#paulina archives

[suppose-i-was-worm]

I Put A Spell On You

Fake Dating (Part 1)

**I know, it's not the one that I started writing and was really funny, I'm having a lot of trouble with that one. Enjoy this one instead!**

“I need your help.”

Damian frowned, stashing away the knife he’d hidden beneath his pillow. Danny was crouched on the sill of the window he’d come in through, looking at him with wide blue eyes.

“Tt. What do you need? It is well past midnight.”

“I need you to fake date me.”

“What?”

Danny flinched, and Damian realized how sharp his question had been.

“My apologies. Please explain to me what is going on so that I can best assist you.”

Coming fully into the room, Danny started to explain.

“So, you know my parents and holidays, right? They- they’ve started hounding me about bringing home a significant other since Jazz got married.”

Damian nodded- he was familiar with Danny’s parents’ personality, even having never met them.

“Anyways, for Thanksgiving, they’re threatening to invite Paulina over and make me sit next to her. Paulina, Dames! I wouldn’t survive. So I told them I had a boyfriend who lived here in Gotham, and now they’re insisting on coming here to visit. If they find out I lied, I’ll be dead! My grades are too good for an early death.”

“So you came to me.”

“You’re the only person I know well enough to pull this off, Damian.”

Damian pinched the bridge of his nose, a habit picked up from his father.

“And you did not think to tell them about-“

Cutting him off, Danny grabbed Damian’s face and looked directly into his eyes, a serious look on his face.

“Damian, I assure you it would be a fate worse than death if they found out how we met.”

Damian pulled himself away from Danny, glad for the dim light of his bedroom hiding the blush heating up his cheeks. The other man had never been that close to his face, and Damian would probably say that Danny’s eyes were more dangerous for him than the entire League of Assassins.

“Please, Dames? It’s Paulina we’re talking about.”

Closing his eyes, Damian thought things through. Fake dating Danny would be- a blessing and a curse at the same time. A blessing, as it would require him to be close to the other man for extended periods. A curse, because he knew it would end as soon as Danny’s parents left Gotham. For Damian, who had been struck by Danny’s beauty from the first moment he’d seen the other, the brief benefits might just outweigh the pain of them ending. At least he’d have the memory of being close to Danny.

When he opened his eyes, Danny was holding his hands in a mock praying position, looking up at Damian through his lashes.

“Tt. Fine.”

Danny lit up, literally, and then darted forward, planting a kiss on Damian’s cheek.

“You’re the best! They’re coming in to town tomorrow- drop by mine when you can!”

The other man slid back out of the window and flew off before Damian recovered from the kiss enough to protest the short notice.

~~~

The next day found Damian waiting outside Danny’s apartment, flowers in hand. He had done some investigation as to what he ought to bring with him to meet a significant other’s parents, so he was also armed with a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates.

The door opened soon enough after his knock, revealing an older woman he had never seen before. He could see where Danny got his frame, though, as well as his delicate features.

“You must be Damian! Come in! Danny’s elbow deep in the microwave with Jack. I’m Maddie- we’ve heard so much about you!”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

He stepped inside the apartment, handing Maddie the wine and chocolates after she closed the door.

“Oh, you’re a charmer, aren’t you? Danny!”

Danny poked his head out of the kitchen, and Damian almost swooned at the look Danny gave him.

“Hey Dames! Glad you could make it!”

He emerged, wiping what looked like grease off his hands, and took the flowers that Damian handed him.

“For you, Beloved.”

More importantly, he also took the short kiss Damian gave him over the bouquet.

When Damian pulled away, he was delighted to see that Danny was flushed.

“Uh- thank you! They’re beautiful.”

“Oh, you two are so cute! How long have you been dating?”

“Three years.”

“Not long.”

Danny and Damian spoke at the same time, and then Damian smiled smoothly, determined to fix his mistake.

“Perhaps I feel like our time together until now has been too short. Every time I see you, you are as beautiful as the day we met.”

He was rewarded with Danny flushing an even brighter red.

Maddie turned to her son, hands on her hips.

“You’ve been dating this polite young man for so long and hadn’t told us?”

Danny shuffled his feet, looking bashful.

“I didn’t want to scare him away. I really like him, mom.”

A large man came out of the kitchen, laughing a booming laugh.

“We can tell, Danno. It’s not like you haven’t been talking about him for the last few years.”

Damian looked over at Danny, doing his best not to let his expression show. Danny had been talking about him to his parents? For years?

Danny laughed nervously and then herded everyone into the dining room.

If he were being honest, Damian had pulled out all of his acting skills to charm the Drs. Fenton throughout the evening. He did not need acting skills for his interactions with Danny. He kept close to the other, wrapping an arm around his shoulder when he could and dropping light kisses into the shorter man’s hair when the opportunity presented itself.

It was heaven.

Danny walked him out to his car after dinner, and didn’t let go of Damian’s hand the entire way.

“Thank you for tonight, Dames.”

Damian smiled down at the love of his life.

“Of course, Beloved. Anything for my husband.”

With a scoff, Danny let go of Damian’s hand and stepped back.

“Sure, Damian. Drive safe.”

~~~

Danny Fenton knew when he was screwed. His parents had been in Gotham for a week, and Damian was still dropping by to see him on a semi regular basis. He’d even been touchy, and Danny knew that of all people, Damian Wayne wasn’t ever physically affectionate.

It partly gave him hope, and partly made him think this gambit was hopeless. He was aware of Damian’s extra-curriculars, after all, and knew the entire family were good actors.

And yet-

Damian’s parting kiss to him had been long and clinging the evening before his parents left, and he seemed reluctant to leave Danny standing in his own doorway. His hand lingered on Danny’s wrist, and his eyes were the last to tear away.

So, yeah. Danny was fifty percent sure that Damian might possibly reciprocate his feelings, but he didn’t have the courage to ask outright.

He hadn’t had the courage to ask much of Damian since they met, even though he’d been half in love with the other man the moment they laid eyes on each other.

It had been a routine summoning- He’d tasted the blood in his mouth, and while it did not necessarily taste like the blood of an innocent (he always went to bat for the victim in those cases), it piqued his curiosity enough to check things out.

He rose from the summoning circle, crown of fire wreathing his head as he showed off his less human appearance.

The cultists fell away from him, scrambling to bow and prostrate themselves in front of him.

“Oh great Ghost King! Please accept this sacrifice in order to take your rightful place as the lord of all worlds!”

Danny looked down to see a handsome young man in a well fitted suit glaring up at him, blood drying from a wound on his head.

When their eyes met, something changed. The summoning circle flared from Danny’s own ice blue to a sharp neon green, and something lit up under the chair the ‘sacrifice’ was tied to.

With noises of surprise, the cultists started to rise to investigate, but Danny snapped his fingers and caught them all in ice.

Landing, Danny inspected both the runes in the summoning circle and the one beneath the sacrifice, and then floated out of the circle to find the book the cultists had been using to summon him.

When he found it, he had the urge to finish these idiots off himself. They had somehow botched the ritual so much that they had turned it into something of a wedding, and now he was ghost married to a human civilian.

Turning back to said human civilian, he found the other on his feet on the opposite side of the room, holding an improvised weapon.

“Oh cool, you got free. Good news, you’re not going to die.”

The civilian stiffened even more, arching an eyebrow.

“Tt. What is the bad news?”

Danny shrugged.

“Oh, not much. We’re just kinda… Married now? I’ll find a way to dissolve it, or something, and you’re not obligated to have anything to do with me, but… Yeah. Supernaturally married. Is a thing. That we are.”

Civilian’s shoulders slumped, and he stalked out of the warehouse (why was it always warehouses?). Danny followed behind.

“Oh, hey, we’re in Gotham!”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Close to my apartment.”

The man turned to him incredulously.

“The ghost king has an apartment in Gotham?”

Danny let his transformation wash over him.

“Well, Danny Fenton does, and I’m him most of the time.”

“Damian Wayne. A pleasure.”

Damian held out his hand, and Danny shook it carefully.

“Totally! I’m gonna- go. I guess. And look into the ghost married thing.”

“No rush. It might be advantageous to be married to an interdimensional king.”

With a laugh, Danny lifted into the air.

“Sure. I’m cool with being friends, if you want. Maybe we can work together.”

“I can do friends.”

#dp x dc #dp x dc fanfic #dp x batman #danny phantom #damian wayne #dead serious #dpxdc #fake dating #idiots to lovers

[ashspecter]

Gonna Make You a Star

@lavendarlily's prompt: Who knew Danny Fenton was so agile? Paulina makes it her personal mission to get him on the cheer squad.

Summary: Danny never thought that being light on his feet and knowing martial arts would help him anywhere but fighting ghosts. He was wrong. Now Paulina wants to make him a cheerleader for Casper High’s football team.

TW: N/A

Words: 3435; Chapter 1 (This was supposed to be a one-shot)

#danny phantom #danny fenton #paulina sanchez #cheer au #cheer squad au #dp au #no one knows au #phic phight 24 #phic phight 2024 #dp events #phandom #phandom events #oneshot

[impyssadobsessions]

One shot I made based off this drawing I did >w< Danny basically trying to save Paulina and Dash without revealing his identity!

Original Post:

#danny phantom #danny fenton #fanfic #dash baxter #paulina sanchez

[collectingthegoods]

Danny Fenton as a Casper High Cheerleader

Fanart for the fanfic School Spirit by PunzAnonymous on ao3. Casper High Spirits! Danny and Paulina are the poster children. The picture on the right is a photo someone took and the picture on the left is one of the flyers they made with it.  #dpxdc #fanart #CheerleaderDannyFenton

#dp fanart #dp x dc #dpxdc #CheerleaderDannyFenton

[wingedflight]

Ghost Girl

Finally posted the full collection of Paulina Phantom AU ficlets and illustrations that @marzfartz and I created for this year’s Ectober! Includes two bonus ficlets that I never got around to posting here on Tumblr.

#ectoberhaunt23 #Danny phantom #Paulina phantom AU #my fic

[scarletsaphire]

Danny, newly added to the cheer team (mostly) against his will, is attending his first lock in with the girls. It's a lot more fun than he expected.

--

4th fic for @phicphight, with this one going to @lavendarlily and @lonelygrayrose, with a special shout out to @hannahmanderr because she asked politely. Prompts used will be at the end!

Danny had accepted that he didn't get much control over his life. Ever since he'd died, he was getting pulled one way or another for ghost fights or school or family stuff. It really came to its worst point went he'd been more or less bullied into joining the cheer team. Sam and Tucker were not help; they thought it was hilarious.

It did mean that the already minuscule amount of free time he had was filled with practice, or games, or other team building exercises. Like right now; the annual lock in for the cheer team, hosted in Casper High one and only cafeteria. Really pulling out all the stops.

Danny had been dreading it since it was announced two weeks ago; knowing his luck, there would be some kind of ghost attack, and then he'd have to play the whole "Oh I've been here the whole time!" game. And if that didn't happen, he'd be stuck in the cafeteria with the cheer leader girls for twelve hours straight! Sure, they were nice enough, especially since he joined the team, but that didn't mean they were friends!

It had only taken an hour for Danny to change his opinion.

The parent chaperone very clearly did not care about what they got up to, provided no one broke a bone or stole something where she could see. This allowed them to roll all of the tables off the walls of the cafeteria and construct a complicated and completely unsafe obstacle course for them to run through.

The first two girls had already given it their best shot; the first one, Abigail, who Danny had never seen without bows in her hair, had made it pretty far for being the first one through, but her hair had gotten tangled in one of the wheels, and the official score keeper (who was, of course, Paulina) gave her a DNF. She was currently off to the side with Star, getting her tied back into a braid and watching the spectacle.

The second girl, Brittany, had finished, if her time was a bit sad. "I don't want a repeat of that!" she'd said while the rest of  them teased her about her terrible performance. "I just got these braids put in on Monday, and I am not spending another four hours to get them redone!"

They were going in alphabetical order, so that meant Danny was next up. He lifted his arms above his head to stretch while he analyzed the course.

They'd done a pretty good job, if he did say so himself. There were several tables that he would need to go under, several he'd need to jump, and one they'd set up to require jumping on the seats instead of on the table. A bit rudimentary, sure, but it worked for their purposes.

"So, Danny Fenton," Paulina said, holding her water bottle out towards him like a microphone. "As the only boy on the team, you have quite the reputation to try and uphold. Do you have a strategy going into this?"

Danny flashed her a grin he normally saved for when he was Phantom. "Course I do."

Paulina returned the smile, and leaned in closer. "And what would that be?"

"And spoil the surprise? Not a chance."

Paulina laughed, leaning back on her seat of backpacks, blankets, and pillows. "You're setting high expectations, Fenton. You ready?"

Danny nodded, settling into a running stance.

"Three, two, one, go!"

He started running to the cheers of his teammates.He hadn't lied; he did have a strategy, and it didn't involve any kind of ghost powers. He wouldn't need them.

Danny had spent the better part of two years dodging bullets, ray beams, fire, boomerangs, bazookas, and about a dozen other, faster, much more painful objects. Two years honing reaction speed, flexibility, and spatial awareness, all of which would help him decimate the past two times, and anyone else who wanted to race after him.

Okay, maybe the practice part did involve ghost powers, but he wouldn't be using any now.

He vaulted over the first table cleanly, chaining the momentum to roll underneath the next table in one fluid motion. He came to his feet already running, ready to vault over the next two tables. In what felt like a heartbeat, he was already at the end obstacle, where he'd have to hop back and forth on the seats without touching the table; if he touched it, that would mean an immediate disqualification.

It didn't prove to be any more difficult than any other obstacle had been, although it was significantly slower. Danny leapt off of the final seat straight into a backflip, landing perfectly on his feet.

That part wasn't required; he just felt like flexing a little.

His grand finish was met with the roaring applause of the eight girls; Abigail had even started whistling, much to Star's annoyance, as she was still trying to fix her hair.

"And that is two minutes and twenty seven seconds!" Paulina called from her makeshift chair.

"Damn!" Alysha said. "That is going to be a tough time to beat!"

"Thank you, thank you," Danny said, taking an exaggerated bow. "I'll be here all night."

Alysha shoved his shoulder even while she laughed.

Danny made his way back to the spot he'd claimed, a little bit to the side of Paulina's seat.

"I am so happy we recruited you," she said as he sat down.

"Yeah," Danny agreed. "I am too."

As surprising as it was, it was true. Maybe he'd originally gotten the spot because of his ghost fighting and powers, but it had quickly become the only (mostly) ghost free thing he had. He'd never gotten that kind of luxury at home, and while he loved Sam and Tucker to death, it was way to easy for their hangouts to become patrols or planning patrols. Or homework, but that didn't count.

There was the additional fact that being on the cheer team had made Danny's life easier at school; the teacher's were more lenient with schoolwork, he had a different group of people he could sit with if Sam and Tucker were out sick, or if they got absorbed in their infamous debates, and everyone was just so much nicer to him.

Even Dash had stopped with the bullying, and after a couple stilted conversations and an emotionally charged apology that was leagues beyond what he'd thought Dash capable of, Danny would be willing to call them friends.

Definitely just friends though. It didn't matter that Tucker had caught him staring at Dash several times during lunch or that he got all flustered whenever they ended up in the locker room together. That was a coincidence. 

Just like Danny had expected, none of the girls came even close to his time. Star got a strong second place at three minutes flat, which was very impressive on its own, but his natural talent and years of practice held him high above the rest.

"You have to tell us how you did that," Aubrey said, jutting out her bottom lip. It was the same look she gave Coach Tetslaff every time she tried to extend practice.

Unfortunately for her, it worked just as well on Danny as it did on Coach. "Yeah, sure. Right after I tell you how I handle flying so well."

"Ugh." Aubrey flopped forward into a heap on the table. "You are. So mean."

The sound of a cellphone ringing cut off whatever Danny was going to say next. The team glanced back at the chaperone, who had settled in a corner of the room with a laptop, a thermos Danny swore was full of hard liquor, and headphones. They all sat in silence as she answered the phone.

"Hello? Uhuh. Yeah, I'll be right up. Everything should already be paid for, right? Good." She hung up the phone with a snap and stood from her spot. "Pizza's here. You kids sit tight, I'll be right back."

The group stayed quiet until her footsteps disappeared down the hallway outside of the door, before everyone shared a conspiratory look. Everyone but Danny, that is.

"Uh... what did I miss?" Danny asked.

Aubrey and Abigail stood up, one moving to the window of the door, the other to the chaperone's bag. The other girls all shared the same look again. 

"Did nobody tell you?" Dakota asked.

Danny ran over the incredibly short list of things he'd been told about the lock in, which was basically just that it was a lock in, before shaking his head. "Tell me what?"

"Oh, Ms. Pachelli is a total drunk," Paulina said. "I'm sure you've noticed its not apple juice in her thermos?"

Danny nodded his head.

"Well, that's not enough to last her a whole night, even on a good day, and dealing with us is never a good day in her books." Paulina studied her fingernails while Abigail fished a bottle of whiskey out of her backpack. "So, every year we switch out her spare bottle for one of Abby's parents' old empty ones."

Sure enough, Abigail pulled out an identical bottle from Ms. Pachelli's bag.

"And... you don't get in trouble for that?"

The rest of team all giggled. "Please," Star said dismissively. "She barely cares about us to begin with, and if she tries to get us in trouble, she'd have to admit she has a problem."

"She's coming," Aubrey hissed from the door, and Abigail made a dash back to her backpack. By the time Ms. Pachelli was back in the room, three steaming pizza pies in hand, the whole team was doing a perfect imitation of teenagers who weren't up to anything.

"It'll be over here when you girls are hungry," she said, setting them down where food was normally served. "Uh. You girls and Danny." She amended when she turned around to see them all pointing at him, a habit they'd developed with Coach Tetslaff. Ms. Pachelli settled back down in her corner, taking one, long swig from her thermos, and putting her headphones back on.

The rest of the team

"She'll fall asleep soon," Dakota whispered to Danny. "That's when the real party starts."

Sure enough, it had barely passed 1 AM before Ms. Pachelli had dozed off and the team was left completely unsupervised. Brittany went to make sure she was sleep, and after fiddling with the headphones, she shot a thumbs up at the group. Abigail pulled the bottle back out to the cheers of the team.

"It's time for the real party to get started!" Dakota called.

"Don't we need to stay quiet?" Danny asked.

Star shook her head. "Nah, she's got some video playing in the background. I don't even think a ghost attack would be loud enough to wake her."

"I think its flat earth videos this time," Brittany added. "Definitely looked like it from what I saw, at least."

Danny rolled his eyes. "Why is she even here? If she sucks and also hates all of you-" he ignored whoever called out "She hates you too!" "-why does she volunteer to do it?"

"We ask for her by name," Abigail said, passing the now opened bottle to Paulina.

Paulina took a swig straight from the container before passing it on to Brittany. "That, and if she didn't volunteer for this, she'd have to actually do something at any of the other events the school hosts. She's part of the PTA." 

"Ok, but that doesn't explain why she has to be on the PTA," Danny pointed out.

"Uh, duh, she's Derreck's mom. You can't have a kid in as many extracurriculars as he's in and not be on the PTA," Star said.

"I guess," Danny agreed. He still didn't really understand, but he also didn't want to spend the whole night asking about Ms. Pachelli's life. Besides, the bottle had reached him. He took a small sip from the bottle, and pulled a face at the unexpected burn.

The girls laughed.

"First time tasting alcohol?" Audrey teased, taking the bottle from his hands.

Danny rubbed the back of his neck. "It's not the first time. I just. Didn't expect it to taste like that."

The girls all shared a look before laughing harder.

"It is going to be a fun night," Paulina said, a mischievous smile on her face.

--

Danny wasn't sure what time it was anymore. He knew that a couple of the girls had conked out, with Aubrey being the first to fall about an hour ago. He knew that he wasn't getting any sleep tonight, and from the looks of it, neither was Dakota, who was blasting music from her phone and dancing on one of the tables. She'd been the one to hog most of the bottle.

Not that Danny was complaining; he was definitely not sober, although he couldn't say whether he was tipsy or drunk or somewhere in between or another word he wasn't privy to. Either way, he was drunk enough that he'd agreed to let Paulina and Star do his makeup, something he would never have agreed to without the help of the whiskey.

"Stop moving," Star said, holding him by the shoulders and looking into his eyes, as if she could psychically control him into not moving. Jokes on her, Danny knew how mind control worked, and it was only sometimes like that. "Or else we're gonna-" she hiccoughed, then continued as if nothing had happened, "-mess up your makeup."

"Yeah," Paulina said. "And you don't want to look like a mess for Dash, do you?"

Danny snapped his head towards her, nearly poking his own eye out with the makeup applicator she was using.

"Stooop!" Star said, turning his head back towards her.

Danny obeyed, but he turned his eyes to look at Paulina. "Why would I care about what Dash thinks?"

He could just barely make out her flat stare from the corner of his vision. "Because you like him?"

"I do not!" Danny protested.

Star giggled while Paulina talked over her. "Danny, we have eyes, you know. And we've seen yours wandering to him every time he's anywhere near you."

Danny opened his mouth to protest, but Star pushed it shut. "Nuh uh. Lipstick first." He tried again, but was met with the same result. "I will smear this all over your teeth do not test me Fenton." This time, Danny obeyed.

 By the time he had finished, his initial protests had already died out. It wasn't like they were wrong; he just hadn't realized he'd been so obvious about it. "Fine. I might have a little crush."

"Well if by "little crush" you mean that you're head over heels in love with my best friend, then yeah, I know you have a little crush on him."

"Hey!" Star cried. "I thought I was your best friend?"

"Best boy friend," Paulina corrected. "But not boyfriend boyfriend. We tried dating, but he's not interested in me. Which, you know, I was insulted with originally, but he's just not into any girls, so the fact that he was into me enough to try dating is a win."

"So, he likes-"

"Boys, yeah."

"Which means you have a chance," Paulina added. "But only if you sit still and let us make you look pretty!"

Danny really didn't think he had been moving around all that much, but he made sure to sit even stiller now.

"You're gonna need to be the one who asks him out."

Star nodded. "He's worried about doing something wrong, cause he was so mean to you before." Star paused at Paulina's glare. "Oh. Was that a part I wasn't supposed to share?"

"Yes," Paulina said, annoyed. "But it's too late now."

"Wait, hold on, what?"

"Oh, he likes you too," Paulina said. "It's gotten kind of annoying, listening to him go on and on about how 'cool' you look doing flips and everything."

Danny felt his face heating up more. "I mean. I just. I don't really know how to ask someone out?"

"Oh trust me, I know," Paulina laughed. "Don't think I've forgotten all the shit you pulled during freshman year."

Danny's face burned even hotter.

"Polly, you're embarrassing him!" Star said, but she couldn't stop a giggle of her own. "We're supposed to be helping!"

"I know, I know, but I can't help it!" Paulina said, her laughter dying out.

"You two planned this?" Danny asked incredulously.

"I mean, we didn't not plan it?" Star replied.

"No, we planned it," Paulina corrected. "I think Abigail even put it on her itinerary, but she fell asleep, like a loser."

Star giggled again. "So we're taking over!"

"You've got to be more confident, flaco. You get all blushy and stutter, and give up halfway through, and while that's adorable, it's not going to work if you want results."

"We've seen you on the field, we know you can do it, so don't try to deny it," Star added.

"But that's an entirely different thing!"

"It's not that different," Paulina said.

 Star ignored her. "Then just pretend you're on the field! Put on a good show for him, and I guarantee he'll be drooling all over you. Just like he is during the games."

"He is not drooling about me during the games."

"Oh, he so is," Star countered. "You remember the game you first debuted?"

Danny nodded; while he'd done fine, the actual game had been a bit of a shit show. Casper High had lost, fourteen to nothing.

"Dash only fumbled that because he was so distracted by you," Paulina said. "Tripped right over his own feet, cost us the first points of the game, and it was all down hill from there. If you can do that when you aren't even trying, imagine what you can do to him when you are."

"I think we're done here," Star said, withdrawing from Danny.

"I think we've outdone ourselves," Paulina said, angling his face to admire their work. She grabbed a small mirror from her pocket and passed it over to him. "What do you think?"

He looked surprisingly good, much better than he expected considering the fact he was a boy and that the people doing his makeup were at least a little drunk.

"It looks good," Danny agreed.

"No," Star protested. "You look good, and you need to take that vibe with you when you ask Dash out tomorrow."

"Who said anything about tomorrow?"

"We did," Paulina said. "Because tomorrow, we're going to be dragging him with us to the park and finding a convenient excuse to leave him there alone."

"You're gonna swoop in, and you're gonna ask him out and save him from having to deal with us all day."

"Trust us. It'll be perfect."

"I don't-"

"Shh." Star put her finger over Danny's lips. "We're doing this, whether you show up or not."

"Which means we need our rest, and you need your beauty sleep."

"So shoo while we clean up."

Danny didn't really know what else to do besides walk back to his pile of stuff and get comfortable.

He guessed he was going to the park sometime tomorrow. He hadn't been planning on it, but that was ok. He was used to that.

--

Prompts:

LonelyGrayRose - "Well if by "little crush" you mean that you're head over heels in love with our best friend, then yeah, I know you have a little crush on [him/her]" lavendarlily - Who knew Danny Fenton was so agile? Paulina makes it her personal mission to get him on the cheer squad.

#danny phantom #danny phantom fanfiction #danny fenton #paulina sanchez #dp star #cheer au #phic phight #team human #phic phight 2024

[chicinsilk]

US Vogue June 1986

Paulina Porizkova wears pink ribbons in Michael Katz's hair, earrings, Jay Feinberg. Hairstyle Suga of Suga salon NYC. Make-up François Nars. Beauty Note: Golden Glisten Color Wash, Sunlit Sands Eyeshadow, Lipstick, Poster Pink. Estée Lauder.

Paulina Porizkova porte des rubans roses dans les cheveux de Michael Katz, boucles d'oreilles, Jay Feinberg. Coiffure Suga of Suga salon NYC. Maquillage François Nars. Note beauté : Golden Glisten Color Wash, fard à paupières Sunlit Sands, rouge à lèvres, Poster Pink. Estée Lauder.

Photo Richard Avedon

vogue archive

#us vogue #june 1986 #beauty 80s #1986 #beauty makeup #suga hairstyle #francois nars #estée lauder #jay feinberg #michael katz #paulina porizkova #richard avedon

[wastefulreverie]

Hey guys, it's Invisobang week!! Meaning I get to share this whopping 46k word fic I've had in the works since April!!

I had such a great time collabing with @jackalspine and @buggingaroundwithghouls for art for this piece. Thanks you guys and I hope everyone enjoys! <<33

Since Phantom has done so much for us, there’s a group of students putting on an event to show our appreciation. I don’t think many people thank him for what he does, you know?” Paulina said. “It would be a great opportunity to acknowledge the person who saved us.” He scoffed. “You think that Phantom saved you?”

Or: Danny Fenton does not like ghosts. It doesn’t help that he is one.

#Danny Phantom #Fanfiction #Danny Phantom Fanfiction #Invisobang #Invisobang 2022 #Danny Fenton #Fic #Phicc #Phic #wrwritings

[youmaycallmeyourhighness]

"Alright!" Paulina slams her hands on the table, making Tucker and Sam jump in surprise.

"I'm throwing Danny a surprise Christmas party, I'll need your help."

For a beat there is complete silence before Tucker cautiously starts.

"Y'know Danny…hates Christmas, right?"

"Yeah! But only because his crazy parents make it so miserable for him, so I'm gonna give him the perfect Christmas." Paulina trills.

"You two meet me at the gym after school, I have a plan."

And that's how Tucker and Sam got roped into helping with the disaster on December 21'st.

For @they-bite here's your Valentine's exchange. Sorry it took so long, hope you like it

#danny phantom #danny fenton #paulina sanchez #pink astronaut #valentine's core exchange 2024 #my fics #my writing

[spectral-tentacle]

Dash Baxter was a winner, in every way. He'd always been the biggest, toughest kid in his grade. He was good at football, could climb the highest trees, run the fastest, and he was handsome too, with All-American good looks that the ladies appreciated.

His parents were well-off too, if not exactly rich. Their respectable, boring careers (lawyer, software engineer) paid for a house that was large, and everyone who could drive had their own car, including a brand new sports car for Dash when he turned 16.

These things made him popular. He had everything a guy could want, and then some. You might think a guy like that would be gracious—what reason would he to have malice towards any?

But Dash was full of hate, especially for one Danny Fenton.

See, on the outside, it looked like Dash had everything and Danny had nothing. Danny was from a family of freaks—professional ghost hunters, who were more like professional laughing stocks. Dash half-suspected the town paid them a salary for their comic relief qualities, as they bumbled and ranted and were generally amusing nuisances.

They certainly weren't well-off, or if they were, they weren't giving it freely to Danny so that he could dress stylishly or be a generous gift-giver to friends or anything else that might help buy him popularity.

Danny wasn't tall, or broad of shoulder, or even possessing wiry muscular strength. He was scrawny, puny, weak and pathetic. His looks weren't admirable or All-American, although his big baby blue eyes were fringed with long, thick black lashes and his slender, pointed face had a delicate beauty—those were traits better placed in girls. Danny couldn't play any sport well, not even sissy ones like volleyball. He was an uncoordinated klutz with no stamina.

So why did Dash hate this boy, this loser who seemed to have nothing? It was because he had the one thing Dash didn't. Friends—real friends, that is. Danny had nothing to offer Manson and Foley. And yet they liked him anyway, stuck by him when they would have been better served dumping him like old garbage.

Who did Dash have that would stick by him like that? If his parents went bankrupt, if his looks were disfigured in a terrible accident, if, God forbid, he could no longer play sports? Would Kwan or Dale or Paulina give him the time of day?

Going by how they treated Valerie, they'd abandon him like rats.

And for that, he hated Fenton.

#dash baxter #danny fenton #danny phantom #drabbles #fanfiction #my fic

[fishareglorious]

live The Star reaction

Sotheby and Matilda.... that's gonna be something of an interaction.

FRENCH JUMPSCARE

Oh their interactions will be fun...

Watch matilda fold like a table napkin 5 seconds later and have like an entire archive or something around lmao

fuckign called it lmfao

o lala gayass. I missed you so much you little french gay duck

She says this with such a gritted tone I'm laughing. Here's what you get for underestimating Sotheby.

Ah, so here we get to see Hofmann's report of the storm.

So she was around to witness the first ever Storm, not that everyone knew that it even happened at that time.

Do you... really have that authority, Matilda? Pretty sure access to this would need to you to have an incredibly high-clearance if someone didn't leave it in this archive.

Just hoping the two of you don't get into deep shit for reading this repost lmfao.

That's... horrifying to witness. From what I remember, the narrator in chapter 4 has mentioned Paulina in one or two of his trails.

So Greta, and by extension also her brother have some arcanist blood. Not by much, so it seems.

You could really feel her sombre hopelessness for this.

The age of humanity is being reversed to pave the way for arcanists. Manus does mention that in their doctrine.

Ah, Lucy?

Only appeared after one of the Storms, but took Laplace and whipped them all up into something organized. I didn't know she was the head of it, huh.

Is the fog a metaphor for ignorance on what the Storm is about, or is it kinda like the fog in that Aperion cave type thing. Probably the former, considering how much Hofmann puts importance in not being ignorant.

Case in point. You did not die ignorant in the end, Greta, that I'll say.

Are the people she's talking about 37's mother, Hugh, and other Aperion locals?

yeah lmao that's definitely them. that's probably sophia's father, the one colored pink with the glasses, and I'm assuming 37's mother is the other one.

#WARNING I DROP A MAJOR CHAPTER 6 SPOILER HERE. PLEASE MIND THIS BEFORE OPENING THE CUT #reverse 1999 #playing rev 1999

[hannahmanderr]

(part 1 of 2)

Newton's third law states for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The Heart of the Infinite Realms sets out to prove that wrong.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Danny reeled.

Remnants of fleeting memories that weren’t his own assaulted him like a swarm of angry bees. There was the weight of a pulsating ring lifting from his finger - 

- and the distant thunder of a door slamming open -

- and -

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Star rolled her eyes. “Listen Pauli, if he really thinks he can use you like a plaything and toss you aside the moment he thinks he’s found someone better, then he never even deserved to breathe the same air as you.”

“H-he told me I was special!” Paulina sniffled. “That I-I was the on-”

“Girl, you know I love you, but I told you this when you first started seeing him!” Star interrupted. “He’s a player! Like literally! That boy can’t keep it in -”

“But he ch-cheated on me! No one cheats on me!”

She flicked her eyes both ways as she crossed the street. Paulina’s house wasn’t too far of a walk, but she did have a couple of streets to cross to get there. “Exactly. No one cheats on you and gets away with it. You’re the queen. You’re the one who rules.”

Paulina sighed with a dramatic flair only she could perfect. “I don’t feel like the queen. Not when I can’t have what I want…”

It was a rare show of vulnerability from her. Paulina never showed weakness, not to anyone. The only person she would open up to was Star, and even then she would not do it often. Things usually had to get pretty bad for her to be so blunt. 

Still, Star frowned. “Are you on about Danny Phantom again? Because I thought we -”

“No! I’m keeping my promise! No ghost boy until he realizes I’m right for him!”

“Good girl.” She skipped over a puddle, and a sudden grin blossomed on her face. “Ohhh, wait, I think I know what this is about,” she said with a mischievous air.

“What?”

Star’s grin widened. “Don’t think I haven’t forgotten about what you told me at Dale’s party last month. I know what you really want. Or should I say… who you want?”

She could practically hear Paulina’s stunned expression over the phone. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said flatly.

“Mhmm. Sure. You were drunk, but you weren’t that wasted.”

“I wasn’t anything because it never happened!”

Star laughed. Paulina’s house was just around the corner and a block down the road now. “Pauli, you can admit it to me. I’m not gonna tell anyone. Besides, I think it’s sweet how you pine after her!”

Paulina groaned, and there was a soft thump as she presumably flopped onto her bed. “It’s not pining! Díos mio, it’s not anything! Like I would fall for a goth geek like her, even if she is pretty!”

Star had to bite her lip to keep from guffawing at her friend’s slip. And to think Paulina was denying this crush so vehemently.

“Well, I -”

The sky exploded around her.

Experience had long since taught her to duck immediately. When you lived in a town plagued by ghosts who could fly, there were only so many reasonable responses to loud noises. Miraculously, she managed to keep the phone pressed to her ear.

She glanced up fearfully. The air hummed with potent energy, the kind that usually heralded a powerful ghost, only this was dialed up to an eleven. A series of chills ran down her spine, and in spite of herself, she shivered.

Above her, the sky keened with an ominous rumble that shook her to the bone. Her heart plummeted when the sharp crackling of lightning pierced her ears and a blinding fork of green light split the sky. 

The edges of the cracks began to try and pull themselves away from each other, revealing even more green light. Just beyond, if she squinted, she could see the black of a pitch dark void trying to creep into the cracks and push them apart even more.

And just as quickly as the lightning and the cracks had appeared, they disappeared with a deafening snap that jolted Star’s gut out of place and sent her falling onto the sidewalk.

For a minute, she couldn’t do anything other than breathe heavily, trying to catch her breath and calm her racing heart. Paulina’s voice was running at a hundred miles per hour in her ear, but she couldn’t find it within herself to even try to pay attention. Something inside her boiled away at her blood, filling her with a kind of dread she’d only felt a handful of times before. 

Very carefully, she propped herself up so she was sitting. She couldn’t find any remnant of what had just happened - only confused neighbors emerging from their homes, peering up and wondering the same thing she was.. 

“... was that? Star! Star, please! I heard a loud noise, are you okay?”

The words slowly started to take form in her brain. “Y-yeah,” she whispered, still watching everyone point up at the sky and talk amongst themselves. “I’m fine… I think… Did you see the sky?”

¿Qué piensas? Of course I saw it! What even happened?”

Star swallowed. “I don’t know…” But whatever it is can’t be good, she finished silently. Not when you lived in a town constantly plagued by the supernatural.

“I-I’ll try to tell you what I can when I get there,” she promised, hoisting herself onto her feet and jogging towards Paulina’s house. It shouldn’t have been more than a block, by that point. 

She didn’t know how on earth she was going to explain it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  He staggered backward, the blinding green light from the split sky still imprinted on the back of his eyelids. His hand hit the stone wall behind him, and if it was the wall of the Keep or Long Now or the Acropolis or his own house, he didn’t know. 

Swooning, he pitched to the side. Fragments of foreign memory still plagued him with the echoes of sounds he didn’t recognize, like the unearthly roar of rage and anguish -

- and the broken cry of a disembodied voice -

- and the sound of -

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sydney yawned noisily as the shade of his trigonometry teacher, Mrs. Rekdal, wrote out another equation on the blackboard. In life, Ms. Rekdal had been a tiny, crotchety Norwegian lady with a distinct distaste for nonsense. Apparently, her shade held similar attitudes.

She whirled around sharply and pointed her chalk at the classroom. “Who said that?” she demanded, beady eyes coming to rest on each and every student in turn. “If this is so boring, perhaps it’s time I assigned you another twenty problems for homework, eh?”

Sydney froze. Granted, he didn’t particularly care if they got another twenty problems (things like homework become meaningless when your entire afterlife is tied to the shadow memory of a high school), and he knew Ms. Rekdal would easily forget about the incident, but even after 50 years of trig lessons from her, incurring her wrath still shook him to the core.

The girl behind him - not one of the ones he’d finally managed to win over, sadly - kicked the bottom of his seat. “It was Poindexter!” she said. Her voice barely concealed her snickers. “He did it!”

Sydney turned to glare at her. “Real chummy of you, Kathy.”

She merely flashed him a cheeky grin.

“A-hem!”

Sydney yelped at the sharp crack of Ms. Rekdal’s ruler slapping against his desk. Sheepishly, trying to keep his shoulders from creeping up towards his ears, he turned back to meet her fiery gaze. She had always been one of those teachers that seemed like they could stare into your soul, and now felt no different. 

“Well, Mr. Poindexter?” she said. She peered over the rims of her tortoise-shell glasses. “Tell me why I shouldn’t send all of you home with an extra hour of homework tonight, since you seem to be the wise guy here!”

He bit back a comment about how it was impossible for her to send them home with extra homework - for all intents and purposes, the echo of Casper High was home - and instead tried for an apologetic smile. “W-well, you see, ma’am, I -”

Ms. Rekdal disappeared.

Sydney blinked. “What the -” He waved a hand around where she’d been standing, but there was no trace of her. “Did you guys -”

He cut himself short when he turned around, only to see the rest of the class had disappeared too. Not even their bags and books and papers remained.

He stood up, and his chair fell to the ground with a clatter. “Alright, if this is someone’s funny idea of a prank, I’ll have ya know this is a lame one, buster!”

Something shifted outside the window.

Something of a girlish scream tore from his throat as he looked out the window only to see a big, gaping rip of pure darkness emerging against the already-dark horizon of the Ghost Zone. Around the edges, ectoplasm warped and wobbled. Neighboring doors and windows were swallowed whole, or disintegrated, or simply glitching. 

Even through the glass, he could hear the distant sounds of a guttural, furious roar. His eyes flew open, and his core shuddered to a halt.

He knew that roar anywhere. 

“I-impossible!” he gasped. He made to run for the door and tripped over his fallen chair. “He can’t be - he’s supposed to be locked away! I-I have to…”

Have to what? If his ears weren’t tricking him, if this truly was him… what could little old him do? He was a wimp! Nothing like the kind of person needed to beat him up! Nowhere near as strong as -

The answer hit him like a brick wall.

“Phantom!” He worked to untangle himself from the chair. “I’ve gotta -”

“And just what do you think you’re doing, Mr. Poindexter?”

Sydney blinked again, and Ms. Rekdal stood over him, arms crossed and eyes as beady as ever.

“What?” His ears fell deaf to the snickers of his classmates around him as he sat up, staring out the window.

The tear of darkness was gone. The roar had died away. The doors had been returned.

As if nothing had ever happened.

“Sit! Up! Poindexter!” Ms. Rekdal snapped at him. “Unless if you don’t think you need history class anymore, in which case I’m more than happy to send you straight to the principal’s office!”

Sydney stopped in the middle of righting his chair. “History class? But this is trig!”

This time, he heard his classmates’ giggles. “Wow, did you really hit your head that hard?” Kathy said, still laughing behind her hand. “Trig class, what a joke!”

“I don’t -”

“Enough!” Ms. Rekdal barked. “There’s been enough interruption to this class for one day! The next person to disrupt class will earn themselves a one way trip to a month’s worth of detention!”

Sydney gazed around the room helplessly. Sure enough, the posters of formulas had disappeared in favor of maps and posters with the presidents. Rather than the math they’d been working on before, the blackboard was covered in notes about the War of 1812. His classmates all sat in the same seats, but they held history textbooks in their hands instead of trigonometry textbooks.

His mouth formed around soundless words. This… it couldn’t be right. The shade never changed. It never changed. It was impossible! It was an echo, it couldn’t change! Everything always remained the same!

Until now. Until that rip in the sky. Until that roar.

Without another word, Sydney turned and fled out the door.

He had to warn someone.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He fell into something squishy and warm and loud, something yelling his name into his ear. He flinched away from the sound. It grated too harshly on his ears. It only added to the cacophony of alien memories overwhelming him.

And yet worse than the peppering of unfamiliar memories and the swimming thoughts and the disorientation, was the intense burning that consumed his core and heart, inside and out. Like someone had taken him to the sun and dropped him inside. Or like someone had stabbed it with a knife of fire and blood blossoms.

Like being caught in the crossfire of life and death all over again.

He groaned weakly and drew his knees to his chest. It was too much to bear. Too much. Too hot. Too much like the memory of a razor-sharp sword swinging down into his eye - 

- and the angry flames of a crown trying to reject him - 

- and the -

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Fright Knight sighed as he carefully petted Nightmare’s fiery mane. He did not own much; he was a servant to the throne, and the throne provided for him. He had no need for belongings, not like other ghosts. Even if he’d had belongings, he couldn’t guarantee they would even remain the same with the changing of the throne. Everything, even down to his armor, always changed.

Still though, there were a few things he could always count on having. His sword, for instance, christened as Sāwol Rīpere many centuries before, with the coronation of the most recent king. Of course, its name changed with each coronation of each new king, but the sword remained his. The tool with which to carry out his sacred charge.

And his beautiful mare. Her name too changed along with the sword’s (and his own), but she remained by his side throughout the centuries. His duty to the throne aside, Sāwol Rīpere and Nightmare were the two things he prized most. His two constants amidst an existence of rotating rulers and rotating identities.

Granted his relationship with Sāwol Rīpere, now better known by its more modern translation of Soul Shredder, had been strained over the past few centuries. Even now, sheathed and hanging at his side, he could feel its power itching to be freed, its need to reap souls to the Realm of Eternal Terrors, as it had been commissioned to do with the name it had been granted.

It was a power he despised.

And yet it was a power he couldn’t reject.

Not yet, at least.

He still managed to take comfort in Nightmare. Though her appearance had changed to evoke fear in those who saw her, to him, she was the same magnificent steed she had been millenia ago, back when she’d first been given to him. Their bond was strong, one-of-a-kind. No matter what, he knew he could rely on her to be his faithful companion.

As he stroked her neck and mane, though, he felt her muscles tense beneath his hand. Despite having no visible face, the Fright Knight frowned. “Nightmare? What troubles you?”

As if in response, a crashing force of energy slammed into them both.

The Fright Knight braced himself against the barrage. He’d found himself in the midst of many onslaughts before, but none so strong as this. Nightmare whinnied with anxiety, and he suspected the only reason she did not kick her hoof against the ground was because she too needed to brace herself against the force.

Almost as quickly as it came, it left, and in its wake came a rumble that caused his armor to clink together loudly. Across the sky of the Realms above him, green light flashed and forked, and with a great heave that he could feel in his core, it began to tear itself apart, exposing a darkness like none he had seen before.

At the same time, another sensation grew in his core, one that he’d not felt in many centuries. A certain yearning that strained against himself, one that demanded to be satisfied immediately. As he watched the tear in the sky grow, his eyes widened as the recognition of the yearning dawned on him.

“After all these years,” he whispered. “Could it be…?”

For a moment, he stood there, reveling in the feeling. True, this was not an entirely foreign pull on his core, but there was a distinct… lightness to it. Not heavy or forceful or with the sense of impending doom that had accompanied it the last time it had appeared. No, this one felt promising. 

Like for the first time in hundreds of years, he could allow himself to hope again.

And then the next moment, yet another sensation wrapped its hot grasp around his core. He gasped at the familiar sting, and Nightmare reared with a loud neigh.

Of course she would. He knew she hated the sting as much as she did.

“Calm yourself!” he said, unable to keep the urgency out of his voice. He reached up to stroke her neck again, and she dutifully relaxed into his touch. Still though, she made sure to voice her displeasure through a series of nickers and grunts.

“I know, my mare.” He couldn’t resist how his fingers tightened around the tendrils of flame that formed her mane. “He’s been awakened again. He’s…” His voice trailed off. He couldn’t bring himself to reassure his horse in the face of the revelation.

He swallowed thickly. The hot grip on his core was undeniable. It had held him captive for too long now, ever since a crown of flames was placed upon the new king’s head. He knew it all too well. His core demanded that he follow it, that he fulfill his duty to the throne.

And yet the new sensation, the new tug at his core… it too demanded his attention. Though softer and quieter than the sting, it beckoned to him as well. It told him of a duty that needed equally fulfilled. The same duty demanded by the sting.

He sighed again, shakily, and carefully untangled his fingers from Nightmare’s mane. The feeling of his core at conflict with itself was quickly becoming all too much for him to bear.

He needed to choose. 

And he knew which one would win out in his core, regardless of his own desires.

Slowly, he mounted Nightmare. With a cry, he snapped the reins, and his mare took off like a rocket.

Headed straight for Pariah’s Keep.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“No!”

His cry was strangled; his mouth felt too clumsy around it. The scratchiness in his throat didn’t help matters, and he couldn’t remember if it had been from all the screaming, but had it actually been him doing the screaming? He couldn’t remember, and he had too many memories jumbled around in his head.

And he had priorities. Like the last memory of the Fright Knight. And his panging, burning core. 

His core, burning with the same hot grasp that had taken the hold of the Fright Knight.

Trembling, he blindly attempted to push himself away from whatever warm, soft thing he’d fallen on. “He’s -” he gasped, unable to catch his breath. “Pa- he’s…”

Voices around him drowned his own feeble voice out. They shouted, only adding to the overstimulation. Were they talking to him? Yelling at him? He couldn’t tell. It was like trying to listen underwater.

With another gurgle, his arms gave out from under him, and -

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He fell face first onto the stone floor. The dome of the Ecto-Skeleton shielded his face from most of the damage, but the force of the blow still shook his body and caused him to crash painfully against the side. Hopefully that crack in his ribs was more imagined than real.

Ignore it, he repeated to himself. The same mantra he’d been repeating to himself the entire fight. Do what needs to be done.

Still though, he couldn’t stop himself from glancing down at the dashboard.

19%.

18%.

17%.

Not enough.

It wouldn’t be enough.

Gritting his teeth, he summoned a picture of Amity Park to mind. Pushed out the pain. Pushed out the feeling of energy draining from him faster than he could replace it. Pulled in every desperate thought about the city and people he loved so much. His friends. His family.

Do what needs to be done. For them.

As he stumbled to his feet, gasping at how much energy even such a simple movement cost him, Pariah cackled above him, his laugh deep and thunderous. “Surrender, child!” he taunted from his place at the foot of the dais. “You can’t possibly win!”

Danny’s eyes narrowed.

16%.

15%.

Pariah was right. God, the thought made his stomach turn and his heart stutter, but Pariah was right.

There would be no winning here. 

For a moment, time seemed to stand still. The sound of Pariah’s maniacal laughter was drowned out by the rush of blood in his ears. Each labored breath pushed his overworked lungs closer and closer to the brink of giving out. His heart and core had long since begun to fall out of their carefully maintained rhythm.

The image of Sam and Tucker, of Mom and Dad and Jazz, began to fade from his mind’s eye.

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to ignore the tears threatening to fall. 

He had to.

He had no choice.

Do what needs to be done.

He inhaled shakily. “I don’t need to win,” he said, making sure to look Pariah dead in the eye. With a heave, he summoned energy to his hands and shot twin blasts of turquoise ectoplasm.

Pariah, of course, ducked, but the blasts soared over his head and into the rubble at the top of the dais. With a deafening crash, the stone was exploded out of the way, revealing an ornate sarcophagus standing alone atop the dais, lid still opened and ready to welcome an occupant.

There would be no winning today.

14%.

13%.

Not for either of them.

Not if he could help it.

“I just need to make sure you lose!” he shouted, lunging forward. Pariah, whose confident aura had faltered at the sight of his old prison, stumbled back, never once averting his gaze from the Sarcophagus to see Danny. 

Just before they collided, Danny made a desperate swipe above the king’s head. His fingers closed around hot metal, and he yanked with a great tug.

The Crown came loose.

If his life hadn’t been at stake, he probably would’ve laughed at the bewildered look on Pariah’s face. Unfortunately…

He looked down at the Crown in his hands. Back up to the Sarcophagus. Over to Pariah.

12%.

“NO!” Pariah’s scream was loud enough to shake bits of rubble from the ceiling. 

Danny looked back down at the Crown. Something about it seemed to pulse in his hands, almost as if it were alive. He could feel the power within it. Even through the metal mecha, he could feel its richness, its fullness, how pure and unfiltered the power within was…

It reached toward him. He could feel it practically knocking at the door to his core, asking to be let in, and his core ached to do so. It was almost frightening how welcoming the power felt, and how much he found himself yearning to welcome it back.

If only…

11%.

Pariah began to recover from his shock, and in that instant, Danny made another split second decision.

He threw the Crown to the side and lunged forward again.

The instant it left his hand, Danny regretted that decision. The sudden absence of that power hit him like a brick wall, and he nearly faltered from the shock. Maybe he should’ve kept it. Maybe the ghosts were wrong about it only working with the Ring. Maybe it could’ve offered him something, anything, just something enough to make sure he lasted long enough to put this guy away for good.

When he came into contact with Pariah, though, those thoughts were thrown aside just as easily as the Crown.

He had a job to do.

Pushing the king up the dais was surprisingly easy, all things considered. Still ate up too much of his precious energy, but had he held onto the Crown any longer, Pariah would’ve had more of a chance to recover and brace himself against the attack. That would’ve cost him even more energy.

And it didn’t mean his heart didn’t tremble in his chest with every pained breath. Or that his ribs didn’t scream in agony. Or that his body felt any less battered and bruised as it probably was.

Just a little further.

Pariah growled, something feral and guttural, and he tried to dig his heels into the ground. 

So close.

Danny pushed harder.

10%.

Something snapped inside him as they reached the top, and with a feral growl of his own, Danny shoved Pariah face-first into the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep and shut the lid with a bang that resounded across the Zone.

For one blessed second, he felt lighter than air. Had he managed to do it? Had he really won? 

And then the full force of Pariah’s power crashed against him.

Danny’s core skipped a beat as he frantically repositioned himself to hold down the lid tight. Pressed tight against the Sarcophagus with his head bent low, he couldn’t see much around him, but he felt it as the atmosphere around him began to shift violently. Ambient ectoplasm manifested into something tangible and swirled around Danny and the Sarcophagus like an angry cyclone.

Angry was definitely the right word for it. He could practically taste it in the air as the energy around him hummed.

(Little did he know that the same angry cyclone surrounded the kidnapped Amity Park.)

Something was on the brink of happening. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something familiar.

He looked down at the dashboard.

9%.

8%.

Pariah roared wordlessly from within his prison, the noise nearly deafening in Danny’s ears. The king gave a particularly strong heave, and Danny gasped as he desperately pushed back.

The energy around them was becoming palpable now. It wanted… something. It wanted… to…

7%.

6%.

5%.

His eyes unfocused for a moment, no thanks to the exertion, and when they came back into focus, albeit somewhat blurry, they landed on the keyhole of the Sarcophagus.

His heart dropped like a stone.

The key. He didn’t have it.

No…

Oh God. Oh God. He…

He really wasn’t going to make it.

He wouldn’t win.

And Pariah would be able to walk free over his dead corpse like a welcome mat.

Oh God.

I’m gonna die.

4%.

And now he knew why the energy buzzing around them felt familiar. He’d experienced this before. The ectoplasm and the hum and the desire and the feeling like something was about to break and everything.

He didn’t have the energy to scream as flashes of blinding white and green light filled his mind. The memory of electricity coursing through his body, burning his insides away and reducing him to dust and rewriting him entirely, was almost enough to make him fall away from the door.

3%.

Almost.

He couldn’t breathe now. Whether it was because he was too weak or because the smell of burning flesh and ozone and ectoplasm haunted him or because of some other third reason, he had no clue. Tears fell freely down his cheeks.

Please, he begged silently. Why was he praying? Did he even believe in God? Was it some fit of desperation of hope of a life beyond this one?

2%.

His core felt ready to give out. His heart fluttered in an irregular beat. He was slumped against the Sarcophagus’ door, nothing more than dead weight against it. He was all too aware of the neural receptors attached to him, sapping away any last bit of life they could. 

I don’t want to die…

The energy around him threatened to rip him open all over again.

I’m too scared…

Distantly, he felt something wrap around his core. 

I’m too weak…

It wasn’t unpleasant, surprisingly enough. If anything it was… comforting?

I can’t do this…

1%.

He began to fall into a lifeless heap. He expected it to hurt as horribly as the rest of him, as badly as everything else had hurt him, but it was strangely soft. In a bizarre turn of events, he was reminded of one of the poems Lancer loved to drone on about. Something about going softly into the night.

Maybe that’s what dying would end up being.

I don’t want to die…

He couldn’t do it.

He couldn’t hold on.

He dropped.

Something clicked.

(The energy moved.)

The roar in his ears died away. His vision went black.

A voice tried to speak to him. He couldn’t understand it.

His core and heart slowed.

Rest. The thought was fuzzy, unclear, more of a feeling than a word. He couldn’t even tell if it was his own.

But he obeyed.

Maybe dying could be like going to sleep.

Maybe…

And as he lost the last threads of his consciousness, a new voice spoke to him, unfamiliar but clear as day.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sweet little Prince…

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He choked back a cry of fear. That voice… Was it the memory, or was it speaking to him now?

With a jolt, he realized it was the same voice that had been giving him those thoughts since he’d entered the Ghost Zone not two hours earlier. Panic gripped his heart, and when the hot hold on his core gave a particularly strong squeeze, he gasped and clawed at his chest.

Leave me alone! He didn’t know if he said it out loud or not; he couldn’t tell. At this point, all he knew was the fear inside of him. Get out of my head!

It was Pariah. It had to be. How he’d gotten inside his head like this, he didn’t know, but it was the only explanation.

Another wave of panic seized him, and he began to claw with more desperation. On some distant, not quite conscious level, he drew on his core, willing the energy into his hands, only for it to respond with another stab of pain. He cried out.

A pair of hands seized his own. He instinctively drew on his core again in an attempt to go intangible and escape, but he was met with the same pain. Instead, he resorted to thrashing about, trying to free himself.

“Par… let go..!” he wheezed.

He couldn’t let Pariah get him again.

He couldn’t go through that again.

He couldn’t.

You won’t have to.

The voice only increased his vigor. 

He jerked away from the hands as hard as he could, and -

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The force of the shudder had been enough to bring everyone in the Ancients’ chamber to their knees.

Save for young Phantom.

For a moment, Kala could only watch from his position pressed into the table as the child hung in the air, wrapped in a warped glow. The deathmark on his arm grew brighter and brighter, and frost began to spread on the floor and walls. Power tinged the room, a power that felt as light as a refreshing summer breeze and as strong as a mountain.

In that moment, Kala could believe that this child was truly the next High King, every bit deserving of the title of Pariah’s Bane.

And then Phantom fell and the illusion shattered.

The shudder was almost forgotten as the power and frost dissipated. The child landed on his feet but quickly fell first into the wall behind him, then into one of his human friends, the boy. The boy yelped Phantom’s name, and the other one, the girl, was quick to kneel at his side as well.

If the image of the child floating in the air, surrounded by power, had been kingly, the image of him writhing pathetically on the ground and whimpering nonsense was anything but. Kala found himself at a loss.

He’d never seen anything like this.

Frostbite and Pandora’s attendant reacted immediately, rushing to help ease Phantom off of the human boy. “He’s burning up,” Frostbite murmured. In his arms, the child looked small, weak. He pressed two claws to Phantom’s chest, and Pandora’s attendant took Phantom’s hands in hers to keep him from flailing too much. “His core is overheating.”

“It was that - that earthquake, or whatever you call it!” The human girl sprang to her feet and looked helplessly at the other Ancients. “It’s been doing that all day, that’s what we were trying to say before!”

Zunje grabbed the tablet that had been thrown from her hands. “It’s done this each time?” She began to scroll furiously. “But why would it overheat? Why would it respond so poorly? If it’s the Heart at the root of all this, it shouldn’t…” She trailed off, muttering to herself.

Phantom cried out unintelligibly, trying to shake off the attendant’s grasp, but she held tight, singing something quietly in ancient Greek. 

Kala’s frown deepened. Something was not right. 

“No king before has ever had such a… violent reaction to being told of their ascension,” he remarked.

The human girl’s eyes flashed his way, and to his surprise, he found himself mildly impressed by the fierce, determined shine in them. “It’s not that! He wouldn’t… It’s gotta be something else! This doesn’t just happen!”

“Precisely,” Kala agreed with a nod. “Perhaps this truly is the work of the Heart. Perhaps it is attempting to reject him.” The idea made sense to him. In spite of whatever image he’d been presented with earlier, he couldn’t accept the notion that Kilaris would choose a half-breed child of all possible candidates. He simply couldn’t! It violated every unspoken law that had already been established!

… Right?

“But the Heart’s rejected folks before,” Babel said. “It’s never done anything like this before. I mean, even if he ain’t the guy…”

“... Kilaris would never inflict harm like this upon one of its own,” Pandora finished. 

Kala hummed. “Then it must be someone else’s doing.”

“What?” The human boy glanced at him. “I thought Vlad said that was impossible. Like, someone would have to actually be here to hurt him that way.”

“No, yeah, that’s about right,” Zunje said. She did not look up from her tablet. “Core interference has gotta be a direct thing. Only a strong magic can do anything from a distance.”

“So then it is the Heart,” Pele said with a grunt. 

Zunje bit her lip. “I… I don’t know? It’s… I can’t tell?” She stabbed a finger at the tablet. “I’m trying to, but it’s not…”

Phantom rolled in Frostbite’s arms. “P… pah…” he gasped, as though his mouth struggled to form around the sound.

Frostbite himself rumbled. “He needs to cool down. I’d offer to maintain his core temperature myself, but…” His eyes flickered in Pandora’s direction. “I… worry about the practicalities. I may have something that can help, though.”

“Here.” Pandora’s attendant shifted to sit on her ankles. “Go. I will keep him as stable as I can.”

Frostbite seemed hesitant, but after a brief moment of indecision, he carefully lowered the child into the attendant’s lap. “I’ll be as quick as I can,” he promised, and Kala couldn’t quite decide if it had been directed more towards the attendant or Phantom himself.

As Frostbite disappeared through the door of thick ice, Kala turned his attention back to Zunje. “Can you not give us any report?” he asked.

“Believe me, I’m trying. My sensors are going nuts. Things are just so inconsistent…”

There was a loud crack, and suddenly, Babel stood on Zunje’s shoulder. “Lemme see!” They made a grab for the tablet. “Inconsistent is my middle name.”

“You don’t have a middle name.”

“Well, if I did, it would be inconsistent.”

Phantom began trying to speak again. Pandora’s attendant leaned in closer. “Say that again,” she whispered.

Still, the child’s mumbles seemed unintelligible to him.

The human girl had gone back to staring at her friend, picking blindly at her fingers. “So… you were being serious about Danny being a - a king?” she asked quietly.

Pandora nodded. “Very much so. I’ve admittedly had my suspicions for a while now…” She trailed off, glancing at Kala. “But it’s been speculation at best. I’d hoped for his sake that I was wrong, but…”

“Wait, what? Why? Is it dangerous or something?”

Pele snorted. “Danger lies in all things. It is never a question of if. It’s a question of how much.”

“The throne is not inherently a dangerous office,” Pandora said quickly, having seen the way both humans paled considerably. “My concern was… mainly in terms of his age. Even by your human standards, he is young.” Her gaze softened as it came to rest on the delirious Phantom. “It is an incredible burden to ask of anyone, especially for someone as young as he.”

“Right. Yeah.” The human boy licked his lips. “Definitely not dangerous to put a teenager in charge of an entire dimension. Nope.”

“Do not get me wrong. I firmly believe he’ll make a great king, given time.”

“If he is to be king,” Kala said before he could stop himself. “I am still not certain that he is the Heart’s chosen. Especially given these… troubles.”

“You can’t deny that he has some connection to Kilaris,” Pandora protested. She gestured to her attendant, still holding the child in her lap and leaned in close. “How else can you explain a reaction such as this?”

Kala opened his mouth to answer before realizing he didn’t have one. How could he explain it? As much as he loathed to admit, the evidence did seem to point to the boy as the next king. He would, as always, wait to finish gathering all evidence before making a decision, but he couldn’t deny the signs.

He also couldn’t deny the doubt that refused to be satisfied, deep in his core.

The door of ice opened again, and Frostbite re-entered the chamber, holding a bundle of fabric in one of his paws. He wasted no time returning to young Phantom’s side.

“Here.” Gently, he lifted the child’s shoulders and secured the fabric around his neck. “I was saving this as a gift, but… he needs it now.”

Kala watched with attentive eyes as Frostbite carefully wrapped the outer folds of the cloak around Phantom, effectively cocooning him. 

His eyes opened.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Clockwork hummed a little tune to himself as he spun the dial on his staff. In front of him, a time window showed the image of young Danny, emerging from a portal.

A black, frosted crown sat on Danny’s head.

Clockwork would’ve liked to watch the boy in real time. Sadly, the Observants had made sure to block his view into the Ancients’ chamber long ago.

He’d have to settle for offering a tiny bit of assistance from afar. 

Hopefully Frostbite wouldn’t be too upset with him for adding his own little touch to Danny’s gift.

#danny phantom #danny fenton #ghost king danny #hannah writes #supernova #fanfiction #danny phantom fanfiction #dp fanfiction #fanfic #what did i tag these with before #i can't remember #anyway off to finish off part 2 afshdkjladfskj

[jet-engine]

The entirety of "Lights, Camera, Phantom!" can now be found on Fanfiction (here) and Archive of Our Own (here).

In my favorite story in the "Friendly Phantoms" series, a director ghost wants to make a documentary about Danny Phantom. Dash and Paulina are Danny's co-stars, Vlad is the director's best friend, and things sure do happen.

#danny phantom #fanfiction #reading and writing #writing #friendly phantoms #lights camera phantom

[ashboy-3]

What's in the Mysterious Bag

Written for Danny May 2023 Day 2 Prompt: Backpack Fandom: Danny Phantom Characters: Danny, Sam, Tucker, Valerie, Paulina, Dash Words: 769 Summary: It’s safe to say for all of Casper High that Danny Fenton is one weird kid. When the rumors started the teachers tried to put a stop to it, but too many weird things happened that they started to talk to each. Throughout Danny’s high school career the rumors didn’t stop with him, they also spread to his two best friends. They hate to say it but the rumors all started with a backpack.

It’s safe to say for all of Casper High that Danny Fenton is one weird kid. When the rumors started the teachers tried to put a stop to it, but too many weird things happened that they started to talk to each. Throughout Danny’s high school career the rumors didn’t stop with him, they also spread to his two best friends. They hate to say it but the rumors all started with a backpack. 

No one thought anything of it at first till Danny started drinking from glowing water bottles.

Danny had weird ghost weapons on him for no reason.

Danny had books written in ancient languages that no one knew he could read but was somehow failing all of his classes. When asked what he was reading he would just shrug and say it was a boring story a friend recommend.

Danny takes meds, everyone knew this, but they were never found in his backpack, always in his friend's. 

It was strange but disappointing that it took Casper High a few months to realize that Danny never actually had a backpack. All of his things were kept with Sam and Tucker. The trio had a system and it took everyone a while to notice. All of his unfinished homework could be found in Tucker’s bag, but all of his finished work could be found in Sam’s. 

Sam held his meds and weird glowing drinks. 

Tucker held his weapons and weird books.

Casper High tried to figure it out, without talking to the trio of course. Someone tried that in their Junior year and it only made them more confused. Teachers tried to get the meds handed over to the nurse for Danny to properly take, but it was dropped the next day with a signed doctor's note of a name no one in Amity knew of.

Casper kept track of what was going on. The trio acted like they didn’t know what was going on around them, but they knew. They knew how when Danny’s eyes started to glow he needed a drink, and when he was waiting in between classes he had to read the books because he had to learn the ancient languages. English isn’t Pandora’s first language and it was unfair of him to only speak English to her.

He had more than just homework in Sam and Tucker’s bags. Casper High caught on to this, but they never found an explanation.

“So what is in those backpacks? Danny,” Paulina flirted with him, not noticing Danny slipping off into the wonderful land of sleep.

“Huh? Oh sorry, Paulina. It’s just things I ask them to keep for me,” Danny shrugged.

It was a shock to everyone when Valeria showed up one day, also caring a backpack that was used for Danny’s things.

She was still friends with Star, Kwan, Dash, and Paulina, but now she was also friends with the trio of weird. Good friends meant helping Danny.

“Why doesn't Fenton carry a backpack?” Dash asked as she was with them a lunch one day.

“It’s too much for him. He’ll get an overload and freakout,” Valerie shrugged. It wasn't the full truth, but it wasn't a lie either.

“So can we know what you have in there for Fenton,” Kwan asked, getting ready to pounce in her backpack.

“Don’t even think about it,” she glared, eating and taking a bite of her lunch as she felt a head lean on her back.

“Danny that you?” she asked calmly, looking behind her to see it is indeed Danny.

“M’hungry,” he mumbled into her back.

“Where’s Sam and Tucker?” she asked, ignoring the looks of her friends.

“Tucker’s making up a test from yesterday and Sam is doing a club thing,” he said, still hiding his face.

“Here,” she said, digging into her backpack and grabbing two water bottles filled with the strange glowing green liquid.

“I swear Fenton the second this shit leaks onto my bag and stains it. I’ll kill you,” she glared as he ripped off the lid and downed the liquid.

“I’ll force Vlad to buy you a new one,” he shrugged, already feeling better as he opened the second bottle, drinking this one more slowly.

“Thanks, Val!” Danny yelled as he went to get himself some actual food.

“What was-” Star started before Valeris shook her head.

“Just don’t ask. You don’t want to know.”

No one still knows why Fenton doesn’t truly carry a backpack or why the three have these items in their bags. They just added it to the list of why Fenton is truly a weird guy.

#dannymay2023 #danny fenton #danny phantom #dannymay #sam manson #tucker foley #valerie gray #danny is most definitely a little shit #danny is a chaos lord

[the-sprog]

Here's my holiday truce gift for @constellaj !!! I hope you like it :)

I worried a lot about the length XD it came out a lot longer than I expected!

Dash runs, ducking behind a big enough piece of rubble that got detached from the City Hall when the ghost threw Phantom at it.

He's breathing heavily, catching his breath and catching at his weapon. He takes a look over his hiding place. Red Huntress is physically holding the ghost to the ground –how she can do it and why the ghost isn't phasing through her or the ground itself he doesn't know– while Phantom is nowhere to be found.

The Fenton's aren't on the scene, and neither are the Guys In White luckily –for anyone but him. He's been looking for a functional specific piece of gun for a while now.

"What are you doing?" He hears someone say behind him. Dash turns around. He feels his cheeks heat up as he finds himself face to face with who he would probably consider his favorite person in the whole world.

Phantom stands there, floating a few inches off the ground, with his arms crossed and stern expression printed on his face. Dash had never noticed before now how short the boy-ghost truly is, since the only reason why their eyes are the same level is because of the floating.

"Phantom-!" His enthusiasm is cut short as the ghost in front of him doesn’t let him get another word in.

"Where did you get that weapon?" Phantom asks. His voice carries anger in it, Dash realizes. His brows are furrowed and his jaw seems slightly clenched. "Did you steal equipment from the Fentons?"

"What? No!"

"Where did you get that stuff, then?"

Dash pulls on the safety on the ecto-gun he held carefully in his hand. He usually wouldn't bother, seeing as ecto-based weapons were usually regarded as safe for humans —he tested that theory on himself before bringing the gun to school with him—, but he didn't want to risk hurting Phantom.

He nervously adjusts the baseball cap hiding his hair as well as the tight domino mask glued to his eyes —thank Paulina and her emergency make up pouch— before he decides to respond, "The -ehm- the GWI tend to leave stuff behind, especially of it gets busted by a ghost," he clears his throat before continuing, "so I've been picking them up and –well, turns out this shit is not as complicated as it seems."

For a small moment, Dash could swear Phantom seems impressed by his admission, but as quickly as it came, the look is gone from Phantom's face. "You've been doing that?"

Dash nods. "Yeah. My pop's always making me help him work on his cars so…" he trails off. "I know my way around soldering irons and cables and stuff."

Phantom hummed, but his expression didn’t change. "And you think that's good enough that you can put your life on the line like it's nothing? Like you know what you're doing?"

Dash crosses his arms and squirms under Phantom's scrutinizing gaze.

"As tempting as it is, you shouldn’t steal from the GIW." His eyes trail towards Dash’s ecto-gun. "And you definitely shouldn’t be fighting ghosts with a modified ecto-gun."

"I'm not the only one!"

Phantom sighs and his hands drop to his side. "Red has armor. Heck, even the Fentons have some kind of protection on them!" He takes a breath, calming himself after the involuntary outburst. His face changes, and for a moment Dash truly sees how tired, perhaps even a bit dejected, the other kid is. "I'm already dead, Dash." Their eyes don't meet. Any awe and wonder Dash may have felt when he was first approached were gone.

Dash's eyes widen upon hearing his name. "How did you...?" He doesn't even finish his question that Phantom scoffs.

"If you want to hide behind a cap and a mask, maybe don't wear your letterman jacket," Phantom tells him with a smirk and an eye roll.

Dash looks at his sleeves and curses under his breath. "I'll remember next time," he says.

That sentence seems to bring Phantom back to the core of the issue. "There won't be a 'next time'."

"What? But I can help!"

"You’re going to end up hurting someone, Dash." Panthom’s patience is starting to wear thin, Dash can tell. He’s fidgeting with his gloves and looking around, like he would rather be anywhere else than here talking to Dash.

"I just want to be a hero," Dash pauses and watches Phantom’s eyes widen. "Like you," Dash finishes, blushing slightly.

Phantom scoffs. "You? A hero?"

The color drains from Dash’s face. Unsure how to respond he lets out a weak, "What?"

"I hang around Casper every once in a while. You’re a bully, Dash, and nothing more than a bully." Phantom’s face hardens. "You torment kids weaker than you and for what? Feeling superior to them?" Dash stays quiet. He doesn’t know how to respond- doesn’t know if he even should respond. "I won’t say you’re just as bad as the ghost I fight. But, Dash, you sure as hell aren’t a good person, let alone a hero."

Dash swallows around a lump that has taken residence in his throat. Was this truly how his hero saw him? How can he defend himself? How can he explain that it isn’t as bad as Phantom’s making it sound?

…is it as bad as Phantom’s making it sound?

"I’ll be taking that ecto-gun now." Phantom stretches his hand towards him in silent demand, but Dash doesn’t move. If he gives the gun the conversation will be over and who knows when he’ll have a chance of redeeming himself!

Phantom sighs. "I’m asking as a courtesy. I could just phase it out of you, dude. Have your existential crisis later, please."

Dash lets go of a breath he didn’t even realize he was holding and silently reaches for his gun. He briefly entertains the thought of pointing it towards Phantom and making a run for it, but he pushes it away. That would make him just like one of the actual villains Phantom has to deal with, be it ghosts or overeager ghost hunters.

Phantom's words haunt him when he goes to school the following day. Dash can't stop thinking about what the ghost told him.

"So..." He gets pulled out of his musing by Kwan resting his elbow on his shoulder. "How did it go out there? I bet Phantom was hella impressed by your bravery and general hotness."

Dash doesn’t respond. He sighs, a dejected expression having long since taken residence on his face.

Kwan’s smile falls. "Hey, man. What’s up?"

Dash closes his locker and leans against it, looking directly at his friend’s face. "Phantom caught me with an ecto-gun and he was not happy about me going into danger with no protection. He took it from me."

"But that’s not what’s bothering you, is it?"

"He told me I can’t be a hero." Dash pauses. "Because I’m not even a good person in the first place."

Kwan’s eyes widen in surprise. "What? Why?"

Dash rubs his neck. He doesn’t know when the habit started, but he knows it’s something Phantom had also been caught doing numerous times. "He said he sees how I act in school and doesn’t like how I treat other students."

Kwan groans. "Who knew Phantom was a killjoy?"

"I don’t know, man." Dash tries not to look towards Daniel Fenton, but his eyes wonder as he thinks about Phantom’s words once again. "Maybe he has a point?" If Phantom had talked about one of his… victims –he thinks is probably the most appropriate name for his classmates– in particular, Fenton would have a medal for ‘Most Tormented Kid In Casper High’ so who knows what the ghost would’ve told him. "I did some thinking and –well what fun would he be ruining? The one we have at the expenses of other people?" He crosses his arms. "It wouldn’t make us much different from Youngblood."

Kwan rolls his eyes at Dash’s claims. "C’mon, man. You know it’s not the same! We don’t have superpowers."

"Yeah. But we sure as hell have more muscles than all the geek squad combined."

"Y-yeah, but… well-"

"It's harder to excuse when I put it like that, isn't it?" Kwan doesn't respond and this time Dash doesn't even try to stop himself from darting a look towards Danny. "Maybe it's time we grew up."

And thus begins Dash's However-many-steps-it-takes plan to… become a better person, he supposes.

He thinks about it for a long time, and ultimately decides to not include apologizing to the kids whose lives he made like hell to the list. If he were them, he wouldn't believe himself based on words alone. He'd assume it was all part of a prank or some sort of scheme. A change in attitude and behavior would actually show he wants to do better, and it would be more convincing than simply words.

So, he decides to start by working on his temper. Dash is aware of the fact he's quick to anger in a way that none of the other football players on his team are.

He considers asking Danny's sister for advice.

She's a psychology major in some big name college, right? Yeah, he thinks he remembers something like that. He should still have her number from when she used to tutor him, from before she moved to college.

Dash thinks about it during the rest of the day, writing in his phone’s note ideas on how to redeem himself in Phantom’s eyes. It makes him wonder if wanting to be better to win someone’s affection defeats the purpose of being a better person…

He adds that to the list.

A high-pitched shriek startles him out of thinking about it, almost making him drop his phone.

"You talked to my ghost boy?" Dash turns around and, sure enough, Paulina is uncomfortably close to him. "Did he talk about me? Why didn’t you say anything?! I’m sure he talked about how much he loves me, didn’t he?" she said.

"Uhm," Dash stutters and takes a few steps back. "Not really, no."

Someone next to them chuckles.

"What do you want, Manson?" Paulina crosses her arms and glares at the goth chick, one of Danny’s friends. He never really did pay attention to her, so her name escapes him. He knows her and Paulina used to be forced to hang out when they were kids, and that she used to be a possible A-Lister recruit.

"To know how someone can be so delusional." the girl- Manson, Paulina said– is evidently having a great time antagonizing his friend –ex-girlfriend?... Ex-beard?– with a smirk on her face and leaning on her locker. "There’s no way you still think you have a chance with him," she pauses, watching Paulina fume. "He probably doesn’t even know you exist."

"Sam-" her friends look as uncomfortable as Dash feels witnessing the exchange. Danny has a hand on her shoulder, trying to pull her away to go to their next class. At this pace it’s likely they’ll all be late.

Lancer won’t care, but still.

Tucker is looking towards Dash, never making eye contact for more than a millisecond, clearly waiting for his reaction.

"You’re one to talk, Marilyn Morose," suddenly, Paulina starts responding to the taunt, "making goo-goo eyes at Star whenever she’s close." She’s smiling, apparently satisfied with herself. Sam is bright red in her cheeks. Dash has eyes, so he knows it’s not Star that Sam is looking at, but he doesn’t say.

"Hey," he decides to intervene, deeming this a situation that fits with his goal. "Not cool, Polly."

"But she started it!" Came the response.

"Yes. And you’re not a child. Be the bigger person or whatever." He doesn’t wait to see anyone’s reaction. He just takes Paulina’s arm and pulls her towards their class, but she pulls away from his grip and starts yelling at him.

"What’s your deal?"

Dash sighs. "Just… Some things Phantom said. Put stuff into perspective, is all,"

Paulina plays with a strand of her hair. "He told you to do that?" She asks, contemplative.

"In a way."

She looks him up and down, face scrunched up, before it clears up and she hums, "Alright then. I forgive you."

And that was it? Damn that was easy.

As Dash turns around, he catched a glimpse of Danny’s eyes examining his face and looking at him up and down, but he tries to ignore the anger that comes from the other boy staring at him and judging him. He takes a big breath and clenches his fists and grits his teeth, and he follows after Paulina heading towards Lancer’s English class.

The morning’s encounter sets the example for the rest of the month.

Someone attacks –verbally or physically– another student;

Dash stands up for them;

Dash loses a few friends;

Paulina and Kwan back him up by saying Phantom agrees with Dash;

And then the cycle repeats.

Dash also continues going out with modified ecto-weapons –he understands the danger. He knows what he’s doing when he’s fixing them! Kinda– and a new costume. Over the month he learned more and more about what he needs. He’s pretty sure his dad has some suspicion about his ghost hunting activities, but as long as his dad doesn’t try to stop him that’s good enough for him.

Now the suit is more reminiscent of Red Huntress’, although it’s clearly more homemade. But it has more protection –his hands are wrapped with boxing ropes, he has knee guards, toe-steel boots, and he’s in the process of making an ecto-proof kevlar undershirt, but the materials for that are hard to come by and his sewing skills need some work.

"So you did get better at the secret identity thing."

Dash turns to the beginning of the ally he’s been sitting in to catch his breath. He’d been trying to catch the Box Ghost all evening, but he’s yet to come across a containment device and getting the ghost in a net is surprisingly hard.

Phantom stands –well, floats actually– next to him.

Dash feels his cheeks heat up. He hadn’t been planning on going face to face with Phantom any time soon, going as far as trying to patrol on hours when Phantom doesn’t. He’s unnecessarily nervous, but nervous nonetheless.

"How did you know this time?" Dash thought he did so well. He switched his jacket for a non-descriptive black hoodie with the hood glued to the baseball cap, his eyes are behind a domino mask, and his nose and mouth are covered by a homemade additional mask that Paulina helped him design. It is pastel pink, but so is his cap, so it matches.

Phantom scoffs. "You’re the only dumbass who goes around with old GIW weapons."

Dash looks at his arsenal, then back to Phantom, and a laugh escapes him. "Yeah, I guess you’re right." He pulls at his mask revealing the lower half of his face. "Are you here to take my stuff again?" He asks, as he holds out one of his ecto-weapons to him.

Phantom shakes his head. "No."

"Oh?"

"I’m here to make you an offer."

Dash waits, but Phantom doesn’t elaborate. "Go on?"

Phantom takes a breath. "I need you to promise I can trust you and you won’t say anything about this to anyone."

Dash eagerly nods. "Yes, of course." He gets up, getting on a more even level as the ghost.

Phantom takes a deep breath –a breath? How’s he breathing? Is it a reflex? A muscle memory of his life?– and holds out a hand.

"Want to be part of my team and help me fight ghosts officially?"

"Yes! Of course," Dash immediately responds, "you’re awesome, why would I not want to?" He takes the offered hand, and immediately feels the air kicked from his lungs.

"Sorry." Phantom doesn’t actually sound sorry. Dash thinks he seems sort of amused, actually, but based on previous conversations it’s a fair bit or revenge for how much of a jerk Dash has acted over the years. "Should’ve probably warned about holding your breath when turning intangible. I forget," he admits as he rubs the back of his neck.

Dash definitely got the habit from him, and the confirmation only makes him blush more.

"Reminds me to warn you about invisibility. Your eyes will mess up colors while you’re invisible."

Dash nods and readies himself for the change. It makes him feel slightly nauseous to see so many purples, blues, and greens in the familiar Amity Park scenery.

They don’t fly off, though Dash assumes Phantom is still floating, but they do pass through several buildings.

They don’t talk again –which makes the journey slightly awkward– until Phantom phases them through the ground and Dash makes a strangled cry. Phantom chuckles at that.

Once they’re in front of an underground door, Phantom lets go of both invisibility and intangibility, and then phases through the door on his own, leaving Dash to inspect the door, and then opening it from the inside.

"Ta-da!" Phantom says while doing jazz-hands.

Dash gets pulled inside the room by an additional set of hands that definitely didn’t belong to Phantom, phasing right through him, and finds himself pinned to the wall by a tiny figure.

"Sam," the ghost-boy admonishes, "Play nice."

"His reflexes are terrible," she comments, letting him go. "Are you sure about this?"

Phantom shrugs. "He’s the one that modified that ecto-gun I brought back a few weeks ago."

Sam turns quickly to stare down at him. "You said it was you- the Fentons who got to GIW garbage before us!"

"Yeah, well… I lied."

"You! Ugh!" She grunts and then storms off towards a staircase on the other side of the room. Dash is sure that if she had walked through a door, she would’ve slammed it closed. But the sound of her boots hitting the ground with each one of her steps does convey the same feeling as if she had done just that.

"Dude…" Tucker speaks up from wherever he appeared while Dash wasn’t paying attention. "Why?"

"This explains so much but also nothing at all." Dash’s exclamation gets ignored.

"Oh, heyyy… Dash is here." Well, sorta. There are still no explanations given, so Dash doesn’t think it counts. He slowly waves a hand at Tucker.

"We needed an engineer, Dash is a pretty decent one!" Phantom explains.

"I’m a pretty good engineer!"

"Tuck, you’re good with tech. You’re our tech guy. You don’t know how to fix the speeder and it’s been 3 months now since the last time we’ve been able to use it."

"That’s irrelevant." Tucker crosses his arms.

"No, it is not." Phantom lands on the ground and calls out to him "Dash Baxter," Phantom says, looking towards Dash, "Welcome to Team Phantom!" And he smiles, showing a bit of fangs that have no business making Dash’s cheeks color in red.

"Thank you, it’s an honor!"

"You should already be familiar with the other members of the Team." Phantom gestures to the staircase behind him, "You saw Sam earlier, that’s Tucker."

"Hi."

"Then there’s the Fenton kids." He counts on his fingers, "Red Huntress –leaving it up to her to reveal her identity to you or not–" Dash nods. "And then the ghosts: Frostbite, Specter, Pandora, Clockwork-"

"When it suits their fancy," Tucker interjects, not even looking up from whatever he’s doing on his PDA. Why does he even still have that? Can’t he get a smartphone, like a normal person?

"-right." Phantom nods, "We have some files you’ll need to look at about all the various ghosts and people, and their affiliation to us. Got it?"

"Absolutely, anything for you!" Good way to put your foot in your mouth, Dash. He blushes, as does Phantom, his pink cheeks getting even pinker and brighter coloured.

Tucker clears his throat. "Phantom’s going to teach you how to use the weapons you’re fixing, I’ll fill you in on a bunch of stuff, Sam will teach you to use the thermos, and if you need to talk to someone… go to Jazz."

"Tucker!"

"What? I’m not going to- psychoanalyze him! That’s Jazz’s job!"

"So…" Dash tries to prevent another argument. "The Fenton kids?"

"Where do you think we get all this stuff?"

"Yeah," Phantom says. "We really needed another way to get weapons. Danny is not great at sneaking around."

"Oh, this is great."

Dash turns to see the Red Huntress leaning against the wall next to the stairs, while Sam enters the room from behind her. She goes straight towards Phantoma and punches his arm.

"Red?" Phantom doesn’t phase her out, accepting the punch that Dash doesn’t believe could ever hurt the ghost. "What are you doing here? We were supposed to meet tomorrow," he says, as if nothing else was happening in the meantime.

"A little birdy told me about someone’s character development."

"Whose character development?"

"Yours, Dash."

"Oooh. Yeah, makes sense." Dash nods.

"Well, then," Sam interjects, "since you’re here earlier for no sensible reason, why don’t we go ahead and start Dash’s training right now?" She smirks, her hand resting on an ecto-gun left on the table in front of her.

It’s not the same that Phantom took from Dash in the past, it doesn’t look like a GIW weapon at all. It’s more gray than white, for starters, and there are green and blue accents in the design. There are soldering marks and paint splotches, the color in some of the details doesn’t even look very uniform.

"Heck yeah!" Dash pumps his fist in the air, excited to actually do something.

And also, possibly, maybe, to spend some time standing really close to Phantom, his body behind Dash, his hands over his and helping him hold the weapons correctly, his face so close he can feel his breath on his neck- Oh gosh, he’s definitely red in his cheeks again.

Tucker flips a switch and a section of the floor opens up, while something raises up from the opening.

Suddenly, there are training dummies in front of Dash. They’re scorched and cut and overall ruined. But still usable.

Except one that has a hole in its stomach. That one’s probably not that useful.

"We’ll start with the one of the guns you have with you," Phantom says and gestures with his hand towards his hip, "I like your outfit change, by the way," he adds, "Did you make it yourself?"

"You should see me without it?" Dash can’t help but try to show off, stretching one of his arms in front of him, making the fabric adhere more to his body and accentuating his muscles. He immediately cringes internally at his own attempt at flirting, but it’s too late for him to backtrack so he commits to it and smiles at Phantom’s direction.

Gosh he wants to steal Tucker’s PDA and look up ‘How to flirt like a normal person’. Maybe WikiHow has some advice he can look at. Anything would probably be better than whatever he’s trying to do at the moment.

"Uhm… I like the outfit. I’m a bit confused about the pastel pink, though," Phantom admits.

Dash shrugs and pulls out one of his weapons. "I like pink, and I think it looks good on me. Don’t you?"

"Sure…?"

"I know I love it on you, especially when it colors your cheeks." Dash tries to look smug, even as his own cheeks start gaining pigment.

There’s a beat of silence and then, "Are you flirting with me?" Phantom asks him, voice breaking in the second half of the question.

"Is it working?"

Phantom blushes again.

"See? You’re so cute when you blush," Dash can’t stop himself from saying, smiling smugly with the knowledge he was the one to fluster the hero.

"I- I have to- I’ll just-" Phantom points towards the staircase before flying towards it and disappearing at the top.

No one else in the room says anything for a while. Dash fidgets with the ecto-gun in his hands until the silence gets too unbearable for him and he clears his throat.

"Was I that bad?" He asks, a bit jokingly, just to break the tension that built up in the atmosphere.

"I’m sorry?" Tucker is the first one to respond to him. "I feel like my entire worldview just crumbled."

"What about Paulina?" Sam asks.

Dash shrugs. "She was my beard, I was her skirt. We broke up when we came out in…" he thinks about it for a second, "July after Freshman year, I believe?"

"That was so long ago, how did we not know?" Sam said, almost masking Tucker’s confused "What does that even mean? I’ll just google it."

"We don’t make a big deal out of it."

"Well, at least you and Danny can bond over something." Red walks in Dash’s direction and pulls out an ecto-gun of her own. "Well, since spooky bailed on you, I’ll help you work on your aim a bit."

"Sure." Dash grips his weapon in front of him and desperately attempts to ignore the fact that Sam and Tucker are going to wherever Phantom ran to.

They meet up three times each week, Dash's training sessions with Phantom don't get any less awkward, even though Dash does minimize the amount of flirting attempts. He doesn't stop altogether, he's not strong enough to resist the temptation completely –and Phantom’s just so cute when he blushes! Being able to fluster the town's resident superhero is one hell of a power trip.

"Your hands look heavy- want me to hold them?" Dash says one day.

"I guess you'll just have to kiss it better," he says the next.

And he continues like that until one day–

"I do like my men like I like my coffee. Very strong and able to keep me awake all night."

That… that was something Dash didn't prepare himself for, as is evident by the color that spreads up his ears and down his neck.

The smirk Phantom throws his way after saying it –while he hides his own red cheeks behind the ghost-themed mug he’s drinking from.

Dash does his best to ignore the confused looks Tucker and Sam send each other, too preoccupied by trying to regain his footing and not dropping his weapon.

From that day, Dash starts learning more and more about Phantom. It's like he passed an invisible barrier and now the ghost feels more comfortable letting him in.

He learns that Phantom loves video games, though he doesn't play often and mostly uses Danny's accounts and devices.

He learns that he loves food –hates toast, though. With a passion– and would give a limb for some good Nasty Burger fries drenched in sauce.

He learns he's a huge Astronomy nerd. Phantom Loves to stargaze.

He learns he used to dream of becoming an astronaut. Dash forces himself not to pay attention to the solitary tear that falls on Phantom's cheek and is quickly swept away.

He wishes he was the one to do it. But he's not sure any kind of comfort would be appreciated in such a situation.

Dash wants to kiss him.

It’s something he’s been thinking about increasingly often.

"They’re glaring at me again," Dash says bitterly, putting all his focus on fixing Tucker’s FentonPhone that got damaged during that day’s fight. He’s getting more frustrated as time goes on, between not being able to figure out which of the wires he’s crossing incorrectly and feeling Tucker and Sam’s eyes on the back of his head.

Red Huntress scoffs. "You’re not winning them over that easy."

"Dash shrugs. "Phantom seems to like me enough."

"That boy is both too trusting and too paranoid somehow. Don’t know how he does it."

"So…" he pauses what he’s doing to look her in the eyes –in the… visor mostly. "What do you suggest?"

"I’m not helping you pick up Phantom."

"What!"

"You don’t seem to need my help with that."

Dash blushes. "No, c’mon Red! I meant about the other two!"

She shrugs. "Honestly, I don’t think there’s anything you can do other than… Being nice. Just like you’ve been doing now."

Dash hums. "It doesn't seem to be working though."

"These things take time, Dash." Phantom’s voice comes from behind him. The ghost rests his arms on Dash’s head, even though Dash can tell he’s also floating. He would be too short otherwise.

Dash, despite himself, smiles when he hears Phantom’s echo-y voice.

"They’re just being difficult," says Red.

"Unlike someone else," was the barely audible retort from Tucker followed by hasty apologies.

"Hey." Phantom taps Dash’s shoulder, once again gaining his attention. "Want to patrol with me tonight?"

Dash’s eyes widen. "Really?"

He can feel Phantom nodding on his head. "Yeah. you’ve been doing well with learning about weapons. I can put you on thermos duty so you can practice without subjecting me to that thing."

"It’s going to be awesome!"

Phantom giggles at his enthusiasm, and Dash knows if he spares a look towards the previously mentioned two in the room he’ll see judgment in their eyes.

But he doesn’t let that spoil his mood. He starts packing his backpack, having quickly learned throughout his training that it was always a good idea to have one with him. It isn’t reinforced yet, they don’t have the materials to do it for all of them, but they’re working on it.

Phantom's waiting for him on the staircase. They're yet to let him come and go from what he refuses to call anything other than a hideout. He's always accompanied by the ghost boy and they never leave by foot. He doesn't know what the regular-person entrance of the place is.

As Dash expected, Phantom grabs his arm and shoots up towards the ceiling. During the course of his training Dash also learned to get used to the change of colors and the longing for air.

And patrol begins.

Dash has never patrolled before, getting into the midst of things only in defense, as a response to an attack. He's surprised to discover just how many ghosts get out and about, not even causing trouble, during the wee hours of the night.

But of course 'playfully-mischievous-at-worse' is not the only type of ghost lurking in the shadows.

Phantom appears to know pretty much everyone they come across, be it friend or foe.

There's the biker –who Dash thinks looks weirdly families, and not based on the files he was handed when he joined– and his girlfriend who not even Phantom seems to be sure where they stand.

"Relax, peepsqueak," Johnny says. Dash did study those files, he feels is important to point out. "Zone's a bit stuffy today. Not a lot of privacy."

"We're not causing trouble, so why don't you introduce us to your new recruit?" Kitty –the girlfriend– smiles towards Dash. "He's cute."

"Hey, watch it," both Phantom and Johnny say to her.

She shrugs. "I'm just saying."

Dash steps forward, tired of being passive in a conversation that concerns him. "I'm flattered, but I have eyes on someone else," he says, looking in Phantom's direction. As soon as they make eye contact Dash winks causing Phantom to giggle.

The ghost boy coughs and schools his expression again.

Kitty's eyes widen. "No way." She smiles. "Ember is never letting you live this down, kid."

"I told you two to stop gossiping about my life!"

"There's not much more to do in the Zone," Johnny adds.

Dash lets them bicker for a bit, ready to intervene if it devolved into a fight. Phantom doesn't have the chance to let go like this that often, and seeing the smile tugging at his lips that the ghost boy is not really that desperately trying to suppress… well, it creates butterflies in Dash's stomach.

They move on with a parting warning from the biker.

"Careful. We're not the only ones aware of blondie here."

They're on edge.

The Box Ghost makes himself known and Dash panics. He doesn't even let him finish his usual monologue that he has the thermos pointing in his direction and sucking him in.

"He's not so useless after all."

Both Dash and Phantom turn towards the new voice entering the alley.

"What are you doing here?" Phantom's eyes dart from Dash to Plasmius, never leaving one unchecked for more than a few seconds.

Plasmius smiles. "I just thought I'd come to greet the new kid, Daniel," he says. Phantom flinches at hearing his name. "We should get to know each other. After all, we're bound to meet again." Plasmius pulls out a gun, one that Dash has never seen before, with more purples and pinks in its design.

Why would a ghost need a gun?

Phantom starts charging his ecto-blasts.

Dash grips the thermos.

"Does he know? Or is he the only one in the dark?" Plasmius taunts. "Afraid he won't like you anymore?"

Plasmius shoots towards Dash with no hesitation.

Dash lifts his arms to shield his face from the upcoming blast.

Phantom cries out in pain.

Plasmius clicks his tongue. "So predictable." He starts floating towards Phantom, his eyes focused on the boy.

"It doesn't do you well to keep secrets, my boy."

Phantom grunts and a flicker of light starts emitting from his body at random intervals.

Dash doesn't let him get too close. He lifts the thermos and is fast enough to surprise the ghost, sucking him into the containment device.

Dash crouches next to Phantom. "Oh my God-"

"I can't-" Phantom groans again. There are tears streaming from his eyes. Dash is starting to panic, so before he succumbs to it, he forces himself to pull out a medikit from his bag.

"What- what do I-" he starts to say, but gets interrupted.

"This isn't- FUCK- this isn't how I wanted to tell you," Phantom says.

The light keeps pulsing until it forms a ring around his midsection.

The ring splits, traveling opposite sides –up and down Phantom's body.

Until Phantom is not who's laying in front of Dash anymore.

"What the fuck," he manages to say, once out of his stupor.

"I-" Danny gulps. "I'm sorry."

Dash sighs. "C'mon." He grabs his arms and starts pulling up. "Let's get you against the wall."

Danny hums in agreement.

Once situated, Dash plops down next to him.

"So," he says.

"So." Danny mirrors.

"Are you… hurt?"

Danny shakes his head. "No, mostly tired. A bit disoriented."

"Cool, cool."

They sit in silence for a bit.

"Are you going to ask?" Until Danny breaks it.

"Huh?"

"How it's possible. How- how I… died." Danny fidgets with his fingers, looking anywhere but towards Dash.

"Oh. Uhm… I don't really care."

"Oh."

"I mean- if you wanna talk about-"

"No, no. It's just… refreshing. People are usually curious."

"I'm- honestly I'm mostly confused."

Danny nods. "Yeah I don't… I don't fully understand it either."

"I really like Phantom," Dash admits. He's surprised by how quiet his voice is.

"Yeah- I-" Danny keeps avoiding making eye contact with him. "You must to be so disappointed to discover this-" he gestures to himself. "-is really who you were flirting with."

"I don't know."

"What?"

"Well, I realized- after these weeks. I don't… really know you. Any of you."

"Huh."

"And I really like Phantom."

"You said that, yeah. So?"

"So…" Dash trails off. "I'd like to get to know Fenton, too." Dash smiles and turns towards Danny. "But I doubt they're much different."

Danny doesn't seem reassured. "But what if you don't like Fenton?"

"Do you like me?"

Danny snorts, color spreading to his cheeks and ears. It's a little weird, Dash thinks, to see the familiar sight but feel like it's for the first time all over again. "I've been told I have a think for nice people that can deadlift me, and… well, you did become cool to hang out with lately."

Dash draps one arm across Danny's shoulders, bringing him closer to him, so much so that Danny's laying on Dash's side. "Then you're worrying too much. We'll cross that bridge if we get to it."

Danny snorts and Dash doesn't even have to look down to know the red has spread further on his face –not that Dash's own hasn't started to resemble a tomato. But his mask is doing a good job protecting his dignity, as well as his identity.

"I do have a question though."

"Mmh?"

"Can I kiss you?" Dash asks before he loses his cool.

"What?"

"I mean- you don't have to. I've just… been thinking about it a lot," Dash says, lamely, "so I'd really like to kiss-"

Danny pulls down his mask and kisses him.

His lips are soft. For some reason, Dash wasn't expecting that.

The kiss is chaste, quick, but it shuts him up for a good minute, making Danny laugh and making him blush even more.

"You were taking too long."

Dash gives him a friendly shove when Danny starts laughing again and gets another kiss for his efforts.

'Yeah,' he thinks, 'I don't think I'll find it hard to like Fenton, too.'

#danny phantom #teddy ghost #swagger bishie #danny/dash #holiday truce 2022 #holiday truce exchange #danny phantom fic

[wingedflight]

he’s just an angry little boy

So I wrote a dpxdc fic that’s actually more of a fusion. In which Danny isn’t turned into a ghost during the portal accident, he just gains some really bad Lazarus Pit Rage

Title: Half Rage

Summary: Ever since the accident, Danny has been seething with rage.

Excerpt:

A heavy blow knocks the books from his arms. Danny jolts and opens his eyes again as mean laughter fills the stairwell.

It’s Dash, of course. Who else would think it the height of entertainment to corner a lone boy? Danny glares. The fury washes over him again, like he hadn’t almost managed to bury it deep enough to last the rest of the day. He feels hot, sharp with it.

One of the kids behind Dash stops laughing abruptly as he catches the look in Danny’s eyes. But Dash himself? He’s either too stupid or too arrogant to take warning.

“Oho,” Dash says, “Is skunk boy angry at me? You were standing right in my path, Fenton. I couldn’t help it.” He chortles at his own words, and his friends follow suit.

They sound like a pack of hyenas, thinks Danny derisively. This observation is not helpful, not calming.

Miffed that he’s gotten no reaction from Danny, Dash reaches out to flick his hair. “What’s with the skunk stripe anyway?”

Danny doesn’t blink, not when Dash’s finger first jabs towards his face and not when the offending lock of bleached hair drops over his eye. He doesn’t move at all, an utter contradiction to the raging whirlwind in his chest.

“Think this makes you look cool or something?”

The rage is boiling up, seconds from spilling over.

“Think a girl like Paulina would ever go out with a skunk like you?” Dash tugs on the lock of hair, a single jerk hard enough to actually pull a few pale strands out.

And that’s it.

Time’s up.

Danny’s done.

(Read More)

#danny phantom #dp x dc #crossover danuary week 2023 #i know I’m a few days before the comics prompt but I couldn’t wait lol #danny phantom au #this is the result of me being obsessed with Danny and also angry red hood Jason at the same time #my writing