Work Text:
The plan was dinner and a movie. It’d been a rough start to the school year, Halloween meant new horror movies at the cinema, and a regular Friday night activity was an attempt at normality. Danny had his fingers crossed ghosts weren’t going to view the spooky season as a reason to haunt Amity Park more than usual and that he and his friends would remain undistributed until at least Saturday afternoon.
Just twenty-four hours, please , of being a normal high schooler.
It said something about his life now that dinner and a movie was not something exciting to kick off the weekend, but a relaxing time.
“All set?” Tucker asked, snapping his locker closed.
“Oh man, yes,” Danny slung his backpack over his shoulder. “Let’s find Sam. Last matinee is at four thirty and I’m starving. I’d like to get a snack before we get there.”
“What’s wrong with an extra large popcorn?”
“I’ll have that too!” Danny insisted. “I’m just like, hungry all the time now.”
It was one of the weird medical mysteries he didn’t like to think about too much. His heartbeat had slowed, and his breathing, and his core temperature dropped. The energy required to keep him alive should be diminished because it wasn’t like ghosts ate. They just…magically had the power of flight and didn’t need to think about keeping energy levels up. It’s not like the dead had to worry about calories.
At least, that’s how Danny thought about it. He didn’t like to think too much about his humanity impacting his ghost and vice versa. It was easier to think “I’ve got ghost powers” than “I’m a ghost”.
(He still wasn’t entirely sure if he had died or not. Even those resuscitated aren’t told they died, only that “it was close” or “we almost lost you”. And wasn’t that Danny? Almost lost but not? He still walked and talked and ate.)
Tucker arched a brow, but didn’t comment. They’d agreed this was a normal weekend. Abnormal, ghost things, were off the table outside of emergencies. Danny’s constant need for food was simply a result of being fourteen.
(Never mind that it wasn’t a thing before the accident.)
Sam rolled her eyes at Danny’s request for a detour, but didn't complain even if she did wrinkle her nose at Danny ordering two taquitos from the 7-11 roller. It’s a good detour - the candy here was cheaper than the cinema.
“I’m so excited,” Danny bounced on his toes in line. “Did you see the trailer?”
“The werewolves look epic!” Tucker agreed.
“What do you think?” Sam cut in. “Four jump scares?”
“Betcha five,” Tucker said.
“You’re on.”
They’re not the only ones from Casper High at Amity 6, but thankfully, the A-listers are elsewhere. No one did more than wave or nod between groups, and Danny relaxed in the crushed velvet chairs. It was a normal Friday night. He didn’t have to worry about homework, or his mother’s cooking, or anything other than trying to catch the popcorn Sam tossed at his face.
(He wanted to catch it because he was hungry. Just snackish, he had just ate. And it wouldn’t be hard to grab a handful of butter popcorn to hold up to his mouth. But that was weird, being hungry so fast. So he just tried to catch them one by one.)
When the lights dimmed, they leaned back in their seats. Danny gave in and grabbed a handful of popcorn, absorbing the trailers. More horror films, of course. Including one about turkeys out for revenge for Thanksgiving. Odd, but he’d seen odder.
The theater’s intro rolled, reminding people not to talk during the show. The screen went dark, slowly revealing a forest at night. The movie was about a pack of werewolves picking off a group of campers. Danny knew what was coming, he recognized what the music was doing, but when the first jump scare came…
Tucker jumped. Sam jumped. Someone in the theater went meep! Someone else let out a soft laugh.
Danny breathed in sharply through his nose and swallowed. It felt like he’d just had a lemon meringue cookie. Something had sat on his tongue while the music built, only to dissolve then the tension in the theater cracked, the sweet taste so, so good he had no choice but to seal his lips and swallow. It was delightful. He wanted more, a whole box of cookies. He wanted to stuff them into his face, one by one.
The rattling of ice in Tucker’s drink brought Danny back to himself.
A movie theater. He was watching a horror flick. He was being a normal teenage boy.
Danny stuffed popcorn in his mouth. It was fresh, he’d seen it pop, but it felt stale in his mouth. He pushed it onto Tucker’s lap, leaning over to whisper, “Guess I had too many snacks before. Share mine with Sam.”
He leaned back, only half paying attention to the movie. The lemon flavor in his mouth lingered, and he tried to not make it obvious how he used his tongue to explore his own mouth. He didn’t remember eating a lemon candy, and there was no lemon on the popcorn. But the faint taste persisted. No, it grew. It was like he was drinking a sweet lemonade, sugar and citrus filling his mouth as the music switched to a minor key.
Another jump scare. Another invisible meringue cookie in his mouth dissolving. Another fading of the taste.
It didn’t take Danny long to notice the pattern. When the movie got scary, Danny consumed something. Consumed so much that when the movie was over, for the first time in weeks he didn’t feel hungry.
“Okay, from one to five, how scary?” Sam asked as they walked out of the theater.
“Solid four,” Tucker answered. “Really liked the lighting, and the werewolves looked so real! Danny?”
He brushed a hand over his mouth, hiding one last lick of his teeth. “Four,” he agreed. Not that he’d paid much attention to the movie compared to his deconstruction of it.
“You guys are wusses,” Sam scoffed. “That was maybe a three and a half.”
Tucker jumped in to defend his rating, but Danny stayed quiet as they walked to Nasty Burger This was a normal weekend. He was a normal teen. He was imagining the lemon in his mouth.
(But if he could give a real rating to the movie it was a five. Because why was he tasting phantom flavors? Why did he feel so full? He didn’t like it. He didn’t like this at all. How was tasting invisible food a ghost power?)
It wasn’t a long walk from Amity 6 to Nasty Burger. Not to a teenager with plenty of time to kill, enjoying the lingering light of the day. The lights from the Nasty Burger were easy to see, bright and tall, and Danny did his best to add his impressions about the movie to the conversation with his friends.
As they got closer, the lemon taste in his mouth faded and Danny relaxed. Maybe it had been a something in the air, a cleaner filling the air vents. That was a normal thing to taste.
They hit a corner and waited for the light to turn. Danny turned toward Sam and Tucker, arguing over if werewolves or vampires were scarier, when his mouth flood with lemon while someone laid on the horn.
This wasn’t lemonade though - it was the acidic bite of a raw lemon slice, nothing to sweeten it. His lips puckered, his mouth dried. He stared it on the woman in the middle of the intersection who had suddenly braked to avoid hitting another car running a red and turning left. She sat in the drivers’ seat one second, two seconds, before getting out of the center of the intersection.
As she left, as she calmed, the spike of lemon disappeared and Danny couldn’t ignore the connection anymore.
When people got scared, he tasted lemon.
And when he tasted lemon, his hunger went down.
“Jeez!” Tucker said. “So glad my parents aren’t here. They already aren’t sure about drivers ed this winter, and crazy drivers here is not gonna help.”
“You gotta go for a different angle, like how much time it’ll save them. Do your parents really want to drive you to school all the time?”
“I walk.”
Sam shrugged. “Then you’re sunk.”
“We can take it next fall,” Danny offered. “Or maybe this summer. But come on, we’re at the Nasty Burger.”
Danny could always scrounge up an appetite for Nasty Burger, and today was no exception. He dithered over his drink - but ultimately chose a lemonade.
(He was a normal teen. He was not somehow consuming fear. Was not tasting emotion in the air.)
Sam looked over at his order when he picked it up. “I thought you'd go for at least a Blowout sized combo. Is that just regular Nasty sized?”
“You passed over your popcorn too.” Tucked leaned in to peer into his face. “You feeling okay?”
Danny stabbed the straw in his lemonade and took a sip.
“Yeah, I'm good. Just not that hungry.”
(He wanted to spit out his drink, the artificial sugar awful. Fear tasted so much better. But this was a weekend to be normal, so he'd drink it and not make a face.
And he'd ignore the taste of a lemon cough drop that was his own bitter fear.)