#or just not gone to sleep on Dannys bed given he had proper sleep in the other camp the night before

[molliemoo3]

Ant and Dec being so obviously done with Dean is cracking me up

[idy-ll-ique]

One And Only.

Pairing: Mob Boss!Steve Rogers x F!Reader

Genre: Fluff, Smut

Warnings: s*x

Requested: nope

Summary: Their marriage is for business purposes only but they fall in love. Until Y/N starts having a doubt... does Steve Rogers have a mistress? It's all a misunderstanding...

Author's Note: Hiya peeps, iw!Steve in this one. Enjoy!

---

"Hey, you doing okay?" Y/N turned away from the mirror and smiled at Natasha and Wanda. "As well as a bride could be minutes before her wedding," she jabbed, making the ladies chuckle. "It's going to be fine, Y/N, Steve will treat you well. We've been friends with him for years, one thing we know about him is that he never treats women wrong."

"I don't doubt that, it's just that— I met him a week ago. One time. I don't even know him, anything about him, other than the fact that he leads the most feared crime gang in the entire country," Y/N muttered, tugging at the sapphire necklace she was wearing. Something blue. "You will get to know him soon enough, though. Come on now, everyone is waiting."

Her father stood outside the door, a soft smile on his face. "You look lovely, honey," he cooed, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead as the two ladies sauntered past them into the Hall with their partners. "Thank you, papa." The two people walked into the Hall and everyone stood up to greet the bride. At the end of the aisle stood Steve, tall and proud, a huge smile on his face.

Y/N couldn't help but smile back. As soon as she reached near him her father let go, but not before pressing a kiss to her cheek. Steve took her hand and brought it to his lips when she stood in front of him. The priest standing next to them began his usual recitations; Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today… Y/N didn't really pay attention to his speech.

She was busy staring at Steve, who looked magnificent in an all black suit, his dirty blond hair and full beard making her feel all sorts of things. His smile softened a bit, also not listening to the priest. He was observing her. It was supposed to be purely transactional, the marriage, but he knew it wasn't gonna end like one. It would be a proper marriage.

Happily married.

She looked wonderful. He met her a week ago; a bit wary at the concept of merging two mobs by marriage but the moment he saw her, he knew he had to have her. She was his, no one else's. The two quickly exchanged their vows as the ring bearers came forward with the rings. The bride and the groom took the rings with smiles and turned to face each other.

"Steve Rogers, do you take Y/N Y/L/N to be your lawfully wedded wife, to live together in marriage? Do you promise to love her, comfort her, honor and keep her for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health, and forsaking all others, be faithful only to her, for as long as you both shall live?" The priest turned to Steve expectantly.

"I do," Steve spoke, loud and clear, as he slipped the ring on Y/N's finger. Y/N had to admit, she felt a bit giddy when those words left his mouth.

"Y/N Y/L/N, do you take Steve Rogers to be your lawfully wedded husband, to live together in marriage? Do you promise to love him, comfort him, honor and keep him for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health and forsaking all others, be faithful only to him so long as you both shall live?" Y/N smiled shyly at Steve. "I do."

Steve grinned widely when she neatly placed the ring on his finger. "You may now kiss the bride." And the whole room erupted into stentorian cheering as Steve gathered his wife in his arms, pressing his lips to hers in a deep kiss. Only when he heard a wolf-whistle coming from the crowd did Steve stop, pulling away to look at his out-of-breath wife.

"Mrs Rogers," he spoke fondly and she giggled. "Mr Rogers," she teased as they turned to the crowd, Y/N clutching Steve's arm as they smiled widely. Not many people had attended the impromptu wedding; just Steve's close friends and Y/N's father. Her bridesmaids were Natasha and Sharon, with Wanda being her maid-of-honor.

Steve's groomsmen were Sam and Tony, with Bucky being his best man. "Well, the first dance goes to the bride and her father, I'd say," Clint called out, already helping himself to a bottle of beer as music started playing. Steve reluctantly handed his wife over to her father, bidding her with a sweet kiss on her cheek.

"I hope you know why I had to do this, honey," her father sighed as they danced in the middle of the Hall. "I know, papa. Don't feel bad, I think I'm starting to like Steve. He seems friendly enough and Nat and Wan told me he's good to women." Her dad chuckled. "Well, he doesn't have the label of promiscuity that other leaders do." He was right.

Steve Rogers never really had time for dating, too busy leading the salient mafia. Also, the thought of having women just for a night or two didn't sit right with him, so he never went in that direction. "Can I have this dance now?" As soon as the song changed Steve appeared on her side, holding his hand out. She smiled and took his hand.

He easily slid an arm around her waist as the music slowed. One hand around her waist and the other holding her hand in classic ballroom dancing position, he pulled her closer. She rested her head on his chest, the arm which was around his neck lowering to his middle. "I'll treat you well," Steve whispered as they languidly swayed in the middle of the room.

"I know. If it's not much, um, I think I'd like to take things slow…" she hinted, hoping he'd notice. And he did. "Of course, of course, we can do that. I don't want to make you uncomfortable in any way," he assured her. "Thank you, Mr Rogers," she mumbled. "My pleasure, Mrs Rogers." The rest of the ceremony was enjoyable to say the least.

---

10 months had passed since the wedding.

Steve and Y/N were still taking things slow, against their own wishes.

It was a misunderstanding.

They loved each other; they really did, but they couldn't bring themselves to say the words to the other. Steve was purposely not making the first move, in fear that his wife would think he was rushing things. Y/N, on the other hand, had started severely doubting herself because 10 months have passed, does he not want to be with me anymore?

She was expecting him to make the first move, and he was expecting her to give him the permission first. It was annoying, to say the least. They were still friendly with each other, so Steve didn't pay much attention to the anxiety his wife was feeling. Y/N was beside herself with worry that had increased tenfold since... well, 15 minutes ago. She had overheard a conversation.

"So, how's Smith treating ya?"

"Same old, ya know. He has like 3 bitches as mistresses, thinks I don't know about 'em. Which mob man doesn't have a mistress in today's world, ha?"

"Preach, sister. I'd think even Rogers has one, heard somewhere that he and his little wife haven't even consummated their marriage. Probably doesn't even wanna be with her, he did marry her for the business."

"Mmhm, I agree. What about you, Lin?"

"Oh, Danny? Probably out there sleeping with Denise."

She didn't mean to eavesdrop on their personal conversation, but she couldn't help it. Mistress? She was familiar with the term, but what she was not familiar with was the fact that nearly all married mobsters had one. And when they mentioned Steve, she was done for. Crying, she had gone back to her room, collapsing on the bed, sobbing.

In her crying state, she failed to notice Steve also in the room as she raked her brain, thinking about all the times Steve had come home from work. He had given her no reason to believe that he had another woman, but what if he was just that good at hiding it? "Sweetheart? My love, why are you crying?" The bed dipped next to her.

Steve had just stepped out of the shower when his wife had thrown the door of their shared suite open, falling on the bed with a nerve-wracking sob. Why was she crying? "S-Steve…" she stammered and he pulled her on his lap, rocking her back and forth, getting her to calm down. It worked as Y/N's heart rate slowed down.

"Y/N, tell me, what happened? Who hurt you, tell me their names." Steve suddenly saw red at the prospect of someone hurting his wife. "N-No one hurt me, I just… I accidentally overheard a conversation I shouldn't have and—" She trailed off when her breath hitched. Steve soothingly rubbed her back, pressing a soft kiss to her lips.

"What were they talking about?"

"Mistresses. One of the ladies said that nearly all mob men had mistresses and I— We haven't even consummated our marriage, haven't done anything besides kissing so I just thought— Do you have a mistress?" Her question shocked him. Him? Keeping a mistress when he had a wife he was head-over-heels for? "My darling, I love you."

She looked up at his words. "You do?" she mumbled, taking a deep breath. "Of course I do. The only reason I didn't say anything was because you told me, on the day of our wedding, that you wanted to take things slow. Before doing something, I needed your permission and that's why I haven't made a move on you." Y/N felt very silly all of a sudden.

"I'm so sorry for accusing you—"

He chuckled and shook his head. "Don't apologize to me, princess. Come here." He hugged her tightly, cradling the back of her head as she buried her face in the crook of his neck. "Do you know how many of my colleagues have asked me the same question?" She gently shook her head. "One too many. Do you know what I say to them each time?"

"No…"

"I say, why would I have a mistress when my wife makes me the happiest person on the planet? Why would I have a mistress when my wife is an angel personified? You guys are just jealous that she's mine and not yours." Y/N's skin burnt at his praise and she burrowed closer to him. "Steve," she muttered bashfully and felt him chuckle underneath her.

"Will you allow me to show you just how much I love you?"

"Yes."

He gently lowered her on the bed and hovered above her, one large hand coming to rest on her cheek. Then he made quick work of their clothes until they were bare in front of each other; Steve's eyes went wide with awe when he saw her body. "You are perfect," he declared, his warm hands grabbing every bit of skin it came in contact with as his lips touched her neck.

Y/N mewled underneath him when he shamelessly groped both her breasts, groaning. "So perfect. So beautiful. Only mine, my one and only," he whispered, pressing his lips to hers in a chaste kiss as he felt his shaft harden. "I love you," she blurted out as one of his hands found her core, his fingers scissoring her open, getting her ready for penetration.

"I love you too, my sweet," he smiled at her before lining his shaft against her core. He pushed in inch-by-inch, giving her some time to adjust to his size. He was bigger than anyone she had previously been with, much bigger. Y/N bit her lip to stifle a moan as he bottomed out inside her, grunting. "None of that," he rasped, "I want to hear you."

Y/N groaned when he lazily rotated his hips, not holding back, just like he asked. "That's it, baby girl. Just like that." He sped up inside her, grabbing the headboard of the bed, each snap of his hips sending waves of pleasure washing over Y/N. "Oh, Steve," she whimpered, her hands balling into fists around the bedsheets she was clutching, moving weightlessly against him.

"Are you close, my dear?" he growled when her walls clenched around him. She meekly nodded, throwing her head back as she tried to hold in. "Only one moment, love, I'm close too." His thrusts soon got sloppier. "Cum with me," he ground out before letting go, shooting his load inside her. Y/N came just moments later, her arms wrapping around Steve's shoulders when he slumped on her.

"There we go, our marriage is sealed," he joked and she laughed tiredly, pressing a kiss to his forehead. Steve rolled off of her, smiling gently when he saw her drifting in and out of consciousness. "Go to sleep, I'm right here. I'll take care of you." He got up and walked to the closet, taking out a spare towel. Running it under some hot water, he sat next to her and cleaned her up.

Then he cleaned himself up, put on a pair of pyjama pants and lay down next to his sleeping wife, an automatic smile blooming on his face. He'd dreamed that their first time would be unforgettable, and it was, but he also wished it was… longer. God knew he was an insatiable man; but he also didn't want to pressure the woman he had grown to love.

There's always a next time, anyway.

"Sleep tight, my dear."

---

A/N: Leave a like if you enjoyed, thanks for reading!

[mattmurdocksdumpy]

𝓗𝓸𝓹𝓮♡

Defenders and Daredevil season 3 spoilers!

seriously HUGE spoilers

𝒲𝒶𝓇𝓃𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈: angst !!

.

.

You looked at the candle placed carefully on the shelf  in the office, a picture of you, Foggy , Karan and Matt altogether at Josie's. The flame flickered as you packed up the last of your things for the weekend. You stopped at the red jar, one that father Lantom had given you, along with a rosary. You weren't religious, but everyone at the office agreed it was important for you all to have a proper grieving place, considering you didn't have a grave to visit. You sighed. Last one in the office always had the hardest job. With a deep breath, you blew out the candle, and the light that shon on the memory in the picture frame vanished.

- a few months prior -

You watched as the building began to crack and crumble to the ground. You felt a heavy compression on your chest. You screamed as you tried to run to the building, to run to him.

A pair of strong arms wrapped around you before you could even get close. Luke held you against him as you pounded at his arms wrapped around your waist, begging him to let you go. You didn't care what would become of you, you just knew you needed him.

You needed Matt.

Luke didn't let go until the building had collapsed, and he then gently unwrapped his arms from you. Your knees buckled as you sobbed, your eyes red and irritated from the endless tears.

Jessica knelt down next to you, hugging you from the side, tucking her chin into the crook of your neck.

Danny looked at the ground, his guilt settling in like a thick cloud. Claires hand was frozen over her mouth, her eyes wide from shock.

You all knew it was likely to happen, that the devils actions would eventually catch up. But you refused to believe it could actually happen.

But here you were, kneeling on the tarmac as Jessica hugged you tightly, her hand playing with your hair.

"He's.. he's gone Jess-" you sobbed out.

She closed her eyes, and just held you tighter. Luke knelt down and hugged you both, resting his head on top of yours.

But you didn't want Luke's hug, or Jessica's.

You wanted his.

You wanted it more than anything.

Danny's eyes were fixated on the debris, Jessica's were shut tight, Luke's were glossed over and yours were red and swollen, tears trickling into Jessica's hair.

.

The car ride over was quiet, police sirens blasting through the city as cars with bright flashing lights passed your police car every few seconds. Your eyes were glossed over.

You stepped out of the car and into the station, walking down the hallway as the others filed into the room infront of you.

You knew Foggy and Karen were waiting for you and Matt. And you knew your swollen eyes would tell them the truth before you even opened your mouth.

You hesitated before stepping into the door. Karen smiled and foggy let out a deep breath as you ran over and embraced them both.

You wanted to hold the tears back.

But you couldn’t.

Tears flooded onto their shoulders.

And they knew.

They knew the minute you started crying.

They held you tight, before beginning to cry into your shoulder, the three of you leaning on each-other for support.

.

A few months later

.

You groaned as the neighbors dog barked.

"Stupid postman" you sighed, rolling over in the silk sheets, before grabbing your phone and checking the time.

yikes.

1.45pm

Did you sleep through the alarm you had groggily set the night before?

Then it hit you. The postman doesn't come that late, not to your apartment.

Then the apartment door opened. You froze, your heart beating hard against your rib cage. You edged over to the edge of the bed and reached underneath, grabbing one of Matt's batons you had kept under the bed incase of emergencies. You quietly swung your feet over the edge of the bed, tiptoeing to the door, the bamboo baton in your right hand. You waited until the mystery person walked into the bedroom, before blindly swinging it full force towards the man's face.

His hand reached up to hold it, catching it easily in his palm. You blinked as you stared at the familiar hazel eyes.

"M-Matt?" You stuttered. You dropped the baton and it crashed to the floor, bouncing once before settling at his feet.

"Yeah- uh- it's me" he muttered. He obviously hadn't planned on you being in his apartment, but he didn't look surprised anyway. You couldn't tell if that's because he could smell your perfume from a block away, or because he had expected you to be here still, not being able to move on from what you and him had shared.

You felt your legs wobble as you hesitantly walked over to him, cupping his face gently, your hands warm against his ice cold skin. His stubble wasn't as clean shaved as it usually was, since you normally helped him with shaving.

He didn't move forward. He stayed glued to the floorboards, his blank gaze averted to the floor. Your eyebrows furrowed at his absent reactions. His eyes looked sunken and a nasty black eye circled his right eye. He looked pale, lacking his usual glow.

He wasn't your Matt.

This Matt looked completely different.

"Are you okay?" You asked, whispering quietly as you didn't know how sensitive he was at the moment.

"I'm fine. Why are you here?" He grumbled, his tone flat with a slight hint of anger. You blinked at him.  Why were you here? Your mind went blank.

"I'm here because- because I thought you were-" you muttered out. His hands rested on yours against his face, his eyes closing for a brief second, as if he was savoring the touch. But then he held your hands and moved them away from his face. You looked at him with confusion.

"Matt Murdock is no longer apart of me" he muttered quietly, before turning to leave. You grabbed his wrist and pulled him back into the room.

"Matt.. what happened?" You asked firmly, your eyes pricking with tears.

"I became self aware." He sighed. "I realised I was causing more harm than good, especially to you"

"Matt that's bullshit. Where have you been all this time? Why didn't you come back? We all though you were dead?! We had a funeral! Foggy and Karen were distraught when they found out." You leant against the wall and folded your arms.

"I've been at the church. St Agnes. The sisters helped me get back into shape" he spoke softly, but there was a sharpness to his words.

"Oh so what? You're sat in some convent while your friends grieve you?" You snap.

His blank gaze was averted to the floor. His lips were pressed against eachother. He said nothing.

You scoffed. "I can't believe you. "

He didn't reply. The room was filled with a heavy silence.

"Do you know how hard it was to watch that building fall onto the man I loved, the man I adored? Do you have any idea what it was like to hope every day you would magically turn up at my door, or that they would atleast find a body so Karen could grieve properly? The cold nights we sat in silence in Josie's trying to organize a funeral?" You yelled, your voice cracking at multiple times throughout your speech, tears beginning to fall from your eyes.

" I couldn't come back! I would've made everything worse. Thought you'd have met someone new by now- forgotten about it" he leant against the wall, his words sharp and snappy right back at yours.

You blinked at him. Forgotten about it?

"Are you serious right now? Met someone new ? Matt- I was - I am head over heels for you! No one is ever going to change that. How fucking dare you? Is this because of Elektra? What, you and her ran off into the sunset? " you scoffed.

His head snapped up, his brows furrowed.

A sore subject obviously.

"Elektra's dead, and nothing was going on with her. I promise. In the past we had something, but she- she was toxic and it was nothing more than a fling in college. But she's dead. The building killed her. I'm head over heels for you too, but I couldn't  keep hurting you... it wasn't fair on you. Couldn't burden you any longer" he sighed.

"Matt- you were never a burden. Every goddamn time you stumbled in through the rooftop access bleeding and half dead, I had a mini heart attack, but nothing will ever compare to constant pain I've experience thinking you were dead. The empty chill through my bones every time I heard your name, or went to fogwells, or whenever I'd pass the church. The painful reminders that the man I loved was gone. I would stitch you up every night for the rest of our lives if it meant being able to spend my life with you" you stated, tears pricking at your eyes, and a single tear threaded down your cheek.

His eyes watered, and a single tear escaped his right eye. "I- I've missed you love but- but we can't. I cant put you through that,  I'm so sorry" he choked out.

"Forever the martyr. Stop thinking about everyone else for a minute and concentrate on how you feel. You deserve happiness too, Matty. " you whispered softly, chuckling slightly as tears delicately streamed down your face, yesterdays mascara leaving a path of ash down your face. You stepped closer to him and gently cupped his face, his harsh stubble rough against the soft palm of your hands.

"What if- what if I hurt you?" He mumbled, his brown eyes closed to try and hide his fear, but also his relief. You still loved him, still missed him.

"Nothing hurts more than not having you by my side" you smiled weakly, before leaning in and gently pushing your lips against his. His hands engulfed you, coming up to hold your face as you held yours.

"I won't leave you again.. I promise I won't" he mumbled out inbetween sobs and kisses. The salt from both of your tears seeped their way into the kiss, but neither of you cared. You held on so impossibly tight to eachother as the night melted away, the two of you embracing eachother, reunited as last.

You were in his arms at long last.

The candle of love and hope had been relit.

[darthfrodophantom]

Ectoberhaunt Day 5: Ouija Board

Summary: To get into the spooky season spirit, Tucker and Sam convince Danny to play a video game late at night, and Danny isn’t pleased about the subject of the video game.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/34303123 

Too Close to Home

“Let me get this straight,” Danny interrupted. “I fight ghosts - real ghosts - on a nightly basis. And now that I actually have a free night you want to take up the time that I should be sleeping to fight fake ghosts?”

He shook his head as he looked at his computer screen, the only light in his entire bedroom aside from the digital clock that showed the hour: 11:45. From the first-person view of the computer game on his screen, he watched the avatars of both of his friends attempt to throw basketballs into a hoop.

“But this is way more fun,” Tucker’s voice said over Danny’s headset. “And it hurts a lot less! Ah! Dang it Sam - you messed up my throw!”

Sam cackled triumphantly. “Better pay more attention to your timing then.”

Tucker groaned as his avatar abandoned the basketball for spray paint cans, which he chucked at Sam. “Besides Danny, we’re not fighting ghosts: we’re hunting them.”

“Fine, fight, hunt, whatever. I still do both of them,” Danny argued.

“Not like this you don’t,” Tucker grinned. “God he’s gonna get creamed.”

“You know Danny, maybe we should let you go to bed. You’re gonna ruin my perfect streak,” Sam teased.

Danny rolled his eyes. “Or maybe you’ll actually do better because you have a true ghost hunting professional on the team,” he defended. He had no idea why he was bragging - he’d just been given an out and given the late hour he should take it, but now it felt like he needed to defend his pride as a ghost hunter. …That thought sounded a little too similar to something his parents would say and he quickly dismissed it. “Besides, I played the tutorial, I know what I’m doing. I’m just trying to figure out why we’re doing this.”

“Because it’s spooky season,” Tucker replied with a hint of sarcasm.

“We are only five days into October, Tucker, and if you’re gonna keep doing this all month I am going to hit you with the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick,” Sam threatened.

“I dunno, it might be worth it,” Tucker teased. “What do you think Danny?”

Danny shook his head, even though none of them could see it. “As the only person in this group who has actually been hit by the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick, I would back off,” he advised.

“Listen to Danny Tucker,” Sam chuckled as her avatar walked over to the white board to set up the hunt. “He’s actually speaking wisdom for once. Now come over here and pick out your gear.”

The playful teasing between best friends stopped as they actually got serious and picked out the gear they would need for their mission. Since Danny had no money, he couldn’t really participate in the conversation, but it seemed like Tucker and Sam had played this enough to know what they needed to bring. Sam started the mission, and their avatars found themselves inside the trailer looking at another whiteboard.

“Alright, looks like our ghost is named Thomas Clark and he responds to all of us,” Sam informed the group while Tucker’s avatar walked over to the shelves to equip supplies.

“Well that’s a dumb name for a ghost,” Danny complained as he looked at the bulletin board next to the computer. He had to squint at his screen to read them, but the articles were fairly legible and contained ghost stories he remembered hearing his parents talk about. It also had a recent article that he actually remembered running in USA Today proclaiming Amity Park as the most haunted city in the world - he didn’t know whether to feel proud or annoyed.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Sam agreed, though her voice was laced with sarcasm. “He should have gone with Thomas Phantom instead.”

Danny rolled his eyes as Tucker burst out laughing. “Oh yeah, now that sounds like a proper ghost,” Tucker added between laughs.

“I knew I was going to hate this,” Danny groaned under his breath. “Can we just get this over with?”

Sam’s avatar turned to face the new whiteboard. “Alright, fine. Objective one: find out what kind of ghost we’re dealing with - standard. Objective two: witness a ghost event.”

“I am a ghost event,” Danny smirked, causing Tucker to burst out laughing again.

“Objective three,” Sam snapped, “capture a photo of the ghost.”

Tucker’s avatar grabbed a camera and snapped a picture of Danny’s avatar. “Got one!” he proclaimed, which drove both boys into laughter.

“Objective four,” Sam said louder, “get a ghost to walk through salt.”

“What? That’s dumb. Everyone knows that’s an old wive’s tale,” Danny complained as he shook his head. Did the creators of this game actually do any real research before they made this game?

“Are you regretting this yet Sam?” Tucker asked as he finally stopped laughing.

“Let’s just get in the house,” she groaned. Danny smirked in triumph, and he could tell Tucker was sharing a similar smirk on his end.

They divided up equipment between the three of them, but not before Danny could comment on the inaccuracies of each of the pieces of equipment and how useless they’d be in an actual ghost fight. From faulty science to just being plain incorrect, Danny made sure to have pithy comments about all the equipment. He didn’t know why it bothered him so much that it had to be accurate - he was not his parents - but as a ghost and a ghost hunter, it just felt a little more personal than he wanted to admit.

Because he was the newest one, Danny got stuck with the Spirit Book (“What? Are they trying to imply all ghosts can’t write? That’s alivist!”) and the EMF Reader (“...Okay that one’s actually accurate”) because they were apparently the easiest to use. Laden down with their gear they walked up to the small house. Sam’s avatar unlocked the door and they headed inside. Danny noticed the tonal shift immediately. Outside he could hear wind and crickets chirping, but once he stepped inside the doorway, an oppressive silence covered his headphones. It reminded him of the sensation on a pressurised airplane and it unnerved and unsettled him...a lot more than he planned to admit to his friends.

“Alright, spread out,” Sam instructed. “See if you can find the ghost room.”

Ghost room, right. He remembered that from the tutorial. It had been the garage in the tutorial, so he figured he should start there. He walked back through the dark house, turning lights on as he went. It wasn’t because he was scared - absolutely not, he was a real ghost hunter! - it was just much easier to see. He pulled out the EMF reader and walked into the garage. It had an eerie quality to it, and he couldn’t tell if it was because he remembered seeing the ghost there last time (a mean looking (and inaccurate) ghost covered in blood and holding an axe) or if it was because he was alone and the room was so large, but he did not like being in here.

“You know, in the tutorial, the ghost was a bloody axe-man,” Danny remarked over the walkie talkie.

“Yeah, I think he’s standard in the tutorial,” Sam remarked offhand. He did not want to admit how good it felt to hear her voice in the oppressive silence of the house. They were clearly focused on their tasks, and that was a good thing, but it felt a lot better hearing their voices.

“Red blood,” he continued, simply to trigger more conversation. He didn’t get any EMF readings, so he gratefully left the garage. “Not ectoplasm. It’s like they didn’t even try.”

“Ugh, Danny, they’re going for a horror aesthetic, not something real,” Sam sighed.

“What? Ectoplasm-stains are horrifying,” he countered as he walked through the rest of the first story. Still no EMF readings.

“Only when it’s yours,” Sam said, and the weight of those words echoed in the silence of the house that made him stop moving for a moment. “No cold spots upstairs,” Sam informed them to break the silence.

“Yeah, no EMF downstairs,” Danny added. “I’m gonna check out the basement.” That’s where they loved to hang out in the real world, so it seemed the next best choice.

“Oh hang on, if you’re going down there I’ll go with you,” Tucker spoke up.

Danny stopped halfway down the stairs. “It’s fine, I’m pretty used to basements,” he joked weaky.

“Yeah, well the last time you went into a basement alone with untested ghost equipment you died.” Tucker said it light-heartedly as a joke, and it was one they’d said a bunch of times before, but somehow it just didn’t feel the same in this tense environment. It felt too...personal.

He waited for Tucker’s avatar to appear before they walked down the stairs together into the basement. Unlike Sam’s basement or his own, this basement had a much creepier feel to it, with the foreboding worn brick walls and discolored cement flooring. Honestly he was glad Tucker went down there with him because it just felt better having another person there.

“Sam, maybe you should get down here with the thermometer,” Tucker mentioned as they both walked through the basement. “Because we’re not--”

Danny whirled around as he heard something thud hard against the ground behind him while he jumped in his chair. The EMF reader in his hand jumped up to three dots and blared at them while he stared at a box of tools now on the ground. The ghost was clearly in the room. Danny half-expected his ghost sense to go off, but he had to remind himself it was just a video game. There wasn’t actually a ghost here.

“What happened?” Sam’s urgent voice said over the walkies.

“Ghost knocked something off the shelf down here,” Tucker said as his avatar walked over to the toolbox. “Ooh! We’ve got fingerprints!” he cheered as his avatar shined a light on a glowing handprint.

“Oh that’s so not how that works,” Danny complained, just to help lighten the mood. Honestly he felt a bit jumpy knowing that the ghost was in the room...and he couldn’t sense him. He’d dealt with invisible ghosts before, but his ghost sense always gave him a vague idea of where they were...except for now. He turned in his chair to check the room behind him. No ghosts, no ghost sense. It’s just in the computer game.

“Figures that the ghost would be in the basement,” Sam remarked as her avatar walked down the stairs and opened her journal. Right! Journal. Danny opened his and placed their one piece of evidence inside. The sooner they got all of those the sooner they could leave, and he really liked that idea.

“I’m not seeing freezing temperatures, but it is a little cooler than the rest of the house,” she continued. “So let’s start setting stuff up in here. Tucker get the DOTS up and I’ll place the camera. Danny place the spirit book.”

Okay, this wasn’t so bad with the three of them in the room. He could hear them moving around and he could see them, so it made him feel a bit better. And there was still no sign of the ghost. He put the spirit book down near the toolbox and looked away from it. Maybe the ghost wouldn’t write in it while he was watching? He didn’t know.

“Ooh!” Tucker cried excitedly.

“Did you see it in the DOTS?” Sam asked.

“No - Ouija board! Oh yeah!” Tucker cheered. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Oh I love these,” Sam agreed. Danny’s brow furrowed as he looked at the screen. Why were they acting so happy - didn’t they forget there was a ghost in this room with them?

“Hang on, let Danny try the Ouija board,” Tucker suggested. “You know, because he’s never seen it before.”

“Ooh good idea,” Sam agreed. Danny walked over to where they were and saw Sam’s avatar set down a light brown board.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sus about your motives right now,” Danny said. He had a bad feeling about this...

“No Danny, it’s fine. These are actually pretty cool in this game,” Sam assured him. She quickly explained how the Ouija boards worked in the game and what questions to ask, and against his better judgment, he walked over and activated the board. The numbers and letters glowed orange against the light color of the wood.

He decided to start with something easy, so he swallowed and forced his voice to come out clear. “How old are you?” He jumped in his chair and his avatar backed up quickly as the planchette moved across the letters.

“Y - O - U - N - G,” Tucker read. ��A young ghost.”

“Oh God, I hope that doesn’t mean it’s the crawling baby ghost,” Sam sighed. “I really hate that one.”

“Ask it something else,” Tucker encouraged.

“I don’t know,” Danny hedged. For some reason the Ouija board set him on edge. Something deep in his gut did not like this. Even if it wasn’t real and he kept telling himself it wasn’t real, he didn’t like it.

“No dude, it’s okay,” he assured him. “You can ask two questions before a significant sanity drop. Just ask it one more and you can go back to the truck.”

He very much wanted to go back to the truck. He just needed a chance to regroup. He was a ghost and fought ghosts for a living and he could not understand why this game unnerved him so much. But Danny Phantom wasn’t scared of ghosts, any kind of ghosts, and he wasn’t about to show it on a video game. “Fine,” he groaned as he picked up the board again. “Who died?”

This time he knew what to expect, and didn’t jump as much as the planchette started moving. First to the D, then to the A. Over to the N, then looping back to the N. It ended on a Y.

All three of them stopped moving. The silence became even more deafening around them. Danny dropped the Ouija board and backed up as far as the game would let him. He felt a cold sweat drip down his back. Danny. It spelled Danny. How did it know his name?

“...That has got to be a coincidence,” Sam finally said after the silence that seemed to stretch on forever.

“The ghost’s name must be Danny,” Tucker suggested, voice full of forced bravado.

“...No it’s Thomas,” Sam said slowly. “It must just be reading your username to scare you,” she decided.

“No my...my username is GhostBoy,” Danny reminded them, finally feeling like he could speak.

“Is this game actually haunted? Danny, what did you do?” Tucker accused, voice bordering on hysterics.

“What? I didn’t do anything!” Danny yelled back. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest. He put a hand up to feel his breath - still normal temperature. He looked around his room. There wasn’t a ghost here. But how did it know his name? And that he did almost die in a basement? “You’re the one that told me to use it!”

“Okay, let’s just calm down,” Sam interrupted. “It’s gotta be a coincidence. Let me try it and see if it says the same thing or gives me my name. It could be a new update that checks the name on the Steam account or something.”

Sam moved closer to the board, but before she could touch it all their flashlights flickered.

“Shit!” Tucker yelled.

“Run!” Sam cried in a panic.

Danny followed them up the stairs to the main level. The idea of running from a ghost, not fighting it, was so foreign to him, but he had no choice. He was powerless here. No ghost powers, no weapons, no thermos. He was completely helpless against this ghost.

He bolted for the garage, the one other room he knew how to get to. Sam’s avatar was running next to him. He could hear footsteps behind him and he swore as he ran towards the garage. Sam diverted into another room, but he continued into the garage. He found a locker he’d opened before and rushed into it. He barely remembered to turn off his flashlight and he waited. Seconds passed and he realized he was holding his breath. No...not holding his breath. Not breathing. He looked down at his hands and saw the glowing white gloves. When...when did he change into his ghost form?

Sam’s voice over the walkie startled him. “What the--? Oh my G--” The walkie feed cut to static and then nothing.

“I...I think it got Sam,” Tucker’s voice said over the walkie. Danny turned on his flashlight and saw that it was no longer blinking. He threw his head back in relief. The hunt was over. He climbed back out of his locker, keeping the door open again just in case.

“Dude, she was running right next to me. It must have followed her instead of me,” Danny told him. “Ugh, well what are we going to do now? She’s the only one who knew what she was doing!”

“Wait, I thought you would be a pro because you’re a ‘professional ghost hunter’ - isn’t that what you kept saying?” Tucker teased.

“Yeah, well I lied! This is nothing like ghost hunting!” he argued as he walked out of the garage. He was going back to the trailer. “Real ghost hunters would bring some kind of weapon and wouldn’t just run around helpless! We should just call it.”

“What? No! We’ve got two more pieces of evidence to collect. And we haven’t done any of the objectives! Tucker retorted.

“Fine!” he snapped as he walked down the main hallway. “if you want to keep looking for clues you can, but I’m going back to the trailer to check--”

The front door slammed shut. His flashlight blinked again.

“Shit!” Tucker cried.

Danny could hear the footsteps behind him. He could feel a heart thumping in his headset. He started running off to a room but stopped. No, he was not running again. He was going to stare this ghost down and prove that Danny Phantom was not scared of some ghost. His image struck fear in the hearts of ghosts and his name carried respect in the Ghost Zone. He was not going to let some video game ghost get the better of him and spook him with some Ouija board trick.

He turned around to face it, camera at the ready. If he was going down, he was getting a picture of it. The ghost blinked in the hallway and Danny saw the cause of his anxiety for the first time. The ghost floated down the hallway, with white hair and a black and white jumpsuit. It...it was him. The ghost was Phantom.

He completely forgot to take a picture as his own image rushed at him. He saw two gloved hands cover over the screen and then everything went dark. He heard the crash of breaking glass, saw a strange underground cavern for a second, and then he was back in a foggy blue version of the house.

The ghost of Sam’s avatar approached him, and he heard her laughing over the headset. It sounded like she’d been laughing for awhile. “Oh my god Danny, did you see the ghost?” she asked between laughs.

“It...that was...oh my God,” he groaned. It all made sense. Spelling Danny was likely an Easter egg, a cute nod to his name of Danny Phantom. The fact that it happened in the basement was just a coincidence, because it’s a creepy spot and a commonly haunted area. He hadn’t summoned anything. He wasn’t being targeted by some ghost in the computer. It was just an Easter egg paying homage to him.

Suddenly all the stress left him and he laughed. God, it felt so good to laugh after all that panic. This game had gotten him so worked up and over what? Over a ghost that looked like himself? Suddenly it all seemed so silly that it scared him that much. He had felt actual dread and fear, enough to trigger an unconscious transformation out of a need to protect himself, but there weren’t actually any real consequences. Now he just got to walk around unhindered in this ghostly version of the house, but nothing else actually happened.

Sam laughed along with Danny. “So you did see it then?”

“It was...oh my god Sam it was me! It looked just like me!”

“I know!” she exclaimed. “As soon as I saw it I forgot to keep running and stared. So of course it killed me. I did get a picture though,” she bragged.

“Oh man. I meant to, but I was just too stunned.” Now that he felt much better, he decided to wander around the house following Tucker who, for some reason, was still trying to finish the level on his own.

Sam suspiciously stopped her laughing. “Wait...Danny, your voice sounds weird. Are you...are you in your ghost form?”

Danny bit his lip as a slight blush graced his cheeks. “I don’t want to hear it.” But the telltale whoosh of the glowing rings turning him back to his human form seemed to be all the confirmation she needed. Except, he didn’t hear her laugh.

“...Danny, I wanted to apologize,” she said, and that made Danny stop moving and look quizzically at the screen.

“What? Apologize for what?” he asked.

“For goading you into playing this game,” she clarified, her voice surprisingly serious. “While I’ve been hanging out here in the spirit world, I realized why this game set you off so much.”

“What do you mean? I never said it set me off,” Danny defended. How could she possibly know that? He thought he was playing it pretty cool.

“Oh please,” she scoffed. “You’re in your ghost form and you were panicking after the Ouija board thing.”

“Hey you would panic too if--”

“Danny I’m trying to say that I get it,” she interrupted. “Being near a ghost without your powers? Without any weapons? Being powerless? It’s one of your biggest nightmares, that your powers will fail when you need them. And this game, it’s too close to home.”

Danny stopped moving and stared at the screen, because she was absolutely right. This was too close to home. How many times did he have to check to make sure his ghost sense wasn’t actually going off? How many times did he keep thinking about how similar everything felt to his own experiences? How unnerved he was about a ghost in the basement? It was too similar to his real life...except he had the tools he needed in his real life. Not a flashlight and some dumb spirit book, but actual real tools and powers and weapons, but here they were all taken away from him. Everything he relied on to fight ghosts had been stripped from him in the game and trapped him helpless in a house with his friends. Of course that bothered him. It was, as Sam said, one of his more recurring nightmares.

“...Yeah I think I’m good never playing this game again,” Danny admitted, the closest he planned to get to acknowledging everything she said was true.

“Honestly? I don’t blame you,” Sam agreed softly. “I think it’s easier for us because we’re used to this role: when there’s a ghost in the area, we help figure out what’s going on and support you. It’s not all that different from this game,” she explained. Her ghostly avatar followed Tucker out of the house and he followed after them. “But when you’re used to doing the fighting and defending and can’t...I guess it’s probably harder to separate yourself from the game.”

He reached behind him and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah,” he sighed. As much as he hated to admit it, she was right. It was too similar to his daily life, and as he tried to argue at the beginning, he didn’t need to hunt fake ghosts poorly when he knew how to fight real ghosts well. “You know you sound like Jazz,” he pointed out, trying to lighten the mood and change the subject.

“Wow, you’re going to insult me after I tried to help you?” Sam scoffed. “See if I ever help you again!”

Danny smiled at the screen, glad to be back to the teasing. He definitely felt more relaxed and more like himself. “Oh look, Tucker’s finally calling it quits,” Danny observed as Tucker closed the door to the trailer.

“God, I can’t wait to find out if he saw you.” He could hear her grinning through the headset and honestly he felt the same. Out of all of them, Tucker would be the most excited about this addition.

The screen changed over to the menu screen, showing all their accomplished objectives. It also meant that all three party members could talk to each other again. “I can’t believe you left me!” Tucker complained. “It’s even worse when you’re in there on your own! Do you know how much more evidence we needed to collect? Um, a ton!”

Sam laughed, and Danny had to join in. “Okay so we are sorry about that, but Tucker did you ever see the ghost?”

“No, which is probably why I’m the only one that survived!” he complained.

“Oh my god Sam, he didn’t see it,” Danny groaned.

“Oh my god.”

“No wait, didn’t see what?” Tucker asked. His voice had calmed down a bit and was colored with curiosity.

“Tucker...the ghost was Danny,” Sam told him.

“Uh no, we clarified his name was Thomas,” Tucker corrected.

Sam and Danny both groaned. “No Tucker, the ghost was Danny Phantom. It was skinned to look like Phantom,” she clarified.

Tucker’s line sat silent for a long time before he finally exploded in a shower of shock, excitement, and regret. “NO WAY! No! That is so cool! I mean I knew the developers were fans, but this is so cool! Like literally the best tribute ever. Oh my god I can’t believe I missed it! No!” he cried. He was so loud into the microphone that Danny had a hard time believing Tucker didn’t wake his parents.

“It’s why both of us died,” Danny explained. “We were just too shocked seeing it.”

“We’re going back in. I need to see this,” Tucker demanded.

Danny bit his lip. He was not going back in. He meant it when he said he was done. He almost had his explanation on his lips before Sam spoke up first. “I doubt it’ll show up two times in a row. I Googled it and the skin will be here for the whole month of Halloween as a random draw, so you’ve got time to see it. But if you want to try again tonight, I’ll keep playing if you want. Danny...he needs to get some sleep.”

“What? No, it's so much easier with three people. Come on Danny,” Tucker pleaded.

“Nah, Sam’s right, I should go to bed. Gotta be rested for those real ghosts tomorrow,” Danny chuckled. “Besides, being killed by my own image was a little weird.” And also a little too close to home, considering some of his memories of Dan.

“Yeah, this game isn’t Danny’s jam,” Sam explained simply. He had a feeling Sam would talk to Tucker more about what they discussed while their avatars were dead, and honestly he didn’t mind. He didn’t want to keep secrets from Tucker, he just really didn’t want to talk about it any more tonight.

Tucker sighed. “Alright, fine, you’re off the hook. At least you gave it a try though.”

“I did, and you’re both gonna owe me one for doing it too,” Danny reminded them.

“Dude, pretty sure you’re in the negatives when it comes to IOUs from us,” Tucker pointed out with a good-natured laugh. “Testing out inventions, excuses at school, doing your homework, remembering the thermos when you forget it, distracting your parents…”

“Okay okay, I get it,” Danny groaned as he left the screen and exited out of the game. “Well fine, then I’m less in the negative now. And on that happy subject, I’m going to bed. Good night guys.”

“Good night Danny,” Sam replied. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

Danny almost hung up on their private Discord server when he heard Tucker speak up. “Hey Danny, wait.”

“What?” he asked curiously, his mouse still hovering over the disconnect sign.

“The type of ghost...was a Phantom.”

I’ve never cross-posted on tumblr before, so this will be a first! I hope you enjoy!

[bluejayblueskies]

to grieve and to mourn

for prompt 3 of jontim week: hold

cw for mentions of death (both animal and human), alcohol, and smoking

.

When Tim opens the door to Jon’s flat, the first thing he registers is the smell—acrid and sooty, stronger than usual, like Jon’s gone from one or two cigarettes a day to an entire pack.

 The second is the fact that it’s quiet.

 Tim kicks the door closed behind him, balancing the bag of takeaway in one hand and the bottle of bourbon in the other as he does so. He sets the takeaway and alcohol on the table, takes off his shoes, and makes his way to the bedroom.

Jon had mentioned to him once, more than a few drinks into a night out at the pubs, that he’s the type to mourn in private. Tim can’t remember how it came up—maybe something about Jon’s uni years, or something Sasha said—but Jon had spun off into a story of the time he’d caught a frog over the summer and had decided to keep it. He’d placed it in a little glass jar with holes poked in the lid and had slid it beneath his bed—apparently, he’d read about what frogs eat, and so he’d planned to go out the next day and get the necessary supplies.

 When he’d woken the next morning, the frog was dead. And it had taken his grandmother three days to convince him to leave his room for more than just meals.

 So Tim isn’t surprised when he walks into Jon’s bedroom to see Jon sat atop his bed, hair tied up into an approximation of a bun and an array of papers spread out before him in a kaleidoscope of white and black. Nor is he surprised to see the cigarette held between Jon’s fingers, burning faintly orange in the low light.

 Jon startles as Tim enters the room, nearly dropping his cigarette onto the papers. He mutters a curse, snubs the cigarette out in an ashtray next to the bed, and says, “Christ, Tim, a little warning next time would be nice.”

 “Sorry,” Tim says, leaning against the doorframe. “Went ahead and let myself in.” He holds up the key Jon had given him and wiggles it for effect. “Besides, if I’d have called, you wouldn’t’ have let me come.”

 “You don’t know that,” Jon mumbles.

 “Yeah,” Tim says. “I do. And I just… I just wanted to check in. See how you’re doing.”

 Jon’s laugh is dry and bitter. “Not great,” he says, gesturing to the papers in front of him with his now-free hand. “There are so many choices that I’m expected to make, like- like it even matters if her coffin is oak or mahogany, or if we have a wake or not.” He leans back against the headboard and pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s… it’s not like there’s any point to it, is there? What’s the sense in having a funeral when you haven’t got any family left to mourn you?”

 “You’re still here,” Tim says gently.

 Jon lets out a long, slow breath. “Well, I would much rather just get the entire ordeal over and done with.”

 Tim can see stress written across every line of Jon’s face, underlaid with a grief that hasn’t quite had time to settle yet. He wants to offer to help—to make arrangements for Jon, to get the entire thing squared away, to help Jon organize a proper service and go with him so he’s not alone. But he knows the offer would be rejected, no matter how he phrased it or how many times he asked. So instead, he says, “I know. And you will. For now, though, think you could take a break? I stopped by that Thai place on my way over, got that peanut curry you like. Also, bourbon, if you’re feeling up for it.”

 Jon glances down at the papers in front of him. He looks tired, and Tim’s heart breaks for it. Still, he waits until Jon says, hesitantly, “I… I suppose that might be… yes, I- I think a break might do me some good.”

 Tim brings the takeaway and the bourbon to the bedroom, despite Jon’s protests that I can walk to the kitchen, Tim, I don’t need to be coddled, and settles down on the bed in the empty space where the papers had been a moment before. He pushes the peanut curry into Jon’s hands wordlessly and pops the lid off his own squash curry.

 Tim’s never been the kind to mourn in public. There’s always been something so mortifying about showing the most vulnerable parts of yourself to people you barely know, and so Tim’s always kept it hidden until he has the space to breathe, to finally let go.

 He hadn’t cried for Danny until he’d gotten back to his flat. The icy numbness had slipped away as soon as he’d crossed the threshold and he’d broken, crumpling onto the floor in his entryway and letting out ugly, hiccupping sobs that echoed in his empty flat. His eyes had been stained red when he’d talked to the police an hour later, but his face remained neutral. Even when the officers they’d sent into the ruins of the Covent Garden Theatre came back with nothing more than empty hands and false apologies, he didn’t cry. How could he? Danny deserved his tears, not them. It doesn’t seem right, to mourn in the open, when death is such a private affair.

 But as he sits with Jon, their knees and shoulders pressed together gently as they sit and eat in a silence that could easily be oppressive but is anything but, he thinks that if he were with Jon, it wouldn’t be so bad. And given the way that Jon leans slightly into his touch, he thinks that Jon feels the same.

 Tim doesn’t bother with glasses, just takes a drink of bourbon from the bottle with a grimace before extending it toward Jon. Jon wrinkles his nose but, after a moment, he takes the bottle.

 They pass the bourbon back and forth, and Tim’s head has started to go a bit fuzzy when Jon finally says, quietly, “Thank you, Tim. For- for being here. I… I don’t usually…”

 Jon trails off, but Tim thinks he understands. He takes the bottle from Jon, gingerly sets it on the side table so as not to spill, and puts his hand on his knee, palm facing up. An invitation. After a moment, Jon reaches over tentatively and lays his hand on Tim’s, threading their fingers together. Tim squeezes Jon’s hand gently and says, “I’ll always be here, you know. Whenever you need me.”

 “I know,” Jon says softly, and after a moment, he squeezes Tim’s hand in return.

 They sit in silence for a few more minutes. Tim’s never liked silence—it’s always felt stifling, anticipatory, like a liminal space that only exists between one noise and the next. Even now, he still itches with the desire to fill it, held back only by the knowledge that that’s not what Jon needs from him right now and the fear that even if he were to say something, he doesn’t know if it would be the right thing.

 Then, in a voice cracked and choked, Jon says, “I miss her.”

 Tim turns to look at Jon; his eyes are fixed on the bedspread in front of him, and it looks like he’s trying very hard to fight back tears. “We weren’t all that close anymore, really. I don’t think we ever were, if I’m being honest. But she was the only family I had left, and now she—”

 Jon cuts off with a small, hiccupping laugh. “And now she’s gone. It’s- it’s just me.” He lets out a long, shaky breath. “It’s just me.”

 I’m here, Tim wants to say. You’re not alone. I’m never going to leave you alone.

 Instead, he lets go of Jon’s hand, slips his arm around Jon’s shoulders, and pulls Jon tightly to him as something inside Jon breaks and he begins to cry.

 Jon’s face is still sticky with tears as he presses it into the crook of Tim’s neck, curling up against him as they lie in bed, the takeaway containers discarded onto the floor. Tim wraps his arms tighter around Jon, presses an impulsive kiss to the crown of Jon’s head, and lets the soft sounds of Jon’s breathing chase him into sleep.

[thoseofgreatambition]

Hi LeeAnnnnnn Can i plz request a drabble of just dad George? Im so obsessed with dad twins rn and Ive given a lot of attention to Fred but i wanna see some Georgie love too! Ty ily 🧡

thank you love! i do adore some dad!george kind of a continuation of my other dad george from a while back with his toddler? also heavily influenced by my own father so hope y’all like it

Being a father is hard. George had known it going into every appointment, every decision he’d made with you, every moment. 

Being a father was much harder than he thought. 

He watched as his son struggled to find himself and shouted when he couldn’t contain his emotions. The kicks at walls and tears when Fred Jr. couldn’t handle what was going on. The arguments and the crying at night. 

The overwhelming love was almost suffocating-- but it was a struggle. On nights like tonight. 

Long ago, when you were still alive, the two of you had realized that giving the boy some space worked the best. 

So space was being given. 

George wondered if it was all the long nights at work that made little Freddy so upset. He’d started bringing his son to work-- had turned the backroom into a proper play room or flex room that Fred might like. 

Perhaps he should have listened to that parenting book and not have named his son after his dead brother-- something about expectations. 

Your death had been hard on them both, perhaps it was just a matter of it making things so much harder. 

Either way-- his son had been gone for two nights so far after storming out and screaming at his parent. He always came back. Freddy always came back. Usually it was after having slept on a friends couch, but he always came back. 

George’s hand shook as he tried to piece together the product in his shed. 

Going to hogwarts hadn’t made things much better-- aside from the fact that Freddy had more friends now than just his cousins. On the breaks Freddy just seemed to revert back to the sad, angry boy he’d always been. 

Dozens of parenting books stood on dusty shelves. None had seemed to help. 

A door slammed back inside of the house-- Freddy was back. 

George took his time to approach the door, before knocking. He could hear the boy crying-- turning 15 seemed to make things worse.

“Freddy? Can I come in? I’ve got some dinner for you.” 

A grumbled response came from inside the room, and George walked into a mess of a bedroom with his son crying so hard his eyes were swollen shut. With a frown, George handed his son a handkerchief to wipe his eyes with. “If you keep rubbing them you’ll hurt them Freddy.” 

With a huff, George sat down on the bed. He’d tried putting Freddy in activities. Tried cooking more healthy food. Tried earlier bed times. 

And his son was still in pain. Crying until he couldn’t breathe. George stroked his son’s hair as the young man sobbed into the comforter. More silence, more space. 

George loved being a father, but it was hard. 

“Dad, I messed up.” 

“What happened, Freddy?” 

“I was out with friends, I went to sleep at Danny’s house. His cousin was there and I got into an argument with him. A bad one.” 

George’s hand left his son’s head and moved to pat him on the shoulder as Freddy finally began to sit up in the bed. 

“I was screaming at his cousin-- he was an asshole! He was being a prick about you, couldn’t let him talk down about you not finishing school!” 

“I don’t need you to defend me Freddy--” 

“He was being an ass! And I got too mad and I--” Freddy seemed to falter under his father’s worried gaze and seemed to wither. “I cursed him. Nothing too bad-- Danny’s mum is a healer so it got sorted but... I got one of those notices from the ministry-- they say I’m going to get kicked out of Hogwarts--” 

“I won’t let that happen.” At Freddy’s hopeful look, George continued, “You won’t get kicked out-- your Uncle Harry had done far crazier things at that point. I’ll take you to the ministry to get it sorted. But you’re going to go and see someone about all of this Freddy.” 

There were more tears. “Danny said he doesn’t want to see me ever again. My friends hate me now.” 

George continued to pat his son on the back. The parenting books hadn’t done much to help him about this. His vision began to blur, but he didn’t want to make things worse by crying. “You made a bad choice, Freddy. They’re upset with you. They’ll need time, and you’ll need to give it to them and respect their choices. It doesn’t make you someone bad, it means that you need to work more on your anger issues.” 

When his son collapsed into tears once more, George kept his own tears at bay. It was hard not to wonder about what he could have done different so that Freddy wouldn’t be having such a rough go of things. If you were here things would be better. You were always so good at setting things straight. 

“I need you to eat what you can and shower up. We’re going to go and get this all sorted out in the morning.” 

“Are you mad at me, Dad?” 

“No.” George wiped at his tears and made himself look down at his son, “I’m just sad that all of this happened. But I’m not mad. You’re a good boy who made a mistake.” 

A silence, before Freddy pressed onward. “Do you still love me?” 

“Always. You couldn’t do anything to change that.” George was more openly crying at the moment. Dozens of words he wanted to say held back simply for the fact that it wasn’t right to burden his child with his own insecurities about parenting. “I love you to bits and pieces.” 

“I love you too.” Freddy looked at his father-- the strong man he looked up to for years and felt incredibly vulnerable to see him upset. Both struggled to get a grip of themselves. “I know I’m in trouble-- will you stay in here for a little while longer, please?” 

George didn’t answer, and simply nodded as he wiped away his tears. He’d do anything for his boy. 

[comic-book-jawns]

A Proper Sleepover

“Hiya!”

Jamie’s head popped up a second later in the middle of the elaborate blanket fort that had taken over their studio apartment since she’d last seen it, heading out the door for her birthday dinner, after which Jamie had asked if she could walk around town for a bit — which hadn’t been asking a lot, considering it was a beautiful May evening in Vermont.

To say that Dani had always wanted to go to a sleepover was, in a sense, misleading. Growing up she’d had sleepovers at Eddie’s once a week if not more. But given the very fact of how often she was there, sleepover wasn’t quite the right word for it.

The O’Mara’s was like her second home — or maybe it was her own home that was the second home, if she were to judge a home by what a home was supposed to be like. Eventually, the O’Mara’s had grown stifling, of course, but it had never been cold.

In any case, it had not been the site of her first real sleepover, her only real sleepover. That had been at Ashley G’s house in seventh grade. Ashley wasn’t her friend. She didn’t have many friends aside from Eddie. But Ashley was rich, so she’d invited all the girls in their grade to sleep over in her gigantic basement.

Dani hadn’t slept at all, though. She’d been so excited to be included for once that it hadn’t occurred to her until she’d arrived that they would all be sleeping in one room, which meant if she had a nightmare, as she often did, everyone would know.

Fortunately, she’d been spared that embarrassment because she’d quickly become far too anxious to even try to sleep. There’d been the teasing about when she and Eddie were going to get married, if he was a good kisser. And, sure, it was uncomfortable, but she’d been expecting it.

What she had not expected was the near paralysis brought on by sitting in a tight circle with her pajama-clad classmates. Every time she would manage to find a perfect, if scoliosis-inducing, position in which to sit — one in which she was not touching anyone. Everyone would move around, and she’d have to start all over again.

At the time, she’d written it off as her not being used to touch. Her mother was many things but a hugger was not one of them. Eddie tried, but it always seemed to make him uncomfortable, especially as they’d gotten older. Eddie’s mom was the only person who’d ever hugged her with any real frequency. But even by then, it had begun to feel a tad smothering, if welcome nonetheless.

So, at the time, that’s what Dani had attributed her discomfort at the sleepover to. And, at the the time, she’d known it was a lie. So, despite the invites that she’d later received from girlfriends of Eddie’s friends when Eddie had suddenly become popular in high school, Dani had never gone to a sleepover again.

But the desire had never gone away. It had always felt like yet another experience she’d missed out on. So, she’d made an off-hand comment to Flora during their “sleepover” at Bly — which, incidentally, had been her and Jamie’s first “sleepover,” technically speaking. Jamie remained unaware of Dani’s early morning “check-in,” but evidently she’d done some recon of her own that night.

“So... do ya... ” Jamie scratched the back of her neck. “Never actually done this before, but - ”

“Jamie, it’s perfect!”

Dani was already struggling to see her through blurry eyes.

“Yeah?”

She could still make out Jamie’s cheeks getting redder, as her smile got more lopsided. Dani closed the door, which she’d only been able to open halfway on account of the outer rim of blankets and dropped the bag she’d been holding, containing a new novel for Jamie she’d just bought from the local bookstore.

Then, she bent double to enter the fort. The blankets gradually ascended as she got closer to the middle, not unlike a circus tent. But Dani stayed bent over like a linebacker and ran straight for Jamie. Wrapping one arm around her lower back and the other around her thighs, Dani lifted her and twirled around, smiling proudly as Jamie immediately giggled.

She managed to make it around about 1.5 times before falling over onto a pile of cushions, at which point she too burst out laughing. As they recovered, Jamie cleared her throat.

“Right, down to it, then.” She sat up and reached over to her left. “Ya need to strip.”

She turned back to find Dani smiling coyly.

“So you can put on these!” She held out her Blondie T-shirt, which she’d first given to Dani to borrow on her birthday, and pajama bottoms. “Honestly, Poppins!”

Dani blushed but grinned shamelessly as she took the clothes.

She’d been treated to breakfast in bed — “I apologize in advance,” Jamie had quipped as she’d handed her the plate. Dani had insisted it was delicious, and Jamie had explained that they had a dinner reservation, after which Dani would get her present, so until then, the day was reserved for whatever Dani wanted to do.

Coincidentally, they had not set foot outside their apartment until well into the afternoon.

*****

“You’re the one the one that I want!”

Dani woke up reclined against the cushions, her view of the TV partially obstructed by Jamie who was leaning forward, hugging Dani’s knees on either side of her. As she watched, Jamie stretched her right arm out to grab a handful of popcorn, threw it her mouth and wrapped her arm around Dani’s knee once more, never taking her eyes off the screen.

Jamie had rented three movies from Blockbuster. They’d started with My Side of the Mountain, a childhood favorite of Dani’s that Jamie had found herself loving as well.

Next was Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, a relatively new movie they’d heard good things about. Jamie had said as the credits rolled that “playin’ truant” was for “tossas” and if Ferris were really cool he would’ve dropped out like she had, and Dani had whacked her with a pillow, instigating a pillow fight that had served as a quality intermission.

Grease, which Jamie claimed she’d picked purely for Dani’s benefit to check romcom off the sleepover bucket list, had been the closer. Dani had nodded off sometime after Danny and Sandy’s reunion at school and smiled now as she watched Jamie watch them celebrate their decision to change everything about themselves in spandex.

She wrapped her arms around Jamie’s stomach and pulled herself up, resting her chin on Jamie’s shoulder.

“Hey, you,” Jamie said softly.

Her eyes remained on the screen as the song wrapped.

“You could’ve turned something else on.”

“Well, I didn’t know when you’d wake up, did I?”

“Mmhmm.”

Dani’s smile was more of a smirk now.

“Tryna say something, Poppins?”

Dani sighed.

“Oh, just that I’m... hopelessly devoted to you.”

Dani giggled as Jamie scoffed.

“Ya better not be.”

“No?”

“Well, not... ” Jamie cleared her throat. “Not hopelessly, anyway.”

Dani smiled and leaned in to kiss Jamie’s reddening cheek.

“Deal.”

Even from this angle, she could see Jamie smile shyly. Dani knew she was almost ready. She’d half-wondered if that would be her present — Jamie saying it. But she wasn’t disappointed in the slightest. All she’d really wanted for her birthday was to be with Jamie. After all, it hadn’t exactly been a sure thing.

She’d secretly been kicking herself since the night of Jamie’s birthday, several months ago at this point, when she’d joked that she was sure Jamie would be able to “think of something” for hers. She hadn’t offended Jamie — Jamie was the one who’d joked about it in the first place — but she had broken her cardinal rule. She’d talked about the future.

Of course, Jamie had already figured out when her birthday was, so there was nothing Dani could’ve done differently, really. But still, she’d been haunted by the thought that that conversation would be all Jamie would have, that it would haunt her too if they never got the chance to celebrate it.

So she’d never brought it up again. But, at last, the day had come, and it had been better than she ever could’ve imagined.

“Oi, what’s this?!” Jamie gestured at the TV. “S’not even real words!”

Dani laughed, facing forward again. “We Go Together” had started up.

“So this is where you draw the line?”

“Well, the other songs - ”

“Yes?”

Dani’s smirk was back. Jamie closed her mouth and cleared her throat, before chuckling.

“We gotta get you to a show.”

“Huh?”

“A musical.”

Jamie laughed again.

“You and I both know that you’ll love it.”

Jamie’s shy smile was back. Dani’s tone had not left room for rebuttal. Jamie finally turned her head to look at her.

“Thank you.”

Dani smiled widely and leaned in for a kiss. She’d broken her rule again. But she supposed she’d just made another one. She wouldn’t give up on hope.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Another Place: Lev and Danny

I just had this thought and had to go with it. Consider this the final (maybe? Probably not, I am having too much fun) installment of this, this, and this involving Danny becoming friends with @untilthepainstarts‘s Lev as part of an online support group for trauma survivors, realizing the similarities in their experiences, and eventually meeting in person! Thanks, Dotty, for help with this one!

CW: Vaguely referenced past trauma/torture and noncon.

“Are you absolutely certain this is food?” Danny cocks his head, staring down at the plate that sat between them on the kitchen table. 

Lev laughs in response, shaking his head, a bit of dark hair falling over his face as he pushes the plate just a little closer, a soft scrape along the surface. “I promise it is! I promise. If you’re here, you have to try vegemite, right? It’s basically our national food.”

“What is it?” Danny leans in closer, his eyes slightly crossed, as he focused on the single piece of toast sitting in front of him, with a light spread of something incredibly dark brown, vaguely shiny, and a touch nerve-wracking. He looks up at Lev like a child looking up at their mother over a plateful of steamed broccoli sprouts, and Lev laughs again, hardly able to stop himself.

“I just said, it’s vegemite-”

“No, I know you said that, but, um, what… what is vegemite? It looks like chocolate-”

“Tell him that’s what it is,” Graham calls from the couch, where he and Nate had been sharing stories in low voices the other two couldn’t quite hear. There’s a grin on his face that tells Danny without having to try a bite that it definitely isn’t “Tell him it’s chocolate.”

“No!” Lev puts on an expression of mock anger. “I’d never be mean like that! And look, you’ve made him all red.” He gestures with the vegemite-covered butter knife he’s holding in one hand at Danny, who has indeed gone a bit red, his scars paler than his skin in the moment, freckles darker than ever. 

He’d come into the air conditioned apartment and pulled on a zip-up over his already-long-sleeved shirt, and to his relief neither Lev nor Graham said a thing. So he’s huddled up in it now, the closest he gets to warm, about to eat something utterly unrecognizable. 

“No, I should have… I should probably know what it, um, is,” Danny mumbles, feeling kind of stupid for thinking it looked like chocolate at first.

There’s a low murmur, Nate speaking to Graham, Graham speaking back. Then Graham calls out, “I was just teasing you a bit, yeah, Danny? Sorry. We get it basically in our bottles, here, it’s kind of a novelty when someone doesn’t know right off.”

Danny doesn’t become any less red, but he likes the way Graham is always ready to apologize and doesn’t think Danny is weird for being tripped up, or embarrassed, or too shy to ask things on his own. 

“It’s made of yeast,” Lev says, smoothly, as though the moment hadn’t happened, and Danny likes that, too. Move right past things, and let Danny pretend he’s better at this than he is. “Yeast mixed with… a bunch. Look, give it a try, it’s… salty.”

“Bit bitter,” Graham added.

Danny frowns. He reaches up and pokes at the side of the toast with one finger. “And you put it on toast? Like jam?”

“I can sense that you feel some trepidation here,” Lev says, not quite teasing. “Look, give it one bite, yeah? Then you can say you tried vegemite, you’re a proper Australian tourist then.”

“Can I ask you something?” Danny asks, picking the toast up with both hands If Lev’s eyes drop to the scarring that is dug so deeply into the backs of his hands, it’s not obvious, and Danny isn’t watching for it any longer. 

He likes their apartment - it feels like his, a little, all cozy and all the signs of two people making a home together. It feels like people who know how much it means to get the chance. Knowing each other’s stories means that all the questions that normally ring so loud in Danny he can’t think are much quieter, because he already has the answers.

Did you ever get scared to sleep in the bed? - Yes, at first, less with time

Are you ever afraid that everyone knows?  - Yes. That never fully leaves

Do you ever wonder, during, if you like something because he made you like it? - Yes, oh God, you don’t know what it means to have someone else ask that question, Chem

L, I’m kind of scared to ask this one - go on, ask, Chem, we’re friends here and you know I won’t lie to you, this place means something, being here - okay. do you still dream about him all the time and it’s not always a nightmare?

It had taken Lev two days to answer that one. 

Then, finally, just when Danny had thought he’d fucked up and lost his first friend who really understood him before they’d ever even learned each other’s name, L had sent his reply. Can I tell you about the dreams? I can’t tell Bond.

Bond - L’s name for his partner, on the message board, and Graham Pierce might be the opposite of James Bond but Danny kind of liked the joke, anyway. He’d just called Nate the Badass, as in the Badass is ready for dinner, got to go.

Nate had hated that nickname. Danny used it anyway.

Sitting in Lev’s apartment, about to bite into what he’s fairly certain smells weirdly like soy sauce, he feels better than he feels anywhere else but his own home. In a place where everyone knows, everyone has lived it. There’s a shorthand they can all rely on with each other. There’s comfort in that. 

Danny takes the bite, and it’s… there, in his mouth, and yes, salty and bitter definitely describe it. His very American brain is screaming at him that jam goes on toast, or peanut butter, something sweet and not this, not at all, get it out. Lev watches him with a smile, humor sparkling in his dark eyes, head slightly tilted to the side.

If Danny weren’t wearing a wedding ring on his left finger, and Lev weren’t head over heels for Graham Pierce, he could have flirted with Lev, he thinks. Well, if he weren’t also so traumatized he’d be terrified of the very idea. 

Danny manages to swallow the bite, which feels like it gets lodged halfway down his throat just to spite him. 

“Well?” Lev asks, flash of white teeth in his smile this time. 

“Yeah, how is it?” Graham calls from the couch. 

“… can I, um, have a beer, please?” Danny asks, and both of them laugh, Lev actually clapping his hands together and nearly resting his head on the table, he’s laughing so hard. Danny’s whole face flushes red, and he feels a little humiliated - look at the fucky American, can’t eat vegemite - but there’s too much genuine light and kindness in Lev’s face for the feeling to do more than come and go.

“I’m sorry, Danny, we’re sort of nationally terrible about doing that to Americans. Pretty sure it’s a rite of passage.” Lev gets up to look into the fridge, grabbing a couple of bottles of beer out. “Apparently we’ll find some brown sludge that sticks around after making yeast and our first thought isn’t ‘oh, that looks like engine oil’ but ‘that looks like it’d be nice on toast’. But we’re a country that eats kangaroo steak, so…”

Danny grins at that, taking the opened beer when Lev holds it out to him. “Thank you for giving me beer,” He says, automatically, some part of him briefly gone and then back again. “I am grateful for every gift I am given, and every breath-”

He goes still, for a fraction of a second the apartment had… shifted, and been somewhere else. Dark eyes had been colorless and shifting. His heart speeds up and he takes a deep breath, holds for five, lets it slowly out again. 

My name is Daniel Michaelson, and Abraham Denner is dead.

Again.

My name is Daniel Michaelson and Abraham Denner is dead.

Lev has gone still, too, watching him closely, reading the change in posture and expression with the perfect knowledge of someone who has seen Danny’s expression on himself in the mirror. “You all right, Danny?”

Something in the tone of Lev’s voice catches Graham and Nate’s focus immediately and they turn nearly as one. It’d be funny if Danny wasn’t feeling unmoored, like he wasn’t supposed to be here, like this had never happened. 

“Danny? Do y-you need a minute?” Nate asks, in a low voice. 

“I’m fine,” Danny says, and his voice is a little weaker than he wants it to be. He hesitates, then takes a drink from the beer, swallowing again and again, half the bottle gone in one long go. He sets the bottle down with a thump on the table. The salty bitter taste is good, washed away by the darker taste of the stout. “I’m fine, guys. Really fine.”

“If you’re not really fine,” Lev says, softly, and his hand is on the table, a few inches away. No closer than this, but close enough for compassion to show. “This is the best place to be. You can be not-fine for a bit here, we do it all the time. I’m pretty much a professional at being not fine.”

Danny lets out a soft huff of laughter, and the world settles back into place, into time. “I promise I am. That, um, happens sometimes, still.” 

There’s a shorthand they share. Questions already answered, knowledge that never needs to be spoken to be understood.

Sometimes I forget where I am, when I am. Do you do that, too? - Yes, on good days for a second or two, on bad days it feels like hours

Do you feel safe? - On the best days, I think I almost do. 

Could you still say all the things he made you say? Do you remember them all? - Every fucking word. I could type it all out to you right now, without thinking. 

“Happens to me, too,” Lev says lightly, as if they’re talking about having trouble remembering they left a book and not flashbacks and monsters that keep trying to climb out of the dark and back into their heads. “Tell me what you think of my idea, Danny - Fucked Up Support Group Movie Night? Only in person, this time?”

The world is solid and real around Danny as he smiles brightly, crinkling the scar at his nose, the lines dug into his jaw stretching a little. Nate, watching him from the couch, relaxes. 

Graham, watching Nate, relaxes, too.

“That sounds fucking great, L. You pick.”

Lev grins, brightly. “I know exactly what I want to watch, Chem.”

Graham groans from the couch. “Damn it, I think I know what he’s going to pick. Is it-”

“The Mist!” Lev says, to Graham’s resulting good-natured groan.

“I haven’t seen that,” Danny says. “Is it good?”

“Is it-… yes. Yes, that’s what we’re watching tonight. Go on, get to the TV. I’ll bring you another beer. You two want them, too?”

Calls of assent and gratitude from the couch, and Danny settles into an armchair, folding his legs up and wrapping his arms around them, turning himself far smaller than it ever seems like he should be able to, drinking his beer and watching Lev bring the rest in to clink onto the coffee table, bottle opener beside them. 

It’s nice to know someone else who knows without having to be told.

It’s nice for there to be another place in the world that feels safe.

It’s a good day.

He feels safe.

[ayamari-no-goshi]

Eidolon 8 | (T)

ff.net | AO3

Fandom: Danny Phantom (DP)

Summary:  AU: What started off as the result of a simple act of rebellion ends up causing his life to spin out of control. How will young Danny cope with the results as well as a past that has a strange habit of coming back to haunt him.

Warnings: rated T for violence, mentions of death, kidnapping, and various other things

Parings: hints of Danny/Sam much later on

Notes: originally uploaded to Ff.net. Cross-posted to AO3 and tumblr

8. Double Teamed

It had been an incredibly trying day, and Winston was more than glad to be home. Chaos greeted him as he walked into work and had remained until it the end of the day. His ears were still ringing from a rather vicious call from a mother claiming that the school was somehow brainwashing her child. Although it was quite possible that one of the teachers had said something questionable in class, he highly doubted that aliens were in any way involved. To make matters worse, he was forced to go to a meeting afterwards with one of Vlad's representatives, which ended up being far more problematic.

The representative as well as the state mediator (who had been sent to babysit them) explicitly told him that a date had been set for a hearing, and if the judge found that the accusations were valid, than Danny's case would go to court. It sounds simple enough, but Winston had no idea where Vlad had managed to get his so called evidence. Maltreatment of a child? That was preposterous! He had done the best that he could to take care of the boy, and although he was nowhere near perfect, he felt that Danny was growing up just fine. How Vlad managed to convince the state that there was a problem was beyond him.

What was even more surprising was learning that the date for the hearing was so soon, just after Danny's birthday. Due to how busy the U.S. court system could be, it could take months to years for a hearing to occur, let alone an actual case. Yet, he was going to have to deal with one in just a couple weeks. It was, for lack of a better word, uncanny. It was possible that there just happened to be an opening that particular day, but it was more likely that Vlad had somehow used him money to move up the date.

There was just something not right about the entire mess, and the more Winston thought about it the more he became convinced there was something else to the motives of the eccentric billionaire. When the representative called his boss during the meeting and mentioned when the date was, the man seemingly lost it. Although Winston could not make out any of the words, it was very clear that something about the date was in no ways appealing. It was also odd that Vlad had managed to convince the state of a possible problem with Danny's current situation. With there being no previous reports, complaints, or evidence it seemed utterly ridiculous that the state would have taken such a claim seriously, especially without having sent their own investigator out.

He also had a sinking suspicion that Vlad was somehow involved with Plasmius, but there was no way to prove it. The strange co-appearance of the two had strengthened previous misgivings that had been brought up by the letters the Fentons had sent him prior to their disappearance. But Vlad was too intelligent to have any dealings with a creature like Plasmius. They could be in contact through a second party, but that would be stretching it as well. There was also the fact that Vlad had alluded to having knowledge about what was currently plaguing Danny. If that was true, how would he have gotten that knowledge?

A throbbing pain interrupted his thoughts. The migraine he had been trying to ignore throughout the day was no longer manageable through willpower alone. As he searched the kitchen cabinets for some medicine that could take the bite out of the pain, he tried to push the previous thoughts from his mind. It was true that Vlad's motives did not seem to add up, but it was probably nothing more than the man's unusual nature. Paranoia and anger can be some of the best motivators of the imagination.

It was probably in his best interest to lie down once he managed to take the medicine, but he figured that he should at least try to get some idea of how he was going to break the news to Danny first. The boy had finally gotten out of the funk he had been in after being informed about what had happened to his parents with the help the apparent help of his friends. It had been their idea to have a sleepover tonight, since tomorrow was the start of the weekend, to help keep him in good spirits. Winston had been very glad that they had been worried enough to try and get through to him. Everything he had tried with the boy had failed miserably, and had been considering taking him to a psychiatrist if his closed off mood continued.

As he thought about it, he figured that it would probably be best to explain the situation fully once Danny returned home. He had tried to keep most of the details hidden as to not worry the boy, but with the severity of the current situation, the time for secrets was over. Danny was going to need to know exactly what to expect.

He sighed as he rubbed his forehead. His migraine was getting worse. After checking to make sure that all of the legal papers he was going to need within the next few days were organized, he decided to turn in for the night.

….

Getting to sleep was harder than Winston thought he would. His migraine prevented any position from being comfortable. After about twenty minutes, he had finally managed to start to doze when a strange noise caught his attention. Sitting bolt upright, he strained his ears for any further noise. The house seemed quite enough and his throbbing headache was a compelling enough reason to go back to sleep.

As he lay back down, a severe chill crept over his body. Knowing that the situation was quickly becoming dangerous, he slowly reached down to retrieve the gun that was hidden under the mattress.

"Do you really think that toy will be effective against me?"

He had rolled out of bed as soon as the voice had begun to speak. A moment later, he was standing with his gun trained on the specter. "Plasmius…." he hissed, "what do you want?"

The ghost smiled as it placed its hands behind its back. "Normally, I would say the boy, but he's currently not here at the moment, is he?"

"If you already knew that, why did you come?" Winston asked while trying to determine a possible escape route. Of course the ghost had placed itself between him and the door.

"It's simple, really," it told him with a flourish. "The current chain of events is moving a bit too slowly for my liking, so I'm speeding it up a bit by removing you from the equation."

Winston cocked the weapon in his hands as he readied himself for any sign of attack. "Sorry to burst your bubble," he told it as he slowly started to move towards the door, "but if I'm gone, Danny will just be sent to Vlad Masters. And believe me when I tell you that the man has the money to get what's needed to keep you away."

An amused laugh answered him. Winton eyed the specter carefully as he asked, "What's so funny?"

"Because that's exactly what I want to happen," it replied as it suddenly fired a plasma ray at him.

He barely managed to dodge, and by the time he had caught himself, another blast was coming his way. The strange cool but burning energy sent him flying backwards into the wall when it hit. After sliding down the wall, he glanced up at his attacker. "I don't understand," he told it as he winced. The attack had done some damage to his ribs.

It laughed again as it approached him. "With as intelligent as you are surely you've noticed that there's some sort of connection between myself and Masters. Only, it's far more complicated than you think it is." As it spoke, a strange black ring of energy came into existence around its waist before it split. Both halves of the ring traveling along both halves of its body as it melded its appearance into that of Vlad Masters. "Ta da. It's a handy little trick, don't you think?"

Winston had seen a great deal during the course of his life, especially after having served in the military, but not even that had prepared him for such a shocking event. "Wh-what are you?" he stuttered.

"Me?" the billionaire asked with faked surprise. "I'm the same as young Daniel is… or I should say will be once his birthday comes around."

It suddenly became apparent to Winston why Vlad had been so angry during the phone call earlier. The hearing would fall after Danny's birthday… after he became… He didn't even want to think about it.

"Did you know that Jack and Maddie had gone into the field of paranormal studies in order to find a cure for their son's 'aliment' years before he was even conceived?" Vlad gave him a disgusted look as he… it began to pace. "They knew what a child of theirs could end up being, but they failed to see the truth of the matter… The boy would be given gifts that no human could ever dream of understanding. So, I did the boy a favor and got rid of them. But, unbeknownst to me at the time, they had thrown a wrench into my plans, you!" It glared at him as the black rings formed again and returned it to its proper appearance. "But after tonight, that's not going to matter anymore."

"And I say that it's not going to be as easy as you think, you crazed-up fruit loop!" he shouted as he raised his gun, stared into those crimson eyes, and fired.

xxxxxxxxxxx

"Guys, after everything that's happened, do you really think it's a good idea for us to be out, in the park, alone, at night?" Tucker asked as he followed behind him and Sam. His voice betrayed just how frightened he was.

Sam just rolled her eyes as she continued to walk. "Wasn't it you who said that the ghost couldn't leave its haunt?"

"Well, yeah… but…"

"But what? Come on and live a little!"

Danny smiled as he watched his two friends argue. Although he too was a little wary about being alone, he figured that nothing too bad could happen to them. Ignoring the ghost that appeared on Wednesday, Amity Park was usually a very safe place to live, even at night.

It was Sam who managed to once again convince them to come out at night. Though, this time, he wasn't exactly sure if it was to talk privately or just to get away from her parents. She had decided to have a sleepover at her house because she thought that they were out of town, but something had prevented them from going. He couldn't forget the look of horror she wore when they entered her impressively large house to find them waiting for her. In a way, it was apparent why she didn't like them too much; they were dressed very brightly and had an unusually sunny disposition making them the complete opposite of their daughter. After having dragged himself and Tucker into her room, she apologized, much to his surprise.

"So Danny," Sam said suddenly, catching his attention, "have you heard anything new about what's going on with your case?"

"No, not really… Winston had mentioned on the phone earlier that he was supposed to be going to a meeting for it today. I guess I'll find out tomorrow if anything happened," he replied with a shrug while trying to keep his voice neutral. Winston had kept saying that everything was fine, but a worried expression seemed to be appearing on his face more and more after getting off of the phone with anyone who had anything to do with the case.

"Well, that's good, isn't it?" Tucker asked, his voice betraying a strange mixture of hope and concern.

Danny shrugged and continued walking. Although it concerned him, without having a lot of information, he couldn't get too worked up about it. "So, pushing that aside, what's going on in the realm of the normal?" Little did he know how much trouble he would get into by Sam from just using the word 'normal'.

….

After a few hours of walking around the park and having Tucker continue to complain, the three of them decided to return to Sam's house. Although he couldn't be certain, he was fairly sure that it was after midnight. There was just something about the silence combined with the lack of cars or other people that suggested it.

There was something about the night that was concerning him. Perhaps it was the paranoia of everything else that had happened weighing down on him, but the shadows seemed to be darker and more defined than usual. The feeling of being watched was also present, though this time, he was unable to see any movement.

A cold chill ran through his body. Thinking it was just the wind, he hugged himself hoping to gain a little more warmth as they walked. "Dude, are you okay?" Tucker asked, surprising him.

"Yeah," he replied as he tried not to let his teeth chatter. "I'm just a little cold." His friends looked like they were about to shrug it off until he and they noticed that his breath was slowly becoming visible. He stared at the misty vapor as it formed for a moment before disappearing. Had it really gotten that cold?

After sharing a look, both Sam and Tucker grabbed his arms and began marching, for a better lack of a word, towards the entrance of the park. "Guys, stop! What's wrong with you?" he demanded as he yanked his arms out of their grip.

"Um, Danny, I don't know if you've noticed, but every time something weird happens to you, something weirder happens," Sam told him.

"And after hearing about what happened last time, I really don't want to be around when it does," Tucker continued.

He just stared at them. "What do you mean weird? It's just cold out here!"

"That's the thing. It's not the temperature that's cold, it's actually you," Sam tried to explain. "I don't know what it is, but you're skin's like ice, and I'm fairly certain that you weren't like that earlier."

Danny frowned as he looked at his hands. How was that even possible?

"Anyways," Sam told him with an uncertain tone as she gave him a slight push, "let's get you back to my house so that we can get you a blanket. No matter what other weird stuff is going on with you, it is probably not a good idea for you to continue to be that cold."

He grudgingly agreed and allowed himself to follow his friends. An uncomfortable silence fell between them as they walked, which really began to grate on his nerves. Okay, so he was cold. That was a problem how? Not all that strange. Falling through solid objects, on the other hand? That was a completely different matter.

As they approached the street a high pitched whine disturbed the night. He had just enough time after noticing the initial flash of light to make some sort of noise and tackle both of his friends to the ground. The sharp vibrations that followed verified his initial fears.

"What was that for?" Sam demanded as she pushed him off of her.

"You're welcome," he replied sarcastically as he stood up and glanced around. Something told him that was just the opening for something much larger.

"Um, guys…" A hand was tugging on his pant leg. Glancing down, he saw Tucker pointing at something. The boy's face was as white as a sheet, which was rather impressive for how dark his natural skin color was. Danny allowed himself to take a look and gasped. Where the three of them had been standing only moments before, the ground was warped and destroyed. Whatever that light had been, it was certainly strong and dangerous. He did not want to think about what could have happened if they hadn't moved.

The feeling of being grabbed startled him, but he quickly learned it was just Tucker using him as leverage to help stand back up. "What… what was that?" His voice was little more than a frightened squeak.

Danny did not replay immediately. Inwardly cursing that there weren't more lights in the park, he tried to find any sign of where the source could have been. There was absolutely nothing! No shadow, no further noise; just an eerie silence that was only broken by the sound of breathing. "I-I'm not sure…" he told his friends hesitantly as he turned back towards them. "But, we need to get out of here… Wait… what was that?"

A strange noise had broken through the silence and was quickly becoming louder. It was difficult to place what it could be, but it definitely had a metallic sound to it. But there was an unusual sort of hitching within the sound, which almost made it seem like it was laughing.

"Come on!" Sam's sharp tone brought him back to reality as she again tried pulling on him and Tucker. "I really don't think that we want to be around when that thing shows itself." She had just managed to get them moving again when another blast hit nearby sending them back to the ground.

He must have hit the ground pretty hard because the next thing he knew, Tucker was trying to shake him awake. "I'm okay…" Danny told his friend as he tried to push himself up. As he did, he could feel something wet beginning to run down his face. Great, he was bleeding, but he was going to have to push that aside, escaping was far more important.

After a few more heart pounding moments, the three of them had managed to get to the outskirts of the park. Taking a hesitant breather, they scanned the area hoping that they were free of whatever had just attacked them.

Thankful for the temporary break, Danny took the chance to wipe the blood off his face and out of his eye. If he was going to have to run again, he really did not want any other distractions. Grimacing at the sight of his blood covered hand, he realized that he was going to get the cut taken care of as soon as possible. He was also going to have to figure out what else had managed to get on his face. Although it was faint, there was an odd looking green color that had gotten mixed into it.

"Danny! Behind you!"

The fear in Sam's voice was nothing like he had ever heard before. Startled, he turned to see what was wrong and found himself face to face with the barrel of a gun.

"I have you now, ghost child."

[ladylynse]

Together: [FF | AO3] “We’ll always be together,” Maddie had promised, but then there was the accident, and they weren’t. Until she came back. Warning: Character death.

Written for the 2019 Phic Phight! Largely based off a prompt by @hauntedjoanns (After a freak lab accident, the Fentons bury Maddie. But she comes back.) but also incorporating one of @quishaphantom‘s prompts (Start and end the fic with the same sentence, the first time it's positive and happy. The second time it's chilling and foreboding.). This is about 6.7 K and is set after The Fright Before Christmas.

Now with some awesome fanart by @dannyphandump!

“We’ll always be together. We’re a family, and we’re Fentons. A silly little feud like this isn’t going to break us apart.” Maddie sat down on the foot of Danny’s bed and smiled at him. “You know that, right, sweetie?”

She thought he didn’t want to talk about what had happened at Christmas, when in reality he’d spent half his time with his friends and the rest in the Ghost Zone celebrating the Christmas Truce—and, on a more personal level, the end of the Ghost Writer’s infernal rhymes. Had he been in his room when she’d first knocked and begun talking to him outside of his door, soothing him, trying to coax him into opening it, she might not have this impression. She’d believed his apology when he’d come back with the presents, but considering she and Jack had run out fairly soon afterwards…. Maybe she thought they’d ruined it for him again, since he’d disappeared for so much of the evening.

He wondered how late it actually was.

He probably should’ve come back sooner, spent more of his Christmas with them, but once he’d gone, the food in the Ghost Zone had been unexpectedly good. It had been real, fresh, and surprisingly not contaminated, unlike everything in the Fenton household. But he could make it up to them tomorrow; he was off school for another week and a half, and all he had to do was find out from Jazz which weapons it was safe to pretend to be interested in. Once he asked about those, maybe agreed to go on a quick patrol with his parents and take down an ectopus or something, they’d believe the truth when he told it: that he really didn’t harbour any hard feelings about how they’d acted all these years, not anymore.

“I know, Mom,” he answered dutifully.

“Sometimes we fight; every family does. And, sometimes, things escalate. And sometimes our dinner is contaminated and gains sentience.” Her lips quirked into another smile, and he smiled, too. There had been too many disasters in the past for them to ignore that. “But we’ll handle each problem as it comes, honey. I promise you; nothing like that will ever separate us. You and Jazz are more precious to us than anything else in this world or the Ghost Zone. We love you both. I don’t want you to think anything is going to get in the way of that, or of our love for each other.”

He just nodded. It wasn’t like he could tell her the truth about why he’d run away—well, the whole truth, anyway—or how he’d come to be surrounded by formerly-possessed Christmas trees or where he’d gotten the presents he’d given to them in the end. It was easier if she believed his behaviour was due to the Christmas feud, of how she and Jack had carried on, of how they’d run out in pursuit of ghosts. Honestly, it was rather sweet that she’d come to reassure him. He just didn’t need the reassurance.

“You can talk to us, honey. About anything.”

She suspected there was more to this. If he brushed her off now, she’d find a way to bring it up again. Danny untangled himself from the covers so he could give his mom a proper hug. “I know,” he repeated, “and I love you guys, too. Like I said before, I overreacted earlier, and I’m sorry. It’s not that I didn’t want to talk to you when you came up tonight; I just fell asleep early. I didn’t hear you right away.” The lie fell easily from his lips, and he forced a laugh as he finished with the truth. “It was a long day.”

“I’ll let you get back to sleep, then.” She kissed his cheek before he had a chance to contemplate escape. “Good night, Danny. I love you.”

“Night, Mom. Love you, too.”

XXXXX

Danny woke to wailing alarms, sleepiness falling away as adrenaline filled him. He transformed—

—and four ecto-energy seeking weapons sprang out of the walls to focus on him. He groaned and changed back before they could fire. Who had activated the Fenton Anti-Creep Mode? His ghost sense had never gone off, so it wasn’t like someone had breached the Fenton Ghost Portal again. He grabbed his ecto-gun off the shelf with his model rockets (he refused to sleep with it under his pillow, despite what his parents wanted) but didn’t even bother shoving his feet into slippers before running into the hallway.

His parents’ bedroom door was open. So was Jazz’s. A quick peek inside both rooms proved that they were empty, as was the bathroom, so Danny started down the stairs. He saw Jack pushing Jazz towards the front door, but before he could open his mouth to ask, one of Jack’s hands had grabbed his and was tugging him down the last of the steps.

“What happened?” Danny asked, twisting to look behind him.

His father’s face was unusually grim. “Outside, you two. Mads and I will deal with this.”

“Deal with what? What’s going on?”

“Wait for us across the street,” Jack said, and then he slammed the door in their faces, leaving them standing on the stoop in their pajamas.

Danny looked at Jazz, who shrugged and rubbed her arms. “Ghost?”

He shook his head. “My ghost sense never woke me up.”

“And it always does?”

“Kinda hard to sleep through a sudden freezing sensation.” Truth was, though, he didn’t know that his ghost sense always woke him up. How could he? He’d still be asleep.

“Maybe it’s a drill, then.” But the alarm was still ringing inside, and Jazz didn’t look convinced. Every other family drill they’d had had come with reminders—never trust a ghost, always remember technology may have been infected, never back yourself into a corner, always keep at least one weapon within arm’s reach, that kind of thing—and it seemed unlikely that they’d stop now.

They’d never had a ghost drill in the middle of the night before, either, for all that his parents had threatened it. He watched some of the lights flick on in the neighbouring houses and realized why. More than one disgruntled face looked out the window before turning away and disappearing into darkness, realizing it was just the Fentons. Again.

“This is probably to keep us on our toes,” Jazz said lightly. She took his ecto-gun from him and shoved it into a pocket in her housecoat—hers was already in the other pocket, judging by the bulge—before crouching in front of him. “Come on; climb on. You’re barefoot, and powers or not, I don’t want to find out if you can lose any toes to frostbite.”

Neither did he, so Danny climbed on her back. She hadn’t given him a piggyback ride in years, but she shuffled across the street and waited under the streetlight. As the wind picked up, bringing with it a few flakes of snow, he could feel her shivering beneath her thin housecoat. He wished there was something he could do to help, but with the possible exception of a ghost shield—

“Cold wind,” Jazz commented after a moment, but her voice was high, wrong, and Danny suddenly realized that she wasn’t shivering; she was shaking.

He clutched her tighter, turning them both intangible except for the soles of her feet and slippers, as if it would help them escape from the chest-constricting feeling that was settling over them.

Something was wrong.

Something he couldn’t stop.

Something she couldn’t fix.

“We have to go back in,” Danny whispered. He didn’t know how long it had been. Too long. It must have already been too long. Their parents should have come out to get them ages ago. They should have—

The alarms finally cut off. He flew them both back across the street, past caring that someone might see. If they did, they’d just explain it away, like they explained away everything else. It was just the Fentons, after all. Just the Fentons, steeped in their paranormal studies again, inventing strange things and talking about it to anyone close enough to listen.

Danny didn’t drop their intangibility until they were safely inside. Jazz was running for the basement lab before his feet even hit the kitchen floor, but he wasn’t far behind her.

The door to the lab wasn’t closed like it usually was, like it was supposed to be, but he took the stairs two at a time without stopping to wonder why. The Christmas Truce was no longer in effect, but the ghosts weren’t that cruel; they wouldn’t have planned something for the moment the Truce ended.

And his ghost sense had never gone off.

“Dad?”

Jazz’s voice sounded strangled, as if she had to force herself to speak. As if she were trying not to cry. Danny caught up to her at the bottom of the stairs and finally let himself look around. The emergency lighting was on, softer lights lining the walls and disappearing up the emergency exit tunnel to the backyard, but he didn’t need the usual harsh fluorescence of the lab to know that something had happened here. Broken glass, splattered ecto-samples, scorch marks along the far wall.

A lingering smell of burnt something, acrid and plasticky and maybe a bit acidic.

“What happened?”

There was definitely panic in Jazz’s voice now.

Danny followed her gaze and swallowed as he recognized the black boots sticking out from behind the examination table. The rest was hidden by his father’s hulking form, but—

“Dad.” Jazz’s voice cracked. “How’s Mom?”

Jack’s shoulders shook, and something inside of Danny twisted.

A choked sob was Jazz’s only answer.

Danny couldn’t swallow the lump in his throat back again as the world blurred.

XXXXXXXX

Jack explained it to them later, as much as he could explain it. Maddie had gone down to the lab to tinker with something. A surprise, she’d called it. Wouldn’t tell him the details, but he had a few guesses, none of which mattered now. Something shorted out. Something got knocked off the shelf. The order of events wasn’t entirely clear, but some of their ecto-samples had been released, and not just the standard ectoplasm ones. Danny was pretty sure Jack had mentioned a suspected hallucinogen, though he wasn’t sure which ghost was supposed to be involved in that. Maybe it wasn’t a ghost at all. He hadn’t realized his parents had ever done a scouting mission into the Ghost Zone, let alone collected some of the native flora, but maybe they had. Or maybe that had been part of his mother’s surprise.

Whatever the exact circumstances, Jack hadn’t been able to save her in the end. Something had gone wrong, something Danny couldn’t stop, something Jazz couldn’t fix, and now—

Jazz put a cup of hot chocolate in front of him.

He hadn’t realized she’d gotten up to make something. Hadn’t noticed her leave her spot at the table, hadn’t heard the kettle’s shrill whistle or the clink of the spoon against the cup. She’d made one for each of them.

She’d made three.

It wasn’t enough.

Danny wrapped his hands around his mug, lifting it to his face to breathe in the steam, but it couldn’t warm him, and his stomach twisted after the first sip.

He didn’t drink the rest. Jack never touched his. By the time Jazz finished hers, it must have been ice cold.

They sat in silence, trying to come to terms with everything, until the phone rang. Jazz jumped up to get it, and Jack shot her a grateful look, and then there was too much to do to sit in silence. There was too much to do to think. Contacting all their relatives, breaking the news to Vlad, talking to the funeral home and getting all those preparations in order, writing the obituary and getting it in the paper, picking up Aunt Alicia from the airport, talking to the florist, the bank, the accountant, the lawyer, the insurance company, finding out who needed to know what and by when and which places needed a death certificate and—

None of them were sleeping.

It was a good thing he didn’t need much sleep anyway.

People kept stopping by to bring them food and their condolences, which was just as well, because Danny didn’t think they could eat any of the food in their house anyway. Not that any of them were hungry. They were too tired to be hungry, stuck in cycles of shock and grief as reality started to sink in. But they did try to eat, since it was there.

The ghosts stayed away, though.

Danny thought he might have Vlad to thank for that, but he didn’t ask.

XXXXXX

A lot of people turned up for the funeral.

Danny didn’t know half of them, but they knew him, and they shook his hand or hugged him or touched his shoulder. In hindsight, it made sense; everyone in town knew the Fentons. But it was weird, seeing all these people show up, all these people being sad for someone he wasn’t sure they’d really known. Sometimes people cried instead of trying to talk to him, and he always got tears in his eyes, too. If he let himself think about it, he cried. He tried to distance himself, tried to distract himself, just to get through it.

He couldn’t remember anything anyone said to him at the funeral.

He had a vague recollection of being at the cemetery, of the cold seeping into his bones, of the wisps of snow skittering across the ground at their feet, of the way the artificial turf didn’t quite cover the mound of dirt that had been displaced. He remembered looking up at one point and seeing Valerie standing there with her dad, and he remembered thinking that she knew what this felt like. Unlike Sam and Tucker, she knew.

He remembered wondering if he could ask her how long the pain would last, but he hadn’t known how to ask the question, and there had been too many people at the reception, anyway.

He’d nibbled at the food on the plate Sam had brought for him, but even when she and Tucker had sat with him at a table, talking more to each other than to him, it hadn’t been enough.

Was any of this his fault, even partially? Had she been doing something in response to how he’d been acting? Had she been hoping to surprise him? Had it really been a freak accident or had it been a targeted attack on her because he was Phantom? Would things have been different if she’d known the truth? His mom had always taken more safety precautions in the lab than his dad, and he knew theirs wasn’t exactly the safest profession to begin with, but—

At least he’d told her he loved her. At least he had that. But he hadn’t spent…. He’d left them, left them all, when he shouldn’t have, and she’d thought…. She’d…. If only he’d….

Danny cried himself to sleep that night.

Again.

XXXXXX

When Danny woke, it took him a few seconds to orient himself. He was in his room, of course, in bed, but he couldn’t remember falling asleep. It had been after three in the morning when he’d last looked at the clock and sworn to himself that he wouldn’t look at it again, and—

Bright red numbers informed him that it was half past six. It was still dark outside. The house was quiet. He couldn’t remember dreaming. He wondered dumbly what had woken him.

And then a shiver ran through him, and he coughed, and he realized his grace period was over.

He wasn’t ready for normal, wasn’t ready for any semblance of normal, but the ghosts weren’t going to wait any longer.

Danny grabbed the ecto-gun off the shelf, picked up the thermos he’d started storing next to it, and shuffled his slippers onto his feet.

He didn’t want to fight.

But he didn’t want to lose anyone else, either.

And maybe it would just be the Box Ghost, and Danny could give him some cereal boxes and send him over to Vlad’s to look for more and be done with it. He shouldn’t, considering Vlad had agreed to put up Aunt Alicia and take her back to the airport in the morning, but Vlad would just call Valerie anyway. Frankly, Danny was happy to leave the ghost hunting to Valerie for a while.

Something fell. Shattered, from the sound of it. Maybe it was the Box Ghost after all. Or Technus after the toaster again. Or the Lunch Lady, stocking up on semi-sentient meat. Danny headed downstairs and walked towards the kitchen. He didn’t want to do this, but Jack and Jazz hadn’t been sleeping well, either, and if he could deal with this before either of them woke up—

He crossed over the threshold of the kitchen, blinked, and froze.

It was a cloudy night. Some light from the streetlamps spilled inside, but he didn’t need that to be sure of what he was seeing. Ghosts always had their own glow, however subtle, and it was his ghost sense which had woken him up. Even running on very little sleep, Danny knew there was no mistaking what he saw.

Maddie stood over the shards of her glass mixing bowl, and when she looked up at him, she smiled. “Hi, sweetie,” she called softly.

He took a step back.

“Did I wake you? I just wanted to make some cookies.”

He took another step back.

“Did you want some water? Let me get you some water.”

She glided smoothly over broken glass to the cupboard by the sink, and after a moment’s concentration, she had a glass in her hand and was fighting to grasp the tap, to turn it on and fill a glass of water for him.

He was halfway up the stairs when he heard running water, and he didn’t look back.

XXXXXXX

They didn’t talk about it. There was no screaming, no crying, no denials. No one drew any weapons, either.

Not even Jack.

She’d made sure they didn’t have any weapons left to draw.

None of them had ventured into the lab until her return, but she had, probably that first night. As far as Danny could tell, what she couldn’t destroy, she’d simply tossed into the Ghost Zone. Whether the genetic lock recognized her or whether she simply used her knowledge of it to get around all the protocols, he didn’t know. He did know that she’d deactivated the Fenton Anti-Creep Mode, probably at the same time she’d stolen his dad’s arsenal and swiped his sister’s ecto-gun and thermos.

She hadn’t found his yet, despite watching him carefully behind a too-sharp smile.

She didn’t know he’d hidden them in his bedroom wall that first night.

She still didn’t know he could.

She must have never talked to any of the other ghosts. Not that he thought they’d talk to her, except maybe Plasmius, but Vlad didn’t know or he’d be here. He’d probably come even knowing this wasn’t really Maddie anymore; he’d just be desperate to see her one last time. But he wouldn’t come without knowing, and as far as Danny could tell, the other ghosts were still avoiding the Real World—or at least avoiding his little corner of it.

He’d even tried calling Cujo, to no avail. Either Cujo hadn’t heard him or he couldn’t get through whatever Maddie had reconfigured to keep other ghosts out. There was definitely something. Danny kept hitting a barrier, presumably the Fenton Ghost Shield, every time he tried to phase all the way through an outside wall. Trying to phase through the ground didn’t work, either; whatever it was passed through the earth, too, which might be what was messing with Cujo’s ability to create portals if he had heard Danny’s call.

Intentional trap or not, it meant Danny couldn’t sneak messages out that way. Or any way, really, considering Maddie had destroyed their computer, their phones, and everything else she thought they might ultimately use against her. Since their routines had been so disrupted, no one was going to question this. Even Sam and Tucker had been trying to give him space, sending only the occasional message to check up on him with assurances that he didn’t have to answer right away and promises that they’d be there if he ever wanted to do something, whether that involved talking about what had happened or avoiding the subject at all costs. Not hearing from him for a few days would have been weird before, but not now.

It was…strange. They were all walking on eggshells, trying to adjust, trying to figure out the boundaries without pushing too far. They didn’t know what the consequences would be, not yet, but they still feared them. Feared this. Feared what Maddie had become.

Danny was finally beginning to appreciate some of his parents’ theories on ghosts.

Then again, ghosts were as much a culmination of people’s beliefs around the afterlife, around ghosts, as they were people’s spirits and echoes of their lives.

And Maddie had believed ghosts had obsessions.

She had believed they didn’t feel pain.

She had believed they had no true emotions, merely masks, and that they were expert manipulators.

She had believed they couldn’t be trusted.

Some of that certainly held true now, but he didn’t yet know how much.

Danny lay in his bed with his eyes closed. Not pretending to sleep—she wouldn’t believe that—but content to use it as an excuse to think. She was watching him. He knew that. She was watching him the most closely of all, probably because she’d come to realize she could trust him the least.

Danny wasn’t sure, if it came down to it, if Jack would be able to fight her. She was a ghost, but she was his wife. That might change things, just as knowing he was Phantom might change things, if he ever gave it the chance. It wasn’t quite the same—she was dead, a proper ghost; she had no body, no human side to embrace, not anymore—but for every fear he’d ever had about them finding out, he now found himself thinking that the opposite would happen here. They wouldn’t have attacked him for being Phantom, and Jack wouldn’t attack Maddie now.

Even if he had the opportunity, even knowing what he did, he’d hesitate.

She’d know what to say to make him hesitate.

And then she’d act before he could, and the opportunity would be lost.

Jazz wouldn’t be any better. He could pass a weapon to her without explaining how he still had it, but she was trying to get through to their mom. To talk to her. Remind her of who she really was, not this façade, this shadow. Jazz wouldn’t want to attack until she was convinced it was too late, and if he talked to her about this, she’d just ask for him to give her time.

He wasn’t concerned about keeping his secret from his dad anymore; he just wanted to keep it a secret from his mom. It was the only advantage they had. Telling Jack anything now just ran the risk of Maddie finding out, especially since Jack wasn’t great at subtle.

It would be different if Maddie hadn’t changed. But for all that the ghost of his mother smiled at them and baked batch after batch of cookies, the ghost wasn’t his mom. Not really.

There was a thump across the hall. Jazz. Danny opened his eyes, climbed out of bed, and met her in the hallway. Her eyebrows rose a fraction, and he gave his head a minute shake. It wasn’t safe to talk. Maddie was listening.

Jazz risked reaching for the front door handle, but Danny wasn’t surprised when her hand fell away and she kept pace with him into the living room. The doors in the house weren’t locked, per se, but they wouldn’t open, either. Neither did the windows. No doubt the Fenton Ops Centre was locked down as tightly as the Fenton Ghost Portal—and, presumably, the emergency exit to the backyard.

Jack looked up from his needlework. “You kids all right?” The stitches Danny could see were tiny, tight, but he wasn’t much farther along than he had been last time Danny had looked. Likely as not, he kept picking them out.

“We’re great, Dad,” Jazz chirped, but her eyes told the real story.

They were a family of ghost hunters trapped in their own home by a ghost who had been one of them, who knew their usual tricks. Jazz hadn’t been making any progress with her psychology, Jack seemed at a loss for what to do, Danny wasn’t sure of the best plan of attack and couldn’t discuss it with either of them, and she was afraid.

“Isn’t this wonderful?” Maddie asked, materializing as Danny and Jazz sat down on the sofa. “We need to spend more time together, as a family. We’re better this way.”

It didn’t even sound like her anymore.

Danny had thought, if there were a change, that it would be gradual. Time deteriorated all things, even memories. But this was…. She’d never seemed like herself since she’d come back. Maybe not all of her had come back.

“It’s nice to have quality family time,” Jazz agreed carefully. “Too many people have trouble keeping their lives balanced.”

The smile that had been fixed on Maddie’s face faltered. “Oh, sweetie, don’t worry. We’ll make up for lost time. I promise.”

Jazz swallowed and glanced at Danny. He pretended not to see.

“We’re making do,” Jack said. “We…we still have food we can eat.”

As opposed to food they couldn’t eat, like the Christmas oranges the cookies had infected yesterday. Danny had nearly had to reveal himself then and there, until Jazz had fished the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick out of her closet and, between that and Jack’s golf clubs, they’d turned the oranges into pulp and trapped the remains in jars.

Maddie had been suspiciously absent for the entire incident.

“You haven’t finished my cookies.” Maddie’s tone was light, but she was watching their reactions, frowning slightly at every grimace. Danny wasn’t sure if she was intentionally contaminating every batch or not. He hadn’t figured out what she wanted.

Aside from trapping them all inside, she hadn’t given them a lot of clues. Revenge for what had happened to her? As far as he knew, it had been a freak accident—not even the sort carelessness could cause, like not cleaning the ecto-filter on the portal. Unfinished business? Maybe, except ghost hunting had been the family business, and destroying their weapons so they couldn’t be used against her, while beneficial to her continued existence in the Real World, wasn’t conducive to achieving that goal and moving on. He hoped she didn’t want him and Jazz to take up ghost hunting more wholeheartedly than either of them had, but if that was her goal and the reason she was trying to keep them here….

“Just don’t have much of a sweet tooth lately,” Jazz murmured. None of them had tried their hand at cooking a meal yet, but Danny knew they were running out of gifted casseroles—albeit more because they kept getting contaminated than because they were being eaten. Maddie wasn’t exactly careful in the kitchen anymore, but he knew how hard it could be to learn to control new powers. He doubted it was much easier for her than it had been for him, especially since she was spending all her time in the Real World.

Still, they’d have to act soon. Three days of being a prisoner in his own home, and his skin was constantly crawling.

Cold flooded through him, and Danny shivered. “You’re being awfully quiet, sweetie,” his mother said.

“I was just thinking,” he muttered, not meeting her eyes.

“Aren’t you happy? We’re a family again.”

Danny’s head shot up. Was that all it was? Was that what this was? He wished he could discuss it with Jazz—she’d know in a heartbeat; she probably already had a guess—but all he could do now was search Maddie’s face. She was smiling again, and it was more than her usual mask. Cruelness twisted on the edge of it, and her eyes…. He hadn’t seen them look so cold when she’d been alive, even when she’d been cheerfully informing them that ghosts didn’t feel pain.

Maddie stepped back, but the cold didn’t diminish, some combination of her presence and his ghost sense and who knew what else. “You don’t think we’re a family,” she concluded, and her gaze focused on Jack and Jazz. “Do any of you think we’re still a family?”

Even Danny knew their pause was too long, their assurances too late.

Shadows danced across the drawn curtains as the light in the room pulled away and dimmed. Jazz didn’t even look at him, knowing full well he wasn’t the cause. Her gaze was fixed on Maddie. This was the first time she’d openly displayed any of her new powers, and which ones she had would give them the best clues as to what had happened.

“I’ll just have to prove it to you, then,” she said, and Danny heard a thump from the kitchen. He jumped to his feet, and Jazz screamed, and Jack was looking around for something to use as a weapon—

There was something in here with them, something besides Maddie, but he couldn’t spot it, and he was so cold now that he wasn’t sure he’d have noticed his ghost sense going off. Could Maddie really control light and shadows or was there some sort of mutual agreement between her and a shadow ghost, not unlike what Johnny 13 and Shadow had? But when would she have made one—when could she have made one—and who would make such a deal with her without even telling her who he really was? If they’d planned to double cross her—

“Look out!” Jazz shrieked, and she tackled him. Something exploded overhead, showering them with sparks, and then he could smell smoke, and burning cloth, burning hair, and fire crackled and heat swelled and his eyes were smarting, and Jack was yelling at them to get to the door—

And then there was nothing.

“This is what I’m protecting you from,” Maddie said as Jazz rolled off his back and climbed tentatively to her feet. He sat up but stayed on the floor. His eyes were watering. Smoke and ash still stung his nostrils and hung on his tongue. But the heat was gone, and the earlier cold, and he was more convinced than ever that his ghost sense hadn’t gone off.

Not for someone besides his mother, anyway.

He thought he knew what this was now. He’d met enough ghosts that worked with illusions, or near enough, and if Jack was right about what he thought had happened….

“It’s not safe outside,” she continued. “Not anymore. When I broke through, when I came back…. They followed me. They got out, and now they’re trying to get all of you. I won’t let that happen.”

“I’ll fight—”

“You can’t,” Maddie interrupted, cutting off Jack before he could begin his argument. “Not these ghosts. You’re a terrible shot, honey.”

“Not when it comes to protecting my family,” he replied, lifting his head.

“That’s all I’m doing,” she answered. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. And now I can do it properly. You’ll all stay here, and you’ll stay safe. Now, I’ll bring in those cookies in case anyone decides their sweet tooth is back.”

Danny caught Jazz’s eye as Maddie left the room and risked a tiny nod. He didn’t have a plan, not really, but she’d follow his lead, and Jack would catch on soon enough. They needed to move before things got worse, before Maddie got stronger.

While she was preoccupied in the kitchen, Danny slipped upstairs.

XXXXXX

Danny didn’t know if Maddie had any sort of ghost sense. If she knew of his ghost powers, she certainly hadn’t let on. Then again, he’d barely used his ghost powers since her return. Until now.

He wasn’t as good as Vlad when it came to duplicating himself—he couldn’t hold a duplicate very long in ghost mode, let alone in human form—and he risked giving the game away faster if he tried sending one downstairs as a stand-in. He didn’t need it disappearing mid-sentence. Instead, he’d let Jazz cover for him, like she always had before.

Danny turned invisible the moment he was out of sight, though he stayed tangible until he needed to grab the weapons he’d stowed away. He stayed this way as he flew back to the living room and pressed the thermos into Jazz’s hands. She shifted, subtly pointing to the pillow resting against the arm of the couch, and he slipped it behind that instead as Maddie returned with a plate of chocolate chip cookies that emitted a faint green glow.

Danny steered clear of her as he edged toward Jack, but he needn’t have worried. Maddie stopped in her tracks when she noticed his absence. The room grew colder again.

“Danny just ran to the washroom,” Jazz offered before Maddie asked. Maddie looked in the direction of the upstairs bathroom, frowning slightly. Danny shivered even though he was certain she didn’t know—yet—that he wasn’t actually up there.

Maddie’s lips thinned, and Jazz glanced at Jack before snagging Maddie’s attention again. Danny took the opening for what it was. “Trust me,” he murmured in Jack’s ear as he slipped the ecto-gun into one of the side pockets of his dad’s suit. To Jack’s credit, he jerked but didn’t say anything—maybe because he recognized the familiar weight of what had become forbidden weaponry.

Danny sneaked back upstairs, flushing the toilet and running the tap for good measure, before joining the others in the living room again. Maddie didn’t smile when she saw him. Whether or not she knew the truth, she didn’t believe the lie. She’d be expecting something.

“Are you feeling okay, sweetie?” she asked, half turning towards him.

Danny opened his mouth to repeat his usual lie—I’m fine—when he saw Jack draw the ecto-gun and flip off the safety. Maddie was turning back to him even before it finished powering up, but she surely wasn’t expecting the pillow Jazz threw at her or she’d have phased through it.

The distraction was enough for the ecto-gun’s whine to reach its climax. Jack fired. Danny ducked and shot off an ectoblast for good measure. Maddie had also managed to avoid Jack’s blast, but she hadn’t been anticipating his when she’d thought him unarmed. It caught her in the side and threw her across the room. He rolled and transformed, figuring he’d withstand anything she retaliated with better in ghost mode and not wanting to be in the same spot by the time she recovered enough to send something at him. Just because he hadn’t seen her use a ghost ray, didn’t mean she couldn’t.

When Danny came back up in a crouch, the world was thick with smoke. Turning intangible helped—it was easier to breathe, the smoke didn’t sting anymore, and he couldn’t feel any heat from the flames which had sprung up—but it didn’t give him his sight lines back. Jazz and Jack were lost in choking darkness, and Maddie was far enough away that he couldn’t spot her, either. He knew this couldn’t be real, but he also had no idea how he was supposed to see through an illusion like this.

There wasn’t fire, just as there wasn’t really smoke, so trying to do anything to fight it wouldn’t get him anywhere. He’d do more harm than good. But she could have easily removed herself from view in a world spun of her own illusions, and if he didn’t do something—

The world filled with blinding light, and then everything was dark.

XXXX

Reality snapped back into place when the thermos left Jazz’s hands. “Wh…what…?”

“It seems someone’s been keeping secrets,” Maddie said, tucking the thermos under her arm. Jazz’s eyes darted around the room, her heart sinking when she couldn’t spot her little brother. True, there was a chance he was hiding again and biding his time, but….

But that didn’t seem likely, given that Maddie held the thermos and the ecto-gun Jack had used was in pieces on the carpet. Jack was staring blankly at the remains, and Jazz didn’t know if he was shocked to find out he’d spent the last few days living with two ghosts or if he was still lost in Maddie’s illusions.

That’s what it had to be. It was rare for a ghost not to have some power related to either the means of their death or their obsession, particularly a ghost who could keep their form and interact with the Real World for as long as Maddie had. She didn’t have Spectra’s years of practice, and Jazz doubted she’d opened the Fenton Ghost Portal since coming through it from the other side. It was too risky for her to leave such an obvious hole in their defenses, even if she hadn’t known of Danny’s dual nature or Vlad’s personal portal.

Jazz had tried overriding the security system of the Ops Centre last night. She’d tried crawling out through a vent the night before, thinking it a less obvious choice. But while the air could get through, she could not. And Danny couldn’t have had any luck with anything he had tried, either, or he’d have let her know. Somehow.

And Jack….

Jazz swallowed.

Jack hadn’t hesitated before taking a shot at Maddie at the first opportunity.

She hoped he hadn’t merely been acting on old instincts. If this was an indication that he might not accept Danny—

“We’re supposed to be a family,” Maddie said. Jazz flinched at her sharp tone, but Jack looked over, and Jazz edged closer to her father. She’d have to figure out how to get the thermos back later. She’d have to— “Do you not want to be a family, now that things have changed?”

Jazz knew better than to answer that question. Jack frowned, but he kept quiet, too.

“I’ll admit this was a surprise—” here Maddie tapped her finger on the thermos’s lid “—but it works in our favour, really. Danny will come over sooner or later. I’ll just keep him safe in here until you two have come over to my side.”

“To your side?” Jack growled. “You can’t pretend we’re a family when this is what you do.”

Maddie’s smile was all wrong. “You know exactly which side I mean, honey.”

Jazz’s breath hitched. Maddie might not be able to cut off their air supply, but it wouldn’t be difficult for her to contaminate the rest of their food. She might be able to taint their water, too. She might—

“You’ll see things from my perspective soon enough,” Maddie continued. Her tone made it clear that she didn’t intend to give them a choice. Jazz tried to remember if she still had a Fenton Lipstick sewn into Bearbert or if she’d forgotten to replace it the last time half his stuffing had been ripped out. She’d have to check.

Providing she ever had the opportunity.

With Maddie’s apparent control of illusion, with her ability to bend their perspective of reality, Jazz couldn’t even be sure this much was real.

“We’re family, after all, and I’m going to do what’s best for you. For all of you.” Maddie stroked the thermos before looking up at the two of them. Her eyes held no love for them; they were filled instead with possessiveness, with obsession. Their hardness kept Jazz rooted in place, terrified of what a misstep might mean now that Danny was trapped. “We can be a family of ghosts instead of a family of ghost hunters. I’ll do whatever’s needed to make that happen. Don’t worry. We’ll always be together.”

(see more fics | my phight phics | that fanart for this fic you should see)

[goodproofingwater]

Wildfire Records - Chapter Three

Word Count: 2987

Pure pain ran through Victoria’s brain as her alarm rocketed through her unconsciousness, and she would have given anything to be able to roll over and go back to sleep.

Being the professional she was, and knowing that the entire floor was aware that Juliet and herself had been to a gig the night before, she dragged herself out of bed and to the coffee machine, clutching at it for dear life as she got ready and dragged herself back to the office.

It was the following month before they could get Cindy in a room to talk to her, and the girls had been to three shows since, more sure now than ever that The Dangers were going to be a hit.

The monthly floor meeting finished without a word as to how the girls had done, which although frustrating (they had done all the proper paperwork and had submitted requests to get the band in for meetings with Cindy and her superiors), was a sigh of relief. There was little that Victoria would rather do than present in front of the talent scouts without anything to back her up, and she suspected that Juliet felt much the same.

Victoria rushed into Cindy's office before any of the other scouts could get there, earning herself a particularly cold scowl from at least three members of the team who had been waiting for the chance. She closed the door behind her and walked to the desk, placing the CD that Andy had given her next to the scout report and waited for her manager to make the next move. Cindy eyed her with full interest, sitting forward only to see what was in front of her before she took her usual position, leaning back in the chair and resting on one arm.

“Can I help you?” The blonde spoke, body language clearly indicating the lack of care this woman gave to the girl in front of her, but Victoria persisted.

“This band that you had us see, The Dangers?”

“Oh yeah, I had forgotten about that” the soft smile on her lips didn’t touch her eyes, and it became immediately clear that the girls had been given the task to shut them up. But they had stumbled on excellence.

“They’re fantastic.” Victoria spoke, nudging the items in front of her forward slightly as she sat up straighter, “I know that you said that they weren’t right for us but you have to—“

“They’re not right for us.” Cindy spoke, eyeing the scout report but making no move to take it, “we’ve had five different artists come in from the presentation already, three of them have studio time booked with us. I don’t need another third grade guitar band filthying up our books just because you went to your first scout and think you’ve found the next oasis.”

The blonde sat up straighter in her chair, glancing down at the report and the CD, “I’ll take this report and put it in your file, might even give you and Juliet some additional shit artists to go and see, but you’ve got a long way to go before we sign anyone that you recommend from the shit list.”

Victoria was speechless. She had known that Cindy was harsh, hadn’t expected any praise and had even thought that she might not take her advice but this seemed brutal. The red head had heard some of the artists that had come through the other scouts, from the Alisha keys wannabe to the guy that thought his was he next Craig David, none of them matched up to The Dangers.

“Anything else?” Cindy spoke, breaking the silence that had fallen in Victoria’s complete disbelief of what had happened.

“No.” She spoke, standing and sliding the report across the desk, taking the CD back. At least she could enjoy their music even if she couldn’t help them get signed.

She walked back to the desk deflated, desperately wishing that the meeting could have gone better if only to ensure that she didn’t hate her job even more. Of course she knew she was lucky to have the position, but it was so hard to come in every day knowing that after 7 months of her internship she was still doing the same thing she did on day one. She had thought she would learn, would have the opportunity to see what life was like here and pick a direction, but really all she had been was an assistant with no prospects.

Her phone lit up, buzzing hard on the desk and she couldn’t help but smile when she saw who the message was from.

J: we’re playing Dublin castle again tonight, do you wanna come?

She eyed Juliet who was busy tapping away at a spreadsheet, cataloging files that the management had not seen fit to do themselves.

V: sure thing, got some bad news so get your drinking hat on

J: ah shit that doesn’t sound good, make sure you bring Juliet, Danny hasn’t shut up about her in practice this morning. See ya at 7 :)

The redhead smirked at her phone, letting out a small chuckle as Juliet had been exactly the same.

At 6:30, Victoria and Juliet arrived at the familiar red facade, the redhead stomping out the cigarette she had lit on the walk from Camden Town station. She was nervous, a little scared even, to tell these men that there was nothing they could do. The girls had been so supportive at the previous gigs, had told them how good they were and how hard they were pushing, and through all of it they had become what she would consider friends. It was hard to know if they felt the same, if they were just tolerating them because they were from a record label, and she was concerned that the good times they had had would be lost when she told them that Cindy had no interest in even seeing them live.

Oh well. On with it.

A smile split across her face as Andy walked out of the door, his love for ugly shirts still shining through and Victoria was fast learning that he could pull off even the most disgusting pattern. Today it was cream and white shapes which looked almost like paisley, but not enough for it to be noted as such. His leather jacket made his shoulders look even broader, and she couldn’t help but stare as he lit his cigarette, the expression on his face as he took the first toke attractive in a way that the red head could not explain.

“Hey there pretty ladies..” Andy smiled at the girls as he walked over to them, leaning against the red painted brick and a little too close to Victoria than would have been comfortable if she didn’t find him attractive. “Got some news for us I hear?”

He directed his question at Victoria, and it was good that he did as Danny stole Juliet’s attention the second he walked from the door. He held a beer in one hand and a rum and coke in the other, and while Victoria was about to comment on him buying Juliet a drink and not her, Josh appeared holding a whiskey and coke for her.

His smile was devastating, and something about the way he looked at her made her weak at the knees. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but he made her nervous, much more nervous than the cocky front man who she was sure would have had a similar effect on most other women.

“Thank you..” she smiled and he nodded, taking a sip of his pint and licking his lips in a way she knew wasn’t deliberate but was still hot.

“So what’s this bad news?” Andy spoke, a glimmer of nerves running through his tone that she hadn’t been expecting. Danny and Juliet joined the group again as the girl pulled them over, and although it was frustrating that Juliet didn’t step up next to her to give the bad news, she was well aware that she was the lead in this. She had thrown them in the deep end and had forced her way into their managers office.

“Well.. we showed— well tried to show your music to our manager.” Danny winced at her words slightly, already anticipating what was happening, and although she knew she had to give bad news she couldn’t help but falter a little as she glanced down at Danny and Juliet’s adjoined hands. Whatever he was laying down, she was definitely picking up and the younger girl had to admit it was quite cute.

“And? She didn’t like us?” Andy spoke after taking a long drag on his cigarette, the fingertips of his other hand twitching and wishing he had something else to intoxicate him.

“She didn’t even listen..” Victoria spoke, shoulders falling small as she broke the bad news.

The silence hung over them for what felt like hours but could only have been a few seconds, and thankfully Josh’s optimism allowed him to speak despite the disappointment.

“Well, at least we got scouted huh?” He spoke, glancing between the two other men and nudging Andy slightly to try and knock the disappointed look from his face.

“Uh yeah” he stood up, clearing his throat and taking another long drag from his cigarette and throwing it on the floor before he stamped it out. “Yeah. Yeah at least we know we’re making a mark”

Victoria immediately felt awful, and hated that she had disappointed them. They were really great, and she had made sure to tell them that at each show. She couldn’t help but think that she had been leading them on without intending to.

“You really are,” Juliet spoke, squeezing Danny’s hand and a small smile washed across his face as if her touch had cheered him up. “Just because our bitch of a manager doesn’t want to sign you doesn’t mean that others won’t!”

“Exactly!” Victoria continued, “Cindy is going to hate herself when Sony music pick you guys up. You’re honestly so great that there’s no way that someone’s not going to take notice.” She was excited at the prospect, and she could feel Andys eyes on her as she addressed the group. He had a way of making her squirm under his gaze without doing anything.

“And we picked up two die hard fans..” Josh smirked as he looked between Juliet and Victoria, clinking his glass to both of theirs.

Josh had always been a glass half full kind of guy. He had been enthusiastic about moving to London for a month, had been one of the driving forces in Andy asking his parents if they could stay in their apartment and although he was disappointed, was now in charge of ensuring that the boys were not too disappointed at the prospect of being signed fading. Did it suck? Yeah, of course. Was he going to let it stop them? Absolutely not.

The blonde was glad for the girls arriving early and not only so that Andy could get his temper tantrum out of the way. He enjoyed spending time with them, enjoyed knowing someone in London when there were so many unfamiliar faces. In San Fran they had a group of friends that would come to all of their shows, would bring people to support them and cheer them on, and to be honest the roughest part of moving to England had been losing that. It also helped that he found Victoria ridiculously attractive.

As usual, Andy had gotten in their first. The redhead had a way of commanding the attention of women that neither himself nor Danny could understand. The closest they had got to getting to the bottom of it was that he was the front man, and his persona on stage and how cocky he was leaked into the way he spoke to women. Unfortunately for the girls he spoke to, none of them could see how much of a fuck boy he really was. The boys loved Andy like a brother, but God was he a womaniser. The only girls that had lasted more than a night around them when he was sleeping with them (and he was always sleeping with them) were ones that were either equally as crazy, or the ones that helped supply the frontman's casual coke habit.

The cocaine wasn’t the problem. It was recreational and they all dabbled sometimes, it was the fact that he let the seedy, over confident, coked up version of himself become him when he was sober. Danny and Josh had known him when he had cried because a girl had ignored him when she walked past his locker, so it was both strange and made perfect sense that he had the facade that he did now.

The red haired girl sat opposite him on the table as she finished the drink that he had bought her, and as she glanced over at him with those piercing blue eyes he almost forgot to listen to what she said.

“Do you want another, Josh? I do owe you..” Her painted red lips and that British accent formed around his name in ways he hadn’t known he was attracted to until that moment, and he licked his lips before he nodded.

“Anyone else?” She asked around the table, and when everyone put their orders in, he stood to help her with all the glasses.

At the bar she placed her order and he leaned against the wood, eyes running over the bottles behind the bar and letting out a small laugh as he remembered how different bars were in California. Here they were like pieces of the community, even the ones that had had bands played in them, but in San Fran they were much more crass and centered around a good time rather than a homely vibe. He was sure there were places like that here too, but all of the places they had played with the band had been quite british.

“Are you nervous?” The redhead spoke, mirroring his stance but spinning her credit card in her fingers as she awaited the drinks, her painted nails tapping softly against the bar as she did so.

“Not really..” He smiled, watching the bartender place the glasses in front of them, one already filled to the brim with beer and she moved it to sit in front of him, “Thanks --  don’t really get nervous before shows.”

He took a sip and she raised an eyebrow at him, a look that said she didn’t believe a word that had just left his lips and he couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Alright, I guess sometimes I do, but you have to understand that when you have a frontman like Andy there’s not really much you have to do. I just stand there and play music that we’ve practiced a hundred times, while he talks to the crowd.”

“Not true, you sing back up sometimes..” She spoke, tipping the fresh whiskey and coke filled glass toward him before she took a sip.

“Yeah but… I don’t know, Andy kind of takes care of everything so we don’t have anything to worry about.”

“Hmm..” She spoke quietly, eyes running over the redhead at their table, his eyes already running over her body as if he owned her and Josh let out a short sigh. He was getting used to every attractive woman that met the band immediately falling for the older man, but it didn’t mean that it didn’t frustrate him when there was someone he felt like he could particularly connect with. But then her eyes met his own and he couldn’t stop himself from the small smile that met his lips.

Victoria let her eyes run over the blonde in front of her, his blue eyes intense yet soft at the edges somehow. It had been so easy to talk to him, like speaking with someone that she had known for years, and yet there was still that feeling in the pit of her stomach when he smiled. What was that? The two walked back to the table with the glasses, placing them in front of their respective owners, and retaking their seats on opposite sides of the table.

The band were fantastic that night as they always were, the dynamic that Josh had pointed out even clearer now that Victoria knew about it, and she bit down on her lip as he looked over at her when he sang a small part in a song called “Cocoon”. Andy was particularly showy, and she smiled between the two of them, enjoying the music and noticing just how focussed Danny was on stage. Juliet stood next to her, her eyes glued to the tanned boy in the back, a small chuckle leaving her lips as she pointed out his “drum face”.

It bothered both of them that this incredible band had been passed up on by their manager. It seems so backwards that musicians who were so good, who had travelled to London to try and make it, were not even given the chance of her coming to their show. There had to be something that the girls could do, whether it was constantly shoving the CD in the face of their manager, tricking another talent scout down here, or even speaking to their contacts in the industry.

As they played their last song, Victoria vowed to herself that she would do something. She had learned a lot in the 7 months she had been at Fieldworks, had been to enough industry parties and events helping with the set up and build down to know how this worked. The Dangers would be heard by a record company, even if it was the last thing she did.

[glitterrhowell]

Chapter 33

title: Seized

Co-author: fadingcrystalvoid

Pairing:  Daniel Howell & AmazingPhil (Phan

Word count: 1.3k

Warning/Genre: Rape/extreme violence/ depression/PTSD/Degradation/torture/ Non-consensual pretty much everything/Little!Dan/Daddy!Phil/Kidnapping

Summary: It started out as a fun day at the park but it ended in terror. Phil takes his little Dan to the park and while Phil is not looking, Dan suddenly gets kidnapped. What will happen to Dan? Will Phil ever see his boyfriend again? Did Phil have something to do with it? Heavy trigger warning

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The moment the words Nico Howell had left Dan’s lips, Lela had sprung into action. She’d alerted the proper authorities and everything since had been a whirlwind. The police were now taking Dan more seriously since they actually had a name to go off of. Although it had been thought that Nico was a runaway and he had been presumed deceased by his family it had still reopened the investigation enough that the police were now were combing the wooded area around the cabin.  

Two weeks after beginning their search, they finally uncovered the bodies. It had the whole city in a frenzy; families flooded the police station, desperate to know if one of the bodies found was a missing loved one.

Despite the investigation being reopened, nothing had really changed for Dan. Lela had avoided mentioning anything about the investigation to him since he really wasn’t in the mindset to understand. The only thing that had really changed was that Dan was now well enough that he was getting to go home. Well as close to home as he could. Dan was not being allowed to go back to their apartment since it was still technically still a crime scene, and Dan really wasn’t able to take care of himself anyway so they’d settled on Phil’s mom taking him in.

Since Dan’s parents wanted nothing to do with him, Katherine had rented an apartment in London close to the hospital so Dan could be close to Lela. It was something she’d been thinking about anyway after the five-week-long hotel bill came through. And at this point, Dan didn’t argue anymore about Phil, so he had just shrugged his shoulders and clammed up when he’d been told this.

Dan yawned as he wiped the sleep from his eyes. He looked around the room for Eric and when he couldn't find him he pouted with confusion. Eric was always here when he woke up, Eric was the one who walked him to breakfast. Dan grabbed Pooh bear and made his way to the cafeteria hoping maybe Eric had just gotten up early.

He rounded the corner into the cafeteria. His eyes widened there where a few balloons and streamers hung as well as a piece of paper hung up that said “Congratulations Danny!” and underneath it sat Eric, Kate, and Lela. Dan giggled and squealed with excitement.

“Dan, do you understand what this is all for?” Lela asked him as she enveloped him in a hug.

“Is it cause Pooh bear and I get to go home?”

She smiled, “That’s right, you’ve made enough progress that you're going home today.”

“But not home with Daddy?” he asked in a small but hopeful voice.

“But not home with daddy,” she confirmed.

Dan sighed and he hugged Pooh bear closer.

“Dan there’s another surprise for you!” Kate said clapping her hands together.

Glad that Kate had taken the attention away from Phil, Lela let Kate continue.

“Hi, love,” Louise said as she awkwardly stepped out from behind one of the doors.

“Lou-Lou!” He squealed.

Dan had spent plenty of time with Louise while in little space before everything happened so the age regression wasn’t much different.

Dan ran up to her and squeezed her.

“It’s been a while huh love?”

“Uh huh,” he said, gripping her tighter.

Dan and Louise spent several minutes hugging and just enjoying each other presence it had been so long since the two had even seen each other. Before Dan had been kidnapped if Louise was remembering correctly. But it didn’t take long for the conversation to take a turn and Dan was asking her about Phil. Lela had given her strict instructions to not mention Phil, or the investigation, as she didn’t want it to disrupt his progress. She tried her best to redirect the conversation but Dan was pretty protestant. Louise was just in the process of telling Dan for the fifth time she hadn’t talked to Phil when she breathed out a sigh of relief; his attention was diverted to Lela who came walking out with a cake.

They spent the rest of the afternoon eating, playing games and talking and by the end, there were tears from everyone involved. Both Eric and Kate promise to visit once they were out and although Dan didn’t quite understand why they couldn't leave, he didn't put up quite as much of a fight as Lela had expected him to. Before she knew it, Dan was in the back of a cab with Kathryn, leaving the hospital.

~~~~~~~~

“This has got to be enough for another trial,” Luke said slapping the paperwork down on the desk in front of his superior officer.

“Officer Temple I really don’t see how this is any of your business.”

“Sir, if I’m right an innocent man is in prison! It’s my duty to take whatever information I have and turn it over to the judge!” Luke said breathing heavily now, clearly getting frustrated at his superior's lack of interest.

“Let me tell you this, Temple, if you take that to the Judge then your out of a job mate. This department doesn’t need any more bad publicity.”

“Fine!” Luke shouted grabbing the papers off the desk and storming out of the office.

~~~~~~~~~

Phil spent the next two weeks in the hospital being pumped full of medication and slowly healing from his injuries. While the whole time he was still chained to the bed and he always had guards on him he had to admit it was still better than being actually in locked up in prison. The food was decent and the doctors were nice and he actually got to watch TV and have a little bit of privacy even if that privacy was a non-locking door on the bathroom.

Phil knew any day now he would be getting the ok from the doctor, telling him he was ok to go back to prison and he was absolutely dreading that day. He was not looking forward to going back, period, but he really wasn’t looking forward to going back to kide and his gang. Ever since Kide had become his cellmate, every second had become a constant fight for his life. He was constantly being jumped and it had gotten so bad he hardly slept at night in fear that Kide would beat him up in his sleep.

There was a knock at his door and Phil expected Doctor Mandor to stick their head through. However, when the door opened, he was instead met with a kind looking officer.

“Officer Temple, what a surprise,” he said, shocked.

“Phil,” he nodded before he stepped in.

The room was uncomfortably quiet for a moment before Phile spoke.

“So what are you doing here?”

“Oh yeah well. I’ve come to tell you some big news. I’ve just talked to the judge and they're willing to reopen your case!”

“Wait, what?” Phil asked.

And so, much to the guards’ distaste, Luke told him about how they had found bodies buried in the woods around the cabin and how one of them had been Nico Howell. He explained he had pointed out to a judge that it couldn’t have been Phil because he had gone missing before Dan and him ever met. The entire time Phil was completely shocked to the core and didn’t know what to say. When he did finally say something it was, “So I get to go home? I get to see Dan?”

There was nothing but happiness on his face and it almost killed Luke to have to crush it,

“No, Phil, sorry. You still have to go back to prison. Your sentence is being upheld until a new verdict is come to.”

Phil was crushed. While he was grateful for the new trial, all he really wanted was to go home.

They talked for a few more minutes before Luke left and Phil was once again alone. But he wasn't alone for long because not more than ten minutes late doctor Mandor came in and told him he was well enough to go back to prison and just get check-ups in the infirmary there.

[adorkablephil]

Fic: The Roles We Play (4)

Title: The Roles We Play Summary: Dan Howell and Phil Lester work together as voice actors for BBC radio dramas in the late 1930s, but slowly begin to develop “inappropriate” feelings for each other Rating: G Word Count: 3,046 (this chapter) Tags: Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Historical AU, 1930s, BBC, Radio, Actors AU, Slow Burn, Love Letters, Past Character Death, Grief, Angst Author’s Note: This fic was inspired by the @phanfichallenge 20k History Challenge. A bazillion thanks, as always, to my amazing beta, India! See my note on the first chapter regarding historical inaccuracies.

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[ All Chapters Masterlist ]

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18 March 2001

Kathleen should have gone home about an hour ago, but she’d found herself unable to put down the letters emerging from the shoebox. She needed to know more! She wanted to know how it all turned out … and yet she wasn’t willing to cheat by skipping to the letters in the bottom of the box. She wanted to read each in its turn, following the story as it had unfolded in these men’s real lives.

She had also fallen hopelessly in love with Great-Uncle Dan and wished desperately that she’d gotten a chance to know him. If Phil Lester’s letters to him were any indication, Daniel Howell had been an incredibly wonderful person well worth loving.

Picking up her phone, she called her husband to tell him what was happening. He, too, expressed curiosity and urged her to stay as late as she liked. He would give the kids their dinner and even put them to bed if necessary. “No,” Kathleen objected. “I’ll be home before bedtime, I promise. I just want to read a few more letters.”

“Order in some food,” her husband, Stuart, insisted. “Look on their fridge. Even crusty old men probably have takeaway menus on their refrigerator. Have some dinner, read some more letters, and come home when you’re ready. You can always go back tomorrow to read more. Or bring the box with you.”

Kathleen shook her head, even though she knew Stuart couldn’t see her. “It would feel wrong to take the shoebox out of the house,” she explained. “I can’t explain it, but I don’t even want to move it off the table. My great-uncle had it open here—left it here perhaps the night before he died in his bed—and it seems disrespectful to move something so precious to him away from where he left it.”

“Well,” Stuart replied slowly, “you will eventually have to sell the house. And probably the table, as well.”

Kathleen laughed. “I know. I don’t need to leave it here forever … just … maybe until I’ve finished reading all the letters. Then I can pack them up and take them home. Save them somewhere special.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Stuart agreed gently. He was a good man. “Just make sure to eat something and don’t stay too late. Remember, you can go back tomorrow.”

“Yes, sweetheart. I’ll see you in perhaps two hours.” They said their goodbyes, and Kathleen wandered into the house’s tidy kitchen. All of the cabinet doors were slightly ajar for some reason, so she shut them. Such things disturbed her sense of order, and she wondered why her Great-Uncle Dan would have left the doors open like that. Did he honestly not notice or care? Or had it been some odd personal choice she could not understand? Did he have some reason for preferring them that way?

As Stuart had predicted, there were indeed a number of takeaway menus on the refrigerator. The one on top was for Domino’s Pizza, so Kathleen decided to order from them in honor of this house’s former occupants and their apparent culinary preferences. She phoned and was asked if she would like the usual order for that address, with all the dips. “Er … no,” she replied, and then ordered herself a simple, small pepperoni pizza. She also helped herself to some Ribena from the kitchen, where she found an entire drawer full of bottles of the stuff. It helped her feel more connected to them, as if she were somehow drinking their favorite drink with them. She raised her glass in a toast to Daniel Howell and Philip Lester, still uncertain whether Philip had been her great-uncle’s “housemate” or if Dan had found some other love later in life. She very much hoped that this had been Dan and Philip’s home together.

Waiting for the food to be delivered, sipping her glass of Ribena, she returned to the kitchen table and eagerly picked up the next letter.

-

4 August 1939

My most beloved Daniel,

In my lonely house at night, I think only of you. I re-read your letters and hold them to my heart. I think of the sweet words you have written and wish that I could hear them spoken by your lips.

I fear I am utterly besotted. Will you laugh at me? I think not, for I believe you share the intensity of my feelings, but I sometimes feel so alone, isolated in my inability to speak to you on these topics directly. Every time your eyes meet mine, I feel as if I have missed a step on a flight of stairs, as if I am suddenly falling. And, as when falling, I am not entirely without fear, but I like to imagine my fall ending with me landing in your arms.

Fancifully yours, Philip

-

There were many such papers: some proper love letters and others simple short notes. Kathleen’s pizza arrived, and she began eating absentmindedly, her attention still primarily on the letters from the shoebox. She held them far away from the pizza, however, lest pizza grease stain anything. She would rather risk pizza sauce falling on her own clothing than besmirch her great-uncle’s love letters.

-

18 September 1939

My Beloved Daniel,

Today during the radio broadcast, you touched my hand by chance, and I found myself momentarily unable to speak. You may perhaps be a negative influence upon my career, and yet I want only to feel the touch of your hand again and again. I want to hold your hand in mine and press a gentle kiss to your palm.

With these thoughts in mind, I will seek sleep tonight in my lonely bed and mail this upon the morrow so that I may hope to inspire dreams of you as long as the letter remains in my possession. In truth, I dream of you most nights, and expect tonight will be no different. I hope you also dream of me.

Yours always and forever, Philip

-

The doorbell rang again, surprising Kathleen. She looked at her watch to see that it was now early evening, and she should really leave this work behind and return to her family soon. She wondered who might be at the door, and so went to answer it. An older lady with bright red hair showing gray at the roots smiled in a very friendly fashion from the doorstep. “You must belong to one of my boys,” the woman said unexpectedly.

“One of your boys?” Kathleen repeated in confusion.

“Oh, my, yes. My Danny and Philly. Much older than me, of course, but still my boys. I’m Bernice, their neighbor these past … oh … more than twenty years. Nearly thirty, now, in fact.” The woman shook her head sadly, then reached out to take Kathleen’s hand and pat it gently between her own. “You must feel their loss even more keenly than I do.” And then somehow the woman was coming into the house, though Kathleen could not remember having invited her by word or by gesture. Bernice boldly went into the kitchen and made herself a glass of Ribena, then commented softly, “Oh. Someone closed the cabinets. Was that you?”

Kathleen nodded. “I don’t know why they were all open; perhaps a flaw in the construction? But seeing them all open like that bothered me, so I closed them. Why do you ask?”

Bernice smiled sadly. “It always bothered Dan, too. Phil was always leaving the cabinets open, and Dan always chided him about it. They bickered like the old married couple they were, you know.” Kathleen was happy to hear her hopes realized: It was Phil Lester with whom her great-uncle had gotten to spend his elder years. But the odd woman had continued speaking, her voice quiet and reverential. “After his dear Philip died, though, I came every day to visit poor Daniel to make sure that he was eating properly. He grieved so deeply, you know. I noticed the open cabinets and asked him about it, and do you know what that sweet boy said? He told me, ‘If the cabinet doors are open, then I feel like Phil might still be in the house, so I daren’t close them or face the fact that he is truly gone.’ Of course, he himself was gone not long after. Couldn’t live without his love, I think. They were the closest two people I’ve ever known, those two.”

Feeling a sudden upwelling of affection for this woman who had apparently cared deeply for the two men Kathleen had only begun to know through the letters, she smiled and said, “I’m Kathleen Banks, Daniel Howell’s great-niece. I didn’t know him well, and I didn’t know Philip Lester at all, so I would love to hear stories about them. I do wish I’d had the chance to know them before they died.”

Bernice looked Kathleen up and down and replied tartly, “Looks to me like you had at least forty years of opportunity, missy. It’s a mite late to be regretting now.”

Kathleen blushed, feeling as if she needed to explain herself to a woman she’d never even met before 10 minutes ago. “Great-Uncle Dan was estranged from the family my entire life, and I didn’t even know that Philip Lester existed until I began reading his letters today. My family told me that Great-Uncle Dan lived with another Army pensioner to help pay the rent, but that was obviously a lie. Given the way my family seems to have treated him, I don’t know if he would even have been open to knowing me.”

Bernice put her hands on her sizeable hips and shook her head in disbelief. “Well, of course he would have, child! It was only his own family that wouldn’t have him! Or, at least, that’s what dear Philly told me over tea one time when Dan was away. His mother’s funeral, I think it was, and Phil said it was one of the few times the family would even let him near. But of course Phil could not go with him. Danny never talked about his family, but I know Phil hurt for him.”

Kathleen frowned deeply. “I didn’t know,” she told Bernice. “No one ever talked about him, and I guess I was just busy with my own life, and I never thought…”

“Yes, yes,” Bernice interrupted her brusquely. “None of you ever thought of him. But that boy still had a family that loved him.”

Kathleen wanted to ask what family Bernice was referring to, but Bernice had walked up to a photo on the wall and smiled broadly at it. “Oh, those dogs. They loved those dogs. They’ve been gone 10 years or so now, but sweet Danny and Philly kept their photo on the wall.” Kathleen went to look and saw a photograph of two very happy-looking corgis with tongues lolling in doggy smiles at the camera. “The boys walked those dogs twice a day, every day, and it was often the only time they left the house. They liked their own company, you know—didn’t go out much. If I hadn’t stopped by so often to bring them proper food, they would have had pizza delivered every night.”

Kathleen glanced guiltily at the kitchen table, where her pizza still sat a safe distance from Dan’s pile of keepsakes.

“Oh,” Bernice breathed, having followed Kathleen’s glance toward the table. “Dan’s box of memories. He went through that every day near the end. I can only imagine the things he loved deeply enough to save all those years and bring out constantly during those final days.” She sighed, sniffed, and quickly wiped a hand across one of her eyes. She cleared her throat and added, “Well, I suppose it’s only fair that someone from his family be permitted to read the things he held most dear, though the whole lot should most likely be given to those what loved him when you’re finished.” Bernice gave her a steely-eyed glance.

“I think I’ve been coming to love him by seeing him through Phil’s eyes,” Kathleen admitted. “I wish so very much that I hadn’t lost a chance I never even knew I had. He seems like a really lovely person.”

Bernice laughed. “Oh, he was a crotchety old goat much of the time, unlike his sweet Philly, but that Dan had a heart of gold under all that bluster. I do wish you had gotten to know him, as you seem like you might be one of his few relations that might have brought him joy.” Bernice paused. “As long as you loved Phil equally, of course. There was no Dan without Phil, no Phil without Dan. They were a matched pair, and you wouldn’t have gotten a second glance from your great-uncle if you didn’t accept that Phil meant the world to him.”

Kathleen felt tears sting her eyes. “I think that may be why he became so estranged from the family. I think there may have been family members who couldn’t accept their relationship. That’s my guess, anyway. But I can promise you this: If I had ever gotten to meet the Phil Lester who wrote those letters, I would have hugged him even more tightly than my own Great-Uncle Dan. I feel as if prejudice within my own family stole them both from my life, never giving me the opportunity to know them.”

“Oh, pooh!” said Bernice with a dismissive hand gesture. “They wouldn’t have wanted much company anyway! They liked to be on their own, in their own little world, just the two of them.” She seemed to see something in Kathleen’s face and added, “But if you ever want to hear stories about them, get to know them a bit after the fact, you come visit me any time you like. I live just next door at number 18.” Bernice went to wash out her Ribena glass and left it upside down in the dish drainer. “I should be getting home now. I just wanted to see who was over here, since I saw the light on and got curious.” She stepped close and shocked Kathleen by kissing her lightly on the cheek. “You seem a sweet girl. Come see me anytime you’d like to hear about your uncles, because I loved those boys dearly and will never tire telling stories about them.” She smiled sadly again, gave Kathleen another quick kiss on the cheek, and then opened the door and left without another word.

Stunned, Kathleen sat down again at the table. The congealed pizza no longer looked remotely appetizing, and she hated seeing it so close to those delicate and precious documents her great-uncle had saved so carefully. She put the remaining pizza in the refrigerator, knowing that she would be returning tomorrow and might be willing to snack on it then.

Just a couple more letters, she told herself. Maybe two more, then she would head home. There was still plenty of time before the kids needed to go to bed, and Kathleen didn’t want to leave quite yet, not after that emotional conversation with the neighbor.

-

31 December 1939

My love,

I was, of course, distraught to see you leave so soon after that most precious moment, but I know that you must spend part of the festive season with your own family. I cannot have your attention every moment of every day, no matter how much I may desire it. Please know that you are in my heart and in my thoughts always.

As I write this, I know that I shall see you this evening for our New Year’s Eve broadcast. I will see your lovely brown eyes turn to me and I will know the emotions and the memories behind that glance. We may shake hands or I may rest a hand upon your shoulder, but those small touches contain a multitude of emotions.

We start the new year by turning a beautiful new page. We may find ourselves not in a position to express our feelings as openly as we might like, but we two know the truth and share its inestimable beauty.

Yours most devotedly, Phil

-

Kathleen couldn’t help wondering about “that most precious moment,” and quickly picked up the next envelope, only to find that it did not contain a letter. Or, rather, it contained a form letter with relevant details stamped in ink.

-

NATIONAL SERVICE (ARMED FORCES) ACT, 1939 ENLISTMENT NOTICE Date: 15 JANUARY 1940 Mr. DANIEL JAMES HOWELL

DEAR SIR,

In accordance with the National Service (Armed Forces) Act, 1939, you are called upon for service in the ARMY and are required to present yourself on MONDAY 29 JAN 1940, at 10 a.m., or as early as possible thereafter on that day to:

RINGSTEAD BARRACKS MILL HILL RINGSTEAD DORSET NW7

A Travelling Warrant for your journey is enclosed. Before starting your journey you must exchange the warrant for a ticket at the booking office named on the warrant. If possible, this should be done a day or two before you are due to travel.

A Postal Order for 4s, in respect of advance of service pay, is also enclosed. Uniform and personal kit will be issued to you after joining H.M. Forces. Any kit that you take with you should not exceed an overcoat, change of clothes, stout pair of boots, and personal kit, such as razor, hair brush, tooth brush, soap and towel.

Immediately on receipt of this notice, you should inform your employer of the date upon which you are required to report for service.

Yours faithfully, James Alistair Davies Manager.

-

Kathleen found herself almost physically ill at the phrasing of the closing of the letter. “Yours faithfully”? Among all these letters from the truly faithful Phil Lester, a bureaucratic form from the British Army sending Daniel Howell off to World War II with a “Yours faithfully” made Kathleen nearly lose the pizza she’d eaten earlier.

She decided this was an excellent time to go home to the warm arms of her loving husband, who wouldn’t mind if she cried a little bit over events of decades past.

******

[ Continue to Chapter 5 ]

[jordan202]

My Boys: Beyond the Horizon - Chapter 6

Thank you @jia911 for your help!

I will add the link to previous posts tomorrow because now I am on my phone.

My Boys: Beyond the Horizon – Chapter Six

Owen finished the knot on his tie and grabbed his things, ready to go downstairs to have a quick breakfast. It was early in the morning and he couldn’t be late to an important meeting with a supply company, even though it was Saturday. 

He left his bedroom and strode down the hall, supposing all kids were enjoying the opportunity to sleep in a little later during the summer. But the door to Megan’s room was opened and as he peaked inside, he noticed his daughter standing in front of the mirror, apparently too focused to notice his presence.

“Are you looking for any flaws?” Owen asked with a smile, startling the teenager. “Because you won’t find any.”

“Dad!” Megan censored the way he had sneaked inside and scared her, but quickly smiled widely when she noticed his presence behind her through the mirror. “You’re up early.”

“It is me who should be saying that,” he pointed out. 

“I promised Tommy I’d join him for tennis this morning at the club,” Megan clarified. “It’s his last weekend before his intern rotations start and he wants to make the most of it.”

“You are a good sister,” Owen affirmed with conviction. It was a little past seven in the morning and he knew how the kids cherished not waking up with the alarm during their vacation. Looking at the teenage girl through the mirror, he added, “now that your brothers are back I feel like I never see you anymore.”

“Aww, are you jealous?” Megan turned around on her stool with a teasing smile on her lips. “There is enough Megan for everyone.”

Owen looked at his daughter up and down. Unlike his sons, who had all grown up to his height or up, Megan had barely made it to her mother’s already small size. He raised his eyebrows in doubt and saw how she chuckled in response, giving in to his provocation.

“Alright, fine, maybe not that much, but I can still manage,” she said. 

“I know how busy you’ve been, but maybe,” Owen suggested with a playful voice, “maybe you can find time in your extremely busy schedule to have dinner with your father every once in a while?” he looked deeply into her eyes.

“I promise,” Megan said, touched by the importance he gave to her company and spending time together.

“Okay, kiddo,” Owen leaned over and gave her a kiss on the forehead. “You have a good day. I love you.”

“Love you too, dad.”

.

Amelia was busy checking her schedule for the following week on the phone at the same time she served hot fresh coffee on an indecently big mug. 

“Are you planning on leaving some for me?” Owen asked with a friendly smile as he made his way to the kitchen, not surprised to find her awake that early on a Saturday.

His wife rewarded him with a mischievous grin and a kiss before he took a seat on the stool near the kitchen isle with his own coffee mug. Owen took his time briefly checking the news on the morning newspaper and once he was nearly done with the sports section, proud to see Lucas’ picture stamped on it, he heard his wife’s voice.

“Did you know that Emily’s mom was at the hospital?”

“Huh?” Owen looked up, surprised with the random question. “Emily as in Lucas’ Emily?”

“Yes,” his wife confirmed. “I didn’t know either…” Amelia sighed. “She passed away a few days ago. From what I gathered, Tom ran into her and found out. I’ve been thinking about maybe calling, checking up on her?” the neurosurgeon suggested, unsure of what to do. “You know, just to let her know we’re here if she needs anything.”

“That’s an excellent idea,” Owen suggested with a smile, still trying to process the news. “I’d hate to think she is dealing with this alone, if that is the case.”

He saw as his wife focused back on the dirty mug inside the sink and figured Amelia didn’t look so stressed about the issue anymore once she had talked to him about it and made a decision. So Owen decided to share what was on his mind too.

“So… next weekend I have the Medtronic thing that I need to attend,” he started.

“Oh, is it next weekend already?” Amelia turned over from the sink to face him. “Are you going to Minneapolis?”

The neurosurgeon knew that the medical technology company was one of the largest providers of surgical equipment to their hospital, so it was often that as chief of surgery, her husband had some kind of meeting or conference with them. Their headquarters was situated in Minneapolis and at least once or twice a year Owen traveled there for a couple of days.

“Actually, no,” he said, finishing his coffee under her curious gaze. “They are hosting this event here in Seattle this year and it’s not a formal meeting, it’s more like a gala to promote this new line they are launching,” Owen explained. 

“Oh, so you don’t have to fly there,” Amelia realized with a genuine smile, finishing storing the coffee pot back inside the cabinet and collecting the things she’d used to make breakfast. “That’s good.”

“It is,” Owen smiled mysteriously.

Something in his enigmatic and yet obviously satisfied expression made Amelia stop what she was doing.

“What?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Can you guess in which hotel this event is taking place?”

Amelia was distracted for a moment, wondering why he was talking about the business event as if it meant anything. But then she realized his question had been about the location and instantly had an epiphany, which became evident in her wide smile. 

Many years before, a few months after she’d moved to Seattle, the  neurosurgeon had slowly come to fall madly in love with Owen. At the beginning of everything, they had struggled for a while to even manage to go out on a proper date. It wasn’t until Amelia had discharged Nicole Herman, one of the biggest cases of her career, that she and Owen had really been given the opportunity to focus on each other.

And the result had been extremely gratifying. Back then, the grandfather of a young child Amelia had operated on had showed his gratitude by taking Owen to meet several businessmen who weeks later had injected a lot of money in the hospital. Back then, as chief of surgery, Owen had done a brilliant job turning a low potential situation into one that had brought amazing gain to the hospital. Not only that, but he had also taken Amelia as his company to the event, making it their first official date. At the time, Owen had secretly booked a room for them, but their plans to spend their first night there hadn’t exactly worked out the way both had wanted to. 

The following evening, after a misunderstanding was resolved, Owen had taken Amelia to his trailer and there they’d finally been together for first time. Amelia didn’t regret anything that had happened between them at any time, because it had taken their relationship to the exact place it was at today, and she loved everything about it.

“Oh my God, really?” she went around the kitchen isle and stood closer to him. “Don’t tell me they are having an auction again! Are they?”

Owen laughed heartily, assaulted by the same memories as she. At the time of their first date, the hotel was hosting a benefit auction and he had bought Amelia the ugliest painting they had ever seen. 

“I wish we still had that painting,” he commented, looking straight into her eyes as her laughter slowly subsided. 

Weeks later, after their relationship had gone through a darker time and Amelia’s brother had died, Owen had left on a tour with the Army. Finding herself in perhaps one of the worst states of mind she’d ever been in, after an entire day of agony for hearing uncertain news about Owen being caught in a gunfire situation and not being able to know if he was alive or dead, Amelia had gone home and smashed the painting against the wall in a fit of rage. 

“We do,” Amelia confessed with a playful smile.

“No way,” Owen gave her a doubtful look. “Really?” he wrapped one arm around her waist and pulled her closer, seeing on her face that she was telling the truth.

“I still have it stored upstairs somewhere,” Amelia leaned in on his embrace and looked into his eyes. Owen was sitting on a kitchen stool and that leveled their heights. She splayed her hands on his shoulders, fixing an imperceptible wrinkle on his shirt. “I tried to glue it all back together. Of course it didn’t work out. It looks even uglier now.”

“Like that time in Connecticut when Robbie and Danny tried to glue back together a moth?” Owen relived the memory, laughing along his wife. “God, that was memorable… I still remember the look of horror on your face when the thing came flying in your direction.”

“It wasn’t at all that funny,” Amelia pretended to be censoring him, failing to convince her husband. “You keep laughing at my expense and I won’t accompany you to your fancy gala,” she smirked proudly. “Yeah, that’s right, I know you’re going to ask me to.”

“I was not,” Owen lied, his smile making it obvious.

“Oh really?” Amelia played along, laughing as he bent over and kissed the column of her neck, burying his face on the crook of her shoulder. “I guess I can continue with my plans of scheduling a trip to Pittsburgh for a lecture at the-”

Amelia’s words were interrupted when Owen sneakily kissed away the rest of the sentence. Unable to hold her amusement, she watched as he stared into her eyes with a loving expression.

“No Pittsburgh for you because next weekend you’re mine,” he decided, tightening the grip around her waist. 

“Only next weekend?” Amelia raised an eyebrow in defiance, testing him.

“Don’t test me,” Owen spoke possessively. He gently pulled a lock of brown hair away from her ear before he whispered, causing a shiver to run through Amelia’s spine at his seductive tone, “and I’ll make damn sure no one interrupts us there this time.”

“So you’re determined to make the best of that hotel bed?” Amelia cracked a joke, causing her husband to close his eyes to control his chuckle.

“I absolutely am,” Owen notified her with a wink, giving his wife one last peck on the lips before he finally left for work. “I’ll even make sure to book us the exact same room.” . Megan tried to control her laughter as she was challenged on a silly cell phone game. Each time she lost a round, Aaron would lean over and attack her with kisses.

“This party is pretty boring.”

Megan straightened herself on the seat as her smile died down. The girl lifted her eyes to gaze at the author of such negative comment.

“Marianne, what’s wrong?” she asked with genuine interest. “You have been expecting this date for weeks now,” Megan pointed out. They were at Claire’s boyfriend’s birthday party and everyone from their school seemed to be there too. 

Steve was an only child to very wealthy parents and his house was every teenage boy’s dream, with a large outdoors swimming pool, a fancy backyard area and a huge game room right across the yard inside the pool house.

“I am fine,” Marianne lied. 

“You clearly are not,” Megan sighed, preoccupied. The obvious conclusion came to her mind. “What did that son of a bitch do?”

“Nothing,” Marianne was quick to answer. She looked into Megan’s eyes and repeated reassuringly, “JD did nothing, that’s the problem.”

Megan knew Aaron was present, making it impossible for her to address Marianne’s intimate life out loud, so she settled for asking the question with her eyes. Marianne then gently nodded affirmatively, letting Megan know that she had indeed had sex with the guy like she’d planned.

“So he just didn’t say anything after?” Megan was confused. She had no idea what to expect in a situation like that, but the guy doing nothing certainly seemed like the wrong option. “Hasn’t he called you or…?” she shook her head, hoping to encourage her friend to talk. “Marianne?”

Megan realized things were probably much worse than what she’d initially imagined when her friend broke down crying. Aaron looked at her with an expression of absolute alarm, as if he wanted to help but had no idea what to do.

“Aaron, do you think you can get Marianne some Pepsi or something like that?”  

It was obvious the look of relief on his face when the boy was given something concrete to do. Once alone with her friend, Megan supposed the girl would feel more comfortable to talk.

“What happened?”

Marianne turned her head up, struggling to contain her tears.

“I saw him talking to these other girls…” she confessed, hesitating to look across the pool. Megan instinctively did it and she noticed JD was surrounded by a group of students that included boys who played in the team and girls who were in their year and younger. One of them was standing on the tip of her toes to whisper something in his ear and the guy seemed pleased enough. “I passed by him earlier and all he did was to say hi. He didn’t even ask me how I am feeling…”

Megan took a deep breath and slowly exhaled it, thinking of what she should do. Deep down, she wanted to go to the guy and tell him off, but at the same time, she knew it would probably expose Marianne to ridicule. And she didn’t want to see her friend hurting any more than she already was.

After noticing one of her friends was in distress, Claire left the pool and went to join the girls, having the same reaction as Megan once she found out that just days later after losing her virginity to JD Callaghan, the guy was now treating Marianne like they were mere acquaintances. 

After hearing words of encouragement for a few minutes, Marianne finally calmed down enough. Aaron came back with the soda as requested and subsequently left. Megan nodded her head in gratitude for his thoughtfulness to leave the girls alone for the time being.

“You know what…” Marianne sniffed, looking from one friend to another. “I am tired of always being the victim.”

Megan and Claire looked at each other, positively surprised by the girl’s unexpected empowered comment.

“I am sick of people treating me like this and walking all over my feelings,” she said, rising to her feet with determination. “I am going to let him have it.”

Once again, Megan and Claire exchanged looks of surprise. But this time around, Megan was growing preoccupied.

“What, you’re doing it now?” Megan read Marianne’s thoughts, unable to believe it.

“Hell, yeah,” Marianne replied, devoted to using that bravery that she knew could go away at any second.

“He is with his friends now,” Claire tried to reason why the girl’s decision shouldn’t be made on an impulse. “Everybody is there! You don’t need an audience for that, Marianne, wait!”

Megan and Claire got up too, promptly following the girl.

“Marianne… what are you doing, get back here!”

By the time Megan said the words, the girl was furiously walking in the opposite direction. Judging by Claire’s wide eyes, she supposed her best friend was just as alarmed about Marianne’s impulsive, potentially stupid decision. But the minute the two of them caught up with the girl, she was already standing in the middle of the students group, defiantly facing the guy who’d hurt her feelings.

Megan didn’t realize she held her breath at the same time a thick silence involved them. The sounds of conversations all around ceased immediately as all eyes were now focused on Marianne and her strange attitude. Megan noticed her friend’s lips trembled as she seemed to hesitate. She took a step forward to stand right behind Marianne and hopefully stop her from having that confrontation in such an exposed place, but it was already too late.

“JD! I just wanted to say,” Marianne started and Megan wished her friend’s voice didn’t sound so unsure, “that it’s absolutely awful the way you are behaving, pretending nothing has happened.”

Around them, a large of group of teenagers looked from one to the other, expecting some sort of response.

“What?”

Megan frowned, just as confused as her friend seemed to be. Because she was standing just behind Marianne, she had a clear vision of JD’s face and she could tell he really seemed to have no idea what she was talking about. 

“I am talking about the way you’re pretending nothing has happened and how you’re avoiding talking to me.”

Megan didn’t notice exactly when, but Aaron materialized near her, and his voice was clear as he intervened.

“Marianne, your cell phone is ringing, I think it’s your dad,” he lied. 

Megan looked at him and realized he had made up a lie to get her friend from the uncomfortable spotlight and for that she was extremely grateful.

“I don’t think we fully understand each other here,” JD’s voice resonated, ignoring Aaron’s words and interrupting Megan’s thoughts. It was the first time she was listening to him speak and the calm, controlled way with which he pronounced each word with his deep voice was intimidating enough. “I am not pretending anything. Nothing has really happened.”

“What?” It was Marianne’s turn to gasp and Megan noticed how she faltered, looking like she was about to cry.

Everyone had at some point heard Marianne talking about the guy, be it at the school football practices or when the teenagers hung out in smaller groups. So it became instantly obvious that while the girl had obviously gotten romantically attached, JD didn’t reciprocate her feelings. And worse than that, he was acting like her emotions didn’t mean anything and were in fact an inconvenience. Marianne stood there for a second longer, looking the guy in the eyes, secretly hoping for a recertification. But JD settled for staying completely in silent, sustaining the girl’s gaze with no emotion in his mysterious eyes.

Megan didn’t clearly see when her friend broke down in tears and ran away as fast as she could, being promptly followed by Claire. She also didn’t notice how the people around them started to whisper, immediately fueling the new hot gossip that was about to be spread to the entire school. All Megan could focus on was the despicable person in front of her, who looked like the entire scene had done nothing but bore him.

“Wow,” her voice resonated loudly, involuntarily recapturing people’s attention. “What a great person you are,” Megan added with sarcasm, not making an effort to contain her anger. “I can’t begin to imagine how pathetically insecure you must be to treat people like that.”

Megan’s insult had the desire effect because everyone around them seemed perplexed, although not exactly surprised that Megan had stood up for her friend. And yet people were absolutely baffled by the way she was fearlessly calling out the new guy with the worst reputation without even flinching and showing any signs of retreat.

But unlike their classmates, who looked anxious and bewildered, JD Callaghan seemed slightly amused. Did he look like he was… approving of her? The discreet smirk on his lips served only to infuriate Megan even more. 

“You’re the worst kind of person there is,” she decided, looking at him with absolutely disgust. “I bet deep down you know that too, but you don’t want to admit it, so you treat people like crap to make you feel better about yourself, don’t you? Since you know you’re not enough, I mean,” Megan sustained his gaze, unable to hold the words and insults that poured out of her mouth. “So what was it?” she scoffed, oddly taking pleasure in insulting him. “Didn’t your mom go to your ballet recitals?” Megan tilted her head to the side, failing to see the shock on people’s face at the scene she was making. “Or was it your dad who never wiped your butt and left you with a daddy complex?” 

The girl stopped, unaware of how worked up she really was. Her cheeks were flushed with rage and her blue eyes were sparkling like bright jewels as she couldn’t control the words coming out of her mouth. 

Instead of getting angry and insulting her back like Megan expected he would, JD settled for a light chuckle as he continued to stare into her eyes. His reaction irritated the girl even more.

“Either way, you have to seriously get over yourself and start behaving like a human being,” Megan finalized, seeing she wasn’t getting anything from him and probably wouldn’t. “Be a man. And stop walking around with that I don’t give a damn about anything look on your face because all it does is make you look like a freaking cliché. And you’re already pathetic enough.”  

Megan turned around to leave. She was already a few steps away from him when JD finally decided to talk.

“Does the look on my face really bother you?” 

The girl turned around and when she noticed the smug smile on his lips, she decided it wasn’t worth it. People around them were whispering even more than before. A few had even gotten their phones to text friends, but Megan was oblivious to all of that. The most pressing thought on her head was Marianne, so Megan resumed her way, determined to check on her friend and forget all about that confrontation with the most obnoxious guy she’d ever met. .

Thomas flipped the phone in his hands, debating whether or not he should make the phone call he’d been dying to make. Hell, he didn’t even know if Kate would pick it up.

Reaching out for his wallet, Thomas opened it and easily found the picture he had been looking for. A few months before, Kate had given him a small photo strip with a collage of several of their pictures. The first one showed the two of them around age five or six, on their last day of kindergarten. Thomas was smiling widely to the camera with one arm wrapped around Kate’s shoulder as she stared lovingly at him. On the second image, they were about fourteen and wearing matching T-shirts as they finished eighth grade, both scowling and making funny poses. The third picture showed the two of them with large graduation caps on their last day of high school, their faces glued together as they celebrated the excitement that was about to come when they left together for college. And then on the fourth one, a picture taken recently at a Harvard pub, Kate was sitting on her side on Thomas’s legs, both her arms tightly wrapped around his neck clinging to him with her eyes closed and a large smile that was Thomas’s favorite sight. This time around, Kate was the one facing the camera as Thomas looked at her like she was the only thing present in the room, even though there were lots of other people around them.

The young doctor kept examining each scene, reminiscing about them. His heart felt constricted and it had been for weeks. At times, it got so bad that he felt like a part of himself was missing. 

Kate was the love of his life. Throughout their entire lives they had stumbled upon people who had doubted their connection or even suggested that what they had between them was nothing but a silly puppy love and that they’d grow out of it soon. Others praised and encouraged their relationship, confessing them too wish they had a love story like the young couple. But none of that mattered to Thomas at the moment because without Kate, there simply was no story to tell.

She had been there in absolutely every moment he could remember. And he’d never gotten tired of it. Not once. Kate was his best friend, his cherished half, his favorite person in the entire world. He loved the wrinkle on her nose when she laughed, the light freckles on her face that were only evident under the sun, the way she always whistled when she was nervous about something and how he could tell which mood she was in just by the tone with which she pronounced his name.

Thomas could still remember the last time he’d seen her right before she’d left for London. At the time, he had tried to convince her to stay, but Kate was determined to be away from everything. Thomas knew how hard their last year of med school had been, particularly on her. And he wished for nothing but for Kate to be happy.

Unfortunately, Thomas couldn’t be happy with her. Not if that meant being away from his dream. But also, after weeks without her, he was starting to realize he didn’t think he could be happy without her either.

The following morning, his first shift as a surgical intern would begin and for the first time since Thomas could remember, Kate wouldn’t be there to share a first with him. He had no idea where she was or what she was up to and not knowing it was killing him. His old bedroom in his parents’ house was filled with so many memories that reminded him of her that at that moment, Thomas made a decision.

A few days before, his brother had signed the lease agreement on a penthouse apartment just a few blocks from the training field where he would spend most of his time. Lucas had insisted that Thomas went to live with him because the place was too big for one person. And Thomas knew his brother hated being alone. For the young doctor, it was a great deal because the place was also very close to the hospital and he’d save a lot of time in traffic. On top of that, Thomas also knew that he couldn’t live with his parents for much longer. Almost as if intuitionally summoned by his thoughts, Amelia knocked twice on his bedroom door before walking in.

“There you are,” she cheered with a smile. “You look so calm, I think I am more excited about tomorrow than you are!”

“Mom!” Thomas frowned, “are you trying to make me nervous?”

“I am saying you don’t look nervous,” the neurosurgeon pointed out with a teasing smile. Thomas had already put the photograph back in his wallet he’d been staring at, so it was only fair that his mother really had no idea why he looked so disconnected from the world. 

“I am thinking about moving in with Luke,” Thomas confessed with a sympathetic nod. “I know what you are going to say,” he anticipated her reaction, knowing he was right by the obvious way his mother shut her mouth right after immediately opening it to reply to his news. “I know you’d love having me here but mom,” Thomas reasoned, raising his eyebrows with a mirthful look on his face. “Just think about it. I can’t really live with my boss.”

“What?” Amelia shook her head, completely dismissing that as a reasonable argument. “Of course you can.”

“And my boss’s boss,” Thomas added. 

“That is not a good enough reason for you to move out,” Amelia insisted, holding back a smile as she tried to convince him. “I do it. I live with my boss.”

Thomas thought about it for a moment and had to acknowledge she was right.

“But well… To be fair, I do sleep with him too, so your dad being my boss is the least of my problems,” she added, laughing at the way Thomas scowled when she mentioned sleeping with his father.

“I am going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Thomas replied with a smile, but still averse to the reference his mother had made. “So, what do you think about what I said?”

“I think…” Amelia took a deep breath and tried to be fair, “I think it’s an excellent idea, baby,” she did her best to be supportive. It made sense, considering how close Lucas apartment was to the hospital. 

Their oldest son had taken Owen and Amelia to the penthouse apartment a few days before to show them the place and ask for their opinion about the rental agreement. Owen had then taken the document for one of the hospital lawyers’ to have a look on and after everything was settled, they had helped Lucas choose and buy new furniture for his new place.

“I think it’s going to do Luke some good to have you around as well,” Amelia wisely pointed out. “You keep an eye on him and make sure he takes care of himself and he keeps an eye on you to make sure you’re not overworking yourself.”

“Sounds like a good deal,” Thomas smiled back at his mother, glad he could count on her support.

Amelia then gave him a kiss on the head and wished him good luck on his first day the following morning. As she went downstairs, Thomas was once again left alone with his own thoughts, trying to make sense of his confused feelings. With his mind made up, Thomas picked up the cell phone again, ready to text his brother an affirmative answer. He tried to ignore how anxious and scared he felt about what the following day would mean for his life and his career. But most of all, he tried to ignore the fact that not having Kate there was the main source for all of those unwelcome feelings.

.

Emily felt disoriented and as it had been becoming quite often lately, unsure of what to do. 

“What’s up with you? You’ve been so quiet since we got here.”

The young journalist looked up to find the eyes of her fiancé. Peter had flown in to attend her mother’s funeral that morning and for that she was extremely grateful. Emily knew he was on a deadline, so unfortunately for her, Peter would have to fly back to New York in just a few hours. At the moment, he was sitting with her in the kitchen of her parents’ old home, the place Emily would announce in the market soon. 

“I don’t know, I just got the strangest news today,” Emily shared. Taking her time to process what was happening, the young journalist elaborated, “I spent the last three days dealing with organizing my mom’s funeral and trying to locate my sister that I barely had any time to do anything else,” she stated, seeing on Peter’s face that he understood what she was saying. “But then, when we left the cemetery and I asked you to drive us back to the hospital, I did it because I wanted to have a first look on the billing for my mother’s case… You know, just to start thinking of a plan on how I’d come up with the money” Emily looked astonished, but she leveled her eyes with Peter as she shared. He could nearly see her brilliant mathematical mind adding up figures and calculating interest rates to see what was the best solution available to get her out of that financial mess. “And they told me that there is no debt.”

“Huh?” Peter frowned, just as confused. For the past week, Emily had filled him in on the details of what her sister had done and how much money they now owed the hospital for the many procedures and days in the ICU her mother’s treatment had required. “I thought you said the insurance company refused to pay for anything.”

“They did refuse it,” Emily confirmed it. “At first, when I got the news, I was expecting something like that too, but they said the cost for my mother’s treatment had reached over three hundred thousand dollars… and yet it was already covered,” she blinked repeatedly, trying to make sense of what could have possibly happened.

“Maybe the insurance company people changed their minds?” Peter asked with furrow, knowing that possibility was extremely unlikely.

“They said the money came from an anonymous donor,” Emily shared, not quite sure why the term bothered her so much. “I tried to think about it, but I really can’t think of anyone who’d care so much about my mother to clean up her name like that.”

Peter stayed in silence, just as curious as she was. For the next half hour, he drank coffee with Emily as she tried to think of who could have done that, or how it could have happened. The hospital had refused to disclose the name of the generous anonym who’d helped, claiming it was against their policy. But as the journalist she was, Emily was too intrigued to let it go so easily.

Soon enough, it was time for Peter to leave to the airport. Emily kissed him goodbye, hoping that the house sale would happen soon enough. She was grateful for the generosity of whoever had it been, but too proud to simply settle for that. The house probably wasn’t worth a third of the money they’d need to cover the expenses, but if she donated to the hospital whatever amount she got from selling it, at least she wouldn’t feel so bad about not having any control over a stranger’s overbearing generosity.  Or even about how she didn’t have a way to properly thank them.

With that thought in mind, Emily felt a little more hopeful for the first time since that nightmare had begun. As if hearing about her sister’s backstabbing betrayal hadn’t been enough, she had lost her mother way too quickly. And then there was the other thing that Emily refused to think about, because unlike her sister and her mother, who Emily would never again see, Lucas’ face would still pop on the TV or cover the front page of the newspaper every now and then. And each time it did, her heart would shatter with all the mean, cruel words he’d said to her the last time they were together.

Deciding that Lucas Hunt wasn’t worth any more seconds of her thoughts, Emily decided to be practical and get back to work. She was still mourning her mother, and her editor at Seattle Times had been kind enough to give the journalist a couple of days off, even though she was new there. But he had made it clear that since the paper’s sport section wouldn’t properly cover Lucas Hunt’s millionaire transfer from LA Galaxy to the Seattle Sounders on the immediate moment it happened, they should at least devote a proper segment to talk about him in one of the followings days. 

It was still early in the evening so even though she was physically and mentally exhausted, Emily decided not to go to bed until she got a message from Peter saying he was in the airplane. With the TV noise on the background, the young journalist sorted through the mail, seeing a couple of expired bills and two folders with discount coupons. Next to them, she spotted a much larger folder that she’d gotten at the office earlier that day, with all the material her colleagues had judged important for her to take a look at before resuming her activities the following day.

Knowing she was about to get bored with so many sports info, Emily took off her shoes and kicked back on the couch, instantly remembering how uncomfortable that thing was. Her back was still protesting the lumps when she finished reading a two page description of a baseball match and a extensive chronicle about what the teams should expect with the latest NFL draft and how much it would cost each to keep their new players.

After wondering if writing about how poorly the teams were conducting their many six digits contracts would geut her fired, Emily proceeded to sort through the rest of the papers, for the first time noticing a small white envelope. It contained nothing but her name and work address, which was unusual for business mail, that generally had a return address.

But the moment Emily opened the envelope and saw the picture it contained, she realized that letter might not be entirely professional, after all. On the background of Lucas Hunt’s very familiar childhood picture, in which he was fully dressed with the Seattle Sounders uniform while holding a soccer ball and smiling to the camera, she identified a yellow post with it in his familiar handwriting, dated from three days before.

 I am sorry about the mean things I said to you today. I know this picture won’t take back what I did, but I hope it serves you to know I regret the way I treated you. Feel free to use it on your article if you still want to. I know for sure that you won’t share anything about my life that I wouldn’t feel comfortable with and I am sorry that I suggested otherwise. 

Emily read the small note three times. The fact that there wasn’t one single spelling error only wasn’t more impressive than the actual content of the note. She could swear Lucas had been wishing that that was the last he’d seen of her the minute she furiously walked out of the door on their last encounter. She could still see the look of anger on his face and remember the despise in his voice as he’d made accusations against her.

Why had he changed his mind? He’d seemed so insulted when Emily had merely suggested using a childhood picture for a piece. Lucas had refused it instantly, looking at her as if the girl had made him a personal threat. Yet now, he had actually mailed her the picture himself, authorizing the journalist to use it.

Emily frowned once again, unable to concentrate on any other task anymore. That entire day, everything, it was just wasn’t making any sense. She took her hand to her temple, realizing that the minute Lucas Hunt walked back into her life, once again she began losing control over things. It really couldn’t be a coincidence.

At first, the thought came as an innocent supposition in her head. But the gut feeling she had once she realized that prerogative actually did make sense was enough to make her get up and pace back in forth, immersed in her own web of reasoning. 

Emily had a very logical mind and it was automatic that she tried to combine all facts. 

She had grown up in a very poor family and fought her way up throughout most of her life. The only few times someone had ever given her anything had been six years before, when an anonymous donor had magically funded her Ivy League school trip, unexpectedly allowing Emily to finally see Yale for the first time and become sure that studying journalism there was what she wanted. At the time, she had asked the principal where the money had come from and he had told her the information was confidential. And now, when once again an anonymous donor had covered perhaps the most expensive bill of her life overnight.

Emily was still in denial about the whole situation, but if she gave it proper thought, the only common denominator for both situations was that she had met Lucas not long before both. The idea that he could have somehow found out about her debt and paid for it seemed ludicrous, comical even, considering how much he hated her.

But then Emily thought about the picture sent and the message it contained, and just like that, she realized it was the obvious explanation. It was all linked. Somehow, she supposed through his brother, Lucas had found out about her mother. It couldn’t have been anyone else. Emily had spent a big portion of her evening learning about salaries of high profile athletes. What other person that she knew would easily have at his disposal over three hundred grand like that? And because Emily’s mind was so logical, it kept thinking about why on Earth would Lucas ever do anything like that. When realization finally hit her, she felt the worst she’d been all night.

He pitied her.

That had to be it, Emily told herself. Her stomach churned inside her abdomen and she felt nauseated. It really couldn’t be it, she hoped with all her heart she was wrong about her supposition. But deep down, Emily knew she probably wasn’t. Feeling disgusted at the thought, the journalist looked around, searching for her cell phone. On their first encounter, Thomas had said he still had the same number as always. She supposed she still had his contact saved. If anything, Emily would force him to give out his brother’s current location, so that she could find him and let him have it.

Because of one thing, Emily was sure. No one pitied her. 

And she was going to pay Lucas Hunt back every cent of that money. Even if it meant staying in Seattle for longer than she’d planned.

[rileychester]

Something that has really been bothering me since the cheating happened. And I apologize now, this is gonna be long and probably just me ranting.

That even though it’s lazy, cliche, predictable, tacky writing it is somewhat true to Robert and his self destruction behavior. (Though I can think of several other stories that could have brought about the same thing other than cheating, I digress) Well it’s more two things that have really been bothering me.

1. It puts all three into little soap boxes that they aren’t able to break out of because the show won’t let them. It just keeps up in repeat hell, where it’s pretty much the same soap story that we have already seen on the show and in these characters before a hundred or so times before. Because dare forbid, any soap try to think outside the box.

Aaron the tortured, suffering, and always having life knock him down tragic soap gay. Robert the fuck up whose usually always fucking up by his down stairs brain. And always has to mess up, so he can start at the bottom and work his way up all over again. (Also side note, it puts the boys in a couple box, where Robert is always the one messing up and Aaron always the one whose long suffering and has to forgive him and take him back. So unhealthy and unbalanced…so unwatchable. It just gets boring, predictable, and cringe worthy. But then that seems to be the basic for a lot of soap couples these days and not just on Emmerdale. One is always the cock up and the other always giving in and taking them back because it’s epic/true/real love. That’s not love, that’s bullshit.)

And lets not forget Rebecca. The tragic rich girl, who likes to stir up trouble/while half being a decent person (some of the time) since the show can’t seem to decide how they want to write her. While also being mainly used as a sex storyline for men who don’t want her in the long run. Or taking advantage of a situation for her own personal gain instead of being the bigger person and walking away. She’s just a plot point, whose there to wear pretty clothes, sleep around, and do shocking things so people are disappointed in her and hate her. So basically another throw away White, seriously what is the point of keeping them on if they don't add anything to the show, even as villains. Actually Rebecca kinda reminds me of Maisie Wylde back in the day.

Also it takes away the genuine friendship that was brewing between Robert and Rebecca. Leaving them even more alone in the village. (It’s important in soaps for characters to have connections and ties to the village and not just be floating about.) He shouldn’t have used her for self destructing like that, but she also shouldn’t have agreed when he was in that state. I get she’s still in love with him, but she must know Robert well enough to know he’s just acting out and this is not going to mean happily ever after. And that Robert was in a really shitty state, needing a friend to help him through it and not undress him into rompy pomy.

2. I love the boys, both together and separate. They have a very special place in my heart and I do want them together. Mainly because I love them, but also because I think they are good for each other. I think they bring out the better in each other, call each other on their shit, and I think they’re five million times happier together. But I do think the show rushed putting them together, maybe because of fan demands, maybe because Robron was a huge audience drawl for them. Maybe because they wanted to write them in these big stories and give them some “happiness” and maybe because Ryan and Danny are so beautifully together, they wanted to really show of their talent together. Who knows, I do think it went a bit fast. And not just because it’s a soap either.

My major fear about this story is that it will go the way of many soap couples where cheating has happened. The wonderful cliche and predictable world of soaps goings something like this. The reveal of the cheating, the big blow up, people picking sides and throwing shade, the big I hate you for all time, bitterness, they tolerate each other, some big drama to pull them closer again, angry sex, another big drama to pull them even closer (someone’s life in danger), emotional connecting sex, lots of longing angst but still not together, a big emotional talk about how much they miss each other and promises never to hurt each other again where the show rushes the reunion. And most everyone just accepts they are back together. This has been a staple in soaps since I was a babe (maybe it’s because I grew up mainly on US soaps, where you couldn’t turn around because you were surrounded with cheating and triangle storylines. Blah…)

See my fear is they won’t get to the heart of why Robert self destructed and fucked up this way with Rebecca. I mean they could have had Robert over work himself and get behind the wheel of his car and end up in a terrible accident or Robert be in danger of losing custody of Liv while Aaron’s gone. (Or hell I would have even accepted Aaron cheating with someone inside while high or because it was an emotional moment and Robert cheating with Rebecca as a way to hurt Aaron back.)

Because I can think of several times they could have delved deeper into Robert and yet they kept quiet on that front. When the affair was revealed to the whole village and Robert’s family found out he liked boys as well as girls, there was maybe one or two talks with his family, but noting in-depth on his feelings for Aaron, how long he’s been into guys, how did his affair with Aaron come about, what Jack or Sarah would have thought about the news. Or after what happened to Katie, there was a lot of Aaron beating himself up. And yes we did see some Robert hating himself, being filled with guild, and focusing all his energy on keeping Andy safe and alive. As well on focusing on Aaron and his self harming again. But not much on the fact that he accidentally killed Katie, a woman he had known most of his life, had loved, who he was gonna marry, who had been a part of his family for years. I don’t think they have ever had Robert visit her grave and apologize to her or be honest about what went down. Or after Robert was shot and almost died, yes there were some moments, but not really about Robert from what I remember. Or when he thought Aaron was the culprit, or when he found out it was Andy and Ross who were really behind it. There was a moment here and there, but not really to the heart of the character. Or hell even when he told Aaron the truth of who really shot him, there were no talks between Aaron and Robert over Robert and Andy’s complicated love/hate relationship/feud, or Robert almost dying, or why Robert keeping silent about Andy and Ross. Then when Andy was framed and had to flee, there wasn’t a scene of Robert with Aaron over the lost of his brother or the anger over what the Whites had done to his family. These are just a few examples, there are more.

Not to mention he’s been gone from the village for five-six years. We know that not all those years were spent with the Whites. From what I remember, Robert had hardly any possessions to start over with when he left. Yet when he comes back he has access to hit men numbers, friends that are willing to pull cons with him on rich strangers, or friends who can find Sandra and Liv in the matter of a day, when I believe even the police were having trouble locating them. Also in that time, he’s had one offs with men from the sounds of it on a regular basic, where he’s seems to accepted that he enjoys men sexually and is attracted to them. He wasn’t so turned off by the idea of men after Jack found him with that farm hand that he explored the idea and didn’t lock it away too much. He probably rationalized it away as just sex, that it was just physical fun and women were for emotional love. Speaking of Jack, they have barely touched upon Jack since Robert has been back. I think I squealed like an idiot when Robert opened up to Aaron about Jack on the big car crash week. There is a fucking ocean they could have gone swimming in for stories, but instead they went for the laziest cliche in the book. Him feeling sorry for himself, getting drunk, making a move and falling into bed with an female ex who was very willing.

The show has shown over and over again that they are more interested in staying glued to the tricks of stereotypical old with Robert. So when all this comes out and Robert is sent to the bottom of the dung heap again. I doubt they will even flesh out why he risked everything (hurting Aaron is the worst way because it was Aaron’s biggest fear) and why he self destructs in this way. I mean honestly this story seems out of left field, Robert was doing so well, I get him falling apart considering what’s going on with Aaron and Robert has shown he’s a mess without Aaron. But it was so quickly and rushed, when they had him be so stoic during everything with Gordon. He was progressing as a character, like I said there were many ways he could have fucked up. They just took the worst one and I don’t think they have a proper plan to fix this. Mainly because I think it’s gonna be predictable and mainly since they haven’t given Robert that much of a chance so far.

[akiameokami]

"It's Danny."

Fandom: Danny Phantom

Ship: Vlad Masters X Danny Fenton AU where Jack and Madeline are dead and Danny lives with Vlad while going to college.

*Warning* Contains: fluff and feels Summary: Danny's parents had died in an accident related to ghost hunting a year or two ago and with no where else to go, Danny went to live with Vlad. There wasn't much of a choice involved, college was coming up. Jazz had already moved away for her school and couldn't support Danny. It was the responsible thing to do, and as it turned out, Vlad wasn't such a horrible guy.  When Danny first arrived at the mansion, he was expecting it to be a living hell but he was too numb to care.

Danny walked in and sat down on the bed in his new room. The room itself was lush and had a classic taste to it but Danny didn't really care at the moment. Vlad was leaning in the door way talking to Danny, not that he was listening. "Daniel!" Vlad said loudly as he placed a hand on Danny's shoulder, making him jump away. He looked up at Vlad, unable to mask the fear and sadness in the sudden reaction. Vlad withdrew his hand and looked down sadly at his "nephew". "Daniel, did you hear me?" Vlad asked softly. Danny used the back of his hand to wipe away the tears that hadn't formed yet and then shook his head no. "I was saying you could have those delinquent friends of yours over whenever you wanted. That Samantha and Tucker, I don't care much for teenagers but I know that this isn't easy on you and that you need your friends." Vlad said, showing a look of distaste on his face but also concern. "Thanks.. but my name's Danny. Not Daniel." Danny mumbled, not sure how much he should open up to Vlad. "Well..." Vlad started, choosing his words carefully, "When you are part of the Masters household, you don't have a cute nickname like Danny. To me, you are Daniel and I will expect you to respect that." Vlad said while taking a seat next to Danny, placing a comforting arm around his shoulders. Danny had to hand it to him, Vlad was being so much more attentive than he would have given credit for. Vlad leaned closer to him and whispered in his ear, "Go to sleep Daniel." and left. The way he said his name still sent shivers down his spine, for the first time in his life, Vlad was being kind towards him.

This type of caring interaction carried on for a few months. They ran into very few problems, like bathroom space and music tastes, and somehow Danny was starting to feel happy again. Sam and tucker came to visit them one weekend a month, but Danny saw them at school a few days of the week so it was okay. The strangest thing that has happened is the way Danny is casually getting along with Vlad. They pass the salt at the dinner table, talk about their days, share their problems, rush to each others defense when needed and actually enjoy the others company. That makes Danny feel like maybe the reason Vlad had been a jerk for so long was because he was just lonely, and that makes him feel pretty bad for Vlad. Danny hadn't brought himself to tell Sam and Tucker that he was actually happy being with Vlad just yet, they still hated him. He planned to tell them today since they were coming over and Vlad would be out. ~~~~~~ The three of them were chilling out in the den playing video games and making jokes about the professors at school. Sam was casually splayed out on the sofa, laptop and text books within arms reach, Tucker was in front of the TV, gaming away, which made Danny wonder about his grades. Danny was sitting in one of the plush recliners, biting his lip from nervous habit. "Guys... Can I tell you something?" Danny tests the waters. Sam sighs and puts her book down, looking at Danny with a smile. "Finally you decide to talk to us! Tucker, turn that stupid thing off." Sam harps at Tucker with a firm but friendly tone. Tucker rolls his eyes and turns to Danny, only pausing the game. "What's stressing you out man? You look as pale as a ghost." Tucker says, punctuating his statement with a laugh. Sam roles her eyes at him in response. "Go on Danny." She urges. "I.. I'm happy." He says awkwardly, gripping the arms of the chair intensely. Tucker looks confused but Sam arches an eyebrow. "What kind of happy are we talking here?" She asks knowingly. Danny swallows his fear, he knew she would pick up on it. "I am happy being here with Vlad, he makes me happy." Danny says some-what confidently. Tucker faces him fully this time, "Dude, that sounded gay." He says with zero sensitivity. Sam shoots him a dirty look but doesn't say anything, waiting to see what Danny says. "Well, maybe it was." Danny says a little too fast. Sam smiles just a little, but Tucker starts with the typical questions. "You're gay?!" He asks, "Have you always been gay?" He keeps going without waiting for answers, "Were you gay for me at some point?!" He is getting louder now. Danny is cringing at the questions, he hasn't even excepted this himself and now Tucker is making it worse. "Shut up Tuck!" Sam yells as she hits him on the back of the head. Tucker stops his rant and sees how nervous and sad Danny looks. "Oh... I'm sorry Danny, I've just never..." He doesn't know how to finish, but it's okay. Danny knew this would be new territory for Tuck.  They talk about it for the rest of the evening, trying to normalize it. Sam gives Danny dating advice and good websites to learn about all things LGBTQ+ and invites him to the club at the college, Tucker keeps apologizing and sending Danny pictures of different half naked men that just make Danny laugh.  Just as they are packing up for the evening Vlad gets home and calls his hellos, "Daniel I'm back! I brought home some dessert for us for later, it's not for your friends though." At that Sam and Tucker both die laughing, thinking Vlad meant something else. "Is that his pet name for you? Daniel?" Tucker says, choking on his laughter. Danny blushes and gets defensive. "No! He just thinks it's proper. Please don't call me that ever again." Vlad waltzes into the den, loosening his tie and taking off his suit pieces. "What was that just now?" He asks, looking to the now silent teenagers. Tucker doesn't back down for once. "Oh, I was thinking of calling Danny Daniel from now like you do." He says with a smirk. Instantly Vlad has a disgusted look on his face and Danny feels hurt. "No. It's Danny, only Vlad can call me Daniel." Danny says too fast and too loud as he stands up from his chair, knocking text books over in the process.  Before Vlad can even get the words out of his mouth Sam is already packing up her stuff, "I think it's time you two went home." Vlad says, mostly looking at Tucker.    ~~~~ After some rushed and awkward goodbyes, and an encouraging pat on the back from Sam, Danny and Vlad are staring at each other awkwardly in the entrance way. "So... What dessert did you bring home?" Danny asks, wishing away the awkwardness. Typically he would just go ghost and run away but he hasn't gone ghost since the accident. Vlad looks at him annoyed. "Really Daniel?" He says flatly, stepping towards him. Danny freezes, Vlad was saying his name that way and it was sending chills up his spine. Danny would be lying if he said that he hadn't gotten off thinking about that voice before. Vlad ruffles Danny's hair in a friendly way, then drags his hand down to caress his jaw line in a more intimate way. When he drops his hand Danny exhales a breath he didn't realize he had been holding. Why? Why didn't Vlad do anything? "Vlad..." Danny breathes out as he is walking away from him. Vlad stops and looks over his shoulder, eyes glowing in their ghostly way. Vlad only does that when he is fighting to control something.  Danny starts to step towards him. "Don't Daniel!" Vlad says in a thunderous voice that stops Danny in his tracks. Typically Danny would leave him alone when he got like this. They both got ghostly rages sometimes but typically they were easy to predict. This one just sprang up out of no where and he couldn't understand why. "Why Vlad?" Danny asks calmly, he was back into his comfort zone and that made him feel stronger and more confident than he had felt since the accident. "Why the sudden rage? Why the insistence to take me in? Why did you always chase after me?" Danny finds himself walking forwards as he asks the questions that he has been fighting to not ask this entire time. Vlad leans on the wall next to him and stares Danny down, searching for the words and deciding if he is going to answer. "Why you ask?!" He growls, scratching into the walls. "Because I'm dangerous right now." He says, his voice sounding more controlled. Danny laughs at this, "You literally spent years trying to kill me and now you are worried about hurting me?" Danny asks in between laughing fits. Vlad visibly bites his lip and Danny's eyes go wide. That was hot. "Things are different now Daniel, I feel different now." Vlad admits the last part in a quiet voice. This stops the laughter and gives Danny the push he needs. He rushes over to Vlads side and pulls him down by the collar of his shirt and kisses him. Not in a desperate or hungry way (even though he wanted to) but in a tentative and bashful way. This could get him kicked out, or picked up. Danny starts to pull away but then he feels Vlad nip at his lips, Danny opens his mouth letting out a silent gasp and Vlad takes the opportunity to slide his tongue inside, instantly deepening the kiss. One of Vlads hands finds the small of Danny's back and the other finds his hair, he reverses the position and pushes Danny up against the wall. This makes Danny release a moan that he really didn't mean to let out. Vlad pulls away and looks at Danny with a terrified expression. "I'm sorry about this Daniel, you know how the rage can make you do stuff that.-" Vlad was starting to make an excuse as he backed away but Danny grabbed his hand and interrupted, saying "Stuff that you really want to do any other time of the month!" Vlad doesn't say anything to this but tries to straighten his clothes and Danny's. "Vlad, I am sorry if this bothers you but.. I like you, and I don't mean as a caregiver. I know that you love, er..-" Danny faulters as he remembers the situation, "Loved my mom but that just means that you should understand how it feels to fall in love with someone you shouldn't. POV SWITCH TO VLAD Vlad looks down at Daniel and notes the defiant look on his face. The words that the 18 year old just spoke stung; however, they belonged to an old wound that had already healed. Vlad no longer cared about Daniels mother, the only Fenton he cared for now was Daniel himself. That was the only one he had cared about in a long time. During one of their first few fights where Daniel got injured and was obviously in pain, he looked up at Vlad with those piercing blue eyes. Vlad's first thought was that they looked like just Madelines but the more he saw them, the more he realized that these eyes were better. It didn't matter what Vlad did to Daniel, he would always meet him head on even if there were tears streaming from those beautiful eyes. There came a point when Vlad had abandoned his original goals all together and only continued his villainous ways because that was the only way Daniel would see him. Then one day the boy called him up out of his own free will and explained the situation. Daniel had been experiencing signs of new ghostly powers, ones that he hadn't encountered yet, and when they were out on a family hunt something went wrong. Daniel wouldn't tell Vlad the details but he did tell him that it was his fault, the reason his parents were dead was his fault. As horrible as that was Vlad couldn't help but feel glad when it was him that Daniel turned to, never did he think it would lead up to this moment where he had Daniel Fenton pushed into the wall wish his clothes rumpled and hair a mess. "Daniel, you're wrong. I only have eyes for you, but that is the problem. A grown man shouldn't be lusting over an 18 year old that is the child of his late best friend!" Vlad exclaims, hating how desperate he sounds. He sees a small smile play across Daniels swollen lips and knows he should run. That child always smiled like that before he got what he wanted.  "But you aren't lusting over me. Do you love me?" Daniel asks, his grip tightening on Vlad's wrists like he is afraid to let go. Vlad uses his free hand and gently grabs Daniels chin, admiring the face that is offering him what he wants the most. "I love you more than you could ever know, Daniel."   Potential future fics in thus AU: Vlad asking Danny why he is the only one who gets to call him Daniel and feeling proud when Danny tells him why Vlad and Danny devling more into "the Accident" Vlad with a possessive kink and getting mad at Tucker and Dash Danny getting further picked on by people for being gay and Vlad uses his ghostly abilities to "get even" Danny and Vlad have a dessert night ;) Danny gets an F on a science thesis about ghosts because the teacher doesn't believe in ghosts so Vlad decides to inspire the teacher. Danny goes to the LGBTQ+ meeting at the college Danny tells Jazz about Vlad Vlad helps Danny feel comfortable with going ghost again

Vlad or Danny goes through a Ghost Rage which is much like and Omega's heat in Omegaverse stuff + more potential stories TAGGING: @septic-crankiplier (because you liked the post, lemme know if you don't wanna be tagged in these)  @dannyphans (Because it was recommended for me to? Sorry if this is a no?) If you want to be tagged in those or future stories just let me know! I don't bite! (But Vlad might)