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Danny stares at his hands where they grip the sides of the bathroom sink. He’s avoiding his reflection, like he does so often after ... y’know. Anyways.
He’s staring at his hands because he’s avoiding his reflection because he hasn’t looked quite right since the day he died. But he can’t stop thinking about Amorpho, and what the ghost could do.
Danny may act like it sometimes, but he’s not stupid. He’s noticed he very conveniently gains new powers when he needs them most. He always just chalked it up to his life being a very crappy hero movie rip-off. Y’know, superhero gains extra powers at the very last second that just so happen to be exactly what they need to beat the villain of the week? But since meeting Amorpho ... Danny’s realized his skin feels strange no matter if he’s ghost or human, like it doesn’t quite fit.
Like his fingers are the wrong shape and his teeth are too small in his mouth. Like he’s got too many joints but not enough, like his skin just wants to melt off his bones and his lips want to stretch wide wide wider.
It makes him wonder -- what if he doesn’t gain all the new abilities? What if ... what if he’s always been able to do them all, but he just hadn’t realized until the situation forced his hand?
It wasn’t pretty, watching Amorpho shift shapes. Hearing non-existent bones snap, watching his skin stretch and shrink, listening to it tear; it had been horrifying. Since dying-but-not-really, Danny had become used to seeing a lot of gore in his day to day life, but nothing quite like that. Except, well, after the initial wave of nausea the first time he witnessed a shift up close, it hadn’t been all that gross? All he could think about after was how good it must feel, to stretch your bones like that. To feel your skin hug you so tightly.
He’d almost forgotten himself, almost let these thoughts slip to Sam and Tucker. But he caught himself at the last second, when Tucker almost threw up and then wouldn’t stop talking about how gross the shape shift had been to witness. And Sam, she hadn’t been grossed out, simply fascinated. But it was the same way she was fascinated with her horror movie special effects. Danny didn’t want to make his friends sick, or have them study him like a movie monster.
So he kept his thoughts to himself. And now here he is, home alone and locked in his bathroom but refusing to look at his reflection because he wanted to just ... see what it was like. Just once. See if it felt as satisfying as it looked.
He takes a deep breath, and lets himself sink into the familiar deathly cold. Come on, Fenton. Stop being a wimp. Another deep breath, and he looks up.
Danny always forgot what he looks like to other people when he goes ghost. The hazy static that blurs his body, same as his voice. Looking in the mirror is disorienting. He can see what everyone else saw when they look at him, but he can also see himself clearly: black and white hazmat suit, white hair, green eyes, luminescent freckles, icy-blue skin.
He fights the urge to look away from his familiar-unfamiliar reflection. Taking one last deep breath, for comfort more than anything else, he concentrates hard on the way his skin doesn’t fit and how his mouth is wrong, and decides to start small.
Slowly, focusing all his energy on his mouth, he opens it, refusing to take his eyes off his reflection. It takes a second, but then -- his canines, growing longer. The teeth next to them and the same ones on the bottom of his jaw do the same. Pulling his lips back so he can see everything better, Danny leans in closer to the mirror.
Oh, wow . He has fangs! He lifts a finger to his mouth, runs it over his teeth, pressing. A sharp sting, and he pulls his finger back to see his glove punctured, a bead of ectoplasm growing on his finger. Sharp.
Looking back at his reflection, he this time focuses on his eyes, the way they feel like they should melt out of his skull. And they do.
Slowly, his left eye loses its firmness, and then all at once it’s dripping down his cheek in one thick line of eyeball slime.
Danny feels like he should be horrified, but honestly, it just feels -- good.
He reaches up, scoops his melted eyeball back into its socket and lets it be solid again.
He feels satisfied in a way he’s never felt before. To balance this feeling, he lets his other eye melt down his cheek, but then he can’t get enough.
He opens his mouth wide, wider than it should be able to go, into a terrifying grin. His teeth grow sharper, his breath comes out colder. Danny gives into the feeling in his fingertips, lets them sharpen into claws. He lets his shoulders droop down farther than they should be able to go, lets his bones melt away. His head tips back and he hates it for a second because he can no longer see himself in the mirror, but then his spine bends bends bends backwards, more. His ribcage gives.
He melts all together, up and down and sideways. Sharp still, he’ll never not be sharp, but shapeless in a way he’s never been before. Both his eyes are gone and he doesn’t have ears but he can still hear, can still smell and see and feel even if all that still has a solid shape is his face with a too-wide smile and too-sharp teeth.
It shouldn’t, oh it shouldn’t, but it feels so good. So right to let his body go.
No human could ever do this. No human could ever see this, watch it happen to a body that had looked so human and not feel wrong, feel sick to their stomach. Not even Sam.
Danny doesn’t know how much time passes before he reforms his body. For a second he worries if it will feel wrong to be mostly solid again, but when he’s all back together again, all he feels is settled.
Light flashes and he’s human again. He looks at himself in the mirror. Are his teeth a little bit longer? Are his nails a little bit sharper? Are his eyes just a little bit less blue?
Danny doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. His body has never felt so comfortable before. He never thought his body fit him strangely, before, but suddenly he can’t imagine ever being forced back into that ill-fitting skin.
For the first time since his death, his body fits his soul.