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Trying to keep track of what I read: A collection
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2021-10-31
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They Never Do

Summary:

Ghost Flowers pop up all over town, the kind that shows up when someone becomes a ghost. Yeah everyone is wary of them, fear mongerers say there is a serial killer on the loose.

People point to Danny Fenton, wearing a flower chain of the ghostly flowers.

There has been a huge misunderstanding.

Notes:

THIS IS BASED ON A PROMPT FROM TUMBLR, thank you theshadowrealmitself your mind is huge and I also love misunderstandings in media (except for romantic kind)

So yeah, everyone thinks Danny is a serial killer wearing the flowers from where he killed his victims when he's just wearing some pretty flower. With a side of body horror and gost bullshit.

Work Text:

There are flowers all over Amity Park. They were growing from between cracks in the concrete, thriving in the strangest places. They were a bright bright white color, almost unnaturally blank. They were beautiful and speckled with reds and greens and blacks, they seemed to show up everywhere. One day the alley would be normal, the nest there would be a patch of beautiful flowers growing by the trashcans whenever the garbage men came to take the rubbish. 

 

It wasn’t until one night that people found out what the flowers meant. 

 

Sidney Pointdexter was floating through the halls of Casper High, people not paying much attention to him after he was seen as a pleasant if slightly strange boy. He haunted the place and they all sort of respected his space in a way. It must suck to be dead and always in a school, so they don’t have to make it worse for the guy. 

 

When he stops in the library, the kids go quiet as death. Sidney frowns and touches a patch of flowers growing from a small alcove behind one of the less used shelves. 

 

He mutters softly to himself, “More of these? I don’t remember anyone dying here last night. I think I’d remember another ghost showing up…”

 

The kids who heard don’t say a word until Sidney carefully passes a hand over the ghostly flowers and looks like he’s grieving. 

 

The word spreads fast, the flowers all over town… they’re not so pretty anymore. The splatter of color across them looks like blood carelessly thrown about, ectoplasm and ichor and red red red like a pool opened up from someone’s neck. No one touches them, because it would be bad luck if they did. Amity isn’t too small, but it’s scary to think that someone died in that spot just the day before. Was it a ghost fight casualty?

 

Or was it a human problem, something done by one of the living to one another? Just a wall away from someone sleeping or staying up late to watch scary movies with their friends. 

 

Words spread fast. 

 

Words like death are muttered in hushed tones, kids are being kept inside more now, curfew is getting stricter. More flowers appear. More alarmists cry of serial killers and murder and chalk lies but no body has been found. The police can do nothing, but the city is in shambles of worry with the flowers becoming more commonplace. 

 

Dash looks at a patch of flowers on the football field and stalls, because fuck. Someone just died there. Someone must have died there the night before and he didn’t see anything of them but there were flowers to prove that they existed. 

 

(The true story was that fucking Skulker got out of the thermos for the third time that night and Danny had to retransform on the field just to then kick the ghost’s ass for a fourth time and then tear u his suit with his bare hands so that the annoying freaking blob wouldn’t get back out.)

 

Not that anyone else knew that. The football team was quiet all day.

 

Danny really liked not getting shoved in a locker that day, so he seemed cheerful. That was… everyone in school was mourning this unknown person and yet this kid was smiling and doing his homework. Some were envious of how he could push through this situation without being as morose as the rest of them.

 

Some were suspicious.

 

Suspicions only grew though, because Danny Fenton was terrible at reading a situation. 

 

Danny hums to himself, looking at the flowers growing by one of his favorite places in the park. It was close to a cemetery and no one wanted to get within five hundred feet of one of those on the off chance that the church grin would start barking and change into a large ectoplasmic entity that wanted to use them as a chew toy. Which Danny would then have to fix. (Speaking from experience.)

 

The flowers are pretty, and somehow it feels like peace when he holds onto one of the petals. Without thinking, he plucks a few flowers from the ground and began to weave their stems together with the way Jazz taught him when he was little. When they used to go to the park, and he’d toddle around with only his sister as supervision. It was nice actually, the way the cool dark green stems flowed together and were so cool against his fingers. 

 

Before he could stop to think he had made a nice little bracelet of flowers. Should he give them to Sam?

 

No, the thought hits his fast and hard like a train on impact, keep them.

 

Huh. Wonder where that thought came from. Still, he didn’t see anything strange about it, and he slipped the chain of flowers onto his wrist and smiled at them Then he remembered why he was at the park and jumps up from his spot in the grass- he has to get to fifth period in ten minutes or Lancer will literally skin him. 

 

When the teenager slips into class, no one pays much attention. Mr. Lancer’s searching eyes caught onto the flower chain on the boy’s wrist and almost has a stroke. He wonders briefly why in the world the boy would take those flowers- he had never been one to wear flowery pretty things. Not that Lancer would judge, he did drag in his free time thank you very much. 

 

Still, it was strange, and worrying to see the flowers of the dead wrapped so carefully around his delinquent student. 

 

Rumor flies fast, that Danny Fenton was wearing ghost flowers. The kind that people think was coming from a serial killer. 

 

It goes from him being the next victim to being the serial killer himself. It gets worse with every mouth the rumor passes. No one could do much of anything. There was no real proof, and none of the ghosts would say a thing. No new ghosts were popping up either, though the flowers told a story of tragic death and forever afterlife. Not sight nor sound caught on anything but whispered rumors. 

 

They make sure not to say these things around Tucker and Sam, they might be in on it. 

 

Slowly the town withdrew from Danny Fenton, and he was none the wiser, already such a wraith in his own life. He had his two friends, and hey no one was picking on him anymore. And they were staying away from other nerds too. Maybe the jocks were finally not being dicks! That was a win in his book. 

 

It isn’t until someone finds a patch of flowers in their locker that the rumors get louder. Because teenagers assume the worst and exacerbate the truth to feel important, it’s only natural. Because how did someone kill another person in someone else’s lockers. What was once an uneasy backing away from Danny was now a full-out restraining order against the guy effective immediately. 

 

It caught his attention.

 

“Sam? Do you know why people are like? Avoiding me like I have the plague?” He asks, hands absently rubbing at a cool splattered petal on his wrist. 

 

The goth looks over at him and shrugs, “Not sure, I don’t think you smell bad.”

 

This leads the teenager to pull his shirt up and sniff at it to make sure he doesn’t actually smell bad, but he starts using a new kind of cologne just in case. Tucker laughs at him, but he has no clue either. 

 

It’s not until someone is brave enough to confront Danny that he realizes how entirely fucked he is. 

 

“Why are you always covered in those flowers?” Kwan asks, his voice is hardest. Danny has never had the guy get mad at him before, even when he played pranks on the whole team. Kwan was a really nice guy! What did Danny do?

 

“What do you mean?” He asks, before remembering he was in fact wearing a crown of flowers today because he was pretty dammit and he liked how they looked in his hair. He could acknowledge things he liked thank you, no toxic masculinity here.

 

Kwan looks at him with an unreadable expression, “Why are you wearing ghost flowers.”

 

Danny blinks, and then thinks about it, “Wait. what?”

 

“Don’t act stupid! These flowers are from where people die! They grow where someone became a ghost! They’re all over town, so why are you wearing them?”

 

Oh, oh. OH! Oh god, what kind of hole has Danny dug for himself this time. His face must be doing something weird because Kwan is backing away. He steels himself, “What do you think I’m doing wearing them?”

 

He’s trying to ask in the most non-confrontational way possible, but that must have sounded like a threat because Kwan’s face hardens and his mouth sets into an angry frown, “God you really must be a serial killer.”

 

“Wh-” And there he goes. 

 

Why must Danny’s life be so complicated! He tries to take the flower crown on his head, but it’s not moving. Why can’t he- oh. It seems to have fused with him, the stem tightening around his skull enough that the place where flesh meets greenery becomes melded. He can’t even take off the crown- nor the bracelets. They think that he’s a killer!

 

He sinks to the floor and leans against the wall, trying to pull the flowers off him but they will not budge. 

 

“Of course. Of course, I can’t stop the rumors without telling the truth but the truth is- the truth might get me killed.” Danny gives up tearing at the ghost flowers and stares down at his hands, “Social pariah or special experiment specimen… God, what kind of life do I live.”

 

Phantom was well-liked now, getting truces with the Fenton’s and Red Huntress, he was seen as helpful. The town hero. A good spirit. 

 

Danny Fenton was now public enemy number one, with people believing him to be a killer…

 

Well. Not like he hasn’t had experience with being seen as evil. He’ll just have to roll with the punches and hope that maybe the flowers go away. That the rumors go away. 

 

(they never do)