#astatia-ghast

[andre93a]

My collab for Invisobang2023 with @astatia-ghast for her amazing fic Clockwork's Odyssey. Her fic here

[bibliophilea]

Hey Bib, I have a question. WTF is going on in your profile pic? I stopped to look at it closely for the first time, and there's just. There's just so much going on here. So much.

Oh yeah! That’s a remnant from a Dannypocalypse long past!

So, my icon has, for about as long as I’ve been on tumbl, a variation on the four-eyes joke:

Namely, that I have “four eyes”, but three of them are real eyes, and one of them is a monocle!

For 2017 Dannypocalypse, I decided to expand that joke to Danno, and also make a few more phun icons!

After a couple years of changing back and forth between my current icon and my other four-eyed icon, I got lazy and decided to keep this one!

Hope this helps!

[astatia-ghast]

Clockwork's Odyssey

After far too long, it is my utmost pleasure to bring to you the fanfic I have been working on all summer for Invisobang 2023: "Clockwork's Odyssey!"

Synopsis: Several weeks after the events of “The Ultimate Enemy,” Danny begins to starve from a ghostly hunger that seems impossible to sate. To his surprise, Clockwork appears with a proposition: join him on an adventure into the Ghost Zone, which will provide the nourishment he needs. Danny accepts despite his better judgment, but as they descend into places where time and reality seem blurred — and where Clockwork’s secrets come to light — he begins to wonder what kind of nightmare he got himself into.

Read on AO3

If you like Lost Time, then this is the fic for you. ;)

This year, I was partnered with the absolutely incredible artist @andre93a, who created an astonishing cover image for my fanfic. Thank you so very much! It was unreal to be paired with someone of your skill!

I also received so much help from the wonderful @underforeversgrace, who beta read the fic and listened to me scream about far too many things. Thanks for helping me keep my sanity while somehow also keeping yours.

And a huge thanks to @bibliophilea, @kinglazrus and @strawberrycamel for making Invisobang 2023 a thing and keeping it running! It was such a blast to be part of it, and I'm so, so thankful for all the friendships I made along the way!

I'll be posting deleted scenes and author commentary on my blog in the time between chapters, so make sure to check me out over at @astatia-ghast.

And with all that said -- how 'bout an excerpt?

------

He's so hungry.

He's so hungry, and Amity Park is crumbling.

A gargantuan creak and smash rip the air as the last remnant of the FentonWorks logo crashes to the ground. It lands a few feet to Danny's left, casting great reverberations through the pavement, but he pays it no mind. He can't, really; oh, how dearly he would love to pay it mind, but there is only one sensation taking command of his mind at the moment.

Sam is lying inert beneath him, framed by his hands and knees. She has been dead for a while, but Danny hasn't yet found it within himself to halt his cannibalization of her soul.

His wicked fangs hover hardly an inch from her flesh as he draws in deep breaths, struggling in vain to extract the last remnants of her fear and sorrow. He should have stopped drinking long ago, when her spirit had grown dull and her body weak, but just as it had with every other soul in this forsaken city, his hunger could not be sated.

The last drops of the horror she had died with vanish into his maw and seep into his core like water into dry earth. It is done. She has been drained.

And he is still hungry.

------

Continue reading on AO3

Thank you so much for your support! This project has been, well, an odyssey!

[five-rivers]

A Star is Born!

AO3

@astatia-ghast

After revealing himself as a ghost (as a hero) (as an inhuman monster), Danny had gotten used to people staring at him.  Even people who had known him for a long time.  Especially people who had known him for a long time.  Something something, couldn’t reconcile the person they knew with the person they admired, according to Jazz.  

Danny had, honestly, enjoyed the attention at first.  It was kind of like with the Yetis!  But the thrill of being invited to every party wore thin fast.  Now he just ignored it the best he could.  

Today, however, was different, and it was really getting on his nerves.  Today, there was giggling.  

So, he normally didn’t mind giggling, but it was coinciding with an awful lot of pointing and whispering.  That, he was less fond of.  

Still.  What could he do about it?  Other than be annoyed.  He was going to do that anyway.  He got his breakfast (the lunch ladies were staring) and sat down at his usual table to wait for Tucker.  Sam was taking a zero period cooking class, and wouldn’t meet up with them until ten minutes before the bell rang.  

“Oh my gosh!”

Danny looked up.  Tucker was standing a few paces from the cafeteria doorway.  His eyes sparkled with emotions Danny had never before seen outside of an anime.  He looked delighted.  

“Danny, dude!” said Tucker, and now he flung his arms out and to the sides so violently the stylus attached to his PDA went flying and would have been lost to the mysterious and forbidden lands behind the breakfast-line counter if not for Danny’s swift use of telekinesis.  “Where did you get those nekomimi?  They look so realistic!”

“The what?” asked Danny.  

“The cat ears!”

“What cat ears?” asked Danny.  

There was a moment of silence as the whispers stopped.  

“He doesn’t know,” hissed someone, their voice carrying easily across the cafeteria.  

“I need to film this.”  There was a mad scramble for phones, PDAs, and in one notable case a full sized TV camera that absolutely should not be on campus.  

“Tucker,” said Danny, “are you telling me that there are cat ears on my head right now?”

“I mean, I guess they could be dog or wolf ears, but, yes.”

Danny raised his hands to the sides of his heads and found his earlobe.  It felt a bit… weaker, more fragile, than it had before.  He traced the sides of his ears up and up and up and…

“Tucker,” said Danny, holding onto the very tips of his ears, “why?”

“I don’t know, man.  Didn’t Frostbite say you might get shapeshifting powers?”  Tucker shuffled forward.  “Maybe you’re thinking too hard about cats.  Do you have a tail and is it fuzzy?”

Danny opened his mouth to say no, but then experienced the always-unsettling sensation of his spine reconstructing itself while he was still human.  Then, to Danny’s mortification, there was a terrible ripping sound and a fully formed and very fluffy tail unrolled itself.  

Across the room, Paulina stood up, a determined expression on her face.  “If you do requests, can you make your eyes green and pretty and sparkly and huge and slitted like a cat’s?  I’ve always wanted to see what that would be like on a human.”

Danny wasn’t intending to take requests.  He didn’t even know what was really going on.  But no one had given his power that memo, so it did it anyway.  

“Wasn’t there a cat guy ghost alr–?” started Ashley.  

“No, we don’t talk about them,” said Paulina.  "They don't count."

More importantly for Danny, who also wanted to forget that particular ghost, the cat (boy) was out of the bag.

"What about wings?  Can you do wings?"

"Make yourself look older and you can buy beer at–"

"Younger!  I want to see what Phantom would have looked like as a baby!"

"Can you do plants?  Oak trees?  Roses?"

"Dragon! Dragon! Dragon!"

"What about other ghosts?  What about blob ghosts?"

"Ooh!  Ooh!  Can you become a cockroach?"

"No!  Don't make him be a cockroach!"

"Metamorphosis, people!" shouted Mr. Lancer.  "What is– I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream!"

It was really impressive how Mr. Lancer said that all in a single breath.  Well.  Shrieked it in a single breath.

"HI, Mr. Lancer," said Danny, miserably, having become a shambling mound, "can I call home?"

"Can you- can you not… turn back?"

There was a sort of slurping sound as Danny's various body parts rearranged themselves.  

"I don't have a good handle on it yet," said Danny, trying to affect unconcern.

"Involuntarily transforming into whatever people say?" asked Tucker, voice slightly washed out.

"Something like that, I think."  

"Well," started Mr. Lancer.  

The cafeteria doors were thrown open and Mrs. Woods strode in.  "Where is my latest drama star?"  She didn't wait for an answer before shouldering through the crowd and picking Danny up off the floor.  "There you are."

"I'm not in drama," said Danny.  

"Nonsense!  You'll be a natural.  Just imagine all the parts you could play!  We'll immerse you in the world of drama.  Acting.  Staging.  Theater!  You'll have all the drama you can stomach!"

"But I don't want any drama," Danny tried protesting again, but she was already dragging him off.  "To the stage."

"Mrs. Woods!  I don't think I can stomach anything!"

"That's fine!  Many are the great actors who barred from stage fright!"

"It's not stage fright!"  It might have been a little stage fright, but becoming a loose heap of assorted body parts via shapeshifting not five minutes ago was playing a much larger part in his reticence.  "Mrs. Woods, I can’t–"

"There is no can't in drama, only yes and!"

"Isn't that improv?!" wailed Danny as she carried him through the door.  

“Yes, and?”

“My elective is astronomy!”

“And I’m electing to ignore it!”

“Holly!” called Mr. Lancer.  “You can’t just kidnap students!  The time to change classes is over!  We’re halfway through the term, for love of education!”

Like this would be any more okay if it was still the beginning of the term.  

“An exception can be made!”

Sometimes, Danny wondered if Mrs. Woods was a ghost.  She certainly acted like it, sometimes.  Either way, he’d had enough.  He phased out of Mrs. Woods’s grip.  

“No!” she hollered, even as Danny hid behind a horribly out-of-breath Mr. Lancer.  “My star!”

A door down the hallway opened up.  “Are you looking for me?” asked Star.  “Can it wait?  I’m making up a test.”

“It’s not about you,” said Danny.  

“Great,” said Star.  She eyed Mrs. Woods.  “Good luck, or whatever.”  She shut the door with a clunk.  

“So, uh.  Can I go home?” asked Danny.  

“Go to the office and ask if your parents can sign you out.”

“I can fly–”

“You’re sick, right?”

“Yeah.”

“You need your parents to sign you out.”

“William,” said Mrs. Woods.  “You can’t do this to me!  I supported your bid for a field trip to the Shakespeare festival!”

“You did that for your own reasons!”

Danny, wisely, slunk away.  He definitely wouldn’t be coming back until he could control his new shapeshifting powers.

[phantomphangphucker]

Phic Phight - The Green Ribbon Is Staples

@astatia-ghast @q-gorgeous @mr-lancers-english-class @tourettesdog

Danny gets a lot of injuries but every so often he gets one he’s never gotten before, normally that’s just a pain since none of the trio usually know what exactly to do about it but they eventually manage; unfortunately this time it’s a little too revealing.

Chap. 1:

Decapitation Station

Okay. So. Danny’s got a problem. Or twenty. Twenty problems sounds more accurate. Why? Well um, lets rewind a little. 

See he was heading home, from detention due to missing homework, like usual, when his ghost sense did what his ghost sense does. So, you know, he had a fight to fight, ghostly ass to kick. It was good ol’ Boxy because of course it was, he should have figured honestly. But the surprising part? The real cut throat turn of events? Yeah apparently Boxy got his hands on multiple boxes -read: more than two- of barbed wire, ecto-barbed wire because apparently Jeb was trying to protect his chickens -he has chicken in his houses tiny back yard for some fucking inane reason, like seriously why? Ugh- from a ghost kitsune. 

So Boxy threw the boxes at Danny like he normally does. 

Danny let the boxes phase through him like he normally does, because come on? regular boxes are a shit weapon. 

But surprise! That turned out to be the dumbest decision he’s made in a long fucking time. Why? Well because the ecto-barbed wire inside the boxes, that he obviously could not see because the boxes were fucking closed, did not go through him like he expect. 

They did go through him though. Just... not the way he wanted them to. 

Meaning they went through him by cutting through him very literally. He’d realised his fuck up quick enough to minimise the damage but that was because the first box was aimed at his goddamn head. The Box Ghost got to be cut throat for the first time in his entire existence, at the cost of Danny’s head getting fucking whole ass flung into a grocery store wall. 

At least this is how Danny got to find out he could still move his body without its head. It’s also how he found out that decapitation is terrifying to ol’ Boxy. 

“I! AM SORRY! THAT IS NOT OKAY! I mean you are less circular now!”.

Danny takes the time to have his headless body kick The Box Ghost in the shin as his hearing cuts out before using his thermos, it’s hard as fuck to aim without being able to tell what he’s looking at. Since, apparently, he could use his body without a head but couldn’t use his head without it being still connected to his core, fucking great luck there. 

It’s still pathetically easy to catch Boxy, even effectively blind. Using the feel of ecto-energy and ghostly pressure, no matter how weak, to figure out his own location and Boxy’s, aim and fire and he gets the ghost on his third try. No quippy wit of course, since he was down a fucking head holy shit. 

At least he manages to find his head, it, unfortunately, does not auto reattach. 

... And he can’t see to stitch it on himself. Meaning he needs Sam or Tuck, preferably Sam. But she’s not a ghost, meaning he can’t just locate her ecto-signature. He also can’t just float around Amity cradling his head and hoping she fucking sees him. He also can’t call, because no mouth obviously. So that’s either three or four of his twenty some issues. The fifth is just the pure fact that Boxy of all ghosts is the one to put him in this situation in the first place, talk about embarrassing. Ugh. 

Danny settles for calling Tuck, who can absolutely trance the call with ease, and just scrapping the phone speaker on the floor and making thumping noises with his feet. He’d look up morse code if he could see. Zone if he didn’t have Tuck on speed dial he’d be fucked... on second thought he might not have even managed to call Tuck. 

Should he try again? 

Well it can’t make things worse. 

He calls about twenty times and maybe some go through maybe some don’t. He can’t hear if there’s a voicemail. Fuck how is he even gonna know if Tuck does show up? If he had at least one of his heads senses he’d be cool, Tuck always smelled like meat and metal, his voice was an obvious easy identifier or whatever, he did in fact know what the guy’s skin tasted like, and sight was easy. 

But touch was all he’s got right now and unless he’s touching a ghost, aka something with an ecto-field, he can barely tell the difference between people. Maybe whoever will clue in and write their name on his arm or something? He can only hope to be that lucky. 

…

He is not that lucky. 

In multiple ways.

Who ever he’s called is definitely not lean or skinny. Meaning they’re not any of the people he was cool with calling. It’s not Sam’s lean muscled arms with sharp pointed nails. It’s not Tuck’s skinny arms and calloused fingers. It’s not Jazz’s skinny arms and would have been shaking hands. Zone it’s not even Val’s lean toned arms and firm grip. 

Whoever it is has thick muscled arms and rough large hands. If the hands where bigger he’d think he really fucked up and called his dad, but they’re not. Plus, his dads hands would probably not be shaking. His dad wouldn’t be freaked out by an injured ghost. His dad would not be handling an injured ghost with gentle care. His dad would not be seemingly attempting to help. His dad would either ‘study’ him or hurt him or capture him. 

This person is doing none of those three things. This persons hands are shaking, they are freaked out, and they are helping. Meaning he should be okay enough at least. Problem is he doesn’t know if this person can do stitches well enough to align and reconnect stuff, or if this person is actually anyone he called and not some random person who just happened to be around. 

Danny’s got his head cradled in one arm and pressed against his stomach, the person is holding onto that arm, so Danny uses his free hand to point at his head then at his neck, making vague stitching motions and hoping the message is getting across. 

He can feel heavy breathes brush against his jumpsuit so he’s guessing that who ever took some restorative breaths, good? Hopefully otherwise he might be very fucked until someone else shows up. Either way Danny moves his head so that he can kinda feel the mangled detached end of it brushing against the mangled detached end of his neck, he thinks he got his head on the right angle but whoever hopefully can line up his spine for him. 

Wait shit, if this isn’t Sam, Tuck, or Jazz, which it obviously isn’t, then they won’t know he has a fucking spine since ghosts don’t normally have that shit. 

Quickly lifting his head up making the person definitely jerk, to flip it enough for whoever to see the spine end. Gesturing vaguely where he thinks the spine end is, then leaning his body/neck forward and physically grabbing his spine and tapping on it. Hopefully they get it, he gives whoever a thumbs up for moral support before going back to aligning his neck ends and holding his head steady with both hands. 

The person goes around his back, their knees pressing up against his lower back and ass, whoever was tall damn. Not his dad tall but definitely at least six foot. Even their knees are shaking though so that’s not great; hopefully they have a decent therapist. Great now he sounds like Jazz, ugh. 

The person does tentatively touch his spine bit and Danny’s pretty sure he can feel his heads bit of spine pressing into it. He keeps holding his head when the other person feels to get up.

... 

They didn’t just leave did they? The fuck??? Even if he is a ghost that’s still pretty fucked up to just leave him, especially when whoever poked at him and maybe tried to see if they could help. 

... Did they maybe go to grab some shit perhaps? Right yeah most people didn’t just walk around everywhere with medi kits and shit.

...

It is taking whoever a while if that’s what they’re- oh wait nevermind, based on the vibrations on the ground he’s going to guess the person is back and it seems like they’re running. Cool. Okay. Definitely had gone to get stuff. 

The person damn near knees him in the back when they get back down on the floor with him. Jerk. Danny would scoff or scowl if his head was freaking attached. 

They’re grabbing at his spine again so it’s definitely one hundred percent the same person. Good. Cool. He wasn’t totally abandoned headless by a random grocery store. 

Then he feels some seriously jarring vibrations travel down from the bit of spine attached to his skull, officially very confused. What the actually crap did whoever run off to get??? Then he feels cold metal on his bodies exposed section of spine, it feels kind of like a flat bar? Oh! OH! Okay he is absolutely getting a metal bracket drilled into his spine to hold it together, that was actually pretty fucked up. Effective hopefully but wow, oof. This was gonna suck so much later.

And now he can’t tell if the person is shaking because of being freaked out or because of the goddamn drill they’re taking to his spine. 

He thinks whoever drills on three brackets or metal rods, before the drilling fully and finally stops. He’s starting to get some feeling back in the rest of his spine and the bottom bit of his skull but his actual skin and hair and senses are still a lost cause. Whoever taps he’s shoulder very cautiously and draws a question mark over his jumpsuit, so Danny moves to hold his head up by the hair and takes the other hand off of his head to try and pinch the jagged detached edges of neck skin together, then making the stitching gestures again. He needs his skin at least somewhat securely connected for things to heal at a remotely functional degree, annoying but whatever. 

The person writes ‘ok’ on his skin, at least the person was calm enough to try communicating with him now. Neat but Danny’s not going to push shit, instead going back to using both hands to hold his head steady. Unfortunately he had expected this person to, you know, use a sewing needle or something and some fucking thread to stitch his skin up. What he hadn’t expected was the sudden feeling of being shot with two extremely shallow and thin bullets straight in the neck. Ancients fuck what the hell?!? He absolutely jerks from that. 

Okay so, this fucker is using a goddamn staple gun he thinks? Did whoever run off to a fucking hardware store? The next staple is a lot shakier and Danny makes a point not to jump, which gets him rewarded with the next staple being less shaky. Danny’s just going along with this because it should? maybe? actually work? Hard to say since he’s never reached for goddamn staples when he’s needed a bit of patching up. This person was probably hoping that securing his spine would be good enough. Well tough shit, his luck ain’t that fuckin’ good. 

...

.......

It takes a goddamn while, and he thinks the person is taking fortifying breathers every so often. Which is fair. Stapling a persons neck back on had to be super upsetting and freaky. But! He can actually hear -yes, hear!- the staple gun noises now. It’s alarming a little, way too much like the sound of some of his folks guns but he can take it. But eventually whoever does stop. 

“Holy shit this is, so fucked”. 

Wait... holy shit, Dash???? Why him of all people???? The fuck? Well... okay guess Danny can’t be complaining too much. The guy had a ton of hero worship going on, so he wasn’t going to dick his goddamn idol over. 

Danny tentatively lets go of his head and, when it doesn’t flop over or anything, he gives Dash a double thumbs up. 

“Oh, oh thank zone his heads not loling over. Holy shit”. 

Danny taps on his ears and gives another thumbs up. 

“Are... are you trying to say you can hear again? Fuck this is so screwed up”; it kinda sounded like he ran his hands through his hair roughly. 

Danny gives another, but far more eager, thumbs up. 

“That’s? That’s good right?”.

Another thumbs up from Danny.

“Okay good. Good. This is so not how I ever wanted to run into my hero. In to you. What the zone even happened?”.

Danny doesn’t know how Dash expects him to answer him. So he makes an ‘x’ with his fingers over his mouth or where it feels like his mouth is anyways. 

“Still can’t speak huh?”, he actually snorts even if it sounds shaky as Hell, “that must suck for you”.

Oh hundred percent yes. Danny’s a talkative bastard. Danny flips him off. Apparently that’s really funny because Dash just starts wheeze laughing, it sounds like he flopped down on the ground which is honestly probably really gross, fuck knows what’s on it. 

“Zone I just stapled Phantom’s neck together and he flipped me off, what the fuck is today oh ugh”.

Hey if anyone’s having a shit day here it’s him. Sure having to fix him would be pretty fucked but at last Dash wasn’t the one dealing with being fucking decapitated and oh hey his visions coming back some. Blurry as hell but he can, in fact, see. He glances around, there’s a lot of glowing green stuff, probably his ecto, he should probably clean that up; also, he now knows why he usually fixes himself up with thread and not staples, shit is tense and makes his skin pull. 

Eyeing Dash, who’s staring at him Danny thinks, Dash jerking and sitting up, “hey the blank stares gone, you got vision back?”.

Danny wiggles his hand back and forth in the air and makes a weird squeaking sound, shrugging. Dash shakes his head disbelievingly, “I can’t believe you can survive losing your freaking head. Man that’s cool. Super freaky and I’m going to have so many nightmares now”. 

“Air pee”. 

Dash looks at him deeply concerned, opening and closing his mouth a few times before shaking his head and getting up. “You good? I can leave? Wait shit, sign my arm!”. 

Danny rolls his eyes but does as he’s asked because he is not nearly enough of an asshole to refuse after the guy stapled and drilled his freaking head back on. Danny also gives him a pretty solid back pat, “you ‘ight”. 

“Thanks but no? I’m raiding my dads liquor cabinet immediately”.

Danny can’t even give him shit for that, even if even he knows that ain’t the best way to deal with fucked up shit. Shrugging and stretching out, a lot of things cracking and popping, nice he’s seeing actual proper details now and his spine feels more proper spine like. Shit was gonna take so long to heal though. “Jus’ don’ mae rum ceral an’ don’ wine up inna ‘rigerater”. 

Dash sounds horrifically disgusted, “ew and... I won’t?”, the jock somewhat cautiously walks away. Fair enough, Danny just put him through some whack ass shit and then basically admitted to having had rum cereal and crawling into a refrigerator.... 

Him and his stupid fucking mouth. 

...

Okay so what now, if he changes back right now he’s going to start bleeding red everywhere. Fuck right, he’s gotta clean up his ectoplasm. At least that’s a simple thing, floating back down towards the ground and setting it all on fire. Watching the blue flames for a bit and realising that he absolutely can not hide Dash’s patch job for shit.

Well.

Fuck him entirely.

And by ‘him’ he means himself, not Dash. Dash did the best he could and Danny could not expect anyone to do a stellar job of reattaching people’s heads. In fact, someone being remotely skilled at that should be deeply concerning. Even a ghost having that skill would be concerning.

Alright so first things first, find something reflective and check Dash’s work out. Hmmmm. Okay so a chunk of shiny metal will have to do. Him lifting the piece up and around his neck to check it out, flames still burning away, as Sam arrives.

“Danny why did I get a soundless thumping call and why is this entire area on fire?”.

So Dash did a pretty okay-ish job, like yes all the staples are almost all uneven and less than straight, some aren’t in properly and one looks like it got bent to fuck. But his skin is knitting itself back together.

Danny turning around to wave at Sam gets him an instant gasp of horror. “Oh fucking zone, what happened!”.

Danny holds up a finger, “so I can survive decapitation and Dash know’s how to use power tools”, and floats himself around her enough for her to look at his neck, even she’s being leery about touching it or moving his head around. At least his vocal cords have put themselves back together, even if it sounds like he’s eaten an entire box of nails.

“Damn your voice sounds like shit”, she winces, poking one of the staples which Danny absolutely twitches in a bit of discomfort from. Okay so this shit was gonna hurt like a bitch when he changes back, ugh. Her frowning and digging in her pocket, “okay sit down, I’m at least attempting to straighten this shit out. I’m not taking out the staples, it’s healed some so it’ll do less damage to just let your body dissolve the metal”.

“Yeah he also drilled fucking hardware brackets into my spine”.

“Why would let him use that!”.

“I couldn’t see or hear or speak! Sam! I couldn’t tell who it even was that was trying to give me a patch up!”.

Sam rubs her temples sighing, pointing at the ground which fine Danny floats back down towards. At least the flames are dying out, yay for not leaving a crime scene level of ectoplasmic mess that could be traced back to him! Her getting to work immediately, “geez he pulled your skin too tight in some spots and not tight enough in others. Some spots aren’t even lined up well!”.

“Sam give the guy a break, he was terrified! And remotely normal people do not know how to put skin back together unless they’re literally doctors”.

“Yeah well this is going to heal really nasty, it’s already healed nasty”, she points at his face with a slightly ectoplasm stained finger, “and you aren’t missing any jumpsuit meaning unless you feel like adding a choker to your costume you can’t cover this up”.

He was unfortunately aware of that. As Phantom it wasn’t… too big of a deal. It would just raise questions about ghosts being able to get scars and how he got it and if he had more. Zone his folks might even rework some of their research over this. But… it would make people worry and he didn’t want that. “Considering the choker wouldn’t even be part of my actual form, I’d just wind up wrecking it. But-”.

She huffs, unclipping her own choker and holding it in front of his face, “you better have been about to say ‘but I should at least cover it up while it’s healing’ Danny. I have a million of these things, go ahead and destroy a few”; she drops it on his lap and continues moving his floating ass around to stitch between the staples.

Danny sighs to himself, careful not to swallow or move his Adam’s apple too much, “fine, but I’m just going to wear turtlenecks as Fenton, a chokers a little too attention drawing when I don’t normally wear that shit”.

She just scoffs as she continues her work.

Would a turtle neck hide this shit? Not if anyone remotely looked at him with any degree of attention even slightly. Like a child wouldn’t notice purely by being a lot smaller than him but that’s it. Unfortunately a choker or handkerchief will just make people more likely to look at his neck, and bandages would be even worse. Aka he doesn’t really have any options here.

Sam nodding and leaning back, “okay, you’re good. This is a seriously messed up injury though, you caught the ghost who did this? It was a ghost right?”.

Danny blushes immediately, “it was a ghost yeah, and ugh, I’m never living this down”, sighing into a hand and trying to ignore the way the staples pull, “it was fucking Boxy”. She laughs scandalised at him. Danny groaning more, “yeah yeah laugh it up. He actually scared himself”. She laughs even more and fine he joins in a little too. Fuck today so much.

…

After a bit she pokes his floating ass, “you should change back, so you get over the pain before we get you home and in bed. Your parents are still doing late night hunts right?”.

Danny sighs, putting his feet on the ground and nodding, “unfortunately, yeah”, moving to rub his neck before remembering that would be a fucking dumb idea and scratching his hair instead, his head felt unpleasantly fresh, “sure it means I don’t have to deal with their questioning but ugh”. They would somehow manage to get themselves involved in one of his late night ghost fights and shoot at him, it was annoying and every time it happened whatever ghost he was fighting legit debated throwing hands with his parents for real. Some purely because the Fenton’s shot first, others because they were interrupting their chosen ‘Phantom fist-a-cuffs’ time, others because they knew Phantom wouldn’t do it himself.

Anyway.

Human time.

Ha. This was gonna suck. Sure not as much as that time Tuck had to haphazardly shove his organs back inside him and Danny had to change back before said organs could reorganise themselves, but still. He cringes his whole face up in anticipation as he lets the change flow over him. “ANCIENTS FUCK!”, bending over, one hand on a now shaking knee, and the other tenderly over the front of his neck.

Ow.

Holy shit.

Fucking Hell he is never getting decapitated again. Oh Ancients.

He can taste metal inside his throat and he can’t tell if that’s blood or actual literal metal. The spine bolts are awful actually, he should not have let Dash do that. Oh he is regretting everything so much. “FUCK! OW! WHY DID I LET HIM DO THAT!”.

Sam pats his back as he drops his hand from his neck, touching would only make it worse, both hands on his knees and wheezing now. His neck was on fire and extremely cold all at once and it was fucking stupid and he hated it. He can feel his ecto attacking the metal, it burned more than he’d like. Swallowing, “oh that was such a bad idea”, he is not eating anything for a while. Pushing himself to stand up and blinking tears out of his eyes, “I, ow, am phasing all my food directly into my stomach for a while. Oh zone, this sucks”.

San pats his back again, “figured. Definitely no swallowing utensils for you for a bit”.

“Sam, if a fork prong got caught on or nicked the stupid bolts, which some are definitely partly inside my throat and bolted back to my spine, I will scream immediately”. Zone he would have screamed from changing back if he hadn’t been prepared for it to hurt like a son of a bitch.

She nods, “and I wouldn’t blame you”, scowling, “I still can’t believe you let Dash drill fucking Home Depot bolts into your neck. You know how dirty those things probably were? Ugh. Now stand still, you’re leaking”.

Danny has to clench his fists something fierce, fingernails digging into the palms of his hands, to keep from flinching as she wipes a cloth around his neck. Rolling his eyes at her whipping the side of his mouth too with a stupid smirk. “How bad does it look?”; he does not feel like going through the effort and pain of trying to use that bit of metal to look it over again.

“Bad. Danny. Gnarly and jagged. The staples stick out really harshly”, frowning and crossing her eyes as they cautiously and carefully make their way out from behind/around the grocery store which was thankfully closed. “When I stitch you up I always try to make it blend smoothly with your skin as much as possible, Dash was definitely not thinking about that, which fine I can’t blame him for, but still”, grimacing, “you better be really careful about what turtlenecks you wear, otherwise the staples are going to catch on the fabric”.

Danny full body winces, oh zone that would suck. He might maybe be able to resist screaming at that but he’ll definitely at least suck in a really ragged breath and curl in on himself. He was used to pain but still; he doesn’t even want to move his head or neck around. And of course his voice still sounded like hot garbage but considering the bolt attaching the inside of his throat to his spine that made sense. He really wishes Dash had positioned that one bracket and set of bolts differently. He can absolutely feel the metal bar being squished between his throat and spine. Ugh.

Shaking his head as they finally make their way back to FentonWorks. Sam giving him another pat, “you good to see yourself to bed or am I helping the injured baby”. 

Danny snorts, “oh shove it”, chuckling, “I can handle my self but I am absolutely taking the fuzzy blanket off of my bed because I do not want to get woken up by my bed ripping out a staple”. 

“Smart choice”.

She heads off with a simple wave and chuckle at Danny sticking out his tongue, at least he had motor control of said tongue again. Okay, now get lunch and go to bed before his parents possibly show up. 

He grabs out the left over chilli, that is thankfully not sentient or moldy, and phases it into his stomach. Was it going to take a bit to digest? Yes, obviously. But he was absolutely not chewing this shit and swallowing it. He’s had enough unintentional pain for one day that he absolutely does not feel up to adding in any intentional pain. 

The fluffy blanket that was super comfortable especially when his muscles were all achey, gets torn off and left on the floor in a heap. His floor isn’t exactly ‘clean’ but that doesn’t really matter to his sorry ass; he is going the fuck to sleep. 

“Nocturne bless this fucking bed”. 

Chap. 2:

The Un-hide-able Kind Of Damage

Did Danny sleep the whole night away? Obviously not. That never fucking happens. But no one serious showed up and every single one that showed up took one look at his neck and noped out. Apparently there was a bit of a code to not mess with Phantom if he was rocking some injury that was really fucked up. It’s didn’t help that it looked gnarly regardless of form... the choker barely helped and he forgot it almost every time. 

But he managed to make it to morning without further neck or throat damage. He also did not see any online photos or videos of the damage, so far so good. 

He absolutely meticulously inspects his turtleneck options for loose thread or snaggy material. He’s left with a total of three wearable sweaters, not great but not, you know, bad either. The one he goes with is a dark red, in case he bleeds a little, and has a burning Christmas’s tree on it, because anytime is the right time to say fuck you to Christmas. Dumbass holiday, that one. He phases the thing on because he is not dealing with trying to get his head and thusly neck through the long turtleneck part, shit’s painful enough as it is. Him fiddling with the collar in the mirror, the wound is still jagged enough that the fabric brushing against the edges sends twinges of pain up and down his neck. It’s not great. Not at all. Plus, it covers the wound about as well as he expected it to; if anyone one stares or specifically looks at his neck then he’s screwed. 

He’s seriously tempted to just... not go to school. Zone spending the day laying in the park would be better. But the lasts thing he needs is the school calling his parents and them wanting to have a talk with him. Or everything forbid he runs into them while he’s supposed to be in class. Even if he was still getting along with them, which he’s not going to be anytime soon, he wouldn’t want them around him to possibly notice he’s injured. 

Meaning school pretty much has to happen. Sighing to himself and moving down the stairs gingerly enough to not make his sweater move, heading out to go suffer through wildly unnecessary schooling. 

…

He waves at Sam and Tuck, they’re huddled by his locker, man does he ever love them. Tuck looks so worried at him, “show me immediately. What the hell, man”. 

Danny smirking and gingerly pulling out and down his sweater, wincing a little from the pressure against the back of his neck, “Sam told you?”.

Tuck’s entire face cringes up, “damn that’s hardcore, did you actually thank Dash for doing that to your poor neck”. 

Danny letting go of his sweater and bopping the techno geek on the head, “he literally reattached my head, of course I did”, shrugging, “sure the way he did it is a little shit and a pain in the ass but at least I have a head again”. 

Both of them roll their eyes at him but they’re smiling so it’s pretty clear it’s all in good fun and jest. Tuck poking him, “oh and we’ve already agreed that we’re taking your notes because you absolutely shouldn’t be lifting and lowering you head constantly for hours. You should be attempting to heal”.

“Pfft, since when do I go out of my way specifically for healing but I’m lazy and you guys know that, meaning you know I’m not gonna say no”. 

All three chuckling as him and Tuck head to their first class, Sam going her own way after a bit. 

Danny makes it though exactly twenty three minutes of class before his ghost sense goes off. At least the ice going up his throat felt faintly soothing, as he shoots his arm up, “bathroom”, and leaves without being given the go ahead. No one ever tried to stop him anymore, all he would get was annoyed glares or sad ones in Lancer’s case.

Pulling into the bathroom and changing, relishing the lack of pain for a bit before zipping up invisibly through the ceiling; he’s got a ghost to track down. 

He has absolutely no issue finding the ghost. Why? 

Because he immediately head butted a motorcycle the second his head exited the fucking roof top.

His poor neck. Zone. Why him? 

Danny floating backwards, rubbing his head and grumbling, “Johnny? What the hell, man?”. 

“Oh damn you really did get decapitated, huh?”. 

“The fuck you think? Duh”, sighing and crossing his arms at the ghost, “did you just show up to see for yourself?”. He’s going to be a little pissed if that’s the case. He can do without the ghosts doing ‘wellness checks’ on him anymore than certain ones already did. 

Johnny snorts, “surprised it didn’t wind up mounted on a wall”. 

To be fair, that’s kinda what Danny himself thought would be what happened if he ever did lose his damn head, but that was mostly because of Skulker being the only one that usually tried to ‘relive’ him of his head. Scoffing, “as if I’d ever let Skulker’s sorry ass take my freaking head. Now are you gonna leave peacefully or are you gonna start doing donuts on the rooftop?”. 

“That second one sounds pretty solid but I don’t feel like dealing with your head falling back off because that looks like a damn hack job”.

“Hey! You try fixing anything while blind, deaf, and unable to taste or smell!”.

“Damn”. 

Danny chuckling, “I know, right? Now you leaving or?”, and making shooing motions. 

Johnny smirks, revving his engine. Danny sighing mentally because he knows that translates to ‘let’s play tag, mother fucker’. Johnny shoots off with a, “depends if you can catch me, Phantom”. Typical.

“Damn it, Johnny!”. And now Danny’s off chasing Johnny and his stupid motorcycle. He rarely actually tries to shoot the guy because it feels like a dick move when all the guy generally does is street race and drive on roofs. Hell some of the twenty-something’s actually adored the biker and would race him; which fine Danny let slide because he thought it was a nice human/ghost bonding experience even if it was technically a crime. But hey, Danny’s existence was technically a crime too so why should he care anyways? 

Plus, if he’s being honest, chase racing him was kinda fun, felt a little more like being his actual age again. It’s was practically play for him, which was slightly sad, but they only make it a few streets down and destroy one streetlight before Danny’s got Johnny souped. Danny flipping the thermos in the air a little sillily.

“Oh zone! are you okay!”.

Danny jerks in the air and looks somewhat down at the person that looked to be having tea on their balcony. “Yes, worry not citizen”.

Fuck Danny’s luck, the guy points at his own neck, “uh, you sure about that?”.

Crap. What should he say? “Worry not, it’s not fresh and is healing perfectly fine”. Danny salutes and basically flees the conversation. Especially since he heard the guy whisper about how ‘holy shit ghosts can get actual long term injuries???’. Not good.

He basically speed walks to his home ec class with Sam. Poking her a little hard and trying to ignore the stupid pain in his throat and the fact that he’s pretty sure headbutting a motorcycle bent on of the brackets Dash drilled to goddamn his neck, “a civilian noticed”.

“Well shit. Not surprised but still”, Sam shrugs, “well Tucker’s got any mentions of you set up to ping him so we’ll see if this person keeps things to themselves or not”.

After all, there really wasn’t much else any of them could do.

…

Does he get a ping from Tuck? Absolutely. It takes all of eight minutes. Danny groaning to himself, he’d thump his head on the table but that would probably hurt something fierce.

Treft26fu: @ whoever DECAPITAED Phantom, you suck and he is weirdly okay with it

Treft26fu: or maybe whoever just wrapped a cord around his neck and TRIED to decapitate him

Treft26fu: anyway this just in ghosts can get proper people like injuries

The guy goes on a tangent for a while actually. Tuck’s managed to actually block the comments from being visible to anyone, thank fuck. Tuck throwing a proper text his way.

Geek: what do you want me to do if he notices no one’s responding to his comments?

Danny humming to himself, the vibrations down his throat aren’t great but aren’t bad either. Well most people would be annoyed if they found out Phantom was silencing them or someone else.

Ghost: pretend to be the G.I.W. silencing people from releasing ghosts are sentient feeling beings

Geek: *snort* nice. So that’s ’I’ll take anti-G.I.W. propaganda for $100’.

Ghost: I’ll take subtle beginning of an uprising for $200

Geek: creating deepfakes in 3… 2.. 1.

Danny just rolls his eyes at the guy not responding after that. Mrs. Canecher snapping, “eyes up here, Fenton”, startling him a little and making him jerk; more than a few people laugh at him. Jerks.

At least he makes it through the rest of his class, goddamn.

Of course that’s exactly when shit goes south. In the form of one Dash Baxter… again kinda. Dash bodily shouldering him into the wall as soon as Danny makes it out of the classroom. And of course Danny winces from that, because getting bashed into a wall is kind of jarring to the fucking bolts and staples in his fucking neck, thank you very much Dash.

Dash’s sneer is practically a growl, even if his eyes don’t really look to be in it, “aw look at little pathetic Fen-tiny flinching from a wall. How ‘bout I give you a real reason to flinch from me”.

Dash grabbing his sweater collar and yanking him up off the ground at the same time as both Danny and Sam snap, “don’t!”.

Dash of course scoffs at their attempt to stop him, sneering down at Danny and ramming him into the wall. Danny closing an eye, wincing, and hissing in pain and frustration. Why did Dash have to be such a fucking jerk all the time? And oh great it feels like that bent bit of metal bracket is being pressed into a fucking vein or something since a quarter of his neck is going numb and fuzzy. Fucking ow. He can feel some portions of nails getting pushed deeper into his skin and blood welling up around them. Wheezing, “put me, down, Dash”; wow his voice sounded extra shit. Like he’d gone and rubbed sand paper on all the nail cuts.

Then Sam, his boss ass him-damned friend, has her boot off and wielded in record time, fully prepared to beat Dash with it regardless of Danny making it very clear he doesn’t want his friends doing that shit to Dash or any other bullies for his sake. He’d rather himself be bullied than anyone weaker/more fragile. Hopefully the fact that she’s doing that when she normally doesn’t is enough to make Dash realise that she’s serious and he needs to fuck off.

Course Dash doesn’t even seem to notice, instead glaring down at a glaring Danny. Which at first makes Danny think this is some ‘dominance’ crap where Dash is just trying to get him ‘scared’ and get him to ‘back down’ and act meek. But a second or two going by and Dash’s glare looking progressively more horrified, gets Danny to actually slap Dash’s wrist off of him.

Shit.

Okay.

Flee?

Flee.

The second Danny’s feet are back on the ground he grabs Sam’s wrist and books it; Dash too stunned to do anything till Danny’s got them around a corner. Danny turning the two of them invisible immediately so he can tenderly put a few fingers up to his throat and wheezing in pain.

Sam whispering, “you good”. Danny shaking his head, blinking away a bit of tearing, and whispering back, “honestly no. He’s, he’s, probably, the worst, person to, notice, this”.

“Considering it’s his handy work?”.

Danny winces a little, nodding slightly and being mildly pissed at the way that pulls on the staples.

Both stilling and staring when Dash, still looking a little horrified, appears around the corner and looks around, him frowning in confusion, “what? Where?”. When he seems sold on currently being alone he stares at the ground, then at his slightly shaking hands, and mutters, “am I just hallucinating now?”, and actually curls in on himself a little as he walks off quickly.

Great. Now Danny feels bad. He’s not trying to make Dash question his own sanity! Ugh. And then Danny feels something hard and definitely metal drop in his throat, instantly sending him into a coughing fit, and practically collapsing to the floor in pain; he absolutely drops the invisibility without really paying any attention to having done so. Sam following him down to ground, worried.

Of course all this results in Dash basically rushing back to see Danny kneeling on the ground, one hand on his throat and another on the ground, while Sam is rubbing his back and glaring bloody murder at the returning jock.

Danny coughs up the end of one of the fucking bolts, it clinking on the ground is extremely loud and it fucking rolls away because of course it does, rolls away right into Dash’s shoe. The clink of it falling over feels like a thunderclap while Danny’s still wheezing and screwing his face up in pain.

At least no one’s in the hallway now, having moved quickly off to their classes the second Sam started actually threatening Dash with her boot; her wrath was well-feared, good. She’d be proud, if Danny wasn’t currently groaning into the floor.

Danny lifting up his head enough to eye Dash staring down at the bolt end touching his foot, Danny deciding fuck it and flopping onto his back on the ground with a wet cough and wince. Sam glancing down at him, “you going to just lay there?”, then going back to staring at Dash.

Danny groans again, absolutely crying a little, “I, am ’ever, lettin’, ‘one bolt, my fuckin’, ’eck, agin”.

Dash fucking squeaks of all things and shuffles over to stare down at Danny, cautiously avoiding the glaring goth. Danny glares at Dash without much feeling, “what? Go’, any ‘ore insuls, to ‘row, my ‘ay?”, coughing wetly and wiping at his mouth with a sleeve, careful not to jostle his head, “or ‘eel, like tossin’, e ‘round, ‘ore?”.

Dash blinks harshly and speaks again, “Phantom? You… coughed up a bolt end”, the guy is fiddling with the damn corroded off bolt end, the green burning on it is very stark. Why the fuck was the guy fiddling with that thing? Ugh.

Sam jerking out a hand, glaring at the jock, “give it and go away”.

“What? I- no! Screw off Manson!”. Ah Dash sounds slightly more normal now. Still freaked but not weirdly flat anymore.

Danny snickers, wincing from his throats bullshit, “I ‘ean, ur the one, eno ‘rewed my, ‘roat”.

Sam groans immediately at him, “goddamn it, Danny”.

Even Dash winces down at him, “Zone fuck, holy shit, you’re… Phantom?”, the guy drops the bolt and runs his hands through his hair, “oh zone I reattached Fenton’s head, zone”. Sam running after the rolling bolt, “damn you too, Dash”. Danny has faith she’ll get it before it causes any issues. Dash is busy pacing in circles currently so…

Yeah. Not helpful.

Fuck his neck felt kinda totally raw in spots and based on the wetness on the back of his neck and head he’s gonna guess he’s making a bit of a puddle of blood. Fun. Ow. Wheezing, “this, this is, ‘finitly the ‘econd, wors’ ‘jury, I’ve had”. He can feel one of the holes in his throat sliding back and forth across the length of the bolt when he talks or swallows. This is hell a little bit.

Dash stops and crouches down on his ankles near Danny’s head staring at him but only kinda seeing him, “second? Worst?”, sputtering, “decapitation? Is second place? What? And I’m? Staring down at Phantom?”, blinking harshly, “Fenton’s-your Phantom?”.

Sam comes back and smacks Dash over the head, “you better keep that to yourself, jackass, now help me move Danny to a bathroom or else”, and grabs one of Danny’s arm, Danny just smacking her with the other as a way to give it over. At least Dash jerks up harshly and does grab his ankles, because yeah Danny’s not standing up right now, not a chance. Dash muttering, “never met your heroes, you might have to put their head back on and find out they’ve been letting you beat them up”.

Danny, with his head resting on one arm so he doesn’t have to strain his -very injured and still stitching itself back together- neck muscles to hold his head up, “gla’ ta see yur handlin’ tis well”. As it is, all this being moved crap is making him feel like one of the staples has popped out partly and is just swinging around tugging on bits of still attached skin.

“Danny, shut up before you jack your throat up even more”. Danny huffing an extremely cold breath at her for that. Her glaring down at him, “jerk”, he can tell her hearts not really in the insult though which was absolutely because he was being an ass purely because his throat felt like it was trying to rekill him and AND now someone has basically figured his shit out. Ugh.

At least they make it into the bathroom, without anyone noticing. Of course the door swings back open the second it closes though, it’s Tuck thank everything; meanwhile Sam vaguely gently puts Danny’s arms, and thus head and neck and upper back, down. Sam and Tuck rounding on Dash who’s still holding Danny’s ankles up for some dumb reason, they point aggressively at the jock, growling, “you”.

Danny wheezing from his less than comfortable position only halfway laying on the floor, “‘ash, if ya ‘on’t, put me ‘own, Imma, ‘ick ya”. Dash doesn’t even react to Sam’s and Tuck’s fingers pointing in his face so Danny absolutely intangibly frees an ankle from the guys hand and kicks him one in the chin; Dash sputtering and dropping Danny’s other ankle immediately.

At least he’s now back entirely on the ground, the nice cold sweet ground. The faint metallic plink on the ground absolutely means he definitely lost a staple though, way too quiet to have been a whole ass bolt; plus he’s pretty sure there’d have to be a big gapping hole for one of those to actually fall through a hole in his skin then onto the floor. The plink also getting Tuck’s attention, him lifting Danny’s head up gingerly and pocketing the kinda eroded staple, Danny doesn’t even look at him, “today is ‘hit”.

Tuck ruffles his hair quickly, “and you sound like shit”, before standing back up and crossing his arms at Dash.

���Ya rye ahvin’ a suck in’ ‘roat wound”.

Sam sighs, explaining to Tuck for Danny, “he coughed up a bolt end and even though I told him to stop talking he won’t shut up”, glaring at Dash more aggressively, “so?”. While Tuck gives Danny a chastising, “dude”. Danny just shrugging his shoulders, wincing at the neck movement, and going back to staring emptily at the bathroom ceiling.

He really shouldn’t have come to school. Like at all. Absolutely terrible decision. Stupid him. Stupid stupid him. Ugh.

Dash’s swallow is loud and makes Danny internally cringe at how much swallowing that aggressively would hurt right now. “So the thing I gave myself a massive hangover over has come back to haunt me on Fenton’s neck, what the fuck”.

Danny blinks, wheezing instead of chuckling, “ah. Ya ‘ctually raid-ed, folk’ lior’ cabnet?”.

Sam and Tuck giving him judgemental looks, while Dash throws his hands out baffled, “I spent an hour shaking and stapling my heroes neck what of course I did-what-oh-my-zone-this-is-a-nightmare”, and starts pacing in circles again.

Tuck chuckles though, eyeing the jock, “are you saying that because Phantom’s Fenton or because of having to deal with a horrific injury”.

“Both!”, Dash stops and gestures aggressively at the geek, “both”, sticking both arms down at Danny, “how even? Zone fuck did your parents experiment on you or something?”, screwing up his face and seemingly speaking more so to himself, “can I get away with beating the Fenton’s up?”.

Danny snorts, wincing, “ow fuck. Naw, my ‘ad, will ‘reak you, ‘ike a ‘ooth-ick, ‘ash”.

“That doesn’t mean he will!”, shaking his arms at Danny, “you didn’t”,

Sam scowls down at Danny, “Danny, shut. Up”, then walking closer to Dash and pointing a finger right in Dash’s face, “one, Danny will be mad if you try to fight his dad. Two, he’ll stop you and fuck his throat up more anyways. Three, it was an accident that you have no damn right to know anything about you asshat. Four-”, signing and dropping her hand, “-my opinion of you just, unfortunately, went up a notch”.

Danny blinking and turning his head, ow, enough to look at her, “oily ‘hit”,

“Shut. Up”.

Danny huffs at her, pushing himself to sit upright with some effort, pointing at Dash then shrugging and dropping his hand.

Dash blinks, “how are you so calm if you’re not dead”.

Tuck groaning, “oh he is dead, just not entirely”.

“That makes zero sense, loser”.

Danny is having none of that, he lifts a hand up again and ecto-blasts the bathroom stall next to Dash’s head. Dash jumps, squeaks, and slowly looks to stare at Danny wide-eyed. Danny quirking an eyebrow, “bad”.

“I- um- okay?”, Dash still sounds squeaky, looking at Sam and Tuck, “holy shit you’re sidekicks”.

For once both Sam and Tuck facepalm for a reason other than Danny being a dumbass. Tuck laughing while Sam sighs, “yes, Dash, obviously”, gesturing at Danny who grins dumbly, “you really think we’d let this dumbass do shit on his own? He’d do something stupider than he usually does”, grimacing at Danny, “Danny, you’re leaking again”.

This time it’s Tuck sighing and grabbing some paper towel to clean Danny’s throat and mouth off. Danny’s almost tempted to wheeze really hard to maybe get blood splattered around but that would be really dumb and really painful for no good fucking reason. He just really hates today and his stupid body right now. Grinning instead, “‘ink ya can un’end a bracke’? Kinda ‘ill ’on’t have feelin’ in ‘art of mi ‘eck”.

Tuck glares at him, “what”, sighing disbelievingly, “you shoulda mentioned that immediately, man. Why do you do this shit to us and yourself”.

Dash flinching, “did I mess up?”, while Tuck moves around to where Danny’s tapping his neck. Danny shrugging, “I ‘ean, num’ ‘eans naw pain, sew”, and shrugs. And sure, part of his mouth was also numb which wasn’t great but hey at least the pain is mostly only radiating from other sections of his neck, giving him one little area of relief.

Sam gestures at Danny though still staring at Dash, “see what I mean. A Dumbass”.

Dash actually nods agreeingly, jerk, before backing up a step or two when Tuck pulls out his personal media kit and one of those sharp art knives from inside, tweezers too but that was probably less startling to the jock. “Going to have to rip a few out, man. And probably cut some stuff”. Him yanking out a staple actually takes so much effort Tuck falls on his back.

Danny cringing, ow, “my ‘ody sure ha’ attichme’ isdues, huh?”. Tuck pushing himself up and clamping down on another staple, “you suck. Sam you wanna help instead of glaring Dash out of existence?”.

The goth huffs, points aggressively at Dash, “you. Stay”, before moving over and grabbing the wannabe scalpel; Danny gripping his knees at the almost feeling of sharp metal on skin.

Oh great it kinda looks like Dash is shaking a bit again. Lovely. But the guy shakes himself off somewhat and actually comes over to help, sorta help at least, too. Grabbing Danny’s shoulders to, Danny guesses, keep him steady.

Danny absolutely feels the second Sam, or Tuck he’s not looking, gets the metal unbent. Him jerking forward, a hand to his neck and headbutting Dash’s chest, “ow! Fuck! Shit! Agh!”. Okay note to self, no pain for a while thanks to numbness equals sudden intense pain when numbness goes goodbye bye. Ow. Why is he so stupid? And Dash is so startled he doesn’t even move or do anything more than huff like he just got the wind knocked out of him which he probably did; Dash falling on his ass seconds later, “shit Fenton! Ow!”.

Sam moving quickly to stitch up the hole she had to cut in him to get good enough access to fix his shit, “stay still, your lucky you didn’t rebend the thing”, grumbling to herself, “at least that jerk bought solid brackets”.

Dash wheezing a little and rubbing his chest, “I wasn’t going to patch freaking Phantom up with cheap shit he’d break in a fight”.

Tuck getting up to clean things, and himself, off in the sink, “that’s actually smart, congrats”, eyeing Sam and Danny, “how’d it get bent anyways”.

Sam growling without looking away from the work she’s almost done, “Dash here slammed him into a wall”.

Danny, kinda staring at Dash as something to do and trying to ignore the pain and pulsing, “actulie I head’utted Jon’s ‘ike”,

“Why would you do that!”.

“Acci’en’! Gosh!”.

Sam huffing, “well the wall didn’t help”, then looking at Dash as she cleans her own hands, “like I said, he’s a dumbass”.

Dash nods slowly, “yeah”, looking down at Danny, who’s just sitting on the ground slightly curled in on himself, “is, are you gonna be good? And why did this hurt but not me drilling your spine?”.

Tuck actually gives Dash a supportive backhanded swat on the arm, grinning, “don’t worry about it, he heals like a beast. Also, he doesn’t feel pain as Phantom”.

Danny straightening out some and stretching, wincing at the throat hole moving over the exposed bolt again, “a ‘essing and curs’”, and promptly coughing again, spitting up metal bits, at least he caught all the shreds and corroded bits in his hand this time. Grimacing at the mess of spit, blood, and metal; getting up with a stagger to wash his hand off, “ew”.

Dash gestures aggressively at Danny as Danny turns around to eye him, “I wouldn’t call that ‘healing’ at all!”.

“Dude, ya re-atta-ed mi ‘ead! Imma ‘ay Imma doin’ a damn ‘ood job”. Oh hey, it’s slightly easier to talk now, cool. It feels like that one hole is closing up now, that musta been where the metal he was just coughing up came from.

Dash opens and closes his mouth, humming and shrugging after a beat, “yeah I guess that would kill most people, huh”. Danny wheeze laughing as Sam and Tuck shout, “YES!”, at that.

No one says anything for a bit until Danny clears his throat, which was dumb to do, and winces. At least one throat hole is gone now, he is so not going to class until he apparently coughs up the other bolt end. “Okay. So. We ‘ood?”.

Tuck grinning at Danny, “well you sound slightly better”.

Danny shrugging, “bye bye ‘aping throat wound”. Tuck gives him a thumbs up like a real friend. Then, of course, he feels the other bolt end inside his throat fall, fuck. That of course causes another coughing fit that sends him to the ground again, Tuck and Sam rushing over to pat his back hard till the damn bolt gets coughed up. Danny just groaning and rolling to lay on his back again, “mevar ‘ind”.

Dash wheezes, “I- um, we’re good. Yeah we’re good. But if I ever run up on an injured Phantom I’m calling your idiot friends since I clearly suck at it”,

Tuck waving Dash off, “Dash, none of us would have known what to do with a decapitation. That was a first for Danny-dude”.

“Yay ‘or mi”, Danny shaking away a few tears, man his body was an asshole. Sitting up enough to look at Dash more properly, “ya ‘id ‘ood”.

Sam snapping, “no he did not!”.

Danny pointing aggressively at her,“tis ’raight an’ ha-n’t fallen oof”.

“That doesn’t mean much”.

“Be ‘orse it I ‘ried to mi ‘elf!”.

“Your head would be backwards and upside down somehow if you did it yourself, moron”,

Danny flips her off. Dash actually chuckles though, “this is the weirdest conversation I’ve ever been in, wow”, then collapsing against a bathroom stall, which causes the doors to open, which results in Dash falling backward with a yelp and fucking knocking himself out with the toilet.

You.. you gotta be kidding? Seriously? Danny blinks, “‘eri-yous-lie?”. Sam actually bursts out laughing while Tuck runs over to help get Dash out of the stall, him snapping, “don’t you even try to think about helping, Danny”.

“Eh I ‘ink I ‘elped enou’ bi ‘ockin’ ‘im out”.

“No”.

“Yes”.

Sam and Tuck glare at each other before laughing, all three of them winding up on the floor laughing, or wheezing in Danny’s case. Dash groaning from the floor a few seconds later, “did I just get knocked out by a toilet?”.

Sam snorts, smirk showing in her voice, “yup”.

“That’s really hilarious actually”, Dash shakes his head, “if I wasn’t probably high on Advil my head would kill me”.

“Hey, at ‘east ‘vil actu-eel ‘orks on ya”.

Dash snorts, “that’s rough man”.

“Eel mi ‘out it”.

“I have no idea what you just said”.

“Piss oof”.

Danny and Tuck pushing themselves to sit up, meaning that now everyone’s basically just sitting in a sorta circle in a men’s bathroom. Cool. Man his throat is killing him though. The fresh stitches on the back left side of his neck stand out in the swath of pain pretty noticeably, why? Because they hurt less. A staple gun was never, ever, getting added to the medi kits; Ancients.

Tuck eyeing Dash, “so, are you actually going to keep your mouth shut about this? About finding out your idols secret identity?”.

Dash puts up his hands, “I’m not Wes, I’m not that stupid”, flushing a little, “but I definitely did tell Kwan about, uh”, gesturing awkwardly at Danny, “patching you? up? Yeah”.

Danny shrugs, trying not to move his neck with the motion, it kinda works, “eh, figs”.

Tuck chuckling and shaking his head, “he means ‘figures’, which yeah even Sam can’t blame you for venting to your best friend, that would be a dick move. Right Sam”.

Sam scowls, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms, before sighing, “fine. It really would be”. Danny giving her and the jock thumbs up, because yeah, talking was not helping his healing ass like at all.

Dash chuckles awkwardly, “yeah, Kwan’s the best”.

Sam sighing, “Kwan will also realise Danny’s Phantom if he sees”, rubbing her temples, “meaning we still have a jock to keep an eye out for”.

Absently, Danny knows it would be a massive dick move to force Dash to keep this from his best friend. Granted Sam and Tuck might also beat him if he gives the jock the go ahead to tell Kwan. But unfortunately Dash continues, “and he did tell Star, who told Paulina, who, uh, told all the cheerleaders, who probably told everyone”.

Sam glares murderously at Dash then Danny, “I’m going to kill him”.

Danny pouting, “‘am, it is ‘ery rude ta ‘reaten ta kill some-on in ‘ront of a ‘hos’”; and then spits up some metal and just rubs it on his pants, he’ll wash them later maybe. All three grimace at him. Whatever.

“Um, let me point out that they did tell everyone and I did not expect to witness hardcore medical drama and hear mind breaking info when I decided to take a smoke break inside for a change. Hi”.

All four jerk and slowly look at the guy peaking out from a slightly open bathroom stall door. Well. Damn it. Screw his existence entirely. Dash and Sam getting up instantly and both looking ready to beat this guy into silence for Danny’s sake. Aw, they’re bonding over murderous intent, how utterly evil and adorable. Meanwhile, Danny decided fuck it and grabs out his phone. Moving to the Amity Teens chat:

thealivedanny: those whose eyes see have mouths that don’t move

Haleykaley: that’s ominous hot shit

Bailnwail: has Fentons phone been possessed again?

Tuck’s phone pings, “Danny… why did my phone just ping the sound it does when you message a public chat?”.

“Eye do ya hav’ a ‘iose spec-fy for mi?”.

“I’ve had one ever since someone accidentally messaged the very public gaming chat a death threat meant for Vlad and a picture of your broken arm with exposed bone”, Tuck glancing at his phone, “ah you’re just terrorising the masses, I see”.

The guy comes out of the bathroom stall entirely, hands up at the goth and jock, “hey I ain’t my fault you guys didn’t do a sweep of the place before starting your soap opera medical drama”.

Danny holding up a finger, “echly it’s a super-atura drame”.

“Debatable”, the guy clears his throat, “look it doesn’t really look like there’s any point in silence here but I ain’t no fucking punk ass snitch”, dropping his hands and shrugging, “just ignore me stealing baby formula for my kid brother and we good”.

Danny pushing himself to stand up, his throat felt less hole filled now, “man, I’a eel tha’ shit fer ya”. Then glancing at his phone when it pings, it’s freaking Dash in the teen chat room.

Football king: those whose eyes see have mouths that don’t move

Danny looking at the jock with a quirked eyebrow, said jock gives him a slightly too wide-eyed thumbs up, “you, uh, seem to have this covered so I’m going to go drown myself-”.

“Didn’ ta toile do tha’ ger ya already?”.

“In Advil, Fen-taco or Danny, whatever”.

Danny snorts, wincing a little, “eh don’ ‘ange. An’ ‘on’t haveta craw to hospit”.

“Screw you, oh this is stupid”, Dash scowling, “and like the guy who crawled into a refrigerator should have any say”.

Tuck eyeing Danny, “oh you told him your stupid rum cereal story?”.

“He ‘ad plans ta get ‘runk, it wah apple-cable!”:

The dude wheeze laughs, “fucking ‘apple cable’, nice”. Danny absolutely flips him off, but the guy smiles, “nice to know our little hero is a dumbass”.

Sam eyes him and decides he passes whatever mental test she was giving him, “yeah. Yeah he is”.

Danny rolling his eyes and looking at his phone, at least nine more people have posted the same ‘those whose eyes see have mouths that don’t move’ message. Well shit. Okay. Well… at least Danny’s got a clue for how many people have seen and just fucking put two and two together to get four. Wes also threw in a ‘those whose eyes see have mouths that do move’, because he’s an ass. Fucking Wes, goddamn. No chill. At least a ton of people respond back either insulting or threatening Wes. Good. And Dash also leaving shaking his head is probably good too.

The guy eyes them before jabbing a thumb towards the bathroom stall he came out of, “am I cool to finish my cigarette? Since I put that shit out as soon as you guys hauled ass in here?”.

Sam sighing, her, Tuck, and Danny all exchanging shrugs before Sam gives the guy a go ahead, “sure fine, whatever. But yeah, that snitches get stitches and wind up in ditches thing can absolutely be very literal”.

“Tell that to the whole school then”.

“I will”. Sam basically grabs Tuck and Danny and drags them out of the bathroom. Her grumbling at Tuck as she continues dragging them, likely to their next class, “how bad is it”.

Tuck speaking while scrolling through his phone, “bad, there’s really no way to keep a cap on this”.

Danny hums, which doesn’t hurt nearly as much now that the bolts aren’t inside his throat. Pulling out his phone and dropping a link to one of the many videos of his folks ranting about ‘evil ghosts’ in the chat. Which gets the chat bombarded with ‘THOSE WHOSE EYES SEE HAVE MOUTHS THAT DON’T MOVE’ and he’s pretty pleased with himself over that.

Tuck snorting as Sam pulls them to their seats, “smooth dude, now everyone who didn’t already know, knows it had to do with ghosts, GrEaT iDeA”. Oh the sarcasm was thick there.

Sam pulling out her own phone and scrolling, smacking Danny on the arm, it would have been a head slap if his neck wasn’t still fucked, “idiot! But ugh, at least it seems like it’ll keep people quiet. At least from the Fenton’s and maybe adults in general”.

Tuck shaking his head, “yeah, I still don’t get why all the adults have such a hard time seeing that, at the very least, Phantom’s good”.

Sam growling right back, “because they’re stupid and think that just because they’re adults and we’re kids that there’s no way they could be wrong and us right. And that if kids all agree on or do something then it must be dumb, wrong, or immature”.

Lily turning to face them, “a lot of us also do stupid shit, case and point”, pointing at Danny, “you coming to school with a barely attached head that looks awful holy shit”.

Ah crap, Danny mildly panicky readjusts up his turtleneck, fuck him so much. Tuck and Sam just sigh tiredly at this point, and another ‘those whose eyes see have mouths that don’t move’ gets added to the chat. But the girl grins at him, “you could totally get an awesome tat to cover that though”, leaning over, “I know a guy”.

What?

Sam is interested immediately, “oh do tell, I’ve been dying to get some webs on my shoulders”, grinning evilly, “especially because my parents will stop trying to stick me in strapless dresses then”.

The two girls absolutely do exchange info while one of the cheer leaders, Brittney he thinks, be-lines to his desk. Shit shit shit. But all she does is slam down a thing of lozenges, “here, we use these after practices and games since all that cheering makes for a wicked sore throat”. Danny is confused, “thanks?”. She cringes, “wow you do need them”, smirking, “at least you sound like a gruff musician now”; and walks off to her seat.

Apparently everyone takes that as a sign to give Danny stuff, because goddamn everyone brings him something and by the time the teacher shows up Danny has a little mound of random trinkets and things on his desk. Sam and Tuck are wheeze laughing at him. The teacher quirks an eyebrow at him, “Mr. Fenton?”.

“I’m a ‘agon apparently and tis my horde”.

“Are you sick?”.

“No physicals but in da head prob”.

The teacher rolls her eyes at him before starting the lesson. He spends the entire class getting bombarded by direct messages.

‘Get lots of sleep’

‘There’s some stupid powerful muscle relaxers in my locker’

‘West side bathrooms water is green again so don’t use that to wash up’

‘Do you have enough food’

‘I’m giving Dash first aid lessons against his will for you’

‘You want some apple pie’

‘Whoever did that is going down in my notes as ‘head stealing asshole’ forever more’

‘I cleaned your blood up, no worries’

‘You want more losengezes’

‘I’m making everyone sign a get well soon card bye the bye, it’s glittery and cute’

‘There’s balloons in your locker now, open when most chaotic for maximum chaos’

‘I will cry on your shoulder to feed you emotions if that’s a real thing ghosts do’

‘I’ve got a great emotion support ferret if you want something to pet’

‘I shall supply you with an alarming amount of soothing teas’

And on and on it went, he had to put his phone on silent for fucks sake! It was kinda cute and nice though. Even if it seemed like the entire school had now decided to baby him. And as soon as class ends he gets jumped by one of the drama kids, who throws gauze around his neck.

Danny sputtering and taking a ‘no limbs are allowed to touch’ stance, the gauze hanging like a scarf, “why!?”.

“To wrap it so it doesn’t get infected, obviously”. The kid just walks away.

Tuck, looking at his phone, chuckles, “dude, you’ve been given the ‘is baby’ role”. Danny just pouts and pulls the gauze off from the back of his neck. This wasn’t useful for him, he’d dissolve it, but hey the sentiment was nice.

Jasper chuckling as he comes out of the classroom behind them, “yeah because you’re not taking care of yourself apparently”.

Someone actually gives him a whole ass pie in the hallway before the trio manages to get to their next class, he’s pretty sure they all actually missed lunch somewhere in the time they were dealing with Dash. So hey, free food! Definitely appreciated. Even if he hunches over it to make the fact that he’s just phasing pieces into his stomach not super obvious, and it’s not as good as Skulker’s but the teacher doesn’t give him shit for eating in class beyond glaring… which half the class glares right back at the teacher for.

Then, of course, his ghost sense goes off. Fuck him entirely. Hand shooting up, “bathroom”, and him fucking off. This time he’s careful about potential headbuttable objects when he phases his head through the school roof.

By the time he finds the ghost, it’s Technus annoyingly, there’s not much for him to do. Why? Because at least twelve teens and goddman twenty little kids are kicking and throwing things at the ghost and shouting about leaving Phantom alone. Technus is actually curled up crying, “I CAME TO CHECK ON HIM! PLEASE STOP SMALL CHILDREN!”.

Danny is so fucking confused.

Him floating down slowly, “uh? Whatcha doin’?”.

One of the teens stops, huffing, “well you need to heal, dontcha? Literally no one’s actually seen you with an injury that lasts more than a few seconds”, shrugging, “so no fighting for you”.

Is… is this how he’s going to have to tell the town that he actually likes getting into fights? Oh man, awkward. “I enjoy it though”.

“You are injured. No fighting. In fact-”, the girl digs in her pocket and holds out some tickets to him, “-you shouldn’t even be in school. Go have fun at that little petting zoo in Elmerton”.

Danny takes them because it would be rude not to, right. Blinking at the whimpering ghost, “I’m… still gonna soup him”.

“That’s what you call it? That’s adorable”.

Danny blushes and quickly captures the beaten miserable ghost, immediately leaving. Making it back to class at the same time that Sam and Tuck get bodily pushed out of it. Danny blinking at them, “uh?”.

Sam shakes her head fondly, “apparently we’re supposed to go to a petting zoo?”. Tuck chuckling, “we’ve also been given firm instructions to swaddle you, but I am not caring you around in a teenager sized fabric baby swaddle”; he actually holds up a bunch of fabric.

Danny blinks harshly, “what”, shaking his head and holding up the tickets, “some kids were curb stomping Technus mosh pit style. I’m legit a little touched”. Sam gives an impressed whistle before snagging the tickets, shrugging, and dragging both boys off. Guess they are indeed going to a petting zoo.

“Hey good morning guys, welcome to the Elmerton petting zoo. We’ve got brushes and some treats to the side, or you can just give them pet downs and love with your hands and hearts; everyone here is super friendly, though Flapjacks the black goat is a headbutter”.

Sam snorts eyeing Danny, “you’re a goat, Danny”.

“Goated, you mean”.

She absolutely smacks him for that.

The lady continues, “most places won’t let you hand feed but we gave up on that because you Amity kids are a nightmare and never follow rules”.

Tuck snorting, “how’d you know we’re Amity Parkers”.

“You’re skipping school boldly and look dead inside, obvious tell”. Danny absolutely doubles over wheeze laughing at that, a rabbit sniffs him cautiously.

“And just like goats, you guys are always finding new and interesting ways to nearly kill yourselves. Muffintail got stuck upside down in a random bucket last night and screamed bloody murder till one of the dogs got him out”, pointing to some signs, “we have more neat info about goats over there besides their desire to die”.

Danny snickers, smirking at Sam and Tuck, “Muffintail huh? ‘It’s muffin time, who wants a muffin, please I just wanna die. Please somebody kill me, please it’s muffin time’”.

Tuck wheezes, “fuck that’s so old Danny, zone damn it”. The petting zoo lady laughs to herself too.

Sam wandering off to grab some carrots and poking the roasters with them, at least the roosters actually eat said carrots. A peacock jumps on her head though, Danny and Tuck both absolutely taking a photo of that shit. The zoo lady smiling at that before speaking up again, “before you start wandering around too much, Amity Parker’s aren’t allowed in the horse or deer area since all that ghost smell freaks them out. Please don’t scare our horses and deers. And since there’s blood on your sweater, please leave the wolves alone as they will bite you”.

Tuck laughs while Danny’s face heats up something fierce, he absolutely didn’t bring a spare sweater though so… Danny muttering, “I forgot about that”. Tuck patting his back before he does actually wonder off to bother the other rabbits.

Of course the second Danny’s left up to his own devices he immediately gets rammed in the back by a black goat, which proceeds to walk on his back when he falls over. The petting zone lady scolding it, “Flapjacks no”, when the goat physically jumps up and down on him. Sam absolutely got a video and sent it to the teen chat along with a ‘can’t go anywhere with this dumbass’. There’s mass responses of ‘bad goat!’ and one person commenting that ‘oh I know that one, he’s called flapjacks because he’s a jackass’. The lady does get Flapjacks off him long enough for him to get swarmed by curious bunnies, Tuck following after and laughing at the bunny pile that Danny’s become. That also goes into the chat and gets far more ‘cute’ responses.

The amount of time Danny gets followed around by bunnies is adorable and weird, Danny blinking at his bunny herd, “I think bunnies like me”. Tuck pouting, “I want the bunny love”; Danny gives the guy a bunny, it kicks him immediately. Poor Tuck, Danny snickers at him.

Sam walking over with an owl in her arms, the petting zoo lady looking confused in the distance. “You would think bunnies would hate you, since you’re basically a predator”.

“I don’t eat ghosts, Sam”.

Tuck snickering, “You should, get that ecto”.

“Ew! Tucker!”, Sam smacks the geek, “they are sentient beings!”.

“And sentient beings are delicious, my point stands”.

“Blood mouth”.

Danny laughing at the mild argument, laughing until one of the bunnies decides to bite him right in the fucking throat, “augh! ow what the fuck!”, the bunny runs of with a staple in its mouth. “No no no no no no no no, give that back!”. Danny winces and chases after the bunny even with bits of pain shooting up the side of his neck now; it was doing a pretty good job of healing. Was.

It takes ten minutes of him, Sam, and Tuck chasing the bunny for Sam to catch it and get the semi-dissolved severely ecto-contaminated staple out of the bunnies teeth. The bunny is very mad about loosing its prize and immediately starts biting Danny’s shoes. Danny huffing, holding a bit of fabric to his neck to stem the renewed bleeding, asking the petting zoo lady, “what’s that one’s name?”.

“I Eat My Cereal Dry”.

“Well I Eat My Cereal Dry is a dick”.

She laughs at that at least, while the trio continues wandering around the area.

Lindsey thinks that outside of the bitey rabbit and back-butting goat the whole trip turns out pretty good for the three kids. Sure after school let’s out the place basically gets swarmed by Casperhigh students to the point where the place hits max capacity. She’s frankly flabbergasted and vaguely overwhelmed, especially when most of the students are more interested in the kid with the extremely disturbing neck injury that keeps getting harassed by bunnies.

Like… they’re damn near hand feeding the kid more than the animals, giving him head pats and arm pats and back pats; Millie the goat gets jealous and starts trying to get them to stay away from the boy. Adorable but strange.

At least none of them go near the horses or deers.

Thankfully Danny’s able to go home without running into his parents or any ghosts, seemingly Techus or Johnny or Boxy told everyone to fuck off; Technus getting ganged up on was probably a pretty solid warning to most since everyone really only wanted to fight Phantom specifically or cause random chaos, not get assaulted by children with severely brutalised senses of danger.

Zone, he even makes it through the night uninterrupted for a change!

And checking his throat out in the mirror in the morning, moving it around and prodding at the stitching, and scars from all the staples that have since dissolved. It still ached a bit but there’s no actual pain. The steel brackets are definitely still there because Dash went and grabbed thick ass fuckers but all the bolts are gone for sure, so swallowing and physically eating still made a bunch of pressure on his throat; meaning he’s still sticking to phasing food into his stomach instead of chewing shit.

Jazz bangs on the door a little aggressively, Danny sighing as it just pops open, her staring at his neck, “seriously? Are you okay?”.

Danny sighing again for good measure and rolling his eyes at her, “I am now, yes I know the scarring is gnarly, that’s because of a not super great patch job and not because of how bad the injury was”.

Jazz sighs shaking her head, “I saw the chat by the way”, her leaning on the doorframe, “so, everyone knows now, huh?”.

Danny groans exaggeratedly, he’d tilt his head back dramatically if he wasn’t still slightly injured, “just the teens thankfully”, eyeing her, “they're a lot better about ghosts than the towns adults”.

“You mean the Fenton’s”.

“I mean all of the adults, Jazz. Mom and dad… are just the worst of them”.

She hums at him, which he ignores, “are you even bothering to cover it up now?”.

He knows exactly why she’s asking that, he’s in just his standard simple long sleeve that he always wears nowadays meaning that everyone and anyone will be able to see the scars and bits that are still healing. But he grabs up a handkerchief from the counter, “I’m still covering it, just not really caring about whether I draw attention to it or not”. After all, adults generally won’t ask, teenagers definitely would have… if they didn’t all already know what was up.

“I still don’t like it”.

Danny huffing, “it’s not really your scar to like or show off or not, Jazz”. Zone, with this there was almost no point in bothering to hide any of his scaring anymore, but going bare arms might be pushing it right now, considering how severe some of the scaring was. Eh maybe someday, but not today. “It’s not like mom and dad will really notice”. She cringes but he doesn’t really care if she doesn’t like the honesty.

Jazz nods a little, “well I’m off, try to stay in school?”.

Danny waving her off as he’s grabbing up the handkerchief, “yeah yeah yeah, the ghosts have backed off to let me heal a little so I might be able to actually do that”, chuckling, “apparently decapitation is freaky to them. Who knew”. That does get a laugh out of her at least, before she fully leaves.

Danny not too far behind.

…

Sam and Tuck eye the handkerchief and chuckle to themselves. Sam smirking, “nice neck piece, bored of sweaters already?”.

“Pfft, you know how I like to keep things interesting”.

Kwan shouting, “Fenton! How’s your headless doll situation!”.

What? Danny looks to the jock, confused, “what are you even talking about, Kwan?”.

“You know, like that thing where a ladies head is held by a ribbon? Except you’ve got bolts and staples and thread?”.

Danny rolls his eyes, “that green ribbon story? That has nothing to do with dolls man, but it does have to do with dead people and a decapitation, I guess”, and shrugs, pointing to the handkerchief, “ain’t perfect but my heads almost fully reattached, nothing is actively holding anything on anymore”. At Kwan pointing at his own neck and tilting his head, Danny just assumes he’s asking further about his fashion choices, “it’s still healing, man, it looks gnarly”.

Kwan waves that answer off, “pssh, who cares. Scars make men of boys!”.

Danny, vaguely insulted, grabs the bottom of his shirt and yanks it up aggressively, gesturing at his torso and the aggressive amount of scaring there. Including the nasty, repeatedly reopened, and rarely stitched back together right, Y incision. “You sure about that one?”.

Kwan gapes a little, “dude, you are ripped”.

Of course that’s what he cares about, Danny facepalms immediately. Dropping his shirt and sighing, “I’m still not walking around with a fucking barely healed decapitation scar, Kwan”. The guy has the audacity to pout at him.

Then someone yells, “nice neck! You goof!”.

Danny chuckles to himself, everyone in this goddamn town was so fucking weird and he loved them for it.

He really only keeps up with wearing the handkerchief while shits healing and when he knows his folks are gonna be around, every single teen just seemed to think it was cool. He got lots of lanyards with pins to ‘decorate’ the scar, some weird handkerchiefs, Emilie even knitted him an infinity scarf. The one that made him laugh the most, and realise that things definitely were going to be just fine, was him getting mobbed by the art kids sticking temporary tattoos all around and over the scarring; it looked so damn silly seeing one of his gnarliest scars just covered in unicorns and seagulls and stars and an angry goat. Somehow everyone having fun with it and him not being bothered by it kept the adults from ever even trying to ask about it.

End.

PRompts: Tooth-rotting fluff occurs at Casper High after Danny's secret identity is revealed. Identity reveal. Dash finds out Danny is Phantom. What happens? Could be swagger bishie or not, either or is okay. Danny, Sam, and Tucker go to a petting zoo. Danny receives an injury or scar that he can't easily hide in one form, let alone two.

[raaorqtpbpdy]

Father-Son Bonding (2)

With Maddie and Jazz off attending a women in STEM conference over the weekend, Jack decides to take Danny out for the best father-son bonding activity there is—ghost hunting! They're going to catch that elusive Danny Phantom or die trying! Metaphorically, of course. Jack would never let his son die hunting ghosts, or at least... that's what he thinks.

Written for the prompts:

Jack and Danny spend quality time together hunting that damn ghost boy! Danny is being such a help! Bonus points for if they're both enjoying the endeavor. [from @pricklenettle], Jack Fenton finds out. [from @underforeversgrace], and Jack is excited to hunt ghosts alongside his ghost-powered son, and Danny is enjoying the time with his dad way more than he thought he would. Maddie, however, is deeply troubled by all the ways her son could get hurt, and her overprotectiveness causes a heaviness to fall over the Fenton family home. [from @astatia-ghast]

Read on AO3

Chapter 2: Jack Fenton Doesn't Know What's Waiting (Ch.1; Ch.3)

[Warning for minor violence]

In ghost form, Danny dove into the green-tinged water. Just as he'd expected, the Fenton Foam made it sting like hell against his skin, and especially in his eyes, but he couldn't afford to close them. He swam right to the bottom, where Mariner was holding his father under, and pried them apart, inadvertently kicking his dad in the stomach in order to get the leverage he needed.

"You think you can beat me in my own territory?" Mariner roared, their voice not the slightest bit muffled, despite the terrain. "The water strengthens me!"

"Not this water!" Danny refuted, although his voice did not carry like Mariner's did, so it sounded more like, "Glug glib globob!"

The one-liner didn't really matter though as Danny whipped out his Fenton thermos and sucked Mariner into it. Despite Mariner's claims, Danny had been right about the water weakening them. Fenton Foam was really no joke, and it made Danny wonder why his parents didn't use it more often. He didn't have time to wonder now, though.

He clipped the thermos to his belt and grabbed his father's limp body, hauling him out of the deep-end with all his ghostly strength.

Dad didn't move one he was out of the pool.

Danny didn't know what to do. He didn't know CPR or anything, so what could he do? Come on! He had ghost powers! If they couldn't even save his dad, what good were they?

Water!

If Danny could use intangibility to get the water out of Dad's lungs, maybe he'd be okay. He put his hands against his dad's chest and prayed to any god or ghost who might be out there that the foam in the water wouldn't resist intangibility. Someone must have been listening.

An instantly later, Dad's eyes snapped open, and he was coughing and spluttering and shouting, "Ghost!"

—

"Ghost! Ghost boy!" Jack shouted.

He barely registered being flat on his back on wet concrete when he jumped up and wrestled the ghost boy into submission, grappling him on the ground. The ghost boy didn't fight back. Perhaps he knew it would be futile. After all, Jack Fenton was not a ghost hunter to sneeze at; just ask his wife.

"Danny!" he called out, excited. "Danny I caught the ghost boy! I caught Danny Phantom!"

His head swiveled around, looking for his son's black hair and white jumpsuit, but he was nowhere to be seen. He called out again, looked harder, but there was no answer, and Danny was gone.

"What have you done to my son, spook!" Jack snarled. "You have one chance to tell me what you did before it tear you apart molecule by molecule, scientific progress be damned. If you hurt my son in any way, I'll pay it back to you a hundred times over."

"Dad... it's me," said the ghost boy, and in a flash of white light, the figure in Jack's arms transformed. "I'm your son."

And there was Danny, soaked to the bone, with ecto-foamer stains on the brand new jumpsuit his father had lovingly sewn for him, and Jack had never been happier or more confused to see him. He released the grapple and let his son stand up and take off his gloves to wring the water out.

"Danny?" Jack asked. "You're... you're the ghost boy? You're Danny Phantom? but how?"

Danny looked around nervously, but Jack already knew that all the water park patrons had gone, and the employees were hiding and cowering.

"The portal," he said. "I'm not contaminated with ectoplasm, it... changed me." He swallowed visibly and looked up at Jack with fear in his eyes. "Are you mad?"

Jack stepped forward and his breath hitched when he saw the way his son flinched back at the movement.

"No, Danny," he said, and he strode forward again and wrapped his boy up in a big bear hug. "How could I be mat at you for something like that? That's not your fault! If anything it's... it's mine."

He realized as he said it how true it was. It was his carelessness that caused the portal to activate when Danny went inside it. He should have disconnected the power. He should have put caution tape over the opening, or closed the doors. He shouldn't have been letting his son down into the lab when there was an experiment that big in progress at all. All the guilt that had plagued him since the accident first happened was suddenly coming back tenfold. He felt like he was drowning for the second time today.

"Oh Danny, it's all my fault," Jack insisted. "If I were less careless, if I were a better engineer, this wouldn't have happened to you.

"No, it's not your fault. I should have known better than to mess around with your experiments. It was just an accident. And in the end, it gave me the power to save you from being drowned by that ghost today, so I don't regret anything."

"Are you okay? That ghost didn't hurt you, did it?"

"Dad, I'm fine," Danny said. "The foam in the water stung a little, but I'm really okay."

"The foam... but you're still covered in it!"

"It's okay, Dad, really! It kinda just feels like licking a D battery, but all over my body."

"That's not—Danny, no," Jack said, shaking his head. "This place has showers, go take one and wash that gunk off. There are spare jumpsuits in the car; I'll bring you one."

Danny nodded, and turned to go to the locker room.

"Oh, and one more thing," Jack said, causing him to pause. "I'm sorry for... grappling you, and threatening you.... If I had known it was you, I never would have done that."

"It's okay, Dad." Danny smiled at him. "It was actually kinda nice hearing the lengths you'd go to protect me. Although... it would have been nicer if you didn't say those things to Phantom all the time."

"Well, I'm sorry for that, too," Jack added.

"I forgive you," Danny said firmly, like he was trying to end this conversation. The way he shifted uncomfortably seemed to corroborate that theory. "I'm gonna go take that shower now, 'cause this stuff is starting to itch."

"Right! You go do that."

After washing off the slowly crusting foamy water, Danny changed into a regular, non-Fenton-Fabric jumpsuit, and he and Jack walked back to the GAV. The ghost proximity alarm in the vehicle blared when Danny got within three feet.

"Sorry!" Jack shouted over it, hitting the button on the key fob that turned it off. "Sorry, I forgot about that."

Danny just snorted a laugh and climbed into the passenger seat. They were both silent as they buckled up, and Jack turned the key in the ignition so they could leave.

Finally, Jack cleared his throat. "I guess the ghost hunt today is a bust."

He glanced over to see Danny's lips quirk up in a small smile. "I don't know about that. Maybe we didn't hunt down Danny Phantom like we planned, but you are technically taking him home with you. Plus," — he waved his Fenton Thermos between them — "We did manage to bag that Mariner spook, and they were pretty powerful, so all-in-all, I'd actually say we can call today's ghost hunt a success."

"You know what? You're absolutely right!" Jack agreed. "I wasn't thinking about it that way, but this was a complete success! We are the greatest ghost hunters in the world!" he bellowed. "Now you say it, nice and loud."

"We are the greatest ghost hunters in the world!" Danny shouted, laughter coloring his every word.

Yeah... today was definitely a success.

Jack didn't let the fact that it would probably be the last sour the experience for him. He didn't even bring it up until they were home, putting their gear away.

"Too bad this is the last time we'll go ghost hunting together," Jack said sadly, while he field-stripped the ecto-guns to clean them.

Danny stopped cleaning the water out of his wrist ray, cotton swap frozen an inch away from it. "What? Why?"

"Well... I just thought that you wouldn't want to anymore, since you're kind of a ghost yourself," Jack said. "Obviously we don't know as much about ghosts as we thought we did, if you can be one and still be... you are still human, aren't you?"

"Yeah, but... that doesn't mean we have to stop hunting ghosts all together," Danny said, sounding a little downtrodden at the prospect. In fact, he sounded like he felt quite the same as Jack did about the two of them not hunting ghosts together anymore. "I mean, I hunt ghosts all the time when I go out as Danny Phantom, that's like, the main thing I use my powers for, actually."

"Really? Why?"

"Well I can't just let them go around town causing chaos, can I?" Danny pointed out. "They may not be like, evil, but they can't die, and they don't tend to think about the consequences of their actions, so they cause trouble, sometimes even when they're not trying to, and someone's gotta stop them."

"So... you just go out and hunt ghosts on your own? What do you do with them?"

"I guess... catch and release?" Danny said. "I catch them in the Fenton Thermos and then release them into the Ghost Zone where they can't hurt anyone. They'll come back sometimes, but I just catch 'em again."

For a long moment, Jack just stared at his son, watched as the boy's shoulders slowly shrunk down with anxiety as he waited for Jack to say something.

Then he started to laugh, a deep, powerful laugh, that echoed against all the steel and concrete in the lab.

"My son's a ghost hunter!" he crowed and he got up and lifted his son in another bear hug, swinging him around like a rag doll in joy. "Oh, Danny-boy, I'm so proud of you! Tomorrow we're gonna go ghost hunting again, and we're gonna catch tons of ghosts and send 'em back to the Ghost Zone! The Fenton boys won't stop that easy!"

Danny laughed with him, much higher pitched, but just as giddy. "We're the greatest ghost hunters in the world!" he cheered, and Jack repeated the declaration at the top of his lungs.

They did, eventually, get back to cleaning and putting away all their equipment. Jack washed Danny's new jumpsuit so he could wear it again tomorrow, they went out to get celebratory hamburgers for dinner this time, a happy change from their usual self-pity hamburgers they got after ghost hunting trips. It was the same hamburger, but it tasted like victory!

Then they both went to bed, and Jack could barely sleep a wink in his excitement for tomorrow.

—

That morning, both father and son were up bright and early, dressed in their Fenton Works Jumpsuits, and once again loading up the GAV with weapons and ghost hunting equipment. Soon enough, they were rocketing out of the garage in a screech of tires and a cloud of dust, chowing down on beef jerky and fudge for breakfast.

"Are you ready to hunt some ghosts?" Jack asked his son.

Danny grinned and transformed in a flash of light. "You bet I am!"

Thank goodness he'd reminded his father not to turn of the ghost proximity alarm or the internal automatic defense systems in the GAV, otherwise that little maneuver wouldn't have gone over as well.

They weren't hunting any ghost in particular, unlike yesterday, but there were always miscellaneous ghosts around Amity Park just waiting to be captured and sent home.

"Spectral Sub-sonar is picking up ghost activity downtown... looks like the mall," Danny said, and he gripped the safety handle tightly as the vehicle banked left to head downtown.

"I don't see any running and screaming," Jack observed when they got there. Through the glass doors at the front of the mall everything looked calm. "Do you think they're overshadowed?"

"Maybe," Danny said. "Or maybe the ghost isn't inside the mall."

Jack looked down at the sub-sonar screen in the dashboard. "Looks like the ghost is around back."

"I'll fly ahead and see what I can see inside," Danny suggested. "You drive a lap around the mall?"

"Good thinking," Jack said. "Don't forget to put on your Fenton-phones."

Danny nodded and did so, "Check," before phasing through the roof of the GAV to look for ghostly activity in the mall, turning invisible before he went inside.

"See anything?" Jack asked through the Fenton-phones.

"Not yet," Danny replied. "I'm pretty sure these people aren't overshadowed, though. I can't sense any ghosts in here, and they're acting way too naturally for it to be ghosts pretending to be shoppers. I'm heading to the far end now."

"Copy that, Dann-o. I'm on the far side now and so far—wait..." there was something going on just ahead, and Jack pulled the GAV to a hard stop. He could see that eerie glow that always accompanied ghosts wherever they went, and floating boxes. "I see the bogey! East loading dock!"

"On my way!"

Jack grabbed the Jack-o-Nine-Tails to subdue the ghost and got out of the GAV. He walked toward the loading dock with purpose, and by the time he arrived there, Danny flew through the wall to fight with him. They were close enough to see the ghost now, a familiar one at that.

"Beware!" The ghost shouted. "I am the Box Ghost! I am the master of all things cardboard and square! You do not stand a chance against my corrugated destruction! Nor the various stock and wares of..." he looked at the packing labels on the boxes he was floating around. "The GAP!"

Jack made to whip the ghost with his Jack-o-Nine-Tails, but the ghost just threw a slew of cardboard boxes, blocking each of the tendrils. It made for a good distraction, though, and Danny was able to hit the spook with one of his... what at he called it? One of his ghost rays, stunning the ghost.

"Dad, Fenton Thermos!" Danny called out, and shot a continuous beam at the Box Ghost.

Jack fumbled a bit getting the thermos into his hands, but Danny held on plenty long enough for his father to take aim and capture the ghost inside it.

"Got him!" Jack announced, capping the thermos proudly.

The two of them returned to the GAV where they high-fived each other for a job well done and tore out of the mall parking lot before anyone could blame them for the damage the Box Ghost had done.

"You know, Danny-boy, we make a pretty fantastic team," Jack observed, "whether you're a human or a ghost. A spectacular father-son duo!"

Danny chuckled. "Yeah... you know, actually, I was terrified about what would happen when I told you I was Phantom. Even though I knew you would love me no matter what, I was still scared that you would treat me differently afterwards. But, actually, I'm enjoying this way more than I thought I would."

"Oh, Danny," was Jack's sympathetic reply. "Well, you know what? I'm enjoying working with the ghost boy a lot more than I thought I would, too. So let's just enjoy this together!"

"Yeah!"

"After all, we're the greatest ghost hunters in the world!"

Danny laughed heartily and repeated the phrase.

"We're the greatest ghost hunters in the world!"

After that, the two of them kept on driving around, searching for ghosts. Luckily, there wasn't a lot of traffic for some reason, so Jack had plenty of room on the roads. Most of the day was pretty quiet, but they did manage to catch a pair of ectopusses before they decided to call it for the day and head home.

Danny changed back into his human form so they could drive thru at Nasty Burger on their way back, and the two boys were in excellent spirits as they turned onto their street.

At least, they were until they saw who was standing there, on their front porch, glaring furiously.

It seemed Jazz and Maddie had come home early. And Maddie did not seem too pleased to find her husband and sun driving home in a fully armed and activated Ghost Assault Vehicle.

[underforeversgrace]

i love you (don't kill me)

Title: i love you (don't kill me)

Words: 4591

Warnings: Major Character Death, (semi) Graphic Depictions of Violence

Prompts:

Sherry_A_H: Tearing up Phantom molecule by molecule is something the Fentons will regret for the rest of their lives.

Nocturnal Starr: Maddie struggles to come to terms with Danny being Phantom.

Astatia Ghast: When Danny’s body is purged of ectoplasm, he begins to waste away. It turns out the Accident changed his body so completely that he can no longer survive without ectoplasm.

Even with as many times as it’s been explained to her, Maddie still just can’t understand. She can’t grasp her son, her black-haired, blue-eyed little boy, being Phantom. It just wasn’t possible. It wasn’t.

Maddie leaned back in her chair, rubbing her gloved hand across her tired face as the heart monitor beeped steadily. At least they were able to handle this at home. Express fake concern that it was high level ectoplasmic contamination, that he couldn’t be admitted to a general hospital because of it. But there was nothing to be done, was there? Not anymore. She and Jack had gone too far, messed up too severely this time.

Maddie just sat there, listening to the monitor. Danny’s heartbeat was far too slow. Even his friends had said this was lower than his normal. Well, Tucker had advised them of that. Sam refused to speak to them. Even Tucker had been short and to the point in his response, his voice cold and hard.

Jazz had been the one to fill them in, Tucker nor Sam could be in the same room as Maddie and Jack for longer than a few seconds, far too little time to go over the events of the past two years. Jazz couldn’t bear to look at her parents either, though. She hated them. Maddie could find no kindness or softness in her daughter’s face anymore, no hint of love for them. And she found she couldn’t blame Jazz for her reaction.

They all knew what Jack and Maddie had done.

A small alarm trilled from her pocket, pulling Maddie back to the room. The blue room with the stars on the ceiling and model rockets littered on shelves along the walls. The blue room with the hospital bed, with her dying son.

She pulled the timer out from her pocket, silencing it with a button press.

“Time for another injection?” A male voice asked behind her, near the door.

The man was named Michaels, he was a bodyguard Sam had hired to watch over Danny, because Sam didn’t trust his parents alone with him. While Maddie could hold her own against most people, Michaels was not one of them. He was an even more skilled black belt than she, an even better shot with the human gun at his hip.

He was a stranger in her son’s bedroom, he was an unwelcome figure in her family’s suffering.

He was her son’s protector while she had been his executioner.

Maddie sighed. “Yes, it is.”

“The red one again?”

“No, the blue one.”

“Is it really already time for the blue one again? He’s already had one in the past twenty four hours.” Michaels responded, his voice light but his eyes narrowed at her in distrust. He didn’t know the full story - what Danny was, exactly what his parents had done to him - but he was no fool. Then again, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize something was wrong when he’d been explicitly told to keep an eye on Maddie and Jack.

“He… he didn’t stabilize with that one this morning. Normally, he has an increase in his vital signs - his heart rate, oxygen levels, temperature - but he had none of that. No use in giving a booster when the shot didn’t take.” Maddie replied, her heart clenching in her chest. 

Her eyes strayed to the bedside table, where a small present wrapped in starry paper sat. Her little Danny had turned sixteen eight days ago. He’d been in a coma for ten. He’d never open that present, would he? See the car they’d bought for him? The keys sat in that little box - a singular key with a NASA emblem on the keychain, to an older model car they’d parked at the Mansons’.

Tears pricked at the mother’s eyes and she blinked them away before they could fall. She still held onto hope that Danny would suddenly awake, happy and healthy and whole in whatever way he wanted, and she didn’t want him to see her crying.

“Here,” Michaels said, handing a syringe over to Maddie. Thick red liquid seemed to bubble in the glass, or was it a gas? Ectoplasm was such an odd thing. Michaels shot her a firm nod then stepped back by the dresser, locking the case with the chemicals back up. Yet another safeguard for Danny’s life, at risk from his parents. Their concoction had been tested by ectologists even more renowned than the Fentons, to make sure it would not harm a ghost. It was kept in a locked case and only the other scientists were allowed to formulate more, based on what Maddie and Jack had created. She never touched them except when it was time for one.

Did the Fentons even count as ectologists, Maddie wondered? Or just monsters with guns, shooting down and destroying anything that didn’t fall on the ‘right’ side of the alive/dead binary?

Maddie popped the protective cover off the needle, turning Danny’s arm so the crook of his elbow looked up at her - covered in bruises and needle marks from where she’d been desperately trying to save him.

Ironic, isn’t it? Maddie had fantasized about doing this to Danny Phantom. About strapping him to a table, cutting him open, injecting every possible substance under the sun into his arm to see how his spectral body would react. She’d already known she would have to ignore the creature’s screams. Not sentient. Not able to feel pain. Not able to die when he was already dead.

Her and Jack had discussed the best ways to slice him open - though, then, they’d still been calling Phantom an it - without destabilizing him. They didn’t want his core to give out before they’d even started, after all. They’d wanted to carve off chunks of Phantom’s ‘fake’ skin, rip their way into whatever he had in his chest cavity. Wanted to cut and take samples and biopsies from every inch of the ghost, inside and out. And it would’ve all started with a simple shot, wouldn’t it? Some sort of suppressant to keep the ghost’s abilities at bay.

So, no, Maddie couldn’t be upset at how her daughter and her son’s friends were acting.

She’d gotten her dream. She just hadn’t realized it could ever be a nightmare.

But this was definitely a nightmare she was in, a hell of her own making, as she gently pressed the needle into him, piercing through flesh and injecting the mixture into him. She looked at the monitor connected to him, all the wires measuring all the signs of life in him, desperate to see an improvement.

But there was nothing. He hadn’t reacted. He was just as still, looked just as dead.

Pain pierced her through the heart as she collapsed back into her seat - she would’ve almost sworn she’d been stabbed, the pain felt so real, so tangible. This was their last idea. Human blood supercharged with ectoplasm, with enough electricity going through it to take out a city block, to try to make them bind together, to mimic what they’d stolen from Danny.

But it failed. They had failed. She had failed. How could this be happening? It just wasn’t possible. It wasn’t. How could they have messed up so badly?

“We’ve got it, Mads!” Jack yelled, running to the glowing form on the ground.

“Nice shot, dear!” Maddie called, a wide grin across her face as the two ghost hunters caught up with their prey.

Danny Phantom looked up at them through the net, eyes unfocused, mouth moving without sound.

“It worked! Whatever brain pattern it has mimicked isn’t working!” Jack said, proudly hoisting the overly large gun onto his shoulder, beaming at his wife. 

“The Fenton Scrambler might just be one of our best inventions!” She said, clapping her hands together as her husband grabbed the net and began dragging it behind them, back towards the GAV. Maddie opened the rear doors and Jack tossed the ghost in. It made a noise and placed a hand against its head, slightly shaking its head, doing a very good job of mimicking confusion.

Jack and Maddie hopped into their seats and Jack floored it, sending them flying back towards their home, tossing any and all driving safety recommendations out the window.

Within minutes, they were home, their catch unloaded and dragged down to the lab, still unable to speak. Unceremoniously, Jack tossed the ghost into a containment block at the corner of the lab, all sides blocked by phase proof glass.

“Hmph, Danny still hasn’t done his chores!” Jack whined, looking at the messy lab. The table they needed was half buried under old, never finished inventions. Mess covered every flat surface - from old pizza boxes to ectoplasm and everything in between.

“We’ll remind him when he gets home!” Maddie said, kissing Jack on the cheek. They began to clean, both shaking with excitement.

Maddie kept glancing over at the corner, licking her lips in anticipation. The ghost seemed to be getting some of its limited faculties back, the net had slipped off when it’d been tossed in. It pressed a hand against its eyes and wrapped the other arm around its center. It’s ability to pretend to be human was so impressive! She wondered if its insides would be as impressive. Was it so desperate to appear human that the illusion would go beneath its faux skin? Would there be bones? Kidneys? An appendix? How cold was it? Would it be colder inside?  Butterflies fluttered around in her stomach, excited anxiety burrowing deep into her very being.

Taking far longer than she would have liked, they got the lab in a semi-acceptable state. The table was cleaned off, the scalpels and syringes were sat on trays to the side, and the rest of the mess was, uh, out of sight and therefore out of mind.

“It’s time!” Maddie hollered, jetting towards the door of the containment area, her hand resting on the handle. “Hit the ghost shield!”

Jack hurried over to the side wall and slammed his fist onto a comically large button with his face on it. The sound of machinery whirring and then the ghost shield encased them, an eerie green that made the air beyond the bubble look fuzzy. Jack held up another gun, ready to shoot at the ghost if needed. Maddie was better at hand to hand so she would be the one getting in close contact with Phantom, Jack would provide back up with an ecto-grenade (that had an area of effect even larger than the room, it was physically impossible for even Jack to completely miss).

They nodded to each other and Maddie threw open the door.

Phantom looked at her, pushing itself to its feet, eyes still unfocused.

“Mom?” It asked, the otherworldly echo sounding out of place for such a simple word.

“Excuse me?” Maddie asked, bewilderment temporarily replacing excitement.

“Mom?” It asked again, stumbling forward. A cold hand grabbed her forearm as Phantom continued to look around, confusion painted heavily onto its face. “What’s going on? I feel weird.”

Maddie turned to look at Jack, wondering if she was hallucinating, but the look on Jack’s face mirrored her own emotions.

The ghost groaned, releasing its grip on her and collapsing to its knees, holding its head in both hands, partially out of the containment cube.

“Phantom, what are you-“ Maddie started, but was cut off as bright white lights encircled Phantom’s waist. She heard Jack begin to charge the gun up, though he didn’t fire as the light seemed to split harmlessly, only changing the clothes between the rings as they moved.

She had exactly zero idea how she was supposed to react when Phantom vanished, her son in his place.

“Mom?” Danny asked, the echo gone. “What’s happening…?” The sentence trailed off as he looked up at her. Maddie’s jaw clenched as she saw his eyes - radioactive green.

“Jack, get the Fenton Ghost Catcher!” Maddie barked, grabbing Danny’s arm and jerking him up. Jack nodded wordlessly, concern and fear etched on his face as he ran towards the sub basement, where they’d stored the Ghost Catcher while they made upgrades to it.

Danny yelped in pain as she pulled him up roughly and her chest tightened. She never wanted to hear that sound again. But that did seem to pull Phantom out of whatever haze it had been in - Danny’s voice didn’t sound as confused when he? it? spoke again. “Mom, what are you doing?” He called, trying to dislodge her grip from him, pulling weakly. 

“Get out of my son, Phantom.” Maddie hissed.

“What? I’m not overshadowed! It’s me, Danny!” Her son insisted, doubling up his efforts to escape her grasp. That net must have worked even better than they’d expected since Phantom had hidden itself inside a human. A human would be having a severe headache, nausea, and persistent confusion. But her ‘son’ had recovered too fast. This wasn’t her son, her son was being used as a puppet.

“I don’t know what kind of weird overshadowing ability you have to completely change forms, but get. Out. Of. My. Son.” She hissed the last few words.

“No, no, no, no! It’s me, Danny, there was an accident and I’m half ghost and that’s why I have two forms and why all your inventions lock on me and -“ He began stuttering. Maddie tightened her grip on his arm, pulling him roughly towards her as she grabbed his other arm as well.

“How long have you been in my son?” She growled, holding him tight enough to bruise. But Phantom would protect her son. It was a side effect of overshadowing - the human host got the ghostly parasite’s durability. “Our weapons have been honing in on him for two years, how long have you held him?”

“No! It’s not like that! Please just listen or ask my friends or Jazz! We’re - I’m - the same person! C’mon, even the name is a pun! Fenton? Phantom?” Danny was babbling now, fear etched into his eyes. Maddie stared into his blue eyes, that for some reason now seemed to be flecked with green when she was this close, anger building up in her. That was her son’s fear she saw, the fear she’d continue to allow Phantom to possess him and strip away his free will.

It was then that Jack lumbered back up the stairs, Ghost Catcher in hand. He brought it over to where they stood, sitting it beside Maddie and the ghost, pressing a newly added on button. They’d made adjustments to it - it would purge all ectoplasm from the human body. Who knew how much ectoplasmic contamination her son had after two years under a ghost’s control? She hated herself in that moment - what kind of mother doesn’t realize her son has been taken over by a malevolent spirit? For two entire years? She’d make it right, she’d fix this.

Danny’s eyes widened. Of course, that’s how Phantom knew about all of their weapons and other inventions! It had heard them talking around the dinner table! It knew the Catcher had been improved!

“Dad, mom, stop! Just listen to me! Please!” Danny yelled, clawing at Maddie’s hands. That must be her true son shining through - forcing his much lower strength over Phantom’s so she couldn’t be dislodged. “That’ll kill me!” He screamed as Maddie pushed him towards the device, Jack’s face uncharacteristically solemn. Even he knew they had messed up, they had missed something huge for so long. “Please, stop!” He continued, tears starting to streak down his face. Maddie wasn’t sure if it was Phantom trying to pull on her sympathies or her Danny crying in joy that he’d finally be free of this monster. She hated that she couldn’t tell.

“Everything is gonna be okay, Danny,” she whispered in his ear.

“Stop!” He called out again. Maddie pinched at a pressure point in his neck and he went limp in her arms.

Gently, she and Jack passed Danny through the center of the Catcher and watched in horror as Phantom split from him, liquid ectoplasm dripping to the floor. How much ectoplasm had Danny had in him? Both were still unconscious.

Maddie carefully sat her sleeping son on a nearby chair, smiling as she watched his chest rise and fall as he breathed. Meanwhile, Jack bound Phantom to the table, triple checking that all of the restraints were tight enough. Both parents were angry at this stupid ghost, this awful, horrible creature that had stolen their son from them for so long.

Jack shoved some fabric into the ghost’s mouth, pressing phase proof tape along the outside to keep it in his mouth.

The ghost awoke before their son did. It cried its fake tears, screaming behind the gag as they took out both their revenge and scientific curiosity out on its body. They sliced and diced as much as they wanted, amazed by the exciting specimen in front of them. At one point, Maddie moved her scalpel towards its eyes, holding eye contact for longer than necessary. As pain reflected in its eyes, Maddie found herself questioning her conviction that ghosts couldn’t feel pain. She lowered her scalpel and began excising the eye, viciously hoping this ghost could feel pain, could feel every incision they were making.

They had ripped apart over half the ghost’s body before it finally stopped fighting and went limp in its restraints.

The joy of righteous vengeance enacted brought her so much pride, made even more delicious by finally getting to live out her fantasy on Phantom. It had always been an odd ghost, different in ways they couldn’t understand.

It wouldn’t be until Jazz came home several hours later and found them in the lab that they realized what they might have done when she explained through sobs, her hands covered in ectoplasm from where she’d ran to the table, screaming Danny’s name.

When Danny never woke up, however, they realized what they’d done, just as how much they’d messed up. They hadn’t listened. They hadn’t thought of all the times they’d seen Danny go through ghost shields, how Phantom had grown older with Danny. They’d never even stopped to consider what if they were wrong.

Maddie felt the wet soil beneath her knees, felt the chill settling into her bones as it seeped through her pants. She hadn’t worn her suit since the monitor went off for the last time, since the coroner had come out for her son’s body. Pain, grief, had settled like lead in her chest. She had no more tears left to cry as she gazed at the headstone in front of her.

Daniel James “Danny” Fenton

April 3, 1993 - July 19, 2009

A beloved hero and cherished son

They’d chosen to release the truth after Danny had passed away, so his DP insignia also was engraved onto the stone, above his name. They’d lied about his cause of death. He died from ghost fighting, after being poisoned. His parents, who loved him more than anything in the world and were among the world’s leaders in ghost science, had immediately dedicated themselves to saving him, no matter the cost. Only those closest to Danny knew the truth, and even then, only his parents knew the extend of it. Knew his last words were pleading with them to stop, that they were going to kill him. Knew that they had tortured another part of him to death. Only Maddie knew she’d taken joy in his suffering.

Jazz had informed them she would not be speaking with them again, to not reach out to her, ever. Sam and Tucker made it clear the only reason they weren’t telling the cops Jack and Maddie’s negligence had actually caused Danny’s death was because they knew he wouldn’t want that. He would blame himself for not telling them. For letting himself get caught.

Maddie had had to come to terms with a lot since the day Danny first went into the coma. She’d had to accept she was wrong. Phantom was a hero. Her son was selfless and kind, and she’d been too prejudiced to see Phantom was so, so good.

Thunder cracked in the sky above her, rain began to fall softly. But she didn’t move. The cemetery was quiet.

The funeral had been yesterday and it had just been too much. Fans of Phantom, people who had come to send off a dead ghost. Originally, Maddie had been so angry. How dare these people? Her son was dead, why were they talking about a damned ghost? But that ghost had been her son. She’d lost count of the number of speakers, all the stories of what Danny had done as Phantom.

Employees of a daycare that had caught fire, saved by Phantom. She had written that off as Phantom’s intelligence - he knew saving children would make him look good.

An elderly woman who’s home had been targeted by missiles from Skulker, the only reason it hadn’t been made into wreckage had been Phantom throwing a shield at the last moment. But he hadn’t gotten out of that unscathed - he’d gotten struck and bled green all over her front porch. Maddie had written that one off, too. That ghost was only here to attack Phantom regardless and Phantom had only caught that missile because he’d forgotten to go intangible, like he’d done dozens of times before. Now Maddie wondered if that had been intentional, though. All the times he’d gotten blasted out of the sky - his body would cause much less damage than some of the projectiles the other ghosts would use.

Someone from the local Observatory, who would sometimes see Phantom stargazing. Who’d talked to him and realized he was just a kid who loved the stars, who saw the way Phantom’s cheeks glowed like constellations the more he saw or discussed he stars.

A jock from Casper High, who had mercilessly bullied her son, who now knew how easily he could’ve died if his target had ever fought back, but Phantom - but Danny - was good and had used his powers for good.

Sam and Tucker had gone together, telling stories of Danny, showing the child behind the hero. They never specified Danny Fenton or Danny Phantom when they talked about him. Because there was no difference. It was always Danny. Just Danny.

A thought that routinely haunted her. Those had been some of the last words of his life and they played on repeat in her mind.

A police officer from the local station was outside the cemetery - to guard Danny’s grave in case any of his few detractors tried to hurt his grave. Even the police loved Phantom, it seemed. He helped in a lot of traffic accidents. And the officer had assured her someone would be there around the clock for a while.

Maddie had no doubt that the only reason she was able to be here - alone, kneeling in front of her child’s grave - was because the officer had kept fans and haters alike out.

She leaned forward, pressing her forehead against the cold, smooth stone. Apparently she wasn’t quite out of tears, she realized, as she began to cry again.

“Are you alright?” Came a familiar voice behind her. She whipped around, unwilling to believe it until she saw it.

There, with a little half smile on his face, floated Danny Phantom, white hair dancing in a way that didn’t quite match the current breeze.

“Danny?” She breathed.

“Yep, that’s me! Do I know you?” He asked, tilting his head to the side in curiosity.

“You… you don’t… know who I am?” She asked, her voice stuttering.

“No, I’m sorry! I just heard crying and could feel you were in pain, so I wanted to make sure you were okay!” Phantom said, an easy smile on his face that Maddie recognized. Danny used to smile like that - carefree, relaxed - a long time ago. When had he last smiled like that? When he was eight or nine?

Maddie was unsure what to say. What, exactly, do you say to your dead son that you violently killed, who has no idea who you are, who just wanted to make sure a stranger in pain was okay? “I… lost someone I love.” Maddie settled on.

“Danny?” A new voice joined in. He appeared in the blink of an eye. A ghost clad in purple, clock staff in hand and clock workings in his chest. If he’d been human, Maddie would’ve thought he was nearly a hundred, as bent over as he was, long white beard nearly as long as he was tall.

“Hey, dad!” Danny chirruped, floating higher up and hugging the ghost.

Maddie’s heart felt like it had been ripped out and stomped on.

“Child,” the older ghost chastised softly, smiling, “I told you to stay near me.”

“I know,” Danny whined, drawing out the ‘o’ sound. “But this lady felt like she was in pain!”

The purple ghost ruffled Danny’s white hair. “I know. Can you head home? I will be there shortly.” He said, waving his hand almost boredly. A portal appeared where his hand passed. Danny nodded then zipped through the portal, which closed behind him immediately.

The remaining ghost turned his attention to Maddie, smile sliding away as red eyes bore into her own. Maddie fidgeted under his gaze.

“I am his guardian now. He will not be returning to this plane.” The ghost stated, answering questions she hadn’t even decided to ask yet.

“Is he…still Danny? Is he happy?”

“Yes, he is still Danny, just without his memories. Due to the…traumatic nature of his death,” the ghost scowled at her, “his life is forgotten to him and will be for many decades. You will be decaying before he remembers. But, yes. He is happy. He is still the same ghost child, still with the urge to help everyone.”

Maddie’s vision was swimming with tears. She didn’t know how to feel. She had tortured and murdered her son. But he had come back - again - as a ghost. But he didn’t know who she was, he’d never be on earth again during her lifetime.

“I… I didn’t think he’d be able to restore his ghost side.” Maddie said.

The red eyes continued to bear down on her, unblinking, as though he could see her very heart. “You only killed part of his soul. This is what remains.”

Maddie nodded, wrapping her arms around herself as the rain picked up.

“Goodbye, Madeline Fenton.” The ghost said, waving his hand like he had done before to open the portal.

“Wait!” Maddie blurted, reaching out for the ghost. The portal appeared next to him, swirling and beautiful, but he did not go in. He said nothing, waiting for her to continue. “Can…when he remembers, can you tell him how sorry we are? We love him and we will never forgive ourselves for what we did, but we are so, so sorry.”

“He knows. He may not know what he knows, but he knows you regret your actions. His love for you is the only reason I’ve brought him here, and to your husband, to give you closure.”

Maddie nodded, at a loss for what to say.

As quickly as he appeared, the clock ghost disappeared.

And Maddie was left with the rain beating down on her, soaking her, with only her son’s grave beside her.

[hailsatanacab]

WIP Tag Game

Rules: In a new post, post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

a lot can change in a month

all the most self-indulgent tropes i can fit in this here thing (uncle constantine, ghost king danny, reveal gone wrong, etc)

cadmus calling

it's a normal day for alfred pennyworth

jason is mistaken as jack (cont.)

lmao literal torture fic feat. duke the sunshine boi

you're joking, right? gala pranking turned twin reveal

you're batman? that's not a good thing - panic attack reveal

Send me an ask with a WIP number and I will ramble on, at length, about it!!!! Personally, I am currently losing my mind for numbers 1, 2, 4, and 7, they're all my daydream fuel atm 🤣

Thanks to @wolfjackle-creates for the tag!! In return, I'll tag @die-erlkonigin6083, @disillusioneddanny, @faeriekit, and @astatia-ghast if any of you would like to play!!! Happy WIP-ening!!!!

[darthfrodophantom]

Micro-Unmasking - Chapter 2

Well, I wasn't sure I was going to continue my one-shot from 2022, but I was inspired by a prompt to give it a go! So now you'll be getting a chapter 2 and a chapter 3!

Summary: Great timing prevented Danny’s secret from being revealed to Dash during their shared experience with the Fenton Crammer. But what would happen if his timing had been just a little off and Dash saw more than Danny wanted?

Phic Phight 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 - for Ikiracake

Write one of YOUR ideas that you haven't written for whatever reason. Have you been too intimidated to write it? Are you afraid people won't like it? This Phic Phight season, none of that matters. Whatever it is, put your feelings aside and give it a try, even if it's just one scene! - for @astatia-ghast

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38159509/chapters/140482114#workskin

Chapter 1 on AO3, Chapter 1 on tumblr

Chapter 2: Vexing Texting

The insistent buzz of his phone woke him up before his alarm. Danny groggily reached for the phone and managed to actually grab it after a couple failed attempts. No one ever texted him before his alarm, so it had to be important. With bleary eyes he attempted to read the new message on his phone. 

“Do you have to sleep?”

Danny groaned and threw his phone onto the mattress. It bounced off the padding and onto the floor. Danny groaned again in misery as he threw his arm over his eyes. He would regret that action later when the alarm went off and he’d have to actually get up to find his phone, but in that moment the urge to throw it in frustration felt too satisfying to deny.

~

Thirty minutes later, Danny stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom brushing his teeth. The mad scramble for his phone that somehow bounced under his bed left him cranky and even more tired and he felt a wash of pity for the exhausted face that stared at him in the mirror. His phone buzzed in his pocket and he reached for it instinctively to check the alert. He expected to see some morning alert for a new daily post from social media, maybe the long-expected update from Doomed teasing their newest expansion. 

“Why the rings of light?”

Danny groaned so hard he sprayed flecks of toothpaste onto the mirror. He rolled his eyes and dropped his shoulders in defeat. He looked at the sleeve of his pajamas, shrugged, and leaned over to wipe up the toothpaste with his shirt sleeve. Better a dirty shirt sleeve than a lecture from his sister.

He spat out his toothpaste and typed a terse, quick response before angrily thrusting his phone into his pocket. He’d already suffered through two whole days of this; he didn’t know how much more he could handle.

~

Danny jerked awake as his phone rattled and vibrated aggressively on the laminate table. His face had been inches from his cereal bowl and he almost got a bowl full of cereal to the face. Jazz snickered into her coffee mug from her seat across the table.

“How long have you been sitting there?” He really couldn’t remember if she’d been sitting there when he came down or not.

“Long enough to watch you fall asleep at the table.”

“And you were just going to what? Keep watching as I face-planted into a bowl of cereal?” he asked as he crossed his arms over his chest.

“I figured you’d wake yourself up before it got to that point,” she chuckled as she stood up to place her empty coffee mug in the sink. “You have five minutes.”

Danny rolled his eyes and picked up the spoon that fell out of his hand when he jerked awake. He shoveled cereal in his face, which really was the only way he ate cereal anymore. He remembered his phone vibrated and he knew with a sinking moment what he would find even before he turned the phone over.

“Does music sound different as a ghost?”

He dropped his spoon into his bowl and slumped against the chair with a beleaguered sigh. Yes, the text had saved him from getting a milk facial. And this time it was actually an interesting question. But he still couldn’t believe he was still having to put up with this.

“You know you can just block him,” Jazz mentioned as she grabbed his cereal bowl and rinsed out the remaining milk in the sink.

“And you know why I can’t,” Danny retorted as he typed out a short but satisfying answer. He’d become quite the expert at answering the question in as few words as possible. Really it was a shame, because this question did actually make him think, but he refused to give him the reward of a lengthy answer.

~

Danny grabbed his books from the locker. He actually smiled in pride that he could actually keep his locker in some semblance of organization now that he didn’t have to constantly ensure there was room inside his locker for his entire body. Getting a third day in a row without being shoved into his locker really was a sweet benefit from this whole situation. Too bad it came with so much mental anguish.

The feeling of his phone vibrating in his pocket wiped that proud smile off his face. He took one look at the phone and threw himself back against the locker as he looked towards the ceiling in the hope that the cosmos above could answer his unspoken questions. Why? Why him? Hadn’t he suffered enough through this whole ordeal? Why couldn’t he just stop?

“Dude, did he text you again?” Tucker asked.

Danny simply held his phone up to show his best friends the new message from Dash. “Why do you wear that jumpsuit?” he read aloud in case his friends couldn’t quite make out the words on the screen.

Tucker just shook his head. “That kid is insane. Obsessed. Nutso.”

“This is the fourth one this morning,” Danny moaned. “That weirdo even texted me before my alarm went off! Who even gets up that early? Crazy people, that’s who.”

Tucker sighed as he patted his friend’s shoulder in sympathy. “Man, I’m sorry.”

Upon finding no salvation or answers on the ceiling, Danny turned his attention toward the phone and typed out a response. “There, I told him I died in it. Let’s see if that shocks him into silence for a bit.”

Tucker stifled a laugh into his sleeve. “Have you told him any half-dead jokes yet?”

“Not yet, so I don’t think he’ll be expecting it.” His sister didn’t understand them, and sometimes Sam didn’t either, but it’s how he and Tucker coped. Sometimes it just felt easier to deal with the trauma of it all with laughter. And if he couldn’t joke about his death-that-didn’t-take, then the seriousness of the event gained a lot more power in Danny’s mind and he couldn’t quite handle that. Maybe when he was older he could find the emotional and mental maturity to seriously reflect on the consequences and meaning behind almost dying in the portal, but even a year out it still felt too close and too soon to the event.

“Why are you still even answering his texts?” Sam finally spoke up, and the sharpness in her voice reminded Danny that she hadn’t talked since he brought up the texts. He could almost feel the irritation simmering around her and he really hoped he’d be able to avoid it. “Why don’t you just stop?”

Danny sighed. Everyone seemed to think it would just be that easy to tune him out, but Danny knew better. He knew Dash better than most people gave him credit for. “Because right now it’s new and it’s all he’s thinking about. Dash doesn’t stay focused on something for long, so if I wait it out then it’ll be old news and he’ll move on.” Danny waved a hand to emphasize his point. “But if I ignore his texts, he’s only gonna focus on this even more. And then he’ll want to talk to me. Trust me, texting him is better than having him come over to talk to me.”

“So now you’re going to be all buddy-buddy with the bully who made your life hell?” Sam challenged as she placed her hands defiantly on her hips.

“The single sentence texts I send back are far from being ‘buddy-buddy,’” Danny retorted.

“You text him more than you text us!” Sam barbed.

He had the decency to look properly ashamed at that call out and he slumped against the locker. “I know. I know, and I’m sorry. But what else am I supposed to do?”

Both Sam and Tucker fell silent as they also seemed at a loss for a better handle on the situation. “I don’t know man,” Tucker finally said. “I’d probably do the same thing you’re doing.”

“I just don’t like that you feel like you have to do something you don’t want to do,” Sam sighed.

“Yeah, well when have I had any say about what I want to do since the accident?” Danny pointed out. If he had his say, he wouldn’t have to hide from his parents all the time or get injured night after night or skip class or get bad grades. He could actually get a good night’s sleep, study to be an astronaut, and maybe consider leaving Amity for school or a job in the future. What he wanted to do no longer held any meaning in his life ever since that first ghost stepped out of the portal.

The group fell silent again as the weight of that statement crashed around them. It hung heavy in the air. Sam and Tucker tried to share his burden as much as they could, and he appreciated that, but sometimes they forgot or couldn’t really understand the full impact of what being a ghostly superhero meant for the rest of his life. Danny, unfortunately, was far too aware of the consequences of that decision.

“Well now we all get to do something we don’t want to do and go to class,” Tucker pointed out as he pasted on a cheery smile. “Do we ever get to do anything we want to do as teenagers?” He elbowed Danny gently in the side, and that jab pulled Danny out of his thoughts. Trust Tucker to find some way to pull them out of the seriousness of the moment by normalizing his struggles. That heavy fog seemed to fade away in the wake of Tucker’s infectious smile, and Danny couldn’t help but smile back. 

“My parents didn’t buy the cereal I want again,” Danny complained.

“See! This is exactly what I’m talking about! No control, no choices, just a bunch of adults constantly telling us we can’t have what we want. Where’s the justice in that?” Tucker complained.

“Don’t even get me started on the dress my mom’s making me wear now to the synagogue,” Sam added. Whether she’d actually dropped the subject in her mind or not, that remained to be seen. Sam had a tendency to hold on to serious topics and ruminate on them over time. Danny could almost see those thoughts behind her deep purple eyes, but she also knew when to let it go and join in on Tucker’s attempts to lighten the mood.

They all complained about the normal, mundane things they had no control over in their lives until they made it to their first class. Danny almost forgot how they got on this subject until he saw Dash in the classroom. Dash quickly avoided his gaze and looked almost…sheepish? Talking about his death really did stun him into silence, or at least made him realize how personal these questions could be. He’d remember that for later.

~*~

Danny stuffed his newest homework assignment into his locker. He’d love to say he’d have the time to complete that, but he knew better than to hope. 

“Hey Fenton!” Dash called in his usual, threatening tone. Danny barely had enough time to spin around before Dash loomed over him. He planted one hand on the locker beside Danny’s head while his large body dwarfed Danny. He peeked around Dash and noticed the rest of the A-listers gave them a fair bit of distance as they chuckled to each other.

“Dash, what are you doing?” Danny asked with a groan when he realized they were out of earshot.

“Just wanted to say hi,” Dash said. His friendly tone contrasted sharply with his threatening pose.

“You were saying about how the texts would stop him from talking to you?” Sam pointed out from the side as she crossed her arms over her chest. Danny did not miss her triumphant smirk at being proved right.

Danny shook his head. “Dash, we talked about this.”

“No see, it’s cool,” Dash explained. “See my threatening pose? People are gonna think I’m doing my usual Fenton bashing. You wanted me to keep up appearances.”

“No, I wanted you to tell everyone that you had a change of heart after being fitness buddies and then we’d just ignore each other,” Danny reminded him.

“Well yeah, I know,” Dash said quietly, almost like he was hurt that Danny wanted to ignore him. “But then they all pointed out that I got a lower grade on the fitness exam because of you.”

Danny gritted his teeth. “I already explained why I had to do that. And I got us a passing grade.” He knew Dash was dense, but he’d already walked through this with him! Did he seriously not remember it? Or had he spent too much brain power texting him inane questions than to actually remember the plan?

“No no, I don’t care about that,” he dismissed. “I remember the plan. But everyone asked me if I was mad about it and if I was gonna do something about it. I couldn’t really think of a good excuse. So if anyone asks, I’m yelling at you for the grade.”

Danny immediately felt a pang of guilt over his harsh thoughts. Dash had been paying attention. He had been working hard to keep the secret, like he promised. He didn’t really know what to expect from the jock after threatening him on the rooftop, but so far Dash had kept up his end of the deal. When he made the ultimatum, he didn’t really think how hard it would be for Dash to keep the secret while changing his ways at the same time. This was his attempt to divert suspicion, and Danny was giving him a hard time for it. He had to remember to be better and a little more gracious going forward. Dash didn’t have to do this; he could blab the secret and only good things would happen to him. He had to be more appreciative of his attempts to keep this under wraps.

“I’ll make sure I complain about that later, just to keep up the act,” Danny promised, committing to his part to contribute to the charade.

Dash nodded. “But look, while I’m here–” 

Danny withheld a groan because here it came: more questions. More requests to engage. More talking about himself and his ghost powers than he felt like discussing with his school bully.

“--I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

That caught him by surprise, and Danny regarded him with a quizzical eye. “You do? For what? You have to be more specific given our record.”

Dash grimaced. “Well yeah. I mean obviously I’m sorry for all of that. But no, I’m sorry about the jumpsuit question. I didn’t mean to make you talk about the fact that you…you know…” He hunched over slightly like he was discussing a secret and mouthed the word ‘died.’

Danny looked taken aback and tilted his head slightly. “You’re sorry that you made me think about my death?” he repeated. He had to have heard Dash’s question wrong.

Dash winced like the word ‘death’ caused him physical harm. Danny felt another flash of guilt. Okay, maybe it was too soon for half-dead jokes with Dash too. “Dash, it’s fine,” he sighed. “I’m reminded of how I died constantly. You bringing it up doesn’t change that.”

Dash’s face creased in sympathy, and Danny felt discomfort squirm in his gut that he could earn a look of sympathy from Dash of all people. He looked like he wanted to say something else, but the sound of his friends behind him caught his attention. “Oh, right. Uh, I should probably go. Right.”

Without much warning Dash slammed his hand into the locker next to Danny’s head. The entire bank of lockers vibrated from the force of his fist. Danny jumped as the action took him completely by surprise. The moment had been so strangely heavy that he forgot they were supposed to be putting on an act. 

Dash walked back towards his friends with a swagger. They laughed once he rejoined them, and Danny could vaguely hear him boast. “Well, he won’t be getting me a C on an assignment any time soon!”

The three members of Team Phantom stood in silence as they watched Dash and the others saunter down the hall while their laughter echoed after them.

“That…was a very weird conversation,” Sam finally said. She kept her gaze down the long corridor at the A-listers’ retreating backs even when they were long out of view.

“Yeah, it was almost…normal,” Tucker added. “We don’t have normal conversations with the popular crowd. And we definitely don’t have normal conversations with Dash.”

Danny shrugged. “That’s how he was on the roof. Like a completely different person.”

“He didn’t insult you once,” Sam pointed out, as if that explained why the conversation felt so strange and off to the group. And maybe that was part of it, but there was something else that seemed off that Danny couldn’t quite place his finger on. 

Every time he talked to him, he seemed to learn more about the boy who’d bullied him for as long as he could remember. Seeing Dash care about his mental wellbeing? He didn’t quite know how to deal with that. For years, he only seemed to care about how he could add to Danny’s mental turmoil, but now he seemed so protective of it. It felt weird, seeing this different side of him. He always wondered how Dash could have so many friends and how people could actually want to hang out with him. Did they maybe see this other, more caring side of him too? Why did he all of a sudden get to see this side?

An irrational anger flared up inside of him. Why hadn’t he been able to see this side of Dash from the beginning? The side that actually seemed to care about how people felt or how they were doing with emotionally taxing information? Why wasn’t he able to see the side of Dash where he came up after a hard day and asked how he was doing? Instead he only saw the side that pushed him further into the dirt and then laughed at his misery. What had he done to deserve that part of Dash’s behavior? And why did revealing himself to be Phantom suddenly make that all go away?

The obvious answer was that he wanted to share the limelight with Phantom. Dash never made his adoration of Phantom a secret, and if he could get Danny on his good side then maybe he could be Phantom’s best friend. Surely he knew that wasn’t going to happen, right? He had been very clear about that on the rooftop. So then what caused the change in his behavior? Why did he suddenly seem to care so much about how Danny felt? It left him feeling unsettled and it stuck with him as he gathered his books and headed for their next class.

~*~

Danny startled in his chair as a puff of cold air escaped his lips. He hadn’t been sleeping, but he had been lost in his own thoughts to the point where he had barely heard anything the teacher talked about. And now he definitely wouldn’t get the chance to catch up on the day’s material. He turned towards Tucker and Sam who recognized that look and they nodded towards him. 

Tucker surreptitiously held up four fingers. Danny made a face and shook his head no. What was he thinking suggesting plan four? That only worked in English! 

Tucker furrowed his brow, but moved on and held up six fingers instead. Danny thought about it for a moment and then eagerly nodded his head. Tucker turned slightly in his chair so Sam could see the six fingers. She rolled her eyes and shook her head but mouthed the word ‘fine.’

Sam situated herself in her chair and raised her hand. “Ms. Murphy, I’m not…” She trailed off as her eyes rolled back into her head and she fell out of her desk. The whole class stood up to see what happened, Tucker and Danny included. 

“Oh my gosh Ms. Manson!” their teacher squeaked as she ran over clearly in a panic. “Someone get the nurse!”

“We’ve got her,” Tucker offered as he and Danny lifted her up and supported her weight between the two of them. “We can take her to the nurse.”

“Well go then!” Ms. Murphy berated them. They quickly made their way out of the room with Sam. As soon as they cleared the door they rushed off down the hall into the janitor’s closet. 

“Plan six? Really?” Sam snapped. “We had to go with plan six?”

“We’d never used it on her!” Tucker defended. “And hey, it worked didn’t it!”

“And my hip is going to be feeling that fall for a week!” Sam complained as she rubbed her hip bone with a wince.

Danny triggered the transformation into his ghost form. “Next time we’ll do plan seven then,” he promised. Tucker winced, but really it was only fair to make him take the fall next. “Now are you guys coming or staying?”

“We’re definitely coming,” Sam spoke up. 

He figured as much when they sacrificed so much to get out of class too. They grabbed onto him as he turned them all intangible and flew them out of the school towards the source of the ghost attack. 

He didn’t have to fly far; his ghost sense led him towards the street just outside the school. The giant ghost of a bear loped down the street as it aggressively chased after cars.

“Well that’s a new one,” Danny remarked as he set them down on the sidewalk. 

“I didn’t know bears hated cars so much,” Tucker commented.

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Tucker, it probably got killed by a car.”

Tucker winced when he realized the sense in her macabre statement.

“Well, this just took a turn for the depressing,” Danny sighed. “Much as I’d like to let it get revenge on the thing that killed it, we can’t just have ghosts attacking cars. So here’s what we’re gonna do. Sam, you--”

“Wait!” a loud voice called from behind them.

Danny winced because he didn’t need to turn around to know who that voice belonged to. He’d heard that voice yell out to him from afar for years. Even now that tone still caused his heart to jump in response. He slowly turned around in the air to face Dash who positively beamed that he caught them before their attack. “Dash, what are you doing here?” he asked with an exasperated sigh.

“I came to find you,” Dash stated.

Well, that was a given. He’d been hoping for at least a little more guidance on his true motives.

“Wait Dash, how did you even get out of class?” Tucker asked as he studied the jock with a suspicious eye.

Dash shrugged. “I’m the football quarterback - I can leave class whenever I want.”

“There’s something very unfair about that,” Tucker griped under his breath.

“Why did you come to find me?” Danny asked as he tried to get them back on topic.

“Oh, I want to help,” Dash offered. “With the ghost. Let me help.”

“No,” Tucker vehemently denied. 

“Hell no,” Sam added with all the spite she could possess.

“No way.”

“Absolutely not.”

“It’s not happening.”

“Never ever.”

Danny raised a hand to stop their increasingly emphatic denials; they made their point and he could see how each one tore further into Dash. Maybe Dash didn’t care how his words hurt others, but that didn’t mean he had to stoop to the same level. “Dash, I know you’re a fan. I know you want to help, but we’ve got this.” 

“I know you do. You’ve always got it. Phantom always figures it out in the end. But I really think I can help,” Dash offered again undeterred.

Danny sighed. “We talked about this Dash,” he tried to say in as delicate a way as possible, but he was losing his patience with the jock. “You bullied me for years. You’ve embarrassed me, hurt me, got me in trouble, and destroyed my school projects for years. You don’t get to just all of a sudden be here like none of that happened just because you know the secret.”

Dash recoiled like he’d been physically assaulted. He ran a hand along his arm as he folded in on himself and actually looked small for once. It was unnerving to see him with such little confidence. “Yeah...yeah I know that. But that’s why I want to help. I want to make up for it because…” Dash paused for a long, uncomfortable moment “...because I feel bad about it, okay?”

“You feel bad about it now, because you think Danny’s cool now,” Sam pointed out, voice full of venom. As much as Danny would have liked to take Dash’s statement at face value, he had to agree with Sam that he couldn’t really trust the reasons behind this newfound revelation. Phantom and Dash just had this team up against a pretty powerful ghost, and he probably thought that since he was in the know that could become a consistent trend. But there was more to being a part of Team Phantom than just knowing the secret at the core of their group, and Dash hadn’t earned his place there yet.

Dash withdrew even further as his shoulders sank. He wrapped his other arm around his torso. He looked strangely vulnerable in a way that Danny had never seen. “That’s not—I know that’s how it looks. But it just made me think. See, I didn’t know you’d died and went through all this,” he tried to explain as he gestured towards Danny’s floating form. “And I kept bullying you. You had so much else going on, and I kept bullying you. And I shouldn’t have done that. Phantom or not. I think...I think I can see that now. I didn’t really care what you were dealing with, and maybe I should have.”

Dash bit his lip but he plunged on through his explanation of recent self-reflection. “I want to make it up to you. I can help.”

Danny shifted nervously in the air. He didn’t really know what to say after such a declaration. He really appreciated that Dash had given some thought to being a bully and came to the conclusion it was wrong. Granted he only took the time to think about it because now Danny seemed worthy enough to understand. If Dash had decided to think about his side of things at any time he probably would have come to this realization sooner, but it hadn’t seemed worthwhile until now. But did the injustice of the timing taint or negate his conclusions? He still realized that bullying had caused Danny additional undo stress, and he didn’t want to discourage him from thinking about that more. 

But at the same time, did that mean he had to now work with his former tormentor? He shouldn’t have to work with him to help him engage further in his journey of self-discovery, and yet that felt like the only option available to him. If he let Dash join Team Phantom, maybe he could help him be a better person. But did Dash really deserve that time and effort after everything he’d done? Couldn’t he use what he’d already realized and figure out the rest on his own? He didn’t quite know how to turn Dash down while still inspiring him to keep traveling down this road of self-discovery. He had to find some middle ground.

“Look Dash, I’m glad this is making you see the error of your ways, and I really hope you keep thinking more about bullying,” Danny said honestly, “but we have a system. We’ve got this handled.”

Dash looked crestfallen as his shoulders drooped. “I promise I won’t get in the way,” he bargained, and Danny just wished that he would just understand what no meant. He’d heard it multiple times in the past couple minutes, so why couldn’t he get the hint?

“Dash, if you want to help, right now the best thing you can do is to let us handle it. The longer we talk the more cars that bear goes after. You want to help? Let me go fight this ghost and then we can talk about it after.”

He didn’t really give Dash a chance to argue further as he charged after the bear ghost. Maybe he’d be able to think of something to say to Dash while he fought the ghost, but he doubted it. He didn’t really know how much more clear he could be. He rammed the ghost in the side and sent it flying down the road. It skidded across the pavement and Danny winced at the thought that maybe the bear had experienced that sensation before he died. He’d have to thank Sam later for implanting that thought into his head. The bear stood up and roared at him as its eyes blazed red.

“Looks like I got your attention,” he joked weakly. The bear barreled towards him and he shot as many ecto-blasts as he could at it before he dodged out of the way. He rolled on the ground and immediately popped back up to shoot another blast at the bear as he tried to turn around. He didn’t know if he was hurting it or angering it further, but his attacks seemed to be doing something.

He dodged out of the way of another charge but misjudged the direction as his dodge threw him too close to the ghost. It quickly closed the distance and swiped a ghostly claw along his back. Danny choked out a cry of pain as blood and ectoplasm seeped out from his cuts, but he pushed through the pain like always. He took advantage of being so close and punched the bear in the muzzle before he threw all his strength into one large ecto-blast to the belly. It pushed the bear away and he took that opportunity to suck the ghost into the thermos. 

He breathed out a sigh of relief as he stood up from the ground. He looked over at his friends - not surprised to see Dash still there - and shook the thermos in their direction. “Well that was bearable. Get it? Bear-able?” His friends only groaned, but he did notice Dash crack a smile. “Oh come on, how come you never appreciate my–”

A large gray shape slammed into Danny. The force of the blow sent him flying through the air until he hit the pavement hard in the distance as the asphalt cracked beneath him. He rolled along the pavement until he skidded to a stop in the middle of the road. He didn’t move.

[lexosaurus]

Ok I never do these tag games but I'm like eh what the heck I wanna ramble!

Previous thread was super long so I'm making this its own post.

Tagged by @going-getting-got-ghost (obsessed with ur username btw)

Currently reading: In between books! Just finished rereading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir because I needed something lighter and fun (after reading Jennette McCurdy’s autobiography which can I just say GOD DAMN). About to start reading (tonight!) A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Naas because one of my good friends recommended it!

Favorite Color(s): Purple and black

Last Song: According to Spotify it was Îles by Jordan Critz from my “Orchestral S Tier” playlist

Last Movie: John Wick (the first one) with my bf. Called it “the male gaze on screen” and he laughed.

Sweet/Spicy/Savory: SWEET

Currently Working On: Finishing up writing Chapter 21 of Everything Was White! Excited to post it!

Tag 9 blogs! @reallydumbdannyphantomaus @kinglazrus @wastefulreverie @qlinq-qhost @underforeversgrace @astatia-ghast @bibliophilea @ectopusses @duchi-nesten

[jackdaw-sprite]

Got tagged for this game by @ectoentity and @echoghost1. Thanks for the tag! (sorry it took me a bit -- I was frantically trying to finish some Funerary Rites chapters)

RULES: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

Well well well. For my own sanity, I'm going to use only gdocs stuff, and I'm only going to use things I'm doing solo and only docs with unposted narrative in them, so pure planning docs and working draft docs with only summaries and outlines are out. Also out: docs with redundant information (either already posted, or chapter final drafts that match what's in a working draft document)

That leaves me with:

Icebox

A Goodbye In Two Parts

Star Nursery

Adoption (Draft)

Spider Brains - The Wristwatch

Funerary Rites - Day 2 working draft

Ectober 20 - Fight

Fine - Working Draft

fic-bits

Nine entire people is a stretch, but let's see if I can do it. Feel free to ignore if you've already been tagged or if the vibes aren't quite right, etc.

@datawyrms, because I know what your WIP folder looks like and it will be funny.

@strawberrycamel @seaglass-skies @astatia-ghast @tourettesdog @underforeversgrace @reading-wanderer @modordracena @ovytia

[bibliophilea]

Psst this mutual likes you and your blog *blush* okay bye

Awwwwwwwwww thank you so much!!

I like you and your blog, too! ::D

[jadenoryuu]

Chapters: 2/3 Fandom: Danny Phantom Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Danny Fenton & Frostbite Characters: Danny Fenton, Frostbite (Danny Phantom), Penelope Spectra, Sam Manson, Tucker Foley, Jazz Fenton, Jack Fenton, Maddie Fenton, Dash Baxter, Valerie Gray, Undergrowth (Danny Phantom) Additional Tags: Emotional Ghost Hunger, Empathy, Empath Danny, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Danny, Starvation, Frostdad, Adoption, Foster Parent Frostbite, Fenton's B- parenting, they're trying tho, Jack Fenton has ADHD, Identity Reveal, no beta we die like danny, Phic Phight (Danny Phantom), Phic Phight: Team Ghost (Danny Phantom), Phic Phight 2023

Chapter Title: A Call from the Other Side

Chaper 2 @phicphight ! I almost made it! ヽ(｡◕o◕｡)ﾉ

@astatia-ghast for this chapter we're adding one of @majorastudios's prompt, hopefully they'll like it!

Now I'm off trying to write down chapter 3 in three hours, wish me strenght!

(๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

[phantomtwitch]

@astatia-ghast tagged me in this like a week ago, lol, and I am only just now getting to it. Been pretty busy and out of it recently. BUT anyway, here's the rules for the game:

RULES: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

So one of my WIPs is my EctoImplosion fic, which I can't really discuss. And I'm not going to name ALL the files in my WIP folder, just because of how I organize things, and a lot of them are the same fic but like draft 9 or whatever, and also I have a doc that's just full of random fic ideas I want to write but generally haven't done much with. Anyway, though, here's the somewhat edited list. Some are more descriptive than others:

EC-ND-2

Human - 6

Wayward/DP Crossover

DP-GZ-2023-3

H-D14

DP Fae Deals

DPxDC Prompt Response

Valerie Wraith Draft 1

I think that means I'm supposed to tag 8 people, but I'm bad at this tag people stuff. Uhhhh . . . @summerssixecho and @paenling and @modordracena and @maebird-melody and really anyone else who wants to join in.

(And if I tagged you and you've already done it/don't want to do it, no worries! Feel free to skip it).

[phantomphangphucker]

Phic Phight - Eat With Your Eyes

For: @astatia-ghast @kii0mi @crowswithize @majorastudios @gamma-radio-dp @underforeversgrace @bookhoard @dekalko-mania @five-rivers 

Danny and Phantom's situation wasn't really new news these days and neither was his little hunger issue.

Chap.1: The Uneating

Ever since most of the town had put it together they’d gotten used to Danny being maybe a bit weird or off. Sure some of the town still wrote the Fenton boy off as just a weirdo and Phantom off as just their ghostly protector, but most didn’t; no one who went to or worked at Casper High did, that’s for sure. For the most part it was just little things like him maybe walking through something instead of around it or the random seemingly unwanted power usage that everyone wrote off as Phantom fucking with his host for a laugh.

Fenton getting randomly pantsed was absolutely hilarious. Though Phantom seemingly hijacking Fenton’s fingers to ecto-beam one of the teens bullies, quickly put a stop to said bullying; once the two figured out pretty much everyone knew about their weird situation anyways.

It had been a bit strained at school when the two had first clued in that everyone knew, seemingly expecting to be attacked or ‘separated’ -if that was even possible- but some reassuring settled things down. Now Fenton could just leave whenever to let Phantom do his hero business, and Phantom was being more ‘in the open’ even when not explicitly ‘in control’ of the body. Sure, the two would give people kinda weird looks when anyone commented if they liked each other or shared an opinion, but everyone just kinda figured that was them still being a bit weirded out over everyone just being cool with them.

This also lead to everyone, especially everyone at Casperhigh, ignoring things that either Danny was trying to hide or ignore. Like how Phantom, for whatever reason, chose to make Fenton’s breath cold as a sign that the ghost ‘wanted out’ for whatever reasons, it was almost always to deal with some ghost though. With how Fenton would glare at his foggy breath, he clearly found it annoying; everyone decided that the two probably couldn’t communicate mentally/internally due to this, since Phantom just mentally asking would make way more sense and would still work in a cold environment. Someone people would stare at the fog for a bit but always tried to play it off like they didn’t notice; except Sam and Tucker, who were Fenton’s friends so clearly that was okay.

So it was in this same vein that all the adults definitely made sure to not react to or comment on the… staring; even when his eyes would go green for a bit, which was almost always followed up by Fenton closing his eyes harshly and rubbing his head/temples… sometimes grumbling a little or sagging tiredly. The teens were less considerate though, they all would get excited if Phantom’s eyes came out, everyone assuming that Phantom was just trying to say hi. Half the time this resulted in Fenton getting slightly mobbed with eager ‘hello’s and other such greetings, which he’d flee and hide in the bathroom from; leaving teachers to chastise the teens fellow classmates. Granted, said teachers shared the same opinion, but mobbing the boy just ‘cause Phantom wanted to make his presence known wasn’t appropriate. Sure the mobbing was less ‘intense’ now, since the staring and Phantom eye flashing had been steadily happening more often -a sign of comfort with everyone knowing perhaps?- but still; especially since Fenton only seemed more bothered by it happening.

So while it was nice Phantom ‘rising to the surface’ to say hi or just stare at them, the last thing anyone wanted was the two to stop getting along; Phantom being ‘cute’ or not. Plus, if it wasn’t for everyone’s tolerance and fondness of Phantom, and Fenton really, the intense wide-eyed staring would be really goddamn creepy; which, yeah, it sometimes still was. There was something predatory or metaphorically soul sucking about it. But ghosts were normally creepy right? They were supposed to be. So it was fine, it was endearing and cute, instead of disturbing and unsettling. Especially when Phantom’s green eyes glowed in that way that all the light around them seemed to disappear into darkness, usually that only happened when Phantom was in control of the body but sometimes it’d happen on Fenton’s face too; that always came with the sensation of needing to flee for your life but everyone’s interpretation was that Phantom was just saying hello very aggressively and didn’t understand that that wasn’t the best way to be doing that, which just made it really fucking adorable instead.

It was like a cats eyes going all wide and dilating over watching birds. Predatory? Yes. Adorable? double yes.

And sure, whatever they were feeling before Phantom got very aggressive about his ‘hello’s was always gone after but that just made sense, especially to the teens, how could someone go back to being mad or sad or annoyed after Phantom made a point to say hi? Maybe Phantom or Fenton could tell and Phantom was just trying to make them feel better? Again, sweet and adorable.

Fenton squeezing his eyes shut harshly and giving a bit of an apologetic look was just him actually being apologetic for Phantom’s less than human behaviour. Sam and Tucker seeming slightly worried about it meant nothing, right? And Jazz was always worried about her brother. Jack and Maddie were obviously still getting used to their son’s body roommate and getting over their ectophobia, so of course they were at least a little worried; realistically any parent would be worried about their son having a ghost existing in his body, like, obviously.

Plus, Fenton, and Phantom most likely, definitely told his friends and family stuff that he/they didn’t tell to everyone else. Everyone was like that with their friends and family; and Phantom obviously tried to be mostly ‘professional’ with the towns folk, less so with Fenton’s classmates and teachers, and definitely even less so if at all with Fenton’s close ones.

Oddly enough, Jack seemed to be the one that seemed the most concerned about the staring, even if he was the least concerned about everything else.

---

Jack was lying in bed and frowning at the ceiling for what must be the hundredth time in past while after the family had had supper. Mads was out researching again, trying to find more of Skulker’s discarded tech to figure out how it worked or if the ghost had gotten any closer to figuring out how to actually harm their half-ghost son; meaning Jack was free to think. Sure he was also concerned about the poacher/hunter ghost figuring out how to hurt his son, but he’s confident his boy can handle anything that ghost throws at him. Jack was still worrying about him right now though, just not about that. No, Jack was more concerned with Danny’s increasingly odd behaviour. Sure, Danny’s behaviour around them had changed and been arguably ‘weird’ ever since they found out about him, but that was expected. Him phasing through things, finding random acts of body horror funny, or baring his teeth at something that was annoying him, was all just normal ghostly behaviour that Jack would expect from any ghost, Halfa or not. Vlad certainly bared his teeth a lot; way more than Danny so it was definitely influenced by their personalities. Him and Maddie definitely worried about Danny brushing off his injuries like they were no big deal, but that was just because they were his parents and not because they actually needed to be worried. Ghosts getting grossed out by Danny breaking a bone was always absolutely hilarious though, made Jack crack up every time even if the ‘my son just broke a bone! Oh no!’  reaction was still there in the back of his head. Danny wrapping his ghostly tail around any of them/his friends when he was sleepy and feeling a bit protective was also very adorable. And he initially had the same ‘Aww, that’s adorable’ reaction to his son’s little wide-eyed staring moments -fits? Phases? Moods?- even before he knew about his sons halfa status; and after finding out he only thought it was even cuter and was likely some kind of ghost fondness behaviour. Staring at something because you really really like it made perfect sense and was a very touching thought. Danny seemingly not liking it, or turning away, or rubbing his head, was just him still being a bit awkward and unsure about the way he is and them actually knowing about that.

Thing was… Vlad didn’t do that. He didn’t do the intense wide-eyed staring with the occasional eye glow, ever. Not towards Jack, which Jack could understand even if he liked to still think of Vlad as his best buddy ever. Not towards his Packers collection. Not towards even Danny, who Jack knows Vlad is weirdly overly fond of. Outside of them having some differing powers, likely due to likely having different cores, and having different Obsessions, they shared all the same little ghostly attributes otherwise. The staring was different. It was just Danny. And that worried Jack.

Before Danny had ‘grown up’ and become an adult ghost, Jack thought it was just ‘cause he was a child ghost, which Vlad very much wasn’t. But the staring got noticeably, almost aggressively, worse after; meaning it wasn’t an age/physical maturity thing. If anything that meant it was just a ghost thing, since all of Danny’s more ghostly behaviours seemed to increase after he ‘grew up’; meaning Vlad should also being doing it. Sure, perhaps Vlad had learned to not do that in the twenty odd years he’s been a halfa, but Danny had really solid control over everything but the staring these days; the staring seemed less controlled honestly.

So here he is lying down worrying and wondering if he should just bite the bullet already and call Vladdie. He didn’t exactly… like telling Vlad anything about Danny considering their odd and sometimes violent sorta-friendship -and the whole cloning incident that Jack was totally not cool with- but Vlad knew being a halfa better than anyone and if Jack was asking out of genuine concern he knows Vlad will listen and maybe be nice.

Sometimes he wishes he told Maddie about Vlad’s halfa status, that way he could ask her if this was a good idea. But he’d never do that without Vladdie’s permission and he’s fairly sure his buddy doesn't actually realise Jack knows, which was a whole nother issue on its own but worry over Danny trumps trying to ‘wait for his best friend to just tell him already’. He always kind of expected Vlad to just tell him and shout at him for the accident, that never happened though and then life just got in the way. Jack definitely waited too long on that, he almost wants to thank Danny for this sort of push.

Okay yeah. He’s calling Vlad. Right now. Definitely right now.

Jack stares at the ceiling before grumbling to himself, “man up, Jack. Are you or are you not a Fenton”. If his son can go off and fight ghost god kings, then Jack can call his freaking sorta best friend.

He continues to just lay on the bed for a while before very forcefully making himself sit up and grab the phone like he was threatening it.

Vlad actually picks up but doesn’t even say anything. Oh he probably wants to find out who’s calling him first. Heh. Whoops.

“Hey, V-Man”.

Vlad’s sigh is more than a little audible, “what do you want, Jack?”, and then there’s a muttered, “if there’s about to be a ghost invasion I’m going to set my African Violets on fire”.

That was another thing about Vlad and Danny, both liked to threaten violence when mildly annoyed. “So uh”, Jack swallows a little and proceeds to word vomit, “I-kinda-totally-know-that-you’re-a-half-ghost-like-Danny-and-was-kinda-totally-wondering-if-you-totally-get-like-urges-to-stare-at-things-intensely-but-have-just-like-learned-how-to-resist-that-because-Danny-boy-keeps-doing-that-and-I’m-worried-about-it-‘cause-he-seems-to-not-like-it-and-it’s-kind-of-creepy-even-if-it’s-also-adorable-and-it-seems-to-only-be-getting-worse-or-something-please-help”, and wheezes, out of breath, afterwards.

It takes Vlad a while to respond to that. Understandable. “Jack”. Oh he’s mad. “I-butter biscuits”, Vlad takes a deep breath, “know that I am half tempted to burn down your house, what do you mean you KNOW. But-”, another sigh, “I am… resisting that desire because I… do not have that ‘urge’ as you just called it. That is not normal”, then grumbling some more, “Daniel, what did you get into now. Why are you like this”.

Jack chuckles very awkwardly and can practically feel Vlad glaring at his phone. “Uh, yeah. And, I mean, I am sorry about that. The accident. And-maybe-I-was-waiting-for-you-to-tell-me-and-yell-at-me-for-it-and-maybe-I-shouldn’t-have-done-that-”.

Vlad thankfully cuts him off, “as much as I do want to yell at you and as much as I am aggressively smug to finally get an actual apology from you- you never even seemed to CONSIDER apologising for that. What’s going on with Daniel?”.

Not for the first time Jack’s kind of glad for Vlad’s weird level of fondness for Danny. “Yeah that was dumb of me huh?”.

Vlad growls,“you THINK”.

Jack winces a little, “Ah heh”.

“Daniel, Jack”.

Jack nods to himself, shifting on the bed some, “it’s like I said. He has these moments where he’ll just stare really intently, sometimes his pupils dilate almost completely covering his irises, or his eyes will go green, sometimes enough so that all the light around his eyes seems to disappear. There’s a predatory, soul-sucking feel to it; even if it is kinda cute. Like he’s a cat and we’re birds. Or like those little animated characters with the really big doll eyes”, rubbing his neck, “Mads thinks it’s endearing, like a ghostly way to say he likes us but that he’s just embarrassed. I’m not so sure about that. So uh, I’m asking. Probably-should-have-asked-sooner-‘cause-you’d-probably-know-right? Which-I-probably-would-have-if-I-had-just-told-you-I-knew-instead-of-you-know-not? And-I’d-like-to-think-Danny-would-just-tell-us-if-something-was-wrong-but-I-don’t-know?”.

Jack’s honestly surprised Vlad hadn’t interrupted him again, but based on all the shuffling and what maybe sounds like pages? turning Jack’s gonna guess he was looking something up. Vlad muttering to himself audibly enough for Jack to still hear him, “I was thinking as much, but why would he be being so noticeable? Unless”, sighing loudly, “that fudging idiot”.

Jack’s a little confused, “me or him?”.

“Yes, you’re an idiot, but no I mean him”. Then Vlad goes right back to muttering, “I’m half tempted to go beat some sense into that thick skull of his”.

Okay, Jack’s not going to pretend he didn’t hear that. “I’d rather you just tell me why first at least”.

Vlad doesn’t saying anything for a beat, “have you just been wilfully ignoring my threats of violence for years?”.

Jack rubs his neck again, that probably wasn’t a normal reaction, was it? “Well, Danny-boy didn’t seem to mind and has definitely been doing it right back”.

“You’re an insane fool”, Vlad sighs yet again, “at least I know where Daniel gets it from. However, I can’t believe I’m saying this, you’re right to be worried, Jack. Is Maddie truly not?”, he sounds genuinely confused and concerned about that.

Jack nods to himself, “she thinks he’s just being adorable in a more spooky way. Like him becoming all ghostly so young affected how he shows affection or attention or whatever, and he just can’t tell it’s a little creepy”.

“I don’t even know what to say to that”.

“Does that mean it’s a bad thing? All his classmates and teachers seem to think it’s cute too. Mr. Lancer even subtly awww’d and gave him a head pat over it”.

“Oh for Goudas sake- has this town lost all sense of danger? If Daniel was weak I’d understand, but this is just ridiculous”.

Jack frowns, ‘of danger’?, “danger? Vlad?”.

“Yes, danger, Jack”, Vlad starts basically outright ranting, “That ‘staring’ has a predatory feel because it is predatory. The boy is hungry and his body is trying to make him eat you. And since it’s clearly happening against his will he is clearly bloody starving himself like an IDIOT. Of course that fool wouldn’t want to and would instead just ignore his own fudging needs; how did I even miss that? How did Jack of all people notice and get concerned first?”.

Jack frowns deeper, he seriously didn’t like the sounds of this. Sure sometimes Danny missed lunch or supper or breakfast because of a fight but he certainly wasn’t starving himself? So there has to be a ghost thing that he needs to eat? But he isn’t? And whatever this was Vlad wasn’t too surprised Danny wasn’t ‘eating’ it? But ghosts didn’t eat people so what? He’s confused. “Vlad, what are you talking about? What do you mean he’s starving himself? I’m fairly sure ghosts don’t eat people, you don’t right?”. If halfas need to eat people, for some reason, that would take some serious getting used to; though it would make sense Danny-boy not wanting to do that. Jack seriously hopes he’s jumping to the wrong conclusions here.

Vlad actually laughs at that, “Jack, do you seriously believe I’d be able to be a remotely public figure if I had to commit cannibalism? I’d have to be an utter fool. The media would rip me to shreds in a heartbeat. Though… I Imagine it is a bit similar. Basically, if you remember all those theories that ghosts feed off of emotions, then you already have your answer”.

Jack taps his chin, okay so that was better and it was neat to have a theory confirmed, but… “so Danny’s not feeding on emotions and it’s showing through his eyes? Why the eyes? Wouldn’t a more mouth or stomach-related reaction make more sense? Like the hunger pains or mouth-watering humans get?”.

“If you would recall, ghosts don’t have stomachs; though I suppose since halfas don’t react the same as full ghosts all the time, then your question isn’t completely idiotic. And this is a case of reacting different than ghosts. Think, Jack, where on Daniel does his ectoplasm, in human form, have the best and easiest access to outside of his body?”.

Jack all but smacks his forehead, this should have been obvious, “the eyes!”.

Vlad sounds almost tired, “exactly. On full ghosts all of their ectoplasmic outer shells have constant full time access to the environment and any emotional energy that happens to be in the air, as such they absorb said energy through their ‘skin’; for halfas, it’s the eyes, as that’s the only part that’s always in close contact with the atmosphere and any emotional energy that might be floating around”.

“Okay, but why is he not doing that then? I mean, I’m guessing his body just naturally knows how and surely he knows, so?”.

“Do I really need to explain to you why the boy wouldn’t want to be eating his friends' and family’s emotions?”.

Jack rubs his neck, “well it’s not like that would actually hurt us right? Though I guess he might feel bad about it”.

“Oh come on, seriously? Outside of the simple fact that it is rather parasitic, which Daniel would dislike; it very well can hurt. If someone’s emotions get sapped too much they can literally die or go comatose. He likely decided ignoring it was the better option rather than risking the possibility of hurting someone, unaware that that’s not exactly an option. So now the idiots backed himself into a corner, because if Daniel’s so hungry he’s clearly barely controlling it, he likely will not be able to help severely overindulging if he gives in and feeds. As I said, dangerous”. Grumbling, “though he’s likely glad his behaviour is being interpreted as endearing rather than threatening. I can’t imagine he’s not confused by it though”.

Jack might have laughed at that last bit if he wasn’t genuinely really worried all over again, someone thinking your threats to… eat them was adorable or cute would be pretty annoying and funny. Swallowing, “that’s not good. So, how do we help? Can we just make him fed? Without him hurting anyone? And then we, or you maybe, can, like, talk to him without him being distracted by being hungry?”, chuckling very awkwardly, “I know I suck at thinking when I’m hungry”.

Jack ignores the mumbled, “you’re terrible at it when you’re full too”. Vlad hums a little, “his body will force him to, one way or another, eventually. That won’t end well, for anyone. It is not as if anyone can merely shove ‘emotions into his eyes’ as one would shove food into someone’s mouth. Nor is there an IV drip for emotional energy-”.

Jack cuts him off, “I could just make one then!”, and nods to himself. He’s got no clue how yet but he’s sure he’ll figure it out!

“If you pull that off I will be genuinely impressed with you, as much as that would pain me. But unless you truly believe you can pull such a thing off in hours or perhaps days, I’d say it’s too late for that approach. Either convince him to feed, preferably under sedation at first, then in small ‘bites’, as it were, later. Or I will”.

Jack grimaces at that, he has a feeling Danny wouldn’t like whatever Vladdie’s methods would be. How would Jack, or Maddie, convince Danny to do something he pretty clearly doesn't want to do? Would just making it clear to him they’re okay with it be enough? And Jack’s not just going to knock his son out and force it somehow. “I guess I’ll just have to try talking to him then”; what other option was there?

“See to it that you do, I will be asking him”. And Vlad just hangs up on him.

Jack eyes the phone a little before putting it down and folding his hands over his mouth, thinking. If Danny really has enough of an issue with this emotional feeding thing that he’s willing to starve himself, just giving him the okay to do it probably won’t be enough. Jack would bet half his fudge that Sam and Tucker probably knew and probably already talked to him or tried to and Danny shut the conversation down. Though… that was probably before he got so seemingly hungry that he was losing control of his own eyes and was accidentally eating until realising what he was doing and stopping himself; him blinking harshly or squeezing his eyes shut must be him forcing himself to cut it out. So maybe talking would work? Well, what else can Jack really do? And maybe if he got enough people together Danny could just collectively feed on everyone or person hop who he’s feeding off of? Then he wouldn’t have to worry about hurting anyone! The whole town loved Phantom these days so Jack doubts he’d have trouble convincing a lot of people to help; especially his son's fellow teens.

Sure Danny probably wouldn’t want the whole town knowing about this but if it would get him to not starve himself then it would be worth it.

Okay now how to start the talk? Uhhh. Well Jack’s never been one for subtle!

---

Chap.2: The Eating

Danny was… not doing great. Everything ached and he was so hungry and he kept aggressively disassociating. Everyone around him was just practically bleeding emotions and he could see them in the air, it was just making him hungrier and he couldn’t help looking and focusing on it. The colours, scents, tastes, in the air and around people. The fact that teenagers were so much more emotional than adults was definitely not helping. Ghosts were pretty heavily emotional too and everyone got emotional cheering for him in his fights. He’d complete school work, barely, and get pride thrown at him by the teachers; Lancer was the worst. Everyone was so tempting, their emotions were, and his stupid body was being so goddamn needy.

All he wanted to do was go home and crawl into bed.

He would have thought that by now he would have gotten used to not satisfying that stupid part of him, but no apparently not. Stupid, stupid body.

Initially he’d kinda liked being able to pick up on emotions, being easily able to tell how his friends or family or townsfolk were feeling, but it very quickly came to bite him in the ass when he realised he had a strange sort of hunger aimed at the emotions. It made him feel like a parasite, when he realised that feeling of fond comfort at being able to tell what they were feeling was at least partly him eating the emotions… or absorbing them or however it worked. Either way it was gross, and creepy, and icky, and he didn’t like it. Wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. He did not consent to his body doing that, to anyone, period. So why couldn’t his body just get the goddamn message already?!?

Ancients it was just so… so goddamn much.

Djiojfisbcjsj

…

Fuck.

Damnit.

Wincing slightly and squeezing his eyes shut. Fuck. He really hated that it was getting worse. It. madel m feelike shit. Ugh. Putting his head down on his desk and trying to massage his temples subtly, just waiting for the goddamn bell to just go off already. He wanted to go home. If the Box Ghost shows his stupid face today Danny’s just going to scream at him like a banshee until he leaves… which hopefully won’t turn into crying, ‘cause he kinda wants to start doing that too.

Can you cry out your hunger? Fuck that’d be nice.

Star near him muttering, “awww, boo”, disappointedly at him, just makes him want to bash his face into the desk until he breaks it or his face or both. He does not understand why everyone thought his ghostly shit was cute… and frankly he can’t really be bothered to try and figure that out right now; or ever maybe. He’d rather they all feel that way, fond and amused, over viewing him as a freaky monster. And at least it was distracting.

hd hi is on I in sk

Ugh.

Digging his nails, claws really, into his desk enough to hurt a little more than the ache was also distracting; and at least all these desks were fucked up enough that him damaging them more didn’t really fucking matter. The desk actually audibly cracking makes him cut it out and tense though, only relaxing a little when no one comments on it. Did that mean no one noticed? no, he knows most people pretend they didn’t notice things that they think he doesn’t want them to. It was nice, he appreciated it. What he’d appreciate more right now is being left alone in a dark secluded room, cut off from everything including stupid visible emotions.

Ancients he can feel them brushing up against his skin, like a tempting caress nudging him towards just devouring every little bit.

He growls at his stupid fucking desk. Fuck.

Kwan’s voice makes him flinch a little, “dude, I don’t know what that desk did to you but the bell rang”.

Oh fuck. Goddamit.

Danny grumbles incoherently into the desk top before actually replying, “thacks, ‘wan”, then pushing himself up with some serious effort. He just kind of staggers out while staring bloody murder at the ceiling and trying to ignore goddamn everything.

(Kwan, watching this, snickers to Dash, “Phantom must not be letting him sleep much”. And Dash, at seeing Kwan’s expression and wiggling eyebrows, “you better not be saying what I think you are”. Which only made Kwan chuckle some more, “dude, they share a body, no way they aren’t both involved in a certain something”. Dash immediately punched him).

-

It takes some serious effort for Danny to skirt around Sam and Tuck, who would want to walk at least part of the way home with him like always, the amount of worry and concern and anxiety they were practically bleeding at him lately was fucking intoxicating and he was legit scared he was just going to lose it and attack them or something. Granted that possibility was kind of exactly why they were concerned about him. He wasn’t doing good and they knew it. He was not okay with… feeding off of them, or anyone else, regardless of how he’s sure they’d feel about it if he was ever remotely willing to have that kind of conversation with them. Besides, he’s not sure he even can do that at this point. If he did just give up and give in to the need would he be able to actually stop? He just sort of… knows he can’t eat too much with hurting someone. And if he couldn’t would anyone even be able to make him stop? He wasn’t a weak ghost by a long shot…

Fuck.

Jdksk my bjzk in f no dow ole fhd

This sucks.

The air, the emotions, were so mushy against him and it kept making his eyes all fizzy and stuff. Ugh.

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He can’t keep on going like this. He’s either going to freaking destroy himself -he was an idiot for thinking he could just… not eat- or he’s going to destroy someone else.

He was just so hungry.

So needy.

He just wants.

No she Kia isjcndjshdsinvdjsnn dks

-

Danny just stands in front of his front door for a while before finally mustering up the effort and mild self control to open the damn thing. For Ancients' sake, let them leave him alone.

“Danno! Mads is still out but you wanna come and talk some stuff over with me?!?”.

Fuck.

No he goddamn doesn’t. Ugh. He’s half tempted to just try and glare his dad out of existence but looking at him just gets Danny bombarded with worry? concern? nervousness? which confuses him enough to forget about the glaring plan and not immediately notice the regrowing hunger gnawing behind his eyes.

Augh. Closing his eyes and rubbing his temples a little while trying his best to just mumble in a normal tone, “is it, ah, important?”. If his dad’s worried about something Danny should at least try to put up with his stupid bodies bullshit.

He can hear Jack rubbing his neck, not a good sign, “oh, yeah… yeah!”, giving Danny an awkward smile when Danny looks up at him again, “you can just lay your head down on the table while I talk your ears off a little, if you’re tired”.

Danny manages a thankful pinched smile at that, they’d gotten pretty good about recognising that he was tired or hurting fairly often. He absolutely does just lay his face down on the table, trying to look like he was ‘resting’ but he was really just mentally boring holes with his eyes into the wood; eyeing and focusing on the shapes and colours of said wood instead of on the feeling of his dads emotions brushing against his skin and making his eyes dilate hungrily against his will.

His dad clears his throat, Danny does not like that, “alright so, I’ve been kinda worried about you so I called-Vladdie-to-ask-if-maybe-it-was-a-halfa-thing-since-he’s-you-know-one-too-which-Mads-doesn’t-know-about-but-calling-was-a-good-thing-because-I-was-right-to-be-”.

Danny coughing, choking on his own breath a little, interrupts the man. Danny jerking his head up and waving his hands around wide eyed, Vlad what? Since when? His dad knew? How thadidad t?!? hat?!? How did his dad his did his did know dad his did his dad know dad know did know did his did know dad his did know that?!?

Ow.

His poor fucking head. His poor fucking everything. Needless to say what he ends up saying is fucking ghost speak gibberish, “S҉̕i̴͘n̸͡͡c̴̕̕é́͘ ̨w̕ḩ̵e̛?̷ ̕w̴̢h͜e̶͠?̶ ̴̛̀H̕e̵h?͞҉͏ ́͝H͡eh̵͡?̴ ͝H̢o̷̶҉w̵̸ ̢tḩ͜én ́҉V̛̛l̢̕a̶d̴̛ ͠͡ha̶̷l̸͢fą͏?̶̛ ͞w̢̡͡h̀͏e͞͠ǹ ̷V̵l̶͠͠a͟d̕ ̡͝ha̕l̴̴͠f̧͝à̕? ͜H̀͡e͏h?̴̡ ͜Há̸͜r̸̢g͏͘h̢̡?̕͜ ̢He͡҉̶h̕͏͜? ̡͝H͡e͏͞h̛͠?̢”, which results in him snapping his mouth shut and blushing.

His dad winces while Danny just stares in a way that’s starting to get hungry now that he’s slightly over his shock. Jack speaking up, “You… wanna try that again? Son?”. The… worried look his dad’s practically aiming at his eyes is concerning.

Danny makes a point to close his eyes and take a bit of a breather, pinching the bridge of his nose,  “you… know about Vlad?”.

“I kind of always did, he wasn’t happy”.

Oh now Danny wants to hit him. “Fuck”. Danny lets his head thump back down onto the table, grumbling and putting his arms around/over his head, “I guess that’s for the bes. Ugh”. He doesn’t want to deal with this or whatever mental crisis Vlad’s currently having. Fuck him. Vkk JK Lady guy b KB du Ijkk ok. Wait, shit right, uh, his dad said something else didn’t he? Yeah, “yer worried ‘bout me?”.

“Danny, while me and your mom get that us knowing about you, and the town knowing I guess, is still pretty new for you so your easing everyone into your more quirky ghostie quirks; the staring doesn’t feel like it’s just a quirk. It seems like it’s getting worse and like you don’t like it even-if-it’s-kinda-adorable-in-a-way. So, like, Vladdie-”, his dad clears his throat before practically spitting out, “Vlad says you’re starving yourself”.

Danny’s entire body tenses up. What is he even supposedtosaytothat ahshdkenrbfhdka? Like yes, that’s exactly what he’s doing. Holy fuck. But he can’t just not do that either. He won’t eat. He can’t eat. He doesn't want to.

He really, really, does want to though. And that scares him more.

Stupid body… stupid eyes. Fuck. Cjj size isdjemdhbcjskcnc. CI bc dc d. Huff. C

“Dann-o, I don’t want you doing that. If you need something, food or emotions, then you need it. Heck! No one in town would want you starving yourself, not me or your mom, any of your friends, not Vlad, and not even the neighbour Jenny who hates us all”.

Danny violently doesn’t want to have this conversation, talking about it doesn’t exactly make it fucking better. He’s hoping his dad doesn’t notice him digging his claws into his one arm enough to bleed a little.

“And look, maybe you don’t like the need or however it is you ‘eat with your eyes’ as Vlad kinda put it, or maybe you’re worried about hurting someone or just freaking someone out, or maybe you just didn’t know how before and now it feels like it’s too late maybe; but you clearly need to eat. But I don’t know how to help, other than to just kind of talk, and Vlad kind of said if you’re to the point that pretty much everyone is noticing then it’s not really safe for you to-”.

Danny out right growls into the table, “you think I don’t know that”, it’s honestly a miracle it comes out in English. If… if he just lets himself fed, let’s himself eat, then he… he’s not going to stop. He’ll hurt someone, or he’ll lose is frickin’ mind. He can’t do this. He doesn’t want to talk about this. He wants to leave. He wanto le He wanto ts He Heave le Heants to leave.

Danny aggressively shoves himself up and off the table, still staring down at it, and tries to actually leave but his dad grabs his arm (the one Danny hadn’t just been stabbing), “Danny, stop, I’m serious. You need to deal with this. You need to eat somehow, okay?!? You can’t keep doing this to yourself! And not just because it’s not really safe for everyone else”.

Danny moves after a second grabbing his dads wrist, having to acutely make sure he doesn’t break it, and pulls him off. “I won’t”.

“Danny-”.

Danny throws his arms up into the air, actually look at his dad now, and snarling, “how do you suppose I even do!?!”.  Goddamnit, his dad is so worried. And now Danny’s scaring him a little. And is just so much, the most. Hdgjsnelsonsos Bo x. Ugh. Fuck, everything aches so goddamn much. Hedoskswk. He hates this. Hes hates Hes his this te his Hes te his te Hes hathathis. Ancients he’s just so hungry. His stupid fucking eyes. Augh.

Everything’s getting darker.

He thinks.

That’s a bad thing.

Ugh. Fuck. He… he can’t goodman think.

He’s…

He’s going to hurt the, ugh, who was he talking to? Fuck. He can’t do this.

The emotions taste, the emotions feel. Fuck he’s actually tasting and feeling. Shit.

It takes a lot more effort than Danny would like just to get his damn eyes to close, him gripping and somewhat leaning against a corner of a wall with one hand, massaging his temple and eyelids with the other and moaning slightly. Why… why did it have to feel and taste like that? Ugh.

He’s barely aware of his… crap right his fucking dad, damnit, sounding to stagger a bit and breathing a little heavy. But more than anything there’s still all the emotions coming off him, fuck Danny can’t think like this. Hissing and gripping the wall a hit tighter, “can you… calm down, please”.

One of the chairs squeak as his dad sits back down slowly, he… groans, and Danny panics internally a little. His dad doesn’t sound scared or upset though, “Sorry, I’m, whew, kinda an emotion guy. You okay?”.

Danny wheezes and drops his one hand from his face sooner than he’d really like to, glancing at his dad because… because he’s worried. His dad looks a bit pale and… drained. Fuck. Danny winces, “are you”. When his dad nods and gives him a weak smile Danny glances away, “I don’t want to do this”. He… goddamn hurt him, damn it. Why does he have to be like this? He’s fine with all the other halfa shit just not this.

“And I never wanted, to be nearly seven, feet tall. We work with, what we’ve got. You have to. I want you to”, his dad sighs, “and I really do wish you were okay with it. Enough to keep yourself, healthy at least”.

“Yeah, well, I’m not”. Height issues wasn’t really comparable to this in Danny’s goddamn opinion. You can’t avoid being tall by ignoring it, granted ignoring didn’t seem to be really working here either. Fuck him.

His dad takes a bit of a breather again, “Vlad suggested sedating you so you wouldn’t take too much at once, or too aggressively, I guess”.

Danny manages a bit of a chuckle, “figures Vlad would say that”.

“Yeah I’m not too cool with that either, son. I, well, I was thinking, maybe, seeing how many people would be willing to volunteer and you could just hop from person to person with the feeding so everyone would be fine? Maybe? Everyone really likes you so? Yeah…”.

Danny had freezed up, eventually glancing back at his dad slowly, sounding flat, “you think I want the entire town knowing about this”; and his dad flinches and the fear scent- taste grows a little, shit Danny probably looked goddamn murderous. Danny rubs his free hand down his face, grumbling a, “sorry”.

His dad swallows audibly, “ah no, it’s fine. Ghosts are supposed to be spooky, and it is kinda adorable too, plus you probably would have told us on your own if you were okay with anyone knowing really. But-”, he frowns, “-I can’t really think of anything else”.

“Then I jus don’t”.

His dad practically snaps at him, “I’m banning that option. Definitely not. You’re eating”, and he goddamn pouts like a puppy at Danny, which fine, makes Danny smile a little.

Danny eyes the table, which his dad pats a little goofily, so Danny goes back over and puts his head back down on it. Fucking Hell, he could probably try to literally bite his dads face off and the man would still hug him eagerly. It was kinda a nice feeling. And his dad really was giving off some ‘awww, that’s cute’ type emotions; there was something seriously wrong with that but Danny liked it. Plus, softer more cozy or gentle emotions poked at that hunger in him a lot less than intense or heavy ones did. Fuck, if everyone didn't apparently find his bullshit ‘cute’ or ‘endearing’ and were instead just utterly fearful or disturbed, he probably woulda lost his shit a while ago. Muttering into the table, “you people are weird. Thanks for not being freaked I guess”.

His dad actually chuckles at that, “you’re my son, you could start yanking off your head and chucking it at people, and I’d think it was the bees knees”.

“Please never say that again. Ugh”. His dad just laughs down more at Danny’s mild embarrassment.

His dad speaks back up after a moment, “you seem a bit better, huh?”.

“Well I… did, ugh, eat a little, so”, and Danny shrugs stiffly, “plus, you’re not leaking emotions everywhere now”. And thank fuck for that. Ancients he was still so hungry though; it was almost starting to feel like he couldn’t imagine not being just fucking plagued by eye-based hunger all the time.

“You know I’m going to say you should eat more then? Just, uh, maybe not from me”.

Danny groans, grumbling, “no, dad”.

“Danny”.

Danny thumps his head in the table a couple of times, fuck, “I can’t. Won’t”.

“That really isn’t an option, like at all. I did think of maybe trying to make an emotional energy IV drip, which would be super neat right? What would I even name that?! But how would I do that? And how long would it take? Too long I say, so does Vladdie. The town seriously won’t judge you or think less of you”.

Danny blinks, he hadn’t even thought of that? “That… might not even be possible, but yes that’d be awesome”, Danny sighs deeply, “and I really doubt that”.

“Son, what was the last thing the town turned into one of those memes?”.

Danny groans a little, “… me face planting into Johnny’s stash and fighting a stop sign high out of my mind?”.

“Exactly, I’ve literally seen people getting hit by a torn off limb of yours and just throwing it back at you. No one’s gonna be freaked, trust me”, his dad laughs a little, “heck! Most will probably be more annoyed you thought they’d be freaked!”.

Danny doesn’t know what to do with the fact that that might be true. Sure Danny thought that sometimes but Danny’s brain was a fucked up weird ass half ghost brain; a fucked up weird ass stupid emotionally parasitic brain. “I don’t like this��.

“And you don’t have to. What you do have to do is not ignore your needs”.

Danny lifts his head up enough to eye his dad, who gives him an encouraging smile and a goofy little thumbs up, making Danny sigh and thump his head back down. Damnit. Ugh. What Danny’s doing clearly ain’t fucking working, and this horrible fucking plan was better than him imploding or exploding. “Ugh. Fine. This really fucking sucks”.

His dad pats his shoulder, “well you’ve got your friends, and family, and sorta friend Vlad, in your corner regardless. No way your friends don’t know already and your mom will feel just like me!”.

It was at that moment that both their phones went off and the tv spontaneously turned on, showing an emergency broadcast from the mayor… about Phantom…

Danny’s going to fucking obliterate that asshole.

Danny lifts his head up slowly with a truly offended scowl on his face and slowly glances around the kitchen, ecto-beaming a vladcam into oblivion shortly later, “he’s a dead man”. His dad looks slightly concerned but laughs heartily, even if he’s still a bit pale.

“It’s come to my attention, and with great concern, that our local town hero has been negligent to his own needs and could use everyone’s help-”.

Danny ecto-beams the tv with a growl. His dad patting him some more, “well, at least he waited till you actually sorta agreed!”, shaking his head with a laugh, “how often does he bug our house though?”.

Danny growls some more, “too damn much”.

But his dad just shrugs, “I’ll give him points for tenacity!”.

-

It didn’t even take one full hour for Mr. Lancer to call and tell Jack that in no uncertain terms was Danny to not come back to school until he was better and that he should have said something and that, so long as everyone consented, Phantom was free to eat as he pleased. Danny nearly had a legit panic attack and mumbled about how everyone in his town was fucking insane; Jack didn’t disagree.

Jack also asked if Danny knew why everyone seemed to call him Phantom whenever they were talking about his ghostie stuff and called him Danny or Fenton otherwise. Danny just shrugged, speaking while muffled by his bed some, “I think they’re just so used to the separation that it’s just easier to stick with it”.

-

Jack also had to confirm with Maddie that, yes, what Vlad said was true. Though he blamed the man knowing on the vladcam, she wasn’t impressed. Not with Vlad for being a creep and spying on them, not with Jack for not telling her immediately about his concerns, and not with Danny for not tell them on his own. But she also picked up on Jack’s pale parlour and how he seemed drained, and clued in that more confrontation wasn’t the best idea for Danny; he felt bad and guilty enough as it was. So instead she simply ruffled his hair, gave him a peck on the cheek, and told him she loved him. Which earned her a mumbled, “thanks”. Even if that was followed by him informing her, with a bit of a hiss, that he couldn’t, “handle all the concern, and frustration, and fondness; right now”.

---

It took all of one full day for the Fenton’s, or Danny more specifically, to get a signed ‘Phantom Health Plan’ form with literally every single conscious Amity Parker’s name on it. Legit the only people who hadn’t signed where unconscious and bedridden at the local hospital for one reason or another. Danny was goddamn flabbergasted when his dad handed it to him with a wide grin.

Danny blinking at it, rubbing a hand over his face, “somethin’ is seriously wrang wit this town”.

Jack shrugs, “naw, everyone just loves you. And I say that’s great! Also!”, pointing at Danny, “I told you so”. Jack was very proud of himself… and a little smug.

Danny smiles at him until his pupils dilate a little and he cringes.

Jack rubbing his neck and making a point to not stare at the staring, “ah sorry”.

Danny hisses a little before closing his eyes and sighing, “jus… try to, ugh, not with the emotions, till I’m not… out of my own control so much”.

“I make no promises!”.

Danny just growls faintly at that.

-

When Danny goes out for patrol that night -he can’t just not patrol, emotional hunger or not, his Obsession trumped whatever other shit his body might be doing- Johnny gives him a similar paper just from the ‘frequent visitor’ ghosts, because of fucking course. Danny mumbling, “at least ghosts being weird makes fucking sense”.

Johnny pointing at him from his motorbike, “if any of us had known what you were doing to yourself, fucking everyone would have pinned your sorry ass down and thrown emotions at you till you caved, future ghost king or not. Fucking moron”.

Danny snapping back, “then I’m glad you didn’t”.

“Fuck you too!”.

Danny shoots him with an ecto-beam which, as is standard, turns into a motorcycle/flying chase through nearly the entire town. Said chase scene getting interrupted by a lady shouting, “EAT MY DEPRESSION! I FEEL TOO MANY FEELINGS AS IT IS!”, at Danny/Phantom.

While Danny was busy being dumbfounded Johnny glared at him and snapped, “well? Don’t leave a lady hanging, Phantom”.

“Oh my Ancients, I hate you”, facepalming and sighing, there was no way he was getting out of this shit… and everyone had kind of agreed… and Johnny could just run him over if he went overboard. So fine, he gives a little, stares a little, and lets his eyes do that dilating thing a little, and fucking eats.

It’s everything a bit and yes, Johnny runs him the fuck over, “you’re a greedy bastard, and that’s what you get for being a moron, moron”. Which, fine gets Danny chasing him again.

The lady’s left muttering, “best, ah, best therapy, session of my, life. Holy, shit”, from her bedroom floor.

---

It takes an entire week before he feels like he won’t just fall into a pit of staring and attempting to eat everyone; and to not feel like a massive trash heap that rabid raccoons have been rummaging through, about said eating. During that time nearly the entire town had personally turned up on the door step, asked for him, and told him to ‘never do anything like that/this ever again’ in a chastising tone; he was feeling thoroughly chastised, which was definitely the point. Nothing like a town wide public and personal shaming to kick his self-hating self-conscious ass. Some of them did literally hit him though… Vlad, Sam, Tuck, Valerie, Valerie’s Dad, Paulina’s Dad, the entire football team, his gym teacher, even fucking Wes, and then Vlad again just to really get the point across… that turned into an actual brawl though.

And of course when he went back to school he got bombarded with questions, which he got extremely tired of saying shit like ‘I don’t want to talk about that’ to, so eventually he just gave up while growling at people. Hence why he was now in this situation…

“So the staring was all, like, staring at the food you could see but no one else can, ‘cause you can, like, see emotions and shit; which is sick as Hell dude. But what about your pupils goin’ all wide and shit; you looked like you were tripping balls”.

Danny wants to cry. He was a bit desensitised now but he still didn’t fucking like his emotional hunger. “I was not goddamn high, Jesse. That’s just, I don’t know, how I ‘absorb it in’ better. I’m not a goddamn expert”.

One of the jocks snorts, “shouldn’t you be”.

“Oh fuck you”.

Brittney leans forwards, “does this mean no more staring all wide eyed and cutesy at us? No more Phantom staring? Because I personally loved that”.

Danny glares, “you do realise that was me trying to eat you right? Like that was a predatory threat”.

“But it was still cute, and that’s what matters”.

Danny smacks his head on his desk, “the fuck is wrong with all of you”.

Todd chuckling, “I don’t think you should be asking what’s wrong with people”. Danny just glares at that.

Wes, ever the detective, asks, “and the blinking?”.

Danny gives him a dull look, they might get on better now that the guy wasn’t trying to expose him -can’t expose what’s already exposed, asshole- but still. “Digestion, Wes”, sighing, “and trying to fucking control myself because that shit wasn’t fun cutesy uwu shit to me”.

“Well then maybe you shouldn’t have been ignoring your apparent needs”.

“I will beat you with half a broom, Wes. Like bro, I am waiting for a chance to rip off your ear lobs and eat them in front of you like a feral raccoon”.

Chelsea awww’s, “oh I just love Phantom’s creative threats of violence”.

Danny groans with genuine mental anguish.

Dash perks up, Danny eyeing his somewhat former bully, “wait, does that mean you’re literally eating with your eyes and not just you being weird with words again”.

Danny flips him off, “yes, Dash”.

“Nice, I’m finally Phantom’s eye candy”. The room goes dead silent. Dash blushes faintly, “shit, said the quiet part out loud”.

Danny bows his head down, “for the love of everything”. Apparently Dash’s hero worship was actually just a full-blown crush. Lovely. Danny didn’t need this shit, but it did explain some of the dudes weird ass emotions that Danny had been studiously trying to ignore the implications of.

One of the geeks, Luise, sticks up her hand, “what does all that even feel like?”.

Danny doesn’t actually know what to say to that but he is grabbing on to that life preserver out of having to address Dash’s feelings. “Uh, staring feels like staring… just with a mild disassociated ‘nobody’s home’ feeling attached and hunger but in the eyes instead of stomach? I don’t fucking know, it’s the same feeling just a different location. And also like salivating but in the eyes and without actually salivating.  And the dilating is literally just dilating, but also with that feeling you get when you drink cold or warm liquids and you can feel it going down your throat and into your stomach, except entirely in the eyes. And blinking is like taking a bite, a teeth clacking together into something juicy, bite”. The fact that that entire comment just gets sensations/emotions of fascination, amusement, and cute emotion; still throws him through a bit of a loop and fine maybe… maybe it makes him feel a little okay with eating a little. They were pestering him and talking about this, especially with that kind of description, was just making him goddamn eye-hungry. If anyone notices that him looking at everyone was more hungry staring and eyeing the swirling of emotions about, and that maybe the dilation of his pupils wasn’t entirely because of how fucking bright it was in here, and that the blink wasn’t just a blink; no one says anything. This… maybe this wasn’t so bad. He still didn’t like it but, maybe, fucking torturing himself with starvation and convincing himself he was a fucked up parasitic monster, hadn’t been the best idea he’s ever had. He was a freaky little monster that everyone had just decided was cuddle worthy.

Marven pushes up his glasses, “so staring isn't just staring, and dilating isn't literally just dilating”.

Danny glares at him, “leave my word weavy bullshit alone”.

“Then learn how to use words”.

“No. Shove a dick in it”.

“In your eyes?”.

“I can just knock you out by staring, you know”.

Jesse chuckles, “dominance is kinky”. At everyone staring at him he shrugs, “what? Phantom’s stupid powerful, right? He’d love that shit”.

“I am about ten seconds away from actually trying to stare you into unconsciousness”.

Jesse just seems jazzed by that, like he thinks it would be fun or some shit.

That one jock pipes up again, “so, tell us why again you even had an issue with this? Why Phantom did?”.

Danny gives him a bit of a weird look. “You mean besides feeling like some kind of parasite, the fact that this started before everyone knew my shit, and that there was a legit risk of fucking killing someone or multiple someone’s? You want a reason besides all that? Fucking seriously?”.

Dash snorts, “man, you are such a goody goody”.

“Every superhero type that isn’t is usually a fucking alcoholic or an out and proud murderer, Dash”.

“Oh, right”.

Chelsea nodding, “and not wanting to risk, like, murder, is kinda normal, right? Like, if I thought driving came with an eighty percent chance of running over babies, I wouldn’t drive”.

Most of the classroom laughs at that.

Brittney hums, “yeah”, playing with her hair a bit, “and I guess when we all didn’t know we wouldn’t have been super nice about it”.

Danny huffs, “you think? If plain ol’ fourteen-year-old Danny was all like”, gesturing ridiculously with his hands, “I wanna eat your emotions with my eyes, let me stare at you”, cringing a little, “I would have gotten a fucking swirly or accused of being a leper or rabies infected or riddled with syphilis or something”.

Dash nods, “fair”. And Danny glares violently at him.

Marven points at him, “it isn’t factually parasitic behaviour though, you’re not living on or in any of us nor are you subsisting purely off of us. It’s not even cannibalism since you’re not actually eating our bodies and Phantom’s not human anyways”.

Danny points right back, “you do know there is emotional parasitism and parasitic human to human relationships, right? Stop riding my ass. Also, I am human, though I didn’t call it cannibalism; ‘cause yeah no it’s really not”. Marven huffs at him.

Brittney hums, “so, can you, like, still be all cute and stare-y? With Phantom’s eyes too?”.

Danny puts his head in his hands and sighs, laughing a little, this is fucking ridiculous. Why the fuck was he so concerned by these people's reactions? Granted that was only a small part of it but still. Lifting his head up and giving her a very pitying look, “if you seriously want me to make my freaking eye-hunger known like that then fine, fucking Ancients”. She grins like she’s proud of herself.

Luise puts her hand up again, “do different emotions taste different? Or look different?”.

Danny shuffles a bit at that, “look? Oh yeah, so yes I can basically read everyone’s emotions”, grumbling, “it’s slightly annoying”.

“How could that be annoying?”.

“Have you met my dad? Or Sam? Or Tuck? Or Val? I am surrounded by over-emotional hair-trigger people. Overwhelming when… hungry, and distracting otherwise. If the air’s thick enough with emotion I literally can’t see the damn board through it if I’m at the back”. The two nerds actually wince at that. Danny sighs again, “the, uh, taste is more general, I guess. Some are harsh and intense, others squishy and fluffy”, rubbing his neck, “intense ones are more satisfying or whatever, but also more irksome to the whole hunger thing. Fluffy ones less satisfying but more comfortable”, and shrugs again. He doesn’t want to talk about this, ugh.

Wes, as expected, is the first to press the issue, “which ones?”.

Danny glares at him specifically before eyeing everyone a little, “will y’all stop fucking asking me if I answer?”.

“Yup”.

“Absolutely”.

“Definitely”.

“Eh fine”.

“I mean, I guess?”.

Danny sighs, “fuck me”.

Jesse chuckles, “naw you got Phantom for that”; earning a glare from Dash and a choking cough from Danny.

Look, okay, Danny hasn’t… not thought about that possibility. Duplication was a usable power. But uh, no. Not going there. “Fucking Hell, Jesse. Anger, fear, annoyance, hatred, strong excitement, heavy passion, glee, blood-lust; are all intense. Stuff like cute-emotion, laziness, boredom, affection, mild amusement, and regret; are soft and cozy. Happy?”. At least that gets him a round of nodding,

Chelsea grinning, “so the spooky creepy-cute horror monster thinks our cute emotions taste soft, that’s adorable”.

“I hate you people”, and at last the goddamn bell rings and Danny gets to fucking book it like his life depends on it.

Jesse snorts, “he does know we’re all totally gonna bug him about emotional flavours and his eyes being bitey, right?”. Most of the class chuckles either in amusement or meanly.

Dash still grinning as he gets up, “if someone gave him another swirly do you think his eyes would taste the toilet water or the whoever the fuck’s amusement, more?”.

“I CAN STILL WHIP UP A MOLOTOV COCKTAIL FASTER THAN YOU CAN DRAG ME TO A BATHROOM, DASH!”.

Everyone laughs at the jocks expense.

End.

Prompts: Danny isn't shy about sharing most facets of his half-ghost life with his friends and family, but one thing he's always been too afraid to talk about is his need to consume emotions. When one of his parents deduces that he needs to do so, he has to face a conversation about it for the very first time. Maybe it's a good thing he's having this conversation, though, because he is starving and really needs help. and No matter what he does, Danny only seems to be getting hungrier and Danny is a Creature and everyone is cool with it except him. and We have a lot of identity reveal fics- how about a post reveal one? What are the consequences (positive or negative or quirky) of danny revealing his identity (accidentally or not) to either his parents, Valerie, or anyone of your choice and Horror, but soft and cozy with lots of sensation. and Despite most of the town knowing Danny is Danny Phantom, they get it in their mind that Phantom is stuck in Danny's body but both are very cool about it. Danny has no idea this misunderstanding took place. and Jack and Maddie may not be the best but they're trying and Jack has always known what the accident did to Vlad. and Amity Park loves their ghost boy.

[raaorqtpbpdy]

Father-Son Bonding (3)

With Maddie and Jazz off attending a women in STEM conference over the weekend, Jack decides to take Danny out for the best father-son bonding activity there is—ghost hunting! They're going to catch that elusive Danny Phantom or die trying! Metaphorically, of course. Jack would never let his son die hunting ghosts, or at least... that's what he thinks.

Written for the prompts:

Jack and Danny spend quality time together hunting that damn ghost boy! Danny is being such a help! Bonus points for if they're both enjoying the endeavor. [from @pricklenettle], Jack Fenton finds out. [from @underforeversgrace], and Jack is excited to hunt ghosts alongside his ghost-powered son, and Danny is enjoying the time with his dad way more than he thought he would. Maddie, however, is deeply troubled by all the ways her son could get hurt, and her overprotectiveness causes a heaviness to fall over the Fenton family home. [from @astatia-ghast]

Read on AO3

Chapter 3: Maddie Fenton Doesn't Know the Half of it (Ch.1; Ch.2)

[Warning for bigotry and unintentional bad parenting]

Maddie Fenton was not happy. First, she and her daughter had been kicked out—politely asked to leave the women in STEM conference because apparently, the small-minded people running the event didn't consider ecto-science "real science", and her talk of ghosts was disrupting the other attendees and the speakers. And now she was watching her husband coming home after obviously having taken their fourteen-year-old son out on a ghost hunt.

She watched the GAV slow as it approached the house. She'd never seen her husband drive that slowly before, and she knew that he knew he was in the dog house after this.

She had made herself absolutely clear on this matter that their children were not to be allowed on ghost hunts until they were eighteen. It was simply too dangerous, especially for Danny, who'd had a fragile constitution and heart problems ever since his accident. And Jack had gone behind her back, taking advantage of her absence to go against her direct wishes.

Rather than going to the garage, Jack pulled the GAV to a stop on the street, obviously realizing that his punishment would be worse if he tried to delay it. It was common for Jack to not know or realize when he did something wrong. He often broke rules only because he forgot they existed. But Maddie had never and would never let him forget this one. So, for once, he knew what he had done.

And he was gonna get it for this.

—

"Stay cool, Danny," Jack said as he pulled the GAV to a stop on the street. "Maybe she doesn't know we went on a ghost hunt."

Danny took one look at his mother's face and shook his head. "I think she knows."

Jack grimaced and tilted his head. Danny made a compelling point. Still, if they played it cool, maybe they could get away with minimal damage.

"Just, smile and act happy to see her," Jack said. "No matter how terrifying she may be right now."

Danny nodded, his brows furrowed in determination.

They both plastered on smiles as they climbed out of the vehicle. Jack greeted his wife with open arms.

"Maddie! You're back early! It's good to see you!"

"We missed you mom!" Danny added, laying it on thick.

It had no effect.

"Don't you dare try to butter me up!" Maddie snapped, holding out a hand to stop them in their tracks. "You took Danny on a ghost hunt?! You know how I feel about that!"

"No, we weren't ghost hunting, we were just—"

"Is lying really the route you you want to go, Jack?" Maddie cut him off sternly. "Because that will only make your punishment so much worse."

"I'm... sorry?" Jack tried instead.

"Is that a question?" Maddie asked. Evidently that hadn't helped his case in the slightest. She didn't wait for him to respond before barrelling forward with her lecture. "Just because we agreed that it would be best to train them for the possibility of fighting ghosts, to protect themselves if they were ever attacked, does not mean I want them going out to pursue those dangerous monsters!"

Jack saw Danny flinch in his periphery and wondered if that was how he had sounded just a few days ago. If Danny had heard his parents calling ghost monsters and thought they must think he was a monster too. If so, it was no wonder he had been so hesitant to reveal himself.

"Now, Maddie, I think you're overselling the danger a bit," Jack tried. "Danny is strong and competent, just like his mother. He can handle it. And I was there the whole time to protect him."

"And I think you're not taking the danger seriously enough," Maddie shot back. "Ghosts are vile, evil, and deadly. They have no regard for human mortality and care only about their own obsessions. Anyone can handle themselves against a ghost until they can't. And I for one don't want to find out at what point our children can't handle themselves.

"And you? Protect him?" She scoffed, crossing her arms. "Don't make me laugh. Half the time when we go out ghost hunting, I have to be the one protecting you! Don't give yourself more credit than you've earned!"

"Hey, that's not fair!" Danny piped up. "Dad did a great job protecting me!"

"Quiet Danny," Maddie snapped. "Don't think you're in the clear. You knew the rule just as well as your father did—no ghost hunting until you're at least eighteen—and you went along with it anyway!"

"Now, Maddie, there's no need to yell at him, it was my idea," Jack tried, but his wife had more than enough ire for the both of them.

"Oh, don't worry, I'm not done with you yet!" She glared at him, uncrossing her arms only so she could go back to gesticulating, wildly and aggressively. "You know that ghosts don't hold back just because an opponent is young or inexperienced. Danny could have died!"

At that, Jack glanced at his son, and saw Danny meeting his gaze with a similar look on his face, halfway knowing and halfway sympathetic. Danny was already dead, after all.

Maddie kept going. Yelling and pacing and wagging her finger as she practically bit their heads off right there on the front porch of Fenton Works where all the neighbors could see—not that any of them dared to watch. Maddie could be downright terrifying when she was like this, and no one was spared her vitriol if they dared to make their presence known. That was why Jazz just stood there, absolutely silent, not even daring to go inside the house lest that movement attract her mother's attention and put her in the line of fire.

Time wasn't exactly Jack's best area, but it felt like hours that his wife yelled at them before she finally finished lecturing and started doling out punishments.

"Jack, you are going to fix every single broken or busted thing in the lab. You're going to clean every weapon in the armory—thoroughly. You're going to upgrade the security on the Fenton Portal, and you are going to scrub every surface in the basement until it sparkles!"

"Even the floor?" Jack asked.

"Floor, walls, even the ceiling Jack," Maddie said. "And that's not all! You're also going to fix the lawnmower, the vacuum cleaner, the garbage disposal, and the refrigerator so it stops randomly making that weird groaning noise. All the household repairs you've been saying you planned to do for years, and until every single one of them is done, you'll be sleeping on the couch."

Danny opened his mouth as if to defend his father, but he quickly snapped it shut, probably not wanting to make his own punishment any worse than it was already going to be. Jack could hardly blame him for that.

"And Danny!" She turned on him, hands on her hips. "Until your father has fully completed his own punishment, you're grounded. You are to come directly home after school, you are not allowed to invite your friends over, and no video games! Am I understood?"

"Understood," both Jack and Danny acknowledged dourly.

It seemed a little harsh to Jack, but he knew better than to challenge his wife's decision now, or she'd only make it worse. After a few days, a week at most, she would ease up a bit. At least let him sleep on the bed, if only to reduce the risk of him destroying the couch with his tossing and turning.

"Good!" she said. "Now, I've had a long, and trying day, so I'm going to go upstairs and take a long, soothing bath to relax. You'd better be getting started on your punishment by the time I'm done."

"Yes, Maddie," Jack said.

With that, Maddie finally went into the house, leaving her husband and children on the porch, all three of them waiting a few minutes to make sure she was actually in the back before they entered themselves.

"I'm sorry," Jazz said, her shoulders slumped and voice quiet. "I totally forgot about Dad's tradition of taking us ghost hunting when Mom's away. If I'd remembered, I could have called you and warned you to deactivate the ghost hunting equipment on the GAV before you got home."

"Yeah, that would have helped," Danny griped.

Jack put a hand on his small shoulder to stop him from being mean to his sister. "It's not Jazz's fault," he said. "It was just unlucky timing."

"Still, you and I fought ghosts when Mom and Danny were at that mother-son science symposium thing, too," Jazz pointed out. "I should have done something."

"That's not your responsibility, Jazzy," Jack assured. "Don't worry. I'll blase through those household repairs in no time, and tinkering in the lab? That's hardly a punishment. You'll be un-grounded soon enough. Come on, Danny, help me put away all this stuff?"

He was hoping to talk to Danny in private for a few minutes, without Jazz there.

"Sure, Dad."

The two of them got in the GAV, and jazz went into the house as Jack brought the vehicle around to park in the garage.

"Danny... about the whole Phantom thing... and your mother..."

"You don't think I should tell her, right?" Danny guessed.

"Hrn, it's just... after hearing all the things she said today... and she's not as willing to change her views as I am," Jack said, not really sure what he saying, or particularly wanting to say it, but wanting to make sure his son was safe. "Maddie... all her theories and observations about ghosts. She made them herself. They're all based on her own studies and research and she's sure she's drawn all the right conclusions.

"Me, I'm just an engineer," he continued. "I was willing to believe whatever she told me when it came to ghost biology and psychology, because those are her fields—at least I was until... well, until I had a first-hand source to contradict her. I'm not sure she'll be so quick to accept those contradictions when she was the one who came up with those theories, fist-hand source or not."

Danny looked down at his hands in his lap for a long moment, not saying anything. And for that moment, Jack was sure his words must have upset his son.

"If you disagree, Danny, it's your secret to tell, but—"

"I don't disagree," he said. Then he went silent again.

Although he was determined to wait for his son to collect his thoughts, Jack quickly became antsy in the silence, and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"I was so happy after I told you, and you took it so well," Danny said. "It made me think that maybe mom would react the same way, and maybe it would be safe to tell her. And then we got home today, and I had to listen to her talk about ghosts and it was... it was even worse than usual. It was just... disheartening, I guess, to realize the reality after getting my hopes up like that. But I agree that telling mom right now wouldn't be a good idea."

"But that doesn't mean you can't ever tell her!" Jack added, trying not to let his son's hopes be completely dashed. "No matter how staunchly she's convinced of her views right now, I'll change her mind. I'll warm her up to the idea that not all ghosts are evil, and that they don't have to be destroyed. And I'll release the ghosts we trap through the Fenton Portal and make sure she doesn't hurt you while you're out as Phantom."

"You promise?" Danny asked, his voice so small.

"I promise," Jack said. "It's my job to keep you safe, and that's what I'm gonna do. You can count on me."

"Alright, then I will," Danny agreed, a small smile making its way onto his face. "We should get started putting all this stuff away. There's a lot of work to do if we want our punishments to be lifted."

—

Things were different after that. Knowing Danny's secret changed more than just Jack's personal opinions of ghosts. Suddenly, he was hyper-aware of his wife's anti-ghost rhetoric. All the awful things she said like they were objective facts. He'd never thought much of it before, but now, every time, it made him think of their son and his chest ached with sympathy.

That wasn't all, though. Ever since she got back and learned that he'd taken Danny ghost hunting, she was even more protective of her son than before. She kept close watch on him, and that prevented him from sneaking out as Phantom to protect the town from ghosts.

Thankfully, he had Jazz and Jack both helping him out—and Jack was still surprised that Jazz had found out about Danny before him—but even so he struggled.

Just as Jack anticipated, he was allowed back into the bedroom after only a week, though she still expected him to finish all the chores and repairs she'd given him. But things didn't go back to normal.

There was something oppressive hanging over the household now.

Jack had to change her mind about ghosts sooner rather than later if he wanted their family to go back to the way it was. It was his only hope. But even still, he wondered if things would ever be like they were before.

Somehow... he was starting to doubt it.