Chapter Text
Danny Fenton was afraid of the dark. (Danny Phantom was too, but no one needed to know that.)
Was there a reason that Danny was scared of the dark? Of course. Whenever the lights went out, all he could see was Dan’s red eyes and bared teeth surrounding him, and sometimes, he felt the itch of his bird-like talons ghosting across his neck. He could see his parents’ twin smiles, twisted into something he could only describe as sadistic, and his bed would begin to feel like the cold metal of the dissection table in the basement that lay only two floors below him. He could see glimpses of the fractured faces of ghosts, and he could hear their scratchy whispers, quietly calling for him to join them in their eternity.
Did his parents know about his fear of the dark? No, they’d ask questions; Danny got nervous when they asked questions.
His sister, perhaps? No, she’d blow it way out of proportion.
Someone at school, or even just his friends? God no, his friends would never stop worrying, and if word got around, Dash would ruin him.
Needless to say, because of this fear, Danny had a nightlight. It was a little red and white rocket ship that projected bright stars onto the ceiling during the dark of the night and he loved it.
(Though he feared that, with the way his grades were spiralling, it was the closest he would ever get to the stars.)
The only way he could get to sleep without it- or any other light source- was if there was another person in the room with him. It could be anyone, it didn’t matter who, he just need to know that someone was there.
(Anyone except my own parents, he would think with a sigh- because he’d never un-see that Y-shaped vivisection scar left on his chest from the last time they caught him.)
(Maybe they were the main reason he was afraid of the dark and not Dan after all- although he wasn’t sure he wanted to know if that was true or not.)
Danny Phantom- half-ghost saviour of Amity Park- was scared of the dark more than anything else. Who would have guessed?
Dash Baxter was not an easily-rattled teenager, but somehow, Fenton- of all people- had managed to do it.
It was all Mr. Lancer’s fault anyway.
It had been a pretty slow Friday, not even a ghost attack to break the unbearable mundanity of the day, and Dash could only watch the clock in anticipation of the coming weekend. But then Mr. Lancer had given back the short-essay results on the poem ‘Time and Love’ by William Shakespeare; and a huge, slightly smudged ‘D’ had been stamped across the front of the paper in bold crimson. It was infuriating but, also the perfect excuse to end his boredom by wailing on Fenton so, perhaps it was a blessing in disguise. (Besides, during the last week, Dash hadn’t seen him at all- almost as if he’d disappeared. He was long due a pounding.)
When Dash had stalked towards Fenton’s turned back, he had seemed more on tense than usual, and his movements were sluggish. He was dragging his feet, almost as if the weight of them was difficult to carry. Then he had screamed some warped version of the raven-haired boy’s surname, turned him around and grabbed his shirt roughly, intending to intimidate Fenton- as per the usual.
But then their gazes had locked, and Dash was stopped in his tracks.
Dash Baxter did not feel any sort of compassion for the youngest of the Fentons, but those big, blue eyes just looked so scared. They made him seem too young, too small, like he could clasp his shirt just a little bit tighter and suddenly Fenton would shatter like a tea cup. It was worrying, because that boy was a lot of things, but afraid of Dash had never been one of them.
But Fenton didn’t really look as if he was looking at him, more through him, like he was expecting something to turn around the corner that Dash had his back to and attack them.
He had bags underneath his eyes, too. Both an ugly purple and black that made them seem like they were from bruises rather than sleep-deprivation. It looked like the boy hadn’t had a full-night’s worth of sleep in weeks. How had Dash not noticed before?
(Maybe this is why I got a D in poetry analysis,- he thought glumly- I’m not perceptive at all, am I?)
He still had a hold of Fenton’s- no- Danny’s t-shirt collar, so he let go.
(I may not be one of his loser friends, but this is just weird, so I have a right to ask.)
“Dude, you look like a zombie, what the hell?”
Danny laughed, and it might have eased Dash’s concern a little if it didn’t sound so nervous.
“I’m fine, Dash, just tired. Why do you care anyway?”
The question wasn’t spoken with a bitter or resentful tone, he just sounded genuinely curious, as if it was a truly rare occasion in which someone other than Manson, Foley, or his sister expressed concern for him. (It further saddened him to realise that that was mostly his fault.)
“Because it’s no fun knocking you down a peg if there’s no pegs to knock down. You look like you haven’t slept in centuries, Fen-toad.”
Danny Fenton was decidedly not having the most pleasant of weeks.
His rocket- his rocket; with the stars and the lights and everything- was missing. How could it be missing? He always hid it when he left his room, so, it couldn’t have been stolen, because only Odysseus knew it existed (which is to say nobody). But he always hid it in the same place- so he couldn’t have just lost it.
This, of course, meant that Danny was the most sleep-deprived he had ever been in his miserable half-life. Just existing was physically painful. The weight of his body was hard to carry, and he could feel the flesh underneath his skin as it met the cells that made up his outer layer of being- he despised it.
The strangest thing was that he also seemed to be more alert than he had ever been in his life as well. He could hear the erratic heartbeats of all the tortured adolescents in the hallway, he could hear people’s heavy breathing through the thin walls, and the talking was so loud that he thought his ears might bleed.
Then Dash Baxter had rocked up to him with his pounding footsteps and ragged breaths- which might have gone unheard had Danny not been so sleep-deprived- screeched his last name (or at least, a derivation of it) with all the strength and terribleness of a banshee and grabbed him by the front of his shirt.
Situations such as this had two possible outcomes for Danny Fenton was tired:
One- adrenaline would pump through his system like blood in his veins, strength would catch him like a rabbit in a snare and, in a burst of ungodly power, he’d fight with an uncontrollable fervour unheard of in his lifetime and the opposition would be absolutely decimated.
Or- if the opposition was not a threat- his body would go into complete shutdown of everything except his vital organs, and he’d be left with about as much fight in him as a particularly beat-up ragdoll.
And Dash Baxter was no threat- not to Danny- so, he collapsed in the athlete’s grasp, utterly helpless.
But then, he had been put down, without even a scratch to show for it.