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luxaofhesperides · 6 months

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Accidental Bride Sacrifice ; requested by @starlightcat04!

Danny has long since gotten used to the feel of summonings. They don’t happen often, but sometimes the right components are put together to force him into answering, and he’d have to go as the new Ghost King.

Which no one told him was a thing! He hadn’t protested too much about the whole Ghost King deal when they finally told him about it after he graduated high school. It gave him a good excuse to ditch life in the living realm and not worry about college or a career, and let him really embrace his ghost side.

The summonings are a problem, though. They always feel staticky and bad, like a dumpster that just got struck by lightning. The taste of iron on his tongue, a clear sign of blood being spilled, lets him know that it would be one of end the world for us summonings, because some people can’t put in the effort to do it themselves, apparently.

But this time, the summoning feels different.

Danny pauses, eyes going unfocused in the middle of his conversation with Jazz. He had been looking forward to spending the week with her, now that she’s on winter break, but his luck is as bad as always.

“I’m being summoned,” he tells her, cutting off her rant about a transphobic professor she had.

“Oh, no. Do you need me to do anything? Should I go with you to beat up whoever it is that’s summoning you?”

Danny tilts his head to the side, considering. The taste of blood is noticeably absent. In fact, this summoning pull doesn’t make him feel sick at all. It makes him feel warm, as if he’s just been wrapped in a hug.

“No,” he says. “I think I’m good. This one feels different.”

“A good different?” Jazz asks, worry clear in her voice.

“Yeah. A good different. I’ll come back soon, okay?”

“Alright. Be careful, Danny.” Jazz pulls him into a quick hug, then steps back to watch as Danny stops fighting the pull of the summoning and disappears into a swirling white rings that flashes into existence behind him, blinding her for a moment, and is gone when she manages to blink the spots out of her vision.

For a minute, Danny drifts in a void of stillness, traveling through the realms as the summoning draws him closer to the correct realm. And then he’s rising out of the ground in a dark building made of concrete, candles of green flame scattered all over the place.

“Great One!” someone in a hooded cloak cries, raising his arms in jubilation. “Our calls have been answered!”

“I’ll fucking kill you!” a mechanical voice yells from farther back. When Danny looks past the cultists’ heads, he spots a man in a red hood and leather jacket chained to a pole, along with a bunch of other people in strange costumes tied up, desperately trying to free themselves.

“Silence!” The leader of the cult, or who Danny assumes is the leader, snaps at the hooded man and gestures to the people off to his left. They force another costumed person forward, this one in yellow armor. He can see the blood running down their face from beneath their helmet and from their nose, dark lines of blood cutting through their brown skin.

The cultists throw the armored person forward, forcing them to kneel. Then they bow to Danny and step back.

“Great One,” the leader says, voice unpleasantly reverent and grating, “Welcome to the mortal realms. We offer you this sacrifice to feed your strength. He will make a fine general for your undead army in your crusade to rid this world of its filth.”

The people in the back begin shouting all together, panicked voices overlapping, and Danny is left staring down at the cultists in shock.

The summoning had felt so nice. What the hell was this? He did not sign up for another ‘end of days’ insane cult. He just wanted to be hugged.

His silence makes the cultists nervous. They begin to shift uneasily, whispering to each other, and the leader clears his throat, then pulls a large crystal dagger out of his cloak. “We shall prove our devotion to you through an offering of a hero’s blood!”

And then he moves towards the sacrifice and Danny snaps out of his shock to yell, “Wait!”

The entire room freezes. Even the costumed people in the back go still.

Danny winces, then tries to smother his power, make himself more palatable to the humans of this dimension. “Wait,” he says again, and he sounds closer to human now. If he could, he would drop his ghost form entirely, but he knows better than to endanger himself like that. “What, exactly, did you summon me here for?”

The cult leader stares at him for a moment. “To… To rid the world of filth and allow your loyal followers to spread word of your power. You will be worshiped again, Great One, and serve as a reminder to man that Death shall always prevail.”

“Okay, I get that, but I was talking more along the lines of the summoning. What ritual did you use? What specifically were the summoning requirements?”

Normally, he’d be able to figure it out himself, but these cultists didn’t use a summoning circle. So they did something else, something less visible and therefore harder to figure out, in order to bring him here.

A woman standing off to the side speaks up, stepping forward hesitantly. “I had pieced together a few summoning spells from this book to bring you here. You had to accept our chosen sacrifice to your side in order for the summoning to work.”

“Hold up that book for me, please?”

She does, and Danny flies down to grab it from her hands. “Point out which lines you used,” he says, already reading a few of the words written down. It’s definitely ghostspeak written down, which should be near impossible for living humans to translate without being skilled in magic.

“Ah, these ones.” She points to each line, reading them out for him, and Danny starts understand what, exactly, went wrong.

“Is there a problem, Great One?”

Danny returns the book then floats over to the sacrifice and picks him up. The costumed people make alarmed noises, but quietly quiet down again when all Danny does is move him away from the cultists.

“Okay,” he says, “So. The lines you used to summon me were not translated properly. What you interpreted as ‘accepted to stay by the king’s side in loyalty and strength’ is not meant to be, like, him being part of my undead army or whatever. It’s a royal marriage vow.”

“They married us?” the sacrifice shouts, disbelieving. The cult leader buries his face in his hands and sighs.

“My deepest apologies, Great One. We meant no offense. We simply wanted to aid in your destruction of this depraved world.”

Danny scrunches his nose and shakes his head. “Yeah, that’s not gonna fly with me. I do not do the biding of random people, especially those who are ready to murder innocent people for no reason. Frighty, if you would.” He snaps his fingers, calling up Fright Knight who always enjoys getting to torment the people who summon Danny for murderous reasons.

Fright Knight appears in a swirl of darkness and screams. Shadows swallow the room, and when they recede, no cultists remain.

“Thanks, Frighty. Have fun with them. I need to figure out all… this.”

Fright Knight bows to him, then disappears. Danny lets out a breath, then floats down lower to be eye level with the sacrifice. “Hey,” he says gently, with a smile, “I’m so sorry they did this to you. I’m Danny. What’s your name?”

“Du— Uh, Signal,” the sacrifice says, sounding rather dazed.

“Signal,” Danny repeats. “Like… a traffic signal?”

“No. I mean, maybe? But it is Signal. That’s my hero name, not my real name.”

“Oh, you’re a hero!” His getup makes more sense now. Danny checks him over for any signs of injuries. So far, only his head and nose seem to be injured, but his wrists are tightly bound behind his back. Carefully, Danny calls upon his ice and shapes it into a sharp knife, then cuts through the zipties.

He helps Signal up to his feet, floating by his shoulder. “All good?”

“Yeah, man, all good. Let me just get the others free.”

“Oh, I can do it!” Danny flies over to the other costumed people, who must also be heroes. All it takes is one link in the chain being frozen and broken for the entire thing to go lax, allowing them to free themselves. Hooded guy spares Danny a single glance, then hurries over to Signal to check on him. The other three, a man with a blue bird across his chest, a blond girl with a yellow bat outline on her chest, and a guy with bandoliers and a golden bird emblem, all watch him warily as he floats back towards the center of the room.

“So,” the blue bird man says, “If they summoned you with a marriage vow, and you accepted, does that mean you’re planning to steal Signal away from us?” He’s smiling, but it’s not a nice smile.

“No! I had no idea they did this! I am so sorry you all got caught up in this. You most of all, Signal.”

Signal shrugs, nudging hood guy away from him. “Nah, man, it’s all good. This is definitely the better outcome.”

“I don’t know, being married off isn’t really a good thing.”

“Hey, at least they married me off to a decent guy.”

“You don’t know that,” Danny says, “What if I’m secretly evil?”

“If you were secretly evil, you’d be destroying the world right now. I think you’re fine.”

The blond girl waves at him, demanding his attention. “Quick question! They were calling you ‘Great One’. Are you a god or something?”

“Not really? I’m the Ghost King. So I’m a ghost who rules over other ghosts and also a majority of the Infinite Realms.”

She nods as if this is all totally normal for her, then shoots Signal a grin. “Congrats on bagging a king! Not the worst way to spend a night, right?”

“Can you break the marriage?” blue bird man asks, the lines of his shoulders tense.

Danny awkwardly rubs the back of his neck, not looking any of them in the eye. “I honestly don’t know. I can look for a way! But I genuinely have no clue. This was unexpected.”

“But you accepted.”

“I didn’t know what I expected! It just felt like a hug, and I wanted a hug! I thought I was being summoned for something nice for once!” Danny curls up, bringing his knees up to his chest, and hides his pout behind his hands. He knows he’s being childish, but he can’t help but be upset that he couldn’t have this one good experience from being Ghost King.

It’s always responsibilities and death cult summonings and fighting ghosts who don’t think he should be king. Sure there have been some good things, but they’re comparatively few when looking at all the other stress and pain that comes with the crown. Sue him for wanting to have a nice night for once. Hell, at this point, he’d take being summoned to help with some kid’s homework, because at least then he could have a quiet night helping someone.

“Hey, man, can you come down here?” Signal asks.

He wants to stay out of reach, hiding himself away for a bit longer, but Signal is his new, surprise, accidental husband, so Danny lowers himself to the ground and peeks through his fingers to look at him.

He tenses when Signal hugs him, soft and warm and comforting. It takes a moment for him to realize what’s going on, and then he’s melting into Signal’s embrace, dropping his hands to wrap them around Signal’s back.

Distantly, he can hear the other heroes talking quietly amongst themselves. He blocks out the sound as much as he can, determined to enjoy this hug while it lasts.

Which is… fairly long. Signal makes no moves to end the hug, so Danny closes his eyes to really savor the moment.

“So,” Signal murmurs into his ear, “As newlyweds, how about we get to know each other a bit better before we start working on fixing all this?”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Let’s ditch these guys and take some time to ourselves.”

“I promise I’ll get this fixed,” he says, just to make sure Signal knows. “Genuinely, I am so sorry to have married you through an old Realms vow when you had no say in it.”

“Hey, if it lands me a very nice, very attractive king, then I don’t mind at all. I could have done without the murderous cultists, though.”

Danny huffs out a small laugh. “Oh, for sure. Thanks for being so cool about this. Want me to fly us out of here?”

“Yes please,” Signal says. Danny smiles and tightens his grip on Signal, then lifts them both up. “I’ll see y’all later! Have fun with the rest of your patrols!” he calls out to the other heroes, who start shouting at him.

Danny flies them right out the roof before the other heroes figure out a way to kick his ass. The city they’re in is smoggy and dark, tall buildings rising up into the cloudy sky, and police sirens ring through the air. There’s no where that looks like a particularly nice spot to land for a conversation, so he asks Signal where he’d like to go and follows his directions from there.

They end up phasing through a building, then into the floor, which leaves them in what Signal calls The Hatch.

Danny takes a quick moment to freak out over being in a hero’s secret hide out, the composes himself and finally pulls away from Signal.

“So,” he starts, looking around The Hatch and taking in the giant computer, the workstation, the motorcycle farther down the way, “What did you—Woah!” Danny spins around, slamming a hand over his eyes the instant he realizes that Signal is taking off his helmet, leaving his face bare.

It’s not like he’d know who Signal is anyways, being from a different dimension, but it’s the principle of the matter.

Signal laughs when he sees Danny’s attempt to keep from looking at him. A warm hand wraps around his wrist and gently pulls it away. “It’s okay, Danny, you can look,” he says. “It would be pretty weird if my own husband didn’t know my face.”

Slowly, giving Signal to change his mind, Danny opens his eyes. He moves his gaze up, going from Signal’s armor to his face, his very cute face and his warm brown eyes, and Danny stares for a moment.

“Hi,” he whispers.

“Hi,” Signal says, fondness coloring his voice. “My name’s Duke. Are all Ghost Kings as cute as you?”

“Duke,” Danny repeats. “Hi. Um, no. The last one really sucked, actually, which is why I fought him. He was so bad the Infinite Realms didn’t want him anymore, so though I technically didn’t beat him in single combat, it was enough for the Infinite Realms to kick him out and get me on the throne.”

“Man, I can not wait to hear more of your stories. Think we got time for that while we search for a way to undo that marriage vow?”

Taking his chance, Danny says, “Sure! It’s a date.”

He’s awarded by Duke’s bright smile and idly wonders how long he can keep them married. Hopefully long enough for them to get into a real relationship where he can propose properly. And then he can get Jazz’s blessing too—

“Oh shit,” Danny realizes.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“I need to tell my sister or she’s going to actually kill me.”

Duke winces. “And I should probably tell the others before Spoiler makes a mess of things… B is not going to be happy with me.”

They share a despairing look, already dreading the amount of scoldings they’re both going to get. He’s not looking forward to it.

“...Put it off until tomorrow?”

Duke nods. “Yeah. That’s a tomorrow problem. For now, how about a late dinner?”

“Sounds perfect.”

. . .

[send me a ghostlights prompt!]

#ghostlights #dc x dp #dp x dc #dcxdp #dpxdc #dpxdc fanfic #dp x dc fic #prompt fill #my writing #dukes pov is just: u're abt to be sacrificed. u're mildly concussed. a cute guy glowing like the north star saved u and is now ur husband #he's had a night but all in all it ended pretty nicely!#they're gonna work together and just hang out while trying to undo the marriage summoning ritual and find they're super compatible #and then in a few years they'll be marrying each other for real :)#thanks for the prompt!!

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