Work Text:
Danny wasn’t panicking. He was past that. He’d been panicking for the last hour, trying to get everything to stop, trying to find a way out, trying to do literally anything except get himself caught. Panicking hadn’t helped anything, so he wasn’t panicking anymore.
Instead, he was breathing, slow and controlled, sitting in a bathroom stall hoping against hope that no one found him.
Danny winced a bit when he bit his lip, drawing blood. He hadn’t bit that hard. Shakily, Danny brought his hand up to feel at his teeth. They were sharp and pointed. Danny breathed in and out, pushing the panic down even as he mentally added fangs to his list of changes to his body. At least that one would be easy to hide as long as he kept his mouth shut. The rest of the changes weren’t that subtle.
His current list included an imp-like tail, pointed ears, glowing eyes, glowing skin, claws, and, for some reason, scales on his forearms and shins. And now fangs. In another ten minutes it would probably be something else too. Danny really wished he hadn’t let his parents drag him to this stupid “spectral science” conference.
He had known it was a bad idea. Really. He’d outright said that a ghost would have to be insane to willingly allow themselves to be surrounded by ghost hunters for three days. But, his parents had really wanted him to come and Tucker had made the excellent point that it would be good to see what kind of weapons were out there. So, Danny had let himself be dragged into a den of ghost hunters and now he was regretting it. He was never being nice to his parents or listening to Tucker again.
To be fair, it should have been fine. No one actually suspected anything. Danny just had horrible luck and he’d been sprayed with “Dr. Zott’s Ghost-Begone” when its inventor decided to do an impression of an overzealous makeup counter employee at Macy’s. Danny had walked right into a foul-smelling fog and now, two hours later he was stuck in a bathroom stall trying to manage an involuntary transformation that didn’t even line up with what he normally looked like as a ghost.
He still couldn’t get over the fact the only invention, other than his parent’s, that actually seemed to work was called “Dr. Zott’s Ghost-Begone”.
The worst part of this was that he didn’t have backup. Sam and Tucker were all the way back in Illinois and Jazz had started college in Washington State. Danny was stuck in Florida.
Even if he called one of them and by some miracle they were able to leave immediately, Danny couldn’t see a way for them to get here in less than a day. His parents would come looking for him long before then. To make matters worse, he couldn’t even go invisible or intangible to avoid them because that stupid spray messed that up too. They would definitely find him. Or some other convention goer would.
Danny took a deep breath. His parents had been better lately, a lot better. In the past few months, their behavior had changed. They had started taking notes at ghost fights. Danny couldn’t imagine a world where his parents didn’t charge headfirst into ghost fights, but in the past few months they’d started taking recording equipment into battle with them.
They’d started reviewing the recordings after every battle and there were detailed notes strewn across the lab. At first, Danny had thought it was going to cause more problems. If his parents started using recordings to somehow improve their battle tactics or equipment, it could end with Danny hurt, but so far that hadn’t happened. Instead, he’d started seeing notes on ghost to ghost communication and human-ghost interaction. His parents had almost completely stopped talking about tearing ghosts apart molecule-by-molecule. It was… weird.
Danny still didn’t know if he could trust the change. Sitting here in the bathroom, Danny supposed he was about to find out. After all, he was going to be found out. It was going to either be his parents or someone else. Someone else would almost certainly be some other ghost hunter. His parents had been better.
Danny wasn’t panicking. He had a plan. Kind of.
He pulled out his phone and texted his group chat with Sam, Tucker and Jazz, “Power failure. I’m enacting Plan Z.” *
Then Danny called his dad. The phone rang once, twice, then “Hello, this is Jack Fenton”. Danny didn’t know whether to be grateful or horrified his dad actually answered.
“Hey Dad,” Danny said, his voice echoing in a way that wasn’t caused by the bathroom tile, “I have a bit of a problem. I’m in the second floor bathroom down the west hallway past the vending machine. Do you think you could come here?”
There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the phone. “Danny, are you okay?” his dad asked, a note of panic in his voice.
Danny hesitated. Whatever was going on with his body wasn’t exactly what he would describe as okay. He’d actually rarely felt less okay.
His dad picked up on the hesitation. “Danny, do you need me to call an ambulance?”
“No!” Danny shouted before taking a short calming breath, “No, I’m not hurt or anything. I just–” Danny grasped around for a way to describe his predicament. “I just could really use some help.”
There was a harsh pause on the other end of the line. “I’ll be right there,” his dad said, voice determined, “Don’t hang up on me.”
Danny took a deep breath. “Thanks Dad,” he said. He could do this. It would all be fine.
Over the phone Danny heard the noises of his dad making his way through a crowded conference center. Within two minutes, he heard the sound of the bathroom door opening.
“Danny?” his dad called. It echoed over the phone.
“Third stall, Dad,” he said, hanging up the phone as he did so.
He heard his dad walk over, seeing the neon orange jump suit through the cracks of the stall. Danny took a deep breath. He wondered if his dad could see him glowing.
“Can you open the stall, Danny?” his dad asked. Danny didn’t actually know if he could. This felt like one of his worst nightmares come to life. He had called his dad, but this was it. This was really it. He was about to tell his dad he was Phantom. His mom too before the end of the day.
“Danny?” his dad prompted. What was Danny even supposed to say? How was he supposed to explain this? Phantom was one thing, but Danny didn’t even look like that right now. He was some weird agglomeration of ghostly features. He didn’t even know why that was. How was he going to explain it to his dad?
“Danny,” his dad prompted again, “If you don’t say something, I’m going to assume you're hurt and you need me to take off the door. You’re scaring me, son.”
Danny took a deep breath. “I’m here. Just please don’t freak out,” he said. His voice shook. His heart pounded. Before he could doubt himself again, Danny opened the door.
His dad stared at him in shock. Danny stared back, his heart beating out of his chest.
Danny cleared his throat. “I think I had a bad reaction to Dr. Zott’s Ghost-Begone,” he said, with a shaky laugh. It wasn’t even a lie. He was having a bad reaction.
That seemed to shake his dad out of the trance he was in. “Well,” he said, “I can’t say this was the situation I expected to walk into, but I think it’s going to have the same solution. Hold on for a second while I go get my extra jumpsuit out of the Ghost Assault Vehicle and call your mother.”
Danny blinked. He didn’t know what he had been expecting, but it was not that. There was no yelling, no accusations, no weapons being drawn on him. There was just his dad helping him out without asking questions. Danny hadn’t even needed to prove it was really him and not some imposter. It was probably the strangest experience of his life. He briefly wondered if he had been transported to an alternate reality.
Danny took a deep breath and looked down at his phone. He winced at the two dozen panicked messages in the group chat. His thumbs hovered over the screen, trying to figure out words to describe what was happening.
He settled on “We’re good for now. I’ll update later.” It was probably not the best message for dispelling panic, but it would have to do. He couldn’t even parse his dad’s reaction and the man had left before Danny had the chance to ask any questions. He could only hope this wasn’t some kind of trap, although he doubted his dad would be the one to try and pull off something like that.
Five minutes later, the door opened again. “Okay, Danny,” his dad said, making his way over to the stall. “I have a suit with goggles and a face mask. I think that should cover everything up. I wasn’t quite sure what to do about the tail, but I think the suit’s baggy enough that it should be fine.”
Danny gratefully took the proffered suit with his clawed hands. “Uh, thanks, Dad,” he said, voice still a little shaky, “Do you, uh, have any questions about, you know, all of this?” He gestured generally to himself, wincing slightly. He probably shouldn’t be pressing his luck, but well, this was really weird.
“Oh, I have plenty of questions,” his father said, a blend of jovial and nervous “but I think I know enough to know that we should get you out of here before asking them.” He glanced around as if to see if someone was watching. “I’ve already filled your mother in with the basics. She’s going to meet us outside in the GAV.”
It was easier than Danny thought it would be to get out of the conference center. Between the baggy jumpsuit, the goggles, and the facemask, most of his ghostly features were hidden. Even the glow was muted. Danny would have been worried about the getup standing out, but he and his dad walked by three people in similar outfits on the way out.
All that tension, all that fear and all it took was a three minute walk for Danny to get out of that building.
As promised, his mother was sitting just inside the passenger area of the GAV. Danny stiffened. His dad had been weirdly chill about everything, but would his mom be? What did his dad tell her exactly?
“Oh, Danny,” she said, reaching out and taking his face in her hands, “Are you okay?”
“Uh,” Danny didn’t know what to say.
His mom pursed her lips. “Off with the mask and goggles,” she said, not waiting for him to comply before doing it herself.
Danny flinched back. His mom looked angry. It looked like she wasn’t going to be as understanding as his dad. Maybe he should–
“I want to get Dr. Zott and his blasted ghost-spray banned from this convention,” she seethed. That was not what he expected. “He should know better to be spraying people with that kind of thing. I sincerely doubt he’s gone through all the proper testing and you never know if there’s going to be someone around that has a bad reaction to an aerosol like that.”
Danny stared blankly.
“You’re right,” his dad said, immediately backing her up, “We should file a formal complaint.”
This was not going at all how he was expecting. “What is going on?” he finally blurted out, flabbergasted.
Maddie turned to look at him again. “You’ve had a bad reaction to an aerosol agent,” his mother said calmly, “I suspect it had some sort of chemical that interfered with your ecto-signature. That kind of thing can be quite delicate. Thankfully your human form makes you mostly immune, but it still isn’t good for you.”
Danny blanched. “Human form?” he asked, voice shaking once again, “You know?” His voice was barely more than a whisper, though indignation seemed to bleed into it all the same.
His mom blinked at him before exchanging a look with his father. Then they both looked sheepish.
“Danny,” his father said gently, “We installed cameras in the lab six months ago.”
The blood drained from Danny’s face. He couldn’t breathe.
“You do all your training with Sam and Tucker in there,” his mom followed up with, just in case he didn’t understand how royally he screwed up.
“Oh.” It was all Danny could say. He’d been planning contingencies for years in case he ever had to tell his parents and it turned out they already knew.
Maddie looked between him and his dad. “Look, Danny, I know this is a lot. We’re going to need to talk. I know there’s been a lot of hiding going on and I’m sure…” she hesitated, trailing off.
“What your mother is trying to say is that we love you, Danny,” his father said, “There is going to be a lot to talk about, but never doubt that we love you.”
“Exactly,” his mom agreed, “We love you always and forever.” She paused and looked at Jack. “Dear, that presentation is in a couple hours, do we need to…”
“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart,” his dad said, “I can take Danny back to the hotel room to make sure he’s all good and you can still do your presentation. I was just going to be making the slides go anyway.”
His mom hesitated. “Well if you're sure…”
“When my powers have gone on the fritz before, it’s worn off after a few hours. I’m not sure if there’s much you’ll be able to do if this is the same kind of deal,” Danny added tentatively. He wasn’t actually that confident that these were changes that would just wear off, but he did know he didn’t want both his parents fussing over him while he waited to find out. Besides if they didn’t wear off, he was probably going to need to go to Frostbite.
Jack ruffled his hair. “And don’t worry! We’re Fentons! We’ve got this!”
His mom grinned at that. “Okay, but call me if you need anything. I mean it.”
With that she slipped out the door and back to the conference center.
Danny buckled himself in the back, still not wanting to be seen, and braced himself for his father’s driving.
It wasn’t until Danny was toweling off his hair back at the hotel that he broached the question. He’d showered off the residue of the spray and it seemed to be helping. There hadn’t been any more changes at least.
“Why didn’t you tell me you knew?” he asked, not bothering to clarify what he meant.
Sitting on the other hotel bed, and trying to get the online conference zoom to work, Jack’s shoulders slumped.
“At first,” he started, looking sheepish, “We just wanted to be sure we knew what we were dealing with. You remember that whole incident a couple years ago when we thought Jazz had been possessed, right?”
Danny nodded, wincing. Jazz had spent the next week getting her hair untangled after her encounter with the Fenton Weasel. Being found out that way also haunted his dreams for weeks.
“Well,” Jack continued, “First, we wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again. And because we had videos, we could go over them and think things through before confronting you.
“The recordings pretty clearly showed that not only did Sam and Tucker know about you turning into a ghost, they were supporting you. We doubted they would have done that if you were some kind of evil ghost that had taken over our son, but ghosts can be tricky, so we decided to look into it more.”
Danny felt his shoulders tense.
“We decided the first thing to do was compare your DNA to make sure you hadn’t been outright replaced. So, we took the DNA from one of your baby teeth your mom had saved and compared it to a recent sample from your hairbrush.”
“That’s a little creepy,” Danny interjected.
Jack ignored him. “The DNA was odd. It was a match, but your recent DNA sample had significant ecto-contamination. We were worried after that of course, but it didn’t look like the kind of thing we could cure. Not to mention, we weren’t sure how it was affecting you and well–” Jack reached up and scratched the back of his head.
“You know how people change their behavior if they know they’re being watched?”
“Yeah?” Danny responded, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, we decided that we wanted to watch to make sure nothing was wrong before telling you we knew, just to make sure you didn’t end up hiding something being wrong because you knew we were watching.” Jack looked sheepish. “Then we got carried away.”
“What do you mean carried away?” Danny asked, wary.
“Well, we knew you were out fighting ghosts, so we started wearing ghost cams whenever we were out hunting ghosts– I’m pretty sure you knew about those –and setting up ghost cams around town.
“When we were reviewing those, we noticed that you were talking and interacting with a lot of the ghosts you fought. Then we noticed that some of those ghosts were talking and interacting with each other. And we started looking into that more, so much so that, well, I’ve got your mother’s conference presentation pulled up here. It’s going to start soon. That might explain things a little better.”
Danny was skeptical, but looked at the screen on his father’s laptop anyway. The conference zoom was in fact pulled up. The camera was pointed at the front of a large auditorium. There was a slideshow pulled up on a projector. The title read: “SENTIENCE IN GHOSTS by Drs. Jack and Maddie Fenton”.
“You finally figured out ghosts are more than just imprints of post-human consciousness?” Danny said, feeling a little out of place.
Jack nodded, not meeting Danny’s eyes. “We were going to tell you, but there was just so much research we needed to do. And, well, we thought that it might be better to wait until you were comfortable enough to tell us yourself.
“Your mother and I know that we haven’t been very ghost friendly in the past. We wanted to show you that we’d changed. We’ve been working on our hunting practices these past few months and, well, we thought if you saw all the research your mother and I did, you might feel more comfortable. I guess we kind of forgot we were waiting today with everything that was happening.”
Danny stared at his father, not knowing what to say. He just–
There was movement on screen and he could see his mother take the stage. “Thank you all for coming out to see this presentation!” she began, “My husband couldn’t be here today, but we’ve been working on some research over the past several months that we’re very excited to share.”
For the next 45 minutes, he watched his mother try and convince a room full of ghost hunters and scientists that ghosts were capable of thought and emotion. The response was chaotic.
Danny didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to think. He felt loved.