is pathetic.”

“You wouldn’t miss me?”

“I am not necessarily opposed to clandestinely seducing my sugar daddy stepdad should the occasion arise.”

Joe crossed himself like a nun passing tattooed, cursing, lip-pierced teenagers on the sidewalk. “Lord, protect me from this harlot.”

A weekend away. No Charlie, no constant and chaotic whirlwind of Lees, no Ben. I hadn’t spoken to Ben since our misadventure in the Lee kitchen; if he wasn’t avoiding me of his own volition, he was following orders to stay away. Joe claimed that they’d talked it out. I wasn’t sure if I believed him. “I accept your invitation. Although, truthfully, I’d rather get hit by a bus than watch an entire real-life, no-commercial-breaks baseball game.”

“I accept your acceptance. And I’ll throw in a visit to the Shedd Aquarium, just for you. They have baby sea otters.”

“Sweet.” I checked my iPhone. “I’m gonna be late for Chemistry.”

“Anything fun planned?”

“We’re doing a lab involving hydrochloric acid. I’m highly concerned that Ben will accidentally spill some on himself. The miraculous instantaneous healing thing might raise a few questions.”

“Hm,” Joe replied. But he wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at my bandaged hand. And he wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Joe, I’m fine.”

“Yeah.” He took a preoccupied swig of his Dr. Pepper. Solemnity never seemed right on him; it was like he was wearing somebody else’s skin. “You’ve mentioned that.”

“Hey. Mob guy.”

Now his eyes flicked to mine.

“No more sad spaghetti.”

“Okay.” He surrendered, took my face in his hands, gave me a kiss on each cheek and then one quick parting peck on the forehead. “You win. I’m not sad. I’m ecstatic, actually. I’m gonna be eating my weight in hotdogs and mustard-slathered pretzels on Saturday. What’s there not to be ecstatic about?”

“The fact that your license says you’re only twenty and consequently can’t get a beer?”

Joe blinked, remembering. “Fuck.”

I drained my Diet Coke, flung my pizza crust to the skittering grey squirrels—no eerie albino forest friends today—and pulled on my backpack. “See ya. Have an awesome time in Game Theory.”

“Thanks, I probably won’t!” he chimed, waving, grinning compliantly; and yet did I still sense some lingering menace of disquiet, of fear? I suspected I did. Chicago would cure everything.

Ben tensed when I walked into Professor Belvin’s classroom, ran his fingers through his unruly blond hair, peered fixedly down at his notebook and feigned obliviousness. There was already a metal tray of Erlenmeyer flasks, labeled bottles of solutions, burettes, goggles, gloves, and an unassembled ring stand crowding our small table by the open window. Autumn air poured in like seawater through cracks in the hull of a ship.

“Guess who’s gonna see the Cubs play up close and personal this Saturday?” I announced.

He pretended to have just noticed me. “...You...? But that doesn’t sound like you.”

“It was Joe’s idea. I’m acting like I’m not totally thrilled and freaking out about it, but I am. Don’t tell him.”

Now Ben was the one staring at my bandaged hand. His green eyes were large and unfocused.

“I’m fine,” I insisted.

“Sure,” Ben returned noncommittally.

I started skimming through the packet of lab instructions and setting up our titration experiment as Professor Belvin circulated through the classroom, observing, commenting, offering suggestions and critiques. My wounded hand—still sore in the lull between Advil doses and relatively useless—was quite the embarrassing hinderance; I fumbled with a large glass flask and almost dropped it.

Ben shook his head and reached out to stop me. “Here, oh my god, this is so pitiful, sit down. Please sit down. I’ll set it up. It’s the least I can do.”

“Thanks.” I peeked at his notebook. “Your handwriting is atrocious. Haven’t you had like a century to work on that?”

“Penmanship was never at the top of my to-do list, tragically.”

“What language is that, anyway?” The phrases scrawled in black ink in Ben’s notebook definitely weren’t English. Or Italian. “Elvish? Are you a lowkey Lord Of The Rings fan? Magic and self-sacrifice and nearly insurmountable evil, I could see that being your thing.”

He smirked, struggling with the ring stand. “It’s Welsh.”

“Welsh,” I repeated, perplexed. “Welsh...like how Gwil is Welsh?”

“Precisely.”

Professor Belvin checked in on us, nodded in approval, reminded me that I was always welcome to stop by at bowling league activities, and resumed his wandering.

“Gwil still speaks it,” Ben continued. “The rest of them speak it too. At least enough for basic communication.”

“I didn’t know,” I said, fascinated, examining the long, unfamiliar words riddled with Ls and Ws and Cs. “But that must be very useful.”

“It is. Welsh is nearly a dead language at this point. It’s like talking in code. I always refused to learn it on principle...or maybe I was just being difficult. I would study other languages, Arabic, Japanese...but not Welsh. That was always Gwil’s language. Their language. It was a Lee thing. But now...”

“Now you’re sort of a Lee too,” I finished for him, smiling.

“Whatever,” Ben said, hiding behind his bangs.

I watched him as he at last tamed the ring stand, secured the burette, placed the Erlenmeyer flask. Then he began reading the labels on the solution bottles. “Guess what else.”

“What, Baby Swan?”

I grinned, showing off my unremarkable, entirely benign human teeth. “I’ll bring you back your very own U Chicago hoodie.”

That night, after a pleasantly prosaic dinner with Charlie—burgers, one veggie and one of the conventional variety, and milkshakes at Danny’s Diner—I started packing a small, Arizona-sky-blue suitcase as sparse raindrops pattered against the roof and moonlight streamed in through the open window. Then I ticked off my mental inventory.

“Jeans, sweaters, pajamas, socks...”

I pawed through the top drawer of my old, scratched dresser—the same one that had once upon a time been Renee’s—and contemplated the bra and panty options. Would my theme be comfort and practicality, or feral impenitent seductress? Friday and Saturday in Chicago would be our first nights alone together. That had to be significant, right? After some deliberation, I gathered a handful of lacy, transparent, and/or exceptionally skimpy lingerie from Victoria’s Secret that Jessica had more or less forced upon me during a shopping trip in Port Angeles last month. As I dropped them into the open suitcase, I glanced up to see the albino owl outside my open bedroom window.

“You never know,” I told the owl, shrugging.

It leered judgmentally back at me with those gory red eyes.

“Oh shut up. How many eggs have you laid in your lifetime, Casper The Unfriendly Ghost? Probably like a bazillion. Freaking feathery trollop.”

The owl had nothing to offer in its own defense.

“Why don’t you ever come around when Joe’s here? I’m sure he’d love to meet you. He’s pale and weird too. Although I like his eyes a little better than yours. No offense, Snowflake.”

The owl blinked, tilted its gaze at me, ruffled its feathers and sent the raindrops that had gathered there flying in every direction.

I slid my iPhone out of my back pocket, spun around, and snapped a quick selfie with the owl in the background. “Say cheese, Marshmallow!”

The owl immediately unfurled its wings and flapped off into the trees, vanishing.

“Huh. I guess homegirl is camera shy.” I texted my selfie to Archer, typing out with my thumbs: I am the Steve Irwin of Forks. Behold, one of my many forest friends.

Archer replied a few minutes later: WOW! Pasty and mildly disturbing. Exactly your type. :)

“Yours too, apparently,” I murmured, smiling in my empty room.

I went to my full-length mirror with the plastic, teal-colored border, briefly appraised my reflection, felt a dull swell of approval for what I saw there. The version of myself that had once been so consumed by fears of inadequacy seemed impossibly far away, maybe even fictitious, a dream so vivid I could mistake it for truth. Three things were taped across the top of the mirror: Joe’s Official Citation!! No More Sad Spaghetti!! post-it, his Official Whatever You Want Pass, and a photo of us dressed up together and standing in front of the limo in the Lees’ driveway just before the Calawah University Homecoming dance. I peeled off the Official Whatever You Want Pass, carefully folded it into a neat little square, and tucked it into my wallet.

When the rain began to pour and thunder rolled in off the Pacific Ocean, I closed my bedroom window; but I remembered to leave it unlocked for Joe.

Departure

“Got your license?”

“Yes, Dad,” Joe sighed.

“Got your airport snacks?”

Joe held up the gallon-sized Ziploc bag filled with pumpkin and white chocolate chip cookies. “We’re ready to rock.”

“Call me when you get there safe,” Mercy fretted, hugging me and then Joe. “And Joseph, sweetheart, you make sure you keep an eye on her. She’s never been to Chicago before, it’s a big city, and O’Hare is an absolute nightmare, it’s so easy to get lost...”

“I don’t think he needs any reminders, love.” Dr. Lee laid a hand on her shoulder, stroked his neatly-trimmed beard with the other, watched us with a vague and wistful smile.

Mercy went back to trimming the flowers she had spread out across the kitchen countertop, white calla lilies that she threaded one by one into a translucent sapphire blue vase. “Now don’t forget to say goodbye to your brother. He’s out back feeding the new ducks. And I expect these ones to stick around for a while, thank you very much.”

“Mom, I don’t need to say goodbye to Rami. I’ll just think it. Really loudly.” Joe rubbed his temples with his fingertips and squeezed his eyes shut. “Peace out, you nosy bastard.”

“Joseph,” Mercy pleaded.

“Okay, okay, I’ll go say goodbye. Don’t get all aggressive. Don’t take it out on the flowers.” Aggressive...what a joke. I doubted that Mercy Eleanor Lee, formerly Martin, had a single aggressive bone in her immortal body; not even the infinitesimal stapes of her inner ears or the sesamoids of her feet.

“They’re calla lilies,” she replied dreamily, tending them like children. “And they symbolize love, and beauty, and fidelity...”

My nostrils itched and burned faintly in dissent. “I think I’m allergic to them.”

“You’re allergic to fidelity?” Joe asked, raising his eyebrows. “That’s it, now you’re definitely not getting my reclaimed virginity. No ma’am. I am not hit-it-and-quit-it material.”

“Oh sweet baby Jesus,” Mercy murmured.

“I’m going,” Joe said, showing his palms in capitulation and disappearing out the back door. I dragged my suitcase to the front one, politely declining Mercy and Gwil’s offers to help.

Lucy—her bleached hair in a high half-ponytail and wearing polka-dotted black tights, combat boots, a plaid miniskirt, and an extremely Octoberish orange sweater—was sitting cross-legged on the roof of Gwil’s Volvo. God, he’s such a dad. “Have a nice time,” she chirped artfully.

I opened the hatch of Joe’s Subaru and threw my suitcase inside. “Why do you sound like you already know I will?”

“I might have some relevant clairvoyant insight.”

“No way.” I stared up at her, stunned, my hands on my waist. “But you can’t see me, right...?”

“True. But this vision wasn’t of you. It was of Joe. You just happened to be there.”

Interesting. Very interesting. “And what transpired in this vision?” A night full of hot, steamy, blissful vampire sex? A girl could dream.

Lucy closed her eyes, recalling it fondly, maybe even cherishing it. “You were sitting in the stands of a professional baseball game. I could hear the crowd roaring, the umpire’s trumpeting interruptions. Blue and white...everyone was wearing blue and white. And you were there together—Joe a vampire, you human, side by side, almost entwined—shouting to each other over the thunderous noise and laughing and pushing nuggets of soft pretzels into each other’s mouths. So happy. I’d never seen Joe so happy.” Her striking pale eyes came open. “And he’s someone who’s already rather prone to happiness, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“I have,” I agreed.

“He’s never been serious about anybody else. I hope you know that.”

“I know that’s what he tells me.”

“It’s the truth,” Lucy insisted. “I would know if it wasn’t. Rami would know, Ben would know. Joe...he’s kind of the opposite of you. He’s always been the easiest to read. He’s the one Rami hears most loudly, the one who shows up most often in my visions. He’s clear, you know? Uncomplicated. Authentic. And what you mean to him...it’s something everybody sees. It’s a contagious sort of lightness, of joy. So thank you for that.”

And if whatever mysterious genetic switch that renders me immune to your talents wasn’t flipped, I’m pretty sure I’d look the same way. “I should definitely be thanking you,” I said. “You guys have a pretty cool existence going on here. And I’m so grateful to be invited into it.” For however long this lasts, anyway.

“None of us really invited you,” Lucy demurred. “We just let it happen.”

“So everyone knew I was coming? Because you saw it?”

“Everyone but Joe.”

“You never told him?”

“No. Not even now.” Lucy turned sharply towards the trees, as if she heard something in the soaring western hemlocks that swayed drunkenly in the wind. After a moment, she continued. “I’m not sure if I can even explain why. It wasn’t that I feared changing the timeline or something...my visions always come true regardless. Always. But I guess...” She tugged on her short half-ponytail, pondering. “I guess I didn’t want to cloud any of his decision-making, any of his emotions with the specter of the inevitable. I wanted whatever he felt for you to be completely organic. And it is.”

I considered her. “You are extremely thoughtful for someone who spends as much time shopping as you do.”

Lucy laughed in a high-pitched, almost juvenile trill, netting her fingers beneath her chin, her elbows resting on her bent knees. “I do like to shop. I didn’t always though.” She peered off into the trees again, this time pensively. “Did Joe tell you anything about my life before Gwil saved me?”

“Aside from the copious hippie jokes, not really.”

She nodded, her eyes far-away and still lost in the forest. “Gwil and Mercy are inordinately wonderful people. My biological father and mother, unfortunately, were not. And maybe they couldn’t help it, because from what I understand their parents were monsters too. I don’t think of them very often now, not even to resent them. But when I was alive I burned with it, with all that hatred, with all that bitterness. Every bruise was another log on the fire. Every screaming match or hurled plate was a splash of gasoline. So I ran away and found what I fancied to be a new family, and I lived on basement couches and out of vans and in abandoned buildings, and I explored increasingly inventive ways of putting that fire out.”

The October breeze cascaded through the trees, carrying echoes of birdsong and disembodied distant voices and the scent of pine. It reminded me of Joe.

“Chemically speaking,” Lucy said, “that first hit of heroin, that first high...it’s the best you’ll ever feel in your entire life. Nothing else will ever compare. Not skydiving, not backpacking through Southeast Asia on some Pulitzer-prize-winning journey of self-discovery, not winning the lottery, not the births of your children, not falling in love. And once you accept that, what’s the point in stopping? Everything you ever experience will live in the shadow of that needle. You’re twenty-five and you’ve already seen the endgame. You’re born, you suffer, you catch a glimpse of paradise, you pay bills and push shopping carts down the aisles of grocery stores and insipidly smile your way through your husband’s work parties until you die. What’s the fucking point? So I didn’t stop shooting heroin. And the whole time, I knew it was killing me. That’s what they don’t tell kids when they force them to make those idiotic classroom promises to never do drugs. You know it’s killing you, but you don’t care. Because it feels so goddamn good. Because it becomes the only sliver of your existence that doesn’t cut like glass beneath your skin. Sometimes you love things so much you let them kill you, isn’t that ridiculous?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer her; still, I heard my own voice: “Yes, it is.”

“It took dying for me to see that life is worth living. That there’s magic in the mundane and the frivolous. And that there’s beauty everywhere if you bother to look for it.” Lucy uncrossed her trim legs, leapt gracefully off the Volvo, and—with definite but not unkind scrutiny—pulled at the collar of my thrift shop sweater. “Even in your very, very, very misguided fashion preferences.”

The front door of the Lee house swung open, and Joe jogged out, carrying his suitcase. Gwil, Mercy, Scarlett, Rami, and Ben appeared on the porch to wave us off.

“What’d you do?!” Joe demanded, pointing at Lucy.

“Nothing,” she quipped.

“You guys gotta stop doing this!” Joe exclaimed. “You know what you’re doing, you know exactly what you’re doing, you gotta stop cornering people and forcing them to listen to your creepy tragic backstories! Nobody freaking asked!”

Lucy chuckled patiently and stood on her tiptoes to hug him goodbye. “Have fun.”

“You know it.” Joe tossed his suitcase into the Subaru and opened the driver’s door. “Ready, Baby Swan?”

“Almost.”

I walked to the wrap-around porch, climbed the steps, held my hand out to Ben. My stitches had almost completely dissolved over the past week, and the clunky impediment of bandages was no more. Joe crossed his arms and watched from beside the Subaru with an uneasy frown, but he didn’t try to stop me. He nodded to Rami, so subtly I almost didn’t notice. Rami nodded back.

“I will miss your melodramatic brooding immensely,” I told Ben. “Please do some fun family stuff while we’re gone. I’ll see you soon. Dan eich bendith.”

“Dan eich bendith,” he replied, taken aback. And then, after a moment’s hesitation, he ignored my outstretched hand and embraced me, his grasp so strong and yet so careful. His scent like crisp leaves and salted caramel and autumn sieved into a bottle unfolded in my lungs like an opened book.

“I Googled that especially for you,” I whispered. “You’re welcome.”

“I’m in awe.” His words were characteristically sardonic, but I heard warmth in them as well. When Ben pulled away, I saw that everyone else was smiling. Mercy had tears in her eyes.

I retreated back down the porch steps and met Joe by the Subaru. “Okay, mob guy. I’m good.”

He slid on his sunglasses, shook his head, flashed a proud and toothy grin. “You definitely are.”

All the way down Route 101 to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, we listened to Joe’s classic rock mixtapes and my NOAA Ocean Podcast episodes, reviewed the weekend itinerary, ran through the bare essentials for me to understand an MLB game (“Which I am totally not excited about whatsoever,” I informed Joe, who knew enough not to believe me).

When the Boeing 747 ascended above the clouds and unimpeded sunlight poured in from the other passengers’ windows, Joe put on a black sleeping mask over his sunglasses and reclined his seat, tried to nap, passed the time until he would be safe beneath the curtains of the sky again.

Somewhere over the Dakotas, as I leafed through a book about the Great Barrier Reef for my Marine Botany class, Joe’s hand bumped mine. “Hey,” he said drowsily, seriously; and I braced myself for some emotional declaration, some dire warning, some grave realization of the futility of what we agreed—almost always wordlessly, and yet unfailingly—was love.

“Yeah?”

“It’s an emergency.”

“Uh oh,” I replied, smiling now.

“Flag down the flight attendant and get some more of those honey roasted peanut packets,” Joe said. “I’m starving myself back to death over here.”

The Windy City

The bat cracked deafeningly against the baseball pitched at nearly a hundred miles per hour. It was a home run. The crowd erupted into mindless, primal shrieks of conquest; and when Joe jumped to his feet, clapping and cheering and nearly spilling his blue-and-white bucket of popcorn, I found that I did as well. I screamed for the team of a city I’d never lived in, sank back into my seat beside Joe, nestled against his chest as his right arm closed around my waist and hauled me in closer, as his left hand teased me with a soft pretzel nugget hovering just out of reach. And in that moment, I felt like Lucy, snatching Polaroids out of the space-time continuum of the present and the future and the past. There was where Joe and I were right now, of course; the day we had met each other in the nonfiction section of the Calawah University library; the dance floor at Homecoming; the first night he snuck soundlessly into my bedroom window; all those years we still had left to spend together. Not forever, but perhaps long enough.

“I like this baseball thing,” I told him over the roar of the crowd, twirling my fingers around the curling locks of dark hair that stuck out from under his Cubs cap. Or maybe I just like you.

“Whew, thank god.” Joe wiped his forehead with the back of his hand in mock relief. “Now I don’t have to break up with you.”

After the game—a 5-3 Cubs victory, close enough to keep the spectators’ blood pumping throughout—we boarded the L, held onto the metal railings as the packed train car bumped and swerved along, and disembarked in Little Italy. Historic brownstones were interrupted by a freckling of pizzerias, Italian ice stands, and sports bars spilling out shouts of triumph and despair. We were staying in the Four Seasons with a view of Lake Michigan; but we had an hour of daylight—albeit chilled, dreary, and forever threatening rain—left in our Saturday. Tomorrow would be the aquarium, and then dinner before catching our flight back to Seattle, back to the greenery and fog and eternal dampness that I was beginning to think of as my home. Had I really only left Phoenix two months ago? Had I ever really lived there at all?

“So,” Joe said as we walked under shedding green ash and black cherry trees, his arm draped across my shoulders. “Guess what the University of Chicago has. In addition to a killer Economics PhD program, which yours truly will be graduating from in approximately 2027, astonishingly aged not a single day. Maybe he’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline.”

“Hideous sweatshirts?” I guessed.

“One of the best Marine Biology departments in the world. And the affiliated Marine Biological Laboratory up in Massachusetts, where they send their PhDs to do research.”

“Wait, seriously?” I stopped abruptly, the heels of my boots squealing against the sidewalk. “You mean...for me?”

He rolled his eyes. “No, for my other girlfriend who is also inexplicably super obsessed with the ocean. I clearly have a type.”

“You want me...to come to Chicago...with you...after graduation? For like...a five to seven year commitment?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Well, that just sounds...serious.”

“Huh. What do you know. I guess we’re serious after all.” He took my hand and pulled me gently forward, leading me down West Taylor Street. He seemed to have a destination in mind.

“How is this going to work for you, anyway?” I asked, beaming uncontrollably now, trotting along beside him. “Living in a place that isn’t Washington or Scotland or Alaska?” Chicago was cold and cloudy for a lot of the year, true, but few cities were Forks-level wet and sunless. Forks-level tyrannically depressing, I would have said two months ago.

He shrugged, unphased. “Night classes. Sunglasses. Faking a chronic illness so I don’t have to leave our house. I’m really good at that one. Plus I can get a doctor’s note any time I want one. I’ve got connections, you know.”

Our house. He said OUR house.

Joe came to halt in front of a stately yet plain brownstone which now operated as a trendy bookstore, the kind that sold six dollar lattes and hosted anarchist poetry slams on Friday nights.

“Is this where we’re going to crack hipsters’ kneecaps as a bonding activity?” I asked.

“This is where I grew up.”

I looked again, studying the earth-colored stone quarried over a century ago, the wrought iron railings that framed the front steps, the rectangular windows revealing the illumination and shadows of other families’ lives. “Joe,” I said softly, leaning into him, searching for my words.

“There were eight Mazzello kids: Joseph, Charles, Mimi, Salvador, Donna, Lucia, Bianca, and Giuliano.” He rattled them off like a jingle from a fast food commercial. “And I was the oldest. So when my dad dropped dead of a heart attack in the middle of his shift at the Zenith Radio factory, it was my job to step up and figure out how to keep everyone fed. I was seventeen and completely hopeless at school back then; Sal was always the smart one, the disciplined one, he ended up as a math professor at Loyola University. I was just some directionless, grieving kid who never shut up. But there was a place for boys like me in Chicago in the 1920s. The mob could get you money. The mob could turn that same incessant chatter that got you bruised at school into something useful. And the mob could give you a family.”

Joe watched the brownstone solemnly, meditatively, his hands in his pockets.

“My mom sobbed for an hour the first time I brought home an envelope full of bills with Hamilton’s face on them. She knew how I got it. But how could she say no, how could she tell me to stop? We’d never seen money like that. All my siblings could finish school. My sisters could have new dresses on days that weren’t Christmas and Easter, my brothers new shoes, Sal the glasses he needed so badly. My mother always had something to put in the offering plate at church. And once you were in the mob, it wasn’t exactly easy to leave. But they took care of their own. After I died, they sent my mother money for years, until her own children were established enough to support her. That’s when I learned that money wasn’t just something that put food on the dinner table or kept the lights on. It’s a way of showing loyalty, of giving people peace and comfort and meaningful choices in their lives. It’s how I’ve been taught to give back to the world. So I guess I shouldn’t have disparaged my fellow vampires back in Forks, because there’s a slice of my tragic backstory, Baby Swan. Now you know. And you should know everything, since we’re in this thing together. Or maybe I just want you to.”

I laid my palm against his cool and flawless face, ran my thumb lightly across his cheek. “You really are serious about me.”

“I am alarmingly serious about you.”

“Even though this thing of ours has an expiration date?” Since I can never become a vampire. Since I will never have the distinction of being a permanent fixture of the Lee coven.

“That’s not a problem for today. That’s a problem for ten or fifteen years from now, whenever you decide you want to settle down and have kids and do the whole Great American Dream bit. You’ll be sick of me by then anyway. You’ll be dying to get away from us. Hahaha, get it? It’s a pun. Dying to get away from the vampires.”

I couldn’t imagine ever being sick of Joseph Francis Mazzello. Still, ten or fifteen years felt almost as good as forever to me. Fifteen autumns, fifteen Christmases, fifteen journeys around the sun that he avoided so deftly. “Why me, Joe?” I asked, incredulous. “You could have anyone. Any human, any vampire. Why me?”

“Because you’re you,” he said simply. And his mystified dark eyes added: What kind of a question is that? “You’re smart and you’re hilarious and you actually care about the world, about where it came from, about where it’s going, about people and places and animals that you’ll never meet. You’re indomitable. You’re fearless almost to the point of recklessness. And yet you’re so kind. You’re even nice to Ben, and humans are never nice to him...they’re either horrified or confused, or they’re too busy fantasizing about him to remember that he’s a real fucking person. But you’ve always tried to see the good in him. Even when he didn’t deserve it.” Joe shook his head, marveling. “And yeah, I’ve...I’ve screwed around, full disclosure. I’ve done the hookup thing. And it was great for what it was. But I never wanted more. I never felt some gnawing, sentimental, Hallmark-channel need for connection, to understand who they were as people. And then I met you, and...I want to know every single goddamn thing about you. I want to know your favorite color, what books you read, what the hell is so appealing about pineapple pizza, what you dream of. I feel like I could never get tired of trying to understand you.”

A refrain circled through my mind like a whirlpool, dragging every other thought down into oblivion: I love him, I love him, I love him. “Blue,” I said at last.

“What?”

“Turquoise blue, like the sky in Arizona. That’s my favorite color.”

The smile, slow and wonderous, rippled across his face. He took my hand again. “Come on.”

Joe led me onwards, down a few blocks and around a corner, as the muted sun receded from the sky and the first stars took its place, pinpricks of celestial light in a blanket of violet, azure, amber, rust. He stopped in front of the Church of Saint Lawrence, established in 1902 according to the sign mounted on the brick wall that faced the street, perhaps the same church that he had once visited with his family as an impatient child, snickering with his brothers and sisters and kicking the back of the pew in front of him with shoes that never fit quite right. There was a fountain bubbling with transparent water, a statue of the Virgin Mary at the center, coins made of copper and nickel and zinc glinting through the water under corridors of silvery luminance cast by the streetlights.

“I lied about not having my own superpower,” Joe informed me mischievously, not at all serious.

“Oh, did you now?”

“Absolutely.” He opened his wallet, rooted around, pulled out a penny and handed it to me. “I can make wishes come true. So go ahead.” He nodded towards the fountain. “Make your wish.”

The penny was worn and nearly indecipherable, but I was just barely able to read that it had been minted in 1928. The same year Joe was turned. “Joe...I can’t just throw this away!”

“You’re not throwing it away. You’re exchanging it for a wish. Now wish.”

I closed my eyes, chose my wish, tossed the penny into the fountain. The plink it made when it hit the water was bright and yet mournful somehow, like windchimes, like flickering candlelight.

“Outstanding job,” Joe complimented.

He was so visibly proud, so content, so faultless. The streetlights threw shadows across the sidewalk, the fountain, the whole world it seemed. I laced my fingers behind his neck, gazing up at him. “What are we doing tonight, mob guy?”

“I’m so glad you asked. You see, we have options.”

“Let’s hear them.”

“Door Number One,” Joe began. “It’s been a long day, and you’re exhausted from the illustrious honor of witnessing a Cubs victory firsthand. So we go back to the hotel, find some shark documentary on tv, order room service, shower, and drift off into a peaceful slumber. Just like last night.”

“Not bad. How about Door Number Two?”

“Door Number Two. You’re tired, but not that tired. We go back to the hotel, find that same aforementioned shark documentary, but totally ignore it and make out instead. Maybe we even round second base, in the spirit of the Cubs. Whatever you’re up for. Then we shower and drift off into a peaceful slumber.”

“Even better,” I said, and I meant it. “And what’s Door Number Three?”

Now Joe became jittery; his eyes darted to the fountain, the church, the cars that rolled lazily by. He was so desperate to conceal his hope, to not impose any undue influence upon me. I felt infinitesimal, almost weightless drops of rain against my cheeks, my collarbones, the downy undersides of my arms. “Well, uh, Door Number Three is...it’s...well...uh...it’s...”

Door Number Three is a home fucking run. “I want Door Number Three.”

“Really? Because you don’t have to say that, you can say no, that’s completely fine, it’s more than fine actually, it’s awesome, it’s totally cool, I’m seriously fine either way, and you can obviously change your mind whenever—”

“Wait.” I broke away from him, yanked my own wallet out of my purse, found the Official Whatever You Want Pass, hastily unfolded it, and presented it to Joe. “I want Door Number Three.”

He barked out a shocked laugh, accepted the pass, studied it in disbelief. “You are full of surprises, ma’am. It took me a hundred years to find a woman like you. And I don’t think I ever will again. Makes one wonder if this whole eternity thing is all it’s cracked up to be.” He tucked the pass into his pocket and kissed me beneath the streetlights, beneath the stars. “So there’s one tiny caveat to my wish-granting superpower.”

“Yeah?”

He smiled impishly, nudging the tip of my nose with his. “You have to tell me what you wished for.” He was joking, as he almost always was; I didn’t have to tell him anything. He wouldn’t press the issue. I doubted that he was really expecting me to answer at all. And yet I wanted to tell Joe; I yearned, for once, to be as clear as Lucy had said he was.

“For you and me,” I replied in little more than a whisper. “And for forever.”

Home

The only thing that startled me was how profoundly unstartling it all was, how wholly uncomplicated, how effortless.

I didn’t feel like a different person afterwards. I didn’t feel that some latent spark of lust, of carnality had been ignited, had singed through me, had left me forever marked like the heights of children ticked off on a doorframe over decades; I felt neither ruined nor awakened, no wiser, no older, no more enlightened as to the incalculable eccentricities of the vast and enigmatic universe. I felt only happiness, and exhausted satisfaction, and a deep, dreamless peace that engulfed me like frothy fingertips of waves dragging pebbles and shells back into the sea. I felt only a homecoming that was measured not in miles but in soul.

We slept in as the morning sun rose over Lake Michigan, bought Ben a hoodie (black, of course, per his usual aesthetic) from the University of Chicago gift shop, strolled unhurriedly through the dimly-lit, relentlessly blue pathways of the Shedd Aquarium. As I stood in the glass tunnel and watched sawfish and blacktip reef sharks soar by overhead, Joe linked his arms around my waist, tucked his chin into the dip of my collarbone, kissed the slope of my jaw.

“What do you think?” he asked, perhaps a touch apprehensively. “Could you get used to the Chicago life for a few years?”

“I would be tempted to kidnap some of these guys and bring them home to live in our bathtub. But yes.”

And Joe murmured, smiling, his lips to my temple: “That’s illegal, ma’am.”

Our flight back to the West Coast took off after dusk, and there was no blinding sunlight for Joe to avoid; only immense glooms of clouds and gleaming distant stars and the unfathomable void of space, cursed with crushing pressure and darkness like the cervices of the ocean floor.

Fifteen years might not be enough, I thought, resting my forehead against the cold airplane window as the city lights died behind us, as Joe’s hand weaved through mine on the armrest. But forever sounds just about right.

Larkin

There once was a boy born in a stone cottage with a dirt floor in a vanishingly inconsequential village just west of Clifden, Ireland. It was February 9th, 1672, bitterly cold, miserably wet, and the sea was murderous with storms. His mother was illiterate, as her mother had been, and as her mother had been as well, all the way back to people who painted mammoths on cave walls with their fingers; she was thirty-three and already exhausted with living, her seven children forever underfoot, her full and ruddy cheeks perpetually smudged with dirt from the field and ashes from the fire. Her husband was a failure and a drunk, but half a day’s worth of work once or twice a week was better than none at all; and as much as she never would have admitted it, he was a tether for her in a world that was often, as she had learned, both lonely and cruel.

She gave the baby boy a name—a strong Irish name, none of that audacious English rubbish—that meant rough or fierce, just like the sea that rose and ruptured against the rocky cliffs outside. He would need to be rough to survive in this world. He would need to be fierce.

He began like all the other children had been: sweet and yet anonymous, yielding, needful, worryingly small. She rocked him absently with one arm as she stirred the stew pot with the other. She sang to him, told him stories long before he could comprehend them, tales of the Lord and the saints and all their malevolent adversaries: serpents, pestilence, demons, dragons. She tossed stray sticks to him so he could carve pictures into the dirt floor and keep out of the way as she labored with the laundry or the sewing. And he grew, and he grew; and there was nothing remarkable about him at all, that boy speckled with mud and soot and the perpetual bruises of children mostly left to their own devices, that boy with pallid skin like his mother’s and black hair like his father’s and eyes so light and vibrant a brown they were nearly gold.

The boy was a baby, and then a child, and then a young man. And his mother realized one day—all at once, as a mother does when their attention is divided among so many other lives, when the children’s analogous faces bleed into each other and even their names sometimes escape her, even those names that she had chosen herself from the stories her own mother once passed to her through threadbare whispers—that people had a habit of following him, of listening to him. That there was an ether of allure that hovered around him like the mists that clung to the precarious, crumbling cliffs that touched the sea; that there was something like what the heathens called magic. And when the war came, that boy who was no longer a boy left his mother’s stone cottage and enlisted in Clifden, lied about his age, signed his name with an X because that was all he knew how to spell. But he was sure to tell the man who handled the ledger that he did have a real name, a good Irish name, a name apt for a soldier, a name that his mother had told him meant rough or fierce: Larkin.

There are men who join wars out of loyalty, principle, love for their homes; and then there are men who join to escape their homes, perhaps to forget them entirely. If you were to consult that ledger signed in a pub in Clifden, Ireland in 1688, you would read that I fought for Ireland, for the Catholics, for Christ the Lord and all his saints. But what I really fought for was my own resurrection: to take that boy stained with dirt and ignorance, drown him in the blood of other mothers’ trivial sons, and dredge up some greater version of myself that I had always known existed, that was hidden somewhere in the netlike darkness of the marrow of my bones.

People follow me, and they always have. I couldn’t tell you why. When I called them to enlist, when I thrusted swords and pikes into their calloused farmers’ fists, when I told them they could fight and live to see their wretched homes again, they believed me. I climbed the ranks like a ladder, like a mountain made of bones. And all those other mothers’ sons laid down for me so I could walk across the bridge of their spines to what I mistakenly assumed was invincibility.

At the Battle Of The Boyne, my horse was shot out from under me. A Williamite caught me beneath the ribs with his dagger. And as I bled out, staring up at the sky and impatiently waiting for the pain to vanish as my consciousness withdrew like low tide, I became aware that someone was lifting me, holding me, spiriting me through the battlefield and then the wilderness; and that my pain, in a disconcerting turn of events, had swelled to a vicious and unrelenting inferno.

Three days later, I woke to find that I was resurrected again, this time as something more than human. The man who turned me was blond-haired, light-eyed, agile and yet gentle, ancient and yet ever-changing.

“I thought you’d survive,” Nikolai said in a thick Slavic accent, standing over me with a kind smile. Then he helped me to my feet. “You have greatness in you. It sweats out of your pores, it’s in every word you speak. What a shame it would be for all of that to go to waste.”

He taught me everything: how to read and write, how to hunt, how to dodge the sunlight, how to survive an existence that was both theoretically endless and yet forever on the precipice of being cut short. He introduced me to the Draghi, to vampires who were remarkable for their ferocity, or their creativity, or their curiosity, or their cleverness, or all those things at once: Victorien, Honora, Elizabeth, Kestrel, Zhang, Sergei, Ana, Gwilym. And most crucially, Nikolai showed me that my human talents were magnified several times over, that his own followers were not immune to them, that there was power in collecting exceptional individuals like pieces of china stacked in a locked cabinet; and that if I could learn to climb immortal bones, the ladder never needed to end.

You never quite get used to the power, to the invincibility, to the promise of eternity. You never take it for granted. It hits you, again and again, in ceaseless and victorious waves. Once I was a barefoot toddler who sketched dragons and Catholic saints from the stories my mother told me into the dirt floor of our drafty stone cottage. Now I live in palaces with marble floors, with spiral staircases and libraries and gold-dripping ballrooms, with unobstructed views of any sea I choose. Now I am the dragon.

My phone rang, and I checked the name on the screen. Then I answered. “Hello, beauty. How’s the other side of the Pacific treating you?”

And Liesl answered, in a soft and astonished voice: “I don’t think Lucy can read her. I don’t think any of them can.”

I could feel it again. Another wave, crashing through me like the ocean, like the unstoppable rolling of time: power and insatiability and exhilaration. I smiled in my twilight-lit study as long-dead stars rose outside and the wind howled like wolves over the East Sea. “You know what to do.”

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ecto-american · 4 years

Text

If Found Please Return to Danny Phantom

Phic Phight Oneshot for @imperfection-at-itsfinest: When Jack manages to get his hands on Danny Phantom's ghost hunting logbook, an investigation reveals some information about ghosts and the infamous specter himself that a scientific study would never cover.

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It would be wrong of him to read it.

Jack kept staring at the book in his hands. It resembled a diary, the front design being colorless but a pressed design. The moon with stars, with no words, and the diary itself felt unusually thin. There was no lock, as if it was almost inviting him to just read it. Jack had, in fact, already opened to the first page, and the first words greeted him. In a standard font read: If Found, Please Return to: and the name scrawled, in surprisingly tidy handwriting, was the name Danny Phantom.

What an absolute find. It was pure dumb luck. He had seen Phantom drop it, but Jack had went looking for it in hopes that the ghost teen had dropped one of the stolen Fenton gadgets. Only to recover...this book that he had taken home and into the privacy of his lab for study.

The idea of Phantom keeping a diary was kinda funny. He never struck Jack as the type to write down his deepest darkest secrets or teenage embarrassments in a book. That would imply that the ghost had some kind of emotions. They didn’t. They were blobs of ectoplasmic energy.

So it should be okay for him to read, right? Why was he so hesitant? Well...it was an invasion of privacy. But it was fine. Phantom dropped it in the park. Phantom was a menace to society. There was likely evidence in this journal that could explain all of the ghost boy’s terrible deeds, that could prove that he truly was evil. This diary could change everything.

...Jack had children though, and he knew both were avidly creative. Scrapbooking, drawing, painting, writing. They were stress outlets for his girls, and he wouldn’t ever dare dream of invading their privacy like that. So he couldn’t. He shouldn’t. Phantom deserved privacy, right?

“Jack? Are you coming to dinner?” Maddie’s voice snapped him from his thought process. She hadn’t made a noise as she came down the stairs. But Maddie was a much better stealth hunter than him.

“Yes, yes! Sorry, I was distracted,” Jack apologized. He set the book down on the table. Maddie rose an eyebrow at him.

“Did you get a new ectobiology book?” she asked. His eyes glanced to the book, and he shook his head no. Maddie came over to him, studying the book cover. Of course, it didn’t resemble any of the scientific texts that they owned.

“I don’t know how to explain it…” Jack said slowly. He held it out to her. Maddie accepted it.

“This looks like it belongs to the kids,” she stated. She opened the first page, and Jack saw her eyes widen. Her breath hitched, and she looked up to him “Jack...where did you...get this?”

“He dropped it during a fight,” he replied. “I thought it was Fenton tech, but…”

Her eyes sparkled, and she shut the book. A wide grin had appeared, and she threw her arms around her husband.

“Oh Jack! This could teach us so much! If this really is a journal or some kind of diary, then he may have recorded motivations! Thoughts! We can really get into how Phantom thinks and a raw, honest, firsthand account from Phantom himself! This changes everything!”

She was right. She was absolutely right, and he hugged her back. They were scientists first and foremost, and this journal could fill in so many missing blanks about ghosts. It was a starting off point. Jack’s mind raced with all the things they could possibly learn. Just from a simple peek of the book. That was worth more than the invasion of privacy of a ghost that caused so much havoc, destruction and pain.

“We should look at it right now!” he exclaimed. Maddie pulled away with a small frown.

“After dinner,” she reminded him. “I finally got everybody corralled upstairs for a family dinner. It’s nearly impossible to get either of the girls at the same time.”

“Oh, right!” Jack nearly slapped his forehead. Yes, they were scientists first and foremost, but before even that, they were Mom and Dad. “First thing after dinner.”

“First thing after dinner,” she agreed with a smile.

Upstairs, he saw that Jazz was already serving herself. Chicken, mashed potatoes and peas. His youngest was pouring iced tea into glasses for everybody.

“Hey Ghost-kateers!” Jack greeted cheerfully with a grin. Both kids groaned in embarrassment. Perfect.

“Daaad!” his youngest complained, a whine hitching as she put the pitcher of ice tea back. “I told you, if I’m going to be some kind of ye olde soldier type, I wanna be a knight, like at the renaissance fair.”

“Ah, but if you’re a ghost-kateer, you can get an anti-ghost musket!” Jack teased. As he walked past her to get his own food, he playfully ruffled her pixie-cut hair. She waved his hand away.

“But as a ghost knight, I can get a cool sword!” she protested. Jack shook his head in fake disappointment.

“Never bring to a ghost sword to a ghost musket fight, baby boo,” her dad replied.

“Can’t shoot what you can’t see!” she shot back with a grin. Jack had to hand it to her, and he just chuckled.

“Can we please have a ghost free dinner?” Jazz scowled.

“Yes, yes, let’s save ghosts for after dinner,” Maddie agreed. Jazz shot her a grateful look, and Jack focused on getting his serving of dinner from the stove. His youngest pushed her sleeves up, exhaling. Jack stole a look at her and frowned. She had some sweat collected on her forehead.

“Honey if you're hot, you can just take your sweatshirt off,” he told her. She shook her head no.

“No, I'm fine,” she insisted. Jack was skeptical.

“You sure?” he asked.

“Mhm!”

Jack shrugged a bit. She was always insisting on wearing a hoodie, no matter the weather. If she got hot enough, she’d take it off. No need to force it. He got his food and took his seat.

“How's school going?” Maddie questioned. Jazz lit up a bit, and her sister flinched. She raised a suspicious eyebrow at her youngest.

“I managed to get a B on my chemistry test,” the youngest spoke up with a forced smile.

“That’s excellent!” Maddie’s demeanor shifted as she smiled warmly. “Keep it up!”

“Yeah!” The youngest seemed to visibly relax. “Sam’s been helping me study.”

“That’s good, I always studied better when V-man or your mom helped me,” Jack nodded at her as he cut up his chicken.

“Oh it’s true, I used to help your father study for all of our shared classes,” Maddie confirmed. “Otherwise he’d get so distracted.”

“Yeah, Sam just explains it super well,” their daughter agreed. “Tucker’s been going over math with me a bit, which helps some.”

“Well if you need a tutor, just let us know, and we’ll help you arrange one,” Maddie smiled. “What about you, Jazz?”

“Pretty good,” she replied. “Mr. Lancer asked if I wanted to be his TA this summer, which I really do. It’ll look good on a college application, and I might even get paid!”

“Have you been narrowing down where you might wanna go?” Jack asked. Jazz eagerly nodded.

“Yeah! Oxford is my number one choice, but I also would love to go to Yale or Stanford. I’ve been talking with the college counselor about what else might look good on an application for them that I can do over the summer. I wrote them down in my planner notebook earlier-”

“Hey, that kinda reminds me,” her sister interrupted. “Have you guys seen one of my notebooks? I think I lost it,” she asked them. Jack stared at her. The reminder of the notebook he actually had found. Maddie seemed unbothered by the question. This wasn’t unusual, for the parents to have to play “where’s my stuff?” with the kids.

“What notebook?” Jazz asked hesitantly.

“My important one,” came the reply. Jazz frowned lightly.

“Sorry, princess, haven’t seen any notebooks laying around,” Jack replied. He saw the briefest of a cringe cross his youngest’s features. “Did you leave it at school?” Her shoulders slumped.

“I don’t think so?” she said hesitantly. “I’ll have to check tomorrow. I was so sure I had it earlier…” Her voice trailed off before she forced a smile. “If you see it, let me know!” She picked up a forkful of chicken, only to freeze. The clattering made Jack glance up curiously as she was turning her attention to Maddie. “Can I be excused? I have some homework to get done.”

Maddie let out a soft sigh. So much for family dinner.

“Of course, just make sure you come back down before you go to bed to get your chores done,” Maddie nodded at her. The young Fenton snapped to her feet with a thanks, fully abandoning her dinner as she went to the stairs. Jazz stared after her sister, craning her neck to track her movements before hurriedly shoveling more mashed potatoes in her mouth.

“Uh, I’m not that hungry, and I totally forgot to do this online assignment,” Jazz spoke, standing up, taking hers and her sister’s plate. She was already walking away before either parent could truly give permission. “I’ll put our plates up and clean up in a bit!”

“A-alright?” Jack hesitated, watching his other child put the plates on the counter before rushing up as well. Another child down. They seemed to grow up so fast.

“Least they’re doing homework,” Maddie sighed lightly, shaking her head before taking a drink of her tea. “Oh well. Might as well take their lead and eat in the lab?”

“Please,” Jack agreed. He stood up, taking his plate. “I’m dying to see what Phantom has to say.”

January 10

Skulker: 1; captured

Ectopuss: 1; captured

Box Ghost: 8; captured

Ember: Fought; got away

Fenton Thermos: half-full

Fenton Fisher: untangled

January 11

Vultures: 1; got away

Cujo: 1; played fetch and he went back to the GZ

Fenton Thermos: Full

Ghost Bazooka: overheated and doesn’t shoot anymore, take apart and fix it

January 12

Skulker: 2; got away

Box Ghost: 3; captured

Sidney: 2; got away

Fenton Fisher: tangled, untangle asap

January 13

Skulker: 1; captured

Box Ghost: 4; got away

Fenton Thermos: damaged, won’t suck up ghosts

I met a new ghost today named Desiree. She got away, but it allowed me to discover a new ghost power. Ghost ray.

Maddie furrowed her brow as she studied the words. She stood at the table, her dinner half-forgotten as she thought on the words.

“It sounds like a record,” Jack mused, and he ate another spoonful of peas. Maddie nodded in agreement.

“I think we found Phantom’s logbook,” she agreed. “I’m assuming these are the ghosts he’s fought. And he seems to be recording his powers too. This is huge, we can match up what we know about his powers and what he’s claiming.”

“And he’s recording the status of our equipment.” Jack frowned. “Why would he care?”

“Yeah, he made note that he was going to fix the Fenton Bazooka too,” Maddie pointed out. The scientist flipped through the pages, only to stop at a page, staring curiously. Maddie laid the journal on the table, pressing the spine so that the pages stayed open. She read the page aloud to Jack.

December 19

I hate my life. I hate this existence. I look in the mirror and wonder why it has to be this way. Why am I the one cursed to be this freak? Why is everything about me and my body wrong? For once, I wish something about me was normal, that somebody about me could be right. If Desiree wasn’t such an unreliable asshole with wishes, I’d give everything I have to wish that life could, for once, allow me to be a normal teenage boy.

Jack listened to her in a stumped silence. This couldn’t have been a pre-death thought process of a moody teenager. It was written too recently, and the words hit a sorrowful chord to him. He didn’t intend to, but he quickly began to feel sorry for Phantom. He was very young. It couldn’t have been easy to lose everything at that age. His daughter was his age. Jack cleared his throat.

“It’s not just a log then?” Jack questioned. Maddie shook her head, flipping the pages back.

“No, I think it’s a mix. There’s still records of ghosts and FentonWorks equipment,” she replied. Using a leg, she pulled a wheeled chair to her to sit in. She leaned back, and she pulled the journal to her. After a moment of flipping through and scanning pages, she settled on a page about a third of the way through. “It seems like this is when he began to record things other than just ghosts.”

“What’s it say?” Jack wondered. Maddie read aloud the next few entries as Jack silently continued to eat.

April 4

I only fought this shitty panther today, and he still got away. I’m such a fucking idiot. I can’t believe he got away. I was too slow. All I do is fuck up. There’s ghostly activity happening around the school, and I just can’t figure it out. I feel like I can’t stop them anymore. I don’t know what’s going on, why I suddenly suck so much. I honestly probably just always sucked, and now it’s starting to hit me. [scribbles] and [scribbles] were trying to make me feel better, but I fucked up. It was only one ghost today, and I couldn’t catch them. It destroyed an entire store, and it’s my fault.

April 8

No ghosts today, surprisingly. But [scribbles] has been acting weird lately. The other day she poked and prodded me at dinner. No clue what that’s about. She also tried to give me this speech that I can talk to her about anything, and that she’d love me no matter what. That makes me think she found my binder. I’m honestly kinda freaking out. I knew I shouldn’t have left it out like that. She’s such a nosy know it all.

“Phantom must keep more records than just this,” Maddie lightly mused. “He has an entire binder full of information that somebody discovered.”

“Maybe on other ghosts?” Jack theorized. “He’s recording his fights, he must be also recording information about them.” Maddie’s eyes lit up.

“That makes so much sense,” she agreed. “He probably keeps so many kinds of things written down and logged. I wonder where he’s keeping it? Obviously paper, which is a bit odd. I figured a teenager would move to the digital age…” Maddie paused.

“Maybe he’s older than we think he is?” Jack suggested. “He could have died fifty years ago, and just be more comfortable with writing things down.”

“Oh, that’s true,” Maddie mused. She put down the notebook to take a long sip of her drink. Jack picked it up to observe the page she read.

“Phantom has neat handwriting,” he noted. “He’s not fighting ghosts when he writes these.” Jack’s eyes scanned the words. “...I wonder who he’s scribbled out.”

“Allies?” Maddie shrugged. “He probably went back and blacked out some of the names. Privacy. Especially if this isn’t the first time he’s lost this.”

It made the most logical sense. Jack skipped the purely log entries to one that had more written, and he read it aloud to his wife.

April 10

She was feeding on us. Spectra, the Casper High “psychologist” was feeding on emotions, like some kind of emotional vampire but she’s a ghost. It’s so scary. I saw her do it. She asked [scribbles] and [scribbles] about their lives. What made them unhappy, and why. And when they left, I saw her absorb? I guess how I’d describe it? She absorbed the energy into her skin and it just seemed to instantly revive her, and it made her happy. When she did it to me, I could just look in her eyes and know that she enjoyed every minute of my misery. I managed to stop her, with [scribbles] helping me. It was weird. She didn’t seem afraid of me. I don’t know why.

Spectra: 2; captured

“Ghosts can feed off of energy!” Maddie exclaimed. “Human energy! We always suspected it, but this is confirming something!” Jack glanced up at her excitedly. It was the first real, true ghostly discovery that Phantom was revealing to them.

April 13

All I do is fuck up lately. Because of me, this ghost dog just absolutely has been causing havoc on this girl’s life. She blames me. And I don’t blame her. I ruined her entire life. She lost her house because of me. I didn’t mean to. I tried to stop the dog, but he just won’t respond to anything I say. I can’t capture him. I’ve been trying. I’ve been just calling the dog Cujo. After the Stephen King book, because damn is this dog giving me one fucking nightmare of a time.

Cujo: 3, got away

April 16

[scribbles] kissed me. It was to force me to change back, and it worked, but she kissed me. It was great. She smelled like lavender. I don’t think my heart’s ever beaten so fast. Afterwards she clarified to me that it was just a fake-out make-out. It didn’t feel like it. I don’t want it to be. But she’s my best friend, and I can’t lose her. So I agreed, and when I came home I cried. My dad caught me, and I pretended it was just girl problems, even though that excuse made me feel even worse. He got me some ice cream, and we watched Star Trek together. It didn’t really help that much, if I’m being honest.

Anyway, apparently Cujo’s trained. He knows his commands. [scribbles] thinks it’s because he was a guard dog when he was alive for Axion Labs. For a guard dog, he’s such a playful puppy though, he loves his squeaky toy. And [scribbles] became a hunter specifically to kick my ass. It’s my lucky month. But I deserve it. Will there ever be a day where I actually can do more good than bad?

Skulker: 1; captured

[Scribbles]: 1 Red Huntress

Cujo: 1, got away

“Phantom has a family?” Maddie wondered. She chewed on her food as she thought. Jack shrugged, an odd, unsettled feeling hitting him as he put the book down for a moment. He used his spoon to push around his peas.

“I mean, we all do,” Jack reminded her. “Just...I didn’t think Phantom still talked to his family. After his death. Or did such...non-ghost things with them.” Watching Star Trek with his dad? Jack did that with his own kids all the time. It was his and his youngest daughter’s favorite show to watch together. Jazz typically preferred documentary series, and Maddie was too bothered by scientific inaccuracies to really enjoy science fiction. So it was always “their thing” and knowing that Phantom did it too was...too human.

“Yeah, I didn’t...really expect him to still be haunting them,” Maddie said. Jack could tell that this was disturbing her a little.

“But ghosts can retain their memories from life it seems,” Jack spoke up. Maddie stared at him. “The dog remembers commands from his life as a guard dog. What extent, I’m not sure.” Maddie hummed curiously.

Jack picked the book up again, skipping through more boring logs to other words.

April 29

Ember: 2; captured

Fenton Thermos: full, empty

The past few weeks have been terrible. I have definitely come to the conclusion that I really am developing a crush on [scribbles]. Or maybe I always had one, I dunno. Is this really just an effect from Ember’s supposed spell? Does ghostly mind control really last? I think I always knew that I liked her though. I mean, ever since I told her that [scribbles], she’s been so supportive. She even cut my hair for me, which really pissed my parents off, but they ended up admitting that I looked better with my hair short anyway. Almost like it’s meant to be, huh? Ha. [scribbles] is also one of the only two people who know my deeper secret. She’s been so supportive through that too. She calls me Danny, and every time she refers to me as that, it makes my heart go crazy.

But would she even like me? Would she even wanna be with somebody like me? I don’t think I’d be her type. Some other friends I met at this local support group have complained about the struggles of dating. The stories are depressing, and it makes me worried that while [scribbles] will always love and accept me as a friend, that she’d never be able to love me as a boyfriend. I hate my life.

“Aw, Phantom has a little girlfriend,” Jack half-joked, only for goosebumps to raise and an odd chill run down his spine. He looked to Maddie for her opinion, and her face was scrunched up.

“That’s a bit creepy,” she commented. “He’s pretending to be human.”

“I dunno, Mads,” Jack shrugged. He re-read the ghostly teen’s internal conflicts. “Why would he pretend to be human in a journal that nobody’s meant to read?”

“He has to be sharing it with his allies,” she argued. “Those people he’s been scribbling out. Phantom has to be pretending for them. To keep them around. He even mentioned ghostly mind control.”

She pushed her mostly-finished plate from herself, motioning for Jack to hand over the journal. He complied, and Maddie flipped through it. She stopped, and she set the journal down on the table once more. Leaning over, she studied the spine. A finger ran along the inner spine, and she frowned.

“Pages are missing,” she noticed. Jack pushed his plate out of the way to lean over as well.

Indeed, the top of the diary revealed that it was meant to be a normal, full diary. Now that Maddie pointed it out, it looked like well over a fourth of the diary had missing pages. Jack squinted, pulling his hood over his eyes. He used his googles to better examine.

“They weren’t ripped out, like in a ghost fight,” Jack told her. He pointed to what remained of a page, a barely noticeable strip. “It was carefully cut out.” Maddie narrowed her eyes to get a better look.

“You’re right,” she mused. “Phantom did this purposefully. Probably to hide stuff from his allies.”

“But why hide some stuff and not others?” Jack wondered aloud. “Clearly this girlfriend figure is an ally, but he can’t be...sharing this with her, right?” Maddie pulled back from the notebook to lean in her chair with a heavy sigh.

“...I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t think he would. But he’s also a ghost, they do weird things.” Jack didn’t know how to reply, and so he continued to read.

May 16

The past few days have been so full of drama. Walker ruined my life. He absolutely ruined it. He set out to make me the most hated person in Amity Park out of pure spite, and he succeeded. I’m public enemy number one. I can never win. For a while now, I had debated telling my parents, because I so desperately want their support, but they were part of the news coverage calling me a disgusting, evil ghost. I ended up crying yesterday. I don’t think they’ll ever truly love me if they knew. I also failed Wulf. Another failure on my plate. I’m just waiting for it to all crash down on me.

Walker: 1; sent to the GZ

Wulf: 1; sent to the GZ

Walker’s goons: at least 14, all captured

Fenton Thermos: overflowingly full

“Oh this is just becoming nonsense,” Maddie complained. “He’s lying. We were there, Jack! We saw him attack us.”

“I know, I know, he did, yeah, he did,” Jack tried to gather his thoughts. “But why would he lie in this? I don’t think anybody was meant to read this?” Jack flipped through the pages. The further he flipped through in, the more he could tell that some sections had more carefully cut out papers than others. Why was Phantom cutting out? What was he hiding? Why was he hiding it?

“He meant for somebody to read this,” Maddie lightly argued.

“Yeah, it seems like it, but…,” Jack trailed off. He shook his head a bit, flipping back to where they had left off. “I dunno.”

“Hold on a second,” Maddie urged him, standing up. “Let me get something to write with, we should take some notes.”

“We can just use the scanner to make a copy of the journal afterwards, and we can further analyze it afterwards,” Jack suggested. Maddie thought on this, and she nodded, but she still reached for some scrap paper and a pen.

“Good idea, we should probably read through it fully first anyway,” she agreed. “But I still want to jot down some thoughts.”

“Of course, of course,” Jack replied. He knew that’s how she thought and processed information best, and it was always from her notes that he could visualize his own theories properly. He took a drink of tea before he continued reading the next true entry.

May 24

My entire relationship with my other crush (not [scribbles]) was a lie. She was being overshadowed by Kitty the entire time. This was my first real girlfriend, and it was all fake. I had assumed I was so lucky. I found a girl who knew and was okay with both of my biggest secrets. When I got home I ended up just going straight to my room. [scribbles] brought me dinner, but I didn’t feel like eating. Is this what life is going to be for me? I don’t want it to be like this. The only good thing is that [scribbles] doesn’t know either secret alongside our brief relationship.

Least Kitty and Johnny seem happy again. For now at least. I swear, they’re always breaking up and getting back together.

Kitty: 1; sent back to the GZ

Johnny 13: 1; sent back to the GZ

Shadow: 1; sent back to the GZ

Jack could lightly hear Maddie taking notes on her scrap paper, the pen scratching at the surface. He didn’t comment on it, silently flipping to the next page, and he continued to read.

August 19

I was forced to really face the reality of how much I fucked up [scribbles] life. I hate it. I’d do anything to take it back. It makes me wonder if I should just retire. Am I even really doing anything to help? Am I just a nuisance? Everybody thinks that.

Rationally I know I can’t. I’m the only one who can properly deal with the ghosts, who has the power and abilities to fight back without getting killed. I have to do what I can, but I just wish I could do it without making so many mistakes. [scribbles] said that it’ll be okay, and that it gets better, but it sure doesn’t fucking feel like it.

Skulker: 3; finished

Red Huntress: 2; temporary truce?

“He’s so full of...emotion for a ghost,” Maddie finally spoke up.

Jack glanced at the paper she had in front of her. There was some notes of what they had been learning so far, and there were emotions written in all caps with a line under, and a list of various emotions. Emotions Phantom seemed to be displaying. Guilty, despair, loneliness, self-hatred, self-doubt. Despite the few entries, it was already quite a list.

“It’s not just him either,” Maddie continued. Jack rose an eyebrow at her. She didn’t immediately reply, fingers on her lips as she stared down at the journal. “He’s giving emotions to other ghosts too.”

Jack stared down blankly at the journal in his hands.

“Where?”

Maddie began to write, and as she wrote, it clicked. Spectra’s joy in hurting others. Kitty and Johnny’s relationship. Walker’s spite. Cujo being a playful puppy. According to Phantom, and against what they knew as scientists, ghosts were experiencing a wide variety of emotions and for different reasons. It was weird.

Jack continued to read.

October 17

I don’t know what happened the past few days. It’s this weird blur. According to [scribbles] and [scribbles] I did a lot of bad things under Freakshow’s control. [scribbles] hugged me and told me that it was nothing that we couldn’t fix, but I doubt that. Why does this keep happening to me? I don’t want to hurt people. I want to be a good person, and I want to help Amity Park, but I don’t know what keeps happening. Everything’s a fog, and I’m exhausted.

Freakshow: 1; arrested by APPD

Circus ghosts: freed from Freakshow’s control, went back to the GZ

Replace Fenton Anti-Creep Stick, print out another sticker to put on it

“Freakshow...that was the weird circus guy,” Jack interrupted himself. Maddie nodded.

“Yeah, and if Phantom’s right...he could control the ghosts,” she mused. “So there’s a way for humans to take control of ghosts...That’s something to look into. If we can control the ghosts into staying away, it’d be such a massive scientific breakthrough.”

“We should look into Freakshow more, and see if we can talk to him!” Jack agreed. “Maybe he’ll share something with us.” Maddie smiled softly.

“I doubt that,” she replied gently. “But there’s no harm in trying. What else does it say?”

November 8

I have to fight Pariah Dark. I’m terrified. I don’t think I’ll live through it. How can I live through fighting the actual ghost king? I may never see my family again, and I can’t even tell them what happened to me if I die. I’ve been debating telling [scribbles] that I like her, but I don’t think I could bring myself to do it.

What happens if I die? I have no clue. I’m scared to find out. I can’t die now. I have to make it back. I’ll go missing, and I won’t even be declared dead as my parents’ son. Nobody will know who to really look for. I have to come back. Maybe if I succeed, and people like me again after this, I can tell my family everything.

November 10

I couldn’t tell them. My parents still despise part of me, despite what I’ve done. I know they love me, cause my mom’s already been fussing over me like crazy because of my injuries. [scribbles] said she cried when they couldn’t find me, and that my dad had gone out looking for me all over the city, even in the dangerous parts. They of course love me, but do they really love me unconditionally?

Jack felt his voice trailing off as he hit the end. He coughed lightly, and he took a long drink. Maddie stared off into nothing. The only thing he could think of was his own search for his baby girl. He wasn’t alone, bumping into several other parents desperately looking for their missing children, and several children who got separated from their parents. The entire day was somber and frightening, and Maddie had spent the entire day glued to the phone. In case she called them.

It was all...too real, and Jack flipped past more logs. He couldn’t help but begin to take note of how every single day had a log of ghost fighting activities, even if Phantom didn’t write down his feelings every day. This was so much more than the ghost hunting duo ever expected, more attacks than they were recording.

His eyes rested only for a moment on December 19, and he decided to just skip it. They had already read it earlier. No need to refresh those memories. More logs, and more missing pages, and he came upon another one.

March 26

I ripped out a lot of pages, more than I intended. I can’t risk anybody finding out what happened, but also other pages revealed too much, so I kept them tucked away where nobody could ever find them. I’d burn them, but I don’t want to lose the ghost hunting data. It’s okay now. I fixed the problem and assured that everything’s going to be fine. Possibly better. I made the right choice this time, and now I know that one day, I will grow a sick beard.

I know somebody knows my secrets now. All of them. She had known for months but wanted me to tell her. She asked me if I had a name, and ever since I told her that it was Danny, she’s been calling me that whenever she can. It made me cry the first time. It’s so great to have her know everything now. She loves me no matter what. I couldn’t ask for a better person. Even though she found out because I’m an idiot. This entire thing also made me realize how important it is to keep those secrets, and how poorly I’ve been keeping them.

I didn’t ever mean for this to turn into a diary. I wanted to keep track of ghost fights. But it honestly helps with both the dysphoria and the stresses of being a ghost. I just went back and scribbled out names. Just in case. In the future I need to be more vague.

But this is also the end for one secret. If things go wrong then well. I don’t know. I’ll make it up as I go along. But I know that this is who I am, and that I’m hitting a point where I need help to just be me.

Him: 1; captured for good

Skulker: 2; captured

Desiree: 1; captured

Ectopusses: 1; captured

Cujo: 1, sent back to the GZ

Fenton Thermos: full

Fenton Anti-Creep Stick: destroyed, get new bat and sticker to put on it

Also learned a new ghost power: Ghostly wail. A scream that can just absolutely fuck somebody’s day up. I have to use it sparingly though.

Jack closed the journal, and he set it flat on the table. His mind was blank, and he couldn’t read Maddie. She continued to stare at the closed book, hand in pen but almost unsure as to what to even jot down as a note. He leaned in his seat, finishing his drink. Maddie exhaled deeply, dropping her pen in favor of stretching.

Neither said a word. Jack knew that this journal was not any kind of trick. It was too raw and emotional to be anything more than the thoughts of a teenage ghost. He regretted reading it. It held some interesting information, and he was sure if he dug deeper, that he would find more. But as it stood, his own intense guilt was settling as he knew that he just took too personal a look into the private emotional afterlife of Phantom.

“This is a lot to take in,” Maddie finally spoke. Jack only nodded.

The basement door opened, and they heard dual pairs of footsteps hop downstairs. Jack instantly brightened, and he turned in his chair to smile as his kids soon came into view.

“Hey, is this a bad time?” Jazz asked. She glanced between them, and Jack immediately shook his head no.

“No, no,” Maddie replied quickly. Jack saw her push the journal and her notes, along with her pen and a few spare lab tools, carelessly into a drawer to help assure the Fenton kids that they weren’t interrupting anything. “What’s up, sweetie?”

“Well, I have something that I wanna talk about,” their youngest spoke slowly. Jack noticed that she had finally taken off her hoodie, and that while she wore her normal tomboy attire, that something was a bit off about her. He couldn’t place it. Jazz stood close to her, an arm full of books clutched to her chest, though he couldn’t make out any titles. “It’s something important, and I don’t really want to put it off any longer.”

“Is something wrong? Are you in trouble?” Jack asked. His daughter shook her head no.

“Oh, no!” she said. “It’s just…”

She took a deep breath, and soon, their son began to explain.

#phics #my phics #phic phight #team ghost

227 notes · View notes

redhoodedwolf · 4 years

Text

A Week-ish of Sterek Fics

Hello all! So I recently accidentally fell back into my AO3 bookmarks and have fallen down a rabbit (fox? eh?) hole that leaves me entirely unproductive and sleep deprived but full of feels, so I thought I’d share all of the fics that I’ve rerereread thus far in the last week (it’s over 75 guys) (since friday 😬). Each has the fic name and description, length, and year pub/finished because it makes me feel old. Also all of these are complete because I am weak and cannot handle WIPs.

Note: I’m not adding any tags to the descriptions, so make sure to read the tags and ratings on each fic first before reading!!!

Teaching Derek How to Text (and Other Shenanigans) by neilwrites | 9K | 2018

yo derek Who’s dying

---

I see your 'Derek doesn't have a phone' line and raise you 'Derek has a phone, he and Stiles text all the fucking time.'

The Hoodie by ladiekatie | 1.7K | 2017

“You shouldn’t be able to see me. What are you?” The guy in the hoodie says, the ball of energy grows hotter under Derek’s chin.

or the one where Derek is just trying to talk to the guy at the back of the subway.

Nothing You Could Say by SylvieW | 13K | 2016

Stiles’ second year of college is not working out as he planned. He rarely sees Scott, his job is exhausting, and to get home after his shift, he has to walk at three in the morning. Nearly getting mugged is the icing on the cake, but luckily a gruff stranger is there to rescue him. But now Stiles can’t seem to shake the feeling that he’s not alone in the dark.

Old Traditions, Werewolf Edition by Footloose | 3.6K | 2014

Stiles does not work his Omega ass off to attract frat boy Alphas. Absolutely not. He's at college to get his degree. If he's crushing on an Alpha who never crosses the lines of propriety, well, no one needs to know, right?

Stiles Stilinski, Boyfriend Extraordinaire by MereLoup | 14K | 2016

“Beacon County Sheriff's Department, this is deputy Mahealani speaking.”

“Oh thank god!”

“Stiles?”

“I, uh, I need some advice.”

“Advice?”

“Yeah. So, hypothetically, say you met your boyfriend’s mother and sister for the first time ever. Completely by accident. In the grocery store. And they convinced you to help them make a dinner to surprise aforementioned boyfriend when he got home after work. What would you do?”

Danny paused, and then, “Stiles, you don’t have a boyfriend.”

“That’s not the point! And I said hypothetically.”

“Stiles...what are you doing right now?”

***

Stiles never imagined he’d be in Derek’s kitchen cooking a surprise dinner with Derek’s family while they waited for Derek to get home from work.

Partly because their visit was a complete surprise.

But mostly because Stiles didn’t have a boyfriend.

Or even know who Derek was.

But he’d already come this far and Papa didn’t raise no quitter!

third time's the charm by stilinski | 4.9K | 2016

Sure, Stiles has a mark on his chest that belies the depth of his feelings, but it's not something anyone can see unless he decides to show it, or unless werewolves suddenly have x-ray vision.

Which—worrying. And probably-definitely-likely a possibility – if it was to manifest anywhere, Beacon Hills would be top of the list.

Stiles almost turns around there and then to ask Scott how his visual acuity is but is stopped by the teenager at the register finally looking up long enough to spot Derek. Stiles watches her mouth fall open and her expression—studiously blank but with a faint flush rising in her cheeks—is one Stiles knows far too well, particularly when faced with Derek in all his snug-fitting-jeans, v-neck-wearing, canvas-jacketed glory.

Stiles is pretty sure he invented that expression.

Ukochany by VincentMeoblinn| 34K | 2016

Derek comes home to find a mail order husband and two amused betas waiting for him. When he realizes their prank was far from harmless he ends up saddled with a husband who barely speaks English but insists Derek is the love of his life. He's also determined to win him over.

only if for a night by stilinskisparkles | 3.2K | 2016

“I’m Stiles,” he says breathlessly.

“Derek.”

“Derek, hi, do you—”

Derek doesn’t let him finish, kisses the words right out of his mouth.

Hypothetically by alisvolatpropiis | 6.6K | 2015

Stiles holds his hand up to shield his eyes from the sinking sun, its orange-yellow light reflected infinitely across the vast, calm ocean. As utterly stunning as the sunset over the Pacific is, especially while floating leisurely on a surfboard a few hundred feet from shore, it’s a mere backdrop that pales in comparison to who he’s looking at.

Derek Hale, whose eyes are their own oceans that Stiles feels like he’s been floating on since the first time they met. The older man’s eyes are as ever-changing and colorful as the sea they’ve spent the day on, a palette of greens and blues filigreed with gold around the pupils. And if that weren’t enough, the rest of Derek is also transcendentally exquisite: high, arching cheekbones and a chiseled jaw, although that particular perfection is a bit obscured these days by his ever-thickening beard, night-black like his hair, nearly shoulder-length but almost always knotted in a messy bun at the crown of his head.

sincerely, derek by stilinskisparkles | 8.1K | 2016

September, 2009

Hi Stiles, it’s Derek. Derek Hale, from space camp. I’m writing this in English because my teacher Ms Grady said I had to write about my summer, but I spent my summer with you, so I decided to write to you, instead.

Please write back. Love from Derek.

Pancakes and Murder by Amethyst Shard (AmethystShard) | 14K | 2012

Stiles' life has been a roller-coaster filled with awesome highs and terrifying drops ever since his best friend Scott got bit by a werewolf. The ride hits a bump when a dead body turns up at the Hale house (again) and Derek's only alibi is Stiles. Which would be fine, except that Stiles' dad is the sheriff and has no idea his son has been hanging out with the former fugitive. Awkward.

The Witching Hour by MellytheHun | 8.2K | 2016

The radio host AU no one ever asked for but I have written anyway because sometimes when DJ’s play several sad songs in a row, I worry about their mental health and then this AU was born

Derek Hale, The Hero Beacon Hills Needs (Series) by MellytheHun | 11K | 4 Works | 2016

This series started with this Tumblr prompt, "it’s the middle of the night and i’m walking home alone in the dark and there’s this guy following me and he’s starting to gain on me and i found this phone booth with a lock on the door and i tried to call my best friend but my hands were shaking so badly i accidentally dialed the wrong number and i don’t even know you but help me” au

Stiles is walking home when he's stalked by a dangerous stranger and an even more dangerous stranger comes to his rescue.

Fly a Little Faster by mirrorkill | 32K | 2013

Everyone knows when you go back in time, you shouldn't step on an ant, just in case you accidentally kill your own grandparent or something. But what happens when you go back in time and, uh, accidentally interrupt the one event that apparently made the Grumpiest Alpha in Town into a ball of mindless manpain?

Well, if Marty McFly can do it, so can Stiles Stilinski. All he has to do is get Derek and Paige to fall in love before he gets pulled back to his own time. And before he makes anything worse. That's easy as pie, right? Right?

You are the Moon by skoosiepants | 10K | 2012

Stuff Stiles doesn’t like to deal with first thing: hot, moist dog breath in his face, a cuddly werewolf creepifying his perfectly normal morning wood with shades of bestiality, and his dad holding his service revolver up against the skull of his bedmate, never mind the fact that his bedmate could possibly be a vicious unhinged rogue omega.

Baby, you should stick around by ElisAttack | 9.5K | 2016

Derek's driving along a stretch of highway when an unusual sight makes him slow down, the engine of his old pickup rattling in protest.

There's a kid standing by the side of the road.

It's the middle of nowhere, the goddamn apocalypse, and this kid is standing by the side of the road with his thumb pointed skyward. Like he's playing at being a hitchhiker.

Or the one where Stiles thinks he's all alone in a post-apocalyptic world, until he meets Derek.

Don’t Be Anything But Okay by skoosiepants | 4.8K | 2016

“Oh my god.”

Ben pops open the car door and says, “Please don’t embarrass me, Dad.”

Stiles flaps a hand, still staring at the magnificent sight before him. There are glistening arm muscles and a sweaty tank top and then the vision bends over and holy god. He has to look away; it’s too much to take in all at once, he might swoon.

OR-

Stiles has a teenager and Derek has a plant nursery.

covalent bonds (Series) by HalfFizzbin | 9.2K | 3 Works | 2015

Derek's a hot nerd. Stiles is a nerdy jock. A LOVE STORY FOR THE AGES.

Disappear Here by AgnesBlue | 28K | 2016

Stiles was quiet. “What?” Derek said again. “My first heat is coming up soon,” Stiles said at last. Derek closed his eyes, disinterested. He knew where Stiles was going with this. “I was thinking…hoping, really,” Stiles said. “Maybe you could stay with me during that time.”

AU in which wounded in a fire that killed off his entire family, Derek wants nothing more than to be left alone as he finishes off his senior year in high school. That all changes when omega Stiles Stilinski asks him to help him through his first heat.

Money Isn't Everything by TroubleIWant | 6.3K | 2015

Stiles slurps at the dregs of his iced hazelnut latté, pretending he doesn’t need a refill just yet. Supporting your local business is great and all, but Isaac charging $5 for a coffee with syrup is highway robbery. He’s already cut his expenses down to the bare minimum, and splurging for foofy drinks is not in the budget. Except that he can’t really help himself: black coffee is plain gross. Maybe I should plan on marrying rich, he thinks darkly.

Or,

Stiles has a huge crush on the super-hot guy he always sees at Isaac's coffee shop, but when he finds out that they guy's an unemployed orphan he has to decide if the difference in their financial situations is a deal-breaker, or just a bump on the path to true love.

So Shed Your Skin and Lets Get Started by halfhardtorock | 21K | 2014

He's sixteen and in the woods on the wrong side of the town-line and he's so fucking fucked.

He knows he's not supposed to run, they teach that to you in preschool (don't run from a Were, back away slowly and walk with care), but they never told you how it would feel, standing alone in the dark with your heart beating in your throat as those glowing eyes tracked you from the shadows.

you and me (and my best friend) by trilliastra | 1.5K | 2016

“Come on, I shouldn’t be the only one having orgasms. Let me help you out.”

“Uh –” someone clears their throat and Derek jumps, startled, hits his elbow on the wall and curses, “am I interrupting something?” Stiles asks, cheeks red.

Derek looks up, sighing. Of all the people working in this damn school, Stiles had to be the one to catch him and Erica talking about sex. It’s just Derek’s luck. He spills juice on his pants? Stiles walks into the classroom; Laura starts yelling at him about something that happened when they were kids? Stiles is right behind them, waiting for his coffee; Boyd accidentally throws a ball at his face? Stiles is at the E.R. when Derek gets there with a swollen face and a broken nose.

The universe hates him.

Easy Alpha by interropunct | 4.6K | 2012

Easy A/Teen Wolf AU. Wherein, Derek Hale is the high school hussy, Jackson and Scott really need to learn to use their inside voices. And, contrary to popular belief, everyone is still a virgin.

Body Language by LadyMerlin | 2.3K | 2016

In an alternate universe, soulmates exist, and they can communicate with each other by writing on their own skin.

The catch? No one knows their soulmates' name. It could literally be anyone under the sun, and Stiles just doesn't have that kind of patience.

chantes une nouvelle chanson pour moi by pr1nc3ssp34ch (dallisons) | 13K | 2013

Stiles Stilinski has been at Hogwarts since his first year, okay. That's six years of experience. He knows how Hogwarts works, how it operates. He's not quite an expert or anything, but he's pretty damn sure he knows this school.

So why the hell have they waited like a million years to start taking transfer students?

And why is he the only one who can't get a French date?

C’était Salement Romantique by Swing Set in December (swing_set13) | 2.2K | 2015

The Triwizard tournament is really about fostering wizarding relations. Ask anyone. Just not Stiles, he’s busy French kissing Derek.

Hogwarts really should teach some linguistic classes.

The Long Way Home by MyChemicalRachel | 19K | 2016

Stiles didn’t plan to sleep with his best friend’s dad. It just kind of happened. And then it happened again. And again. And again…

All that once was, remains. by countrygirlsfun | 8.8K | 2016

Life is only a long list of constants.

Being a part of a royal family, being a prince, has been a constant in Derek Hale’s life since he was born and swaddled in silk cloths.

Wherein Derek finds himself in love with a stable boy who is more than he seems.

Driver's Education by arrowofcarnations | 9.2K | 2014

This is the moment he realizes he can never have Derek Hale – that he was stupid to ever think he could. Maybe their moms made them hang out when they were little and maybe they’ve managed to get along these past few weeks, but they’re too different. Derek’s cool, he plays a million sports, he drives a Camaro, he’s friends with Jackson. Stiles doesn’t fit into the equation and he never will.

Letters by ericaismeg | 8.9K | 2014

“Stiles, this is getting ridiculous. Can you please do something about it?” Lydia demands. “Do anything. I don’t care. Go up and kiss him, ask him to prom this year, write him secret admirer love letters, whatever. Just do something.”

***

OR: The one where Lydia sets up an email account for Stiles to "confess his love" for Derek. And as fate would have it, they also end up becoming friends in person at the same time.

We're One of a Kind (Like Dip Da Dip Da Dip Do Whap De Dobby Do) by orphan_account | 3.5K | 2012

Derek is your classic greaser—with a leather jacket, a hot rod, a hot bike, and a duck butt. Genim “Stiles” Stilinski a total fream—he’s too cool to be a poindexter but he’s so far from a cat that Derek almost feels bad for him. All that’s missing in this love story is some oddly perfectly timed musical numbers.

do it for our country by HalfFizzbin | 936 | 2012

In which Derek tries to play it cool but Stiles is totally hep to his jive.

Fast Times At Clairemont High by MonsieurBlueSky (MyChemicalRachel) | 6.9K | 2016

Stiles is stoked when he's chosen for an undercover operation to take down a drug ring. He's less stoked when he discovers that he'll be posing as a seventeen year old student at the High School where Derek teaches.

It's Too Early For This by thepsychicclam | 4.9K | 2016

Derek loves his job at the coffee shop, especially because Stiles comes in for coffee before early Saturday morning lacrosse practices. The problem is that Derek is too shy to do anything about his crush, and the situation is not helped by the rivalry between the basketball and lacrosse teams.

A Tentative Truce by Inell | 8.5K | 2016

Stiles and Derek have a long standing rivalry that has extended beyond the Beacon Hills High School theater department to every other area of their high school lives. With the announcement of the winter production, their competitiveness has to be set to the side so the musical can be successful. With a tentative truce in place, Stiles unable to ignore his growing infatuation for his co-star.

we keep living anyway by bistiles (alis) | 10K | 2015

“Oh, damn, my manners. What an example I’m setting, am I right? I’m Stiles Stilinski, but call me Stiles, please,” Stilinski extended his hand for Derek to shake, and Derek took it, feeling the solid grip and the long fingers around his own hand. For some reason, he blushed on the spot.

“Derek. Derek Hale. Call me just Derek,” He answered, still holding Stiles’ hand in his.

By the look on Stiles’ face, he felt much the same as what Derek was feeling, whatever that unnamed reaction was.

“And this little barnacle attached to me,” Stiles continued, letting go of Derek and flushing pink, “is Leigh.”

Stiles is struggling to raise his only child all alone, while dealing with financial problems, a new job, and Adrian Harris, the worst boss in the world.

But then he meets Derek Hale, a dreamy co-workers, and what is a terrible situation becomes considerably less grim, when he has Derek by his side.

Don't Judge a Derek By His Cover by captaintinymite (augopher) | 4.5K | 2015

Stiles doesn't care about the rumors surrounding Beacon Hills High School's resident bad boy, Derek Hale. In fact, he thinks the rumors are total crap. Of course, being secretly in love with someone has a way of clouding one's judgment.

However, he knew for a fact that Derek liked books. So when the two paired up for a final English project, he was excited (but also a little terrified).

But you know what they say...never judge a book by its cover. The same goes for people.

sometimes fate is like a small snowstorm by thepsychicclam | 8.1K | 2014

In a coffee shop two days before Christmas, Derek meets Stiles. Despite neither of them being interested in relationships, they spend an unforgettable evening together, but then part ways. During the following years, Stiles competes in the Olympics, Derek tours the world - and neither of them forget. Then twelve years later, two days before Christmas, Derek finds Stiles in that same coffee shop.

aka a kinda sorta serendipity au

should the pillars of memory topple out of my reach by bleep0bleep | 4.3K | 2015

If Stiles didn’t know any better he’d say that look in Derek's eyes is adoring, but he does know better, and also amnesiac Derek thinks they’re married. Which is the only fact he hasn’t questioned so far, which is the weirdest thing.

Just High School by Dexterous_Sinistrous | 4.5K | 2015

Derek and Stiles have been dating for some time.

The only thing is, nobody else really knows.

Tis The Season Baristas Fear The Most by stilinskisparkles | 5.4K | 2012

Scott is hands down the worst barista Derek has ever hired. But it's Christmas and apparently that means something to some people.

Mind Reading Can Be Such a Pain in the A** (Series) by Fanhag102 | 21K | 2 Works | 2015

Derek Hale can read minds. If he could have chosen a mutant power for himself instead of being given one by random, genetic happenstance it's safe to say mind-reading would not have been his 1st, 2nd, or even 96th choice.

Maybe if he'd gotten the power of invisibility he wouldn't be sitting in a senior Economics class next to a hyperactive kid with a buzz cut who won’t stop thinking about dicks.

A Criminal and His Lucky Charm by Dexterous_Sinistrous | 5.9K | 2015

Please forgive yourself.

For what?

For allowing yourself to let someone in. For letting me love you. I didn’t deserve it, but that wasn’t your fault. Derek, please, just do it. Please— please don’t drag this out.

Derek Hale valued Stiles above everyone—everything. And Stiles betrayed that. In the end, he figured if he had to die, dying in Derek’s arms wasn’t so bad. He could at least have that.

the things you said when we were the happiest we’ve ever been by foxerica (ericaismeg) | 4.8K | 2015

Derek and Stiles meet again at their high school reunion.

From Dirty Paws by Surreal | 9.9K | 2014

Stiles finds a wolf in the woods. Well, it's more like the wolf finds him. Either way, he's happy to have a new friend in his otherwise boring social circle.

flawless by bibliosexual | 4.9K | 2015

“I know you and I are, like, werewolf-married, but dude, if I ever met Lydia Martin in person . . . All bets are off, is all I'm saying."

It's not like Stiles really means it (does he?), but it still makes Derek’s hands clench into claws on the steering wheel.

"Yeah, if," he says, and keeps his eyes on the road.

Those Hidden Places by Mimiminaj | 18K | 2015

He doesn’t belong here.

It’s the first thought that crosses Derek’s mind as he watches the new inmates spill into the cafeteria. The kid stays close to the wall, eyes scanning all the exits and skimming over the tables. If he’s trying to get a barring for his surroundings he’s doing a shit job of it, something made completely evident as Lewis shoulders him from behind and the kid almost jumps to flatten himself against the wall.

Stiles is the new inmate at Derek's prison. He really didn't expect to fall in love with the mouthy little brat.

Baseball Pants by thatfamoushappyending (betsytheoven) | 2.8K | 2015

Scott shows Stiles a picture of the new pitcher for the Dodgers, and Stiles is suddenly an avid Dodgers fan.

While You Were(n't Quite) Sleeping by mikkimouse | 13K | 2015

Scott’s mom, Melissa, had given Stiles the basics on Derek’s condition when he’d first come over here a month ago. Derek had been here six years, the only survivor of a horrific house fire that had killed the rest of his family. It had left him burned, half his face puckered with scars, and he’d been in a catatonic state the entire time. Stiles couldn’t even begin to imagine how awful that would be, being trapped in your own body for years on end, all alone.

Stiles had an inkling of how much being alone sucked, anyway.

(An AU in which Derek is the one who was trapped in the fire, and then in the hospital, based on a set of pictures from littlecofiegirl.)

dhale25 by ericaismeg | 8.1K | 2014

Derek Hale is an actor in Los Angeles, Stiles is a fanboy in Toronto. When Derek posts his Snap Chat username on Twitter, inviting people to add him, Stiles gets brave and adds him.

They develop a snapping relationship, and it gets intense.

I Settle for Long Distance Calls by iamursforevrmre | 4.3K | 2014

Derek is the guy who Stiles met on some random band page on MySpace because Derek made a ridiculously hilarious comment and with a spurt of confidence, Stiles had messaged him to tell him just how hilarious it was and they got to talking. Derek is the guy that made a FaceBook account just to talk to Stiles on the messenger so they could talk more when MySpace was slowly dying out. Derek is the guy that changed his text message plan to unlimited when he finally sent Stiles his cell phone number. Derek is the guy that has been on the phone with Stiles at any and all hours through the day.

And Derek is the guy that Stiles is in love with.

You look like my next mistake by Vendelin | 15K | 2015

“So, are you dating someone new? Someone who doesn’t mind that you’re frigid?” Kate cocks her head to the side, smiling as though she just asked him about where he bought his shoes.

His entire body sighs in defeat as his shoulders grow square. Just as he opens his mouth, someone comes up to stand beside him, snaking an arm around his shoulders. When he glances to his side, expecting to see Isaac, his brain seems to malfunction. Because it isn’t Isaac. It’s Stiles Stilinski, the lacrosse talent of the year, a senior who Derek has seen multiple times from far away, but never ever talked to.

In which Derek is a nerd jock, and Stiles is a frat guy, and Derek falls for him even though he knows he shouldn't.

Coaches Cupcake Coffee House by ChildOfTheRevolution | 4.8K | 2013

Danny looked at him as if he were crazy, ‘It means he wants to ride the dick Stiles.’ He said slowly, as if talking to the mentally insane.

‘Ride the dick, my dick?’ Stiles asked weakly.

‘Figuratively speaking of course, Derek looks more like a topper to me. And you, my friend, are a twink of the most twinkiest standards, but I’m not one to judge.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Stiles admitted, finding himself in a weird crouch-like stance that he apparently now adopts when he’s overwhelmed about finding out Derek Hotcakes wants to bone him three ways to Sunday.

Gladiator AU ( Series) by HaleHole (SweetFanfics) | 9.9K | 2 Works | 2013

He looks up at the door and waits. He hopes that whoever it is, they will be go easy on him. Werewolf he might be, with superhuman healing, but that does not mean that he will not be sore the next day. And he is scheduled for a fight.

Let it be someone easy to please, Derek hopes. Someone who will be quick to take their pleasure and even quicker to leave. He keeps hoping this as the door is pushed open. A voice murmurs a quick set of instructions to whoever has hired him for this session. It is cut off half way through by a familiar, impatient voice that makes Derek strain against his bonds. -- Rome based, Gladiator AU

Stilinski's Home for Wayward Wolves by owlpostagain | 35K | 2013

“At least your puppies knock first,” Stiles snorts. “Here I thought their alpha raised them to be well-mannered.”

“There’s a sign,” Derek responds stiffly.

Stiles, whose curiosity outweighs even his hardest of grudges, abandons his chilly façade of nonchalance in a heartbeat. He jumps right up and all but pushes Derek out of the way in his effort to get to the window, and sure enough when he leans outside there’s a laminated strip of cardstock duct taped to the vinyl siding:

DON’T FORGET TO KNOCK Stiles gets cranky when we scare him

---

Or, in which Stiles Stilinski moves to Beacon Hills for his junior year of high school and accidentally adopts a pack of teenage werewolves.

Theory of Overprotective Canines by rosepetals42 | 11K | 2015

Stiles is totally looking forward to living alone in his super cool apartment off-campus. He is. He is also very excited to bike to school every day, ready to set up an awesome game room, and definitely over his crush on Derek Hale. Completely over it.

Or at least he is until Derek decides he's moving in with him. And then turns out to be the perfect roommate. And then starts attending all his classes. As a wolf.

This is not going according to plan.

Hot for Teacher('s Aide) by linksofmemories_archive | 8K | 2013

“He invited you to his apartment.”

“To do a lesson plan.”

“Yeah and to probably lesson your plan while you’re there,” Scott said, waggling his eyebrows.

“That made no sense, but you still managed to make it sound dirty,” Stiles said. “I’m impressed.”

The healing touch by devilscut | 96K | 2015

Stiles loses his temper with the rest of the pack when they all make excuses not to volunteer to help their Alpha. Deaton has instructed that for the next 24 hours Derek can't use his hands after he seriously injures them in a magical entrapment. Seeing the emotional hurt that Derek's selfish pack has inflicted on him when they argue and try to get out of it, Stiles volunteers to stay and then proceeds to give the rest of them a verbal ass-kicking. He then takes care of his friend, the Alpha, Derek Hale, while trying to work out what his feelings are towards the werewolf.

Quit Dragon Me Around (Seies) by WonderWolf | 17K | 3 Works | 2015

Stiles makes the mistake of taking Derek’s sword and now the grumpy werewolf seems determined to stop him from stealing and landing himself in jail.

Stiles is not pleased. He’s also starving.

(Or the one in which Derek has good intentions, but little understanding of how Dragon biology works. He just wants the cute mole-speckled kid to be safe). -----

“Five meals, Scott. Derek Hale has stopped me from eating five meals. I can’t believe he’s really trying to kill me over stealing his sword. That’s so petty of him. It isn’t like I meant to steal it,” Stiles complains.

“You kind of did mean to, dude,” Scott adds unhelpfully.

“But you don’t understand, Scott. It-”

“Just smelled so good? I know, you’ve said that like fifty times over the past two weeks,” Scott says.

“This is the equivalent of him stealing my lunch money, right? Thanks to him, I didn’t have a meal this week. Or last week! He’s a bully, is what he is. A nice smelling, douchebag of a bully.”

You'll See Me Again by matildajones | 10K | 2015

Stiles is standing there in his uniform, hair long and hands behind his back. There’s a blush on his cheeks and he can barely look Derek in the eye.

“Hey,” he whispers. He’s wearing the medal Derek had presented to him.

Derek stares. He doesn’t think he’s breathing anymore.

Stiles is the soldier who saved Derek and brought him back home. He doesn't seem to care that Derek's a prince or that he's a little bit broken. Derek falls, quick and sure, but it's not easy knowing that Stiles will soon have to return to the war.

Thousand by ericaismeg | 4.2K | 2014

“Seriously, Erica, I could tell him a thousand times in a thousand ways and he's never going to understand what I mean.”

“I thought I told you to spell it out to him,” Erica says. “Derek's has trust issues. I told you this would be difficult.”

Stop Crossing Oceans by greenleaf | 11K | 2015

“There are no absolutes, Scott! No hard rights or hard wrongs! The world doesn’t fucking work that way and we can’t afford to think like that, because people are going to die! We signed up for that the moment we got involved with all this!”

“We? We?” Scott hisses. “Don’t you think you? Don’t forget that you’re the one who dragged us into that forest the night it all started, Stiles. So if it’s anyone’s fault, it’s yours.”

Something inside Stiles cracks, so strong and so deep that he practically hears it.

The Wolf that whispered into Stiles' Heart by ElStark | 9.9K | 2015

Basically the Union of the prompts:

Mute!Stiles + Wolf!Derek + Soulmates/Mates AU

“Don’t you have a pack?” Stiles asks him –by then he had discovered that the wolf was in fact a male wolf –“I mean, wolves move in packs, right? Lone wolves don’t make it on their own. I read it yesterday.” He says while they’re both sprawled on the fallen leaves in Stiles’ secret-thinking spot in the woods. Derek licks his face, and Stiles laughs. “Is that your way to tell me that I’m your pack?” Derek licks him again on the nose, making the boy’s face scrunch up, “Ugh. Gross, dude!” he wipes his drool covered face with his sleeve and then gives the wolf a pointed look, “I’m not a wolf, you should have noticed, you know, I don’t exactly have fur and I don’t growl and I don’t have glowing eyes…” He says leaning in to look them closer, “Are you even supposed to have those kind of eyes? I couldn’t find anything about wolves and glowing eyes on the internet..” The wolf snorts.

Aftermath by GhostwithShotgun | 11K | 2015

Stiles suffers from PTSD and insomnia after the events with the nogitsune. He has nightmares, gets at most one hour of sleep every night and has daily panic attacks. He tries his best to hide it because they all have their own troubles and he doesn't want to burden his friends further.

Meanwhile, Derek has made a habit out of checking all pack members every night to make sure they're alright.

Cross a Canyon (with a broken limb) by theroguesgambit | 18K | 2015

“You never graduated,” Stiles says, just to say it. To test it out in the open air. That's... huh.

Stiles spends his senior year battling troll-gremlins, taking on an unexpected tutoring job, and definitely not falling for a certain sourwolf (even though everyone else seems to think he is).

It's a Schlong Story by floatingstark | 33K | 2015

"Do you like him?"

"Of course I do, he’s great!"

"Then what is the fucking problem?"

"My dick!"

-or-

Ex-Porn Star Derek Hale has a lot of issues but Ice Cream Parlor Owner Stiles Stilinski is not one of them.

Bad Dog Bakery and Café by Boom | 27K | 2015

Stiles saves an Omega from wolfsbane poisoning. Said Omega now won't leave Stiles alone. Stiles doesn't really have a problem with this.

Beat The Blues by lilpeas | 2.9K | 2015

Derek and Stiles have been childhood friends since the sandpit. When Talia realises Stiles is in love with Derek, she knows Derek has to stop seeing him: Derek’s a werewolf and Stiles is human. It can’t be.

But things never go according to plan.

Red Light's Already Off by orphan_account | 3.3K | 2015

Stiles isn't a hooker. He just plays one on TV.

Noteworthy Observations by LadyDrace | 3.7K | 2015

In which Derek recieves complimentary notes in his locker from a secret admirer, and though it turns out they weren't actually for him, things turn out pretty well in the end.

One Hale of a Sandwich by whatthehale | 10K | 2014

Stiles in bed isn’t really something Derek should be thinking about.

Ever.

Because the person who normally picks Lily up from school? Is Scott.

Lily’s other parent. And Stiles’s partner.

Not to mention the entire source of Derek’s current misery.

AKA, the one in which Derek thinks Scott and Stiles are in a relationship and that they want to threesome with Derek. Spoiler Alert? They aren't and they don't.

Choice by Omni | 8.6K | 2015

Derek knows what it feels like to not really have a choice, what it's like to be manipulated. He'd never take away someone's right to choose freely. The fear of even accidentally doing so is enough to hold him back from acting on his own feelings.

Stiles has never had a problem making his own choices, and fuck anyone who would try to tell him he can't.

(Or: Stiles gets bitten by a different alpha, but of course would prefer to have Derek as his alpha. And also just, you know, have Derek.)

Emergency Love by Kedreeva | 13K | 2012

Wherein Derek is a firefighter and Stiles is a paramedic, and they just keep meeting.

gave your smile to me by Sarageek16 | 4.7K | 2013

In which Stiles is a hooker (but not really), Derek wants to feed his skinny little body, and there is soup. Not necessarily in that order.

#sterek #eternalsterek #sterek fic #stiles stilinski #derek hale #fic rec list

103 notes · View notes

sylph-feather · 4 years

Text

Half-hot water

Summary: Phantom disguising as his normal self is a strange prospect, but one must do what needs to be done.

Wordcount: 2174

Prompt: by @ecto-american

“Danny being stuck as Phantom and forced to deal with situations that he'd normally be as Fenton (like going to school, having a family dinner, etc)”

“This is possibly the most stupid idea we’ve ever had,” Danny mumbles.

“And that’s saying something,” Tuck chirps an aside.

“Stop moving,” Sam instructs, “I’m trying to make you look like you.”

Green eyes blink, baleful as Sam adds a layer of human toned makeup to Danny’s green toned skin. Danny pouts, but his lips are sealed.

“How long do you think it’ll last?” Tucker hums, thinking back to Skulker’s new weapon— obviously inspired by (if not provided by) Plasmius.

Danny’s lips part to reveal sharp canines as he makes to reply, but Sam shoots him a glaring look. Exaggeratedly and spitefully, Danny lifts his arms in a frustrated I don’t know motion.

“Find him an outfit,” Sam instructs to get the two to stop talking. Tucker shrugs and scampers off.

xXx

By the time he’s back, Tucker has procured gender ambiguous things from Sam’s closet— all black, yes, but just a hoodie with a t-shirt and lounge pants.

The first step, of course, is removing the jumpsuit. Danny’s friends turn around.

And wait.

And—

“C’mon man, what’s taking so long?” Tucker groans.

“Uh,” Danny’s small voice comes, “we may have a problem,” he says slowly, drifting over to them. His hair is black, but it drifts like Phantom’s wispy underwater hair; it’s a strange image, to see him so intentionally human, yet still with an aura and glowing green eyes and all the other subtly ghostly things.

Danny is still in his jumpsuit, just minus the gloves that he has tucked into one of the thing’s sleek pockets— really cementing his Phantom image.

Fantom? Tucker considers as a name for this, or maybe Fentom…? Phentom? Hm.

Sam, meanwhile, looks about ready to yell at Danny, asking why he is still in that jumpsuit.

In answer to the unsaid rant, Danny peels off a shiningly white jumpsuit boot, throwing it to the side.

For a moment, his foot is bare, and fairly human asides from the skin toned with green blood and the sharpened nails— and then. And then the boot makes a faint hiss, a bubbling sound on Sam’s carpet, and it melts. The leg of Danny’s jumpsuit then also seems to melt, rubbery material dripping into a new boot.

“That’s weird,” Tucker grunts as Danny settles on shoving all his clothes over the jumpsuit.

xXx

He can’t transform by the time the makeup is done, or by the time he reaches home from his “study session” (as was his excuse, his lie).

He tested all the other powers, putting a little float into his step, a little glow to his hands, flickering out of existence and tangibility… only the going-human one was left broken by that stupid, stupid electrical shock.

He gives his outfit a once over, tugging at things. His skin glows faintly beneath the makeup, and his eyes glow less faintly under the uncomfortable colored contacts (he’d almost gagged, putting the things in his eyes and blinking them into position), hence why he’s wearing sunglasses as additional cover, to keep people from noticing the toxic green light behind the blue.

Keep people like his parents from noticing. Parents that would— don’t think about that. He breathes in, breathes out, puts his feet back on the floor from which he had slightly drifted.

“I’m home,” he announces slowly, awkwardly bringing up that mask of normal to try to outrun the fact that he was anything but. He hopes his voice doesn’t echo too much. From this distance, at least, he doesn’t feel bad about removing the sunglasses (after all, he’d be questioned more about wearing them inside). Danny just tries to slant his eyes down.

“Hey sweetie,” Maddie says, absentmindedly fiddling with some machine at the table as Jack gives a muffled echo of that around the food he has shoved in his mouth. Jazz gives him a wave from her book, not even glancing up. His mother continues, “how was studying?”

That alone is enough to make him sigh a little in relief. “Good,” he pushes out with a nervous titter. “You know how great Sam and Tuck are,” he awkwardly adds. He considers excuses to get up to his room— normally he hangs around and chats a little, or listens to his parents rant, or does homework downstairs. But today he doesn’t exactly want to do that, but he also doesn’t want to be too dramatic and draw attention, so—

“There is a ghost ahead,” the sleek machine beeps, lights on it whirring.

Jazz, of all of them, freezes and stares at him— and then she stares harder, and Danny can feel his sharp nailed hands itching, and his hair feels scratchy around his pricked ears, and his aura feels bright— it’s as though he can see that she’s noticing all that.

Thankfully, Maddie and Jack on the other hand just laugh. “Silly thing. There’s no signs of a presence of one of those suffering spooks” his father guffaws.

(Behind him, the kitchen light flickers a little).

Danny barks a nervous, raucous laugh. You’re being paranoid, they don’t suspect you at all. “I’m, uh,” he pauses, stuttering, “gonna work upstairs today, if that’s alright,” he laughs, and it’s so fake he wants to claw at his throat. “I’m just feeling a little people-d out today, you know?” Danny is at least proud of coming up with a reasonable excuse that doesn’t invite scrutiny, and gives him an out for other extended family time.

“Aw, alright,” his dad pouts. “How can ya get people-d out?” he grunts with a laugh.

Maddie rolls her eyes. “You’re just too energetic, Jack. That’s fine, Danny— though do come down for dinner, please. Just a little time, at least,” she smiles.

Oh, crap. Now Danny feels bad. Wednesdays are usually reserved specifically for sit down together dinners; they have them other days, but Wednesday is the always, the guaranteed.

Danny’s head swirls with excuses from nausea to more introvertedness to headaches. What his mouth, against his better judgement, says is, “OK, yeah! Sounds good.”

He smiles nervously, lips moving to keep sharp teeth hidden, and he leaves just at a speed just a little under too fast to be considered normal.

xXx

Danny feels like throwing something as he angrily paces the air of his bedroom. Why did I say that? I’m so stupid.

There’s a knock on his door, and Danny thumps to the ground, scrabbling at his outfit to get it tugged down over his jumpsuit and glow. “Come in,” he stammers.

Jazz enters. “Sorry to bother you,” she says.

Danny shrugs.

And— and she just stands there, staring. Subconscious and feeling all the failures of his disguise, Danny picks at the threads of the hoodie to keep himself from further drawing attention to those features— after all, he now wants nothing more than to fiddle with all of them; to close his eyes even more, to ensure there’s no white patch in his hair that Sam missed, to brush that hair more thoroughly over his sharper ears, to flood the lights in his room so his glow isn’t so noticeable.

It isn’t until Jazz, still silent, takes a step forward while staring deep into the colored contacts that Danny blinks (and now those contacts feel so uncomfortable and gritty against his eye, ugh) ans says, “uh.”

“Right,” Jazz says slowly. “Sorry.”

And then she leaves.

Weird.

xXx

Danny is left to his own devices for the rest of the evening, which… asides from the tendency to float as he does them, he doesn’t do anything all that abnormal in relation to his routine. That is: keeping an eye for the foggy breath that came with ghost attacks while doing homework and studies, cleaning his room, and videogaming (or otherwise relaxing).

Thankfully, the universe for once decides to let Danny have a break, leaving him with finished homework and a clean room (for once), and time aplenty to just relax.

It isn’t until he smells dinner cooking that the dread kicks in.

xXx

His parents are calling him, and Danny is having a mental breakdown over sunglasses. Sunglasses.

He ditches them, because ultimately the thought that they’d invite more suspicion, or even worse, concern, is just too much.

“You look a little flushed,” his mother points out, pushing a plate towards him so he can serve himself.

Danny refrains from making a pale as a ghost joke, or saying something about that’s why his eyes look bright (that would only point them out, even if it excuses them in the same motion), and instead just laughs a breathy laugh. He keeps his lips tucked over his sharpened teeth, nervous.

Over the whole dinner, Danny can’t restrain himself from that urge to excessively fiddle. He messes with his hair, running sharp nails to comb it into place— make sure it isn’t drifting in that watery way it does sometimes, make sure it’s covering his pointed ears. He stares at his skin, checking for makeup smudges, carefully eats so that the makeup that feels so heavy on his lips does not become overly smudged and so that his teeth are not to exposed.

It’s calculated, it’s exhausting, and it’s frankly overdoing it for his rather selectively observant parents.

What reason would they have to suspect me? Danny constantly reminds himself as he stares at the food to keep his glowing eyes from their faces.

He babbles; he knows not about what, just generalizations. School, how his tests have gone, assignments he finds interesting (he is a nerd at the core, despite his grades). Sam and Tucker and the renewed fight of diet.

Thankfully, his family is enough to carry the conversation as well— especially, of course, Jack (as usual). Not per usual, Jazz does not participate. No, she spends dinner doggedly trying to meet his eyes, and Danny spends it vehemently avoiding hers.

Never would he have thought Jazz, the rational, logical, sister that didn’t believe in ghosts would be the biggest threat to his secret.

“I’m going to get some more,” she hums, and walks behind Danny.

His shoulders tense, body gone rigid.

Her hand just ruffles his hair— he feels it tickle at the edge of his ear, meaning it was exposed... and Jazz just gives him an odd smile, meeting his eyes briefly (he dropped guard on that feature out of surprise), before spooning more food on her plate.

...Danny doesn’t look the gift horse in the mouth (or the eyes), and he counts his blessings.

xXx

Sleep is, apparently, not something that comes easy in ghost form. Danny wouldn’t have known before all this, considering any time he was knocked out or fell asleep ordinarily, he’d revert to being a human, and he was never stupid enough to be a ghost in his own house as he did something as vulnerable as sleep.

Emphasis on that he was never stupid enough, on that past tense, because that is exactly what is doing now.

...Or, trying to do.

Instead, he floats a little above the bed, unable to keep concentration on staying grounded while trying to perform the activity of little concentration. A hard balancing act.

Really, after what felt like forever, Danny concludes it is highly likely that ghosts weren’t exactly made to sleep. That, or they weren’t made to do so at night; the darkness sends his cells abuzz, and explains to him why so many freaky things happened in the dark because he so wants to just go crazy. It is almost like Danny had drunk caffeine too late in the day, and now he’s gotten jittery— except he didn’t do that, so.

For good measure, he tries again on the human form front. Just a faint white spark— better than nothing, at least, and a little improvement considering it was nothing last he had checked. If it still was without improvement by now, maybe Danny would’ve worried about dying the rest of the way by an idiotic taser, but that improvement indicated he was (probably) fine, so he didn’t need to have one of his many existential crises.

So he stares,

— stares… stares… stares…

He feels his lids getting heavy.

xXx

Maddie shakes him awake.

“Rough night?” she asks, and Danny gives a nervous laugh, startlingly awake as memories jolt back.

Maddie frowns at her fingers, rubbing together waxy makeup, but shrugs it off.

Unable to stop himself, Danny’s eyes (crusty and uncomfortable with a night of sleeping with contacts in; the things feel more like shards in his eyes than ever) flick down to look at the hand his mother grabbed… to find it unsmudged.

No, wait.

He runs a finger along it, and makeup comes off, but it reveals human toned, pink tinted skin beneath.

His mom continues, oblivious to Danny’s joy— “I had trouble sleeping, too— trying to fix that new invention, because it kept saying there was a ghost here.” She laughs in a scoff.

Danny can’t project that same confidence, but he can laugh anyways, fully human once again.

#dp #phic #phic phight #phic phight 2020 #dp fanfic #Danny Phantom #phic phight 20

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mylittlenovathings · 3 years

Text

𝓗𝓪𝓵𝓵𝓸𝔀𝓮𝓮𝓷'𝓼 𝓜𝓸𝓻𝓮 𝓕𝓾𝓷 𝔀𝓲𝓽𝓱 𝓨𝓸𝓾

Sam Alexander x OC

TW: Slight swearing(less than ten, more than one)

(one shot for upcoming fic. First time, don’t judge)

Summary: Basically Sam/Nova is trick-or-treating with his sister and Jade(OC) comes to embarrass him but they just have a lot of fun together.

Jade’s POV.

IT IS SPOOPY DAY! I’m probably gonna go try and scare the A-Team later. I can’t wait. FINALLY THE DAY I CAN PUT MY HAIR IN FULL BLUE and no one will stare. Well, they always do. I’m Tony Stark’s daughter. Maybe I could get Danny into this. He probably would say no. Eh,I’ll go see Kamala first. Or text her. She doesn’t really celebrate Halloween.

The A-Team Chat

Jade:ANyone Trick-or-Treating tonight?

Sam: Thanks for reminding me, Stark

Sam: You wanna join, Jay?

Peter:( ͡• ͜ʖ ͡• )

Luke:( ͡• ͜ʖ ͡• )

Jade: Luke and Peter out here on the same wavelength.

Sam: I forgot I was supposed to chaperone my sister

Jade: Such a big word.(¬_¬ )

Sam: So I’ve gone out in my onesie. Honestly, Jade, please come embarrass me loudly. Everyone is staring.

Jade:Give me a sec

I laughed and threw on my uniform. It’s Halloween! I ran out and jumped into the night sky. Oh god. I was supposed to scare people not embarrass Sam today but hey, I get to embarrass my boyfriend. That’s fun. IN FRONT OF HIS SISTER! Holy-this is gonna be fun.

I landed behind a bush to catch my breath but laugh at the same time.Sam’s head popped out. He was wearing a multi-coloured unicorn onesie. He looked pretty cute in it.

“Lazy ass costume.” He rolled his eyes.

“Better than yours.”

“Just embarrass me please.”

We popped out of the buch while I was openly laughing at him. Kaelynn smiled and wrapped her arms around me. Kaelynn is the sweetest. I heard our friend, Peter behind us.

“Hey.” I waved.

“Hey Jade.” He nodded.

He was wearing an Iron Man hoodie. I laughed really loudly. Sam rolled his eyes. I laughed and set my head on his shoulder. Peter made a fake gagging noise while I didn’t care. We were fine like this. We kept walking as some of our other friends joined. We were all laughing loudly at him. All of a sudden, he intertwined his fingers with mine. No one noticed but he smiled at me like asking me if it was okay. The fucker knows I’m okay with him. He’s the only one I fully trust. Well, we thought no one noticed.

“Sam and Jade are holding hands.” Kaelynn said.

Sam glared at her but still firmly gripped my hand. I frowned mockingly at her. I rolled my eyes and kissed Sam. Full on. Kaelynn looked away, almost traumatised. The A Team gasped. I smiled and I could feel Sam grin too. I giggled like a little girl. I never was allowed to be a little girl. My face apparently visibly darkened because Sam stroked my nose. I scrunched up my nose. I did that and Sam does the nose thing cause...I don’t know. It was a weird thing.

After a while, we dispersed. Sam and I dropped Kae at home and we just walked around without the costumes. “Nice night, huh?” He smiled.

“Full moon, full moon!” I pointed at the sky.

He laughed at my child-like wonder.I never saw the moon until I was ten. It was Nova who showed me the planets in depth. I laughed and started waving my hands up and down. He just smiled. Then sighed.

“What’s up?” I put my hand on his.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m guessing you don’t want a two-faced assassin who is liable to suddenly turn into a killing machine as your girlfriend, huh?”

“What?! No! Well, yeah. But not for that reason. It’s...that place. They’re gonna come for you. I might lose you. I don’t want to.”

I nodded. “I-ok. Sure. I know. But I'm much stronger than any of them have ever trained for. Sam, I won’t die in that battle. They would.”

He sighed and took me by the hand.I got up and spun him. Whenever no one was looking or listening, Bucky(or Dad, as he is apparently my dad)would quietly speak in English. I was raised in German and Russian but was made to understand any language with the add-ons of mythical languages for other reasons. He would remember vaguely whatever was happening. Kinda hurt though. I don’t know. I suddenly felt my phone vibrate.

INHABITANTS OF AVENGERS TOWER

Tin Man: Midnight kid.

Patriotic Pants: Yeah, where are you?

Tin Many:Kid. Where are you?

Aunt Nat🖤: She’s with Sam.

Patriotic Pants: Kid, it’s midnight.

Dad: Yeah, Halloween is basically over, doll.

I yawned and looked at Sam. “I need to go now.” He smiled and put on his helmet. Was that even there in the first place? We were still holding hands amazingly. OH AND SHOULD I MENTION THAT THEY STILL THINK SAM IS JUST MY FRIEND NOT MY BOYFRIEND?

Jade: Don’t worry, I’m on my way.

Patriotic Pants: You’d better, your dad is pacing the floor.

I sighed before taking off with Sam. No one could see us. “Are you fine with me introducing you as my boyfriend to my family?” I looked at him.

He looked kinda shocked. I stopped in the middle of the New York sky. He looked so scared.

“You don’t have to!” I replied.

Sam nodded. “Get it done and over with right?” He sighed.

I tilted his chin up. Being an inch taller than him was an advantage. You know that moment when your heart starts swelling up and your face gets all red and-just AAAAAHHHHHH.That? It was that moment. We were about to kiss but we both started laughing and just couldn’t actually do it. I don’t know. I wasn’t very sure what we were laughing about exactly. I think it was the fact that what we were doing was awfully cheesy and we weren’t the overtly romantic type of couple. The only people who know we’re dating are the A-Team and the Secret Warriors. The Secret Warriors don’t even know I’m Jade Stark! I’m surprised Doreen doesn’t know yet. I mean, she knows about Kamala but not me? Dammit Doreen,get your head in the game.

After the whole laughing thing was over and we both fell a few times, we reached the Tower, and guess what? THE AVENGERS WHO WERE AWAKE WERE THERE.Nat, Dad, Steve and Tony.

“Henlo!” I exclaimed.

“Doll…” Bucky took on the edge of cautious anger in his voice.

“Hi.” Sam gripped my shoulder.

“You’re Sam, huh?” Steve asked.

“You’re the one my daughter’s dating.” Dad said with a hint of realisation.

“YOU KNEW?!” I yelled.

“It was obvious, kid. The way you light up when you talk about that specific member of your team, how you want to beat him up yet wanna hug him. You speak differently about him. Also when you talk to him, you get all silly and bump into stuff.When you first introduced us to your team, you explained the rest haphazardly while you gave us a full damn case file about Sam. Pretty obvious” Dad shrugged.

The rest of the Avengers just got it. Steve looked embarrassed by not realising it. Aunt Nat’s smile definitely said that she wasn’t expecting me dating. Tony was clapping. Sam was blushing and laughing because NOW HE KNOWS HOW I TALK ABOUT HIM, GODDAMNIT DAD.

“Doll, besides from that, can you come with me for a bit?” Dad nodded towards the entrance into the main building.

“Oh,ok.” I walked towards him.

He put his metal arm around me.

“Kid?”

“Mhm.” I was already worried.

“Sam’s a good kid. I like him. Only doll,you know what happens…”

“Of course, I know. But Sam knows everything about me. I know everything about him. I know he isn't lying. Even if he is,I can just y’know...scare him.” I pushed my hands in front of me, making an explosion sign.

Dad smiled. “Course you can doll. Now let’s go see if the rest have killed Sam yet.”

“When did you realise I was with Sam?” We walked back to the “balcony”.

“I mean, probably the day you let him lift you up.”

I nodded, remembering that day. We walked through the door and Sam looked tad bit terrified and Tony was laughing.

“You good Sam?” I asked while keeping a laugh quiet.

“Yeah. I’m gonna head home now Jay. I’ll see you tomorrow? For training?” He smiled.

“Duh.” I rolled my eyes.

He laughed. I smiled. The adults all signaled to each other to leave. I pulled my hoodie over my head. He just stood there. It was those awkward bits in movies where the two protagonists realised they liked each other all over again and one side of the relationship just told their family about the secret things they’ve been doing.Suddenly, warmth splashed over me. Sam kissed me. Of course he had. I smiled.

“Good night, Jay.” He put his helmet back on before jumping back into the sky.

I sighed. I’m so fucking lucky to have Sam.

THE END I posted this on my main but decided to repost it here

#nova #ultimate spiderman #usm #ultimate spiderman fanfic #nova fanfic #sam alexander

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rachel-rxth · 3 years

Text

SPOOPY

Sam Alexander x OC

TW: Slight swearing(less than ten, more than one)

(one shot for upcoming fic. First time, don’t judge)

Word Count: 1548 words(wtf)

Summary: Basically Sam/Nova is trick-or-treating with his sister and Jade(OC) comes to embarrass him but they just have a lot of fun together.

Jade’s POV.

The A-Team Chat

Jade:ANyone Trick-or-Treating tonight?

Sam: Thanks for reminding me, Stark

Sam: You wanna join, Jay?

Peter:( ͡• ͜ʖ ͡• )

Luke:( ͡• ͜ʖ ͡• )

Jade: Luke and Peter out here on the same wavelength.

Sam: I forgot I was supposed to chaperone my sister

Jade: Such a big word.(¬_¬ )

Sam: So I’ve gone out in my onesie. Honestly, Jade, please come embarrass me loudly. Everyone is staring.

Jade:Give me a sec

I landed behind a bush to catch my breath but laugh at the same time.Sam’s head popped out. He was wearing a multi-coloured unicorn onesie. He looked pretty cute in it.

“Lazy ass costume.” He rolled his eyes.

“Better than yours.”

“Just embarrass me please.”

We popped out of the buch while I was openly laughing at him. Kaelynn smiled and wrapped her arms around me. Kaelynn is the sweetest. I heard our friend, Peter behind us.

“Hey.” I waved.

“Hey Jade.” He nodded.

“Sam and Jade are holding hands.” Kaelynn said.

After a while, we dispersed. Sam and I dropped Kae at home and we just walked around without the costumes. “Nice night, huh?” He smiled.

“Full moon, full moon!” I pointed at the sky.

“What’s up?” I put my hand on his.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m guessing you don’t want a two-faced assassin who is liable to suddenly turn into a killing machine as your girlfriend, huh?”

“What?! No! Well, yeah. But not for that reason. It’s...that place. They’re gonna come for you. I might lose you. I don’t want to.”

I nodded. “I-ok. Sure. I know. But I'm much stronger than any of them have ever trained for. Sam, I won’t die in that battle. They would.”

INHABITANTS OF AVENGERS TOWER

Tin Man: Midnight kid.

Patriotic Pants: Yeah, where are you?

Tin Many:Kid. Where are you?

Aunt Nat🖤: She’s with Sam.

Patriotic Pants: Kid, it’s midnight.

Dad: Yeah, Halloween is basically over, doll.

Jade: Don’t worry, I’m on my way.

Patriotic Pants: You’d better, your dad is pacing the floor.

I sighed before taking off with Sam. No one could see us. “Are you fine with me introducing you as my boyfriend to my family?” I looked at him.

He looked kinda shocked. I stopped in the middle of the New York sky. He looked so scared.

“You don’t have to!” I replied.

Sam nodded. “Get it done and over with right?” He sighed.

After the whole laughing thing was over and we both fell a few times, we reached the Tower, and guess what? THE AVENGERS WHO WERE AWAKE WERE THERE.Nat, Dad, Steve and Tony.

“Henlo!” I exclaimed.

“Doll…” Bucky took on the edge of cautious anger in his voice.

“Hi.” Sam gripped my shoulder.

“You’re Sam, huh?” Steve asked.

“You’re the one my daughter’s dating.” Dad said with a hint of realisation.

“YOU KNEW?!” I yelled.

“Doll, besides from that, can you come with me for a bit?” Dad nodded towards the entrance into the main building.

“Oh,ok.” I walked towards him.

He put his metal arm around me.

“Kid?”

“Mhm.” I was already worried.

“Sam’s a good kid. I like him. Only doll,you know what happens…”

Dad smiled. “Course you can doll. Now let’s go see if the rest have killed Sam yet.”

“When did you realise I was with Sam?” We walked back to the “balcony”.

“I mean, probably the day you let him lift you up.”

I nodded, remembering that day. We walked through the door and Sam looked tad bit terrified and Tony was laughing.

“You good Sam?” I asked while keeping a laugh quiet.

“Yeah. I’m gonna head home now Jay. I’ll see you tomorrow? For training?” He smiled.

“Duh.” I rolled my eyes.

“Good night, Jay.” He put his helmet back on before jumping back into the sky.

I sighed. I’m so fucking lucky to have Sam.

THE END

#fanfic?#sam alexander #ultimate spiderman #ultimate spiderman fanfiction?!#hloy shit this is bad #fanfic #marvel champions #usm #ultimate spider-man

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ibelieveinahappilyeverafter · 4 years

Text

Danny Phantom - belief does not make it real (but fear does)

The first of my Patreon drabbles that I wrote last year and am now posting here to my Tumblr! I hope you guys enjoy it and, remember, to check out my Patreon page so you can see more great drabbles like this one year round!

Summary: Danny, Sam, and Tucker decided to test a few common myths to see if there’s anything that really can repel ghosts. Blood blossoms had managed, after all, and they’d rather not be taken off guard again. Some of the items, though, has Danny amused more than worried - at last until he realizes that some stories are true.

Fandom: Danny Phantom

Characters: Danny Fenton | Danny Phantom, Sam Manson, Tucker Foley

Rating: Teen Audiences

Word Count: 2,219

Check out my writing commission information here! Pledge to my Patreon to get exclusive content like this drabble!

⁂

“There’s absolutely no way that this is going to work.” Danny stared at the array of objects on his bed, Sam and Tucker on either side of him with Tucker’s phone still held out in front of his face, screen starting to go dim. “It’s not that I don’t believe in it, it’s just that this is stupid and it’s not going to work. Period.”

“Danny, you know I hate agreeing with Tucker, but he might actually be right for once.” Sam’s serious expression twitched into a smile, Danny trying to keep his stern expression at Tucker’s scoff.

“Thanks, Sam. Thanks a bunch,” Tucker grumbled, waving his phone screen in Danny’s face. “Just read this, okay?” The screen was black due to inactivity. “It seems pretty promising!”

“You literally googled ‘ways to repel a ghost’ and clicked one of the first results. How is that promising?” Danny moved to fall into his computer chair, rolling across the floor and relaxing a bit at the sound of wheels over a wooden floor. When he looked back up, Tucker was sitting on the bed and near drowning in his hoodie of the day and Sam was kicking her feet from where she was on his desk, dress flaring out with the movement. “This is stupid.”

“Yeah, but that’s what you said about your parent’s ghost portal when we were fourteen.” Tucker had a point and Danny hated it. “C’mon, man.”

“He’s got a point,” Sam sighed, kicking at Danny’s chair when he rolled back over. “We didn’t think anything but your parents’ weapons could hurt you, and then that whole blood blossom thing happened.”

“Ugh, thanks for reminding me of that,” Danny shuddered. He was now seventeen and even though that event was years away in the past, he still remembered how much those had hurt. It was almost the same feeling as when he had been stuck in the portal when it had turned on. “You think this stuff is gonna work, though?”

“Won’t know until we try,” Tucker shrugged, picking up a few objects from the pile that had been dumped onto his bed. There were a few pencils and notebooks scattered in there, but Danny had a feeling that was more from the fact Tucker had turned his backpack upside down on his bed. Then again, they could be using homework as a way to ‘repel him.’ It’d probably work. “Okay, first up is protection objects.”

“You’re going to hate this,” Sam ‘whispered.’ Half a second later she caught the object Tucker tossed at her without even looking. There was a reason Danny was afraid of his best friends, sometimes. “Okay, so first we’re going to try crystals.”

“Sam’s gonna do it since she’s the witch.” Tucker ducked the boot that was tossed at him, sticking his tongue out as Sam squirmed around and kicked her other one off, managing to nail Tucker in the knee. “Jesus are those things made of steel?”

“Just the tips,” Sam smiled sweetly, hooking her foot under Danny’s arm and pulling him back over to her. Danny let himself roll across the floor, trying not to laugh as he bumped into Sam’s table, the girl’s feet, covered with bright purple tights, settling in his lap to keep him there. “The website said black tourmaline, so we’re going to try that one, first. I’m also going to try some of my own crystal quartz, though.”

“Are we sure you’re not a witch escaped from Salem or something?” Danny settled back in the path of sunlight that fell over him and his desk, ready to take a nap as his friends got their weird curiosity out of their system. “Alright, hit me with it.”

“Sure.” With that, Sam proceeded to throw what she was holding at him and hit Danny in the middle of his chest with it. Danny caught the stone before it could hit the floor, rolling it around in his hand. The sunlight caught and held in the cracks of the stone, Danny unable to describe it better than a piece of charcoal that didn’t crumble beneath his fingers.

“Can I keep this?” Danny finally asked, Sam pouting while Tucker slumped and mumbled to himself as tapped something on his phone. He was probably making notes that the stones didn’t seem to work against him. “It’s pretty cool.”

“Yeah, yeah, you can keep it. You sure you don’t feel anything, though? Not even an urge to throw it away?” Sam asked, nudging at his stomach with one of her feet. Danny didn’t bother swatting her away, instead fidgeting with the crystal.

“I mean… It doesn’t hurt, but I guess it sort of feels like more than just a rock, maybe?” Danny stared down at it, almost captivated at noticing the sleek sheen the sun brought out in it. Holding it almost reminded him of how it felt moments before he created a shield. “It’s cool.”

“Hm. Let’s try my quartz.” Sam dug under her shirt and tugged out one of her many necklaces, Danny trying not to laugh at the fact Sam was just wearing something that was supposed to repel ghosts. “I’ve had this for almost three years, now, and I cleanse it in moonlight every few weeks.”

“And you’re telling us you didn’t escape from Salem?” Tucker snort laughed, beaming at Sam’s glare and lack of things to throw at him. Danny ignored them and tucked away his own new stone before looking at Sam’s. It was crystal clear and looked almost like glass, a piece of metal wound around it and threading it onto a leather cord. “So, what, you’re going to throw this one at him, too?”

“Yeah, why not?” That was all the warning Danny had before he was scrambling to catch the necklace, eyes widening as he felt something the moment it touched his skin. It took a moment to convince himself not to drop it, Tucker and Sam noticing at once. “Danny? What’s wrong?”

“Dude, you okay? Did the magic crystal thing actually work?” Tucker sounded shocked, which, considering he was behind this, was not reassuring. He had probably done all this because he was bored.

“No, it didn’t- I mean, it’s not hurting or repelling me or anything, really.” Danny swallowed, looking down at the crystal and carefully reaching it back up to Sam, slumping when she took it back. “It felt like it was heavy, I guess. I dunno, it felt like you dropped a ten-pound rock into my hands.”

There were a few beats of silence between them, Tucker finally mumbling a soft little, “Spooky.” It was all it took to send Danny and Sam into a fit of laughter. “Okay, okay, we have a bunch more stuff to get through! Think fast, man!”

Catching the newest torture device tossed at him, Danny laughed at seeing it was a cheap dreamcatcher made of bright pink colors. He didn’t feel anything while holding it beyond a sense of amusement as he fiddled with it, fingers skimming against cheap plastic and cheaper strings.

“I mean, some pretty bad memories are cropping up, but other than that, I think I’m good.” There was a snicker from Sam and a little mutter about capes. Danny ignored her and tossed the dreamcatcher on his desk to give to Jazz later. She’d get a kick out of it, if nothing else.

“Maybe we should be testing these in your ghost form, too,” Sam said, Danny groaning and wiggling away from her before rolling his chair over towards Tucker and the bed.

“That just means this will take even longer, though. Tuck, wouldn’t you rather finish this soon and go play some video games at your place?” Danny grinned as Tucker started to waver before he sighed and slumped, defeat in every inch of his posture.

“We should really check everything in case we run into trouble like this in the future. We need to know what to look out for, man.”

“What’s she got against you?” Danny narrowed his eyes, looking to an evilly grinning Sam, who had her legs crossed. The fact she was wearing a black dress more suited for the daughter of a Disney villain was not helping matters.

“She promised to buy me a new tablet,” Tucker gave in with a completely slump of defeat, Danny rubbing at his back as he ‘glared’ back over at Sam.

“Temptress,” he hissed, trying to keep in his laughter as he let freezing cold energy build up in his chest before it snapped, form spiraling around him and changing him into Phantom. Beneath his now gloved hand, Tucker gave a sharp shiver. “Oh, sorry, man.”

“No big deal, just wasn’t expecting it. Alright, bring out the stones again, Sam!”

As it turned out, there was a bit of a difference between Danny’s ghost form and his human form. The tourmaline actually had him making a shield on instinct and the quartz was heavy enough that he couldn’t even hold it. Once they established that, they went into everything else and Danny learned a few things he hadn’t been expecting to learn.

Holy water, as it turned out, made him feel energized and refreshed and had him flying a few laps around the room, papers and books fluttering in his wake.

Burning sage, however, had him sneezing repeatedly and forced them to open his windows as he tried to stop his eyes from watering.

Sam’s herbs didn’t seem to have any sort of effect, Danny even eating a few to prove that he was fine. They were all relieved when nothing happened beyond a confused tongue due to all the varying tastes because, even Danny could admit, he hadn’t thought that one through.

Praying had ended up with all three of them in a circle on the floor laughing as they prayed to: the Nasty Burger, Lancer’s true or false tests, Sam’s favorite shade of lipstick, and the gaming controller Tucker had been using for the past seven years.

Meditating and cleansing their auras had left Tucker asleep against the bed, Sam in a deep, serene state on his only nice rug, and Danny feeling surprisingly lighter as he floated in the air. Although, it was odd that he found himself messing with his new crystal when they finally opened their eyes after fifteen minutes. They used some water to wake Tucker up, though.

The helpful article step telling them to ‘try and stop believing’ only had them looking at where Danny was floating over the bed and on his back. It had taken them almost half an hour to stop laughing.

“Okay, I got one last thing.” Tucker held up a shaker of salt, Danny unable to stop his snort. “Hey, it’s in Supernatural, so that’s got to mean something!”

“Oh, right, the horrible show that makes no sense, has poor story structure, and is culturally insensitive.” Sam’s words only had Danny laughing again, Tucker looking like his very life had been attacked. “Oh, calm down. You really think salt is going to do something?”

“Tuck, we literally drowned our fries in salt yesterday,” Danny managed past his laughter, floating down to sit beside Tucker, the two knocking into each other from the dip of the bed. “And I’m not anymore dead than I usually am.”

“Aha! We’ve never had you exposed to salt in this form, though!” Tucker held out the salt, Danny snorting and tugging off a glove and then rolling up his sleeve. “I’m just going to pour it straight on there, okay?”

“Sure, since nothing’s going to happen. Hey, think we got some fries downstairs? That would be great with this,” Danny said, beaming when Tucker gave a dry, single laugh while Sam burst into giggles. “Alright, alright, hit me with it.”

“Don’t blame me when this hurts,” Tucker grumbled, trying to hide a smile as he wrapped his fingers around Danny’s wrist to keep his arm steady before tipping the salt shaker over to allow a thin stream of salt to fall.

There was a single moment where Danny was relaxed and at ease because nothing was going to happen, and then it suddenly felt like his arm was being held up against an open flame that burned. It felt like pinpricks of molten fire were sinking down into his flesh and searing him straight down to the bone, squirming and digging their way in to melt everything touched.

By the time Danny realized he wasn’t on fire, he was on the other side of his bedroom and shoved up in a corner on top of some dirty clothes, staring at where Tucker and Sam were watching him with wide, startled eyes. All three looked down to where Danny’s exposed arm was a bright, fiery red in the pattern of small dots that mirrored the specs of salt that had touched him.

“Well, then.” Sam’s voice was as faint as Danny felt. “I guess we figured out something that hurts besides blood blossoms.”

“Yeah.” Danny let go of the gathered cold in his chest, pushing it out slowly and letting his ghost form fade away. When he looked back to his arm, it was smooth and pale, the only pattern visible the small patches of sun freckles. “I guess we did.”

#danny phantom #tucker foley #sam manson #eternal trio #my writing #my patreon #original

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xmcgarrett · 4 years

Text

whumptober prompt 7 I’ve got you

Prompts:Support | Carrying Rated: Gen Characters: Steve McGarrett, Danny Williams, Noelani Cunha

“You okay?” Steve McGarrett looked up as he heard the question. He nodded towards his best friend and closed the file in front of him. It has been a long day and one glance at his watch told him that it was about time to get home, so no wonder he was a bit tired.

“Yeah, of course, I am okay, why wouldn’t I be okay?”

“It’s just you have been staring at that file pretty long. Maybe it’s time to go home. I for one could do with a beer.”

“A beer sounds nice,” Steve agreed as he closed the file. Danny wasn’t wrong. He had stared for a while. And he was kind of tired. So even if they were having a beer, he would probably get to bed relatively soon and listen to his body's cues. Steve got up, put the file in his desk, and closed it. “Ready to go?”

“Very much so. By the way, you still smell like a sewer.” At Danny’s comment, Steve smelled his shirt quickly. The shirt itself was fine, but, yeah, he pretty much did smell like the sewer he had to jump into that morning to get that perp they were chasing.

“Shower first, then.”

“If the car stinks like that for the next week, cleaning is on you.” Steve just rolled his eyes as he walked out with Danny.

A shower later, Steve was just zipping up the hoody he wore without anything underneath and sat down in the chair he usually sat in. Danny gave him the beer and gave him a slightly worried smile.

“You look tired.”

“That’s because I am. It’s just going to be one beer tonight. And do me a favor, Danny, don’t have the volume up as loud as you tend to.” He usually expected Danny to protest, but tonight things looked different as it seemed.

“Will do. Junior is out tonight?”

“Out with Tani, yes. I don’t think we should expect him back tonight. They are at that Luau up on the North shore. That one usually doesn’t end before midnight.” Danny nodded, took a sip, and leaned back in the chair. They fell into a comfortable silence. They just sat and drank until Steve got up to go back inside to go to sleep. Eddie, who lay close to them, followed him inside and settled on the armchair he settled in now that Danny occupied the couch mostly. Steve took his medication, as prescribed, before going to bed.

Danny went inside a little while later. He made sure the door was closed, before laying down. He barely fell asleep when he heard the first cough coming from upstairs. He didn’t think anything of it at that point. It was not abnormal for him to wake up to coughing, that was what having kids did to you, mostly. He was half asleep again when he heard the next cough, again coming from upstairs. This time he could see Eddie perk up in the dark, so he got up to go up and investigate. He came in to see Steve sitting up, taking a drink of water.

“Are you okay?” Slowly he was beginning to feel like a broken record with that question.

“Yes, just a cough,” Steve told him.

“Sewer bath did not do you god, babe. Try and get some rest. Should I bring you tea?”

“No, I’m fine.” Danny nodded.

“Night, babe.” He turned to go back to bed and soon enough fell asleep. The next time he woke, it was still early. For a moment he was confused why he woke up, but then he heard the coughs from upstairs, a constant stream of coughs that did not seem the case. Alarmed he ran up to Steve. He was half sitting up, half bent over the edge of his bed, coughing hard. Danny went to the bathroom to wet a washcloth and came back to place it in Steve’s neck as he rubbed his back. Slowly the coughs ceased.

“That does not sound good,” he pointed out. Steve shook his head.

“That does not feel good.” His voice was scratchy and thin, clearly from the coughing. Danny kept on rubbing Steve’s back until he was sure Steve was okay. Then he reached forward to touch his cheeks and forehead. The skin was warm and sweaty.

“You’re running a fever, Steve. How else do you feel?”

“Breathing isn’t too nice right now.” Now that was a little bit of a shock to Danny. Breathing trouble did not speak for a simple little cold, but of a bit of a worse issue, one that could hopefully be handled, but probably not by bed rest and tea. The blonde reached for Steve’s wrist to check his pulse. It was a bit on the fast side, pointing to the distress Steve’s body was in.

“It’s going to be fine,” Danny said. “We’re going to go to a doctor, figure out what is going on with you, and then we’re taking care of it. Sound good?” To Danny’s surprise, Steve shook his head. He would have expected Steve to be a bit happier to comply therewith that plan after his liver problems. “And please tell me why?”

“It’s not even … 5 am. No doctors open yet. Let’s…sleep a little longer first.”

“The hospital is open, dumbass. They might squeeze you in if it’s a quiet day.” But he could see Steve was simply tired, so he knew he should not work that angle. But he knew another angle he could work, one that would work. “The sooner we get it done with, the sooner you can probably catch a few hours of actual sleep.” Stubbornly Steve still shook his head, but stopped soon, probably because it either caused his head to hurt or him to become dizzy.

“Not hospital worthy?”

“Not hospital worthy? Are you stupid? Are you literally dumb? You are in pain when you breathe! There could be some underlying issue, this is hospital worthy. Get your butt out of bed, throw on a shirt and pants and we go. Oh, wait, some form of shoes would be nice, too. Don’t bother making yourself presentable, you look like death walking anyway. Understood, soldier?” This got him a nod…and a very tired and pained look.

“I don’t think…,” Steve began and broke off. Danny placed his hand on Steve’s cheek then. He sensed that whatever he wanted or needed to say was something that would cause him to feel vulnerable and weak and he knew Steve did not know how to express that, thanks to his less than ideal childhood and the trauma surrounding it. He always had to be strong or pretend to be strong, unlike Danny had to, unlike Danny brought up his kids, so he did what he would do for his kids: Sit there and wait until he was ready to say it. Especially if the pain was an issue here. The hospital could wait for a bit. It took Steve almost a minute of shaky breathing and a few coughs, to continue:

“Too weak to walk.” Ha, so he was right. It was something Steve would consider weakness, well, because it was, but it was nothing to be embarrassed about. He was sick for heaven's sake.

“That’s okay. You lean on me, buddy, okay? I got you. You lean on me, we get you to the car and in doubt the hospital has wheelchairs.” He would, of course never mention it later, because, well Steve needed help, this was nothing he could hold against him or would use against him. Danny got up to get Steve one of his older shirts, those that he didn’t wear to work and sweatpants - well shorts rather. He handed the shirt to Steve, who dutifully put it on and then helped him up to lean against him, to allow him to dress as much as he could. It took a bit, but it worked. He thought twice on those shoes, though.

“Forget the shoes. It’s warm enough to walk barefoot.” Steve gave him a grateful nod. The former Seal reached out to Danny just as Danny slipped under his arm so he could lean against him. He knew he was taking most of Steve’s weight, but he didn’t mind one bit. He just wanted his best friend to be okay. Truth be told the only thing that had him not flip out was this paternal protocol he was running on right now due to his kids. Get him help, he could always flip out later.

At the hospital, Steve refused the wheelchair, of course, but luckily for them, the hospital had a pretty calm morning so they asked them to go straight into an examination room to check Steve out. The doctor - no stranger to them of course, thanks to multiple injuries in the past - never questioned Danny being there and worked as quietly and efficiently as he could, even apologizing for causing Steve pain by asking him to breathe in deeply for him. He then left the room for a long while, during which Steve managed to fall asleep.

“Good news or bad news first?” he asked towards Danny, assuming Danny would do the talking here and not willing

“Let’s get the bad news first.”

“Commander McGarrett has pneumonia” Danny sighed. Great. That was seriously serious, but it explained why Steve was in such bad shape. On top of it, he had been running non-stop for the past weeks, general exhaustion was probably adding up. But that was the bad news.

“What’s the good news?”

“It’s bacterial, so we can give him antibiotics. And, unless it gets worse, he can recover at home.” That really was good. “I do assume you will arrange a schedule so someone is always with him, just in case?”

“Of course, doctor. What else should I be looking for?” The doctor gave him a run-down on how to take care of Steve of which he made mental notes and made sure to text half of it to Noelani. He was sure she and the others would help, but if there was something medicinal that would give Steve that extra kick or boost, then she would know and probably bring it right after work. He looked at Steve again and smiled softly. Without realizing it probably, Steve had built himself quite the extraordinary family here. He was in good hands. Danny was due a week off soon anyway, so he would take it this week and stay home and take care of Steve.

As much as he hated waking him, he had to in order to get him back home and settled. This time on the couch, to make it a bit easier on them for now. He would think about getting Steve back up to bed in the afternoon, for now, he was glad there was no protest as he put blankets over Steve and announced he was going to make him some hot chocolate, purely to get some calories into him. The way Steve looked at him, reminded him so painfully of the fact that Steve hadn’t had that kind of pampering in years, so if he put some marshmallows on it, who was going to rat him out? Certainly not Steve. Steve just took a look at the cup and smiled softly…before sitting up and patting the couch next to him.

Danny looked at him in awe. This gesture was huge for Steve, actually, it was downright asking for physical comfort, something he did not usually do. Sure, he would go in for hugs at times, but this had a special quality to it, one that was not lost on Danny. He sat down on the couch and reached out to steady Steve as he laid back down, head on Danny’s lap. Danny reached for the remote and put on a show he knew they both liked, while he started to massage Steve’s scalp.

Just as Steve had fallen asleep the door opened and Noelani walked in, holding two bags.

“Hey…oh, he’s asleep. I brought you guys food. Some soups for him and stuff and some food for you. Figured cooking would not be high on your list of priorities,” she said as she walked to the kitchen to place the food in the fridge. Danny looked after her in awe.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” he asked her.

“I am. On my way to a crime scene. Luckily my guys don’t run away, cause they’re dead.” Danny chuckled at that.

“Thank you, Noelani. I am glad the ohana has got his back.”

“We got each other’s backs. Now he is the one that needs us and here we are. See you later, Danny. Pretty sure everyone is planning to pop over after work to entertain you and him a little.” That sounded great. That sounded just like what Steve needed: Family around him, something to take his mind of, comfort and security. He stroked Steve’s cheek again.

“Did you hear that, you big goof? Your family has got you. Rest, heal, we got you.”

#whumptober 2020 #one shot

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kinglazrus · 4 years

Note

For the prompt list thing any chance you wanna do random, #5?

Random #5 - “I would call you an imbecile but that’d be cruel as you wouldn’t be able to spell it.”

It Could be Weird

Danny’s life is weird. Everybody knows it. Even if they don’t know about his part-timejob of being dead, they know about his eccentric ghost-hunting parents, and his uptight psychology obsessed sister, and his own eternal fascination with space.

They know the food in his lunchbox is sometimes alive. They know the lump in his backpack’s water bottle holder isn’t a water bottle but a compact ectogun. They know Danny sleeps above a portal to another dimension.

But they don’t know the weirdest thing about Danny’s life which, amazingly enough,is not the fact that he’s half-dead. It’s that for the past five nights Danny has come home from ghost patrol to find Dash Baxter sitting in his living room, wearing glasses.

Tonight, Danny sneaks in through his bedroom window, phasing through the class. He dumpsthe thermos on his bed—he’ll empty it out later—shakes out the dust and dried ectoplasm from his hair and transforms. Snatching a hoodie off his chair, he fires a harmless ectoblast at his radio on his way out the door, cutting off the music he put on to make it seem like he was home.

He hops down the stairs, tugging the sleeves of his hoodie over his split knuckles, and pauses on his way to the kitchen. Just like yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, Dash sits cross-legged in front of the coffee table. His homework is spread out before him, a textbook at his elbow, a pencil in his hand, and a frown on his face.

Jazz sits on the couch holding an identical textbook—Danny’s copy, he recognizes thebloodstain on the spine—and quietly talks Dash through a lesson on cellular development.

Despite coming home to a similar scene four days in a row, it’s still so bizarre thathe stares too long and Jazz catches him watching.

“Did you do your homework?” Jazz asks. The unspoken before ghost hunting lingers between them.

“No.”

“Liar.”

“Fine. I’m going to do it now,” he says.

“You’re still lying,” Jazz singsongs. She slips a page in Danny’s textbook and glances up at him. “You need to keep your grades up if you want to keep…”

She glances at Dash, who’s pencil has stopped moving and is sitting oddly still.

“… making friends. After school.”

“Making friends.” Danny raises an eyebrow at her. He wishes that’s what he was doing after school. It’d be a hell of a lot kinder on his bones.

Jazz flushes but refuses to be cowed. “Get your stuff, you’re working in here.”

Danny tips his head back, groaning, and heads back upstairs to get his backpack.

—

Danny hasn’t touched his homework in five minutes. He gnaws on the end of his pencil,the metal band squishing between his teeth, flicking the eraser with his tongue to make the pencil swing back and forth. Every few seconds, Jazz sends him an admonishing look over the top of Danny’s textbook.

“That’s not working,” she says.

“I’m contemplating the philosophic implications of my assignment,” Danny says.

Jazz doesn’t look impressed.

Danny doesn’t really blame her. His chin is resting on a math textbook.

“It’s important,” he says. “How can I figure out how many pounds of fudge Anabelle has leftover without first considering why she has it? Or where she got it from? Or what the hell a triangle has to do with it?”

Maybe she’s a distant relative of their father’s.

Jazz rolls her eyes and leans over Dash’s shoulder, scanning the questions he’s working on.

“This one’s wrong,” she says, pointing halfway down the page.

Dash huffs, scowling, and furiously erases his answer.

It fascinates Danny. He’s never seen Dash so focused on something that didn’t involve a football or beating Danny up. Not to mention the glasses. Since when does Dash have glasses? They’ve been in the same class since kindergarten and he’s never seen them before.

Not to mention, Dash hasn’t insulted Danny once since he sat down on the other side of the table. Maybe Dash got hit in the head by a stray ectoblast when Kitty showed up during gym class.

Danny spits his pencil out of his mouth, ignoring the disgusted look Jazz gives him,and says, “I thought you already proved you could tutor the ‘untutorable.’”

“I did,” Jazz says. Shaking her long sleeve out over her hand, she reaches out and swats Danny’s pencil back toward him. “I thought you were being philosophical about brownies.”

“Fudge,” Danny corrects her. “And I decided the Fenton appetite is beyond the comprehension of even the greatest philosophers.”

“Anabelle’s a Fenton now?”

“My favourite cousin.”

“Uh-huh.” Jazz closes her borrowed textbook and sets it down on the cushion beside her, folding her hands in her lap. “If you aren’t going to do your work you can just–”

“Jazz!” Their mother’s voice echoes up the basement stairs. “Can you come downhere for a moment?”

Jazz sighs but gets up without a fuss. She points at Danny before heading downstairsand says, “Be nice. Don’t distract my student.”

“Me? But he's– wait, your student?”

Jazz turns away, leaving Danny sputtering and alone with Dash.

It takes Danny a moment to compose himself. When he does, he shoves his homeworkaside, slams his hand on the table, and leans across it into Dash’s personal space.

“Okay, what the hell, why do you keeping coming here?” Danny asks. “Are you hitting on my sister again? Because she already said no, don’t be a creep. I sent the last guy who messed with her to the Ghost Zone.”

Rather than leaning away, Dash gets in Danny’s face and sneers. “Chill out, Fenturd, don’t be an ass.”

“If you're–”

“I said chill out.” Dash shoves Danny’s face away. “You’re sister’s pretty smart, okay? And I need help with science.”

“You really think I’m gonna believe that?” Danny sits back and crosses his arms. Like hell. He remembers how gross Dash was hitting on his sister in ninth grade. Two years was not long enough to recover from that emotional travesty.

“I’m failing the class, okay?” Dash snaps, cheeks red. “I gotta pull my grade up to a C or else I’m off the football team.”

“Oh.” The fight goes out of Danny pretty quickly. He scratches his head and looksaway. “Okay, whatever. My grades aren’t that great either.”

“Yeah, but you’re a loser.”

“Seriously?” Danny glares across the table. “You can’t be civil for two seconds? I wastrying to be nice or whatever, but if you’re just gonna be an ass about it, fine. Wonder how you’re friends’d react to that.”

Dash wrinkles his nose. “What? They already know.”

“And they didn’t kick you out of your little club?” Danny asks flippantly.

“You think we’re that shallow?”

Danny stares at Dash. He can’t be serious. He can’t be that oblivious. All the A-listers care about are looks, money, and popularity, and Danny knows that firsthand.

“I bet Valerie does.”

Dash at least has the mind to look ashamed, and Danny feels a little vindicated at the sight of his downturned eyes.

“You guys were pretty damn cruel to her after she lost all her money. Are you telling me that wasn’t shallow?” Danny asks smugly.

“Like you’re so great, Fenton.”

“A hell of a lot better than you.”

Dash laughs. It’s loud and mocking, and he throws his head back as he does it. “Oh my god. You know how many times I’ve seen you brush off those friends of yours? Didn’t you, like, ditch them to go to a party freshman year? And you replaced them with robots once.”

“Hey, there was more going on there!” Danny defends himself. He doesn’t even know how Dash heard about the robots, but there was more to it, a ghost that could make you greedy.

Danny took care of it pretty quickly once he realized what was up, although that didn’t stop him from feeling like a massive jerk afterwards. But at least he didn’t mean it, and he knew he was a bad friend at that time.

“I don’t think you realize how much I don’t give a shit,” Dash says. “Just leave me alone, Fenton. And if you tell anyone besides my friends about this, I’ll shove you in so many lockers.”

Danny scowls. “Fine. Don’t flirt with my sister though.”

“No problems there. I’m not into girls.”

It takes Danny a second to process that. “Huh.”

“You got a problem with that?”

“What? No. Like, pretty much everyone I’m friends with is in the queer community,myself included. I thought you liked Paulina. And, you know, you flirted with my sister? And pretty much every single cheerleader.” Danny thinks back, trying to remember if there were any hints. Dash used to flirt with girls a lot, but he can’t actually remember him hitting on anyone in the past year. “You know what that is? Growth.”

“Don’t quote gifs at me, loser.” There’s less bite in Dash’s insult and more resignation. The sound of a man who will put up with what he hates for something he needs.

Danny almost smiles. Almost. Dash is still a massive dick, but Danny hates him a little less than usual right now, if only because he isn’t trying to get with Jazz after all.

They fall silent, Dash returning to his work while Danny just sits there and thinks. He glances toward the stairs once, wondering what’s taking Jazz so long, but doesn’t totally mind it. Being alone with Dash isn’t as horrible as he thought it’d be.

He gets bored pretty damn quickly though.

“Okay, the glasses, you have to tell me,” Danny says.

Dash groans, closing his notebook. “They’re glasses. I wear them and stuff gets less blurry. Fascinating.”

“Yeah, but I mean!” Danny waves his arms in a meaningless gesture. “Since when do you have them?”

“Since I got them.”

“Oh my god, I hate you.”

“Feeling’s mutual.”

“I’d call you a sap, but I think you’d punch me for it,” Danny quips, unable to resist.

“I’d call you a loser, but it’s redundant.”

“I can’t believe you know what redundant means.”

Dash glares at Danny. Normally that look makes Danny nervous, because it’s usually followed by a punch to the got or some other, equally painful retribution, but right now Danny’s actually enjoying himself and Dash doesn’t look like he’s about to snap.

“Quick, write the word down before you forget it,” Danny says, tapping Dash’s notebook.

“Shut up, you moron.” Dash swats Danny’s hand with his pencil.

“Oh no, you’re backsliding. Write it fast.”

“Shut up!”

“Want some help? Here, r-e-t-”

“You are such a fucking idiot.”

Danny beams. “I’d call you an imbecile, but I think that’d be cruel since you probably can’t spell it.”

“I swear to god, Fenton.”

“Hey, don’t be mean to my brother!”

Danny ducks his head to hide the shit-eating grin on his face as Jazz returns. She’s glaring at Dash, who sputters as he tries to defend himself, and Danny silently vows to join them for tomorrow’s study session, too, if this is what it’s going to be like.

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avengerofiron · 3 years

Text

the people who built me || danny & tony

summary: tony has a choice to make when he encounters iron fist during an enforcer patrol. he chooses family. (solo incoming when lola gets time about The Consequences TM - sorry tony)

when: a few days before the siege

word count: 10,094 (we thought we were brief. we were not.)

trigger warnings: torture mention, abuse mention, death mentions

featuring: danny rand

TONY: Everyone made mistakes. It was a fundamental part of life — a fundamental part of science — to do something once, find out where you went wrong, and improve on it for the next situation that came your way. That innovation was what Tony lived for, what he breathed every single day in Stark Industries or as he acted as Iron Man. It was innovation that other people boasted about, too, until the point where mistakes became too much for them to simply brush off, when mistakes were too large to sweep under the rug, that’s when things got dicey.

Tony Stark had a habit of making things dicey.

The Sentinels weren’t his doing, though. For once, he wasn’t the guy in the room to create the targeting system, or the artificial intelligence, or even the giant, maniacal robots designed for one purpose and one purpose alone. These robots were created by men before Tony was even born, years before most kids would remember their first appearance on the scene just after the events went down in Cuba.

Their design needed a little work. Tony could say that with certainty. Their morality needed a complete overhaul, and if Tony could see that, if he could spot it a mile off with no hesitation, he didn’t see how they were going to spin it to make the public agree — but they did. They did, even if Ross stepped into every meeting with a face that looked like he’d been chewing on a wasp because his ass had been well and truly handed to him by the World Security Council. . Security. Sometimes it came at the cost of what really mattered in life. Sometimes, in the process of making a better world, you destroyed the old one that was perfect in its own unique way. Sometimes, people needed a little bad to make the good worth it.

Tony was still learning that. Of course, it was a little hard to learn with Ross breathing down his neck, the warning lingering on the horizon of every decision he made or didn’t make in the field.

He couldn’t afford to mess up. He couldn’t afford to make a dicey mistake, couldn’t afford to pull a Tony Stark.

Inevitably, that was exactly what would happen.

The Sentinels tracking system picked up an anomaly that wasn’t significant enough to investigate, but enough to suggest that something not entirely above board was going down in Hell’s Kitchen. Someone had latent powers they were aware not to use was one of the suggestions thrown around the meeting room. Others said it could be a fault with the system. Either way it needed checking out, and enforcement agents had been put on clean up duty while the robots handled the real, perceptible threats that they didn’t need to negotiate with. . Not just enforcement agents — Tony, specifically. Iron Man, glorified janitor, delegated to the bottom of the pile for the past month because he dared not to disclose some minorly crucial facts to his employers.

Bastards.

“You’ve reached the point of the fluctuation, boss,” FRIDAY informed him through the helmet’s sound system. “So far I’m picking up a single heat signature other than your own.”

“Tell me it isn’t burning up,” Tony replied. “I’ve had enough of fire people for one lifetime.”

“I wasn’t with you during that one, boss. Must’ve been the other computer.”

“Must’ve been.”

“The temperature signal appears human. They’re moving slowly — no adrenaline spike as of yet. I would suggest landing before things get nasty.”

“When have you ever known my missions to get nasty?” Tony asked. FRIDAY remained conspicuously silent, but her presence was noted. Tony could almost imagine her rolling her eyes. “Alright, darling. Let’s get this show on the road.” . He landed on the pavement in the alleyway, hand up and palm glowing. “Hi there,” he announced, voice robotic but not nearly as warped as he would like it to be. (Doing things you fundamentally disagreed with was easier when you were wearing a mask, he had found — Iron Man had always been more of his true self than Tony Stark, billionaire playboy.) “I’m Iron Man, you’re in breach of the Sokovia Accords, and we’re going to need to have a little chat. If you don’t mind, come easily and this’ll all be—”

The figure turned. The way he moved was as familiar as someone stepping around Tony’s kitchen counter, or pulling Tali over on the couch onto his knee, or messing around with Colleen in the gym, clearly holding back while Tony was watching because Tony didn’t know, couldn’t know, the truth.

The truth that was staring him in the face now.

He was wearing a mask, of course. Even Danny wasn’t trusting enough to know that running around with his own face in New York City in the current climate would result in anything but trouble. Tony still knew him, though. He knew him when he was a kid, chasing after him at galas. He knew him as a man, talking about a plane falling from the sky and snow surrounding him. He knew him as a cousin, broaching a subject, a word, Tony had always dodged, backing off the second Tony didn’t bite.

(Sometimes he wondered what would’ve happened if he did. If he gave Danny the truth in that moment, if he opened himself up, if he admitted something to both of them that he’d been carrying since he was fifteen years old. Sometimes he wondered, but not tonight. He was a little preoccupied.)

The man in the mask, the man on the Sentinels’ system, the man on FRIDAY’s tracker, the man he was sent to arrest …

It was Danny Rand.

DANNY: Over the last few years, Danny had had a few very close calls in his life of vigilantism. He’d been stabbed (multiple times now), shot (though only by Harold), kidnapped (also multiple times, which was worrying), maimed… The list went on and on. He had plenty of personal experiences to tell him just how dangerous this life was, plenty of scars and near-death moments to inform him just what he was risking every time he pulled that bandanna over his face.

He’d only recently come to consider the law to be one of those potential consequences.

Danny had never been arrested before. He’d certainly come close a few times in his early days back in the city, when his heart beat too quickly in his chest and he swung his fists at anyone who looked at him too closely, but he’d never seen the backseat of a patrol car. Thanks to Harold’s meddling, he’d even found himself on a federal watchlist for a moment or so, but Jeri took care of it before it could lead anywhere substantial. The closest Danny had come to prison was his forced stay in Birch, an experience he desperately wanted to avoid repeating.

If he were smart, he supposed, he might have scaled back the vigilantism to prevent an arrest. It was what Ward had advised him to do, on more than one occasion. Money can do a lot of things, Danny, he’d warned, but this isn’t one of them. If they catch you, they will send you to the Raft. Not some nice prison for tax evaders, the fucking Raft. And he was right. Danny knew he was right, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to hang up his worn hoodie and yellow bandana. Every time he tried, Ward’s voice was drowned out by a thousand others.

Protect my city. Matt, who hadn’t died for him but almost did, who’d trusted him to save a city he hadn’t even managed to stay in.

Danny Rand failed an entire city. The place he was sworn to protect. Sowande, who had been cruel and ruthless and right. . You should never have borne the Fist. Davos, angry and bitter and hitting the nail on the head every time. Danny had power, and he didn’t deserve it. He hadn’t earned it. Not really, not in the ways that counted. If he did nothing with it, if he failed New York the way he’d failed K’un Lun, what was the point of him? What did any of the sacrifices made to get him where he was mean?

So he didn’t stop. He kept fighting, kept roaming the streets with his Fist glowing as if there weren’t robots out to drag him in and enforcers less understanding than Colleen looking for a high profile collar. Because he needed to make amends. (Because he didn’t know how to stop.)

Tonight had been quiet. He hadn’t seen any sentinels, hadn’t run into any enforcers. He’d barely even seen any crime, only taking out one mugger by well into the morning hours. He probably should have been glad for it, but his skin itched and his chest was tight and he wanted to hit something. When he heard a quiet tang of something unmistakably metallic landing behind him, he was almost relieved. Finally, finally, a chance to let out some of that pent up rage on something he didn’t have to feel guilty for breaking.

But then he turned around, and the world tilted on its axis.

Everyone knew who wore the Iron Man suit, but even if he hadn’t there was no mistaking Tony’s voice beneath the modulated tones. Danny had been following Tony Stark around since he was a little kid, been clinging to his pant legs since he could walk. The fifteen-year gap in their relationship amounted to surprisingly little when he crashed on Tony’s couch as often as he did as an adult. Tony was there in good moments and bad, there on Christmas and in hospital rooms, at family dinners and in the moments when he couldn’t scrape himself off the floor. Tony had been there for all of that, and now, he was here for this.

And Danny froze. . Tony was frozen too, and though Danny couldn’t see his face, he had a feeling the wide-eyed expression beneath Iron Man’s mask was a pretty close match to the one he wore on his own face right now. Uncertainly, Danny shifted. Half of him wanted to walk towards Tony while the other half screamed at him to move away. He didn’t know which half was right. Maybe neither of them was.

“Hi,” he said experimentally, as if checking to see if his voice still worked. “I don’t… Uh, I can’t go to jail.” He bit his lip, barely stopped himself from adding, ’Please, Tony,’ because if Tony didn’t know who he was now, there would be no hiding it after something like that.

TONY: At least Batman roamed the rooftops of Gotham with a voice modulator. At least Daredevil pulled off that dark, mysterious, brooding, silent vigilante type. At least for the few weeks Tony himself managed to keep an alter ego on the down low, he wore a mask that covered the entirety of his face, his whole squishy human body, and his multitude of self worth issues all in one handy package. Danny was out here in a hoodie that wouldn’t have been out of place in Rhodey’s grungy backpack in MIT and a bandana that was riding up on his entirely too familiar nose, his voice breaking through in a weak attempt at a different pitch that Tony could see through in an instant, because he wasn’t a moron.

He was a genius, a fact that he often lamented over, and a genius who loved Danny Rand, at that.

Christ, it was looking at his own heart staring back at him, wide eyed and about to bolt, feet two seconds away from running down the alleyway and never looking back. Tony could catch him, of course. The suit could catch a rocket, if it wanted — but the question was whether he wanted to. The question was whether he wanted to see for himself, up close and personal, what Danny learned in the years he was gone, what knowledge he shared with Colleen that made the woman utterly terrifying. The question was whether Tony was willing to put someone else he loved in cuffs while the man he’d asked to marry him remained on the run, being fed intelligence from Stark systems, being told that if it came down to it, Tony would make the hard choice because it was the right one. . Making the right choice always seemed so difficult. Tony told himself that he needed compasses, like Steve or Sharon or Jarvis, Yinsen or Rhodes or Rumiko (not all of them were good compasses, but that was beside the fact), in order to make them. He told himself that he didn’t know the difference between wrong and right, because when he looked back at his extensive list of personal defects and lifelong tendency towards making mistakes, he figured that was proof of some void in his chest that other people had filled, something his parents failed to cultivate or he burned away with liquor.

But he knew, now. He knew it as much as he knew when Steve looked at him he’d burn down the world to put things right. He knew when he looked at Danny, he could never put cuffs around his wrist. he could never let anyone touch a hair on the kid’s goddamn head, and he wasn’t a kid anymore, Tony knew that, but he was. He always would be.

Tony lost him once before. He wasn’t losing him again, not by choice, not like this.

Of course, of all the words Tony could have chosen to put that sentiment into the universe, he went with something completely …

Well, completely Tony.

“Yeah,” he said, helmet retracting quickly. “No shit you can’t go to jail.”

“Boss,” FRIDAY interjected, “perhaps we should shut off the Panel communication servers-”

Tony clicked one of the panels on the suit’s arm, and FRIDAY faded into nothingness — along with Ross’ feed to this conversation. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Tony demanded, taking a step forward. “Do you just think you can go around the city in … in not even spandex. You’re in less than spandex. You look like you raided a Goodwill and then they kicked you out because you were making the babies cry. I … I do everything I can to try and stop you from getting into shit, Da— Iron Fist, and you and all the, uh … the other ones, you all keep doing this!”

DANNY: Surprisingly, this wasn’t actually a situation Danny had been in before. When he first returned from K’un Lun, he had seen no reason to lie to people about where he had been and what had been done to him. He told the Meachums everything, didn’t understand why they didn’t believe him immediately because it was real. He knew it was real, had the scars and the nightmares to prove it. He told Colleen who, while more receptive, still spent the first few hours of their acquaintanceship looking at him like a bomb about to go off. He told the doctors at Birch, positive that they would understand what he was saying and let him go, so sure that it would reinforce his sanity. He told anyone who would listen about the Fist, and everyone looked at him like something inside of him was broken. Like it was some wild story invented by a child’s mind in order to avoid accepting the truth.

Danny had never wanted Tony to look at him like that. He’d looked up to Ward as a kid, sure, but back then, Tony had been his hero. He’d wanted, so badly, to do everything Tony Stark did. He remembered saying as much to his mother one night as she was putting him to bed, remembered barely stopping for air as he launched into an elaborate retelling of what he’d done at the Starks’ that day, adding animated hand gestures to the conversation as he went on and on about Tony’s games that only he really knew all the rules to and the way he was never angry when Danny and Sharon made up their own rules on top of them, the way the three of them laughed and played and no one flipped the gameboard over when they were losing the way Ward always did and no one cried like Joy used to. The Meachums were family, but that had always been more because of Harold than the children. The Carters and the Starks were family because of Tony and Sharon. Because of Danny.

And now, he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d be the reason they stopped being family, too. . He didn’t think Tony would arrest him. Not if he knew it was him, not if he recognized the eyes staring back at him. On a logical level, Danny knew that Tony never put him in cuffs, never take him to the Raft. But old paranoia told him he was assuming too much, old anxiety clawed at his gut and demanded to be free. Ward had put him in a mental institution, had paid people to hurt him while he was there. Harold had traded him to the Hand, had pointed a gun at him and pulled the trigger. Joy had hired someone to kidnap him, knowing he might not survive the experience. Davos had cut into him, bled him out over a clay pot, shattered every fucking bone in his leg twice for good measure. Danny loved his family, he really did. But he had a lot of bad experiences with trust, a lot of scars he could have avoided if, for a moment, he had loved less.

Tony Stark was not Ward Meachum. Danny knew that. Tony never would have hired guards to chase him down the street with guns in hand because he was afraid of losing money, wouldn’t have hurt him over and over and over again to save his own reputation. Tony wasn’t Joy or Davos, either, and he certainly wasn’t Harold. Tony was a good man who loved Danny, who had always treated him like a person instead of a billionaire, who had let him be a kid when no one else seemed interested in doing so. The Carters and the Starks and the Rands, they were a different kind of family than he’d had with Harold and Joy and Ward. They were less cutthroat, less money-hungry. Sharon and Tony had never wanted anything from him except for him to be himself. Danny knew that. . But that old paranoia still hovered for a moment as he and Tony stared at each other, both still as they assessed the situation. Danny stood lightly on the balls of his feet, ready to bolt if he needed to, as if it would make a difference. He couldn’t outrun Tony when he was wearing the suit, and even the intimate knowledge he’d gained over the last few years of vigilantism wouldn’t help him much against Iron Man. He was pretty sure Tony had some kind of x-ray vision in that thing, so hiding in a dumpster would only end up embarrassing him.

Danny didn’t realize he’d been holding a breath until Tony spoke and he let it out, a quiet exhale as a wave of relief hit him so hard it threatened to knock him off his feet. Tony didn’t sound like Iron Man, enforcer of the Accords right now. He sounded like Tony Stark, exasperated older cousin getting ready to gear up for a pretty intense lecture. . Tony did something with his arm that Danny thought might mean the higher-ups couldn’t eavesdrop anymore, and Danny’s shoulders relaxed just a little. He still carried some tension in his shoulders as Tony launched into his lecture, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t getting arrested for the moment. It allowed him to relax enough to look mildly offended, if nothing else. “Hey,” he said, “Je --- uh, my friend said spandex is lame. And this is comfortable! I need to be comfortable.” Not that the outfit was the point, but it was the principle of the thing, wasn’t it? He had to defend his style choices. “Look, you’re mad. I know you’re mad. Can I just --- I can explain. Okay? It’s just, uh, it’s a really long story, and I ---” He broke off for a moment, searching for words momentarily before continuing, “I punched a dragon! And now I’ve got --- I’ve got control over my chi, and I --- A building fell on Daredevil! And he told me, he said, ’Protect my city,’” his voice got momentarily deeper in a poor imitation of Matt, “and I couldn’t say no, because he was gone! And then --- And then my brother did a sacred ritual on me and I broke my leg and went to China, which you knew that part because of course you would have noticed that I was in China, right? And now I’m back! And, um, yeah. That’s it.”

It was an utterly nonsensical explanation, a series of stories strung together that, from the outside, seemed completely unrelated. Danny had never been the best at setting the record straight, especially not under pressure. Tony knew that, of course.

TONY: He wasn’t his father. Tony had never been his father, and recently, he’d stopped feeling inferior about that fact and started feeling grateful. He rarely gave over to anger. His rage, when it was prompted, came relatively smoothly. It built in him, gathered in his chest, curled around in his mind until he found the way most appropriate to put it to good use. There were rare occasions when Tony lost his cool, at least in that regard.

This was one of those rare occasions.

He was pissed. He was pissed off, and he was angry, and he was every word that he could think of to describe the rising heat on the back of his neck, the way his hands balled into fists. Any other man in a metal suit would use the mask to its fullest potential at this moment and hide his weakness. Tony had never been good at covering the emotions on his sleeve, not when it came to enemies, not when it came to strangers, or the press. Definitely not when it came to family.

He was angry, but he was terrified, too. His throat felt tight as he spoke, his voice raising but not nearly strong enough to have any kind of weight behind it.

“You know I’m mad?” Tony repeated, raising an eyebrow. “You know I’m mad? Are you fucking joking me?” Danny stopped talking, and Tony held up a hand. “Listen, this is the moment where you zip it, alright? This is the point where you stop talking, because I have a lot of things to say to you, and you just—”

Danny kept. On. Talking.

(Jesus, that ran in the family.) . The words that were coming out of Danny’s mouth were quick and panicked, and suddenly Tony was having flashbacks to when Danny was nine years old. Sharon assisted in the breaking of one of Tony’s vases, entirely accidentally, and Danny had a hundred and one excuses for Tony, not one of which included any form of a lie. At that stage, the kid had been utterly incapable of keeping a single detail from Tony. Secrets weren’t something that existed between the three of them.

Except they had. Except every time Sharon and Danny walked into his house in Malibu, Tony had to clean up weeks of evidence of his real life, the life he led on a daily basis. He had to hide the people he spent time with, the things he wasted time on, the things that kids didn’t want to see and he would die before he admitted to, because they, for God knows what reason, looked up to him. Cared for him. Loved him.

Danny was talking fast, and he’d never lied to Tony before except for when he had, but when he said dragon Tony couldn’t find even a piece of his heart that doubted the validity of what he was saying. “A building fell on Daredevil because he chases that,” Tony interjected, before Danny could go any further. “I don’t know the guy as anything other than a dot on my threat analysis, but come on. He goes out in a mask and he tries to make a difference, and that’s honourable and heroic and all of those things, but it’s also fucking stupid.” . What Iron Fist was doing was stupid. FRIDAY was in his ear reminding Tony that he was stupid, that there was a timer on this conversation and Ross would realise before long that Tony had tapped out, and that only spelled trouble when Tony was already on the shitlist …

“This life,” Tony said, taking another step forward, gesturing at Danny’s gear, “this life only ends one way. It ends with you in the ground. It ends with someone taking joy in putting you there. And that’s … I do this because I killed people. I killed innocent people for decades. I killed people, and I need to make up for that but Christ, you …”

Tony sucked in a breath, and all pretence went out the window.

“You had ten years.” He was yelling. No, yelling would be easier — he was trying to scream, but the words were barely coming out. “You were ten years old and you were dead. You were dead and that damn near killed all of us, you know that? You ever wonder why Sharon’s mom worries more than is even close to normal about her coming home in a box? You ever wonder why I … I was in a cave and I was seeing so much shit, and they were going to kill me and I saw you. I saw you and you weren’t even dead. You weren’t. You were alive the whole damn time.”

Tony stepped back, then, heart beat pounding loud in his ears. “You can’t do that to us again.” He said it the same way Pepper had, pushing herself out of bed, shooting him a glare on the way down to the couch. He said it like there was no other solution, like Danny would stop or he wouldn’t, and Tony would be able to walk away — but he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t even be able to stop himself if Danny asked him to. “If it wasn’t me,” he continued, “if it wasn’t me here, tonight, things would be different. You know that, right?”

DANNY: There were days when Tony reminded him so much of Ward that Danny ached with it, moments when his cousin got a look on his face and it felt like Danny was looking at his brother instead. This moment, with Tony clearly and understandably angry and Danny standing in front of him with some dangerous stunt only faintly in the rearview mirror, was one of them. Danny couldn’t help but think back to the thousand and one times he’d had this conversation before. In Ward’s office, when he and Danny were slowly making their way back towards being brothers. On his couch, bloodied and beaten, with Ward quietly trying to pretend not to be terrified. On the runway of a private airport, Ward threatening to lay down in front of a plane to keep Danny from going off on his own.

He’d had the conversation with other people too, of course. Colleen, who waited up until he stumbled home at five in the morning with bruised knuckles and blood on his hands, who asked him quietly how many times he’d lit up the Fist, how many hours of sleep he was running on. Claire, who told him how terrified she was that his obsession with being something he wasn’t would take away everything good about what he was. Jessica, Matt, Luke, Misty… Danny had people who loved him, people who knew what he did and tried desperately to convince him to do it in a way that wouldn’t kill him in the end. And Danny wished he knew how to do it for them. He wished he knew how to be the sort of man who might get a happy ending, the sort of man who could die peacefully of old age someday instead of the sort destined to bleed out in a back alley gasping and wheezing and waiting for help that would never come. He wanted to be that person for them, but he couldn’t. Most days, he still wasn’t confident he knew how to be a person at all. . Tony was talking to him as if he was one. Tony was talking to him like he was a child, perhaps, but he was talking to him as if he was a person all the same, like he was more than a weapon, and Danny had to remind himself that that meant something. He opened his mouth to say more, to dig his grave a little deeper, but Tony told him to be quiet and Danny had always wanted to do pretty much anything Tony told him to do.

It was Tony’s turn to talk now, Tony’s turn to talk about how buildings didn’t typically fall on men who didn’t run into them when they were already shaking, and Danny winced just a little. “A building fell on Daredevil because I ---” He cut himself off, taking a deep, shuddering breath. How much should he reveal here? How much did he tell Tony about the things Iron Fist had been a part of, the things that happened because of him. As far as the police knew, Iron Fist had been nowhere near Midland Circle. Danny Rand’s involvement in the collapse had been swiftly covered up by Ward, who made a hefty donation and requested that his brother’s trauma not be capitalized on to a very receptive commissioner with a very big check. Danny could tell Tony, right in this moment, that it wasn’t Daredevil’s stupidity that dropped a building on his head --- it was Danny’s. He wondered if that would change Tony’s perspective or make him angrier. . “I know how this ends,” he said instead, quiet and apologetic and utterly unafraid. Danny had always known how this would end, had thought he’d seen the end of it more than once, with Bakuto’s blade slipping silently between his ribs or Harold’s gun aimed firmly at his head or Elektra’s face inches from his own or Davos carving him up or Rhyno’s gang watching him shiver and shake and vomit blood onto the warehouse floor and laughing. Danny knew how this story ended, and he’d made his peace with it. If he died tomorrow, he still would have lived far longer than he had expected. He’d accepted death at ten years old with a plane shaking around him, accepted it again a few months later with sweat beading on his brow and boys his age hitting him over and over and over again because there was no mercy in K’un Lun, not even a little. He’d accepted his death at the mouth of a cave, welcomed it when he stepped inside with nothing but his clenched fists and his aching muscles to face a beast he’d only heard of in storybooks. Death was nothing new, nothing scary. Danny had known it for years.

Tony went on then, talked about why he put on a metal suit, and Danny took a shuddering breath, closed his eyes for a moment as the words rushed out before he could stop them. “So have I,” he blurted, sudden and thick and full of grief. “I’m --- I had a job. I had people to protect, and I failed them, and they’re --- I have things to make up for, too. I have scales to balance.” You are nothing. Danny Rand failed an entire city. The place he was sworn to protect. Sowande’s words echoed in his ear, and they were true. They were true, no matter how many people claimed they weren’t. . When Danny’s plane went down, he’d never considered how it affected other people. He’d been ten years old, had his father’s body and his mother’s screams burned into the forefront of his mind, and thoughts back to New York had never been to think of how the people he’d left behind were coping with his presumed death. He remembered Joy talking about it shortly after he came back, quiet and mournful. He remembered the way Jeri looked at him with more emotion in her expression than he’d ever seen her wear before or since. He remembered Sharon showing up to his office and threatening to kill him for disrespecting the memory of a person she’d loved. He’d heard all those stories, but he’d never really stopped to ponder them.

Not until now.

Tony’s words rung in his ears, and Danny flinched. “I wasn’t…” He started, trailing off because what could he say? I’m sorry my plane went down? I’m sorry you thought I was dead and it broke you? I��m sorry you had to lose me? Danny had been a ghost for a very long time, a child haunting the people who had loved him, sainted by his death. And he was alive now, he was back, but they were still haunted. The ghost of the boy they’d known still hung in the corners of their minds, still rattled chains in the basements and made the floorboards groan. You couldn’t undo fifteen years of grief. . “I’m not trying to,” he said quietly, and it didn’t feel true even if it was. Danny didn’t want to die. He’d realized it all at once in Rhyno’s hideout, when BB crouched beside him and they’d both understood with abject certainty that the gang would be disposing of a corpse by nightfall. Danny didn’t want to die, but he’d still gone after Davos mere hours after he was rescued from that warehouse. He’d still gone out, alone and unarmed, to fight a man who’d already beaten him once, still landed himself in the hospital with doctors who whispered in voices they thought he couldn’t hear about the probability that amputation would be required to save his life. Danny didn’t want to die, but he didn’t know how to stop chasing death, either. He didn’t know how to walk away. “I know.” He said quietly. If any enforcer but Tony had found him, things would be different. Things would be worse.

Danny ran a hand through his hair, eyes burning. “I can’t stop, Tony. I can’t --- The way I was raised, after that plane went down, they taught me… I wasn’t a person to them. I was --- I’m a weapon, Tony, a, a thing, and I don’t --- It was expected there. That I’d… They expected it.” They expected him to die. Some of the kids took bets on it, in the beginning. ’If he lives more than a month, I’ll do your chores for a week.’ ’You can have half my rations for three days if he makes it a year.’ They hadn’t even tried to hide it, had spoken about it clear and outright well within earshot. Danny had grown used to that, over the years. It was how things were. He wasn’t supposed to live. He wasn’t meant to.

TONY: He’d been pretending his entire life. He’d been wearing masks since he was a child, going to galas with his father’s hand digging into his shoulder, leaving bruises in the shapes of his fingertips that expensive material always managed to hide. He’d been pretending from the first second he put on the metal mask in that cave, pretending that he was capable of becoming something bigger than former warmonger, Tony Stark, the boy turned man who was so naive as to believe that the person who helped raise him was incapable of hurting him, incapable of ordering his death.

Obadiah loved him, Tony had reasoned. Obadiah loved him, and he couldn’t possibly have known about any of the deals under the table, couldn’t possibly be the mastermind Pepper said he was. Obadiah loved him, and that was exactly why he wanted Tony dead, because loving Tony Stark had never been easy, not for anyone.

Rhodey’s career almost ended just by associating with him. Pepper was dropped into a blazing fire. Rumiko’s family all but disowned her, Tiberius’ stocks dropped, Sharon was forced to pick him up off the floor and discharge him from hospital, driving home silent and pretending that there wasn’t this large, unspoken thing sitting in the space between the driver and passenger’s seat. Loving Tony meant Maria cried every damn night. Loving Tony was so damn difficult that it made Howard want to hurt him, and he had. . ‘You’ll understand when you’re a parent.’ He’d uttered that more than once. ‘When you’re looking at someone you watched grow up, someone who has disappointed you, lied to you, failed to become what they should be — when that happens, Anthony, you’ll understand that it isn’t as black and white as you seem to think it is.’

Tony was looking at Danny. He was looking at Danny, and he felt like his heart had jumped out of his chest and was spluttering on the pavement between them, sustained only by the muddy water in the puddles of the alleyway, but he didn’t want to hurt him. He didn’t want anything to hurt him.

All Tony wanted, in that desperate, aching moment, was to bring Danny to a place where they never needed to have a conversation like this again, a place where they didn’t need to dance around the truth for months and years, because the Starks might have lied, the Carters might have made their name out of mistruths, the Rands may have misdirected, but their kids were honest. The three of them, they’d always loved each other different.

They’d always loved each other right.

(Tony was capable of that, after all — of loving someone in the correct way, of not turning into his father. In other circumstances, he may have been relieved. He had other things on his mind at this point in time.) . “Is that how you want it to end?” Tony would understand that, too. He would understand it more than almost anything else, that desperate need to go out in a blaze of glory to prove himself, to tip the cosmic scales, to cleanse his hands, to make himself worthy of being called hero by kids and parents alike. He’d tasted a human death. He didn’t much care for it. He would understand.

Just like Danny understood him.

I have scales to balance. Tony shifted, feeling like the conversation was on a Dutch tilt, like he’d had a few too many and the world wasn’t that blissful blur anymore but something far more disconcerting.

“Okay,” Tony breathed. It took him three attempts to make the word audible. “Okay, you can’t stop. That’s … we can work with that. We can make that happen, but you— if you want to do this, you have a chance now to do it right. Legitimise yourself. Get the protection of the Panel. Think of the good you could do if you didn’t need to look over your shoulder every five minutes for the cops.” Tony sucked in a breath, taking another step forward. “Register that weapon. I know you. I know what you stand for. Other people might not. They wouldn’t get it. If you …”

(It was Maria at the bottom of the marble staircase, head in her hands, shaking it gently when Tony asked if they were leaving after all. It was Steve, looking up, meeting his eye, putting the pen back in its case and walking away, taking the air in the room with him. It was Natasha on that balcony, or Rhodes in a plane saying hanging out with you is bad for our friendship, or Pepper asking what the hell was wrong with him that he could think, even for a moment, she would be okay with…)

“Please,” Tony said, reaching out a hand. “Come with me. Let me fix this, for you. Let me fix all of it.” We don’t have much time.

DANNY: In the months after he was brought into K’un Lun, after the wounds from the plane crash had healed and he had learned to breathe around the biting cold of air far crisper than even the coldest winters in New York, Danny had developed a habit of running away. It happened often in the beginning, so much so that sometimes he’d find Chodok waiting for him at the edge of the city with a knowing expression on his face, sad and disappointed and utterly unsurprised. He never got far, of course --- there was nowhere to go. There was no way out of K’un Lun, wouldn’t be until the gate opened fifteen years later, but Danny hadn’t wanted to believe that back then. He’d struggled to understand the complexities, had a hard time wrapping his mind around the new rules that seemed so strange compared to what he’d grown up with. How could something be there and then not be there? How could there be a way out one day and nothing the next? How could he exist for the rest of his life in a place that had made it so abundantly clear to him just how little he belonged?

He remembered Chodok, on one of the occasions he found him waiting at the gate for the next grand escape, looking especially exhausted. ’Why do you do this?’ He’d asked, frustrated and at his wits end and sounding more like a father than anyone else in the city had ever bothered and Danny had felt a rush of anger and grief so unexpected it had nearly knocked him off his feet. He’d wanted to scream, wanted to pound his tiny fists against the ground as if he had the strength to bend it to his will, to make it into something familiar and safe and home. His throat had felt tight and Chodok’s hand’s gripping his shoulders had been the only thing keeping him upright. ’I was trying to go home,’ he’d said, quiet and mournful. ’I’ve been trying to go home, I just want to go home and no one will let me. Why won’t you let me?’ . The outburst was embarrassing in hindsight, so childish that Danny felt humiliated at the memory, but the sentiment remained. There were days, even now, when he looked out into the city’s skyline and the thought would cross his mind, strong and certain and utterly nonsensical. I want to go home. Why can’t I go home? It reminded him of sitting in a helicopter with Colleen, of coming back to New York after months away, of looking down at the lights and feeling nothing where he should have felt safety. ’That’s the beauty of it,’ she’d said, ’it can be whatever you need it to be.’ ’What do you need it to be?’ He’d asked, because maybe if he knew her answer he could puzzle out his own. And she’d said home, like that was all there was to it, like one word was a complete sentence, and Danny felt nothing. He’d fought like hell to get back to New York, had nearly died for the city a hundred times over, and he felt nothing.

It took him a long time to understand why. It took him years to realize that it wasn’t buildings or sidewalks that got him out of bed in the middle of the night to run barefoot through the snow, desperate for a way back. It wasn’t his family’s old brownstone or his father’s office that tightened his chest with grief and rage and confusion when Chodok asked him why he insisted on running away time and time again. It was never New York that Danny was trying to get back to. It was Ward. It was Joy, it was Sharon. It was Tony.

Tony, who was looking at him like he’d ripped his heart out of his chest. Tony, who had accepted him back into his life as if he’d never left it, who had never once questioned where he had been or why he was different or why sometimes it seemed to hurt him just to breathe. Tony, who must have known all along that Danny had a nighttime hobby but who had never quite let it come to the surface because knowing meant he’d have to act on it.

Tony, who looked just as frustrated and tired now as Chodok had back then. . It occurred to Danny, quite suddenly, that there had been more than one driving factor in his grief that day with Chodok’s hands on his shoulders. It occurred to him that he’d spoken of home, but that hadn’t been all he’d wanted to say. The words hit him now all at once, quiet thoughts soaked in a child’s anger. Why didn’t you let me stay with you? Why did you give me away to Lei Kung? He doesn’t even like me, but you do. You’re the only person here who’s ever been nice to me, and you gave me away. Chodok must have known, when he’d found a boy in the snow, what would happen to him in K’un Lun. He must have known what he’d go through. He must have known they’d warp Danny into a weapon, must have known they’d beat him and berate him and hurt him, and he’d still done it. Danny thought, back then, that Chodok was the only person who’d never hurt him, but he had. Maybe not directly, but he had.

And now here was Tony, with that same expression on his face, and one key difference Danny recognized with ease --- Tony would never hurt him. Tony loved him the way Chodok couldn’t, the way Lei Kung and Harold couldn’t, the way maybe even Wendell couldn’t. Without consequence. Without condition. Danny had gone against him in a way that would have been punishable by death in K’un Lun, in a way that would have made Tony well within his rights to put him in cuffs and take him to the Raft, and Tony didn’t. He wouldn’t. There weren’t many people who loved Danny like that, and he thought Tony might have been first. He thought Tony might have been the first person to look at him, before K’un Lun and the plane crash and everything else, and decide he was worth loving.

He hoped letting him down wouldn’t change that. . “No,” Danny said, too quickly for it to be true. He paused for a moment, closing his eyes and swallowing before amending. “I don’t know.” He knew how it was supposed to end for him. He knew he’d been meant to die on that mountainside, when the Hand’s soldiers invaded the path he was supposed to guard. The Iron Fist was always supposed to die an honorable death in battle, and there was no K’un Lun left to die for but there were still battles to be fought. If he lost his life in one, maybe it would make up for the battle he’d missed. Maybe the only way you could find redemption was through death.

Tony went on then, offered options, and Danny felt like he was suffocating just a little. Register that weapon. Could he do that? It left a sour taste in his mouth, twisted a knot in his stomach that he didn’t understand. “Tony…” The name fell from his lips in a whisper, and it sounded like an apology, even to him. How could he explain it? How could he talk about K’un Lun, about the lasting damage done to him there? He’d belonged to someone once. He’d been a thing, and they had owned him. He existed for them, bled for them, would die for them, and they’d treated him with as much respect as they treated their swords. You kept a weapon sharp, you kept it clean. You gave it a sheath to rest in, you recognized its power when it was in your hands. You showed a weapon respect, you understood the danger it represented.

You didn’t love it. . You didn’t call a weapon by its preferred nickname. You didn’t ask it how it felt about the solution you used to clean it with. You didn’t value its opinion, you didn’t tuck it into bed at night, you didn’t hold it close when it woke up screaming, didn’t wipe away its tears when it cried. When a weapon had an owner, it couldn’t be loved. And Danny wanted, with the same childlike desperation that inspired his outburst in Chodok’s arms more than a decade ago, to be loved.

If he signed the Accords, it wouldn’t make people love him less. He knew that. On a logical level, he knew that. But the heart was not a logical organ, and his was beating so quickly in his chest that some paranoid part of him feared his ribs might break. “I can’t,” he said quietly. “Tony, I just can’t.”

TONY: He wasn’t talking half as much as he was ten minutes ago. Danny wasn’t arguing, wasn’t trying to plead his case. He wasn’t putting the pen back in the case like Steve, or reaching a hand out to him like Sam had on the grass that day. He wasn’t looking at Tony how Obadiah used to, like he was exhausted and frustrated and disappointed all in one, like he couldn’t understand how Tony could be so intelligent and still unable to grasp what he conceived to be simple facts of the universe, and he sure as hell wasn’t looking at Tony like Howard used to.

He was looking at Tony a little how Maria used to, though — a little like Tony was breaking his heart. Tony decided not to think too much into that.

Maybe this would be easier if Danny was arguing. Maybe it would be easier for Tony to say he was convinced to let Danny go, or that he was persuaded to break the code that he’d signed up to enforce, if his cousin was standing in front of him in a goddamn bandana making a case for his vigilante activities that Tony had been resolutely ignoring for the past six months (years, really. Not just months. Years, since he came back).

Tony could’ve been dead in Afghanistan. He could’ve been dead and he wouldn’t even have the chance to stand in front of Danny and make a decision that should be difficult.

It wasn’t difficult.

“Stop,” Tony said, raking his fingers through his hair. What he’d give to be a few shots down right now — and with that thought, memories came flooding back of Sharon, barely out of high school, coming to sign him out of the hospital because he didn’t want Obie to see him, because of the shame that came with it. Memories came flooding back of Pepper, and of Rhodes falling, and of Steve in Siberia, and … . He turned from Danny. A tactical misstep, undoubtedly, but Tony wasn’t thinking tactically. He knew Danny wasn’t going anywhere. He knew that, because he knew Danny.

He also knew something else. He ran his hands down over his face, eyes burning, and turned back to meet his cousin’s eye.

“Just because you love someone,” he started, swallowing thickly around the lump in his throat. “Just because you love someone doesn’t mean you’re good for them, right? Just because … I mean, I’m not good.” The suit whirred as his hand went to his chest. “This thing, it’s never— I’ve never worked right. I’ve always been hard, you know, difficult to …”

Tony sucked in a breath. FRIDAY was in his ear, despite the mute order. (He really needed to work on obedient artificial intelligence — but like his friends, Tony always preferred having bots around him that were willing to call him out. A moral compass of his own creation.) They didn’t have much longer.

They didn’t have any longer. A holograph appeared from the arm of Tony’s suit, detailing several targets (colleagues) a few metres from the alleyway.

He looked up once more. “I want to be good for someone. I need that.”

A long sigh, and the helmet formed over his head. “No wonder I’m in permanent heart failure,” he muttered. “Come on, idiot. My co-workers are coming, and if they get a shot in on us, I’ll die of embarrassment before I get to kill you.”

DANNY: When Danny was ten years old, his childhood ended in a heartbeat. He was a boy one moment, sitting on a plane and listening to music that was probably a little too old for him, staring out the window at mountaintops that looked so small. Then the world started to shake and the plane started to groan and all at once, life as he knew it was over. His mother was sucked into open air, his stomach bottomed out, his father’s voice grew more and more desperate until he couldn’t hear it at all. Danny hadn’t died in that crash, but the boy he’d been when he stepped on that plane? He was gone the moment the debris hit the snow.

There were no children in K’un Lun. It was Davos who told him that, Davos who sat beside him when he was terrified and desperate and trying to understand what was going on, why he was being beaten and pushed and hurt even when he hadn’t done anything wrong. We’re kids, he’d said, almost pleading as he gripped bruised ribs and tried not to cry. Why are they hurting us? We’re just kids. And Davos, if anything, had been confused. He hadn’t understood that, in other parts of the world, things were different. He hadn’t been familiar with cultures that saw children as precious things to protect. There are no children in K’un Lun, Danny, he’d said, in what Danny figured now was a tone as close to gentle as he’d known how to make it. We’re weapons. And so he had been. For fifteen years, he had been a weapon instead of a child, a thing instead of a person. . But he didn’t feel like that now. Standing in this alley, with Tony across from him, Danny felt like he was nine years old again. He felt like a child, being scolded by a parent. He felt like he had when he’d knocked his mother’s wine glass off the table and shattered it against the floor, when his father sat him down and lectured him on caution. It’s so easy to break things, Danny, he’d said, it’s so easy to do damage. It’s hard not to. It’s hard to be good. We have to try anyways.

Danny’d broken something much worse than a wine glass now. He’d broken a law, broken more than one law, actually. He’d broken Tony’s trust, too. (And he’d broken more than that. A quick flash of a memory popped into his mind --- the Reaper, blood on his lips, grinning up at Danny. This is my favorite part. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Danny’s throat felt tight.)

He’d opened his mouth again, to explain or to argue or to beg forgiveness, but he snapped it shut quickly when Tony told him to stop. Obedience was an easy habit to fall back on after K’un Lun, especially when he was on edge. Tony wasn’t Lei Kung or Priya, wasn’t Yu-Ti or Master Khan. He wouldn’t beat Danny into submission if he didn’t comply without question. But Danny’s mind was split between two places, and there was some comfort in doing what you were told when you were at a loss. There was some comfort in silence, too. . Tony turned away from him, and Danny squeezed his eyes shut and took a breath. He was disappointed, he knew. He’d disappointed Tony, and that was the last thing he’d ever wanted to do. “You’re one of the best people I know,” he offered quietly, because it was true. “I’m not…” he trailed off, chest aching. “I’m not what anyone wanted me to be. I don’t know how to be what anyone wants me to be. Not you, or Ward, or Sharon, or Colleen, or…” He trailed off, smiling tightly and giving his head a self-deprecating shake. If he listed all the people he’d let down, he knew, they’d spend all night in this alley.

Something was happening inside the suit, and Danny wasn’t a smart man but he could guess what. Tony had been here too long, and enforcers didn’t work alone. Someone else was going to come soon. Someone who wouldn’t want to talk things over, someone who didn’t love him enough to forgive his transgressions.

For a moment, the whole world seemed to hold its breath. Danny was pretty sure Tony wouldn’t arrest him, but he didn’t quite relax until Tony told him to come on. His shoulders slumped and he nodded his head slightly. He moved to follow Tony before hesitating, pausing with one foot still lifted in a half-step. “You’re going to get in trouble for this, aren’t you?” For helping him. For loving him.

TONY: Being a good man always came with too many terms and conditions for it to be something Tony genuinely strived for. Being a good man meant making choices that cost people their livelihoods. It meant dropping bombs in foreign countries and focusing purely on the statistics of such a move instead of the human impact. It meant saying no when you wanted to say yes, saying yes when you wanted to say no. It meant hurting the people you cared about and spending your entire life following those you didn’t, because they’d offer you a leg up the career ladder, or get you that coveted contract.

“No,” Tony said, holding his hand up. “We’re not doing that, okay? We’re not. I … I’m not the guy people put weight on, alright?” Tony was the fixer. He always had been for those he cared about, for those he didn’t, for his family and friends and strangers all in one. He was the guy people went to when they needed out of a bad situation, but the second people started loving him, the second they shifted into thinking of him as more than just a means to an end, the second they started looking at him like he knew Danny was behind that bandana, things changed. That was when people could really hurt you, when they could get inside you and twist you inside out, when they could let you down.

He’d already dragged Steve down with him, a truly good man, a man who deserved so much better than anything Tony could give. He wasn’t going to do the same thing to Danny, not without a warning. Not without a comprehensive list outlining all the reasons why Tony Stark wasn’t someone to consider a hero. . “You don’t need to know who you are,” Tony replied. “You don’t. You … I know you’re going to hate me for saying this, but you’re young, Danny. You’re so fucking young. You’re … I was still selling weapons when I was your age. I still believed Obie wasn’t trying to put a hit out on my head. I was still calling Ru every time I got drunk, and you, you didn’t even get your childhood. You didn’t get to be a teenager. You’re young. Your mistakes, they still count, but they’re not … you’re not irredeemable. You’re not.”

No one was. Not even Tony, not even when he found that hard to accept.

You’re going to get in trouble for this, aren’t you? Tony hesitated, just for a moment, then shrugged a shoulder. “I’m already in a shit load of trouble, Danny,” he said. “Helping you isn’t going to be the thing that drags me down.” As it had always been, Iron Man’s greatest foe was himself.

And then the Enforcers arrived, providing a rather convenient outlet for the anger that particular thought prompted. “Keep tight,” Tony called over, “but the second you see a gap, you get out.” With that, and trusting that for once Danny would listen to a word he said, Tony sent a blast towards one of the Enforcers, knocking them back before their weapon could fire.

This was going to be so much paperwork.

#char: danny rand #discord

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darks-ink · 5 years

Note

Ok; forgive me please if I asked already and forgot, but I have a one word story prompt if you're still up for one! "Rain"

You hadn’t send in any for this round. Although I did take a couple of days to get around to this one because I was distracted by drawing instead.

Therain had started during the last leg of school. Danny had spent hisentire last period glancing out of the window, hoping that the fatdroplets would cease to be before he had to travel home.

Whenthe bell finally rung, the downpour had only increased in strength.

Hemade it all the way to the front doors of the school before hechanged his mind. It was coming down hard,and he really didn’t want to walk through it if he could avoid it.

SoDanny sought out an empty bathroom, shifted into Phantom, and flewhome. He made sure to stay intangible to avoid the rain, all the wayto his house.

Helanded in an alley right next to the house, making sure that no onewas around to see him. Then he morphed back into human form, becomingtangible again as well.

Thelast few steps back to his house were rushed, and Danny slammed thedoor shut the moment he stepped through. He grinned to himself,pleased to have mostly avoided the rain. Besides, it’s not likeanyone would’ve noticed, anyway. Jazz already knew about his ghostpowers, and his parents were always down in the lab.

Acrash came from the kitchen,and Danny pushed off of the door to check it out. He barely made ittwo steps into the living room when his dad emerged, however.

Theman was dressed in an eye-searingly orange jumpsuit as usual. Lessusual were the soot stains all over his clothing and face. Stillprettyusual for Jack Fenton, though.

BeforeDanny could make his escape, Jack spotted him. He grinned, waving athis son. “Hey Danny-boy! Made it home safe, I see.”

“Uh,yeah,” Dannystammered out in answer, inching towards the stairs. He was prettysure he could scoot by his dad without the man noticing-

Andthen his escape was cut off by his mom, who also walked out of thekitchen. She was similarly stained with soot, although less so thanhis dad.

BeforeDanny could escape from herpath too, his mom had stuck out a hand and ruffled his hair. Maybeshe wouldn’t notice?

Nope,she definitely noticed. She pulled back her hand and frowned. Dannywasn’t sure if it was at him.

“I,uh, better get dried off,” he tried with a wan smile. He vaguelypointed to the stairs, hoping to make his escape. He was alreadytrying to think of an excuse, but none stood out to him. The onlything he could think of was that he caught a ride, but none of hisfriends had licenses (or cars). And while he could’ve,theoretically, caught a ride with Jazz, she would’ve come home withhim.

“Holdon.” His mom grabbed him by the upper arm, frown deepening as shenoticed that his hoodie was mostly dry as well. Shereleased him almost immediately, but the damage had already beendone.

Hisdad had apparently noticed as well, since the man lumbered closer aswell. “Danny, you’re barely wet.”

Uh oh. Should’vethought ahead a little better, Fenton.And he still didn’t have an excuse, either. “Wow, really? It…felt a lot worse?” Bad. Bad attempt. They’re never gonna fall forthat.

Andthey very clearly didn’t, frowning at him with suspicion. Whoops.

“Danny,”his mom said, tone chastising. She sounded a lot like Jazz wheneverhe came home with serious injuries, insisting he didn’t need help.The family resemblance was kind of scary, really. “Explain.”

“I,uh. Can’t.” He shrugged, a sheepish expression his face. And hecouldn’t, really. He had no excuses, and it wasn’t like he couldtell them the truth. Yeah,so I kind of flew home intangible so I wouldn’t get wet.Like his parents would fall for that.

“Whynot?” his dad asked, one of his huge hands landing on Danny’sshoulders. He was sure that it was meant to be comforting, but to himit just felt like he was getting pinned down. His expression wasdifficult to make out, uncertain and hurt and who knew what else.

“Ijust can’t,” he bit out, attempting to wriggle out of his dad’sgrasp.In turn, the fingers dug in just a little deeper. He was vaguelyaware of the fact that he was overreacting, panicking-

Hismom stepped forward and Danny flinched back, flickering intangible toget out of the pinning grip.

Everyonefroze.

For afew moments, nothing happened. Everyone stood still in shock overwhat just happened. Danny was breathing heavily, trying to stamp downhis panic. It was too late. The damage was done. Now he needed tofocus to guide it to safer grounds.

“Well,”his dad said, voice wavering and uncertain, the usual blusterlacking. “I guess that that explains how you got home so dry.”

Dannyflinched back another step. He couldn’t quite read the expressionson his parents’ faces, but he wasn’t sure that he wantedto.

“Buthow?” his mom queried, frowning. Her voice was quiet, but in thesilence of their living room, it was perfectly audible. “A humancan’t use ghost powers, but a ghost… a ghost can’t grow.” Oreat, or breathe, or any of the things Danny did regularly. Or so hisparents thought. They didn’t need to know that many ghosts coulddo those things, but just chosenot to.

Dannylooked away, wrapping his arms around himself. He had consideredtelling his parents many times, but he always… he always planned onhaving backup. Sam, Tucker… Jazz, at least. But now… Now he wasalone.

“Unlesshe’s both, somehow.” Jack was frowning too, now. But hisexpression was more one of thought, rather than the anger Danny hadbeen expecting. “Are you, Danny-boy?”

Thenickname caught his attention, and he looked back at his parents.“Huh?” he asked, a little stupidly.

“You’renot ghost orhuman, are you?” His dad’s gaze was expectant, but…surprisingly supportive.

“Uh,no.” Danny grimaced, but let his arms hang by his sides again.“I’m… 50/50. A halfa, the ghosts call me.”

“Incredible,”his mom whispered, eyes growing wide. She stepped forward but stoppedwhen she saw Danny flinch away again. “It defies all science…”And then the implications struck her, and she gasped. “But how…?”

Heshrugged, loosely. “The, uh. The accident with the Portal, infreshman year.” Thenhis eyes grew wide, and he raised his hands up in a calming gesture.“But it’s not your fault! Iwent to check it out, Iwas an idiot. Igot myself hurt.”

“Andthat’s why you’re supposed to wear a hazmat suit in the lab,sweetie.” His mom was now slowly approaching him, hoping not tostartle him into flinching away again. Hertone was chastising, but soft. Kind.

“ButI did,”Danny mumbled quietly. Not quiet enough, apparently, based on thequirked eyebrow his mom gave him.

“Whatdid you say, honey?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

Hewould tell them about Phantom later. This afternoon had been tryingenough already.

#danny phantom #phanfiction #phanfic #dp fanfic #dp fanfiction #dark writes #danny fenton #jack fenton #maddie fenton #prompt fill #phantasmapurple9

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ghostgothgeek · 5 years

Text

Mistletoe.

This is my Christmas Truce gift for @ceciliaspen, Merry Christmas!!

A few random things: I had to include one of your posts in this because it was just too perfect to not be included. Hope that’s okay! Here is some Danny/Sam Christmas fluff! I hope you like it!

AO3 || FFN

It was a crisp, cold December afternoon in Amity Park. Danny, Sam, and Tucker were walking home from lunch at the Nasty Burger. Now that school was out for the holidays, their schedules became much more flexible. They could actually hang out during the day and fight the straggling ghosts without worrying about strictly following Mr. Lancer’s attendance policy or trying to cram for exams that ghost fighting took study time away from.

It was almost Christmas, but there oddly wasn’t any snow on the ground in the Midwest town yet. Tucker made the mistake of bringing that fact up, which started Sam on a long tirade about global warming. Danny tuned most of it out. In fact, he tried to tune most of the holidays out. He pretended not to notice the festive decorations, the cheery music, and peppy holiday wishes everyone granted to each other. On a particularly bad day, he almost ectoblasted a group of carolers. They didn’t do anything wrong, per se. Oh no, Danny Fenton just did not enjoy the holidays.

After his little tantrum freshman year, his parents tried to keep The Great Santa Debate to a minimum, at least around Danny. However, Danny was a junior now, which meant Jazz was off at Brown most of the time and couldn’t mediate her parents the way she used to. His parents’ antics ensued, though they tried to do their best at making amends with their family by hosting what was this year’s Second Annual Fenton Family Christmas Eve Party.

“Pleaseeee tell me your parents will let you come over for my family’s Christmas Eve party. My parents will say they’ll put their bickering on hold for a few hours only to try and round up their friends to take sides in The Great Santa Debate. Jazz will be home for winter break, but she at least has the excuse to study and get ahead on her work, so she can ignore them. I need you guys there to keep me sane. I hate the holidays.” Danny groaned and shoved his hands in his coat pockets.

“Hey man! You know I’m there! As long as I’m home before curfew. My parents actually want me to come back closer to curfew, no earlier, no later. They want to ‘spend time catching up’. Eww.” Tucker shivered, though it wasn’t because of the cold air.

“Now that Hanukkah is over, it’s pretty much back to the normal boring antics at the Manson house. I’ll be there. And Danny, there’s really nothing to hate about the holidays. The holidays are great! Most people usually are more generous, once they get past all their corporate greed. There’s no school, the ghosts still have the Christmas Truce, and lots of places are shut down. It’s actually quite peaceful.” Sam smiled to herself.

“No, I still hate it. How is it that you of all people are happiest this time of year and I’m not? Did we switch personalities or something?”

Sam scoffed, “Just because I’m a goth doesn’t mean I have to be angry and broody all the time.”

“Sam, you’re still the cheeriest goth we know.” Tucker pointed out.

“I’m the only goth you two know. Seriously, Danny. Take advantage of the Truce. Enjoy this time of year. Take some time off. You certainly earned it.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s conditioned in my brain to not enjoy it no matter how hard I try. Look, three months of Jazz away at college and I’m talking like her already. Soon I’ll be filling in for her as my own therapist.”

“Bah, Humbug!” Tucker shouted and laughed.

Sam shot Tucker an unamused look. “I can help you enjoy Christmas, Danny. I mean...Tucker and I can. Right, Tuck?”

“Right! First thing you gotta do is find some mistletoe and dangle it from a hat,” his two friends rolled their eyes, “Don’t get it confused with holly though, because then it’ll just look stupid and you’ll get laughed at…”

“Wow, Sam. You look...really nice.” Danny rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably as he greeted his friend at the door. It’s not that he never told her she looked nice before, she was just more formal than he had been expecting.

Sam was wearing a velvet black long sleeved dress with a white collar, black stockings, and her usual boots. Her hair was all the way down and slightly wavy in places. She was carrying a large shopping bag, probably filled with presents.

“My mother said I had to look nice for your parents’ party. She wanted to put me in this red sparkly thing. She let me wear this instead,” Sam said with a satisfying smirk. “I don’t think she realizes it’s from one of my old Wednesday Addams costumes.”

Danny chuckled as he escorted her inside. “I’m glad you’re here. Tucker is driving me crazy.”

“More so than usual?” Sam raised an eyebrow and let out a small laugh.

“We’ll get to that…” Danny promised, weaving in between the groups of adults happily chatting away, dodging his parents in the process. Sam looked around the Fenton house. It was eloquently decorated - stockings with each family member’s initials hung across the fireplace mantle, Christmas music was playing from an old turntable, though it could barely be heard over the loud conversations. Jazz was in the corner chair reading a book, using the Christmas tree as her light source.

“That’s a beautiful tree,” Sam gawked at it as they passed it on their way upstairs to find Tucker.

“Thanks, I guess. Jazz was in charge this year. I just don’t see the point. I mean, who even thought of Christmas trees? What misguided sap looked at a tree and thought ‘I’m going to bring it inside and decorate it with glass balls’? It’s pointless!”

“It stems off the Pagan tradition of bringing in decorated branches to celebrate the winter solstice, although it was the Germans who-” she paused at his scowl, “but that’s not really the point you’re trying to make. Actually, I kind of agree with you about Christmas trees. They’re beautiful, but why chop down a big beautiful living tree just to set it up in your house, under water it for a month, then toss it out on the curb the day after Christmas?”

Danny smiled triumphantly, “there’s my grumpy goth!”

Sam rolled her eyes, though softly smiling, and followed him into his room, where Tucker was sitting at Danny’s computer chair playing some game that involved shooting snowmen with candy canes. He was playing exceptionally terrible, even for Tucker, missing nearly all the snowmen. “Fuck!”

Sam raised an eyebrow at Danny. Danny laughed, “I think my dad accidentally gave Tuck his adult eggnog and kept the non-alcoholic version for himself. I’m hiding him up here so no one notices. Hopefully he’ll be fine by the time he has to go home.”

She nodded and took a seat on Danny’s bed, while he crawled under it to fish gifts out.

“Finally! Present time!” Tucker paused his game at the sound of his friends’ voices and clapped his hands together, swiveling around to face his friends.

“Tucker, you didn’t even bring anything!” Sam objected, noticing he was empty handed.

“I forgot your gifts at home!”

“He didn’t forget. He’s broke.” Danny chimed in, coming out from under the bed with the gifts he had been “hiding” there.

“Nuh-uh! I got you guys something!” Tuckers words slurred a little.

“That must have been some eggnog,” Sam offered.

“That, or Tucker is probably just a lightweight.” Danny laughed. Sam chuckled as well, ignoring Tucker’s protest that he was, indeed, not a lightweight due to his strict all-meat diet. He shut up when Sam handed him a small cleanly wrapped box, and kept a bigger blue-wrapped box on her lap. Danny handed Tucker a box similar to the one Sam gave him, though it was clear he wrapped this one. He handed Sam a poorly wrapped log of a gift. It was cylindrical shaped, which granted is a tricky shape to wrap, but it looked like about halfway through the wrapping process he gave up and just wrapped the entire roll of tape around the gift to keep the paper on. “Merry Christmas, or whatever.”

Sam laughed, “Danny, what is this? It looks like it’s been though the Ghost Zone and back a few times.”

Danny sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck, “It did. Only once though! Klemper caught me off guard when I had it on me and I had to put him back in the ghost zone, no big.”

Sam smiled and rolled her eyes for about the one-hundredth time that night, carefully examining the disastrously wrapped gift after exchanging with Danny the box from her lap. Tucker, of course, had already unwrapped his presents. “Wow! I love you guys, you’re the best, thank you! I love you so much, you’re the best.” He slurred and pulled his two best friends into a hug neither was prepared for, their faces smushed against Tucker’s chest.

Sam and Danny had decided (well rather, Sam let Danny join in on her idea) to give Tucker the newest portable gaming system, complete with a few new games and upgrades. Between Sam’s bank account and Danny’s connections as Phantom, they were able to get their hands on some yet-to-be-released gaming software.

Sam pushed herself away from Tucker, breaking the embrace. She smiled when Danny’s face lit up upon opening her gift to him: a vintage NASA hoodie. “Sam, this is awesome!” He immediately pulled it on. “How did you get this? They don’t make these anymore!”

Sam smiled, “I have a few goth friends who are into vintage clothing stores. Do you like it?” She glanced at Tucker, who was sitting criss-crossed on the floor and already trying to set up his new device.

“I love it! It’s amazing! Though, I don’t really get all that cold anymore since I figured out my ice powers.” He snuggled into the sweatshirt regardless.

“Well you may not be cold anymore, but I’m certainly still not used to your ghost core dropping the temperature of the room. When you wear warmer clothes, it helps me not become a human popsicle. I dunno, I just thought it would keep you motivated towards your career goals and whatnot despite all the ghost hunting getting in the way. And I didn’t want to get you the same thing I got Tucker, especially because you already knew what I was giving to Tucker, but-”

“Hey, Sam. Chill out.” He grinned cheesily at his pun, which she punched him in the shoulder for. “This is great, I’m going to wear it all the time. Open yours, it may help my ice core too.” He smiled softly.

“I’m glad you like it. You should have seen how happy you were when you opened it.” She smiled. “Operation Make Danny’s Christmas Less Sucky is being executed as planned.”

It took a little muscle to break past Danny’s heavy taping job. Sam’s jaw dropped slightly when she saw what was inside his disaster wrapping job.

In Sam’s hands laid a purple, black, and gray scarf. A homemade scarf. She could tell because it certainly didn’t look perfect or store bought. There were a few pulls in it, but she immediately loved it. “You made this.” She stated incredulously, looking up at him.

He nodded, a soft blush forming at his cheeks. “Well, you kinda have everything and you can be very hard to shop for since you’re not into materialistic things and corporate greed and all the stuff you preach about. But this can keep you warm if my ice core goes out of control. My grandma helped me start it and showed me what to do, but yeah I made it, which is why it looks like a perfectly sloppy representation of my life. I’m sorry. I can buy you a new one you’ll like that’s organic or gluten-free or something.”

Sam laughed at his speech, particularly at his misunderstanding. He put so much thought and effort into it. And of course, he knew what was important to her: thoughtfulness and a caring friend. It was actually the perfect gift. “Danny shut up, I love it.” She stood and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thank you.” She began wrapping it around her neck.

“Gross, get a room.” Tucker was sprawled out on the floor, pressing buttons on his device, staring at the blank screen.

Danny and Sam’s faces heated up in a deep red blush as they looked away from each other, muttering “not lovebirds” or something along the lines of it underneath their breath. “We are in a room, Tucker. My room. And you’re making it even messier with all these gadget pieces!”

Tucker’s portable gaming system suddenly sputtered to life, a welcoming melody assuring the user it booted up correctly. Sam and Danny stared at it.

“I’m kinda amazed he was able to set it up that fast while tipsy. It’s actually kind of scary.” Sam muttered.

“Here’s my gift to you, loooovebirds!” Tucker tossed Danny his hat, the one with mistletoe dangling from it.

“Tuck, that’s for Danny, not for me. I’m not wearing that. And I’m holding you accountable for not keeping up our gift exchange tradition.” Sam crossed her arms over her chest.

“Nooooo Danny uses it on you! Thank you, you’re welcome, Tucker! You’re a genius and a stud.” Tucker rambled and shoved the hat on Danny’s head and shoved Sam towards him before he continued pushing buttons on his new device.

“Uhh…” Danny threw the hat to the ground as if it had been crawling with spiders.

His entire face felt like it was burning. It’s not that he didn’t want to kiss Sam, because he did. He really liked her. Sam was just an anomaly to him. He could never read her. One misread action and he would have bruises deeper than those ghosts gave him. It was better for him to not say anything for the sake of their friendship. Plus, he still wasn’t even sure if he liked her liked her. That sounded so juvenile. Sam was his best friend, of course, but he felt something different with her than he did with Tucker. Way different. It was a different kind of love. He didn’t love Sam like she was his sister. It was deeper than that. Sam of course had already come to that conclusion years ago, not that either boys knew it. For Danny, it was something he still couldn’t quite wrap his head around.

Danny looked over at Sam, whose face was as red as Rudolph's nose. Of course Tucker’s actions would make her uncomfortable, too. She was the only girl of the group, which meant she was constantly teased to be dating one of them (usually Danny) or both of them (gross) from bystanders, but never from her friends.

Tucker frowned and picked the hat back up and put it on Danny’s head. “No take backs!”

Danny looked over at Sam apologetically. Surely, they both knew they didn’t have to apologize to each other for their friend’s antics. But it was Danny’s clueless father who accidentally made Tucker more obnoxious than usual. “Sorry, I think he’s drunk.” Danny and Sam both scowled as Tucker tried pushing their heads together. “Enough Tucker!”

Tucker stared at them blankly, hands still on each of them.

Sam groaned. “Just get him to shut up! It will just be like another fake out make out.” She grabbed Danny’s face with both of her hands and gently pressed a kiss upon his lips. That got the boys to shut up.

“Tucker, take your stupid hat back,” she tore it from Danny’s head and threw it at Tucker, hitting him square in the face. “I can’t deal with you right now. Come on, Danny. I still promised to make your fucking Christmas fun, damnit.” She said grumpily, grabbed her bag and Danny’s wrist and dragged him out of the room, leaving Tucker in Danny’s room alone to play with his new toys.

Danny blinked a few times and followed her. He still hadn’t gotten used to kissing her. Granted, this was only the fourth time and all of the previous times served as identity-saving distractions, but it still made his head spin. He shook his head and laughed, “Now who’s the Scrooge?” He wagged his eyebrows up and down stupidly, which immediately broke her trance and she laughed. “So, what’s next then, Mrs. Claus?”

“Don’t call me that.” She led them up to the op center, not quite ready to go back to the high-energy party happening downstairs, and certainly not wanting to see Tucker again until he either sobered up or passed out. Sam dug in her bag and handed Danny a tupperware container.

“Cookies? You made cookies?!” He opened the lid and examined them.

“Hey, I can bake! I don’t know much about Christmas traditions since I’m technically Jewish, but I looked some up and apparently decorating annoyingly adorable cookies is a tradition. Are you filled with cheer yet?”

“You baked the cookies. YOU did?” He picked one up and gently pressed the tip of his tongue to the cookie, testing it out.

“Yes, asshole. I baked them. And they’re not vegan, so you may actually like them.”

“Oh,” he said stupidly. He took a bite into the cookie and raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Wow, you really can bake. These are actually really awesome, Sam.” He smiled and finished the rest in one bite, grabbing another immediately.

Her glowering face softened up as she smiled. “Come on, I’m not done yet.” She pointed to the roof, signaling Danny to go ghost and phase them up there. She pulled out some blankets from her bag and laid down on one, signaling for him to follow. She snuggled into her new scarf until he changed back to his human form. “So tomorrow, if you can get away from your family for a bit, you and Tucker and I are going to do all those cliche Christmassy things. Sledding if it snows, ice skating, we’ll drink hot chocolate and build gingerbread houses, and we can make fun of corny Christmas movies. But I’m not fucking singing any Christmas carols. I draw the line there.”

Danny smiled as he sat down next to her, looking up at the stars, an immediate habit for him.

She noticed his quick serenity. “See? It’s so quiet and peaceful up here. Everyone is inside enjoying their families, you can still see the stars somehow shining brighter through the small amount of clouds, and they aren’t masked from all of the houses and their Christmas lights. It’s beautiful. You can get that calm and quiet you desperately need.” She laughed, her breath creating a small ghost sense of her own in front of her.

“You didn’t need to do this all for me, Sam. I appreciate it, though, I really do. But of all the things you’ve given to me today or signed me up for tomorrow....this is actually my favorite part.” He smiled and changed his focus from the sky to her.

“I know. You’ve always been a sucker for the sky.” She smirked.

He laughed and grinned wider; a genuine, large smile. “I meant that it’s nice to get away from everything and just hang with you.”

Sam blushed and glanced at the small snowflakes now dusting her hair. She looked up at the sky and smiled. “Okay, I’ll admit I didn’t plan for it to snow, but there’s no way you could hate Christmas now.”

Danny didn’t say anything. He watched his beautiful best friend enjoy nature, trying to catch a few snowflakes on her tongue. He liked the way the stars made the snow in her hair sparkle. And then it hit him. That deep feeling again. Like a love that was more than love. He gently grabbed her face and turned her towards him, pressing a sweet kiss on her cold lips.

When they broke apart, Sam looked around, puzzled. “There’s no mistletoe?”

“No mistletoe.” He confirmed nervously, smiling when she came to the same conclusion he did. They both knew the feeling was mutual. This time, she leaned into him, initiating the kiss. It felt hot against the cold air. She tasted like peppermint from the candy she was eating earlier. Danny’s heart pounded. He felt like his whole life led up to this one moment here. He wrapped his arms around her as she tangled her hands in his hair. Sam pulled back to whisper “Merry Christmas, Danny,” before kissing him again. He smiled into it.

Maybe Christmas isn’t so terrible after all.

#Christmas Truce 2018 #Danny Phantom #Danny Fenton #Sam Manson #Tucker Foley #Danny/Sam #Danny x Sam #Amethyst Ocean #Christmas Fluff #Christmas Truce #stephanie writes sometimes

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