Stuck in the middle of a forest made of
Flesh and bones and they're all scared of
A lost little boy who has lost his heart
Fear's not enough, they have to
Tear him apart
—-------
There are two things Daniel Fenton knows that his family knows as well:
He’s adopted.
He can’t remember anything else before that.
‘Adoption’ is a loose term, implying that they went through the official legal processes and troubles of adopting a child into their home willingly, and with the full intention of doing so going into it. That is not what happened. What happened is that Jasmine Fenton found a half-dead child, in strange clothing, in the middle of the woods at her Aunt Alicia’s cabin, and then she went and got her parents.
What happened is that a twelve year old Danny woke up in the same cabin, wearing clothes much too big on him that didn’t belong to him, and with very little memory of before that moment. He wakes up like a spring being set loose, sitting up so fast he scares the daylights out of Jasmine Fenton sitting next to him. He wakes up, reaching for his sleeve for something that isn’t there, and when it isn’t his mind stutters, like he’s tripped at the top of a steep hill.
When they ask him for his name, he tells them, clearing muddled thoughts from his mind; Danny. He’s twelve.
(He thinks that’s his name, at least. It sounds right; it feels right. If he thinks really hard about it, he thinks he can remember someone calling him that, utter adoration in their voice. So it must be his name.)
The Jasmine girl convinces her parents to take him home with them, and they give him the spare guest room upstairs. He has nothing to fill it with.
It’s… a strange experience, to go to a ‘new’ home when he doesn’t even remember his old one.
The official adoption process… happens. He can’t say it’s easy, or difficult. He’s oblivious for the most of it, Jasmine intends on helping him settle in and Danny can’t say he enjoys the smothering. He learns that he is stubbornly self-independent, that’s one new thing he knows about himself.
His adoption papers say ‘Daniel J. Fenton’. Danny remembers staring at the name ‘Daniel’ for a long, long moment, something curdling sour in his sternum. His name is Danny, that he knows. But it’s not Daniel. But he doesn’t know any other way of saying it, so he keeps his complaints to himself.
(Jack Fenton boisterously claps his hand on Danny’s shoulder and jerks him around, grinning wide as he welcomes him into the Fenton Family. Danny’s mind blanches at the touch on his shoulder, an instinct snapping like the maw of a snake, telling him to cut off the man’s fingers for daring to touch him.)
(He keeps the thought to himself, tension rising up his shoulders the longer Jack Fenton’s heavy hand stays on him.)
They found Danny in the summer. It’s a perfect coincidence, Maddie Fenton says before she goes back into her lab with Jack Fenton. She says it’s enough time to allow Danny to adjust; that they’ll enroll him into the school year in the fall. Then she stuffs a canister of ectoplasm onto the top shelf, and disappears like the ghosts she studies back down the stairs.
(There’s something eerily familiar about the ectoplasm sitting in the fridge, something unsettlingly so. Danny knows what that stuff is, but he doesn’t know where. When the house is empty, he takes a can from the fridge and inspects it.)
Jazz wants him to leave the house. Danny doesn’t want to step foot outside of the FentonWorks building until he has something that quells the feeling of vulnerability he gets whenever he does. He tried to once, and he felt exposed. Unsafe.
He turned back around and went inside.
—-------
Where do we go
When the river's running slow
Where do we run
When the cats kill one by one
—------
One day, when the house is empty — or, as empty as it can be; the Fenton parents down in the lab, and jazz out with friends. Danny is making a sandwich, and he caves into the urge to flip the knife in his hands between his fingers. A childish impulse, but one he falls for nonetheless. It comes to him easily, like second nature, in fact. The slip of the blade between his fingers is seamless, flowing with an ease like water running down the wall.
He’s almost startled by it; his body holds memories that his mind does not. Muscles that know which way to move and twist, limbs that know how to hold and how to throw. He continues twirling it, fascinated, as if he were a scientist discovering a new species of animal.
It’s not for a handful of minutes when a new thought hits him; an impulsive thought that pops in the back of his mind like a firecracker; Danny moves without thinking.
He turns, and throws the knife. The pull of his shoulder, the flick of his elbow, is familiar like a hug. He knows when to let go, and the blade flies through the air in impressive speed, embedding itself into the wall with a hearty, loud thunk. Sinking into the drywall like butter.
Danny stares at it in shock, he feels relieved — about what? — before he feels the guilt. He scrambles across the kitchen to pull it out, heart racing in his chest at being caught, and prays no one notices the hole it left behind.
(He runs up the stairs before anyone can find him, food forgotten, and hides the knife beneath his mattress like a guilty murder weapon.)
After that, he leaves the house more. It’s more out of fear of being caught than the desire to leave. But Danny is quickly learning that among all things, he is someone who was dangerous, before he lost his memory. Even with his mind in fractures, he is still dangerous.
He’s not sure how to feel about that — he thinks he should be scared. He feels a little proud, instead.
—------
Hazel beneath our claws
While we wait for cerulean to cry
Unsettled ticks run through time
Enough for the hunt to go awry
—-----
There’s another thing he learns about himself. That he knows about since he woke up. He knows that he left someone behind. He doesn’t know who, but he knows they must have been close; he’s always looking down and finding himself surprised when the only shadow he sees is his own.
He thinks that he must have sung to them a lot; he finds himself humming familiar melodies when he’s lost in thought. Lullabies lingering at the tip of his tongue, an instinct to turn and sing them to someone beside him. He can’t remember the lyrics, but his mouth does, it tries to get him to say them when he’s not thinking. He can’t.
Danny’s found himself humming under his breath more times than he can count, trying to recall whatever it is his mind is trying to claw forward.
(“That’s a pretty song, Danny.” Jazz tells him at breakfast one day, Danny screws his mouth shut. He hadn’t realized he was humming. “What is it?”)
(Something mean and possessive rears its head on instinct, uncoiling like a snake from its ball. His shoulders hunch defensively, he bites his cheek to prevent himself from baring his teeth. He doesn’t know what song it is, but it’s not for her. “I don’t know.”)
He misses his person. Dearly. He knows, the longer he is without them, that they must have been close. Otherwise, he wouldn’t feel like he’s missing a chunk from himself. He wouldn’t be turning to someone who's not there; reaching for a hand that’s missing, birdsong on his tongue, a story to tell.
A dream haunts him one night. Warm and familiar, he’s holding onto someone smaller than him, they’re tucked into his side like a puzzle piece. He’s humming one of his songs that is always playing in the back of his mind, an unfinished tale of a harpy and a hare. Danny can’t remember their face, not all of it. He remembers green eyes, hair dark like his own, skin brown like his.
He loves them more than anything else in the world, a fact he knows down to his soul. He loves them so much it fills his heart with sunlight. Danny squeezes them tight, nuzzling into their hair; he makes them laugh. Then, he proudly boasts something. That when he takes something of their father’s, that his person — a sibling? That feels right — will be… the word fades from Danny’s mind before he can make sense of it.
His person hugs him tight, his… brother? And their mother — a woman whose face he can’t remember either, but who he loves like a limb nonetheless — appears, smiling. Her hands reach for them both, voice calling them, ‘her sons’. There’s ticking in the distance, it sounds like the fastening of chains.
Danny wakes up cold, tears streaming down his face. The details of the dream already fading from his mind like the cold pull of a corpse.
—-------
Harpy hare
Where have you buried all your children?
Tell me so I say
—-------
When school starts that Fall, Danny joins the sixth grade class, and quickly learns more things about himself. One of those things being that he’s smarter than the rest of his grade, whatever education he had before, it was better than the one he’s getting now.
Everyone knows he’s adopted right off the bat. He tells them when the teacher forces himself to introduce himself, but it’s not like they needed him to tell them for them to know; he never existed in their little world before now, and the Fentons are pale as they come. Danny is not.
He befriends Sam Manson and Tucker Foley; they ask him about the scars fading up and down his arms, they ask him about the scar carved diagonal across his face.
Danny, as politely as he can, tells them he doesn’t remember. He thought kindness would come second nature to him, his dream burned into his mind where he hugged his brother so sweetly. Apparently, his sweetness is only second nature to people he considers his own.
(It becomes even more apparent when Dash Baxter tries to bully him later that day, and Danny ruffles like an eagle threatened. His mind whispers, hissy and agitated, sinking like a shadow at his shoulder, several different ways Danny could kill him for talking to him like that, and fifteen more ways he could cripple him.)
(Danny ignores those thoughts, up until Dash Baxter tries to grab him. Then he breaks his nose on the wood of his desk. It’s easy how quickly the rest of his grade sinks him down to the status of social pariah.)
(At least Sam and Tucker still talk to him after that. When Danny goes to the principal’s office later, he wisely doesn’t mention the worse things he could’ve done than break Dash Baxter’s nose.)
—--------------
It clicks and it clatters in corners and borders
And they will never
Hear me here listen to croons and a calling
I'll tell them all the
Story, the sun, and the swallow, her sorrow
Singing me the tale of the Harpy and the Hare
—-------
More dreams come, of course they do. Each one halfway to forgotten whenever he wakes up, ticking faint in his ears. He is many different ages. He is young, shorter than a table. He is older, holding onto his little brother. He is singing in almost every single one. He is singing to his brother.
Danny can barely remember the lyrics, he’s begun leaving a journal by his bedside so that it’s the first thing he can write down when he wakes up. He’s a storyteller, he learns. He feels like a historian, trying to piece together a culture long dead and forgotten.
His most vivid dream-like memory is not a happy one, and for once he’s almost relieved he barely recalls it. He is somewhere that isn’t home, but his mother and brother are there. He is dressed in black, blades keen in his hands.
They are atop a moving train. They are fleeing something. His brother is struggling to keep up, he is small, and young. It’s beautifully sunny, they are somewhere green and lovely.
It is a fast dream.
His brother stumbles on something, and Danny, fast as a whip, snatches him by the back of his shirt and hoists him up to his feet before he can fall. “Watch your feet, habibi.” He murmurs low, a hand on his back. It’s hard to hear, there is wind in their ears.
His brother, face obscured in all but his eyes, which are green as emeralds, nods.
The dream blurs, but Danny falls behind. His foot catches on air — impossible, it should’ve been, at least. He never trips. — and he lands against the roof with a thud and a grunt. His mother and brother stop, and turn for him.
The train hits a turn before Danny can get up, and he shouldn’t have, something pulls on him, he swears, but he slips. He can’t find the purchase to pull himself up, cold fear hits him as his nails scrape against the metal.
His mother and brother’s horrified faces are the last thing he sees before he disappears off the side of the train.
(The ticking is at its loudest when he wakes up, pounding against his inner skull. He only manages to write down ‘train fall’ in his journal, before he’s flipping over to press his head into his pillow to get the pain to stop.)
—---
She can't keep them all safe
They will die and be afraid
Mother, tell me so I say
(Mother, tell me so I say)
—-------
When Danny is fourteen he is still humming songs he can’t remember, his mind still in a broken puzzle. But his room is now decorated with stars and plants in every corner. He has a guitar he keeps in the corner of his room, and he plays the lullabies in his head on the strings over and over again.
The ectoplasm in the fridge still unsettles him, still reminds him of a past he can’t recall. The knife beneath his mattress has returned to the kitchen — he doesn’t need it. He found a box in the attic last year, it had his name on it, and inside he found familiar, strange clothes, and more weapons than he thought was possible to carry on one person.
(Even without knowing that the Fentons prefer guns to blades, Danny knows, instinctively, that they were his weapons. He was — was? Is — a dangerous person. He takes the box down to his room to sort through. The weapons all fit into his callused hands almost perfectly — the grooves worn to fit his palm. They’re just a little small.)
(He tentatively takes a small blade with him to school one day, and feels much more comfortable with it sheathed beneath his shirt. He’s kept it on him ever since, like he’s reunited a lost limb to himself.)
Danny doesn’t have a name for his person, his little brother, nor does he have a name for his beloved mother. He’s haunted by dreams every few weeks, many of them repeating. He’s ingrained the words he can remember to memory, and the ones he doesn’t, he writes down in his journal. His little brother; Danny calls him a bird, he can’t figure out what kind. His little bird of some kind; when Danny takes something from their father — what, he can’t remember what — then his little brother will be a little bird.
(He doesn’t have a name for his brother, yet, but he’s calling his birdie in his head. It’s better than nothing.)
—------
Seeker, do you ever come to wonder
If what you're looking for is within where you hold
Will you leave a trail for them to follow a path
You'll soon forget
Home
—---------
When he’s fourteen, Danny dies. It does nothing to fix his fractured memories, much to his consternation. It just confirms something he already knows; that he was someone dangerous, and that he still is.
When the shock of death has worn off, Danny inspects his ghost in the metal reflection of the closest table. It’s blurry, hard to see, but shock green eyes pierce back at him, green like the portal. Lazarus, Danny’s mind whispers, and he blinks rapidly.
‘Lazarus,’ he mouths to himself. It’s familiar. Sam shows him with her phone what he looks like, joking that he looks like an assassin. Danny doesn’t think she’s that too far off.
He doesn’t tell her that. He tucks the thought away with the rest of his secrets, and fiddles with the hood gathering at his neck, attached to a cape with torn edges swinging down to his ankles. He pulls it over his shock white hair. It shadows over his face impossibly so, until all you can see are his green-green eyes peering out like a wolf hiding in the brush.
He ends up calling himself Phantom.
(Maybe now he can start putting lyrics to his lullabies; his memories may not have returned, locked away with the sound of a clock, but the dead can talk. One of them may just have answers.)
----------
Home is where we are
Home is where you are
Home is where I am
-----------------
Dedicated to @gascansposts for being the one who introduced me to the band Yaelokre, and thus being the whole reason I was inspired to write this in the first place >:] Those lyrics at the line breaks are all from their album Hayfields.
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Our Well Deserved Break
Its
Shenanigans (ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*:・゚✧
Time again!~
-x-x-
Danny, our boy the Ghost King, looking over a small team going over relic's given or 'offered' to Pariah Dark over the years both before and after he was sealed away. As they're taking inventory of the chaotic offering room, they stumble across a certain artifact.
This artifact is able to summon a set number of people (it does have its limits) of the users wishes to them and it sets up a barrier around the surrounding place so no one summoned gets out. You know, those kinds of artifact's certain people use to summon heroes and or villains into a room and have them fight to see whose the strongest or for a tournament, Yeah that kind of artifact!
Danny, who found the item, takes a look at after being told what it does. Then out of the corner of his eye he spots himself in a mirror in the room and see's his crown floating above his head and feels the full weight of his responsibility since before and after his crowning. Yes he had help with his advisor, despite how cryptid he can be at times, and of his council but still the weight was a bit too much for a teenager like him.
An idea struck his mind when he hears the ticking of a clock behind him. Without saying a word Danny looks back and raises an eyebrow at Clockwork whose staring at him in silence as well. He glances at the item, tilts his head a bit before...
Smiles in only the way CW knows would both be good for Danny and amusing for him. He nods and says "One weekend should be fine. All timelines will be paused for them. I suggest telling your friends to help prepare for your guests. Enjoy and have fun my King."
"YES!" Danny's voice echoing in the offering room made many ghosts in the room jump for a bit.
This was totally going to be fun!
-x-x-
When the following weekend arrived, young and very stressed teen heroes from across the multiverse are suddenly pulled from their worlds and are summoned into the Infinite Realms. Before any of them can panic or start fights a voice rang out above them and when they looked they could see a young teen, with a crown floating above his head, white hair, and glowing green eyes sitting on a throne.
He smiled and said
"Welcome fellow stressed out Heroes and Heroines to Phantom's Keep! I'm King Phantom, recently crowned fifteen year old, and this is the Infinite Realms! The birth and ending of the multiverse afterlife! Now don't worry none of you are dead or anything like that. I summoned you all here for one reason and one reason only..."
Here Danny paused, just to troll a tiny bit, and could see some of the more tense heroes readying up for a fight or at least argue to let them go. He grinned though and then said.
"And thats.... TO HAVE FUN!"
After that he floated out of his throne and with a flourish in the air he waved his hands and his throne room changed with party decor all around. Tables off to the side appeared with food and drinks from well everywhere and anywhere the multiverse, balloons rose from the ground and floated upwards, streamers flew across above to attach themselves to the other sides, the castle lights shifted to a dim and music began playing from somewhere.
Danny grinned brightly down at them and their shocked faces. oh that's funny, thank goodness Tucker is recording this and Jazz is gonna scrapbook this party for him (she plans on making them for all the guests as a party gift later, you know to remember how fun the party was)
"Now all of you are stressed out teen heroes with a lot of responsibilities on their shoulders! Believe me, I know that feeling, been there done that still doing it even now! But! My advisor says this will be both fun for me and good for you guys to spend one whole weekend here to de-stress and have fun! I do have some ground rules though. One your timelines are in fact PAUSED, you don't have to worry about calling your parents or if you got mentors to let them know where you are at. Two you are all heroes here, many of you are from different worlds and if you are from the same world they already know or CAN be trusted with your real identities but you are NOT required to remove any masks or de-transform or anything like that, if you wish there are masks on that green table over there you can stick on if you want to keep your identities hidden and are spelled to stay on and fuzz the minds of anyone trying to remember your looks once its on, even if they catch a good look at you right now it'll fuzz their memories of you once the mask is on and even after the party don't worry we thought of the time. Three, boys and girls rooms will be at different wings within the Keep! Just ask any of the maid or butler ghosts that will be joining us shortly and they will guide you to the rooms! Fourthly! There are sparing rooms if you wanna test your strengths with others, I only ask please don't get too carried away. We are here to have fun not make enemies! and lastly PLEASE DO NOT try to leave the castle, we are in the very afterlife of the multiverse people, its like the ocean and even I find it hard to navigate it sometimes. Portals can open up to any and all worlds, different timelines, etc etc. I have key items here in the castle that can pinpoint YOUR timeline and world so when the party is over I can send you home no problem, so again please do not attempt to leave."
Danny paused to take a breath, okay ground rules set up and warnings given. He could see the absolute bewildered looks on all the heroes faces and held back a laugh. He smiled however when one of the teens, mask on his face already and dressed in green, yellow, and red asked 'Why?'
"Why? Well... I think its time us teens get to have some fun without worrying about the next big bad or world ending event. Even if just for a weekend, we do deserve a break. So... Lets have some fun for once!" Danny responded.
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omg it was so hard to pick butttt could i request 1 and 2 from the smut dialogue list (list 3) with buck and bucky!
prompts | "i want to hear you beg" + "arch your back for me" + playing around with smth a little different for their dynamic <33 ~800 words of filth below the cut >:-) this was so much fun ahh thx sm for the request!!
“Oh, baby,” John rumbles appreciatively, sitting back to get a good look at Gale while he rolls his hips languidly into him. “Look at you.”
Golden hair frames Gale’s head on the pillow like a halo, blue eyes half hidden by heavy eyelids, doll–like lashes fluttering each time John sinks his cock in deeper. Messy love bites mark a trail south, scattered across his chest and stomach and increasing in numbers where angular hip bones and soft thighs had just begged for John’s teeth to make themselves at home.
Gale rocks his hips down, dragging his kiss–bitten bottom lip between his teeth to muffle a needy little noise as John’s eyes rake over him. That just won’t do.
John stills, wrapping firm hands around Gale’s thighs where they drape over his own, squeezing gently.
“Keep going,” Gale breathes out, eyebrows knit together in frustration, still trying to fuck himself on John’s cock.
John purrs out a laugh, heart twisting in his chest at the glare Gale shoots him; it’s hard to look intimidating when he’s laid out pliant and pretty and cock–drunk beneath him, but John doesn’t tell him so. He just snaps his hips forward once, watching with satisfaction when the scowl leaps off of Gale’s face as flushed lips fall open to let out a gasp.
“John,” Gale almost, almost whines when he makes no move to continue, lithe hands coming up to wrap around John’s wrists imploringly, and John hums thoughtfully, stroking his thumbs over Gale’s thighs.
“You need something?” He tilts his head, feeling a little thrill at the huff he gets in return.
Gale levels him with an unimpressed look, but the light flush that creeps over his cheeks betrays him.
“I want you to ask for it,” John murmurs. He grants Gale with the smallest roll of his hips to egg him on when he stays silent, and he feels his hands tighten around his wrists.
“Want you to fuck me, John.”
And oh, that’s something– his cock twitches at the rare vulgarity, and judging by Gale’s sharp inhale, he feels it. But it’s not quite what John’s looking for.
“That’s good, baby,” he praises him, delighting in the way his flush deepens. He leans down, sliding his hands up Gale’s hips as he goes, settling them on his waist. He brushes his lips against Gale’s in a ghost of a kiss, trailing them along his jaw until he reaches his ear.
“But I wanna hear you beg for me, Gale,” he whispers.
The immediate pressure around his cock as Gale reflexively clenches down has his head dropping into the crook of Gale’s neck momentarily, cursing under his breath. He can’t help but press his hips forward, needing just a bit of relief, sitting back up once he collects himself, determined to keep the upper hand.
“C’mon,” he rasps out, running his hands up and down Gale’s sides, fingers splaying over his ribcage. “I know you can do it, angel.”
Gale does whine this time, high and desperate in his throat, eyes slipping closed to hide from his own embarrassment. But–
“Please, John,” he says, barely above a whisper. “Need you.”
“Jesus, Gale,” John breathes, head spinning. “Good, so good, baby.”
John’s not going to push– that’s already a lot more than he’s usually able to goad out of Gale, and he’s going to unravel a lot quicker than he intends to if he keeps talking like that.
“Arch your back for me, pretty thing,” John prompts instead, beginning to shallowly fuck into him, and Gale does, tilting his head back on the pillow to bare his neck as his spine curves beneath John’s hands.
The sight nearly knocks the breath out of John, and he groans, sliding one hand under Gale to flatten his palm against the small of his back, feeling the way it flexes as he jerks his hips forward.
Gale cries out so sweetly when he really starts driving his cock into him, grasping desperately at John’s arms, face going slack as he finally gives him what he needs, and it gets to John like nothing else, forever dizzy with the knowledge that he gets to make Gale feel so good.
Dragging those pretty noises out of Gale and feeling him tremble because of him is what really does it for John every time, and it’s what inevitably has him tipping over the edge seconds after Gale spills over his stomach with a broken whimper.
John sinks his teeth into Gale’s collarbone just to feel him squirm beneath him as he fills him up, hands digging into his hips, rutting into him like he can bury his cock impossibly deeper, feeling nails scrabble at his back as the softest mewls escape Gale’s mouth.
He laves his tongue over the fresh indents in apology before lifting his head to capture Gale’s lips in a messy kiss, swallowing his gasps and sighs as he gives him a few more lazy thrusts, chest warm and fuzzy and lovestruck.
John smiles into the kiss, and Gale laughs softly, and god, he’s going to be the death of him.
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