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[q-gorgeous]

phantom phantom older phantom danny phantom

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 1165

Maddie is unexpectedly sent to an ashen future. She doesn't even get the chance to meet the mysterious man who sent her to this apocalyptic world - she's only given a single command, ringing over and over in her head: "Find Danny. Save him." @ecto-mochi

ehbvegsudicwkjbd

Save Danny.

Find him. Save him.

Maddie groggily woke up. The command was ringing in her head over and over. What was wrong with Danny? Why did she have to save him?

She opened her eyes and was met with an ashen apocalyptic world. Where was she? 

She looked up above her just to see what looked like flying cars. A futuristic city. A dome appeared to surround the entire city and Maddie couldn’t help but think it must be a ghost shield. Why did they need a ghost shield around the entire city?

A wailing sound tore its way through the air and Maddie covered her ears. What was that sound? Where was it coming from? 

One of the towers powering the dome exploded and the shield dissipated. Dread filled her being. 

Find Danny. That was what she was here to do. That was what she would worry about. 

Where did she start though? Was she looking for her fourteen year old son or a version of him from the future? 

She just had to start looking. Someone had sent her here. They wouldn’t send her on some impossible mission. She’d know it when she saw it. 

She searched up and down the streets as she walked by. In all the ruined and destroyed buildings. There was not a sign of life anywhere out here. Not a single person roamed in this area. It was just her.

She stopped as that wailing sound started back up again. It sounded even closer this time. 

“No!” 

It couldn’t be. That voice. Was he still haunting Amity Park after all this time?

Maddie turned around the corner of the crumbled building she was standing beside. There he was. Phantom. And… Phantom? 

Standing down the street were two Phantom’s. The one she recognized that must’ve been from her own time. And then there was the older looking ghost. He looked like an aged version of the teenage ghost she hunted down every day. Was Phantom the Danny she was supposed to save? He was technically a Danny after all. 

The older Phantom picked up some kind of medallion and phased it into Phantom’s chest and he screamed. He jumped into the air pulling Phantom behind him. 

Whether or not Phantom was the Danny she was supposed to save, he would probably know where her son was so she could find him. 

She was coming up to a ruined version of the Nasty Burger by the time she caught up with them. It had what looked like a memorial of… her and her family. Danny’s friends. And his teacher? 

What happened here? 

She crept up quietly and stood behind some rubble and listened as the two ghosts talked to each other. 

“It doesn’t matter if I go back in time or not! I’ll never turn into you! Never!” 

“Of course you will.” 

She watched with wide eyes as a ring appeared around the older Phantom’s waist. It split and moved over his body and when it disappeared left standing in his place was what looked like her son. 

“It’s only a matter of time.” 

Everything clicked into place and she finally understood. He looked like Phantom. He could turn into Danny. He was Phantom from the Future. Phantom was Danny.  

This was the Danny she was supposed to be saving. 

Then he was throwing Phantom- Danny- into the portal. 

“I need you out of my way and out of my hair while I make sure nothing happens to change my past.” 

“Danny..?” Maddie stepped forward and reached a hand out towards her son. He turned to look at her with a haunted expression, the portal swirling beside him. 

“Ma- Mom?” He called. He seemed confused. 

She took another step towards him and he took a step back, the portal closing beside him. 

“What happened to you?” She whispered. 

“How did you get here?” He asked with wide eyes. “You didn’t come here with them.”

She shook her head. “Someone sent me here. All they told me was to save Danny. I thought they meant my son. But now I realize they meant you.”

He barked out a laugh. “Save me? There is no saving me. There’s nothing you can do. I’m not even your son. I’m an amalgamation.”

“What do you mean?” She pulled her hand back from where it was still outstretched and kept it close to her body. 

“That fruit loop tried pulling out Danny’s human emotions but only succeeded in pulling out his ghost half. Then I ripped out his. We morphed together and that is who I am now.” 

Her eyes widened. “Vlad? He’s-”

“Half ghost?” He smirked. “You and the fat oaf really are as dense as a brick. You couldn’t even find two ghosts that were always right under your nose.” 

“I’m positive you’re the one I was sent here to save though.” Maddie clenched her fists at her sides. “No matter how much I… Detested Phantom, he always got us out of dangerous and impossible situations. Danny always came home. You are the one in need of help.”

His laughter split across the destroyed parking lot. Danny’s blue eyes turned back to red. “Help? Help? I needed help ten years ago. Help with school. Help with ghosts. Help with the goddamn suicidal ideation I had after I watched my entire family get blown up in this very lot!” 

Maddie flinched as his voice raised in volume. 

“But instead I had the ghost ripped out of my human half and ended up killing him!” 

Maddie covered her mouth with her hands. He killed…?

He laughed again, this time a sad, crazed laugh. He looked away from her. “All our ideation paid off though. But it didn’t help me. Not when I was still stuck with every one of both of their bad traits and memories. All of their fears.” 

“What are you afraid of?” She whispered. He looked back up at her.

“Being alone.” 

She shook her head. “You don’t have to be alone anymore. We can fix this.”

He raced towards her and instead of her son, he was suddenly the older Phantom. He held her up by her throat. 

“There’s nothing you can do.” He snarled. “My fate is sealed. And I intend to make sure it happens.” 

She took in a raspy breath. “Come… Home. Don’t punish- yourself any longer. Come- come home.”

His eyes widened at that and he let go of her like she burnt him. He took a couple steps back. She coughed as he looked at her.

“You- you think I’m punishing myself?”

She pushed herself up off the ground. “You’ve destroyed everything. You’ve demolished an entire city. You’ve probably killed many people. People can’t leave you all alone if you get rid of them first.” 

“I-” He stopped and looked up at her again.

“Come home.” She whispered. 

They stared at each other as she waited for his response. He opened his mouth to reply-

[q-gorgeous]

Sam Wraith

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 1009

No one knows au identity reveal @fangirlwriting-stories

hehehe

Danny was afraid of ghosts. It made sense why. His parents touted all this nonsense about them that Sam knew for a fact wasn’t true at all. 

But that was why she never told him what happened to her down in his basement.

She had snuck down there one of the times her and Tucker had gone to Danny’s house. She waited until they were playing a game she knew would keep their focus for a long time. She told them she was going to use the bathroom but instead of going into the room across the hall, she made her way down the stairs into the living room and then to the kitchen. The lab door was big and intimidating but she just had to see it. 

She pulled the heavy door open and slipped in and shut it behind her. 

It got colder the further she walked down the stairs. She got to the bottom and there it was. 

The ghost portal. 

It hadn’t worked. It had been Danny’s parent’s life work. What they’d been building up to their entire career. And it just. Didn’t turn on. 

She hadn’t been allowed down here since they started working on the portal. She’d been so curious about it but they still didn’t let her and Tucker go into the lab even when the portal didn’t work. 

She walked up to it. It almost looked like a hallway leading to another room. If it was any longer, she would have trouble seeing the other end of it. 

Stepping into the shadows of the portal, Sam trailed her hand against the wall as she walked further into it. 

But then she tripped on something on the floor and caught herself on the wall. She froze when something moved under her fingers. 

The lights of the portal turned on and she slowly turned her head and saw it. The power button. 

She only had a moment to think about running before everything turned green around her. 

Her screams rang through the room but she had closed the door to the lab. No one would come looking for her down here. No one would hear her. 

She thought she would be dead any second but the light dimmed and she collapsed out of the portal onto the floor. 

She pushed herself back up and looked over her shoulder. It was a swirling, bright green vortex. She could feel the energy it gave off. 

Sam struggled to climb to her feet, but she succeeded. Everything hurt but she could feel it slowly fading. How was she alive? That should have electrocuted her. 

It wasn’t until she passed in front of the mirror that the Fenton’s had down in their lab that Sam noticed. 

Her hair was white. So were her clothes. The only thing that wasn’t was her purple crop hoodie that had inverted to the same radioactive green as her eyes. 

Did she die? Where was her body then? Did it evaporate in the portal? Vaporize? 

She lifted a hand up and was about to run it through her hair when a ring appeared around her waist. She looked down at it and it passed over her body, leaving her clothes as their original color. When she looked back up into the mirror, her eyes were purple once again. 

She hadn’t known what happened to her. So she didn’t tell Danny. Because he was afraid of ghosts. And she didn’t want him to be afraid of her if that’s what she was.

Sam never told him once she realized she was some kind of ghost hybrid. She saw the way he ran from ghost fights. She couldn’t tell him. 

So months later when she reached her hand towards Danny as she lay beaten and hurt on the ground after having just detransformed, it made sense why instead of helping her up he could only take a step back. 

He was afraid of her. 

She’d always known he’d be afraid of her. 

“Where’s that spook?”

Danny’s head whipped towards the sound of his dad’s voice. He had a panicked expression on his face and he waved his parents over. Her heart dropped.

“Danny!” His mom shouted. “Have you seen where the ghost went?”

“I-” He looked back at where she lay on the ground and stuttered. “I- uh- no. I didn’t see where the ghost went.”

“Why’d you stop us then?” Jack bellowed. “We have to go catch that witch!” 

“No!” Danny waved his hands out in front of him. “I stopped you because Sam’s hurt!” 

“Sam’s hurt?” Maddie started looking around them and shoved her weapon into Jack’s arms when she saw her laying on the ground. “Sam!” 

Maddie ran over to her and Sam tried not to flinch when Maddie reached a hand down to her. “What happened?” 

Sam coughed. “Ghost- that Wraith was fighting- got me before she started trying to stop it.” 

Maddie tsked. “Ghosts.” She grabbed one of Sam’s arms and looked up at Danny. “Help me get her up, Danny.”

Danny’s eyes widened and he walked over to them. He shakily took Sam’s other arm. Together they lifted her up off the ground. 

“Let’s get you back to the van. Jack, go find that ghost and make sure it doesn’t hurt anyone else.”

“You got it, babe!” He saluted them and ran off in the direction the ghost had disappeared to when it knocked Sam out of the fight. 

Danny and Maddie helped her walk to where their van was parked. They got her inside and Danny sat in the back seat next to her. 

“Let’s get you home so we can get you patched up.” Maddie said before shutting the back door. Sam looked at Danny.

“Thank you for not telling your parents about me.” She whispered. 

Danny nodded. 

“Are you afraid of me now?” She breathed out.

“I don’t know. Normal ghosts are still scary.” Danny said quietly. He turned to look at her. “But if you’re a ghost? My parents must be wrong about everything.”

[q-gorgeous]

She's Almost You

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 861

warning: major character death

"The same kind of music / haunts her bedroom / I'm almost me again / she's almost you" - Almost (Sweet Music) by Hozier. Whatever this line evokes. @jessaverant

yoyoyoyo

“Danny!” Jazz shouted. He was falling from the air. He’d been shot with a weapon by their parents. It shorted out his powers. He couldn’t get his transformation rings to appear. He couldn’t fly. He was too high in the air. What could they do? 

The sound when he hit the ground would forever haunt her. 

~~~

Danny’s funeral. A little girl standing at the back of the crowd. Jazz didn’t know who she was but she bore a striking resemblance to the boy they were burying that day. 

Sam and Tucker introducing them to Danielle. Dani. She was a clone. A clone of her brother. She was the same as him in nearly every way. 

She came to say goodbye to him. Her only real family she’d ever had. She flew all the way here just for him. Where did she come from? Where would she go?

They couldn’t let her go off on her own. Not when she was staring up at them with his sky blue eyes. 

~~~

His favorite song. 

It played behind what used to be his bedroom door. 

Jazz knew that they couldn’t have sent her away. Not a 14 year old child who had only really been alive for 2 years. But she didn’t realize how much her brother would haunt them with her here. They were so similar. From the type of music they listened to and their aspirations to the dark speck of blue in their left iris. 

Jazz would see her walking the halls at home or at school. She’d see her flying around town and all she could see was her brother. She’d see Danielle out of the corner of her eye and she thought maybe her brother wasn’t really dead. Maybe he didn’t really move on. Maybe he was still here. 

Maybe it had all been a dream. 

It felt like Jazz was living in a nightmare. 

~~~

Jazz was starting to feel like herself again. She finally put in her college applications after waiting a year. She was ready to continue her studies. She shouldn’t put it off any longer. She’d had her time to grieve.

But she knew she really hadn’t grieved. Not with Danielle here. She thought maybe going away would give her some real time to grieve. If she was somewhere where she didn’t see his face all the time.

She shook that thought off. Her sister was happy she was going to school. Danielle wanted to get to know Jazz. But Jazz hadn’t been herself for a while. She wanted to try though. She wanted to be a sister again. A good sister. Danielle looked at her like she put the stars in the sky and she wanted to do just that for her. 

Jazz just had to find her own stars again. 

~~~

She’s almost you.

Jazz watched as Danielle fought the ghost king. Jazz had heard the story about him from Danny. That he had been locked back up in his sarcophagus. That he’d been defeated. But it took nearly every bit of strength he had. He almost died. And he needed help to do it. And now Danielle was up there doing it on her own. No ghost friends. No allies. No suit.

Just her. 

She was holding strong but Jazz could see she was getting tired. Their parents were trying to put together something, anything that could help her. But they didn’t have the time. They would run out of time. 

She was too much like Danny. She jumped into danger and ghost fights just like he did. She took on too much responsibility like he did. This wasn’t something she had to do but she did it anyway. 

Then, the ghost king struck Danielle out of the air. She hurtled towards the ground and all Jazz could do was thank the heavens or whatever god existed that Danielle was still transformed. That she still still had her powers. That she would be able to take the hit when she skidded across the pavement and smashed into a building. 

But Danielle didn’t get back up. She lay there. Unmoving. 

Jazz started to run. She couldn’t lose her too. Not after losing him. She couldn’t lose him twice. 

But then Danielle raised an arm and pushed herself up off the pavement. Jazz skidded to a stop. The look she wore was one Jazz had seen Danny wear countless times while fighting dangerous ghosts. 

Danielle glared up at the ghost king and shot back up into the air. 

She flew circles around him and beat him until he was somehow weak enough to pull into a thermos. Jazz stared at her in awe. Marveled at finally seeing Danielle be different from Danny. Defeating a foe without the aid of anything. A foe that Danny almost died defeating even with the help he got. 

Danielle floated down and touched onto the ground. She stumbled her way towards Jazz, hardly being able to keep one foot in front of the other. 

She collapsed into her and Jazz shook as she held her sister. Her parents' shouts echoed from down the street. 

She was okay. Danielle would be okay.

[q-gorgeous]

Grave Green

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 4074

There's a shallow grave in the woods. The only marker is a stone with the name "Danny" scratched into it. Judging by the fresh-turned soil, it hasn't been empty for long. @kinglazrus

hehehehe

Dash wasn’t lost.

No way no how. There was no way he was lost. He was just going on his nightly run and he made a wrong turn and now it was the middle of the night and he couldn't see anything. But he wasn’t lost. He’d be able to find his way back still. 

But the trees blocked the moonlight and he had to move slowly. But moving slowly didn’t help him when he tried to step on empty air and he fell, landing in a patch of turned dirt. 

That was weird. Turned dirt? All the way out here in the middle of the woods?

He sat up and looked around him. Dash’s heart stopped and his eyes widened.

There at the other end of the turned dirt was a headstone with the name Danny on it. He could barely make the name out but he was sure it said Danny.

This couldn’t be Fenton’s grave, could it? Sure, Fenton went missing a month ago but everyone thought he just ran away. He couldn’t have been murdered and buried here, right?

But why was the grave dug out? How long has it been empty?

He heard the sound of a twig breaking behind him and he whipped his head around. 

“Danny?” Dash whispered, horrified.

There he was, covered in dirt and looking at his hands like they weren’t his own. He raised his head to look up at Dash and tears were swimming in his eyes. 

“Dash?” He asked shakily. “What are you doing out here?”

Dash just stared at Danny, at the absurd question. “What am I doing out here? What are you doing out here? You’re covered in dirt and I just fell into your grave!” 

Danny slowly looked back down at his hands. 

“There was an accident. I remember coming out here with my mom.” Danny whispered. “She said we were just going for a walk. That it would help me walk off the shock I got when their portal activated.”

Dash stared at him in horror. 

“I don’t know how she did it, but when we got here there was already an empty grave. She pushed me in and started burying me alive.” His gaze traveled over to stare at dirt he crawled out of. “The headstone is new though.”

“Your mom… Buried you alive?” Dash asked, shaking his hands back and forth.

Danny nodded, still staring at the grave. 

“It’s been a month since you went missing, though. How are you still alive?”

Danny’s gaze made its way back to Dash. “I don’t know. The accident must’ve changed me. Something seemed to scare my mom after I walked out of the portal but she wouldn’t tell me what it was. We came here afterwards.” 

“Your parents are into ghosts right?” Dash asked. “Did their portal kill you? Are you dead?”

Danny went back to studying his hands. “I don’t feel dead. I’m kinda hungry.” 

Dash slowly walked up to him. He hovered a foot away for a moment before he raised a hand up.

“If you’ve got a pulse, you’d still be alive right? Can I see…?”

Danny nodded and Dash put two fingers on Danny’s neck under his jaw. He held his breath and waited for the tell tale thump of a heart beat. He let it out and closed his eyes when he felt it.

“You still have a pulse. Somehow.” Dash pulled away. 

Danny nodded. He seemed tired and he couldn’t stop staring at his hands. Dash sighed.

“Come on. Let’s get you back to my place. We can get you cleaned up and find something to eat.”

Danny nodded again and Dash grabbed one of his hands and pulled it out of his line of sight. Tugging on it, Dash pulled Danny behind him as they started walking. 

“Did your dad know about any of this?” Dash asked softly. He tripped on a rock in the ground and turned to guide Danny around it.

Danny shook his head. “No. It was just me and my mom in the lab when the accident happened. She told me to put my jumpsuit on because we were going to try and fix the portal as a surprise for my dad.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how she thought I was supposed to help if my genius father couldn’t help her figure it out. She sent me inside the portal to take a look but I tripped.” 

Goosebumps rose along Dash’s arms. She sent him into the portal?

“When I braced myself against the wall, I must’ve pressed a button. The portal came to life around me and then I was screaming. When the pain was finally gone, I stumbled out of the portal and my mom had a horrified look on her face. I didn’t know what she saw but a bright light flashed in the lab and then she walked over to me.”

Dash guided them past another tree and finally saw what looked like a path. He started following it. 

“She told me to take my jumpsuit off and that we were going to go for a walk. She said it would help me walk off the shock. But the longer we kept walking, the worse the feeling in my gut got. Before I realized I should run, we were already standing over the grave. And then she pushed me in.” 

“Shit.” Dash whispered.

“Yeah.” Danny’s hand tightened around his. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Let’s just start with getting cleaned up and eating. Then we can talk to my dad.”

Danny’s head shot up and he looked at him. “Your dad? What if he just brings me back to my mom?”

Dash shook his head. “If we tell my dad what happened he’ll probably arrest her for premeditated homicide.”

“Premeditated homicide?” Danny exclaimed. “Why do you think any of that would’ve been premeditated?” 

“Hello? She already had a grave dug out for you? She sent you into the portal?” Dash finally saw the park entrance that he had come in through. He turned back to look at Danny who was staring at his free hand again. Dash could see all the dirt and mud stuck to Danny much clearer now. 

“But…” Danny trailed off. 

Dash sighed and pulled him closer so he wasn’t trailing so far behind him. “Sorry. Let’s get you back to my place.” 

The rest of the walk was short and quiet. Dash could feel Danny’s dazed and disassociating look as he walked beside him. He couldn’t imagine being in Danny’s position. No matter how shitty his own mother was, at least she just left them instead of trying to kill him. 

They finally turned onto the street his house was on. Dash started pulling his keys out of his pocket. He inwardly cringed when he saw the lights in his living room still on. No doubt his dad was still up waiting for him. 

They walked up the stairs to his front door and put his key into the lock and opened the door. 

“Where have you been, young-”

His dad stopped when Dash pulled Danny into the house. He stood there for a few moments studying Danny and the dirt all over him. 

“Where did you find him?” His dad whispered. 

“I got lost on my run.” Dash said, guiding Danny in behind him while he closed the door. “I tripped on the grave he crawled out of while I was trying to find my way back.”

His dad blanched at him. “I’m sorry, what?” 

“I can explain everything to you but can we get him figured out first?” Dash gestured at Danny. “And I don’t think he needs to hear the story he told me again.”

His dad nodded. “Yeah, right. Take him upstairs and find him a change of clothes and get him cleaned up. I’ll make us up some soup.” 

Dash nodded back at him and pulled Danny up the stairs behind him. 

“I’m gonna find some clothes for you to wear first and then we’re gonna head to the bathroom.” Dash said over his shoulder. Danny didn’t respond.

Dash headed to his room and opened his door. He let go of Danny’s hand.

“I’ll be right back.” 

Dash headed to his closet and looked through his t-shirts. They would all be pretty big on Danny but that would be fine. He grabbed the one Nasa shirt he had and headed to his dresser. He struggled to find some sweat pants that would fit Danny but finally found an old pair of his buried at the bottom of one of his drawers. 

He walked back to where Danny stood in the hallway. He was staring at where Pookie sat on the floor, staring back up at him. 

“That’s Pookie.” Dash said. 

Danny nodded. “I remember. I’ve always wanted a puppy.”

Dash smiled. “I’m sure he’ll be able to fill all your puppy needs while you’re here tonight.”

Danny smiled sadly at Pookie but turned to follow Dash to the bathroom. 

“You can sit down on the toilet.” Dash set the new change of clothes on the counter while he rummaged through the cabinet for the first aid kit and a washcloth. He set the first aid kit on the counter and turned the water on. He waited for it to get warm before he soaked the washcloth in water. Sudding it up with soap, he turned to face Danny.

“Are you okay with me cleaning your face and arms off?” Dash asked him. 

Danny looked up at Dash, his expression blank for a moment before he nodded. 

Dash sat down on the edge of the bathtub and started with wiping down Danny’s arms. There was so much dirt and grime. As he washed it off he also found some cuts and scrapes. Danny’s hands were the worst but Dash supposed that’s what happened when you dug your way out of your own grave. 

“I’m just gonna have you wash your hands in the sink when we’re done. That might just be easier than me trying to do it with a washcloth.” He stood up and grabbed a clean washcloth for Danny’s face.

He sat back down and brushed Danny’s hair out of his face. Danny’s blank eyes focused on him. 

Dash held Danny’s head in place by placing a hand on his left cheek. He started by cleaning around Danny’s eyes. Dash moved to his forehead but his eyes stayed closed as Dash cleaned the rest of his face and made his way down his neck. 

“Don’t forget behind the ears.” Danny whispered.

Dash snorted but obliged him.

He threw the second washcloth into the sink and studied Danny’s hair as he opened his eyes back up.

“Wash your hands and take your shirt off. I think we should rinse the dirt out of your hair, even if we don’t actually wash it.”

Danny headed over to the sink and washed his hands while Dash turned the water for the shower on. He tested the water and adjusted it until it felt like a comfortable temperature. Danny finished washing his hands and then took his shirt off and changed into the sweatpants, tossing the soiled clothes on the floor. 

“Lean over the edge of the tub and I’ll rinse your hair out.” Dash said. 

Danny did as he was asked, propping himself up by resting his arms on the tub. Dash rinsed and pulled as much dirt out of his hair as he could before he shut the water off. He grabbed a towel out of one of the cabinets and handed it to Danny.

“Here.” 

Danny slowly dried his hair as Dash opened up the first aid kit. He pulled out the hydrogen peroxide and neosporin. He grabbed yet another washcloth and doused it in hydrogen peroxide. 

Dash turned back to Danny just in time to see him pull the towel off of his head. 

“This will sting a bit.” Dash warned as he started working on cleaning the scrapes on Danny’s hands and arms. He moved up to Danny’s face and cleaned the one scratch that ran across his cheek. 

Dash went to grab the neosporin and started applying that when Danny looked up at him.

“Thank you for doing this. You didn’t have to.”

Dash shrugged. “Even if I didn’t want to, my dad would’ve made me. But I wouldn’t want to leave you all covered in dirt. You don’t deserve that.”

Danny hummed and Dash finally finished cleaning him up and putting bandages on. 

“You can take the spare bedroom. I can bring your food upstairs for you.” 

“Okay.” Danny nodded, pulling his shirt on. He looked down at the floor as Pookie started following them.

Dash opened the door for the spare bedroom and turned on the light. 

“Here you go. Home sweet home for the night. You can get settled in while I go see where the soup is at.” 

Danny nodded again and sat down at the edge of the bed. Pookie jumped up by him and curled up at his side. 

Dash headed back downstairs and found his dad still stirring the soup in the kitchen. He looked up when Dash sat down in a chair at the counter.

“How’s he feeling?” His dad asked.

“He’s pretty out of it. Has been since I suggested that his mom did this to him on purpose.”

Dash’s dad turned to look at him. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’ve got to stop explaining things like this. Can you start from the beginning?”

“He said his mom asked him to help her fix some portal they built that didn’t work. That she wanted it to be a surprise for his dad. But she asked him to suit up and sent him inside the thing. He tripped and hit a button and it turned on from the inside.” Dash looked away from his dad. “He got hurt and when he walked out of the portal he thought something scared his mom. She took him on a walk and at the end of it she pushed him into a grave she had ready and waiting and buried him alive.”

His dad’s eyes widened. “She buried him alive? Wasn’t that a month ago that he went missing? How is he here?”

Dash shrugged. “They’re ghost hunters. It’s probably some weird ghost thing. But she even marked the grave with a rock that had Danny’s name on it. He literally dug himself out of his own grave.”

“Goddamn.” His dad whispered. “I can’t decide if this kid has the best or worst luck in the world.”

“Maybe a little bit of both.” Dash joked. His smile fell and he looked at his dad. “Is this enough to arrest her? Or will Danny just have to go home to her?”

His dad shook his head. “I think it would be enough. We just need to find the evidence to prove it. But we can arrest and detain her for questioning. If we believe her to be dangerous we can keep her without bail as well.”

“Okay. When will that happen?” Dash asked.

His dad looked up towards the stairs. “Let’s talk to Danny and get the evidence we need. I think your and Danny’s statements will be enough to arrest her while we search for other evidence down in that lab of theirs.” 

Dash nodded. “Okay. We’ll keep him safe though?”

Dash’s dad looked back at him. “Yeah. We’ll keep him safe.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When the portal failed, Maddie knew what was missing. 

It was a portal to the land of the dead. When every calculation they’ve checked, double checked, and triple checked was correct, there was only one thing left that she thought could be the answer.

Opening a portal to the land of the dead required a human sacrifice. 

So one day when Jack and Jazz went to the fudge museum, she asked Danny to help her tackle the problem with the portal. She told him she wanted it to be a surprise for Jack. That she wanted to fix it before he came home so that he’d be greeted with a happy sight.

She made sure to hide her notes and hypothesis somewhere Danny wouldn’t stumble upon them. She asked him to get suited up under the guise of lab safety and she sent him into the portal. 

It happened more naturally than she could’ve ever hoped. As he was walking inside, he tripped over one of the wires that ran across the floor of the portal and fell against the portal wall. He pushed the on button that was on that wall and the portal hummed to life. 

She took in the last image of her son, trying to commit him to memory. 

His screams seared her mind and she tried to block them out. This was for science. This was necessary to further their studies. 

But when the screaming subsided, something she wasn’t expecting happened.

A ghost stepped out of the portal. He looked just like her son except for the fact that all of his colors had inverted. 

And his eyes.

His eyes opened. They were acid green and full of fear and pain. He made eye contact with her. A bright light appeared around his waist and when it traveled over his body and disappeared, her human son was left standing there.

“Mom?” He said. He held his hand close to his chest.

“Danny, come here.” She gestured him towards her. “Let’s get your suit off. Let’s take a look.”

She unzipped his jumpsuit and pulled his arms out of the top and helped him step out of it. A lichtenberg scar ran from his hand that hit the button up his arm. 

He didn’t seem to realize what happened. He didn’t realize he had died. That he was some kind of abomination. 

“Let’s go on a walk, Danny. Let’s walk that shock off.”

“A walk?” He asked groggily, confused. “Shouldn’t we-”

She shook her head. “No. Let’s go on a walk. You seem okay. Let’s just stretch your muscles out.” 

This wasn’t how she planned for this part to go. She expected him to just be a body on the floor that she’d have to take care of. She didn’t expect him to survive that. If you can consider it that. 

As they walked further away from the house and into the park, she could feel Danny getting uneasy behind her. She could tell he didn’t understand why they were just going on a walk. It got worse when they walked into the woods and she walked off the path. 

“Mom? Where are we going?” He asked nervously. 

There it was. Right behind him. The grave. He hasn’t noticed it yet.

She pushed him and a cry pulled itself out of his mouth. He fell into the grave and his back collided with the ground.

“Mom!” He cried. “What are you doing?” 

She tried not to listen to his cries and pleas. He was a monster. He wasn’t really her son anymore. Not the abomination he turned into. 

She pulled a pop out Fenton shovel out of her tool belt and started shoveling dirt into the grave. He tried to sit up so she started aiming for his face and dumping more dirt in faster so he couldn’t sit up anymore. 

Soon he was completely covered and he had stopped struggling against the force of the dirt on him. She found a large stone and placed it at the head of the grave so she could recognize it when she came back.

She cleaned her shovel and folded it back up, storing it in her belt. She brushed the dirt off of her jumpsuit and composed herself before she started making her way back out of the forest. 

Nobody could know what Maddie did. She was protecting them. All of them. She did what had to be done. She couldn’t let a monster like that walk around. 

Jack and Jazz just thought Danny was missing. They thought he ran away or maybe that somebody picked him off the side of the road one day. They didn’t know that he died in their basement when the portal turned on. That she had orchestrated the whole accident. They would never know. 

But when she caught sight of the monster wearing her son’s face, her heart stopped. 

There he was, sat in the middle of their living room, Jazz and Jack doting on him. But standing between her and them was Officer Baxter and his son.

“Mrs. Fenton.” Officer Baxter said as he stepped forward. 

“Oh.. You’ve- you’ve found my son.” She said with a weak smile. “Where has he been all this time?” 

Dash stepped closer in front of Danny. Jazz placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Mrs. Fenton, I need you to turn around.” He pulled a pair of handcuffs off his belt. 

She stared at them before her eyes darted back up to his face. “What- what are those for?”

“You are being arrested for attempted premeditated homicide.”

“I- I don’t- Why would you think I would do that?” She tried to feign shock, but he kept walking towards her. 

“We already have a warrant out for your arrest and another to search your lab for evidence.”

She looked at the monster on her couch and pulled a blaster out of her utility belt. “I don’t know how you survived, ghost scum, but I won’t let you walk around pretending to be my son!” 

She went to take a shot but Jack jumped up and knocked the gun out of her hand. 

“This is our son, Maddie!” He shouted at her. 

“He’s not my son anymore!” She screamed as Officer Baxter knocked her to the ground and forced her into handcuffs. “He’s ghost scum parading around with his face! My son is dead!” 

“You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney-”

“Let go of me!” Maddie screamed as she struggled against the handcuffs. He pulled her off the ground roughly and started walking her to the door. “My son died! He’s dead! That is not my son!” 

That monster looked at her with wide eyes she swore she saw turn green. A single tear streamed down his face. 

“That is not my son!” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dash watched as his dad carted Maddie to his car. She was still thrashing against him, screaming in the street. 

“What happened, Danno?” He heard Jack whisper behind him. 

“She did something to me.” Danny whispered. 

Dash turned and saw Jazz and Jack exchange a look between the two of them. Danny was still staring at the front door where his mom had been taken away. 

“What did she do to you?” Jazz asked.

Danny shook his head. “If- if I told you… Would you still love me?”

A sad look crossed onto both Jack and Jazz’s faces. “Of course we would.”

“Mom didn’t.”

“What did she do, Danny?” Jack asked him again.

Danny’s gaze finally lifted and landed on Dash. Dash started a little bit at the expression Danny was giving him.

“You want me to tell them?” Dash asked quietly. Danny nodded. 

Dash took a deep breath. “He told me that Maddie asked him to help with the ghost portal. That he went in and pressed a button and when he came back out she looked horrified. Then she led him out to the woods where she had a grave already dug out.” 

Jazz covered her mouth as tears welled up in her eyes. Jack looked horrified. Danny’s eyes were vacant again. 

“I got lost in the woods yesterday and tripped over his empty grave.” Dash looked away from them and at the floor. “He somehow lasted a whole month buried out there. He had just crawled out of the grave not too long before I got there.” 

Danny had started shaking and Jack shushed him. Jazz wrapped her arms around him in a hug. 

“It’s okay.” Jack said. “You’re safe now. You’re back home.” Jack turned to look back up at Dash. 

“Thank you. Thank you for bringing him home to us.” 

Dash nodded. He was about to turn away when something caught his eye. 

Dash saw Danny’s eyes flash an unsettling green. 

What if his mom had been right?

[q-gorgeous]

tech hunter, more like friend hunter amiright?

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 5930

Tucker's best friend has gone missing. At least Phantom's been defeated by the Tech Hunter and the ghosts have fled Amity Park. @lavendarlily

been sitting on this one all month

Tucker walked into the school feeling the best he had in a long time. 

He wasn’t woken up last night by his equipment going off all night long. He’d gotten a full night’s sleep for what felt like the first time in forever. All thanks to his victory he’d had over Phantom. 

He’d finally been able to corner Phantom the night before. He’d been distracted by a ghost he was talking to. Tucker walked up behind and landed the best hit he’d ever gotten on Phantom before. It punctured a hole straight through his back and chest and caused Phantom to stumble forward. The ghost he’d been talking to flew away before Tucker could even look at him. 

Phantom turned around to look at him. His eyes widened ever so slightly. 

“Checkmate, ghost.”

Tucker didn’t stay to see what happened. He knew he’d gotten him that time. He pulled his hoverboard out as Phantom fell to the ground and flew away. Phantom didn’t deserve anything more, the ghost scum that he was. 

Heading down the hallway, Tucker saw Sam at her locker.

“Hey, Sam!” He shouted, speeding up in her direction.

When he called her name she looked up as if she had been spooked. Her eyes were wide as they scanned the hallway and finally landed on him. She tried smiling at him but Tucker could see that it was tight. That it was fake.

“Hi, Tucker.” 

“Hey, are you okay?” He asked. “You look like you’ve a ghost. Or something equally terrifying.”

She pushed her locker closed. “I’m fine. I just didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

“Oh?” Tucker smirked at her. “Did you finally get some alone time with Danny?”

She shoved him. “Gross, Tucker. No. I just couldn’t sleep. I kept having nightmares.”

He frowned. “That sucks. What were they about?”

The look she gave him was haunting. What could she possibly have dreamt about that was having this kind of effect on her?

“I don’t want to talk about it. It doesn’t matter. It really wasn’t even that bad anyways.” Sam smiled another tight smile at him. “Let’s not be late to class.”

He followed behind her. “Have you seen Danny?”

She shook her head and kept her eyes ahead of her, not looking at him. “No. Not yet.”

Tucker pouted. “He didn’t tell me he was sick today. Unless he’s just sleeping in again. Have you figured out what’s been up with him lately? Why he’s always late and skipping class all the time?”

She shook her head again. “Not a clue.”

Tucker watched as she walked ahead of him into their class. That was weird. She wasn’t quite being standoffish but… She was definitely being avoidant. What was that about?

He followed in behind her and walked to his seat. The bell rang and Mr. Lancer started calling names. 

“Dash Baxter?”

“Here.”

“Danny Fenton?”

Tucker took another look around the classroom. Danny wasn’t in here either. He hoped he wasn’t getting sick. But knowing Danny and his sudden change in attendance, he wasn’t very confident that he was sick anyways. 

The day passed slowly. With Sam acting strange and Danny missing, there was nothing to keep him occupied. 

He was starting to get worried though. Danny didn’t normally skip the whole day if he was going to be late or skip classes. Maybe he was just sick. He couldn’t shake the feeling that was starting to creep up on him though. 

He was glad that the ghosts had disappeared with Phantom’s defeat. It meant that his attendance wasn’t so bad, even if it wasn’t nearly as bad as Danny’s. He wondered where all the ghosts were. It was odd that he hadn’t picked up a single ghost on his scanner yet today. 

He walked into the lunch room and grabbed his food from the lunch line. When he was done, he looked around the cafeteria and saw Sam sitting at their normal table. With Jazz?

They looked to be talking in hushed whispers. He started walking towards them with his lunch tray in hand. Jazz looked up past Sam’s shoulder and whispered one more thing before she smiled at Tucker.

“Hi, Tucker.”

“Hey, Jazz. Is Danny home sick today?”

Jazz shot a look at Sam before her eyes darted back to Tucker. “I’m not sure. I actually haven’t seen him since school got out yesterday.”

Tucker frowned. “Oh. That’s weird.” He placed his tray on the table and sat down to Sam’s right. Her backpack was in her lap and she shuffled it to the left a little bit. “Has he ever done that before?” 

Jazz shook her head. “No. I thought maybe he’d gone to one of your guy’s houses. I was expecting to see him at school today. I’m starting to get worried.” 

“Yeah.” Tucker rested his chest in one of his hands and started picking at his food. “Me too.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sam didn’t know what to do.

She’d been walking around with the thermos containing Danny in it all day. She’d been taking her backpack with her everywhere. Even to the bathroom with her. She couldn’t just leave it somewhere. Not with him inside of it, at risk of bleeding to death if he got let out. 

She especially couldn’t let Tucker see it. Couldn’t let him see the contents screen. Couldn’t even let him know she had it.

He knew she didn’t carry the Fenton’s ghost weapons with her. She didn’t endorse them. The ghosts were still beings. She didn’t think it was right to hurt them. It would be suspicious for him to find a partially full thermos in her bag.

She didn’t know what she was going to do, though. Who could she go to? Who could help her? She thought about talking to the Fenton’s. They were the leading ghost experts. Surely they would know what to do.

But she’s heard what they’ve said about Phantom. How they wanted to tear him apart molecule by molecule. Her only saving grace would be that Danny was in his human form when she sucked him up. Would that be enough to convince them that it truly was their son inside of the thermos? She wasn’t sure.

She sat in class, Tucker right behind her, gripping her backpack. She hadn’t been able to focus at all and this was only her first class of the day. She could only imagine how the rest of the day would go. 

She lay her head down on her desk, still clutching her bag close to her. 

Sam had been tailing Phantom for the last couple of minutes. She had a few questions about ghosts that she wanted to ask him and was hidden around the corner while he talked to another ghost. She was hoping she could wait until the other ghost left. She didn’t want to risk getting mauled. 

But before her or the other ghost could do anything, the Tech Hunter flew down into the alleyway Phantom was in. 

She’d never been this close to Tech Hunter before. She always wondered who it was under that mask.

She peeked around the corner just in time to see Tech Hunter’s weapon go off, shooting a hole into Phantom’s back all the way through his chest. 

Phantom stumbled and slowly turned around, clutching the new hole in his chest with his hand.

“Checkmate ghost.”

Sam’s heart stopped. 

No. No no no. It couldn’t be.

She didn’t want it to be true, but his voice was too recognizable. She’d heard it everyday since they met in elementary school. There was no denying this. 

That was Tucker.

Tucker, a cold blooded hunter. A murderer if Phantom’s expression was anything to go by. 

He jumped into the sky on his hoverboard and flew away. Phantom fell to the ground. She finally rounded the corner and walked up to him.

“Phantom!” She shouted and she ran over and knelt on the ground next to him.

His eyes opened slowly and he turned to look at her. “Sam…” 

She stopped for a moment. “You know my name?”

He tried to sit up but she stopped him. “Don’t move. That’s a nasty injury.”

“Sam…” He struggled to lift his arm around to his other side and grabbed the Fenton thermos that he carried around with him. He placed it in her hand that she extended to him.

“Phantom?” She asked quietly. 

“Put me in the thermos.” 

“What? You want me to capture you?”

He took a deep breath. “I’ll… bleed out if I stay here like this. Put me in the thermos. It’ll act as a… stasis of sorts.”

“But-”

A bright ring appeared around Phantom’s waist. It was like nothing she’s ever seen before.

“Put.. me in… the thermos.”

The rings separated and Sam covered her mouth with her free hand.

“Get help.”

The rings disappeared and before her sat her best friend, bleeding out. She stumbled with the thermos in her hand and pressed hard on the button. It sucked him up into it and she pulled it against her chest. 

Shaking, she leaned back against the wall. What was she supposed to do? What if the thermos didn’t actually keep him in a stasis? What if he just bled out inside the thermos instead? She didn’t know how to fix this. 

How did she fix this? 

“Sam.”

A hand grabbed her shoulder and she shot up in her seat. She whipped her head to the side and saw Tucker pulling his hand back. 

“Are you okay?” He asked her, a concerned expression crossing his face. 

She shook her head to try and clear and took a deep breath. “Yeah. I just- I must’ve fallen asleep. I had another nightmare.” 

She stood up and he moved to let her by.

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it? Maybe it’ll help you make sense of why you’re having nightmares.” 

Checkmate, ghost. 

She shook her head again. She knew why she was having nightmares. “No, it’s fine. I’m okay. I’m sure they’ll stop happening soon.” 

He stopped prodding at her after that and they made their way to their next class. 

Sam felt like she couldn’t breathe and like she was suffocating all through class until their third hour came around. They separated and walked opposite directions down the hallway and she finally felt like she could relax. Like she wasn’t in danger. 

She was still tired and was still nodding off in class but without Tucker sitting behind her she was able to focus on class a little more. She still held her backpack in her lap for safe keeping though. 

She was on her way to lunch when she bumped into Jazz in the hallway. 

“Hey, Sam, have you seen Danny?”

Sam’s heart jumped into her throat and she tried to swallow back the tremble in her voice. “Danny?”

“Yeah. He never came home last night. I’m worried. I was hoping you or Tucker had seen him today.” 

Sam swallowed and swung her backpack around to her front. “I have to tell you something.”

Jazz frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t do this alone. Maybe you’ll have some ideas.”

Sam opened her backpack and pulled the thermos out a little. Jazz’s eyes opened wider. 

“Yesterday- yesterday I saw something. Tech Hunter had ambushed Phantom and hurt him real bad. Phantom told me to pull him into the thermos but he transformed before I could do that.”

Jazz raised a hand to cover her mouth. 

“When he transformed back, he turned into-”

“Danny.” Jazz whispered. Sam looked up at her, shocked. 

“He told you?”

Jazz shook her head and met Sam’s eyes. “I found out during the whole Spectra thing. He doesn’t know I figured it out.” 

Sam nodded. “But there’s something else.” She looked around them and pushed the thermos back into her backpack. “Tucker is Tech Hunter.” 

Jazz pulled back, her eyes wide and a hand over her chest. “Are you sure? Tucker didn’t really seem like the type to-”

Sam nodded again more vigorously. “I’m sure. He had a helmet on but I’d recognize his voice anywhere. I’m sure it was him.” 

Jazz started walking towards the cafeteria. Sam followed beside her. “What are we going to do? Did Danny say anything to you besides to get him into the thermos?”

“No.” Sam shook her head. “Just that it would put him into a stasis and to get help. There wasn’t time for him to say anything else. He was too badly hurt.” 

They got to the cafeteria just as Jazz closed her eyes and took a deep breath. They paused outside the doors for a moment before Jazz pushed her way in. 

“What do we do?” 

They walked to the food line and grabbed trays and grabbed food to set on it. Jazz sighed. “I don’t know. We might have to do some research on some stuff before we decide. This is the most scared I’ve ever felt.”

“Me too.” Sam whispered. 

Sam walked them to her usual table and Jazz followed suit and sat down across the table from her. 

“What about your parents?” Sam asked, leaning across the table. “They might know how to help him.” 

Jazz grimaced. “They might be too biased to see past the fact that he’s Phantom. They talk about what they’d do if they ever got him all the time and I don’t want any of it to become a reality. But worse comes to worse-”

Jazz paused as she looked over Sam’s shoulder. She leaned forward to whisper at her.

“We’ll do our own research first. Then we’ll try my parents. Tucker’s coming.” 

Jazz looked back up and smiled at the boy who was walking up behind Sam. Sam tensed up and she was afraid to look behind her. 

“Hi, Tucker.” 

“Hey, Jazz. Is Danny home sick today?” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It’d been a week. It’d been a week since Danny went missing. 

No one had seen him since he left school that day. Not a single person. How did no one see him at all? Where could he have gone?

Tucker had even done a few searches of his own. He’d flown around town on his board, looking for any sign of Danny. He was lucky that the ghosts were still gone, otherwise it would pull from him time searching. 

And Sam was still acting weird. He could understand that she was upset about Danny missing but… It was different than that. Any time he saw the haunted look in her eyes he tried to comfort her about Danny. Tell her that they would find him. It  took her a moment to process it, like she had to remember that he was in fact missing. 

School was ending and Tucker had to struggle to find Sam outside in front of the school. He had to look for a few seconds before he saw her already all the way across the grass, walking down the road. 

“Hey, Sam, wait up!” He waved his hand in the air. 

She didn’t turn to face him and Tucker frowned. He jogged up to her and grabbed onto the handle on her backpack and pulled. He must have caught her off guard because her backpack started sliding off her shoulders and she whipped around, pulling it out of his hands and to her chest. 

“Sam, are you okay?” He asked.

“I’m fine.” She said.

He frowned at her again. Then it dawned on him. 

“Are you walking around with contraband in your backpack?” He smirked at her. 

“What?” 

He made grabby motions at her bag again. “What is it? Drugs? Weed?” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Condoms?” 

Sam hugged her backpack close to her.

“Tucker, stop.”

“What?” He smiled at her. “What do you have in there?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why don’t you want me to look at it so badly?” He raised his eyebrows at her. “Is it a secret? What kind of secret?”

“There’s no secret, Tucker.”

He frowned. “Seriously?” He reached forward and grabbed the front of her backpack and pulled. 

She held on tight and pulled back.

Something was seriously up. He pulled hard and the top of the backpack opened, sending a Fenton thermos rolling across the ground.

Before he could even think about anything beyond the lit up contents screen Sam was shoving him as hard as she could. It knocked him to the ground and she scooped up the thermos and backed away from him.

“What the hell, Sam?” He said as he rubbed his behind. 

“Have you ever heard of respecting someone’s privacy?” She shot back at him as she held the thermos to her chest. 

His mind slowed when he saw how she was holding it. 

“Sam. Why do you have that?”

“Danny gave it to me.”

Tucker shook his head. “His parents offered you one and you refused. Why do you have it?”

“It’s none of your business Tucker.”

He stood back up and took a step toward her.

“Who’s inside the thermos, Sam?”

She took a step back. She looked like she was afraid of him.

He darted forward and tried grabbing the device from her hands. She stepped out of the way and kicked out her heavy combat boot, catching his feet and sending him towards the ground again.

He groaned and pushed himself back up. “Give me the thermos.”

“No.”

“What are you going to do with a ghost anyways?” He turned to face her. “Aren’t you against hurting the ghosts and holding them hostage? What if you let it out and it hurts you? A ghost doesn’t deserve the safety you’re giving it right now.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She leveled him with a cold, hate filled stare. Her expression took Tucker aback. He barked out a laugh.

“What ghost could possibly be in there that you feel this strongly about?” He took another step towards her, followed by her taking a step back. “Ember? An ecto-puss? That dog that ruined Valerie’s life? What ghost is worth this?”

“Why should I tell you?!” Sam shouted at him. “You’re a cold hearted murderer that’s okay with ending a sentient being’s life! How awful do you have to be to want to kill someone?”

Tucker leveled a look at her. How did she get a hold of him? “He’s already dead, Sam.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re right. He doesn’t matter. Give me the thermos.”

“No.”

“Why are you so insistent on-” Tucker started but pulled back as Sam started screaming at him.

“You didn’t see what I saw!” Tears were streaming down her face now. “I saw you shoot him. One of my best friends became a murderer. And then I went to go help him. All he asked me to do was put him in the thermos. I didn’t understand and he transformed back before I understood.”

“He transformed back?” Tucker asked, confused. That wasn’t something he was aware Phantom could do. Did he have shapeshifting abilities?

“I don’t think Phantom is just a ghost.” Sam whispered. 

“Ha. Yeah, what else would he be?”

“Our best friend.”

Tucker’s heart stuttered in his chest. “No. That can’t be possible.”

“It is.” She nodded her head frantically. “I saw it with my own eyes. He transformed from Phantom to Danny. It was some bright white ring that appeared around his waist. It’s not like anything I’ve seen another ghost do before. He went from bleeding ectoplasm to bleeding blood after he transformed.”

Tucker’s ears were ringing now. “How? How is he both alive and a ghost?”

“I don’t know.” He could hardly hear her whisper. “I don’t know what to do.”

“He’s just in there?” Tucker gestured at the thermos. “Dying?”

“He said he’d be in a stasis if he was in the thermos. That’s why he asked me to put him in there. He asked me to get help. But anyone that could possibly help wants to kill him.”

Tucker’s vision warped and spun. He staggered where he stood and he could feel bile rising up in his throat. 

He tried to kill his best friend. He probably actually killed him. That was the nastiest injury he’s ever seen Phantom get. Phantom never had to go into stasis before. He could always regenerate and heal himself before. 

Tucker leaned to the side and threw up. 

He killed his best friend. His best friend was going to die and it was all his fault. 

“What are we going to do Tucker?” Sam asked him. “You’ve got ghost stuff. Do you know someone who can help him?”

Vlad Masters flashed through his brain. He supplied Tucker with everything he needed to fight ghosts. And for some reason he didn’t understand until now, Danny absolutely despised him. 

“I- No. I don’t have anything that can help him.” Tucker whispered. “I’ve killed him.”

He looked back at her and she was shaking her head as tears welled up in her eyes. “Don’t say that. We have to believe there’s something we can do. If there’s nothing-” 

“He’ll be gone.”

They stood there in silence for a few moments. 

“We need to go talk to Jazz.” She said quietly. 

“Jazz?” 

Sam nodded. “I already told her everything. If we have no one else that can help us, we need to figure out how to talk to their parents. They’re our last option.” 

The pit in Tucker’s stomach grew even bigger. How could he admit to his best friend’s parents that he killed him?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tucker sat with Sam and Jazz in the Fenton’s living room. They were trying to figure out how to break the news to the Fenton’s about the situation with Danny.

“Do I just walk up to them like ‘hey, Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, second parents to me, I killed your son because he’s also that Phantom menace that we both hated?”

Sam shuffled in her spot. “We just need to start with he’s Phantom and injured in the thermos and that we need their help.”

“They don’t need to know it was you, Tucker.” Jazz said softly.

“Danny knew it was me. That whole time. He absolutely knew it was me.” Tucker shook his head. “Shouldn’t I owe it to his parents to tell them the whole truth? I deserve their anger.” 

“You didn’t know it was him, though.” Sam said. “None of us did. None of us would have been able to tell. Who’s gonna think a dead kid is their living best friend?”

“I-”

“Hey, kids.” Maddie walked into the living. The three of them jumped at the sound. She smiled sadly. “Jumpy today, are we?”

Jazz nodded. “We’re just worried about Danny.”

Maddie’s smile fell. “Me too.” 

Jazz looked up at her mom. “Actually, Mom, can you go get Dad? We have something we need to talk to you guys about?” 

Maddie looked between the three of them concerned, but nodded and went to go get Jack.

“We haven’t figured out what we’re going to say to them yet though!” Tucker whispered. “What are we going to tell them?”

“Just let Sam and I handle it.” Jazz shushed him. “You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to, but we need to get it over with. The longer we stall the harder it’ll be.” 

Maddie walked back into the living room with Jack trailing behind her. They sat on the couch that was facing them from the opposite side of the room. 

Jazz took a deep breath. “We know where Danny’s been.”

“What?” Jack and Maddie exclaimed together.

“Why haven’t you told us? Where is he?” Maddie asked. 

“He’s…” Jazz started but petered off.

Sam looked at her and picked up where she left off. “He’s Phantom. He’s somehow a ghost human hybrid. He was shot and he’s hurt really badly.” 

Maddie pulled back. “What do you mean he’s Phantom?” 

“I saw him transform with my very own eyes.” Sam pleaded. “You have to believe us. He’s hurt and we didn’t know who else we could turn to.” 

“Where is he?” Jack asked quietly. 

“He’s in here.” Sam pulled the thermos out of her backpack and held it up in her hands for them to see. 

“He’s in the thermos?” Jack asked, shocked. “How is that possible?” 

“You have Phantom in the thermos?” Maddie stood up.

“It’s Danny in the thermos. Phantom is Danny.” 

“What do you mean that’s Danny? That can’t be Danny.” Maddie stepped forward and reached out a hand. “Give us the thermos.” 

“You have to believe us.” Sam pleaded. 

Tucker raised his arm in front of Sam to stop her. “Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, I didn’t believe Sam at first either. I thought it would be impossible for Danny to be Phantom. But the more I thought about it the more it made sense.”

He took a deep breath. “I’m Tech Hunter. I was the one that shot him.”

Maddie inhaled a sharp breath and pulled her hand back like she’d been burned. 

“I hated him.” Tucker whispered. “I thought ghosts like him were the scum of the earth. But looking back… He never retaliated against me. He always played on the defense and I never thought anything of it. I thought he was a bad shot. He’d joke around with me like he’d known me all his life.”

He stared at the floor, wrapping his arms around himself. “I never thought the reason he’d do that was because he actually had known me all his life. I just thought he was manipulating me.” He choked out a laugh. “It’s like they say. Hindsight is twenty twenty.” 

“If this is true and Danny really is.. In there.” Maddie gestured at the thermos with a shaking hand. “What are we supposed to do? We don’t have anything to help ghosts and an injury of that magnitude might not be able to be helped by us and our medical knowledge.”

“Maybe you could help us find someone in the ghost zone who would know more about how to help him.” Jazz said. “Even if we find someone we’ll need help getting there somehow.” 

Jack and Maddie exchange a glance between them.

“He’s our son, Maddie.” He said quietly. “We have to try, even if he really is Phantom.” 

She turned to look at the thermos in Sam’s hands.

“Okay. We’ll help. Where do we start?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I was able to hack into Danny’s computer.” Tucker said. “He has files with information about all the ghosts he knows. There are ghosts in the ghost zone in some place called the far frozen that have a lot of medical know-how. They’ve helped him before. Maybe they’d be willing to help him again.”

Maddie nodded. “That might be our best option. We could try to do all we can here, but if that injury is as big as the two of you described it, there might not be much we can actually do ourselves.” 

Tucker printed out the map Danny had made of the ghost zone and handed it to Maddie.

“He’s got this all mapped out already?” Maddie stared at the map with wide eyes. “We haven’t even made a trip into the ghost zone a single time yet.” 

“This must’ve been what he was doing some of the times I thought he was blowing us off.” Tucker sighed and took his glasses on and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me.” 

“We-” Maddie took a deep breath. “If Phantom is really Danny, we’ll both have a lot to make up for.”

Tucker looked up at her. “Are we horrible for not knowing he was Danny?”

Maddie shrugged. “It’s hard to say. I would like to think I’d recognize one of my kids anywhere… That I know them like the back of my hand, but…”

“We just couldn’t see it.”

Maddie nodded. “But getting to his yeti friends is something we can do to make it up to him. Let’s focus on that for now instead.” 

Tucker turned off Danny’s computer and stood up. “I guess you’re right. What do we do now?”

He followed her out of Danny’s room and down the stairs. “We make sure the Specter Speeder is all good for ghost zone travel. Then we’ll prepare for the trip.” 

“I think Danny’s notes said that the far frozen is cold. We should bring our coats and gloves with us.”

Maddie smiled. “That’s good to know. Thank you.” 

They walked into the living room where Sam, Jazz, and Jack were sitting around the table. They were going over what looked like notes from the Fenton’s lab.

“What are you guys working on?” Maddie asked.

“We’re going over your guy’s formula for ecto-dejecto.” Jazz said as she turned over another paper. “That’s one that you guys just kinda scrapped and never fixed. We’re thinking it could help since it made all the ghosts you tested it on get stronger.”

“Once we find the right formula, we’re going to make a couple batches of it.” Jack said. “Aha! Here it is! Did you guys find anything on Danny’s computer?”

“We found some information on a medical center that’s located in the ghost zone somewhere.” Maddie said. “Danny has been mapping out the ghost zone too so we’ll be able to get there without much fuss.” 

“That’s great!” Sam turned to face him. “Way to go, Tucker.”

“Thanks.” he shuffled on his feet. 

“Jack and I are going to go downstairs and work on preparations with the ecto-dejecto and checking the Specter Speeder. You three gather together enough coats, hats, and gloves for everyone. After that you could start preparing some food for the trip.” 

It took them a couple hours to get everything ready, but soon they had gathered enough clothing and food for everyone and made sure the Specter Speeder worked. Jack loaded a crate of ecto-dejecto in the speeder and turned around to face them. 

“We’re ready to go! Let’s get Danny some help!”

They started the Specter Speeder and flew into the green swirl of the ghost portal. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny groaned. Everything hurt. Where was he? He could hear a faint beeping. Was he at the hospital? What happened? The last thing he remembered was-

His eyes shot open and he tried to sit up but his chest hurt too much. 

He was in the hospital. What were the doctors told? Who found him? Did his parents know? Did the GIW? He had to-

“Whoa, hey. Don’t move.” 

He turned his head and there standing to his left was Sam.

“Sam? You’re here? Where- My parents-”

She shushed him and gently laid a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay. We’re in the Far Frozen. Tucker found the map on your computer.”

His heart fell and he swallowed. “Tucker?”

She nodded. “He’s been waiting outside. He didn’t want to be in here when you woke up in case you didn’t want to see him.” 

He looked towards the door. “He’s here?”

“Yes. He’s here.” 

How did Tucker find out about him? Why is he even here? Danny thought Tucker wouldn’t want anything to do with him if he ever found out who he was. But he was just waiting outside his room because he was afraid Danny didn’t want to see him? 

“Is anyone else here?” He asked.

“Your parents are talking to Frostbite about all this medical equipment they have here. Jazz is off learning how yeti society works.” 

Danny chuckled, but groaned as it rattled his chest. He laid a hand on top of it gently.

“How long have I been here?” 

Sam’s expression turned sad. “It’s been a little over a month. You were in some pod that Frostbite has in a different room for awhile too. It was supposed to help your ectoplasm repair the hole in your chest. You still have a bit of healing left, but the worst of it is behind you.” 

He let out a deep breath. “Thank you.”

“What?”

“You saved me. You got me the help I needed. I wouldn’t be here without you. Thank you, Sam.”

“Danny, I-”

She stopped at the sound of shuffling outside the door. They both looked towards the doorway and saw Tucker just as he ducked out of the way. Sam looked back at him. 

“Do you want to see him?” She asked softly. 

Danny kept looking at the door. Tucker wouldn’t be here if he was just trying to kill him. He was respecting his boundaries and keeping his distance until Danny asked for him. Would they be able to go back to how things were before? Should Danny want that?

He turned his head back to Sam and nodded. 

“Okay. I’ll go get him.” 

She stood up and walked across the room and through the door. A few moments passed before she walked back in, hand in hand with Tucker as he followed behind her. 

She stopped beside Danny’s bed. Tucker still wasn’t looking at Danny. 

“I can give you two some space to talk. Unless you want me to stay here, Danny.”

Danny looked at Tucker and the shame and guilt in his face. He turned back to Sam and shook his head. “I think we’ll be okay. You should probably let everyone else know that I’m awake.”

She nodded and turned to walk away, shooting one last glance at them before she left. 

His gaze went back to Tucker. He was finally looking at him. Tears were swimming in his eyes and his lips were trembling. 

“Tucker-“ Danny started but Tucker cut him off. 

“No. Don’t forgive me.” Tucker took a shaky breath. “I don’t deserve it. I was so caught up in my hatred with ghosts that I couldn’t see what was right in front of me. I couldn’t tell I was fighting my best friend.” 

Tucker pushed his hands up under glasses and covered his eyes. “You joked around with me. You never tried to hurt me. You were still acting like my best friend and I went and shot you.” 

“Tucker-“ Danny closed his eyes. “No one knew. I didn’t tell anyone and no one could tell it was me.”

“Jazz knew.” Tucker said quietly.

Danny’s eyebrows shot up on his forehead. “She did? How?” 

Tucker shrugged. “She said it had something to do with Ms. Spectra. She didn’t really elaborate much on it because we were focused on getting things figured out with you. 

“Oh.” He looked down at his lap. “I still didn’t tell her though. I didn’t even know she knew.” 

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Tucker whispered. “You could’ve avoided so many things if we had just known.” 

Danny fiddled with his fingers. “I was scared. I didn’t want you guys to think I was a freak or for my parents to think I was a monster. You had already become Tech Hunter by the time I was considering telling you and Sam but you hated me, so I couldn’t. I didn’t know if your hatred would overshadow our friendship.” Danny looked up at Tucker again. “But I can see it didn’t because you’re here now.” 

A sob finally broke its way out of Tucker’s throat. He leaned his arms on the side of Danny’s bed and lay his head on top of them. His sobs wracked his body. Danny lifted an arm up and slowly brought it down on Tucker’s shoulder. His sobs wracked his body harder. 

“It’s okay. I’m okay.” Danny took a deep breath. “We’re okay.”

[q-gorgeous]

Ghosts and Butterflies

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 2645

Danny thought being half-ghost would give him a higher tolerance for alcohol. To his horror, it does the exact opposite, and he wakes up the day after his first college party with hazy memories, a ring on his finger, and one Dash Baxter passed out on his dorm room floor. @kinglazrus

ehehehhehehehhe

Danny groaned as he woke up. His head was killing him and his stomach was rolling. What happened last night? He couldn’t remember. 

He sat up and rubbed a hand over his face. He stopped as he felt something graze over his skin. Pulling his hand back he opened his eyes. There on his hand was a blue… wedding band?

“What the fuck?” Danny stared at his hand, bewildered. 

All he knew was that he went to his first college party last night. He’d had a couple drinks but he can’t remember anything past that. He thought his ghost half would make his tolerance to alcohol higher, but it seemed to have the opposite effect, if his memory and the blasting headache was anything to go by. 

He heard a groan coming from his floor and he flew up. Trying to stand, his legs got tangled in his blankets. He tripped over himself and fell to the ground, right on top of the person on his dorm room floor. They let out another groan.

“What the fuck?”

Danny’s eyes opened wide. He took in the muscular chest he was laying on top of. He pushed himself up, hands on their muscular shoulders. When he pushed himself far enough away from them, he saw Dash Baxter laying on the floor of his dorm room underneath him. 

“Dash? What are you doing in my dorm room?”

Dash opened his eyes and met Danny’s gaze. They furrowed as they scanned Danny’s face before they widened again. A blush rose to his cheeks and his adams apple bobbed as he swallowed. 

“Do you remember anything?”

“Ahh.. No. My tolerance to alcohol is much less than I thought it’d be. I think I blacked out pretty early on. I don’t even remember seeing you at all last night.” 

“Oh..” 

“Yeah..” Danny sat back, trying to ignore the fact that he was sitting in Dash’s lap now. “But I do have a question about this.” He held up his left hand.

Dash stared at his hand and his blush grew deeper. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I assume you know what happened?”

“Oh, I uh, maybe know. A little of what happened.”

“Mind sharing then?” Danny really would like to know. How in the world could something like this happen in one night?

Dash nodded. “Yeah.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dash walked into the frat house. The party was already raging and he was kind of disappointed that he missed the first half, but that’s always the boring half anyways. The later it got, the better the party was. 

He walked inside and imagine his surprise when he saw Danny Fenton dancing with a guy in this frat house’s living room. 

He didn’t really take Fenton for a party animal, but he sure was going. He was dancing like he didn’t have a single care in the world. 

Danny opened his eyes and saw Dash staring at him. 

“Baxter!” He cheered. Dash rolled his eyes.

“You’re drunk.” 

“And you’re late.”

Dash shrugged. “I’m fashionably late. That’s socially acceptable.”

“Come on, babe. Let’s keep dancing.” 

Dash frowned as Danny turned back to his dancing partner. They got back into it and Dash made his way to the drinks table. He picked up a beer and took a drink out of it. He made his way back to the dance floor and found some people to dance with. 

He was dancing with a girl from one of his classes for a bit. He stepped back to go get himself another drink. 

Dash was knocked to the side when someone bumped into him.

“Sor’y.”

Fenton slurred as he walked past him. Dash looked at him as he walked away and a bad feeling made a pit in his stomach. He sighed and followed behind the two of them. 

Fenton sat on the couch with the guy he had been dancing with earlier. His drink sloshed as he talked with his hands. He looked at someone who called his name and while Danny wasn’t looking, the guy he was sitting with tipped something into his drink. Dash frowned and stood up, making his way over to them. 

“Hey, buddy.” Dash towered over the guy. 

“What do you want?” The guy asked him. Danny looked over at him and then up at Dash.

“I want to dance with Danny. Want to finish his drink for him?” 

The guy sat up straighter and stared at him. “Danny can finish his own drink if he wants. I don’t need it.” 

“I don’t know.” Dash leaned down and plucked the cup out of Danny’s hand. “You sure seemed interested in customizing it for him. I figured maybe you’d want to try it yourself.”

Danny had an awed look on his face as he stared at Dash. He looked at the guy he was with. “Blake?” 

Blake stood up and shoved Dash back as he started walking away from them. “How pathetic do you have to be anyways to try and drug someone who’s already wasted out of his ass?” 

Dash threw the drink down on the floor and sat down next to Danny. He ignored the looks people were giving him and instead looked at Danny. He was still looking at Dash like he had picked up Danny’s whole world. 

“You did that for me?”

Dash draped his arms across the back of the couch. “I couldn’t just let that guy drug you. Who knows what would have happened to you after.”

Danny placed a hand on his cheek and then kissed the other one. Dash looked at him.

“Thank yo’ for savin’ me.” Danny drawled out. Dash smiled. He stood up and held his hand out to Danny.

“Want to dance?”

A big smile spread on Danny’s face and he grabbed Dash’s hand. Before heading to the open space in the living room, Dash got each of them a new drink. He chugged his first one and got another before he dragged Danny to the dance floor. 

They danced and drank and danced and drank some more. At some point they had made their way out of the center of the living room and were sitting on the floor in the corner away from everyone. The music was still blaring but for now, it was just them. 

“Haha, they really dared you and Kwan to do that?” Danny asked, gesturing with his drink.

Dash rubbed the back of his neck. “Ha, yeah. We were in middle school. They thought it would be funny. It was kinda weird, Kwan’s not really my type.”

“Ya’h. That’s how I felt with Sam.” Danny slurred. “Like she’s cute and everything but I only really saw her as a friend. We on’y dated because everyone was telling us that’s what we were supposed to do.”

“Well if her spooky goth schtick wasn’t your type, then what is? I would’ve thought that’d be your thing.” 

“Oh, my type?” Danny asked. “I, uh, I kinda-”

Dash stared at Danny as he stammered. Danny looked up to him and studied his face for a few moments. He looked like he came to some sort of conclusion. 

Danny crawled the three feet to Dash and sat in his lap. Dash swallowed and looked up at Danny. He reached a hand up and rested it against Danny’s cheek. He leaned into it and closed his eyes. When Danny opened them again, he looked at Dash’s lips and leaned down. 

Their lips met in a frenzy of heat and desperation. Dash brought up his other hand and tried to pull Danny even closer while Danny ran his fingers through his hair. It sent shivers down his spine and he tilted his head. Danny made a noise and butterflies erupted in Dash’s stomach. Soon Danny was pulling away for air. They were both out of breath. 

What was he doing? 

Danny wasn’t going to remember any of this tomorrow morning. Not with how wasted he was. Did Danny actually want him like this? 

Danny leaned back down to kiss Dash again but he pushed him back.

“I- I’m sorry.” Dash said softly. “Not like this. Not when you’re wasted out of your mind.” 

Danny frowned. “But if I want to-”

“You can find me when you’re sober if you really want to. Come on, let’s get you back to your dorm. You need to sleep this off.”

“I don’ wan’ ta go.” Danny grumbled as Dash pulled him by his hand to stand. 

“Too bad. I’m gonna make sure you get home safely.” 

Danny groaned and Dash pulled him by his hand out of the house. Dash’s brain was still swimming with alcohol himself. He wasn’t sure he was going to make it back to his own dorm tonight. 

“I don’ wan’ to walk.” Danny said as he followed behind Dash. Suddenly he stopped. His head shot up and when Dash turned to look at him, he could see the metaphorical lightbulb as Danny had an idea. “Wait, no, I dun’ have to walk.”

“Danny, I am not carrying-”

Dash was interrupted by a flash of white light that momentarily blinded him. He threw his arm up in front of his face but peeked past it. 

A ring of light had appeared around Danny’s waist. What was that? Danny surely couldn’t be performing magic tricks while he was this drunk. 

The ring separated into two and traveled over his body. Dash’s face flushed as the rings revealed a very familiar jumpsuit in between them. They passed his head and feet and he lifted off the ground and moved to float on his back. 

Danny Phantom? Danny had been Phantom this whole time? 

“This’s much easier.” 

“What-” Dash watched as Danny floated along the sidewalk towards the dorms. How was this even possible? 

Danny whined. “Will you at least stay at my dorm with me? No more kissi’g. I promise.” Danny held a hand to his chest and held the other one up, brandishing the… Girl Scout’s hand sign? 

Dash could feel his resolution slipping. Danny was Phantom. His gay awakening. Could he really say no? Did he want to? 

“... or…” Danny drawled. “We could do even more kissing.”

Danny floated up to Dash and wrapped his arms around his shoulders. His brain was short circuiting and the alcohol was not helping. This was something out of his wildest fantasies. Phantom. Phantom asking to kiss him. Making out with Phantom. 

His resolve broke and Dash pulled Danny’s lips down to his own. This kiss was sloppy and hot but also sort of awkward because any time he tried to press closer to Danny he’d just push him backwards in the air. 

“So… mor’ kissi’g?” Danny drawled out when Dash pulled away for air.

“I- I don’t want to take advantage of your when you’re this drunk.” Dash said as he caught his breath.

Danny smiled at him and flipped upside down on his back. “Y’ure drunk too.”

“Not as much as you are.” 

Danny whined. “I’ve been waiting like one third of- of my life to kiss you, and now y’u want to be a chivalrous man-”

“Wait, what-” Dash did a double take at him.

“-and wait till I’m sober but all I want to do is smooch.” 

“One third of your life?” Dash whispered. 

Danny floated backwards towards Dash upside down and kissed him again. Dash kissed him back and pulled away a moment later.

“If we’re going to do this, I want to do this right.” Dash whispered. “Let’s wait until you’re sobered up.” 

Danny whined as Dash started pulling him through the air behind him towards the dorms. “Will you at least stay the night with me?”

Dash chuckled. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to make to your dorm and then to my own. My head is swimming pretty bad right now.”

Danny cheered and flipped back over so he was floating on his stomach. Dash let go of his wrist as he reached forward and wrapped his arms around Dash’s shoulders, letting himself be pulled through the air as Dash walked. He rested his head on Dash’s right shoulder. 

“I hope I remember this.” Danny whispered. 

“Is there anything you want to do to remind you of it even if you can’t remember?” Dash asked him. 

Danny hummed. After a moment of thinking he gasped. He cupped his hands together in front of Dash and a blue glow emanated from them. Dash watched in awe. Phantom didn’t normally use his ice powers during fights so it was always a treat to see them. 

Danny pulled his hands apart and sitting in his palm were two blue rings. He picked one up and slipped it on his own finger. Then he made grabby motions to Dash. He lefted his hand up and Danny slid the other ring onto his own finger. 

“Rings?” Dash asked as he looked at it. 

“I can’t not notice that when I wake up in the morning.” Danny wrapped his arms around Dash’s shoulders again. “If you’re there in the morning I’ll prob’bly ask you about it.” 

Dash smiled. “Don’t worry. I’ll be there tomorrow.” 

He could feel Danny smile against his neck. “Good.”

Danny placed a kiss against the back of Dash’s neck. 

Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I transformed in front of you?” Danny whispered.

“Yep.” Dash nodded. 

“And I kissed you?”

Dash shrugged. “I also kissed you.”

Danny leaned forward until his head was leaning on Dash’s chest. “I can’t believe I did all that. I thought being half ghost would make me more tolerant to alcohol, not the other way around.” 

“There is one thing we have to talk about.” Dash said.

“There is?”

“Yep.” Dash looked at him straight in the eyes. “Your taste in men. Blake? Really?” 

Danny snorted. “Like you’re much better.”

“I at least wasn’t trying to drug you while you were already wasted out of your mind.” Dash rolled his eyes. “That’s gotta be a big step up. A pretty big one considering you’ve apparently wanted to kiss me for like a third of your life?”

Danny groaned again and started pulling away but Dash grabbed his wrist. He pulled him back. 

“I didn’t say that was bad. I am here, aren’t I?”

Danny looked away from him. “Are you only here because you found out I’m Phantom?”

“What?” Dash looked confused. 

“You hated me back in high school. I never thought you’d feel like that for me. So is it just because I’m Phantom? Because everyone always knew you adored him.” 

Dash’s eyes widened and he shook his head. “No, I- You kissed me before that. I kissed you the first time not knowing you were Phantom. I didn’t want to take advantage of you but you being Phantom just made it harder to keep my resolve.”

“How many times did we kiss last night?” Danny whispered. 

“Uh..” Dash started thinking. “You kissed me on the cheek when I got Blake to leave. We kissed once on the living room floor of the frat house. A couple times on the walk here. And-”

Danny covered his face. “And I don’t get to remember any of them?”

Dash barked out a laugh. “That’s what you’re worried about? Not whether or not I was taking advantage of you?”

“You literally saved my life, I don’t have to worry about that.”

“So you don’t mind that I kissed you?” Dash asked, leaning forward and propping himself up with his arms. 

“No. Not particularly.” Danny said leaning forward. He placed his hands back on Dash’s shoulders. “I probably enjoyed it.” 

Dash hummed, looking at his lips. “I think you did. You kept asking for more.”

“Are you going to give me what I want?” 

Dash sat up the rest of the way and placed a kiss on Danny’s lips. They smiled into it and kissed again.

[q-gorgeous]

Ghosts and Butterflies

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 2645

Danny thought being half-ghost would give him a higher tolerance for alcohol. To his horror, it does the exact opposite, and he wakes up the day after his first college party with hazy memories, a ring on his finger, and one Dash Baxter passed out on his dorm room floor. @kinglazrus

ehehehhehehehhe

Danny groaned as he woke up. His head was killing him and his stomach was rolling. What happened last night? He couldn’t remember. 

He sat up and rubbed a hand over his face. He stopped as he felt something graze over his skin. Pulling his hand back he opened his eyes. There on his hand was a blue… wedding band?

“What the fuck?” Danny stared at his hand, bewildered. 

All he knew was that he went to his first college party last night. He’d had a couple drinks but he can’t remember anything past that. He thought his ghost half would make his tolerance to alcohol higher, but it seemed to have the opposite effect, if his memory and the blasting headache was anything to go by. 

He heard a groan coming from his floor and he flew up. Trying to stand, his legs got tangled in his blankets. He tripped over himself and fell to the ground, right on top of the person on his dorm room floor. They let out another groan.

“What the fuck?”

Danny’s eyes opened wide. He took in the muscular chest he was laying on top of. He pushed himself up, hands on their muscular shoulders. When he pushed himself far enough away from them, he saw Dash Baxter laying on the floor of his dorm room underneath him. 

“Dash? What are you doing in my dorm room?”

Dash opened his eyes and met Danny’s gaze. They furrowed as they scanned Danny’s face before they widened again. A blush rose to his cheeks and his adams apple bobbed as he swallowed. 

“Do you remember anything?”

“Ahh.. No. My tolerance to alcohol is much less than I thought it’d be. I think I blacked out pretty early on. I don’t even remember seeing you at all last night.” 

“Oh..” 

“Yeah..” Danny sat back, trying to ignore the fact that he was sitting in Dash’s lap now. “But I do have a question about this.” He held up his left hand.

Dash stared at his hand and his blush grew deeper. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I assume you know what happened?”

“Oh, I uh, maybe know. A little of what happened.”

“Mind sharing then?” Danny really would like to know. How in the world could something like this happen in one night?

Dash nodded. “Yeah.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dash walked into the frat house. The party was already raging and he was kind of disappointed that he missed the first half, but that’s always the boring half anyways. The later it got, the better the party was. 

He walked inside and imagine his surprise when he saw Danny Fenton dancing with a guy in this frat house’s living room. 

He didn’t really take Fenton for a party animal, but he sure was going. He was dancing like he didn’t have a single care in the world. 

Danny opened his eyes and saw Dash staring at him. 

“Baxter!” He cheered. Dash rolled his eyes.

“You’re drunk.” 

“And you’re late.”

Dash shrugged. “I’m fashionably late. That’s socially acceptable.”

“Come on, babe. Let’s keep dancing.” 

Dash frowned as Danny turned back to his dancing partner. They got back into it and Dash made his way to the drinks table. He picked up a beer and took a drink out of it. He made his way back to the dance floor and found some people to dance with. 

He was dancing with a girl from one of his classes for a bit. He stepped back to go get himself another drink. 

Dash was knocked to the side when someone bumped into him.

“Sor’y.”

Fenton slurred as he walked past him. Dash looked at him as he walked away and a bad feeling made a pit in his stomach. He sighed and followed behind the two of them. 

Fenton sat on the couch with the guy he had been dancing with earlier. His drink sloshed as he talked with his hands. He looked at someone who called his name and while Danny wasn’t looking, the guy he was sitting with tipped something into his drink. Dash frowned and stood up, making his way over to them. 

“Hey, buddy.” Dash towered over the guy. 

“What do you want?” The guy asked him. Danny looked over at him and then up at Dash.

“I want to dance with Danny. Want to finish his drink for him?” 

The guy sat up straighter and stared at him. “Danny can finish his own drink if he wants. I don’t need it.” 

“I don’t know.” Dash leaned down and plucked the cup out of Danny’s hand. “You sure seemed interested in customizing it for him. I figured maybe you’d want to try it yourself.”

Danny had an awed look on his face as he stared at Dash. He looked at the guy he was with. “Blake?” 

Blake stood up and shoved Dash back as he started walking away from them. “How pathetic do you have to be anyways to try and drug someone who’s already wasted out of his ass?” 

Dash threw the drink down on the floor and sat down next to Danny. He ignored the looks people were giving him and instead looked at Danny. He was still looking at Dash like he had picked up Danny’s whole world. 

“You did that for me?”

Dash draped his arms across the back of the couch. “I couldn’t just let that guy drug you. Who knows what would have happened to you after.”

Danny placed a hand on his cheek and then kissed the other one. Dash looked at him.

“Thank yo’ for savin’ me.” Danny drawled out. Dash smiled. He stood up and held his hand out to Danny.

“Want to dance?”

A big smile spread on Danny’s face and he grabbed Dash’s hand. Before heading to the open space in the living room, Dash got each of them a new drink. He chugged his first one and got another before he dragged Danny to the dance floor. 

They danced and drank and danced and drank some more. At some point they had made their way out of the center of the living room and were sitting on the floor in the corner away from everyone. The music was still blaring but for now, it was just them. 

“Haha, they really dared you and Kwan to do that?” Danny asked, gesturing with his drink.

Dash rubbed the back of his neck. “Ha, yeah. We were in middle school. They thought it would be funny. It was kinda weird, Kwan’s not really my type.”

“Ya’h. That’s how I felt with Sam.” Danny slurred. “Like she’s cute and everything but I only really saw her as a friend. We on’y dated because everyone was telling us that’s what we were supposed to do.”

“Well if her spooky goth schtick wasn’t your type, then what is? I would’ve thought that’d be your thing.” 

“Oh, my type?” Danny asked. “I, uh, I kinda-”

Dash stared at Danny as he stammered. Danny looked up to him and studied his face for a few moments. He looked like he came to some sort of conclusion. 

Danny crawled the three feet to Dash and sat in his lap. Dash swallowed and looked up at Danny. He reached a hand up and rested it against Danny’s cheek. He leaned into it and closed his eyes. When Danny opened them again, he looked at Dash’s lips and leaned down. 

Their lips met in a frenzy of heat and desperation. Dash brought up his other hand and tried to pull Danny even closer while Danny ran his fingers through his hair. It sent shivers down his spine and he tilted his head. Danny made a noise and butterflies erupted in Dash’s stomach. Soon Danny was pulling away for air. They were both out of breath. 

What was he doing? 

Danny wasn’t going to remember any of this tomorrow morning. Not with how wasted he was. Did Danny actually want him like this? 

Danny leaned back down to kiss Dash again but he pushed him back.

“I- I’m sorry.” Dash said softly. “Not like this. Not when you’re wasted out of your mind.” 

Danny frowned. “But if I want to-”

“You can find me when you’re sober if you really want to. Come on, let’s get you back to your dorm. You need to sleep this off.”

“I don’ wan’ ta go.” Danny grumbled as Dash pulled him by his hand to stand. 

“Too bad. I’m gonna make sure you get home safely.” 

Danny groaned and Dash pulled him by his hand out of the house. Dash’s brain was still swimming with alcohol himself. He wasn’t sure he was going to make it back to his own dorm tonight. 

“I don’ wan’ to walk.” Danny said as he followed behind Dash. Suddenly he stopped. His head shot up and when Dash turned to look at him, he could see the metaphorical lightbulb as Danny had an idea. “Wait, no, I dun’ have to walk.”

“Danny, I am not carrying-”

Dash was interrupted by a flash of white light that momentarily blinded him. He threw his arm up in front of his face but peeked past it. 

A ring of light had appeared around Danny’s waist. What was that? Danny surely couldn’t be performing magic tricks while he was this drunk. 

The ring separated into two and traveled over his body. Dash’s face flushed as the rings revealed a very familiar jumpsuit in between them. They passed his head and feet and he lifted off the ground and moved to float on his back. 

Danny Phantom? Danny had been Phantom this whole time? 

“This’s much easier.” 

“What-” Dash watched as Danny floated along the sidewalk towards the dorms. How was this even possible? 

Danny whined. “Will you at least stay at my dorm with me? No more kissi’g. I promise.” Danny held a hand to his chest and held the other one up, brandishing the… Girl Scout’s hand sign? 

Dash could feel his resolution slipping. Danny was Phantom. His gay awakening. Could he really say no? Did he want to? 

“... or…” Danny drawled. “We could do even more kissing.”

Danny floated up to Dash and wrapped his arms around his shoulders. His brain was short circuiting and the alcohol was not helping. This was something out of his wildest fantasies. Phantom. Phantom asking to kiss him. Making out with Phantom. 

His resolve broke and Dash pulled Danny’s lips down to his own. This kiss was sloppy and hot but also sort of awkward because any time he tried to press closer to Danny he’d just push him backwards in the air. 

“So… mor’ kissi’g?” Danny drawled out when Dash pulled away for air.

“I- I don’t want to take advantage of your when you’re this drunk.” Dash said as he caught his breath.

Danny smiled at him and flipped upside down on his back. “Y’ure drunk too.”

“Not as much as you are.” 

Danny whined. “I’ve been waiting like one third of- of my life to kiss you, and now y’u want to be a chivalrous man-”

“Wait, what-” Dash did a double take at him.

“-and wait till I’m sober but all I want to do is smooch.” 

“One third of your life?” Dash whispered. 

Danny floated backwards towards Dash upside down and kissed him again. Dash kissed him back and pulled away a moment later.

“If we’re going to do this, I want to do this right.” Dash whispered. “Let’s wait until you’re sobered up.” 

Danny whined as Dash started pulling him through the air behind him towards the dorms. “Will you at least stay the night with me?”

Dash chuckled. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to make to your dorm and then to my own. My head is swimming pretty bad right now.”

Danny cheered and flipped back over so he was floating on his stomach. Dash let go of his wrist as he reached forward and wrapped his arms around Dash’s shoulders, letting himself be pulled through the air as Dash walked. He rested his head on Dash’s right shoulder. 

“I hope I remember this.” Danny whispered. 

“Is there anything you want to do to remind you of it even if you can’t remember?” Dash asked him. 

Danny hummed. After a moment of thinking he gasped. He cupped his hands together in front of Dash and a blue glow emanated from them. Dash watched in awe. Phantom didn’t normally use his ice powers during fights so it was always a treat to see them. 

Danny pulled his hands apart and sitting in his palm were two blue rings. He picked one up and slipped it on his own finger. Then he made grabby motions to Dash. He lefted his hand up and Danny slid the other ring onto his own finger. 

“Rings?” Dash asked as he looked at it. 

“I can’t not notice that when I wake up in the morning.” Danny wrapped his arms around Dash’s shoulders again. “If you’re there in the morning I’ll prob’bly ask you about it.” 

Dash smiled. “Don’t worry. I’ll be there tomorrow.” 

He could feel Danny smile against his neck. “Good.”

Danny placed a kiss against the back of Dash’s neck. 

Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I transformed in front of you?” Danny whispered.

“Yep.” Dash nodded. 

“And I kissed you?”

Dash shrugged. “I also kissed you.”

Danny leaned forward until his head was leaning on Dash’s chest. “I can’t believe I did all that. I thought being half ghost would make me more tolerant to alcohol, not the other way around.” 

“There is one thing we have to talk about.” Dash said.

“There is?”

“Yep.” Dash looked at him straight in the eyes. “Your taste in men. Blake? Really?” 

Danny snorted. “Like you’re much better.”

“I at least wasn’t trying to drug you while you were already wasted out of your mind.” Dash rolled his eyes. “That’s gotta be a big step up. A pretty big one considering you’ve apparently wanted to kiss me for like a third of your life?”

Danny groaned again and started pulling away but Dash grabbed his wrist. He pulled him back. 

“I didn’t say that was bad. I am here, aren’t I?”

Danny looked away from him. “Are you only here because you found out I’m Phantom?”

“What?” Dash looked confused. 

“You hated me back in high school. I never thought you’d feel like that for me. So is it just because I’m Phantom? Because everyone always knew you adored him.” 

Dash’s eyes widened and he shook his head. “No, I- You kissed me before that. I kissed you the first time not knowing you were Phantom. I didn’t want to take advantage of you but you being Phantom just made it harder to keep my resolve.”

“How many times did we kiss last night?” Danny whispered. 

“Uh..” Dash started thinking. “You kissed me on the cheek when I got Blake to leave. We kissed once on the living room floor of the frat house. A couple times on the walk here. And-”

Danny covered his face. “And I don’t get to remember any of them?”

Dash barked out a laugh. “That’s what you’re worried about? Not whether or not I was taking advantage of you?”

“You literally saved my life, I don’t have to worry about that.”

“So you don’t mind that I kissed you?” Dash asked, leaning forward and propping himself up with his arms. 

“No. Not particularly.” Danny said leaning forward. He placed his hands back on Dash’s shoulders. “I probably enjoyed it.” 

Dash hummed, looking at his lips. “I think you did. You kept asking for more.”

“Are you going to give me what I want?” 

Dash sat up the rest of the way and placed a kiss on Danny’s lips. They smiled into it and kissed again.

[q-gorgeous]

Grave Green

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 4074

There's a shallow grave in the woods. The only marker is a stone with the name "Danny" scratched into it. Judging by the fresh-turned soil, it hasn't been empty for long. @kinglazrus

hehehehe

Dash wasn’t lost.

No way no how. There was no way he was lost. He was just going on his nightly run and he made a wrong turn and now it was the middle of the night and he couldn't see anything. But he wasn’t lost. He’d be able to find his way back still. 

But the trees blocked the moonlight and he had to move slowly. But moving slowly didn’t help him when he tried to step on empty air and he fell, landing in a patch of turned dirt. 

That was weird. Turned dirt? All the way out here in the middle of the woods?

He sat up and looked around him. Dash’s heart stopped and his eyes widened.

There at the other end of the turned dirt was a headstone with the name Danny on it. He could barely make the name out but he was sure it said Danny.

This couldn’t be Fenton’s grave, could it? Sure, Fenton went missing a month ago but everyone thought he just ran away. He couldn’t have been murdered and buried here, right?

But why was the grave dug out? How long has it been empty?

He heard the sound of a twig breaking behind him and he whipped his head around. 

“Danny?” Dash whispered, horrified.

There he was, covered in dirt and looking at his hands like they weren’t his own. He raised his head to look up at Dash and tears were swimming in his eyes. 

“Dash?” He asked shakily. “What are you doing out here?”

Dash just stared at Danny, at the absurd question. “What am I doing out here? What are you doing out here? You’re covered in dirt and I just fell into your grave!” 

Danny slowly looked back down at his hands. 

“There was an accident. I remember coming out here with my mom.” Danny whispered. “She said we were just going for a walk. That it would help me walk off the shock I got when their portal activated.”

Dash stared at him in horror. 

“I don’t know how she did it, but when we got here there was already an empty grave. She pushed me in and started burying me alive.” His gaze traveled over to stare at dirt he crawled out of. “The headstone is new though.”

“Your mom… Buried you alive?” Dash asked, shaking his hands back and forth.

Danny nodded, still staring at the grave. 

“It’s been a month since you went missing, though. How are you still alive?”

Danny’s gaze made its way back to Dash. “I don’t know. The accident must’ve changed me. Something seemed to scare my mom after I walked out of the portal but she wouldn’t tell me what it was. We came here afterwards.” 

“Your parents are into ghosts right?” Dash asked. “Did their portal kill you? Are you dead?”

Danny went back to studying his hands. “I don’t feel dead. I’m kinda hungry.” 

Dash slowly walked up to him. He hovered a foot away for a moment before he raised a hand up.

“If you’ve got a pulse, you’d still be alive right? Can I see…?”

Danny nodded and Dash put two fingers on Danny’s neck under his jaw. He held his breath and waited for the tell tale thump of a heart beat. He let it out and closed his eyes when he felt it.

“You still have a pulse. Somehow.” Dash pulled away. 

Danny nodded. He seemed tired and he couldn’t stop staring at his hands. Dash sighed.

“Come on. Let’s get you back to my place. We can get you cleaned up and find something to eat.”

Danny nodded again and Dash grabbed one of his hands and pulled it out of his line of sight. Tugging on it, Dash pulled Danny behind him as they started walking. 

“Did your dad know about any of this?” Dash asked softly. He tripped on a rock in the ground and turned to guide Danny around it.

Danny shook his head. “No. It was just me and my mom in the lab when the accident happened. She told me to put my jumpsuit on because we were going to try and fix the portal as a surprise for my dad.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how she thought I was supposed to help if my genius father couldn’t help her figure it out. She sent me inside the portal to take a look but I tripped.” 

Goosebumps rose along Dash’s arms. She sent him into the portal?

“When I braced myself against the wall, I must’ve pressed a button. The portal came to life around me and then I was screaming. When the pain was finally gone, I stumbled out of the portal and my mom had a horrified look on her face. I didn’t know what she saw but a bright light flashed in the lab and then she walked over to me.”

Dash guided them past another tree and finally saw what looked like a path. He started following it. 

“She told me to take my jumpsuit off and that we were going to go for a walk. She said it would help me walk off the shock. But the longer we kept walking, the worse the feeling in my gut got. Before I realized I should run, we were already standing over the grave. And then she pushed me in.” 

“Shit.” Dash whispered.

“Yeah.” Danny’s hand tightened around his. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Let’s just start with getting cleaned up and eating. Then we can talk to my dad.”

Danny’s head shot up and he looked at him. “Your dad? What if he just brings me back to my mom?”

Dash shook his head. “If we tell my dad what happened he’ll probably arrest her for premeditated homicide.”

“Premeditated homicide?” Danny exclaimed. “Why do you think any of that would’ve been premeditated?” 

“Hello? She already had a grave dug out for you? She sent you into the portal?” Dash finally saw the park entrance that he had come in through. He turned back to look at Danny who was staring at his free hand again. Dash could see all the dirt and mud stuck to Danny much clearer now. 

“But…” Danny trailed off. 

Dash sighed and pulled him closer so he wasn’t trailing so far behind him. “Sorry. Let’s get you back to my place.” 

The rest of the walk was short and quiet. Dash could feel Danny’s dazed and disassociating look as he walked beside him. He couldn’t imagine being in Danny’s position. No matter how shitty his own mother was, at least she just left them instead of trying to kill him. 

They finally turned onto the street his house was on. Dash started pulling his keys out of his pocket. He inwardly cringed when he saw the lights in his living room still on. No doubt his dad was still up waiting for him. 

They walked up the stairs to his front door and put his key into the lock and opened the door. 

“Where have you been, young-”

His dad stopped when Dash pulled Danny into the house. He stood there for a few moments studying Danny and the dirt all over him. 

“Where did you find him?” His dad whispered. 

“I got lost on my run.” Dash said, guiding Danny in behind him while he closed the door. “I tripped on the grave he crawled out of while I was trying to find my way back.”

His dad blanched at him. “I’m sorry, what?” 

“I can explain everything to you but can we get him figured out first?” Dash gestured at Danny. “And I don’t think he needs to hear the story he told me again.”

His dad nodded. “Yeah, right. Take him upstairs and find him a change of clothes and get him cleaned up. I’ll make us up some soup.” 

Dash nodded back at him and pulled Danny up the stairs behind him. 

“I’m gonna find some clothes for you to wear first and then we’re gonna head to the bathroom.” Dash said over his shoulder. Danny didn’t respond.

Dash headed to his room and opened his door. He let go of Danny’s hand.

“I’ll be right back.” 

Dash headed to his closet and looked through his t-shirts. They would all be pretty big on Danny but that would be fine. He grabbed the one Nasa shirt he had and headed to his dresser. He struggled to find some sweat pants that would fit Danny but finally found an old pair of his buried at the bottom of one of his drawers. 

He walked back to where Danny stood in the hallway. He was staring at where Pookie sat on the floor, staring back up at him. 

“That’s Pookie.” Dash said. 

Danny nodded. “I remember. I’ve always wanted a puppy.”

Dash smiled. “I’m sure he’ll be able to fill all your puppy needs while you’re here tonight.”

Danny smiled sadly at Pookie but turned to follow Dash to the bathroom. 

“You can sit down on the toilet.” Dash set the new change of clothes on the counter while he rummaged through the cabinet for the first aid kit and a washcloth. He set the first aid kit on the counter and turned the water on. He waited for it to get warm before he soaked the washcloth in water. Sudding it up with soap, he turned to face Danny.

“Are you okay with me cleaning your face and arms off?” Dash asked him. 

Danny looked up at Dash, his expression blank for a moment before he nodded. 

Dash sat down on the edge of the bathtub and started with wiping down Danny’s arms. There was so much dirt and grime. As he washed it off he also found some cuts and scrapes. Danny’s hands were the worst but Dash supposed that’s what happened when you dug your way out of your own grave. 

“I’m just gonna have you wash your hands in the sink when we’re done. That might just be easier than me trying to do it with a washcloth.” He stood up and grabbed a clean washcloth for Danny’s face.

He sat back down and brushed Danny’s hair out of his face. Danny’s blank eyes focused on him. 

Dash held Danny’s head in place by placing a hand on his left cheek. He started by cleaning around Danny’s eyes. Dash moved to his forehead but his eyes stayed closed as Dash cleaned the rest of his face and made his way down his neck. 

“Don’t forget behind the ears.” Danny whispered.

Dash snorted but obliged him.

He threw the second washcloth into the sink and studied Danny’s hair as he opened his eyes back up.

“Wash your hands and take your shirt off. I think we should rinse the dirt out of your hair, even if we don’t actually wash it.”

Danny headed over to the sink and washed his hands while Dash turned the water for the shower on. He tested the water and adjusted it until it felt like a comfortable temperature. Danny finished washing his hands and then took his shirt off and changed into the sweatpants, tossing the soiled clothes on the floor. 

“Lean over the edge of the tub and I’ll rinse your hair out.” Dash said. 

Danny did as he was asked, propping himself up by resting his arms on the tub. Dash rinsed and pulled as much dirt out of his hair as he could before he shut the water off. He grabbed a towel out of one of the cabinets and handed it to Danny.

“Here.” 

Danny slowly dried his hair as Dash opened up the first aid kit. He pulled out the hydrogen peroxide and neosporin. He grabbed yet another washcloth and doused it in hydrogen peroxide. 

Dash turned back to Danny just in time to see him pull the towel off of his head. 

“This will sting a bit.” Dash warned as he started working on cleaning the scrapes on Danny’s hands and arms. He moved up to Danny’s face and cleaned the one scratch that ran across his cheek. 

Dash went to grab the neosporin and started applying that when Danny looked up at him.

“Thank you for doing this. You didn’t have to.”

Dash shrugged. “Even if I didn’t want to, my dad would’ve made me. But I wouldn’t want to leave you all covered in dirt. You don’t deserve that.”

Danny hummed and Dash finally finished cleaning him up and putting bandages on. 

“You can take the spare bedroom. I can bring your food upstairs for you.” 

“Okay.” Danny nodded, pulling his shirt on. He looked down at the floor as Pookie started following them.

Dash opened the door for the spare bedroom and turned on the light. 

“Here you go. Home sweet home for the night. You can get settled in while I go see where the soup is at.” 

Danny nodded again and sat down at the edge of the bed. Pookie jumped up by him and curled up at his side. 

Dash headed back downstairs and found his dad still stirring the soup in the kitchen. He looked up when Dash sat down in a chair at the counter.

“How’s he feeling?” His dad asked.

“He’s pretty out of it. Has been since I suggested that his mom did this to him on purpose.”

Dash’s dad turned to look at him. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’ve got to stop explaining things like this. Can you start from the beginning?”

“He said his mom asked him to help her fix some portal they built that didn’t work. That she wanted it to be a surprise for his dad. But she asked him to suit up and sent him inside the thing. He tripped and hit a button and it turned on from the inside.” Dash looked away from his dad. “He got hurt and when he walked out of the portal he thought something scared his mom. She took him on a walk and at the end of it she pushed him into a grave she had ready and waiting and buried him alive.”

His dad’s eyes widened. “She buried him alive? Wasn’t that a month ago that he went missing? How is he here?”

Dash shrugged. “They’re ghost hunters. It’s probably some weird ghost thing. But she even marked the grave with a rock that had Danny’s name on it. He literally dug himself out of his own grave.”

“Goddamn.” His dad whispered. “I can’t decide if this kid has the best or worst luck in the world.”

“Maybe a little bit of both.” Dash joked. His smile fell and he looked at his dad. “Is this enough to arrest her? Or will Danny just have to go home to her?”

His dad shook his head. “I think it would be enough. We just need to find the evidence to prove it. But we can arrest and detain her for questioning. If we believe her to be dangerous we can keep her without bail as well.”

“Okay. When will that happen?” Dash asked.

His dad looked up towards the stairs. “Let’s talk to Danny and get the evidence we need. I think your and Danny’s statements will be enough to arrest her while we search for other evidence down in that lab of theirs.” 

Dash nodded. “Okay. We’ll keep him safe though?”

Dash’s dad looked back at him. “Yeah. We’ll keep him safe.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When the portal failed, Maddie knew what was missing. 

It was a portal to the land of the dead. When every calculation they’ve checked, double checked, and triple checked was correct, there was only one thing left that she thought could be the answer.

Opening a portal to the land of the dead required a human sacrifice. 

So one day when Jack and Jazz went to the fudge museum, she asked Danny to help her tackle the problem with the portal. She told him she wanted it to be a surprise for Jack. That she wanted to fix it before he came home so that he’d be greeted with a happy sight.

She made sure to hide her notes and hypothesis somewhere Danny wouldn’t stumble upon them. She asked him to get suited up under the guise of lab safety and she sent him into the portal. 

It happened more naturally than she could’ve ever hoped. As he was walking inside, he tripped over one of the wires that ran across the floor of the portal and fell against the portal wall. He pushed the on button that was on that wall and the portal hummed to life. 

She took in the last image of her son, trying to commit him to memory. 

His screams seared her mind and she tried to block them out. This was for science. This was necessary to further their studies. 

But when the screaming subsided, something she wasn’t expecting happened.

A ghost stepped out of the portal. He looked just like her son except for the fact that all of his colors had inverted. 

And his eyes.

His eyes opened. They were acid green and full of fear and pain. He made eye contact with her. A bright light appeared around his waist and when it traveled over his body and disappeared, her human son was left standing there.

“Mom?” He said. He held his hand close to his chest.

“Danny, come here.” She gestured him towards her. “Let’s get your suit off. Let’s take a look.”

She unzipped his jumpsuit and pulled his arms out of the top and helped him step out of it. A lichtenberg scar ran from his hand that hit the button up his arm. 

He didn’t seem to realize what happened. He didn’t realize he had died. That he was some kind of abomination. 

“Let’s go on a walk, Danny. Let’s walk that shock off.”

“A walk?” He asked groggily, confused. “Shouldn’t we-”

She shook her head. “No. Let’s go on a walk. You seem okay. Let’s just stretch your muscles out.” 

This wasn’t how she planned for this part to go. She expected him to just be a body on the floor that she’d have to take care of. She didn’t expect him to survive that. If you can consider it that. 

As they walked further away from the house and into the park, she could feel Danny getting uneasy behind her. She could tell he didn’t understand why they were just going on a walk. It got worse when they walked into the woods and she walked off the path. 

“Mom? Where are we going?” He asked nervously. 

There it was. Right behind him. The grave. He hasn’t noticed it yet.

She pushed him and a cry pulled itself out of his mouth. He fell into the grave and his back collided with the ground.

“Mom!” He cried. “What are you doing?” 

She tried not to listen to his cries and pleas. He was a monster. He wasn’t really her son anymore. Not the abomination he turned into. 

She pulled a pop out Fenton shovel out of her tool belt and started shoveling dirt into the grave. He tried to sit up so she started aiming for his face and dumping more dirt in faster so he couldn’t sit up anymore. 

Soon he was completely covered and he had stopped struggling against the force of the dirt on him. She found a large stone and placed it at the head of the grave so she could recognize it when she came back.

She cleaned her shovel and folded it back up, storing it in her belt. She brushed the dirt off of her jumpsuit and composed herself before she started making her way back out of the forest. 

Nobody could know what Maddie did. She was protecting them. All of them. She did what had to be done. She couldn’t let a monster like that walk around. 

Jack and Jazz just thought Danny was missing. They thought he ran away or maybe that somebody picked him off the side of the road one day. They didn’t know that he died in their basement when the portal turned on. That she had orchestrated the whole accident. They would never know. 

But when she caught sight of the monster wearing her son’s face, her heart stopped. 

There he was, sat in the middle of their living room, Jazz and Jack doting on him. But standing between her and them was Officer Baxter and his son.

“Mrs. Fenton.” Officer Baxter said as he stepped forward. 

“Oh.. You’ve- you’ve found my son.” She said with a weak smile. “Where has he been all this time?” 

Dash stepped closer in front of Danny. Jazz placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Mrs. Fenton, I need you to turn around.” He pulled a pair of handcuffs off his belt. 

She stared at them before her eyes darted back up to his face. “What- what are those for?”

“You are being arrested for attempted premeditated homicide.”

“I- I don’t- Why would you think I would do that?” She tried to feign shock, but he kept walking towards her. 

“We already have a warrant out for your arrest and another to search your lab for evidence.”

She looked at the monster on her couch and pulled a blaster out of her utility belt. “I don’t know how you survived, ghost scum, but I won’t let you walk around pretending to be my son!” 

She went to take a shot but Jack jumped up and knocked the gun out of her hand. 

“This is our son, Maddie!” He shouted at her. 

“He’s not my son anymore!” She screamed as Officer Baxter knocked her to the ground and forced her into handcuffs. “He’s ghost scum parading around with his face! My son is dead!” 

“You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney-”

“Let go of me!” Maddie screamed as she struggled against the handcuffs. He pulled her off the ground roughly and started walking her to the door. “My son died! He’s dead! That is not my son!” 

That monster looked at her with wide eyes she swore she saw turn green. A single tear streamed down his face. 

“That is not my son!” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dash watched as his dad carted Maddie to his car. She was still thrashing against him, screaming in the street. 

“What happened, Danno?” He heard Jack whisper behind him. 

“She did something to me.” Danny whispered. 

Dash turned and saw Jazz and Jack exchange a look between the two of them. Danny was still staring at the front door where his mom had been taken away. 

“What did she do to you?” Jazz asked.

Danny shook his head. “If- if I told you… Would you still love me?”

A sad look crossed onto both Jack and Jazz’s faces. “Of course we would.”

“Mom didn’t.”

“What did she do, Danny?” Jack asked him again.

Danny’s gaze finally lifted and landed on Dash. Dash started a little bit at the expression Danny was giving him.

“You want me to tell them?” Dash asked quietly. Danny nodded. 

Dash took a deep breath. “He told me that Maddie asked him to help with the ghost portal. That he went in and pressed a button and when he came back out she looked horrified. Then she led him out to the woods where she had a grave already dug out.” 

Jazz covered her mouth as tears welled up in her eyes. Jack looked horrified. Danny’s eyes were vacant again. 

“I got lost in the woods yesterday and tripped over his empty grave.” Dash looked away from them and at the floor. “He somehow lasted a whole month buried out there. He had just crawled out of the grave not too long before I got there.” 

Danny had started shaking and Jack shushed him. Jazz wrapped her arms around him in a hug. 

“It’s okay.” Jack said. “You’re safe now. You’re back home.” Jack turned to look back up at Dash. 

“Thank you. Thank you for bringing him home to us.” 

Dash nodded. He was about to turn away when something caught his eye. 

Dash saw Danny’s eyes flash an unsettling green. 

What if his mom had been right?

[q-gorgeous]

Wing-Bully

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 5267

No one knows au except dash baxter @xscarletsakurax

this is a rework of something that was gonna go write some other writing i did but then i split them into two different fics because the halves didnt vibe with each other kjhgvcf

hidey hey

“Dash, you’re here so we can work on our project for Lancer’s class. We’re not supposed to be down here.” 

“Come on, ghosts aren’t even real. How dangerous can it be down here?”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Dangerous enough that we should really be wearing jumpsuits to protect us from ecto-contamination.”

He walked over to the closet that was down there and pulled out his jumpsuit while Dash laughed at him. 

“Matching outfits with your parents? Lame.”

“Don’t complain to me if you get ectoplasm poisoning then.” 

Danny pulled on his jumpsuit and groaned at the sticker on his chest. He pulled it off and tossed it away. 

“What’s this?” Dash pointed at the deep hole in the wall. Danny walked over to him.

“That’s my parent’s ghost portal. It didn’t end up working though.” 

Dash pushed him towards the portal. “Why don’t you go check it out?”

Danny frowned at him and tried to catch his footing. “No. I don’t know what’s wrong with it. I can’t-” 

“Haha, go in.”

“Dash, stopping pushing me-”

Danny tripped backwards over the threshold of the portal. He tried to catch himself on something on the wall but all he ended up doing was pressing a button that for some godforsaken reason was on the inside of the portal. It hummed around him and after a few moments everything went green. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Glad to see you’re not dead, nerd.” 

Danny looked up to see Dash. It was too early in the morning to deal with him after yesterday. 

“You already knew I wasn’t dead.” 

“A man can dream.” Danny rolled his eyes at Dash’s comment.

“I remember someone crying a lot of tears yesterday when they thought I was dead.” 

A blush rose on Dash’s cheeks. “My adrenaline was running like crazy! It’s not my fault your screams triggered some kind of primal response in my brain!”

“Crying is a primal response now?”

Dash rolled his eyes back at him and crossed his arms. “Have you figured out your whole ghost thing yet?”

“It’s literally been one day.” Danny stared at him. “How could I have figured anything out yet?”

Dash leaned in close to Danny and he glanced at Dash’s lips for a moment before his gaze darted back to Dash’s. “Maybe your parents have some sort of cure. Or maybe it was a one time thing. I don’t know.” 

“Why do you care so much? It’s literally your fault this is happening.”

Dash raised a hand and looked like he was reaching to place it on Danny’s shoulder. “I just-”

Dash was interrupted by someone clearing their throat behind them. They turned around and were met with Sam and Tucker. She was glaring at Dash with her arms crossed. 

“What are you friends with him now?” Sam asked, angrily gesturing at Dash.

“Woah, so what if he wants to be friends with me?” He asked, stepping towards her.

She barked out a laugh. “Come on! You’ve been bullying him the entire time I’ve known both of you. Why would he want to be friends with you? You must be blackmailing him or something.”

“Sam, he’s not blackmailing me.”

“How can we trust that? You could be lying because he’s blackmailing you.” Tucker frowned at him and reached out a hand, placing it on Danny’s shoulder. “I don't want what happened in elementary school to happen again.”

Danny shrugged it off. “That’s not what’s going on. Why can’t you just trust me on this?”

“Because this isn’t smart.” Sam said. “Why do you guys need to be friends?”

Danny threw his hands into the air. “Why are you getting so defensive about this? You’ve literally only seen us have this one conversation and you’re already mad at me. For all you know we could have been assigned a project together or he’s asking about his tutoring sessions with Jazz. Maybe he had to reschedule and wanted me to tell Jazz.”

Tucker shuffled where he stood but Sam still stared at him with crossed arms. 

“Yeah but are you going to tell us the real reason?”

“Does it matter, Sam?” 

Out of the corner of his eye Dash saw Danny start slowly sinking. He panickingly grabbed Danny’s arm to prevent him from sinking any further into the ground. Danny tried to keep his expression neutral but Dash could tell he was shaken. 

“Oh. Is that what’s happening?” Sam looked between the two of them. 

“Is what happening?” Danny asked, frowning at her. 

“What kind of enemies to lovers bullshit is this?” Dash’s eyes widened at her outburst. What was she talking about? What did she think was happening?

His gaze landed on where his hand was still wrapped around Danny’s upper arm and he pulled it back like he’d been burned. Sam scoffed. 

“Sam-” Tucker started but she interrupted him.

“Do you even realize how toxic that kind of relationship can be? He’s just going to hurt you.”

Danny recoiled at her words. “What are you even talking about?”

“The fact that you two seem to be getting real cozy with each other? Are you dating or something?” 

Dash stepped in front of Danny. “How shallow do you have to assume the only reason I’d be talking to him now is if we’re dating? For your information, we used to be friends as kids.” Dash frowned at her and watched as she backed up. “Just because you’re self conscious about your major crush on Fenton doesn’t mean you have to take it out on us because we’re having a simple conversation.”

A blush appeared on Sam’s cheeks before she angrily stormed away. 

“Sorry.” Tucker said as he looked between them again before he followed after her.

Danny watched them as they walked into the school. He was quiet for a few moments before he turned his gaze back to Dash.

“Sam has a crush on me?”

Dash groaned. “That is what you’re focused on?” He started walking towards the school.

Danny followed next to him. “But I didn’t know that! How did you know that?”

“You’re just about the only person who didn’t know, Fenton.”

Dash pushed through the front doors of the school. Danny had a dazed look on his face. 

“Is that why everyone calls me clueless?” He whispered. 

“Clueless strikes again.”

Danny frowned up at him. “Oh what, you’re so observant, are you?”

Dash pushed open the front door of the school. It swung closed behind them. “More than you. I’m not even friends with Manson and I could see the blackened heart eyes she was giving you.” 

Danny shuffled his backpack on his shoulders as they walked down the hall. “I’ve just never seen her that way. I don’t like her like that.”

Dash’s brows shot up on his forehead. “You don’t?”

Danny shook his head. He veered off to the right and Dash followed him to his locker. “She's just a friend to me.” 

Dash leaned against the lockers while Danny tried to open his but his hand just ended up passing through the dial lock. He groaned.

“Maybe you should tell her that, then. Get it over with so she doesn’t try to kill anyone that even thinks to get close to you.”

Danny rolled his eyes. He finally got his locker open. “She wouldn’t kill anyone for getting close to me.”

“I don’t know.” Dash drawled. “She looked like she was gonna claw my eyes out back there. Like a creepy bat girl.”

Danny slammed his locker shut and turned to look at Dash. “You know, if we’re going to be doing whatever this is, I would appreciate you not making comments about my friends like that.” 

“But she can talk to me like that?”

Danny frowned. “No. I literally told her there was no reason for her to be talking to you like that for having a simple conversation with me.”

“But she’s allowed to not like me?”

“That’s your own fault.” Danny rolled his eyes. “She has every right not to like you.”

Dash huffed. He was about to say something but then Danny started sinking into the floor again. Danny panickingly grabbed Dash’s forearm to prevent himself from sinking any further in. Dash pulled him up and when he set him back down, his feet were solid again. Dash looked around them and miraculously no one else in the hall saw what happened. 

“I’m already over this.” Danny mumbled as he let go of Dash. 

“Do you think you’ll get control over it eventually?” Dash asked him. 

“Hopefully. Otherwise I’ll probably have no choice but to ask my parents for help. I really don’t want to do that though.” 

“Maybe we could do some training? Or practice? You won’t get used to your powers if you just try to ignore them. If you try to do it, then maybe you’ll understand how to not do it.”

Danny nodded. “That makes sense. I guess that’s what we’ll have to do.” 

They came to a split in the hallway. Danny looked up at him.

“Well, I’m going this way.” Danny hooked a thumb over his shoulder as he turned to face Dash.”

Dash nodded. “See you later. Hopefully you don’t drop anything today.”

“Hopefully. We’ll see.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

Thirty four beakers. 

Danny was finally getting ahold of his powers and all it took was thirty four dropped beakers and a lifetime ban from handling anything fragile while he was at school. 

Aside from the frequent ghost sighting, things were starting to look up.

“Manson!” 

If only Dash could learn to keep his thoughts to himself when it came to his friends. 

“What is this garbage?” 

He stomped up to where the three of them were sitting at their table in the cafeteria. Sam frowned at him. 

“It’s not garbage! It’s recyclable organic matter.”

“It’s garbage.” Danny and Tucker said together. 

Danny gasped out a breath of cold air. He looked around him. He saw a lunch lady ghost behind the food counter. 

Dash followed his gaze to where the ghost was. He saw it just as she walked behind the wall. 

Dash looked back at Sam and held up his plate of mud, pushing himself between Danny and his friends. “When I asked for a mud pie, I thought I was gonna get a mud pie. Not a literal mud pie!” 

“Actually, it’s topsoil.” 

“Whatever. Are you going to actually eat this garbage?”

Danny slipped away while Dash argued with his friends. Maybe Dash arguing with his friends could actually be useful for something for once. 

He found somewhere to hide and transformed. He flew invisibly back to the cafeteria to the room the lunch ladies worked in. She was floating there looking around and the food and the lunch trays. She kind of looked like Tucker’s grandma. 

She caught sight of him. Danny was ready to bolt as she floated up to him, but she wasn’t making any moves to attack him.

“Hello.” She said sweetly. “Can you help me? Today’s lunch should be meatloaf, but there’s not any here. Did someone change the menu?”

“Oh. Uh, yeah. They’re trying something new this week.” 

Danny jumped back as her hair suddenly flamed up with her anger.

“The menu has been the same for fifty years!” She shouted at him. 

“Wait-”

She levitated some plates and shot them at him. Danny dodged and caught them, avoiding getting hit. What was up with this lady? Why was the menu so important? 

“The menu is sacred! Lunch is sacred!” She spoke in her sickly sweet voice again. “Would you like some cake?”

Danny looked at her, confused. “If you’re offering-”

“No one gets cake until the menu is changed back!” 

She held her arms up and meat started flying towards her from every direction. It engulfed her and turned her into a meat monster.

“Meat is the most important food group! Without meat, you’ll remain puny and muscle-less!” 

“I’m not arguing with you there.” Danny mumbled. He geared up for a kick but she grabbed his ankle and sent him flying across the room. 

“I will restore the sanctity of the lunch menu! As soon as I find out who changed it!”

She disappeared in a tornado of meat.

The ghost was gone for now. Danny flew through the wall of the school and collapsed onto the ground. He transformed back and tried to push himself up. He was so tired. He’d never used his powers like that before. He groaned. 

“Hey.”

Danny opened his eyes and looked up. Dash was standing there with his hand outstretched to Danny. He looked at it for a second before he reached up and grabbed it, pulling himself up with Dash’s help. 

“Thanks. That ghost wiped me out.”

“No problem. I wanted to make sure that ghost didn’t kill you. I was trying to find you when I saw you fly through the wall and hit the ground out here.”

Danny nodded. “Yeah that wasn’t fun.” He looked down and saw that he was still holding onto Dash’s hand. He pulled it away and coughed. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “I should go check on Sam and Tucker though. I want to make sure they’re okay.”

“The ghost attack was pretty contained.” Dash said. “I’m sure they’re fine.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Ah.” Dash said. “That’s fair. Sorry about dragging out that argument with her.”

Danny shrugged and started walking away. “It distracted them long enough to let me slip away for a bit so. No harm done. At least not to me.”

“Good luck. Hopefully she doesn’t chew your head off.” 

Danny pulled the door Dash had walked out open and stepped back inside the school, shaking the hand that had been holding Dash’s. He made his way through the hallways to find Sam and Tucker. 

Sam slammed open the cafeteria doors as Danny stumbled down the hallway. 

“I still can’t believe you’re talking to that meathead.” She shot at him with no preamble. “He literally antagonizes all of us. And then you ditch us to go meet up with him? I saw you two outside.”

“Sam-” 

“What can you say to defend him?” She turned to look at him. “He beats you up all the time.”

“Not anymore.” Danny said.

“What?” Sam stopped walking.

“He doesn’t beat me up anymore.”

She didn’t say anything to that for a few moments. She shook her head. “I still don’t trust him. I don’t get how you could forgive him so easily.”

“I-” He stopped. Had he forgiven Dash?

Sam shook his head. “Let’s just get to class.”

Danny looked around them. “Where’s Tucker?”

She rolled her eyes. “He said he smelt meat so he went to track it down through the hallways. I don’t know if he’s found it yet.” 

Danny scrunched up his nose. He knew exactly what meat Tucker was smelling. “He’s just gonna go eat whatever random mystery meat he finds?”

“Apparently.”

Danny didn’t respond after her last stilted reply. He followed behind her to their next class. When they walked in she went straight to her seat but he looked up and made eye contact with Dash. Dash gave him a questioning look and Danny just shrugged at him before sitting back down.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dash walked into the Nasty Burger. Football had just ended and he was hungry. 

As he was walking to the counter he saw Danny sitting at a table with his friends. Dash smirked and walked over to them.

“Hey, nerds.” He placed a hand on the table and leaned his weight into it. 

Sam rolled her eyes. “What do you want?” 

“I just came to say hi to my favorite nerds. Is there a problem with that?” 

“If we’re your favorite does that mean you’ll stop making fun of us?” Tucker asked thoughtfully. “Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, Sam.”

“He’s not going to stop making fun of us, Tucker. The two of them are over there ‘trying to be friends.’” She said with air quotes. “And he still picks on us all the time.” 

“I’ve tried talking to him about it, Sam, but he has a hard time with it.” 

She shot Danny a look. “So why be friends with him? Why give him a chance? What do you see in him?”

“Just because he doesn’t like you-”

Sam scoffed. “Maybe you’re too insecure about your own crush on Danny.” 

Danny whipped his head to look at her. 

“What?” Dash laughed it off. “What are you talking about, Manson?” 

“Yeah, Sam, what are you talking about?” Danny stared at her. 

“Isn’t that what’s been happening this whole time?” She shot back at them. “He’s got some kind of weird feelings for you, he’s trying to get into your pants. Get on your good side. The pulling the girl’s pigtails because you like her bullshit? Don’t you see how weird his sudden change in actions towards you is?” 

“What about your sudden change in actions?” Danny shot at her. “Do you realize how much of an asshole you’ve been lately?”

“Well, maybe if you weren’t friends with-”

Danny threw his hands up in the air. “God forbid if I make new friends! Or try to get along with someone instead of fighting! Or even make decisions for myself.” 

“Danny-”

He cut her off and stood up. “No I’m-” He gasped and Dash saw his ghost sense fog out of his mouth. He frowned. “I’m going home. I need some time alone.” He turned and started walking towards the door. 

“Danny!” Dash followed behind Danny out of the Nasty Burger. 

The ghost was flying above the parking lot shooting ecto-blasts every which way. 

The door slammed behind Dash and Danny turned his head to look at him. 

“I need some time to think. Please just go back inside.” 

He called on his transformation rings. Once they passed across his body he jumped up and flew into the air towards the ghost. 

He watched Danny fight the ghost. He could tell he was angry. He was sloppy today. 

Danny missed a dodge and got hit through the air by the ghost. He ended up turned facing the opposite direction so he didn’t see it start to charge at him. 

Dash’s heart raced as he watched the ghost fly up to Danny. His heart stirred with feelings he wanted to push down. He didn’t need to put himself in danger for Danny. He didn’t feel that way. Danny didn’t feel that way about him.

But as the ghost got closer, Dash couldn’t help as the anxiety skyrocketed. His resolve broke and he picked up a big piece of asphalt off the ground and chucked it at the ghost. It turned to look at him. 

Dash froze when the ghost’s eyes landed on him. What was he doing? Was Danny really that important to him now?

The ghost’s mouth filled up with ectoplasm and shot it towards.

He wouldn’t be able to move in-

Danny knocked Dash out of the way of the ecto-blast just in time. His arms wrapped around Dash’s chest and he flew back. The blast hit the ground where he’d been standing just a moment before. 

Dash wrapped his arms around Danny as they slammed into the ground. He groaned as his back slid across the pavement and Danny looked down at him. He started feeling the back of Dash’s head, running his fingers through his hair. 

Dash opened his eyes and looked up at Danny. He looked panicked. Like something was wrong, but he literally just prevented anything from being wrong.

“Dash, are you okay?”

He nodded. “Back hurts. Head’s fine.”

Danny leaned down and lay his head on Dash’s chest. Dash’s hands slid down Danny’s back and rested at his side and he closed his eyes again. He really didn’t like this whole ghost hunting thing. 

The ghost roared behind them and Dash felt Danny’s head shoot back up. 

“Shit! How did I forget about the ghost?”

Dash waved his hand above him. “Go. I’m fine. I’m just gonna get my bearings on the ground here.” 

Dash listened as Danny finished fighting the ghost. It ended quickly and he could hear Danny’s footsteps as he walked to stand over Dash. Dash opened his eyes and his heart jumped at the way the sun shone on Danny’s white hair. 

Danny held his hand out to Dash and he slowly reached up and grabbed it. Danny pulled him to his feet and looked at their hands. He let go a moment later. 

“I think we need a new rule. No interfering with ghost attacks.”

“What?” Dash frowned at him. “That thing was about to gobble you.” 

Danny crossed his arms. “Yeah, but if I didn’t get to you on time you could've gotten very badly hurt. I thought I knocked your head on the ground when I knocked you out of the way.” 

Dash shrugged. “But you didn’t.” 

“We can’t rely on that.” Danny looked away from him. “Just promise you won’t interfere like that again?”

Dash wasn’t sure if that was something he could actually do. But one look at the expression on Danny’s face told Dash he should at least try. 

“Yeah. I promise.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny was nodding off in the middle of class. They were given time to work on their homework today but all Danny wanted to do was sleep. Having to fight all these ghosts all the time was making his life way too stressful. He wasn’t to sleep or get his homework done or even get to class on time. It was starting to get to him. 

He yawned. While his eyes were shut he heard someone sit down next to him. He opened his eyes and saw Dash in the next seat over. 

“You look tired.”

“Thanks, captain obvious. I didn’t realize.” 

Dash shrugged. He slouched back in his seat. “Your friends are whispering about you back there.” 

Danny turned and looked over his shoulder at where Sam and Tucker sat at the table in the back of the classroom. When they saw him looking Sam turned back around. Tucker just waved at him awkwardly. 

Danny waved back at him. “I wish they’d just sit over here with me.” 

Dash waved them off. “Who needs ‘em if they’re going to be treating you like that.” 

Sam snorted behind them. Dash turned to look at her. “You got something to say Manson?”

“As if we could treat him any worse than anything you’ve ever done to him.” 

Dash shrugged as he faced back towards the front of the classroom. “Hey, at least my character arc is positive. I’ve made amends.” 

“You’ve hardly even done anything. What kind of character arc have you actually had?”

“I-” Dash started but then he stopped. His brows dropped down and he looked at Danny. 

It hit Danny then that the only thing that really changed with Dash’s behavior was how he treated Danny. He didn’t pick on him anymore and he had cared about him, but he immediately resumed the same habits with both of Danny’s friends. Any time that Dash covered for Danny’s whereabouts during ghost fights, the only thing he could think to do was antagonize Sam and Tucker. He could never think up any actual excuses that wouldn’t cause more problems. 

Danny missed part of the conversation. By the time he tuned back in, Sam was glaring at Dash from across the room. 

“Just because he’d rather spend time with me than you-”

Danny’s ghost sense picked that moment to go off and he couldn’t think of a more convenient time for it to have happened. He stood up sharply and made his way out of the classroom quickly. The door slammed behind him as it closed and he was a couple steps down the hallway when the door opened behind him again.

“Danny, wait-” 

“Why do you do that?” Danny turned and frowned at him. 

“What?” Dash’s brows furrowed.

“Why do you dig at them like that? Make them feel bad about what’s going on?”

“Manson-” Dash started but Danny interrupted him. 

“No. Sam and Tucker are mad at me because of you. They think I’m always ditching them to go hang out with you instead.” 

“That’s not my fault!” Dash shouted back at him. “That’s the ghost’s fault!” 

“But they don’t know that!” Danny stared at him. “All they know is that I’m on good terms with you now and I disappear all the time. They know something is up.” 

Dash shuffled where he stood. He knew he was causing a rift between Danny and his friends. No matter how much he liked to antagonize them, he wasn’t proud of it. He wasn’t trying to put distance between them. 

Danny sighed. “She keeps making jabs about us being together like it would be crazy. Like it would be the worst thing in the world.” Danny looked up at Dash. “I would like it if it wasn’t the craziest thing in the world. If it could actually be true. But with the way you treat my friends-” He shook his head. 

Everything around Dash stopped. What? 

“Danny-”

A blue mist came out of Danny’s mouth again. He shook his head.

“I gotta go.”

“Wait-”

Danny ran around the corner away from Dash.

“What did you do to him?” 

Dash looked down the hallway to see Sam glaring at him. Tucker stood next to her. 

“What?” He asked. 

“He just ran away from you? What did you do to him?” She stomped her way over to him.

“Nothing!” Dash held his hands up in a surrendering motion. “We were just talking and he had to go-”

“We’re in the middle of class. What else would he need to be doing right now?”

“Yeah. Why would he be leaving?” Tucker asked. 

“He, uh, went to-”

Sam ran past him and around the corner Danny went down, Tucker close on her heels. Dash followed behind them knowing Danny would already be gone but they didn’t stop there. They ran down the hallway and out the door leading outside. 

“Danny?” She shouted. “Where are you?”

Dash was the only one that noticed Danny floating in the sky. He was fighting an animal type ghost.

“Uh, guys, I think we should probably go back inside.” 

He pointed up at the sky and Sam and Tucker followed his finger. Sam’s eyes widened and she looked around the front of the school again. 

“Danny!” 

Phantom must’ve heard that one because he turned his head to look down at them. The ghost took that moment to hit Phantom, sending him flying through the air. Now he was much closer to them. 

This ghost looked horrifying. It was animalistic but it looked uncannily like a person. Stringy, hair looking fur and teeth curved into a creepy smile. 

“Get to safety! Now!” Phantom shouted down at them. He shot another ectoblast at the ghost. 

“We have to find Danny first!” Sam shouted in a panic. 

“He’s not out here.” Dash turned to go back inside the school. “Let’s just listen to Phantom and get somewhere safe.”

“That hallway doesn’t lead anywhere except outside! Where else could he be?” Sam asked, still turning around looking for Danny. 

“He didn’t-” 

“Danny!” Tucker shouted. 

Dash growled. Why didn’t they just listen to him? 

The ghost let out a shriek and Dash squeezed his eyes shut and covered his ears. 

“Go inside, now!” 

Dash’s eyes opened at Phantom’s shout. He looked back up into the air. 

Dash stared at the ghost that was hovering in the air in front of them. It was cackling, its head thrown back into the air. It looked back at the ground directly at Sam and promptly shot an ectoblast out of its mouth. Dash saw Sam’s mouth open the slightest bit and everything slowed down. Danny turned, following the path of the blast but when he tried to fly towards her the ghost grabbed onto him, trapping him. 

This was one of Danny’s best friends. She might hate Dash’s guts but Danny cared for her more than she hated him. 

Without another thought, he pushed himself into a run and sprinted his way across the grass. He put himself between her and the ghost and grabbed her just as the blast hit him in the back.

He could hear Sam scream as they fell to the ground. Tucker was shouting from somewhere else but Dash couldn’t make much out past the ringing in his ears. He could hear scuffling in the air above him but it was muffled. The pain in his back radiated out and he could feel it in every jostle as someone shook his body. 

Everything started fading away and Dash hoped he wasn’t dying. Distantly, he wondered if this is how Danny felt when he died in the portal. 

The voices fell away and so did Dash.

~~~~~~~~~~

Slowly, the world came back to him. The first thing he noticed was the steady beeping nearby. The second thing was how bright the lights were against his eyelids. 

He groaned and he heard some shuffling to his left. Someone placed a hand on his arm. 

“Dash?”

His heart skipped a beat and he slowly pried his eyes open. He was laying in a bed in the hospital and Danny was standing to his left. 

“Danny?” Dash croaked out. He tried to sit up but Danny pushed him back down against his pillows. 

“You shouldn’t move too much. You got hit pretty bad.” 

“You got the ghost though?” Dash asked. 

“Yeah, he got the ghost.”

Sam and Tucker walked into the room and stood next to Danny. 

“Uh, no I asked if Phantom got the-” Dash fumbled, trying to cover it up.

“It’s okay, Dash.” Danny said. “I told them. I thought it might be better if they knew.”

Dash looked at Danny’s two friends. They didn’t look like they were mad at him anymore. Or like they hated him. It was relieving that they knew. Danny didn’t have to keep avoiding them or keep secrets anymore. 

“If we’d known in the first place we could’ve helped, you know.” Sam said, shooting both of them a look. 

“Yeah. A team always needs a tech guy.” Tucker crossed his arms in mock frustration.

“But we do understand why you guys have been acting weird for the past couple months.” Sam turned to look at Dash. “Thank you for helping him even though you didn’t have to.”

Dash nodded, dumbfounded.

She stared at him a moment longer and pulled her gaze away. “And thank you for knocking me out of the way of that hit. Sorry it landed you here.”

Dash shook his head. “You’re Danny’s friends. You’re important to him. I didn’t want you to get hurt because of all this ghost stuff.” 

“That’s a nice thought, but you should also try not to get yourself hurt.” Sam said. 

“Yeah.” Danny frowned. “You promised.” 

Dash shrugged. “We can call it karma.” 

Tucker stepped forward. “We need a name.”

“A name?” Danny looked up at Tucker.

“Yeah, like a cool ghost hunting team name.” He waved his hands in the air. “What about Team Phantom?”

Sam snorted. “That sounds dumb.”

Tucker planted his hands on his hips. “Well, do you have any better ideas then?”

Danny’s hand slowly made his way down from his arm to his hand as they talked. He entwined his fingers with Dash’s and gave him a squeeze. Dash squeezed his hand back. 

Everything would be okay. Everything was okay. 

[q-gorgeous]

Not the Lab

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 7184

No one knows au except dash baxter @xscarletsakurax

warning: dissection, scalpels, its not a very graphic description tho

hehehehhehehe

Danny opened the door and was met with a broad chest. His eyes raised and he met Dash’s gaze. He was leaning against the door frame and was staring down at Danny.

“What do you want, Dash?”

“I’m here for my tutoring session with your sister. Let me in.”

Danny blocked Dash’s step forward. “She’s not even home.”

“Oh.” Dash looked away. “I guess I got the day wrong. Again.”

“Yeah.” Danny stared at him. 

Dash looked back up at Danny. “Do you care if I still come in and just work on my homework? Jazz is great at answering my questions when I don’t understand something but she’s also mostly there to redirect me when I lose focus. This place has good learning energy.” Dash gestured with his hands in a big circle.

Danny watched him for a few moments before sighing. “Fine. But if you start messing with anything in here you have to leave.”

Dash nodded. “I’ll just be in the kitchen like when I’m with Jazz.” He walked in and turned back to look at Danny before he walked into the kitchen. “Did you want to work on your homework with me too?”

Danny shrugged and followed behind him. “Might as well. I gotta keep an eye on you if you’re here. Let me just go get my backpack.”

He headed up the stairs and left Dash to walk into the kitchen by himself. He set himself up at his regular spot at the table and started pulling all of his materials out. When he was done he looked up and saw the door to the Fenton’s lab that stared at him every time he was here. 

Just as he was thinking about standing up, Danny walked back into the room with his backpack. 

“What are you starting with?” Danny asked as he rummaged inside his open backpack.

“Math.” Dash replied. “It’s my worst subject so I’d rather get that done first where the learning vibes are good.”

“I guess I’ll start with that too. Then we can ask each other questions if we need to.”

Dash nodded. “That makes sense.”

They sat there for an hour doing their homework and occasionally asking each other about one of the questions in their textbook. They finally finished the assignment and Dash slouched down and leaned his head over the back of the chair. 

“I hate math.”

“Me too.”

They sat in silence for a few more moments before Dash spoke again.

“Want to take a break?” 

He brought his head back up to see Danny staring at him. Danny’s cheeks flushed a little and he snorted. “What would we even do?”

Dash looked over Fenton’s shoulder at the lab again. 

“We could go take a look in your parent’s lab.”

“No!” Danny shouted. 

“Why not?” Dash leaned forward in his seat. “Are they secretly mad scientists experimenting on people down there?”

Danny leveled a stare at him. “No. Other people just aren’t allowed in there. It’s family only.”

Dash leaned back in his seat again and tapped his fingers against his arm. There was no way he’d be able to weasel his way in with that argument.

“What if I invited you to my next party? Would that be enough to let me go downstairs?”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Go to one party? Or not get grounded by my parents? That’s not a difficult decision.”

Dash squinted at Danny and stood up. He started making his way around the table and Danny stood up blocking Dash’s path. 

“You haven’t been able to take me in years.”

“I’ve been taking your shit everyday.”

Dash groaned.

“C’mon, Fentina! Just let me take a peek down in that so-called lab! I just want one little look.”

Danny placed himself between the basement door and Dash. “No. My parents would kill me if I let you down there.”

“What’s the fuss, anyways? You’ve said yourself that none of your parents' inventions even work because ghosts aren’t real. What’s the harm in just one little peek?” Dash bent down to look Danny in the eye. 

“Just because ghosts aren’t real doesn’t mean my parents don’t work with hazardous chemicals. I don’t want you touching something that could burn your skin off or, I don’t know, seal all the orifices in your body closed.” Danny crossed his arms. 

Dash snorted. “Yeah, like they have something like that.”

He tried to go around Danny but he moved so he was still in front of Dash and poked a finger into his chest.

“We’re not going down there.”

Dash grabbed the wrist on the hand that was pointing at him. 

“Don’t you want us to think you’re cool? I wanna see your parents' cool lab. We could even see if we could fix that new invention of theirs. It would make them super happy.”

Danny stared at him for a few moments, studying his face. “If they couldn’t get it to work properly, I don’t see how we’d be able to do it.”

“So does that mean you want to try?” Dash asked with a smile on his face. 

“If it means my parents will be happy afterwards, we can try.”

Finally, Danny turned around and opened the door. 

Dash could tell it was a heavy door. It was made of metal and creaked when it was pushed open. A cold waft of air gusted past them and Dash stared down the stairs over Danny’s shoulder. He flicked a lightswitch and the lights over the stairs flickered on. 

Danny started walking down the stairs and Dash was still for a moment before following behind him. 

“So what’s this new invention of theirs? Some kind of portal?” Dash asked as he studied the metal paneling on the wall.

“Yeah.” Danny responded over his shoulder. “It was supposed to be some kind of ghost portal but when they plugged it in it never turned on. They were really disappointed about it.”

“Do they really believe ghosts are real?” 

Danny shrugged. “They’ve got all these studies and measurements. I have no idea how they’ve gotten all this information but they believe ghosts are the cause of all of it.” 

They stepped down off the bottom step onto the clean, tiled floor. Dash looked around the basement, taking in all the science equipment they had laying around down there. It was very messy, which heavily contrasted what the rest of the house looked like. He figured the Fenton’s would be more neat than this, especially concerning the hazardous materials Danny was talking about before. He can see why Danny was worried about that. There were green splatters everywhere. On every counter and on the table in the center of the room and he even saw it on the door as Danny pushed it closed. 

“Why’s it so messy down here?” Dash asked as he walked further into the lab.

Danny walked over and stood next to him. “One of my chores is to clean the lab and I haven’t had time for it lately.”

Dash shot Danny a look. “Your parents make you clean up their lab?”

Danny shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah.”

“Why are they making you clean up hazardous material? That was an excuse you gave me for why I shouldn’t come down here.”

Danny waved him off. “It doesn’t matter. Besides, I know what I’m doing.”

“If you say so.” Dash went to go look at the mess of items on one of the counters. The green splatters were so vivid. They almost looked like they were glowing. Dash turned and caught a glimpse of what he assumed was the Fenton’s new invention.

“Hey.” Dash nodded his head at the hole in the wall. “What’s that?”

“That’s my parent’s attempt at building a working ghost portal. They don’t know what’s wrong with it.” Danny walked right up to the portal and peered inside. “They said they had an earlier version of this that worked a little better so they thought they had this one right. They’re not sure why it didn’t work.”

“Maybe we can figure it out.” Dash said. “Maybe they overlooked some small detail.” 

“Maybe.” Danny turned back around and walked to the opposite side of the room. He opened a cabinet and pulled out a jumpsuit that looked similar to what his parents always wore. 

“You have matching outfits with your parents?” Dash snickered.

Danny unzipped the zipper. “They’re supposed to help prevent ecto-contamination.”

“Ecto-contamination?”

“Yeah. It comes from ectoplasm.” Danny stuck his legs into the suit. “That’s what ghosts are made out of and produce. That’s what my parents use for their studies.”

“How do they get their ectoplasm?” Dash asked, studying the green splatters again.

Danny shrugged. “I’m not sure. I think they’ve said there’s just more than average residual ectoplasm in Amity Park or something.”

“Oh. Weird.”

“Yeah.”

Danny turned around and Dash held in a snort.

“Ha! What is that?” Dash laughed and pointed at Danny’s chest.

Danny looked down and groaned. He pulled his dad’s face off of his jumpsuit and threw it in the garbage. “Embarrassing.”

Danny walked up to the portal and stood just outside it, staring.

“What do you think is wrong with it?” Dash asked.

“I have no idea.” Danny replied. “I’m hoping it’ll be something fairly obvious though. If it’s too complicated I won’t be able to do much.”

He started walking inside and he looked all around the portal. Dash wasn’t sure what he was looking for, and he was sure Danny didn’t know either. The further in he walked, the darker he got. 

But then everything went wrong.

Dash watched as Danny tripped over something in the portal, and then he heard a soft click. Suddenly the inside of the portal was lighting up and Dash felt his heart fall to his stomach. 

This wasn’t good.

The humming got louder and louder and Dash started running forward.

“Danny!”

A moment later a green light so bright it looked white filled the room and Dash staggered back, shielding his eyes. Danny’s screams filled the room. They were so harrowing and pain filled and it had Dash covering his ears closed instead of covering his eyes. 

He didn’t know how long it lasted for, if it was moments or minutes, but when Dash finally heard something hit the ground, he risked peeking his eyes open. 

When he saw that the bright light was dying down, he opened his eyes the rest of the way and saw Danny laying on the floor in front of him. He looked strange though. 

His hair was now snow white and his jumpsuit had been inverted and was now mostly black. Danny looked like he had burns from the portal but somehow they seemed to be healing themselves back up, even the suit. Danny even looked like he was glowing.

Once the green light disappeared into a swirling vortex, Dash ran forward and dragged Danny away from it. Once he deemed them far enough away, he knelt on the ground and pulled Danny into his lap, his back resting against Dash’s legs.

“Danny.” He shook him. His white hair ruffled back and forth from the movement. “Danny. Wake up. Please.” 

After the last shake, Danny’s eyebrows furrowed and he groaned. He raised a hand to his forehead and pried his eyes open. He looked around for a few moments before his gaze drifted up to Dash.

“Oh, thank god.” Dash whispered. “I thought you were- I don’t even know if you really are- You look so-” Dash cut himself off as he choked up. 

“What do you mean? What happened?”

“You went into the portal in that hazmat suit. You tripped over something and fell into the wall and there must’ve been a button on it or something because everything started glowing this scary green color and then you were screaming. You were screaming so loud.”

Danny rubbed a spot on his hand, a vacant stare in his eyes. 

“Danny, are you okay? You look so different. What if you’re-”

Suddenly a bright ring appeared around Danny’s waist. They both jumped and watched as it split and traveled over his body. Dash thought he would’ve felt something, but it was like the ring wasn’t even touching him even with Danny’s proximity to him. 

When the ring passed over his head and disappeared Danny was left just how he had walked into the portal. 

“You’re-” Dashed started. “You’re back to normal.”

“What happened to me?” Danny whispered, still rubbing the spot on his hand. 

Dash’s heart rate picked up. His chest started rising and falling faster and the room spun a little.

“We have to go get your parents! We don’t even know what this thing did to you. They would-”

Danny sat up and turned. He covered Dash’s mouth with his hand. “We are not telling my parents. We’re not even supposed to be down here.”

He looked at Dash with wide, shaken looking eyes. “My parents would have killed me if they knew I brought you down here. But I don’t know what they’d do to me if they found out what their portal turned me into.”

Dash’s eyes widened and Danny slowly removed his hand from his mouth. 

“I killed you.” He whispered. 

Danny shook his. “Don’t say that.” He whispered back. “I’m not dead. I’m right here.”

Dash ran a hand through his hair. “You died! You stepped out of the portal all glowy and different colors! Then you magical girl transformed!”

“I died but I don’t think I’m dead.” Danny said. “I can still feel my heart beating.”

Dash stopped and looked back up at him. “Really?”

Danny nodded.

“Can I…?” Dash reached a hand out.

Danny nodded again. “It’ll probably help convince you I’m not actually still dead.”

Dash pressed his fingers against Danny’s neck and waited. Then he could feel the soft beats of his heart. He held his hand there for a few more moments before he lowered it.

“What even happened to you?” He whispered.

“I don’t know.”

“What do we do?” Dash asked.

Danny shook his head. “We can’t tell anyone. People would think I’m some sort of freak. And I don’t know what my parents would do.” He looked up at Dash. “This has to stay between us.”

Dash nodded. Who would they tell anyways? No one besides the Fenton’s could really help them. There was no one to turn to. 

Danny groaned. “Help me up.” 

Dash stood and grabbed Danny by the hands and pulled him up. Dash was about to let go when suddenly Danny started sinking through the floor. 

“What the fuck?” Danny shouted panickingly as his feet disappeared into the tiles below them.

Dash kept a tight grip on Danny’s hands. He didn’t want to know what would happen if he let go and Danny disappeared. He pulled Danny up and out of the ground and when Dash set him back down, Danny’s feet were once again solid. 

“Never seen that before.” Dash whispered.

Danny just stared at him. “Thanks Sherlock, me either.”

“How do we stop that from happening?” Dash asked. 

“I don’t know. Maybe-”

A beeping rang throughout the lab and Dash looked around in a panic. Was something about to blow up? Danny wasn’t nearly concerned enough for that. He did look a bit panicked though.

The beeping died down and Dash looked around him again. “What was that?”

“The ‘someone’s in the driveway alert.’ My parents are home.”

Anxiety spiked in Dash’s stomach and he turned to face the stairs. “Why do they-”

“It doesn’t matter. They can’t find us down here.”

Dash grabbed Danny’s hand and pulled him up the stairs. 

They were at the top of the steps when they heard the rattling of the front door knob through the door to the lab. Dash ran up the rest of the way as he pulled Danny behind him. Together they pushed the heavy door closed. They rushed back to their seats and sat down just in time for Danny’s parents to walk in. 

“Hi, Danny!” Maddie called. “How are you- Oh.”

Maddie paused as she walked into the kitchen, gaze landing on Dash. She looked between the two of them and smiled.

“Dash! It’s nice to see you again. I’m glad to see you two hanging out again after all this time.”

Danny’s gaze landed on Dash. “We’re not friends, Mom. He thought his tutoring session with Jazz was today and asked if he could stay and do homework here. He said the house has ‘good learning vibes.’”

“Oh.” Maddie’s smile fell a little and Dash wasn’t sure how to feel about that. “Well, I hope you two still had a good time.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “It’s just homework.”

“Nevertheless, if you two ever need to-”

“Danny-boy!” Jack bellowed as he walked into the kitchen, carrying three cartons of fudge. “They stocked up on your favorite peanut butter fudge!” He thrust them into Danny’s hands.

“Are all three of these one flavor?” Danny asked, flabbergasted. 

“You betcha.” He turned towards the basement door. “Your mother and I are going to start running diagnostics on the portal and try to figure out why it didn’t turn on.”

He opened the door and started walking down the stairs. 

“Wish us luck!” Maddie called to them before she followed behind him and closed the door. 

Dash stared at it for a moment. “How do you think they’d feel if they knew they just hadn’t actually turned it on.” 

“I’m sure it’s just a new addition on a long list of oversights.” Danny said. He stood up from the table and staggered, holding his head.

“Are you okay?” Dash asked. 

“I’ve got a killer headache. And my head feels like it’s spinning.”

“Will you be-”

Danny shook his head. “I’m sure I’ll be fine. You should go before my parents pull us back down into the lab to show us that the ghost portal miraculously started working.”

Danny’s screams rang in his head again. He wasn’t sure if he ever wanted to step foot down in that lab again.

“Yeah. I should be heading home anyways.”

Dash packed up his backpack and slung it onto his shoulder. Danny walked him to the door and opened it.

“See you tomorrow?” Dash asked.

“Yeah, sure. See you tomorrow.” Danny replied and closed it behind him once he walked out. 

Dash stared at the door for a moment before he turned around and walked down the stairs to the sidewalk. 

He took a deep breath and gripped his shaking hands onto his backpack straps. 

Danny died today. Danny died and they didn’t have any answers. Danny died and it was Dash’s fault for insisting they go into the basement. How could he ever face him again? 

The walk from Danny’s house to Dash’s felt way too short. Almost as if he blinked and suddenly he was home. 

Maybe if he went to sleep he’d wake up and find out this was all a bad dream. Maybe he could pretend that none of this actually happened. 

He quietly unlocked and opened his front door, closing it behind him. He quietly made his way up the stairs to his room and dropped his backpack on the floor before collapsing into bed. 

He hoped none of this would be real when he woke up. 

~~~~~~~~

Dash wanted to go back to bed.

Dash wasn’t sure he had even wanted to go to school today. His stomach was still roiling and he didn’t want to find out if Danny had actually died yesterday. Maybe he had just imagined the whole thing. Maybe Danny had actually died and was still lying fried on his basement floor right now. Maybe he survived the initial accident but died later that night. 

He stood on the sidewalk staring at the school as it towered in front of him. He was already here. He had to go in. 

He took a deep breath and was about to start walking when he saw a mop of black hair walking ahead of him. 

Danny yawned a big yawn and he looked tired but he was alive. 

“Danny!” Dash shouted, waving a hand in the air. Danny turned around to look at him. He looked around them as Dash walked up to him. 

“What do you want, Dash?”

Dash stopped short. “I came to see how you were doing. Glad to see you surviving was real.”

“Oh.” Danny shuffled awkwardly on his feet. “Yeah. Still alive. I think I ended up sinking through my bed into the living room last night, though. I woke up at like four in the morning on the living room floor.”

“Oh dang.”

“Yeah.” Danny said as he started walking toward the school. Dash followed after him. “The worst part though was when I tried lifting my arm up in front of my face and I couldn’t see it because somehow my body had turned itself invisible.” 

“I’m still wondering just what exactly that portal did to you.” Dash said, lowering his head and his voice closer to Danny. “Like, do you just have ghost powers now or something?”

Danny frowned. “I’m sure it’s more than that. But basically.” 

“Man, that’d be so cool.” Dash said. “If I had ghost powers, I’d-”

Dash was interrupted by someone clearing their throat behind them. They turned around and were met with Sam and Tucker looking at them.

“What’s going on here?” Sam asked, pointing between the two of them.

“What?” Danny asked, his voice rising in pitch. “There’s nothing going on here. We’re just two guys chatting.” 

Sam and Tucker shared a look and smirked at Danny.

“No! Not like that!” A blush rose on Danny’s cheeks and Dash looked between Danny and his friends a couple times before he processed what Danny meant. A blush rose to his own cheeks. 

“Well, what’s happening then?” Tucker asked. “Did you guys finally make up?”

Sam looked at him. “Make up?”

Tucker nodded. “Yeah. They used to be friends when we were kids. They had some fight when we were younger. I never really knew what it was about.” 

Dash looked at Danny to see him already staring at him. Danny studied him for a few moments before speaking. “Yeah, I guess you can say we finally made up.” 

“Cool.” Tucker said casually. 

“Cool? That’s it? No questions?” Sam asked him. “You’re not curious at all how they figured this thing out after years of conflict?” 

Tucker shrugged. “If they want to tell us they will.” 

Sam crossed her arms and huffed. “I guess you’re right.” 

They started walking towards the school and Dash and Danny followed behind them.

“Did you want to tell them?” Dash whispered.

Danny looked at him and then looked back at Sam and Tucker. “I… I don’t know. I don’t want them to think I’m weird or a freak.” 

“Okay. We can keep it between us for now.” Dash nodded. 

Danny gave one curt nod and then quickened his pace to catch up with Sam and Tucker. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Phantom is so cool.” Sam said as she finished swallowing a bite of her food. 

Danny spit out his drink and looked up at her. Dash sent him a look. “He is?” 

“Yeah. I mean, some vigilante ghost kid fighting to protect us even though no one trusts him? I’d say that’s pretty cool.”

“Do you trust him?” Danny asked, looking between Sam and Tucker.

Tucker shrugged. “He hasn’t really given us a reason not to trust him.” He placed a hand on his chin and started thinking about it. “Except for maybe that time he ruined Valerie’s life. Or when he kidnapped the mayor. He also stole all that stuff one time. Or-” 

Sam elbowed Tucker. “People have off days! I don’t think he did any of that stuff on purpose. Remember he broke out of that spell that Freakshow put him under? He saved me because he was able to break out of it.” 

“Also it was the dog that ruined Valerie’s life.” Dash corrected. “Not Phantom himself.” 

“Yeah!” Sam gestured at Dash. “All the ghosts seem to have it out for Phantom for some reason. How do we know it’s not just all orchestrated?”

“Is the property damage orchestrated?” Tucker asked her. 

“Haha.” Sam took another bite of her food. “But I’m serious. He just… He’s just a kid. Doing this all by himself. It’s messed up.” 

Tucker nodded. “He seems so familiar too. It makes me wonder if we knew him before he died.” 

Dash watched as Danny looked between the two of them, stunned. He opened his mouth.

“Guys, I have something to tell-” 

Danny was interrupted by something crashing outside. It sent the windows shattering and screams erupted around the cafeteria as everyone ducked down to cover their heads and faces. 

“What happened?” Sam looked out the windows, her breathing quick. A screech echoed around the schoolyard. 

Danny gasped out his ghost sense and Dash followed his gaze to where it stood. 

“There’s a ghost.” Dash pointed to it. 

It was digging around in the dirt like it was looking for something. Dash couldn’t tell what animal it was supposed to be. It was boney and skeletal, its hips jutting out from its body. 

Danny stood up and ran across the cafeteria, pushing open the door along the wall with the windows.

“Danny!” Sam and Tucker shouted as they stood up together. 

They went to run after Danny but Dash grabbed Sam’s wrist before she could go anywhere.

“What are you doing?” She asked him hysterically. “We have to go get him! He can’t just be running around outside like that while there’s a ghost attacking!”

“Yeah, dude. Are you mental?” Tucker asked Dash.

“Danny-”

“Needs our help!” Sam tore her wrist out of Dash’s hand and they ran across the room to the door. Dash shifted in his place, jittery. He finally followed after them. 

When he got outside they were already across the grass, but instead of looking for Danny they were looking up in the air at the fight. 

“Foley! Manson! Get over here!” Dash shouted at them from the building. “You’re not even looking for Danny! You need to-” 

The screech of tires signaled the Fenton’s arrival. They jumped out of their van and brandished their weapons. 

“You take that side, Jack! I’ll stay here!” 

“Aye, aye!” Jack ran away from her to the other side of the schoolyard. 

“Sam, Tucker! Get-”

The ghost looked up at Dash’s voice but its gaze landed on Sam and Tucker first. It hissed at them, the sound grating. It started charging at them and they both took a step back but it was moving too fast.

“No!” Danny shouted, flying towards them. 

He got to them just in time to grab them both and knock them out of the way. They tumbled across the ground and Dash could hear Sam and Tucker screaming from where he stood. Danny pulled himself back up and stood between them and the ghost. His fists clenched.

“You’re not getting through me, ghost!” 

Danny jumped back into the fight and it took only a couple more hits fueled by his rage before the fight was over and he caught it in his thermos. 

He turned to look at Sam and Tucker and he flew forward a couple steps before he was being shot square in the back. He hissed and looked behind him to see his mom still aiming her weapon at him.

“Wait!” Sam ran forward and put herself between Danny and Mrs. Fenton. 

“Sam!” Maddie shouted at her. “Get out of the way! We need to capture him!” 

“No, he just-”

“Jack, do you have a shot?” Maddie called, looking in his direction.

“No! The kids are in the way!” 

Maddie snarled. Dash watched Danny recoil. “If you don’t move-”

Danny started flying away. Maddie aimed her gun at him again but he turned invisible before she could take another shot. She shouted into the empty air and threw her gun down. She glared at Sam and Tucker. 

Maddie walked up to them. “Are you aiding the ghost kid?”

They looked between each other, shock on their faces. “No.” Sam said. “The ghost was going to attack us. Phantom was just trying-” 

“To win you over.” Maddie hissed out. “He’s nothing but a manipulator and an evil ghost. He doesn’t really care about whether or not you get hurt. He’s just doing it to fulfill his own needs.”

Sam took a step back at Maddie’s words. Tucker grabbed her hand and pulled her to him. Dash could tell that her words upset them. Unsettled them. He’d never seen Mrs. Fenton talk to someone like that before. Let alone Danny’s friends. 

Danny walked up behind him, his arm brushing against Dash’s. 

“We can’t tell them.”

Dash looked at Danny sharply. “What? I thought you were going to-” 

He shook his head. “It would be nice for them to know, but would it just put them in danger? All I did was push them out of the way of that attack and my mom’s accusing them of aiding and abetting me.” 

Dash looked back up at where Maddie was stomping away from Sam and Tucker. Their shocked expressions turned to look at Danny and Dash. 

“What would she do if they knew and they were really helping me?” Danny whispered. 

Dash shook his head. “I.. I don’t know.”

Danny turned his head to look up at Dash. “We can’t tell them.” 

“Okay. We won’t tell them.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Get back here, ghost scum!” 

Dash ran behind Danny’s parents as they chased him through the air. Of all the things to be giving them the most grief these days, it was Danny’s parents. 

Let’s tear him apart molecule by molecule.

We have to have some remains to examine. 

I wonder what his insides look like. 

Let’s tear him up and find out.

They were relentlessly hunting Danny every time another ghost attacked. They didn’t even bother with the other ghosts anymore either. They only had their sights set on Phantom. That was all they cared about.

He heard Maddie’s weapon go off again and Dash turned down an alley. He had to somehow get to their rendezvous point before them so that Danny could transform and they could get his parents off his trail. 

As he came out of the alley, he saw that Danny had turned around in the air. Dash waved up at him and when Danny caught sight of him Dash ran into the next alley. Dash had his back pressed up against the wall and hid on the other side of some garbage cans when Danny flew into the alley and came to stand next to Dash. 

Dash pulled Danny behind him and turned so he was blocking him from being seen from the entrance. 

“How close were they?” He whispered.

“Too close.” Danny breathed out heavily, calling on his transformation rings. “They-”

His parents ran around the corner of the alley right as Danny’s transformation finished passing. He had a panicked look on his face. Reaching up, he grabbed Dash’s cheeks and pulled his face down. 

Dash’s eyes widened.

“Freeze, ghost scum!” 

Understanding dawned on Dash and he wrapped an arm around Danny’s waist and deepened the kiss. Danny carded a few fingers through his hair and then jumped and pulled away, faking surprise as he looked over Dash’s shoulder. 

“Danny?” His mom called over in surprise. “Is that Dash?”

Dash tried to turn around sheepishly. “H-hey, Mrs. Fenton.” His voice shook and he hoped she couldn’t pick up on the fear that laced through it. 

Jack sniffled. “Maddie, our little boy is turning into a man. I think it’s time we gave him the talk.”

“No!” Danny lifted both hands from Dash and waved them vigorously over Dash’s shoulders. “No talk! I do not want to suffer through that.” 

“I didn’t know you two were-” Maddie scratched her chin. “When did you two start dating?”

They looked at each other.

“Today-”

“The beginning of September-”

Danny frowned at Dash and he chuckled. 

“Haha, yeah, the beginning of September.” 

Danny facepalmed. Maddie’s eyes opened wide.

“You’ve been dating that long already? Why didn’t the two of you say anything?” She gasped and held a hand up to her mouth. “Did you not feel safe talking to us about it? I’m so sorry, if we ever did anything to make you feel unsafe-”

“No, mom. It’s- it’s not that.” Danny stammered. “I’m just not ready to talk about it yet.” 

Dash looked between Danny and his parents. And the weapons that they were still holding in their hands. Maddie smiled at them. 

“That’s okay. We’ll be here when you’re ready.” She lifted her gun to brandish it in both hands again. “Did you two see where that ghost went off to? We were hot on his trail just a minute ago.” 

Danny shook his head. “No, sorry. We were, uh, busy.”

“Drat.” Jack snapped his fingers. “He got away again.”

“It’s okay, Jack. We’ll get him one of these days.” Maddie placed a hand on his arm. She turned her head to look back at Danny. “Be sure to be home for dinner. Bring Dash with you if he would like to join us.” 

They walked back out of the alley. Danny leaned his head forward and rested it on Dash’s chest, letting out a deep breath. 

“That was too close.” 

They sat there like that for a little bit. Dash’s hand was still on Danny’s waist. He started rubbing small circles there with his thumb. Danny took another deep breath and pulled away. Dash wilted at the loss of contact. 

“Let’s get back to the house.” Danny said quietly. “Unless you want to go home?”

Dash shook his head. “I’ll come back with you. Stay for dinner.” 

Danny nodded, relieved. Dash reached a hand up and squeezed his shoulder comfortingly. 

“Let’s go home.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So, Pariah.” 

“Yup.”

Danny was slumped in his seat at the kitchen table. His head hung over the back of it and he just stared up at the ceiling. 

“Almost died.”

“Yeah.” 

Dash played with his pencil that was sitting on the table next to his homework. “At least the ghosts seem to have more respect for you now. You put their terrifying king back into his coffin again.” 

Danny nodded. 

Dash frowned at him. “Are you okay, Danny?” 

Danny looked at him. “Yeah. I just- It’s a lot to process. Like, why did Vlad give Valerie her weapons? Why is he looking for all these artifacts? What is he planning? Why save me? He could’ve just left me there and I wouldn’t be in his hair anymore. He’d be able to kill my dad all he wanted.” 

He looked back up at the ceiling. “What does me defeating the king of the ghost zone really mean?”

Dash opened his mouth to respond but realized he didn’t have any input for that. He closed it again and reached a hand over to Danny but jumped, pulling it away when the basement door opened. 

“Hey, boys! How are you?” Maddie asked as she came up the stairs from the lab.

“We’re good, Mom. How’s the work going?” Danny looked up at her. 

“We’re making a lot of progress on our newest invention!” She walked over to the sink and grabbed a glass and started filling it with water. “We’ll surely get Phantom with this one! It neutralizes a ghost’s powers so it can no longer use them!” 

Dash tensed up and he turned his head to look at Danny. Danny’s eyes were wide as he stared at his mom. “Yeah? Wow.”

Maddie nodded. “We’ve got to get him somehow. I think this one will give us a fighting chance. We’re looking to get a more humanoid ghost to examine for our studies and see what makes them different from blob ghosts.” 

“What will you do when you get him?” Dash asked with a little shake to his voice. Maddie smiled at him. 

“We’re going to cut him open and see if there’s anything to examine inside him. We’re really curious about his core. A blob ghost’s core isn’t strong enough to sustain itself if it’s even slightly damaged, but Phantom’s would no doubt be much stronger. We could head down to the lab and take a look at-” 

 Dash suddenly stood up from the table, his heart racing at the mention of the lab.

“I have to get going. Curfew, you know?” Dash pointed over his shoulder and then tapped his wrist.

“It’s like five pm.” Danny deadpanned. 

Maddie frowned. “That’s too bad. Don’t be afraid to come over more often. We don’t bite. We could even give you a tour of the lab!” 

“Haha, that’s okay. I’ve been warned about all the hazards and wastes that are down there. I’m good hearing about it from up here.”

Maddie shrugged. “Suit yourself. But the offer still stands if you ever want to take us up on it one day.” She grabbed her glass of water and walked to the lab door. “Back to it!” 

She pulled the door closed behind her and after a minute Danny’s gaze shifted to Dash.

“Curfew?”

“I don’t know!” Dash groaned and covered his face. “It was the first thing I thought of.”

“Knowing your dad, my mom probably believed that he would move up your curfew to some insane time.” 

Dash shook his head and closed his eyes. He just… Couldn’t go down there. Even the thought of it brought Danny’s screams back into his mind. 

He felt a hand on his arm and opened his eyes. Danny was looking at him. 

“You don’t have to go in the lab if you don’t want to. Ever. Even if they’re begging on their hands and knees.”

Dash smiled and patted Danny’s hand. “Thanks. I do think I’m going to head out for the night though. Call me if any ghost stuff happens?”

Danny nodded and stood up to walk Dash to the door. “You know I always do.” 

He waved at Danny over his shoulder. 

“See you tomorrow.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dash hadn’t heard from Danny for two days. Before, that wouldn’t have been anything out of the ordinary. But ever since the accident with the portal Dash usually got at least one update from Danny on the whole ghost thing a day. 

He was on his way to Fentonworks now. He just… had a bad feeling. He couldn’t describe it. He knew that if he went to check on Danny and didn’t find him, that he could panic a little more reasonably. 

He walked up the steps to the Fenton’s front door. He went to knock, but when his fist made contact the first time the door opened slightly. Dash frowned.

Why would they just leave the front door open like that? Were they even home? 

Dash pushed the door open the rest of the way and walked inside. 

“Danny?” He called into the house. No one responded. 

He pushed the door closed behind him and headed towards the stairs. Hopefully Danny would just be sick in his room. He really hoped that was where he’d be. 

It was eerily quiet as he walked up the stairs. Fentonworks was always full of life and people any time Dash had been there before. It unnerved him how calm it was. 

Dash made his way to Danny’s door. He paused outside it for a moment before he raised his fist to knock.

He waited a second, two, three, but there was no response. 

“Danny? I’m coming in.” 

He opened the door and swung it open. His heart dropped when he saw that the room was empty. Danny wasn’t here.

He turned back around without closing the door. He walked down the hallway to Jazz’s room and banged on the door, more panicked now. 

Jazz must not have been home either because he waited and didn’t hear anything on the other side of the door. He turned around and headed back towards the stairs, pulling his phone out.

He didn’t think he had a choice. He had to tell Sam and Tucker. Maybe they knew something. Maybe Danny told them where he was. He’d start with that, if they’ve heard from Danny at all the past couple days. Then if he had to he’d tell them about Danny being a half ghost. Maybe they would be able to help.

He heard a noise. 

Dash’s head whipped towards the kitchen. He slowly walked into the room and turned his head.

Dash saw the open door to the lab. There was a light flickering down there and dread crawled up his throat. 

He never wanted to step foot in that lab again.

Dash gulped. 

He had to do this. He could go down there again. He had to see if Danny was down there. He had to find him. 

Dash walked through the kitchen and into the open doorway. He tiptoed his way down the stairs slowly. He could still turn around. He didn’t have to see what was happening down here. 

Dash took a deep breath and took the last step into the lab. 

Danny was there, surrounded by his parents. His insides exposed for Maddie to root around in. Dash felt nausea well up inside him. 

“What have you done?!” 

Jack and Maddie didn’t pay any mind to Dash’s outburst, but he could see Danny stir.

Danny locked eyes with Dash just as his parents touched the glowing orb that sat in his chest with a scalpel. 

An explosion erupted from it and Dash covered his face. It sent cracks up the walls and across the floor and the building was trembling. Everything was creaking and debris was raining down from the ceiling. 

Danny still lay on the table but his parents were on the floor. He couldn’t tell if they were still breathing or not, but right now he didn’t care.

He ran across the lab to where Danny lay on their dissection table. Danny’s insides were all laid bare to the air. How was Dash supposed to get him somewhere safe?

The house creaked above him and Dash decided that there was no choice. He’d just have to pick him up like this. 

Dash scooped Danny up into his arms. He was limp, but he was miraculously still breathing. He turned towards the stairs as the building gave another creak and they caved in. Panic spiked in Dash’s chest. What was he supposed to do? His only way out was blocked. How-

The green glow of the swirling portal caught his eye. He turned his head to look at it. He had no other choice. That was his only way out. 

Dash turned his body and started running towards the portal as the rest of the ceiling started collapsing. 

He clutched Danny to his chest and dove into the ghost portal. 

[q-gorgeous]

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[q-gorgeous]

The Fenton-Feel Giver

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 1579

This time, instead of making a weapon to hurt ghosts, the Fentons make a weapon that allows them to “get their feelings back”. Problem is, they already have them, so what happens when you take an already emotional ghost teen and amplify it by 10? @Amabsis

rararararararararara

Danny sat at the kitchen table, tiredly eating cereal while Jazz read a book next to him as she ate her eggs. He held his head in his left hand and he was about to nod off when his parents erupted from the door to the lab. 

“Hey, kids! Come look at what we just finished!” His dad bellowed. Danny jumped at the loud sound of his voice. 

“It’s too early for this.” He groaned as he and Jazz forcefully followed their parents downstairs into the lab.” 

“It’s our newest ghost hunting weapon!” Maddie smiled excitedly. 

Danny flinched as his dad brandished his new gun.

“This bad boy will give all these apathetic ectoplasmic post human copies all of their feelings back! They’ll never know what hit them!” 

“Dad, how do you really know that ghosts don’t have feelings?” Jazz asked him, looking between Danny and their dad. “You’ve never had a conversation with a ghost. How can you say you know how their minds work?” 

“How can any ghost have feelings when they’re terrorizing the city all the time? Surely if they had feelings they would think about their actions and how it might be affecting the people around them.” Maddie said.

“Now you’re just putting your prejudice on them!” Jazz planted her hands on her hips. “Not all ghosts go around terrorizing the city all the time!”

“Also the ghosts just think it’s fun. They don’t care how we feel, even with feelings.”

The three of them looked over at Danny. His eyes widened when he realized they heard his comment. 

“See who terrorizes a city for fun?”

“That still doesn’t mean they don’t have feelings!” 

Danny rolled his eyes and stood up. This was ridiculous. He didn’t need to sit here and listen to his family argue about something that he knew was false. 

“Danny-boy! Where are you going? I haven’t even demonstrated it yet!”

He turned around to face his dad. “I gotta go. I have to-”

He gasped out a breath of cold air. And he inwardly groaned.

“Have to, to- go to the library and check out a book I forgot I needed! It’s about a project on Patrocolos!”

“You’re still learning about that guy?” Jack frowned. 

“Long unit.” Danny said as he backed up. “Very important to a lot of different cultures. What a guy.”

“Be back before curfew!” His mom called to him and he turned and dashed his way up the stairs. 

When he hit the top he transformed and flew through the roof and scanned the streets around him. Where was the ghost? 

“I am the Box Ghost!” 

Danny closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, groaning.

“Tremble before me and my boxes of doOoom!” 

Danny flew in the direction that the Box Ghost’s voice was coming from. He came into view and he had a swarm of boxes flying around him.

“Hey, Boxy!” 

The Box Ghost turned around to face him. “Ah, Phantom! I see you’ve heard my war call! You will face my wrath and get boxed!” 

Danny scoffed. “As if. Your wrath is about a centimeter long.” 

“You will regret your words, young halfling! My boxes will leave deep cardboard cuts all over your skin! I will-” 

Danny sucked the Box Ghost into the thermos as he was talking. He yelled as he got sucked in and the sound was cut off when the beam disappeared. Danny capped the thermos as all the boxes fell into the street. 

He heard the screeching of tires below him and looked down. His parent’s van plowed to a stop and they were jumping out. 

“There he is, Jack!” His mom pointed at where he floated up in the sky. 

“This is the perfect time to test our new weapon, Maddie!” 

Danny’s eyes widened. Considering ghosts really did actually have feelings, Danny didn’t know what it would do to him. He didn’t think he wanted to find out either. 

They started shooting at him. His dad had the new weapon they showed off at breakfast this morning. His mom had what looked like a regular ectogun. 

He dodged as many blasts as he could, but they just kept coming. One flew past him and sent him spinning. He went back right side up but it was too late.

“Haha! Taste the Fenton Feel-giver!” 

Danny didn’t have enough time to jump and dodge the blast that his dad shot at him. He put his hands up to block his face when the blast made contact. It sent him hurtling towards the ground. The blast itself didn’t hurt nearly as much as he was expecting but his collision with the ground did and he peeked out from behind his arms to see his dad barely containing his excitement. 

Then his mom walked towards him, brandishing her Fenton bazooka and Danny’s heart started racing.

He covered his head and cowered away from her. 

“Don’t hurt me, Mom!” He shouted. 

“Mom?” Maddie exclaimed. 

“I promise I’m not a monster! Don’t hurt me!” 

Danny scurried backwards away from her. What was happening to him? His heart was racing and he was starting to hyperventilate. 

Maddie lowered her weapon, but she looked unsure about it. 

“Jack?” She turned to face him. 

“He looks just like a child.” Jack whispered. 

“Is he just a child?” Maddie asked him.

Danny looked up at his parents. He could tell by their faces that they weren’t expecting the consequences of actually seeing a ghost’s feelings. That they weren’t expecting him to be so human.

Maddie knelt down to be at eye level with him. She reached a hand forward and Danny fell back trying to get away from it.

“Don’t touch me!”

She pulled her hand back and looked at Jack. 

“Phantom, do you remember your human mother?”

He looked at her. How ironic was this. This was some cosmic irony here.

He wasn’t sure what he should do. So he just nodded. 

“Did she ever hurt you?”

Ectoblast burns. Bazooka blasts. Kicks to the stomach.

“Not on purpose. But she did.” 

Maddie’s felt settled into a sad expression. A tear ran down Danny’s cheek as they stared at each other. She reached towards him to wipe it off but he pulled back and jumped into the air.

“Don’t- don't touch me.”

“Phantom, would you like to come back to our lab with us? We could-” 

His heart rate continued to race and his chest rose and fell too quickly with each breath. Scalpels and dissection tables. Samples and tests and inventions and so many other terrifying things were down in that lab. He couldn’t- No. No no no. 

He felt his transformation rings appearing. He knew that if he was ever too hurt that he transformed back. If he passed out he’d transform back. He didn’t ever think he’d be too emotionally distressed that it would force him to transform back. He couldn’t. Not here. 

He pushed the rings back and they were gone for a moment but they just reappeared a second later.

“Jack, what are those rings? Have you ever seen anything like that before?” 

“No I haven’t. What kind of power could that be?”

He couldn’t keep the transformation rings back anymore. They traveled over his body and he watched as his parents confused expressions morphed into ones of horror. The ring passed over his head and he started falling towards the ground. 

“Danny?” His mom called in shock.

His dad ran forward and caught Danny in the air before he hit the ground. Danny scrambled to get out of his father’s arms and fell, hitting the ground. 

“Don’t touch me!” 

“Danny, how is this possible? How did this-”

“You can’t hurt me! Please!” 

Maddie faltered and took a step away from him. “We would never hurt you.”

Danny shook his head. “You wanted to. You always talk about how you want to hurt me so badly. About all the nasty horrible things you want to do to me.”

“But we never- if we’d known it was you, we would never have said those things.”

Danny looked her in the eyes. “Even if it wasn’t me, I’m still just a kid. It doesn’t matter if it’s me or not.”

Maddie and Jack looked at each other.

“We’ll make this right.” Jack said. “We’ll get you fixed up and-”

“No! You can’t take it! I don’t need to be fixed!”

“Take what?” Maddie asked.

“My core!” 

Maddie’s eyes opened wide. “You have a core?”

“You can’t have it.” 

Maddie shook her head. She looked like she wanted to reach out to him and touch him but she kept her hands firmly at her side where she knelt down. “We don’t want your core.”

“We need to reverse the effects that the Fenton Feel-giver had on you.”

“No experiments?” Danny asked. He looked back and forth between his parents. 

“No experiments.” Jack said.

Danny was still looking between the two of them. His heart rate was starting to slow. 

“You still love me?”

Danny could see the moment his mom’s heart broke. “Of course we do, sweetie.”

Tears welled up in Danny’s eyes and he held out a hand to his mom. She grabbed it and stood up, pulling him with her. 

“It’ll be okay. We’ll get you fixed up and then you can tell us how this all happened.” 

Danny nodded. He took a deep breath. “You still love me.” 

“More than life itself.”

[q-gorgeous]

Sew Me Up and Keep Me Whole

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 7603

Thanks to seeing how various injuries are treated as a member of the football team, Dash actually has a decent background in first aid and anatomy. He gets adopted into Team Phantom when circumstances keep leading him to be the one patching up Phantom after fights.

ohohohhoho

Dash was walking home after a football game. He was exhausted and was looking forward to going to bed tonight. Plus there was a ghost attack at the end of the game so it ran extra long while they waited for it to be over. 

He turned into the park. It was dark in the park, but it made his trip home from the school faster. His dad would be even madder if he woke him up this late. He wanted to get back as soon as possible. 

He got to the wooded part of the trees when he heard something. It sounded like voices. 

“Tucker, you’re not doing it right.” Somebody whispered angrily. It sounded like Manson. 

“Do you want to try doing this?” He hissed back. “I’m the only one who’s taken a sewing class. You didn’t think you should be reduced to something so ‘stereotypically feminine.’”

“-’s not ev’n a fem’n’n thing.” Was that Fenton? “Sewing is a b-basic life skill…” 

“That’s not the point!” She hissed back at them. “My mom-” 

Dash stepped through the bushes and past the tree separating them and fell short. That wasn’t who he was expecting to be there.

Phantom sat in between Foley and Manson, not Fenton. As he stepped through the bushes their heads snapped up to look at him. Phantom’s head groggily lulled to the side as he looked at Dash.

“Ha. Jus’...what we need.”

Dash frowned. “What?” 

Phantom chuckled and closed his eyes.

“No! Don’t close your eyes!” Manson lightly slapped him. When he just groaned and leaned his head back against the tree behind him she slapped him harder.

“...Sam!” He pried his eyes open and glared at her. “Don’ hit m’..”

“You can’t fall asleep until Tucker is done with your stitches. If only he could just hurry it up.” Manson ground out.

“I’m going as fast as I can!” Tucker breathed out, his hand shakily pulling another stitch through Phantom’s injury. “I don’t want to leave an ugly scar or make it worse by not doing it well.”

Dash stepped closer to where they were sat behind the bushes. Manson shot another look at him. He could finally see Phantom’s wound and it was pretty gnarly. Foley’s stitches were holding it closed but they definitely weren’t pretty. 

“Do you need help?” Dash asked apprehensively. “I’ve seen a lot of injuries during football practice. And I’m not squeamish like you, Foley.”

“Yeah? You know how to sew up wounds?” Manson spit out. “How is watching people get treated for wounds during practice the same as sewing up an injury?” 

Dash held up his hands. “It seems like Foley doesn’t know what he’s doing either. I know how to sew already. Isn’t that like halfway there?”

Foley looked at Manson. “If he can get it done faster than me, why not let him? We’re gonna run out of time.”

“How can we trust him?” Manson glanced at Dash, worrying her lip. 

“He is literally Phantom’s biggest fan except for maybe Paulina. Do you really think he’s gonna try to kill him?” 

A blush rose to Dash’s cheeks at Foley’s comment while Manson kept studying him. 

A few more moments went by before she looked back at Phantom. He smiled at her groggily.

She sighed. “Fine. Dash, get over here.”

His eyes widened, stunned that they actually accepted his help. He strode forward and knelt on the ground between Foley and Manson. Phantom looked up at him, the goofy smile still on his face. 

“Funny that y’ur the one h’lping me.” He chuckled.

“Why’s that?” Dash asked. Phantom just shook his head and chuckled again.

“Here.” Foley handed him a pair of gloves. “We don’t know if his ectoplasm can irritate or damage skin. We haven't felt risky enough to try it out yet.”

“How often do you guys do this?” Dash snapped his gloves on and took the needle from Foley. Phantom smiled wistfully.

“I get hurt a lot.” 

Dash hummed as he made his first stitch. “Well that’s not good.”

“Yeahh.. ghosts suck. And also bullies. They can hurt pretty bad sometimes too.”

Shame wriggled into Dash’s stomach as he made another stitch. What would Phantom think of him if he knew he was a bully himself?

Phantom hummed a wistful sigh as he watched Dash sew his wound closed. 

“Y’know, ‘ur pretty cute.”

Dash’s brain stopped for a moment and spent a second processing what Phantom said. He felt like he was short circuiting.

“What?” Dash asked. 

Tucker burst out laughing. “Man, you’re not gonna live this one down.” Sam shushed him. 

Dash continued sewing Phantom’s wound closed as he tried to get his bearings. He never would’ve thought his hero would think of him like that. 

“So.” He said, pulling the thread tight. “Are you guys friends?”

“We’r’ bes frie-” Sam covered his mouth.

“We help him with ghost fights. We don’t know him that well.” 

“Oh. It just seemed like you guys are pretty close. He must trust you two a lot.” 

Dash finished up his last stitch. “There we go. You’re all closed up.” 

Phantom smiled at him again as Dash pulled off his gloves and put them in a bag Tucker held up to him. “Tha’ was s’much faster than Tucker.” 

“Much cleaner stitches, too.” Sam said, leaning down to look at them. 

“‘Thank you for trying, Tucker. We’re so grateful for you, Tucker.’” He mumbled out as he put all their supplies back in his bag. 

“C’mon, Tuck!” Phantom lulled his head in Tucker’s direction. “You’ve stitched up so… so many stitches before now. I’d’d have bled out so many times over with-without you.”

“Thank you, D- Phantom.” 

Dash pushed himself up off the ground and stretched. “Do you guys need help getting him back… Wherever he needs to go?”

“We can take him back to my house.” Sam stood up. “My parents are those people who go to bed at eight o’clock and get up at some ungodly hour for their office jobs.”

“Can you stand, Phantom?” Tucker asked him.

Phantom shakily tried to stand up. He only made it up part way before he fell back to his knees. 

“Here.” 

Dash bent down and picked Phantom up bridal style. He adjusted his hold on him until he was holding him comfortably. 

“Okay.” Dash turned to look at Sam. “Lead the way.”

He followed behind Sam and Tucker as they walked through the trees. Phantom was much heavier than what Dash would expect from a ghost. He figured ghosts would be light as a feather since they could fly, but Phantom felt so much like a human it was uncanny. 

Phantom leaned his head back into the crook of Dash’s neck. He took a sharp breath in as he felt Phantom’s breath ghost against his neck. 

Dash looked down at Phantom and his eyes were closed, but after a few moments of Dash staring Phantom peeked an eye open. 

He jumped and looked back up at Sam and Tucker. They were whispering between themselves, shooting glances back at Dash. Phantom chuckled.

“Thank you for helping us.”

Dash looked back down at him. Phantom already seemed to be more coherent than when Dash first stumbled upon them. 

“Of course. You should probably thank your friends for letting me help you. They were pretty skeptical at first.” 

Phantom shrugged. “They’re just looking out for me. They’re protective.” 

“So you are friends?” Dash asked. Phantom looked at Sam and Tucker. 

“Yeah. They’re the best friends I could’ve asked for.” 

“Are you friends with the Fenton kid too?” Dash asked.

Phantom turned to look at Dash sharply. “The Fenton kid?”

“Yeah.” Dash nodded. “Danny. Hangs around with those two. Kind of a freak.”

Phantom frowned at him and turned away from him. “Oh. The ghost hunter’s son? No. Why would I be friends with him? His parents would tear me apart.” 

“Oh. Yeah that’s true. Those three just never go anywhere without each other so I thought maybe he was in on this too. He’s a dork anyways.” 

“We’re here.” Sam called behind them. 

Dash looked up to see Sam and Tucker stopped in front of a set of stairs leading to Sam’s front door. Phantom suddenly jumped out of Dash’s arms and winced once his feet hit the ground. It set Dash off balance and it took a moment for him to regain it. 

Phantom walked over to where Sam and Tucker were waiting. 

“Will you be okay?” Dash called to him.

“Yeah.” Phantom said without looking back at him. “I’ll be fine.” 

He walked away from Dash without looking back at him. The three of them walked inside the door and shut it behind them. 

He stood there and stared at the closed door. A pit formed in his stomach but he’s not sure what happened. 

He turned around and started the short trek home. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dash was walking in the hallways of Casper High. He was heading to his next class. He just wanted this day to be over with.

Up ahead of him he saw Fenton and his friends. He smirked and started walking faster to catch up with them. 

“Hey, Fentoadally lame! Where do you think you’re going!” 

He saw Fenton’s shoulders rise and fall as he sighed. He looked over his shoulder at Dash, an angry grimace on his face. 

“Anywhere away from you.” 

The hallways were starting to clear out as it got closer to the bell. He caught up to them and grabbed Danny by the shoulder, turning him around and slamming him into the lockers to their left. He glared up at Dash.

“What do you want, Dash?”

Dash sneered down at him. “I want to get my afternoon wailing in before I lose my chance and you disappear for the rest of the day like you did yesterday.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “And why does your wailing have to be on me?”

“Because you’re my favorite nerd to wail on.” Dash said as he pulled his arm back, ready to hit Danny. 

“Excuse me!” 

Something hit Dash in the back of the head. He hissed and when he turned around he saw Sam holding her boot in her hand, glaring at him. 

“What the hell, Manson?” He rubbed the spot she had hit. “What’s that boot made of?” 

“Steel toe.” Tucker said from where he stood, far away from the action. 

“How’s it feel, Dash? Huh? Do you like getting hit? Do you want to know what it’s like to get beat up for no reason every single day?” Sam spat at him.

He took a step away from her. He already knew what that was like. He didn’t need to know what it would be like, just from a different person. 

“Sam-” Danny tried stepping out from behind Dash to get to her but there wasn’t enough room for him to move. 

“Why should we let you keep helping us with Phantom if we can’t trust you to leave our friend alone?”

“What?” Dash asked, incredulous. “How are either of these things related?” 

Sam walked up to him and poked him in the chest. Distantly Dash could hear the late bell ringing. “Because how do we know you wouldn’t turn on Phantom? That if we relied on you, that you would actually be there to help him?”

“But Phantom is-”

“A person, just like Danny.” Sam said. “Just because Danny isn’t your ‘hero’ doesn’t mean he deserves to be a punching bag.”

Dash rolled his eyes. “Fenton just asks for it.”

Sam closed her eyes and shook her head.

“No, you know what? We won’t need your help anymore, Dash. We were doing just fine without you. We’ll manage.” 

“I didn’t want to have to associate with you nerds anymore than I have to anyways.” Dash tried to ignore the pang in his chest at the idea of not being able to help Phantom anymore.

“You know, I’ve heard that Phantom doesn’t like bullies.” Fenton said from behind him.

Dash turned and frowned at him. “What do you know?” He shoved Fenton into the lockers one more time and walked away from them. He could hear Sam furiously whispering with Danny about something but Dash tried to tune it out.

Where did Manson get off threatening to beat him? That’d just make her a hypocrite, wouldn’t it? Doing the very thing she hates? 

Whatever. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t make it so Phantom couldn’t talk to him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hey, I’ll see you later, Kwan!” Dash said as he walked out of the Nasty Burger. Kwan turned around where he was walking the opposite way down the sidewalk.

“Yeah! See you tomorrow, buddy!” Kwan shouted back at him. 

Dash smiled as he started his walk home. Kwan was always pretty good at cheering him up. He’d had a pretty bad week. Every time he’d gone to Phantom to try to talk to him he’d up and disappear or fly away before Dash could even get a word in. Sam and Tucker must’ve said something to him about what happened with Fenton. 

He sighed. He’d probably never get to talk to Phantom again at this rate. 

He heard some rustling coming from the alley he was coming up on. He paused just before it. Nothing good ever came from inside alleyways. 

“Tucker, where are you- Danny, he-” 

He could hear Manson’s panicked voice coming from inside the alley. He crept forward. 

Dash looked into the alley to see Sam desperately talking on the phone. Phantom sat on the ground in front of her. She was holding a rag to his stomach. 

“No, no I already have the supplies. I can’t-”

A tear streamed down her face. “Tucker, I need you. I can’t do this without you.” 

Phantom’s eyes slowly opened. He tilted his head towards the end of the alley that Dash was standing in. He locked eyes with him, taking a deep breath.

“Sam..”

She looked up at him. When she saw where he was looking, she followed his gaze until her eyes landed on Dash. Her eyes widened. After a few moments of staring, she put her phone back up to her ear. 

“No, Dash- Dash is here. He just walked up. He- He could probably help us again. Just one more time.” 

Dash jumped. How serious was it this time that she couldn’t wait for Tucker?

“Dash, get over here!” 

He jumped again at her call, but ran to them inside the alley.

“Can you stitch him up again?” She pleaded. “I know what I said, but I-”

“It’s fine.” Dash said. “I’m not that petty that I’ll refuse to save his life just because you don’t like me.” 

She pulled a first aid kit out of her backpack and handed it to him. “You’re mean to me and my friends. I don’t want to be around you if you’re going to bully us.” 

“Tch.” Dash scoffed. He pulled on a pair of gloves. “As if you aren’t just as mean to us. You go around antagonizing Paulina and forcing things that you want to do on other people.”

She rolled her eyes. “You literally beat people up and stuff them into their lockers. That is not the same thing.”

“Yeah, well-”

“As much as I love watching Sam tell it to you, can you guys hurry it up?”

Dash and Sam looked at Phantom. He had one eye squinted open and he was looking between them. 

“Sorry.” Dash said. He threaded the needle and got started stitching up Phantom’s wound.

They were silent while Dash worked. His stitches were quick and soon Dash was done. He sighed.

“I actually used to be friends with them when we were younger. Before they met you.” 

“What?” Sam turned to stare at him. “Why are you so mean to them then?” 

“My parents didn’t like Fenton’s parents. Or all the nonsense they were spouting about ghosts. I’d come home and tell them all about it and they thought the Fenton’s were ‘corrupting my mind’ or something like that.”

Phantom turned his head to look at Dash. 

“My parents told me I couldn’t be his friend anymore. And I told Danny that, but he didn’t get it. And he and Tucker were a package deal at that point. They were more inseparable than me and Danny had ever been. So I just… told them that I didn’t want to be their friend anymore. That they weren’t cool enough. I think I hit one of them. They didn’t go out of their way to talk to me after that.” 

They sat in silence for a moment after that. 

“Parents, amiright?” Sam said quietly, as she looked at Phantom. “My parents are like that. They try to get me to stop being friends with Danny all the time but I argue too much with them for it to ever stick. Or I don’t tell them when I’m hanging out with Danny.”

“At least you have that luxury.” Dash looked at the ground. “If I don’t listen to my parents… Well, they like to use their fists more than their words.” 

Sam covered her mouth.

Dash let out a short laugh.

“And now ghosts are real and they keep asking me all sorts of questions like they expect me to remember the things they told me were bad and wanted me to forget.”

Dash was startled when he felt a hand on his arm. He looked up and saw that Phantom was still staring at him. 

“It’s not your fault.”

Dash shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. He shifted so that instead of kneeling on his knees, he was sitting on the ground. He ran his hands through his hair roughly. 

“It is my fault!” Dash ground out. “I didn’t have to treat them the way I did! I could’ve broken the cycle but now I’m just like my parents.” 

“You don’t have to be.” Sam said. “There’s always time to change. Hell, admitting to how shitty you’ve been is a pretty good start.”

Dash sighed. Phantom looked like he was about to say something but he was interrupted by Tucker sprinting into the alley, out of breath.

“I’m here! I’m here. Did you guys get it figured out?”

Sam nodded and gestured at Dash. “He helped us out again. He really came in clutch there.”

Dash nodded and stood up. “I guess I should get going now. I don’t want to-”

“Wait!” Sam held her hands up in a stop motion. She stood up to look at him. “Do you want to join team Phantom?”

“What?” Tucker looked at her, shocked. “Why are you asking Dash to join the team? I thought you-”

“Clearly having another person around will be beneficial.” Sam interrupted Tucker without looking at him. “You’ve already helped us twice. You could even teach us to sew and stitch up wounds better.” 

Dash looked between the three of them. He wasn’t a part of whatever they had going. Would they really be okay with him joining their team? Did they really want him to be a part of it? Or was it just a pity offer? 

“Why would you want me to join your team?” Dash said quietly. 

“You care more than I thought you did.” Sam said.

Dash laughed. That didn’t seem like a very concrete reason.

“Break the cycle.”

Dash looked back up at where Phantom still sat on the ground. He was staring at Dash. 

“Break the cycle.” He said again. “Prove that you can be better. If not for us, just do it for yourself.”

Dash looked away. He nodded. That sounded like a good reason. Work to break the cycle his parents put him in. He nodded again.

“Okay. I’ll do it. I’ll join Team Phantom.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dash stood outside Tucker’s door awkwardly. Tucker said now would be a good time to come over so they could practice sewing. He hasn’t knocked yet though. He hadn’t been back here since they were all still friends. 

He lifted his hand up and paused for a moment. Finally, he brought his fist down on the door and knocked twice. 

“I’ve got it!” Tucker shouted from inside the house. He heard some shuffling and then a muffled, “Mom!” 

Then the door opened, but instead of Tucker it was his mom. His eyes widened as her mouth dropped open. She looked behind her where Tucker was standing and then looked back at Dash. Tucker shrugged behind her. 

“Why, Dash, I haven’t seen you in such a long time. How have you been?” She asked him. 

He nodded. “Good, good. Things have been fine. How have you been?” 

“Things have been good here.” She looked between Tucker and Dash again. “What brings you over after so long?”

“I, uh..” Dash stammered. They didn’t come up with an excuse. He really couldn’t tell her they were practicing sewing so they could sew up wounds. 

“Class project!” Sam’s voice came from down the steps behind him. He turned to see  her hurrying up the stairs. “We’re going to be working on our sewing today for class. Dash is going to practice with us.”

“Ohh.” Tucker’s mom nodded. “Well that sounds fun. Do you guys have any projects in the making?”

“We’re not quite there yet, mom.” Tucker said as he stepped forward. “We’re still learning so we’ll probably just be sewing squares of fabric together.” 

She nodded again. “Let me know if you kids have any questions. I know a thing or two about sewing myself.” She smiled at them.

“Thanks, mom. We will.” Tucker waved them into the house and then closed the door behind them once they were both inside. “Come on, let’s go upstairs.”

He followed behind both Tucker and Sam as they made their way up the stairs. He hadn’t been here in a very long time but little had changed over the years. Except for maybe new photos that had been hung up on the wall. 

They reached the top of the stairs and then Tucker pulled down the attic door and unfolded the ladder. They climbed up there and Dash had the fleeting thought that if they wanted to make him disappear, an attic would be a pretty good place to make that happen.

“Boo.”

Dash jumped as a voice spoke close into his ear and then laughter erupted from an invisible mouth.

“Oh that was good. I haven’t been able to get Sam or Tucker that good in a long time.”

Phantom dropped his invisibility and appeared in front of Dash. Dash chuckled nervously. 

“Phantom, don’t be too mean to him. We’re trying to make amends, remember?” Sam called to them while she and Tucker dug through some box.

“Yeah, yeah.” Phantom waved her comment off. He looked back at Dash. “I gotta have fun with this whole ghost thing somehow though, right?”

Dash nodded. “I can’t say I would be so chivalrous if I had your powers. I’d probably be sneaking into the girl’s locker room or something.”

“Eh. It was exciting the first couple times but now the novelty has worn off.”

Dash’s eyes widened. Phantom went to spy in the girl’s locker room? 

“Anyways.” Phantom drawled out. “What will I be doing today?”

Dash stared at him. “You’ll also be learning to sew.”

Phantom frowned. “Why?”

“If Sam or Tucker, or even me, ever get hurt during one of your ghost fights it might be useful for you to know. Or if you ever have an occasion where you’re alone and need to do it yourself, if you’re able to of course.” 

“Are you gonna be like, our teacher?” Sam asked Dash. 

Dash shrugged. “I can explain the basics but this is mostly just practice time.”

They got to work practicing their sewing. Sam and Tucker were working together on the other side of the attic while Dash worked with Phantom. They had cut up squares of fabric that they were sewing together. Phantom looked up at Dash as he pulled a thread through his two pieces he had in his hands. 

“Why’d you learn to sew?” Danny asked. “It’s not something most guys pick up.” 

Dash shrugged. “My parents liked to wreck a lot of my things growing up. They destroyed a lot of stuffed animals, but when they ripped apart the last teddy bear I got from my grandma before she passed away I decided I was going to take it into my own hands and fix it.”

“Oh.” Phantom’s shoulders dropped and he looked at Dash sadly. “I’m sorry they did that.” 

“They’re not good people.” Dash made a couple more stitches on his own squares in his hands. “It hurt when I realized that.” 

Phantom nodded. “Sometimes I worry that my parents are bad people. They want to hurt me but I know they’re not actually bad.”

“How are they not bad? You just said they want to hurt you.” Dash frowned at him. 

“It’s more complicated because of the whole ghost thing.” Phantom shook his head. “They don’t know who I am.”

Dash’s eyes widened. “What? How can they not know?”

Phantom’s sad expression turned into a smirk. “I’ve got to keep some of my secrets.” 

Dash rolled his eyes. “Okay, Inviso-bill.” 

“Hey!” Phantom pushed his shoulder. 

His skin tingled where Phantom had touched him through his jacket. They smiled at each other and Dash looked back down at the fabric in his hands. They worked for another couple moments before Phantom spoke again.

“What if we sewed them all together?”

“What?” Dash looked back up at him. 

“The squares.” Phantom held up his small pile he had gathered while they were working. “We could sew all the squares we make together and turn them into a blanket.”

“Ohh. That’d be cool.” He turned around in his seat. “Yo, Manson. Foley!” 

They turned around to face him. “What?”

“Phantom wants to turn our squares into blankets.”

“I like that idea.” Tucker said. 

“Does your mom have a sewing machine? It might be easier to sew all the rows together with the sewing machine once we get that far.”

Tucker nodded. “Let me go ask her for it.” 

He headed downstairs. Sam stood up and walked over to them. 

“How’s your practice going?” She asked. 

“Good.” Phantom held up his work so far. The stitches were getting neater and tighter as he showed Sam his progress. 

As Dash was showing Sam his own squares, Tucker made his way back up the ladder to the attic. He hefted the sewing machine up onto the floor and climbed up with some extra fabric and some kind of stuffing. He let out a breath. 

“My mom gave us some fabric and some quilt batting so we can finish turning it into a blanket.”

“How do we decide who gets to keep the blanket?” Dash asked.

Phantom looked at him. “I think you should get it. We can always make more if we’re going to keep practicing sewing. You should get the first one.”

“Yeah.” Sam said. “It can be a thank you for taking the time to teach us and practice with us.” 

“Let’s get this bad boy finished.” 

They spent the next couple hours practicing sewing the squares by hand and once they were all sewed together Dash took them to the sewing machine. They got all the rows assembled and the blanket put together with the stuffing inside. Dash stood up and held it up for everyone to look at.

Tucker clapped. “Great work everyone. Just, wow.” 

Sam rolled her eyes. 

Dash lowered it and smiled at them.

“Here.” 

Phantom floated forward and grabbed the other end of the blanket and helped Dash fold it. Their fingers met as they folded it together. Phantom passed his end to Dash and their fingers grazed as he pulled away. 

“Thanks.” They stared at each other for a few moments. Dash cleared his throat. “Well. I should get going. It’s getting kind of late.”

“Yeah. Me too.” Sam checked the time on her phone. My parents are gonna start calling me if I don’t get home soon.”

“Thanks for helping us out Dash.” Phantom called as Dash started making his way down the ladder. Dash smiled at him. 

“Thanks for giving me the chance.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~

Dash stepped out of the school. It was empty in the schoolyard. Dash had had to stay late to finish up a test with one of his teachers. 

“Hey.”

Dash jumped at the voice beside him. Phantom flickered into visibility. 

“Why do you keep doing that?” Dash pouted. 

Phantom shrugged and held his head in his hand as he floated next to Dash. “It’s funny. Like I said, I can’t get Sam and Tucker like that anymore.” 

“Where are they anyways?” Dash crossed the street in front of the school and started the walk home. 

“They’re busy.” Phantom groaned and flipped onto his back midair. “They had some very important stuff to do and they said I couldn’t come with them.”

“So tragic.” Dash smiled and shook his head at Phantom’s antics. 

Phantom laughed as he floated backwards on his back beside Dash, his arms crossed behind his head. Dash smiled as he watched him, a warm feeling growing in his chest. Phantom’s smile felt like the sun. 

“I think they’re trying to surprise me for my birthday. It’s coming up soon.”

Dash’s eyes widened. “You still celebrate your birthday?”

Phantom shot a look back at him. “Yeah? Don’t you still celebrate yours?” 

“Yeah, but you’re a ghost. Wouldn’t you celebrate your death day instead?”

Phantom scrunched up his nose and stared at a point from where they had come. “I try as hard as I can to not think about my death day. It was painful.”

“What was it like? Dying?”

Phantom turned to face Dash. He studied his face for a moment before he spoke. 

“I-”

A roar sounded from ahead of them on the street they were walking down. A ghost turned around the corner of a building and stared down at them. 

“Stay back.” Phantom said to him and flew away. He flew circles around the ghost's head and soon it was facing back the other way. It roared when Phantom shot an ectoblast between its eyes. 

It swung at him again and again, its slow paws trying and trying to hit Phantom. 

“You sure are slow!” Phantom smirked at the ghost and spun onto his back. “You fight like my sister.” 

The ghost roared again and Phantom flew back to avoid the swipe but he didn’t move fast enough.

The ghost scratched Phantom across the chest as he flew back. Dash could hear him hiss from where he stood on the ground. 

“That’s all you got, ghost?” Phantom held his fists back up.

As if taking that as a challenge, the ghost shrieked. It reared up for another hit. Phantom dodged the first one but wasn’t so lucky the second time. 

When the ghost’s claws connected with Phantom, Dash could hear the sound of his suit ripping. The ghost spun and sent him flying backwards down the street. 

“Phantom!” Dash shouted as he turned to look where Phantom had been thrown behind him. 

He laid there on the ground. He was hardly moving. The ghost started closing in, not paying any mind to Dash. 

“Hey!” Dash swung his arms in the air, trying to get the ghost’s attention. It finally looked down at him and paused. 

“Yeah! Leave him alone!” Dash shouted. He stuck a hand into his backpack and pulled out that lipstick laser that Tucker gave him. He aimed it at the ghost and took a shaky shot. 

It hit the ghost in the chest and it roared, charging at him. Dash took a step back but he yanked his backpack off, desperately digging out the thermos. He shakily pulled it out of his backpack just as the ghost was getting to him and he pressed the button. 

The ghost loomed over him before it got sucked into the thermos. Once it was gone, Dash closed his eyes and let out a deep breath. Then his eyes snapped back open and he turned around.

Phantom. 

He ran down the street to where Phantom lay. Phantom’s eyes opened as Dash got closer. Thank god. 

“Hey. How bad is it?” Dash asked as he dropped down to his knees on the pavement. 

Phantom hissed as he sat up. “Not the worst I’ve ever had. I’m not sure any of these need stitches.”

“Are you sure?” Dash studied his suit where it was torn. “I could literally hear your suit get shredded from where I was standing.” 

“Yeah.” Phantom nodded. “I think a good chunk of things I need to have stitched up are because I kept fighting and tore them and made them worse.” He looked up at Dash. “Thanks, by the way. For helping me with that ghost.” 

“Whaat? It was nothing.” Dash smiled at him.

Phantom laughed. “I could see you shaking in your boots from here.” 

Dash crossed his arms and turned his nose up away from Phantom. “Fighting ghosts is a lot scarier without fancy ghost powers.” 

“Yeah, but really, thanks.”

Dash looked back at Phantom. He couldn’t help it. It was the first thing he could think to do. He wasn’t going to just let a ghost get him when he couldn’t fight. 

Dash was lost in thought for a moment before his mind wandered back to Phantom’s injury. 

“Do you at least want that bandaged even if you don’t need stitches?”

Phantom nodded. “Yeah. It’ll help stop the bleeding.”

Dash dug through his backpack where it sat next to him when he dropped it. He pulled out his first aid kit. 

“Gauze or giant band aid?” Dash asked. 

Phantom looked down at his chest where the scratches were. He thought for a moment. 

“Probably gauze. I think these are too long for a giant bandaid.”

Dash nodded. He pulled the gauze out and turned back to Phantom. He blushed.

“What?” Phantom asked. 

The thought of Dash asking Phantom to undress was frazzling Dash’s brain. He only had to unzip the top part of his jumpsuit but he’d never seen Phantom in anything besides that before. What would he look like underneath? 

“I need, uh, you to unzip the top part of your jumpsuit so I can wrap the gauze around your chest.”

Phantom looked back down at his chest. “Oh.” He unzipped the front of his jumpsuit and pulled his arms out. He looked back up at Dash.

Dash’s blush went all the way up to his ears and he tried not to stare but he couldn’t help it. Phantom’s skin was so different from other ghosts. He was so much more human-like than them. 

Phantom held his hand out for Dash and he looked back up to his face. 

“I can do this if it’s too weird for you.”

“It’s not weird!” Dash blurted out. “I just, uh- I don’t-”

Phantom grabbed the gauze out of Dash’s hand and started wrapping it around his chest. “That’s okay. Sam was kind of awkward the first time she had to do this too.”

Dash nodded, but he was disappointed. This could’ve been an opportunity to get close to Phantom. To maybe graze a hand against his skin. Feel what a ghosts skin would-

“Dash?”

He jumped. “Yeah?”

“I’m all done. Here.” Phantom tossed the roll of gauze back to Dash. He fumbled to catch it and when he did he stowed it back in his first aid kit. 

Dash put everything back in his backpack and threw it back on his shoulder. He stood up and waited for Phantom to shove his arms back into his sleeves before he offered his hands to help Phantom up. 

Phantom looked at them for a moment before he reached up and grabbed onto Dash’s hands. Dash pulled Phantom to his feet and then they just stared at each other. Dash’s grip on Phantom’s hands tightened. He took a step closer to Phantom but then someone shouted at them. 

“Look! It’s Phantom!” 

Dash looked up around him and was shocked to see how many people had gathered around them. Where had they all come from? Were they all watching the ghost fight from their homes?

“Phantom, who is this boy? Why is he helping you?”

“Is that your boyfriend?”

“Who would be crazy enough to date a dead person?”

The voices clamored around them and Dash felt like they were pressing in on him. Phantom glanced at him and let go of his hands and instead wrapped an arm around his side.

“Gotta go!” 

“Wait, wha-!” 

Dash yelped as he was pulled into the air with Phantom as he took off in flight. He’d never flown before. Not even in a plane. He squeezed his eyes shut and wrapped his arm around Phantom’s shoulder. The flight was quick and soon they were touching down on the ground. 

Dash peeked an eye open and saw that they were standing in front of his house. 

“That was fast.” Dash said, out of breath. 

“Yeah.” Phantom smiled at him. “My top speed we’ve clocked so far is a hundred and twelve miles per hour. I can get anywhere in town pretty darn fast.” 

“Dang. That’s cool. Kinda scary.”

Phantom smiled. “You get used to it after a while.”

They looked at each other for a moment before Phantom seemed to remember he was still holding onto Dash. He coughed and pulled his hand away and it drifted across Dash’s back, leaving a trail of butterfly inducing tingles.

“Well, I gotta go. I have things to do.”

Dash let out a nervous laugh. “How busy can a ghost possibly be?”

“Like I’ve said, I’ve got to keep some of my secrets.”

Phantom started floating up into the air.

“Aw, come on. We’re not close enough for that yet?” Dash shouted up at him.

He smiled down at Dash. “Not quite. Maybe one day.”

Phantom waved down at Dash and then he flew away. Dash’s heart fluttered and he waved back belatedly. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dash was laying in bed. He was ready to go to sleep after such a long day. He could almost fall asleep right now.

He started drifting off but was interrupted a moment later. 

Phantom flew through Dash’s bedroom wall and crashed onto his bed. Dash jumped up and stared at the boy that was suddenly next to him. 

“Phantom?” Dash exclaimed. 

He was curled up on his side next to Dash, holding his stomach. 

“I didn’t… I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Tucker is out of town and the far frozen was too far away for this one- ah!” He clenched his stomach again. 

“No, no. That’s what I’m here for. That’s why you guys agreed to let me join your team. So that there was someone else there to patch you up.”

Phantom shook his head. “This one’s worse. There’s a chance I’ll-”

A white ring appeared around his waist. Phantom tensed up and groaned before it disappeared again.

“What was that?” Dashed asked, staring.

Phantom shook his head. “You need to start stitching the wound up now. If we wait it’ll start bleeding faster. We can’t-” He tensed up again. Sparks flew around his middle. “We have to hurry.” 

At Phantom’s plea, he hurriedly got up and grabbed his first aid kit from under his bed. He kneeled down and Phantom turned to his side to face him.

“Can you uncurl for me? I need to take a look.” 

Phantom nodded and slowly pulled his arms away from his stomach. They were covered in ectoplasm. Dash gulped and studied the wound. It was deep. Ectoplasm was steadily oozing out of it. He pulled a pair of gloves on. 

“This is pretty deep, what if I can’t-”

“Sewing it shut will help.” Phantom grimaced. “Once the wound is shut my healing abilities will have an easier time mending it.” 

Dash nodded. “Okay.” 

He took a deep breath and got started. Phantom flinched with every touch of the needle. Dash was halfway done when the ring appeared around his waist again. Phantom struggled to push it away, but it disappeared after a few seconds. 

“Phantom.” Dash kept stitching the wound closed. “What’s happening?” 

“I can’t keep it back anymore.” Phantom ground out. “When I transform, I’m going to start bleeding much faster. You have to keep stitching me up, no matter what.”

“What? When you transform? What does that-”

The rings appeared around Phantom’s waist a final time. Dash tried to keep his focus on stitching Phantom’s wound, but then the rings split. They revealed a very familiar shirt underneath them. 

“I’m sorry.”

The rings finished traveling over the rest of Phantom’s body. Dash’s hands shook as the ectoplasm that was steadily coming out of the wound turned into blood. The pace increased and Dash got a glimpse at Phantom’s face as the rings went over his head and Danny Fenton was left in his place. 

Danny met his gaze for a moment and then his eyes fluttered closed.

“Danny?” Dash whispered.

He didn’t move and Dash went back to stitching up the wound. He was almost done and he was hoping this would be enough. That Danny wouldn’t…

He shook his head. He couldn’t think like that. He had already seen the impossible. Danny wouldn’t die. He couldn’t. 

He made his last stitch and cut the thread. He grabbed a bag and disposed of everything inside it. He was about to put the first aid kit away when he thought about putting a bandage on top of Danny’s stitches. 

He pulled a bandage and some gauze out of the first aid kit and when he turned back around Danny’s eyes were already open, staring at Dash. 

“You’re awake already?” Dash whispered. “I wasn’t sure- I was afraid that-”

Danny shook his head. “My healing powers are already working. It just needed help getting started. It can’t heal if it’s still bleeding so much like that.” 

Dash let out a deep breath. “I’m glad to hear.” 

A pause stretched between them and Dash looked down at his hands and saw the gauze and bandage he was holding. He held them up.

“Do you want these on there too? Would it help?”

Danny nodded. “They’ll help make sure I don’t bleed into my clothes.” 

Dash nodded back at him. “Your shirt looks pretty bad too. Do you want one of mine?”

Danny shrugged. “Sure.”

He set the bandage and gauze down on the bed and headed to his dresser. He pulled out a shirt and turned back around to see Danny pulling his shirt off. 

Heat rose to Dash’s face and the comments Phantom made that first time Dash helped him came to mind. Tucker’s laugh echoed inside his head. 

Man, you’re not gonna live this one down. 

Sam and Tucker must know. That’s why they were being so weird that night. 

He sat down at the edge of his bed and looked at Danny. He peeled the back of the bandage off and put it over Danny’s stitches. He spread his hand out over it, pressing the edges down, making sure they were sticking to Danny’s skin properly. 

“Can you sit up?” Dash asked. Danny nodded and pushed himself up, wincing. 

Dash leaned closer to Danny and started winding the gauze around his torso. Once he was done, he looked up to see Danny’s face only a few inches from his own. 

They stared at each other for a few moments before they both spoke at once.

“I’m sorry.” 

Both of their eyes widened. Dash sat up.

“Why are you sorry? I was literally the one wailing on you for so long.”

Danny shook his head. “I lied to you. I never told you who I was. I could see the way you looked at me, but I didn’t think you’d look at me like that if you knew I was also Danny.” 

Dash flushed. “You could tell.” He breathed out. 

“Yeah I could.” Then he rolled his eyes. “And if I couldn’t, Tucker would’ve made sure I knew anyway.” 

“Tucker knows too?” Dash whispered. He didn’t think anyone could see his developing feelings for Phantom. He thought they just would have assumed it was because he was Phantom’s biggest fan. 

“Yeah. No offense, but it was pretty obvious. Especially if even I could tell.” 

Dash groaned and covered his face with his hands as he leaned back onto his bed. He felt Danny lean over to look down at him. Dash opened his eyes.

Danny met his eyes. His eyes traveled down his face to his lips. He slowly bent down and pressed his lips against Dash’s. Dash closed his eyes again and after a few seconds Danny pulled away.

“It helped that I was looking for it, though.”

Dash smiled up at him. “You did call me cute that one time.”

Now it was Danny’s turn to groan. “I don’t even know what I was thinking. I hardly even remember that.” 

Dash placed a hand on the back of Danny’s head and pulled him back down and kissed him again. 

“Did Tucker ever let you live it down?”

Danny laughed. “No. Of course not.”

“I bet it’ll be even worse now.” Dash said against Danny’s lips.

“Oh, you bet it will.”

Dash kissed Danny one more time and gently pulled him down to lay beside him.

[q-gorgeous]

Ghost Buddies

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 2267

(Insert your favorite Casper High student) knew that hiding in the janitor's closet was not the best idea. Now (student) doesn't know what to do after seeing Fenton change into Phantom in the cramped space and leave without noticing. @summerssixecho

more dash hehehehhee

“Okay, you two. What do we do in the event of a ghost attack?”

Two little boys raised their hands up in excitement. She pointed at the one to her left. 

“Yes, Dash?”

The other boy groaned and crossed his arms while Dash excitedly gave his answer.

“Find your buddy and hide in the nearest closet or the next best place!”

“Good job!” She clapped her hands.

“Mom! Why was Dash the one to answer it?” The other boy pouted. “I know the answer too.”

“Danny, sweetie. We know your knowledge on ghosts is top notch! We need to know that your best friend Dash here knows what to do in the event of an emergency too.”

Danny still sported a pout on his face but he shrugged. “I guess you’re right.” 

She stood up and looked down at them. “Now who wants some ice cream?”

“We do!” Danny and Dash shouted together, chasing Danny’s mom into the kitchen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Realistically, Dash knew that hiding in the janitor’s closet wasn’t the brightest idea. 

Looking back, the only reason the ghost drills Fenton’s parents made them do as kids had them hide in the closet was probably just so they’d be out of the way while they hunted the ghosts. And also to keep them out of sight of the ghosts. Having seen his fair share of ghost attacks, he didn’t really think hiding in a closet when ghosts could just fly through the walls did much to help him.

But by now it was instinct to run and hide in the closest closet he could find. He was walking down the hall when he heard the ghost attack and darted into the janitor’s closet. He had closed the door behind him and ran to the back of the closet and tucked himself behind the janitor’s cart.

But when the door opened and closed again, he was reminded of how vulnerable he really was just hiding out here. Yes, he was hidden. But he wouldn’t be able to escape if he needed to while locked in such a small space.  A ghost could get in here so easily. Why did Dash keep thinking this would be a good hiding spot?

The only thing he had going for him right now was that whoever was in the closet with him now couldn’t possibly be a ghost. They had to open the door to get inside. They wouldn’t pose any danger to him. 

He peeked his head above the cart he was hidden behind and his eyes landed on Danny Fenton. At least Fenton still had the same ghost drills literally drilled in his head if Dash was stuck with them too. 

Dash was about to call his name when something strange happened. A magical looking white ring appeared around Danny’s waist. What was that supposed to be?

The ring split in two and traveled across both halves of his body. He still didn’t understand what was happening until he saw what the rings revealed when they passed over Danny’s body. The rings passed his hair and fizzled out and Dash’s jaw dropped.

Standing there in front of him was Phantom. Danny Phantom. Danny Fenton.

Danny Fenton was Danny Phantom. 

He jumped up and flew through the ceiling and Dash was alone again. 

He didn’t move. He could hardly think. What was he supposed to do? Did he tell someone? Did he tell Danny? Did he tell Danny’s parents? 

“Whenever we catch our first spook, we’ll tear it apart molecule by molecule!” 

No. He couldn’t tell Danny’s parents. His parents would tear him apart. 

Did he just sit with this information? Hold it till his grave? 

Dash shook his head and sat back down behind the janitor’s cart. He didn’t have to do anything with this information. Him and Danny weren’t friends anymore. He didn’t need to worry about him. It didn’t matter to him that his former best friend and the kid he wailed on also just happened to be his hero. No it didn’t matter one bit. 

Suddenly, he heard the announcement signaling the end of the ghost attack. He stood up and grabbed his backpack, heading back out into the hallway. 

Walking past him was Danny. He looked like he was in a hurry to get somewhere but paused when he saw Dash coming out of the janitor’s closet. He looked like he was about to say something but he looked away from Dash, distracted by who was walking by. 

Dash watched as Sam and Tucker ignored Danny as they walked past him. What was that all about? Were they still friends? When did they stop hanging out? Dash didn’t even know the last time he saw them eat together at lunch, now that he thought about it. 

He opened his mouth to say something but Danny was walking away from him already.

Did no one know Danny was Phantom? Did he have no one on his side? 

It was then that Dash decided he was going to be better. He wasn’t sure how he could help Danny with any of this, but he could make an effort to not make his life hell anymore. Maybe he could even try to become his friend again. 

He could at least try, right? 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was left unspoken between them. Danny never tried to ask Dash if he saw anything in the janitor’s closet. He wasn’t sure if Danny was just hoping Dash didn’t see anything or if he just didn’t want to talk about it, so Dash didn’t push it. 

But now the bathroom breaks signaling ghost attacks made a lot more sense. Of course it had to be because Danny was Phantom. Not because he carried his parents' weapons around or because he just knew when they were going to happen. 

Dash knew ghost attacks happened often but now everytime Danny was missing from class it was different. Danny wasn’t skipping class because he was some trouble maker. He was literally a superhero going around and stopping the bad ghosts that swarmed all over Amity Park. 

Dash stood outside the school staring at where Danny stood on the sidewalk, waiting for the light to change. Suddenly a ghost flew by and he looked back and forth, probably looking for somewhere to transform. He was about to run off when his parent’s van drove down the street from the direction the ghost had come from. 

Danny had to quickly step back to avoid the van and it was hardly parked when his parents hopped out. 

“Dannyboy!” His dad shouted. “Did you see where the spook went?”

Danny pointed. “Uh, I think it went that way.”

An explosion sounded from the direction Danny pointed. Shrapnel and debris flew towards them and Dash covered his head. He started walking toward Danny and his mom.

“We’ve been chasing this ghost all over town. It’s one of the most destructive ghosts we’ve seen so far. It’s taken out a couple different buildings already.”

“It’s caused that much damage?” Dash asked as he walked up. 

“Yes. We’ve been having a hard time getting it restrained so we can safely detain it in a thermos. It keeps getting away.” 

“Hopefully Phantom will be here soon to help.” 

Maddie scoffed. “That spook is nothing but trouble.” Dash looked at Danny. “He’s just a putrid ghost that only-”

A crash sounded behind them, sending more shrapnel and debris flying and Maddie gestured Danny towards their van.

“You two, get in the car.” 

“No!” They said at the same time. Danny shot Dash a look and he fumbled, trying to think up an excuse.

“I, uh, I mean- Mrs. Fenton, Danny and I really aren’t friends anymore. I don’t think we should still be each other's buddies for ghost attacks you know? And I also really think there are much better hiding places than your van that’s been taken over by Technus who knows how many times now.”

He pressed his lips together as both Fenton’s studied him. Maddie sighed. 

“That last ones a good point.” She said tapping her chin. “Fine. Head home and activate the ghost shield. But stay together. I don’t need either of you getting hurt.” And then she ran away from them. 

“Welp.” Dash swung his hands forward and clapped them together. “I’m just gonna-”

“What are you doing?” Danny stared at him.

“What? What do you mean?” Dash chuckled nervously. “I just don’t want to be stuck in your parents' weird van.”

“I don’t need your help.” Danny frowned at him.

“What?” Dash’s eyes widened.

“I don’t know what you saw that day or how long you were in that janitor’s closet.” Danny walked up to him and tilted his head to meet Dash’s gaze. “But you’ve been weird since then.”

“I uh don’t know what you’re-”

“You're just as bad a liar as you used to be, Dash.” Danny interrupted him. “I don’t need you to be nice to me suddenly just because you find out who I am.”

“That’s not what this is.”

“Yeah?” Danny started to walk away from him. “I don’t believe you.”

Dash’s shoulders slumped at that and his heart felt heavy. “I don’t blame you.” 

Danny stood there for a few more moments. “Just stay out of it, Dash.”

He started running away from him. He turned into the next alley and soon Dash was watching Phantom flying into the sky and back towards the school. 

Was he just doing this because Danny was Phantom? He would like to think he wasn’t. Dash would hope that if Danny was in trouble that he would still care, even without the knowledge of him being Phantom. 

Dash started walking away from the fight. Did he just leave Danny alone like he asked him to? How did he prove to him that he just wanted to help? 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was a cold day out today. Dash just really wanted to get home but his dad sent him out to pick something up from the store. It was just starting to rain and Dash was chilly. He was almost to the store when he heard some commotion coming from down the street ahead of him. 

Danny flew from around a corner, drifting in the air as he tried to turn. Blasts followed behind him and shortly after his parents ran around the corner, following him. 

Danny twisted and turned as he dodged each of the blasts that his parents shot at him. Dash could tell that he was panicked. His eyes were wide and his fists were clenched shut. He dodged one last time but he couldn’t escape the next one. 

Dash watched with his heart in his throat as Danny got hit by a blast from his parents and started hurtling towards the ground. 

Without thinking Dash started sprinting towards where Danny was falling. His heart was racing but he had to get there before Danny’s parents did. 

Danny collided with the ground. Dash could see his parents running towards him, but he was closer. He managed to scoop Danny up without stopping and kept running in the direction away from the Fenton’s. 

Dash could feel Danny shift, tilting his head to look up at him. 

“Dash?” He croaked out. 

“I’ve got- Shit!” 

Dash had to tilt to the left to avoid getting hit by a shot from one of the Fenton’s weapons. He felt Danny grip the front of his shirt at the motion. He had to get out of the open. Where could he go?

He looked around. There was an alleyway up there. 

He turned left into the alley and turned left again once he came out of it. He looked over his shoulder and didn’t see the Fenton’s quite yet. Maybe if he ducked into another alley he’d be able to lose them.

He turned left into the next one and hid behind a dumpster. He tucked Danny closer to his chest and waited. He held his breath as the Fenton’s ran past the alley they were in. He waited a few moments before he let it out. 

“Dash?” 

He looked down to see Danny staring up at him. He was still gripping the front of his shirt but he had an awed look on his face. 

“You saved me.” 

Dash let out a soft chuckle. “How could I not? You’re literally my hero.” 

The awed look fell from Danny’s face. “So you are being nice to me just because I’m Phantom.” 

Dash’s eyes widened and he shook his head vehemently. “No, no! I swear! Like, yeah, Phantom is cool. I love Phantom. But I think I probably like Phantom so much because he reminded me of you. And everyone loves Phantom, so it was acceptable for me to also love Phantom. And then I found out you were Phantom, and it like, forced me to reflect on my actions and-”

Danny held a finger up to Dash’s face. “Shh. Don’t hurt yourself.”

A blush rose on Dash’s cheeks. He didn’t realize he was starting to ramble. 

Suddenly, that same, bright white light that he saw that day in the janitor’s closet appeared around Danny’s waist. 

Danny transformed to his human form and wrapped his arms around Dash’s shoulders. 

Dash froze. After a moment he reciprocated and wrapped his arms around Danny’s back. 

“I know this is probably crazy to say considering you’ve literally become my bully and wail on me, but I’ve missed you.”

Dash felt like he’d been punched in the heart. His arms tightened around Danny. 

“I’ve missed you too. I’m sorry for everything.” 

[q-gorgeous]

[q-gorgeous]

My favourite girl

[q-gorgeous]

Of Time and War

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 6313

Clockwork and Pariah Dark are immortal gods from different pantheons trying to learn about humanity by posing as university students. Unfortunately, they are roommates, and neither is aware the other is also a god. Romance and shenanigans ensue.

finally posting this one ahahahahha

Clockwork stood in the middle of this human learning den. How strange that human children traveled so far to learn that they’d need a new dwelling to live in. Weren’t there places to learn closer to them? 

How fitting that he was to observe and learn about humanity in a place where humans went to learn. He’d fit right in. 

He heard that humans liked to decorate their dwellings with trivial items so he decorated his side of the room with the only thing he could think of. He didn’t like many things but he did enjoy watching the flow of time, so his walls were covered in all sorts of clocks. He had as many different kinds as he could find in this town. Humans made some truly interesting clocks. Much more creative than anything their creatives could come up with. 

He was studying a very elaborate cuckoo clock when the door to his room opened. 

In the doorway stood a muscular human child. Well, technically he was an adult now by human standards. He was very young compared to Clockwork though, who was as old as time since he was time himself.

“Hello, dwelling mate.” Clockwork stuck out his hand in the ideal human greeting. A handshake. “I look forward to learning this semester.”

The human child stared at his hand and entered the room without reciprocating this human custom. Strange. Was this something that had fallen out of style? Did humans not do this anymore?

“I too look forward to learning at this learning facility.” The boy looked at him. “What’s your name?

A name. Clockwork forgot he needed a more human sounding name.

“My name. Yes, my name.” He looked around the room for a moment before his gaze landed on the cuckoo clock he had been staring at. “Chronos Cuckoo. My name is Chronos Cuckoo.” 

“Hello, Chronos. My name is Paimon Black.” He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Clockwork. 

Was this an acceptable greeting? Did humans who didn’t know each other greet each other in this way? 

“Hello… Paimon.” Clockwork awkwardly patted Paimon on the back. “How long does this greeting go on for? I am not familiar with it where I am from.” 

Paimon suddenly pulled back. “Ah, sorry. That is the greeting that I use for my human mother.”

Ah. Yes. That definitely makes more sense. Clockwork nodded. 

Paimon looked around Clockwork’s side of the room. “You have a thing for clocks, Chronos?” He looked him up and down. “Or for time specifically?”

“Yes. I love to learn about history and predict what is to come to pass. By learning what has already happened, sometimes we see things repeat themselves.” 

“Would you be going for a…” Paimon snapped his fingers thinking of the word. “History major?”

Clockwork nodded. “What about you, Paimon? What interest calls you?” 

“I like learning about weaponry and it’s used in combat.” 

“Ah. Would you also be majoring in history?” Clockwork asked. That’s kind of what it sounded like. 

Paimon shrugged. “Maybe. I’m not quite sure. I still have to-“

“Hey, nerds!” Another human stuck his head in through their open door. “The party in the common area is starting soon. Be there or be square!”

“What do squares have to do with anything?” Paimon whispered after the boy walked away. 

“Let’s go find out.” Clockwork walked toward the door. “Are you coming?”

“I suppose. I don’t have much else to do yet.”

They both walked out and Clockwork closed their door behind them, locking. “Don’t you have things to unpack?”

“Oh.” Paimon looked away. “I didn’t come with much.”

“Don’t most humans enjoy decor and paraphernalia that broadcasts their interests?”

“I was advised that bringing in my weapons and using those as decor would be unsettling for some people.” Paimon shrugged. “So I didn’t bring anything else with me.”

“That’s true. In the current gun climate, it’s an understandable request.”

They made their way to their floor’s common area. A big group of students were huddled around a table gathering and plating food and snacks. They walked up to the first table and saw a brown dessert cut up into squares.

“Maybe these are the squares that boy was talking about.” Paimon whispered. Clockwork chuckled at him.

“Hi there!” A cheerful girl spoke right next to them.

Clockwork looked up at her. She had big glasses and her blonde hair was pulled into two pigtails. He smiled. “Hi.”

“My roommate made those brownies. They’re soo good. But just a regular kind of good, if you catch my drift.”

“Are we drifting?” Paimon looked around the floor, confused.

“Ha, you are too funny.” She grabbed a brownie and put it on her plate. “I’m gonna see if I can get an anime club up and running here. Would you guys be interested in something like that? I think I’d be hosting watch parties in the common area.”

Where better to observe human culture and behavior than in an extracurricular setting? Then he can learn why some humans love this anime thing so much. 

“I would love to.” He turned to look at Paimon. “Would you like to watch this anime with us?”

Paimon looked back up from the floor. “Sure. What kinds of anime are there?”

“You’ve never heard of anime before?” Her jaw dropped and then a smirk appeared on her face. “How would you two feel about watching some anime in my dorm after the party tonight?”

Clockwork nodded. This would give him the opportunity to learn about humanity’s biggest enigma: the human woman.

“What anime would we be starting with?” Clockwork asked.

“The longest ongoing anime. We’re gonna start with One Piece.”

“Ohh sounds fascinating.”

They milled around the party for a few hours before retiring to the girl’s room.

He stopped as he crossed the threshold to the room. “I apologize, I never got your name.”

“It’s Cindy. And my roommate's name is Libby.”

“Sup.”

Clockwork jumped and turned around to see the other girl. “Hello. My name is Chronos, and this is Paimon.”

“Hi.” Paimon gave Libby a small wave.

Cindy pulled out a small television from inside the closet. “We don’t have much room but I think we could move the dresser to the center of the room and we can all pile on my bed to watch it.”

Once they got everything set up, Clockwork became engrossed as they watched. These pirates were such explorers. They wanted to see the world and accomplish great things. 

After a couple hours, Cindy turned off the television after the last episode finished.

“Is that it?” Clockwork asked sadly.

“No, there’s wayy more than that.” Cindy said. “But I think it’s time we turn in for the night. We don’t want to be late for our first day of classes tomorrow.”

“I suppose.” Clockwork said as he stood up. 

“Will you let us know when you get your anime association set up?” Paimon smiled at Cindy. “I look forward to watching this again.”

“Yeah! I’ll probably hang flyers up to let others know it’s happening too.”

“Thank you.” Paimon waved as they exited the room. “Have a good night, ladies.”

“I’ve never been so fascinated by anything before.” Clockwork said as they walked back to their room.

“Not even with clocks?”

“Those don’t count. Clocks and time are everything to me. I just meant in terms of such trivial things. I never thought television would be so interesting.”

“You didn’t have a television back home?” Paimon asked. “I thought most families had one.”

“Oh.” Clockwork realized he probably didn’t know as much about humans as he should’ve if he wanted to blend in more. “You’re right. My… Parental units just weren’t interested in it so I didn’t think I had any reason to be either.”

“That makes sense.” Paimon unlocked the door to their room. “Well I guess we should go to bed so we can be up bright and early for class tomorrow.”

“I guess.” Clockwork sighed. “Goodnight then.” 

They climbed into bed and Clockwork laid there. He was still thinking about those pirates. 

He pulled out his cellular device. He could find a copy of it on the world wide web. He had time powers. He could just watch all of it before tomorrow. He wouldn’t even be late for class.

After only a moment's deliberation, he pulled his ear buds out and found the anime online. He’s never had something catch his attention in this way. He deserved to indulge himself in it a little. 

Time did not creep forward until Clockwork got to the latest episode. He didn’t realize this anime wasn’t complete. But now he had something to wait for much like the humans do. He would get to find out what the anticipation of waiting for a new episode felt like.

He finally started time again and let his eyes fall shut. 

~~~~~~~~~~~

Clockwork was pleasantly surprised to see Cindy in his first class of the day. He walked up to her with a big smile on his face.

“I finished it.”

She smiled at him as she sat down. “Finished what?”

“The anime. One piece.”

Her jaw dropped. “You finished it? How?”

“I spent all night watching it.” He puffed his chest out.

“No, that’s still not possible. All of One Piece has a total screen time of sixteen days. There’s no way you could’ve finished it all in one night.”

Clockwork froze. He did not think of that when he was deciding if he should freeze time to watch it. “Oh. I must’ve missed something somewhere. Haha. Guess I didn’t finish it after all.”

Cindy chuckled. “That’s okay. I’m glad to see you’re excited about it. It’s cute.”

“Cute?”

Cindy looked at him. “Yeah. A lot of guys think it’s cringe to like anime. It’s cute how into it you got.”

“Why is anything cringe? If one enjoys something they should embrace it.”

Cindy looked at Libby as she walked up to them. “This guy gets it.”

Libby threw up a peace sign at him. “Slay.” 

Paimon walked into class and walked up to them once he saw them.

“Hello, friends.”

He wrapped his arms around Clockwork and he froze. He was quickly realizing that this wasn’t the most common human greeting.

“Oh, wow.” Cindy said. “You guys are a lot closer than I thought. How long have you been together?”

“Together?” Paimon asked.

“Yeah, are you guys dating?” Libby asked. 

“No!” Clockwork shook his head. “We only just met yesterday.”

“Oh.” Libby said. “You guys just look like you’ve known each other for a while.”

“That’s just how people greet each other where I am from.” Paimon spoke quickly. “I did not realize it wasn’t a customary greeting in other places.”

“Nah, it’s chill. It’s just usually reserved for people you’re closer to. I’m sure everyone could use more hugs in their day to day life though.”

“Yeah!” Cindy said. “It’s really not that weird, just unexpected.”

Paimon nodded. 

That was when their professor walked in. 

“Well, we should go sit down.” Clockwork said to Cindy. He scanned the room for empty seats and found two at the back of the class.

He waved Paimon to walk behind him and they made their way to their seats together. 

They sat down and Clockwork pulled out a notebook and scrambled for a pencil in his bag. Did he forget to pack them? He wasn’t normally forgetful.

“Here.” Paimon said. 

Clockwork looked up to see Paimon holding up a pencil to him. He stared for a couple seconds and reached out to grab it. When he touched the pencil, his hand accidentally grazed Paimon’s and it sent a shock through his system. He quickly took the pencil and faced towards the front of the classroom. 

He didn’t know what that was. Why such a simple touch made him feel that way. In his millennia he’s never had that happen to him. What was it?

“Hello, everyone. My name is Professor Haggardy. Today we will be going over-”

Clockwork shook his head. It wasn’t a big deal. It didn’t matter. He should focus on his class and what the humans thought was important.

~~~~~~~~~~

A few weeks later Clockwork and Paimon were once again headed to Cindy and Libby’s room. She requested that they bring their own refreshments. Libby was making more brownies and Cindy made something called ants on a log. He didn’t realize humans were still eating bugs, but he supposed that’s why he was here. To learn more about them. 

Clockwork prepared his favorite dish that he has witnessed during all his time. The ube cake roll. Paimon was bringing plates, cups, and soda pop because he apparently didn’t know how to cook.

They stopped in front of the girl’s door and Clockwork knocked. He heard shuffling on the other side and then Cindy opened the door. 

“Hey, guys!” Cindy said excitedly. “Come on in.”

She ushered them in and closed the door behind them.

“You can put the food on this folding table over here. Then get settled in because I have some cool news.”

Clockwork set down his cake roll and saw Libby’s brownies, but next to it there was a plate of celery with peanut butter and raisins placed to look like ants. He nodded to himself. This made much more sense. 

While Paimon was setting his own stuff down, Clockwork turned to walk the short distance across the room. He jumped and landed on Cindy’s bed and he watched as she set up the tv so they could watch the first episode of an anime called Death Note. It was one that she thought Paimon would like because it was basically a type of weapon. 

Paimon dropped onto the bed next to Clockwork, landing almost on top of him. His skin felt electric where it brushed Paimon’s arm. Paimon adjusted to get more comfortable, but didn’t move any further away from him. 

“So, before we start I have some good news!” Cindy said as she looked at them. Libby gave her a thumbs up from where she sat on the other end of the bed.

“We got approved to start hosting an anime club every week in the common room!”

“Wooo!” Libby cheered. Clockwork smiled. 

“That’s great.” Paimon said. 

“Yeah! I’m looking forward to getting to know more people! I used to go to clubs when I was in high school and I miss having a group extracurricular that was just for fun.”

“Will we still have our own weekly anime hangouts?” Clockwork asked.

Cindy nodded. “Of course! You guys are my friends. I like hanging out with you. But one of these days I think we should make plans to do something besides watching anime.”

Clockwork nodded thoughtfully. That would give him the opportunity to see what else humans did for fun.

“We could go clubbing.”

Cindy barked out a laugh. “Libby none of us are old enough to go clubbing. They wouldn’t let us in anywhere.”

Libby shrugged. “A girl can dream, can’t she?” 

“We could go axe throwing.” Paimon suggested. 

Cindy’s eyes widened and she shot Paimon a look. “Axe throwing? I didn’t peg you for the violent type. You seem pretty chill.” 

Paimon shrugged and the motion rocked Clockwork a little. “Gotta let off steam somehow, right?”

She laughed. “I suppose. We ready to get started?”

Clockwork nodded in tandem with Paimon and Libby. Cindy hit play on the tv and hopped onto the bed between Clockwork and Libby. 

They watched a couple hours of this host anime that Clockwork couldn’t remember the name of. By the time this last episode they watched was ending, he could feel Paimon nodding off, his head resting on Clockwork’s shoulder. Cindy chuckled to his right.

“I suppose we should wrap up for the night so he can go to sleep.” She pointed at Paimon. 

Clockwork smiled. “I suppose. I was enjoying the anime though.”

“We can always finish watching it when you two come over next.”

He nodded. “That sounds swell.”

Clockwork turned to Paimon and shook his shoulder.

“Paimon, wake up.”

Paimon groggily looked up, his face inches from Clockwork’s. He met his gaze and for a moment they were frozen there. The tension grew and Paimon looked down at Clockwork’s lips before glancing back up at his eyes. After a moment Paimon’s eyes widened and he backed away. 

“Sorry, did I fall asleep? How much did I miss?”

Clockwork’s face grew warm and he stood up. “I’m not sure. We were going to stop for the night since you seemed so tired.”

“Oh.” Paimon said, disappointed. He stood up next to Clockwork. 

“Well I hope you two had fun.” Cindy stood up and walked them to the door, waggling her eyebrows at Clockwork. The blush crept up onto his face again. What was happening to him?

“I sure did. We’ll see you two tomorrow.” 

Clockwork waved at the girls. Cindy waved back but apparently Libby had also fallen asleep at some point. She was snoring on Cindy’s bed.

Cindy closed the door behind them and Clockwork and Paimon headed down the hallway towards their own room. 

Paimon yawned and Clockwork chuckled at him. “Tired today?”

He nodded. “I think I was up too late last night studying for an exam. I’m feeling it today.”

“Well, hopefully you get a better night’s rest tonight.” Clockwork opened their door and held it open for Paimon. He walked inside past him and Clockwork closed the door behind him. 

“You’re telling me.”

They got changed and ready for bed. Just before Clockwork was about to turn the light off, Paimon wrapped his arms around his middle. A fluttering feeling erupted inside his stomach. 

Clockwork swallowed. “Is this a common goodbye as well?”

Paimon nodded against Clockwork’s cheek. “It is.” 

Clockwork lifted his arms up and wrapped them around Paimon’s shoulders. This one felt different. Normally there wasn’t so much tension in a simple greeting. Something was happening to Clockwork. He didn’t think a god such as himself could feel such a thing.

He pushed it down and after another second pulled away from Paimon. 

“Goodnight.” He turned off the light. They both got into their beds.

“Goodnight, Chronos.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

It was their semester break. Everyone else went back home for the holidays but Clockwork didn’t have any family to go home to. He only had the other gods in his pantheon, but they didn’t really celebrate such trivial holidays. 

The only other person who didn’t go home was Paimon. Clockwork thought it was odd. He wondered what Paimon’s home life was. He didn’t talk about it very often and when he did it was very stilted. 

Clockwork decided that while he didn’t have classes to worry about he could try out having a human job. He applied before the semester ended and he was going on day fourteen with no day off in sight until the semester started. He was tired to the bone and he didn’t understand how businesses could do this to their employees. If a god like Clockwork felt like this after two weeks, he couldn’t imagine what a regular human would feel like. 

He opened the door to his dorm room. He could barely keep his eyes open but he could see that the light was off. 

Staying quiet, Clockwork took his coat off and hung it up in their closet. He stumbled his way over to the nearest bed and collapsed onto it. He was expecting the soft give of his blanket but instead he was met with someone’s hard chest and a soft oof sound.

“...what?” Paimon breathed out. 

Clockwork’s eyes snapped open and he lifted himself up to see Paimon blearily staring up at him. 

“I’m so sorry. For waking you up. I thought this was-”

Paimon scooted over in his bed and pushed Clockwork down onto the mattress beside him. Clockwork froze and waited for Paimon to remove his hand from his side, but he never did. 

“Paimon?” Clockwork whispered.

“...m tired. Just go to sleep.” Paimon said. His breathing evened out and deepened and soon Paimon was asleep again. Clockwork still didn’t move. If he got up to go to his own bed he would wake Paimon up again. But was this really okay? Would Paimon be upset in the morning?

Clockwork looked at Paimon’s sleeping face. He didn’t seem too bothered by it when he woke up. And he was already back asleep. He must’ve been comfortable enough. 

Clockwork shifted, settling in and getting more comfortable. He closed his eyes and soon he was also asleep. 

The next morning came by and Clockwork slowly drifted awake. He was laying on his back but he could feel something on his shoulder and draped across his chest. 

He pulled his eyes open and was surprised at what he saw. 

Paimon had his shoulder resting on Clockwork’s shoulder, with his arm draped across his chest. He looked so peaceful as he slept. Clockwork couldn’t help but trace every line in his face. The way his lips turned up or the sharp slope of his nose. A warm feeling spread across his body and the fluttering sensation was back. 

He smiled as he watched Paimon and it was then that Clockwork realized what he’d been feeling. 

Love. 

Human’s were known for their love. It was what drove the majority of their lives. Clockwork never thought he’d be one to succumb to it. A not to a human, no less. 

But as Clockwork stared at Paimon’s face, lit up by the sun filtering in through their blinds, there was no denying this feeling. 

He was falling in love.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Clockwork stood outside Cindy’s door. He wasn’t sure if he should actually knock or not. He wasn’t sure if this is something Cindy would be willing to talk to him about. Would she turn him away?

He raised his hand up to knock and paused. Maybe he shouldn’t-

Suddenly the door opened in front of him and he saw Cindy staring at her keys. She looked up and jumped a little when she saw him. She smiled.

“Hey, Chronos. What’s up?” 

He swallowed. He supposed he should just follow through with it. 

“Hey. I wanted to ask you about some… relationship advice.”

She smirked. “Oh? Well come on in. We can’t stay too long though because I have to get to work but I have a couple minutes.” 

She stepped aside to let him into her room and she shut the door after him.

“Sooo… Paimon?”

Clockwork looked up at her sharply. “How did you know?”

She rolled her eyes at him and sat on her bed. “It’s not that hard to figure out. You guys have had really good chemistry all year, especially considering you two have only known each other that long.”

“What does chemistry have to do with Paimon?”

She laughed. “It’s just a figure of speech. It means you guys work really well together.”

“Oh.” Clockwork sat down on the bed next to her. He looked at the floor for a few moments. 

“How does falling in love work?” Clockwork asked Cindy.

The teasing expression fell from her face and she smiled softly at him. “I’m not sure that anyone knows that.”

“Does it happen to everyone?”

She shrugged. “Some people never fall in love. Some people fall in love with a lot of people. It depends on the person.”

“I never thought I’d be the type of person to fall in love.” He said. “It seemed so trivial.”

“Do you think you’re falling in love?”

He looked at her. “How would I know?”

“Well, how do you feel?”

Clockwork looked back at the floor. “I like being around him. He touches me and it feels like electricity runs through my veins. I’m always thinking about him but it also scares me. I’m not afraid of anything, but this terrifies me.”

“I think that’s how you know it’s love.” Cindy said quietly. 

“What do I do about it?”

She shook her head. “That's for you to decide. You could tell him or you could keep your friendship the way it is. I can’t tell you what you should or shouldn’t do.” She knocked her shoulder into his. “I can tease you about it, but I can’t seriously tell you what to do.”

Clockwork nodded his head. “I guess I’ll have to think about it.”

“Yeah, do that. Thinking about it is good. It’ll help you decide what you really want to do.”

Cindy slapped her hands on her knees and groaned as she stood up. “But I do have to go to work. You down for some anime again this week?”

Clockwork smiled at her as he stood up. “Always.”

They walked to the door and she pulled her key back out and opened it.

“I hope it goes well.” She said.

“Me too. Thank you for listening.” 

“You’re welcome. That’s what friends are for.” She pulled the door closed behind her and locked it. “Hey, while I’m remembering it, do you and Paimon want to come to my sister’s party she’s having at her sorority?”

“Sure. Will it be like our floor parties that we have in the common area?” Clockwork started walking with her as she headed down the hallway. 

“It’ll be much more exciting than that.” She smirked at him. “There’ll be alcohol and brownies. But they’ll be the good, good kind of brownies.”

“We’ll be there. I’ll ask Paimon about it.” 

“Bet!”

He waved at her as they split and walked down opposite directions of the next hallway. He headed back to his room and opened the door. 

Paimon was sitting with his legs splayed against the wall and his head hanging off the edge of his bed. He was throwing a ball up into the air and catching it in his hands as he stared at the ceiling. His eyes darted to look at Clockwork as he threw the ball up again but he missed it as it fell back down and it hit him in the chest. 

Clockwork chuckled. “Lost in thought?”

He sat down on the floor in front of Paimon’s face as he groaned. 

“No. I’m just thinking about my math class.” 

“I could always help you with it. I’m doing fairly well myself. I’d be glad to help.” Clockwork said. 

Paimon met Clockwork’s gaze and held it for a few beats before speaking. “Thanks. That’d be super cool.”

Clockwork chuckled and looked away. “Anyways, Cindy invited us to a party at her sister’s sorority. Says it’s supposed to be really exciting. Did you want to come with me?”

“Sure!” Paimon said. “I’d love to go to the party with you.”

Heat rose to Clockwork’s cheeks. “Cool. Did you want to start working on our math homework together? We can go over anything you don’t understand.”

“Yeah, that’d be great.”

Clockwork stood up and watched as Paimon crawled around and readjusted himself so he could stand up. But when he did, he tripped into Clockwork. He grabbed Paimon’s arms so he didn’t fall to the ground and they both froze. 

Paimon made eye contact with Clockwork and pulled away. “Thanks. That could’ve been bad.”

“No problem.”

They gathered their math materials and settled down on Paimon’s bed and started working on their homework. Their arms brushed against each other as they gestured to the work in their textbooks and their notebooks. They stayed like that until they finished the assignment and separated to go to bed for the night.

~~~~~~~~~

Clockwork and Paimon walked into the sorority house together. It was filled to the brim with people and the music was loud. Lights were blinking and strung all throughout the house, almost as if it was moving to the beat of the music. 

“Have you ever been to a party like this?” Clockwork leaned close to Paimon and shouted at him.

Paimon shook his head. “I wasn’t invited to much back home.” 

“Me either. I-”

“Paimon! Chronos!” Cindy called. 

She danced her way over to them, her hips swaying to the music and a bottle of alcohol in one hand and a brownie in the other. “How goes it?” She asked. 

“We are doing well.” Clockwork smiled at her. “Are you having fun so far?”

“So much fun!” Cindy cheered. “We’ve been waiting for you to get here!” 

“Is Libby here as well?” Paimon asked. 

“She sure is.”

Clockwork and Paimon jumped at the voice that was suddenly behind them. They turned to see Libby with her own brownie. She threw a peace sign up at them. 

“There’s my girl!” Cindy walked in between them to get to Libby, throwing her arms around her. “Now the party can really get started!” 

“I’m not sure we have much to add.” Clockwork said. “Neither of us have ever been to a party like this before.” 

Cindy gasped dramatically. “Never?”

“Never.” Paimon repeated back to her.

“Such a shame.” Libby said.

“It is such a shame.” Cindy threw her head back sadly. 

“What do you usually do at parties?” Clockwork asked. “We could start with that.”

Cindy gasped and smiled at them, looking between Clockwork and Paimon before her gaze settled on Clockwork. 

“Let’s play seven minutes in heaven!” Cindy said excitedly.

“What is this?” Clockwork asked.

“You’ve never played seven minutes in heaven before?” Libby asked. “Tragic.”

“We play it kind of like spin the bottle.” Cindy said. “You sit in a circle and take an empty bottle and spin it. Whoever it lands on, you both have to spend seven minutes in the closet doing anything you want.” She waggled her eyebrows at that. 

“Some people just sit and talk, some people just wait for their time to be up.” Libby bounced her shoulders up and down. “Some people even get freaky while they’re in there.”

“Let’s start!” Cindy called.

The party goers gathered around and sat in a big circle around the room. Clockwork watched Paimon sit next to Cindy across from him in the circle. 

“Paimon, why don’t you go first?”

He looked at her and shrugged. Grabbing the bottle, he twisted it and watched it as it twirled around on the floor. 

The bottle spun quickly in the center of their group. It slowed down and finally landed on Clockwork. Paimon looked up at him and met his gaze. 

“Ohhhh. Paimon and Chronos. Time for your seven minutes in heaven.” She did a little dance as she smirked at them. 

She walked them to the closet and opened it.

“And just so you guys can’t get out before your time is up, I’m putting this on the doorknob.” She held up an oddly shaped piece of white plastic. 

They looked at each other and stepped inside the closet. She smirked at them and waved.

“Have fun you two.”

Paimon was staring at the door before his gaze slid over to Clockwork. “What do we do now?”

Clockwork shrugged. “Whatever we want, I guess. We could just talk. Or go over some material from our classes.”

Paimon nodded stiffly. “We could go over our mathematics course?”

“Okay.”

Clockwork started going over the material for their Real Analysis math course. It was such simple math, he was glad to help Paimon with it. They both tested into the course but he could understand why a human such as Paimon would have a harder time understanding the concepts presented to him. 

He was going over the next concept they learned that week when Paimon shifted.

Clockwork felt Paimon’s hand slide across the floor and brush his. His heart rate spiked and he swallowed. How did these feelings overtake him so fully? Why was he so nervous? He was a god for titan’s sake. 

“This is what humans do when they like each other, right?” 

Clockwork nodded. “It is.”

Was he really going to act on these feelings? Could he do that?

Clockwork lifted his hand and scooped up Paimon’s. 

They turned to face each other, their faces inches apart when the closet door opened.

“Your seven minutes are up you two!” Cindy singsonged. 

Clockwork and Paimon jumped away from each other. Clockwork’s heart was racing. Were they really about to do that? 

Clockwork stood up and held his hand out to help Paimon stand up. Paimon reached up and took his hand. They walked out past Cindy and she was giving them eyes. Clockwork’s face flushed and he tried to ignore her look. 

“Okay, now it’s Libby’s and Buster’s turn!” 

Clockwork walked away from the group as they cheered and Paimon followed after him. Paimon grabbed his hand and Clockwork turned to face him.

“Did you want to get out of here?” Paimon asked quietly. 

Clockwork studied him for a moment before he nodded. 

The walk from the sorority was quick. They weren’t that far away from their dorm building. Once they got inside the building, they walked back to their dorm room quietly. The air felt charged between them and Clockwork wasn’t sure what was going to happen once they got there. Would it be good? Would it be bad? Would he even like it? Would they just pretend like nothing happened? 

Clockwork went to open their dorm room door and it felt like it took an eternity. He opened the door and walked inside, Paimon quickly closing it behind them. Before Clockwork could even turn the lights on, Paimon had walked up to him, grabbing one of his hands again. 

Paimon’s other hand lifted and traced over Clockwork’s cheek. He leaned into Paimon’s and and closed his eyes. Paimon rested his head in the crook of Clockwork’s shoulder and he could feel his heart rate spiking. Paimon pulled back a little, his breath warming over Clockwork’s neck. 

“Is this the beginning of what we call a human mating ritual?” Clockwork whispered. Paimon’s face was inches from his own as he lifted his head back up. Clockwork didn’t know what a human would do in this situation. He was the god of time. Not… This. But he couldn’t deny the feelings bubbling up inside him. Could he really let himself feel like this for a mere mortal?

“I believe so.” Paimon breathed out across Clockwork’s cheek. He shuddered. 

“How do we start?” He asked.

Paimon was quiet for a few moments before he whispered back.

“I don’t know.”

Clockwork’s eyes widened. “You don’t know?” He’s always heard that young men were overly curious about this sort of thing. How didn’t he know anything about human mating rituals?

“I’ve never done anything like this before.” Paimon looked down at Clockwork’s lips. 

“Me either.”

“Our floor mates would be laughing at us right now, wouldn’t they?” Paimon chuckled.

Clockwork smiled. He placed a hand on Paimon’s cheek. “Yes. They would be. How is it that they know so much more than us?”

Paimon’s smile fell off his face. “I don’t know exactly what I’m feeling. You make me feel nice. I like being around you. But it’s different than how I like being around that girl that invited us to her fun ‘anime association’. It’s bigger. More encompassing.”

Clockwork stared at him. “Bigger than us?”

Paimon chuckled again. “Yes, somehow bigger than us.” He pulled his gaze away from Clockwork’s. “It’s somehow bigger than us but you couldn’t even imagine how big I am.”

“Is that a human euphemism?”

“No!” Paimon pulled back, a flush creeping up to his ears. “What if I told you something that your small human mind couldn’t comprehend?”

Clockwork frowned. “What would another human be able to tell me that I wouldn’t be able to comprehend?”

“What if I told you that I wasn’t just another human?”

Clockwork's heart felt like it stopped. Not another human? That’d be absurd. What would the chances of that happening be?

“What do you mean, you’re not just another human?”

“I’m not a human.” Paimon said. “I was sent here by my pantheon to observe human life on earth more closely. But we started getting so close and I couldn’t help but feel… Feel like I was somehow taking advantage of you, being such a high power when you’re just a human.”

Clockwork barked out a laugh. It built up until he was belly laughing in the middle of their room. He grabbed Paimon’s wrist. 

“See, you’re human mind can’t comprehend it.”

Clockwork shook his head. “No that’s not it. I’m laughing at the absurdity of it. I was also sent here by my own pantheon to observe the humans.”

Paimon just stared at Clockwork for a few moments, processing this new information. 

“You’re not a human?”

“Not any more than you are, apparently.” 

“What’s your name?”

He smiled. “My name is Clockwork.”

Paimon’s eyes widened. 

“Is that why that first night before classes felt like it took forever? You watched that whole anime?”

Clockwork blinked at him. “My powers didn’t freeze you in time?”

“No!” Paimon threw his arms up in the air, Clockwork's hand going with his wrist. “I kept waking up thinking ‘surely it’ll be morning this time.’ And it never was! For so long!”

Clockwork barked out another hearty laugh. “I didn’t even notice anything with my earbuds in. How wild.”

“Pariah.”

“Huh?” Clockwork asked.

“My name. It’s Pariah Dark.”

“Ah, the god of war.” Clockwork let go of Pariah’s wrist and trailed his hands up his arms and around his neck. “I guess you don’t have to worry about taking advantage of me anymore.”

Pariah smiled at him. “I guess not.” 

Clockwork looked at Pariah’s lips and inched forward, pressing his own against them. They stayed like that for a few moments before he pulled away. 

“How lucky are we to have found someone that’ll stay with us forever?”

Pariah trailed his hand against Clockwork’s face.

“The luckiest of all.”