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secrets-of-ty · 5 months ago

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Danny Phantom Fanfic Masterlist

I've been meaning to do this for a bit! Since I've been in the Phandom for 10+ years I've picked up a lot of good fanfics over the years and I think it'd be great to share them again in case people have forgotten/haven't encountered them!

I mostly used Fanfiction.net in my older days so a lot of them will be linked there. I'm also pretty picky when it comes to fics being completed, so expect the ones listed to be bingeable with an ending! And finally, I'm not huge on romance/smut so most of them probably won't involve those genres, I'll point out ones that do. (These are in no particular order).

👻 Happy Reading! 👻

👻 = Regular Fic

🟢 = Alternate Universe Fic

⚔️ = Crossover Fic

💙 = Would Recommend!

💙💙 = One of my Favorites!

💙⚔️💙 Mirrored by Lynse

"As a general rule, diving into unknown swirly vortexes in the Ghost Zone is a bad idea, but this was a time when Danny had no other real choice. Meanwhile, Jake thought he was through dealing with ghosts, but Rotwood, well, he's just getting started."

I posted about this one a few years ago and the author, @ladylynse , said it's also available on AO3. This is by far one of my f a v o r i t e fanfics that I read annually or so! If you're a sucker for American Dragon too, definitely check this one out <3 The characterization of both Jake and Danny, plus watching their friendship grow, always gets me in the feels.

💙👻 Phantom's Sketchbook by AkoyaMizuno

"Mr. Lancer finds himself in an unparalleled situation, he has access to something which can give him incredible insight into the personal workings of Amity Park's local ghost teen hero, Danny Phantom."

It's been a while since I've read this one, but I remember it having a lovely characterization of Lancer plus his mentor relationship with Danny. (I loved this one a great amount back in the day that I, uh, made fanart and turned it in for a school assignment. Which is lost to the ages now 😅)

👻 Darkness by Cordria

"Maddie and Phantom are trapped in the dark. Can they come to an agreement to work together before they both die at the full moon? Part 1 of Illuminations Saga."

I don't quite remember this one but I DO remember Cordria had some absolute bangers. You'll probably see their name a few more times on this list.

💙👻💙 Masks by Cordria

"Sometimes, people hide who they truly are behind masks. This is a short story about the day that Lancer decides enough is enough when it comes to Daniel Fenton. Sequel is 'Plunge'"

When I said Cordria had bangers, THIS is one of them! Another fic that I read annually, this one involves Lancer getting closer and closer to Danny's secret while he's stuck in detention for the weekend. I love love LOVE the characterization of Danny and Lancer in this, another at the top of the favorite list!

👻 Plunge by Cordria (sequel to Masks ^)

"Sequel to 'Masks'. Now that Lancer has learned the truth and has let Danny out of his office, Danny needs to face the next hurdle: his parents."

For some reason, I always forgot to put this on my favorite list so I often missed out on reading it with my annual read of Masks. I remember it being a decent sequel where the Fentons pick up the pieces of Danny's reveal.

👻 Pits by Cordria

"Danny has been captured and thrown into the Pits by Walker to fight for his life. Listen in as he tells his dark, twisted tale of surviving despite the odds. Warning: dark and depressing. Sequel is 'Final Exam'."

Another one I don't fully remember, but it had to be a solid read since it's on my favorites haha! I have a vague sense that it was a little angst/gore-y(?) as the description warns, so just heads up!

👻 Lab Rat by AnneriaWings

"The look on my parents' faces – eager, curious, somewhat hateful – wasn't exactly hard to give away their intentions. I knew what they were going to do to me even before Mom snapped on a pair of rubbery, white latex gloves."

*** This one is definitely a vivisection fanfic with graphic descriptions, so beware that content. Again, haven't read it in a long time but it had satisfied my angst itch back in the day.

👻 Wondering by Phantomrose96

"A continuation to Cordria's starshot #69 "Wondering". Danny's been captured and tortured by his parents, but he refuses to say a word until his psychiatrist starts connecting the dots. Can he risk keeping it a secret any longer?"

*** Another angst, lab experiment-esque fic. There are definite graphic scenes (as warned in the first chapter). I do remember this fic being huge in the 2010s (definitely a staple of the Phandom). The relationships and Danny recovering from his torture were great highlights.

👻 Connections by Lynse

"Maddie knows that the Booo-merang has keyed into Danny, for whatever reason, so what's she to think when she sees it collide with Phantom?"

Don't quite remember this one, but Lynse is amazing at writing, so it's bound to be a good read.

👻 Confessions by Lynse (Sequel to Connections ^)

"Follows Connections. Danny's secret's not as safe as he thinks, what with Maddie unable to ignore her wild suspicions any longer and piecing things together and Jack asking questions all on his own."

Same as above!

💙👻 Earthquake by Turkeyhead987

"Danny leaves with his bathroom excuse and leaves Dash curious. He follows Danny and ends up the the gym room with him. While they're in there, an earthquake occurs and leaves them trapped inside. Will any secrets be revealed? No DashxDanny! They're just the main characters!"

This one is another one that I've read multiple times over the years! From what I remember, it was a fun read involving Dash and Danny being trapped in the gym after an earthquake, and explores how Danny handles his secret around Dash while they wait for rescue.

💙👻 A Jock and a Hard Place by AnneriaWings

"Danny and Dash were silent, trying to wrap their mind around that stupid, simple fact – the door was locked. They were trapped. In a janitor's closet. Together. (Collab with Haiju)"

No romance in this one! Another story where Danny and Dash get trapped together. I've read this one several times, and remember enjoying the tension of Danny's secret being revealed. I also think they explored Danny and Dash's relationship in a fun way!

👻 An Unlikely Alliance by Represent

"Maddie wants her family back. In an attempt to understand her Danny's change in behavior, she unwittingly enlists the GIW to exorcize Phantom from her son."

Gonna be real with ya'll, I don't remember this one at all. But uhhh I'm gonna throw it on here just because I can. :)

👻 Flip Turn by dreamsweetmydear

"Danny's life the last couple of years has been chaotic and pretty scary, to say the least. However, one detention with Mr. Lancer opens a window of opportunity that promises to turn his life around in more ways than one. Revelation fic. Post-"Kindred Spirits.""

Yet again, I don't remember this fic. Sorry! But it's under 8000 words, so it's a little bit of a shorter read than some of the ones on this list!

👻 Journey of Secrets by WolfKael

"First Danny Phantom fic! DXS, TXV, but not super-heavy. Lancer's class is on a trip to the Ghost Zone, courtesy of the Fentons! (Takes a couple chapters to gain momentum, and I promise it isn't your average 'field trip' fic!) T because I'm paranoid, but it could probably be K ."

Also not a fic I remember. It's got about 50,000 words so thought I'd throw it in for anyone that likes a longer fic!

👻 Vulnerable by HaiJu

"A desperate moment leads to a difficult choice, and Danny must deal with the consequences. A collaboration between Anneriawings and Haiju."

Don't remember it, but HaiJu had/has some great fics! Seems to involve Danny and Maddie after skimming the first chapter.

👻 Little Fires by Represent

"My family's supposed to be geniuses, yet they've never figured it out. Now I know why. Because they already know I'm Phantom. They must know. The better questions are: Have they known this whole time? What's in that vial? What happened to Skulker? And what's in the locked drawer?"

You know what, if I remember it, I'll say something 😂

👻 Judge, Jury, Executioner by Cordria

"The Observants and the Ghost Council are sick of the Fentons creating half-ghost creatures that disobey the rules of the universe. It's time for them to step in before more are made. Can Danny save his parents and keep his secret intact? A three-part fic."

💙👻 A Phantom Marooned by LordPugsy

"No one but Danny was suspicious when his English class was awarded an all-expenses paid cruise trip by an anonymous benefactor. Everyone but Danny thought it was bad luck when they became ship-wrecked on an island in the middle of nowhere. No one but Danny fully understood the dangers lurking in the trees. No one but Danny knew how much danger they were all in so far from home."

This one involves Danny and his class getting out of Amity Park, so it's a little more oc-filled and explores a nontraditional setting for the trio. There might be a little SamxDanny in this one if I remember correctly, but overall I do remember having fun reading through this!

🟢 Candlelight by HappyLeif

"Sam's only friend is the ever-loyal Tucker, ever since Danny began slowly distancing himself from them after some accident freshman year. She wanted a friend, but she never thought she'd find the one she was looking for in the highly debated ghostly hero of Amity Park.

AU = Danny alone during the portal accident. Looks like there's some SamxDanny in this one! Don't remember it but heck I might have to reread it since the synopsis has me interested.

👻 Crashing and Burning by GriffinRose

"For two years, Maddie has put up with Danny's ridiculous lies and excuses. She's tried everything to get through to him, but the pattern just goes on. She's so tired of fighting him on this all the time. And so, after two years, she's done. She doesn't care what her son does anymore, because Danny doesn't seem to care that he's her son."

👻 I'll Be Here by HaiJu

"Some days you can't pick yourself up. Having family means you don't have to. Danny-centric, three oneshots. Completely shameless hurt/comfort. Bring tissues�� and antiseptic."

👻 What Little Girls Are Made Of by HaiJu

"Phantom and his younger double save Amity Park from a monstrous ghost, nearly destroying themselves in the process. The Fentons have always hunted ghosts; now it's time to save one."

💙👻💙 You Should Be Dead by SaphireDragon11

"Dash and Kwan are horrified to discover they've accidentally killed their classmate, but perhaps even more so when he shows up at school the next day. With his secret on the line, Danny soon discovers Dash and Kwan are the least of his worries."

THIS story is definitely a favorite and fun read! The ending battle chapters always gets me excited to reread! ***Danny does get straight up shot by Dash at the beginning so be warned for that content. But I remember a post going around a year or so ago where someone had drabbled about Danny getting up after being shot by Dash. This story explores that concept with a longer plot!

💙👻💙 Roughing It by HaiJu

"Lost deep in the woods with an undead pack on their heels, Maddie and Phantom find themselves entangled in an awkward alliance. Can they cooperate long enough to get out of this mess?"

Another favorite! This one explores Maddie and Danny's relationship, kind of similar to how the show did in the Maternal Instincts episode. I adore how HaiJu explores Maddie's thought-process with dealing with Phantom in a situation where she kind of needs him and he won't leave her alone. Great mother-son fic!

👻 Phantom of Truth by Haiju

"Locked away in a secret government lab with Phantom as her subject, nothing stands between Maddie and the truth... except, perhaps, herself."

Haven't read this one in a loooooong time, but I remember being around for HaiJu updating this fic, posting about it on Tumblr, and the Phandom being generally hyped for it. Another staple for the Phandom! It's another torture fic, so heads up regarding that content!

💙👻 Shadow of a Doubt by Haiju (Sequel to Phantom of Truth ^)

"The truth was supposed to save Danny. Fix things. The lab, the experiments, the lies, those were all in the past. Weren't they? Sequel to Phantom of Truth."

And then BAM on top of finishing Phantom of Truth, HaiJu hit us all with a completed sequel! I was super excited whenever this fic got updated, felt like I was waiting for a new episode to air on TV every time! There's some OCs in this since it explores Danny running away from Amity, but I remember genuinely loving the OCs and loved reading about Danny mentally recovering from being experiment on.

👻 Just a Boy by Tay1019411

"Maddie and Jack finally have Phantom right where they always wanted him: in there lab, helpless, but everything is different now. Now, Maddie faces the truth about what Phantom really is."

🟢 Make It Go Away by DarkNymfa

"Not for the first time, Danny cursed himself for never telling anyone about his extra-curricular activities. And now, far more injured than he could fix himself, Danny desperately wished that he had told just one person."

No one knows AU

👻 Flicker by DarkNymfa

"It had taken just one moment, one split-second in which she had seen Phantom instead of Danny. Now she found herself on a path she didn't want to be on. One she couldn't leave, not anymore."

👻 The Scientific Method by ReconstructWriter

""After two years of failures you'd have better luck asking Phantom to be your lab-rat," Jazz said. The Fentons decide to try just that."

👻 Phantom Hitchhiker by ghostanimal

"Phic Phight Oneshot: While students get to leave early after a ghost attack, teachers have to stick around for boring meetings to discuss the attack. The ghost attack was now over, but it didn't mean all the ghosts were gone. Lancer finds himself driving a certain Phantom home while reflecting on how young the poor kid is."

👻 Returning After the Reveal by Illusn

"Phic Phight attack, using a prompt by Love-ly-ish. Danny returns to school after his secret was revealed in a ghost attack, having to deal with people suddenly treating him differently."

👻 Vantage Point by Lynse

"Phantom was young. Painfully young. Somehow, Lancer had never really noticed that before. One-shot, written for the 2019 Phic Phight."

👻 Oddities by Lynse

"Jack can't deny that their ghost hunting equipment malfunctions around Danny-consistently and exclusively around Danny-and decides to get to the bottom of it, once and for all. One-shot, written for the 2019 Phic Phight."

👻 To Be a Hero by cosette141

"Danny has always known the consequences should he be captured by the Guys In White, but now Tucker is going to learn firsthand just what the stakes are for his superhero friend and what it really means to be a hero. (not slash) hurt/comfort"

👻 Family Reunion by Dp-Marvel94

"For Phango. Prompts used- Setting: Family Reunion, Wes Weston, Aunt Alicia, Stuck in the thermos. And Identity Reveal…kinda (does it count if Wes had already worked out that Fenton was Phantom but hadn't seen him actually transform so wasn't completely sure?)"

Wes Fic!

👻 Stuck by SummersSixEcho

"[OneShot] After a prank from two of his ghostly acquaintances, Danny is stuck in ghost mode during one of the most important events of his young half-life. If only he didn't have to give a speech on top of it... [Phic Phight 2020 entry; prompt by Ghostanimal]"

👻 One-Eighty by SummersSixEcho

"[One Shot] After a grueling battle, two teenagers at a diner try to sort out a night of revelations. [DannyMay 2020, Day 28: Diner]"

👻 Threads of Time by ZombieRed

""I just want to know what's going on with you, Danny! I wish I could just, I don't know, spend the day figuring out what you've been hiding from me. Then maybe I could help you. But you being closed off from everyone is only hurting you. Can't you see that?" Or Maddie keeps on waking up to Thursday morning [No PP, pretty much ignores season 3 as a whole]"

👻 Invisible Stitches by Lynse

"Family bonding time might be less dangerous now that his parents know his secret, but that doesn't mean Danny is wild about being kept in the dark when it comes to his dad's plans for the weekend. One-shot."

Loved the concept of Danny having trouble being away from Amity Park!

👻 Whenever You're Ready by SummersSixEcho

"[OneShot] Jack and Maddie try to show their son they are very supportive of Phantom once they find out his secret. They want him to tell them on his terms, but everything ends up in bigger misunderstandings and more revelations they weren't prepared for. [Belated Phic Phight entry for Star G, Arioz, Bird, Dekalkomania, and Wife]"

Written in a Journal-Entry style! Interesting format if I remember correctly.

👻 An Attempt at Camping by Seasilver17

"They should have known that even when they were in the middle of nowhere camping. Something would have to go wrong. Curse his Fenton luck"

👻 Secrets Secrets and Advice (This Teacher's Vice) by AppleScentedLazers

"After a particularly grueling day Mr. Lancer just wants to go home, kick up his feet, and read some Shakespeare. But, when he runs into two of his students looking for their missing best friend, Lancer ends up with more questions than he has answers for. Such as, who is Phantom? And just what is Daniel Fenton hiding?"

👻🟢 Going Ghost by cosette141

"My take on the moment Danny turns on the ghost portal and becomes half-ghost… as well as an alternate way for Sam and Tucker to find out. Friendship Oneshot"

👻 Lair by Lexosaurus

"When something goes wrong with a piece of Vladco tech, Valerie ends up stuck in the Ghost Zone. With Phantom."

💙👻 In Case of Emergency by Unlucky Alis

"Lancer is grading papers when he gets the call. "I'm calling from Amity West. I have an underage patient here who has named you as their emergency contact." Lancer rushes over, of course, fretting all the while about what accident Danny Fenton has gotten himself into now, because it could only be him. Except, when he arrives, it's not the Danny he expected to find."

I remember enjoying the little twist on Lancer being the emergency contact for Phantom yet having no idea. Lancer handles it pretty well all things considered. (I think you guys can tell I just like Lancer fics at this point HA)

👻 Furthest from Myself by WastefulReverie

"An accident during a ghost invasion leaves nearly a hundred citizens with inexplicable ghost powers. Little did they know, this was only the catalyst for a series of revelations."

👻 Ghost Smarts! by Dekalkomania

"When it becomes clear the ghosts are here to stay, the Amity Park school district decides they need to teach proper safety precautions. In dire need of extra credit, Danny takes Mr. Lancer's offer to be the assistant in an assembly titled, "Ghost Smarts!"

Very unprepared for what he signed up for, Danny must deal with the eccentric detective J.J. Bittenbinder, all while not blowing his cover."

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goliath-de-senfina-sango · 7 months ago

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Mythic Phantom

This is a little something I whipped up over a while thinking about merging the DP and Riordanverse universes together, and I thank @geraldmariaivo for helping me think my way through it. If you want the ao3 version you can find it here, and I hope you enjoy the fic!

Most Underworld Gods felt it when Vlad’s current permanent Portal opened, but they all Felt it when Danny’s accident happened. A child’s death throes is hard to ignore after all. Pantheons world wide decided that was America’s problem, and Hel decided it was Persephone’s problem, and Haides felt it would close on its own. No gate to Khaos can stay open for long after all.

When Ember went globally live, Muses and Music Gods and Hypnos heard the way she sang, called out to the mortals to never be forgotten. Danny and Tucker dealt with her swiftly enough that she was remembered, noted even, but disregarded.

When the Fright Knight’s sword was drawn, many Fear Gods turned toward Amity, but Danny dealt with it swiftly. Most regarded it as an anomaly but Phobos and Deimos sent subordinate spirits to investigate the town and report anything interesting.

Hades and Persephone noted the invasion of Ghost Cops and saw that Danny had it handled in only a few days, which they would count as a quest fulfilled. Clearly, Amity Park was a contained issue, and the Master Bolt had gone missing by now so they have other things to deal with. The House of Life have some reservations but agree.

Then Pariah Dark got out, and the Gods scrambled to do something about that. In only a week however, He was dealt with too. A closer eye was warranted. By everyone, not just the Observants.

Whoever these agents were, be they half-bloods or spirits or even minor gods, most wouldn’t see Young Blood and thus would fear Danny was losing it too. When he calmed down, they’d sigh in relief. The two future Ghost Villains who show up outside of the do-over would raise alarms at how fast ghosts can progress, but hey, it’s handled.

When the Hellenic spies are pulled back home for safety during the winter solstice, pleasantly surprised by Ghost activity dying down at the same time, Artemis and Luna, Khonshu and more felt something wrong happening as the Ghostwriter possessed the moon to speak.

When Duul Amon returned to the land of the living, the House of Life sent agents to the town, and Tucker Foley was immediately offered magic lessons. His is power over stone and steel, glass and gems, as well as an ear for the voices of machines. Between terrakinesis and technopathy, Tucker’s limits with his staff became only what he understood about technology.

Then entire copies of the Ghost Boy (Prince? King?) appear, attacking him, manipulating him for the elder, but he lets her go free after he’s rescued? Truly fascinating. Psychopomps keep an eye on Elle wherever she goes - she’s always very close to melting after all. The titan army also keep an eye on her, a powerful being both like and unlike the Gods, much the same as a Titan, Giant, or Monster.

Then the Reality Gauntlet is found by a mortal man, a rogue Magician, while the boy is busy trying to stop it and save the world, Lydia is keeping House of Life magicians and even Odin’s Ravens from finding Freakshow, so some Camp Jupiter heroes are being sent on a quest to deal with him. Then he gets the fucking gems and turns the world into a circus for 10 minutes.

Before the Boy tricks him, takes the Gauntlet, resets the world to before his identity was revealed to the world, (though perhaps not quite fooling the memories of Gods, who Are the world) and destroying the Gauntlet and gems in a single blast.

An artifact presumed by the Ghost Investigation Ward to be powerful enough to destroy the Infinite Realms, reduced to molten ash by one burst of power.

What to do about the young Phantom is a matter of discussion during the solstice meeting on Olympus. Hades is sent to investigate the boy and finds that he is a godling of Kaos Themself, which sparks yet further debate on what to do when Artemis goes missing.

But then the Son of Hades stumbled upon Elmerton and witnessed a duel between Gods firsthand.

Danny Phantom faced off against Vortex, the ghost of all weather and sky and storm gods who had faded over the millennia, all on his own. Even in defeat, Danny stole half of Vortex’s power, and less than a week later, he defeated the calamity that even two pantheons worth of gods could not.

The Titans would be horrible for humanity as a whole, and the Olympians were bad for half bloods as well. Danny Phantom, however, could be just what most half bloods were after. He needed training in mortal form, clearly, but that could be an angle for Nico to use.

#Sango Scribes #Mythic Phantom #Danny Phantom #Percy Jackson and the Olympians #DP x PJO #fanfiction #Danny Fenton #Tucker Foley #Nico Di Angelo #The Gods #Vortex

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danis-artss · 6 days ago

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Oh myyy a sam

And a tucker, and a valerie (though unlike sam, they are still pretty rough scribbles)

Currently writing a lil phanfic with a friend, and started designing the clothes uwu

Dannys outfits in this fic ? Hidden. At least till i got all of them drawn in a ref sheet lmfao

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ghostlyglimmer · 2 months ago

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Happy Phandom Truce @five-rivers ! I decided to do an undercover agent at Casper High! Happy Holidays I hope you like it 💚

The hallways of Casper High buzzed with the usual chaos between classes—students rushing to their next period, lockers slamming, and snippets of conversations blending into an endless hum. Wes Weston, however, wasn’t paying attention to any of it. He pressed himself tightly against the cool wall of a corner, peeking around it with laser focus. His target was just a few feet away.

The hidden earpiece in his ear buzzed with static before the sharp voice of a Ghost Investigation Ward (GIW) agent cut through.

“Agent Weston, report. Do you have the target in sight?”

Wes rolled his eyes, muttering under his breath, “Yeah, I’ve got him.” He shifted to get a better look, careful not to be seen.

There, standing near his locker, was Danny Fenton. The kid was holding a cheap, rainbow-colored fidget spinner, grinning ear to ear as it floated a foot off his palm, spinning in the air. No tricks. No strings. Just hovering there like it was the most normal thing in the world.

Wes’s jaw dropped. He instinctively pulled back behind the corner, his heart hammering in his chest.

Danny turned to his friends, Sam Manson and Tucker Foley, his excitement barely contained. “Guys, look at this! I finally figured it out! I can keep it spinning without it breaking!”

“Dude!” Tucker hissed, darting a glance down the hallway. “What are you doing? We’re at school! People can see you!”

Sam didn’t even look up from her phone. “Yeah, Danny, great idea. Use your ghost powers out in the open. Real genius move.”

Danny shrugged, the spinner still rotating effortlessly in midair. “Relax, nobody’s paying attention.”

Tucker frowned, scanning the hallway again, but his eyes widened when he caught sight of Wes peeking from around the corner. His face paled. “Uh, Danny? We’ve got a problem.”

Sam followed his gaze and immediately locked eyes with Wes. Her lips curled into a smirk. She raised her hand and, in one fluid motion, gave him the middle finger, her expression daring him to do something about it.

Wes’s earpiece crackled again. “Agent Weston, confirm: is there ghostly activity? Report immediately!”

Panic flared in Wes’s chest. He ducked further behind the corner, flattening himself against the wall as his thoughts raced. Danny Fenton was using ghost powers—ghost powers—in the middle of Casper High. He was definitely Phantom. This was it. This was the proof he needed.

But… was it?

His memories flickered to all the times Fenton—or Phantom, as he now realized—had helped during ghost attacks. There’d been moments where Wes had barely escaped danger, only for Phantom to swoop in and save the day. He hated the smug attitude, but did that really make Danny the bad guy?

“Agent Weston! Respond!”

The sharp voice jolted him. His hand shook as he reached for the earpiece. “I—uh—no activity,” he blurted out. “It’s… it’s nothing.”

He could almost hear the agent on the other end frowning. “Are you sure? Target must be identified—”

“I said it’s nothing!” Wes hissed, ripping the earpiece out of his ear and stuffing it into his pocket.

“Yo, Wes!” Tucker’s voice called out from around the corner, too casual to be innocent. “You doing okay over there?”

Wes froze, his stomach sinking. Slowly, he leaned out from behind the wall. Tucker, Sam, and Danny were all staring at him now. Danny’s expression was sheepish, but Sam’s glare was sharp enough to cut steel. Tucker wore a nervous grin, but the way he adjusted his PDA told Wes he was ready for whatever might come next.

“What’s your problem, Weston?” Sam asked, folding her arms and cocking her head to the side. Her tone was light, but her eyes dared him to make a move.

Wes’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. What was he supposed to say? That he’d been sent to spy on them by a shady government agency that wanted to dissect their best friend?

“Uh, nothing,” Wes stammered, stepping back. “Just… forgot my locker combination.”

“Sure you did,” Sam muttered, rolling her eyes. “You keep lurking around corners, and you’re gonna have a real problem.”

“Big one,” Tucker added, tapping his PDA ominously.

Danny just gave him an awkward half-smile and a tiny wave before turning back to his friends. Wes ducked down the hallway and hurried away before anyone could say anything else.

He wasn’t sure what he was going to tell the GIW. He wasn’t even sure what he thought anymore. All he knew was that if he turned Danny in, he’d have to deal with more than just a couple of angry friends. And something told him Sam wasn’t bluffing.

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justaphantomhuman · 1 year ago

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HGSN x DP

FANART FOR @ectoplasmranch's FIC HERE

(read from right to left!!)

ALSO INSPIRED BY @tha-za's ART HERE

{FIC EXTRACT:

“Humans get cold,” Tucker said, his voice hollow, “You always seem to forget that bit, you know.”

Whatever had possessed him to say the words, whatever had taken hold of Tucker and allowed the accusation to slip out, he regretted not fighting it the moment the face of the creature in front of him slipped.

The mischievous smile, the childish glee- in seconds it all evaporated. And left behind was a shell that only resembled the boy Tucker had called a friend.

“What?” It asked, and its voice felt wrong in a way Tucker couldn’t pin down. It spoke in an uneasy cadence: “I’m human. You know that, don’t you, Tucker?”

Tucker couldn’t speak. He tried, but when his lips parted, nothing came out. Something felt like it was clawing its way up his esophagus. Sweat broke out on his neck. The expression on its face burrowed into his chest and expanded.

It took a step towards him and it wasn’t until it opened its mouth that Tucker realized he’d incorrectly clocked the movement as a threat, when in reality it was an act of desperation.

“I said, don’t you, Tucker?” It asked, its eyes feeling far too dead and far too flat for the tone of voice it had. It moved like an animal going to nip at a plate of food left on the ground, like it would back away and consume and then leave forever as quickly as it had come. }

- - -

[Dialogue in comic reads:

1st Panel –

TUCKER: ... Humans get cold. You always seem to forget that bit, you know?

2nd Panel –

DANNY: What? I'm human. You know that, don't you, Tucker?

3rd Panel –

DANNY?: I said, don't you... Tucker]

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darthfrodophantom · 3 months ago

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Death Is My Gift

Summary: When Danny becomes the personification of Death, his new powers are the least of his problems. Summoned as the fourth horseman of the apocalypse, Danny tries to sabotage it from the inside while also contending with the other three horsemen, the one who summoned him, and the knowledge that if he fails, he may have to help bring about the end of the world.

AO3: Link

Chapter 1: Still Dead - Thanks for Checking

“What the hell is that on your phone?” Sam asked, her tone dripping with derision.

Danny looked up from his screen and cocked his eyebrow. “What?” How could she see what was on his screen when she was on the other side of the table? Not that he had anything embarrassing on there, but look it wasn’t his fault that he messed up his Insta algorithm because he watched one video about large superheated copper balls melting through a telescope lens and now he couldn’t stop watching more of them. But still, how could she see it?

She gestured toward the back of his phone. “That sticker - what the hell is it?”

Understanding dawned on the usually clueless boy and his face brightened. “Oh, it’s my new sticker! Isn’t it great?” he preened as he moved his hand to the side so they could see the sticker in its full glory. He had been waiting for them to notice it, and somehow it took all the way until lunch for them to comment on it.

Tucker craned his neck around to see the purple coffin-shaped sticker plastered onto the back of Danny’s phone case. In white letters it read: “Still Dead. Thanks for checking.” Tucker snorted before he devolved into cackles. “Dude, that’s great!”

Danny grinned even wider. “Right? I thought it was too funny.”

“No, it’s stupid,” Sam argued, and her harsh attitude completely ruined the mood. “Danny, the less people associate you with death, the better.”

“Oh come on Sam, if they haven’t figured out that Danny Phantom and Danny Fenton are the same person by now when they have the exact same hairstyle, then a sticker is not going to phase anyone,” Tucker argued, ever in defense of his friend.

“Exactly!” Danny seconded.

“Or it’s exactly the last piece that helps people make that connection because there’s already so little separating you!” Sam exclaimed, though she did try to keep her voice down so no one else would overhear.

“Or maybe they’ll just think I’m a moody Gen Z kid that says this kind of dramatic stuff all the time. Which is why you should have let me keep that shirt.” He still thought that “Dead Inside” shirt was ironic and iconic, but Sam conveniently spilled black ink from her fancy new quill set on it and refused to give it back for this very same reason.

“Yeah, he could just make it his brand,” Tucker agreed. The two of them always seemed to be on the same page.

Sam reached out like she was about to rip the sticker off his phone, but decided against it and shook her head. “Fine. You want to keep the sticker on your phone? Fine, but don’t cry to me when people start putting the pieces together,” she huffed.

“Well since that’s not gonna happen, you’re gonna be waiting a long time,” Danny grinned. He struck an overly exaggerated victory pose with his neck cocked slightly to the side while he tilted his chin up to the sky.

Sam jerked back as the color drained from her face. “Danny what the—“ she cried out, so loudly and so suddenly that it caught the attention of other people in the lunchroom.

Danny immediately looked behind him, assuming that whatever caused Sam’s sudden reaction had to be behind him. His need to protect his friends from whatever threat caused such a startled response rose up and hammered in his throat as his mind spun with the possible horrors he would see behind him.

But he saw…nothing. Well, not nothing. He saw other students eating their lunches at other tables throughout the room. Students drifted in and out of the cafeteria as they finished their lunches. No ghost. No threat. Nothing that should cause Sam to turn as white as she did.

He turned back to face Sam, concern etched deep into his brow as he studied her face. “Sam? What’s wrong?” he asked in quiet urgency. If she truly saw some danger that he couldn’t, then he needed to know.

Sam studied Danny for a long moment, far too long for Danny’s liking. She wasn’t looking past him, she was looking at…him. “...Nothing. Nothing. It’s nothing. I think I’m just seeing things. I thought I saw…nevermind. It’s nothing,” she assured them.

Danny raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure? Because something freaked you out.”

She shook her head and plastered a forced smile on her face. “Yeah, I’m sure. Too little sleep and too much caffeine has just got me jumpy. I’m fine, really. Besides, we need to act like we’re having a normal conversation: too many people are watching.”

“Well yeah, you practically jumped out of your seat,” Danny pointed out.

She narrowed her eyes and gave him a half smile before she reached across the table and grabbed his abandoned phone. “It did let me get your phone though.”

“Wait hey!” Danny protested as he reached across the table to recover his phone from her clutches, but she deftly moved around his grasping hands.

“Now let’s see about that sticker,” she teased. Danny immediately doubled his efforts to retrieve his phone. Not being able to rely on ghost powers made it a little more difficult than it should have been to win it back (was he maybe relying on those too much? That felt like too much of a Jazz question for him to think about it too long), but he did save the phone and his ironic sticker. He was so preoccupied saving his sticker that he didn’t notice that Tucker had gone quiet and regarded Sam with a very significant and curious stare.

Lunch wrapped up shortly after the scuffle over the phone, and the three of them rushed off to their lockers and then off to class. Just outside the door to the classroom, Tucker held a hand out to stop Sam and waited for Danny to get a few feet inside before he spoke up in a whisper.

“Did you see the skull?”

Sam blinked and her face grew pale again, just like it had in the lunchroom. “The what?” she asked with a slightly shaky voice.

“The skull? Over Danny’s face?”

“What? Yes! Yes I thought I was going insane!” she exclaimed, though still in a whisper to not catch any more attention. The briefest moment of relief washed over her, but it immediately washed away into even more worry.

“No, I saw it this morning,” Tucker admitted. “Thought it was just some trick of the light or something. It was there one moment and then–”

“--Gone the next,” Sam finished. “And when I saw it I just felt…off. Like this moment of dread. Like I was–”

“--Looking at something I shouldn’t have seen,” Tucker validated as he nodded his head. “Yeah, same here. It was a weird feeling to have looking at my best friend.”

“What does it mean?”

“No idea,” Tucker sighed as he looked towards Danny pouring over his textbook in the hope that he’d be able to at least pretend that he did the reading before class. “But knowing Danny, it’s probably nothing good.”

Danny noticed odd glances from his friends a few more times that day. He worried maybe he had something on his face, but then again Sam would have said something. Tucker would have stayed quiet to have a good laugh about it later, but he’d have clued him into the joke by now. Maybe he was doing something ghostly without knowing it? But if that was the case they would have definitely let him know. In the end, he chalked it up to his friends being weird and went about his strangely quiet day.

There weren’t any ghost attacks. He couldn’t remember the last time he went through a school day without being interrupted by ghosts. It felt…nice, but unnerving at the same time, like he missed something. Like he was supposed to clue into something happening in the Ghost Zone. But in the end he decided not to worry about that either, especially once school ended and he could just hang out with his best friends ghost free.

By the time they hit up the game store (Tucker was still trying to get them into tabletop games) and the record store (Sam wanted to browse the LPs), Danny had forgotten all about his previous warnings…until he hit the Boba shop. Second up to bat, he placed his order with the barista, a smiling young woman who wore fun earrings that looked like watermelon slices. He paid for his drink and left a decent tip, but when he looked back up from the pin pad, her haunted expression caught him by surprise.

No longer kind and smiling, her unfocused gaze stared beyond him with eyes opened so wide her eyelids disappeared. Her pale, gaunt face looked hollow and lifeless. Her mouth fell open unnaturally.

“Fifty-seven years, one hundred and thirteen days, seven hours.”

Her flat, emotionless voice echoed within the sudden silence of the rest of the room. Chills shot along his body as the hair on his arms stood on end. His gut twisted uncomfortably as the presence of something…wrong and haunting fell over him. The silence of the world pressed in around him and left him only with that eerie voice thrumming though the void.

“What?” he finally stammered out.

“Do you want a receipt?” she repeated in her normal voice. Suddenly the whole world came back around him. The noise and the commotion of the busy Boba shop almost felt overwhelming after the sheer absolute silence.

“Oh uh…no,” he answered lamely.

“He’s good,” Sam spoke up quickly from behind. She pushed him to the side and took over the situation, but concern etched deep lines into her forehead. “But I’ll have a…”

What Sam ordered was lost on him as Tucker pulled him over to the drink pick-up counter. “Dude, what happened?” he asked in an urgent whisper. “You just froze.”

“I don’t…I don’t know. I heard something totally different…” The eerie tone of her voice, the chill that shot like livewire up his spine (like the accident, but he really didn’t want to think about that), it all stuck with him and wouldn’t leave him. His memory was absolute trash at the best of times, but he could still remember every number she quoted to him like it had been etched into his very core.

“What did you hear?” Tucker asked as Sam joined them. Those concerned lines across her brow still made him feel like something more was going on here, because Sam usually only worried when there was actually something to worry about.

“Just…some numbers, like years and months,” he shrugged, trying to pass it off as normal, even if it couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Like a countdown?” Sam pressed.

Danny’s eyes grew wide. Exactly like a countdown. Down to the hour.

He didn’t need to say anything for Sam to know she was on to something. “So what was she counting down to?”

“You think I know?” Danny rebuffed as he pointed at himself. “But you guys heard it right? How…creepy she sounded? How hollow?”

“No, we didn’t man,” Tucker responded, strangely serious. “We heard her ask if you wanted a receipt and then you just froze.”

He looked between both of his friends, hoping for some kind of alternate answer or for someone to say they were pulling his leg, but they weren’t. “So you…you didn’t hear it?” he implored, desperate for someone to agree with him.

“No Danny, we didn’t,” Sam confirmed. “But Danny, we need to–”

“Pomegranate boba,” another barista announced. Danny automatically turned towards her, only to see the same lifeless stare directed his way.

“Twenty years, two hundred and twelve days, two hours.”

He shook his head and closed his eyes as the pressure of the void threatened to swallow him again, but then like before, everything opened up and the noise of the world rushed back to him.

“Danny?” Sam fretted as she stepped closer to him.

He opened his eyes and looked out on the brightly lit boba shop. “Sorry I…it happened again,” he admitted.

Tucker and Sam exchanged significant glances behind Danny’s back before making an executive decision. Tucker grabbed their drink orders while Sam gently placed a hand on Danny’s back. “I think we should get out of here,” Sam suggested.

Danny could see the sense in that. The last thing they needed was to make a scene, and he could feel the eyes of both the people behind the counter and the ones standing in line. Best to beat a hasty retreat and figure this out somewhere a little quieter.

He scooted around the line of customers, hoping he could make a quiet exit. He caught the gaze of a young boy in line, but he only saw the vacant stare on his young face.

“Eighty three years, three hundred and two days, eleven hours.”

Danny spun quickly away from the boy and placed his hands over his ears, but it didn’t help as he locked eyes with a college student at a table who happened to look up from her laptop.

“Three years, thirty days, seven hours.”

And then the gaze of a well-dressed woman striding through the door.

“Forty years, eighty-eight days, nineteen hours.”

And the older man sitting with his grandchildren at a table.

“Ten years, one hundred and fifty days, three hours.”

Macabre countdowns from various shop patrons echoed around him. Anyone who met his gaze morphed their faces into the gaunt masks and intoned their countdown in that same hollow voice.

“Stop! Stop!” Danny cried as he curled in on himself. Tucker and Sam immediately pushed him through the doors and outside of the shop full of curious onlookers, but if they thought ushering him outside of the shop would be better, they were terribly wrong as Danny confronted more people on the street. The constant chorus of lifeless laments descended upon him in a deafening whirlwind.

“Ninety-eight days, twenty hours.”

“Sixty-eight years, two days, one hour.”

“Seventeen years, two hundred and ninety days, eight hours.”

Until they finally culminated in a chilling “Thirteen seconds.”

A morbid curiosity came over him as his gaze lingered on the older man who intoned the foreboding knell, just before the man clutched at his chest and dropped to the ground. Everyone around him rushed to his side and barked out orders to call an ambulance, but Danny knew deep, deep down in his core that it wouldn’t do any good.

The man was dead.

Dead, exactly thirteen seconds later.

Realizing this area was about to get a lot more attention, Tucker and Sam pushed Danny into a nearby alley and shrouded him from view. “Danny what the hell is happening?” Sam practically yelled.

Danny dropped to the ground as he clutched at his core that ached with the pain of what he just witnessed, and the horror of what he’d come to realize. He didn’t want to admit it to himself or to the world as a whole, but he had a horrifying feeling he knew what the times meant.

They were a countdown to death.

“I don’t…I don’t know why, but people keep telling me how long…how long they have…left,” Danny squeaked out between shallow breaths. The world swam around him and he clenched his jaw to try not to be sick.

“Left to what?” Tucker asked.

“To live you idiot!” Sam chastised. “Danny, are you sure?”

“What else could it be?” he exclaimed as he gripped at the hair on the sides of his head. “Someone said thirteen seconds, and then thirteen seconds later he…he…” His breath quickened in his chest. His heart thrummed too fast against his ribs. Sweat beaded on his brow as he shivered. This…this was a panic attack. Oh god, he was having a panic attack. But could anyone really blame him? He heard a man was going to die and just…just…watched it happen and couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t do anything!

“Danny…Danny just look at me,” Sam pressed delicately as she knelt next to him and placed a gentle hand on his arm.

His eyes reached her chin before he remembered - as soon as he met someone’s gaze, even from afar, they told him how long they had. He couldn’t know that about his best friend. He couldn’t. What if it was a small number? What would he even consider to be a small number? Would any number ever be large enough?

He slapped her away in a panic and retreated into himself as he buried his head into his arms. “No!” he screamed. “No, any time I look at someone they tell me how much time they have left and I can’t…I don’t want to know that. I can’t know that!” he practically screeched.

Sam and Tucker exchanged worried but uncertain looks. They’d dealt with a lot since the accident, but this was certainly a new complication where their very presence seemed to add more stress.

“Okay Danny, okay. We don’t know if that’s what’s happening.” She paused as she felt him tense beside her. “But if you think that’s what’s happening, then we won’t look at you.”

Danny grabbed his hair tight in his hands as he shook in a huddle on the floor. How was he going to do this? Never look at anyone he ever cared about again? Make sure they never looked at him? What kind of life would that be? He couldn’t live like that, with that paranoia that some day one of them would mess up and they’d meet his gaze and then he would know how much longer he had left to spend with them. His breathing quickened again as he found himself spiraling further down into his panic, down into a depth of foreboding terror that he didn’t know if he could climb out of again.

“Okay but Danny, even if you aren’t looking at anyone, I need you to breathe okay?” Sam pleaded. “Just breathe with me. In and out slowly. In and out.”

He did as he was told because he didn’t really have it in him to argue. In and out, in and out. He took deep breaths in through his nose and out through his mouth like Jazz taught him. It probably didn’t help that he was still curled up in a ball and didn’t have great air circulation, but he didn’t dare uncurl.

“Okay, good,” Sam praised as she finished sending an urgent text. “Now let’s figure out what’s going on, because we will figure it out.”

“You mean figure out why I can tell when people are going to die?” Danny snapped.

“Yes,” Sam replied, voice calm despite Danny’s barbed tone.

“...I don’t know if this is the right time, but there probably isn’t a right time so I’m just gonna say it,” Tucker sighed. “Danny, we noticed something weird earlier. It would only happen for a second, but it was like your face was covered by…like a translucent skull.”

Danny looked up but immediately thought better of it and ducked his head back down again. “A what?!”

“A skull. We didn’t know what it meant at the time–”

“We still don’t know what it means,” Sam added.

“--but it has to be related,” Tucker finished.

“This has to be more than a new ghost power,” Sam brainstormed. “This feels like something more significant.”

“More significant? What the hell does that mean?” Danny rebuked. He knew they were just trying to help, but honestly without an answer it was just making him feel more anxious and overwhelmed. He didn’t know if he could handle something more significant than being a half-dead, ghost-fighting freak.

“We don’t know,” Sam said, controlled and patient. “But we’ll figure this out Danny, we promise, just like we’ve figured out everything else.”

Everything else. Because there was always something. There was always some other side effect of the accident that all of them had to keep dealing with. Ghost powers, ghost fighting, his parents, new powers, a secret identity, ice powers, and now this. When was he done? When would he finally stop having more and more piled on top of his already overflowing mind? How much was a teenager expected to shoulder before he finally just buckled under the crushing weight of it all?

Apparently it would be one more thing.

He gasped as the cold breath escaped from his throat. He deflated a bit into his self hug. He knew the quiet afternoon was too good to be true. He knew it.

“Danny, you don’t have to go,” Sam mentioned, almost pleading.

“You know I have to,” he sighed with hollow defeat.

“No, you don’t. Let your parents get it, or Valerie. It doesn’t have to be you right now,” she begged.

“They never handle it well,” Danny argued as he stood but kept his gaze on the floor.

Sam shook her head, prepared to put her foot down. “But Danny, you literally just stopped having a panic attack, do you think now is the right time to do this? Maybe you just need to think about yourself for a bit!”

“When do I ever get to think about myself?” he barbed as he transformed. “Besides, a ghost can’t tell me how long they have to live, right? Sounds like I’m safer with one of them.”

Before they could argue with him he shot off into the sky, leaving a cloud of dread behind him. Tucker and Sam exchanged meaningful glances.

“Follow him?” Tucker checked.

“Absolutely follow him.”

~*~

As yet another ectoblast grazed Danny’s side, he realized Tucker and Sam had maybe been right about letting someone else handle this. His head was not in the game. He couldn’t shake the feeling of dread that swirled around him and it made the fight against the ghostly crow that much harder to focus on. His newfound popularity also proved to be a complication as it led to more onlookers watching the fight. He couldn’t help but meet the eyes of people in the crowd, and every time he listened to their own voices toll their own death knell, he found himself wide open to a hit from the annoying ghost that honestly wouldn’t have been that much of a challenge otherwise.

"Three hundred and twenty-one days, thirteen hours.”

He squeezed his eyes tight as he tried not to internalize how little time the concerned woman who looked his way had left, but closing his eyes during a fight was never a good idea.

“Danny!” he heard Sam yell, her voice distant but urgent.

He opened his eyes and saw the crow barreling in to charge with glowing talons ready to claw out his eyes. He immediately acted on instinct and threw out his hands to maybe summon a shield or take the talons to his arms or something.

He felt something cold and heavy fall into his hands, and he swung it without even looking at it too closely. A thin line of green slashed across the ghost and then it vanished. His overzealous slash continued through the brick of a nearby building that weathered and aged as decay seeped out from the fine line in the brick. When the arc of his swing stopped, he finally looked at what he held in his hands.

A scythe. Long and slender, the curved blade made a full crescent as it tapered into a neat, sharp point. The edge of the blade glowed with a faint green light, but it almost hurt to register: like its presence cut through the very existence of what his mind could accept as real. It looked so simple in his arms, and yet it felt dangerous. Deadly.

He stared dumbfounded at the blade in his hands. It felt heavy in his arms, but not because of its actual weight. It actually felt too easy and natural to swing. His fingers gripped around the shaft like he was meant to hold it. It felt so right and natural in his arms, and that scared him even more.

He immediately dropped it, but instead of hearing it clatter to the ground, it vanished into shadows as the absolute black swallowed it.

With panic etched all over his face, he looked desperately towards Sam’s voice, but only after he remembered that he didn’t dare look towards his friends. He dropped his gaze, but they understood his intent and rushed over to him.

“Danny, Danny are you okay?” Sam asked as she grabbed her friend’s arm.

“No…no I don’t think so,” he admitted. As hard as it felt to admit, he wasn’t well. He had no idea what the hell was happening, but he just knew none of this could be good. A sense of dread lingered around him that he couldn’t shake. A whisper of an answer tickled at the edges of his mind, but it was so cloaked in fear and terror that he didn’t dare even acknowledge its presence.

Sam nodded morosely and squeezed his arm. “That’s okay. We’ve got this Danny. C’mon, let’s get to my house. I think I know what’s going on.”

~*~

Danny sat in his favorite chair in the Manson library. Most of the room felt like something out of a middle-aged woman’s Pinterest page: a million shades of beige accented by a few plants or vines. Some books even had their spines facing the wall because their binding was too colorful. Sam managed to carve out a corner for herself. She separated this corner out with deep red curtains and inside its sanctuary she kept all her books (spines proudly out, thank you very much) on black shelves. Gothic sconces of wrought iron glowed with just enough mood lighting to read by and plush wine red chairs provided the perfect getaway to crawl into with a book.

One of those chairs sucked him up inside its cushions and he let the weight of the fabric surround him. Sitting here with the dark mood lighting while Sam read aloud some new book or poem always felt like a comfortable space. Maybe Sam hoped the familiarity would bring some comfort to him right now, but even its power couldn’t counteract the horrible twisting in the pit of his stomach.

His friends swore they wouldn’t look at his face and would focus on his chest instead, but he still didn’t feel comfortable looking anywhere but at his wringing hands in his lap, just in case. He’d heard about too much death already today: too many times that seemed far too short for the nice faces that seemed burned into his mind. He had no idea who these people were and probably would never see them again, but he would forever remember their faces and would never be free of the knowledge of their death.

Would it be quick? Slow? Painful? Could he stop it? Could he save them? If he remembered their faces could he hunt them down and try to save them? Maybe not the ones in decades, but the ones who would be dying in the next few months? Could he help them so they didn’t end up like the old man on the street who died before his eyes while he was powerless to stop it?

The thump of a large book on a table shook him out of his thoughts as Sam stood near the small round table. “You’re not gonna like this, but I think I found the answer.”

That certainly caught his attention and he looked towards the book. Whether he’d like the answer or not, he needed to know. The heavy old tome looked like every Victorian book that Sam loved to collect, with a dark binding, embossed edges, and thick block lettering for the title.

The Tome of Record for the Myths and Legends of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

No.

No, that couldn’t be the right book. That was not the answer.

He shook his head and backed up in his chair as far away from the book as he could physically get. “No. That’s not the right book.”

Sam approached both Danny and the book gently, like any sudden movement would spook him. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I know I’m right about this.”

Tucker leaned in from his chair and his eyes grew wide. “Wait, apocalypse? Sam you’re serious?”

“No, she’s not serious because she’s wrong!” Danny insisted.

Sam slowly opened the book and turned to a page marked with a dark black ribbon. “Just look at it Danny. It explains a lot.”

Against his better judgment he peeked at the new chapter: “The Fourth Horseman: Death.” He didn’t let himself read any more, but the haunting image of a black-cloaked figure atop a skeletal horse with a skull for a face and a very familiar looking scythe froze him in his seat.

The death knells. The skull. The scythe.

No, just because it made sense, that didn’t mean anything. Lots of things in this world made sense without actually being right, and this was just another one of those things. It didn’t mean that he– He couldn’t possibly be–

Tucker trailed a finger along the text of the book as he read, his mouth and eyes falling agape. “Wait Sam are you…are you trying to say that Danny is…Death? Like the Death?”

He felt an irrational anger towards Tucker for putting into physical words what his mind refused to acknowledge. Because it was crazy…right? Some crazy, wacky theory. This couldn’t be reality, it just…it couldn’t be.

Sam nodded solemnly. “I am. I don’t know why, but Danny has somehow become the personification of Death.”

For some reason the finality in Sam’s voice forced him to really hear it. As much as he wanted to deny it, the nagging whisper always there on the periphery of his mind had been trying to tell him the whole time. He knew it from the first countdown, but refused to see it. He knew what the symbolism of the scythe meant, but he refused to connect it. And he knew that all of these pieces only added up to one possible explanation. Just like Sam, he’d already reached the same conclusion, but he just refused to see it. He couldn’t avoid it anymore.

He was Death.

He needed to get away from the book, the picture, the proof. He didn’t want to see it anymore. He fell through the chair, momentarily grateful to have some kind of physical barrier between him and the book, but the piercing, empty eyes of the skull on the page followed him even through the chair. He scrambled back along the floor until he hit the bookcase behind him.

“No no no I don’t want this! I don’t want this!” he screamed in ever increasing levels of panic. He looked at his shaking hands, almost expecting to see bony hands stretching out instead of his normal skin. He grabbed at his face, his arms, anything to make sure that he hadn’t turned into some skeleton. “I can’t–I don’t want to be Death!”

Sam and Tucker rushed over to his side and pulled his trembling body into a hug. They tried to bestow him with whatever comfort they could, but they knew it wouldn’t be enough. Just like they did when Danny first emerged from the portal, they were at a loss for what they could do and they just tried to be a physical support for him.

Danny grabbed onto his friends desperately as he shook in their arms. He didn’t know how much he needed their reassuring strength and strong hug until he found himself in their arms. Maybe he relied on them too much for emotional stability, but something about their presence served as a grounding force for him and he needed that now more than ever.

“We’ll figure it out Danny,” Sam tried to assure him. “We always do.”

They did always figure it out. The accident, the ghost powers, the ghost fighting, the secret identity, Pariah Dark, Vlad, his horrifying potential future - they’d found a way to make it through everything that his strange life had thrown at him. It stood to reason they could make it through this too, but for some reason this seemed so much more imposing than all those other obstacles.

The personification of death. What did that even mean? Did he have to reap souls? Was he actually the one responsible for killing people? Was he now to blame for everyone’s deaths? Did he have to help people cross over or find peace or meaning in their lives? Could he still live his normal human life? He’d already been neglecting it so much because of ghost fighting, but would this completely eclipse everything else? It felt like such a huge burden to throw onto his already overburdened shoulders, and he didn’t know if he had the strength to keep it all up.

But even more than a burden, being Death pushed him even closer to the dark stench of death that always seemed to swirl around him. He already straddled a very fine line between life and death, and while he didn’t always know where he found himself on either side of it, he cherished the balance. He liked being reminded that he was still alive. He died, and he was a ghost, but he was so much more than that too. His heart beat, he kept growing - he still had a life. He needed those reminders to stay sane. But being Death…it pushed him so much further towards that darker side. It disrupted that balance that he held onto so desperately. Those reminders of life seemed so much further away, like they could be snatched away from him at any moment, and he didn’t want to think where that constant focus on death and loss would take him.

He couldn’t keep dwelling on this. He was a boy of action, and he never did well just thinking through things. Maybe that helped Jazz, but he needed to do something. Figure this out, get rid of it, something. So he pulled away from the hug slightly, enough of a signal for his friends to release the warm group hug. He missed that comfort immediately, but he couldn’t stay huddled up against the bookshelf forever.

“How did this happen?” he croaked. Trying to find a reason meant that he had to accept it as the truth, and that hurt, but he’d already accepted it. Now he just had to get rid of it.

“I don’t know,” Sam admitted. “But Danny, we have a much more pressing issue than how.”

“More pressing than this?” Danny questioned, almost hurt that his internal turmoil and need to solve this wasn’t considered a pressing issue.

“Yeah, because it gets worse.”

Panic clenched around his heart again. How could it possibly get worse? This already seemed like a destitute situation with no possible solution on the horizon.

“Worse than Danny having death powers?” Tucker inquired. Well at least Tucker was on the same wavelength.

She nodded morosely. She took a deep breath, but as she slowly breathed out she straightened up, her brow resolute. “The summoning of the fourth horseman…it’s the final sign. The apocalypse is coming, and Danny’s going to be forced to make it happen.”

~*~

I hope you all enjoyed this! It's a little late of a submission for Ectober's Day 17 Gothic Horror prompt, but apparently world-building a multi-chapter longfic took a lot longer than I expected. But I'm excited to share some of my lore behind this ghostly version of the four horsemen over the next two chapters!

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q-gorgeous · 10 months ago

Text

Sew Me Up and Keep Me Whole

fanfiction

ao3

word count: 7603

Thanks to seeing how various injuries are treated as a member of the football team, Dash actually has a decent background in first aid and anatomy. He gets adopted into Team Phantom when circumstances keep leading him to be the one patching up Phantom after fights.

ohohohhoho

Dash was walking home after a football game. He was exhausted and was looking forward to going to bed tonight. Plus there was a ghost attack at the end of the game so it ran extra long while they waited for it to be over.

He turned into the park. It was dark in the park, but it made his trip home from the school faster. His dad would be even madder if he woke him up this late. He wanted to get back as soon as possible.

He got to the wooded part of the trees when he heard something. It sounded like voices.

“Tucker, you’re not doing it right.” Somebody whispered angrily. It sounded like Manson.

“Do you want to try doing this?” He hissed back. “I’m the only one who’s taken a sewing class. You didn’t think you should be reduced to something so ‘stereotypically feminine.’”

“-’s not ev’n a fem’n’n thing.” Was that Fenton? “Sewing is a b-basic life skill…”

“That’s not the point!” She hissed back at them. “My mom-”

Dash stepped through the bushes and past the tree separating them and fell short. That wasn’t who he was expecting to be there.

Phantom sat in between Foley and Manson, not Fenton. As he stepped through the bushes their heads snapped up to look at him. Phantom’s head groggily lulled to the side as he looked at Dash.

“Ha. Jus’...what we need.”

Dash frowned. “What?”

Phantom chuckled and closed his eyes.

“No! Don’t close your eyes!” Manson lightly slapped him. When he just groaned and leaned his head back against the tree behind him she slapped him harder.

“...Sam!” He pried his eyes open and glared at her. “Don’ hit m’..”

“You can’t fall asleep until Tucker is done with your stitches. If only he could just hurry it up.” Manson ground out.

“I’m going as fast as I can!” Tucker breathed out, his hand shakily pulling another stitch through Phantom’s injury. “I don’t want to leave an ugly scar or make it worse by not doing it well.”

Dash stepped closer to where they were sat behind the bushes. Manson shot another look at him. He could finally see Phantom’s wound and it was pretty gnarly. Foley’s stitches were holding it closed but they definitely weren’t pretty.

“Do you need help?” Dash asked apprehensively. “I’ve seen a lot of injuries during football practice. And I’m not squeamish like you, Foley.”

“Yeah? You know how to sew up wounds?” Manson spit out. “How is watching people get treated for wounds during practice the same as sewing up an injury?”

Dash held up his hands. “It seems like Foley doesn’t know what he’s doing either. I know how to sew already. Isn’t that like halfway there?”

Foley looked at Manson. “If he can get it done faster than me, why not let him? We’re gonna run out of time.”

“How can we trust him?” Manson glanced at Dash, worrying her lip.

“He is literally Phantom’s biggest fan except for maybe Paulina. Do you really think he’s gonna try to kill him?”

A blush rose to Dash’s cheeks at Foley’s comment while Manson kept studying him.

A few more moments went by before she looked back at Phantom. He smiled at her groggily.

She sighed. “Fine. Dash, get over here.”

His eyes widened, stunned that they actually accepted his help. He strode forward and knelt on the ground between Foley and Manson. Phantom looked up at him, the goofy smile still on his face.

“Funny that y’ur the one h’lping me.” He chuckled.

“Why’s that?” Dash asked. Phantom just shook his head and chuckled again.

“Here.” Foley handed him a pair of gloves. “We don’t know if his ectoplasm can irritate or damage skin. We haven't felt risky enough to try it out yet.”

“How often do you guys do this?” Dash snapped his gloves on and took the needle from Foley. Phantom smiled wistfully.

“I get hurt a lot.”

Dash hummed as he made his first stitch. “Well that’s not good.”

“Yeahh.. ghosts suck. And also bullies. They can hurt pretty bad sometimes too.”

Shame wriggled into Dash’s stomach as he made another stitch. What would Phantom think of him if he knew he was a bully himself?

Phantom hummed a wistful sigh as he watched Dash sew his wound closed.

“Y’know, ‘ur pretty cute.”

Dash’s brain stopped for a moment and spent a second processing what Phantom said. He felt like he was short circuiting.

“What?” Dash asked.

Tucker burst out laughing. “Man, you’re not gonna live this one down.” Sam shushed him.

Dash continued sewing Phantom’s wound closed as he tried to get his bearings. He never would’ve thought his hero would think of him like that.

“So.” He said, pulling the thread tight. “Are you guys friends?”

“We’r’ bes frie-” Sam covered his mouth.

“We help him with ghost fights. We don’t know him that well.”

“Oh. It just seemed like you guys are pretty close. He must trust you two a lot.”

Dash finished up his last stitch. “There we go. You’re all closed up.”

Phantom smiled at him again as Dash pulled off his gloves and put them in a bag Tucker held up to him. “Tha’ was s’much faster than Tucker.”

“Much cleaner stitches, too.” Sam said, leaning down to look at them.

“‘Thank you for trying, Tucker. We’re so grateful for you, Tucker.’” He mumbled out as he put all their supplies back in his bag.

“C’mon, Tuck!” Phantom lulled his head in Tucker’s direction. “You’ve stitched up so… so many stitches before now. I’d’d have bled out so many times over with-without you.”

“Thank you, D- Phantom.”

Dash pushed himself up off the ground and stretched. “Do you guys need help getting him back… Wherever he needs to go?”

“We can take him back to my house.” Sam stood up. “My parents are those people who go to bed at eight o’clock and get up at some ungodly hour for their office jobs.”

“Can you stand, Phantom?” Tucker asked him.

Phantom shakily tried to stand up. He only made it up part way before he fell back to his knees.

“Here.”

Dash bent down and picked Phantom up bridal style. He adjusted his hold on him until he was holding him comfortably.

“Okay.” Dash turned to look at Sam. “Lead the way.”

He followed behind Sam and Tucker as they walked through the trees. Phantom was much heavier than what Dash would expect from a ghost. He figured ghosts would be light as a feather since they could fly, but Phantom felt so much like a human it was uncanny.

Phantom leaned his head back into the crook of Dash’s neck. He took a sharp breath in as he felt Phantom’s breath ghost against his neck.

Dash looked down at Phantom and his eyes were closed, but after a few moments of Dash staring Phantom peeked an eye open.

He jumped and looked back up at Sam and Tucker. They were whispering between themselves, shooting glances back at Dash. Phantom chuckled.

“Thank you for helping us.”

Dash looked back down at him. Phantom already seemed to be more coherent than when Dash first stumbled upon them.

“Of course. You should probably thank your friends for letting me help you. They were pretty skeptical at first.”

Phantom shrugged. “They’re just looking out for me. They’re protective.”

“So you are friends?” Dash asked. Phantom looked at Sam and Tucker.

“Yeah. They’re the best friends I could’ve asked for.”

“Are you friends with the Fenton kid too?” Dash asked.

Phantom turned to look at Dash sharply. “The Fenton kid?”

“Yeah.” Dash nodded. “Danny. Hangs around with those two. Kind of a freak.”

Phantom frowned at him and turned away from him. “Oh. The ghost hunter’s son? No. Why would I be friends with him? His parents would tear me apart.”

“Oh. Yeah that’s true. Those three just never go anywhere without each other so I thought maybe he was in on this too. He’s a dork anyways.”

“We’re here.” Sam called behind them.

Dash looked up to see Sam and Tucker stopped in front of a set of stairs leading to Sam’s front door. Phantom suddenly jumped out of Dash’s arms and winced once his feet hit the ground. It set Dash off balance and it took a moment for him to regain it.

Phantom walked over to where Sam and Tucker were waiting.

“Will you be okay?” Dash called to him.

“Yeah.” Phantom said without looking back at him. “I’ll be fine.”

He walked away from Dash without looking back at him. The three of them walked inside the door and shut it behind them.

He stood there and stared at the closed door. A pit formed in his stomach but he’s not sure what happened.

He turned around and started the short trek home.

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

Dash was walking in the hallways of Casper High. He was heading to his next class. He just wanted this day to be over with.

Up ahead of him he saw Fenton and his friends. He smirked and started walking faster to catch up with them.

“Hey, Fentoadally lame! Where do you think you’re going!”

He saw Fenton’s shoulders rise and fall as he sighed. He looked over his shoulder at Dash, an angry grimace on his face.

“Anywhere away from you.”

The hallways were starting to clear out as it got closer to the bell. He caught up to them and grabbed Danny by the shoulder, turning him around and slamming him into the lockers to their left. He glared up at Dash.

“What do you want, Dash?”

Dash sneered down at him. “I want to get my afternoon wailing in before I lose my chance and you disappear for the rest of the day like you did yesterday.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “And why does your wailing have to be on me?”

“Because you’re my favorite nerd to wail on.” Dash said as he pulled his arm back, ready to hit Danny.

“Excuse me!”

Something hit Dash in the back of the head. He hissed and when he turned around he saw Sam holding her boot in her hand, glaring at him.

“What the hell, Manson?” He rubbed the spot she had hit. “What’s that boot made of?”

“Steel toe.” Tucker said from where he stood, far away from the action.

“How’s it feel, Dash? Huh? Do you like getting hit? Do you want to know what it’s like to get beat up for no reason every single day?” Sam spat at him.

He took a step away from her. He already knew what that was like. He didn’t need to know what it would be like, just from a different person.

“Sam-” Danny tried stepping out from behind Dash to get to her but there wasn’t enough room for him to move.

“Why should we let you keep helping us with Phantom if we can’t trust you to leave our friend alone?”

“What?” Dash asked, incredulous. “How are either of these things related?”

Sam walked up to him and poked him in the chest. Distantly Dash could hear the late bell ringing. “Because how do we know you wouldn’t turn on Phantom? That if we relied on you, that you would actually be there to help him?”

“But Phantom is-”

“A person, just like Danny.” Sam said. “Just because Danny isn’t your ‘hero’ doesn’t mean he deserves to be a punching bag.”

Dash rolled his eyes. “Fenton just asks for it.”

Sam closed her eyes and shook her head.

“No, you know what? We won’t need your help anymore, Dash. We were doing just fine without you. We’ll manage.”

“I didn’t want to have to associate with you nerds anymore than I have to anyways.” Dash tried to ignore the pang in his chest at the idea of not being able to help Phantom anymore.

“You know, I’ve heard that Phantom doesn’t like bullies.” Fenton said from behind him.

Dash turned and frowned at him. “What do you know?” He shoved Fenton into the lockers one more time and walked away from them. He could hear Sam furiously whispering with Danny about something but Dash tried to tune it out.

Where did Manson get off threatening to beat him? That’d just make her a hypocrite, wouldn’t it? Doing the very thing she hates?

Whatever. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t make it so Phantom couldn’t talk to him.

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

“Hey, I’ll see you later, Kwan!” Dash said as he walked out of the Nasty Burger. Kwan turned around where he was walking the opposite way down the sidewalk.

“Yeah! See you tomorrow, buddy!” Kwan shouted back at him.

Dash smiled as he started his walk home. Kwan was always pretty good at cheering him up. He’d had a pretty bad week. Every time he’d gone to Phantom to try to talk to him he’d up and disappear or fly away before Dash could even get a word in. Sam and Tucker must’ve said something to him about what happened with Fenton.

He sighed. He’d probably never get to talk to Phantom again at this rate.

He heard some rustling coming from the alley he was coming up on. He paused just before it. Nothing good ever came from inside alleyways.

“Tucker, where are you- Danny, he-”

He could hear Manson’s panicked voice coming from inside the alley. He crept forward.

Dash looked into the alley to see Sam desperately talking on the phone. Phantom sat on the ground in front of her. She was holding a rag to his stomach.

“No, no I already have the supplies. I can’t-”

A tear streamed down her face. “Tucker, I need you. I can’t do this without you.”

Phantom’s eyes slowly opened. He tilted his head towards the end of the alley that Dash was standing in. He locked eyes with him, taking a deep breath.

“Sam..”

She looked up at him. When she saw where he was looking, she followed his gaze until her eyes landed on Dash. Her eyes widened. After a few moments of staring, she put her phone back up to her ear.

“No, Dash- Dash is here. He just walked up. He- He could probably help us again. Just one more time.”

Dash jumped. How serious was it this time that she couldn’t wait for Tucker?

“Dash, get over here!”

He jumped again at her call, but ran to them inside the alley.

“Can you stitch him up again?” She pleaded. “I know what I said, but I-”

“It’s fine.” Dash said. “I’m not that petty that I’ll refuse to save his life just because you don’t like me.”

She pulled a first aid kit out of her backpack and handed it to him. “You’re mean to me and my friends. I don’t want to be around you if you’re going to bully us.”

“Tch.” Dash scoffed. He pulled on a pair of gloves. “As if you aren’t just as mean to us. You go around antagonizing Paulina and forcing things that you want to do on other people.”

She rolled her eyes. “You literally beat people up and stuff them into their lockers. That is not the same thing.”

“Yeah, well-”

“As much as I love watching Sam tell it to you, can you guys hurry it up?”

Dash and Sam looked at Phantom. He had one eye squinted open and he was looking between them.

“Sorry.” Dash said. He threaded the needle and got started stitching up Phantom’s wound.

They were silent while Dash worked. His stitches were quick and soon Dash was done. He sighed.

“I actually used to be friends with them when we were younger. Before they met you.”

“What?” Sam turned to stare at him. “Why are you so mean to them then?”

“My parents didn’t like Fenton’s parents. Or all the nonsense they were spouting about ghosts. I’d come home and tell them all about it and they thought the Fenton’s were ‘corrupting my mind’ or something like that.”

Phantom turned his head to look at Dash.

“My parents told me I couldn’t be his friend anymore. And I told Danny that, but he didn’t get it. And he and Tucker were a package deal at that point. They were more inseparable than me and Danny had ever been. So I just… told them that I didn’t want to be their friend anymore. That they weren’t cool enough. I think I hit one of them. They didn’t go out of their way to talk to me after that.”

They sat in silence for a moment after that.

“Parents, amiright?” Sam said quietly, as she looked at Phantom. “My parents are like that. They try to get me to stop being friends with Danny all the time but I argue too much with them for it to ever stick. Or I don’t tell them when I’m hanging out with Danny.”

“At least you have that luxury.” Dash looked at the ground. “If I don’t listen to my parents… Well, they like to use their fists more than their words.”

Sam covered her mouth.

Dash let out a short laugh.

“And now ghosts are real and they keep asking me all sorts of questions like they expect me to remember the things they told me were bad and wanted me to forget.”

Dash was startled when he felt a hand on his arm. He looked up and saw that Phantom was still staring at him.

“It’s not your fault.”

Dash shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. He shifted so that instead of kneeling on his knees, he was sitting on the ground. He ran his hands through his hair roughly.

“It is my fault!” Dash ground out. “I didn’t have to treat them the way I did! I could’ve broken the cycle but now I’m just like my parents.”

“You don’t have to be.” Sam said. “There’s always time to change. Hell, admitting to how shitty you’ve been is a pretty good start.”

Dash sighed. Phantom looked like he was about to say something but he was interrupted by Tucker sprinting into the alley, out of breath.

“I’m here! I’m here. Did you guys get it figured out?”

Sam nodded and gestured at Dash. “He helped us out again. He really came in clutch there.”

Dash nodded and stood up. “I guess I should get going now. I don’t want to-”

“Wait!” Sam held her hands up in a stop motion. She stood up to look at him. “Do you want to join team Phantom?”

“What?” Tucker looked at her, shocked. “Why are you asking Dash to join the team? I thought you-”

“Clearly having another person around will be beneficial.” Sam interrupted Tucker without looking at him. “You’ve already helped us twice. You could even teach us to sew and stitch up wounds better.”

Dash looked between the three of them. He wasn’t a part of whatever they had going. Would they really be okay with him joining their team? Did they really want him to be a part of it? Or was it just a pity offer?

“Why would you want me to join your team?” Dash said quietly.

“You care more than I thought you did.” Sam said.

Dash laughed. That didn’t seem like a very concrete reason.

“Break the cycle.”

Dash looked back up at where Phantom still sat on the ground. He was staring at Dash.

“Break the cycle.” He said again. “Prove that you can be better. If not for us, just do it for yourself.”

Dash looked away. He nodded. That sounded like a good reason. Work to break the cycle his parents put him in. He nodded again.

“Okay. I’ll do it. I’ll join Team Phantom.”

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

Dash stood outside Tucker’s door awkwardly. Tucker said now would be a good time to come over so they could practice sewing. He hasn’t knocked yet though. He hadn’t been back here since they were all still friends.

He lifted his hand up and paused for a moment. Finally, he brought his fist down on the door and knocked twice.

“I’ve got it!” Tucker shouted from inside the house. He heard some shuffling and then a muffled, “Mom!”

Then the door opened, but instead of Tucker it was his mom. His eyes widened as her mouth dropped open. She looked behind her where Tucker was standing and then looked back at Dash. Tucker shrugged behind her.

“Why, Dash, I haven’t seen you in such a long time. How have you been?” She asked him.

He nodded. “Good, good. Things have been fine. How have you been?”

“Things have been good here.” She looked between Tucker and Dash again. “What brings you over after so long?”

“I, uh..” Dash stammered. They didn’t come up with an excuse. He really couldn’t tell her they were practicing sewing so they could sew up wounds.

“Class project!” Sam’s voice came from down the steps behind him. He turned to see her hurrying up the stairs. “We’re going to be working on our sewing today for class. Dash is going to practice with us.”

“Ohh.” Tucker’s mom nodded. “Well that sounds fun. Do you guys have any projects in the making?”

“We’re not quite there yet, mom.” Tucker said as he stepped forward. “We’re still learning so we’ll probably just be sewing squares of fabric together.”

She nodded again. “Let me know if you kids have any questions. I know a thing or two about sewing myself.” She smiled at them.

“Thanks, mom. We will.” Tucker waved them into the house and then closed the door behind them once they were both inside. “Come on, let’s go upstairs.”

He followed behind both Tucker and Sam as they made their way up the stairs. He hadn’t been here in a very long time but little had changed over the years. Except for maybe new photos that had been hung up on the wall.

They reached the top of the stairs and then Tucker pulled down the attic door and unfolded the ladder. They climbed up there and Dash had the fleeting thought that if they wanted to make him disappear, an attic would be a pretty good place to make that happen.

“Boo.”

Dash jumped as a voice spoke close into his ear and then laughter erupted from an invisible mouth.

“Oh that was good. I haven’t been able to get Sam or Tucker that good in a long time.”

Phantom dropped his invisibility and appeared in front of Dash. Dash chuckled nervously.

“Phantom, don’t be too mean to him. We’re trying to make amends, remember?” Sam called to them while she and Tucker dug through some box.

“Yeah, yeah.” Phantom waved her comment off. He looked back at Dash. “I gotta have fun with this whole ghost thing somehow though, right?”

Dash nodded. “I can’t say I would be so chivalrous if I had your powers. I’d probably be sneaking into the girl’s locker room or something.”

“Eh. It was exciting the first couple times but now the novelty has worn off.”

Dash’s eyes widened. Phantom went to spy in the girl’s locker room?

“Anyways.” Phantom drawled out. “What will I be doing today?”

Dash stared at him. “You’ll also be learning to sew.”

Phantom frowned. “Why?”

“If Sam or Tucker, or even me, ever get hurt during one of your ghost fights it might be useful for you to know. Or if you ever have an occasion where you’re alone and need to do it yourself, if you’re able to of course.”

“Are you gonna be like, our teacher?” Sam asked Dash.

Dash shrugged. “I can explain the basics but this is mostly just practice time.”

They got to work practicing their sewing. Sam and Tucker were working together on the other side of the attic while Dash worked with Phantom. They had cut up squares of fabric that they were sewing together. Phantom looked up at Dash as he pulled a thread through his two pieces he had in his hands.

“Why’d you learn to sew?” Danny asked. “It’s not something most guys pick up.”

Dash shrugged. “My parents liked to wreck a lot of my things growing up. They destroyed a lot of stuffed animals, but when they ripped apart the last teddy bear I got from my grandma before she passed away I decided I was going to take it into my own hands and fix it.”

“Oh.” Phantom’s shoulders dropped and he looked at Dash sadly. “I’m sorry they did that.”

“They’re not good people.” Dash made a couple more stitches on his own squares in his hands. “It hurt when I realized that.”

Phantom nodded. “Sometimes I worry that my parents are bad people. They want to hurt me but I know they’re not actually bad.”

“How are they not bad? You just said they want to hurt you.” Dash frowned at him.

“It’s more complicated because of the whole ghost thing.” Phantom shook his head. “They don’t know who I am.”

Dash’s eyes widened. “What? How can they not know?”

Phantom’s sad expression turned into a smirk. “I’ve got to keep some of my secrets.”

Dash rolled his eyes. “Okay, Inviso-bill.”

“Hey!” Phantom pushed his shoulder.

His skin tingled where Phantom had touched him through his jacket. They smiled at each other and Dash looked back down at the fabric in his hands. They worked for another couple moments before Phantom spoke again.

“What if we sewed them all together?”

“What?” Dash looked back up at him.

“The squares.” Phantom held up his small pile he had gathered while they were working. “We could sew all the squares we make together and turn them into a blanket.”

“Ohh. That’d be cool.” He turned around in his seat. “Yo, Manson. Foley!”

They turned around to face him. “What?”

“Phantom wants to turn our squares into blankets.”

“I like that idea.” Tucker said.

“Does your mom have a sewing machine? It might be easier to sew all the rows together with the sewing machine once we get that far.”

Tucker nodded. “Let me go ask her for it.”

He headed downstairs. Sam stood up and walked over to them.

“How’s your practice going?” She asked.

“Good.” Phantom held up his work so far. The stitches were getting neater and tighter as he showed Sam his progress.

As Dash was showing Sam his own squares, Tucker made his way back up the ladder to the attic. He hefted the sewing machine up onto the floor and climbed up with some extra fabric and some kind of stuffing. He let out a breath.

“My mom gave us some fabric and some quilt batting so we can finish turning it into a blanket.”

“How do we decide who gets to keep the blanket?” Dash asked.

Phantom looked at him. “I think you should get it. We can always make more if we’re going to keep practicing sewing. You should get the first one.”

“Yeah.” Sam said. “It can be a thank you for taking the time to teach us and practice with us.”

“Let’s get this bad boy finished.”

They spent the next couple hours practicing sewing the squares by hand and once they were all sewed together Dash took them to the sewing machine. They got all the rows assembled and the blanket put together with the stuffing inside. Dash stood up and held it up for everyone to look at.

Tucker clapped. “Great work everyone. Just, wow.”

Sam rolled her eyes.

Dash lowered it and smiled at them.

“Here.”

Phantom floated forward and grabbed the other end of the blanket and helped Dash fold it. Their fingers met as they folded it together. Phantom passed his end to Dash and their fingers grazed as he pulled away.

“Thanks.” They stared at each other for a few moments. Dash cleared his throat. “Well. I should get going. It’s getting kind of late.”

“Yeah. Me too.” Sam checked the time on her phone. My parents are gonna start calling me if I don’t get home soon.”

“Thanks for helping us out Dash.” Phantom called as Dash started making his way down the ladder. Dash smiled at him.

“Thanks for giving me the chance.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

Dash stepped out of the school. It was empty in the schoolyard. Dash had had to stay late to finish up a test with one of his teachers.

“Hey.”

Dash jumped at the voice beside him. Phantom flickered into visibility.

“Why do you keep doing that?” Dash pouted.

Phantom shrugged and held his head in his hand as he floated next to Dash. “It’s funny. Like I said, I can’t get Sam and Tucker like that anymore.”

“Where are they anyways?” Dash crossed the street in front of the school and started the walk home.

“They’re busy.” Phantom groaned and flipped onto his back midair. “They had some very important stuff to do and they said I couldn’t come with them.”

“So tragic.” Dash smiled and shook his head at Phantom’s antics.

Phantom laughed as he floated backwards on his back beside Dash, his arms crossed behind his head. Dash smiled as he watched him, a warm feeling growing in his chest. Phantom’s smile felt like the sun.

“I think they’re trying to surprise me for my birthday. It’s coming up soon.”

Dash’s eyes widened. “You still celebrate your birthday?”

Phantom shot a look back at him. “Yeah? Don’t you still celebrate yours?”

“Yeah, but you’re a ghost. Wouldn’t you celebrate your death day instead?”

Phantom scrunched up his nose and stared at a point from where they had come. “I try as hard as I can to not think about my death day. It was painful.”

“What was it like? Dying?”

Phantom turned to face Dash. He studied his face for a moment before he spoke.

“I-”

A roar sounded from ahead of them on the street they were walking down. A ghost turned around the corner of a building and stared down at them.

“Stay back.” Phantom said to him and flew away. He flew circles around the ghost's head and soon it was facing back the other way. It roared when Phantom shot an ectoblast between its eyes.

It swung at him again and again, its slow paws trying and trying to hit Phantom.

“You sure are slow!” Phantom smirked at the ghost and spun onto his back. “You fight like my sister.”

The ghost roared again and Phantom flew back to avoid the swipe but he didn’t move fast enough.

The ghost scratched Phantom across the chest as he flew back. Dash could hear him hiss from where he stood on the ground.

“That’s all you got, ghost?” Phantom held his fists back up.

As if taking that as a challenge, the ghost shrieked. It reared up for another hit. Phantom dodged the first one but wasn’t so lucky the second time.

When the ghost’s claws connected with Phantom, Dash could hear the sound of his suit ripping. The ghost spun and sent him flying backwards down the street.

“Phantom!” Dash shouted as he turned to look where Phantom had been thrown behind him.

He laid there on the ground. He was hardly moving. The ghost started closing in, not paying any mind to Dash.

“Hey!” Dash swung his arms in the air, trying to get the ghost’s attention. It finally looked down at him and paused.

“Yeah! Leave him alone!” Dash shouted. He stuck a hand into his backpack and pulled out that lipstick laser that Tucker gave him. He aimed it at the ghost and took a shaky shot.

It hit the ghost in the chest and it roared, charging at him. Dash took a step back but he yanked his backpack off, desperately digging out the thermos. He shakily pulled it out of his backpack just as the ghost was getting to him and he pressed the button.

The ghost loomed over him before it got sucked into the thermos. Once it was gone, Dash closed his eyes and let out a deep breath. Then his eyes snapped back open and he turned around.

Phantom.

He ran down the street to where Phantom lay. Phantom’s eyes opened as Dash got closer. Thank god.

“Hey. How bad is it?” Dash asked as he dropped down to his knees on the pavement.

Phantom hissed as he sat up. “Not the worst I’ve ever had. I’m not sure any of these need stitches.”

“Are you sure?” Dash studied his suit where it was torn. “I could literally hear your suit get shredded from where I was standing.”

“Yeah.” Phantom nodded. “I think a good chunk of things I need to have stitched up are because I kept fighting and tore them and made them worse.” He looked up at Dash. “Thanks, by the way. For helping me with that ghost.”

“Whaat? It was nothing.” Dash smiled at him.

Phantom laughed. “I could see you shaking in your boots from here.”

Dash crossed his arms and turned his nose up away from Phantom. “Fighting ghosts is a lot scarier without fancy ghost powers.”

“Yeah, but really, thanks.”

Dash looked back at Phantom. He couldn’t help it. It was the first thing he could think to do. He wasn’t going to just let a ghost get him when he couldn’t fight.

Dash was lost in thought for a moment before his mind wandered back to Phantom’s injury.

“Do you at least want that bandaged even if you don’t need stitches?”

Phantom nodded. “Yeah. It’ll help stop the bleeding.”

Dash dug through his backpack where it sat next to him when he dropped it. He pulled out his first aid kit.

“Gauze or giant band aid?” Dash asked.

Phantom looked down at his chest where the scratches were. He thought for a moment.

“Probably gauze. I think these are too long for a giant bandaid.”

Dash nodded. He pulled the gauze out and turned back to Phantom. He blushed.

“What?” Phantom asked.

The thought of Dash asking Phantom to undress was frazzling Dash’s brain. He only had to unzip the top part of his jumpsuit but he’d never seen Phantom in anything besides that before. What would he look like underneath?

“I need, uh, you to unzip the top part of your jumpsuit so I can wrap the gauze around your chest.”

Phantom looked back down at his chest. “Oh.” He unzipped the front of his jumpsuit and pulled his arms out. He looked back up at Dash.

Dash’s blush went all the way up to his ears and he tried not to stare but he couldn’t help it. Phantom’s skin was so different from other ghosts. He was so much more human-like than them.

Phantom held his hand out for Dash and he looked back up to his face.

“I can do this if it’s too weird for you.”

“It’s not weird!” Dash blurted out. “I just, uh- I don’t-”

Phantom grabbed the gauze out of Dash’s hand and started wrapping it around his chest. “That’s okay. Sam was kind of awkward the first time she had to do this too.”

Dash nodded, but he was disappointed. This could’ve been an opportunity to get close to Phantom. To maybe graze a hand against his skin. Feel what a ghosts skin would-

“Dash?”

He jumped. “Yeah?”

“I’m all done. Here.” Phantom tossed the roll of gauze back to Dash. He fumbled to catch it and when he did he stowed it back in his first aid kit.

Dash put everything back in his backpack and threw it back on his shoulder. He stood up and waited for Phantom to shove his arms back into his sleeves before he offered his hands to help Phantom up.

Phantom looked at them for a moment before he reached up and grabbed onto Dash’s hands. Dash pulled Phantom to his feet and then they just stared at each other. Dash’s grip on Phantom’s hands tightened. He took a step closer to Phantom but then someone shouted at them.

“Look! It’s Phantom!”

Dash looked up around him and was shocked to see how many people had gathered around them. Where had they all come from? Were they all watching the ghost fight from their homes?

“Phantom, who is this boy? Why is he helping you?”

“Is that your boyfriend?”

“Who would be crazy enough to date a dead person?”

The voices clamored around them and Dash felt like they were pressing in on him. Phantom glanced at him and let go of his hands and instead wrapped an arm around his side.

“Gotta go!”

“Wait, wha-!”

Dash yelped as he was pulled into the air with Phantom as he took off in flight. He’d never flown before. Not even in a plane. He squeezed his eyes shut and wrapped his arm around Phantom’s shoulder. The flight was quick and soon they were touching down on the ground.

Dash peeked an eye open and saw that they were standing in front of his house.

“That was fast.” Dash said, out of breath.

“Yeah.” Phantom smiled at him. “My top speed we’ve clocked so far is a hundred and twelve miles per hour. I can get anywhere in town pretty darn fast.”

“Dang. That’s cool. Kinda scary.”

Phantom smiled. “You get used to it after a while.”

They looked at each other for a moment before Phantom seemed to remember he was still holding onto Dash. He coughed and pulled his hand away and it drifted across Dash’s back, leaving a trail of butterfly inducing tingles.

“Well, I gotta go. I have things to do.”

Dash let out a nervous laugh. “How busy can a ghost possibly be?”

“Like I’ve said, I’ve got to keep some of my secrets.”

Phantom started floating up into the air.

“Aw, come on. We’re not close enough for that yet?” Dash shouted up at him.

He smiled down at Dash. “Not quite. Maybe one day.”

Phantom waved down at Dash and then he flew away. Dash’s heart fluttered and he waved back belatedly.

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

Dash was laying in bed. He was ready to go to sleep after such a long day. He could almost fall asleep right now.

He started drifting off but was interrupted a moment later.

Phantom flew through Dash’s bedroom wall and crashed onto his bed. Dash jumped up and stared at the boy that was suddenly next to him.

“Phantom?” Dash exclaimed.

He was curled up on his side next to Dash, holding his stomach.

“I didn’t… I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Tucker is out of town and the far frozen was too far away for this one- ah!” He clenched his stomach again.

“No, no. That’s what I’m here for. That’s why you guys agreed to let me join your team. So that there was someone else there to patch you up.”

Phantom shook his head. “This one’s worse. There’s a chance I’ll-”

A white ring appeared around his waist. Phantom tensed up and groaned before it disappeared again.

“What was that?” Dashed asked, staring.

Phantom shook his head. “You need to start stitching the wound up now. If we wait it’ll start bleeding faster. We can’t-” He tensed up again. Sparks flew around his middle. “We have to hurry.”

At Phantom’s plea, he hurriedly got up and grabbed his first aid kit from under his bed. He kneeled down and Phantom turned to his side to face him.

“Can you uncurl for me? I need to take a look.”

Phantom nodded and slowly pulled his arms away from his stomach. They were covered in ectoplasm. Dash gulped and studied the wound. It was deep. Ectoplasm was steadily oozing out of it. He pulled a pair of gloves on.

“This is pretty deep, what if I can’t-”

“Sewing it shut will help.” Phantom grimaced. “Once the wound is shut my healing abilities will have an easier time mending it.”

Dash nodded. “Okay.”

He took a deep breath and got started. Phantom flinched with every touch of the needle. Dash was halfway done when the ring appeared around his waist again. Phantom struggled to push it away, but it disappeared after a few seconds.

“Phantom.” Dash kept stitching the wound closed. “What’s happening?”

“I can’t keep it back anymore.” Phantom ground out. “When I transform, I’m going to start bleeding much faster. You have to keep stitching me up, no matter what.”

“What? When you transform? What does that-”

The rings appeared around Phantom’s waist a final time. Dash tried to keep his focus on stitching Phantom’s wound, but then the rings split. They revealed a very familiar shirt underneath them.

“I’m sorry.”

The rings finished traveling over the rest of Phantom’s body. Dash’s hands shook as the ectoplasm that was steadily coming out of the wound turned into blood. The pace increased and Dash got a glimpse at Phantom’s face as the rings went over his head and Danny Fenton was left in his place.

Danny met his gaze for a moment and then his eyes fluttered closed.

“Danny?” Dash whispered.

He didn’t move and Dash went back to stitching up the wound. He was almost done and he was hoping this would be enough. That Danny wouldn’t…

He shook his head. He couldn’t think like that. He had already seen the impossible. Danny wouldn’t die. He couldn’t.

He made his last stitch and cut the thread. He grabbed a bag and disposed of everything inside it. He was about to put the first aid kit away when he thought about putting a bandage on top of Danny’s stitches.

He pulled a bandage and some gauze out of the first aid kit and when he turned back around Danny’s eyes were already open, staring at Dash.

“You’re awake already?” Dash whispered. “I wasn’t sure- I was afraid that-”

Danny shook his head. “My healing powers are already working. It just needed help getting started. It can’t heal if it’s still bleeding so much like that.”

Dash let out a deep breath. “I’m glad to hear.”

A pause stretched between them and Dash looked down at his hands and saw the gauze and bandage he was holding. He held them up.

“Do you want these on there too? Would it help?”

Danny nodded. “They’ll help make sure I don’t bleed into my clothes.”

Dash nodded back at him. “Your shirt looks pretty bad too. Do you want one of mine?”

Danny shrugged. “Sure.”

He set the bandage and gauze down on the bed and headed to his dresser. He pulled out a shirt and turned back around to see Danny pulling his shirt off.

Heat rose to Dash’s face and the comments Phantom made that first time Dash helped him came to mind. Tucker’s laugh echoed inside his head.

Man, you’re not gonna live this one down.

Sam and Tucker must know. That’s why they were being so weird that night.

He sat down at the edge of his bed and looked at Danny. He peeled the back of the bandage off and put it over Danny’s stitches. He spread his hand out over it, pressing the edges down, making sure they were sticking to Danny’s skin properly.

“Can you sit up?” Dash asked. Danny nodded and pushed himself up, wincing.

Dash leaned closer to Danny and started winding the gauze around his torso. Once he was done, he looked up to see Danny’s face only a few inches from his own.

They stared at each other for a few moments before they both spoke at once.

“I’m sorry.”

Both of their eyes widened. Dash sat up.

“Why are you sorry? I was literally the one wailing on you for so long.”

Danny shook his head. “I lied to you. I never told you who I was. I could see the way you looked at me, but I didn’t think you’d look at me like that if you knew I was also Danny.”

Dash flushed. “You could tell.” He breathed out.

“Yeah I could.” Then he rolled his eyes. “And if I couldn’t, Tucker would’ve made sure I knew anyway.”

“Tucker knows too?” Dash whispered. He didn’t think anyone could see his developing feelings for Phantom. He thought they just would have assumed it was because he was Phantom’s biggest fan.

“Yeah. No offense, but it was pretty obvious. Especially if even I could tell.”

Dash groaned and covered his face with his hands as he leaned back onto his bed. He felt Danny lean over to look down at him. Dash opened his eyes.

Danny met his eyes. His eyes traveled down his face to his lips. He slowly bent down and pressed his lips against Dash’s. Dash closed his eyes again and after a few seconds Danny pulled away.

“It helped that I was looking for it, though.”

Dash smiled up at him. “You did call me cute that one time.”

Now it was Danny’s turn to groan. “I don’t even know what I was thinking. I hardly even remember that.”

Dash placed a hand on the back of Danny’s head and pulled him back down and kissed him again.

“Did Tucker ever let you live it down?”

Danny laughed. “No. Of course not.”

“I bet it’ll be even worse now.” Dash said against Danny’s lips.

“Oh, you bet it will.”

Dash kissed Danny one more time and gently pulled him down to lay beside him.

#gorgi writes #danny phantom #dash baxter #danny fenton #sam manson #tucker foley #swagger bishie #fanfiction #phic phight 2024 #fanfic #fic #phic

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lonelygrayrose · 3 months ago

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Remember how I said something fun was coming for fans of The Amnesia Videos?

Art by @m3gahet check out their blog! They do comissions and are a delight to work with.

My best friend comissioned the art for my birthday and it was SO hard to choose which scene to have drawn! I hope you guys like it as much as I do!

Art without text and link to The Amnesia Videos below the cut off!

#danny phantom #danny phantom fandom #sam manson #dp fandom #danny phantom fanfiction #tucker foley #amethyst ocean #danny fenton #danny phantom characters #dp fanfiction #dp sam #dp fic

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im-totally-not-an-alien-2 · 1 year ago

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Every year, Sam, Danny, and Tucker go on a vacation courtesy of Sam's very reluctant parents. This year, it was Tuckers turn to choose the location and activities, and he chose Gotham.

Not only did it have Wayne Tech, one of the most technologically advanced companies, but Gotham was also hosting a massive furry convention this year and the three of them were cosplaying as Succubats from the Dragon Quest series. They had gone all out, full purple body and face paint, contacts that made the whites of their eyes black, hand died leggings, leotards, and fuzzy leg warmers as well as everything else. Let's just say there was a lot of sowing involved.

Danny even made a mad scientist invention that toyed with gravity so that they could fly while flapping their wings. His parents were so proud and made them stop for pictures before they left.

The convention was fun and they got saved by Robin once and ended up teasing him a bit. Sam was cackling the next day when she found out Robin had gone through the rest of his patrol not knowing that Danny's purple galaxy lipstick was still on his cheek the entire time.

The only part they didn't like was this weird trenchcoat guy kept following them around in the shadows, but Batman was with him, so it was probably okay. The Justice League had found out about the anti ecto acts and publicly tore the government a new one. Danny had barely managed to hide his parents' involvement and work with Tuckers and Vlads' help. While he and Vlad were still bitter enemies, Vlad didn't want to see Maddie in jail, and Danny could work with that.

On the flip side of things, the Justice League still had no idea about the portals in Amity Park or that anything was going on there. So when John Constantine found out about a insanely powerful entity that radiated death energy like the sun radiated light heading straight to Gotham, he panicked and immediately went to Batman to tell him the bad news.

John had no idea what this creature was and was determined to find out, but between the make up and body paint and everything else, it was impossible to discover the identity of the three teens. It didn't help that Danny could just turn them invisible/fly them everywhere so John and Bruce are suffering

#prompts #fanfiction prompts #dpxdc #danny phantom #danny fenton #batman #damian wayne #tucker foley #sam mansion #succubat #dragon quest #tucker totally begs tim/ lucious for his autograph if he gets the chance #danny had gotten his wierd death vibes all over tucker and sam so no one knows if they're actually human or not #lucious is interested in the tech Danny made and wants to hire danny and Tucker in the future #succubat is a monster from dragon quest btw

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paxopalotls · 5 months ago

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@invisobang season is now!

Check out @tourettesdog's newest fic, Ghosting Along, which I helped do art for!

My art:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

@wheatcak3 Art:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

#danny phantom #danny phantom fanart #danny fenton #danny fenton fanart #tucker foley #maddie fenton #jack fenton #fenton family #no one knows au #invisobang #invisobang 2024 #danny phantom big bang #danny phantom fanfiction #injury cw #pax art

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robinsegghead · 8 months ago

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Danny's Daycare Part 11

[Master List]

Dragging himself off the couch (where he’d actually gotten a few hours of sleep- how’s that for ‘not normal’ Red Hood?), Danny checked his phone. He had a missed call from an unknown number two texts, one from Damian one from Tim, and a reminder that Damian was coming over sometime after noon.

Tim: No worries, Danny. I hope everything’s all right?

Danny decided to respond to that later when he heard the bedroom door open and remembered he needed to get breakfast started. Hopping up, he moved to the kitchen, feeling lighter than he had in weeks, and started searching for food.

“‘Morning.” Santi murmured, taking a seat on the stools across the island from Danny. “Wha’s t’eat?”

He’d learned early on that the boys’ Gotham accent was even thicker after waking up and had to keep himself from cooing at how adorable it was. You’re not their dad, chill.

“Looks like….” Danny pulled out the container Red Hood had left the night before and read the little note he also included. Gallo Pinto, make some eggs and toast to go with it- there’s plenty so actually eat it, Danny. -Red Hood “Something called Gallo Pinto. I just have to make some eggs.” He ignored the pointed remark about eating the food and he definitely ignored the part about toast.

Santi sighed and placed his head against the counter.

“You okay, kid?”

The boy nodded. “‘M tired. Miguel’sa bed hog.”

Danny laughed. “Looks like you and I have something in common.” Santi looked up, questioningly. “Older siblings who hog the bed. I bet he steals the covers too, huh?” When the boy nodded Danny chuckled again. “Yeahhh…. They always use the ‘I’m bigger’ arguement too.”

“‘F I had a younger siblin’ I’d do it to ‘em too.” Santi sighed. “Did you do it ta Dani?”

“No I… I never had the opportunity.”

Santi tilted his head. “How come?”

He hadn’t told the boys much about himself, though he never held back information it usually just didn’t come up. He wondered though… if they outright asked him about certain things, Phantom, ghosts, Jack and Maddie, would he tell them? “We didn’t grow up together really.”

“But she’s yer sister.”

“Yes, well… I… didn’t meet her until I was fifteen and she was twelve and even after that we didn’t spend much time together. She spent her teenage years traveling and I- well I didn’t.” He let out a puff of air, Santiago was clearly very interested in this topic so he continued. “Dani’s a free spirit, she’s always come and gone as she pleased and well… I couldn’t be happier that shes’s decided to stay here for a little while. Don’t tell her but I kind of missed her.” He stage whispered the last sentence as if she would overhear him.

Speak of the devil and she shall appear. His door opened and closed without so much as a knock and then a very familiar face walked around the corner. “What’s to eat? I'm starving!” She exclaimed obnoxiously.

~~~

“So this friend of yours…” Miguel trailed off, Danny waited in silence for him to finish his sentence. “So your friend….” Danny nodded. “You have friends?”

Dani cackled while Danny huffed, exasperated. “Of course I have friends!” Miguel and Santiago shared doubting looks. “Listen, I just don’t have a lot of time to hang out with people. But there’s Sam and Tucker, we’ve been friends forever, and then Valerie joined the group- oh and Wes is definitely a friend too. We became friends towards the end of high school though so we don’t keep up as much. But yeah, I have friends.”

“Dude.” Santiago breathed. “That’s like… four people.”

“I’m pretty sure every friend is canceled out by an enemy so you’re at net 0 brother.” Dani laughed. “The negatives even.”

Miguel frowned. “You have enemies?”

Danny’s rebuttal was cut off by the knocking at their door- saved by the bell, well, sort of. Metaphorically. Damian was on the other side of the door, wearing slacks and a nice sweater (why was the kid always so dressed up?) and had a bag in one hand weighed down by (theoretically) cat stuff.

“Hi Damian!” Danny greeted. “Come on in!” He’d noticed throughout the time he’d known Damian that the boy was rather proper. He was always dressed nicely, always spoke politely, his posture was perfect, and he had an air about himself… like he knew his importance. He supposed it was good that the kid had that much confidence- maybe it would rub off on Miguel a bit.

Leading Damian to the dining room (which was really just a table in the kitchen), Danny started introduction. “I know you guys met briefly at the store-”

“You’re that guy whose brother goes by dick!” Santiago laughed.

Damian quirked an eyebrow. “Yes, Richard insists on going by it which I think is absurd.”

Santiago quirked his head. “Why you talk like that, man?”

“OKAY!” Danny clapped his hands together. “Let’s not be rude to my friend who is here to do us a favor and teach you boys about owning a cat, capeesh?” The boys nodded, Santiago sheepishly, and Damian untensed slightly. “Miguel, Santi, why don’t you show Damian your apartment and he can answer any of your questions.”

The boys nodded and Damian followed them without a word. The second they were out of earshot Dani gave him a Look.

“What?” Danny asked defensively.

“Oh my Ancients.” She breathed, her eyes widened as if she’d just realized something.

Danny looked between where Damian had disappeared and his freaking-out sister. “What?”

“Nothing. You’re a dumbass.” She stood up and stretched. “This has been fun but I’ve got some things to see to, people to visit, you know…” She trailed off.

Pursing his lips, Danny tried not to ask. He’d suspected for a while that she was hiding something from him, but he didn’t know what or why. And he didn’t want to know. She was free to keep things to herself, he didn’t need to know everything she was doing at all times. “Okay- don’t forget, tutoring with Jason starts a week from tomorrow and you might learn a thing or two from him.”

“Pffff.” She waved a hand at him dismissively. “I’m already great at English!”

He deadpanned her. “You remember who you’re made from, right?”

~~~

“Do either of you have any questions?” Damian asked, looking between the two boys who’d been listening to his instructions without interruption for the past thirty minutes. When he’d met them- or, re-met them, he’d thought they would be incapable of listening to his expertise without butting in constantly, but he’d been wrong.

Miguel and Santiago shared looks, the older one was the first to speak up. “I don’t think so. Guess we can always ask Danny if we think of anythin’ later on.” He shrugged.

Knowing that Danny was not only new to owning cats but also incredibly busy, Damian hesitantly offered his own number. “If you ever have questions that Nightingale cannot answer or is not around to answer… you may… call or text me.”

“Oh shit man, really?” Santiago blurted out.

Miguel smacked him upside the head but it seemed to be more of a brotherly affection than anything else. “Manners, man.”

“Right, uh. Sorry.” Santiago offered. “Just excited I guess, we never got a pet before.”

Damian knew the feeling. When father had first agreed to letting him get a cat he’d been ecstatic. One cat, dog, and cow later and Damian was still excited any time he rescued a new animal or was able to get another one himself. “That is understandable, I too was excited to get my first pet.” Checking his watch, he stood. He still had homework to do before patrol tonight. “I should be going, but let me know how things are going once you’ve gotten all of the necessary supplies and have fallen into a routine.”

After saying goodbye to Danny and heading out Damian couldn’t help but hope the boys would text him. He pushed the sentiment away quickly. They either would or would not message him and it did not matter either way.

~~~

“So Danny’s like- not human, right?” And wasn’t that a crazy way to start a conversation?

“Hi Santi, what happened to hi? Hello? How are you? My name is?” Miguel joked back, not taking his eyes off the textbook in front of him.

His younger brother groaned. “Come ooooon! There’s somethin’ weird ‘bout him! He’s gotta be a meta, right?”

Spinning his pencil, Miguel responded absentmindedly. “What makes you say that?”

“‘Member when he was having a long day last week and accidentally ripped the handle off the fridge ‘cause it wouldn’t open? Or how ‘bout when I left some stuff here the other day and came ta get it while he was at work an’ he was also here? And at dinner that night I asked ‘im how work was and he said it was good?”

Miguel hummed. “Maybe he took that day off and didn’t want us to think he was bein’ a helicopter parent.”

“AH HA!” Santiago shouted, jumping to his feet and pointing. “You called him a parent!”

The older boy groaned. “Santi- I didn’t mean- look, he’s like five years older than me! At most he’s like an older brother and even then-”

“Tell me again how ‘e chased down your kidnappers and kicked their asses? Or how safe you felt when he moved you out of the way of danger? Or how he checked on us a buncha times at night and got you anythin’ you asked for?”

Miguel groaned, completely forgetting about the textbook as his brother listed off more times Danny was ‘meta like’ or ‘dad shaped’. It wasn’t untrue- but Miguel had said he didn’t want Danny to play parent and he meant it. He’d had parents, he knew how that song and dance went, and he wasn’t looking to suffering it again.

Danny was cool, he fed them, helped them with school stuff, took care of them, all the things a parent did, but he didn’t get on them about curfew, or eating their vegetables, or grades, or any of that bullshit parents got upset about. He was cool. And safe.

He didn’t remember a lot from his kidnapping- Danny said that was probably for the best- but he remembered a lot of loud noises at one point and how badly he wanted them to stop. And all at once they did. After that there was a voice, it was comforting, calming, and gentle hands that held him close. Danny had told him after the fact that he’d moved Miguel away from the danger and had Red Robin take him home.

Because apparently Danny wasn’t done. Miguel had no idea how many guys Danny took out, but any amount was too much. After the way Miguel had treated him, the way he’d yelled at Danny and got mad at him for just trying to help- Miguel didn’t deserve Danny’s help.

“Are you even listenin’?” Santiago asked, leaning close.

“So what if he ain’t human? Meta’s’re cool.” Miguel argued.

Santiago looked at him like he’d said something stupid. “Obviously. But Batman hates ‘em! What if he finds out ‘n kicks Danny outta Gotham!”

Anxiety clawed at Miguel’s insides but he pushed it down in favor of quelling his brothers’. “That aint’ gonna happen dumbass. Batman don’t care ‘bout Danny bein’ a upstandin’ citizen.”

“Hey guys,” Danny knocked on the door and leaned into Miguel’s room. “Dani wants to go out for a couple of hours this afternoon, go shopping, get food, stuff like that. You guys want to come?”

The boys looked at each other, knowing why Dani was trying to get him out of the apartment. “Nah, got work to do.” Miguel answered casually.

“Okay… Santi?”

Miguel froze.

“‘M good, gonna stay with Mick.” Santi answered, unperturbed.

Danny shrugged and left them to their work. When Miguel was sure he was gone he whipped around to Santiago. “You let him call you Santi? Since when?”

His brother bit his bottom lip nervously. “Uh… when… he called me that when I… when you were…”

Right. That made sense. High stress moments make people form bonds or whatever. Jazz said something about that the last time she’d swung by. She was never around for long, just enough to ask the boys about themselves and make sure Danny was eating and sleeping (he wasn’t). “Do you… want ‘im to call you that?”

Up until this point, Miguel had been the only person allowed to call him that nickname.

“I mean… I kind of… like it?” Santi mumbled. “He’s just so nice and he takes care of us and- and I- I… he’s okay- okay?”

Feeling a twinge of guilt and jealousy, Miguel shrugged. “You can let anyone call you whatever you want, Santi.” The two worked in silence for a moment before Miguel’s phone buzzed. “Dani says they’ll be gone for at least three hours ‘n that we can get to work now.”

“I still can’t believe he didn’t tell us ‘bout his birthday.” Santiago huffed as he stood up and followed his brother out of their apartment and to Danny’s.

Miguel shrugged. “He don’t know ours. Maybe he don’t like it?”

They could both understand that a bit. Birthdays were a touchy subject for them, maybe that was the case for Danny?

~~~

Danny was kind of oblivious a lot of the time, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know why his younger sister had dragged him out of his apartment for a multi-hour shopping trip on his birthday after very obviously not mentioning his birthday. He tried not to think too much about what the boys might have been dragged into back home while his sister buys anything she sees and likes.

To be fair, she really did need some stuff for her apartment, she’d furnished it almost immediately after moving in, but she lacked decorations. Dani was a maximalist, she liked displaying her knick knacks from her trips around the world, covering every piece of furniture in pillows and blankets, and making the place feel overall, homey. Something Danny wasn’t as good at.

(Where the hell did she get that from? It certainly wasn’t him. His and the boy’s apartments were true testament to his lack of decorating skills and although he’d offered the boys many times to take them shopping for decorations and whatnot it seemed they felt similarly about the subject.)

“Danny come on!” Dani sighed dramatically. “You’ve been dragging your feet all dayyyy!”

With a scoff, Danny picked up the pace. Luckily they’d already been shopping for a few hours and she had promised this was the last store. He froze when he saw the store. “I am not going in there with you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be such a boy. It’s just bras.”

“It’s not the bras- it’s shopping for bras for my sister. Not happening.” He was putting his foot down on this one. Dani shrugged and disappeared into the store for way longer than he’d expected. Finding a nearby bench to sit down on, Danny pulled out his phone.

Tim: Astronomy, huh?

Danny: Yeah its like the only thing Im good at

Danny: After science that is

Tim: And running a daycare apparently

Danny: In my defense I didnt know Id be good at that until I did it

Tim: You’re telling me you just kind of…. Did it?

Tim: No thoughts?

Danny: Something like that

Tim: Dude. What the fuck

Danny: Okay, your turn. Hobbies?

The two had been talking on and off for the last week since Danny had reached out but they were both incredibly busy and often only sent a couple of texts a day. Dani’s impromptu shopping trip gave him a good excuse.

Tim: Skateboarding and photography

Danny: Thats so cool! I remember you said you were going skateboarding with your boyfriend?

Tim: Yeah one of them

One of them? Danny looked up for a moment, his brain rebooting to understand- what the fuck? He couldn’t even get one partner and Tim had two?! How was that fair? Shaking his head, Danny responded.

Danny: Thats cool, does the other one not skateboard?

Tim didn’t respond quickly enough before Dani came rushing out of the store with a large pink bag and a big smile. Danny put his phone away and picked up the myriad of of bags he’d been tasked with carrying throughout their shopping spree.

“Is that everything?” He asked, trying to keep the whine out of his voice.

She rolled her eyes, carrying only the bag from the last shop they’d been to. “Yes, Danny. We can go home now Ancients, you’re so impatient!”

“I don’t know where you got your love of shopping from but it was not me!” He was just grateful they could fly home invisible and intangible and it wouldn’t take long although it would take a bit longer than if he weren’t weighed down by a dozen shopping bags.

They got to the apartment building a few minutes later, stopping in Dani’s apartment first to drop off the bags- he hadn’t bought anything after all.

Dani set everything down then gave her brother a thoughtful look. “I wanna say hi to the boys.”

“O…kay?” Since when did she need his permission to say hi to the boys? Before he could ask she’d grabbed his hand and dragged him from her apartment to his. She made a lot of noise trying to open the door instead of phasing through which was strange but Danny was tired.

As the door opened he noted that the lights were all off- maybe the boys were in their apartment? Now that he was thinking about it- hadn’t they been at their place when he and Dani had left earlier? Why did she assume they’d bein his-

“SURPRISE!” The lights flickered on as a chorus of voices shouted at him.

Startling slightly, Danny gained his bearings. Standing in his living room were the boys, Sam, Tucker, Jazz, Valerie, and Wes, all wearing party hats and smiling widely at him. He hadn’t spent his birthday with anyone in a few years so he hadn’t expected anything like this. He probably should have.

“Happy birthday, little brother!” Jazz exclaimed, pulling him into a tight hug.

“Dude! You should have seen the look on your face!” Tucker laughed, joining in the hug Jazz had started. Sam joined too and for a moment Danny felt completely at peace.

Someone shoved through the tangle of limbs and bodies. “Yeah yeah, happy birthday Nightingale.” Valerie scoffed.

“Man you didn’t tell us you had kids!” Wes shouted from the couch.

Danny made his way into the living room and collapsed into an armchair, exhausted from the shopping. “That’s because I don’t.” He thought he caught a frown flit across Miguel’s face but he pressed on. “But they’re good kids and I’m happy to talk about them. Is there food? I’m starving?” He hoped getting the focus off of the boys would help them feel a bit more comfortable.

He wasn’t exactly unhappy that everyone was visiting- he was incredibly grateful they’d taken the time to come all this way and spend his birthday with him but he was worried. The boys had been forced to socialize with people they didn’t know without anyone they knew there to act as a buffer. Sure they’d met Jazz a few times, but they were more comfortable around Dani than they were around her.

Miguel especially didn’t like when there was a lot of attention put on him.

“Of course there is! I brought a meat platter-” Tucker started.

“And I brought a veggie platter and vegan dip.” Sam cut in.

Valerie rolled her eyes. “I ordered pizzas- meat lovers and vegan.”

“I brought drinks!” Jazz offered.

Wes looked around. “Well shit- no one told me to bring anything! Besides I just got off a double shift at the Planet and drove her right after! I haven’t even showered in two days!”

“So that’s what that smell is.” Danny smirked.

Overall, it was a success. The boys seemed to loosen up once everyone started eating and relaxing, Valerie played with the kittens (who were getting quite big at this point) while catching up with Jazz, and Wes was ranting about work.

“I mean- the guy “gets a few interviews with superman” and suddenly he’s like the go to guy! He’s literally superman! That isn’t investigative journalism! It’s an autobiography!” Wes shouts, finishing his rant by stuffing the rest of the pizza in his mouth.

Sam snorts. “Wes, come on, Clark Kent is not Superman.”

Wes gave her a Look. “This is high school all over again! I told everyone I knew who Phantom was- and I was right!” Danny gave him a pointed look before glancing at the boys. “I know who Superman is, I’m ninety-eight percent sure I know who each of the Gotham vigilantes are, I’ve got the Flashes figured out, and no one believes me!”

Miguel tilted his head. “Who’s Phantom?”

Now you’ve done it. Danny glares at his friend. “Small town hero from our hometown. No one’s seen him in years though so you couldn’t possibly know who he is.”

Looking between the curious teenager and the possibly enraged eldritch being that could tear him apart with the snap of his fingers, Wes chose life. “Yeah… you’re probably right.”

Tucker and Sam laughed as Wes slunk to the kitchen to get more food. “Don’t worry Wes! I’m sure the Planet will recognize your brilliance soon and you can score your own interview with Clark Kent- sorry- Superman.”

~~~

Turns out, Dani had only bought a bra so she could disguise her gift for Danny in a bag she knew he wouldn’t carry for her. He hadn’t expected gifts but upon opening them he couldn’t have been more grateful. Jazz’s gift had been a yearly pass to the planetarium and observatory in downtown Gotham. She mentioned that he was allowed to bring one free guest with him every visit.

Sam, Tucker, and Valerie had gotten him a bunch of new space themed clothes, blankets, and books- including a new book he’d been debating getting for a while.

Wes promised his gift was coming but ‘it was a bit sensitive and he’d understand when it arrived’. That only worried Danny a lot.

Dani had gotten him the newest model of the Celestron telescope. There was no way a store was just carrying one of those, she’d have to have ordered it specially. Turning it over he found his name engraved into it along with his favorite constellation. He almost cried.

(He did).

The cake was delicious, Miguel and Santiago ate more than Danny thought they should have (but he wasn’t their dad and wasn’t going to tell them to slow down) and ended up in a sugar coma for the rest of the evening. He moved them to his bed and closed the door so he and his friends wouldn’t wake them (What? He didn’t have to be their dad to take care of them like one).

“So Danny,” Wes started. He was on one side of the couch, his legs on top of Tucker and Sam’s laps who were leaning against each other. Jazz had taken his armchair from earlier with Dani sitting on the arm which left the spot next to Valerie on the loveseat. Ironic. “You didn’t tell us you had kids.” He repeated from earlier.

Sighing, Danny closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the headrest. “Like I said, they aren’t my kids. I didn’t just say that for their benefit or something.”

Everyone nodded slowly, giving each other looks, but Tucker spoke up. “Sure, but like… you house them, clothe them, feed them, tutor them, love them, protect them… That’s kind of like a dad, no?”

“Not my dad.” Danny shot back nonchalantly.

Jazz winced. “But like a dad should be.” She added quietly.

He thought about it for a moment. “I’m only five years older than Miguel-”

“Does that really matter?” Valerie snorted.

Shooting her a look, Danny started again. “I’m only five years older than Miguel and nine years older than Santi but if I could legally adopt them and call them mine, I would. It’s not like anything would change if I did, really. I wouldn’t suddenly be overbearing or whatever, but I promised Miguel when he agreed to let me help them that I would not try to parent them. So I’m not.

“I’m doing what I said I would. Clothing, feeding, housing them, that’s easy, loving and protecting them is something I was going to do whether or not they agreed to let me help. But I’m not going to call them my kids,” not out loud anyway. “I’m not going to… tell them they can’t have more cake than they should or give them a curfew or ground them or- I… I’m not going to parent them unless they outright ask for it.” He finished with a shrug.

The room was quiet for a moment.

“Who would’ve guessed C+ average Nightingale would be the first with a prominent career and kids?” Valerie joked, elbowing Danny in the ribs.

The room erupted in laughter as everyone started bringing up different ideas of where they thought he’d be at twenty-two (twenty-three now) and it was definitely not ‘Daycare owner in Gotham with two pseudo kids’.

Once everyone had calmed down, Danny asked the question he’d been afraid of asking all afternoon. “When do you guys head out?” It had been so nice seeing his friends again, he hadn’t realized how badly he’d missed them since moving to Gotham.

“Well- about that.” Sam chuckled. “I actually got a job under a prominent scientist I’ve been obsessed with since like- forever- so I’ll be moving to Gotham soon.”

“What? Sam that’s- that’s great!” Danny spluttered.

Tucker nodded. “Obviously I’m moving here too and I’ve got a job interview lined up with Wayne Industries.”

“You’re joking.”

His friends grinned, shaking their heads.

“You mean, you two are going to live in Gotham?” They nodded. “Jazz and Dani are already here, and Wes is just in Metropolis,” He turned to Valerie. “What do I have to do to get you out here?”

Raising an eyebrow, Valerie scoffed. “As if I’d move all the way to Gotham city New Jersey to be near you weirdos. I’m only friends with you because my life was boring before.”

“So you’re saying we’re exciting?” Dani chimed in.

“I’m saying there’s never a dull moment with you weirdos.”

Danny shrugged, leaning into Valerie much to her dismay. “Four out of six isn’t bad- plus Wes is within driving distance. But I’ll find a way to get you guys here. Just watch, I’ll climb the social ladder, own this city, and bribe you here with crazy good jobs.”

They all laughed. After all, that was a ridiculous notion.

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#danny phantom #dp x dc #fanfiction #danny phantom/jason todd #danny's daycare #dead on main #jason todd #tim drake #Tucker Foley #sam manson #Valerie gray #wes weston #jazz fenton #dani phantom

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carelisswriting · 3 months ago

Text

Dealing With Dreams

Hey! Here's my second fic for ecto implosion, my partner for this is @ventisettestars ! It was great working with her, and her art is amazing!!! She also beta read this :)

Hope y'all like this fic!

***

“So there’s Andromeda, and Pegasus, and…”

Tucker leaned over, wrapping his arms around Danny as he listed all of the constellations they could see. He hooked his chin over Danny’s shoulder, looking up at the sky that his boyfriend was enamored with.

Danny’s breath misted in the air as he talked, a result of how cold it was out in the forest at night, and not due to a ghost. If there was a ghost out here, it definitely would’ve already started harassing them.

Tucker focused back on Danny as he let out an excited gasp.

“Tuck, Tuck look! It’s the ISS!” He said, pointing up at a small bright spot traveling across the sky.

Tucker smiled, squeezing Danny tighter for a moment “It’s super cool, Danny.”

Danny didn’t reply, too focused on watching the space station travel across the sky.

He didn’t mind. It wasn’t often that they got a day like this, one where there weren’t any ghost attacks or anything else that would stop Danny from having a nice evening.

Tucker was still bitter about the date attempt from last month. They’d almost made it into the movie theater before the Box Ghost had shown up to steal all the popcorn buckets, which were unfortunately square. It had been the most personally annoying attack he’d had to deal with, which was saying something considering his PDA had gotten destroyed in a few attacks. He always rebuilt her, though.

Anyway, the point is, Tucker was glad that Danny got to have a day where he didn’t have to worry about anything. Well, anything more than usual.

He shifted, pressing closer to his boyfriend.

It sucked so bad that Danny had to be all alone in fights. Tucker and Sam did all the support they could, but. It wasn’t enough. Danny didn’t have anyone to watch his back, just people to clean him up after the fight.

Danny had only gotten bruises and small cuts so far. Tucker worried every time a ghost showed up that this would be the time something worse happened, that something he couldn’t fix happened. A ghost would get the better of Danny, and he would be too broken, too hurt, for Tucker to help him. A broken bone, a wound overflowing with blood, a hit he didn’t get back up from.

If only Tucker could fight with him-

“You okay? Usually you’ve used at least one really bad pick-up line by now.” Danny asked, startling Tucker out of his thoughts.

He lifted his head up, grinning as his depressing train of thought was pushed to the back of his mind.

“Oh yeah? So you admit you like the Foley Charm?” Tucker said flirtatiously.

Danny rolled his eyes, a fond smile on his face “Not what I said, but at least you’re trying. Seriously though, you good?”

“I’m fine, Danny. In fact, let me prove it by giving you exactly what you want, one of my amazing pick-up lines!” He said, wiggling his eyebrows even though he knew Danny probably couldn’t see it.

“No, that’s not what I said, and your pick-up lines are not amazing-“ Danny protested, giggles filtering into his voice.

Tucker grinned wider, before clearing his throat dramatically.

“Did it hurt when you fell from heaven? Cause from where I’m standing, you’re the only angel I’ve ever believed in.”

Danny groaned, a blush visible on his cheeks.

“That’s not even the right line-!”

“Had to put a little bit of that Tucker ‘Too Fine’ Foley spin on it, which made it at least twenty percent better!” Tucker said, before breaking out into laughter.

It really was one of his better lines, but it still wasn’t that good and he knew it.

Danny shook his head, before joining in on the laughter.

It took them a few moments to calm down, Danny taking a deep breath to regain his composure. Tucker couldn’t help but let out one last laugh at that, considering Danny choked on air as he did.

Danny smacked Tucker’s arm “Don’t laugh at me, I could’ve died all the way!”

Tucker smiled, leaning a bit more of his weight against Danny.

“You don’t strictly need to breathe, Danny. Choking isn’t gonna kill you for real.”

“Still! It’s the principle of the thing, boyfriends shouldn’t laugh at their boyfriend choking!” Danny asserted, his voice slightly higher pitched like it always was when he was teasing Tucker.

“Okay, I won’t laugh at you next time you choke on air.”

“Thank you- wait why are you assuming there’s gonna be a next time? I’m not gonna do it again-“

Tucker laughed again, cutting him off, “Danny, I love you, but I’ve seen you inhale too fast and choke on air at least once a month since you were five. It’s gonna happen again.”

Danny pouted, “Yeah, I know. And have you seriously been tracking that? Who am I kidding, of course you have.”

Tucker managed to avoid laughing again, though the effort required was frankly insane. The situation wasn’t even all that funny, he was just so happy to be here with Danny.

This may actually claim the spot of his favorite date they’ve been on, even topping their first date. He usually counted that as his favorite because it had been the first time he’d gotten to kiss Danny.

Stargazing and seeing his boyfriend so happy and relaxed? It might just be one of the best sights Tucker had ever seen.

A flash of light caught his eye, and he looked up, Danny doing the same. A streak of light blazed across the night sky, while galaxies and stars shimmered behind it.

“A shooting star! We should make a wi- uh, we should ask it for something!” Danny said, his voice full of joy.

Tucker chuckled at the almost-slip, before saying “I’m gonna ask it for more nights like this.”

Danny smiled.

“Yeah, me too.”

Tucker watched as the star traced a path across the sky, held his boyfriend, and knew that this was as close to a perfect night as he was ever going to get.

The only thing that could make it better would be if there wasn’t a lingering worry at the back of his mind that this could be the last time Danny was this relaxed. If there was some way that Tucker could fight alongside him.

But the only way he knew how to do that was painful, and it would destroy Danny if Tucker tried.

He’d just have to settle for nights like this, almost-perfect.

***

Nocturn watched the halfa and his human from the shadows as they sat on the forest floor, gazing up at the sky.

He could understand the halfa’s, Danny’s, fascination with it. It was a lovely view, similar to the dreams he himself called home.

The two boys in front of him had some very interesting dreams, dreams that appealed to Nocturn.

As well as some very interesting nightmares.

The human, Tucker, had nightmares that Danny would not come back from a fight, that he would not be able to protect him.

He worried that Danny was lonely, as the only halfa they knew. He dreamed of alleviating that loneliness.

And Danny was lonely, his dreams reflecting a desire for others like him.

But he could not wish that pain upon anyone, the idea of Tucker being the one in the portal featuring prominently in his nightmares, as well as Tucker getting injured due to a lack of ghostly abilities.

An intriguing dilemma, and one that caused Danny a great deal of stress.

One that Nocturn knew how to resolve, as well.

It was not all that hard to create liminality in a liminal world, after all.

***

Tucker blinked, rubbing at his eyes when blinking didn't work.

He…wasn’t awake, he didn’t think. But he didn’t feel like he was asleep, either. Maybe he was lucid dreaming? Sam had talked about that a while back. He’d never had it happen before, but it wasn’t too weird, right?

The landscape around him was strange, stars and swirling colors of galaxies seeming both close enough to touch and far enough away that he could barely see them. Static sparked in the corners of his vision, and it almost looked like the sky was glitching. Also, he wasn’t actually standing on anything.

Which, was a really weird feeling. There was something solid under his feet, he wasn’t floating. But when he looked down, there was just a deep purple void beneath him.

He took a step, feeling his foot leave the solidness, before stepping back down on it. He still couldn’t see it though, and it also- moved?- in the moments between him picking up his foot and setting it down. He’d shifted a bit to the right, the stars moving for a moment.

It was enough to make him feel dizzy, but weirdly, he didn’t.

This place was wack, Tucker did not like it here.

The stars and galaxies were pretty and all, but they were more Danny’s thing than his. He loved to listen to his boyfriend talk about them, though.

Tucker looked down and grimaced. He was not a fan of not being able to see the ground. This entire place was strange as heck.

He glanced around again, seeing abstract shapes wobbling in the distance, shifting in color and size as he watched. Again, really weird.

Okay, if he was lucid dreaming, he should be able to like, move stuff right? Or make stuff? He was wearing his signature sweater and beanie, but he didn’t have his PDA, so.

He concentrated for a moment, but his beloved PDA did not appear in his hand.

Not lucid dreaming then. Or he was just bad at it. But Tucker was pretty sure it was the first one.

So, if he wasn’t lucid dreaming, what was this?

He turned, blinking again. That…had not been there before.

There was some sort of green glow off in the distance, or maybe only a few dozen feet away, it really was hard to tell, but there was definitely something there.

The fact that it was green pointed to this being a ghost, which would be weird. Most of them just went straight to attacking Danny, and Tucker couldn't think of a reason why one of them would go after him, or bring him to wherever this was, instead of just, y’know, fighting him.

Still, there wasn’t exactly anything else in this place, besides whatever those shapes were. Also, if it was a ghost, and it had brought him here, it probably knew how to get him out.

He was going to be very annoyed if it did not know how to get him out.

Tucker started to walk towards the glow, before-

Something slammed into his side, knocking him over.

He bounced slightly against whatever was making up the ground, letting out a sharp exhale as the wind was knocked out of him.

“Crap, sorry, I didn’t realize how hard I was gonna hit you, you okay?”

Tucker opened his eyes, looking up at Danny’s face.

“Dude, that hurt.”

Danny winced “I know, sorry. I was just really relieved to see you and I didn’t think about the fact that you were walking and definitely did not have time to brace yourself.”

Tucker sat up, Danny kneeling next to him.

“I’m okay, but- Hey wait. How are you here, isn’t this supposed to be my dream, or something like that? Are you just like, a figment of my imagination? Cause it’s kind of pathetic that my brain decided to have my boyfriend bowl me over-“

Danny cut him off with a frantic wave of his hands “Nope, I’m real! Definitely not your imagination, though I’m pretty sure this is my dream? Or our dream I guess, since we’re both here.”

“Our dream? How would that even work?” Tucker said, before he realized something. “Is this a new power? Cause if this is a new power that’s cool as heck-“

Danny shook his head, cutting off Tucker’s sentence “Not a new power, I don’t think. I’m pretty sure I’m not in control.”

“That doesn’t sound good.” Tucker pointed out.

“Yeah. I know.”

They sat there for a moment, before Tucker pushed himself to his feet. He looked over, seeing that the green glow was still there.

“Hey, before you showed up, I was heading towards that.” He said, pointing towards the glow.

Danny glanced over, the corners of his mouth turned down.

“This is some new ghost trying to mess with me, isn’t it?”

Tucker shrugged.

Danny sighed as he stood up.

“Let’s go see what they want. And kick their ass for interrupting our sleep.”

He grabbed Tucker’s hand, before pulling him towards the green glow. He went along with his boyfriend easily, of course. He knew Danny would make sure neither of them got hurt.

Well, hopefully Danny would make sure to keep himself safe, and not just Tucker. Tucker worried, sometimes, that Danny didn’t value himself enough. That he considered his pain not to matter.

Tucker hoped he was wrong about it.

It took a few minutes for the two of them to get close enough to the glow to see what it was.

It was a ghost, like Tucker had guessed. Their body was covered in some sort of starry fabric, covering every inch except for their head. The horns curled on top of their head added to their intimidating look, while the tranquil expression seemed to be at odds with the rest of their features.

All in all, definitely a ‘weird’ ghost, as far as Tucker was concerned. Most of the ghosts that had come to bother Danny or fight him had at least a mildly human appearance, instead of bordering it like this new one did.

Danny drew himself up, before calling out, “Hey! What’re you doing?”

Tucker resisted the urge to pull Danny behind him. Or to hide behind Danny. Neither would be particularly helpful.

The ghost focused on them, their face curling into a smile.

“I am simply waiting, Danny.” The ghost said, their voice melodic and deep.

“For what?”

“Why, for the two of you to arrive, of course.”

Before Danny or Tucker could react, the world shifted, and suddenly they were directly in front of the ghost. They hadn’t moved, exactly, the world around them had.

“Allow me to introduce myself. I am Nocturn, and I believe that I can be of help to you.”

Tucker looked at him warily, cautious and unwilling to let this ghost out of his sight. Could not say he was a fan of a random ghost offering to ‘help’ them. That sounded a lot like what Spectra said, before she started trying to drain people’s emotions.

Danny stiffened at his side, squeezing Tucker’s hand, and he knew that his boyfriend was thinking the same thing.

“Yeah, no. The last ghost that said that tried to kill me.” Danny said, a scowl visible on his face in Tucker’s peripheral vision.

He wasn’t taking his eyes off Nocturn until they were out of here.

Nocturn made a sound, one that could almost be called a laugh if it wasn’t for the slightly off way that it caught and stuttered on the way out.

“My goal is not to kill you, Danny. The opposite, in fact.”

Tucker scowled. There weren’t exactly a lot of things ghosts wanted from Danny that didn’t end in a fight. If Nocturn wanted Danny to do something stupid or dangerous, he was going to have to go through Tucker.

“Yeah? What do you want him to do, then?” He asked, anger in his voice. He wasn’t going to let this ghost try to manipulate Danny.

Nocturn laughed, a real one this time. It was vaguely unsettling.

“The more relevant question, ‘What does he want me to do?’”

Tucker blinked at the cryptic answer, his expression dropping into confusion for a moment. Danny had gone still next to him, studying Nocturn.

“Are you saying that your ‘help’ wouldn’t need anything from me?” Danny asked, suspicion in his voice.

Nocturn tilted his head “Of course not.. My help would be in service of something you yourself wish for,,”

Tucker and Danny both tensed. When nothing happened, they both let out a breath of relief. Desiree had not been a fun fight to deal with.

Nocturn continued, ignoring or oblivious to their momentary tension.

“After all, your very dreams give away what you desire.”

Danny flinched, shifting Tucker's focus to him in alarm.

“Danny, are you-“

“Just because I dream about it doesn’t mean it should happen.” He said, cutting Tucker off with a hard voice, a glare directed at Nocturn.

Nocturn shook his head, a smile on his face “I do not mean your nightmares, Danny. I refer to the others, the pleasant ones.”

Tucker watched as his boyfriend blinked, before looking at Nocturn with an expression altogether opposite what it had been a moment before.

He looked…hopeful.

“There are others?” He asked, something fragile about his voice.

It hit Tucker, then, that this was about how lonely Danny was. He’d noticed it, of course he had, but there was nothing they could do about it, short of trying to recreate the portal accident. And believe him, neither of them wanted that.

But if Nocturn knew about other halfas, maybe. Maybe they could get him to bring them here, or to tell Danny where they were.

“I did not say that.” Nocturn said, making Tucker want to punch him.

Danny’s face fell, and Tucker’s desire to punch the tall ghost increased by at least double. He squeezed Danny’s hand, trying to offer some comfort.

Danny took a breath, seemingly gaining some confidence “Why even say that, then? Why even offer to- to make my dreams come true?”

Nocturn didn’t answer Danny’s question. Instead, he looked to Tucker.

“And what of your dreams? So perfect, so well-suited.”

Tucker felt his skin crawl at the way the ghost was looking at him. Like a pawn, like a specimen.

This was definitely one of those ghosts who considered humans below their notice. He wasn’t even sure why the guy was talking to him in the first place.

“Yeah, I’m just gonna go ahead and pass up anything you’d give me, thanks.” He said, a bit of bitterness in his voice.

Plenty of his dreams were just to have power. Power which he probably should not have.

There were also the ones that centered around Danny, and caring for him, but Tucker doubted Nocturn was talking about those.

Nocturn tilted his head, the exact same way he had a few minutes earlier.

“Even if the dream align with Danny’s own?”

Something like fear, with surprise mixed in, bolted through Tucker’s mind.

What-

That wasn’t possible. That Danny could have the same dreams as him, or that-

Or that Nocturn could make any of those dreams come true.

Danny squeezed Tucker’s hand, and he looked over to see his boyfriend with a slight smile on his face.

Tucker took a deep breath. It was fine, they’d dealt with ghosts like this before. Well, not like this, exactly, but they’d dealt with ghosts before. It would be okay.

Nocturn looked at them with an expression Tucker couldn’t even hope to understand, before continuing “You both dream of Tucker becoming a halfa.”

Tucker’s mouth dropped open, and he looked over to see the same expression of surprise on Danny’s face. They- that wasn’t-

Tucker closed his mouth, swallowing. He looked back to Nocturn.

“That isn’t possible, even if- even if we both- yeah. It’s not happening.”

He glanced over at Danny, worried about his reaction. But all there was on Danny’s face was a sort of resigned acceptance, and agreement.

Somehow, that made Tucker feel worse. He’d only stated a fact, but it wasn’t a fact that either of them liked.

“If you will remember, I have already stated that it is possible. And I will help you achieve it.” Nocturn said, looking at them with an almost bored expression. Almost. His eyes were too focused on Danny for it to be real.

Danny squeezed Tucker’s hand again, before letting go. He stepped in front of Tucker, putting himself between Nocturn and him.

“I’m not going to let you hurt him.” Danny said, his voice flat yet full of anger.

Tucker startled. He was so focused on the impossibility of him becoming a halfa, even if he wanted to, that he hadn’t considered the part where it could be taken as a threat against his life.

Nocturn laughed.

“I will not hurt either of you, Danny. The process would not leave lasting harm on him.”

“That doesn’t exactly sound great, dude.” Tucker chimed in, pushing past Danny so they were once again standing shoulder to shoulder.

He grabbed Danny’s hand again, ignoring the slightly annoyed look his boyfriend gave him.

He’d just have to deal, Tucker wasn’t leaving him to chat with the insane ghost by himself.

Nocturn shrugged, the causal motion extremely weird to see on the ghost. He didn’t have shoulders, exactly, so it was more like his entire torso tilted up for a moment, before settling back down.

“It is not harm that would last longer than a day. It would not affect you in death, or half-death.”

“But it would hurt him?” Danny asked, his voice conveying just how much that was not allowed.

Nocturn looked at him for a moment “It would not hurt, Danny. Merely harm. Becoming a halfa is not an easy process.”

He looked a moment longer, before softening slightly, his eyes gaining a spark of empathy that had been absent so far.

“It would not be like your own transformation.”

Danny inhaled sharply, causing Tucker to squeeze his hand.

“And this would work?” Tucker asked, pushing down the hope that wanted to spill out in his voice.

He couldn’t believe they were considering this. When had they started considering this?

Nocturn nodded “Yes, it would. This realm,” He swept a hand around himself, gesturing to the landscape around them, “is one where the normal rules do not apply. It is a realm governed by myself and the logic of dreams.”

“So this is a dream.” Tucker said.

“Yes, of a sort. Though it is not a ‘normal’ dream, as you would say. Nor are you dreaming.” Nocturn explained.

Tucker looked at him for a moment “That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Yeah, how can we be here if we aren’t dreaming?” Danny added, finally recovered from the mention of the portal accident.

Nocturn waved a hand in front of himself. “This realm is a dream, my dream. I have just pulled the two of you into it for the purposes of this deal.”

At the mention of the deal, Tucker realized something.

“Wait. What do you want in return? You never said.” He asked, narrowing his eyes.

Even if this ghost could actually turn him into a halfa, Tucker wasn’t stupid enough to fall for another trick like Desiree’s, where everything you gained was twisted around into a bad thing.

If Nocturn asked for something unreasonable, he’d refuse.

Even if there was a pang in his heart at the idea of doing so, of leaving Danny alone.

Nocturn smiled. “It’s simple. All I ask is for Danny to become my apprentice.”

Tucker blinked, before looking over at Danny. He looked just as confused as Tucker felt.

“So, you don’t want me to like, destroy something or kill someone? Or let you do it?” Danny asked, confusion clear in his voice.

“Of course not, Danny. All I ask is for you to learn, and help me in small tasks associated with my duties. Nothing so violent.”

Danny turned to Tucker, looking at him intensely for a moment, before turning to Nocturn.

“Can we- have a minute? To talk about it.”

Nocturn inclined his head, before disappearing.

Tucker immediately turned to Danny.

“You can’t seriously be considering this. There’s no way the apprentice thing isn’t a trap-“

“I know, but- Tuck, if he’s telling the truth-“ Danny looked at him pleadingly, before continuing “If he’s telling the truth, you could be a halfa.”

Tucker sighed. “Yeah. I could.”

They looked at each for a moment, their hands clutching each other.

“You could always kick his ass, if he’s lying.” Tucker said, slight hesitance in his voice.

Danny grinned. “Yeah, and I don’t think he’d try to get me to officially ‘become his apprentice’ or whatever until his end of the deal was complete. I wouldn’t do it before then.”

Tucker smiled back. “Yeah, so if he turns out to be full of it, you won’t owe him anything. And- and we could try.”

“We could try.” Danny repeated, looking down at their joined hands with something like wonder.

Tucker took a deep breath. “I could be a halfa. I’m going to be a halfa.”

There was a chance Nocturn was lying, but he seemed pretty confident he could do it. Tucker couldn’t help but think that it was going to work.

Danny looked back at him, “You are.”

He leaned in, kissing Tucker, who smiled into the short kiss.

Danny pulled back, an expression full of love on his face.

“Let’s do this.” Tucker said.

Danny nodded, grinning, before turning slightly away from Tucker, though not letting go of his hand.

“I can probably just yell for him, right? He said this was his realm or whatever.” Danny asked.

Tucker shrugged “Probably? That or he’ll show up eventually, it’s not like he’s gonna leave us running around in here.”

Danny nodded, before yelling, “Nocturn! We’re done talking!”

There was a shift in the air, and then Nocturn was standing in front of them.

“So? What is your decision?” Nocturn asked, his red eyes slightly narrowed.

“We’re doing it.” Tucker said.

“I’ll become your apprentice, after Tucker’s a halfa.” Danny added.

Nocturn smiled, before holding out a hand. Green flames filled it, those same green flames racing down to the ground and circling Danny and Tucker.

“Would you like to make a Deal?” Nocturn asked, power heavy in his voice.

Tucker squeezed Danny’s hand, feeling a squeeze back, then reaching his free hand to Nocturn’s, Danny doing the same.

The two of them grasped it at the same moment, and the green flames swirled onto their arms. They were cold, almost freezing, as they settled into Tucker’s skin.

He looked at his arm, the green tinge left there by the flames fading as he watched.

Tucker let go, Danny doing the same.

“So, what happens now-?” Tucker asked, before being interrupted by a portal opening under his feet.

His hand was torn away from Danny’s as he fell.

“Tucker-!”

The last thing he saw was Danny’s panicked face, before the portal closed above him.

***

Tucker landed on the ground with a thud, and groaned. A little warning would’ve been nice. Especially for Danny, he hoped his boyfriend wasn’t killing Nocturn right now-

He blinked, seeing trees above him.

He was in a forest, trees stretching up towards a night sky, one unnaturally bright with stars. There was also solid ground, that he could see, covered in softly glowing leaves.

Huh. When Nocturn had said becoming a halfa was gonna ‘harm’ him, he had been expecting the portal to drop into a vat of fire or something.

Or, like, the void of space. One of those.

Either seemed like they fit with Nocturn’s whole deal.

Tucker stood up, looking around at the small clearing he was in again. There was a path leading deeper, or at least he assumed it was deeper, into the forest. The path was wavering slightly as he looked at it, almost like pavement when it was hot out.

He grimaced. Then again, a shifting, dream-like forest also fit with Nocturn’s whole deal.

Hopefully it wouldn’t be too hard to navigate.

Hopefully.

He sighed, before starting down the path.

At least there didn’t seem to be anything else here, other than the plants.

Tucker wasn’t sure what he’d do if there were any ghosts here, considering he didn’t have any of his tech, and wasn’t a halfa. Yet.

This still seemed too good to be true, a dream. But that was exactly what it was.

And it was still real, still happening.

He was going to be a halfa.

Danny wasn’t going to be alone.

Tucker couldn’t help but smile to himself, before flinching as he walked directly into a branch.

A branch that had not been there a moment earlier.

He took a step back, watching as the branch swung back up into the canopy, the bright glow of the leaves disappearing into the shadows.

“Okay, not normal plants then.” He muttered aloud. He’d known that, obviously, but he hadn’t realized they were going to try to mess with him.

And he was pretty sure the branch had just been messing with him, considering all it’d done was smack him in the face.

Tucker groaned as he started to walk again.

Great, mildly sentient ghost plants that wanted to prank him. Just what he needed.

At least it wasn’t actual ghosts.

And at least the ‘trial’ so far had just been walking.

Tucker blinked, before frowning.

Wait, actually, how long had he been walking for? It can’t have been more than a few minutes-

He glanced behind himself, seeing nothing but forest. The path he had been following had been disappearing behind him, apparently.

He turned, but-

The path in front of him was gone too. There were only trees, the ground covered in glowing leaves that had fallen from the canopy above.

Tucker squinted, seeing what looked like another clearing. He could see a bit of uncovered ground, at least.

He started to pick his way through the fallen leaves, stepping carefully. He was determined not to trip on something hidden under the leaves and fall flat on his face. That would be really embarrassing, even if no one was here to see him.

Thankfully, he managed to avoid any tree roots or hidden vines as he walked to the clearing, stepping into it.

It wasn’t exactly a clearing, more an area where the leaves had been cleared away by something.

If Tucker had to guess, that something was the small bushes that encircled the area. They were softly pulsing as he watched, the purple leaves shaped like cones that expanded and deflated.

The plants also had small berries on them, star-shaped and bright, ectoplasmic green.

Tucker stepped cautiously into the center of the ring of bushes, but nothing happened. Guess they either didn’t care, or could only mess with leaves. He wasn’t actually sure how they would’ve moved the leaves, figuring out plants was really more Sam’s thing.

He glanced at the berries again. His stomach growled. He was starting to get hungry, for whatever reason. Wasn’t this supposed to be a dream?

Tucker’s eyebrows drew together. Well, actually, Nocturn hadn’t said whether where he was sending Tucker was a dream, had he?

So, this could just be a weird bit of the Ghost Zone. Or something different that Nocturn had created.

Whatever, either way Tucker was getting hungry. And in the absence of a Nasty Burger, or any kind of meat, he wasn’t picky, the only thing he could eat was the strange berries.

In any other situation, he wouldn’t do it. Eating food contaminated with ectoplasm was a very bad idea, if you weren’t Danny. But that was exactly the point. The whole reason he was wandering this forest was to become a halfa, to become like Danny. It really couldn’t hurt him to eat them at this point, right?

Tucker reached out, plucking a few berries off the bush. They didn’t glow, exactly, instead being such a bright shade of green that it seemed like they should.

Tucker looked at them for a moment, before shrugging and eating the entire handful at once.

Which was probably a bad idea, actually.

Considering the cold burning that was running down his throat now, tingling and scratching at his flesh.

The berries didn’t even taste good, metal and something sharp on his tongue.

Tucker coughed, trying to- do something, about the pain in his throat. It did not work.

It wasn’t unbearable, or anything, just uncomfortable.

He coughed again, a reflex this time. It almost felt like there was something stuck in his throat, even though he was pretty sure there wasn’t.

At least he wasn’t hungry anymore. Though, that was weird too. He’d only eaten a handful of berries.

Tucker sighed, before turning to walk away from the bushes. Whatever, it was weird ghost food anyway. Why should he expect it to be normal?

He did regret eating it, though. At least a little bit. The burning in his throat did not appear to be going away.

The forest around him was still thick, with no hint of an end. Tucker still couldn’t tell how long he’d been walking for. The sky didn’t change at all in the past few- minutes? Hours? However long it had been. It probably wasn’t going to change, and he didn’t have a watch either, so he had no clue how to figure out the time.

He’d never been the best at time, honestly. There had been more than one time that he had gotten completely wrapped up in a project or game and lost all sense of time until his parents came to drag him out of his room for dinner. There was also the sheer number of times he’d been late for things before he’d started setting alarms on his PDA to make sure he made it on time-

Tucker shivered suddenly. It wasn’t cold, the forest had been the same temperature this entire time, a bit warm.

He felt like something was watching him. He hadn’t seen anything, but the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up, and he could almost-

A small puff of steam left his mouth, and Tucker froze. What the-

That- That was just like what happened with Danny’s ghost sense.

It was working. It was actually working.

Tucker couldn’t help but laugh aloud, a smile overtaking his face. It was working, he had a ghost sense-

Wait.

That meant that the thing watching him was a ghost-

And he didn’t have any other ghost powers yet.

Tucker looked around, seeing nothing, but-

Better to be safe.

He broke into a run, hoping that the forest would prove just as confusing for whatever ghost as it had for him.

Assuming it wasn’t Nocturn.

Oh.

Tucker stopped running, suddenly feeling very stupid. He wasn’t in the Ghost Zone, not really. Which meant it was almost definitely Nocturn keeping an eye on him.

Tucker sighed, before starting to walk again.

***

This place was horrible and Tucker hated it.

He was sure that it was looping back around on him at this point. He’d seen the berry bushes at least eight more times.

He didn’t exactly want more pain piled on top of his burning throat, so he hadn’t eaten any more berries.

Despite the fact that he was definitely hungry again. And the part where they were probably the reason he had a ghost sense.

He still had no clue how long he’d been here.

It could’ve been ten minutes, or three days. There was no way of telling, not when all that ever seemed to happen was him getting hungry, and the forest looping around.

Tucker sighed as he walked past the berry bushes again. Still exactly the same-

He yelped as a vine grabbed his ankles, pulling him off his feet. Okay, not the same-!

Tucker flailed, trying to get the vine to drop him. When that didn’t work, he resorted to attempting to pull himself up enough to tear them off.

The reason this was a last resort was due to his very bad core strength, since he didn’t actually want to do sit-ups in gym and avoided it like the plague.

He grabbed at the vine, just barely managing to get a hold of the tendril furthest up his leg before gravity brought his torso back down. Luckily, the vine came with him, and he dropped to the ground with a thud.

Tucker groaned. That had hurt. That had hurt a lot. He’d managed to hit his head, as well as get the wind knocked out of him.

Just add it to the pain in his throat, whatever. At least he wasn’t still being held captive by the vine.

He sat up, flinching as he did so. His back was not happy with him. A sharp, stinging pain in his legs caught his attention next. There were long cuts down his legs, in swirling patterns like the vine had burnt them into him. Ectoplasm was oozing around, and into, the cuts.

Tucker frowned. On one hand, that was probably bad. On the other hand, it was also probably good.

He had to assume this was part of whatever plan Nocturn had, so it would turn out fine. Right?

He stood up, wincing as he put weight on his legs. The cuts bled more, and he mourned the loss of these pants. He liked them a lot before they got cut up and covered in blood.

Wait, if this was a dream, or something, maybe his actual pants were fine?

Tucker shook his head, before starting to walk again. Yeah, the chances these weren’t actually destroyed was low. He sorta doubted Nocturn had gone through the effort of copying their clothes, and had actually just put the real ones on them somehow. Which, weird, but ultimately Tucker didn’t care, considering it barely even ranked in terms of ghost weirdness they’d had to deal with since the portal opened.

He passed by the berry bushes again and frowned.

That was quicker than it had been looping before.

It was speeding up.

And his legs were really starting to hurt now-

Tucker froze as he looked down at his legs.

There was a green color spreading out from the cuts on his legs. Not the color of ectoplasm, it wasn’t the ectoplasm mixing with his blood-

He reached down, trying frantically to wipe it off. It did not come off.

The green was- in his skin, it was his skin.

His skin was turning green.

What the actual-

Tucker took a breath, before blowing it out all at once.

This had better be more weirdness from this place and not something permanent, because it was not going to be a fun time trying to hide this from his parents.

Also, he would seriously hate it if his legs were permanently green-

He looked down at his legs again, and realized something.

The green spreading from the cuts was the exact same shade as his now-ruined pants. This was definitely weird ghost stuff.

Tucker blinked, his eyebrows drawing together. Huh.

Now that he thought about it, and this was happening, he was going to be wearing this outfit for, well, functionally forever, yeah? Danny was stuck in the jumpsuit he’d been wearing when he- when the accident happened.

It was a good thing Tucker liked this outfit, then. He remembered how annoyed Danny had been in the beginning, that he didn’t get to choose.

It also meant that the pants weren’t actually ruined, so that was super cool.

Tucker shook his head, before walking forward again. His legs still hurt, but honestly? He just wanted to get this over with, at this point.

A puff of steam left his mouth again, and Tucker sighed.

Was Nocturn seriously just going to watch him this whole time? That had to be what was going on, why else would his new ghost sense keep going off?

Whatever, he didn’t actually care.

He just wanted to finish this ‘trial’, so he could be a halfa, and get back to Danny.

He just had to keep moving forward.

It had been either a few hours, or a few days.

But he just had to keep moving.

***

Tucker had already thought about it a lot over the past few- however long it’s been, but seriously. This place sucked.

His legs were pretty much completely green now, and he was starting to wonder if they were going to turn into a ghost tail at some point, it would make sense-

The other thing was that his throat had stopped hurting, finally.

He was seriously starting to regret not making Nocturn tell them what the trial would be.

Tucker sighed. Even if they had insisted, he kinda doubted Nocturn would’ve caved.

He just hoped that it hadn’t actually been a few days. He was pretty sure wherever this was had weird time, so he wasn’t worried about his parents or anything-

But Danny was also here, or somewhere close to it. And he was waiting on Tucker.

He really hoped he hadn’t freaked out his boyfriend too much.

Though, if he had, it was definitely Nocturn’s fault, considering he’d opened the portal without even saying anything, and also hadn’t told them about how long this would take.

Tucker didn’t even know for sure how long it would take, or was taking, but he would bet Nocturn did.

Unless Tucker was doing something wrong-

Tucker grimaced, before shaking his head.

He really hoped he wasn’t doing anything wrong. It would absolutely kill him if he was.

He chuckled at the pun he’d just accidentally made. That was the point of this-

He blinked. That…had not been there a moment earlier.

In front of him was a small tree, one that only came up to about his waist. It was bending to the side, the weight of the large piece of fruit hanging off its branches too much for such a tiny thing to support.

The fruit itself was strange. It was glowing, and the colors on it swirled together as Tucker watched, yellow bleeding into orange into yellow. It was about the size of a pomegranate, though Tucker doubted the inside was the same, judging by the fact that the texture looked to be more like an apple than anything.

He glanced around, seeing that the berry bushes had disappeared from sight for the first time in a while. The forest had started looping fast enough that as soon as they disappeared from behind him, they were in front of him.

His ghost sense went off again, and Tucker shook his head. Yeah, yeah, he’d hurry up.

He had to assume that’s why Nocturn kept showing up, to check on how long it was going to take.

Tucker looked back to the fruit.

He was still hungry.

And something about this felt final, like he'd be done after this.

And he really wanted to be done.

He wanted to be a halfa, and to see his boyfriend. He wanted Danny to know, for sure, that he wasn’t the only one, that he'd have help from now on, that he wasn’t alone.

Tucker reached out, plucking the fruit off of the tree. It sprung up, the weight of the fruit gone.

He ran his fingers over the skin of the fruit. He’d been right, it felt like an apple.

Which meant he was probably supposed to eat it like one.

Tucker shrugged slightly, before biting into the fruit.

Oh, that was a weird taste.

It was good, though?

Mostly.

He continued eating the fruit.

It didn’t actually taste much like fruit, actually, of any kind, except for if he was counting the overpowering sweetness that had come out of the first bite. What really made it weird was the tangy, metal, spicy aftertaste that became the main flavor the more he ate. Which, based on how Danny described it, Tucker would have to guess was ectoplasm.

It probably said something about how much Tucker had already been changed by his time in the forest that he actually thought it tasted good. The berries had tasted the same, kinda, and he hadn’t liked those-

Tucker doubled over as pain exploded in his chest. It felt like his ribcage was collapsing.

He groaned as his chest tightened, before loosening by degrees as-

As something settled in his chest.

That-

Tucker straightened up, the pain leaving as fast as it came.

He could feel something in his chest, pulsing. A ghost core?

He was pretty sure that was not how that was supposed to work.

But hey, he’d done it.

He looked around, seeing that nothing had changed.

He sighed.

Guess he had to keep walking.

Yay.

Tucker took a step forward, before-

He pitched forward, the ground disappearing under his feet.

He tumbled down into the sky, purple void and silver stars glittering around him as he fell.

Below him, there was nothing, just more empty space and galaxies in the distance. It was an eternity of nothingness.

He really hoped this hadn’t been a trick by Nocturn. He was pretty sure it wasn’t, but still.

Tucker closed his eyes, the constant spinning making him dizzy.

He could feel the- core, apparently, in his chest humming as he did, something spreading out from it, a heat and light flashing in front of his face, visible even through his closed eyelids.

Tucker felt it as he passed out, still falling through the void of space.

***

“Tucker? Tuck, c’mon-“

Tucker blinked open his eyes, seeing Danny’s face hovering above him. Literally, considering his boyfriend was in ghost form and was floating.

Danny grinned “Tuck, it worked-!”

Tucker frowned, what had-

White hair fell into the corner of his eyes, and Tucker froze.

Before grinning just as wide as Danny had been.

He sat up, feeling cold rock beneath him, and reached out to pull Danny into a hug.

“It worked, I’m a halfa!”

Danny laughed, hugging Tucker back just as hard “You are, you are-“

They stayed like that for a moment, before Tucker pulled back slightly. He glanced around, seeing that they were in the Ghost Zone, not Nocturn’s weird realm. Score.

“We should probably stand up-“

Danny grinned “Are you sure you mean that?”

Tucker glared lightly at him “Of course I do, what-“

He tried to move his legs under him, before realizing-

Oh. He had a ghost tail. He was in ghost form right now.

He knew from watching Danny that he could have legs, too, but he didn’t actually know how to do that right now.

So instead, he pushed himself up so he was hovering in the air. It was surprisingly easy to get the hang of, though he was betting that was cause they were in the Ghost Zone.

“Okay, I get what you meant now. Now c’mon, I want to-“ Tucker started to say, before Danny flew up to meet him, grabbing him in another hug.

The force of Danny’s hug pushed them off the tiny island, leaving the two floating in the endless space of the Ghost Zone, which Tucker really didn’t mind. His boyfriend was curled around him, their tails twining together. It was perfect, honestly.

“I was so worried, especially with the vines, but you did it! You’re okay!” Danny said, his tail squeezing Tucker.

“I am, I- Wait. You were the ghost watching me? I thought it was Nocturn!” Tucker exclaimed, a smile on his face.

Of course it had been Danny. He would’ve wanted to make sure everything would be okay, and that Tucker wouldn’t get hurt.

Danny nodded. “I made Nocturn let me watch. He said I couldn’t do anything, or let you know I was there, but I was.”

Tucker felt his grin get bigger as he wrapped his arms around Danny, pulling him into his side.

“Thanks, Danny.”

Danny was smiling up at Tucker as he said, “I can’t believe you did this, I love you.”

Tucker reached up to hold Danny’s cheek. “I love you too.”

They stayed like that, relishing in each other and the fact that neither of them were alone.

“My end of the deal is completed.” Nocturn said, pulling Tucker out of the moment a bit. Not that much though, considering this was amazing.

Danny pulled back slightly from Tucker, turning his face towards Nocturn and waving him off.

“Yeah yeah, I’ll be your apprentice or whatever. Later though, right now I wanna hang out with my halfa boyfriend.”

Tucker laughed, feeling his chest warm at the reminder that he was a halfa now. He could help Danny, and he wouldn’t be alone-

Neither of them would be alone.

Nocturn sighed “Very well. I will return at a later time.”

Danny gave him a thumbs up, already turning back to Tucker.

Tucker barely noticed as Nocturn left, too focused on Danny’s face in front of him, a large grin across it.

“So, wanna see who can fly faster?”

Tucker grinned back, already uncoiling his tail from Danny’s.

“I bet it’s me!” He said, before taking off.

“No fair, that’s a head start-!” Danny called, already giving chase.

Tucker laughed, feeling free, feeling happy, feeling full of love.

Feeling like he would never be lonely again.

And neither would Danny.

#danny phantom #savant par #tucker foley #fanfiction #my writing #ectoimplosion2024

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