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half-deadmagicperson · 9 months

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Holiday Truce Time!!!

Hi y'all this is my holiday truce gift for @clawofthewild

Title: Afterschool Activities

Summary: William Lancer was sitting in his classroom, bored from grading, when he hears noises from the hallway

Rating: T

Warnings: Injury, Blood, Stitches, Brief Mention of Needle

Event run by @phandomholidaytruce

Anyways I hope y'all enjoy and have a safe and Happy Holiday!!!

William Lancer was having a pretty average evening. Teaching was as chaotic as usual, especially with all the ghost attacks. But right now, William found himself with the most boring part of his job: grading.

The man sat in his old office chair and tapped his red pen on his lips. Almost done. He just has a few more to finish. This semester his sophomore English class was studying Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. He mildly regrets assigning them all an essay, as his eyes scan another block of text. Finally, he scrawled a number at the top and moved to the next one.

He looks down at a crumpled piece of notebook paper with a name he was all too familiar with jotted at the top.

‘Danny Fenton'

Young Daniel was an interesting case. He was quiet and reclusive, never really interacted with anyone in the class. He was constantly tired, but still seemed eager to learn. William heard stories about how wonderful he was in middle school, but as soon as he hit freshman year, he seemed to go south.

Daniel never really had many friends, aside from Miss Manson and Mr. Foley, but William hasn't seen those three together since fall last year. It appears there was a falling out. William sighed and continued grading.

The teacher listened to the continuous clicks from the clock on the classroom wall. It was almost 5 o’clock. He could continue his work at home, but he never seems to focus when Darcy, his cat, keeps distracting him. So instead, Lancer sat in the quiet of his classroom listening to the clock and the distant shouts of what was probably a ghost fight.

William sat there for what felt like hours before he heard a thud in the hallway. That's weird. Nobody should still be in the building. Maybe it was just Carol or one of the other teachers. Quietly, William peaked out the classroom door.

He could hear the shuffles of feet and quiet murmuring from around the corner. The man crept closer as silently as he could.

“Where is it? Where is it?” a voice from around the corner whispered. More shuffling, except it sounded more like someone rifling through something. Amidst the ruffling, strained winces escaped the person's mouth.

William had one thought. This must be one of the highschool junkies looking for their stash. No wonder they weren't getting caught. They were coming when the school was closed! Should he call the police?

A loud clang resounded against a locker, followed by a cry of pain. Lancer froze. Were they okay? The sound of stifled, panicked crying answered that question. This person needs help!

Against his better judgment, William peaked around the corner. A dim glow encompassed the mass lying on the floor. Wait? Was that?

Amity Park’s very own ghost boy, laid on the crappy linoleum, gripping his side. His chest hitched on every breath as tears streamed down his cheeks.

William knew the kid needed help, but he was afraid that the kid would disappear if he tried to approach him. He couldn't call a doctor. If he did, the GIW would probably scoop the boy out of existence, or the Fentons would find him. Lancer sighed and looked around.

His eyes eventually landed on the school nurse's office. There should be at least something in there. William quietly made his way down the hall and jiggled the handle. Unlocked! William flicked on the light, looking around for a first aid kit. He rummaged through the drawers until he found what he was looking for.

Lancer went back to the corner of the hallway. Hopefully the boy didn't vanish. When he got closer, he heard the breathless sobbing from before. Good, he's still here. William took the kit and set it on the floor. He gave it a push and watched as it slid towards the ghost boy.

The kit gently stopped right next to the crying boy. Phantom glanced down at the box before frantically looking around. His glowing eyes reflected off the lockers in the dark hallway.

“Who's there?” the ghost asked fearfully.

“A friend.” William felt the words come out of his mouth. The boy was shaking. It was weird seeing Phantom in a state like this. It looked like a strong wind could blow him over. William watched as the boy stared at the box.

“Do…do you need any help?”

There was a long moment of silence. At first, William thought the boy had fainted. A soft voice proved him wrong, “Um, I…might need help. I, uh, think it needs stitches.”

“Is it ok if I come closer?” Lancer asked. He heard the ghost make a positive grunt. Slowly, the teacher slid around the corner to face Phantom. The boy's eyes widened in recognition before he reached for the kit.

Phantom never let William out of sight. Lancer decided not to move any closer.The timid child shuffled through the kit before pulling out gauze and some other supplies.

William watched curiously as the boy peeled off part of his iconic HAZMAT suit. It was bad. A giant gash spread across his side. Green liquid oozed out like blood. Phantom moved the hand that was applying pressure as he went to wrap the wound. That gash needed way more than just some gauze.

Phantom wrapped his wound with extreme precision. He grabbed a pen from the open locker and used it as a tunicate. The boy's swiftness and ease scared Mr. Lancer. How often did Phantom get injured in battle?

After wrapping his wounds, Phantom went to stand up. William raised a brow.

“You probably shouldn't be trying to move too much, especially if you need stitches.”

The boy flinched at the sudden noise.

“There wasn't any thread in the kit, but I'm wrapped up enough that I can make it home.”

William went to argue, but was interrupted by Phantom who was now off the floor.

“I'll be fine! After all, us ghosts aren't supposed to feel pain,” his heavy breathing and leaning against the locker said otherwise, “See! I'm standing! I'll be able to fly ho-”

William rushed over as the ghost boy crumpled back onto the floor. The teacher went to check for breathing, a pulse, anything to make sure the ghost was ‘alive’. The boy was shivering under his hands. He needed a doctor, but who would accept a ghost? Lancer sighed and rubbed his temples. In a split second decision he stood up and ran to his classroom.

Out of his room he grabbed his jacket, coffee mug, and the wet wipes he used to clean off desks. He sprinted down the hall and filled his mug with water from the fountain. After he made his way back to Phantom, he pressed the mug against the boy’s lips, hoping that would help.

Using the wet wipes, William quickly went to wipe up the splotches of…blood? Ghost blood? Whatever the term was. He worked silently, watching the ghost’s flickering glow. After he cleaned up the mess, he took his jacket and wrapped the kid up in it.

William lifted Phantom up with ease and carried him over to the teacher's lounge. The lounge wasn't the greatest place, it had a crummy couch, but it was better than the floor.

Lancer pressed his hand against the ghost's forehead. Phantom’s skin felt cold to the touch. No fever. That's good. Suddenly William remembered something. In his desk, he has a sewing kit in case a button comes off his shirt or something while teaching.

The teacher made a mad dash back to his classroom. He rummaged through the drawers until he found a small kit. It wasn't a lot of thread, but it should work.

William wiped the needle off with a wet wipe in hopes of better sterilization. The last thing the kid needs is an infection. Lancer ran back to the teacher's lounge to check on Phantom.

The ghost boy was shaking, probably from blood loss at this point. His fresh gauze was already soaked through with sticky green substance. A glowing ring appeared around the boy’s legs only to disappear again. William has no idea what that was, but he better work quickly.

The teacher peeled off the layers of bandages to look at the wound. It looked even worse up close. Nausea crept its way into Lancer’s throat. William did his best to push it back as he worked on cleaning Phantom's wounds. He held back a wince every time he made another stitch.

After the boy was stitched up, he seemed to stabilize. At least, he stopped shaking so much. His breathing became more relaxed. For a second, William was more relaxed too. That was, until the bright rings started coming back. The flashing lights kept coming and going, almost like Phantom was subconsciously fighting it. The boy started tossing and turning before resigning back into resting on the couch. When the strange rings came again, he did not fight it.

William looked down at where Phantom once was laying to see the bruised face of his student. Danny Fenton was curled up in the teacher's lounge. Danny Fenton was Phantom.

William’s mind reeled with the new information. His student, the recluse, was going out there to save everyone. His student was sacrificing his academic career to fight ghosts.

….Dante's Divine Comedy…

His student was dead.

Lancer went and checked for a pulse. His heart was beating? But he's a ghost? How was this possible? William is not an expert in science, but what he does know is that his student needs his help. The teacher continued to slowly give the boy more water and monitor him.

Danny eventually began to stir. The boy's bright blue eyes whipped open and looked around. William’s brows were knit with concern.

The boy looked at his arm that was dropping off the couch. It was probably at that moment he realized he was no longer Phantom. Danny shot up before wincing in pain. Lancer leaned forward in case he had to catch him again. Thankfully, Danny stayed upright.

“I, uh, found some thread to patch you up in my classroom,” William said to try and break the silence. The boy looked frozen, terrified, but he managed to squeak out a small thank you.

“Daniel-Danny,” the boy stiffened even more, “are you doing okay?”

The boy sat there as his mind processed the question. Tears started to form in Danny's eyes. Finally, the boy began to sob, wincing at every hick-up. Lancer heart filled with grief for this boy. He was too young for all this. The teacher grabbed the box of tissues and passed them to Danny.

For a while, the room was quiet with nothing but the sobs of the teenaged boy. Every once and a while, Danny would blow his nose, but he didn't speak for twenty minutes or so.

Finally the boy took a deep breath and started pouring out words. His tale was full of loss and sorry. He lost his friendships, he lost his grades, and his parents are hunting him. Granted they didn't know he was Phantom, but he's scared to tell anyone for fear of their life and his own. He spoke of the disappointment he became. Jasmine, his sister, had even given up trying to reach him. His broken paragraphs sang a song of ruin.

Once he was done, Lancer placed his hand on his student's shoulder for reassurance. Danny met his teacher's gaze before lurching into a hug. Lancer felt the boy's heaving breaths under his arms.

“It's going to be okay, Daniel, you won't have to be alone anymore.”

After that day, things were looking better for Danny. Now he had someone to cover for him and help him with schooling. Jazz has even commented on the sudden change in behavior. Danny was still hesitant to have Lancer help with any injuries he might have, but the teacher has become somewhat of a mother hen, always checking in on him after each ghost attack.

William was proud of his student. Young Daniel's grades were starting to improve, and so were his friendships. Danny had plans to go to the arcade with Samantha and Tucker over the weekend. Overall, things were looking better for the boy, and Lancer was glad to help.

#danny phantom #mr lancer #phandom truce 2023 #fic #tw injury #tw stitches #tw needles #tw blood

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raaorqtpbpdy · 5 months

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Team Phantom's Official-Unofficial Medic

Thanks to seeing how football injuries are treated, as well as a general interest in first-aid, Dash finds himself incidentally helping out an injured Phantom. After a while, Phantom starts to seek Dash out when he needs first-aid. But eventually he comes to Dash with injuries way beyond the scope of Dash's first-aid knowledge, and all he can do is his best.

Based on the prompts: 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. [from Cake], and Identity reveal. Dash finds out Danny is Phantom. What happens? Could be swagger bishie or not, either or is okay. [from @q-gorgeous]

As per the second prompt, this fic could be interpreted as swagger bishie, or as platonic. It just kinda happened that way lol.

Also, not gonna lie, Dash is a bit of a freak in this one.

Read also on AO3

[Warnings for blood, injuries, gore, suturing, medical procedures, mild romanticizing of the aforementioned, implied dissection, near-death experiences, and Dash's shitty father]

Dash... wasn't really sure how it happened, honestly. One day, he'd been one of a hundred people who supported the town hero, Phantom. Basically nothing more than a fanboy. And the next he'd seemingly become Team Phantom's go-to guy for first aid.

He guessed it started when he happened to pass by an alleyway biking home from football practice, and doubled back upon seeing something glowing green in the shadowy space between two buildings. He'd thought it was some ghost lying in wait to attack and wanted to be sure. It wasn't.

In the alleyway, Danny Phantom was sitting on an overturned crate with the top half of his jumpsuit pulled down, bleeding badly from a wound on his side. Manson and Foley, Fenton's loser friends, were next to him—though Fenton himself wasn't there. The two of them looked to be holding a couple rolls of bandages and some antiseptic, but they were arguing quietly about how to use them while Phantom kept cursing and asking them to please just do something to stop the bleeding already, because he couldn't keep losing ectoplasm like this.

Dash didn't exactly consider himself to be a good Samaritan, and he wasn't the most compassionate guy in general, but he did like to show off, and he wasn't going to leave his celebrity crush bleeding out in some dirty alleyway. Luckily, he kept a small first-aid kit in his back-pack because Manson and Foley did not have all the materials they needed to patch up a gash like that.

"Hey," Dash called out, first-aid kit already in hand. "You two losers obviously don't know what you're doing. Give me the bandages and get out of my way."

"And a meathead like you is gonna know any better than us?" Manson jeered, obviously skeptical.

"I'm a football player," Dash scoffed back. "I've seen injuries a lot worse than this get patched up, and I know how it's done. Just give me the bandages."

She raised an eyebrow, but handed over the roll of bandages she was holding. Dash started by quickly cleaning his hands with hand-sanitizer. It wasn't as good as a proper wash, but it would do. His own first aid kit had alcohol wipes to properly clean the wound, something Manson and Foley hadn't thought to get, apparently.

"This'll sting," Dash said. "I mean, if you feel pain. From what I've read, there still doesn't seem to be a professional consensus on whether ghosts feel pain, but you would know better than I would."

Phantom hissed through gritted teeth when Dash started to wipe away the excess ectoplasm and clean the wound. Dash wasn't sure if that meant he actually felt pain, or if he was just habitually mimicking pain, like those G.I.W. releases said that ghosts tended to do. Phantom didn't seem keen on clarifying, though, so Dash chose not to ask.

Once it was clean, the wound was still leaking ectoplasm, but not quickly. It would probably have been best to stitch it up, but Dash didn't have a needle and thread, so butterfly stitches would have to do. He snatched the disinfectant out of Foley's hand and sprayed the wound.

Then he put it down on the ground and used one hand to press together the two sides of the wound and applied the adhesive butterfly stitches with the other. It took fourteen of them, leaving Dash with only three left in his kit. Yeah, it definitely should have gotten actual stitches. Finally, Dash used hand-sanitizer to clean his hands again before carefully wrapping a roll of bandages around Phantom's torso.

"There, all done," he said. "The bandage isn't too tight, is it?"

Phantom shook his head. "No, it feels fine."

The whole time he had worked, Phantom and the two losers had watched him in rapt silence.

"You... actually do know how to do this stuff," Foley observed.

"I told you," Dash said. "Football players get injured a lot. I learned."

"No need to get snippy, jackass," Manson sneered.

"Jackass?" Dash repeated, genuinely offended. "I just stopped your buddy here from bleeding out. I think a little gratitude might be appropriate." Normally, he wouldn't care about insults from dorks like these, but given the circumstances it just felt uncalled-for.

Manson's nose scrunched up in anger and she opened her mouth like she was about to argue, but Phantom cut her off.

"You're right," he said. "Thank you. We were just... surprised. I guess we never really thought about what sort of skills football players might have outside of, well, playing football."

"And bullying nerds," Foley tacked on, though he snapped his mouth shut when Phantom elbowed him in the side.

The truth was, most of the football players Dash knew weren't as good at first aid as he was, but they all knew the basics. Dash just had a particular fascination with seeing injuries and especially watching them be methodically patched up. It was something he would never admit, because he knew how weird and low-key fucked up it sounded to say that he liked looking at people's injuries, but it was true.

Any time someone got injured enough to call the school nurse, but not enough to call the ambulance, Dash would come over to watch how she fixed them up. He'd even taken a few first aid classes. And his friends had even noticed enough to tease him for it when he paid more attention than usual during the human anatomy units in biology and Phys. Ed.—although, predictably, they seriously misinterpreted the reason for his interest.

"Can you move?" he asked Phantom. "Are you hurt anywhere else?"

Phantom stood up, stretched, winced, tested his movement. "No, Skulker only got me the once. Looks like I'm good."

"Good," Dash said.

He packed up his first-aid kit while Phantom pulled the top half of his suit back on. It was then that Dash realized he'd been so focused on patching up the ghost's injury, he'd completely missed out on his chance to ogle Phantom with his shirt off. Stupid!

"Well," he said, much more loudly than he'd meant to, as if he was trying to talk loud enough the other's wouldn't hear that last thought he'd had. "I should get home and take my dog out. Glad you're okay, Phantom. Later, dorks!"

And with that, Dash hurried out of the alley, got back on his bike, and pedaled home as fast as he could.

That hadn't been it, though. After that incident occurred, Dash had no reason to think it was anything but a one-time deal. He'd gotten to meet his hero, and even provide some actual, tangible assistance to him, and he would treasure that encounter for the rest of his life. The following day, he had still been so high up on cloud nine he hadn't even bullied any dweebs. But he never expected anything like that to happen again.

It did happen again, though.

Football practice had just ended, and Dash headed to the bike rack behind near the auto-shop. Normally, he parked his bike on the rack near the boys locker room because it was obviously way closer, but he'd been a little later than usual that morning because Pookie ate something that had gotten kicked under the kitchen counter god knew how long ago and Dash had to stop to clean up the vomit and get her in a kennel for his mom to take to the vet while he was at school.

He remembered still being worried about Pookie by the time football got out because his mom hadn't called him with an update, so he was in a bit of a rush and he ran out of the locker room toward where he'd locked up his bike. As he pulled out the key to his bike-lock, however, he saw something through the window of the auto-shop. He was going to ignore it, when he heard a familiar voice call out.

"Ew, that's so wrong!"

Curiosity got the better of him, and he pushed open the door of the school's auto-shop, which should have been empty, not just because school had ended two hours ago, but also because Casper High hadn't even offered auto-shop classes since the eighties or something after the teacher retired or died. Dash didn't really know or care the details, but he did not that no one went into the auto-shop, and the door should have been locked for so long it was rusted shut, but it opened easily.

Inside, Dash saw Danny Phantom, his right arm bent unnaturally at the elbow and shoulder, definitely dislocated if not broken. Manson and Foley were with him again. Foley had a roll of bandages in his hand, even though bandages had nothing to do with treating dislocated joints. All three of them turned to look at Dash when he opened the door, probably just because they'd instinctively turned to the sound of it swinging open, but it certainly felt like they were staring expectantly.

Dash sighed, and stepped through the door. "Put those bandages away, it's obviously dislocated, not sprained."

He knelt down at Phantom's feet to take off his backpack and dig out his first aid kit. There was a thin piece of cloth in it that he could make a sling out of, and an instant ice-pack. He put his kit down on a work bench and carefully positioned his hands on Phantom's shoulder. It would have been easier if he could actually see the joint, but he wasn't about to ask the ghost to take his shirt off for him. That would be too embarrassing.

"Do ghosts feel pain or no?" Dash asked, forcing the joint back into place with a hard shove and a loud pop.

"Agh!" Phantom cried out. "Yes. We do."

"Good to know," Dash said. He moved down to the elbow. Gently, he rotated it, trying to ignore the way Phantom winced when he moved it, then he carefully positioned his hands again and popped it back into place.

Phantom cried out even louder the second time.

"You're not allergic to Tylenol, are you?" Dash went to his kit and pulled out a bottle.

"No?"

"Good," Dash poured out three pills and handed them to Phantom. "Take these, they should kick in in half-an-hour." Phantom took them and swallowed them dry, which wasn't the best way to do it, but Dash didn't have anything for him to wash it down with, since his water bottle was empty after practice.

"Is that all?" Manson asked.

"No," Dash said. "I'm gonna make a sling to help you keep it still and supported, and I've got an ice-pack for you. The key to recovering from an injury like dislocation is the RICE method. Rest, ice, compression, and elevation. The RICE method helps to reduce this inflammation, and reducing inflammation reduces pain."

He took out the thin cloth from his kit as he explained this and folded it into a sling, tying it behind Phantom's neck when his arm was settled at about the right height.

"Is that the right height?" he asked.

"Maybe a little high," Phantom replied, and Dash adjusted it. "Better?"

"Yeah."

"How do you have an ice-pack in your first-aid kit?" Foley asked. "Wouldn't it melt?"

Dash took out the instant ice-pack. "Not this kind. It's kinda like a glow-stick. The pouch is full of chemicals. You crack it, and shake it, and that makes the chemicals mix, causing a reaction that makes the pouch cold. You're not supposed to hold it with your bare hands though. Sorry, but you'll have to use my spare gym socks. Don't worry, these ones are clean."

he unrolled his spare socks and shoved the ice-pack into one of them before handing it to Phantom.

"Try not to use it much until it heals," Dash said. "Rest is the most important part of the RICE treatment."

"Thanks, Dash," Phantom said, taking the ice-pack like he was amazed to see Dash acting like this. Admittedly, it was a lot different than he would normally act around nerds like Manson and Foley, but he was more preoccupied with the fact that his hero apparently knew his name than whether or not folding a sling and loaning someone an ice-pack was out-of-character for him.

"You know who I am?" Dash asked.

Phantom tensed, which obviously made him jostle his sore shoulder and wince. "Uh... yeah. Sam and Tucker told me after you help me out last time," he explained. "They said you were usually kind of a jerk, but I really do appreciate you helping me like this."

Oh, that made sense. Kind of stung that after bandaging his wounds, Phantom's impression of him was still that he was the guy who bullied his friends.

"A guy can have more than one side to him," Dash defended. "Besides, I'm pretty sure you've saved my life personally, like, four times, so even after this, I still owe you two more. Try not to cash 'em in too soon, yeah?"

"I'll do my best," Phantom said, with a smile that made Dash's heart race.

Then his phone rang, and it was his mother calling. "Sorry, I gotta take this!"

He left the auto-shop to answer it.

His mother was calling to ask him if he was home yet and let him know the vet had pumped Pookie's stomach but she was going to be perfectly okay. Dash sighed with relief. When the phone call ended, though, there was no less urgency in his pace when he rode home.

Again, Dash expected to never be that close to Phantom again, but a month later, there was a knock on his back door.

He was very confused about why the back door and not the front, but he answered anyway, and standing there was Manson and Foley, with Phantom floating between them, bleeding profusely from his right leg while he cradled his left arm, and smiling sheepishly at Dash.

"You said you owed me two more, right?" he said. "Don't suppose there's a two-for-one special going?"

"We tried to patch up his arm like you did to his torso before, but we're pretty sure we did it completely wrong," Foley said.

"Not that wrong," Manson argued, but she had her arms crossed and she was pouting, looking very defeated.

"Anyway, we remembered you lived kinda close because remember that one time you invited Danny to that party so you could get with his sister?" Foley went on, ignoring her. "Yeah, we figured we'd be better off coming to ask for your help."

"Fine, take him to the garden bench. If he bleeds ectoplasm all over the floor, my mom'll flip, but nobody'll notice it on the dirt," Dash directed. "I'm gonna get the first-aid kit and wash my hands. I'll be right back out."

The fist-aid kit under the sink in the upstairs bathroom was a lot more comprehensive than the one Dash carried around in his backpack—which was mostly just the basics and a couple of extra things, like an instant ice-pack, that ended up being needed during practice or games more often than not. Even the more comprehensive one didn't have a needle and thread, though. He wasn't 100% sure he'd need it, but he got them out of his mom's sewing kit anyway, and sterilized the needle with rubbing alcohol before he headed back down to the garden.

This time, he did ask Phantom to remove the top part of his jumpsuit. Unlike with a dislocated arm, he couldn't properly bandage a wound he couldn't directly access. Dash did his best to keep his expression as neutral as possible when he did so. He didn't want to think about what he'd have to ask when he go around to the leg. By all accounts, he knew he should treat the leg first, but he had to work up the courage to ask Phantom to take off his pants before he could do that. So arm it was.

This was clearly the wound Manson and Foley had tried to do themselves. Dash could see immediately that they hadn't done it right. It was wrapped so tight that the arm below the bandage had started to turn green from lack of circulation, and even though it was a self-adhering bandage, they'd knotted it for some reason.

"We did it way too loose at first and it wasn't staying on," Foley explained, "But then we went too far the other way, and we couldn't untie it."

"You're not supposed to tie this kind of bandage," Dash said. "Self-adhering bandage like this is for sprains and muscle injuries, for making sure your joints aren't moving too much. They're not absorbent, so it doesn't do any good to wrap 'em around bleeding wounds."

He cut the bandage away, and under it, he saw that Manson and Foley had applied butterfly stitches longways over the wound, instead of across it.

"Oh, it's gonna hurt when I take these off," he said apologetically.

"I knew that wasn't right," Manson muttered, even though she was the one who'd said she didn't think they'd done things that wrong.

Quickly, but methodically, Dash re-cleaned, disinfected, and bandaged the wound. Luckily, this one wasn't that deep, to the butterfly stitches were sufficient, and Dash didn't have to pull out the needle.

Once he was done, however, he coughed uncomfortably.

"Uh... I've gotta get to the gash on your leg now, so you're gonna need to uh..." He couldn't get himself to say it. He couldn't ask his celebrity crush to take his pants off. He just couldn't do it.

Phantom looked a little lightheaded, and cocked his head, not seeming to get the message. Thankfully Manson didn't have that problem, nor, apparently, did she have any sense of shame.

"He needs you to take your pants off so he can treat your leg," she said bluntly.

"Oh," Phantom said.

He started to squirm out of the bottom half of his jumpsuit, apparently unbothered by the fact that they were outdoors in broad daylight—even if they were surrounded by a six-foot fence. His wound did seem to be bothering him, though, as he grunted and hissed in pain as he pulled his jumpsuit down past it.

Yeah... Dash definitely should have taken care of the leg wound first.

The gash in his just above his knee was much longer and deeper than the one in his arm. Ectoplasm almost completely coated his entire calf and was still leaking from the wound. It was no wonder why Phantom was so lightheaded.

"Shit, I shoulda done this one first," Dash muttered with a grimace.

He started by wiping away the ectoplasm with a clean rag, thankful he'd thought to get some out of his gym gear rather than grabbing his mother's nice hand towels from the bathroom. He wrapped a rubber strip above the wound to stem the flow of ectoplasm some. Then he cleaned around the wound with alcohol wipes. The rest of the leg still had streaks of green, but the wound itself obviously took priority when it came to getting it clean and disinfected.

This time, Dash was gonna need the needle and thread. His hands were shaking minutely as he threaded the needle, but he got it after two tries.

"Now hold on, there's no way you learned suturing in football," Manson contested. "There's no way!"

"I also took a couple of first-aid classes," Dash admitted.

"They don't teach suturing in first-aid classes either," Manson insisted, putting her hands on her hip.

"You say that like you've ever been to a first-aid class," he scoffed. "How would you know."

She scowled, but didn't have anything to say to that.

She was right of course. Suturing was not something they taught in first-aid classes. But there was no way in hell that Dash was going to admit to watching videos about it on YouTube for fun. He knew how that sounded. Contrary to popular belief, he wasn't completely stupid.

Ignoring her, he went to start the sutures. Even with the tourniquet, there was still a slow drip of ectoplasm. Phantom grunted in pain when Dash pushed the two sides of the wound together to start stitching. It was a hard line to balance, but Dash tried to be both quick and gentle, not wanting to irritated the wound, or prolong the discomfort of getting stitches.

If he mentally cropped out the peanut gallery, and pretended it was just him, Phantom, and an open wound, this was almost exactly like on of his fantasies. Yet another thing he would definitely never admit out loud.

Idly, he wondered how many hoops he'd have to jump through to add local anesthetic to the Baxter household first-aid kit. Probably a lot. The kind of injuries you needed local anesthetic to treat were also typically the kind of injuries people were supposed to go to an actual doctor for, and not a high-school freshman with a weird medical fixation.

Once the stitches were done, twenty-six in all, Dash used another alcohol wipe and a clean rag to more thoroughly clean the area around the wound before wrapping a gauze bandage around it.

This time, Dash did think to subtly ogle Phantom, just a little bit, before telling him he could put his jumpsuit back on. He was only human, after all. He wasn't gonna miss out on that kind of opportunity twice.

"Hey, how come Fen-toad's never with you?" Dash asked when Phantom was putting his suit back on. "I thought you three were like, joined at the hip or something."

"Oh uh..." Manson and Foley looked at each other before Foley answered, "Danny can't stand the sight of injuries. Makes him sick to even look at 'em, so... we let him dip when it gets this bad."

"That tracks," Dash replied. "Your friend always was a bit of a wuss."

"Haha... right," Foley agreed awkwardly.

Phantom and Foley thanked him for his help. Manson did too, after a matching pair of pointed looks from her friends, although her thanks was sullen and reluctant.

"You're welcome," Dash said, packing up the supplies to return them back where they belonged. "But you guys are so lucky my parents weren't home when you showed up or they'd've flipped, so I suggest you start making tracks sooner, rather than later."

"Right," Phantom said. "Come on, guys, let's go." With that, they were gone, and Dash was left to put his supplies away and then scour the Fenton Works website in the hopes of finding tips for how to get ectoplasm stains out in the wash.

If he had to pinpoint it, Dash would say that third incident was when he became Team Phantom's official-unofficial medic.

After that, whether by coincidence, or the three of them intentionally seeking him out, Dash ended up patching one of Phantom's injuries just about every week. They often went to the school auto-shop for it, since it was private, usually close by, and always empty.

"I'm pretty sure you've fixed me up way more times than I've saved your life by now," Phantom joked while Dash finished treating an ectoplasm burn on his forearm. Manson and Foley weren't with him this time, but Dash didn't ask after them. He didn't mind it being just him and Phantom for once. "How many do I owe you at this point?"

Dash shook his head and capped the burn ointment. "You don't owe me anything," he said. "This one was for saving Kwan's life from Walker a few months ago. The scratches last week were for protecting the cheer squad from Ember, and the sprained ankle the week before was for saving Pookie from that ten foot tall ghost dog that wanted to play with her and nearly stepped on her instead.

"You've saved the lives of everyone I care about. This is the least I can do," he finished. Then, he decided the two of them had gotten close enough by this point that he was safe to crack a joke, and added, "Plus, sometimes I get to see you with your shirt off, so like, bonus."

Much to Dash's relief, Phantom laughed lightly at that. "Yeah, too bad it's always 'cause I'm bleeding out."

"Well, you can't win 'em all."

Phantom laughed again. It sounded... familiar somehow, although Dash couldn't place it.

"Hey, I've kinda wondered this ever since you started helping me out, but are you planning to become a doctor after graduation?" Phantom asked.

"I've thought about it, 'cause I do actually like doing this kinda thing—but it's not realistic for me," Dash said with a slightly disappointed shrug. "In the first place, medical school is stupid competitive, and I'm barely scraping the 2.5 GPA required to stay on the school sports teams. With my grades, the only way I'm getting into college is with a football scholarship, but if I do get in, I'm planning to major in sports medicine. If I don't get scouted, I might become a paramedic. It's not set in stone or anything, but you know."

"Well, speaking as a repeat patient, I think you'd make a great paramedic," Phantom said.

Dash smirked. "What're you saying? You think I can't get scouted?"

"No!" Phantom said quickly, then chuckled sheepishly. "More like I don't know what sports medicine is."

Dash laughed out loud.

"Your burns are all treated; now get outta here. I gotta get home."

"Yes, sir!" Phantom saluted him sarcastically and flew off through the ceiling.

Dash never imagined he'd become close enough with his personal hero to crack jokes like that. And to tease him? Never in a million years. But he was.

"Did something happen?" Kwan asked him as they were walking down the hall on the way to third period.

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"I dunno, you just seem like you've been in a good mood lately," Kwan clarified with a shrug. "You haven't even bullied Fenton in, like, a month, let alone anyone else. I was just wondering if something good might've happened to you."

"Oh uh... not really," Dash replied.

As much as he would love to brag all over the school about being friends with Phantom, he was sure Manson and Foley—and Fenton too, he supposed, even if the dweeb always wussed out when things got bloody—had their reasons for keeping the fact that they were Phantom's allies a secret. Of course, Dash had no idea what those reason's were.

For his part, Dash knew that if he told everyone he was close with Phantom, they ask him why. Then, he'd either be forced to tell them about his secret interest in emergency medical treatment, lie like a bitch, or say nothing and accept the embarrassment of everyone thinking he was making it up. None of those options were particularly appealing.

It was fine that his buddies knew he was the best at applying sports tape and wrapping up sprains, but they didn't need to know how deep it really went.

"I guess I've just been in a good mood, that's all," Dash said finally. "No real reason for it."

"Well, it's nice to see it," Kwan said cheerfully, clapping him on the back as if in congratulations. "Not being grouchy and stressed all the time is a good look on you."

"Thanks," Dash said, genuinely. Although, how nuts was it that being regularly put in the position of having to patch up severe injuries on someone he cared about was somehow a stress reducer.

Yeah... Dash was pretty sure at this point that there was probably something wrong with his brain. Although, he found that he didn't worry about it as much as he once might have. At least someone else was benefiting from the fact that he found watching wounds being sutured mesmerizing, and almost therapeutic.

Dash was in his room, working on homework, sure that he was gonna have to redo every single one of these math problems when he went to tutoring with Jazz tomorrow because he definitely wasn't doing them right. He sighed and pushed math aside to grab his history packet. Document based questions weren't so bad, because at least he had the answer right there in front of him, if he could just find it.

He heard a thunk on his window and looked up, but ultimately decided it was probably a bird or something and chose to ignore it. Then the sound came again and Pookie growled softly from where she was sitting on Dash's bed. She barked.

"Alright, Pookie, I'll look," he said.

With a sigh, he stood up from his desk chair and went over to his bedroom window, sliding it open.

Standing in the back garden was Manson and Foley, and they were carrying Phantom between them. Carrying him—because he was evidently in no condition to fly. He looked to be more open wounds than intact skin. His left leg was bent at an odd angle with something black sticking out of it that Dash was pretty sure was bone.

Phantom hadn't been seen in over a week, and this was the condition he was resurfacing in?

It was hard to believe he could still be conscious in that condition, but Phantom shouted up in a slurred voice, "Hey... buddy!"

Dash's eyes blew wide. "I'll be right down!"

His parents were home, so he made sure the path was clear as he ran downstairs. His dad was up in his office, and his mom was taking a bath, meaning the coast was clear. Ge grabbed a tarp out of the garden shed, a new one, still wrapped in plastic. It wasn't sterile, but neither was Dash's bedroom, and the tarp would be easier to clean than his carpet.

Phantom still dripped ectoplasm on the floor every few inches—which Dash would have to clean up later—as Manson and Foley carried him up the stairs while Dash lead the way to his room, hurriedly unwrapping the tarp. He shooed Pookie out of the room and laid the tarp on his bed, throwing the pillows onto the floor so he'd have a relatively flat surface.

"Put him on the bed while I get the first-aid kit," Dash directed, rushing out of the room as soon as the three of them were fully inside and the doorway was clear.

He brought the first-aid kit into the room, then ran out again to raid his mom's sewing kit, thoroughly wash his hands, and get a new bottle of rubbing alcohol upon remembering that the open one was almost empty. When he finally had everything he needed, he pushed his desk chair next to the bed, but Phantom's injuries were way more extensive than usual, and he didn't even know where to start.

"Come on Baxter," he muttered to himself, laying out the first-aid kit on his nightstand with trembling hands.

He took a deep breath, and tried to recall everything he'd learned about first-aid. But this... this didn't require first-aid. This probably required surgery. The leg definitely required surgery. But they didn't have a surgeon, they had him, and there wasn't really any question of whether a ghost could go to a regular hospital because pretty much everyone in Amity Park over the age of 18 still thought ghosts, and especially, were a menace that needed to be eliminated.

Fuck, okay. After his conversation with Phantom before, he'd found some first-responder training videos online. Those would probably be more helpful than his basic first-aid classes. Phantom wasn't gonna be able to remove the jumpsuit on his own this time, so Dash stripped off his gloves and boots and grabbed the scissors and started to cut away the thick fabric. The suit never retained any damaged from Phantom's wounds, so it would probably survive being cut up.

It was worse when Dash could see the full extent of the damage. This obviously hadn't happened to him in an even fight. His wrists and ankles were badly bruised, even though they'd been cushioned by his boots and gloves. The cuts weren't the kind he usually got in a fight, but clean, straight incisions on his limbs. And across his torso was a large, Y-shaped cut.

"What the fuck happened to him?" Dash breathed out, horrified.

"The guys in white got to him," Manson answered darkly. "We had to work with Plasmius to get him back, but there was no way in hell we were gonna let that bastard see him like this, so we brought him here."

"I don't know who Plasmius is, but maybe he would be able to help more than I can," Dash admitted, shaking his head. "I mean, I'll do everything I can, but this is way beyond me."

"Please, Dash," Manson said, and Dash was pretty sure it was the first time he'd ever heard her sound earnest while she was talking to him. "We can't take him to Plasmius."

Dash took another deep, shuttering breath, and tried to make his hands still. If he just focused on one wound at a time, he should be able to do this. Maybe. Hopefully.

"Alright," he agreed.

He went to his closet and pulled out every one of his sweat rags that were clean. He had quite a few because his mom insisted on him using a clean one every day, even though no athlete ever did that. But she was a clean freak, and he wasn't about to argue with his mom.

"The bathroom is directly left of my room," he told Manson. "Go and get two of these rags damp with warm water, and then come back. My mom's taking a bath in the master bathroom, so she won't be out for a few hours, but if my dad sees you, just tell him your my girlfriend and he'll leave you alone."

"Ew, I don't want to be your girlfriend," Manson said with a grimace. "Aren't you gay?"

"Yes, but you think I'm gonna tell my dad that?" he asked. "Avoid him if you can, but if he sees you, lie. Now go."

She left without another word.

Foley, meanwhile, stood near the head of the bed, pushing Phantom's hair out of his face and muttering promises Dash would have to keep. Things like 'everything's gonna be fine', and 'you'll be okay'.

Dash looked Danny over and tried to determine his priorities. The leg and the Y-incision were obviously the worst, but it was all bad. Which one should he do first? What could he put off until the end?

It probably took too long for him to finally decide that the Y-incison was a bigger deal, especially since he had to make sure there was no internal damage. He pulled on a pair of nitrile gloves, the rubber snapping against his wrists, and held his breath as he carefully peeled back the flaps of skin.

"Internal organs cant feel distinct physical sensations," Dash recited. "Sharp or strong pains coming from internal organs are typically somatic, or the result of pressure, rather than actual organ damage."

Phantom let out a muffled scream through gritted teeth. Not good.

"Foley, in the med kit is a bottle of strong painkillers leftover from when my mom had to have abdominal surgery," Dash said. "It's an orange bottle. I can't remember the full name, but at the bottom of the label it says 'generic for: Norco'. Make sure Phantom swallows it properly."

"Got it," Foley replied with a determined not, and left Phantom's side to dig through the various orange prescription bottles in the kit.

"Once you've done that, look in my dresser for a pair of clean socks or a leather belt for him to bite on so he doesn't break his teeth, because we can't wait for the painkillers to kick in, and we can't have my parents hear him screaming either."

"Got it," Foley repeated, and kept sifting through the bottles until he found what he was looking for. "You said a belt, right?"

"Or socks, anything that'll keep him from grinding his teeth together," Dash confirmed. "But give him the painkiller first."

While Foley did that, Dash carefully arranged everything where it belonged according to the anatomy chart he'd memorized. He wasn't exactly sure why a ghost had internal organs at all, but he was grateful that they were at least organs he recognized, even if they were green, and gray, and black, instead of red and pink like human organs mostly were.

There was also a faintly glowing, iridescent, blue-green crystal in there, but Dash had no idea what that was or where it went, so it was without a doubt, a ghost-exclusive thing. Dash tried to position it more-or-less centrally without cutting any of the other organs on its sharp edges.

He had to stitch together some things that looked like they'd been cut. Even though he didn't have the proper thread for internal sutures, the ectoplasm should still dissolve it in a few days, even if the thread wasn't made to dissolve. At least, if what it had done to all his towels over the past few months was any indication, it would.

He didn't notice when Manson came back in and stood across the bed, waiting for further instructions, until she cleared her throat and held up the damp towels. Then, he looked up, his hands frozen in place as he took in the scene around him. Foley had found a belt and had Phantom bite down on it, which presumably meant that the ghost had taken the painkiller, although Dash could only hope it actually worked.

"What do you need now?" Manson asked.

"I need you and Foley to use those towels to clean up all this extra ectoplasm," Dash said. Resigning himself to buying a bunch of new towels, because these ones were absolutely done for after this. He pointed into the first-aid kit. "Use those rubber straps and tie them around his limbs above his injuries to slow the flow of ectoplasm. If your run out, rip one of the dry towels into strips and use those. If the towels you're using to clean him up get too soaked with ectoplasm, you can rinse them with warm water and keep using them."

Manson handed Foley one of the towels and they immediately got to work.

"One of you should do the broken leg first, but be careful around the bone," Dash added.

"I'll do it," Foley volunteered.

Finally, Dash was done reconstructing Phantom's innards, and closed the skin folds so he could stitch them up. He had to take off his gloves because the needle kept slipping across the ectoplasm-covered gloves and out of his hands. It wasn't the right type of needle for sutures. It never had been, but he'd never wished so much that he had the right one.

As soon as he was done here, if Phantom didn't dissolve, or evaporate, or whatever ghosts did when they ceased to be, Dash was gonna go to as many craft stores and/or medical supply stores as he needed to to find a proper suturing needle. And some local anesthetic, no matter how many hoops he needed to jump through.

He lost count of how many stitches it took to close up the massive incision on Phantom's chest. A part of him was afraid he might run out of thread before this was over. But when he looked up at the alarm clock next to him, he could see that he'd been working on this for over an hour. The dorks had done a good job cleaning up and applying tourniquets, but there was still a long way to go.

Fuck, that leg couldn't wait a second longer. There was no time to wash his hands again, so he just used the last dry towel to wipe the ectoplasm off his hands and put on a fresh pair of gloves.

Now that he was examining it closely, it had been a clean break, the only problem was that his femur was sticking out of his thigh.

"I hope the Norco has kicked in, but even if it has, this is probably gonna hurt like a bitch," Dash said. "You ready?"

Dash could see Phantom squeeze his teeth even tighter on the leather belt in his mouth as he nodded.

Without waiting a second more, Dash pulled on the leg and pushed on the exposed bone, forcing it back into place with a sickening crunching sound.

Phantom screamed through the belt in his mouth, and Dash was seriously afraid his parents would come in. He didn't have a lock on his bedroom door to stop them if they tried.

Phantom's eyelids drooped like he was about to pass out, and Dash wasn't sure if that would be a good thing or not. On the one hand, at least he wouldn't have to be awake for all this, but on the other hand, in a ghost, falling unconscious probably meant they'd disappear soon, and Dash didn't want that. His uncertainty was answered when Foley noticed the same thing he did and urged Phantom to stay awake.

"Come on, Danny, don't pass out," Foley said to him. "You have to stay awake. If you pass out, it's all over."

"You call him by his first name?" Dash noticed, surprised. Somehow, he'd never actually heard the dweebs refer to Phantom by name. Usually, they spent their time addressing him, usually in the form of a plea, and thanks, or a passive-aggressive remark.

"Yeah, why wouldn't we?" Manson asked.

"I dunno," Dash replied.

He didn't look at them, focusing solely on making sure the femur was properly aligned. A real doctor would have used metal pins to affix it in place, but Dash didn't have anything like that, so he would just have to hold it steady until Phantom's healing factor fixed just enough to stop if from moving out of place immediately. He was surprised to find that looking at an exposed broken bone being fixed wasn't any less fascinating or more disturbing to him than watching a cut getting sutured. He wasn't sure if he liked what that said about him.

"I don't even call you guys by your first names."

"Yeah, but that's because you're a jerk," Manson pointed out.

Dash frowned. Maybe she had a point there.

"Hang in there, Danny," he said softly. "I'm doing everything I can."

It felt like too long before the cracks in the pitch-black bone started to stitch together and Dash could let go, push the muscle and tissue back into place, and attempt to stitch together the skin. And he still had several more to go.

"Manson, uh, Sam—position a pad of gauze over the wound itself, then wrap the whole thigh with a gauze bandage," Dash directed as soon as he cut the last stitch. "Nice and tight to keep the bone in place, but make sure you don't cut off his circulation."

"Right," Sam agreed, and grabbed the necessary materials out of the kit.

Looking at their supplies, Dash wasn't sure they had enough gauze for everything.

"Try to make the gauze last, because it's got a lot to cover here," Dash added, cringing.

After the broken femur, Dash moved to the other leg, and started to disinfect and then stitch up a straight incision that spanned from Phantom—Danny's lower thigh, over the knee-cap, and a few inches down into the calf. It was deep enough to see the dark bone and gray tendon underneath, which was probably the point, but Dash didn't let it get to him.

"No, no, Danny, stay awake!" Foley—Tucker said urgently. "You're in the final stretch, only the arms and hands left to go."

"And this dislocated ankle," Sam added.

"Ankle, shmankle, Danny can handle a dislocation in his sleep."

"Doesn't it get confusing, having two friends named Danny?" Dash asked, doing everything he could to keep his hands steady as he continued the sutures.

"Not really," Sam told him. "You'd be surprised."

"He may be surprised sooner rather than later if Danny can't stay awake," Tucker said.

Dash didn't find out what he meant right away. He finished up with the knee, and moved up to the long incision on Danny's right arm from elbow to wrist. If ghosts didn't typically produce ectoplasm faster than they could bleed out, this one would have killed him for sure. Clean. Disinfect. Start stitching.

He'd just gotten past the elbow when he hear Tucker's voice on the edge of panic.

"Danny?" he said. Then he raised his voice and repeated, "Danny!"

A ring of white light appeared and passed over Dash's vision, and the next thing Dash knew, he wasn't covered in ectoplasm, and stitching up pallid skin over glowing green muscle. He was covered in blood.

He knew he couldn't spare the time to look up and see what was going on, but that was about all he knew.

"Somebody describe to me what just happened so I don't have to stop stitching and see for myself," Dash demanded, his voice on the harsh side, and he knew it.

"Um..." Tucker started to say.

"He's Danny Fenton," Sam explained, her voice low and almost scared. "He has been the whole time. He's only half-ghost, and he can't maintain his ghost form when he's unconscious, which also means his healing slows down significantly after he passes out, so don't stop stitching."

Dash breathed in deeply. "Fuck!" he shouted. "You two better start bandaging, then. When he was still a ghost that could wait until I was done, but not the fuck anymore. Foley, tape pads of gauze over the wound on his torso. Manson, the right knee, just like you did the left thigh."

"On it," they both said in unison, and started getting the supplies out of the medical kit.

"Remember that's all the gauze we have, so make it last, I still have two more incisions to go after this one."

"At least they didn't get around to his back," Sam noted darkly.

"Why would you even say that?" Dash groaned, distressed by the very possibility. Spines were a lot more complicated than femurs.

When he was done with the arm, the last incision he needed to stitch up was the vertical cut on the side of the throat. If he had know Phantom was half-human, he would have done that one first, but since he was a ghost, and didn't seem to have any trouble breathing, or need to breath anyway, Dash had figured there was no more dangerous than the cuts on his knee or forearm, and he could just start at the bottom and work his way up.

They couldn't very well have put a tourniquet on that one, so Tucker was standing there with a thoroughly soaked towel sopping up the blood as it slowly trickled out so Danny didn't drown in it. Dash considered putting the arm on hold, to take care of that, but the cut on the forearm went through a major artery that Dash had just barely gotten to heal before Danny turned human, so he wasn't willing to take the risk.

Danny hadn't died the rest of the way yet, which was a good sign. The only good sign so far, but still. It was a challenge not to rush himself and get sloppy as he finished the however many remaining stitches on Danny's forearm before moving to his neck.

"Tucker, switch places with me and gauze up his forearm."

"You got it," Tucker said.

"Sam, get a wring out a towel in the bathroom sink and come back to dab up the blood while I take care of this."

"Yeah." Sam grabbed the least gross looking towel and ran to the bathroom next door.

Everything inside the incision looked to be intact, so Dash cleaned it with an alcohol wipe and sprayed it with disinfectant. By the time he was done with that, Sam was back with a drier towel and ready to take care of the blood while he did the sutures.

At the very least, this last incision was much shorter than the others, but it still took eleven stitches to close it properly. Dash told them to hold off on bandaging it while he went over to the next room to wash his hands. Sam and Tucker were both a lot better at wrapping bandages than they used to be, but he figured, given the placement of the wound, he was better off doing it himself rather than risking one of them wrapping it too tight and inadvertently suffocating their friend.

Once he was alone in the upstairs bathroom, he could finally take a breath without worrying about breathing germs directly into an open wound. When he went out and got a suturing needle and local anesthetic, he should also get a box of surgical masks. And more gauze. And sweat towels. He should make a list.

As he washed his hands thoroughly and methodically, he also saw himself in the mirror. He had blood and ectoplasm all over him. A thick streak of the stuff was smudged across his forehead from when he'd used his sleeve to wipe off sweat. That wasn't sanitary, but Danny wasn't an ordinary person, so he'd be fine... probably... hopefully.

Dash was tired. He'd looked at his alarm clock when he got up, and this all had taken a total of six and a half hours. It was nearly midnight by now.

He needed a shower.

But he wasn't done yet.

He returned to the room and had Tucker hold up Danny's head while he wrapped up the final wound. They were all disgusting. Covered in sweat and blood, and ectoplasm, and they were exhausted.

Dash didn't even have the energy to take a shower. And it didn't look like Sam and Tucker had the energy to go home, not to mention Danny probably shouldn't move.

"Let your parents know your staying over," Dash said. "We have to clean all this shit up before we go to sleep or Danny could get infected."

Sam and Tucker both groaned, but didn't argue. They cleaned Danny up with a sponge, and Dash laid out a couple of old bath towels under him in case he bled through his bandages.

He ended up just throwing the whole tarp away. If his parents needed it, he would just say he didn't think they had a brand new tarp, and maybe they were misremembering. Or, he could put it on his shopping list. If he could afford it after everything else he had to buy, he might as well.

Dash barely had the presence of mind to wedge a chair under his door so his parents couldn't come in unexpectedly before he, and Sam, and Tucker, all collapsed on the floor and fell asleep all piled on top of each other.

Dash woke up the next morning because Sam extricated herself from their human knot, stole one of his shirts, and went to take a shower. Which was honestly not cool, because Dash totally should've gotten dibs on the first shower after all that. Not that it mattered, because he almost immediately went back to sleep.

A little while later, Dash woke up on his own and detached himself from Tucker. He followed Sam's lead in grabbing some clothes and taking a shower. The clothes he was wearing were obviously gonna have to go straight in the trash, which was a shame, because he'd like these jeans.

A hot shower was just what he needed, though. The water soothed his sore back and hands, and he watched the gooey brown-ish slime of ectoplasm and blood slough off him and down the drain. It was the greatest relief of his life when he finally felt clean again.

When he looked in the bedroom, Danny and Tucker were both still asleep, Danny on the bed, recovering, and Tucker sprawled out and drooling on the carpet. So Dash headed down to the kitchen for breakfast. Sam was sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of Wheaties and wearing one of his concert T-shirts and seemingly nothing else—although given their height difference, the shirt went almost down to her knees, so it wasn't exactly indecent.

"Uh... are you wearing underwear?" he couldn't help but ask.

"Yes!" she replied, sounding insulted.

"Are you wearing... my—"

"No! God, I washed mine in the bathroom sink and used the hair dryer to dry them off," she said in a rush. "Is that what you wanna hear?"

"Yeah, actually, it's kind of a relief," he said, getting out a bowl and spoon. "Also, resourceful. I'm impressed."

"Thank you," Sam said, and ate another mouthful of Wheaties.

Dash opted for the Honey Crisps, and took a seat next to her.

"Your dad saw me," she said. "Apparently, he got called in for a work emergency, even though it's Sunday. I had to use the girl friend lie, and not only did he buy it, but he told me to tell you he said congratulations. Your dad's kind gross, you know that? He knows we're only fourteen, right?"

"I mean, you are wearing my shirt and no pants," Dash pointed out. "But yes, I am aware that my dad is kinda gross. He's for sure gonna be weird to me about this for a while. If he doesn't ask me about the next time my girlfriend's coming over at least twice a day for the next week, I'll be surprised."

"Yikes."

"Pretty much."

"There was no work emergency," Dash said. "His workplace is closed on Sundays. He's going to meet his girlfriend Crystal. I don't think that's her real name. Mom doesn't know about her."

"Yikes." Sam repeated, more emphatically this time.

"Yeah."

The two of them ate in silence for a few minutes before Sam spoke up again.

"About yesterday..." she started to say, then paused, her brows furrowing in thought. "You... you were fucking amazing. I mean that honestly, like, you were in way over your head, and stepped the fuck up, so... thank you."

"Oh, uh... you're welcome."

Of the three of them, Sam was definitely the one Dash felt like he got along with the least.

"Seriously, coming to you like we did, with Danny in that condition... it was pretty fucked up of us, even though we didn't exactly have a choice," she continued. "I know I've been kind of..." Dash waited as she fished for the right word, "standoffish with you, because you've kind of bullied the three of us, and especially Danny for years, but you've changed after you started to help us so..."

"I get it," Dash said. "I've been a dick. That's not exactly news to me, I did it on purpose. Actually, stopping was the accident. I barely even noticed that I'd been laying off the bullying until Kwan pointed it out."

"Wait, what?" Sam asked. "Why?"

Dash stared into his cereal and brought a spoonful to his mouth to stall. It was sweet. The crunch was starting to get mushy as the cereal got saturated with milk.

"I live my life by my parents' expectations, especially my dad's," Dash answered finally. "My dad has very specific ideas about what the ideal life is for a boy like me. Sports teams, popular friends, hot girlfriend, bullies nerds. In middle school the times my dad got a call from the school about my bad behavior picking on weaker kids—those were the only times I ever got his approval. He actually acted proud of me for it."

"You're dad's fucked up."

"No arguments here," Dash scoffed. "Kwan says the same thing to me on a regular basis, but it doesn't change the fact that while I live in his house, he's in charge. When I'm eighteen and legally independent, then I can start making my own decisions, but he's pretty much set on narrowing down my prospects as much as possible until then, to force me into the life he wants me to have. You know. The American dream, just like what he got."

"Do you want me to kill him for you?" Sam offered.

Dash laughed. "Believe it or not, Kwan's actually said that to me a few times, too."

"You know, I never thought Kwan and I would get along, especially after he got me banned from my favorite goth poetry slam, but maybe I should give him another shot." Sam put down her spoon and lifted her bowl to her lips to drink the rest of the milk. "You know," she added, taking her dishes to the sink. "I was really surprised that you had oat milk in your fridge."

"Yeah, my mom's always on some kind of diet, a lot of 'em are no-dairy," he replied.

Sam shrugged, said see-ya-later, and headed upstairs back to Dash's room.

Dash headed up too when he was done eating. Tucker was gone, but the sounds of the shower going in the next room explained that. Sam was sitting next to the bed, watching Danny's slow, but steady breathing.

"Tucker stole one of your shirts," Sam said without looking at him. "But his cargo pants actually made it out of yesterday's blood fest basically unscathed, unlike my skirt, so he's gonna re-wear them."

"Oh... good."

"You really did do an amazing job with him," Sam said. "He's not even having trouble breathing or anything. Even Danny is gonna take a week or two to recover from this, but your work on him is definitely gonna streamline the process."

"Thanks."

"No joke, you should become an ER doctor."

"If only I had the grades to get into medical school," Dash sighed, taking a seat on his desk chair. "Danny and I had pretty much this same conversation a few weeks ago."

"I'm sure a well placed bribe could get you at least admitted," Sam said, "although you'd still have to study."

"What bribe?" Dash scoffed. "My family's well off, but we don't have that kind of money. Like I told Danny, if I can get scouted for a football scholarship, I'll major in sports medicine, and if not, I'll try to become a paramedic. I think it's a pretty solid plan, don't you?"

"I guess," Sam relented. She looked back down at Danny with a slight frown. "Should we wake him up? Would we even be able to?"

Dash followed her gaze.

Danny's breathing was still steady, his gauze covered chest rising and falling without hesitation or stuttering. He hadn't bled through any of his bandages, although it was still a good idea to replace them later.

"I have no idea," Dash admitted. "I don't think trying to wake him up would do any harm, but I don't know if he's actually comatose, or just resting. He'll need a lot of rest to heal from this."

Sam nodded silently, but made no move to wake her friend. Come to think of it though, Dash had a question about the whole 'Danny being a ghost' thing. It explained a lot, honestly, but there was still something that didn't make any sense.

"Hey, Phantom has been missing for a while, but Danny's been going to school like always, so how can they be the same person?"

"After Danny went missing, Tucker tracked down a shapeshifting ghost called Amorpho who owed Danny a favor, and called it in," Sam explained. "They've been posing as Danny at school to throw off suspicions, but they'll be leaving town again once they learn Danny's back."

"Clever," Dash commented.

About a minute after that, they heard the shower turn off and another couple minutes later, Tucker returned. Dash's shirt was almost as big on him as it was on Sam. Before now, Dash had never been particularly self-conscious about his size, but either they were really small, or he was actually huge, and it was kinda awkward.

"If I wake up Danny, will something bad happen?" Tucker asked, looking right up at Dash expectantly.

"Oh, uh... I don't think so, but I'm not 100% sure. He might be in a coma."

"I'm gonna try to wake him up," Tucker declared.

He walked over to Danny and poked his chest injury hard.

Sam and Dash both immediately started to chide him for it, but Danny's eyes snapped open and he gasped sharply.

"What happened?" he croaked. His throat may have been bandaged, but obviously his voice was still sore.

"You got got, dude," Tucker answered. "Guys in White cut you open, Sam and I got Vlad's help rescuing you, and then brought you to Dash to get you stitched up. He knows who you are now, by the way. You kinda passed out while he was still stitching you up."

"Oh."

"Sam, can you go get him some water," Dash asked.

"Right," she agreed. Before she left, she turned to her friend and smiled. "Good to have you back, Danny." Then she was out the door.

"How to you feel, Danny?" Dash asked.

"Like I got run over by a truck with razor-blade wheels," Danny replied.

"Try to focus," Dash said, his tone gentle but urgent. "Tucker, help him sit up."

Tucker immediately complied, slipping a hand under Danny's back to get him upright.

"Can you move your fingers?" Dash asked.

Danny wiggled his fingers on both hands.

"Try to touch each of your fingertips to your thumb."

Danny did so, though he couldn't quite get his thumb to meet his pinkie on the side that had the forearm incision. That was to be expected this early in the healing process, and Dash assured him the that mobility should come back with time.

When Sam came back with the water, Dash handed him the bottle of leftover Norco and told him to take one. It might make him a little loopy, but it would help with the pain.

He moved on to having Danny bend his wrists, elbows, roll his shoulders and so on. They hit an embarrassing bump when Dash realized he never reset Danny's dislocated ankle, but that was a quick fix. He had Tucker grab some self-adhering bandages from the kit, which he hadn't taken back to the bathroom. Thankfully, the painkiller had kicked in before Dash reset the ankle, so Danny didn't even flinch.

"You're nice," Danny said as Dash finished checking him over and gave him the all clear.

Oh yeah, the meds had definitely kicked in. From the sound of Danny's voice alone, Dash could tell he was completely loopy.

"Thanks," Dash said, taking out a set of sweatpants and a zip-front hoodie from his closet. "It'll probably hurt to raise your arms for a while, so button up shirts and zip-front jackets until your chest heals."

"Okie dokie," Danny agreed, taking the clothes from Dash and floating off the bed to get dressed.

Dash pointedly looked away, ignoring the fact that his crush had been fully nude in his room for twelve hours and he'd never once taken the opportunity to ogle. Given the circumstance, it just felt like it would have been particularly wrong.

"You're a whole sweetie pie," Danny said, and floated over to give Dash a kiss on the cheek. "Not just a piece of a sweetie pie but the whole pie. You're a pie."

"Thanks," Dash said again, although this time his voice came out as a squeak, and he could feel his face turning bright red.

He could hear Sam and Tucker snickering at him. No. Manson and Foley. They were temporarily losing first-name privileges for this.

Dash didn't understand how finding out that Phantom was actually the kid he always bullied didn't make his crush go away, but actually made it worse overnight. He sure wished it hadn't though.

"If you're not dying anymore, then get out," Dash grumbled. "I still have to clean up the ectoplasm you dripped all over the house coming up here, and then I have to buy more gauze. If you get injured again in the next month, I'll kill you."

"Sweetie sweetie pie pie!" Danny singsonged, but didn't protest when Manson and Foley each grabbed him by one hand and dragged him, still floating, out of the bedroom and down the stairs.

Once they were gone, Dash's shoulder slumped and he sighed. He wasn't sure if it was exhausted, relieved, love-struck, but he sighed.

Being Team Phantom's official-unofficial medic was hard work.

He eyed the green drips on his bedroom carpet and sighed again.

But his work wasn't over yet.

#danny phantom #dp #danny fenton #dash baxter #sam manson #tucker foley #fic #things i wrote #phic phight #phic phight 24 #cw: gore #cw blood #injuries #minor swagger bishie #medical

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