Archive of Our Own

Hazy evening light poured into Danny’s kitchen window, diffracting off of the metal sink just below it and onto the ceiling. It made strange shapes along the textured plaster, moving just slow enough so as to not be detected with a quick glance.

It always looked the same this time of day; Danny was thankful that he’d found a place with enough natural lighting to suit his predominantly nocturnal schedule (lord knows he could use the vitamin D). The living room had a large window, too, making the worn couch along the wall an ideal napping spot.

Doing precisely that, Danny mumbled softly in their sleep. They had notably puffy cheeks that evening, which enhanced their defined under eye circles.

On the floor in front of Danny, Tucker and Sam played a silent game of Gin Rummy with Danny’s beat up bicycle cards.

They didn’t seem interested in their friend’s occasional stirring, seemingly convinced that it would be near-impossible to wake him up with a few hushed exclamations and the sound of shuffling cards.

Just then, a soft hum emanated from the kitchen, filling the formerly soundless space. There was a sound akin to the low sparking of a lighter finding its light, green luminescence flickering to life in the middle of the kitchen as the hum grew louder.

Sam and Tucker made eye contact before jumping up, leaving the cards unattended.

The light condensed momentarily before exploding into an vertically ovular blob of inconsistent greens and pinks. The colors oscillated between opaque and transparent, allowing light to pass through the shape.

“What the hell…?” Sam murmured, grabbing the blade fastened onto her garter. It was coated in a substance that repelled ghosts - from Fentonworks, obviously - but would probably do the trick for a human, too.

“Should we wake Danny up?” Tucker kept his eyes on the portal.

He wasn’t quite sure if this was a Phantom-level dilemma.

Before Sam could respond, a thin, yellow leg stepped through the portal, followed by a rectangular figure that hardly measured up to either of their hips.

“SpongeBob??” Sam lowered her knife immediately.

“Sam! Oh, and Tucker! It’s nice to see you again!” He exclaimed, jumping into the air with open arms. He landed almost soundlessly on his feet (which just so happened to be wearing a pair of blue crocs).

“It’s good to see you too, SpongeBob, but what’s the deal with — “

Before Tucker could finish, two more figures made their way through the portal before it closed behind them.

Almost instantly, the air of the room shifted.

There, Jimmy Neutron - Danny’s friend, and henceforth Tucker and Sam’s friend - was cradled in Timmy Turner’s arms, limp as a dead fish.

Timmy’s expression was frantic as he approached the pair, SpongeBob assuming a place next to Sam.

“Y…You’ve gotta help him. We thought that Danny could be able to but if he can’t get here in time then - “

“What’s wrong with him?” Sam asked as Tucker made his way to the couch. SpongeBob stayed at Sam’s side, tentatively watching the interaction unfold.

“I-I’m not sure. We were hanging out and decided to go to SpongeBob’s dimension but s-something went wrong with his portal machine thing and…”

Timmy had to take a moment to collect himself. He was now crying, tears streaming down his cheeks and onto Jimmy’s.

He felt horrible about it, but he couldn’t really wipe them away.

Sam motioned for him to set Jimmy down on the ground, assessing as much as they could.

Obviously they weren’t a medical professional, but they and Tucker had operated on Danny more times than either of them could count.

It was usually minor things. Small cuts, ghost infections, but every once in a while something remarkably disastrous would happen, so they’d learned to be prepared for moments like these.

Once Jimmy was on the ground, it was easier to see what was going on. Blood specked both of their clothes, but it was notably focused on Jimmy’s chest and right arm.

It was fresh, too, thankfully.

Tucker, on the other hand, had a different problem to deal with.

Danny didn’t sleep quite right.

It would be a lie to say that his backwards sleep schedule began after he became half-ghost, though.

He’d often experienced bouts of insomnia long before Tucker had met him, but being a ghost crime fighter at the mercy of his foes and their schedules certainly accentuated what was already there.

Most of the time Danny would take sleep whenever they were able to find it. Unfortunately, this wasn’t every day. They’d frequently find themself just restless enough to lay awake, but too tired to do anything beyond that.

Sometimes he’d text Tucker and Sam, but mostly he’d just exist catatonically, balanced perfectly between awake and asleep.

The only reason Tucker knew this was because of how often they’d slept in the same room. He spoke with Sam about it one morning after it took Danny a particularly long time to actually fall asleep, but they brushed it off as a non-issue.

Sam seemed to think that it was a byproduct of his newfound biology. They were sympathetic, obviously, but understood that it probably wasn’t something that Danny could fix (and she was certain that he’d tried) with a prescription or two.

So now, in a particularly vexing turn of events, Tucker would be expected to wake them up.

He dreaded it, knowing that Danny could use all of the actual rest that he could get, but was sure that he would agree with his motivations once conscious.

Hesitantly, he placed his hands on Danny’s arm, shaking it softly.

“Hey pal, you’ve gotta get up.”

A groan escaped their downturned lips before they blinked awake.

“Mh?”

Their voice was groggy, but not unaware.

“Jimmy, Timmy, and SpongeBob are here,” Tucker said, now standing at full height, “Jimmy’s hurt and… well, I’m not sure what’s wrong with him but they seem to think that you can help him.”

Tucker looked back at the scene unfolding on Danny’s kitchen floor.

He immediately sat up, grabbing the cane resting along the couch and made his way over to the group.

Timmy was grabbing ice from Danny’s fridge as SpongeBob idly watched over Sam from a distance.

As the pair approached, Sam turned to them, brows knitted in concern.

“I’ve never seen anything like this... His entire torso is covered in these tiny incisions.”

She motioned to the boy’s now-uncovered chest - apologies to Jimmy’s newly blade-severed shirt, she had done what needed to be done - which was freckled with droplets of blood. A roll of paper towels was by her side, one of which had already been bloodied.

“I’m afraid to compress anywhere on him; I just don’t know if there’s still… something inside of him? It doesn’t look to be bugs or anything, but I have no idea what could have caused this,” she sighed.

Danny had taken a step closer, now able to investigate. It really was quite peculiar.

“Timmy, what happened?” They asked, rubbing the fatigue from their eyes.

He walked over with the ice, looking beyond stressed.

“Well, we were going to see SpongeBob but the portal malfunctioned or something and Jimmy tried to fix it but… when he was messing with one of the panels I heard something pop and he fell over. I, uh, thought he was playing a joke on me but then he started bleeding and I - “ Timmy had begun to speak quickly, stumbling over his words, “I just didn’t know what to do. SpongeBob came through the portal after that and soon enough we somehow got it working to get here. I wouldn’t know where else to take him for something like that,” he motioned weakly to the state of his friend.

“M’sorry,” he turned away, choking up. SpongeBob circled around to his side, patting his side comfortingly.

“It’s ok, Tim,” Danny said, standing up and walking to the sink. He began to wash his hands.

“I’ll fix him right up.”

Sam made eye contact with Tucker, motioning for him to take the other two out of the room.

Thankfully, he got the message, guiding them to Danny’s bedroom and closing the door after he’d entered.

Sam was always better with the medical jargon, anyway.

Once Danny had finished and come back to their makeshift workstation, Sam was already moving her own supplies out of the way.

She’d grabbed what vitals she could from Jimmy, and had confirmed that he was relatively stable, but that was all she’d be able to do at this point.

It was in Danny’s hands now.

They kneeled before their friend, inhaling slowly.

“Here goes nothing.”

Within a moment, Danny’s hand had become transparent. He slipped it through Jimmy, moving it through his torso.

Danny had a habit of sticking out his tongue when he was focusing, and Sam had a habit of laughing at it.

Sam bit their cheek, focusing on not pointing out the goofy expression on their friend’s face as he gauged the damage.

“It feels like sand, somehow. It’s like he was shot with… sand.”

Sam furrowed her brows, but listened intently. She’d try and work out whatever happened as Danny worked — he wouldn’t be thinking about the semantics of it as he probed around his friend’s vital organs with his non-corporeal hands.

“Could you get me a tin? I’m gonna need somewhere to put it.”

“Yeah,” she replied, getting up and rummaging around Danny’s kitchen. It was as easy as ever to navigate — Sam practically lived there — so she was back on the ground with an empty cookie tin within a matter of seconds.

“Thanks.”

And with that, they began the strenuous process of painstakingly locating and extracting every foreign particle in Jimmy’s body.

Sam considered finding a way to sedate the man sprawled out on the floor, but unfortunately did not own anything other than local anesthetic. Her biggest concern was that he’d somehow wake up and need to lay there, enduring whatever Danny needed him to before they could call it quits.

She said a silent prayer that the incident had knocked him out cold for the next hour.

At first, things were going alright. Monotonously, Danny would carefully feel for a particularly concentrated area of particles, make them intangible, and remove them with a moderately steady hand.

The tin was dusted with these minuscule shards of material after a minute or two, but one could hardly call it full.

Not long after, the process became painstakingly precise. Danny had removed any large congregations of the sand from inside his friend, but they were far from finished.

By their estimate, most of the fragments were sporadically located at various depths and locations around Jimmy’s exposed chest, and would need to be taken out carefully, so as to not disrupt the organs (that by Danny’s assessment, were somewhat unharmed) surrounded by them.

He would start the process in Jimmy’s arms and work inwards, seeing that they were mostly unharmed.

It meant that his chest cavity would be last. It was a daunting prospect that Danny forcibly ignored the implications of, instead focusing on what he could do to best help now.

All things considered, it only took him a few minutes to gather every dust particle in Jimmy’s arms and dispose of it into the cookie tin.

He pulled his hands out of his friend’s body, making himself tangible for a moment.

“Are you doing okay, Danny?” Sam asked, handing them a glass of water that they hadn’t seen her obtain.

“Yeah. I’m alright - I’ve got most of it out, I think, but his chest is going to take me some time. That’s where most of the sand was and I want to be careful about the stray pieces that I missed on my first go.”

His voice was tinged with lassitude, but didn’t lack conviction, evident in the stern expression of focus etched into his features. He took a sip of the water, setting it to the side.

“His arms are alright.”

Sam nodded, understanding immediately.

They moved to grab a roll of gauze, carefully disinfecting the minute wounds with saline before wrapping his respective arms neatly.

By the time that Sam had finished, Danny was several minutes into the task.

Sweat beaded on their forehead, which was accentuated by their furrowed brows.

His tongue was sticking out of his mouth, twitching every so often.

This wasn’t an easy job.

Danny had to continuously focus on making exclusively his left arm and hand non-corporeal, but remaining tangible himself so as to anchor himself to one spot on the ground. He forcibly oscillated his abilities in his hand, just slightly gaining enough feeling back in his fingers to gauge where the sand was located, subsequently extracting it.

At first, it hadn’t been much of a pain, considering that they’d used this trick for all sorts of things prior to Jimmy’s incident. But after a few minutes, even a decade of having these abilities amounted to nothing as he realized that this was going to take an incredulous amount of effort out of him.

The focus required to maintain his ghostly form wasn’t the issue. Sure, isolating a part of his body and making it transparent used to be difficult, but after a while Danny found that he could maintain it with ease.

It was getting the tips of his fingers to sit somewhere between tangible and intangible that caused growing difficulty. They had to be ghostly enough so as to not damage Jimmy’s flesh, but physical enough so as to be able to actually grab and sense the sand, turning it non-corporeal as he exited Jimmy.

This unusual middle-ground could be achieved once or twice a day without issue, but Danny had admittedly never had to use it for longer than a minute.

Not to mention that if he were to accidentally cause one of Jimmy’s organs to turn intangible, the cavity in which it once occupied would quickly fill with blood, rendering it impossible to put the organ back safely.

He couldn’t make Jimmy fully intangible either, seeing as the particles were too small to discern from the rest of his body at that scale.

Danny was unfortunately pursuing his only option.

He thought back to a time when he’d choked on a bottle cap, having to reach into his own throat and grab the aluminum fragment, pulling it out quickly.

Even then, the debacle had only lasted a moment or two.

Now, he had to keep pushing through whatever discomfort or fatigue that affected him, remaining calm and steady for Jimmy.

“Let me know if you need anything,” Sam offered, knowing that it was futile. When Danny was focusing on something like this, he couldn’t be bothered.

Sam learned that a long time ago, but couldn’t help reassuring her friend. If nothing else, she’d be there to pick up the pieces left of Danny after he’d inevitably fall apart.

They’d grown quite a bit over the years.

—

As the grueling minutes droned on, Tucker found it increasingly difficult to occupy SpongeBob and Timmy.

Timmy’s godparents - Tucker thinks he remembers hearing Timmy calling them that at one point - seemed to want to keep the peace as well, especially the pink-haired one.

She was particularly vocal when they’d first entered Danny’s room, attempting to distract her godson with musings regarding the chaotic decor.

It wasn’t terribly messy by any means, but the room itself was a bit… incoherent.

Posters from various films, shows, and performances were plastered on the walls, accompanied by a few odd postcards from all over the world.

He had silken evergreen covers, complete with a massive gray weighted blanket sitting on the foot of his bed.

There was a beanbag, too, which SpongeBob immediately took to occupying and bouncing on. It seemed to be an effort to let out all of his nervous energy.

When Timmy and Tucker sat near one another on the bed, Tucker offered everyone a soda from the mini fridge next to Danny’s desk.

Luckily, no one accepted the offer.

Danny only drank sparkling water and tap water.

“So… what’s new with you two? Haven’t seen you around as much,” Tucker began casually.

Timmy looked away, clearly overridden with worry. It was a bit sad to watch him try and keep it together.

SpongeBob took this as an opportunity to give Tucker as many updates as possible in the span of a few minutes. He talked about his job, his friends, and dinner last Saturday. After Tucker had responded to everything that he could, the room went quiet for a moment.

“Do you think he’ll be okay?” SpongeBob asked solemnly.

Tucker nodded, keeping an eye on Timmy, who continued to remain silent, but seemed to perk up at the mention of Jimmy.

“I do, yeah. Whatever the issue is, Sam and Danny can work it out. They always do.”

“Why aren’t you helping them?” Timmy blurted out.

“I’ve never been great with blood, if I’m being honest. Luckily, Danny usually bleeds ectoplasm nowadays.”

He earned a moderately concerned look from both Timmy and SpongeBob.

“But honestly, those two can handle their own. They’ve always been in sync with stuff like this and I don’t mind not being there with them. Our dynamic goes beyond us always being together, y’know?”

Timmy and SpongeBob sure did.

“It’s that kind of stuff that makes me worry about all of you. And Jimmy,” Timmy said solemnly. “Like, what it means for us when we don’t see each other for a while.”

Cosmo and Wanda had taken their place on Timmy’s shoulders, listening to the boy without comment. They were often the go-to source of support for him, but the pair had no reason to interject in a room full of friends.

Instead, Cosmo patted him softly, silently reminding him that he and Wanda were there.

Timmy fought tears as he looked down at fidgeting hands.

“I know the feeling. Danny’s always been shitty with responding to messages and all that, but sometimes they’ll just fall off the face of the earth for weeks at a time. No texts, no drop-bys, and he’ll flake on all scheduled plans. It really scares Sam and I,” he began, looking to the door that separated them from the inevitable high-stress situation occurring just out of view.

“But then he comes back. And he apologizes, and usually tries to explain himself, and any anger that I might have had with him just kinda… goes away. We catch up and soon enough, it’s like nothing happened.”

Timmy sat with that for a moment.

“There’s a certain point where you need to accept that circumstances aren’t gonna go your way. In the end, it doesn’t matter how little time you get to spend with someone. You just get to be there with them when the time comes.”

Tucker smiled, giving Timmy a pat on the back.

“We don’t see each other often, pal, but you’re always welcome to hit me up. I always thought you were cool as shit. You too, SpongeBob,” he winked at the sponge.

“Tucker’s right! I don’t hang out with you every day, but whenever we do I have a super fun time.”

Timmy sniffled, now unable to keep the waterworks at bay. He avoided rubbing his eyes, desperately trying to keep his eyeliner intact.

“Thank you. Both of you. Um, I just… I just want him to be okay.”

“He will be! You heard Tucker: Sam and Danny are basically professionals,” SpongeBob leaped up to emphasize his point.

“They really are.”

“We were gonna tell you guys… something today but y’know. It kind of fell apart,” he let out a hollow laugh. “It’s why we’re we’re headed to see SpongeBob in the first place.”

“Ooohhh a secret?” SpongeBob’s attention was immediately honed in on Timmy.

“Go on,” Tucker said, raising a brow.

“He’s definitely going to kill me when he finds out that I broke the news when he was unconscious, but seeing as the day is pretty much over and we said we’d do it today…” his gaze wandered out to the drawn curtains that hid a nighttime sky.

“We’re dating.”

The room went silent for a moment before it erupted in a literal and metaphorical outburst.

“Ooohhh Danny’s gonna be so happy!!!”

“Danny’s gonna love that!!”

SpongeBob and Tucker said respectively.

It was a miracle that Sam and Danny were so focused on Jimmy that neither of them heard the mutual exclamation.

“They complain about you two all the time, you know. About how you’re both too shitty with communicating feelings so you just stew in this weird middle ground between platonic and romantic before not speaking for months on end.”

Timmy’s face flushed bright red.

“They’ve called this for over a decade!” SpongeBob added enthusiastically.

“Gee, I’m glad the responses weren’t too bad,” Timmy said, remaining incredibly flustered.

“Pfft, don’t worry about it. You’re not the only queer guy in this escapade.”

“I’m aroace!” SpongeBob added, sounding very proud of himself.

“Wait, you’re not straight, Tucker?” Timmy inquired as he scratched his head.

“No duh. I’ve had a boyfriend for four months.”

“It really has been a while, huh…” Timmy mused quietly.

“Hey, uh, thank you two. I’m still freaked about Jimmy, but… y’know. It’s nice talking to other people, is all.”

Timmy was red in the face again. This wasn’t exactly easy for him to verbalize.

“You’re welcome. Let’s figure out some way to occupy ourselves so we don’t bother the doctors,” Tucker said, only with a slight degree of sarcasm in his tone.

“Hey, would you guys want to play a game? Before I came here Patrick and I were playing Coral Jumpers.”

He offered up an innocuous, pure smile that was difficult to ignore.

“As long as you explain what the hell Coral Jumpers is, I’m in!” Tucker laughed.

—

On Danny’s estimate, they only had a few more minutes of work left.

They were going about the monotony of seeking out small sand fragments and discarding them when they felt several fingers on their hand go numb.

He immediately pulled back, taking a moment to inspect his hand.

As suspected, three of his fingers had turned a dull yellow.

“Raynauds?”

Sam looked from Danny’s hand to his face, gauging his reaction.

“Yeah. I - um - can you help me warm them up?”

This wasn’t a new occurrence in the slightest.

When Danny had become a halfa, it had altered their bodily functions in a few critical ways. In this instance, it had affected how their blood circulated when they were in their human form.

He went to a rheumatologist on Jazz’s advisement, where they diagnosed him with Raynaud’s syndrome: a relatively harmless phenomenon that caused his blood vessels to constrict in his extremities at entirely the wrong time.

Usually it was only an issue in the cold, which could easily be avoided with a hefty pair of gloves, but it would occasionally act up when they would switch back to human form after being in their ghost form for long periods of time.

The fix was quite simple: a bit of time and something to warm up his hands.

Unfortunately for Danny, he didn’t have time, so sitting and waiting as Sam wrapped her functioning hands around his wasn’t as pleasant as one might think.

“Do you think you’re close to being done?” Sam motioned towards Jimmy with her head.

“Yeah. Close to it; I’m hoping that he stays asleep,” they mused idly, watching the show rise and fall of Jimmy’s chest.

Thank goodness he was a heavy sleeper.

Sam shifted their grip, making an effort to keep most of Danny’s hand covered at any given moment. They’d done this dozens of times, so they were no stranger to the process.

“You’re doing a good job.”

Danny nodded quietly.

“You too, Sam.”

Soon enough, his hand had regained its color and he’d pulled away from his friend, ready to finish the job.

He took a deep breath and continued what he’d been doing for god knows how long.

Once finished, Danny used his cane to get up, carefully making his way over to the beloved couch. Their head was spinning, but it was over. Jimmy was free of those dreaded particles.

Sam began the much quicker process of disinfecting the small wounds and dressing them, covering his now-bruised torso in bandages, gauze, and antiseptic.

She stood up and cracked her back before tidying Jimmy up a bit. She wiped a few drops of dried blood off of his chin with a wet paper towel and pushed back his hair.

It was only fair to make him look presentable before parading his unconscious (and healed!) self around.

They headed to Danny’s room after giving Danny a soft pat on the head and a quiet “rest up”.

Once there, she walked into what could only be described as one of the most chaotic card spreads she’d ever seen.

“What the hell is going on here?” She laughed, musing at the scene in front of her.

Timmy had a pile of aces to his side, along with three fours, two eights, and a handful of face-down cards at his side.

SpongeBob had all of the queens and kings, plus two twos.

Tucker had all of the jacks, threes, and one nine.

Sam had absolutely no idea what this meant, including the unusually shaped organization of the cards at the center of the trio, but it looked like they were all deeply invested in the plot of the game before she’d interrupted.

“It’s called Coral Jumpers! It’s a card game that SpongeBob taught us,” Tucker replied with a grin.

“Is Jimmy okay?” Timmy asked immediately, ignoring all formalities.

“Yeah. Danny and I just finished up; I think he’ll be awake soon if you want to come see him?”

He jumped up hastily and hurried out the door. Coral Jumpers was fun, but it was nothing compared to the overwhelming anxiety that had settled in his chest over the last hour.

There he was, splayed out on the floor like a bear rug: Jimmy fucking Neutron.

Tears stung in Timmy’s eyes as he ran over to him, quickly crouching down to get a better look.

He was shirtless - everything except for his outer layer had been removed from his torso, but nearly every inch of skin from his waist-up was covered in bandages. They were clean, which Timmy silently thanked Sam for, knowing that his brain wouldn’t have fared well if Jimmy had been as bloodied as before.

As tears streaked his face and further smudged his imperfect eyeliner, he sighed.

“You said he’d wake up soon? What’s taking him so long?” He asked flatly, glancing up at Sam. His tone wasn’t malicious in the slightest. Rather, it held a certain innocence to it that softened the room.

“Not sure. Whenever he does come to, though, I’m going to give him a handful of pain meds - say, you don’t know if he has any drug allergies, do you?” Sam was rummaging around one of Danny’s cabinets, soon procuring a variety of prescription drugs.

“Uhhh I don’t think so. He takes a lot of Tylenol?”

Timmy did not know much about medications.

“Hah, Danny too. Well, I should say he used to. He’s on that extra strength shit now,” Tucker laughed.

As SpongeBob filled up a glass of water, a soft groan emanated from the still body on the floor.

Jimmy’s eyelids fluttered as he scrunched his nose.

“Fuuuuuuuuck…” he muttered under his breath, causing both Sam and SpongeBob to hurry over.

The glass hadn’t filled all of the way, but SpongeBob held it at the ready as Sam motioned for Timmy to prop Jimmy’s head up.

“Hey, buddy. We’re gonna get some meds in you, alright?” Sam said.

“Uuughhhhh…”

Timmy let out a sigh of relief. It was nice seeing him conscious.

Sam placed a pill in his mouth, shortly followed by a gulp-sized amount of water, which Jimmy swallowed well. She gave him another one, which he gulped down without issue, and sat back.

“SpongeBob, could you grab some crackers from the pantry?” They asked softly.

The sponge nodded, carefully making his way over there. He was very familiar with the layout of Danny’s apartment, as the two met more frequently than the entire group did. Even then, they didn’t often come to Danny’s place.

Once he’d gotten a sleeve of saltines, he passed them to Sam, allowing her to feed him the flaky crackers.

“It’s not great to take these guys on an empty stomach, so you’ve got to have a few crackers, okay?”

Jimmy nodded weakly. “I get it,” he muttered, taking a bite.

Timmy couldn’t imagine the pain he was in, but hoped that stroking his hair would ease his mind off of it.

It seemed to work, as Jimmy had eaten enough after a few minutes without complaint. Additionally, he kept taking sips of water, which Sam verbally noted as “very good”.

All of it was still a fever dream to Timmy.

Jimmy was okay.

It was over; he’d gotten him to the right people.

But even then, looking at his fatigued features and injury-ridden body, processing the whole thing was difficult for him.

“M’glad you’re okay,” Timmy whispered after the room had settled down.

SpongeBob was over by Danny, idly sitting with his back against the couch. Danny appeared to be asleep, but SpongeBob didn’t mind.

“I feel like shit, Turner,” his boyfriend grumbled.

That made him chuckle.

“I know, I know. But you’re alive.”

—

The energy of Danny’s apartment has mellowed after an hour or so. Everyone had found their respective places on the couch, on chairs dragged in from the kitchen, or on the floor, including Danny (who had squeezed in a successful 30 minute nap after the surgery).

Presently the group found themselves joking around and catching up.

“You TOLD THEM???” Jimmy asked loudly.

He’d been having issues with volume control since the pain medication set in.

“I’m sorry!! I was worried that you were gonna die or something, okay? Just wanted someone to know while we were both alive and in the same vicinity,” Timmy replied defensively. His tone hadn’t lost its playful touch, though.

“Pfft, as if. It’s difficult to kill someone of my intellect.”

Half of the room rolled their eyes.

“Sure, whatever.”

Timmy smiled, wrapping his arm around Jimmy cautiously. They’d gotten the couch on account of Jimmy’s injuries, so his only job now was to make sure that Jimmy wouldn’t fall off.

“What was it that hurt you to begin with?” SpongeBob inquired.

“Huh. I never did ask,” Timmy added, looking at Jimmy.

“Oh, yeah. Well, from what I recall before going unconscious, a component on the portal had somehow disconnected before Timmy and I tried to go to Bikini Bottom. I decided to check it out, but I wasn’t expecting the pressurized cosmic dust to explode and give me hundreds of ant-sized bullet holes in my chest,” he sighed.

Jimmy was still in a decent amount of pain, but he’d already forcefully forgotten how he felt when he’d woken up.

“Jesus…” Tucker remarked quietly.

“Do you, um, remember anything? Like, after it happened?” Timmy asked.

“Not really, no… I remember briefly realizing that something was very wrong after falling over but that’s it. I don’t think the situation had enough time to register,” he laughed nonchalantly.

Timmy gulped, remembering the incident vividly. He wasn’t able to catch Jimmy, having been halfway across his laboratory when it occurred. The sound of his side hitting the cold, hard ground was enough to make his spine straighten in immense discomfort, though.

He shuddered internally when he remembered how it felt to look at Jimmy and realize that he was bleeding - not just out of one wound, but out of an indiscernible large amount of wounds - and that he couldn’t do anything to help.

The portal was working by then, so SpongeBob had stumbled upon the horrific, biblical scene of Timmy holding a lifeless Jimmy in his arms, and followed when the portal eventually led them to Danny’s apartment.

Timmy blinked away the recollection, reminding himself of what was in front of him: a live Jimmy, talking and everything.

His boyfriend offered up a lopsided smile, which was returned by a soft chuckle.

“You look pretty dumb, Jim.”

“What??? Not true at all,” Jimmy replied, sounding incredibly tired.

Despite having spent a large portion of his day unconscious, Jimmy’s body was begging him to go back to sleep.

It could have been the influence of the medication, but either way he was feeling ready for a long, long rest.

Jimmy leaned into Timmy’s shoulder, positioning his head on top of his boyfriend’s chest. His body ached terribly.

Soon enough, the conversations in the room continued without him.

Danny and SpongeBob had taken an obscure position on some television show that the entire group had managed to watch, causing an uproar among his friends.

Timmy remained somewhat quiet, occasionally interjecting an anecdote or comment, but feared that raising his voice too high would wake Jimmy.

A dopey smile planted itself onto the scientist’s face as he drifted back to sleep.

Surely he’d feel better in the morning.