Chapter Text
At an actually decent suggestion from Jazz, Danny starts going home before going on patrol, just because too often if he tries to patrol first, he misses his much earlier much stricter curfew, and he really can’t afford to do that right now.
Jazz comes with him a lot of the time. She brings a thermos or strategies in regards to the ghosts they’re most likely to find. She catches the ghost sometimes, and Danny always feels grateful that her aim has gotten better. Ghost fighting is more than a little easier with backup.
Tonight, however, nothing much helps, as there’s so many ghosts out and about it doesn’t matter how efficient or well-planned they are, they still get home after midnight. Danny phases them both through the walls and up to his bedroom, and then collapses onto his bed and changes back without moving.
“That’s it,” he groans. “I’m sleeping for a week.”
“Unfortunately we still have school tomorrow,” Jazz says, but he can tell she’s exhausted too. She flops down on the bed next to Danny, but doesn’t bother looking at him as she keeps talking. “At least it’s almost Friday.”
Danny manages a weak laugh. “Never thought I’d live to see the day you’d be excited to see the weekend,” he says.
“I’m excited to be well rested,” Jazz mutters, and Danny looks over to find her eyes are already shut and she seems half asleep already. He doesn’t want to make her move when they’re both this tired, but he doesn’t know if he has the strength to walk to her bedroom either. So instead, they both end up falling asleep sideways on the bed, with Danny having just enough time to shove the thermos under his pillow to deal with in the morning before he passes out too.
…
A knock on his door wakes them both, but there’s barely any pause before it opens and Mom walks quickly in, looking nervous about something.
“Danny have you seen— oh, Jazz, you’re in here!”
Danny blinks blearily, trying to push himself upwards.
“Sorry Mom,” Jazz says, already awake and two steps ahead like usual. “I was helping Danny study last night, and we both just kind of fell asleep.”
“Oh no worries, sweetie, I just didn’t know where you were,” Mom says. And Danny expects that to be the end of it, but instead Jazz stands up and walks across the room, then gives Mom a quick hug.
Danny blinks in surprise, but Mom hugs Jazz tightly back for a second before giving her a smile and heading back out, with a call that she’d see them downstairs for breakfast.
“Uh, you guys good?” Danny asks, and Jazz turns to face him, blinking a couple times. Maybe she’s not as awake as he thought she was.
“Oh, Mom and Dad just get more nervous when they don’t know where we are now,” Jazz says. “That’s why I suggested coming home before patrol. It’s not your fault, but we shouldn’t get in trouble for it.”
Danny narrows his eyes in concern. “That’s why you suggested coming home before patrol?”
“Well, that and it’s generally easier to patrol if we’ve already had dinner,” Jazz says. “It’s really okay, Danny. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
“I wasn’t,” Danny says, sitting upwards and stretching his arms above his head in an effort to wake himself up. “Meet you downstairs for breakfast.”
“Sure thing,” Jazz says, heading out to her own room.
Danny still isn’t quite awake when he does make it downstairs, but he sort of feels like he can make it through the day while feeling only slightly like a zombie. As long as nothing happens, anyway, like Dash getting on his case or some large assignment being given or another ghost attack.
Oh who is he kidding, he’s doomed.
Someone nudges him in the shoulder, and Danny turns to see Jazz approaching from his side. “I can drive you to school today if you want,” she says. “Just so you don’t have to rush quite as much.”
“Yes please,” Danny says. “You’re a lifesaver.” He grabs one of the pieces of toast sitting on the plate in the center of the table, then takes a bite without bothering to put any butter or jam on it.
He manages to get ready with just a little time to spare, which gives him time to grab the thermos and head down to the lab. Danny manages to send the ghosts stuffed into the thermos through the portal back into the ghost zone, where they’ll hopefully be for a while.
He’s about to turn around and head back upstairs when he hears the lab door open, and he freezes.
“Danny?” Mom asks, as she walks down the steps. “What are you doing in the lab, don’t you need to be getting ready for school.”
“Uh, I think I left a pencil down here when I was cleaning,” Danny says, turning to the nearby cluttered lab table as an excuse, and starting to shift through papers.
Mom looks around with a raised eyebrow, lingering on the messy tables and scattered papers and beakers. “Maybe you should take another crack at the cleaning part,” she says.
“Uh, totally,” Danny says, grabbing the first pencil he lands on and heading back upstairs. “You got it Mom! Sorry, I was just super busy with studying.”
“No, that’s alright, hun, studies come first. Just make sure you make some time to do your chores too, okay?”
“Sure thing,” Danny calls as he runs back up the stairs. He waits until he’s out of earshot to mutter to himself, “I’ll add it to the list of priorities, right under the ghost fighting.”
He shakes it off and moves to grab his bag, then heads out front to meet Jazz, who’s already waiting in the car.
“Ghosts taken care of?” she asks as Danny shuts the door.
“Yep,” Danny says as she pulls away. “Thanks for the ride. I don’t think I would have had time otherwise.”
“No problem. I love it when there isn’t a thermos full of malicious entities stuck under your pillow all day.”
“It is one of my favorite decorative habits,” Danny says, giving an admittedly still exhausted smirk.
Apparently a little more exhausted than he thought, because he ends up falling asleep on the way to school, and Jazz shakes him awake when they get there.
“You sure you’re up for this?” she asks as Danny drags himself and his bag from the car.
“So up for this,” Danny says, waving her off. “I’m gonna take a nap in homeroom and probably during lunch. I’ll be fine.”
“Alright,” Jazz says. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m definitely not. How are you so awake by the way, that’s not even fair.”
“I wasn’t the one that did all of the actual fighting last night,” Jazz says as they start towards the school. “And I also have a good sleep schedule the rest of the time.”
“Good sleep schedules are for chumps.”
“Yeah see, that’s probably part of your problem.”
“Bah.”
They split up as Danny reaches homeroom, where he does in fact put his head on his desk and sleep until the bell rings again.
He really can’t afford to sleep through his algebra class, though. That one had taken the biggest hit while he’d been off doing crimes for Freakshow, and algebra has never been his strong suit. He’s managed to get his grade back up to a somewhat decent C-, but it’s a shaky C-, one he can’t afford to slack on. So in passing period, he splashes some water on his face, smacks himself in the face a couple of times, and then heads in to force himself to focus on numbers.
He sits near the window next to Tucker, who has algebra the same time as him, and who looks significantly less exhausted than he does, which is probably why he feels okay with whispering to him as class starts.
“Hey, did you get the homework done?”
Danny’s head snaps over to him. “What?”
There isn’t homework due today, is there? How did he forget that?
Oh, what does it matter? He wouldn’t have had time to do it last night anyway, between getting slammed into concrete walls, or through store windows, or into other ghosts.
Tucker, next to him, holds up an entire packet of quadratic equations, all of which he’s done, and all of which look complicated.
Danny slams his head down on his desk. “Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“Sorry dude,” Tucker says with a sympathetic frown.
Danny looks hopefully towards him. “Could you help me make it up after school?”
Tucker winces, which doesn’t seem to bode well for his chances.
“Uh, sorry,” he says, looking away. “Sam wants to, uh, do a thing.”
“A thing?”
“Yeah, at the park. And you’re still grounded, so…”
Danny sighs, looking back at his desk. “Right, yeah. Thanks anyway.”
Tucker doesn’t say anything, and then the bell rings, and the teacher up front calls for everyone to pass in their homework.
There’s a two day late policy which doesn’t make exceptions for the weekend, meaning Danny’s gonna have to figure out some way to get it done today so he can turn it in tomorrow. Maybe he actually will be up late to study that night. Ghost fighting comes before homework, but homework tends to find a way to come before sleep.
And if he doesn’t want to piss off his mom, he’s gotta fit cleaning the lab in there somewhere.
Whatever, he can sleep all day Saturday. It’ll be fine. He’s grounded anyway.
…
Lunch seems to take forever to get there, and by the time Danny finally makes it to their usual table, Sam and Tucker are already there and talking. Danny sets his tray down, then drops his backpack down on the table next to it and buries his head in it.
“Late night?” Sam asks.
Danny makes a grumbled noise of agreement.
“I thought you caught up on all your homework from being gone.”
“That does not stop me from forgetting about new homework, apparently,” Danny says, managing to pull his head up.
“Yikes,” Sam says. “Good luck with that.”
“I’m gonna need it,” Danny mutters. He grabs the apple from his tray and takes a bite a split second before he remembers why he doesn’t eat the terrible mealy school apples and spits it back out onto the tray.
“Geez Danny, you think you could try being a functional human today?” Sam asks, pulling her tray back towards her.
“Apparently not,” Danny says, giving a short laugh. He covers the bite of the apple with a napkin to throw away when he finishes the rest of it. “Sorry Sam, I didn’t get enough sleep last night.”
“I can tell,” Sam says with a roll of her eyes. There was a short pause before Sam says, “You’re not alone in that, though. There were ghosts fighting all night, they kept waking me up.”
Danny winces. “Sorry, Sam. That sucks,” he says.
“I bet it was Invis-o-bill again,” Sam says, turning to look at Tucker, probably trying to include him in the conversation, since he’s been pretty quiet through most of lunch, looking down at his PDA. “Did you guys see how much damage he caused last night? He needs to pay more attention.” She nudges Tucker. “He woke you up too, right?”
“Uh, yeah,” Tucker says, looking down and tapping something on his PDA.
Danny doesn’t say anything, and instead takes a drink of his chocolate milk. He probably should have paid more attention last night. He and Jazz have been trying to cut down on the property damage as a way to help his image a bit. The only problem being last night he was still out fighting at 11PM and he was achy and exhausted. He’s still achy and exhausted.
Still, if Sam’s noticed that’s a problem. The main point for all of this is to show her Phantom in a new light. If that’s not working, then he needs to be doing something he’s not.
“I’m just saying,” Sam says to Tucker, apparently taking his agreement as more than it seemed to Danny. “I’m getting a little tired of not getting enough sleep just because of a bunch of stupid ghosts.”
Danny snorts, taking another sip of milk to cover it as a cough. That makes two of them.
Sam drops the ghost fighting after that, but Danny has trouble shaking off the sour tinge it adds to his mood for the rest of lunch. He tries to reason his way out of feeling crummy about it while walking to his next class.
Of course Sam’s irritated she didn’t sleep well. Danny’s irritated he didn’t sleep well too. And of course she blamed it on Phantom. That’s nothing new for her. He’s just not in a great mood because he’s tired, and things will be more bearable tomorrow.