Archive of Our Own ^beta

After Danny’s accident, he calls in sick. Parents be damned. He’ll unplug the landline if his hands ever become tangible again.

Here on the morning of the second day, the meaty, foreign weight of his body holding him in place in his bed, Danny dies again.

His room is cold. The pile of blankets does very little save for muddling the electricity coursing through his veins. Every hour or so, the voltage returns. The Lichtenberg lines racing up his arms make his whole body shake. He heaves out nothing, stomach acid and ectoplasm blending in his throat. He cannot make himself get up, refuses to look in the mirror to see what he might have accidentally transformed into again.

It hurts. God, it hurts.

If he were able to pick up his phone, he’d see the countless texts and calls from Sam and Tucker, worried voicemails, trailing messages. He cinches his eyes shut, trying to think of anything but the horrified expression they shared when he first stumbled out of the portal, all static and fear. He remembers very little of the experience but that look. Danny knows they’re disgusted—he feels it too. Deeply, as intrinsic as the pain, he feels it.

He doesn’t have the energy to be startled when a knock sounds at his door. Mom, he thinks dully. He opens his mouth to scare her away, but is interrupted before any sound can escape him.

“Open up, Danny,” Sam calls, and her tone brokers no argument.

Danny’s heart ( still beating) zigzags in his chest, desperate to escape, a bottled moth against the sun. He looks down at his hands, ignores the fern-like scars, the tremor. “It’s unlocked,” he croaks, unsure of himself.

The door slams open immediately. Sam stands triumphant, Tucker at her heels. They both recoil slightly, caught off guard by the temperature difference, and Danny can feel himself sinking deeper into his mattress.

“Danny,” Tucker says, his breath misting. He shuts the door behind them before rushing to his friend’s bedridden side. A thousand thoughts cross over his face, a complicated blend of relief and fear and concern and anger. He opens his mouth a few times, and Danny watches the clouds of breath. He hadn’t realized how cold it was. 

Sam can’t seem to decide on what to say, either. “Danny,” she whispers, emphasis added. She reaches for his hand, grasping it. Danny blinks when it doesn’t phase through, almost shocked at the warmth, the presence.

“Hi,” he murmurs. The electricity has receded again, leaving his limbs full of static. He grips her back, and for a moment they’re both silent, hands and eyes locked.

Tucker is the first to speak. He sits near Danny’s legs, comfortingly close despite the needle of concern in his expression. “Danny, this… we—we’re worried about you.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, and Sam looks ready to smack him upside the head. He looks between the two of them, their shared glances, the nervous energy, and feels tears pricking to his eyes. He repeats, “I… I’m sorry. It’s just… it’s so much.”

He sits up, pulling his knees up to his chest. Sam joins Tucker on the bed, cross-legged, still holding tight to Danny’s hand. They watch him, and a part of Danny mutely realizes that they’re afraid for him rather than of him. 

When the electricity isn’t surging, Danny is left with emptiness. His insides feel all carved out. He focuses on the contact—Sam’s hand, Tucker’s weight next to him dipping the bed.

He thinks of it. The dying. Yesterday, he had been too afraid to even consider the word, but today it feels… comforting, almost. Safe, complete. Wholly unlike the fragments of ghost and human battling within him.

He thinks of his hands, the way they lit up, the way they changed. How his hair burned white, body reversed.

Sam’s thumb rubs anxious circles into his palm, avoiding the new, pink scar.

Danny holds up his free hand, early sun clinging to it. The scar makes a path over his whole body, curving down his wrist, rippling over his chest and stomach. “The internet said they were supposed to fade by now,” he says, absent.

Tucker shrugs, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. “Not much research on your situation, though, is there?”

He casts his gaze to the window, and Sam squeezes his hand again. It helps, somewhat. Keeps him present. He can see students walking, classmates on their way to Casper. 

“Do… do you think you could go to school today?” Sam asks, tentative. “It was terrible without you. I know you needed space, but…” she gestures helplessly. It’s always been hard for Sam to open up about anything vulnerable, and the frustration at her own stilted words is clear on her face. 

Tucker assists. “It might be good to get back in the swing of things fast. Bad to miss so early in the year, yeah?” Danny grimaces, considering his new, strict teacher, Mr. Lancer. Jazz had sung his praises, but he regarded Danny and his friends like roaches. At his expression, Tucker’s hand finds his knee, and he continues, “And, dude, we miss you. Even after just a day. You didn’t text back at all. It was scary. We need to know you’re good.”

Danny isn’t sure that he is, but their pleading expressions rouse him from his emptiness. “Okay,” he says. “But I think we’re going to be late.”

Tucker’s grin is enough for the tension in Danny’s shoulders to dissipate. “Not with that attitude.”

—

They make it into the walls of Casper High mere minutes before the first bell has rung, racing down the hall to get to homeroom. Sam and Tucker’s jabs and banter are enough to make Danny crack a smile as he trails behind them, dragged along by his two friends, a hand in each of his. 

The long, red undershirt Danny has on rasps against his skin. The fabric is wrong, the seams awkward, but it covers his scars, so he does little more than rub at the irritation as he sits down between Sam and Tucker. They keep close, monitoring him under the guise of friendliness. The tremor in Danny’s hands has started up again. He takes deep breaths, feels his flighty pulse with two fingers at his neck. For now, he remains mercifully alive. 

The classes begin to go by in a haze. His focus is less on the coursework and more on his heartbeat, the way it sends ripples through his body. He scribbles half-hearted notes, arms weighted with life, with blood. The Lichtenberg figures creep under his shirt.

He’s walking to history when it happens.

The wave of static passing through him stops him in his tracks. A shudder wracks his frame, tearing an exhale from his throat, cold clawing at his insides. The breath comes out frosty, stuttered. His vision blanks for a moment, like standing up too fast. 

He falls forward, but not due to the sensation. Someone bumped into him. Shoved him? He looks up, wincing at the fluorescents.

“Watch where you’re going, dipshit,” Dash Baxter snarls. 

Danny’s seen him around before. Who hadn’t seen him, in his highschool football glory? He opens his mouth to apologize, but his whole body still feels like it’s been shifted to the side. No sound comes out, only another freezing, shuddering breath.

Dash scoffs, stepping over him. For a moment Danny stays, unmoored.

—

Sam and Tuck walk him home. By the end of the day, he’s beginning to feel more like himself again. The electricity is subsiding, its waves muted. His hands resist the twitch. 

At the door to Fentonworks, his friends linger. 

“Want us to sleep over?” Tucker asks, hopeful.

Danny mulls it over. Finally, he shakes his head. “I… I don’t think so. Not tonight.”

Sam smiles, squeezing his shoulder. “That’s okay. Be safe.”

“We love you,” Tucker adds, pulling him and Sam into a sudden hug. Danny almost laughs, heart twinging fondly at the way Tucker holds him. “ So much.”

“Okay, that’s enough.” Sam detangles herself, but her grin is prominent. “We’ll see you tomorrow, alright?” Danny nods, and she seems nervous still, but satisfied. 

Danny waves goodbye, watching them leave. He enters his home, takes in the quiet.

Again, the cold seeps in.

—

That night, Danny finds himself in front of the mirror.

The bathroom door is locked, he’s checked three times. The nerves remind him of the first time he wore a binder—silent excitement, blooming fear. He takes a steady breath, and attempts to transform.

It’s frustrating, to… what, go ghost? That sounds a little silly. He makes a mental note to name it something better later.

Regardless. 

He tries a few things. He flexes before the mirror, all muscles tensing in place, illuminated only by the star-shaped night light by the sink. It bathes him in green. No change occurs. He stares at his reflection, willing it to warp into ectoplasm. Something keeps him rooted in place, heart caged and beating. The damn thing, still beating.

He tries to slow his breathing, calm himself—no use. There’s an energy running under his skin, rushing like blood, but not quite. It makes his lungs contract, his hands tremble. 

He thinks about it. His death.

He’s been trying not to. But oh, he thinks about it. 

The nerves. Eyes darting towards the door, the image of his parents barging in at any moment. Tucker, curious. Sam, camera poised. The scrape of hazmat rubber against his skin. A final breath as he turned the knob, the click of a camera, the bright light of its flash—

The electricity arced through him then, agony, livewire. He could feel it, feel the change, the way everything shifted, the way his heart seized, the way his body was suddenly lighter than it had been.

His hair, a shock of white. Tucker and Sam were talking at him, swimming in their panic, and his only dazed thought was of his graying father.

He remembers hyperventilating, the air just… passing through. 

The tears. The pleas. His mouth kept opening, but he had been unable to beg. Help me. Help me. Help me.

His scars prickle at the memory. He’s agitated now, a shudder wracking through him. Useless. He looks up—

Phantom stands in the mirror, eyes wide and vibrant.

He laughs.

—

At lunch, Danny is alone, but not for long.

Last night had been progress, but nowhere near enough. It took hours to switch back again, to calm the energy thrumming through him. He had been on the brink of an anxiety attack the whole time anyway, the memory of death keeping him tense.

Here in Casper High, his hand phases through his fork and it clatters to the ground. His frustrated groan comes out strangled.

Tucker, appearing out of nowhere(— did he get powers too?— ), drops a new fork on Danny’s tray before plopping down next to him. His arm snakes around Danny’s shoulders in a squeezed greeting, ever affectionate, before he turns to dig into his lunch.

Sam sits down a moment later, watching Danny eye his fork apprehensively. “You good?”

“It’ll fall again,” he mutters. “My hands aren’t working.”

Sam and Tuck exchange a glance and God, he hates when they do that. He shoots the two of them a pointed glare, as if to argue I’m fine, but he doesn’t move to continue eating.

“Anyway, Sam has some bullshit for you,” Tucker cheerily segues, swallowing a big bite of cafeteria pizza. Sam rolls her eyes. 

“You are not beating the techno geek allegations.”

“Wasn’t trying to, Stone Age.”

She opens her mouth to retort, but Danny interrupts before the bickering can spiral. “Hold on. What?”

Sam sighs, the eyeroll returning like a nervous tic. She rummages in her spider bag, past lipstick and small books of poetry, to pull out—

“A… camera?” Danny hesitates, looking it over, his hands threaded together.

“Not just any camera,” Tucker prompts. 

“It’s film, not digital.” Sam picks it up as she explains, showing him its dark back. With the sliding of a switch it flips open, revealing the inner shutter and the empty film cavity. Sam fidgets uncomfortably, “I… I don’t know. I thought it would be cool. To…” to keep your mind off things, she doesn’t finish. Danny nods, message received.

“It is cool, but…” 

Again, he hesitates.

He’s never been much into any kind of art. Never tried it, at least. What if he’s bad at it?  Worse—what if he breaks it? His eyes wander back to the fork on the ground, shadowed by the cafeteria table.

Tucker seems to notice his concern, adding on, “There’s a strap, so it won’t fall if… y’know.”

Danny blinks, worry momentarily melting away. He cracks a smile, and both his friends relax. “What happened to it being bullshit?”

“Eeeh. Whatever. I’m not the one using it.” Tucker shrugs, sheepish. 

Danny turns back to Sam, still fiddling with the thing. “It was my mom’s,” she rambles. “She was gonna throw it out, and I couldn’t let that slide. It’s really fun, actually. Check it out.” She pulls out a few more things—a small yellow box, a folder. She takes out a plastic protector sheet full of film strips, images burned into them. It slides across the table, and Danny picks it up, turning it to the light.

The images are small and opposite, all the dark light, all the light dark. Danny can make out various scenes—a bar, an embracing couple ( Sam’s parents? ), a picnic in the sun. 

Sam continues, “It’s—when you take a photo, the film is exposed to the light, and it creates an exposure. An image. You gotta reverse the colors when you scan it because it’s all wacky like this, obviously. But the process is—therapeutic, almost? I… I dunno.”

Danny runs his fingers over the protective plastic, careful, contemplative. When he closes his eyes, he thinks of Phantom, the figure in the mirror. His white hair. His black suit.

His eyes trace over what looks like young Sam, holding up a decapitated teddy bear. Her hair is white. 

All wacky.

“I have film for you, too.” The yellow box is next to slide over. There’s a swash of purple on the design, an example image of a red bridge in the light. It proudly reads, KODAK GOLD 200 . “200 is the ISO. Don’t shoot it in the dark, basically. It’s better in brighter conditions.” She watches him nervously. “Do… do you want me to load it for you?”

“Okay,” he murmurs. Suddenly, it feels reverent. The cafeteria bustles around them, but it’s all slipping away, nothing more than surrounding fog. Sam moves carefully, slow enough for Danny to follow the movements. She takes out the roll of Kodak Gold, pulling the film from the side, feeding it into the camera’s back. Danny watches, rapt. Even Tucker has abandoned his PDA, curious at the process. 

The back clicks shut, whirring. “It’s automated,” Sam explains. “It’ll advance as you go. All the film exposed to the light will be damaged, so try not to open the back until the roll is used up.” Gingerly, she leans forward, putting the camera on him like a medal. “Wanna try it out?”

With it secured to his neck, he feels a little safer from the prospect of accidentally breaking it. The thing is a melding of plastic and metal. Human and ghost. His hands remain corporeal as he fiddles with it, takes off the lens cap, presses the flash up and down. His fingers ghost over the shutter button ( the trigger, his mind supplies). Hesitant, stilting—he gets to his feet.

“Lean in,” he tells his friends, putting his eye up to the viewfinder.

 Behind the guiding focus lines of the viewfinder, Sam and Tucker put their heads together across the table. Tucker makes a face, brandishing his tray, Sam side-eyeing him judgmentally. Danny can’t help the warmth blooming in him. He presses down— click. 

The flash startles him, making his arms jerk. Sam laughs, blinking back the light, already saying something about how the photo’s going to turn out blurry but it’s fine, it’s all part of the process, and Danny’s ears are filling up with static.

Within him, the energy hums. 

“Danny?” Tucker asks. 

His hands are shaking. The pink, feathery scars on them make it burn.

“Hey,” Sam calls distantly. “It’s okay,” she’s saying, but Danny’s breath is stuttering, electricity cracking around his teeth. 

The dark walls of the unfinished portal frame his vision. He chokes on air, feeling dim voltage ripple through him. Everything is close, the world invading under his skin. People are chattering, laughing—at him? Is he visible? Is he even there?

Everything burns. His bones are alight, and Danny pictures them black in all their brightness. He leans forward, head buried into his arms—he’s sitting again, he hadn’t noticed. Tucker is tracing circles into his back, steady, comforting. His body shudders around the motion, but Tucker’s hand doesn’t flinch away.

Sam is holding his hand and the touch is distant but there, gripped around his numb, twitching fingers. They’re both quiet, or maybe they’re speaking, but Danny can’t hear it. The hum of electricity is high in his ears.

Eventually, the current stutters out. He’s breathing fully again, almost desperately, focusing on the rise and fall of his chest. Tucker’s hand goes up and down his back in tandem, prompting his lungs. 

He clings to Sam’s hand, feels her cling back. Slowly, his eyes open.

The lunchroom is empty now. When had the bell rung? His insides are plunged into ice water as he realizes, “You guys are late to class.”

Tucker’s hand keeps him from stumbling to his feet. The other is raised, placating. “Nu-uh. Study hall, remember? Falluca’s out sick.”

Danny breathes out a sigh halfway between relief and misery. “I’m sorry.”

“Do not apologize,” Sam says, her gaze intense. “You—are you okay? That was…”

“Scary,” Tucker finishes. “That was scary, dude.”

Danny wrings his hands. His uneaten lunch rests in front of him, prompting, almost. He pushes it away, guilty. 

His friends stare, imploring. They’re afraid to ask, Danny knows. He wants to explain, to tell them how this has been happening, how the tiniest thing will send him back to the lab, back to that day, but it’s… hard. The words won’t come out.

“I knew the camera was a bad idea,” Sam says, covering her face with her hands. “I’m sorry. I can take it back.”

“No.” Danny says it so quickly, so sharply that she looks up. He shrinks, hands closing around the camera again. “I… I like it.” Little Sam, her negative. Danny, himself. “A lot. I just got… startled.” Even now, the static makes his hair stand on end.

“Do you… want to talk about it?” Tucker asks. 

“ Yes. ” The admission is merely a whisper, full of intensity still. Yes, he wants to. Of course he wants to. He stays miserably silent.

Sam frowns, rubbing his hand. “We’re here for you, whenever you’re ready.”

Danny can feel his expression breaking, a weakness cracking through his features. He opens his mouth to respond— I know, I love you guys— but instead of sound, out comes a shaky, blue breath.

The three of them hesitate, silent in surprise. Danny is reeling again, fingertips numb from the sensation, whole body burning and freezing at the same time. He clutches the lunch table, careful not to careen forward. Tucker steadies him, him and Sam watching with wide eyes as he controls his breathing again.

“Danny?” Sam asks, worried again. He holds up a thumbs up, scrubbing at his eyes with his free hand.

“Whew. Sorry. I’m okay. Headrush.”

“Looked like more than a headrush,” Tucker observes, expression spelling out his alarm.

Danny waves him away. “I’m okay. Same thing happened yesterday, too. I think I just haven’t been eating enough.”

Sam’s eyebrows shoot up. “Do you think it’s a… thing? ”

“What—” Danny takes a sip of water, chuckling around it. “A ghost thing?”

She shrugs. “I dunno, Danny! Could be.”

“Okay, I’ll humor it. What does it mean, then?”

“How should I know? You’re the—”

“Guys,” Tucker interrupts. He’s gone ashen, almost like he’s seen…

Danny follows his gaze, and oh, shit.

There’s a ghost. A real one. Rummaging around in the cafeteria trash can. It’s a… raccoon? But it’s green, dripping ectoplasm. It lifts its head at the sudden silence, glassy eyes wide, and it just… scurries away. Through the wall.

“What the fuck,” Sam whispers.

Tucker concurs, “Definitely a ghost thing.”

Mom and Dad would be flipping their lid right now, Danny thinks. Dazedly, he remembers that he’s something they could flip their lid about now, too. He stares at the trash can. “Should I… do something?”

Tucker presses his hands together in thought. The bell rings overhead. “No,” he decides. 

Danny snorts. They continue on as they grab their bags, the calm chatter resurfacing. It was almost as if they hadn’t seen the ghost. A part of Danny was beginning to forget about his outburst, too. 

The camera knocks against his chest as they walk to fifth period. He trails behind Tucker and Sam, immersed in their conversation. Sam is turned slightly, grinning as Tucker pokes at her arm. The interaction is happy, normal.

Click.

—

“What’s that?” 

Danny jolts at the sudden noise behind him, clutching the camera close. It’s just Jazz, ever-nosy. She leans over, hair brushing his shoulder. 

“None of your business,” he easily responds. Her eyes narrow. 

Without their parents in it, the kitchen is blessedly quiet. Since everything , they’ve been practically living in the lab, shocked ( hah ) by the sudden breakthrough in the portal supposedly leading to the Ghost Zone. 

Jazz calls it a wild goose chase. Danny keeps his mouth shut.

“C’mon,” she tries. “Let me see.”

“It’s got cooties.” 

She rolls her eyes, snatching it from his hands. The movement of the strap yanks his neck around, and he makes a noise of disapproval. She ignores him, looking the camera over. “I didn’t know you liked photography.”

He shrugs, averting his eyes. “I’m trying it out.”

She hums, satisfied. The camera falls back into his eager hands. Almost through them—one arm goes suddenly invisible, but the other is free to scramble for it. Still, the strap on his neck keeps it steady. Jazz is already walking away, clueless as ever, flipping through some textbook with happy people on the cover. Danny glares in her direction and she makes a show of not looking.

Jazz is smart, but annoying as all hell. Danny probably drives her up the wall too, he guesses—siblings are like that for each other. He watches her turn a page, highlighting another passage. 

Her and her psychology. She couldn’t possibly understand the situation Danny is in, but that never stopped her before in helping him.

“Jazz…” he starts, voice suddenly small. His timidness grabs her attention; the book in her hands slams shut immediately. 

“Yes?” She asks, rapt. Her eyes are wide and curious. She gets this way sometimes, during a good book or when their parents fight, like she’s trying to analyze every detail of the situation.

Danny hasn’t opened up to her in a while. Age has distanced them—she’d probably wave it off as him going through puberty, which makes him all the less willing to discuss his problems. This was different, though. Terribly, terribly different.

His weight shifts uncomfortably on the chair. Suddenly, he can’t look at her anymore. “Danny?” she prompts.

It’s all too big. Too bright. He hugs himself, feels the burn of pressure against his scar.

A gusty breath escapes him. “Um. Want to help me study for lit class?”

She deflates a little, but not much. “Oh. Yeah, of course.”

He tries to smile, but it comes off more as a grimace. Maybe he’ll tell her, but not now. Not like this, with their parents down the stairs. Like it’s just another Wednesday.

He casts his gaze to the lab’s ajar door. Longing twists his insides. Maybe someday they’ll know, too.

—

In the dim bathroom, Danny’s eyes glow.

He’s not terribly self-centered, but it’s hard not to look at himself like this. His ears are pointed, teeth sharper. The Lichtenberg figures snaking up his arms ooze color, green and vibrant. He floats near the ceiling, bumping from wall to wall like a screensaver. He takes his gloves on and off, eyeing his fingers, their ghoulish hue.

Tucker’s been laying down in the bathtub, having imported his pillow from Danny’s room as they check out his phantom form together. Sam’s on the phone, utterly miserable that her parents had kept her from sleeping over on a school night.

“ You fail a test one time… ” she grumbles through Tucker’s flip phone, and he and Danny share a grin. “ You guys better not do anything fun without me. ”

“We wouldn’t dream of it,” says Danny. He’s been sticking glow-in-the-dark stars to the ceiling, floating down only to grab a snack from Tucker’s bag. The bathroom is a little cramped, but it’s the only place he feels safe enough to transform in his house. His room is too unpredictable, and the lab is out of the question. Not that he’s been down there since… well. 

Tucker rips a sour belt in half with his teeth, making sure to chew into his phone to make Sam extra uncomfortable. He looks at Danny and the twisted way he’s not-sitting, body half folded over, suspended in air. “That can’t be comfortable.”

There’s a sense of glee in this. Danny feels— cool , almost. He gives Tucker a wide, fangy grin. Candy is chucked his way, and it phases through him.

“Hey,” Danny says suddenly. “Can you take my photo like this?” He gestures to the camera, hanging from the towel hook. It felt wrong to leave in his room—he’s been carrying it everywhere. 

“ You might have to use the flash ,” Sam says. Tucker, halfway through the ordeal of getting up, hesitates. 

They lock eyes. Danny grimaces at the thought of the bright light, the burn of electricity. He twists around, suddenly uncomfortable. “...Maybe not, then.” 

Tucker’s legs swing over the edge of the tub anyway. “Solution,” he announces, brandishing the unplugged night light. “This plus your…” he gestures at Danny, “ everything, that should be enough light, right Sam?”

“I’m not there, I can’t see if—”

“It’s enough,” he decides, grinning. “Okay Danny, look cute.”

Danny laughs, kicking his legs out, trying to add emphasis to his anti-gravity. Click. 

Tucker passes him the camera, and Danny takes an aerial-view photo of him returning to his tub lounge. Click. The noise makes them both break out into snickers.

—

Danny sighs, head propped up with his hand. He has abandoned his pencil at this point, using his free hand to fiddle with the camera while Lancer drones on in the background. It’s beginning to make perfect, terrible sense why he was Jazz’s favorite teacher—his constant pop quizzes, strict gaze, complex lesson plans… it all makes Danny want to die. Again .

For the third time since the start of history, a spitball hits the back of his head. He whips around, shooting daggers at Dash Baxter and Kwan Lee, sneering conspiratorially to one another. They’ve been messing with Danny since the start of the year, and it makes him want to rip his hair out. 

Mercifully, the bell rings. The rising chatter and zipping of bags is almost enough to drown out Lancer’s spiel regarding—well. Who gives a shit. Danny is trying to leave as quickly as he can, but he’s stopped moments before the doorway, skidding to a halt right before crashing into Kwan.

Dash leans on the wall next to him, grinning like a Disney villain. Danny’s eyes dart around—somehow, they were the last people in the room, “Fenton,” Dash says, looking him up and down.

“Baxter,” Danny counters, cringing at the way his voice cracks.

“This door is tolled now,” Kwan says. His shoulders perfectly fill out the space, a meaty rectangle. If Danny went invisible, he could walk right through.

Dash nods. “Ten bucks.”

Danny grips the straps of his backpack. “Steep price,” he cooly comments, desperately wishing not for the first time that this wasn’t one of his only classes without Sam or Tucker in it. 

He looks the two of them over. Static pricks at his fingertips. If he transformed, the two of them would be scared shitless. He’d bare his teeth, let his eyes burn bright. They’d run away and never bother him again. 

Their smug glares are so, so tempting.

Electricity burns in his chest. He opens his mouth—

“Fenton, Baxter, Lee—you three better be getting to class,” Mr Lancer calls, passing them in the hall. He doesn’t even look their way, already pinching the bridge of his nose. The jocks scatter, leaving Danny with final threatening looks and a clear message: this isn’t over. 

Shitheads, he tries to convey back. It doesn’t hold. His whole body is prickling, agitated.

Danny changes into his gym clothes in a cramped bathroom stall. He’s always been uncomfortable with the locker rooms, more now that they’re full of assholes. His hair stands on end, energy mounting below his skin, almost begging him to shift.

He’s alone in here, the dripping of a faucet the only sound nearby. So, he listens. 

The relief is instant, frustration rolling off him in sharp, static waves. Like this, everything is so much more volatile, his very being seemingly shaped by emotion. His form wavers, fizzing brightly. He hovers above the bathroom floor, fingers twitching. 

What did he do to deserve getting picked on?

Dash was older than the rest of the freshman student body, stupid enough to be held back but too good at sports to be fully discarded as a social outcast. Girls trailed behind him, other meatheads always at his side. Danny was just some kid. What the hell did he do?

God, he wants to teach Dash a lesson. Show that jerk what he’s made of. Make him scared. 

The electricity bubbles in his hands. His whole body is trembling, white-hot. 

Dash’s voice echoes in his ear. Watch where you’re going, dipshit. Watch where you’re going, dick—

In a flash, a hole has been burned through the stall door.

Danny turns back immediately, mouth agape as his scuffed shoes hit the ground again. It’s as if the door has been melted through, burnt around the edges, still smoking green. Had he just—?

Click. Without thinking, he takes a photo of the scene, knowing Sam and Tucker will want to see later.

The tardy bell rings, and he rushes out before anybody can see him.

—

“ So you really can’t hang out? ” Tucker’s voice mournfully crackles. Danny can hear his puppy dog eyes and it makes him chuckle fondly. He adjusts how he’s sitting on his bed, laying on his stomach, feet in the air, phone next to his ear.

“I have a curfew,” he responds. Mom has made it very clear that he won’t be let off easy now that he’s in high school. “My mom’s barely cool with you guys sleeping over—it’s hilarious you think she’d even consider letting me go to the Nasty Burger at this hour.”

“ That is straight up dystopian, dude,” Sam says. Danny can picture her pointing a fry his way, her critical grin. “ It’s only 8:30. Even my parents let me go.”

Danny sighs, flopping over onto his back. “I know. It’s stupid.” He rests the phone on his pillow, holding his arm up to the light. His eyes trace over the scar, taking in every detail of it, as he has been every day since the incident. Still no fading. Why was the internet such a liar?

There’s a pause on Sam and Tucker’s end. Danny strains his ear, trying to immerse himself in the faint sounds of the Nasty Burger at night. Distantly, he hears people taking orders, a group laughing at another table, Tucker contemplatively sipping his milkshake.

“ ...Y’know who doesn’t have a curfew? ” Asks Sam. There’s a mischief in her voice, and it pulls Danny to the sound.

“Who?” He asks despite himself, caught on her hook.

“ Well, ” says Tucker. Danny sees his expression clearly—smirking, eclipsed by junk food. “ There’s this ghost…” 

Ah.

“Ahhhhhh.”

How had he not thought of that? He hangs up without another word, his friends cut off mid-giggle.

In the silence, there is a moment of hesitation.

Has Danny considered sneaking out before? Of course. Countless times. The heist-like difficulty of the enterprise always stopped him in his tracks, but now… to hell with tying a rope of t-shirts—with his powers, this was almost too easy.

Transform. Turn invisible. Float to Nasty Burger. Foolproof. No, better— parent proof.

Why is it so hard, then?

He sits up now, feet pressed against the carpeted floor. His hands grip his knees as he tries to steady his breathing. It’s not calm he needs though, is it? He needs energy, voltage. He tries to conjure the afterimage of death. It makes his skin crawl.

Sitting here, eyes shut, sweat beading on his brow, he can so clearly feel the thing that isn’t him under his skin. 

His scars twinge. Something fizzes in him, popping like carbonation. A memory surfaces—him and Tucker at Nasty Burger, equipped with soda cups the length of his forearm. He drank his weight in Sprite that day, bubbles of it blessing his face like little kisses. It leaves an odd taste in his mouth now, buzzing discomfort under his tongue.

Danny knows that the accident left him changed. Any idiot could puzzle that one out. Why, then, does the thought make him want to vomit?

He tries to mold the electricity filling his veins, make it tangible. He invites it to the surface, trying to shoo it away from where it’s making his heart hammer.

In a flash, his skin is glittering, abrasive. Light dancing off water. 

He sighs, relieved and unsure why. He isn’t sure of much these days, is he?

What he is sure of, though, is that his friends are waiting on him and it’s been a good twenty minutes. They’ve texted him a few times, but he flips his phone shut in lieu of any answer, too conflicted on how to explain. 

…Okay, he can’t leave them hanging. He opens it again a moment later, typing out a scrambled omw before phasing through the window.

He’s semi-corporeal, but can still vividly experience the cool night air. Amity Park is full of fall’s beginning, leaves browning, the world dying in slow motion. Truly, it’s beautiful. He flies above streetlights, brushing past roofs, eyes trained on the stars. He trusts himself to know the way, too distracted by the constellations he can make out—Andromeda, Pegasus—if he reached out, his knuckles would graze their sparkling forms.

Wind rushes through him, twinging his electric insides. His white hair is splayed flat against his face, pressed back from his quickness. He speeds up, just to push it further. 

His weightlessness is indescribable. In an odd way, it’s grounding—finally, the energy has somewhere to go.

It’s 9:03 when he arrives at the Nasty Burger. He makes sure nobody is watching when he taps on the window by Sam and Tucker’s table, and quickly goes invisible when heads turn at the friends’ sudden expletives. 

Danny is still cackling when they come out to meet him, bent over in the air, the force of his laughter sending him into somersaults. Tucker, now drenched in milkshake, eyes him disapprovingly. Sam, however, cracks up alongside him. 

“Tuck nearly had a heart attack,” she wheezes. 

“If you don’t stop laughing, I’m going to hug you so long that the smell of artificial banana never leaves your clothes,” Tucker seethes back, stretching his dripping arms out in warning. She shrieks in protest, giving in to his sudden chase. 

Click.

Danny hadn’t even realized he had brought his camera before now, feeling it knock against his chest. Bringing it was second nature at this point, his stance irregular without its familiar weight around his neck. He had the perfect angle anyway—floating above the chaos, his friends illuminated in Nasty Burger neon. 

A little meter on the top of the camera tells him he has 31 exposures left. 31 more memories to capture.

He breathes, and it comes out freezing.

Sam and Tucker stop their wrestling at the sound of his gasp. Once again, his insides have been replaced with ice, whole body going still, hands absently gripping at the camera.

Tucker is paused, hand outstretched in Sam’s hair. They detangle themselves quickly, surrounding Danny as he floats back to the ground. The static is seized within him, icy, waiting. 

Sam is half-smeared in milkshake goop, but her clean hand finds Danny’s shoulder. She’s saying something, so is Tucker, but they’re speaking a mile away. Danny’s gaze is roaming—something is here and he knows it, the tripwire in his brain yanking him to attention.

After a moment, it dissipates. At Danny’s sudden responsiveness, Sam and Tucker’s shoulders fall in twin relief. 

It is then that the window to the Nasty Burger is shattered by an uprooted table, whizzing past them.

The table doesn’t hit anything but pavement, and for a moment Danny relaxes, but the frost in his throat forces his gaze back to the glass where something is roaring.

It’s… a bear. He’ll let himself believe it’s a bear.

A bear on two hind legs, face jagged with ectoplasm. Its eyes are turned in anger, red spots blending with the neon Open Now! sign. The remaining humans seem to have evacuated, their screams on the wind. 

Dazedly, Danny hands Sam the camera. “Be right back,” he says. 

Sam sputters, incredulous. She tries to call after him, but it’s no use. The static is building in his chest, sparking at his fingertips. 

It’s a little embarrassing—he thinks of Spiderman. 

He had seen the movie two summers ago and fell in love with it. As he now acts, he pictures the young, intrepid hero, dangerous in his valor. It all just… makes sense.

With purpose, he conjures the anger Dash so recently stirred in him, malleable energy dancing off his hands. He trembles with it—and maybe with fear—as he circles his Green Goblin. 

He can see Sam and Tucker on the sidelines, watching from a safe distance. Their presence soothes his tremor. Somehow, he smiles.

“Hey—uh, fur-brain!” He stumbles, choking on the words. The beast turns, snarling. Ectoplasm dribbles down its jaw, and Danny feels his stomach plunge at their closeness.

He holds his hands up, willing the electricity forward, and this is it, he’s a hero, he’s Amity Park’s friendly neighborhood ghost boy, he’s saving the Nasty Burger, he’s impressive, he’s worthy—

He’s… hovering there, and nothing’s happening. His fingers twitch. No power emerges.

“ Fffuck ,” he whispers.

His eyes screw shut in preparation for mauling, but that doesn’t come, either. 

“Easy there,” someone says. Danny cracks an eye open to see a girl with pepper spray and a broom. “Shoo. Shoo!”

She’s… pretty, he realizes. He doesn’t have the heart to kick himself for that being his first thought. Her hair is in perfect curls, pulled back with an orange bandana. It cascades down her back, a waterfall. She’s adorned in gold—bangles, necklaces, rings—and in the light, she glitters. She looks Danny’s way, and if his heart could stop again, it would’ve.

She shifts uncomfortably under his gaze. He notices, perhaps a little too late, how he’s staring at her—eyes wide, mouth agape. Quickly, he adjusts. 

His Green Goblin skitters off, chased by the stranger’s pepper spray.

Suddenly, they are alone together in the half-wrecked Nasty Burger. 

“Are you okay?” He blurts. His feet shuffle against the ground—when did he float down? Did she see him flying?

She gives him an odd grimace. Her green eyes dance over him, gaze prodding, judgemental. “That’s a weird costume.” 

Click.

Danny and the girl whip their heads to the hole in the window where Sam is peeking through, face obscured with the camera. She cringes at the loud noise, ducking down again. 

“Don’t mind me!” She calls cheerily. Tucker shushes her, head buried in his hands. 

Danny turns back to the girl, about to apologize, but she’s already gone.

Shit. “Sam,” he hisses, “what the hell.”

Sam and Tucker emerge fully from their hiding spot. Sam looks embarrassed, fidgeting with the camera strap. Tucker races up to Danny, shaking him by the shoulders. 

“ Dude ,” he stresses, “that was Valerie Gray. You just saved Valerie Gray. From a ghost!”

“More like she saved him ,” Sam points out. She returns the camera to Danny, who snatches it back with a glare. 

“Semantics.” Tucker waves her away with a hand. “Do you think she’ll go with you to homecoming now?”

Danny can feel cool ectoplasm pooling in his cheeks—blushing, but wrong. He averts his eyes, praying it isn’t noticeable to his friends. “Shut up,” he says goodnaturedly, trying not to die ( again ) at the thought of embarrassing himself in front of a cute girl.

Sam, as if reading his thoughts, punches him in the shoulder. “She probably won’t even recognize you at school,” she says. “She’ll just think it was some nerd who got lost on his way to ComicCon, or something.”

“Yeah,” he sighs, wringing his hands. He casts his gaze to the ruined burger joint, the broken glass… “Maybe we should head home.”

They don’t need any convincing. Tucker grins, “Wanna give us a ride?”

He frowns, befuddled. None of them have their license, how is he supposed to—

Oh , yeah. Ghost powers.

“I don’t know if I can carry both of you at once,” he says.

At Tucker’s persistence, he is forced to attempt it. Sam holds onto him like a backpack, Tucker hanging from his arms. It’s surprisingly easy—the weight throws him off a little, but they can get airborne without question.

Above the Nasty Burger, Danny swings Tucker from side to side and he screams with joy. Sam buries her face into Danny’s back, muttering a string of increasingly creative curses with every twist and turn he makes. He wiggles from side to side, feeling her nails dig into his side as both a protective measure and a way of scolding him for his antics. 

“I’m gonna throw up!” Tucker yells, disturbingly ecstatic. Sam tells him to shut the hell up.

“It’s late! Someone’s gonna call the police on us,” she complains. 

“Sounds like someone’s scared ,” Tucker teases, neck craning to fully display his shit-eating grin. 

Sam lessens her vice-like grip on Danny momentarily to flip Tucker off, refusing to look his way. Danny and Tucker snicker.

“Y’know Tuck, Sam has a point,” Danny says. Tucker’s confused for a moment, but at Danny’s wink, he catches on. 

The smile breaks out on his face again, bright as the sun. “Yeah?” he prompts.

“I better get you guys home… and fast. ”

“Danny, I swear to god—” 

Sam’s protests blend into a shriek as Danny rockets through the air. Tucker cheers against the wind, clearly swallowing bugs and not seeming to care in the slightest. Danny’s eyes are watering, not-tears streaking his cheeks. Smiling makes his face hurt, scrunched up in joy for far too long—but maybe, out of all the problems in his life, that’s the best one to have.

Danny drops Sam off first. Tucker’s house is closer, but a part of him feels bad for putting her through this whole ordeal in the first place. When she extracts herself from his back, she spends a minute and a half splayed on her front lawn, reconnecting to solid ground. Danny and Tucker crack up again at the sight, and between her shushing and warnings, she’s giggling, too.

“Okay. Scram before my parents see,” she says fondly, punching each of them in the shoulder. Tucker makes a big show of agony, clutching at the afflicted area. “Oh yeah,” she breezily says, ignoring his theatrics to lock eyes with Danny. She hands him his camera back, pressing it into his hands. “Wouldn’t want you to forget it.”

Danny grins. “Thanks.” For everything, he doesn’t tack on. Their gazes linger at one another, everything suddenly bittersweet. “You’re the best, Sam,” he finishes lamely. She laughs.

Tucker, laying in the grass, holds his arms out to Danny. “Take me home,” he orders. 

Sam calls from her doorway, “Feel free to drop him.”

“She loves me,” Tucker informs Danny, climbing onto his back. “Woah, this is way more comfortable.”

Danny snorts. Sam lingers on her porch, waving as they take off.

The flight to Tucker’s house is slow, quiet. Danny is actively taking his time now, hesitant to return home with so much energy still buzzing in him. 

“This is beautiful,” Tucker marvels, resting his chin on Danny’s shoulder. “You must do this every night.”

“Not really,” he says. His eyes are turned upward, darting from constellation to constellation. “This is the first time I’ve…” he gestures aimlessly, distracted by the stars.

Tucker hums. He’s getting tired, Danny can tell by the way his chatter has petered out. He’s feeling the drag of the late night, too—they’ll both have to fight to stay awake in class tomorrow, but he can’t find it in himself to care too much.

“Hey,” Tucker says suddenly. They’re nearing his house, only a street away. Danny stills, hovering in place. 

Danny watches an orange streetlamp flicker. “Yeah?” he asks. It feels like they’re ten, whispering under the blanket at a sleepover. It’s weighty—Tucker’s usual mirth is gone, replaced with something hesitant.

Tucker adjusts his grip to be a little tighter. “...Danny, you know you can talk to me, right?”

Danny’s face crunches up. He laughs a little, the deep, cold chunk in the center of his chest vibrating anxiously. “Uh. Yeah?”

“Tonight was fun. I just…” he sighs, at a loss. “I don’t know. It’s—it’s hard to tell how you’re feeling sometimes.”

What?

“Tuck,” Danny says. He floats down, and Tucker climbs off Danny’s back to face him on solid ground. His gaze is shifty, desperate. 

“I was just thinking about the other day.” Tucker picks at the loose threads of his milkshake-crusted turtleneck, avoiding Danny’s imploring gaze. “With the flash, and—yeah. I dunno. I’m just worried, I guess? I don’t want you to bottle it up, or something.”

The light stutters on Tucker’s glasses as his gaze comes back around to meet Danny’s. They stand for a moment like this, frozen, unsure. Tucker’s fingers tap against his thumb in a nervous rhythm. Danny wants to reach out and hold them, quiet his worry, but it’s making him think.

Danny frowns. His hand rubs up and down his arm, scar bristling at the touch. 

He hadn’t really stopped dying yet, had he?

He isn’t sure how to say it. His voice comes out shaky—“Y’know how satellites in orbit around earth aren’t being held up by gravity? Like, they’re just falling, but slowly?” Tucker gives him a concerned, clueless look. It is late, and Danny feels sick. He scraps his efforts. “I’ll let you know if I need to talk,” he settles on saying, and it makes Tucker visibly relax. 

“Okay,” he says, face still twisted in an unfamiliar frown. It’s uncanny to see him without a smile, like a daisy without its yellow center. “I love you, man. I’m glad you’re here.”

They embrace and Tucker is steady, persistent. It anchors Danny—he lingers for a moment at Tucker’s door, a quiet part of him so desperate to keep the night going, to not return to his cold room and its fake stars.

But it is late. And Danny feels sick.

—

Danny wakes up in the dark, his breath heavy and electric. The negative of his dream is burnt behind his eyelids—white suit, camera flash—and no matter how hard he tries, he cannot rub it away. New, phantom figures carve their way through his skin, diverging from the Lichtenberg patterns, burning all the same. It’s not real. He knows it isn’t real. His arms are the same—wrecked by the portal, but the same. Why, then, is it suddenly so hard for him to breathe?

He sits trembling, eyes tracing over the plastic stars on the ceiling, their greenish glow.

—

“Okay, can you explain the significance of the Albatross?” 

Danny lets the silence stretch out uncomfortably long, shrinking under Jazz’s disappointed stare. His fingers tap against the beat-up Casper High copy of Frankenstein on the table before him. It looks like an English teacher threw up—the collective notes of Sam, Tucker, and Danny (not that he did more than doodle) are all strewn about. Jazz has her big, perfect binder of everything she ever learned in high school, and at this point Danny just wishes she’d hit him on the head with it.

Sam and Tucker are equally awkward. They sit with ice waters in hand, exchanging glances as Jazz and Danny have another silent argument.

“Is this really necessary?” He finally asks, and she looks ready to rip her hair out.

“ Danny ,” she seethes. 

“It’s a metaphor, of course it isn’t necessary!” Tucker unhelpfully adds, shutting up at Jazz’s glare.

She takes a deep breath. “Maybe we should take a break.”

About damn time, Danny almost says, his mouth gracefully kept shut. The three of them have been struggling to teach him the plot of Frankenstein for about two hours now. The exam was tomorrow, and he couldn’t even explain the Alba-whatever. He had already accepted his fate, but for some reason, Jazz was determined to make him suffer.

Jazz stretches, her arms popping. “Danny, can you grab my water?”

He rolls his eyes. “Sure. Where is it?”

“I think I left it in the lab.”

Sam and Tucker freeze in place. Sam looks at Danny first, eyes wide. His arms crawl. He hasn’t been down there, not since…

“I’ll get you a new one,” he says.

Jazz makes a face. “No way. It’s special, I infused it with mint and cucumber.”

“If it’s so special, why’d you leave it down there?”

She stills at the tension in his tone. He looks at her with practiced neutrality, ignoring the way his fingers twitch.

Jazz’s Therapist Look makes Danny want to scream sometimes. 

It’s the way her eyes soften, the way she frowns like she’s about to ask “ how did that make you feel? ”. She’s desperate to diagnose him, to tell him how messed up he is. The only problem is that he knows he’s messed up. He knows something’s wrong. It made him feel bad. He feels bad. Is that what she wants to hear?

“I can grab it,” Sam suggests around the sudden silence.

“No, Mom and Dad wouldn’t want you in the lab.” Danny grimaces, resolute. “It’s fine. I’ll get it.”

She gives him a look, but he’s already up and moving to the door. Stupid. It’s all stupid.

He walks down the metallic stairwell, one step at a time, and ponders on what he could possibly be proving by doing this.

His hand is slick with sweat, slipping down the steel railing as he moves. Time is passing in slow motion. The sound is already making his ears burn—metal churning, fizzing lights. It’s quieter without his parents in it—they had gone to the hardware store in search of more tools, leaving the lab soulless in its unfinished state.

In the doorway, he hesitates. The whole room gets a once-over.

The walls seem to buzz. Just his imagination. His eyes avoid the portal, skirting around its heavy frame. It’s shut, the black and yellow of its closed maw making his chest seize. 

It’s ice cold. Shit is scattered everywhere. The walls are cut up, racing wires and motherboards half-revealed. Epidermis and dermis. It’s all too exposed, the bones of the place. Danny’s breath comes out shaky.

He’s looking for something, isn’t he? A sense of purpose? A way to get his family to like him, now that he’s become the thing they want to destroy?

What would they do if they found out? He looks over the room, sees the forceps, the scalpels, the long, metal tables covered in dust-guarding plastic. Above them, there’s a drawing—something crude, all abstract and crayon. It’s of Danny and his parents, fighting a ghost. The memory comes as a moment of peace for his deteriorating state. He was so proud of it, the shading, the color. His parents hugged him so tightly, smiling like he deserved it. He did, then. He did deserve it.

He rips it off the wall.

—

There are little perks in death. For instance, eavesdropping has gotten a hell of a lot easier.

Danny is incorporeal, haunting the hallway that Jazz sits in, their parents at her side. He floats above them, blowing white hair from his eyes as his family discusses… well. 

“He’s in an important stage of development,” Jazz continues. Her voice is hushed but intent, hands balled up in her pajamas. It’s way past her self-ordained bedtime of 10:30 ( It’s the perfect number of hours to keep my brain sharp, or something), Fentonworks cloaked in shadow around them. 

Jack and Maddie are distracted. Their work gear is on, goggles down. Jazz must have fought hard to keep them standing in the hallway long enough to listen to her rambling. There’s a book under her arm— 1001 Questions About the Brain, Danny recognizes with an eyeroll.

“Jazz,” Maddie placates, “Danny is fine. He’s smart and capable, he doesn’t need his hand to be held. Remember when you started high school?”

Danny remembers. She came home crying every day until her first test, that better-than-perfect 102% changing her whole outlook. “This is different,” she says desperately. “I think something’s going on with him.”

Danny drifts above the following silence, his skin crawling. His parents exchange an uneasy glance, their goggles flashing in the light. 

“He’s not doing drugs, is he?” Jack asks. Danny has to stifle his snort.

Jazz groans. “Dad, I’m serious!”

“What is it, then? What’s going on with him?”

Her mouth lapses shut, curling into an uncomfortable grimace. Her expression is twisting slowly into unadulterated misery. “I don’t know,” she admits, voice weak. “I… I should know, I’m his sister, but I don’t, and I’m scared.”

“Oh, sweetie.” Maddie rubs her back, pulling her in close. 

Danny wrings his hands. He floats down, stands among his family. They’re quiet save for Jazz’s sniffling, Jack and Maddie exchanging a concerned glance over her head. 

They’re so close. He could reach out and touch them, join the embrace.

He goes back to his room.

–

While Danny sets the table, Lance Thunder drones on the TV, warning citizens to be on the lookout for strange, aggressive animals.

He’s lining up plates, partially tuned-in to the sound of Jazz’s cooking, and it’s the second weirdest thing that’s happened to him recently. With their parents so busy in the lab, they graciously hadn’t had family dinner in months. Apparently, all it took for them to go back to watery pasta and dull small-talk were a couple of tears. Nice going, Jazz.

Mom and Dad keep looking at him and it’s putting him in a shitty mood. Everyone seems nervous, eyeing him like he’s going to break down at any second. He’s trying to stay cool, keep his face neutral, but his hair is standing on end. 

“Danny?” 

“I’m fine, ” he snaps.

Jazz blinks, watching him with wide eyes. Her hands are frozen, paused mid-chop. The carrots in her grip seem to beg for mercy. “...I was gonna ask you to fill the cups.”

“Oh.” He rubs his neck, the skin blotchy with embarrassment. “Got it.”

She’s quiet for a moment. Lance Thunder talks about the Nasty Burger, the flash-storm that had likely busted its window. Water fills each glass, ice clinking thoughtfully.

“Are you in any clubs at school yet?” She asks. His hand tightens around his father’s cup. 

“No.”

Jazz hums. She’s abandoned the salad to lean against the wall, watching his stiff motions. Stop looking, he urges. She ignores his silent plea. “Not even something for photography?”

He waves his hand, dismissive. “It’s just a hobby.” That’s surprising in and of itself—he wasn’t expecting to like it that much, but he was almost done with the roll of film already. It was sort of fun, documenting everything. 

He was beginning to look at things differently. On his way to school, he’d consider the good lighting, the way two trees perfectly framed a house. Fall was in full swing now, and it tended to draw his eye.  Everything was an opportunity, a memory waiting to happen. 

He had taken a few photos of nature, and a few of that pretty girl Paulina when she wasn’t looking, but Sam and Tucker remained the camera’s main focus. He found himself taking photos of them more and more, capturing snapshots of their conversations, their fights, their laughter. Those were the pictures he was most excited to see developed. 

“I’m glad you enjoy it,” Jazz says genuinely, smiling. Danny can’t help his dour expression. What’s her game here?

Jack and Maddie Fenton burst from the lab’s door, hastily shedding their gloves and goggles. “Sorry,” Jack announces. “We had a breakthrough with the portal!”

Jazz rolls her eyes. “Can we please save the ghost talk for after dinner?”

“She’s right, Jack. Sorry, honey.” Maddie hangs her red goggles on the doorknob, the light reflecting into Danny’s eye. She smiles wide, hands on her hips. Danny can’t remember the last time he saw her hands without their black, rubber protection. “Is that lasagna I smell?”

“Costco’s best!” Jazz grins back. “Sit down, I’ll bring it over.”

Danny’s seat feels too small. His parents are loud, their muddy conversations blending with an ad on the TV he can hardly make out. The tablecloth scrapes against his jeans, and he takes a deep, steadying breath.

Sometimes, It’s easier to be a ghost.

His skin is buzzing. He’s got a flannel on, and if it wasn’t needed to cover the scar up his arms, he would’ve ripped it off by now. He’s desperate to get out, feel the wind in his hair, see the stars twinkling. The cold air would shock him back to normalcy. It would reset his system, he knows it. 

He can’t stand lasagna, so he takes a portion of salad and stacks scraps of green on his plate while Jack’s fork makes an egregious scraping noise. His eye twitches. His parents stink of science, their clothes stained from the lab, all of their movements robotic and exacting. The smiles plastered on their faces lack feeling. He can’t stand it.

Maddie asks, “Did you have a good day at school?” And that’s his final straw. 

“Great,” he says, strangled. They had their literature test. He lost half his lunch money to Dash. He left math early when a lightbulb burnt out and startled him into not being able to breathe. Normal Tuesday. “It was great . I have to go to the bathroom.” He gets up abruptly, Jazz grabbing his wrist before he can leave. The touch burns. He wrestles out of it instantly, giving her a wary look.

She doesn’t look upset, just… confused. “Everything okay?”

A laugh escapes him, the sound high and desperate. He has to get out of here. “All good! Excuse me.”

By the time he reaches the bathroom, Sam’s already picked up the phone. 

“ Danny? What’s wrong?”

He phases through the door, collapsing on the ground. One hand is holding the phone up, the other scrubbing at his eyes. The image of his family staring at him is burned into his mind. Stop looking. Stop looking. 

“Listen to me. It’s okay. Breathe.”

I can’t, he tries to tell her, but it comes out more like a pained groan. His hand goes running through his hair, half inclined to rip it out. His phone clatters to the ground—had he let go, or had it phased through? He isn’t sure. He isn’t sure of anything. 

There’s this heaviness on his shoulders he cannot seem to shake. Death weighs on him like an Albatross. Hey, maybe he did learn something. 

“Danny, would you please talk to me?” 

Sam’s voice is steady, surprisingly so. Danny follows the sound. “Yeah,” he says, breathless. “Sorry. Yeah.”

“Jesus, Danny—don’t apologize. Are you okay? Do I need to come over?”

His cheeks are wet with tears, and suddenly he’s insanely glad she can’t see him. “No,” he murmurs. “I—I don’t—I’m okay, I… shit, I’m sorry.” His words come out jumbled, half-formed phrases dancing on his tongue. The bathroom light hums, burning in his ears. 

For a moment, the only sounds are his shuddering, sobbing breaths. Sam’s giving him a moment to collect himself, he knows. He can practically feel her anticipation, her held breath. She wants to know what’s wrong, how to fix it. She’s always been that way—they’ve been friends for years, and she’d always been one to make things better, whether he wanted it or not. She was viciously protective, ready at the drop of a hat to fend off bullies or bury bodies, but the only body Danny needs burying is his own, and he doesn’t know how to say that.

Danny hears her shift over the line. “Could you maybe tell me what happened?”

He laughs, face buried in his palm. “I don’t know. Dinner with my parents for the first time since…”

“Yeesh.”

“It was just loud in there. I couldn’t—” he lets out a gusty breath. “It’s… um, it’s getting hard to be around them.”

The admission is met with momentary silence, and god, Danny feels stupid. 

“I get it,” Sam finally says. “My parents are… crazy. They don’t get me at all. I know it’s not the same, but I’m here anytime you want to talk about that.”

Danny smiles. He lets his head lean against the door, eyes hitting the ceiling stars he had placed a few weeks ago. “Thanks,” he says. “It’s… weird. They’ve been so busy, I’ve barely seen them. But with everything…” the lab flashes in his brain. The tables. The surgical tools. He shudders. “I dunno.”

Sam hums in agreement. “Need me to come over and break all their weird ghost shit?”

He chuckles, the weight lessening. “No, dude. They’d lose their minds.” He looks over the synthetic constellations on the ceiling, the echo of laughter reverberating in the room, a ghost unto itself. “It’s hard not to tell them stuff,” he whispers.

She thinks this over. Danny hears more shifting, the sound of a book flipping shut. She was probably doing homework before he called. The image of her is so clear—hair loose, her legs folded up in a pretzel. He wishes she was here to lean into his side, to make him real again, to breathe the life back into his corpse. She says, “...I know. I’m sorry.”

Danny knows she can’t see the emotion pinching his face, but he is quick to get rid of it anyway. He sniffles, scrubbing at the tears burning his eyes. “I should get back.”

“Okay,” she says. “Call if you need anything, alright? I’ll see you at school?”

“Yeah. I—” he cuts himself off before he can apologize, “—thank you, for talking to me.” 

He hangs up, his phone closing with a quiet click.

—

In the dead of night, Phantom sneaks down to the lab.

The thick, steel door to his basement passes through his intangible form like a shudder. He floats above the steps, the cold, vicious energy of the place swirling in him. He doesn’t bother turning the lights on—the green glow of technology makes everything visible enough to keep him on edge.

Ever since the accident, good sleep has been harder and harder to come by. Only recently has it really started to grate on him. He’s been falling asleep in class, and it’s only a matter of time before his parents start getting pissed. It’s a school night. He should be in bed with his eyes shut, ignoring the electricity thrumming under his skin, but after three hours of tossing and turning, he’s getting a little annoyed.

Phantom lets his feet fall flat against the cold ground, eyes sweeping over his surroundings. It’s cleaner than the last time he was here. The walls are in the process of being patched, various drills and hammers strewn around them. There’s a section of the room scattered in half-baked inventions—he sees a fishing rod, a thermos. It looks… ordinary, almost.

The energy coiled in his gut pulls him towards the portal, its black and yellow mouth clamped shut. It’s odd to stand so close to the thing that killed him, to look down and see his hands are still rather than trembling.

He isn’t sure how it makes him feel. It’s not peace, but it’s not terror either. It’s—nothing. He feels nothing. Not even the tug of electricity, the Lichtenberg figures momentarily silent on his skin. 

Despite the room humming around him, inside, he is quiet. Bidden by some unknown urge, he steps closer.

The air is conductive, fizzing on his skin. It’s as if the room has disappeared, everything but the portal bleeding out of sight. His gloved fingers graze against the button that opens its mouth, hesitant but wanting .

The sound of footsteps above stops him dead. He slips into invisibility at the metal creak of the door, hand receding back to his side.

“Who’s down there?!” says Jack, his manic voice echoing down the steps. He steps into the green light, armored in pajamas, wielding the Fenton Bat like a sword. His eyes pass through Danny, who has made it his mission to stand as still as possible in the center of the room.

At no sign of movement, Jack relaxes. He runs a hand through his salt and pepper hair, sighing.

“Not even a ghost?” He asks the air, hopeful. Danny can feel a laugh bubbling up in his throat, and he does his best to keep his mouth clamped shut. “Damn it,” Jack mutters, turning back the way he came.

Danny waits until he hears the door’s hinges swinging shut before he breathes out, body suddenly visible again without him asking it to be. Finally, exhaustion is creeping back to him. 

He casts one final glance to the portal, ignoring its draw. He’s had enough of this place for tonight, he decides.

Danny heads upstairs. He floats through the ceiling, stifling a yawn with the back of his gloved hand. In the hallway, he passes a mirror, and it makes the breath catch in his throat.

The white hair, the dark suit… he’s seen it all before. He’s spent the past month scrutinizing this form. Why, then, is it so shocking to see?

His eyes are green and glowing, like the lab’s dim lights. He moves his hand, waves it in the air. The reflection does the same. It’s him, he knows, but it doesn’t feel like it. The thing in the mirror is different, extant. It isn’t Danny, not really. 

As he detransforms, he keeps his eyes shut. His heart resumes its beating. He checks the mirror again, unable to quell the sense of relief at seeing himself there, peeking back at him.

I’m still me, he reminds himself. I’m still human.

When Danny sleeps, he dreams of dying.

—

“Are you seriously not done with it yet?”

Tucker’s groan makes Danny smile on reflex. He looks up from his untouched lunch, raising an eyebrow at his friend.

“It’s only 36 pictures,” Tucker continues accusingly, gesturing towards the camera resting between them. “It’s been over a month and you haven’t taken all the photos yet?”

Sam snorts. “Someone’s impatient.”

“I’m just saying, if it was digital…”

“You are such a geek, you know that?”

Tucker rolls his eyes, folding his arms defensively. “I just wanna see the pictures already.” He looks like a child with his embarrassed pout. Sam frowns in mock sympathy, hitting him upside the head. “ Hey! ” 

“You can’t rush film,” she says. “It’s art. You wouldn’t understand.”

Danny looks at the camera. He picks it up to polish the glossy lens on his shirtsleeve. The meter tells him he has five exposures left. It’s been long enough that he can’t even remember some of the photos he’s taken, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little curious, too. 

The bell rings. Tucker sighs dramatically. “Danny, you should haunt Mr. Falluca so we don’t have to take our math test.”

Danny blanches. “We have a test?”

Sam winces. Shit. “Want us to say you’re sick?”

“Or, y’know.” Tucker wiggles his fingers, making an ooh noise. “Ghost it up.”

“Come on.” Sam swats his hands away. “That’s a stupid idea. What if something goes wrong? Danny, you can’t possibly be considering that.”

“Of course not,” Danny says, considering it. Sam is right, of course—too many variables. God, he hates it when she’s right. He sighs, running a hand through his hair. “...Maybe if I do bad enough, he’ll let me retake it?”

“That’s the spirit!” Sam pats him on the back. “Here—we’ll walk slow, we can help you study on the way.”

Danny dumps his lunch, putting the camera back around his neck. Its steady thump is like a second heartbeat as they begin the trek to Falluca’s class, calming the dread in his chest. 

—

Every nerve in Danny’s body sings.

Please.

He’s back in the hollowed-out gut of the portal, light arcing through him. He sees its course, each path it carves on his skin. It burns through, leaving him cold and desperate. He’s begging, but he can’t tell what for. His friends? His family? Life returned to him? 

Please. Please. Help me. Please.

All it took was the flip of a switch for this irrevocable change. One motion that left his body vacant and burning. One flash of light—

“Danny?”

He opens his eyes, body rigid. His face is wet, pillow drenched below him—has he been crying in his sleep?

The ceiling stars are dim but still seem to burn his eyes. He scrambles to sit up, scrubbing at his face. Jazz is in the doorway, wringing her hands. She looks terrified. Danny looks down at himself, relaxing when he sees he’s still skin and bone. The pulse in his thumb is fluttery, static, but it’s a pulse.

“Hey,” he says, voice shaky. 

She takes this as an excuse to step in, the door clicking shut behind her, eating up the hallway’s light. It’s nighttime—Danny had taken a nap the second he got home, and it seems he overslept. Jazz sits at the end of his bed, watching him with wide eyes.

“You were talking in your sleep,” she says carefully. “And—were you crying?”

“I… I dunno,” he fumbles, threading his fingers together. He cracks his knuckles in quick succession, all nervous energy. A part of him is still buzzing, keeping his heart seized in place. 

Jazz frowns, her empathy nauseating. She places a steady hand on his knee. “Nightmare?”

God, why’d she have to say it like that? He looks away, fingernails digging into his arm in an effort to quell more tears, but they pool anyway. “I guess,” he admits. His voice is tiny and scared and he hates it. He wants it to burn up with the rest of him. He wants to get out of here, transform and smash all the mirrors and fly away and live on the moon. His body shudders.

“It’s okay,” Jazz soothes. “You’re okay.”

But he isn’t. He won’t be, not ever again. 

She continues, “Do you want to tell me about it?”

Mutely, he shakes his head. He can’t do that to her. Not now, not like this. She smiles somberly, beckoning him closer. He unearths himself from the sweaty blankets, leaning into her side. 

His head rests on her shoulder, tears trickling onto her pajama shirt. It’s an old band tee from their parents’ college days, dark and moth-bitten. The fabric is soft, gentle against his face. Jazz rubs circles into his back, soothing his tremor. He says, “I’m sorry.”

Jazz shrugs. “High school is hard,” she says, matter-of-fact.

He almost wants to laugh. “You have no idea.”

She doesn’t comment, but Danny knows she wants to. They both know this isn’t normal, and it hangs over the room like a thick mist, neither willing to say anything about it. 

Danny lets his eyes slip shut, ignoring the afterimage of the lab’s walls tightening around him. He breathes deeply, feels the air in his lungs, how the organ bends and contracts. He’s full of life, he reminds himself, nothing else.

“You know you can tell me anything, right?” Jazz whispers. “I—I’m your sister. I’ll always love you, Danny.”

His expression cinches. “I know,” he weakly responds. 

There’s a pause. Momentarily, Jazz’s hand stops its gentle path on Danny’s back, her whole body suddenly an ounce tenser. He cracks an eye open, her pained expression making his gut turn.

“...Is your arm okay?”

The question startles him. He sits up immediately, nearly headbutting her with his quickness. His arms snake around one another on panic-fueled instinct. “Yes. What?”

She frowns at him, searching his expression. His grip burns around the scar, but he refuses to let up under her scrutiny. She’s giving him the Therapist Look. He’s gotta think of a good lie and fast . 

“I’m not—” he starts, choking on his words. “I—I scraped it. Really badly. But it’s not infected, Sam checked it for me.” He blinks away the memory of him screaming on the lab floor, his arms alight. “It just looks gnarly, is all. I’m good.”

Jazz chooses her words carefully. “It wasn’t… intentional, was it?”

The flipping of a switch. Electricity searing his skin. Black burnt into white. Negative on negative on negative.

“ No, Jazz. Jesus Christ.”

She relaxes a little, but not by much. “...Okay,” she finally says. “I trust you.”

“Good.” Part of his voice dies in his throat, leaving him without conviction. He lessens his grip on himself, but the tension keeps him rigid. 

Jazz is looking at him, prompting. He doesn’t give in. He can’t. He just can’t. 

Finally, she relents. “I should go to bed,” she sighs. Her prying gaze tears away, and Danny lets out a breath. Jazz pulls him into one final, resolute hug. “I love you.”

“Love you too, Jazz.”

Her hands stay on his shoulders for a moment as she pulls away, looking him over again. “You’re really cold,” she says. “Do you want an extra blanket? I can grab you one from the hall.”

His nose wrinkles. “I feel fine,” he says honestly. “Maybe you’re just freakishly warm.”

She rolls her eyes. “ Please ,” she fondly scoffs, lips quirking. It relaxes him, the voltage beginning to peter out.

A part of him is so desperate to just tell her everything, to tell her how weird it is, how scared he is, how much it hurts. He wants her to tell him it’ll be okay, to stay here and rub circles into his back and bring him that extra blanket and keep him from dying a little longer, but it isn’t right. He can’t rely on her like that. He has to grow up.

Finally, she gets up from where they sit, bidding Danny one final goodnight. She watches him as she says it, gaze fixed at his eyes.

He does his best to smile as all the warmth leaves the room.

—

At the end of an unremarkable day at school, Danny’s last photo is taken.

It had been spur of the moment. He was walking down the hall with Sam and Tuck when he realized that, after all this time, he still had no photos with all three of them in it. So, he stopped his friends mid-conversation, getting the first person he saw—Star, a blonde girl he had spoken to maybe once who looked at him like he was an alien—walking the opposite way to stop and take their picture. He hadn’t even realized that it was the final exposure until the camera began to whir, mechanically rewinding the film.

Star had walked away quickly, brushing her hands off on her skirt as Sam and Tucker cheered. People were beginning to look their way, but Danny didn’t care. It just felt like such an accomplishment.

“ Finally, ” Tucker says, elbowing him with such a fondness that it summons a grin to Danny’s face. 

Sam takes the camera, flipping the back open to reveal the roll housing 36 of his most important memories from the past month and a half. She brandishes it like a trophy, and despite its unassuming exterior, Danny really does feel like it is one.

“What now?” He asks her. 

“The fun part,” she says, Tucker audibly rolling his eyes at their side. “I take it home to my darkroom and develop it. My mom said she’d help me out with the process. Could I come over after? Then you can get your negatives back and we can print out all the photos and look at them together.”

Danny’s face hurts from the prolonged smiling. “Of course,” he manages to say.

Tucker clears his throat, and now it’s Sam’s turn to roll her eyes. “You can come too, Tuck. Obviously. But I will wreck your shit if you make fun of it one more time, alright?”

“Thank you,” he primly responds, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. She doesn’t shove him away, the three of them sharing a chuckle, and Danny can’t remember the last time he’s felt this bright without it burning him.

Tucker comes home with Danny while they wait for Sam to come over. She’s on the phone all throughout, Danny listens to her narration of the process with more focus than he’s given to a single literature class all year.

“It’s pretty simple,” she says. Danny listens to the sounds around her—she’s mixing something, her mother giving quiet instruction in the background. He’s never met her mom before. She sounds… nice. “I’m mixing the developer now. My mom’s taking the film out of the roll. After that, we’re gonna give it a little chemical bath and bam! Negatives.”

“It has to dry,” her mother adds, voice faint. 

Danny can practically hear Sam’s eyes rolling. “Yeah. That too.”

“I bet we could’ve helped with the process if we were there,” Tucker says. Neither of them had ever been in Sam’s house. It looked pretty normal on the outside, but Danny was always curious, and by the way Tucker is wiggling his eyebrows, it seems that he feels the same. 

“No thanks. This is a delicate process. Knowing you, you’d probably open the door or turn on some gadget and it would ruin all the film. Also, it’s cramped in here with just two people. Four would make me lose it.”

“Danny could float,” Tucker suggests cheerily. Sam and Danny shush him at the same time. 

Sam’s mother can be heard laughing in the background— ”Your friends are funny.” Tucker shrinks where he’s sprawled out on Danny’s bed, giving an embarrassed hand-wave that Danny translates as SORRY. Danny hits him with a pillow. 

Sam clears her throat. “Anyway. We’re almost done. They just have to dry, then I’ll scan ‘em and come over.” A chuckle crackles over the receiver. “Some of these look really good, Danny.”

“Really?” Danny asks, feeling breathless.

“Hey, stop looking before we can see!” Tucker says, pointing accusingly at the phone. “How can you see anyway? I thought it was a dark room.”

“There’s a red light, dumbass.”

“Language, Samantha,” her mother chides, and Danny and Tucker stifle their snickers.

Another hour of chatter goes by before Danny starts to lose his mind. At one point, he abandons lounging on the bed to pace around his room, cracking his knuckles over and over again as Tucker drones on about the videogame he’s been playing lately.

He’s a different kind of anxious than what he’s used to these days. It’s not electric, budding under his skin. He isn’t volatile, he’s… excited. It’s nice. It makes him feel a little more human.

“Is it done yet?” Danny asks, interrupting Tucker in the middle of his explanation of game mechanics. 

“Oh, it’s been done for half an hour. I’m at your door right now.”

“You have a serious problem,” Tucker says, scrambling to his feet. Danny hangs up, cutting off the sound of Sam’s ridiculous cackle, and the two of them race for the door.

She’s still laughing when they reach her leaning against the porch railing, fanning herself with a plastic sleeve of negatives. “Sorry,” she says with a shit-eating grin, following them inside. “I didn’t want to interrupt Tucker.”

“I bet you weren’t even listening,” he sighs. The three of them sit down in the living room, Sam spreading out the photos so they can all get a look. They’re out of order, but Danny remembers the circumstances around each snapshot vividly.

One by one, he handles the corners of each photo, the memories turning in his mind: Tucker and Sam bickering in the hall, Tucker lounging in the bathtub at a sleepover, bruised autumn leaves turning in the wind, Sam posing with Halloween decorations. There are plenty of unattractive candids taken mid-conversation, depicting doubled-over laughter and beautiful imperfection. Many are blurry, out of focus, clipped by thumbs or smudged lenses, but they’re wonderful. They’re all wonderful.

Danny’s gaze lingers on the first photo, Sam and Tucker with their heads together at the lunch table. The flash washed out Sam’s skin and reflected off Tuck’s glasses, their smiles disoriented at the sudden brightness. It’s blurred at the edges, slightly unfocused. He remembers the flash, the burn of electricity racing up his arms. The photo is placed back on the carpet with extra tenderness.

Tucker elbows Danny, helping the memory to dissipate. He hands him the sleeve of negatives with raised eyebrows. “Check it out,” he says. “You look cool.”

Danny turns the sleeve to the light, searching the inverted images. It’s odd—there are photos of him and of his ghost, but like this, it’s as if they’ve swapped places. Danny sees himself floating in his bathroom, having an awkward exchange with Valerie, attempting to fight another ghost… but he also sees Phantom in the halls of Casper High, grinning with his friends, jumping into a pile of leaves. 

In a way it hasn’t before, it sets in. It’s him. It’s all him.

The boy and the Phantom. Two sides of the same coin. The same body in different light.

Sam and Tucker react loudly to a photo of Paulina. Danny switches his focus to them, the negatives set at his side.

—

Danny doesn’t keep up with photography, but the 36 pictures are tucked safely away in a photo album under his bed. The ones without Phantom in them hang on the wall, and Danny is sure he could spend hours looking at them—if he had the time, that is.

Classes are hard, but he’s getting the hang of it. Jazz helps him study. High school is doable, even for a half-human.

It’s been about three months since his death, and he feels good. Sam and Tucker help him practice his powers. He flies around every other night, counting constellations. The occasional ghost shows up, but he’s learning how to get them to go.

Jack and Maddie are making progress with their tech. Despite his excuses of being busy with school, they want him to start learning how to follow in their footsteps. 

One morning before school, Jack sits Danny and his friends down in the lab to teach them about ghost hunting. They feign ignorance. 

The portal opens. This time, Danny knows what to do.